Tales from the Gael

Well I have been in ‘the wars’ and only now do I feel as though my face is back to normal… though will it ever be again? For two weeks I had a black scab and two black whiskery stitches from my little ‘procedure’ on my lip, then just when that was healing I walked smack into a glass door… cutting the bridge of my nose. It was very sore and shocking and traumatic. Even more so when I had to venture forth with a white butterfly plaster holding the cut together… I looked just like a Norman Soldier.

(It was so strange today when I went to Yoga…there was another lady with a similar dark red scar on her nose…she had done exactly the same thing last week!)

Probably the neighbours are holding glasses to the wall listening to see if John is practising his karate on me. Let him try I say!

Had NZ friend Lyn to stay for 3 nights, and I am worn out from being the Chief entertainment officer and tour guide. I marched her to Brighton where we sat in the sun eating peppered calamari then back to Glenelg and up and down Jetty Road. When she checked her ‘milometer’ gadget we had clocked up half a marathon.

Yesterday I whisked her into Adelaide where we boarded the O-Bahn… a wonderful piece of engineering by Mr Mercedes in 1987… and it is the only one of its kind in the world… it is a bus, that suddenly becomes a train and whisks along at 100 km an hour and you just leave the city to eat its dust… wonderful invention.

The driver just works it with foot pedals on the train lines and sits with his arms folded. Quite nonchalant I thought. When we arrived at Tea Tree Plaza, we aimed for the Japanese Shiatsu massage chairs, where you pop in $2 and it pokes and pummels you just like a real masseur. Ouch! Fantastic and just gets those knotty muscles and sorts them out. Lyn was quite bemused.

We had lunch at the Art Gallery and looked at some of the fantastic Sir Hans Heyson paintings. This artist is a whizz at creating atmosphere and painted the most beautiful scenes with gum trees and native flowers.

He lived in a house up in Handhorf in the Adelaide Hills, and I suppose his house and garden were the equivalent of Monet’s Giverny. No water lilies and Japanese bridges but some of the most beautiful paintings of trees ever seen.

He and his wife entertained other famous artists, Dame Nellie Melba sang in the lounge, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh recited Shakespeare. Pavlova wanted to buy the painting that hangs above the fire place, but was refused. I like to imagine that she might have posed in an arabesque for him, whilst his wife sewed at the window!

All very evocative of another time. The house remains as it was, and to go in, it is like entering a painting.

Anyway I would not like to sit for a portrait right now… with my scars. Looks as though I’ve had a nose job… probably need one.

I had one of those strange meetings on the tram. A lady sat beside me and I was mesmerised by her colour co-ordination. She was immaculate, her eyeliner and earrings matched, and she complimented me on my turquoise long cardigan. It was all very affable. She was a social worker, normally at work, and so was enjoying the more leisurely feel of travel at 10am. She told me about the death of her husband from a melanoma. I sat quietly and let her talk; only prompting her with the odd question. I heard of the pain that was diagnosed as pleurisy, the continuation of the pain, and the third visit to A&E, and finally the tests, and the scans and the discovery of cancer of the liver and brain. The oncologist found the primary source, on the sole of her husband’s foot. Had she noticed it? She sniffed, her 64 year old nose twitching at the memory… ‘what did he think, that I was 19 and madly in love and studied his feet in detail?????’ I could only nod sympathetically. Quite.

I got off the tram, I didn’t even know her name. Needless to say when I got home I had a good look at my feet and all my other moles….my God, it is so scary.

I created a menu for Lyn, wrote it out and served up delicious things, most of which I had never done before… the main course was quails! She loved it all, the garlic ginger prawns, spicy corn chowder, poached pears in red wine and cinnamon, and especially the poor little birds with their little wavy legs! And now she’s gone, and we have time to catch our breaths before going to Melbourne in a fortnight. I am looking forward to that, then on down to New Zealand again. John is meeting a colleague who is Korean and is apparently ‘thirstily awaiting him!’ He told John that he would love working in NZ, such a relaxing country, so much to do etc. Might explain why the job is 2 years behind! We are also going down to Queenstown in the South Island… apparently there it is still very cold, and the rugby teams are taking bad with the weather… though not the Scots of course… they just fit right in!

Look at these yellow daisies dotting the lawns!

