Sun Up on Trucks

Our office lies in the shadow of a large man-made pile of dirt, and that means that the sun reaches us a sickening hour and a half after we start work each day.

My favourite time here is at the end of the day

Just poppin in to say Hi

I'm sitting in the bar at the end of a long long day. I'm in the quiet bar (the Gay Bar as it's known, because they serve wine here as well as beer). The sun has gone down behind the low red hills and outside everything is pretty quiet. Here in the camp, that is. Out on the mine everything's as noisy and busy as usual. It never stops out there.

It's all going well for me, though. I'm the first to admit that I'm surprised how much I'm enjoying myself. The mine itself is massive and exciting, and in contrast, life in the camp (think of a school camp, but populated by rusty old miners) is easy and quiet. There is something about hauling dirt around in a truck all day that makes my colleagues easygoing and cheerful. It's a pleasure to help them with their paperwork each day.

I love the landscape surrounding the mine, and I'll have some photos soon.

Well, not that soon. I've got ten more days on this stint, and I'll be back to talk more at the end of that.

Over and out.

So I'm going away for a while..

My inward-growing career in administration is taking me farther than I would have thought possible. I’m going out to the mines.

If you look at a map of this part of Queensland, you will see that there are many, many mines around here. The gold and the nickel have dried up, but they still mine coal, zinc, copper, silver and gemstones. You know where Mt Isa is? The zinc mine I’m going to is about 250km northwest of there, just near the border of the Northern Territory. There is no town anywhere nearby, but it is just across the road from Boodjamulla or Lawn Hill National Park. You can see where that is on the map, and see some photos here.

There is much that is novel about this particular gig. I get to fly to work for a start. And I get a new hat, and goggles and a uniform including boots. I’ll get all my meals and accommodation looked after. I’ll work two-and-a-half weeks straight, then I’ll come home and sleep for a week. Then repeat.

I’ll be taking a camera and a laptop, so I’m hoping that I’ll be able to post some pictures. It’s only for two months.















And how is Hayden taking all this?

Well after his initial hilarity at the idea of me on a dirty dusty rough mine site, he seems to be taking it OK. He always supposed that he would be the first one of us to be flown out to work in the middle of nowhere - I think it was a bit of a surprise to him.

I'll miss him while I'm gone, of course, but I'll be back before he knows it.

(Ok, not strictly before he knows it. I'm going to give him a warning so that he can clear away the playstation and the pizza boxes before I arrive.)

Wet, Wet Liberal

I just caught a 15-year-old kid nicking baby clothes from our neighbour. He was standing in our yard trying to get the little clothes off their washing line through the fence.

After I chased him away, I felt really really bad and wished I had given him some money. How sad is that?

Glinting

Lately I just can’t stop noticing the lovely golden colours of the sun when it’s low on the horizon. I think it’s one of the nicest things about winter here. In summer, the sun beats down so hard and straight in a way that is barely tolerable. In summer, I would lift myself out of bed to make the most of the cooler early hours with my habitual walk along the beach. Lately I have not felt that urge, and this morning I just snuggled up in bed. I took this picture out our bedroom window, from my comfy position under the doona.


















But I don’t think that the warmth of my doona is the only reason why I haven’t been springing out of bed these last couple of weeks. The awful truth is that I have been a little tiny, tiny bit bored. Everything has been too easy for me, and too pleasant. Ugh.

My job at the construction site is finally finishing up, and the way that that came about was a teensy bit icky, too. The company asked me and asked me to consider taking a permanent job there and they asked so many times that I finally felt that I should consider it properly. I have quite a strong aversion to permanent employment (well, permanent anything really) so that was a big step for me. So I thought about it, and I let them know that I would like the job, but I asked for a salary that was quite a bit higher than what they were offering. (Why? I don’t know. The money is really not that important in cheap-as-chips Townsville). So I wasn’t all that surprised when they gave the job to someone else. But I did get that unsavoury feeling of mixed-up hurt at being refused something that I didn’t want in the first place.

This last week I have been training the person who they found to take the job in the end. You’d think that that would be a bit awkward, but I have to say that it couldn’t have gone to a nicer person: a 40-year-old grandmother to be, with an ancient Ford Fairlane and a pack-a-day habit. I’m not going to say her name here, so let me just call her Shazza. Shazza looks a bit rough, but she has a heart of gold. On her arrival on site, she presented all the guys in the office with lighters featuring pictures of naked ladies. She said she would have got me one, except for that I don’t smoke. I said that that’s OK. She’s taken to the job like a duck to water, leaving me very little to do around the office. Today, Friday, is my last day there.

Now that’s finished up, and I’m wondering what next to do with myself? I’m really looking for a challenge, and, well, there is something in the pipeline but I can’t say what it is yet. All I’m going to say is that it is exciting, and probably difficult and a little bit scary. I hope it comes off!

Winter Sun

Even Hayden was still for a moment yesterday, to enjoy the gentle afternoon sun on his toes.















It was a lovely day. A day entirely without plans. We ate well, shopped (my new green cardy is pictured above) and after our little rest we went for a bit of a walk up Castle Hill.















In this picture you can catch a glimpse of the other side of Townsville, the vast flat western side that yesterday somehow looked quite cozy, like a village in a valley.

We stayed for the sunset, then walked home in the dark.

Golf Buddies

Hayden was off work today with a cold, so I thought I would cheer him up this afternoon and take him to see if we could see the baby crocodiles that have taken up residence in the lagoon at the Townsville Golf Club. We went down there just on sundown, you know, when crocodiles are supposed to be at their most active. I was hoping we'd see them come out of the water to hunt.

We had a lovely walk around the golf course; we saw lots of waterbirds and startled a couple of pelicans off the bank and they skidded out across the water. I love it when they do that. And although we never caught sight of the little crocs, we did have a nice enough time for me to consider taking up golf. In the big cities golf can be an expensive and snooty kind of activity, but in Townsville it’s just a fun sport that anyone can play of an afternoon. Kind of like pool ... but in a big park.

Even More Builder Lingo

A six and a half foot tall carpenter, in stubbies, just tipped his hardhat to me and called me Little Lady. Then he winked at me.

I could think of nothing at all to say to that, so I just simpered behind my fan.

Not Camping

I’m feeling a little bit quiet today, not to say sad. Unhappy? Well, I wouldn’t go that far. My hopes were crushed. I had hoped to awaken this morning to the sound of birds chirruping and a waterfall plummeting. I had hoped this morning to be waking up in a forest. But, well you can probably guess that instead I am at home, typing about it on a computer.

Hayden and I have been on a couple of semi-camping expeditions, most successfully on Magnetic Island (just off the coast of Townsville) where there is a lovely campsite adjacent to the beach and some really good restaurants and bars. So … fun, but only slightly more camping than if we had put the tent up in the lounge room and sat in it to watch TV. But this time, I was yearning for real camping, you know, getting back to nature in that 19th century poet way in which everything takes twice as long to do half as well. I wanted to sleep, cook and eat on the ground.



And so, like the beginning of so many stories of failure, I set out to fulfil my own desire and disregarded everything else. I bought a little camping stove, and we packed up the car and set off. I put on Beth Orton's Central Reservation which is, incidentally, the absolute best music for driving through cane fields in the late afternoon.



We got as far as Ingham, about 100km up the road, where we were due to refuel with petrol and snacks. But Ingham was closed. There was not a soul about. There was no-one we could buy petrol from, so we took in some of the local sights, then pushed on to our destination.

