Secret River, Blue Mountains, New South Wales, Australia

Swinging the Blues....

The river revealed itself, teasingly, never more than a bend at a time, calm between its walls of rock and bush…..  One reach resembled all the others: cliffs, a fringe of glossy green mangroves, green water.  Even the skyline gave no clues, each bulge of high land like the others, striped with shadows from clouds passing in front of the sun.

Kate Grenville:  Secret River

It was dark when we got off the train from Sydney Central.  We faltered down from the station in Brooklyn to the jetty, and stumbled aboard the Hawkesbury River Boat, almost literally into the arms of Neil, the only taxi driver left on the river (there were three, but one sank and one caught fire…. the boats that is, not the drivers.)  Without great ceremony the engine spluttered into life and we took off, into an almost limitless blackness, punctuated only by occasional green and red navigation lights.

Once out of the marina, Neil put his (good) foot down (his other leg sported a bloody bandage, the outcome of a work-related injury….) and the boat reared up like a colt heading for home.  Jittering across the dark waters, I was reminded of William Thornhill’s first encounter with the Hawkesbury River just over two hundred years ago.  Despite the difference in the boats, the river itself cannot have changed much. 

My brother gave me Secret River for my birthday, so I might know more about his secret retreat.  It is a story of the first settlers on the Hawkesbury River, with William Thornhill, a deported Londoner, his wife and children, taking centre stage, with a supporting cast of other Europeans who have staked their claims on the land, and a chorus Aboriginal peoples, who haunt the story, and indeed history.

Kate Grenville’s great-great-great grandfather, Solomon Wiseman, was the model for William Thornhill, and his name is commemorated in Wiseman’s Ferry…  The novel is an enlightening, though harrowing, story.  Life was hard, but the way the white fungus of deportees spread across the land, infecting the natural world, is most disturbing.  Yeah, if it had been me trying to live a life, I don’t suppose I would have behaved very differently, but it’s not comfortable reading….

However, even having read the book, I wasn’t prepared for what we were skimming across.  It is vast…..  Somehow I had envisaged a river like the Thames at Henley, perhaps a little more selvatico?  But this was something else, more like the Tagus than the Thames.  Or it is something else now.  A million years ago it might have resembled my expectation, but, like Port Jackson, this is a Ria, a river estuary, that, following eustatic change, has become more sea than river in some respects…..

In the night the occasional glim indicates habitation amongst the forest.  Eventually flashing lights direct us to my bro’s communal jetty, and Neil pilots us to a standstill.  Then, with a flash of the credit card, a churning disappearance into the night.

In the morning, we are laughed at by Kookaburras, who clearly feel that we are there to feed them, then we climb the rocks to the top of Bar Point, from where the convolutions of the river begin to make sense.  We are less than 100 kms from Sydney, but this is another world. 

Mangroves paddle at the shore, unkempt vegetation straggles up the steep slopes, chattered over by a variety of birdlife – Rosellas, Magpies, Crows, and, above them all, eagles wafting on the updrafts.  There are neighbours.  And there are no neighbours.  

A house that is left unattended may crumble away, hollowed by termites and overcome by plant life.  

It is surprising how many dwellings have been created here, and how some are occupied by coenobites and others by commuters to the metropolis and beyond…..

We could have stayed much longer, but not this time.  We are due upriver, to the Blue Mountains, so called after the haze of eucalypt oil that hangs in the air.  Past St Albans, Windsor, and Richmond, we leave the river (which, in the form of the Nepean, rises in these hills) and weave up the Bells Line of Road into the Hawkesbury Highlands.

We travel through Bilpin, and up to the Blue Mountains Botanic Garden, Mount Tomah.  This is glorious, beautifully organised, and, at 1,000 metres above sea level (and also just over 100 kms from Sydney) we get our first taste of autumn, 

both in yellowing leaves but also in the Bilpin cider that lubricates our lunch….. 

Looking out at the view, it is (paradoxically) inevitable that I compare it with home.  The United Kingdom is about the 50^th most densely populated country in the world (c255 people per square kilometre); Australia is about the 250^th, with just over 3 people per km².  When you think that England, rather than the UK, has approximately 433 per km²  (which is about 1,000 per square mile, and is about the same density as the city of Sydney) and that our home is barely 25 miles from the centre of London, this view across virtually untouched forest is a wonder to behold.

Not that the Blue Mountains are totally free from interference…..  We are in easy reach of the five million or so who populate the Sydney area, and the scenery, and trekking possibilities, are strong attractions, so there are buses and viewpoints, and cable cars, and hotels, many of which conglomerate around Katoomba, with Echo Point and The Three Sisters being the big draws.

Here, or hereabouts, I think is where I once caught an accidental glimpse of Ant and Dec hosting I’m a celebrity, get me out of here…  with some fly-bitten also-rans eating live bugs on the valley floor.  Nightmare.  But they weren’t there when we were!

