Category Archives: people and places

0

To Alex, as your final day at school looms

|

Dearest Alex

A summary of your recent achievements includes your continuing excellence in Drama and, just as impressively, in all of your Year 12 subjects; the inspiring trajectory and resilience you’ve shown in your work at Pasta A Go-Go; and the abundance of positive relationships you cultivate. All wonderful — and of these, I’m truly proud.

But what I want to talk about lies deeper than the visible architecture of these accomplishments. I want to get to the heart of things.

Although capable of admirable assertiveness — you can be feisty on occasion as I well know — there’s a gentleness in you that’s noble and principled. And this connects to kindness, which I believe is the most important quality a person can possess and practise. Here we think of The Dalai Lama, who as the head of Tibetan Buddhism, reminds us that, ‘kindness is my religion.’

The first time I became aware of your gift for kindness — and how others saw it — was in Singapore. Do you remember that boy in your class called Mitt? I don’t think he was enrolled for long but his Mum told me more than once how very compassionate you were to him. You’d included him, looked out for him, and made easier the passage of his young, challenging life. I don’t know how any of this came to be but it gladdened me that your role in this appeared to be voluntary and offered unconditionally. I was delighted, and moved, to be the Dad of someone kind. I still am. Wherever they are, I expect his family still remembers you warmly.

I also admire your appetite for experiences and your receptiveness towards possibility. For me, a chief joy in going somewhere with you and Max is in witnessing your engagement and the subsequent meaning you then collect from travelling. Agreeably curious, you’re inclined towards an open-hearted life.

This was especially evident in Sydney on our coastal walk from Bondi to Coogee. Striding along, chatting with your brother, taking in that rugged sprawl of ocean and sky, clicking some photos — I loved being both a participant and witness to it. And how you do so in a good-natured way is, I hope, a predictor of a happy and fulfilling life.

Another favourite memory: the Lake Lap. I loved how quickly you turned our late afternoon drives around Lake Bonney into a ritual — and how you not only relished the anticipation and the loop itself, but also the talk that followed. You’ve always had the rare ability to find joy and connection in life’s simple rhythms.

Being a dad involves a lot of watching — scanning for all kinds of clues. Happily, in you, I’ve mostly seen encouraging ones.

Last March, I made you a spontaneous offer: let’s go to Adelaide Writers’ Week to hear my favourite writer, Richard Ford, and then drive down to Moana — swim, eat at a café, and later, back in our cabin, watch a Bond film. Of course, you accepted with your usual, wholehearted enthusiasm. You bought into this with immediate unreservedness and listened to the literary discussion with patience and real interest. This passage from The Sportswriter — one of Ford’s best — speaks to perspective, hopefulness, and curiosity

I read somewhere it is psychologically beneficial to stand near things greater and more powerful than you yourself, so as to dwarf yourself (and your piddlyass bothers) by comparison. To do so, the writer said, released the spirit from its everyday moorings, and accounted for why Montanans and Sherpas, who live near daunting mountains, aren’t much at complaining or nettlesome introspection. He was writing about better “uses” to be made of skyscrapers, and if you ask me the guy was right on the money. All alone now beside the humming train cars, I actually do feel my moorings slacken, and I will say it again, perhaps for the last time: there is mystery everywhere, even in a vulgar, urine-scented, suburban depot such as this. You have only to let yourself in for it. You can never know what’s coming next. Always there is the chance it will be — miraculous to say — something you want.  

I was delighted — you’ve always been someone who brings me frequent delight — when unprovoked, you announced that you’d like to go to this year’s Adelaide Writers’ Week to hear one of our idols:  Shaun Micallef. I was impressed that you’d investigated the programme and this showed a healthy disposition towards a cultured life and learning. It also showed me that your curiosity now moves under its own steam.

For a number of seasons watching Mad As Hell on Wednesday nights was our ritual. I loved how ready you were to laugh at it and appreciate its absurd satire. It was tremendous fun and I was thrilled by your quick sense of humour — a necessity as well as a reliable forecaster of future success. We’d roar at Sir Bobo Gargle (release the Kraken!), gasp at Draymella Burt, and laugh at the cigar-chomping Darius Horsham who’d always finish with, ‘Don’t be an economic girly-man.’ There was a quiet magic and symmetry in us meeting and obtaining autographs from both Ford and Micallef. I hope you and I can continue to attend Adelaide Writers’ Week.

