As a Kapunda kid I had many sausage rolls in the Barossa, but never with any ceremony.
I’m quite sure today’s the first I’ve eaten while sitting down. As a nod to the late Lizzie, I use a knife and fork.
Launching into my plate of tucker, I imagine myself sipping a 2016 Louis Jadot Gevrey-Chambertin while the wait staff hover about all subservient, and if tittering into their hands is any indicator clearly thrilled to be in my lordly presence.
In Nuriootpa for work, I’m at Linke’s on Murray Street. Once just a bakery now it’s a ‘bakehouse & pantry.’ Murray Street is wide and handsome, and it’s down the road from the petite Angas Park pub, or AP, and the cavernous Vine Inn, or Slime Inn as some used to call it with gentle mockery and ultimately, generous affection.
It’s Friday lunchtime.
There’re about six exceedingly effervescent staff behind the counter dealing out the pies and lamingtons and irresistibly fat, evil buns and they’re all a-gallop. At a nearby table, a visiting American is telling some locals about his travels. He sounds Californian. All retirees, they conduct their chat with a relaxed rhythm. Lunch can go for as long as they wish. How lucky?
I’ve a cappuccino. I won’t admit it to anyone, but this new enthusiasm is really about the chocolatey foam and not the beverage. Linke’s do a most tidy one.
Researching for our upcoming Italian trip I learn that it’s impolite to have a cappuccino after 11am. I’ll observe this cultural expectation as I don’t want to be scolded by a wildly gesticulating Milanese barista. Who does?
As the great English restaurant reviewer, Victor Lewis-Smith often (nearly) asked: what made me pleased about my sausage roll?
The size was right. Too small and there’s instant, irrecoverable disappointment. Too big and I’m suspicious because, I’ll bet, the fatal tastelessness is being compensated with bulk. This, of course, is a cynical marketing strategy to make you vapidly pleased, like a breathy Kardashian.
Pastry is tricky. Flaky and dry is bad, as is oiliness. Sausage rolls in contemporary, post-pandemic Australia is a tough gig. Linke’s are fine exponents of this delicate craft.
The first incision of the knife (or tooth) is telling. You don’t want the baked good to collapse at the introduction of pressure, like Port Power, but equally you don’t want the utensil to buckle in your mit at the resistance of a house brick masquerading as food.
This goes well too.
With an underlying hint of pepper in the mince the taste is also impressive. But not too much spice given our local palettes aren’t accustomed to unexpected confrontation, especially in the conservative context of a bakery set in a German-settled wine region.
It’d been most tasty.
When I was a boy, this town was hostile, largely because of the football rivalry and I was tainted. Home of the Nuriootpa Tigers, it’s now more kittenish. It’s a gentle and welcoming place.
Later, I drive around the town oval, and through the surrounding caravan park. Across the decades this has been a vivid, telling location. My memories flicker in sepia, and then in colour.
Sizeable sets of late-March waves roll in and it’s chilly when the first of these curling walls topples against our legs. The weekend straightens out in front of us. Max and I quickly tolerate the cold but then a rip drags us along the coast. I’m alarmed.
Max says, ‘We’re going north up the beach, aren’t we?’
‘Yes, we are, that’s right Buddy,’ I reply. ‘You’ve got a good sense of direction.’
‘I just sort of knew which way it was.’
Drying off on the dazzlingly white sand, we then set off towards the famed jetty ruins. I wonder how long until these are finally claimed by the wind, the sand and the water.
On the cusp of his thirteenth birthday, I remind Max that we were last by these wooden relics with his brother Alex. It was a few years’ ago on our way back from a Victor Harbor holiday. He recollects.
Plucking our way beneath the chalky cliffs, across the rocks and through the seaweed, we delve into our past. There’s talk of Bear Grylls. We know his documentaries well, used to discuss the narrative formula. Every Tuesday we’d watch one and have a home-barbequed burger.
I feel a pang.
‘Alex likes the ones set in the snow and ice, but I prefer those in jungles,’ Max says.
I propose, ‘Maybe we should watch some again, you know, for old times’ sake?’
Our weekend is about offerings and gentle explorations of our past, and our futures. As suggested by Claire, it’s a rite of passage, and I want Max to feel relaxed and loved. So far, Year 8 has been rough. I’m worried but hope together we can command our boat through the storm.
At the headland we turn around.
*
In the Aldinga pub, we’re perched at a tall table on high stools. It’s teeming with families, but we’re cocooned in a corner. In tribute to Bear we have burgers. A significant occasion, it washes over me like rain.
Back at our apartment we chat in the Balinese hut, all bamboo and blonde light. Max is invested and appreciative. The sky is smeared with the white dashes of screeching cockatoos. The sun’s now sinking, and it’s been a terrific afternoon. I’m thrilled.
My world shrinks to Max while I again try to open up his like a flower, encourage him to see the adult opportunities for travel, for work, for life. It’s both a privilege and a fearsome burden.
*
Sunday morning and we drive onto the wide, flat beach at Silver Sands. A sign demands our speed must be at walking pace and this suits me. I ease down our windows, let in the salty breeze. Invite in the quietening, deep sea.
There’s many joggers and dogs. Cars are sprinkled along the beach. I pull up and turn off the engine. We talk of New York, Paris, Salt Lake City and basketball. Max loves the NBA. Speaks the language fluently. He asks me for my all-time top 5 basketballers.
‘Michael Jordan.’ I think back and rattle them off. ‘Larry Bird. Kareem Abdul- Jabbar. Magic Johnson. Dr. J.’
‘Dr. J,’ Max repeats. He smiles. I do too.
This extends to a moment, a sharing, and we both silently acknowledge the cool of his name. I remember him from when I was Max’s age. A keen student of basketball history, he knows him too. Julius ‘Dr. J’ Erving, was a star for Philadelphia in the 70’s and 80’s.
