Pensive in Port Fairy .

For the first time the sky is proper blue here by the river in Port Fairy.  The town began by being called Belfast but someone didn’t like that and a ship called the Fairy took shelter here in a storm and the rechristening took place.  Only the odd café is called Belfast now.  It is a lovely town – full of elegant old buildings going back to its origins as an off shore whaling port like Eden, although they had no helpful killer whales here and seem to have fished the waters out very early on.  There was a steamship company here too and some tragic wrecks.  The road changed everything of course and now Port Fairy is a prospering tourist town though there are few of us here now as the mornings are nippy and you need two quilts at night

The land round here is a flood plane and there are notices about what to do in case of a flood.  Yesterday we heard sirens go off and were a little perturbed.  But it turns out that is the signal for the voluntary fire brigade to muster and there must have been two fires.  They said in the museum that they tried using pagers but people felt more comfortable with the sirens.  It kept them in the loop.

There was a lovely sunset over the river last night.  I called to Grant “Look at the sunset” but he was reading and grunted.  I thought how far we have come since 2000 when we were on a beach in Fiji and the sky was ablaze – a once in a lifetime sunset and I called then “Come and see this amazing sunset” “Do I have to?” he replied.  I got very upset.  Divorce was in the wind. How could I spend the rest of my life with such an insensitive brute.  And now I just smile and go my way. How different we all are.  I wonder how particular my responses to waterways, which we see a lot of on this trip, in fact are.  I am a bit anthropomorphic about water.  Lakes seem to me have given up on life and just sit there in their gloom.  Rivers are dogged and purposeful and waterfalls a bit hysterical.  I could never live near a waterfall and would always be wanting to turn it off.  The sea however is calming and so much wiser than me.  It comes and goes according to its needs and is a good grandmother.

Anyway enough of this maundering on. There is the sullage to empty and the tank to fill and the Coorong to reach by tonight.  Did I mention Grant found me a china toast rack in the Lifeline shop in town.  My breakfast is far more elegant in the van than at home.  These little niceties make all the difference when one’s sweater is a fortnight’s worth of grubby and shouldn’t be tumble dried..

Campsite tips.  I began by picking the shower with a dry floor in the amenities block but now I cunningly choose a wet floor because it means the water will come out warm and there is no icy prelude to it.  Also access to the blocks themselves  can be fraught with frustrations, losing the key, forgetting the diabolical password.  Grant solves this problem by sticking a Norfolk Pine seed worm in the door of the Mens.  I however have a knitter’s memory and can usually tap my way into the Ladies’s keyboard with my eyes shut but not open.  What one learns about oneself.

Lorne

We are now on the Great Ocean Road built by returned soldiers after WW1 to link up all the little coastal towns in western Victoria.  It is a beautiful dramatic road that chases the seashore, sometimes on cliffs and sometimes right down by the beaches. which are picture postcard perfect .  It is full of hairpin bends and must have been very difficult to build.  There are magnificent pole houses from time to time anchored in the rock and peering out to sea.

We fetch up at a place called Lorne at a riverside caravan park.  Grant is displeased by the number of ducks.  This dislike puzzles me, as in moments of affection he calls me his duck.  Anyway I love them and take two slices of bread down to feed them and think how little Jacob would enjoy this.

This little town is full of birds. Clearly white cockatoos are a problem. And there are flocks of them that haunt the caravans. There are notices about them “Feeding cockatoos will make them ill” and “Feeding cockatoos can make you ill”   Certainly the picture of the skeletal cockatoo deters me.  I’ll stick to ducks.

We go to the exhibit about the building of the Great Ocean Road which is a memorial to the workers on the road.  A private company began it and so records of its employees are scarce.  The tools were primitive and there were accidents but the work was very good for the traumatized ex soldiers.  Their health improved.  One thing that upset a lot of them was the blasting which brought flashbacks of being in the trenches. In the beginning it was a toll road but eventually the government took it over.

We have a nice beer in the pub and I buy Grant a beautiful big  brown sweater which makes him look like someone out of Fortitude.  It was made in Nepal.  Poor Nepal.

Anzac Day in Creswick

It is the day after Anzac Day.  I think I have at last stopped being an Anzac Day curmudgeon.  It has troubled me that I have cringed at the words “ultimate sacrifice” and tear choked witnesses of the goings on at Gallipoli.  I’ve been to Gallipoli  I’ve seen one bullet split into a fork by another in a little private museum there.  It gave me pause. I’ve seen the seashore and acknowledge the loss and sadness. It was a horrible happening.  But where is all this emotion coming from?  Grant says it would be different if I had had someone there.  But I wonder.  My own father died meaninglessly and young but I have never wept for him because I never knew him.  How then are all these people weeping for their great great uncles et al?  

Then we stumbled on a little town called Creswick, just outside Melbourne.  We had gone in quest of  a Wool Mill where we were going to buy a blanket as it is very cold in Ballarat and anyway I was hoping to source a bit of fleece for spinning.  Detour signs led us off the main street and when we got to the mill it was closed.  An enquiry to someone who was obviously going to work there got the apologetic reply “It’s the Anzac Day rules’” as indeed it is.  Nothing opens on Anzac Day in Victoria till one o’clock.  Again I am puzzled.  Why on earth.