Here the wattle is burgeoning yellow, the flowers along the esplanade are just a gorgeous patchwork of reds, yellows and orange. The bottle brush trees and the gums are now sporting delicate pink shades of flower… and above it all is the widest and bluest of skies.

Well I think I’m going to hang up my needle. After visiting the Adelaide Show at the weekend and seeing all the quilts and embroidery on display I was overwhelmed. Then to cap it all we saw a catwalk display of the most stunning theatrical costumes made by NZ fashion designer and quilter extraordinaire, Jenny Gillies. You should google her, quite a fascinating lady.

Oh My God, I have never seen anything like it. 100 costumes, all depicting flowers went down the runway on the most beautiful dancers. Irises, dahlias, roses, wattle blossom, strawberries, in the most precise detail and all in sumptuous materials.

I came home and looked at my little project…and turned to drink…well a glass of pink bubbly anyway.

The show was all a country show should be. Livestock, competitions of obscure vegetables, HOW do they choose one tray of barley against another, or a plump courgette over another???? Bewildering stuff…no doubt the judges have a quick tipple first, just to numb the senses.

I was goggle eyed seeing a young man flanked by police and security guards being ushered out of the exhibition hall, and exchanged questioning knowing nods with other members of the crowd, until someone finally put us out of our curiosity misery, and shared the tit bit… from ‘Home and Away’ aaaah! A mini celebrity!

Had a giggle at the newspaper when I got home from the fair… a kangaroo had smashed through a car windscreen and went straight into the front passenger seat as a man drove along a suburban Melbourne street. The man hurried out of the car, leaving behind a bewildered roo. The man was treated for cuts and grazes by an ambulance crew, and the kangaroo was still sitting in the front passenger seat whilst all this was going on. Poor Skippy!

Today I had my hair cut by a guy called Romeo! Looks good! Now off to make Leek tarte tatin.

Just been watching morning TV and scribbling notes for the recipe for Mango Mania…sounds and looks delicious, made with crab meat and lime juice. I have post-it notes with recipes from TV and magazines dotted all around the house, promising meals that would just be heaven on a plate, so why is it that here in Australia we get the WORST fast food in the world??? We have just done a 1,000 km road trip at the weekend, and when we called into some of these one horse towns, ready for a nice lunch or whatever, we are offered pies, deep fried seafood and oil, pastry and more oil. They say it is because their main source of trade are the truckies and we all know about truckies’ physiques…but it’s so silly for here in Jetty road in Glenelg, cafes are out doing themselves to provide more delicious yuppie menus than their neighbours. I had a pizza the other night, which consisted of a forest load of mushrooms on a bed of lemon aioli…it was to DIE for. Not a hint of compressed mozzarella anywhere! Oh to be in Italy where they specialise in ‘slow’ food!

The road trip took us down past the Coorong, a vast national park that is made up of salt pans, separated from the sea by huge sand dunes. We had hoped to see lots of sea birds, but were disappointed, although we did see a huge colony of pelicans. We stopped at Chinaman’s Wells and saw where these exiles from Hong Kong came in the 1850s and marched for miles in the search for Victorian gold. They often died along the way.

So much for birds…all we saw were murders of crows patrolling the verges, pecking at all the road kill. I noticed one had its head buried in the body of one of its dead friends…not a very discerning diner. Not like magpies, they have funerals for each other, according to some article I read, they apparently gather and lay down twigs beside their dead pal.

Whilst we had lunch we watched some very cheerful sparrows munching on a graveyard of insects that had met their end on our vehicle’s number plate!

We actually had lunch in Kingston, it was labelled, ‘The Best Middle Sized Town’. How funny. We turned a corner and were confronted with Larry the Big Lobster…seemed a good idea to take a break!

On on to Robe, where the sea bombards three corners of the town, and where the surfies like to come and compete.

I was intrigued with the lighthouse, built again in the middle of the last century and where rockets with rope were stored and shot off the rock to sinking vessels.  Poor stricken souls were then hauled back to shore in baskets. Sounds very precarious, and after witnessing the sea and high tide I wonder how many were actually saved.

We stayed in Mount Gambier in the State’s south east and nearly froze to death in our cabin. We did visit the famous Blue Lake which was quite beautiful.

In the night I had to pay a ‘little visit’ and in the morning John noticed a squashed spider beside the loo. Aaaargh. Just as well I didn’t put the light on.

