sharlock

Day Trip to Victor

2004-04-14T22:27:00.000+09:30

It's funny how when you go to some places you do exactly the same things every time you go there. What's funnier still is that you don't realise it until you're halfway through. I went on a day trip to (Victor Harbor) on Easter Monday. I went with three people: one I know really well (archiegirl), one I'm getting to know well(auprincess) and one I've recently been introduced to (Yellek) Mr Yellek had never been there before (alas! pity the poor person who didn't grow up in Adelaide!) around the town, but for me, with every step we took we were treading on the memories of my childhood.

It started with the trip there. When I was a kid there was a parody of a song called Day Trip to Bangor ... only it was all about a day trip to Victor Harbor. I was singing the parody in my head nearly all the way to Victor... remembering how my Dad laughed at the song and I was too young to know it wasn't the original and that you had to know the words to the real song before you could really understand the parody. I laughed anyway, cos everyone else did.

I remember walking around Granite Island with my family, and my Dad taking photos of two red kangaroos fighting. I don't think you see red kangaroos there any more, just fairy penguins and the shire horses which shuttle up and down the causeway across the water to the "mainland".

I remember going there on day trips for school, walking around the rocks and having important conversations with my best friend about boys we knew. Which ones we liked, and why. This time our conversations weren't much different. The boys were older, but still boys I guess...

I remember going to the ferris wheel when I was about 16 and taking some of the best (b&w) photos I've ever taken, of one little boy riding all by himself. My art teacher asked me about my seeming-obsession with photographing people alone. He thought it revealed some inner loneliness in me. Took me years to realise (and admit) he was right.

I remember walking across the causeway past the camels-- the same camels my cousin Bubbles and her husband rode when they came to visit from England.

I also remember camping with a group of about 15 of my closest friends one Easter a long time ago. I don't even think I was 18... I had a horrible time and broke up with my boyfriend that weekend. I wanted to run and and get as far away from him as I could, yet I was stuck there for the rest of the long weekend at very close quarters.

What was nice, though, about this visit was that all three of us "experts" could direct the newcomer to all the best bits of the town. But rather than having a frantic "tour-guide from hell" approach, it turned out to be the most leisurely visit I've ever had there. We ate lunch at the Crown Hotel (a must-do at Victor), walked around Granite Island, followed by coffee at a cafe and the short drive to The Bluff. I found out that its real name is actually Rosetta Head, though I guarantee if I told someone from Adelaide I went to Rosetta Head they'd have no idea where it was, but everybody knows The Bluff at Victor Harbor. We talked, laughed, ate, drank, ate a bit more, walked a bit, had a coffee, laughed some more.

We talked about how we all had such different personalities: there were two introverts among us and two extroverts. We talked about the difference between geeks and nerds (I'm told there is one) and things we'd been through at the hands of others. Sometimes the conversation was so intense and other times my sides ached I was laughing so much. I had the bright idea of all four of us writing a blog on the same event-- our Victor excursion-- but so far only the two introverts have written theirs...

Wonder who I'll go to Victor with next Easter?

the art of distraction

2004-04-06T20:50:00.000+09:30

People at work sometimes wonder how i can keep concentrating for eight or nine hours on the issue of the day while i've got such pressing life-and-death family issues to deal with. It's not that hard. I've become an expert in the art of distraction. For instance, when i walked out of the office today, i'd just finished a conversation with my supervisor about how he was related to a zillion people in this city. i was smiling and strolling to the carpark. but with each step, the smile faded and the nagging uneasiness inside me all day began to boil up, threatening to erupt. I'd run out of reasons to keep thinking about something else, keep talking about something else, keep my mind on something else. there was nowhere to hide from my own feelings.
before my first entry in today's blog i spent about an hour surfing the net looking at blog sites, working up the courage to start writing a post. and even then i had to write about a whole load of other stuff before i could get to what's really bothering me.
nope. can't go there even now.
i don't think this is necessarily the best way to do things-- keep them private and don't ever let on-- but sometimes it's the only way i can function.
but that's what a blog's for, right? make things public, get your feelings out there...
well, it's a start.

Home Sweet Home?

