Tuesday 12 April 2011

11 and 12.4.11 - Island spring (Millport, Isle of Cumbrae, Scotland)

11 and 12.4.11 - Island spring  (Millport, Isle of Cumbrae, Scotland)

The clouds were heavy, grey and had no compunction about emptying their contents in splattering torrents into the puddles and gutters.  But as our little yellow car nosed its way through the city and out through the fields, a tear appeared in the grey blanket of cloud and brilliant blue shone through.  By the time the ferry swallowed us up through its massive maw, the sea was beginning to glitter, and we drove up to our island home in warm spring sunshine. Daffodils nodding in the garden, apple blossom pink on our little ornamental trees, Grape Hyacinths crowding their blue beaded heads along the edge of the lawn.  And as we opened the door, there in the hall was a huge banner - 'Welcome home Granny and Grandpa', with pictures of a Kiwi, a Duck-billed Platypus, and two kangaroos, tied together with twists of crepe paper and a fistful of multi-coloured balloons.  On the dining room table, a hand made card, a bunch of purple flowers, and a neat pile of Caramel Wafers (Bill's favourite biscuit).  We were stunned.  Our children and grandchildren had made it all at the weekend to surprise us - and were we surprised, and touched.

And so the tasks of chipping away at mountains of mail, unloading tightly packed cases, and greeting friends.  Everyone wanted to hear about the earthquake, as we had starred as front-page news, picture and all, in the little local paper.  That night, our bed had seldom felt so comfortable, our house so cosy.

In the early dawn, the sunshine and the jetlag deprived us of sleep, so onto bicycles and off, round the familiar island road, the sea a deep, dark blue, flecked with white crests, the verges of new growing grass starred with buttercups and dandelions, the gorse triumphant in golden garb, the daffodils, narcissi and primroses announcing the birth of another spring in every bank and hedgerow.  New born lambs nuzzled for their mothers' milk. The trees misted in pale green, as tiny leaf tips peeped through, the red gently curvaceous rocks fingerprinted with yellow and grey lichen.  The air was crisp on our faces, reddening our cheeks and brightening our eyes.  It was fresh and clear to breathe, like pure cold water.  A tug came thrusting through the waves, the water forming a white moustache around its black round prow, froth trailing out behind it.  The mountains of Arran hazy pale blue in the distance, the very same slopes we hiked one glowing day last spring.  The gentle bays of Bute seemed to beckon us to cross and walk the quiet streets of Kilchattan Bay, as we do each year, when the water is calm and flat, rolling like honey under the bows of our little boat.  It's all a message of promise and opportunity.

We've seen many wonderful and beautiful places on our travels, but here is equal beauty too, literally on our doorstep.  And we're grateful for it.






















Sunday 10 April 2011

10.3.11 - Home Sweet Home (Glasgow, Scotland)

10.3.11 - Home Sweet Home (Glasgow, Scotland)

And so we returned.  The flight was long and unveventful, Dubai Airport predictably shiny and busy with its multinational hubub.  The plane touched down about twenty minutes late into a sunny, green spring-kissed Glasgow.  Three of our six beautiful grandchildren were there to meet us - Molly (2) holding a bunch of daffodils wrapped in pink paper, which she consented to present to me on condition that I gave them back at once.  The rest of the day she continued to carry them carefully everywhere she went.  Ryall (8), bursting with pride, announced that he can now swim.  Baby Rosie (5 months) was grown into a dimpled, giggling little girl, changed so much in only eight weeks.

And so we drove to Queens Park, and spent the afternoon laughing, talking all at once, eating ice cream, sailing Ryall's model boat and pushing Molly on the swing.  The park was a brilliant emerald green to eyes accustomed to Australian dryness.  Drifts of daffodils carpeted the ground beneath the spreading trees, whose branches were tipped with the early promise of leaves.  A beautiful spring day, which rivalled the weather we had left in Perth the morning before, had drawn crowds of children, climbing and swinging in the play park, running, jumping, playing football, while the adults stood in clusters, chatting beneath the brilliance of the blue sky.  Glasgow looked her familiar best, the red sandstone of her tenements warm in the sun, her parks studded with daisies, her leafy boulevards shading mums as they walked with babies in prams, toddlers dragging their feet behind, as buses trundled past.  The Glasgow University Tower showed off its delicate stone fretwork, pierced by the blue of the spring skies behind.