The Highlight of the trip were the Naracoorte Caves. Just when I thought I knew everything, suddenly a trip down under the ground into limestone palaces of incredible beauty changed all that. We were confronted with a fossil bed, the size of an Olympic swimming pool, full of bones of creatures that had fallen down holes and died 500,000 years ago. Palaeontologists had constructed models from the bones they found of the ‘megafauna’ creatures that are now extinct…marsupial lions, and leaf eating kangaroos, and snakes of 6m in length. They think they died out about 50,000 yrs ago.

It made it so real to actually see the creatures recreated and standing by the bones that have still to be processed. When the guide turned out the light, it was terrifyingly black, and I tried to imagine poor Skippy falling down, breaking his leg and finding himself on a bed of bones. They say the stress would have killed him in 24 hours…still quite a long time.

Needless to say on Monday we were both feeling like floppy noodles, and I bravely returned to the doc to get my stitches out of my lip…another biopsy for a possible BCC, but happily this time all the pain and inconvenience was diagnosed as a nodular granulomatous (!!!!) whatever!

John went back to work, and there has been a spate of malicious behaviour in the car park…tyres being slashed etc. Fortunately he hasn’t been affected. The job is nearly complete, and should be finished on schedule by the end of September. Then we will have to see what happens next. In the meantime I am making great progress with my embroidery project, went to class yesterday and sewed up lots of my patchwork hexagons to make a frame. Goodness knows what it’s going to be yet; hopefully it will just evolve into something!

Tomorrow it is Spring. I shall look forward to that!

We had a fabulous trip south to the Fleurieu Peninsula, driving through the Australian spring with the yellow wattle trees in all their glory.

The recent rain has turned the fields into an ‘Irish patchwork’ like the singer crooned about in the song, ‘the 40 shades of green’. It is not likely to remain so pretty, for when the summer comes, the landscape will dry up and be dusty brown.

Meeting up with Mai and Rick after 31 years was quite special, and although we all may have changed, and have a few more lines on our faces, it all doesn’t matter. It’s the eyes that we connect with. I love the twinkle and the sense of fun, and suddenly the years just slip away. We were all very different in Kota Kinabalu way back then, yet sitting over dinner, and walking along the beach I listened to Mai chattering, and there was an instant connection. It was as though we only parted yesterday.

Her stories had me mesmerised. She has been on a mission to find her own personal history, and she shared some of the experiences of being a refugee from Latvia, and arriving in NSW, and she described the early years of painful separation that her parents must have experienced. How hard to bury their one year old baby daughter, in the new country after just a few months of arriving. Mai found a small piece of paper amongst her father’s possessions, and it was in Latvian. She had it translated. Later she found the small gravestone, now in broken disrepair, and had it replaced and the words etched on the stone in English.

‘As a bud wilts before it flowers

So you child in the morning of your life

Did leave us’

One of the highlights of the trip for me was fishing at Rapid Bay. I caught 4 whiting… and one was turquoise!

Amazing, and it was so exciting. Luckily Rick was with us; to help with the killing and the hooking and so on… I would have been in a right tizz, without his calm practical skills. I did catch a bright red and blue angler fish, with 2 yellow ‘whiskers’ but I let him go. John was chuckling, imagining the poor fish saying, ‘what the hell was that all about????’ – Yanked from the sea, photographed, then the hook pulled out of its jaw, and then thrown back in!

We ate the whiting, stuffed with grated ginger, red onion and lashings of lime juice; they were so sweet and not boney at all. Brilliant!

This week has been stormy, the sea full of white horses, and so I have been busy embroidering and piecing together my little bit of patchwork, that makes me feel I am entitled to go to the Tuesday meeting of the quilters’ gang.

What can I say… keeps me out of mischief.

By the way I walked to Brighton on Monday and took a notion to look at Lily’s bench, and lo and behold… her relatives must have removed the old plaque and replaced it with a shiny new one! Stories within stories.

We went to the races on Saturday…what a hoot! We dived into a shady spot on Rundle Mall, a TAB where all the gamblers lurk on beautiful sunny days, and watch TV screens and place bets! John was mortified and hung back, unwilling to be ‘seen’ taking part, so I had to ask a guy how to fill in my form, and then pay up my $12 for a win or a place! Then we got the tram back to Morphetville where the race track was, and we had such fun, watching the horses march about, and the owners swigging champagne in their winners enclosures and such like…I felt a bit like Jilly cooper, as I read ‘Jump’ not so long ago…she describes it all so well…John was associating more with Dick Francis…less sex and glamour in his writing!