2004-04-06T20:23:00.000+09:30

Have you ever been to a place for the first time and it seems really familiar? What about if you go to that place and feel more at ease there than just about anywhere else? What if that's not even in the same country you live in?
A long time ago when I was a kid I heard a song by John Denver (hey, don't blame me, my parents were the ones playing it!) which had a line something like "he was born in the summer of his 27th year, coming home to a place he'd never been before". The second part of that line has always intrigued me. I think I truly understood it for myself the first time I went to England in 1990. And I've understood it afresh every time I've been there since.
I was born in England but we moved as a family to Australia when I was two. I can remember landing in Singapore on the way here and seeing people who looked really different to people I knew out the window. I also remember how taking off and landing hurt my ears so badly I thought my head would burst. And I remember my dad chuckling as we looked out the window to see the tin sheds which made up Adelaide airport. (Not much has changed: Adelaide airport still looks like a collection of tin sheds from the air!)
And while I have vague, random memories of things like snow (it was cold and hard, not soft and fuzzy like I thought it should be) and the flowers on my nanna's back porch (to this day I still love hydrangeas). There's also a discrete memory of the blackberries and raspberries at my other nanna's house, but there was a lot I didn't remember.
But every time I go to England that doesn't seem to matter.
I can pick up the accents pretty easily (Lancashire on my mum's side, Cockney on my dad's) and it's like I've been there all my life. I love going to the pub. I love driving and navigating my way through the incredibly narrow roads. I love going to the high street in whichever town I'm in. I love watching television (some of those talk shows like the Trisha Goddard one are really amazing... she's England's answer to Jerry Springer!). I love how the history of the place goes back almost as far as history can be recorded. Just going to somewhere like Winsor gives me goosebumps. So does Canterbury or some of those cool old castles in the countryside. I love how green England is. And it amazes me that on such a tiny little island crammed with so many people that there's any agriculture or farming there. If it were Australia, every millimetre (or inch) would have been built on by now!
And even though I'm seeing a lot of these places for the first time, they're still familiar in a weird kind of way. It's not the kind of familiarity you get from seeing something on television or in a book. It's more that the feeling you get when you're there is familiar. The atmosphere of the place. Its tone, its pace. I don't understand it but it feels nice.
It's a very weird yet somehow comforting feeling.

Where oh where have i been?

2004-04-02T21:05:00.000+09:30

thanks to a friend of mine (Yellek) who not only opened my eyes to the joys of blogging, but all of the wonderful possibilities it creates!
his blog has this fantastic idea of generating a map of all the places you've been in the world.
not sure if it's gonna work for me...
(drumroll please!)

create your own visited country map

i've wanted to travel around the world for as long as i can remember but it wasn't til i was about 25ish that it finally happened (that's how life goes, sometimes).
my dad is in a wheelchair and asked me to be his carer and take him on a trip to england to see his family. looking back at all the things that could have gone wrong and the massive undertaking that it was, i can't believe i actually did it. but some of the best things i've ever done i've done before i could think them through properly. if i act before i think i don't have time to get scared. we went, had a great time and my dad got a suntan in the weak english sun and came back looking ten years younger. i, on the other hand, was quite pale and sickly... i found out a few months later it was glandular fever!! like i said, i'm glad sometimes i act before i think...

to rank them,
china was the most exciting place i've ever been and the people were so hospitable and warm
america was everything i'd imagined and more
england was the home i'd never known
italy was the funkiest place
i slept through new zealand
bali was the coolest (can't wait to go back and pay my respects... :-(
and new york was so good it deserves a separate mention. i love ny2

2004-04-01T18:07:00.000+09:30

most people think someone who works as a journalist should never be lost for words. i am... frequently.

i was lost for words on september 11, 2001. as an australian visiting america, i've never felt more like a fish out of water. vulnerable. lonely and oh so far from home. then there was being so close to tragedy on such a mass scale. of course there was heroism and courage unrivalled as well...

i was lost for words when i saw my nephew and niece being born. utterly unspeakable joy and wonder. not to mention amazement and admiration for my sister-in-law at going through that...

i was lost for words when they told me my mum had cancer. turns out that back pain she'd had for months wasn't caused by a strained muscle at all. nothing like it.

on all three occasions, life would never be the same again.

part of the reason for keeping a blog is to make sure i write something un-work-related, regularly. so that even though sometimes i might be lost for words, i never lose the moments which matter most. hopefully they'll form a trail of breadcrumbs for anyone else who follows...