It’s just a name, but it hangs warmly in the beachy air, and we connect.
*
Within the weekend the heavens present as a comforting character in our story. The gentle blue atmosphere of late summer affirms, and like a wise old priest, encourages our conversations. The beaches, the dark-green vineyards, the twinkling ocean, all seem to be attending to our confessionals.
Packing the car, I’m suddenly awash in a tumble of loss, fear, and happiness. I pause and take a slow breath. Aldinga has been an escape while also a glimpse into the next decade.
Moments ago you were a little kid. And before we realise what’s happened you’ll be an adult. In all your strapping, grinning, capable glory.
Working, studying, voting. Driving. Oh, no. Not driving!
Among the impressive parts of your life are you running to and along the beach and going to the gym (not so much the habitual pie beforehand though). I admire the discipline you show in these regular commitments and look forward to you joining me at the Patawalonga River parkrun soon on a Saturday morning.
I’m pleased that you had a great time at the Heaps Good music festival at Wayville (Peggy Gou your standout). Already music seems as if it’ll be your lifelong friend. One day you, or maybe even we, might get to Coachella or Glastonbury. This would be sensational. Imagine if we saw Radiohead there? I like that you often start a music conversation with me by saying things like
‘What’s your favourite Tame Impala album?’ (we know it’s Innerspeaker)
or
‘Do you know there might be a new Frank Ocean record this year?’
or
What’s the best concert you’ve ever been to? (for me it’s Tame Impala, Vampire Weekend, The Wiggles, in this order)
Of course, I especially like how this demonstrates critical thinking and textual appreciation. And you’re not even being assessed! It’s just what you like to do.
I also enjoy our chats about film and how you can discuss the similarities and differences between 2001: A Space Odyssey (featuring cinema’s greatest villain in in the computer HAL 9000) and Interstellar. These skills and language will carry you far in senior school and beyond. Make the most of them.
Our first season as Strikers members was fun, even the NYE game which we lost narrowly. I hope our new favourite cricketer, Matt Short, stays with us next year. Let’s not think about the looming retirement of your best-loved ever player: Peter Siddle!
So, now you’re a SACE student (for one subject) and this shows us how quickly time is rushing by. School will be done in a blink so slow down, breathe deeply and look around. Take time to appreciate what’s happening. Just this morning I read some great advice for you and all of us:
be kind to your heart.
It’ll be enjoyable, exciting, boring and bewildering but enjoy being fifteen.
Always keep in mind the following exchange in Jaws between Quint, the captain of the Orca, and Mr Hooper, the oceanographer, when on the bow of the boat they stood awestruck as Bruce (the name given to the mechanical shark by Spielberg and the film crew) glided past with his impossibly ute-like bulk and prehistoric menace,
‘That’s a twenty-footer.’
Quint replies in a low, authoritative voice, ‘Twenty-five.’
So, today seven of us, who have deep connections to Kapunda, visited the pub for lunch.
Here’s the answers to the quiz. The winner was Mrs. G. Cross of Gepps Cross.
Seven. Attendees were Crackshot, Swanny, Fats, Lukey, Woodsy, Stef, Mickey.
Yes, lunch began at 12.30.
No, incorrect. Everyone in attendance ordered a schnitzel.
False. Nobody ordered the Diane sauce.
No, incorrect. Everyone ordered salad with their meal despite the ‘no salad, extra chips option.’
True. Apparently, Fats ate most of his salad to the surprise of not just his lunchmates but all in the pub.
Three minutes. A new record time. That’s how long it took to disparage another Kapunda chap who wasn’t at the lunch but should have been. Sorry, Whitey.
Inexcusably home on his couch. See Question 7.
A goat. Lukey was elsewhere.
Four. The number of former and current Kapunda publicans mentioned over lunch. For bonus points in order these were: Nugget (Clare Castle Hotel), Puffa (Prince of Wales), Alan Meaney (Prince of Wales) and Unknown Queenslanders (Prince of Wales).
Four. Number of lunch attendees eager to play for Kapunda Cricket Club in the new year. This was announced after two beers and part way through the schnitzels.
One. Number of lunch attendees who will likely play for Kapunda Cricket Club in the new year (Woodsy: current A5’s captain).
Three. Number of attendees who went to the recent Adelaide Test.
Six. Number of second inning South African Test wickets to fall during our lunch.
One. Australian Test victories witnessed.
None. Number of D. Warner fans in attendance at lunch.
Three. Nostalgic and somewhat wistful mentions of cricket at Adelaide Oval during the 1980’s.
Eight.
One. Discussion of Greenock Schlungers (for those following at home this is the affectionate name for their local cricketers and not a German smallgood).
None. Bikies spotted. Whew. If you don’t count avid amateur motorcyclists Fats and Swanny.
72.7 kilometres. Distance from Gepps Cross Alehouse to Kapunda.
One. Beers needed for trip from Gepps Cross Alehouse to Kapunda.
14.7 kilometres. Distance from Greenock to Kapunda.
Two. Beers needed from Greenock to Kapunda.
Three. Number of attendees who drove up the river yesterday to look at the flood.
A goat. Schnitzels are incapable of deliberate physical movement.
So you’ve now had a year back together at the same school. I was excited about how you’d go and hopeful that you’d look after each other as needed. I’m confident you’ll remain protective of each other.
I know it’s sometimes boring but am glad that most days you both head off to school willingly, and once there, generally try your hardest. Of course, I’m impressed that you seem to enjoy and do well in English! Reading and writing are, as I keep telling you, the keys to every subject. You are fine users of language. I’m also pleased by your achievements in Company Bright Alex and by yours in HASS, Max.
In addition to this I’m thrilled that you show excellent humour, and this great skill applies to school, home and life in general. You also understand the power of story.