Anyway we kept our Rebel Raider in our sights, until they finally paired him up with his jockey…dear God it was a girl, and she was a midget. But plucky. For she pulled him up from second last until when they galloped past at the finish, I was just about shrieking…and they came in 4th. NOT good enough. But what an afternoon!

I imagine the next ‘flutter’ we have will be on the Melbourne Cup, when everyone dresses up and makes a big day of it all. I do hope Black Caviar will be running…I intend to make my fortune on him. (hot tip!!!!)

Braved the rain and the dark last Thursday to go and see the High Priestess of Quilting…Sharon Schamber. Ladies of the Guild of Quilters had all gathered and were assembled.  It reminded me a bit of a scene from Roald Dahl’s ‘Witches’. Quilts were shown and admired from the various groups around South Australia, and then there was the imaginary drum beat as Queen Sharon took to the stage, along with her cowboy husband. That’s him on the left.

They had just come from the US, horribly jet lagged, but I was utterly enthralled along with everyone else. What an amazing talent. She dyed her fabric, painted art work on it, quilted it in all sorts of techniques, and what was shown was like something out of an art gallery. She says she quilts 15 hours a day…married her cowboy on the understanding that she would never cook or clean, and together they win all the prizes, and jet about giving presentations and demonstrations. I particularly loved a lady in a red dress, the folds of which just fall out of the portrait frame, as though she were alive

….then there was Sitting Bull, so powerful, and HUGE…later I had a close up view and saw all her stitches.

Yesterday I went to my new quilting group, where I have started another embroidery….the ladies were fun, talented and helpful, and I duly stitched and didn’t bitch, but listened! I am embroidering a centre piece of pale pink flowers that I will surround with a patchwork, hexagon quilt, to make a cushion for Gerry. Maybe it could be the ring holder and then become an heirloom! Oh well, I can dream.

Going south to the Fleurieu Peninsula on Saturday to stay with old friends I knew in Kota Kinabalu, way back in 1981…really looking forward to that, and I shall take my fishing rod.

In the meantime I am so upset by the News, and the awful pictures of London and horrible yobs, looting and burning. People are so horrible. But to leave on a positive note, there was a wonderful story here this week, about a a beached baby humpbacked whale. Everyone was pouring water on it, and finally dragged it back into the surf, and sent it off with a wish and a prayer. Whales voices can be heard for about 20 kms, so they say, so the rescuers were hopeful that the mother might hear him, and in the morning, when the helicopters and planes were cruising overhead they saw them, re united!

We are all being optimistic that it was indeed the stricken calf and he had a happy ending. Now onwards and upwards, and back to the Highland Rocks!

I am still reeling from our road trip at the weekend for at last I feel I have seen the real Australia. Not the esplanades, malls and city sights, but the vast areas of mallee or scrub land, with eucalyptus trees looking as though they have been there since the Beginning. When I tried to gather my thoughts the first evening, lying in a cabin up in a national park in the Flinders Ranges, I could only think of the stars. We drank some red wine and sat and looked and it was as though the sky would not hold them up, there were so many millions. In the morning I looked out of the window and there were two wallabies sitting under a gum tree, and behind them was the sharp outline of the rocky Flinders with the sun just rising.

We decided to drive through the Brachna Gorge and Bunyeroo Gorge, otherwise known as the corridors of time, because of how the rock formations change, from limestone to sandstone to all the other stuff, dating from 650 million years ago. It was all dry, creeks cracked and red, and we saw kangaroos, emus and the wedge tailed eagle.

It was all very wonderful, till we met a creek at the bottom of the gorge, in full flow…Oh my goodness, we thought we would have to go back, not being in a 4 wheel drive, but John managed to manoeuvre around and we got through. Thank God it’s a hire car!

I believe meetings are never just chance.

There is a purpose to everything. So when we drove into the sleepy little hamlet of Port Germein, and dutifully walked part of the way out on to the longest jetty in Australia (1 ½ miles) and admired the deserted tractor and glorious expanse of beach,

we decided to look at the town’s only shop…The Junk Shop.

We met Karen.