Later, crammed into our Glasgow flat, we ate a Chinese takeaway - a homely, loving and laughing family group.  It's good to be home.

Saturday 9 April 2011

9.3.11 - Time to go home.... (Perth, Western Australia)

9.3.11 - Time to go home... (Perth, Western Australia)

So here we are at Perth Airport, checked in, cases away on their wobbly journey into the mysteries of the deep depths of the airport.   In almost exactly 24 hours, we'll step off the plane in Glasgow (assuming  the airport gremlins don't get us).

It's been an amazing trip.  We covered 2,500 miles in the caravan, about another 1,000 in hire cars, plenty more in friends' cars, on trains, boats, planes.  We've stayed in houses, a caravan, a hotel, a holiday villa, a farm homestead, a backpackers hostel.  We've travelled by foot, by car, by pick-up truck, by train, tram, bus, boat, plane, van.   We've visited New Zealand from north (Auckland) to south (Dundedin); we've spent time in four of Australia's six states (New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia).  We've been in seven major cities, many towns and villages.  We've experienced sun (lots of it), rain, wind, temperatures ranging from the high thirties down to the low teens.  We've experienced an earthquake, faced a poisonous snake, been bitten by numberless insects.   We have swum in the sea, climbed mountains, driven through clouds of grasshoppers, walked in forests, been amazed by the outback, watched the surfers.  We've learned about Maoris, Aboriginis, settlers, explorers.  We've been in museums, art galleries, shops, cafes.  We've seen the immense trees, the sun setting red over the sea, the torrents of stars over the outback.  We've met up with 24 relatives and five old friends.  We've made numerous new friends.  We've seen wild kangaroos, albatrosses, penguins, emus, Ibis, kiwis (but no wombat!).  We've heard Kookaburras, Bell Birds, Galahs, cockatoos, magpies.  We've visited and reminisced about Bill's childhood home, walked home from his school, paddled on his  beaches.

It's been a dream come true.  But love of Scotland, home and family makes us excited about going home.  

Friday 8 April 2011

8.3.11 – Free food and suitcases (Perth, Western Australia)


8.3.11 – Free food and suitcases (Perth, Western Australia)

I’m listening to Didjeridu music as Bill is packing in the bedroom.  It’s a challenge, as we’ve acquired quite a lot of stuff during this last eight weeks, but Bill is a miracle packer and he has just emerged with two bulging cases.  I congratulated him and pointed out (just in case he hadn’t noticed) that he had no shorts on.  Unfortunately, he had packed them, so a degree of urgent dredging around the larger case was necessary to restore his dignity.  Tomorrow we will lie on the beach until it’s time to go to their airport, about 6pm Perth time.  We’ve already booked our taxi driver, a pleasant young man called Radek, with a mid-European accent.

Breakfast on the patio
Our villa in Scarborough
This morning, we ate breakfast as usual, sitting at the round glass-topped table on the patio, in the shade of the Frangipani tree.  We were feeling quite organised.  It’s a matter of pride with me to ensure that there is next to nothing going to waste at the end of a holiday, and I knew we had eaten all our food supply neatly down to about four slices of bread, a few teabags and half a tin of spam.  No wastage there then.  Suddenly, our neighbours called to us over the seven foot dividing fence.  They’re flying to Sydney today, and would we like to have their left-over food?  We said ok, assuming we were talking about maybe half a pint of milk and a tin of beans.  Up the path she came, staggering under three loaded bags, packed with a box of large ice-cream, three cucumbers, a huge bag of tomatoes, a sizeable head of broccoli, unopened tins of veg, a jar of honey – and so on and so on.  So now my fridge is full to the gunnels and goodness knows how we’ll get through it in 24 hours.  Maybe we can unload it onto the new neighbours next door who arrived this afternoon...

Perth from King's Park
King's Park
Perth is built around the confluence of two rivers – the Swan and the Canning.  They form wide tranquil lakes before exiting to the Indian Ocean via a narrow channel.   

King’s Park is perched on Mount Eliza, a green oasis in looking down upon the blue lakes and the tree-lined suburbs, as well as the inevitable glassy covered spikes of the office blocks in the CBD.  The high rise nature of all the CBD’s we have seen – so similar to those in the USA and Canada – does tend to make the cities all look very similar from a distance.  Within them, pretty 19th. Century buildings cower at the bottom of these immense structures, which rear up all around them.  These spires glitter and gleam, and have all the bling of rather over-ornamented ladies out for a night on the town.  