Wallaman Falls. It was only 50km further. We thought that we should get there OK.




We left the flat plains of cane and started to climb into the hills. It was very beautiful, but the only problem was that driving on a tilt made our fuel gauge look even more empty.

The road became gravelly, then muddy, then potholed. I turned to Hayden, who was driving, and said "We can turn around whenever you want to, sweetheart" meaning, of course, "Please please please can we keep going?".

Hayden, like any sensible person, turned the car around and we headed back to town.

Once we got back to Ingham, we discovered where all its inhabitants had been. Not, as I had imagined, enjoying their Saturday afternoon siesta or sitting quietly by the river. No. They were all at the Ingham 06 Car & Bike Extravaganza: No BYO, No dogs, No Bad Attitude. The streets were suddenly filled with utes and hoons, and the air smelled of burning rubber. Hayden watched as a bogan couple slid their bottle of Jim Beam inside a black sock, then stashed it in the engine of their ute. I tried to find out, unsuccessfully, who had won "Best Street Machine" and "Best Street Machine Overall". I saw some great burnouts down near the showgrounds.















And we were able to buy enough petrol to get us home again.

The Naked Ocean

The Council has taken down the stinger nets from the swimming beaches; another sign that summer is officially over.

Now that I’ve got the whole ocean to swim in I don’t know where to start, like I’ve been colouring inside the lines all summer and now it’s time to draw freehand.

Tarnished Gold

We had a two-year-old visit us on the weekend. She brought her favourite pink shoulder bag, and in it her little coin purse. When she took it out, I asked her what was in the purse? did she have some money in there? and she showed me two hair elastics and a small carved kookaburra.

This article from the New York times is fairly old, but I thought I'd share it with you anyway. It is about a group of nomads who walked out of the Colombian jungle in order to join in with modern day society.

No-one can work out why they did such a thing.

Meanwhile my knowledge of the way the world works just grows and grows. I learnt a new bit of lingo only today: startin' carton.

That would be the carton of beer that a new worker brings to the building site to make the other guys like him (or her, as it was in this case).

The Darkness

I did a new collage for the wall of my study. More particularly, I filtered and rearranged the pictures and cut-outs, articles and quotes that were previously on the wall and I took down the ones that are bright and sunny and positive and kept the ones that are darker, deeper, more intriguing, and with underground meanings. But don’t read anything into that. I am not at all depressed or unhappy – in fact I can’t remember a time in recent years when I had less to worry about – but I read an article in the Weekend Australian a couple of weeks ago that got me thinking, plus it is winter – even though it doesn’t feel like it. It is a natural time for thoughts to grow darker.

The article I read was about the Hillsong Church, which, for those of you who aren’t familiar, is a new and very popular kind of Christian church in Australia. It has a very upbeat style, with its own groovy songs played on electric guitars, and a strong message that God is cheering us all on to become rich and successful with perfect teeth and hair, blah blah blah. The part of the article that got me thinking was when they mentioned that Hillsong Church has revised the seven sins. They are no longer pride, envy, lust and greed etc, but have been changed to ‘having negative thoughts that hold you back’, complacency and regret. That alarmed me somewhat. To my mind, the old-style Christian church had the negative thoughts covered: sinning, damnation, eternal hellfire and so on. Somebody’s got to be thinking about that stuff, so that the rest of us can go skipping about in our sunshiny lives. And if it’s not going to be the church, then maybe it should be… me?

So on my wall I have kept up the long article about Moby Dick, torn from the newspaper quite a while ago and now well yellowed. I have kept the pictures of Ricky Swallow’s more recent works; I have kept the coffee loyalty card from Gloria Jeans with the picture on it that looks like a lino-cut; it is of a man and a woman dressed in sombre clothes, and it has a prohibition-era look about it, but not glittering pearls-wearing decadent prohibition, more like dark dirty nasty grimy deprivation prohibition. The lino cut faces are dark and shadowed, made crude in the dim light and under the effect of some kind of demon drug … what can it be that they have taken? The writing on the card says Frequent Sippers Club … and in smaller text, ‘escape the daily grind’… these people are obviously addicts. Surely they’re not just drinking coffee? I also have kept a very small (postage stamp small) picture of a figure, silhouetted, looking out onto dark, still water where an old Chinese boat sails. I have kept a slightly larger one of a faraway beach and I have kept a picture I cut from an ad for a new car; in the back seat two blond children sit, one is grinning maniacally and the other gazing strangely out the window. I have kept some different passport and ID photos of myself - representing different identities, international espionage - and I have kept one other page cut from a magazine, not because it is dark or it suggests the underworld, but because it is quite hilarious. I cut it from Marie Claire, where it was attached to a story about how reading is the latest craze amongst models. It's a photomontage of all different but gorgeous models, dressed beautifully, overly made up, sitting around waiting to go on the catwalk. Their noses are in books and their beautiful brows are furrowed in concentration, they are trying very hard to make out the words. It’s so cute.

Sorry I've been gone so long

I've been spending too much time at the office.





























Also, I’ve been cooking a bit and thinking about my winter vegetables. Now that we’ve decided to definitely sign another six-month lease on the place where we’re renting (and not move into the vacant, cheap three-bedroom house up the road, and not get a cat, not just yet), I think I am going to go and get myself one of those massive horse-troughs of a planter box, and begin planting proper vegetables on my balcony. I have been stalled on this quite early though, I ordered some special organic seeds from a place near Brisbane and they have failed to arrive in the post, twice now.

I can’t wait to find out what will grow here in winter. I am hoping for baby carrots and beets and shallots, and I am going to have a crack at growing some lavender, I don’t know why except that the clean bright sunlight we have on these cooler days makes me think of the smell of it.

This weekend the national outrigger canoeing championships are being held down at the beach. I’m going to go down and watch, trying to ignore the fact that the event has been sponsored by Defence Force Recruiting.

100 Things to Do Before You Die

I read in one of the fluff columns in the Sunday paper of an Australian woman who is trying to learn to become a Buddhist; part of her training is to live for a year imagining that it is her last. She said that it had quite an affect on her, living this way, and that she was spending a lot more time clearing her wardrobe of things she no longer wore, defragging her computer and generally ‘putting her affairs in order’ as they say in fusty old English dramas. What?? I screeched (in my mind, of course, I'm not a lunatic). As if. As if you would spend the last year of your life on personal admin. I personally would not be wasting my last precious 365 days doing that stuff. As is my wont, I re-pondered this later as I was bottling homemade tomato sauce and inscribing the ingredient list on the label. I thought: that’s because my affairs are already in order. I must be the only person in the whole Sunday-paper-reading public who is sickeningly organised enough not to relate to that story.

The Omniscient Third

In my self-directed study of the art of writing (ie, in my reading of writer’s and bookmonger’s blogs) I have heard over and over again of Tolstoy’s brilliant narrative in Anna Karenina, which I completely failed to notice the first time I read it. So I decided to give it another go, and I must say that I’m loving the story this time, too.