This letter is also meant to reflect on ambition and integrity — and I know you have an abundance of both. They’ll serve you well in this life which needs them. I remember your first day at school in Singapore — the morning heat rising, the skyscrapers shimmering — when you climbed aboard that little bus bound for Orchard Road and the great unknown. Your journey had begun.

These brief years have vanished, your final school day looms, and you’re about to go into the world. In my quiet moments, I used to wonder about the future and how you would look, sound, and be as an adult. Now, suddenly, that future is here. You stand at its edge — optimistic, imaginative, kind. I know you’ll be all types of magnificent.

Off you go.

Love always,

Dad

2

Glenelg v Eagles — Pecker Park Ponderings

|

Woodville Oval is long.

From fence to fence, it’s two-hundred massive metres. How agog must European or American visitors be who are accustomed to compact soccer pitches and gridiron fields? It reminds me of Rome’s chariot-racing stadium, the Circus Maximus, with its intimidating length and considerable circumference. Running laps here would be tough.

Watching the Eagles in their warm-up jog, they appear (mostly) young and undersized. Two dozen are sidelined with injury. A good thing the QEH is out the back. Many look like they’re a year or two off (legally) driving. It’s bright and sunny. Clots of blokes in shorts. I prefer not to grizzle about footy catering — but wonder if I paid too much for my bucket of chip. A rare odourless wind blows in from the Port.

After a scrappy opening, on Glenelg’s first entry Riley Holder dribbles it through. The Tigers then begin to exploit the oval’s massive acreage by sustaining possession with solid chains of handball and short passing. Archie Lovelock asserts himself with a smother, gather, and goal.

Aw, Cracklin’ Hosie, gets on board with a major, characterised by his panther-like prowling and athletic predation. Jarryd Lyons was a Lion but now he’s a Tiger. While he and his brother Corey are in the team, a pair of Lyons doesn’t quite make a pride — but we’ll be proud of them if these feline fellows help win the flag. He takes some inspiring grabs.

The Eagles kick two goals to commence the second term and courtesy of the zephyr, the Sherrin remains captive at the southern end. After twelve minutes Glenelg finally gets it inside fifty. This barren period is rare for such an attacking side but shows how our game is partly at the mercy of the elements. In a sometimes-malicious encounter there’s a skirmish on the forward flank from which Alex Martini emerges shaken not stirred.

*

The third quarter is underway and given the relentless wind I reckon we need to be at least six goals up at the final change to avoid a visit to the QEH cardiac ward — at least it’s only a swift stroll. A match highlight is the half a dozen frantic smothers from both sides and with a smile I recall the last-gasp effort from Will Chandler in the 2024 decider. I’m convinced this could’ve been the flag-winner.

Second-half specialist Luke Reynolds scores after a free and then there’s one for the VHS tape with a (Darcy) Bailey banana. During a P&O cruise happy hour who wouldn’t welcome a Bailey(s) banana? The ever-elusive and unruffled Cole Gerloff goals following a retaliatory smother from Hosie. A blow-out approaches. The umpires endure five torrid minutes during which spectators from both camps bark disapproval to the wind — and as always, hear nothing back.

In a display of sparkling local wit our first miss of the quarter is met with an aged antagonist yelling, ‘Sucked in.’ Laugh! A great captain’s tackle in our arc and with his immaculate kicking mechanics Liam McBean converts again. He’s the best shot for goal I’ve seen in our city since D. Jarman.

McBean again. Lyons another hanger. Clouds now assembling over the Port and the air is suddenly chilled. Pleased I’m not in shorts.

As is my spectating habit I move every quarter and for the concluding stanza I’m on the sloping lawns in front of the scoreboard. The breeze is now becalmed and so the ball has permission to venture to the northern end. We trade scores early but are largely unflustered by the hosts.

With less fizz in the contest now than flat Fanta, the clock ticks down — but up on scoreboard. Only golf claps for goals. But there’s still outrage present with a late dubious free against the home side. Why is sporting dismay louder than celebration?

It’s a win for the Tigers — modestly efficient. But we haven’t done much to sharpen our premiership credentials. I thread between the Barry Jarman Stand and the Percy Fox Green Stand and head to my car — half frozen, half hopeful.

We’ll remain in a wary but largely inconsequential waltz with the Crows for second spot. Either way, the qualifying final looms.

0

Mystery Pub: Goo and Gump

|

The most magnetic pub in Norwood is The Colonist. Its exposed ceiling beams and ducts, and unplastered, aged walls give it a vintage aesthetic. Claire and I made the staccato crawl along Currie Street, through the parklands, and onto The Parade. Turning into the pub carpark, the golden light pushing from the windows into the darkening July evening set a welcoming tone, a hostelry hug.