Perth by twilight
We were booked on a twilight cruise of the Swan River, which was to be the highlight of our last day.  But arriving at the office, they apologetically informed us that we were the only passengers booked on the large ship, and so the cruise had been cancelled.  As a measure of their distress about this, they produced two bottles of wine for us.  Laden with yet more nutritional largesse, we turned away, and noticed a ferry going to and fro across the bay.  For a tenth of the price, we sailed over and back, returning as the lights came on in the city and the setting sun coloured the sky behind the trees on Mount Eliza.  

Better go now and start making a huge salad to be washed down with those bottles of wine......

Thursday 7 April 2011

7.3.11 – Thoughts (Perth, Western Australia)


7.3.11 – Thoughts (Perth, Western Australia)
Hiking on Arran
Raining this morning, and much cooler.  During one of the showers, our eyes were caught by my screensaver, which happened to be displaying a set of slides of us hiking on the lovely Scottish island of Arran, last May.  We gazed at the images of the heather-clad rocky mountains, the blue twinkling sea, the grassy banks of wildflowers, the amber burns, the rocky inlets, the blue haze of islands beyond.  It was home, and we belong there.  Scots have been on that land for nearly two millennia.  Bill said ‘Makes you think about the Aboriginies, doesn’t it.  How would we feel if someone suddenly turned up and told us it wasn’t our land anymore and we had to get off?’

I have been growing more and more interested in Aboriginal history and culture.  I’ve gleaned what little information I have from Australians we have met, from museums, leaflets, the internet, and pictures.  I’ve not yet been able to speak to anyone of Aboriginal descent, but have read a book written by Aboriginal academics.  What has grasped my imagination is that this is easily the oldest culture in the world.  Estimates range from between 40,000 and 60,000 years.   They probably came to Australia around the time of the last Ice Age, paddling through shallow seas long since replaced by impassable oceans.

It’s a complex culture, based upon oral traditions, which, as research here and elsewhere has shown, are usually at least as accurate ways of recording history as written methods.  Their culture is based on The Dreaming – stories about how the landscapes were created and about the ancestors, creatures and events that formed them, and from these are drawn complex systems for regulating their societies. 

It is likely that, through these means, these tribes can remember events that happened at the dawn of time.  For example, the beautiful blue crater at Mount Gambier and its sister craters, which owe their origin to volcanic activity about 30,000 years ago, are described in Aboriginal Dreaming stories as a cooking pots or fires.  Why would lakes be described in this way unless their fiery origins are locked deep in the racial memory?  These peoples may well have shared this land with the last dinosaurs, and certainly with many huge animals now long extinct - some of their tales appear to reflect this also.  

Furthermore, they understood and could survive in this often harsh and unforgiving climate.  Over the millennia, they had developed ways of living in harmony with their land.  They were hunter/gatherers, who moved on with the seasons and the variations in weather, but were also able to grow extensive acreages of wheat.  They developed a range of tribes, each attached to certain areas of Australia, within which they roamed and to which they were – and are - deeply attached, through their understanding of the Dreaming.

What a gift these people were to human society, in terms of helping us understand our roots.  And yet, as has often been the case, the colonists did not appreciate what they had.  Here were an ancient people who could have shared their knowledge and skills which the early settlers would have benefitted from, which could sometimes even have saved their lives.  Word went back to Britain that this land was ‘Terra Nullius’ – an empty land, ripe for settlement.  Not all attitudes were hostile – Captain Cook said ‘They are human creatures, the work of the same omnipotent author, equally under his care with the most polished European; perhaps being less offensive, more entitled to his favour.’  But none the less, the country was settled, land was parcelled out and sold – a concept that was totally foreign to the tribes, who did not believe land could be ‘owned’.  So they lost most of their beloved tribal lands, and with it their sense of identity and self-respect.  Harsh treatment, up to and including multiple murders, attempts to ‘assimilate’ them into white culture, which included taking their children away from them – the Stolen Generation – and discrimination all took their toll.  Being British, I have to accept that I am partly responsible for all this. 

And now?  I am very struck with the way Australia is becoming very richly diverse, ethnically and culturally.  When Bill was here in the 1950’s, it was still the era of the ‘White Australia’ policy (only white immigrants were accepted, which operated from the 1850’s until finally ending in 1973).  His dad did what he could – as an ex-serviceman, he had joined the RSL (Returned Service Men’s League), but resigned when they would not accept blacks into their membership.  