The first time I read Anna K was during the 2nd-most unhappy six months of my life (a pretty miserable time but not quite as bad, I think, as my first semester at university). It was October in the year 2000. Like many Australian 20-somethings, I went to London seeking fortune and adventure, but found when arrived there that my money was worthless and my earning capacity negligible. My first job there, as a secretary in the supply-chain department of a publisher, brought in enough money to cover my rent, but not much more than that. It was a hard, lonely time. I had some Australian friends in London, but they were mostly architects and IT professionals on handsome salaries, with penchants for endless rounds of expensive poncy bars and brand new restaurants that served bland tasteless food. I gradually dropped out of that scene and found myself killing time, wandering Oxford Street alone. Eventually, inevitably, I wound up in Borders where I discovered that, in London, books were not nearly as expensive as drinks or food, and I settled in for a long reading bender of a distinctly Russian tone: Nabokov (much more Russian than American, really); Turgenev; a contemporary bloke, Victor Pelevin and, of course, Dostoyevsky. Dostoyevsky hit the spot. Nothing in my life was so desperately, tragically, hilariously bad as it was for his characters. When I exhausted his supply I turned to Tolstoy, hoping for more of the same from Anna Karenina. However, I was disappointed to find it an overly-long and boringly-detailed soap opera. I ploughed my way through the text – I had shelled out £9 for it after all – but afterward closed it with a feeling of disappointment and a dry, metallic taste in my mouth.

Soon after that, the sun came out on London and the whole outlook of my life there changed. There is nothing like a London summer (although so far Townsville winter is sort of coming close). I found a better job. I took a holiday in Italy and had the obligatory weekend in Amsterdam; I made some new friends and found that life was rosy once more, blah blah blah, and I don’t think that I have read another Russian author since then. My reading focus turned more to Americans: Hemmingway, Miller, Scott Fitzgerald, and Bellow, and I started to wonder more and more what it was that made a good book good. I gently reminded myself that I used to like writing stories, myself.

These days I spend more time reading than ever, though much of it is online. I seem to be far more likely to act on a book recommendation from a fellow blogger than from one of my real-life friends (sorry, real-life friends), and since I have spent so much time pondering Point of View (thanks in particular to this blog), I decided to pick up and re-examine Mrs K, the most masterful example, I've been told, of the Omniscient Third Person. This time, I am really appreciating the effect of Tolstoy’s way of getting inside each of his characters’ minds. He clearly, dearly loves each character though he presents them along with all their foibles and self-delusions. He conveys the drama of each scene, as well as all those tiny details (the ice-skate drilled directly onto the sole of Levin’s boot; the paperknife used on the pages of a new book) that are more than just embellishments, and that I am relishing so much this time. And I do enjoy the more Dostoyevskyesque characters, those who wallow in their own maudlin internal monologues like the manic-depressive Levin and his consumptive brother Nicholas (Nicholas’s common-law wife is a former street-whore, which is, of course, very Dostoyevsky). But, I am glad to say, I appreciate the buoyant Oblonsky and the cold social-climber Vronsky just as much.

And the story is so romantic. How could I have missed that last time?

Cafe Clutter

Make no mistake, I’m missing Melbourne’s cafes. Every Melbournite has his or her favourite, and the one I’m missing the most is the Lawson’s Grove milk bar in South Yarra. (In fact, if anyone’s down that way, would you mind popping in and saying hello from me?) Lawson’s Grove is a beautiful, fussless café shrouded in leafy greenery and built into the ground floor of the creamiest block of art deco flats in a whole cul-de-sac of creamy art decosity. The atmosphere there is one of pure, quiet, early-twentieth-century leisure, which is rare on that side of the Yarra. You can rely on your coffee to arrive a full fifteen minutes after you order it, giving you plenty of time to become absorbed in the Saturday paper, or a magazine or a book. Your breakfast will arrive not long after, and there is plenty of space on the table to spread out your reading material around your plate.

The café we’ve been sniffing around the door of most in Townsville is a brand new one called Squires, and it is as different from Lawson’s Grove as it is possible for two cafés to be. Nonetheless, we have been going there quite a bit because the coffee is the best in town – and I don’t mean that in a snobby way, it’s just that coffee isn’t really taken as seriously around here as, well, as it ought to be – plus the chairs there are quite comfy and the music is low and unobtrusive. In short, it’s a great place to sit for a while with a coffee and some cake if we deserve it, and have a good read. And on Friday evening we did just that.

Whereas the proprietress at Lawson’s Grove will greet you with a beautifully understated casual glance, proprietress of Squires was openly happy to see us and, she said, our books. We sat. We drank mochas in enormous cups with saucers, and we ate some delicious carrot cake. It was lovely. Later on in the weekend I was thinking about the partnership of books and cafes which is well known everywhere in the world but, it seems, Townsville. The only people I’ve seen here sitting reading in a café are me and Hayden. I suppose that, to the locals, we must seem a little odd. Huh. Who’d have thought?

The only thing grotesque

"And the only thing grotesque
Is the space through which
we stumble each night"

After all that, it looks as though my job will be finishing up soon, and – I suppose – I will be heading back to my ordinary stay-at-home, focusing-on-the-internal writing life. The building company is getting sick of paying my expensive temporary wages, and they want to get a permanent office girl in. They have offered me the permanent job, in fact they keep offering it to me three and four times a day, but, well, I’m not going to take it. I thought about it for a bit, but I’m pretty sure I’m not going to. For one thing, I might get shy about blogging classic builder interchanges such as this:

Builder bloke 1: Have we got a hole puncher?
Builder bloke 2: It’s over there near Naomi’s fat arse
Builder bloke 1: You can’t say that! That’s sexual harassment! [To me] don’t listen to him love, your arse is fine ... [confirms with a glance] Yeah, it's fine.

After May Day

With this glut of public holidays – Easter, Anzac Day, and yesterday May Day – I have become quite lackadaisical about how my weekends become spent. This last one was the worst for wasting; I spent it mainly with getting over things. On Friday night after work I thought it would be nice to pick up a piece of fresh fish to cook up for our dinner. I have been working on my cooking repertoire, under the influence of Stephanie, and my current ambition is to become one of those people who can walk into a kitchen and just whip stuff up. I whipped up the fish with garlic (and middle eastern spices, partially in honour of Kath’s departure for Dubai) and in so doing caused myself the most debilitating garlic-hangover that obliterated most of Saturday. On Saturday afternoon I thought a bout of yoga might heal me so I attended a class at the gym, but it left me too sore to move. Sunday was a forced rest day due to the stiffness in my arms and legs, and by Monday afternoon, after a dip in the pool for exercise, I stood under the shower in a lovely summer-holiday-at-the-coast mood, not a thought in my head about what I might do next.

It feels like ages ago that I was unemployed, and it seems like everything has changed since I started work. True, many things have changed, perhaps the most unexpected is that I seem to have made friends with a whole bunch of burly drinkin’ swearin’ builder blokes. It took Hayden to remind me that I haven’t even worked a full five-day week since I started, due to all these public holidays. The best part about that is that it’s already Tuesday, already time for cheap pizza and The O.C.

My Street

Some bloggers who I don’t know at all, and whose blogs I found through I can't remember what meandering path of links, have been showing each other pictures of the streets where they live. I thought I’d take the opportunity to show you mine too.


Eyre Street is not an obviously beautiful street. Not like the last place where we lived, which was just off Alexandra Avenue on the bank of the Yarra. But Eyre Street has a charmingly unassuming air of, oh, say, 15 to 20 years ago. I know that I've mentioned before how Townsville is remarkably like how I remember Brisbane from the days of my childhood, and Eyre Street captures that vibe perfectly. It's all to do with the daggyness, the buffalo grass, the general lack of landscaping or renovations of any kind. Eyre Street is not pretending to be in Tuscany or in London or East Berlin or the future. It's not even pretending to be in the past, despite the impression that it creates. Children happily ride their bikes up and down it. A game of cricket would not be unheard of. Though there have been some new apartment blocks put up, and some fairly recently at that, Eyre Street has not lost itself to pretension, and remains as wide, dry and cracked as the desert salt lake from which it takes its name.