I’d booked a table by the fireplace and spent the working afternoon congratulating myself. I chuckled as I imagined Claire by the crackling flames melting into her Chesterfield, nursing a pepperminty Coonawarra cabernet, and smiling at me with involuntary, eternal appreciation. However, proudly marching us into the fireplace room, we stop and grimace as it’s more like a shopping centre café with severe, unforgiving lighting and utilitarian tables. It had less appeal than the pool chemicals aisle at Bunnings.

Stools were urgently pilfered and we claimed a spot at the bar. With white wine and a Pirate Life ale (R) in front of us, we unwound into our visit and dissected the surroundings. The absences were gladly met. No TVs, no thumping house music, no maddening distractions. Just a pub bursting with punters. Occasionally, it’s elevating to be slap in the middle of the bellowing din, to be among boisterous strangers, and relish their anonymous shouting and thrumming oomph. A young, beardy man offered us oysters from a tray. ‘No, thanks,’ we chorused, glaring at the cold globs of snot.

Contrasting with the naked women artworks decorating the pub innards was an interesting image. ‘See that picture on the far wall,’ I said pointing like a self-pleased museum tour guide, ‘that’s similar to a famous album cover.’ Claire surrendered to my mansplaining, powerless. ‘It’s like the album Goo by Sonic Youth.’ A great record, the cover art’s inspired by Maureen Hindley and David Smith, key witnesses in the 1966 Moors Murders trial involving a couple of (crazy) Mancunian serial killers. ‘Thanks for that!’ Claire could’ve chirped.

We returned to our endeavours which being a Friday approaching six o’clock meant our second and final (boozer) drinks. Mystery Pub issues a license for us (Claire) to be alcoholically adventurous — this monthly boldness finds expression in cocktails. The arrival of a concocted refreshment is an event — her Long Island Iced Tea comes with aromatic New York cool and dreamy Gatsby evocations. Claire takes a purposeful sip. Then another. Her assessment: blah.

A camel plops in the desert, the caravan moves on.

Zinging along Greenhill Road and homeward bound (I wish I was) when a deplorably monstrous truck — a ute, to you and me, Gladys — veers into our lane. On its whale-sized rear bumper were two stickers. One read: Pray for America. Neither Claire nor I could tell if this came with irony or sincerity for Friday night, as we all know, is not the time for considered subtextual appraisals.

The other was for Alabama’s Crimson Tide — the college football team Forrest Gump played for — not a sticker you often spot on Adelaide utes. The Crimson Tide is mentioned by 1970’s act Steely Dan on their Aja album in the song ‘Deacon Blues.’ It’s about elegant failure and I thought of my fireplace booking and Claire’s Long Island Iced Tea. The chorus goes

Learn to work the saxophone
I, I’ll play just what I feel
Drink Scotch whiskey all night long
And die behind the wheel
They got a name for the winners in the world
I, I want a name when I lose
They call Alabama the Crimson Tide
Call me Deacon Blues.

Safely home in my wicker chair, beer in hand, Aja spun on the turntable. ‘Deacon Blues’ glided about the living room — to my delight, if not Claire’s. Mystery Pub had begun at The Colonist, but we’d detoured to far-flung Americana. This was intriguing and soaring.

2

No Helmets at Silly Mid-On: A Birthday Letter to Rocket

|

Hello there Rod

Happy birthday! I thought it a fine moment to pause and raise a glass (West End if available) to a few tremendous memories from the vault…

Let’s begin with the ongoing tradition of our SANFL Grand Final texts in the case of Sturt or Glenelg winning. You had the upper hand in 2016 and 2017; I had a turn in 2019, then received a text in 2023 and 2024. Surely one of us gets a message this year. Watch out!

*

I still think back to those Adelaide Oval Test matches of our youth. We loved the cricket, of course, but also the economy of the cheap kid’s ticket. More cash for beers. I can see us now at the Victor Richardson Gates — me first, just 17, sliding through. Then Davo. Taller. He’s waved in too. Chrisso, taller again, gets the nod after a suspicious squint from the bloke on the gate. But then comes you, all six-foot-five of you, last in the queue. The old guy takes your ticket, peers up, irritated, and says, ‘Are you sure you’re all under sixteen?’ Davo doesn’t miss a beat: ‘Yeah, we’re from the country. Breed ’em big out there.’