What can I say…she got under my skin. She was outrageous. Clad in a patchwork skirt, with crazy patchwork sweater, she showed us her quilt made up of ties, and her other quilts hung on the walls, mementoes of cold winters in the Barossa and Germein where there is nothing else to do. She and her husband are true hippies; warm, funny, true free spirits, and so talented. I noticed on the baby grande piano that she used as her shop counter, was the Bible opened at Corinthians.

We climbed up to the Yourambulla Caves where there are ancient aborigine paintings.

I was a little afraid as we climbed higher and higher, and eventually had to climb a virtually vertical ladder, that John or I might keel over, with a sprain or a heart attack, for we were so remote, and vulnerable. Images of that horrible film, Wolf Creek came to mind, but we needn’t have worried…all we saw was a lizard and curious kangaroos and now I just have aching legs from the unaccustomed use of calf muscles.

It was so sad to see the carnage in the outback, of kangaroos, foxes and emus lying dead. Apparently they tend to gather for meetings in the road at night and that is when they get hit. I was so freaked driving along these straight fast roads that something might boing out of the scrub and jump on our car. We did see some fabulous birds, a ringneck parakeet flew across our windshield just as bold as brass, but the highlight was a flock of galahs rising up into the air in front of us was quite special. They just rose in a pink cloud and settled into a tree, and instantly it was like looking at a child’s painting….the tree appeared to have a pink lollipop top! We did have a picnic…chose a choice sight, in Burnt out Creek!

And John just loved this sign…must be a male thing!

So we are back, and weary from looking and looking. I have two more lady friends to meet this week, so I am lucky, thanks to friends of friends. I have also got back to the Highland Rocks, and the story is moving on…and on…now I have to think how to pull all the ends together. Here in Glenelg the sun is setting, tabouleh and humus are made and Kris Kristofferson is playing and all is well with the world!

I got up early this morning, and went over to the jetty with my trusty rod. The first cast hooked a crab, which was a little tricky to disentangle! I let him go.

My fellow fisherman was an elderly guy who had been out since 4 a.m. …oh my goodness, keen or what? Anyway he had 3 King George whiting and several squid, and he kindly gave me some of his bait. It was all very companionable, and he told me he had caught a sea snake yesterday at dawn…it was poisonous with coloured stripes. I could just imagine the panic if I had done the same! Hurled it on to the jetty then ran like the clappers! He said he cut its head off, and the sea gulls came to inspect, but they all squawked in alarm as the body was still wriggling about. Ugh. He’d also caught a dog shark, pretty big, but he put it back. I was secretly just a little relieved when 2 dolphins swam past looking for breakfast…whenever they are about, fishermen might as well go home. So I did. I just want to catch manageable fish.

I had big plans to go for a walk, but our beach is overrun with tents and flags and the sea is covered in horrid dinghies zooming around orange inflatable cones.

There is to be a HUGE surf boat competition this weekend, with competitors from all over Australia taking part. To escape this jamboree of noise and craziness John and I have decided to do a road trip up to the Mount Remarkable National Park, where we are going to do some walking in the Flinders Range. It all sounds very good, and hopefully we will be able to do it ourselves without a tour guide. I have suddenly become very brave about natural wild life after spying a Hunter spider on our balcony. It has been very busy building mansions for itself in all four corners and its larders are just bursting with flies and bugs. I think he is quite an asset, so long as he stays out in his own territory.

We went to see the Cuban Ballet Revolucian on Tuesday, which was billed as ‘Sex is coming to the City’ and to be honest, it was absolutely red hot and fantastic. Eat your heart our Mr Chippendale!

The choreography was amazing with hip hop, classical, rumbas and sambas all intermingling. I came home practically deaf from the pounding music, and tried to balance in the bathroom, with my leg up on the sink. I wasn’t game to run across the room and throw myself at John. I think I would have mowed him down. Why do these dancers make women look so light and winsome? (maybe because they don’t cook chocolate fudge brownies in the afternoon like me…the apartment smells deeeevine by the way!)

Anyway sitting next to us was a young woman, who kindly leant us her programme. She had driven 8 hours from Victoria to come to Adelaide. She said it was a whim! We passed a few minutes chatting during the interval and then she invited me to drive back with her to Melbourne. I almost agreed. I was so tempted. But I didn’t because I had agreed to go on a blind date with another woman the following day. She was the mother of someone I had met on the plane, and she had kindly rung me and asked me to lunch. Suddenly from no friends I was inundated with offers! That night after balancing in the bathroom, (with my leg up on the sink) I thought of Robert Frost, and the path less travelled.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveller, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I–
I took the one less travelled by,
And that has made all the difference.

