Finding Maud

Two years ago, I received a grant from Arts Queensland which gave me time to revisit my research on Rosa Praed and her deaf daughter Maud. I read the Murray-Prior papers in the National Library of Australia and combed Patricia Clarke’s biography, Rosa! Rosa! for references to Maud, who had been deaf since she was small. At age 28, Maud became destabilised by the fracturing of her family had a breakdown. She was admitted to Holloway Sanatorium in Surrey, and later transferred to St Ann’s at Canford Cliffs, near Poole. Clarke had written to the Sanatorium to ask for Maud’s medical records, but was informed that these were destroyed after 20 years. However, when I checked the National Archives database in the UK (which hadn’t yet been created when Clarke was writing her book), I found that they were still extant. I realised needed to go to England to find them.

When doing archival research from the other side of the world, you can pay a whack of money and get the archive’s employees to find documents for you, or you can pay even more money and get on a plane. It’s usually cheaper to get someone to make the copies, but then you risk not finding what you want. Control freaks with an eye for detail (and who liked collecting stamps when young) such as yours truly also prefer to do the work themselves. There is also serendipity in archival research: when you’re tootling among old papers, there’s more of a chance of making connections with pieces of information that you find on your way, and these connections throw up new ideas.

It was five and a half years since I had left England and returned to Australia after finishing my PhD. Until a few years before, I’d had nightmares about having to return to finish my thesis, and would wake with that familiar, sickening feeling of leaving my family behind yet again. So I was somewhat apprehensive about returning, but that feeling began to dissipate when I was met by my good friend C, who lived in Kent, and as I met up with other old friends in London. It was autumn, almost ten years to the day (20th September 2014) that I had boarded a plane to England for the first time to start my PhD, and the weather is rarely cruel in an English autumn.

We visited Knole, the book which inspired Virginia Woolf’s novel Orlando. I’d always wanted to go there with C while I was there, as she lived not far away, but we never got around to it. It was a grand but hollow building, and I wondered how they had ever kept warm.

A day later, I began my research at University College London’s Ear Institute and Action on Hearing Loss Library, located at the Royal National Ear Nose and Throat Hospital, which I’d often visited for checkups when I lived in London. I also knew the head librarian from having worked at UCL library, and that was nice too. I was specifically looking at the reports of Society for Training Teachers of the Deaf and for the Diffusion of the German System. They didn’t yield much that was interesting, although the librarian gave me a fascinating account of Benjamin St Ackers’ daughter, who had been taught to speak though she had been deaf since birth, and ended up very isolated and alone.

From London I caught a train to Leamington Spa, where some more old friends lived. One of these had been in our (predominantly Australian) bookclub, the Book Rangers. She now had two sprogs: a lively little boy who liked investigating things, and a newborn girl. The next day I caught a train to Birmingham, where the archives for the Society for Training Teachers for the Deaf (which was an amalgamation of the all teacher training colleges) were held at the Cadbury Research Library. Sadly, there was nothing in this lot, aside from some minor references to Benjamin St John Ackers.

I returned to London, and from there I went on to Woking.

‘You’re going to Woking!?’ a friend had exclaimed when I told him of my research plans over coffee at the Brisbane Writers Festival.

‘Yeah. What’s wrong with Woking?’

‘Woking’s awesome! It’s has a racing car track at a museum. Actually, it’s a Weybridge, but that’s not far away.’

‘Maybe I’ll just send you a postcard from Woking.’

He clocked the look on my face. ‘Yeah, do that. If cars aren’t your thing.’

Woking seemed a nice place, although overrun with chain stores, as are all the small towns in England, something that never failed to make me sad. I grabbed a coffee and some lunch from Pret, then caught a cab to the Surrey History Centre, which was housed in a municipal building. It was a plain, almost sterile building, at odds with the leather bound case notes which were handed to me.

I set up my camera and latptop, pulled on a pair of white cotton gloves to protect the case notes from the sweat on my skin, and opened the case notes. There was Maud, staring back at me, as well as a letter she had written to her doctor. The case notes, although not detailed, described her deterioration over about a decade.

I was beside myself, and this article I wrote for Meanjin describes why. I wandered back to the pub at which I was staying via a path beside a canal, dazed and triumphant.

A few days later, C very generously drove me to Canford Cliffs, where Maud's sanatorium was located. The building had been restored and it was beautiful, set among green lawns that slide down to the sea, but I wondered how it would have been in Maud's time. Gulls cried overhead. Maud wouldn't have been able to hear them, but she would have felt the sea breezes on her face.

I caught the train back to London and stayed with some good friends who live near Kensington Gardens, and who were also not far from one of the apartments Rosa Praed had lived in. I took myself for a walk through Holland Park to find it, stopping to marvel at the peacocks.

Then, after a gloriously sunny day in Bath with C, where we bought some dark blue suede boots from Duo Boots, it was time to leave. The Queensland election started while I was stepping onto the plane. When I flew into Brisbane, I wasn’t able to get my phone to work, so once I reached Customs I bailed up the first officer I could find.

‘Who won the election?’ I asked him.

‘They’re still counting, but it looks like it might be Labor.’

‘That’s brilliant!’ I exclaimed. Campbell Newman, an arrogant and selfish politician who, in his first act of parliament, had binned the Premier’s Literary Awards, had also squandered his majority by treating Queenslanders like trash.

He turned over my card and read my occupation. ‘So, you’re a writer. That’d be right.’

I laughed, loudly. It was good to be home.

To Florence and Prato

It’s a measure of how busy and tired I’ve been this past year that I’m only just now writing up the trips that I took last year, to Prato, England and Rome. Fortunately, Christmas has given me a breathing space and I’m catching up on my belated posts.

Last year, after doing more research on Rosa and Maud Praed, I realised I needed to go back to England to look for Maud’s medical records. The European Association for the Study of Australia was holding a conference in Prato, Italy, in September. I had wanted to go to the association’s conference in France two years before but I was too broke. This time I had a bit of cash in reserve and decided to stop off on the way to England.

I caught a straightforward flight to Rome and checked into a hotel. When I woke the next morning I walked down to the Colosseum and attendant ruins. If someone had told me I’d be there again two months later, I would have laughed.

In the afternoon I wandered into Termini to catch a train to Florence. As I stood watching people using the ticket machines, trying to work out what to do, I was approached by a neatly-dressed, slightly cross-eyed young woman with blonde hair, who asked if I wanted help. ‘I need to go to Florence,’ I told her. She took me to a ticket machine and showed me how to use it. I wasn’t quite sure that what she was doing was orthodox, but she turned away when I slid my card in and put in the pin. When the machine spat out the tickets and she showed me the platform number on the screen, she said, ‘Ten euros, please.’ I felt like an idiot, I later emailed my boyfriend, who reassured me that it was par for the course to be fleeced at least once when travelling.

The last time I was at Florence train station was in 1999, when I was backpacking with friends around Europe. We’d just missed the train to Pizzo in Calabria, and it was too late to find a hotel, so we spent the night on the station’s cold floor. When we finally boarded our train the next morning, we went south through a gorgeous Tuscan sunrise of pink, layered with mist and shot through with gold. I tried to keep my eyes open to watch it, but I’d only had a few hours sleep. This time I was alert, and the view was of gorgeous, green rolling hills. I was ecstatic to be overseas again and realised how much I’d missed travelling.

In Florence, the station was crowded. I’d forgotten how many people there were in Europe. I queued in the taxi rank, and a middle-aged, balding man before asked me, ‘You are a local?’

‘No,’ I replied. ‘I’m from Australia.’

When the cab pulled up, he gestured for me to get in, and I shook my head and made for the cab coming after me. What was it with these arrogant, European men, I thought crossly, did they try it on with anyone?

My irritation subsided when I reached Ape Rosa, an 18th century villa that was located away from the centre. It was absolutely gorgeous, with high-ceilinged, airy rooms, ornate furniture and a lovely green garden.

As I signed in and was given my key, one of the owners dropped by.

‘I’m from Australia,’ I introduced myself.

‘You are the famous person?’

‘Noooo! I’m not famous. No.’

‘You have the website?’

‘Yes, I’m a writer, but I'm not famous!’

Still, she made me feel like a star. Later, she told me that Napoleon’s brother had stayed at villa, and what with the excellent coffee that was served with breakfast, I was pretty much in heaven.

There was a bus that I caught into town, which was very straightforward. My friend from England had intended to join me, but she was unwell and had to cancel. It was easy to get around the city, although in my jetlag I’d booked the wrong time slot to the Academia, where Michaelangelo’sDavid was housed. They let me in anyway, and as I stood in the queue, I watched a couple of Asian girls giggling at a nearby stall over the aprons and boxer shorts that featured David’s manhood. It was hard not to smile. I also chatted to some ladies waiting ahead of me, who were speech therapists from America.

