I’m always late. But today I’m on time. My brother and I share this characteristic much to the distress of our wives. It’s not genetic. Lateness was a serious sin in the family. Our parents were always annoyingly punctual; meaning I was never quite ready when they arrived, much to the chagrin of my father.
Today he would be pleased. We’ve got him to his rendezvous ahead of time. His other son however is somewhere on the highway between Murwillumbah and this destination.
Our mobile phone conversation is guardedly civil.
“Oh, I thought you said two o’clock!”
Silence.
“We’re not far away. Maybe twenty minutes”
Silence. A muffled prompt from the background.
“Maybe thirty……….or forty.”
Monday, 19 January 2009
Journey - a story in 16 parts. J10. SISTER LOVE
Dad’s sister is the first to arrive. She’s driven down from the hinterland through the former dairy country, now avocado and citrus farms and past the country dance hall at Meerschaum Vale.
She’s close to eighty and is a clone of her brother in appearance and attitude. When these two siblings share an afternoon chat family stories, which should be well kept secrets, tumble forth. Their shared memories paint the love, pain, the long forgotten but never forgiven transgressions and the complex personalities of the extended family.
In their conversation grandfather and grandmother became Poppa and Nonna; the distinctive scent of homemade salamis and sweetmeats, which I’d never tasted, flooded my nostrils somehow conjured up from the curing room (once a laundry) of fifty years ago; his prodigious vegetable garden flourished, filling my imagination with bouquets of colour, the droplets of early morning dew on deep green spinach sparkling before me. Amongst all this the tension between the Irish matriarch and the stern Italian peasant father became silently and sadly palpable.
Here she was. His sister. Ever loyal. Committed to being with her brother to the very end. Her body frail. Her bent back cursed by arthritis. Teeth gritted she eased her painful way out of the Toyota’s driver’s seat. Once free, the agony of movement is quickly transformed into a sparkling embrace. I face my beloved aunty. Our northern noses compete for airspace. I am the third clone.
She is a Wardell girl again.
She’s close to eighty and is a clone of her brother in appearance and attitude. When these two siblings share an afternoon chat family stories, which should be well kept secrets, tumble forth. Their shared memories paint the love, pain, the long forgotten but never forgiven transgressions and the complex personalities of the extended family.
In their conversation grandfather and grandmother became Poppa and Nonna; the distinctive scent of homemade salamis and sweetmeats, which I’d never tasted, flooded my nostrils somehow conjured up from the curing room (once a laundry) of fifty years ago; his prodigious vegetable garden flourished, filling my imagination with bouquets of colour, the droplets of early morning dew on deep green spinach sparkling before me. Amongst all this the tension between the Irish matriarch and the stern Italian peasant father became silently and sadly palpable.
Here she was. His sister. Ever loyal. Committed to being with her brother to the very end. Her body frail. Her bent back cursed by arthritis. Teeth gritted she eased her painful way out of the Toyota’s driver’s seat. Once free, the agony of movement is quickly transformed into a sparkling embrace. I face my beloved aunty. Our northern noses compete for airspace. I am the third clone.
She is a Wardell girl again.
Sunday, 18 January 2009
Journey - a story in 16 parts. J9 HEART and SOUL
The remnants of the old jetty, with its twelve inch square turpentine timber pylons, sits behind the pub adjacent to the main intersection. In other words where the two streets which constitute the village intersect.
It’s home to a once impressive set of buildings - the two story pub on one corner, with its bland upstairs balcony sheltering the public bar below; the ornate former bank of New South Wales opposite, its arched main entrance built into an elegant curved façade curling around the corner to greet the imposing Catholic church on the rise diagonally opposite the pub. These three institutions were the heart and soul for the men and women of the district. Each week would see them visit at least one, and often all three in succession.
Even dad, not known for his devotion to any religious sentiment. is captured on film as a child dressed in white shirt and dark pants (Sunday best) standing with twenty other seven year olds in front of the grotto honouring the Virgin Mary. It’s “first communion” day and the photographer has managed to tame the wild boys long enough to frame them forever as devotees of this strange cult.