 Thoughts can get carried away, but you do often wonder what would have happened if you had chosen the other path. Such is life.

So I will never know about the mystery woman and her whim, and her story and the history that made her what she is, and I suppose in a way I shall regret it.

Instead I met Sharon, whose life turned on its head, and she found herself in Australia. She’s an American, and had been living in Alaska with bears and moose that ate her flowers, and then suddenly she is here in Adelaide learning to live another kind of life and make new friends at the age of 64. Her son married an Australian girl 11 years ago, and they invited her to visit, and after a couple of visits they presented her with a key four years ago, and it was to a beautiful house just 8 away from their own. Now she has a garden full of native plants, a dog, a grandson, and best of all, warm winters.

Life is full of surprises. We sat in the sun and ate calamari and prawn salads and talked about quilting and Alaskan salmon. This is what she misses more than anything. And later I walked home, along the beach.

A new sculpture was unveiled beside the jetty at Brighton.

It’s dedicated to Kitty Whyte. I decided to walk the 4 kms to have a look, as her story is really quite gruesome. Poor lady was a school teacher, and thought it was terrible that all these children living so close to the sea couldn’t swim, so she arranged swimming lessons. She was 35 on that fateful day in March of 1926 when she dived off the jetty, with a class of children watching, straight into the jaws of a great white shark. I walked out and looked down, and there were the usual fishermen fishing for whiting and squid, it was all so peaceful, and the water looked relatively shallow.

I  remember sitting with John on a bench just along from the jetty, and reading the inscription dedicated to Lily, who had travelled from Ayrshire in Scotland in the 1800s and was fondly remembered by her own words,

‘Sit doon a while and tak the weight aff yer feet’.

I wanted to read it again, but when I looked yesterday, and I read all the epitaphs on the benches from Glenelg to Brighton, Lily’s had been hacked out and stolen. So sad.

But on the way I read such apt phrases,

‘How serene time feels whilst sitting by the ocean’.

‘Sing, dance, run. Don’t be afraid to dream. For Tanya who was tragically killed at 17′.

 Imagine the horror I felt when John arrived home from work, and just after taking off his jacket his phone rang. He looked sort of bemused.  It was a death threat.

Some guy, he thinks it was an Asian voice said, ‘I know where you live Johno, I’m going to kill you.’

John sort of laughed and said, ‘Oh yes, so you’re going to kill me?’ and the phone went dead.

Before we came, the phone belonged to Jihun, the Korean fellow in the office, and John often gets miss calls…so he rang Jihun and asked him if he had any enemies etc. They made light of it, and there was a lot of laughing, and John reminded Jihun to make sure his salary was paid quickly etc etc….but this job is scary and there are a lot of gangs here in Australia. The nightly news is horrific, with murders, arson attacks, shootings. I am a little afraid to go out today…I shall be looking for shady characters lurking around our building.

At the weekend we went into Adelaide to see the newly renovated wing of the Art Gallery. It was all very splendid, and the paintings reflected a lot of Australian bush, and life as it was way back then…it was really interesting. But the one that really grabbed me was of a fine lady in black, clothed in sumptuous silks and adorned with precious jewels and gold, obviously reflecting her wealth and social position.

Elizabeth Soloman’s father-in-law was the notorious convict, ‘Ikey’ Soloman, who was transported to Tasmania in the 1830s and on whom Charles Dickens based his character, Fagin in ‘Oliver Twist’. Ikey’s son, John became a very successful gold merchant in Sydney and commissioned this portrait to demonstrate his wealth and success.

It’s sad really that the bush can only be seen in paintings of long ago. There is little evidence of it in modern Australia. Nothing in modern art work, songs or television. Gone are the programmes of The Flying Doctors, Skippy, and no one has replaced Steve Irwin who loved to dive into water holes and wrestle with crocodiles. We have to make a concentrated effort to leave the concrete of the pavements and find out what lies beyond the suburbs. Before I leave I would really love to take a bus from Adelaide and travel to Darwin. I do hope we can do it. I found this poem by Banjo Patterson who reminded me of the grandeur of this country and its skies.