David was quite good, but art doesn’t do a whole lot for me, despite growing up with an artist for a father. The next day I visited the Uffizi, which was also good, although these days, looking at Boticelli’s Venus doesn’t seem to be much different to looking at it on the internet. I was more impressed with frescoes stretching across the high ceilings. After that I took myself off along the river to the gardens surrounding Piazzale Michaelangelo, which had exceptional views of the city.

No overseas trip is complete without a spot of shopping if one has an addiction to frocks and the like, and the next day I caught a bus through the green hills to The Mall, a shopping outlet of designer labels which Mum had read about in the travel section of the Sydney Morning Herald. I was a bit disappointed – it was a sanitised, soulless and boxy place, but that didn’t stop me from buying some cashmere from Prada. When in Italy, after all, one must do as the Italians do.

In between my peregrinations in and around Florence, I sat before the window of my room at Ape Rosa, finishing an essay on Rosa Praed that I wasn’t able to get done before I left. I didn’t mind too much; there are worse places in which to write. That essay was published a few months ago in the Journal for the Association of Australian Studies. I also sat in the lovely, tousled gardens and read Annabel Smith’s new book, The Ark.

Then it was time for the conference, which was organised by Monash University, as it has a centre in Prato. I caught a train to the town, which was only half an hour away and checked into a hotel beside the river, just outside the city walls. The theme of the conference was ‘Encountering Australia: Transcultural Conversations’ and I spoke about the interactions between Georgiana Molloy and Noongars in south west Western Australia, as Molloy went about collecting plants. My paper has just been published in the Australasian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology (you may have to create a login to read it).

The conference dinner was at the Conservatorio San Niccolò Private Catholic School, which used to be an orphanage. I sat next to a lovely Australian woman who was doing her postdoc at Cambridge on Judith Wright and a few other poets. The next evening we did a spot of shopping and drank cocktails in the piazza, which was bliss! I think this photo sums up pretty well what I thought of Florence and Prato:

Adventures in FNQ

Summer began early for H and I this year, as by September I was jack of everything and decided it was a good time to go north to do research for my third novel, The Sea Creatures.  This is set in a tropical Queensland town by the sea, although Queensland won’t be described as such in the work.  I didn’t want to go on my own and asked H if he would come too and, being good-natured, he agreed.

H & I found each other in Townsville airport, hopped into our hire car and ventured into the cane fields.  I had never seen cane before (in the novel it acts as a border to the town), and as the sun fell behind the ranges, they were drenched in golden light.  We went up into those ranges, and as we came down the ocean was on our right, filtering into the delta next to Hichinbrook Island.  In the dying light, the water reflected the pink and pale purple sky.

We drove into Cardwell, and hopped out to look at Hichinbrook and the water.  A young woman in a black floppy hat was throwing sticks to her dog.  The dog’s name was Atticus, she told us, then ordered him to shake hands, roll over, and speak with a bark.  Atticus was cute.

I’d been too busy to plan every detail of the trip the way I usually do, so we were winging it (quite against my nature).  H had at least booked accommodation for that night to keep my panic at bay, and we pulled into a very basic caravan park.

‘I wasn’t sure what your budget was,’ he said to me.

‘Ergh, I can probably afford a bit more than this,’ I replied.  I think we were both relieved.

That aside, the lady at reception was very nice, telling us about Cyclone Yasi, a huge print of which hung in the office, and in the kitchen we met a girl who swore at the oven in French.  As the light was nearly going, we walked along the shore.

‘What if the crocodiles come out of the water and eat us?’ I asked.

‘There aren’t any crocodiles, Jess.’

I remained unconvinced, and was much happier when we stepped back onto the road.

The next day we headed for Atherton, stopping first at Tully.  On the outskirts of the town, a sugar mill belched smoke over the adjacent school.  I liked the place, however, with its strip of Art Deco shops, a giant boot and wooden cassowary at one end, and the mountains at the other.  From there we detoured to Mission Beach, and the cane became claustrophobic, pressing against the road.

Mission Beach was touristy, but where there are tourists, there is usually passable coffee, so we parked at a café and ordered lattes, which passed muster for yours truly.  Behind a tangle of shady rainforest was the beach, white and flat, and then the water, turquoise and flat.  I was astonished, having only seen such views on postcards.

We travelled inland, up into bright green paddocks of tea bushes, passing various microwaves on posts that had been turned into mailboxes.  We stopped at Millaa Millaa falls, which were crowded with tourists, and the water was so cold I started hyperventilating.  However, it was nice to have a swim, and when I saw these falls in Danie Mellor’s exquisite exhibition at UQ Art Museum, I was glad that I had visited.

Next on the agenda was Mt Hypipamee National Park.  After a few wrong turns on account of the navigator (cough), we pulled up in the carpark.

‘Look, Jess, a cassowary!’ H said, pointing at a bird on the lawn.

‘That’s not a cassowary,’ I replied, ‘that’s a bush turkey.’

H looked disappointed.

The park wasn’t all that exciting.  Some French ladies heard us laughing at a joke and offered to take a picture of standing us before a tree.  The park’s feature, a crater, was filled with creamy green algae.  On the way back, we found a couple standing in the middle of the track.  They mentioned there was a cassowary up ahead, so we had better wait for it to move.

‘Are they aggressive?’ I asked.

‘Can be,’ they replied.  We chatted to them some more, and it transpired they were from WA and had moved to the area a few years before.  They then walked back up the track to find their friends. 

The cassowary decided to come our way, moving through the bush to the right of the track.  We crossed the path into the other side of the bush, but it kept moving forward, looking for food in the leaf litter.  Then it crossed the path and saw us behind a tree.  I started sweating.  The thing was as tall as I was, with feet the size of dinner plates.  It made eye contact with me, didn’t like what it saw, and made a dash for us.  I lost my marbles and ran onto the track.  When I turned, H was standing the cassowary down, his hand outstretched.  He hissed and shouted at it, and for a few tense seconds the cassowary glared at him, feathers ruffling, then it turned and walked away.

It takes quite a lot to impress me, but I was rather proud of my brother at that moment.  Then the adrenalin overload kicked in and I started shivering.

The bird traipsed back the way it had come.  More and more people arrived, including a tour group headed by an Indigenous man.  The crowd created a a bottleneck in the track.

‘What should we do?’ someone asked the Indigenous man.  

‘Don’t go into its territory and don’t turn your back.’

A tourist hurried to the front of the group to take a photo, then ran back and hid behind the Indigenous man.  A bloke without a shirt on, flanked by two sheilas, appeared and walked through the crowd.  No one said a word, which I thought highly entertaining, but he passed unharrassed.

Finally, the bird wandered off a way and sat down and we could all go our ways with relief.  As H & I reached the car, we saw the bush turkey again.  

‘Do you still think it looks like a cassowary?’ I asked, and we laughed.

That night we ate at the Barron Valley hotel in Atherton.  I was beside myself, because it was a beautiful Art Deco building with matching furniture and lofty bedrooms upstairs.  Aside from it being gorgeous, I needed such a place for one of my characters to stay in when he leaves his wife.  

Sadly, I couldn’t write Atherton’s wonderful Chinese temple made out of a tin shed into my book.  It was unfortunately closed, but H opened the gate at the adjacent dog park and we had a look that way.  The red of the painted eaves, and the rust on the tin against the blue sky, was stunning.

After caffeinating in Yungaburra, we discovered another lovely Art Deco pub, which was open and airy.  Yunguburra was a sweet and quiet town, and from there we drove to the crater lakes, Lake Barrine and Lake Eacham.  We swam in the latter, and the water was warm on top, but bitterly cold beneath.  There were also turtles floating about.

‘What if they bite me on the foot?’ I asked H.

‘They won’t bite you, Jess.’

We lunched on the lawn by the river, then checked out the Curtain Fig and Cathedral Fig trees, which were astonishing, and made us feel like we were in The Lord of the Rings.  This sort of tangled rainforest is also a feature of Danie Mellor’s gorgeous art.  The next stop after that was Jacques’ Coffee Plantation near Mareeba, graced by a mannequin in a dried-out trenchcoat at the cattle grid.  They did at least have good coffee and a nice garden to sit in among those flat, dry plains.

We checked out Mossman Gorge, which was a bit underwhelming, although I liked that it was a successful business run by Indigenous people.

As we walked through the rainforest, H overhead a conversation between a father and his small son, which he then relayed to me.

‘Daddy, where are we going next?’ the boy asked.

‘Palm Cove.’

‘Why, Daddy, what’s at Palm Cove?’

‘I don’t know, son, but you try saying “no” to your mother.’

I burst out laughing.  We ventured on, up to Cape Tribulation.  In the caravan park, the girl at reception recognised H (what a small world), who had gone to school with her fiancé. 