Mural in Hawker - this is the hope for the future
But I’ve seen very few Aboriginal faces around since we’ve been here.  I see the efforts the government is making.  I hear about the problems the Aboriginals face, in terms of poverty, alcohol abuse and crime – the same as the Inuits in Canada, the Native Americans, and even the Scots and Irish in all too recent  history.  I’ve heard direct prejudice too.  This is what happens when an ancient culture and identity struggle against another, newer but much more powerful definition of values and society.  As one Australian explained it to me, ‘It’s a total cultural clash’.  As another said ‘They have been terribly wronged’.  What the way forward may be is difficult to guess.  What is all too clear is that it is so much easier to create these problems than it is to cure them.

Near a set of rock paintings in the Flinders Ranges, one of the official tourist information boards carried the following words –




Wednesday 6 April 2011

6.4.11 – Jails and jailbirds (Fremantle, Western Australia)


Street in Freemantle
6.4.11 – Jails and jailbirds  (Fremantle, Western Australia)
Building in Fremantle
Fremantle lies just south of Perth, and boasts, with some justification, a lot of traditional buildings – elegant balconies, stone frontages.  We jumped on a bus that was pretending to be a tram, as we’ve discovered that this is the best way to get a quick view of a place, and usually a good comic as a driver/tour guide.  This one did not disappoint.  He started by pointing out a statue of John Curtin, a wartime Australian Prime Minister who died in office 1945, and is often said to have been their best Prime Minister ever.  He added that given recent political events, they are thinking of digging him up again. 

Bus/tram, Fremantle
We moved on to the Old Fire Brigade building, now an Indian Restaurant.  ‘How appropriate is that?’ he quipped.  He then took us up to the inevitable view point, on which is a war memorial in the form of a column.  This, he said, had been planned as a tower up which you would climb, with all manner of wonderful facets.  The people of Fremantle contributed handsomely towards this plan – and the Project Manager then ran off with the lot!  So in the end, they got a very nice memorial, but not quite the world-beater that was intended. 

Old Jail with escaped convict at gate
Then we approached the old jail.  This was built by convicts, and operated until its closure in 1991.  Initially, Fremantle was built without convict aid, but the lure of free labour was too much to resist, so the town sent a letter to Britain asking to be granted convict labour.  This was approved, and the letter of reply put on a slow boat to Australia (no Twitter/Facebook then).  Meanwhile, keen to dispatch the requested jailbirds, the powers that be loaded them onto the nearest fast boat, which of course arrived well before the letter did.  Result – a totally unexpected delivery of old lags, for which nothing was ready.  What do you do with a boatload of disgruntled convicts?  The answer - you store them in a disused woolshed and get them to build their own jail.  None too soon, the warders finally arrived, in the shape of ex-Crimean war soldiers – the Pensioner Guards.  Phew. 

In more recent jail history, a prisoner escaped in the 1980’s and managed to stay on the loose, developing a flourishing career in armed robbery in Adelaide.  Popping home a few years later to visit mum, he discovered that the jail was now a tourist attraction, and couldn’t resist going to have a look, and even signed the visitors’ book on the way out – and, no, he wasn’t caught, at least not then.

After all this intensive history, a bit of shopping therapy and a swim in the sea relaxed our overtaxed brains.  (Most of the cells seem to have gone comatose during this long trip).

The evening was great fun – we met Graham (Bill’s cousin Sandra’s son) and his wife Anne-Marie, who emigrated to Perth about five years ago.  Yet more family members we’ve been lucky enough to get to know on this holiday.  The Thai restaurant succeeded in feeding us six meals instead of four, due to an oversight, so we waddled rather than strolled up the path back to our little villa for coffee.  Another excellent day.
Anne-Marie and Graham in our villa

Tuesday 5 April 2011

5.4.11 – Flowers and Heather (Australind and Bunbury, Western Australia)


5.4.11 – Flowers and Heather (Australind and Bunbury, Western Australia)

As we sat eating breakfast on our little courtyard, a small white Frangipani flower dropped from one of the trees above.  Its five white, delicate, waxy petals fanned out, each looking as if a careful artist had painted a splash of bright yellow in the centre.  Purple bourgainvillea tumbled over the wall above.  A pleasant way to start the day, before getting in the car to travel the long, straight roads again.