I’ve been rapt by your approach to your new job at Caruso’s Alex. Thriving in part-time work is important and gives you many wonderful opportunities and life skills. I’m sure you’ll also get a job when you’re able Max, and will find it of huge personal benefit. I look forward to this too. What if you got a job at Caruso’s too?
Another year highpoint was our Melbourne adventure. I enjoyed exploring the city with you and going to the footy. I also look forward to our New Year trip, this time to Victor, and swimming, playing beach cricket and American football. We must decide on a Lake Lap equivalent for each afternoon around 5pm. It’s a vital tradition!
I’m happy how both of you show commitment to exercise. Hoops and biking are your passions Max and it pleases me when I say, ‘How about you go down to the school and play basketball’ and you usually accept the challenge, and do it!
Alex, I’m delighted with your regular sessions at the gym. I’m glad we made this happen for you. I was pleased too, when you went for a run to the beach and back before school earlier this week. I hope you’ll both continue to appreciate that Glenelg North and the beach are a wonderful place to live. Another highlight of our year has been the Onkaparinga hikes, which are great as they give us a chance to enjoy nature too.
I’m happy that we’re going to the Strikers this season and hopefully, we’ll be regulars in the members at Adelaide Oval for a long time! As you demonstrated at the first match, one of the attractions of watching cricket is the chance it offers to have good conversations, and I liked how you both chatted the other night about all sorts of stuff like the NBA and school.
So, well done on your years and I’m proud of your achievements. I’m excited to see what 2023 brings for you both.
Chicago to New York is a lengthy drive and mere minutes in Harry grabs his grapes, eats one, and with alarming vigour, spits the seed out of Sally’s car window.
Only problem: the window’s up.
Leaving the glass splattered in grape-spit, Harry isn’t bothered. He continues to eat and expectorate like a hunter attempting to fell a beast with a blow-dart. The sound design of this is geared to maximise our irritation and unlike many films set in NYC When Harry Met Sally rarely looks overly sumptuous and alluring. It’s really a series of theatrical conversations.
Prior to the grape-eating episode as Harry and his girlfriend exchange their sloppy farewells, Sally honks her car horn to tell him she’s eager to leave. This shows us she’s also a little cantankerous and that the central conflict’s going to be tantalising. Knowing the conclusion, this awkward start heightens our curiosity.
How will the romance between Harry and Sally unfold?
Each is flawed, but charismatic and after a decade of brief, seemingly inconsequential encounters, their friendship finally blossoms.
And what a tremendous friendship it is.
*
Central to the film’s celebrated status is the use of extracts from interviews with older Italian couples. Inspired by actual conversations, the screenwriter Nora Ephron crafted these six scenes so they’re earnest, funny, and emblematic of enduring love.
MAN: I was sitting with my friend Arthur Cornrom in a restaurant. It was a cafeteria and this beautiful girl walked in and I turned to Arthur and I said, “Arthur, you see that girl? I’m going to marry her, and two weeks later we were married and it’s over fifty years later and we are still married.
These segments Illuminate our perceptions of Harry and Sally and function collectively as both a prologue to their love story, but also a euphoric epilogue. They help to enlist our hope. We want our central characters to tell a similar story.
*
Playing Pictionary on a Saturday evening years ago with friends (including my now wife, Claire) and one pair was trying to identify a grumpy-animal blob. Of course the game’s dark goal is to cruelly enjoy the other participants’ frustrations. Their attempts went like this:
Koala! Koala!
Partner shakes head. Waves pencil at ambiguous drawing.
Sad animal! Sad animal!
Partner again shakes head. Stabs at picture which is now representative of violence towards the partner.
Bear! Bear! Frown bear!
Frown bear?
Decades on, we still talk about frown bear. We’ve all known a frown bear. When Harry Met Sally is also a celebration of friendship, and an illustrative moment is the Pictionary episode-
Harry: Rosemary’s Baby’s mouth! Won’t you come home Bill baby!
Woman: Babababy…kiss the baby!
Harry: Melancholy baby’s mouth!
Jess: Baba…baby fish mouth, baby fish mouth!
The deft, heartening bond between Harry and Jess is a counterpoint to the pronounced pessimism that Harry often shows Sally. During a football game the two men talk unreservedly. Meanwhile, a Mexican wave circles the stadium and their mindless participation in it as Harry delves into his marital woes is comical and poignant. He speaks of his estranged wife
Harry: “I don’t know if I’ve ever loved you.”
Jess: Ooo that’s harsh.
(They partake in the Mexican wave)
Jess: You don’t bounce back from that right away.
Harry: Thanks Jess.
*
A tightly crafted monologue is always a cinematic treat, and having arrived at his epiphany, Harry runs across Manhattan (there’s always someone running during the climax of a rom-com) and delivers this to Sally
I love that you get cold when it’s seventy-one degrees out. I love that it takes you an hour and a half to order a sandwich. I love that you get a little crinkle above your nose when you’re looking at me like I’m nuts. I love that after I spend a day with you I can still smell your perfume on my clothes, and I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night. And it’s not because I’m lonely, and it’s not because it’s New Year’s Eve. I came here tonight because when you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of the life to start as soon as possible.
Harry’s speech has an appealing rhythm and the repetition of key ideas like love and you add to its enveloping intimacy. A joyous soliloquy, ‘and I love that you are the last person I want to talk to before I go to sleep at night’ is a great, starry-eyed desire that holds very true for me.
*
So, before Christmas devours the calendar, Claire and I enjoy an early December tradition, when on a Sunday night with wine and chocolate, we arrive in the kind-hearted, affirming world of When Harry Met Sally.
Obviously, professional basketball appeals to teenage boys.
Ridiculously over-sized men doing ridiculously physical things with a ball and to each other. This all happens on a ridiculously under-sized court which appears to be the dimensions of a suburban shower cubicle.