‘And the bush had friends to meet him,

And their kindly voices greet him

In the murmur of the breezes and the river on its bars,

And he sees the vision splendid

Of the sunlit plains extended,

And at night the wond’rous glory

Of the everlasting stars’.

So although so many creeks have become petrol stations, and people see it all from coaches with the air con on high, and so many small towns have blanded out and resemble outer suburbs with their organic food shops and tai chi classes, I still believe that if you really want to see the bush, you can, with a car and a couple of hundred dollars, and the wish and the will.

On On…to a new day!  Enough retrospection and morbid thoughts. The sea is blue and I don’t want to think of chapters of Hell’s Angels, Triads, or any other shifty order. Disconcerting though that everyone in this country wears shades….all dodgy!!!!

Well we are legal eagles again, visas all topped up and we are back in our beautiful Adelaide suburb, and although it was fun to go, it is nice to be back into our own routines. Auckland was cold and chilly, and we got a rude awakening to winter in the southern hemisphere…back to gloves and scarves and the faithful red duffle coat.

We walked around the up market district of Parnell and I photographed John, looking very furtive as though he was a hit man, lurking by the palm tree then making his get-away down through the bush walk!

Visited the glow worms in Waitomo, which was an amazing phenomena…the caves reminded me of the caves in Halong Bay in Vietnam, but I have never seen glow worms light up like a starry sky…Beautiful. Apparently Dame Kiri de Kanawa sang in one of the caves which is domed like a cathedral. Must have been amazing. Some twit in our group tried to sing Happy Birthday….it was NOT memorable.

We zoomed to Rotorua, in order to sample all the Maori experience, like good tourists and lay in the Polynesian thermal pools, feeling like lobsters slowly cooking to death in a temp of 42C. Very good for joints and so on.

Then later witnessed the bubbling mud pools, and whizzing geysers whilst sitting on volcanic hot rocks.

Loved the name of the village…couldn’t quite get my tongue around it!

John left on Monday and my friend Lyn drove me back to Wanganui (600kms) through the rolling hills and fields of the North Island.

It was so nice to see her home again, and I walked around, seeing pictures, Chinese knick-knacks and it was rather like seeing old friends…memories of another time. It was bitterly cold there, and even colder when we drove down to Wellington to the theatre, another 3 hours drive…(I took the Lyceum and the Kings in Edinburgh so much for granted!) On the way back we stopped in for afternoon tea with her friend, who had prepared sandwiches and little cakes and served them on a three tier plate stand…it was charming!

Holidays and catch ups are always nice, and for the few days we were together, Lyn and I covered the years and the people that we were once close to.

But a major part of the experience was the sewing up of all the squares to make up the quilt. Lyn just sat at her machine and sewed away, and I was the gofer, running back and forwards to the iron, snipping edges and just generally getting in the way. It looks good. NOW I have to find a quilting group here in Glenelg to help me put on the backing.

I am very happy to be back in our minimalist apartment, to see the sea so close, and march about up Jetty Road and along the promenade by the shore. The temperature is lovely. No deep falls of snow or earthquakes (there were two on the North Island whilst I was there) or torrential rain. One night I thought the end of the world had arrived….a crack of lightening literally exploded in my bedroom and I woke as though I’d been attacked. It was 2 am, and apparently it was the worst storm they had had in over 60 years. Now, that is something. On the day I was supposed to fly back to Auckland, I was really worried I wouldn’t get back, but although it was very bumpy our little cigar with propellers took to the clouds in the capable hands of a very small lady driver. Her co-pilot looked as though he was reading the manual. Very disconcerting. Hmmmm.

Lyn took me to see some glass blowing in Wanganui. They make some phenomenal stuff, and she was hoping one of the partners in the Chronicle Glass Studio would let me make a paper weight. Unfortunately they were flat out filling an order for ‘Wellie Wood’. (Wellington) They have been commissioned to make about a million glass lanterns for the upcoming film, ‘The Hobbit’. They have already made all the goblets, and a stained glass window. So much fame and glory for such a small studio. I just loved watching the process, and now I do understand the saying, ‘red’ hot and I was fascinated seeing the blowing of the glass, like bubble gum so the lantern fitted into the wrought iron cage. Brilliant. I shall have to go and see The Hobbit now, and pay attention to the glass work!