The three institutions, two of which still ply their trade, were built of deep red local brick now approaching one hundred years of age. The jetty probably predates this. It marks the lifeline for this community to the world and economic survival. Once, shallow draft vessels driven first by sail and later by steam would ply the Richmond delivering supplies and then loading up with produce and timber for the down river run to Ballina and perhaps on to Sydney or Brisbane.
Today a lone fisherman sits, his line drifting hopefully in the shallows, idling away a Sunday afternoon.
We pull up, pick a shady spot to park, throw open the doors, and wait.
It’s home to a once impressive set of buildings - the two story pub on one corner, with its bland upstairs balcony sheltering the public bar below; the ornate former bank of New South Wales opposite, its arched main entrance built into an elegant curved façade curling around the corner to greet the imposing Catholic church on the rise diagonally opposite the pub. These three institutions were the heart and soul for the men and women of the district. Each week would see them visit at least one, and often all three in succession.
Even dad, not known for his devotion to any religious sentiment. is captured on film as a child dressed in white shirt and dark pants (Sunday best) standing with twenty other seven year olds in front of the grotto honouring the Virgin Mary. It’s “first communion” day and the photographer has managed to tame the wild boys long enough to frame them forever as devotees of this strange cult.
The three institutions, two of which still ply their trade, were built of deep red local brick now approaching one hundred years of age. The jetty probably predates this. It marks the lifeline for this community to the world and economic survival. Once, shallow draft vessels driven first by sail and later by steam would ply the Richmond delivering supplies and then loading up with produce and timber for the down river run to Ballina and perhaps on to Sydney or Brisbane.
Today a lone fisherman sits, his line drifting hopefully in the shallows, idling away a Sunday afternoon.
We pull up, pick a shady spot to park, throw open the doors, and wait.
Saturday, 17 January 2009
Journey - a story in 16 parts. J8 SILVER
Journey - a story in 16 parts. J14It could be Ireland. Except for the weather and the sandy beaches and the blue skies.
There’s a hill on the slopes to the west of the coast which used to be the agistment paddock for the dried up milkers from the old family farm. Dad and his horse Silver would climb the hill regularly to check on the stock. It was one of his allotted jobs. It was also an opportunity to disappear from home for half a day.
From Coolgardie Hill the view back is across a broad floodplain – a sea of sugar cane split by the remarkably straight Richmond River. Here the mighty river travels parallel to the coast for its final twenty kilometre journey – against all common sense for rivers.
I imagine Dad sitting up there surveying the scene below, picking out the landmarks which he knew by heart.
To the south, the headland at Ballina marked the destination for the cool waters flowing from the hinterland. Tucked in tight against the rise on which he sat, marking the limit of the ancient silt deposits, the Pacific Highway speeds travellers south or north to the major centres or to hideaway holiday destinations. The river follows the highway, or rather the opposite is the truth. On the far side, the eastern half of the floodplain, accessible to this day by the cable ferry which winches six vehicles at a time across the Richmond is a sparsely populated strip of coastal farmland; an expanse of sugar crops regularly broken by lanes leading due east to secluded beaches known only to locals.
Dad knew these lanes intimately. As a teenager his slender body and sinewy arms were engaged as labour, laying cast iron rail tracks between the fields; sweating each day with his mates in their cane gang, working the lines, cutting manually, pissing on his blistered hands at the end of each day to help the healing - the original antiseptic.
At the extreme south of this view he would have been able to pick out the hamlet of Wardell, where the highway crossed the river via an impressive ornate steel bridge with its engineered hydraulic span which opened to allow trading vessels to travel upstream as far as Lismore.
Wardell is a pub, three churches, a general store, a bank (closed) and a school of arts hall.
No one stops at Wardell.
There’s a hill on the slopes to the west of the coast which used to be the agistment paddock for the dried up milkers from the old family farm. Dad and his horse Silver would climb the hill regularly to check on the stock. It was one of his allotted jobs. It was also an opportunity to disappear from home for half a day.