Not far from here, at Medlow Bath, there is the Hydro Majestic Hotel, initially the Belgravia, founded in 1902; it has a stunning Art Deco foyer, and wonderful views overlooking the Megalong Valley.  Here you could have tea (High Tea Selection of finger sandwiches, petit pastries, homemade scones, clotted cream, homemade jam and your choice of tea & coffee $55.00 per person weekday $65.00 per person Saturday & Sunday) or stay for dinner (Experience the gourmet delights with dinner in the Wintergarden which showcases the fresh seasonal produce sourced from local suppliers within the Blue Mountains area), 

but once, at the end of WWII, its major attraction was the Saturday night dance.  Sydneysiders took the train up for the evening, and just maybe didn't return ‘til Sunday. This was how my sister-in-law Steph’s parents met: she was a nurse in Sydney, and he was recuperating from being a prisoner-of-war in Singapore’s notorious Changi jail. For him, after internment by the Japanese, the Blue Mountains must have been paradise.

Times change.  Pause for thought..... 

This is a wonderful world, but I can’t help but feel a twinge of guilt when I notice that Katoomba is the home of the Gundungurra Tribal Council Aboriginal Corporation.  The Gundungurra people inhabited this part of the Blue Mountains for millennia before white faces appeared on the scene, with our zip wires and 4x4s.  Strange to think again of the population density around here: you would think that in Australia, of all places, there was room for everyone?

I take a leaf out of Jack Davis’s book, Black Life….

Loving

What is living

Is it moonlight over water

soft laughter in the evening

a dog walking his master

or a rainbow’s curve

Looking at old photographs

lasting friendships

honeyed lips and fresh washed hair

If this is so then

I’m in love with life

And pause for thought....

*     *     *     *     *

Then it really is time to go.  There are dangerous creatures about....

And we have a 'plane to catch. 

Take her away, Skipper.....

Queensland here we come!

*     *     *     *     *


Well, I never felt more like runnin' away
But why should I go 'cause I couldn't stay
Without you, you got me swingin' the blues

(with apologies to Melvin Endsley, 1956)

Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Over, Under, Down and Out....

I had reasons to visit Australia.  My ‘little’ (ie younger, taller) brother moved to live in Australia over thirty years ago, and I have always meant to visit him.  More recently, our ‘younger’ (ie little) daughter moved there.  These attractions, coupled with rapidly approaching senility and recently acquired freedom from slavery, motivated us to make plans and go.

And look, they put the flags up for us!

On the way over, during the interminable passage of some 18,000 kms, which does allow time to reflect, I realised I had not really done any homework, and I turned over in my mind what little I knew of the upside-down continent…..

My first encounter must have been on a Mercator map, or a globe.  I suppose I must have heard that Prince Charles did a term at Timbertop in 1966, and that the Queen made an extensive tour in 1970 to celebrate the bicentenary of Lieutenant Cook’s invasion.  I must have learned to recognise kangaroos from an early stage, partly through visits to Whipsnade zoo, and seem to remember there being a stuffed koala in the family at some stage.  Oh, and I remember seeing The Sundowners on a flickery 16mm print at school.  I still remember the bush fires…..

Apart from that, historical and cultural knowledge have I little.  As I struggled to sleep on the ‘plane I played the game of remembering famous Australians (not quite as difficult as famous Belgians….)  The list I finally came up with went like this (the order being a mark of the random nature of my brain):  

Ned Kelly, Peter Carey, Dame Edna Everage,  Joan Sutherland, Steve Irwin, Crocodile Dundee, Patrick White, Thomas Keneally, Cate Blanchett, Germaine Greer, Nellie Melba, Jimmy Little (the most beautiful voice since Nellie Melba), Les Murray, Olivia Newton-John, Rupert Murdoch, Peter Weir, Errol Flynn, Shane Warne, Baz Luhrmann, Kerry Packer, Kylie Minogue, Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Michael Hutchence, Mad Max, Rolf Harris, Bill Kerr, Clive James, Jack Davis, Banjo Patterson, Magwitch, Oscar and Lucinda, Slim Dusty, Richie Benaud, Paul Kelly, Julian Assange, Nick Cave, and Heath Ledger.  

Despite the statue in Centennial Park, Charles Dickens was not an Australian.....

I have to admit this took me most of the Indian Subcontinent to come up with, and that in the end I cheated (I didn’t know Baz Luhrmann was Australian) and I deliberately left out Nicole Kidman (her trousers in The Australian disqualified her.)  But what does it tell about Australia?  If I had just listed heroes…..

When I had finished this game, with time on my hands, I thought of anything else I could remember about Australia.  This was what I got: Picnic at Hanging Rock, The Ashes, Walkabout (probably the best film about walking about ever made), And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda (a song I personally murdered several times), Illywhacker (which I bought in 1986 and still haven’t read), The Song Lines, the cockpit voice recorder, the disposable plastic syringe, the dual flush toilet and the surf life-saving reel (OK, I looked those last ones up…..)

And that was about it.  Melbourne is south of Sydney; Cairns is north; then I got muddled about where Adelaide is and gave up.

Oh, I almost forgot;  The Great Barrier Reef!