The streets of South Yarra were charming, yes, but with a most self-conscious bow in the direction of England. Eyre Street, on the other hand, is nothing but Townsville.

ANZAC Day

I used to sleep in on ANZAC day, and I would tell everyone that it was an anti-war statement. I’m as anti-war as anyone you’re likely to meet. I abhor violence of all kinds, but most especially violence perpetrated in the name of ‘keeping the peace’. It sickens me to think that the lives of soldiers are put in danger by our leaders for their own macho pride or political gain. I know that soldiers choose that danger when they choose their profession. I’ll come back to that. But ever since that day in 2003 that I joined thousands and thousands of people marching against war in Iraq, well, OK, I joined thousands of people for the speeches out the front of Melbourne’s State Library and then ducked into Rue Bebelons, that little bar with red walls and cut flowers perched in massive vases everywhere, and my friends and I had a couple of beers apiece while we waited for the marchers to file slowly past. In the end, it didn’t matter whether we were drinking or marching against the war, the government ignored us all and sent troops to Iraq anyway. It did this unashamedly for the purpose of securing an alliance with America and helping them keep the oil prices down. Ever since that day, I have been extra cynical about the reasons why countries find themselves in conflict.

That you’re against violence is a very easy and acceptable thing to say, but my problem is that I don’t really have an alternative to offer - at least not on the scale of international conflict. If I found myself in a country under attack, especially if that country was Australia, I wonder would I wish for defence from armed forces of some kind? Would I be thankful if they were there? I have no idea. As I sit comfortably at home on this sunny public holiday, it’s easy for me to spout that any desire to be defended would be outweighed by my belief that fighting is not the solution. I think to myself that any fear I felt during an attack would not be diminished knowing that there were guns on my side too. But I don’t know for sure that that would be the case. And the truth is that even now that we live in Townsville, one of the few places in Australia that has actually seen an attack by a foreign army (though it was in 1942), I still can’t imagine what it would be like to be a civilian trapped in a country at war.


Hayden always attends the ANZAC day ceremony, in remembrance of an uncle that he lost, and last year I went along for the first time to accompany him. I was hoping to be moved to consider war and peace and the value of life. I was hoping to gain some understanding of the point of view of the soldiers. The version of the ANZAC story that I was told in school emphasised how young and naïve the Australian and New Zealand soldiers were, and I was hoping to gain some idea of why people still choose to join up and fight in these days, when the dangers are more fully understood. But at that ceremony I really wasn’t moved at all, and that’s not just because I was irritable from getting up before the light and leaving the house without a good strong coffee. The ceremony itself was such tinny affair, lacking in any kind of solemnity, and I was sure that any real diggers would have to have been ashamed of it. It was more like a family-entertainment dress-up show than a commemoration of lives lost in war. There was a primary school band playing, and some high school swot who’d been given a trip to Gallipoli because she was the perkiest blonde in her year told us how she would ‘never forget that trip’, though she didn’t tell us anything specific that she remembered about it either. Afterwards there was a lot of public drunkenness and gross behaviour of seedy looking guys with grandad’s medals pinned to their jackets worn with jeans and sneakers. The whole thing made me queasy.


This morning when the alarm went off in the dark, I remembered the awfulness of that Melbourne ceremony last year and I wondered if this morning’s ceremony would be any better. I was interested because Townsville has a big army presence, and I wanted to see how a real army town went about remembering its dead.
And I am glad that I made the effort to get up and go down to the War Memorial park. The park is on the waterfront, opposite the marina whose water this morning was as still as a mirror. It is a beautiful spot to see the sunrise on any day, and this morning it was most movingly accompanied by a simple, serious service and the laying of many wreathes. A female soloist sang Amazing Grace beautifully clearly and without warbling, and after the ceremony was over I walked across to the memorial, passing a cordoned-off VIP-style area where many women, some older but some less so, sat quietly and sadly by themselves. One of the speakers, himself a veteran, had spoken of the ‘futility of war, but the necessity of defending freedom’. I was grateful to have heard the soldier’s point of view so eloquently expressed, but I’m afraid I still feel nothing but sadness about war. I don’t feel that any honour at all on the soldiers’ behalf, though I suppose that they feel that honour themselves. I hope that it is enough for them.

The best $2.50 I ever spent

After I wrote that last post, we went down to the pool for some late afternoon exercise and were delighted to find that for one day only the local dive shop was offering an introductory dive, included in the cost of our pool admission. It was so fun! I’m so so glad that it’s swimming weather all year round in Townsville!

PS If you haven’t read the post below, please don’t bother. It’s full of nonsense.

Take the Weather With You

How does the weather affect you, if at all? Stephen R Covey reckons that ineffective people are affected by the weather, and that effective people carry their own weather with them and are, presumably, always sunny. I think that Covey is right about many things – and I do think that anyone who assumes that The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is just another nonsense self-help book for ambitious MBA’s should really have a proper look at it. But I’m not sure that I’m with him on the weather. Oh, well maybe he just hasn’t lived in Townsville, or worked on a building site where a few drizzly days in a row (OK, it’s getting to be a couple of drizzly weeks in a row now) lead to thousands and thousands in lost moolah for the company and a rising instance of porta-cabin fever.

You might be thinking that I did enough complaining about the weather over the last couple of months. And you would be right. But may I just say here in one breath that I’m soooo envious of everyone else’s weather in temperate zone, that I’m nearly sick of hearing about it except that I want to hear so much more: my sister finding ripe figs in her overgrown garden in Canberra; Hayden’s mum planting out bulbs in her garden in NZ, Claire and Ed’s spring BBQ in London. In Melbourne, autumn is easily the most beautiful season, with the days still long but cooler and all the leaves of those thousands of avenue trees fluttering slowly to the ground. When I worked at the Melbourne Business School, I turned up late every day of April and May due to dawdling on my morning walk through Carlton Gardens (the rest of the year I turned up late as well, but due to other reasons). I am so jealous of all that is happening in the temperate world, and in addition am missing the extremes of summer in Townsville. I know, after all those complaints! But in summer here, keeping cool was something to do. The mild weather we’ve got now is just boring.

For any new listeners, the thing about Townsville summer is not how hot it gets. It really only gets to be quite warm here, by the rest of Australia’s standards. Elsewhere in Australia, the midday heat reaches skin-boiling point, then in the evening a lovely cool breeze wafts off the water and allows you to sleep. In Townsville, the temperature doesn’t get that high, but it simply doesn’t cool down, ever, over the five months of summer. It’s five months of non-stop warmth.

Come the start of April, the big thing for us was to monitor how cool it had got overnight, on our fancy Christmas present alarm clock-thermometer (my mum and Hayden sharing a fascination with statistics, that present was a foregone conclusion. Mummy, you pretended that it was easy to give that present away, but we could tell it wasn’t). And while I did enjoy a few fresh mornings sitting on the balcony and reading until 9:00am (back in unemployment days, obviously), the novelty has since worn off. It has been cooler, yes, but it has also been drizzly with rain, and limp and humid. The foliage is looking greenish, I suppose, and that is better than the fried look of the dried brown grass and rock in summer, but I’m missing the soft yellow-to-warm brown range of deciduous leaves, not to mention the beautiful blossoms of spring. It is excruciatingly sweet to see pictures like this.