There wasn’t a whole lot to do in Cape Trib, except relax.  I’d been having visions of hotels with infinity pools but I realised that’s not the point of the place; it’s underdeveloped, and they want to keep it that way to look after their environment.  We read novels, lay on the sand, swam a bit (by that point we’d found out it wasn’t croc season), and watched a monitor lizard poke through someone’s belongings at their campsite.

H got up early the next morning to watch the sunrise, but sleep was more important for yours truly, so I passed on that option.  When he came back he announced, ‘Jess, something without opposable thumbs was desperate to get to the peanut butter last night.’

I went outside and found the peanut butter missing most of its blue lid.  It was pretty funny, but I hope the critter didn’t get a blue bellyache.

The snorkelling wasn’t until the afternoon, so we wandered around (coffee was pointless), then decided to visit the insect house, home to an entomologist.  However, it didn’t open till 10.  ‘Honestly, these people have no idea of commerce!’ H said, exasperated.  After he pretended to be a spider stuck to the gates, we read our books until someone drove up and let us in.

The insect house was full of beetles, butterflies and moths, some the length of my forearm, pinned inside glass cases, although there was a plant being eaten by live praying mantises (mantisii for plural??).  Some of these the lady at the desk put into boxes and put in the post for whoever had bought them.  

The snorkelling was cool.  It was a small group of no more than 20, run by Ocean Safari, who took us out on a boat to some small cays (islands of coral).  In the water, which was bitterly cold, we saw big turtles, blue starfish, clouds of tiny fish (forgotten their names) and a giant angelfish, which reminded me of the little angelfish I’d kept in London, and I followed it around for a bit.

The reef and rainforest were beautiful, and I was absolutely heartbroken by the decision a few days ago to dredge Abbott Point.  I had protested with Getup on a march around Brisbane, signed petitions, rang the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority who are supposed to be protecting the place (on their website they exhort people to use Responsible Reef Practices), and left a message on their Facebook page, but they caved to greed, never mind the fact that what has taken a millennia to build will be gone in virtually an instant.  A legal challenge is in the offing, thank God and if, like me, you still want to keep fighting, you can donate to the fund here.  

The Sea Creatures is about a number of issues, the most prominent of which, as in all my works, is the question of belonging.  However it also details the degradation of our environment.  I was raised in the country and taught to appreciate nature, and it depresses me that people don’t care about their surroundings, but rather than give up hope, I would like to think I can effect some change through my writing.

The Ridgeline Residency

A little while back, I posted on my good fortune to be the inaugural recipient of the Ridgeline Residency, which was offered by Ben and Peta of Ridgeline Pottery in Hobart, Island magazine, and the Inglis Cark Centre for Civil Society at the University of Tasmania. 

I wrote about my stay there in Island’s blog, Islandia, and I’ve posted the entries below.  In my first entry I mention that all I knew of Tasmania came from books, but that isn’t strictly true.  A friend of mine visited some rellies in Hobart, and told me that a large proportion of their conversation was whether Holdens or Fords were better cars.  I wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth, or just wanting to make me laugh.  Possibly both.

As my vehicular literacy is nil, I didn’t have any conversations about cars.  However, Ben and Peta of Ridgeline Pottery were the most marvellous hosts who showed me the sights of Hobart, took me to Dark Mofo and the Red Queen exhibition at MONA, and to a lake to see and touch some wild clay which Ben sometimes used for making his pots.  It was sticky, but looked like smooth coloured rocks.  I also drank wine & watched telly with them in the evenings, and went home a few kilos heavier.

At the end of the residency I took part in, and presented at, The Longest Write, a writing workshop offered by Island over the winter solstice.  I’m in the process of recording part of my talk for this, while the essay which I wrote while I was there is almost done (it just needs some editing), and will be published in the Summer edition of Island magazine.

Wednesday, 12th June 2013

I write this from my table at Ridgeline Pottery, which looks through tall glass windows across Pipeclay Lagoon.  A thin-blooded BrisVegan, I am swaddled in wool, cashmere, and whatever synthetic fibre they make thermals from, and I have the heater on.  My feet will not be warm regardless of how many socks I pull on.  It was bucketing in Brisbane when I left, and the rain followed me, which is good, I’m told, because Hobart is the second driest city in Australia.  The rain washes in from the coast and blurs the promontories and peninsulas.  Bright green lichen grows beneath the gums, rabbits bound through the tall native grass and sometime a jenny wren flutters by.  I can’t remember the last time I saw a wren, having lived in cities since I was 18.

All I knew of Tasmania, before the plane began its descent over brown sloping hills surrounding Hobart, I had absorbed through reading.  There was a snippet from a 19th Century letter (the reference to which I failed to write down and I’ve rued it ever since), its writer disapproving of a woman who hadn’t covered her shoulders well enough in a male-dominated town; the first half of Patrick White’s A Fringe of Leaves, in which Ellen Roxburgh visits her brother-in-law and is both attracted and repelled by his physicality; one of my favourite novels, A Child’s Book of True Crime by Chloe Hooper; Griffith Review’s excellent edition on Tasmania, which is worth buying for Cassandra Pybus’ essay on the Chinese tin miners and their fabled connections alone, although many of its other essays are well-executed and absorbing; pieces from Island Magazine about writers Geoffrey Dean (whose story in the Review of Australian Fiction I still think about from time to time) and Amanda Lohrey; Cate Kennedy’s The World Beneath, which I thought lacked the density of her short stories; and, recently, Lady Jane Franklin’s journals, edited by Penny Russell.  

These are but a smattering of stories, and already I’m collecting more of them from Ben & Peta of Ridgeline Pottery, who established this residency in collaboration with The Inglis Clark Centre for Civil Society at the University of Tasmania and Island.  It’s supported by Tasmania's Department of Economic Development, Tourism and the Arts and by Griffith Review.  I’ll use my time here to write an essay on 19th Century botanist Georgiana Molloy, who emigrated from England with her husband to south-west Western Australia in 1829, and began collecting specimens for an amateur botanist in England, Captain James Mangles, who was the cousin to the wife of the governor of Perth.  I’ve been writing about Georgiana for 13 years (some things never let you go until you’ve flogged them to death), but have never had the time to focus on the materiality of her collecting.  This essay will be about how well-adapted she was, as a lady of leisure in the 19th Century (at least until she arrived at Augusta) who had been taught botany, to the craft of collecting the tiny Western Australia flora, and how her skill gave her access to the world of science from which, as a woman, she was barred. 

Ben and Peta are craftspeople.  Ben makes pots and Peta glazes them.  Ben also teaches about glazing.  I followed them to the studio last night, shivering in the night, and watched Ben stack pots in the kiln.  Stored under a long bench were buckets of his glazes, and the colours of the room were creams and browns, all muted, and all one tone, at least at that time of day.  Peta pays great attention to the meals she crafts and her food is exquisite.  Even a salad with lettuce, raw corn, radish, capsicum and chicken (smoked by herself) flourishes with flavour.  It’s wonderful to be among artists.  Writing is such a lonely business that I told them I was happy to be interrupted.  If I was writing fiction, I wouldn’t want to be talking to anyone, but non-fiction requires a different kind of thinking, one that is slightly less intense.  Ben mentioned that working on his pots was similar, in that the method and energy required for wood-firing was different to that of electric-firing.  It’s the same material, but a different form.

This morning I walked with Peta, wrote in my journal and scribbled down the opening of the essay, which begins in an archive.  Much of the essay is about opening seeds, boxes and packages and the subsequent expansion of their meaning, so it seems apt to start in a place that is about unpacking the past from archival boxes.  In the afternoon I battled with Bachelard’s The Poetics of Space to source his thoughts on the miniature.  I don’t know if my frustration with abstract writing is the problem, but his prose is slippery and hard to grasp.  I shall persevere.  

Saturday 16th June 

Yesterday evening evening Ben and Peta took me into town for the opening of Dark MOFO, stopping first by an exhibition opening of one of Ben’s ceramics students.  The gallery’s glass windows fogged up from the heat of bodies.  Outside, the wind was bitter.  We went on down to the docks at the end of Hunter Street. Beyond some burning crosses, and people huddling around fires in ten gallon drums, was a shed full of installations.  We queued for Ivana Franke’s ‘We Close Our Eyes and See a Flock of Birds, 2013’, and eventually sat in a white chamber and shut our eyes while hundreds of tiny light bulbs played a pattern.  It reminded me of the bad LSD experience I’d had in Amsterdam when I was 21 and I panicked.  However, when I calmed down, and I found it more like when I was a child on car drives home to our property in late afternoon, and light fell through the gum trees into my eyes.

There were plenty of young people about, and families with babies, and girls in woollen hats and berets, and I wished I had brought mine.  You can’t wear a beret in BrisVegas without looking like you have aspirations of method acting a malnourished writer.  People sat in lounge chairs, and kept warm by wrapping themselves in red capes that hung from coat pegs on the walls.  Ben made an appointment for an Anish Kapoor massage and Peta put it in his iPhone.