How could this not appeal?
When I was seventeen some mates and I were all obsessed with basketball and more particularly the NBA, the professional American competition.
A match was televised on Sunday mornings and we’d all watch and discuss it that afternoon and at school during the week. It was my first real experience with sport that wasn’t Australian. Magic Johnson, Moses Malone, Larry Bird, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Julius ‘Dr. J’ Erving were the big names and being adolescent I was seduced by their skill and their seemingly exotic names.
The teams and their locations were also mesmerising: Boston and the Celtics, Philadelphia and the 76ers, and Los Angeles and the Lakers. Given their rivalry, LA and Boston games were always the highlight.
So, I’m pleased and entirely unsurprised that Max, now gangly and twelve and curious about his expanding world, is besotted by the NBA. In his room he has about six basketballs, all arranged at the foot of his bed in a brown-orange pyramid. If he’s not playing the game during or after school, he’s in his room watching it online or talking about it to his brother Alex or me.
He loves the Brooklyn Nets.
With their New York City hipster-borough aesthetic this is probably the team I’d support if I were his age. Indigenous star Patty Mills plays for them as do some of Max’s favourites in Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving. Australian export Ben Simmons is also on the roster but is currently spending much time on the bench, fouling out frequently.
Brooklyn’s a bit far to go during term time so I offered to take Max to the Adelaide 36ers and New Zealand Breakers match. He accepted.
It was my first time at a professional basketball match too. I’d been to footy, soccer, rugby league, golf, and cricket but not the hoops.
It was great.
We sat midcourt (not far from where Alex and I were at the Tame Impala concert a few nights’ previous) and it was engrossing, ridiculous fun. In his attempts to encourage our ownership, the courtside announcer often insisted, ‘Your Sixers.’ Max and I spoke of the implied ownership in the second person pronoun, ‘your.’ He gets it. As always, we’re being sold stuff.
Cricket’s Big Bash League has borrowed extensively from basketball’s entertainment formula. Merciless noise, music, lights, quick gimmicks and silly crowd participation. The curmudgeon in me tried to resist but couldn’t. It was harmless, sugary distraction.
And why not on a Friday night?
Max commentated throughout. He has the language and the technical insight. His vocabulary even seemed taken from Brooklyn with its streetwise, vaguely combative terminology.
An odd rite then occurred. Whenever the Breakers would earn shots from the free-throw line a mysterious ritual took place. Resulting, I imagine, from a weird sponsorship deal, the kids in the crowd began chanting.
‘Hungry Jacks! Hungry Jacks!’
Now, I wasn’t sure if hearing this was supposed to inspire or distract or scare the opponents with the thought that they might be force-fed a whopper, or, heaven forbid, a yumbo?
‘Hungry Jacks! Hungry Jacks!’
Maybe, I wondered, if they missed, the kid who yelled loudest would receive their (meagre) body weight in cheeseburgers or Baconators? This, of course, would likely condemn them to a life without any hope of being a professional basketballer.
But still they chanted.
Half-time at the merchandise stall I offered Max a hat or singlet but at his request bought him yet another basketball. Can you have too many? I’m probably guilty of having an excess of checked shirts in my wardrobe.
Using his surname as inspiration we adopted Craig Randall as a home team favourite while Antonius Cleveland also found our affection. The seven-foot Korean centre, Kai Sotto, impressed us with his dunking and gentle athleticism.
Despite the fuzzy etymology of The Breakers, they whopped us by thirty points. We turned the ball over too often and our Kiwi competitors made the most of their three-pointers, but it mattered little to us.
On our way home Max talked excitedly. I reckon we both won.
I remember Eringa; majestic, homely, inspirational Eringa; our Eringa.
I remember English in the library and Geography in a bedroom and History in the maids’ chambers and Ag with Mr. Stephen Booth in a cellar.
I remember individual school photos in the foyer and given we were teenagers, everybody, absolutely everybody looked ghastly because we had inescapably horrific haircuts.
I remember the lone palm tree on the front lawn by the basketball court and thinking how glamorous and evocative it was of a tropical paradise.
I remember not getting out much as a kid.
Hello, I’m Michael Randall and I’m proud to have attended Kapunda High School from which I matriculated in 1983.
I remember there was no canteen and students dashed after the Masters’ bakery lunch van by the changerooms and before it screeched to a halt fought like crows on a carcass to grab the rear door handles and be first in line.
I remember then wondering what was the greater danger for these van chasers: getting run over, or devouring two pies with sauce, a coke, and a Kitchener bun?
I remember the Year 9 bushwalking camp which finished with two nights at the Pines but eating all of my scroggin before we left the school gates. Okay, just the chocolate. Thanks Mum.
I remember each term finishing with a social at the Parish Hall on Crase Street where we played spin the bottle, heard ‘Video Killed the Radio Star’ way too often, did the Military Two-Step to ‘Eight Days a Week’ by the Beatles, and always, always had the last dance to ‘Hotel California.’ Indeed, as the Eagles said, you can check out of Kapunda High any time you like, but you can never leave.
I remember in Year 12 our infinitely lovely English teacher Mrs Mary Schultz chaperoning us through the novels of John Steinbeck and the poetry of GMH – no, not An Ode to a Clapped-Out Commodore – but the Jesuit priest and poet Gerard Manly Hopkins.
I remember an annual staff versus students footy match when in the middle of a pack a sharp yet widely noticed punch landed on a student’s jaw. Of course, the nameless umpire – who could have been a Ryan – yelled an ironic, ‘Play on!’ If a tribunal now met, the defendant might be allowed to lace up his boots in 2025, decades after his retirement from teaching.