Don’t have much to say, really, about anything.

Bin spending too much time with inarticulate builder blokes. Work’s going OK.

Except they haven’t paid me yet. Hate the first part of a new job where you’re trying twice as hard to do everything right, but they haven’t paid you yet so in effect you’re doing it for nothing.
Paid tomorrow, I think.

That’ll be good.

Happy Easter Weekend

I’ve done this before. I’ve got a job in the week before Easter, and then enjoyed the four-day weekend like nothing else.

This Easter has been jam-packed with activity, including a bit of hiking on the beautiful Magnetical Isle.




















There is more description to come, but right now I have to go and squeeze the very last out of this lovely, lovely weekend.

My head is a box filled with nothing and that’s the way I like it

I always thought that in that song, Ben Lee was talking of his head as a box in a Zen kind of way … but now I am beginning to think that he might just be talking about a time when he needed a rest from creative endeavours, and so got himself a job on a building site. I got myself a job on a building site, and now my head is deliciously, gloriously filled up with absolutely nothing at all. I don’t think it’s even a box; it’s just a blank. It is full of blank.

I have worked in some unusual places in my capacity as a reluctant but able office temp, yet I think that this job might take the biscuit. I wish I could show you pictures, and I hope to yet, because the view from my office window is amazing - even if the office itself is a portacabin atop two containers wedged into the side of a rocky hill. When they are finished, the owners of these apartments we’re building will sit on their balconies and look out over the town and the mangrovy coast to the south of it and out to the aqua sea.

The view isn’t the only good thing about my workplace. The facilities are quite something too. As the only lady on site, I get my very own portaloo, designated by a hand-written felt pen sign that is taped to the door. The foreman told me that if I catch any of the men using my portaloo, I’m to come and tell him. Furthermore, if they leave it in a state unfit for a lady, then he’ll get one of the labourers to come and clean it for me.

Thank you so much to everyone who sent their encouragement of my writing efforts, and everyone who told me of their inspiration for their own careers. It was so helpful, and lovely. I hope that you’re all going well.

Thank you

Thank you, a lot, for your comments on the last post.

You know, I am slowly coming to remember that I want to write because I love it, the act of it, and I want to make it a career simply because I don’t want to do anything else with my days.

It’s late now, it’s dark but still warm and I’ve got up from where I was trying to sleep with the sheet wrapped around me as cosy as a doona. My muscles are sore from a swim tonight that was just a splash in the water, not a training session, nor an effort to lose those extra kilos. It was just a splash in the water then, and now it’s late and I can hear light rain falling, it drops with a ping on the metal rail of our balcony.

Why did I want to do this again?

Ok, it’s time I ‘fessed up. I’m in a pickle.

I’ve walked so far down this road to being a writer that it feels like too far to turn around and do something else. I know that I haven’t come far at all in terms of fame or fortune, or publishing, but I have come a certain distance in terms of what I’ve given up to get here. Well, I’ve come to Townsville for starters. It feels a bit like the wilderness, to me. It feels a bit like it’s the end of the road. It doesn’t seem like I can just sidestep into some other kind of proper job, like I always thought I could when I lived in Melbourne. I used to think that I could always change my mind and become something else, but now I think that writing might be it, as far as opportunities go in Townsville. But try as I might I can’t get going again, with the writing. I’m stuck.

And I’d like to ask you for your help.

I’m trying to remember what it was that made me want to write in the first place. Not what it was that made me want to string some sentences together, but what it was that made me want to turn it into some kind of career. I’m trying to remember what it was that made me say “Writer!” instead of “Teacher!” or “Librarian!” or “Mathematician!” (OK, we all know why I didn’t turn out to be a mathematician).

Please, can tell me, as anonymously as you like, what was it that you always wanted to do? Or what you'd do if you had three or four other lives to live, as well as this one?

What was it that made you choose what it is that you're doing today?

Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.

Naomi.

Kiss Kiss

We watched the brilliantly named Kiss Kiss Bang Bang on video last night. It was the first movie I’ve seen in ages that really grabbed the whole of my attention, for the whole of the show. That was refreshing.

Usually I sit through movies and even when they’re boring I try to glean something from the experience, like analysing how the plot is structured and how the characters’ motivations are portrayed. I think I’m going to try to stop doing that; I really would prefer just to sit and enjoy the movie … but Hayden has the next choice for what we’re going to see, and he’s already told me it’s going to be Ice Age II. Hm.

Another?

It has been a good day for poetry. And tea. I bought myself a little crappy teapot the other day, finally and cheaply from Woolies. I was so surprised at how pleasant it was to pour the tea from, into the china cup. Then I found this poem on Jeanette Winterson's website, but this is not the whole of it:

TEA
I like pouring your tea, lifting
the heavy pot, and tipping it up,
so the fragrant liquid streams in your china cup.

Or when you’re away, or at work,
I like to think of your cupped hands as you sip,
as you sip, of the faint half-smile of your lips.

I like the questions – sugar? – milk? –
and the answers I don’t know by heart, yet,
for I see your soul in your eyes, and I forget.

Jasmine, Gunpowder, Assam, Earl Grey, Ceylon,
I love tea’s names. Which tea would you like? I say
but it’s any tea for you, please, any time of day

Yeats: A Coat

I made my song a coat
Covered with embroideries
Out of old mythologies
From heal to throat
But the fools caught it
Wore it in the world’s eyes
As though they’d wrought it
Song, let them take it
For there’s more enterprise
In walking naked

I suppose there is a certain amount of ‘walking naked’ that you do when you write a blog. The blogs where the truth is told unselfconsciously are the ones that I go back to and read and read again, and that is what I’ve tried to do here but I’ve got out of the habit of it, a bit, I think.

Today is the first day back at my writing desk for a while. I suppose I have been on holiday. For most people, a holiday is where they go for peace and quiet, rest from a busy life. But for me it’s the other way around. It’s quiet and still and I like it, back at my desk.

In Search of Lost Time

Sorry if I’ve been a bit quiet for your liking. I knew that I’d stopped blogging, but I got the reasons behind it all wrong.

I thought it was because I was all upset about losing all my stories and documents from my computer, and I thought that I just wasn’t ready to blog while I got myself back on my writing feet. It is true that it has been taking a while to get back into the writing, as anyone who has sat down in front of a blank screen to begin their masterpiece would understand. But that wasn’t the reason why I stopped blogging.

The reason why I stopped blogging was because I momentarily stopped reading Proust in order to read Shantaram, an amazingly true story that was given to me for Christmas by my brother Paul. I highly recommend Shantaram to anyone who is after a massively ripping yarn. But I recommend Proust to anyone who wants inspiration to update their blog. I am, in fact, harbouring a secret theory that In Search of Lost Time was one of the earliest forms of paper-based blog. There is work to be done on that theory, but as I’m only up to the second book in the series I am just thankful that at my current rate of reading, that gives me, oh, many more years of happy blogging to come.

We're fine - and lucky

Palm-tree destruction by Cyclone Larry. Photo from news.com.au

Contrary to some reports going around, Townsville wasn't hit by Cyclone Larry. We're fine, and we were really lucky. All we got was a bit of wind and rain. The cyclone hit the town of Innisfail, just a couple of hundred kms north of us. The people of Innisfail are struggling without food or water, though supplies are being sent in from Townsville and Cairns. Many of them have lost their homes, the roofs having been blown off in the storm.

