Our last day in Perth City was a bit dispiriting . Maybe it was just me but the place
seemed like a wealthy woman who
had gone to her wardrobe and put on the first clothes that touched her hands –
no style, no consideration of colour or age. Big was good however. She liked big. Huge glass office blocks dwarfed poor
little heritage buildings which had been painted nicely, but the colours made
them look like Disneyland imitations.
One had a mighty modern building with bold black and white stripes
behind it. Why on earth?
Nice things – a marvellous public transport system, free in
the inner city. A lovely precinct
dedicated to the arts with an art gallery that mixed aboriginal art with
western art and had some lovely Stanley Spencers on show.
Now that it is a week later I will lift a little of the veil I planned to draw over the terrible trip home. It wasn’t dignified. We had to stuff all our accumulated
things (Fleece, paintings, books, silly teacloths, jumpers etc.) into stripey
bags and then found they weren’t strong enough and so got huge plastic sacks
from the airport people and by the time we’d latticed them up with orange tape
they looked like bodies. Then the
explosives lady insisted on cutting holes for her instrument to check
them. It was all too much. In addition, the latent toothache I had
been having for the last few days flared into agony when the plane took
off. Only liberal quantities of
Nurophen washed down with whisky subdued it sufficiently to stop tears rolling
down my face. I don’t remember
getting home at all.
We are back in Sydney now and I have to say it has taken a
while to get used to living in a house again. It is nice but oh so complicated. So many possible spaces to sit down. There are clothes to
choose from, an oven to cook in. I
feel the panic of a tortoise out of its shell. The most unexpected discomfort is not being like a conjoined
twin any more. Grant and I got so
used to each other’s little ways and expectations. I’d always read my Kindle while he made breakfast because
there was not room for us both to be up.
I’d cunningly fold the bedding whilst still in bed and then transform the bed into a table for breakfast and he
would put the teapot and the toast rack on it with a flourish. We knew what we expected from each
other. Now we don’t see each other
for stretches together and I find myself wondering is he going to get the
washing in or is he expecting me to.
Where is he anyway and who’s doing the dinner? Grant says he’d go mad if he had to live in a van for ever
but I think I could be quite happy doing so.
I was on the bus coming back from the city yesterday
thinking how pretty Sydney was looking and vaguely listening to some French
people assertively talking French in
the front me rather as if they owned the bus. I was finding it hard to pick up much, when the old man by
my side leant towards me and said with a twinkly eye “Do you speak French? Are
you eavesdropping?” He had an
accent I didn’t recognize. “I am
from Slovakia” he said “and do you know one day I was sitting in the bus like
this and two girls were talking in my language behind me. One said to the other
“If I had a head like that I’d wear a hat” So I turned around and answered “What kind of hat should I
get – an Akubra maybe, or a beanie perhaps” And that girl went so white! Payback!”
I sometimes feel a bit like that girl when I write this
blog. I know who some of you
readers are, but there are a lot I don’t know, especially in Port Lincoln where
there is a puzzling spike in my readership. I hope I’m not getting things wrong
or being insensitive and there’s no payback waiting for me.
This journey,
for me, has not been like a typical holiday that fades into a dream as soon as
one gets home. It is still in my
blood. Like a pilgrimage it has
changed me from one sort of Australian - pommie migrant to a more authentic lover
of this place. I feel confident
that I belong here. I understand
why people go to Mecca or Lourdes now.
It is purifying to take to the road for a while – to step out of the
ever ascending spiral of days and nights and weeks and go linear – just head on
from place to place learning as you go and hearing peoples’ stories without
entering into them. And at the end
there is a sort of peace.