Before heading home we stopped by Ryoji Ikeda Spectra in the Regatta Grounds of the Queen’s Domain.  49 beams of pale blue light were projected into the sky, at the centre of which, at the top, clouds drifted by.  I was so cold by this stage that Ben and Peta bustled me into a jacket that looked like a sleeping bag, and I warmed up.  There was music playing, and I felt the vibrations through my soles, and people’s faces were lit up by the light from the beams.  It was spectacular.  On the way home we saw the shaft of light from across the water, a crescent moon hanging beside it.

On Saturday afternoon, Matt Lamb, co-editor of Island magazine, and Natasha Cica, director of the Inglis Cark Centre for Civil Society, came to lunch.  Peta put together a lovely salad, and sourdough bread she’d made, and set out walnuts dusted in icing sugar, and goat’s cheese that was pink with peppercorns.  I was introduced to cherry cider, which agreed with me very well indeed.  The conversation canvassed ceramics and the industrial revolution, which had given rise to the expectation that pottery should be perfect, when there ought also to be space for the handmade, the almost-perfect.  We too talked about houses and places, and how Tasmanians asked in what street and at what number you lived, because they invariably knew someone who had lived in that house.  The community is so closely-knit, it’s like a fabric.

On a morning walk, Peta mentioned that a number of the older men who lived in Port Arthur after the massacre died from heart attacks, because of the strain.  I was reminded of my aunt, a teacher in Christchurch, who said that after the earthquakes there was scarcely a day when she had a full class, because someone would be sick, the stress of the tremors having depleted their immune systems.  When a community is torn asunder, things begin to fray.

Sunday 17th June

After struggling through several of his chapters, I decided Bachelard and I weren’t destined to be buddies.  I get frustrated with writers who can’t get their message across clearly, which comes from being deaf and appreciating clarity in a voice, whether written or spoken.  I put the book aside and went back to Georgiana’s letters, which I transcribed for my PhD, and highlighted all the references to her collecting practice.  I’m using these to discuss the physical activity of collecting, and to focus on her hands, which were responsible for the carefulness and daintiness of her work.  After watching Peta push bread dough on the kitchen bench, and Ben moulding a piece of clay with almost the same action, I decided I needed to reinforce the work of hands, and to illuminate how they connect us to environments from which materials are taken.

Today I watched Ben stroking the bottom of pots with a paintbrush dipped in wax, and Peta then dipping them into buckets of glaze so cold they let off steam.  They had already done one glaze that morning, a white one, and after the other glazes were done they would put them in the kiln.  To get one pot is a lengthy, involved process.

As they worked, Ben described a part of the conversation I’d missed yesterday, about how Scandinavians are good at working with textiles and interior design because they spend so much of their lives indoors.  You can’t do a tapestry in an Australian summer, I added, because sweat and wool don’t go together.

I’ve been thinking about this distinction between inside and outside, and at lunch yesterday I’d also asked why Tasmanians are sometimes so resistant to outsiders.  Resources are scarce, I was told, and competition is fierce.  A comparison was made with Darwin, the population of which is more open and fluid (though I thought it was still felt like a frontier town, when I visited three years ago).  Is it something to do with migration, I wondered, as Darwin is opened to an influx of people from Asia, and people constantly travelling with the army?  Or is it that Tasmania is a microcosm for Australia as a whole, with its aversion to boat people and subservience to dinosaurs who crouch over piles of fossil fuels or woodchips?  If this is the case, then, as Peter Timms writes in his essay on Lady Jane Franklin in Griffith Review, ‘Assuming the Mantle’, Tasmania also has the capacity ‘to serve as a cultural laboratory – to be Australia’s off-Broadway, as it were.’  The smallness ‘tends to throw people together, which generates conversations, especially across disciplines’ (28).  And that is the thing about being inside – you sit, talk, think and generate ideas for a future.

When I phoned Parental Unit to let them know all was going well, they told me I was a wuss for not coping with the cold.  I pointed out that they couldn’t abide Brisbane’s heat.  I frequently wonder how I survived four years in London, and pull on another jumper.

Friday 21st June

After putting Bachelard away, I picked up Susan Stewart’s On Longing.  I really like this book, because it attempts to articulate how reading makes you yearn for something you cannot have.  However, after perusing Stewart’s meditations on tiny dollhouses, books that need to be read with magnifying glasses and writing about the miniature in fairy stories such as Tom Thumb, I realised there was a problem.  All of these things were crafted, and the flora in WA was not.  It was merely seen as small in comparison to English flowers.

I wasn’t completely stuck, because I could still use her idea that new worlds could be opened from a collection of words, and this could be linked to the hortus siccus, the book into which Georgiana fastened specimens so that Mangles could see what his seeds would grow into.  In this way, by ‘reading’ the hortus siccus, Mangles and the men to whom he distributed Georgiana’s seeds could envision Australia, albeit in a fairly rudimentary way.  Likewise, the seeds they grew in English soil were a literal embodiment of the growth of new worlds.  However, I need to work out a way of tying together craft and reading.

In between bouts of writing, Peta and Ben kept me busy.  Ever a slave to fashion, I decided to risk pneumonia and wore my favourite grey frock to the opening of The Red Queen at MONA on Tuesday.  The impression I have of David Walsh is that he has single-handedly revitalised Tasmania, so I was pretty excited about going to an opening exhibition.  Inside the sandstone walls, lit with red light, I found it was warm enough to take off my coat and expose my bare arms, while a glass of champers took care of any goosebumps.  There was a trampoline, and ping pong tables, and an installation of a possum besieged by insects, which were suspended from the ceiling.  Peta and I peered at a spider and an elegantly-dressed man stood beside us, studying it as well.  He said something in an accent to Peta that I didn’t hear.  ‘No, I don’t think that’s Australian,’ she replied, ‘it’s too big.’  He continued to stare at the spider.

A while later, Ben and I sat in a mirrored room for a tea ceremony with a lady in a kimono that was also spangled with mirrors.  Ben, who has been influenced by Japanese ceramics in his pottery, explained that it was usually a very simple ceremony and the shiny reflections were the antithesis of this.  We had a bit of Japanese biscuit and then the bitter tea.  The lady in the kimono asked me if I liked it and, as one who is always to the point, I replied, ‘Not really.’  However, I loved the novelty of it.

On Friday afternoon we drove to Pipeclay Lagoon to look at the wild clay that Ben uses to make his wood-fired pottery.  In his Masters thesis, Ben described this area, ‘It is a place that is on the edge; on the south-eastern edge of this island and on the edge of the southern ocean.  To lie here is to experience a place of eroded cliffs, refracted ocean swells, rock stack and the linear natural and human patterning of the tidal zone.’  The rich red and yellow of the clay, and the blue sweep of the lagoon, was utterly beautiful and I could see why, as he wrote, ‘This is the space I inhabit and is my place of making.’

Ben also mentioned that he tries to source local materials wherever possible, as does Peta in the ingredients for her food, and this was fresh in my mind when we headed into town for the launch of the latest edition of Island at Highfield House.  Natasha Cica, who was in conversation with Labor MP David O’Byrne, asked Ben and I to say a few words.  Ben commented on the importance of initiatives that weren’t necessarily reliant on the government, while I managed to collect some scattered thoughts, and said that Peta and Ben’s craft making seemed to mirror Tasmanians as a whole, for there was a sense of self-reliance about them.  They are also jolly good at making cherry cider, I found, as I quaffed some from Pagan Cider.

Monday 24th June

On Saturday morning Ben and Peta took me into town dropped me outside Strawberry Fool.  Happily caffeinated, I ambled up to Highfield House for The Longest Write, a weekend of writing over the winter solstice.  There were about twenty participants, and first cab off the rank of our speakers was the quick-minded Matt Lamb, editor of Island magazine and the Review of Australian Fiction who discussed the history of the Australian publishing industry (of which I knew little, so I was fascinated) and its future prospects, which are dire.  However, I’m sure the industry won’t cark it entirely, and will find a way to right its ship.  Writers are an annoyingly persistent bunch, and if they want to get into print, they will.

We were then introduced to Johanna Baker Dowdell of Strawberry Communications, who described her process of self-publishing her book Business and Baby on Board because, although she had interest from publishers, they were unsure how to market it.  However, she had plenty of followers on her blog and Twitter and knew she had an audience, so she crowdsourced with Pozible to raise funds to publish the book herself.  I liked her conviction; I think that’s an important attribute for a writer.