If you would like to read all about it, there are lots of news reports here. If you would like to help, there are details of how to donate money here, or you can donate at the Commonwealth Bank.

I am hoping that I can help out somehow, but really I think they need fewer namby-pamby artistic dropouts and more people with useful skills like plumbers, electricians and builders. If you are one of these people, and you would like to go to Cairns to help for six days, you can find further details here.

Our local paper has gone nuts because they are pulling some old general out of retirement to fix everything. That story here.

More about the weekend

This was one of my favourite moments from the weekend, and it actually came nearly at the end, after we'd seen gorgeous natural wonders, beautiful coastline and islands, rainforests and huge gushing waterfalls.

But markets! Fresh fruit! Asian greens! Townsville simply doesn't have a big, vibrant market like this (though there must be somewhere that the restaurants buy their fresh food?) and it was a sight for my sore, sore tastebuds. I don't know how it is that none of this beautiful fresh fruit makes the three hour drive down to Townsville. I just wish I had bought a few more of those bananas. They were delicious, but sadly the rest of the banana crop has been flattened by Cyclone Larry. Damn!

Cyclone Larry has passed well inland, and is starting to lose power. That leaves the residents of Innisfail and the surrounding cane and banana growing area to pick up the pieces. I do feel for them (and of course the bananas).

Update:

Townsville is really made up of a lot of ‘ex-pat’ soldiers, engineers and marine biologists so you don’t hear much of a regional accent around here. We noticed the difference when we arrived in Cairns, though. It’s a whole lot more humid up there, and I think that’s what flattens and lengthens out the vowel sounds. It must have rubbed off a bit on me, too. I was out in the front yard just now, airing our tent, and I heard myself tell our neighbours that we “were away keemping on the weekend.”

Lovely time away

Hayden and I drove up to Cairns for the weekend, a couple of hundred kilometers north from Townsville. We thought it would be nice to get away for a relaxing weekend, and see a bit more of beautiful Tropical North Queensland.
















This is Mission Beach which is, as we speak, getting whipped by Cyclone Larry.

When we got home last night, the weather bureau still wasn't sure at which point Larry was going to cross the coast. The radio implored us to prepare for the worst, so we stocked up on petrol, water, milk and tinned peaches. I know that the traditional tinned item to stock up on is baked beans, and indeed, the local news showed us pictures of the empty baked beans shelves in the supermarkets. But really, is that the best thing you can think of to eat cold from the can for days, when the power goes and everyone's stranded? No, the peaches are a much better option.

Larry has now been downgraded to a Category 4, so it seems that the worst has passed. I'll be back soon to tell you about what else happened on the weekend.

Clean slate

I have been spring cleaning today. I got my computer back from the shop, and it’s working fine now but I have definitely lost all the documents and photographs off of it. I am determined to make an opportunity of this fresh, blank slate and so cleared out my writing desk as well; I pulled down all the taped up notes and ideas for the old stories I was working on, and organised all my notebooks and pens. And then I moved on to clean and tidy the rest of the house. There.

I found a bag of old clothes pegs that I inherited from my great aunt when she moved out of her apartment on the Gold Coast and into a rich-old-lady’s retirement home in Melbourne. I love the colours of these pegs. They must have started out all brightly coloured, but they’ve faded beautifully under years and years of Gold Coast sun.

Stuck in the house again

The last two days I have been trapped in the house by depression and hot weather, but today is different. I am trapped in it by the need to shower.

This morning was a touch cooler than usual; it stayed down at 28º (82º F) until after 8:00am. I was so pleased to put off my morning walk for an hour, partly for the joy of dawdling my morning, but mostly for the welcome indication of autumn’s approach, that soon I will be able to be out walking at any hour of the day I please. But this morning when I got back to the house, the workmen who have been digging ditches in the footpaths of our street had turned the water off, until 2:30pm. They told me that there was a note about it in my letterbox. I looked there, and saw that that was true.

Four hours later, I’m still in my sweaty walk-wear and I’m beginning to get thirsty. There is just one hurdle before I can give in to my desperation to get out of the house and find myself something to drink, and that is the need for a shower. Anyone who has lived in a humid climate will understand.

It is getting boring though, sitting here waiting for my own will to crumple. I wonder when I’m going to give in?

Salvaged some photos!

These photos were - mercifully - saved on the camera while the computer went bung.

This is the one I was telling you about before:




















And this one shows the gathering gloom, just one hour later:

Apologies for the bitterness yesterday. I was having a bad day.

Today seems better. It is another one of those clear, crisp days that remind me of being in a ski resort town. You know, a ski resort town where thongs, shorts, singlet tops and palm trees are de rigueur. I just look out on the fresh sparkly gentleness of it all and it makes me think that I want to do some good in the world.

But that thought is nearly immediately checked by the second thoughts that (a) I don’t have any of those skills (medicine, carpentry etc) that are needed to fix the world's troubles, and (b) anyway, some horrible person has sat down and very deliberately written a computer program to destroy my tiny laptop and everything that I have done on it.

Ok, not finished with the bitterness yet. But soon. I’ll see you tomorrow.

There was a photo taken of Hayden and me, on the shore of Lake Taupo, just before everything started going wrong. It’s a self-portrait, Hayden took it with the camera on the end of his arm, and those shots usually work out really well for us. In this one, we’re both looking tanned and healthy. Hayden is staring straight down the camera and looking so sure. I am leaning against him slightly, and I look tired around the eyes, and my hair’s everywhere in the wind and it looks greasy. It is greasy.

We were down at the lake on a reconnoiter, the day before the Ironman. There are other photos from that sequence: of Hayden staring out at the waves and getting all freaked out at how large they are, and how rough, and of the cloud formations and the rain coming across the lake from the south. Everyone kept telling me that the southerlies always blow through quickly and the weather could change in half an hour. At that moment, I didn’t realise how much I should be worrying about the weather. Also at that moment, I didn’t realise that my computer was contracting a virus and that by the end of the next day these two big things that we had been working towards, the things that we moved to Townsville specifically to focus on, would be in tatters.

I think I might have mentioned a couple of times how worried I was about Hayden doing the Ironman. And I should have been worried. It is a ridiculous race, and even though it was greatly shortened due to the rough weather, Hayden was able to get a fair idea of its demands. He’s pretty exhausted now, and he’s been left feeling hollow because the big event that he was training for, the big thing that he was working towards, was cut in half and handed back to him. So I was right to be worrying about him. But what I regret is the way that I totally let my worry for him blot out any kind of concern for myself. I must have thought – though I don’t really remember - that just because I had allocated all my available worry towards what Hayden was doing, that there was no way that something bad could happen to me. So when Hayden asked could we bring my laptop along so that he could download his heartrate data onto it I totally agreed.

Now my computer is broken, I’ve lost all the writing I did over the last two years, I’ve lost all our photos. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do. I know that I should be out there looking for some crappy admin job to earn money to buy a new computer, but all I’ve done is get season one of The OC from the video shop, and I’m watching the episodes end to end, lying on the lounge room floor eating chocolate. I was slightly pissed off at first, because I didn’t manage to get the whole of season one, only episodes 17 to the end, and I’ve seen those. Episode 17 is pretty much exactly where I started watching the show, in October 2004, just after I bought that laptop, just after I followed Hayden back to Melbourne, last time I didn’t know what to do with myself. Yeah. Irony.

T-1

Today is the last day before we head off to New Zealand for a week, so I’m going to cram this post full of pictures for you to look at, if you like, while I’m away.