So we go into town perhaps for lunch  and see a small town, with people milling about the main street.  A lot of them are dressed in 1914-18 dress –  little boys with peaked caps. Women with satiny dresses they have  pulled out from who knows where,  men with magnificent beards who suddenly seem in the right place.  There are nurses in flowing headdresses and both men and women bearing medals which I suppose are the real thing left to them by some forebear. Nobody seems the least self conscious about the way they look. They are being people rather than acting them.

 The museum is free for the day and as a knitter myself I am hugely impressed at the vast number of knitted red poppies surrounding every memorial, and in fact every rusty WW1 relic.  The effort, I thought, the wool! And what will they do with them afterwards?  Unpicking seems vaguely sacrilegious.  Same problem with Lady Di’s bouquets but at least they could be composted.  But the care and attention that runs through everything  moves me.  There is a parade of horsemen – the Light Horse and a band with marching by uniformed soldiers and military nurses.  On the cenotaph there are  wreathes as well as a fine bunch of carrots dedicated to the horses, not one of whom returned from the war.

 Someone had downloaded posters from the time and every shop has them in their windows They all prompt Australians one way and another to forget the surf and go to war. One has an extraordinarily armed kangaroo with the rhyme

Only a “tag earnestly spoke

Ere the grand old year is done,

Only a tag tied on to a swag

Of hopes for the year to come.

May the best of all ever befall

The “Roo “behind the gun

I don’t entirely understand the rhyme but it conveys another part of the urge that sent young boys to war.  Hope and adventure. Enthusiasm. Not a whiff of solemnity and “ultimate sacrifice” I found I had the feeling in my nose that precedes tears before I pulled myself together.  But it was a good moment.  At last I understand a bit and I feel Australian.  I am glad we came.

Bedding Down in Ballarat

It is a brisk Ballarat morning and damp with it.  As I pick my way through wet leaves to the Amenities block I have a waft of memory.  This is like boarding school in England.  The Ladies block is vast and empty.  I am sorry because it is always nice to meet other travelers and get their little tips. 

Despite three quilts it was just a bit cold last night and I am not displeased because it gives us a perfect excuse to go to Greswick Woolen Mills and get a blanket and who knows, a superior fleece to spin back in Sydney.  After all the Nullabor will be colder than this.

I am interested to note that our van behaviour is evolving.  We hardly ever crab past each other any more.  It is like being babies learning when to move and what the  best way is.  There are politenesses we have developed. We request help more of the other one instead of going and getting the needed thing.  What would be small courtesies like getting the milk out the fridge take on the weight of gallantry when they involve a lot of manouevering  to perform them.  There are now rules. The cook must never be crabbed past.  The way must be cleared  without fuss for the one needing the loo.

 The table provided a drama last night.  We’d had dinner (a nice sausage hotpot) with plenty of wine and the time had come to take up the table and put down the bed.  The table top came up easily but not the post that supported it.  Obdurate aluminium it was, and jiggled but would not yield.  Grant tried  and swore and threatened to get the tool kit out.  I tried.  We though of just leaving it there and sleeping either side like a sort of chastity measure but then we realized the sheet would have to tent over it like a bawdy postcard.  We tried more and it gave in .  I cried Eureka which was appropriate for Ballarat with its Stockade I thought.

Grey Nomads on a Grey Day in Lakes Entrance

Sometimes people say grey skies when they mean white. However the sky today in Lakes Entrance  is truly pigeon grey with a light drizzle falling on what must be a cheerful little seaside town in high summer.  A parade of shops runs along the lake front where boats are moored. There is a bright but silent minigolf course and a new French restaurant as well as several fish and chip shops.  I bought some local fish called “gummy” to cook tonight. Grant was a bit perturbed. I hope it’s nicer than its name.

 I stop in a café that is run by a chocolate maker whose products include  slabs of chocolate with poppies and a row of white crosses on them and of course “Lest we forget”.  I try but fail to imagine an appropriate occasion on which or mood in which to eat them. He also has naked ladies made of black or white chocolate depending on one’s preference.  The coffee was good though.

We were in quest of the cheapest possible teapot for the van and trawled through no less than five opportunity shops serving all sorts of causes - senior citizens, mistreated animals etc.  I cannot believe that much money gets made. One shop even had a notice stating that fifty dollar notes would not be accepted as they drained the till of change.  There are other jokey shops selling signs with “Grey Nomad –Adventure before Dementia” on them.  On this grey day they take on an extra sardonic flavour

We return to the van with plastic bags cutting our fingers but content with our teapots. We in fact got two because we each found one when we had a  squabble and split up for a bit. We had our gummy fish and ginger beer in which I thought it might be nice to cook it.  I also scored a second hand nightie in the animal welfare shop for cold nights on the Nullarbor.  It is an old lady’s nightie, pale blue nylon with lace and long sleeves.  I like the thought of her looking down on me in the night and being pleased at her nightie still keeping someone warm  All in all a good day really.