I was looking forward to hearing Danielle Wood speak, for I’d enjoyed her Vogel-winning book The Alphabet of Light and Dark.  She proved to be a lovely person, and spoke on the importance of first lines and first pages.  Even though I’ve been writing for 17 years and have heard this advice several times, I’ve never really paid attention to it.  I don’t choose a book according to its first line; rather I open the book somewhere in the middle and judge it on the quality of the writing.  However, in this climate, where publishers are pressured and tired, and readers have too many books to choose from, I could see the logic in what she was saying, and resolved to apply it in future.  This advice also segued with what Matt had said about needing to understand the context of publishing, in order to get published.  In a microcosm, this means buying and reading lit mags if you want to get into print, and it also applies to the larger publishing world.  Likewise, Text publisher David Winter’s (insert chilly Hobart quip here) discussion on the types of publishing houses and how they operate gave an insight into tailoring one’s work for publication.

The next morning I spoke about my essay and my experiences of getting published and said that, though I freely admit the industry is tough, I don’t see this as a reason to give up.  You’ve only got one life, so if writing makes you happy, you should keep doing it.  The rest of the day was devoted to writing and eating, and what with the excellent food provided and Peta’s cooking, I am now on a serious diet.  At 4pm we cracked open the booze and had some more of that excellent Pagan Cider.

As for my essay, which now just needs a little bit more research and some polishing, I worked out the link between reading and craft.  It came from a word which had been stuck in my head for several days: ligature, meaning a thing used for tying or binding.  It was mentioned in a phrase that Georgiana penned to Mangles about her young daughter, who had ‘imitated in me in forming a collection of dried flowers fastened by ligatures.’  The flowers were tied down with thread and presented neatly, which in turn facilitated their reading by English botanists.  Likewise, in choosing and setting words, we make our worlds into places that are inviting to readers.  The crafting of botany and of words is ultimately an aesthetic act.

As the plane flew out over Hobart on Monday, I thought, well, that was all so wonderful.  Tasmania is a beautiful place full of friendly people and exciting initiatives, so I’m definitely coming back.  Only this time it will be in Summer, so that instead of wearing three layers of wool, I shall roam the isle in a silk frock.  

On a final note, thank you to Ben and Peta of Ridgeline Pottery, Island magazine, Griffith Review, The Inglis Clark Centre for Civil Society at the University of Tasmania and Tasmania’s Department of Economic Development, Tourism and the Arts for making this residency possible.  It has been just magical.

Good Things Come

‘Good things come to those who wait,’ I’ve said to myself repeatedly over the last six months while dealing with the shock of discovering that my ex was not the man I had admired, which had precipitated a spell of depression, which I worked like a dog to escape, which meant I forgot to have days off and became sick with colds and flu, which perpetuated the cycle.  Finally, a good thing did come, for I was offered a residency in Hobart at Ridgeline Pottery and Accommodation to write an essay on 19th Century botanist Georgiana Molloy and the craft of her collecting.  However, as I’ve sat here with my lovely view of eucalypts, a lagoon and the sea beyond, with showers slanting against the window, or sunlight slipping through the trees, I’ve realised it’s probably more appropriate to say, ‘Good things come to those who try.’

Over these past six months I’ve also put in application after application for grants, competitions, fellowships and residencies, and to have it pay off in such a lovely way gave my self-esteem a much-needed boost.  Peta and Ben, who own Ridgeline Pottery (and make pots & teapots such as that in the picture), are kind and interesting people and are taking such good care of me, and I’m finally getting a rest, and I’m writing again.  I’m blogging about my stay at Islandia, the blog for Island magazine (the entries will appear on Tuesday), and next weekend I’ll be discussing the residency at The Longest Write, a weekend of writing organised by Island that is held over the winter solstice.

A fortnight before I left, my sister had her third child, a much-wanted and dearly-loved little boy whom she carried to term after several miscarriages that she soldiered through, but left everyone else in disarray.  When I hold this child, or smile at him as he fixes on me, slightly cross-eyed, his mouth drawn into a dot at the enormity of my teeth and eyes, I realise I must keep on with my dance classes, which I enjoy, and my internet dating, which I do not, to meet Mr Right.  

That’s all on hold for a few weeks, however, while I’m here writing my essay.  After this I’ll return to Brisbane for a few days, then go down to Wagga Wagga to present at the annual Association for the Study of Australian Literature conference, and then back to Brisbane again to talk at the opening of the Association of Teachers of the Deaf conference.  After that there will be more trying – this time to get back to my third novel, Depths Exceeded.  And for that, I can’t wait.

To India

In December and January of 1983, my parents travelled to India, using a Lonely Planet  guide which, according to Dad, was the second of their books ever released.  My grandparents came over from New Zealand to take care of the farm while they were away.  My grandfather, an accountant in Christchurch, said that it was the hardest he had ever worked, while my grandmother took me to school on my very first day.  I stood close to her side and looked up at her as she spoke to Mrs Woodley, hiding my terror. When my parents came back, we painted ‘Welcome Home’ on a sheet for them, and they gave us silver anklets and a puppet each - two wooden ladies in saris for Sister and I, and a wooden man in pantaloons, playing a pipe, for H.

Thirty years later, I boarded a flight to Hyderabad for a conference on Patrick White organised by the Association for the Study of Australasia in Asia.  I stayed in a plush hotel with a bunch of other delegates from Perth, Sydney, Singapore, Johannesburg and Christchurch, and was very glad of that, otherwise the culture shock would have done my head in before I’d even got started.

The conference was great, with fantastic papers from the plenary speakers Bill Ashcroft, Fred Cheney AO, Lyn McCreddan, Suvendrini Perera, Kirpal Singh, John Barnes and Mark Williams.  Our Indian hosts were generous and kind, and the food they gave us was excellent.  I and a handful of other people sadly had some money taken from our wallets by a professional pickpocket, but I was reluctant to go to the police about it to claim my insurance because it would have been so much bother for our hosts, when they had been so good to us.

I also had another launch of Entitlement, this time by the gregarious and energetic Lyn McCreddan, who did a wonderful job.  To my delight, I presented on a panel alongisde Meira Chand, whose novels The Goassmer Fly and Last Quadrant had been among the first adult novels I ever read when I was 13 or 14.  Mum had been going through an Asian phase and left them lying around the house, along with Han Suyin’s The Crippled Tree which I attempted, but which defeated me.  

Ours was the last panel of the conference, so it was just as well that we were writers and not hardcore intellectuals.  I ended with an exhortation to the conference participants, as champions of White, to help other readers dispense with the notion that he was too difficult to enjoy.  I don’t think he’s a difficult writer, I just think that he takes time, as do other authors such as Kim Scott or Alexis Wright. 

I stayed on a few days after the conference to look around Hyderabad, and the culture shock began.  I saw the Charminar, a monument and mosque, and the mass of people and noise was overwhelming.  Being with two other white women, we stood out like a sore thumb.  The next day I visited the tombs, where the air was hazy and quiet, and reminded me of wats I had seen with H in Thailand.  I also bought some pale pink pearls from the markets, and realised, when I got home, that they were so cheap I should have bought more of them.  However my handbag and jewellery situation is rapidly approaching saturation point (not so much with the frocks or shoes), so there wasn’t really any need.

The following day I flew to Delhi for a tour with Intrepid, which began in Old Delhi.  If I was freaked out in the centre of Hyderabad, this was even worse, with so much traffic and the press of bodies, and being a Sunday it wasn’t even busy.  I was shown a Sikh temple, and the kitchen where they made food for whoever wanted it, rich or poor, and was taken through the cramped and winding streets, which had a lacework of electrical wires overhead.

‘What happens if there’s a fault?’ I asked the guide, looking up at them.

‘Then, it is up to god.’

I laughed at that.

We made our way to Jama Masjid, the largest Muslim temple in India, where I was made to put on a pink shapeless monstrosity to cover my clothes, though I had taken care to dress modestly.  My guide was very friendly, but became a little too so towards the end, asking if I lived alone, and telling me that I looked very feminine.  He meant no harm, and I left him with a copy of my novel, then the driver took me on to Agra.

By this stage it had become clear to me that I was the only person on the tour!  The driver, who was a lovely, kind fellow, was constant throughout, but new guides met me in each city.  On the road, I was overjoyed to have time to read, not least because I ‘d been saving up A Dance With Dragons just for this holiday.  I told the driver I wasn’t very chatty, and that he could put the radio on if he wanted to, but he preferred silence I think.

I was up early the next day to see the Taj Mahal, and was delighted to find that my new guide was extraordinarily handsome.  The Taj was gorgeous too, of course, and it was nice to wander and sit for a bit.  I was then taken to the Agra Fort at which Shah Jahan, who had built the Taj for his wife, was held prisoner after being deposed by his son Aurangzeb.  ‘There is no kin in kingship,’ the guide told me, which made plenty of sense.

The next morning we drove to Fatehpur Sikri, a city built by Emperor Akbar in 1569 and then deserted after 15 years because they had run out of water.  The tour was very quick - I was taken up there on a rickshaw, shown Jama Masjid, a mosque, and then encouraged to buy trinkets (which were pretty, so I didn’t need much persuasion), and taken back again.  Altogether, we weren’t there for more than an hour, and the driver was surprised.