John is going demented here with work. The safety officer has quit (been asked to) as he was  really hindering the work, and antagonising everyone by his niggling, the project manager is in Pakistan overseeing a job there, whilst the bombs are going off, and John is counting the minutes until the weekend! Stressful times.

I have come to the conclusion that no matter where we are in the world, and especially now as we are so far flung from friends and family, all of us just need ‘a wee bit of company’. So many lonely people, and you don’t realise until you do meet up with a long lost friend.

I loved this picture from Indonesia of the macaque monkey that stole a camera and snapped himself in all manner of vain poses. Just love it!

The weather has turned balmy; perfect for fishing but alas no luck. Still it’s pleasant to stand on the jetty and contemplate the Norfolk pines that only grow near the beaches and watch the pelicans sail sedately past.

Hard to think this is mid-winter, and walking along the promenade towards Brighton, I cannot understand why more people don’t immigrate to this wonderful land.

At the weekend we walked along the river that cuts through Adelaide and snapped the black swans (how could Tchaikovsky paint them so evil?) and moor hens and so on.

It was all so very pleasant and we read about how there used to be a pleasure pontoon on the river in 1924 where the gay young things used to come and flap and dance and sip cocktails. So hard to imagine, but it ended in tears. There was an explosion and the whole thing sank and that was that….foul play I am sure. Quite a different picture from the pioneer ladies hauling their bricks up mountain tracks to build churches. Oh the sins of the city, full of churches and whores.

John and I decided to have a little session in a Chinese Massage parlour…he opted for a head and shoulders, to try and relieve the tensions of the last week at the snake pit, as he fondly calls his office. (He still hates his job; in fact it’s getting worse). I decided to go for an AOK ion cleansing treatment. You put your feet in a basin of clean water, with some electrodes in it, and for 30 minutes it generates a stream of positive and negative ions which help to stimulate and detoxify different organs and tissues. Sounds good. Imagine my horror when I was given a chart and saw how the water colour reflects your inner health! After 15 mins the water was bright orange. I looked at the chart and it would seem this was a signal from my joints. There were a few black particles which is a sign of heavy metals and some bubbles which are fats and oils. So not too bad. The lady next to me must be on her last legs. Her water turned black. (Chart says it’s detoxifying from the liver and gall bladder) Hmmmm. I walked away feeling wonderful and cleansed and just a little proud of my healthy life style! That woman should be warned!

Had to smile at some of the crazy animal stories this week. Watched the news last night and saw a report in Florida about a shark hurling itself out of the water and flipping itself over a surf board. The boy must have thought his end had come!

Then there is Happy Feet the penguin that sort of took a wrong turn and is now recovering from stomach surgery to remove a pile of sand from its innards. Apparently some big ice cutter ship is taking him home as soon as he recovers his strength!

And finally an endangered helmeted honeyeater was recently spotted near Melbourne.

He is 16, the oldest ever recorded wild bird of its species, and is nick named Dear Old Boy. I love it…its quite amazing he’s survived so long, being endangered and all that.

Still thinking of funny names, I remember Billy Connolly, when he was travelling in New Zealand came across a grave, containing an unknown body.  The villagers out of compassion erected a stone and engraved it with the words, ‘Here lies somebody’s darling’. How lovely. I wish I knew where it was, and could go and visit.

John and I are now watching the Chilean Ash Cloud with a personal concern, as it now directly affects us and our flight to New Zealand this Friday. He is just about dancing with glee to get a break, albeit for a weekend only, and I am excited as I will meet up with my old friend Lyn, and stay on with her in Wanganuii for a further week. She is going to help me turn my embroidery into a quilt, as I have finally finished the squares.

Here in Adelaide, I don’t think I will go to the next meeting of the South Australia’s Women’s Writers Group, as it is to be the AGM. Heather, who told us last time about forcing a young aborigine boy to eat worms, said the meeting will be like an old fashioned school committee…the office bearers just vote for themselves then get up and do a ‘musical chairs’ routine then sit down in their new position! The same ladies have been on the committee for the last 30 years, and are now all in their 70’s, 80’s and 90’s. I haven’t had much success in socialising. People here in Glenelg seem very insular, or else I have not found the right ones. But, I am full of resolve. When I come back I am going to join a bush walking club. And maybe take a bus trip somewhere. But for now, it’s off to the Land Of the Long White Cloud!