So, eventually, a tad weary, we arrived in Sydney.  It was sunny and bright, though it was the middle of the night, and, most confusingly, I soon found out that the sun set in the East, rose in the West and was at its zenith to the North.  Some of which may be the result of a misunderstanding, but which in any case led to me losing my bearings more than once…..

My brother and sister-in-law live in Leichhardt, a western suburb of Sydney named after a Prussian explorer who disappeared in remote Queensland in 1848. 

The streets are broad, shaded by Moreton Bay Figs and Eucalypts, raucous at dusk with flocks of Rainbow Lorikeets squabbling about their roosting perches.  It is traditionally an Italian area, and the Bar Italia is busy for breakfasts, and Grappa, Ristorante e Bar needs booking for dinner…..  

Tin roofs and wrought iron decorative work mark out the single storey houses, each adorned with flowering plants and palms in the small front yard. 

The Royal Hotel, at the corner of the street, was built in 1886 at a time when Royalty may have been more popular….  In its cavernous interior local drinkers quaff schooners of Coopers Pale Ale in the Happy Hour, while gamblers shout at a wall full of TV screens and betting forecasts.

Sydney is a rapidly developing city, and in the centre is expanding skywards with alarming haste, causing inevitable traffic chaos at rush hours.  The population in 2015 was said to be nearly 5 million, over half a million more than it was in 2011, when over 1.5 million of its citizens were born overseas.  There are reported to be 250 languages spoken in the city.

It straddles the ria (drowned valley) of Port Jackson which is an exceptional natural harbour, named after Sir George Jackson by Lieutenant James Cook in 1770.  It was a perfect haven for the transports of yesteryear, and still is for the cruisers of today.  Port Jackson (which includes the waters of Sydney Harbour, Middle Harbour, North Harbour and the Lane Cove and Parramatta Rivers) is 19 kms long and has a perimeter of 317 kms.

But Sydney is also close to the sea, and the stretches of coast from Bondi to Coogee to the south, 

and from Manly north, give it advantages few cities can rival (if you don’t count low tide on the Thames, or Chowpatty Beach in Mumbai – it’s a film set!)

The Rocks area, between Circular Quay and the Harbour Bridge, is where the earliest settlers built their homes, and the diminutive Susannah Place Museum commemorates this well (though the Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel or the Australian Hotel not far up the road are almost as good!)

Sydneysiders, like little bro’ and family, don’t seem to tire of this metropolis.  Whether it’s Bob Dylan at the Opera House or Prince at the State Theatre (February 21st this year, and the Sydney Morning Herald noted that His singing, too, was sublime. There's something to be said for all that clean living the 57-year-old does these days……  Awww, shucks!)  Whether it’s the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Taronga Zoo or the Royal Botanic Garden; whether you like wandering in the expanse of Centennial Park, or spending time in the Museum of Contemporary Art, it’s a busy, exciting and beautiful place to be….

So much so, that, a little jet-lagged, and overwhelmed by the towering cityscape, it was hard to take it all in, and for a bit I just wanted to sit and watch the world go by.  Which is also quite possible: a jug of prawns and a cool stubby on Shelly Beach, near Manly; a dozen oysters with a glass of chilled Riesling as the sun goes down across Watsons Bay…..  That’s my kind of town!

Back in the tranquillity of Leichhardt, I began to get a feel for the place.  The granite War Memorial in the park told one story; Blak Douglas’s diptych mural What’s Your Point (2015 – Materials: Two cottages and paint) tells another.  

I read on the laminated plaque that this is A poignant snapshot of the his-story of the bold attempts of co-existence between non-Aboriginal peoples and the original occupants of these land we all occupy today. Sadly, it goes on, an oligarchal attitude of those whom honour the ‘founding’ of this great nation ultimately prevents an idealistic coexistence of the two sides. Breadline versus wealth.  Us versus them.  Aptly applied to these two dwellings built during an era when such graphics were more prevalent and stylised in colour to lament neighbourly dispute.  

The British colonial hand points whilst the original occupant’s hand points back.  

The ‘point’ made is one of theoretical illogic.  One side illegally came to occupy the other’s country, introduced a new form of residence, but only one would live the most comfortably and would ultimately determine the material value of their dwellings.

Our visit was too brief.  After thirty years of expectation I didn’t really give it time to do it justice (and bro' was working, bless him – someone has to!) 

So much to learn.  So little time!

And we were bound for Queensland, and the Bruce Highway with our daughter, though first we have the Secret River to explore, and the Blue Mountains….. 

So, those will be the next chapters…..

And then we have to come back, open a stubby and take it easy…..

At the end of 30 Days in Sydney: A Wildly Distorted Account, Peter Carey writes that A metropolis is, by definition, inexhaustible, and by the time I departed, thirty days later, Sydney was as unknowable to me as it had been on that clear April morning when I arrived.

Carey is an Australian, and had lived in the city seventeen years before. We spent little over a week in the Sydney.  Small wonder I know so little.....

With very many thanks to Tim, Steph, Daisy, & Max for looking after us so kindly and showing us around.


[Oh, just remembered - Donald Bradman!]