‘It should have taken hours,’ he said.  I replied that yes, the guide had moved very fast.  I also hadn’t been able to understand what he was saying as his accent was fairly strong, but that didn’t bother me so much as I read up on it later.  The driver spoke to the tour operator, who said they’d been concerned about us getting to Jaipur on time.  This was complete rubbish, as we drove off and got there with hours to spare.  On the plus side, it meant the driver could get away early to see his rellies, as it was Diwali.  Later, I checked my Lonely Planet, and it said to leave aside half a day to see the buildings and gardens, but I hadn’t seen any of the latter, only the mosque, so I was very unimpressed.

However, I loved Jaipur.  The Amber Fort up on the hill was breathtaking, as was Sheesh Mahal, the Hall of Mirrors within it, which was made up of a mosaic of tiny mirrors.  I had used up three memory cards by this stage, and had resorted to my phone’s camera.  While driving out of the narrow streets and back into town, I saw the same puppets for sale that my parents had brought back three decades before.

My guide for Jaipur was the best of the three, being a very kind, pleasant and knowledgeable person. It was an extremely hot day and he took care to stand in the shade as he could see I was struggling with the sun.  He showed me around the City Palace and the Observatory, which was just astonishing.   I couldn’t get my head around the methods of calculation that he explained to me (mostly because it was hard enough to contend with the accent, and the science on top of that), but found the structures so imposing and graceful.  After that I wanted to look at gemstones, and ended up haggling with a man who had a hissy fit because I drove too hard a bargain, but sometimes impoverished writers are forced to extremes, and we were both happy when I walked out of the building with a dark blue sunstone.  

There was a long drive back to Delhi the next day, at the end of which I gave the poor, exhausted driver a giant tip.  My plane didn’t leave until midnight so, at the conference organiser’s suggestion, I rang up the Delhi representative of the ASAA who, to my amazement, collected his wife, who was a doctor, drove me to the Australian Embassy and arranged an interview with the deputy high commissioner.  We talked about the conference and I left them with a copy of my novel, and was told that if they’d known I was coming, they could have organised some interviews with the local media.  I was surprised; I’d had no idea it was de rigueur for writers to visit an embassy, & told them I was still learning the ropes.  That evening, my Delhi hosts took me to a book launch at the cultural centre, which was just lovely, as I felt like a fellow academic, rather than a tourist.

In the taxi on the way to the airport, there was a marching band dressed in white suits playing in the middle of the road.  Two seconds later, we passed a bus where a small boy was vomiting out the window, leaving streaks down the side of the vehicle.  It pretty much summed up India: chaotic, strangely marvellous, and unforgettable.

To Niew Zilland

A few weeks back I made my first visit to Brisbane’s international airport.  Although I was only going across the ditch to New Zealand, I was pretty darn excited because, I realised, it was the first time I’d been out of the country in three years.  Such is the reality of being a povo writer: travel is limited. This was my fourth visit to NZ, the latest being 10 years ago when H and I backpacked from Auckland to Christchurch, struggling en route up Mt Tongariro (or rather, I struggled, being very unfit at that stage) with a swag of people, including a couple dressed in exactly the same outfit of pale trousers, shirt and hat.  We had waited for the bus to the mountain in a café with yellow tabletops decorated with ski boots with a candles stuck in them, while a song by Mel C played on the radio.  Later, I met my first misogynist in a hostel in Westport (which was otherwise very nice), bought a fabulous handbag woven from packing tape, got attacked by a tui and whacked it with said handbag, and helped H push grandma's car through a street in Akaroa because he couldn't work out how to get it into reverse.

We are half Kiwi, as Mum hails from Christchurch, so each visit finishes in that city with a stay with Gran.  This time I flew into Wellington for the annual conference of the Association of the Study of Australian Literature, the first time it had been held overseas.  However, to my chagrin, the plane was delayed for four hours, so I finished reading my novel and had to buy another, and then I missed the opening talk by Martin Edmond.

Martin is a writer of non-fiction, poetry, screenplays, biographies and blogs.  I used to read his blog about being a taxi driver while I sat on the desk at UCL Library, in between checking out books to students.  My father had been a taxi driver of an old black Woolsley in Sydney before he met my mother and took her back to the farm (with the car which, unregistered, loaded with dust and with faulty seatbelts, was used to drive sedately through paddocks or to visit our aunts and uncles on the property), and I discerned in both him and Martin the same rapport with people of all walks of life.  My father tried to teach me this affinity, but sadly I picked up his latent snobbery instead.

The next day at the conference (at which I finally arrived after walking into another conference altogether, full of lawyers) I introduced myself to Martin, and found that he recognised me from my blog, and there came that peculiar but enchanting moment of meeting someone who knows a substantial part of your history before you’ve barely opened your mouth.  He was a lovely person, and later emailed me his talk, which detailed an intricate network of artistic, literary and mercantile relationships spanning the Tasman.

The conference itself was wonderful, especially for someone who isn’t affiliated with an institution but still craves academic stimulation.  I met fellow scholars on Rosa Praed, caught up with someone I hadn’t seen since my Honours year at Wollongong, gave a paper on Georgiana Molloy and her children’s graves, learnt about the representations of islands and homesteads in Australian literature, listened to a sophisticated ecocritical reading of That Deadman Dance and Carpentaria by Jane Gleeson-White (who has also blogged on the conference extensively here, here and here) and, at the dinner, sat next to Richard Hill, of the Treaty of Waitangi Research Unit, and found what I could hear very interesting, but sadly this wasn’t much as he had a beard and a low voice.

At the same time, the conference was a little unsettling, as I was a writer of fiction circulating among people whose job it was to pull fictional texts apart.  Surely, I thought more than once, writers don’t put all this stuff into their work?  And then I mused to my father later, on the phone, why on earth people dissected texts and artworks like this, and wondered if literary critics could see something in texts that writers themselves can’t see – a part of their subconscious, perhaps, and the way they interact with culture.  As always, I remain torn by the critical and the creative, and wish there was some way of balancing them.

Wellington, despite its drizzle, was a pretty city, and I wish I’d had longer to explore its bars and cafes (in one of which, French and red, I sat to read and collect myself before moving on to the conference dinner).  I had looked at Katherine Mansfield's house on the previous trip with H, but I would have liked to have seen some gardens, especially after hearing Sarah Jane Barnett's wonderful poem on the precariousness of gardening on Wellington's steep slopes. On the other hand, the brief stay was probably just as well, as the boutiques were gorgeous and I am currently destitute.  I did walk into one shoe shop, and successfully walked out without extracting my credit card, which was no mean feat.

After the conference I caught the ferry to Picton.  The sun came out and the water was dazzling.

IMG_9105

Picton, too, sparkled despite the biting breeze, and I had time to find a coffee and watch the locals sitting outside the café in the morning light, before catching the train to Christchurch.  Again, the scenery was spectacular, the train very civilised (unlike the rattler H and I had caught from Greymouth to Christchurch a decade before) and I realised I’d forgotten how pretty and dramatic New Zealand is.

Christchurch, however, was a sad heap of rubble.  Buildings were still being torn down because they were unsafe.  My aunt took us to lunch in the suburbs, which were being utilised by businesses that had lost their buildings in the centre, and said how people were so stressed by the earthquakes and aftershocks that their immunity was low and they kept getting sick.  I felt one tremor while I was there, the night before I flew out.  I had just fallen asleep, and thought my Shake Awake, my vibrating alarm clock (necessary for those who can’t hear alarms) had gone off, but I found it was 11.30pm.  In a painful conversation with the taxi driver the next morning (he had an accent and I hadn’t had enough sleep and it was 5am and he was chirpy as) I discovered it was a quake of 4.5 that had made my bed shake like it was possessed by poltergeist.

My grandmother is 90 in October.  I always remember her birthday because it was the same as Sue Ellen, my Cabbage Patch Kid’s, given to me for Christmas when I was 7 (and which my sister ruined almost instantly by tearing the doll’s nappy).  Grandma likes to fuss, and I detest being fussed over and prefer very much to do my own thing, so after the first day, in which I was limp with exhaustion after so much listening at the conference, I began to get a little frustrated, and tried to subsume said frustration in reading.  I resisted eating in the dining hall with the other biddies (recoiling at the thought of all those deaf people, myself included, trying to have a conversation), but was made to go to morning tea.  I consequently finished four novels, and managed not to get into an argument with Grandma about the Maori’s water rights.