I remember our Year 11 Careers trip and staying at the Goodwood Orphanage. At 4am one morning under Mr. Paul McCarthy’s watchful eye we went to the East End Markets to learn about zucchinis. After, it was time for breakfast. Being led through the front bar of the Producers Hotel towards the dining room we saw all sorts of supernatural faces who either hadn’t quite left the previous night or who’d caught the early bus in to make a start on their dawn Hock. But we’d gone on an official school excursion to the pub! Before sunrise! How great was this?
I remember innovations like vertical homegroups in which Years 8, 9, 10 and 11 were banded together as a happy family or depending on the students, like Yatala inmates.
I remember the PE teacher Mr. Geoff Schell leading the daily fitness revolution starring the Health Hustle which means if I now hear ‘Bad, Bad Leroy Brown’ or Toni Basil’s ‘Mickey’ I involuntarily slide on a pair of Adidas Mexico shorts and launch into some dreadfully uncoordinated star jumps. Of course, this is especially tricky if I’m driving.
I remember the compulsory wearing of a tie and needing to be careful with it in Tech Studies and over the stove in Home Ec. so you didn’t end up in hospital or worse: on the front page of both the Herald and the Leader, doubtless with your name misspelt in exotic and embarrassing ways.
I remember the Moreton Bay Figs by the oval which remain among my favourite trees.
I remember the yearly tradition of Charities Week when classes were suspended, and it was all about fun and fund-raising with go-carts on the tennis court and the Animal House-inspired Toga Tavern and emerging all dusty and dirty of face from the Ghost Tunnel which ran under Eringa and so, so many jars of guess the number of jellybeans.
I remember swimming carnivals and the awesome sight of our History teacher Mr. Michael Krips annihilating everybody in the staff and students race by doing a length of the pool in about six relaxed but massive strokes of freestyle.
I remember at the end of the day getting a ride to the primary school on Rexy Draper’s Hamilton bus to save me a longer walk home.
I remember the anticipation for school magazines and getting these signed during the last week of the year by classmates and teachers. Here’s an extract from the 1981 edition: Kapunda competed in Division 2 of the Interschool Swimming competition against Eudunda and Burra. Kapunda was not very successful at all. The Juniors and Seniors came third. We only had two first places for the night, Leanne Noack in butterfly and backstroke. On behalf of everyone here, thank you Leanne.
I remember a Freeling student baking a cake in Home Ec and being told by Mrs. Wendy Trinne that he’d forgotten to include an egg, so what did our pupil do? He flung down the oven door and just on top of the nearly done sponge cracked open one large bum nut.
I remember staff and students cricket matches, when batting at the Gundry’s Hill end, the occasion would finally arrive, and a certain teacher would flick it off middle stump, over the spotty fielders, over the boundary, over the school fence, over West Terrace, over the dusty footpath, over a neighbour’s front yard, and onto the roof of a white-washed cottage. Like a depth charge in a submarine movie. We all waited for it. He always delivered.
I remember PE classes doing archery on the oval.
I remember sitting in the Art Room and the roof rattling with arrows from a PE class doing archery on the oval.
I remember having a lunchtime disagreement on the croquet lawn with a Year 12 classmate when at the height of our quarrel, to her delight and my dismay, onto the slender shoulder of my grey Midford school shirt a passing bird dropped a warm, yoghurt-like blob.
I remember losing that argument to my dear friend Trisha Helbers.
But I remember my joy in April of last year when on that very same croquet lawn I married my wife Claire.
I remember being scared on my first day in Year 8 and in Year 12 being sad on my last.
I remember hearing a teacher interviewed on the radio years ago and the announcer saying thank you because you create lives.
And I remember thinking how very true this is for those of us fortunate enough to attend Kapunda High School.
Setting off in Kurralta Park, six kilometres from the Colley Reserve rotunda gave me ample opportunity to dwell on my joyous present and varied and wide past.
Ambling towards Glenelg over the following 36 minutes I did just that.
I was paid up for my first City Bay fun run since 1994, and this alone represented a triumph. Although I was only entered in the six-kilometre event and not the full twelve I was keen to participate and prove things to myself. But a week out I suffered an avulsion fracture in my foot which is when a flake of bone attached to a ligament is pulled away from the joint.
Ouch.
I was disappointed and that this happened at our Port Elliot townhouse on my annual writing retreat dampened the celebratory mood. Slipping on the bottom rung of the darkened staircase following three generous glasses of shiraz, I knew I should’ve gone the merlot.
Shiraz can be shameless.
So, ever supportive and kind, Claire suggested I do the City Bay fun run when I’d recovered. Five weeks later, this morning at 11.50 by Anzac Highway, and across from Australia’s best K Mart (no, really) my lovely wife said, ‘3, 2, 1, go!’
Like Forrest Gump, I was RUNNING! It was no leisurely jog to the beach and back. It was my own private event with the attendant excitement and exhilarating occasion.
Heading down the Anzac Highway footpath past the homes and shops and pubs I felt deep gratitude (especially when I didn’t go in the execrable Highway Inn). I wondered about the groups of lads I passed ambling down to the Morphettville racecourse. An Indian man was then easing local council how to vote pamphlets into letterboxes outside a big block of cream units. He cheerfully ignored me.
A biker roared through the traffic, his chopper adorned with ghastly yet tremendous wood-panelling, and with his stereo blasting. Speakers installed on motorbikes is always noteworthy and just a little bit funny. I couldn’t identify the music due to the car noise but the funky, yet laconic bass suggested Talking Heads. Puffing along, I inwardly nodded approval.
I was making pretty good time. In 1994 during my last City Bay, when I was non-grey and non-chubby, I had on the Swatch watch I’d bought duty-free on the way to New Zealand’s Contiki Tour the previous summer. Being on the youthful side of thirty and boosted by adrenalin I ran my first six kilometres in 24 minutes! In 2022, I knew this was beyond me however I remembered to be kind to myself. As the Dalai Lama says, ‘Kindness is my religion.’ He knows a few things, our Dalai.