Many Australian townships are so embedded in the woodland that you could pass them by and not know they were there.  So as we searched for Heather’s house, we thought it was impossible that we were at the right place – it appeared to be just a leafy forest.  Then a driveway appeared, with the inevitable letterbox on a post, and nestling amongst the gum trees was a pretty bungalow.  Heather is Bill’s cousin George’s daughter, and she and Mark have lived and brought up their three children in Australind, Western Australia, about 90 minutes drive south of Perth.  In the heat of the day, we sat in comfortable chairs, under a wooden garden shade, drinking tea and talking – the ups and downs of emigration; Australia’s way of life; Aboriginal society and culture.  Heather has recently started teacher training, and has covered Aboriginal Studies, which she found fascinating. I relished a chance to explore this issue, with which I have become more and more fascinated.  The trees shaded us and made us feel cocooned deep within the woods.  There are tame possums living in a knot hole in one of the trees; she has also tamed Magpies.  Unfortunately, neither the possums nor Magpies showed themselves while we were around.
Little settlers' church

The 'Milk Carton'
Later, Heather took us out to the centre of Australind, where a tiny wooden church still stood as it has since the settlers arrived about 150 years ago.  Then on to Bunbury, an elegant, low rise town, curved around a wide bay edged with long cream beaches. We lunched overlooking bobbing sailing boats on the blue water.  Previously an industrial town, its former grain silos have been converted into stylish flats, and another somewhat odd building rejoiced in the nickname ‘The Milk Carton’ – and that is just what it looked like.

From the top of the look-out tower
The lookout in this town demanded a bit more of the tourists than the others we have visited.  There, you simply drove up, parked and looked out.  Here, a slender – and slightly scary – concrete and metal tower challenged you to climb its spiral staircase for a spectacular 360 degree view of the town. Adjacent was a nattily painted black and white lighthouse.

Back at the house, Mark and son Andrew helped us demolish a crunchy salad before the long drive back to Perth.  We’d been warned that kangaroos often jump across the freeway at dusk, so it was eyes peeled all the way till we got to the ice cream parlour at Scarborough for passion fruit cones, eaten overlooking the darkened beach on which the waves broke in ghostly white surf.
Andrew, Mark, Meg, Heather and Bill

Monday 4 April 2011

4.4.11 – Contrasts (Perth, Western Australia)


4.4.11 – Contrasts  (Perth, Western Australia)
I was sure I was going to have to shout for the Lifeguards to run out, BayWatch-style, to rescue him.  Time and again he stood up, looking about, and behind him, the Indian Ocean rose up in an elegant glass-green curve, towering over him, and then swallowing him up in bubbling, frothing white foam.  Sometimes he saw it coming and jumped into the falling water; other times it caught him totally unawares, knocking him head over heels.  But always his head came bobbing up again, like a dark cork on the sea’s acquamarine surface. Eventually he emerged, water cascading from his beard, and telling me how exhilarating it had been.  I’m sure being nearly drowned would be exhilarating, but I’ll get my thrills some other way I think.

Outback
Wanting to see the outback when it is really dry, we set off on the road north out of Perth.  Soon the now familiar flatness was on all sides, but burned almost white, with stunted brownish leaved trees dotted here and there, or bare brown ground stretching as far as the eye could see.  The earth here in Western Australia is not red as in South Australia, but ivory-white.  The sun was strong, and the brightness of the whitened grass and the sand on the verges strained the eyes.  Everything was tinder dry, and the heat shimmered relentlessly creating mirage puddles on the road ahead. 

Tropical forest walkway
Australian White Ibis
We turned towards the township of Gingin, intrigued by its name.  A bright green park, shaded by large trees covered in lush leaves, a little stream running through it, slowly turning a small water wheel, droplets streaming from its edges.  Ducks, tails up, beaks down, explored the stream’s mud for titbits.  Some waddled up to us, and sat down on the grass at our sandalled feet.  Nearby, magpies were raiding a picnic underway at another table.  Across the road, a boardwalk led to a tropical swampland, tree-trunks leaning together over our heads, thick green leaves growing up through quiet brown waters, an Australian White Ibis daintily picking her way under the trees.  And then, out of the town, we were back to the arid browness of the outback.  Down a quiet road, unexpected rock formations – limestone needles in Picasso-type shapes – baked in the sun.  And then round the corner, another contrast. 
Limstone Pinnacles

Moore River Lagoon
Walking to the lagoon
The sea opened out before us, glittering brilliant turquoise.  And into it – or in fact not quite – a large blue river flowed - the Moore River.  But as it reached the beach, a bar of white sand formed a barrier, preventing it completing its long held intention of merging with the sea.  The river, calm in the face of this change of plan, had formed a large quiet lagoon, in which a few people were slowly swimming or wading, their multicoloured costumes shining with water.  All the while, the sea thundered its ocean power on the beach, just a few feet away. 