It was delightful to follow the sunrise home from Christchurch on the plane, and I was thoroughly pleased to get back to the warmer climes of Bris Vegas, albeit burdened with several bottles of Marlborough sav blanc, which is pretty much the only wine I drink.  I’m now gearing up for my book publicity.  My website (C/- H), is nearly ready to go and I have half an outfit worked out for my launch.  I am, however, lacking shoes to match.  A new (perfectly justified, naturally) purchase may be in order.

I looked up ...

and saw that somehow it was June. The time between my January post and this one had been sucked into a black hole. I can barely remember where those months went, though I know it was all English tutoring at the uni, sending Entitlement to the publishers for editing and struggling to and from my job at Autism Queensland in between classes. My stress levels shot through the roof, I went for nearly three months without a day off (except at the Easter break), my social life evaporated, I was irritable with exhaustion and felt as though I was reliving the days before I finished my thesis, only Saviour Brother wasn't around to help with the cooking and cleaning. At least my laptop didn't blow up this time.

But … it was worth it. I loved tutoring. I loved the contact with my students, trying to work out what would make them interested and trying to make them talk, which wasn't always easy, not least because they had an FM microphone shoved in their faces so I could hear them. Once I resorted to tossing sweets at them as a reward, which didn't really work, but at least it cheered them up. At first I had no idea what I was doing, but as Dad always said, “If you're chucked in the deep end, you have to learn to swim” and I learnt fast. And once I relaxed, they began to as well.

In the midst of this was the wonderful sanctuary of Coolum, where A1 had booked a house for our friends. The weather was gorgeous and I was able to wear a new bikini on the beach, and another bikini which until this point had been under-utilised (though was not seaworthy, being white and insubstantial). I was put in B1's room on account of his snoring, which kept those down the hall awake, but not yours truly. In the mornings I staggered out of bed and made a cup of tea and sat on the verandah with my book (Rose Tremain's The Road Home), soaking up the sun and listening to the wind in the palms. Then, in order to render myself fit for communication with other holiday inhabitants, I swam in the pool and woke myself up.

Having found myself without a beach frock (I had been marking up until the lunchtime before we left, then did a tutorial, then packed in haste), I bought a Wish dress on sale in a boutique which had been marked down 80%. I was so excited I was still talking to Sister about it when I returned.

“Oh my god,” she said, “we are so not related. I wore the same clothes four days straight.”

“That's disgusting,” I replied.

We also made a trip to Noosa, to which I had never been and which I found overpriced and crowded, with very unfriendly shop assistants. I also dragged my sorry arse out of bed at 5am to see the sunrise with A1. The last time I had seen the sun rise was when I was 9, camping with our friends the Coopers. I was in the habit (inconceivable to me now) of waking up before everyone else and was often bored to tears waiting for an adult to get up and give me something to do. At least then there had been the sun rising over the sea, viewed from the frame of a triangular tent flap. This time it was overcast, but it was still dramatic watching sharp gold prick the horizon line, before swelling and clinging to the bottoms of the clouds.

When I had shot enough photos, A1 suggested coffee, but I hadn't brought my wallet.

“I didn't think anything would be open at this hour.”

“You don't get up this early very often, do you?” she said.

There was no answer to that.

All that sunshine, sea, pool and friendship was enough to recharge me to get through the last month of tutoring. Now, on my first weekend off, I have run (lengthily), had my first inline skating lesson by the river (excitement extreme) with J2, attended a Getup rally in favour of climate action with Sister and the kids, and picked up a pen for the first time in months. Life, it seems, is about to begin again at last.

On Holidays

In the midst of the stresses of the former part of this year, I booked myself a holiday to visit L in Darwin.  She was on a placement, her boyfriend was away and she was going a bit mental, so our pleasure on seeing one another was mutual.

L and I go back to 2000 whereupon, on returning from Berkeley and not wanting to live in the ‘burbs of the ‘gong for my final year, I flatted in Surry Hills with her and B, both of whom I met through my brother.  I commuted to uni, which, combined with Double Honours and part time work, nearly killed me.  I subsequently adopted a further three of H’s friends and to this day all seven of us remain bound by a shared history of immoderate alcohol consumption, shenanigans canvassing Kingsford, Kensington, Surry Hills and Randwick, and the neuroticism particular to over-achievers.

The house party for the Surry Hills flat was one of the best.  I came up with the theme ‘Come as your deepest, darkest desire’, B designed a wonderfully witty invite requesting attendees to join us in holy flatrimony and L, social butterfly that she is, flounced around inviting every man and his dog from her med course.

I dressed as a tart, as I do with varying degrees of sophistication for every fancy dress party (barring one of L’s where I went as a bridesmaid dressed head to toe in pleated chiffon), B (now working on the reduction of railway noise and vibrations) came as a punk with attendant chain and L (now a nephrologist) was Britney Spears.  SP (now working in energy efficiency) came as a Morman and submitted to having his backside whacked by L with his Bible.  R (now designing microchips for Cochlear) came as Michael Jackson, only his nose of blue-tak fell off halfway through the night and he was reduced to groping his crotch to identify who he was.  Two friends of Bs, fellow mechanical engineers, came as women wearing bras with lights behind them.  When they pressed the lights, their breasts lit up.  It was fantastic.

H, who had a proclivity for spray painting himself and his clothes with gold, came as God.

I digress.

The plane trip to Darwin was surprisingly short.  As always, I love views of the country from a plane, especially when the sun is setting and it lights up the seas and rivers like sheets of gold.  At one stage it was impossible to tell where the sea ended and the sky began, especially as they were obscured by smoke from burning-off fires.

I sat next to a young Asian man who read the inflight magazine from cover-to-cover and, when he had finished that, asked if he could borrow my Country Style, which he perused with careful attention while I hid my smile.  As we circled to land, he was reading the flight safety card.

My visions of sitting on a beach in my new bikini with a margarita to hand while breezes waved the palms were, unfortunately, quickly dispelled.  One couldn’t swim in the sea, it transpired, because of the salties.  If one sat in a public place in a bikini, one would be launched upon by the redneck chauvinists who attended the topless girls bar.  When went out for dinner one night, I dressed very neatly in a black top, knee-length skirt and black heels and I still felt uncomfortable.  There was a very strong sense of it still being a raw, frontier town.

However, the surrounding national parks were gorgeous.  With L and her parents, we went to Litchfield National Park and, after a trek through scrubby bush growing out of red soil, dipped down into the rainforest and waterholes.

I love swimming and playing in water, especially pools and dams because, having grown up inland, an eight hour drive from the coast, this was all there was.  So when I dived into the clear waterhole and swam under the waterfall, I got a little breathless with excitement and had to remind myself of Mrs Woodley’s swimming classes, viz. that one must stay calm in water or one will run out of air and drown.

L had brought goggles so we could see the big, blue-grey fish swimming with us.  She had also, a few weeks prior, fallen into a hole at night while walking her dog and still had a scab on her knee.  The fish liked this and nibbled at the scab, twice.

On another trip we went to the Darwin Wildlife Park and watched an amazing display of birds from prey, which had been trained to fly to and from the rangers in an open area.  There was a barking owl, which sounded like a dog barking softly when it called, a big black cockatoo and a jabiru with glossy blue-green feathers and orange stilts for legs, stepping delicately through the reeds.

Later we met Ernie the dingo, who waited for food, and continued to stare when he realised we had none.  We saw some whiprays which I thought were thrilling because I love sea creatures, though I don’t like to be in the water with them.  Later, in the aquarium, we watched the saltwater crocodile do absolutely nothing.  After ten minutes of waiting we went onto the next exhibit of brightly coloured reef fish, then there was a commotion.  The crocodile was moving!  We hurried back and watched it rise for air, then sink again, unblinking.

Although we couldn’t get beach action, I tried out my new bikini by the pool of L’s parents’ apartment.  It seemed to hold everything in place satisfactorily, though I wouldn’t vouch for it in rough seas.  I also started and, over the next two days, finished the third book of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy which wasn’t as tight as his former two, but at least it didn’t contain the same detailed descriptions of violence against women which I found deeply disturbing.

I couldn't keep up my coffee habit because the restuarants either didn't have, or had run out of, soy milk.  Seeing my devastation, poor L took me to the only decent café in town and, after the consumption of a relatively decent soy latte, I was greatly soothed.  By the time I boarded the flight to Bris Vegas however (after a chat with a taxi driver who restored old radios), I was getting antsy again, so I was very pleased to arrive back in civilisation and to have my caffeine hit the next morning.

Part the XVIII: Notes on Paris

Things are not good.  The self-imposed thesis deadline has become an actual deadline.  I must submit this rotting albatross by 1st December, before I fly home to Oz, otherwise the university will charge me fees to the tune of 3750GBP per term, charming people that they are.  On top of the stress generated by trying to complete a thesis to my own (admittedly high, but unconsciously so) standards before the said deadline, I have various other editing and research projects to complete to keep myself financially afloat, with the consequence that I no longer have any days off.  My body has responded to this unpleasant state of affairs with insomnia, two bouts of flu in quick succession, gastroenteritis, a cold and episodes of depression. To this end, I thought I should pen some notes on my last moments of happiness before I become completely shrouded in gloom and send my readers to the Slough of Despond.  Actually this will be the last post between now and December, when I finally finish up four years of work and fly home for three months of sunshine.