Dreams and Damage

Last night I dreamt I put a lot of hair conditioner on my head for no reason.  Today I slipped on a hill on a bushwalk and ended head down at the base of a tree.  No real damage done except for a sprained wrist but my hair was absolutely full of little burrs - impossible to get out - until I covered my scalp with hair conditioner.  What does that mean I wonder.

Anyway we are in a place boringly called called Lakes Entrance which it is very wet but probably very beautiful when we go and look tomorow. Mind you I have a prejudice against lakes at the moment.  I had a lovely close encounter with stalagmites and stalagtites this morning before I fell down my hill  There was a shawl formation that looked like it had threads in it.  Apparently the steps of Australia House in London are made from black Buchan granite but they call it marble because it sounds  more affluent.

Both Grant and i are getting to be better vanwives.  I mentioned before that emptying the sullage cassette was a challenge.  Well we discovered a greater one when we put it back wrong. Nuff said.
Anyway lets see what tomorrow holds

Boydtown Blues

 We are in a lovely place, Boydtown which could have been the capital of New South Wales if Ben Boyd, entrepreneur extraordinaire, had had his way.  He ran properties, an offshore whaling outfit and had shares in the Pig and Whistle shipping line.  (It was called the Pig and Whistle because when the whistle blew to announce departure all the pigs squealed)  The line ran from Sydney to Melbourne until 1952 when roads were better.  It must have been such fun to live here then with whales in the bay and ships going back and forth.  Ben Boyd though ran into debt and tried a bit of blackbirding to get cheap labour for his farms.  He was very properly stopped by humanitarians and disappeared in the Solomon Islands, assumed murdered by the local inhabitants.

This is the first campsite where I feel totally content.  There is hardly anyone here.  I gathered wood and lit a fire last night even though the wood was wet. It blazed cooperatively and the smoke went straight up.  I sat in a canvas chair and had a gin.  The stars came out.  Some kookaburras cackled their evening prayers.  Grant was sitting in the van with the lights on.  “Come out, I said “It’s so lovely”  But he wouldn’t.  “We are different people” he said.  I guess so.  We shared my wood fired potatoes and he began to get the tacos ready.

Van life

We have been on the road for three days now.  It should have been four but when we got to Durras it was bucketting down and dark and murky and our spirits failed within us so we lit a fire and waited a day.  Sailors need a fair wind we said to ourselves and so do we.
Our first stop was Bermagui in a place called Walaga Lake.  I have discovered that I don't like lakes.  They get me down - so flat and passive- specially this one with a single bored pelican on it.  But we had plenty of excitement in the van learning to crab past each other and do all the things you need to do.  If you are tubby campervanners like us you need to be very good friends.  At least.  we can get past each other so far.  We had to learn about hooking up to the lovely power which gives us warmth and light and pumps the water into the tap.
The nice bits of campervanning - waking and peeping out into the caravan park and seeing fishermen and other early risers, having breakfast in bed before dismantling it. The morning gossip about the other people in the park.  There are very few because it's nearly winter.  We are awed by a couple older than us who put up a tent in the rain.  We wonder about the solitary man with a dog.  The other nice time is the evening when we draw the curtains and make our dinner and break out the wine.  Bed is good too after we have assembled it.  It's just boards and cushions but I find it more comfortable than our bed at home.
One other lovely thing about travelling in your own shell is not having to go back.  In a car there is always the return journey.  With us now there is only forwards and it feels free.
The grimmer bits of caravanning - losing things so we have to crab past each other again and again on our little quests.  Emptying the toilet cassette which is not for the faint hearted.  I had a peculiar taboo feeling not unmixed with melancholy as though it were our ashes.  Finding that we hadn't got the right key to fill the water tank and Grant swore in his usual way and broke the lock.  But still it is all good.
Perhaps the oddest thing about travelling this way, and I know I will get over it, is the feeling that only our van is real and the world outside is a stage set.  The last time I experienced this was when we came to Australia from England by ship and went ashore at the ports.  It was fascinating but transient.  Like a slide show.  Real life began again when we set sail and were snuggled in our cabin. Anyway enough of all that.  We are in Eden today and have been to the Killer Whale Museum where I learnt that killer whales used to work with whalers to catch Baleen whales off the coast here and they all had names like dogs do-Tom, Cooper, Curly and soon.  Must go as the Sprout Cafe and its internet are closing in a minute.  talk soon. JJ

Getting going

Morning of departure and it is difficult to prise us and our bits and pieces of luggage out of the house and on to the road. Shall I take the vegemite? Shall I take my little loom in case of  boredom in the bush evenings?  Why am I uprooting myself at all?  Will I get even fatter eating too much as we drive our miles and miles? Will Grant and I madden each other?

Tonight we are having a goodbye meal before setting off in our campervan to go to Perth across the Nullarbor.  There is a certain amount of scepticism about whether the two of us will survive each other's company for five weeks. Let us see.