We all then galloped straight to the hill and set up shop just in front of the Duck Pond. We heard the whistling of stems being pulled from empty kegs. Shortly after one of us came back with a plastic cup holder bursting with beers, slopping West End Draught onto the sloping lawns.

*

A highlight was most certainly the trip Chrisso, and I made to Coffs Harbour in July of 1990 to visit you and Michelle. We had a great week. I recall Mutton Bird Island, Par 3 golf in Coffs, the cocktail party with your footy club friends, going to the Sawtell RSL and Joe Bananas for dinner, lots of fun along the way and — of course — the triumphant meat tray at a local pub.

Good people, good weather, and that ancient stubby holder still tells the tale!  

*

A less successful expedition was the 1982 Lutheran Youth trip to Naracoorte with Stephen in the Gem. Ending up in a ditch and travelling home by train! Found sanctuary on the Fanks farm. In between was a theological and beery blur. But we survived — just.

*

Then there was Melbourne in 2017 — you, me, the Hayward brothers, Lukey and Nick. Listening to Phil Carmen at the North Fitzroy Arms. He was truly compelling. It was a great event and as people say, you know it’s a big day when you get to the pub at noon and next thing, you’re ordering dinner there too before zipping into Young and Jackson’s for a midnight nightcap. Collingwood and Port the next day! Free bird seed. A funny weekend.

*

It was also terrific to be part of two Senior Colts cricket premierships. Fergy our coach. Tanunda and Angaston Ovals. I had a stint at silly mid-on when you charged in. No helmets in those days — and no shortage of courage. Both the Tanunda batsman and I in danger of fouling our whites. Especially when he defended one of your short balls using only his (four-cornered) head. I was sure it’d come straight off his double scoop Gray Nicolls.

*

But it wasn’t all bouncers and meat raffles. That you and Michelle asked Chrisso and I to act as ushers at your wedding ceremony in Hamilton remains an utter honour. The Yalumba reception was also excellent!

Thanks for all this, Rod — the cricket, the laughs, the travel, the stories we can now retell like old blokes at a reunion. Hang on! Enjoy your extended birthday celebrations. Well played!

Love

Michael and Claire

July 2025

0

Almost, Us

|

A silver tray with vintage glasses of sherry greeted us by the door. It looked like something quietly borrowed from Antiques Roadshow.

Setting the afternoon’s genteel, English drawing-room tone, if Claire had on a hoop dress and I’d just doffed a top hat, it’d be a period drama.

We were at the Stirling Community Theatre for Sunday’s matinee of Almost, Maine.

Stirling is the most Hertfordshire-like of the Adelaide Hills’ villages. Outside was July-cold and drizzling. Clasping our sherry vials, we stole past the soft scarves and murmurs. I quite enjoy ‘Sherry’ by Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons but don’t have the fortification for fortifieds. Claire may have had both snifters. I prefer not to ask.

We claimed a spot by the orange flame of the fireplace. Its considerate warmth was another unanticipated bonus. It was thrilling. I could almost smell a Chesterfield and I enjoyed the quiet happiness.

Making our way into the theatre proper, Claire collected a black blanket from a wooden box. Although it was thin and provided symbolic rather than physical comfort, draping it over our laps was a terrific addition to this pastoral excursion. The anonymous, attentive care was uplifting.

At the door was a kindly couple checking tickets. I showed the woman my phone. By her side was a spritely, smiling usher in a black suit. He also had on a bowtie.

Our theatre visit was now more Downton Abbey than off-Broadway. Sherry. Fire. Blanket. It made an affirming triptych. My inner octogenarian — he’ll be among us before we know it— was preternaturally ecstatic.

At intermission we returned to the fireplace. I nibbled my half of the carrot cake we’d bought (reluctantly) at the Stirling Bakery.

On the adjacent wall was a poster promoting love — the play’s key theme — and in the modern spirit of interactivity we were invited to share our thoughts on this — via heart-shaped sticky notes to be affixed to the poster.

Claire resumed her seat for the second act while I confirmed and displayed my suggestion.

How was the play?

It was engaging and the young cast was enthusiastic if uneven. Eight interwoven stories, each set on the same winter’s night, as the Northern Lights shimmered over a small town near the Canadian border. As a concept Almost, Maine gave us much to consider. Love and loss, hope and pain, a missing shoe, and magic realism. It’s the most performed play in American schools this millennium, should this be any metric.

Claire deposited our blanket back into its box and went to the love poster. ‘Where’s your message? I can’t see your writing.’ I pointed to an unholy scrawl.  