From Coolgardie Hill the view back is across a broad floodplain – a sea of sugar cane split by the remarkably straight Richmond River. Here the mighty river travels parallel to the coast for its final twenty kilometre journey – against all common sense for rivers.
I imagine Dad sitting up there surveying the scene below, picking out the landmarks which he knew by heart.
To the south, the headland at Ballina marked the destination for the cool waters flowing from the hinterland. Tucked in tight against the rise on which he sat, marking the limit of the ancient silt deposits, the Pacific Highway speeds travellers south or north to the major centres or to hideaway holiday destinations. The river follows the highway, or rather the opposite is the truth. On the far side, the eastern half of the floodplain, accessible to this day by the cable ferry which winches six vehicles at a time across the Richmond is a sparsely populated strip of coastal farmland; an expanse of sugar crops regularly broken by lanes leading due east to secluded beaches known only to locals.
Dad knew these lanes intimately. As a teenager his slender body and sinewy arms were engaged as labour, laying cast iron rail tracks between the fields; sweating each day with his mates in their cane gang, working the lines, cutting manually, pissing on his blistered hands at the end of each day to help the healing - the original antiseptic.
At the extreme south of this view he would have been able to pick out the hamlet of Wardell, where the highway crossed the river via an impressive ornate steel bridge with its engineered hydraulic span which opened to allow trading vessels to travel upstream as far as Lismore.
Wardell is a pub, three churches, a general store, a bank (closed) and a school of arts hall.
No one stops at Wardell.
Wednesday, 14 January 2009
Journey - a story in 16 parts. J7 MIGRANTS
Brunswick Heads slipped by, the memories of years of camping by the river following behind in our exhaust fumes. No time to stop today – not even for a quick detour to check out the graceful old pub and shaky footbridge to the ocean. Byron flicked by and then a quick pit-stop to pick up a family of pies from the Bangalow Bakery.
Here the place names began to sing their melodies to me – lyrical voices from my childhood - Bangalow, Mullumbimby, Chincogan, the distant Lismore, Alstonville and Ballina. Unknowingly we’d entered the enclave of the Irish. The place names transposed from a distant Celtic home to the adopted homeland of the poor escaping the potato famine of the 1860s. Here the auburn hair and freckles of my father and his sister made sense. As did the squat form and broad features of his brother. The prominent noses of sister and brother gave away their mongrel heritage – roman noses imported from the northern plains of Italy. Two peasant families thrown together by a common need to escape to a new land of possibilities.
Ten thousand descendants of the 100 or so Italian expeditioners who arrived in the area in 1881 claim this shared story. A disastrous voyage from Europe. A dream sold to desperate and gullible families by a shonky French con man. A wealthy Marquis with no time for ethics.
Though the Italians were here in numbers they spoke no English and lived as an isolated community leaving no place names but a district full of Bazzos, Spinazes and Tomes. Generation by generation, family by family every Italian boy married an Irish girl, and every “colleen” married a descendant of the expedition. The result is a district full of Paddy Spinazes and Stephano Kilcoynes until, after one hundred years, the blending is complete.
The only permanent reminder is the New Italy Museum – a broken down collection of memorabilia and stories struggling to survive beside the Pacific Highway on land as poor as that from which the migrants of Veneto and Connaught had fled.
Here the place names began to sing their melodies to me – lyrical voices from my childhood - Bangalow, Mullumbimby, Chincogan, the distant Lismore, Alstonville and Ballina. Unknowingly we’d entered the enclave of the Irish. The place names transposed from a distant Celtic home to the adopted homeland of the poor escaping the potato famine of the 1860s. Here the auburn hair and freckles of my father and his sister made sense. As did the squat form and broad features of his brother. The prominent noses of sister and brother gave away their mongrel heritage – roman noses imported from the northern plains of Italy. Two peasant families thrown together by a common need to escape to a new land of possibilities.