Today my pace was more leisurely, but I had much more for which to be grateful. There was a cooling breeze and cloudy sky as friendly company. Just by the racecourse I felt a wave of nostalgia for the faded, sometimes vexed previous decades and renewed appreciation for where I was at this exact moment.
Indeed, I have the three ingredients for happiness: something to do, something to look forward to, and most vitally, someone to love. Arriving at the next intersection I again got the run of the lights and scampering across (this might be a generous description) was now in Glenelg East.
It was going well, and my sense of joy was percolating nicely. He’s deeply flawed but as American Beauty‘s Lester Burnham says when he’s on the verge of physical reinvention: ‘But you know what? It’s never too late to get it back.’
With the grass of Colley Terrace beneath my Brooks running shoes I peered anxiously ahead at the rotunda. It appeared deserted and my bespoke City Bay fun run was nearly done.
All about me people were easing into their Saturday afternoons by the beach and for the first time in decades I’d easily run a reasonable distance. I hoped this would be a symbol of capacity, of happy future surprise and of the rich possibilities of life, well-contemplated and favourably executed.
My run complete I effected the rotunda stairs (mercifully this time without incident) and Claire was waving some fizzing sparklers, just for me.
As you know we love rituals such as attending the SANFL grand final, hiking in the Onkaparinga National Park, and when on our annual trip to Barmera completing a late-afternoon lap of Lake Bonney. Rituals celebrate our past and give excitement and shape to our future.
But among these there’s been Wednesday nights watching Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell.
I had long enjoyed it and reckon you were about ten when you first joined me on the lounge. As one of the show’s characters (probably played by Tosh Greenslade in a wig and glasses) may have said, ‘Shaun, you’re never too young (not even at fourteen like you) to be introduced to searing political satire and viciously sharp comedic writing and acting in this bumbling, endlessly self-parodying nation of ours.’
I loved how you’d laugh about the characters who’d feature in that week’s episode. You’d often do your own impersonation of them, such as the Daily Telegraph’s sub-editor Chris Lorax with his pathetic defence of his ‘lamentable puns’ when he feebly says, ‘It’s just a bit of fun’ or at the close of a sketch as the fantastic Sir Bobo Gargle would holler, ‘Release the Kraken!’ or the traffic reporter in the helicopter would say, ‘I’m Lois Price for Mad As Hell.’
All of this you got which pleases me hugely. I think a sense of humour and keen awareness of human frailty are vital and already you have these in ample proportion. I loved how we’d laugh at the same jokes, at the same absurdities such as Darius Horsham, chomping on his cigar and scalding the host by saying, ‘Shaun, don’t be an economic girly-man.’
In anticipating the next episode you’d wonder aloud if there’d be another caricature of a BBC nature documentary such as the Polyamorous Self Pleasuring Gastropods of Bolivia or this one-
We’d also look forward to the increasingly surreal and self-referential spoof of Enid Swink. Your appreciation of the ridiculous was obvious when we’d laugh uncontrollably as the characters would attack each other with the lightening that’d come from out of their fingers. Among our favourite moments was Swink: Origin with all that the title alone says about the shamelessness of the rubbish that Hollywood is trying to sell us.
But you’re alert to this.
It’s an indicator of how significant Mad As Hell is for us that watching the news or driving around and hearing mention of the current Opposition Leader you’d immediately go into character of the spokesperson Brion Pegmatite and mutter the name, ‘Peter’ in that sneering, villainous way that was his Voldemort-like signature. He and the man that inspired him really do find it difficult to show empathy, compassion, or joy.
So, beyond the thirty minutes of mutual fun this provided I can tell that the show has given you much as a thinker and writer, an emerging citizen, and a talented drama student. It’s been a joy to share it with you.
It’s sad that it’s finished but as we know one of Micallef’s exquisite skills is his sense of timing and this is probably another example.
I know there’ll be more rituals to come for us, and I look forward to seeing what these might be.
Love Dad
Thanks to the ABC for both the show and these images.
It’s a snaking and demanding ribbon of tar from Glenelg to Goolwa along and across the Hills and between the vines until the great arc of the Southern Ocean appears like a pale blue relief.
It was supposed to pour down but instead just spat with appalled apathy on my Korean car’s bonnet. I’ve the best part of three days overlooking Knight’s Beach to write and think and read for which I’m enormously grateful.
But I need to open my holiday with a sausage roll, as one should.
My now annual writing retreat is largely predicated on nostalgia and other investigations of the past so exiting the Southern Expressway and ignoring the radio I push in a CD on my hugely old-school car stereo.
The Eagles accompany me on my trip down to the gushing, green Fleurieu. Although my tiny brain is prejudiced happily to the past, I reckon they stand up well. It’d be easy to mock them as symbols of 70’s American excess but the songs and the musicianship are peerless. Eagles Live was enormous in my youth, and it might’ve had the be-jesus overdubbed out of it, but ‘Seven Bridges Road’ and its climbing harmonies still arrest me.
The Goolwa Bakery is located on a side street, and I was instantly smitten by the cosy interior. Some modern bakeries tend towards supermarket dimensions, to their consequent detriment. The atmosphere was also buoyed by a fishbowl in TV, sitting on a table near the door, as it always is in a rural baked goods emporium.
Ordering my $5 sausage roll my thoughts meandered towards Pulp Fiction’s Mia Wallace and her famous $5 shake, a speciality at Jack Rabbit Slim’s. Initially expressing disbelief Vincent Vega then takes a socially inappropriate sip and exclaims that it’s a ‘pretty expletive good milkshake!’
And so it was with my sausage roll.
Claiming a chair on the early afternoon footpath and withdrawing (careful now) the lunch from its brown bag it appeared as a freshly busted hunk of axe handle in both girth and approximation.