We’re all packed and ready to go, which has been quite a process because one of the big things in such a long triathlon is that you have to make sure that you have all the right equipment, plus backups. You can’t just have one pair of goggles for swimming in the lake, cos what if they break? You should pack at least three (and I think Hayden is taking four). The same goes for running shoes and special socks, tubes for the bike, puncture kits, different kinds of jackets for different kinds of cold weather, and all divided up into different bags: one for the swim leg, one for the bike leg and one for the run, and a couple for the in-betweens. A race can be won or lost on these preparation details, apparently. It’s all very complicated.

Today is bright and fresh and clear, and it’s reminding me of the best kind of winter day. It's probably the kind of day that gave rise to the notion of spring cleaning, just because it goes so well with the smell of fresh laundry and the cheerful flapping of white sheets in the wind. This morning I drove Hayden out to work just to hang out with him an extra hour, and when I was driving back alone, I noticed how clear and sharp the hills looked, and how dramatic. It is really quite a nice drive, for a drive to a refinery. You follow the road to Ingham, north west, straight up between the coast and the ridge of hills called Harvey’s Range, which is the range that keeps the rain out of Townsville for most of the year. The sky this morning seemed high and blue and the hills looked scrubbed clean. It seemed propitious.

Everything in this year, so far, has been building towards this point. I wonder what it’s going to be like when we get past it?

Further Shame

While I have been sitting, bitching and whining in comfy warmth by the Coral Sea, this lady has been ploughing herself off a snow-blown mountain to get to work on time. V impressive.

This is the last time.

I didn’t want to mention it again. It’s so shameful, having a skin condition. Even after the first time I mentioned it, I felt ashamed and I wished that I had kept it a secret. But then I mentioned it again, yesterday. I can’t seem to keep my mouth shut about what ails me. But this is the last time for a while, I promise. And I should say that it actually looking much better these days. To a stranger’s naked eye, you can’t hardly see it at all.

But when it was at its worst, one thing that really drove me nuts was the way my laptop keyboard gets really hot after it's been on for a while. It drove me to itchy distraction, until Hayden very thoughtfully (and romantically, because it was Valentine’s Day) got me a brand new keyboard and found me a separate mouse to attach as well. From that moment, I thought that things would surely improve.

But they didn’t! I become more and more … miserable? Irritable? What is the name for that dull moroseness which is caused by mild but constant discomfort? I cursed Townsville and its latitude. I cursed the many hapless shop assistants around here (the custom here is that when a shop doesn't have the item that you're after, the shop assistant won't apologise and let you get on with your life, rather they will go into a long and detailed explaination of why they don't have it. It drives me nuts.) I cursed February, and unemployment, and then I got a job and cursed that, and when I lost the job I cursed as well. Last night, when I was trying to make Hayden a special surprise dinner of homemade dumplings and salad, I cursed the heat, the stove, the dumpling pastry, the hot oil and myself. It was not a very nice surprise for Hayden after all. And then he still had to make the salad himself.

But don't worry, I've found out what the source of the problem was: the mouse! It was too heavy for my poor tiny hand, and it was causing tension to flow up my arm to my shoulders and my neck and into my brain. So I got a new mouse today, and it has made all the difference.

I revoke all curses forthwith.

Bunnings I love you and I'm sorry we're apart

So my decks are cleared of paid employment and education – I had to drop out of my massage course because I got an icky rash on my fingers – and although I got myself all revved up for gardening, I can’t do that now either. If I plant new baby plants before we go to New Zealand next week, they will surely be dead by the time we get back. It’s already probable that I’ll be coming back to dead plants, so I can’t really justify a spend-up trip to Bunnings.

Nope, I’m just at home today, alone, alerting all my superannuation funds of my new address. Fun-o.

What are you up to?

Update on the Garden

I’m really pleased with how my balcony garden is coming along. I’ve got chives and mint and three aloe veras; I’ve got three baby lemon trees competing for domination in a pot; I’ve got a couple of ferns and a couple of just plants, but I have to say that though I love the ferns, the just-a-plant plants are my least favourite. I love the plants that have a use, and I’m already planning more and more trays to plant with useful, edible things. I want to try shallots, and baby carrots, and more different kinds of asian greens. I’m thinking about balcony compost – too smelly, do you think? - and while I’m typing this I’m realising how much happier I am entertaining myself with no money than working for someone else and wasting the beautiful days just to have some pocket money to spend.

No, the music festival job didn’t work out. But that’s fine, really, and there are no hard feelings at all. Basically, I did a two-day trial for them, and after that they told me that they were grateful for the work I did, but they couldn’t afford to keep me on in a paid position. It was such a relief. Obviously they were hoping that I would offer to work for free, but that offer is just not in me any more. Not for a classical music festival, anyway. I used to feel much more strongly that classical music concerts were a god-given right, and that it was the government’s duty to fund them. Now … it’s not that I think that classical music should be allowed to die out, and I don't think it will die out in Europe or Brittain, where it does actually represent the musical tradition for most of the people. But for Australia, whose culture is built on so many different traditions from so many different countries, it's not so relevant. Australia's population has grown mainly from immigrants who have come into the country poor and looking for a better kind of life (my own ancestors included, quite a few generations ago). Classical music was never the music of poor people, and these days I am much more in favour of the government funding other, more inclusive kinds of music.

I wonder what I do feel passionate enough about, to work at it for free? Maybe planting in a community garden, if Townsville had such a thing?

Update

“Easy and unexpected”. What an idiot. I can’t believe that I even wrote that.

And I can’t believe the blithe and thoughtlessly optimistic mood that I sat down and wrote it in.

Although I would like to, I’m not going to say any more at this stage.

I’m going to wait and see.


In the meantime, please enjoy the following visual hold-music, courtesy of my fledgling balcony garden:















My newly growing mint, both Vietnamese and Normal varieties.
















And my Experimental Tray, which contains two things that I always wondered how they grew, and so promptly planted the relevent leftover bits of them after I had finished with the eating of them: garlic and rockmelon.

Let's have a ball and a biscuit

I ate a pie for breakfast this morning, and I have regained my urge to tidy. I’m taking these two things (that aren’t necessarily linked in any other way) as evidence that I’m pulling out of my February funk.

I found myself in the tradies' part of town this morning, when I took our little car to have its airconditioning fixed (it recently gave out due to overuse). I first dropped Hayden at work, and when I arrived at the auto electrician's, I stepped out of the car into the most delicious smell of baking pastry … that’s right, I was in that strange land of light industry where numerous snack bars keep a good supply of pies (pronounced 'poys') on hand throughout the day, starting at breakfast time. Needless to say, I succumbed to the call of the poy. It was worth it.

Anyway, I’m glad I’m feeling better on the whole, cos I’ve gotta go to work tomorrow. That’s right, I seem to have found myself a job, though it was slightly strange how it came about, in a ‘be careful what you wish for’ kind of way. When we left Melbourne last November, I was thoroughly sick of recruitment agencies and their slackness, and boring temp jobs, and I was hoping that in Townsville I would be able to somehow find the perfect kind of low-key yet enjoyable job for, say, a maximum of two days a week, and I was also hoping to somehow just be given this perfect job, without too much rigmarole in the way of applications and interviews and rejections and suchlike. Marny (Hayden’s cousin) mentioned to me that the classical music festival they hold here every winter might need some help, and that I should apply for a job. So I got in touch with them, and they must be the last people in the world to be impressed by my ancient and disused Bachelor of Violin Playing, because I got the job! All very easy, and unexpected, and I’m trying not to dare to hope that everything to do with working there could be so easy and unexpected. I have so many things to do before tomorrow, including finishing the haircut that I started last week.