Ten thousand descendants of the 100 or so Italian expeditioners who arrived in the area in 1881 claim this shared story. A disastrous voyage from Europe. A dream sold to desperate and gullible families by a shonky French con man. A wealthy Marquis with no time for ethics.
Though the Italians were here in numbers they spoke no English and lived as an isolated community leaving no place names but a district full of Bazzos, Spinazes and Tomes. Generation by generation, family by family every Italian boy married an Irish girl, and every “colleen” married a descendant of the expedition. The result is a district full of Paddy Spinazes and Stephano Kilcoynes until, after one hundred years, the blending is complete.
The only permanent reminder is the New Italy Museum – a broken down collection of memorabilia and stories struggling to survive beside the Pacific Highway on land as poor as that from which the migrants of Veneto and Connaught had fled.
Tuesday, 13 January 2009
Journey - a story in 16 parts. J6 CANE
In the car the mood was sombre. Virgin Blue 727s clipped the tops of the trees above, shaving Currumbin Hill on their approach to Cooloongatta Airport. Like hugh birds of prey they led us down the highway towards the border. As they touched down we took off up and over the border hills before tipping us into the glorious Tweed Valley.
The Tweed. How could a state border create such a distinction between the crass flickering neons of the Gold Coast and the sweet smelling lushness of the Northern Rivers. It seemed like two worlds separated by this great flat river bordered by fertile plains.
I could sense Dad settling into his back seat as he breathed the air of home. This was his country. Mile after mile of sugar cane fields. The refinery belching sweet gases into the atmosphere creating a vaporous version of jagged Mt Warning in the background.
We took the old highway, not just for the memories and the chance to follow the river for as long as possible, but to snub the super highway which cut ten minutes from the one hundred kilometre drive and lost its soul in the doing. A gash in the landscape designed by an engineer not an artist.
Dad in the backseat whispered advice as the Peugeot sped through the Moonbi Hills and climbed the range before dropping into Brunswick Heads:
“Watch this corner”
“Change down before this bend”
“Careful of the narrow approach to this bridge”
He reminded me that these hills, now covered in a forest of camphor laurels, were once his playground. “They’re a weed” he’d tell me each time we passed this way.
"Some weed" I’d think every time.
The Tweed. How could a state border create such a distinction between the crass flickering neons of the Gold Coast and the sweet smelling lushness of the Northern Rivers. It seemed like two worlds separated by this great flat river bordered by fertile plains.
I could sense Dad settling into his back seat as he breathed the air of home. This was his country. Mile after mile of sugar cane fields. The refinery belching sweet gases into the atmosphere creating a vaporous version of jagged Mt Warning in the background.
We took the old highway, not just for the memories and the chance to follow the river for as long as possible, but to snub the super highway which cut ten minutes from the one hundred kilometre drive and lost its soul in the doing. A gash in the landscape designed by an engineer not an artist.
Dad in the backseat whispered advice as the Peugeot sped through the Moonbi Hills and climbed the range before dropping into Brunswick Heads:
“Watch this corner”
“Change down before this bend”
“Careful of the narrow approach to this bridge”
He reminded me that these hills, now covered in a forest of camphor laurels, were once his playground. “They’re a weed” he’d tell me each time we passed this way.
"Some weed" I’d think every time.
Wednesday, 7 January 2009
Vacation
I'm on holidays on Stradbroke Island for two weeks. I'm still writing. I'll finish the "Journey" while I'm away and post it when I get back.
Stradbroke is as magical as ever. It's been three years but the essence doesn't change:
crystal clear water; headlands punished by the southern ocean; turtles lolling in the deep; middle class manicured bodies mixing alongside the working fishermen; unspoilt expanses of sandy beaches; dogs; time slowing down. Ahhhhhhhh......................................
Stradbroke is as magical as ever. It's been three years but the essence doesn't change:
crystal clear water; headlands punished by the southern ocean; turtles lolling in the deep; middle class manicured bodies mixing alongside the working fishermen; unspoilt expanses of sandy beaches; dogs; time slowing down. Ahhhhhhhh......................................
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