My first bite met with peppery whiffs and pleasantry. There was flaky, tasty pastry and it wasn’t sweaty which the medically alert among you will know is the biggest killer of over 55’s in this antipodean country.
Looking about my environs I note that the bakery shares premises with the Goolwa Health Centre and hope that all the kiddies reading now grasp the attendant irony.
The woman serving the baked grub was effervescent if somewhat resigned; I wondered about her life but not for long.
Munching on I was acutely aware of my enormous privilege as I was soon to drive to my beach accommodation. I’d be on a balcony with long, glorious hours in front of me.
Five quick minutes later I’d finished my lunch, scanned the surroundings, and pointed my motor west.
The Goolwa Bakery is over a century old. They know how to craft a sausage roll.
I’m unsure but they might even serve them (sauce if required) with ‘pink champagne on ice’ in the Hotel California.
Bustling through the kitchen I’m delighted to hear music as the Billy Joel record would’ve finished twenty minutes ago when I was at the beach.
I’m instantly elated that you’ve put another album on the turntable. I want it to be your record player too. I want it to be a shared hobby. Music is such a rich part of our relationship, and with this simple, affirming act, you just composed another song.
Arriving on the patio is a scene from our movie and this one is shot from my point of view. The record is Supertramp’s Breakfast in America and I know you like them too. They are evocative of our teenage years. All the promise and the torture.
There’s been a whirl of activity with plants and prunings and dead stuff scattered on the lawn in piles. This is movingly symbolic. It’s our home and you’re invested. I love that this has happened while I’ve been elsewhere, during our mid-afternoon.
This is a quiet triumph. A minor, suburban miracle.
Then, of course, there’s you.
In your lovely hair, all tied in a ponytail, there’s bits of twigs and leaves. You’re in a simple, checked shirt and your (now) muddy jeans. You’re wearing black gardening gloves, and these are at once stylish and practical. The camera trails us around while overhead the festive clouds skip by. The water feature percolates away.
With their galloping piano and saxophone and catchiness Supertramp continues, at volume of course. You give me a tour of your horticultural achievements. This is boundlessly heartening and yet another big moment in our small, precious life.
And regularly during this episode you smile your smile. It’s so loving and pure and utterly perfect. I follow you about the garden across the lawn. Our anonymous space is now enchanted by care and devotion but mostly you.
This movie scene has been a magical, unforeseen gift.
Claire and I trudge through the soft sand of the beach and then nurse a coffee at the village green. How daggily cool when from the barista’s van bursts, ‘The Pina Colada Song?’ Of course, I’m not into yoga but may have half a brain.
We’re in Carrickalinga with old friends. It’s Saturday morning and our day reaches out with electric possibility.
Planned equally with science and enthusiasm, my run’s to the Forktree Brewery and back to our accommodation. It’s my daily four kilometres. But up a hill.
How tough can it be?
Round, emerald knolls watch over Carrickalinga and making my way up the road a herd of sheep encourages my ambling by bleating in charitable ways. Last night’s pizza is now unwelcome ballast.
On the outskirts of town, a council election poster urges participation in this democratic event. Texas-sized utes and rattling 4WDs pass and some swerve away from me in vehicular acknowledgement of my ascent. Or not wishing to bloody their gleaming bull bars.
There’s several twists and the road’s undulating. Accustomed to the flat esplanade of Glenelg North, my thighs protest this topographical change to their jogging routine.
Finally, the brown tourist sign I’ve been seeking for excruciating minutes:
Forktree Brewery.
Despite being presently incapable of having a beer, I’ve never been so pleased to arrive at a brewery.
I’m soaked. My ears popped on the way up and my legs are so convinced of an alpine elevation that they expect a few twirling snowflakes.
A woman and her dog survey the beer garden. We exchange a few only-one-of-us-is-in-a-brewery words. With her hound marching her tree-ward she asks, ‘Where have you run from?’
Still in the carpark and puffing I reply, ‘Our holiday house back down the hill.’
She replies, ‘Awesome! Great job!’ Her husband appears with two pints. She’s an American but they live on Kangaroo Island. They both take a sip.
‘How’s the beer?’
‘Pretty good,’ they nod.
‘Lovely,’ I say, ‘We’re heading to Myponga later. Might go to the Smiling Samoyed Brewery.’ They both offer a glowing critique.
The brewery’s 151 metres above sea level. This might seem numerically unimpressive but having extracted a personal toll each of those demanding centimetres now generates a handsome reward.
Hands on hips, I drink in the wide vista up and down the Fleurieu coast. Gentle, green ranges. Sprawling white homes hugging the shore. A seaweedy tan smears the shallows and then the gulf deepens into a marine blue.
Tumbling down the hill. It’s almost controlled falling. Again, the vehicles are generous, and the sheep are softly supportive. A couple rotund blokes nod at me from a front lawn.
The cotton wool clouds loom as if they’re daubed on a God-sized canvas and although it’s mid-winter these pledge imminent awakening. Spring could almost be ready to say, ‘Boo!’
Our double story digs swim into sight and wondering what’s happening inside with Claire, my friends, and the boys, their past thirty minutes is unveiled: toast, hairdryers, and teenagers still in bunks.
My fifty-second consecutive day of jogging four kilometres begins at our Valley Hotel apartment. I cut through the beers garden (note plural: who has just one beer?) and consider how often I’ve run to, but never away from a pub.
Tanunda’s Murray Street is Barossa vine-zero and already enjoying pedestrian traffic with tourists and locals shuffling in and out of the coffee shops and bakeries. A community market’s on and the sun catches the golden varnished pine of trucks and steamrollers and assorted wooden toys.