That is one impression I am left with of Australia – it’s a land of unexpected contrasts.

Sunday 3 April 2011

3.4.11 – Churches in the sun (Perth, Western Australia)



3.4.11 – Churches in the sun  (Perth, Western Australia)
It was hot.as we stepped down from the plane in Perth – like stepping into a warm bath.  The plane had flown over brown, dry land, cut into squares of dry fields, broken where the white of the desert sands had burned through.  Western Australia has had one of its driest, hottest summers ever, unlike South Australia, which has had its coldest and wettest.  The verges of the highways had turned to sand, the grass to straw.  Scarborough beach was long, white and covered in people, surfing, swimming, sitting watching the sun slip red behind the horizon. 

Strange how flying transported us from one reality to another – it seemed a lifetime ago that we walked into St. Andrews Uniting Church in Adelaide, yet it was only this morning.  That was the sixth and last church we’ll attend before our feet turn for home. 

Christchurch Cathedral, 21.2.11
The first was the grey and white solidity of Christchurch Cathedral, where we took communion in a little side chapel.  Little did we dream that twenty four hours later, that imposing, gracious building would be in ruins, an icon for the whole city now facing an uncertain future. 

The next two Sundays, we were in Tahmoor Baptist Church, a small fellowship wrestling with big issues about their future direction. 

On the edge of the Great Ocean Road, we turned into the carpark of the first church we could find – St. Luke’s Uniting Church in Geelong, an airy modern building, and found a fellowship just discovering that their Pastor was leaving them after her years of care had enabled the church to grow into a fellowship with a future focussed on its young people and on the challenges of a multiracial society. 

Bill chatting to the fellowship in Whyalla
In Whyalla, the Church of Christ was the Church Bill remembered as a boy.  An informal group, struggling with falling numbers, they accepted us immediately and unexpectedly asked me to sing for them at the end of the service.  Despite this, they still invited us to a birthday party later in the week.

Hall where Flinders Christian Fellowship meet
Then Hawker, Flinders Christian Fellowship proved to be a tiny group in a little community centre, led by Jeff Morgan, the painter of the Wilpena Panorama – an amazing artwork which has been acclaimed worldwide.  He was a painter and decorator with no background whatever in art until, at a crisis in his life, God promised him that he would become a renowned artist.  Now he has been invited to the USA and in China, they presented him with awards in recognition of his art.

And then today in St. Andrews, a large traditional building, the sun making rainbows through the stained glass windows, as we watched the pastor baptize his tiny grandson Ilario, a smiling little bundle who coped with everything with wide-eyed equanimity. 

All these churches have been in very different buildings, but all following God’s path for them through their differing challenges and all offering an extremely warm welcome to us.  They have been a fascinating thread woven through our adventures ‘down under’.
Jeff Morgan, as painted by a friend

Saturday 2 April 2011

2.4.11 – Rogues and daytrippers (Adelaide, South Australia)

2.4.11 – Rogues and daytrippers (Adelaide, South Australia)
Meg on the beach!!
Even intrepid elderly camper/backpackers need a rest sometimes, so today we stayed around in Holdfast Bay, in the town of Glenelg.  Glenelg has two identities – one as the place where South Australia started its life as a colony, and then a state, and one as a Kiss-Me Quick/rollercoaster/what-the-butler-saw type of holiday resort. 