Wish me luck!

Slow like a train, sharp like a razor

When things are going wrong because it is too hot to think and the glass is slipping from my grasp because of the sweat on my hands, then I know that it’s time to go and see a movie. After two hours sitting still in the cool and the dark, I can rely on coming out feeling a whole lot better. I was half thinking of going to see Memoirs of a Geisha just to push the point, but I went to see Walk the Line about Johnny Cash instead.

I didn’t know much about Johnny Cash before I went to this film. One thing I knew was that my favourite house athletics coach in primary school, Mrs Kelso, had a Johnny Cash t-shirt that she always wore on sports days. One year, Mrs Kelso got sick and had to go to hospital and she missed sports day, and our whole house pledged to run our fastest and try our best and win that day, just for Mrs Kelso. While she was in hospital, I overheard two of the older girls paying out on her Johnny Cash shirt, I remember thinking that that Wasn’t Very Nice. Fast forward to my undergrad years in the mid 1990s; I was living in The Gap and my nutsest flatmate ever, Adrian, would make a point of requesting Ring of Fire whenever we went out dancing, which was every Tuesday night at Babble On, downstairs on Elizabeth Street. Can anyone remember the name of that club night? Was it Buggered? I think it was something to do with sodomy, anyway. Ah, Tuesday night dancing. Those were the days. Adrian used to love having the dance floor to himself while Ring of Fire was on.

So I didn’t know if Walk the Line was going to be just another musician bio-pic; especially because at the start it looked quite similar to a movie about Elvis that I’d seen on telly at midday recently: Southern guy with no money and his black hair in a pompadour, makes his way into the music business via a recording studio where anyone can make a record (kind of like blogging, no? anyone can have a turn). As I watched Johnny become successful and rich and move his family into a bigger house, then become addicted to alcohol and drugs, I was worried that what I had been enjoying up til that point was going to follow that familiar second act plotline: the star’s painful descent. And I know that this was Johnny Cash’s real life story, so the writers didn’t make up the plot themselves, but I was so glad that they decided to emphasise the religious context, by which I mean all the bits about singing hymns, and sinning, and actually believing in the god you mention in your songs, and spirituals and gospel. I loved the fact that he and his mother used to actually sing in the fields as they picked the cotton by hand. I also loved how bizarre his mother’s hair became after they got rich. I loved how he lost the battle with the tractor, but finally found a peaceful sort of life in that house near the lake surrounded by trees. And I loved how June turned out to be his saviour, in the end.

I thought that Joaquin and Reese did a lovely job of it. I don’t know what a real Johnny Cash fan would think, and I was struck at the end when the credits were rolling, and they were playing a real recording of theirs, by how different the sound was. But I felt so much better when I walked out of the cinema, that I sang Ring of Fire in the car, all the way home.

The Silver Coconuts

I find much public art to be spectacularly mediocre, but these ones have been growing on me. They're such a pleasing, friendly shape. And so perfectly relaxed.

When I eventually get my own beachside cocktail bar, it's going to be called The Silver Coconuts for sure.



Now, here are some photos of a mini-race Hayden did on Saturday:















He won, of course.

Well, he won the men's race anyway, and that's the main thing.


PS, the Coconuts scupture is by a French fellow called Thierry Auriac

Itching for March

Is anyone else having trouble with February? I’m finding February really tough. I don’t want to whinge, but … it’s all I’ve got. The whingeing is pouring out of me. I’m crotchety, irritable, clumsy, and itchy. Yes. Itchy. You want me to tell you about my rash, don’t you? I think it’s heat rash. It’s red and itchy, and it’s on the bases of my fingers. Initially I thought it was a burn from the hot steering wheel after the car had been left in the sun for an hour, but now I’m wondering if it’s not some gross fungus or bacteria. Thanks, the tropics.

I really meant it when I said that I was longing for the green hills of New Zealand. But we don’t get to see them until we have finished our February. February is filled with hard training for Hayden and hard hot slow unemployment for me. You’d think that because I’m unemployed it would be easier for me to get to the doctor to see about my rash, but none of the doctors around here are taking any new patients. That’s because there is a health crisis in Queensland. The Premier has offered to resign if he can’t fix it by the end of the year, but frankly, that’s not much use to me in February.

There’s a doctor in our street, but he’s a psychiatrist and his name is Dr Likely. I read that this morning and thought it was funny.

What we got

As preparations for Hayden’s Ironman go into overdrive, we are starting a new morning routine that begins at 5:00am. There are only three and a half weeks until we go to NZ, which means two weeks of hard training before he tapers off to a week of rest before the race. I have vowed to get him up at 5:15am on every morning the next two weeks, just so that he can fit one more run into the day.

It’s been pretty challenging for him, since we moved to Townsville. Though his swimming has become stronger than ever, it has been hard for him to find enough hours in each day that are cool enough to do all the riding and running required. Though I’m not up to being a fully-fledged training buddy, I thought that the least I could do was get up in the dark with him, and take the camera down to the sea for a few snaps of the sunrise. Tomorrow I will go for a proper pre-sunrise walk, and you never know, by the end of the two weeks I may well be jogging. We’ll see.

What we are longing for ...

We’re going to be in NZ before we know it. Cool, rainy, green, it’s going to be quite a contrast. One thing I’m really looking forward to is a feast of spinach and rocket – the green leafy vegetables do not thrive in Townsville. Eating limes has helped us stave of scurvy, but it can’t hold us forever …

Meringues

I was sooo bored this hot afternoon, until I put on the Edith Piaf’s greatest hits and whipped up three eggwhites (left over from Hayden’s mayonnaise-making experiment) into a batch of meringues … ooh-la-la, instant Français!

As babel fish taught me to say: J'aime leurs crêtes blanches brillantes!

Sport? I’m a No, really I am

I’m really not that interested in it. Not as a spectator anyway, despite the post I wrote before last, about how excited I was at the tennis finals. It’s not the sport itself that interests me; it’s the drama of it. These days, I have to take my drama where I find it. It’s kind of like the short part of 2002 that I spent working as a farmhand in the dusty and deserted centre of Sicily, where the only entertainment was the weekly football game on satellite TV. We would drive a tiny dented Fiat all the way into town to watch Milan AC play in their Champions League games, not even in a bar, but in a very local set-up, just two rooms filled with chairs and the telly on full volume and twenty to thirty full-blooded Sicilian men (I never saw another girl there) all standing and yelling at the screen whenever Milan AC tried for a goal. That was pretty good drama.

In Townsville it’s pretty much the same story (minus the Sicilian men). Most of the time it’s just a small dull city filled with working class families and their utes and their children. The only thing going on other than sport is Friday and Saturday night drinking, including an absolutely alarming number of very young women we see out on Hen’s nights. Presumably, straight after the Hen’s night comes marriage and children, and then less drinking because they have to get up early on those weekend mornings in order to take their children to play sport.

I’m not trying to make a point, really. I just wanted to give you a bit of background before I mention that I’m all excited about sport again. We’re going to see a basketball game on Friday night: Townsville Crocodiles Vs Cairns Taipans. Hayden won the tickets by narking on his colleagues about some safety issue at work. I’m so proud of him.