Scurrying along Bilyara Road I recall that Wolf Blass has a shiraz named Bilyara. Us Kapunda folk used to frequent his winery and I wonder if Claire and I should invest a nostalgic hour but given that the Barossa now hosts one hundred and fifty cellar doors perhaps we should keep our visits to novel vinous venues.
It’s downhill past the Tanunda Oval which is being widened to accommodate (hopefully) SANFL footy and first-class cricket. A second, smaller oval for the kids is under development although the skyline’s disarmingly clear because many ancient trees were felled for this progress.
It’s just after eight on the Queen’s Birthday holiday so it’s effectively Sunday. A ute rumbles past with a dog hanging out the window.
Glancing over towards the wicket area I remember a Colts cricket game when I was fielding at very short leg as in thundered my mate Rocket. Already scary quick, in a few brisk years he’d be selected to play Sheffield Shield. The only helmets within the postcode were, I suspect, on the bonces of a bikie gang as they made their philanthropical way towards the pub.
The Tanunda batsman and I were shaking in equal measure, but it was worse for him as with trembling mitts he was attempting to keep hold of some dreadfully narrow willow. As the Kookaburra collected his head the crack was awful, preternaturally percussive, and he dropped to the concrete pitch, a flannelled tangle. Deeply concerned (well, as concerned as boys become regarding matters of physical safety), we rushed to his splayed self, and knew he was fine when he announced weakly, ‘You bastards.’
Now on Langmeil Road and pushing towards my halfway mark I’m taken by the wide, tree-lined boulevard and its handsome homes.
It’s crisp and mercifully still as the ferocious front of the previous week has absconded. According to Mum and Dad it plonked nearly five inches at their place on the Greenock side of Nuriootpa.
Approaching the brashly-monikered and tucked-away cellar door Riesling Freak, I vow to visit prior to the first Test against the Windies given that cricket and white wine seasons conflate. As the gleaming folk of HR might say, some useful synergies may then be generated.
I pull up puffing at Langmeil Wines where my wife marked a significant birthday. We all then traipsed, with purpled glasses in hand, to Peter Lehmann’s and the now defunct Richmond Grove wineries.
But today we’ll explore the Barossa Valley Estates and David Franz cellar doors. Given the affection with which we know the earthy and personal contours of this valley, I’m hoping for both wistful memory and shared discovery.
Barossa Valley Estates
I turn back towards the town centre.
On Fechner Drive (highly Barossan nomenclature) there’s a single vine on an empty block. It’s still smeared with shrivelled black dots and I wonder what happens with its annual fruit yield. Birds, possums, furtive backyard vignerons?
Across the road is a lemon tree bursting with confident blobs, already tennis ball-sized and auditioning for Van Gogh’s yellow period. Then there’s a pastoral counterpoint: an olden stone barn with rusting implements scattered about with the entire mise en scène evoking the original German settlement.
I notice a succession of peppercorn trees and recall the one a nine iron from my childhood home, where under its secretive branches was an enchanted space of games and invention. These, I decide, are the trees of innocence while surging, aspirational gums are for adults.
Nicking through the Tanunda Oval I recollect a rare win in my first year of senior footy for the Bombers. I wonder at the pronounced south to north slope of the ground. As a kid this escaped me.
On the canteen wall, the chalk on the Magpie menu blackboard shows hotdogs are $5 and this seems about right. In the clubrooms under the grandstand, I assume mettwurst and port remain available for the stalwarts.
I skirt the white terrace benches by the southern goal and remember dark, wintry afternoons as a kid scampering around in my footy boots. These silent symbols have been there forever and are redolent of all that’s nurturing and treasured about long past Saturdays.
My fourth and final kilometre concludes as I burst back through the Valley Hotel’s beer garden.
Random granite blocks (and man) at Kaiserstuhl Conservation Park
We strolled in, exchanged greetings with mine hosts and were offered a beer. It was then that we learnt the nostalgic truth.
At the Greenock Brewers Chris and Lisa Higgins sell tremendous beers in bottles and on tap. And, most wonderfully, they can offer you a butcher of beer too.
In a world where the blind madness of upsized consumption has held us to ransom by making us believe we need more and bigger serves of everything from homes to cars to buckets of popcorn at the cinema, being served a beer in a 200ml glass is of great comfort and wistful joy.
Urban myth suggests the Newmarket Hotel in Adelaide first served a butcher of beer to workers from nearby cattle yards, and so the term entered the local vernacular.
Garden-fresh from lunch at the Greenock pub, Nick, Chrisso and I wandered through the shadows of Laucke’s flour mills having decided upon a quick visit and concluding refreshment.
I’m confident it was the first butcher I’d had this millennium. Most pubs no longer stock schooner or butcher glasses and therefore it’s a pint or you’re spitting feathers.
It was instantly the mid-1980s and I was being taught to pull a beer (along with old mate Davo) at the Kapunda Golf Club by Gus Higgins (who was Chris’s uncle). Suddenly all of us were far skinnier but had fatter hair. Allan Border was Australian cricket captain. There were Kingswoods parked outside too.
The Victorville Pale Ale is fiendishly easy to consume. It’s zesty and agreeable and sparkles with citrus notes. I also purchased a six pack for medical and research purposes. If it’d been an hour later, we might’ve dropped anchor and cancelled our evening plans and had a second butcher.
With this nostalgic tone set we spoke of our past, most notably Kapunda icon Skeeta and shared stories of his footy exploits and his drinking exploits and his drinking at footy exploits. Many of us associate Skeeta instantly with the Holden Torana, more particularly his being driven and then not being driven, largely as it frequently ended up in exotic places where a Torana shouldn’t be.
With the golden Barossa light bending across the brewery and through the windows we shared more stories and then it was time for Nick, Chrisso and I to point our non-Torana cars homewards.
I’d enjoyed the beer, and the company enormously. I couldn’t wait until the next time I’d drink a butcher.
mickeytales 