The museum showed the town from both angles.  Very honest accounts of the ‘founding fathers’ revealed most of them to have been rogues and rascals, out for ‘the main chance’.  One even lobbied for the establishment of the colony from a prison cell where he was ‘doing time’ for abducting young girls.  He didn’t even come to Australia on his release, choosing New Zealand instead.  Probably lucky for Australia.  But he still got a town and various streets named after him.  The first ship arriving to survey the territory took shelter from a storm in the bay here for some days, where they ‘held fast’, and hence ‘Holdfast Bay’.  The settlers then arrived, attracted by descriptions of ‘a mild, temperate climate’.  They then sailed thousands of miles, in a cramped ship, eating dried meat and weevil-filled biscuits (unless you were at the captain’s table, in which case you imbibed the Captain’s wine and chose from a range of delicious cheeses and meats).  What they found when they got here was scorching heat, mosquitoes and rats.  But they stuck it out (those of them that didn’t die right away) and so Adelaide and Glenelg were born. 

Pier as in 2011
Within about 30 years, they had moved from tents to solid stone houses, and even built a substantial pier.  Presumably a utilitarian structure initially, this soon became a mecca for daytrippers.  A swimming pool was built, or rather two – one for gents and another (half the size) for ladies.  A tea room soon followed, and an aquarium.  A tramway ran all the way from the heart of Adelaide to the end of the pier.  Thousands of eager holidaymakers came to try the penny-in-the-slot machines.  There was a roomful of these at the museum - glass and wooden boxes, at the side of which was a little handle which you turned, and inside were detailed tiny working models - mermaids emerged from shells, ghosts popped out of cupboards, a rowing boat was attacked by sharks, a belly dancer rolled her beaded hips.  In the 1920’s the pier was damaged by storms and in 1948, finally destroyed.  A small concrete pier now stands in its place, but the fun of the fair as our predecessors knew it, has gone forever.
Meg swimming

Bill swimming
Retreating to the beach, we settled down on towels to absorb the warm sunlight.  Swimming amongst the waves, Bill also absorbed several mouthfuls of seawater, but was exhilarated none the less.  As we picnicked on the silver sand, we met two other Brits, happily agreeing what fun it was to be travelling the world and ‘spending our children’s inheritance’! 

Friday 1 April 2011

1.4.11 - Lazy day (Adelaide, South Australia)

Adelaide tram
Brass pig in Adelaide
1.4.11 – Lazy day (Adelaide, South Australia)
A day for meandering, with little real objective.  The sand dunes Bill remembers from fifty years ago have disappeared under a marina - large gleaming launches, displacing a lot of water and even more money; luxury apartments, balconies perched one above the other, staring out to sea; expensive restaurants – crisp white cloths, sparkling glassware, shining cutlery, and no customers.  There’s a grassy park beside an old wooden sailing ship, now a family restaurant and fish and chip emporium.  It’s called ‘HMS Buffalo’ and sports a wide-horned buffalo as a figurehead.  Apparently this was the name of the ship that brought the first settlers to Adelaide.
Down to the beach to read a book in the sun while Bill swam albeit briefly, and watch two classes of kids learning the niceties of surfing, which only seems to involve running in and out of the water several times, holding surf boards – presumably this is Lesson One.  On the train into town, some teenagers opposite us fall asleep, heads nodding.  They look like some of the embryonic surfers we saw, and their efforts have clearly worn them out.  In town, we head for the opal factory.  Near where we were in the outback, there are opal mines which we didn’t reach at the time.  Beautiful stones, white with hidden rainbow colours which emerge as you turn them gently in the light.  Bill surprises me with the present of a beautiful opal ring – an early Ruby wedding present.  In the main street, I met a small herd of pigs - brass ones, one of them raking the (brass) rubbish out of the bin.
The River Torrens is wider here, edged with grassy slopes, a huge fountain in the middle and glass ‘paper boats’ beside it.  Providing the motive force for a pedalo is good exercise for the legs, as well as providing company for the black swans swimming alongside - scarlet beaks with white bands across them, soft black feathers which curl on their backs, like a soft floaty collar on a black evening gown.
Back home to Glenelg on the tram, along with a growing number of party goers, dressed to kill, and watched with gimlet eye by a security guard, who was joined by two more at the terminus – a hot time is anticipated in the town tonight!
Two aspects of the population here are worth a mention.  When Bill lived in Australia, the ‘White Australia Policy’ was operating – apartheid by the back door.  So for him a welcome change is the multiracial nature of the city today – African, Indian, Chinese and many others made up a large number of the people we saw on the trams and in the streets and shops.  Secondly, I note that it seems to be quite a youthful population – relatively few older people to be seen.  Bill thinks this can be explained because all the oldies are circulating Australia in caravans.  Could well be so.