So, H and I had arranged to travel to gay Paree a few weeks ago on the Eurostar to meet our dear friend SP and his sister.  Lo and behold, the night before we were to travel, the fire broke out in the Channel tunnel.  H put off telling me for as long as he could, but a friend mentioned it to me when we were out at drinks and I plunged immediately into despair.  I had been looking forward to seeing SP for months.  For the next day I obsessively checked the Eurostar website and, overreacting a little as is my wont, dreamed of tracking down the culprit for the fire and enacting revenge.  Fortunately for the truck driver, the Eurostar got itself up and running again, and I was able to get a ticket after work on Wednesday.  Poor H had to stay behind though and help his boss with Design Week.  He wasn’t very happy.

I got myself through the shiny new St Pancras terminal and onto the Eurostar (which was operating on a case of first in first served).  An excited little boy crowed all the way to the tunnel.  The train shunted through the tunnel slowly and, in the darkness, the child obviously thought it was bedtime and quietened down.  Once on the other side however, the twilight filtered into the carriage and he was off again.  ‘Baba! Baba!  Baba!’  And on and on.

I am a bit slow with maps.  I can read them well enough (and navigated H and I over hairy Thai highways), but not quickly.  Thus it was with some degree of pride that I got myself to the hotel near Notre Dame, which was very sweet and neat, with Lepidoptera mounted in frames on the walls, along with a gnat-like insect that was the size of my head.  I had visions of coming across it in the Amazonian forest, and was disturbed.  SP turned up not long after, a bit shaggier than when I had seem him last, but still delectable.  He had been in the Alps running up mountains that day, as one does.

Realising that I was in one of the worst countries for a gluten and diary intolerance, I had done internet research on Vietnamese restaurants (there was nothing to do at work, ok?) and, to my immense delight, SP took command of the map and directed us to Kim-Lien.  The lighting was warm and red and the food was fresh and tasty, but they stumbled with the Vietnamese pancake, into which they had put bacon and cheese.   We arrived there late and after a while the patrons began to leave and the staff gathered around a table, chatting and laughing.  A man walked down the stairs, blowing out the candles in their red lamps, and a fat tabby came up to say hallo, and I stroked him.  I miss having a cat.  All I have is my rather stupid angel fish, Andromeda, who looks very pretty but doesn’t do a lot.

The next morning the sunshine was abundant and I was happy.  There has been no sunshine in London since the fortnight in May that seems to constitute an English summer these days.  We walked past Notre Dame to the Pompidou as SP wanted to see Brancusi’s studio.  It was a bit chilly en route so SP stopped by a rack of coats outside a shop and five minutes later was purchasing a black jacket for twelve euros and pulling it on.  I couldn’t believe that someone could look so shit hot after a mere five minutes and  twelve euros.  However, as SP pointed out, much of my knowledge of men’s shopping habits stems from H who, admittedly, spent fifteen minutes selecting five pairs of undies from a market in Bangkok, and who even sent me away during the selection process because my disapproval (well, it was mild scorn, actually) was unsettling him.  I can’t imagine why.

The Brancusi studio was shut until the afternoon, so we went on to Montemarte and had a coffee at the café where Amelie was filmed.  We sat outside in the sun and the waiter sneered at us in true Parisian style, which made me laugh, and by the time we left I had managed to get a smile out of him.  We went on to the Eiffel Tower where SP was to meet his sister and their friend, and as we stopped to look at a building-length advertisement for Australia.com juxtaposed beside the tower, there was a commotion behind us.  An old man had tripped on the uneven pavement and grazed his hands.  There was blood, and he was disorientated, but some people helped him and SP asked for my bandaids (blister contingencies) and handed them over, and said this was the third time he’d seen blood on his trip.

At the Eiffel Tower I craned my head back to look at the marvellous lattice of iron beams while SP chatted with his sister.  We arranged to rendezvouz at the Brancusi studio, then jumped on a boat and emerged at the Jardin des Tuileries.  People sat on chairs, tilting them back to feel the sun on their face.  Others read newspapers; some old men played boules.  The light was glorious.

We walked back to Brancusi and my feet started to hurt (I was wearing one of my two pairs of flat shoes, but still, they rubbed), so I was glad to get to the gallery and sit down.  SP liked the smooth, simple forms but I find most modern art quite boring (and was in a vile mood when I was dragged to the Pompidou with H and the parental unit two years before) so was happy to look, then rest, while SP did the circuit more slowly.

That evening I pulled on my brown boots, short black ruffled skirt and my favourite dark pink top, for Londoners never appreciate glamour the way the French do and I needed to make the most of it.  I waited for SP+friend+sister outside the Charonne Metro, and they were late, so I was delivered orders to find three interesting character descriptions by the time they arrived.  I wondered if the three green wheelie bins counted as people but suspected this would be disqualified; instead I made notes on a person going past on red rollerskates and a group of Salvation Army donations collectors, which totalled five people. The area we walked through was dark and nondescript, thus it was with a little shock of pleasure that I turned the corner to see a beautiful Parisian bar lit up with warm light from chandeliers.  Inside, it was luscious: delicate and refined, with a charming waiter, lovely wine and excellent food.  The only odd thing was the bathroom which, instead of having soap from a dispenser, had a ball of yellow soap stuck onto a stick; one had to stroke it to get the suds, which felt Freudian in some obscure way.

The girls were worn out, so SP and I ventured on and found a dinky bar with cheap drinks and the requisite footy showing on the TV.  SP gestured to two boys at the table next to us who were staring silently at their drinks.  ‘Do you think they’re on their first date?’ he asked.  I dissolved into laughter.

We walked back along the Seine, though I was having difficulty negotiating the cobbles by this stage, not least due to that fatal combination of poor (meningitis-induced) balance, high heels and alcohol (see here for effects of said combination).  Naturally any sensible person would remove the high heels from this equation, but I prefer the risk of falling flat on my face to giving up my heels.  Then, as we drew near to Notre Dame, we saw a group of people clustered around a huge, suspended ball of light, which lit up the front of the cathedral.  It transpired they were making a film clip with Bollywood dancers and the light was for the filming.  Then they lit another ball and we moved further back to watch, and found that the Indian families of the dancers had come along too.  It was bizarre and magical.

The next morning I didn’t feel so good as my alcohol tolerance is nil these days.  However I managed to get myself upright, clothed and checked out.  SP had wanted to take me to a café he’d found that served good coffee but it didn’t open until 11, so we wandered through a Medieval garden on the other side of the road which had been redesigned, according to an American tour guide talking to a bunch of people (who I couldn’t hear but SP related) in a contemporary style that was sympathetic to the original herb garden.

We found another café in the sun outside the Jardin des Luxembourg and the excellent boy persuaded the French barista to whip up some soy milk so I could have a coffee.  The Luxembourg gardens were even more beautiful than the Jardin des Tuilieries, and the sun stroked through the trees, some of which were beginning to shed leaves.  Out on the other side we passed a crèche, and saw two women bundling seven toddlers into a trolley, which they pushed and pulled up the pavement, which was unfortunately on an incline.  The kids looked about brightly, their faces alternately jollied and blissful.

The afternoon was passed picnicking with SP’s sister and friend in the gardens of the Rodin Museum, which were formal and plain.  I lay in the sun and snoozed while the others looked at the sculptures.  Then SP and I pushed on to the Sacre Couer, stopping first to buy some tourist tat for H.  ‘It has to be under 5 euros, and exquisitely bad,’ I told SP, and he returned to me with the most marvellous mug, which I think speaks eloquently of how much I love my brother:

Paris mug

At the bottom of the steps of the Sacre Couer we were harassed by Africans trying to sell us their knotted bracelets.  SP merely put his hands up and shook his head but I was angry, for they had invaded my personal space and they were touching me.  ‘No!’ I said loudly and barged away from them all, but SP moved on meditatively ahead, and I felt that I had overreacted again.  Note to self: never travel to India.

At the church we crossed wires and lost one another, so I ended up going to the top alone, up three hundred steps.  There were marvellous views of Paris and, while I’m not afraid of heights, my imagination galloped on and had me toppling over the edge, so I went down again fairly quickly.  And then it was time to leave the heat and sunshine and drag myself back onto the Eurostar, feeling sorry for myself.

Tomorrow is my first day off since then, and likely to be my last before I submit my thesis.  Meanwhile my computer has imploded so I am having to use H’s and my fish is ill.  Even if she is a bit of a bimbo, it would be the nail in the coffin if she died.   Never will I put myself through anything like this ever again.