Starring George Clooney in what I think is his best role, The Descendants, is a blackly comedic drama set in Hawaii. Clooney’s character is Matt King who, in the second act, delivers a monologue to his wife. Among other poignant and despairing things, he observes that the function of a marriage should be

to make easier the passage of each other’s life.

Claire took a photo of the sticky note. She then rubbed my arm.

With the lights on and wipers ticking, we descended to Adelaide’s spacious plain. We prodded gently at the play, and our past. It really is a lovely thing — to have shared so many almosts.

0

Seven Small Thoughts from this Week

|

1. I love cooking a barbeque on our veranda, but I’m forming a view that July evenings are too cold for this optimism.

2. I’m re-reading a book on the song ‘Wichita Lineman’ and still find it astonishing that it was written by Jimmy Webb when he was barely 22.

3. I would enjoy running on the Glenelg North beach but because of the recent storms there isn’t really one. The sea has reclaimed what was briefly ours.

4. This is a lovely billboard.

5. Has anybody ever had a dream that began at the very beginning, and not part way through the story?

6. I might buy a roll of film, take some photos, and get it developed. I almost hope one is accidentally of my shoes. I could use the honesty.

7. Can anybody lend me an abacus?

    2

    Kapunda, Monday: A Drive Through the Quiet

    |

    From the top of Gundry’s Hill, Kapunda lies soundlessly below — half-hidden in its jumbled valley.

    The topography gifts this view — and encourages a certain kind of reflection. I consider how some of the nearby towns such as Freeling, Nuriootpa, and Tanunda are largely flat — perhaps a little reserved in their landscape. Our steeper hills allowed for a testing upbringing of bike and billycart riding.

    Once, the surrounds of Gundry’s Hill were simply paddocks — rolling and empty. Now, a housing estate sprouts, improbably dense. There’s about twenty homes hounded in together — you’d struggle to swing a nine iron between them. However, unlike other locations further north, the population’s climbing.

    Driving about I’m gladdened by the early-week industry. People on foot and in vehicles are moving about collecting and depositing stuff, accomplishing transactions, making things happen.

    A blue sky presses down on Kapunda, dragged by an icy wind slashing at the trees and roofs. I remember days like these from my childhood. A friend once called it a lazy wind — ‘It doesn’t go around you, just straight through your torso.’ She was right.

    I’m curious — profoundly invested — in the high school’s rebuild after the 2022 fire. Eringa now looks familiar and is regaining much of its grandfatherly glory. It’s reclaiming its place as the town’s reassuring heart. The croquet lawn lies beneath a compact row of building site offices and the apron sloping from the grand front steps is crowded with what I hope are temporary structures. The old palm tree stands noble by the basketball court.  

    *

    Idling through the Dutton Park gates I take a slow lap around the sporting precinct, passing the clubrooms where Claire and I had our wedding reception. I then see the sleek bowls club, tennis and netball courts, and sadly becalmed trotting track — remembering long, dust-kicked laps in the heat of footy’s pre-season. The encircling gum trees bend in the crisp June gusts.

    I veer past the old Railway Hotel. Most of it’s intact behind some hopeful orange bunting. I wonder for a moment at what it could become. A motel? Café? Restaurant?  I then shake my head. It’s been decades since the pub fire and nothing’s happened.

    Across the road is the Railway Station. It’s now luxury accommodation but I remember Mum taking my sister Jill and I to collect our monthly parcel of State Library books and cassettes. There was always excitement in pulling open the brown paper wrapping to see what’d made the train trip up from North Terrace.

    I note mechanics garages all around town. A number have sprung up to service patiently waiting trucks and utes. Diesel motors have feelings, too. A boxing club’s in a shed across from Bald Hill.

    The North Kapunda pub is shut although the forlorn loss is yet to drape itself glumly over the veranda and windows. I hope it reopens but Kapunda has probably always been overserviced by pubs. Smiling at the thought of Saturdays in there during the 1980’s — the rowdy white smear of a couple dozen cricketers and I hear, ‘Where are you goin’? You owe me a beer for the Schooner School!’   

    In contrast, Puffa’s drive-through has been trading steadily since dawn and just over on Clare Road’s a flashing sign urging punters to drop by for morning coffee and afternoon delights. I love pushing through the front door into its cosy bar but before noon on a Monday’s not really the time. One day soon.

    Turning onto Hill Street I spy the sporting mural about which I’ve heard much. I’m carried back to the past and beam at Rocket Ellis, Paul O’Reilly, Davo, and other portraits. Macca — iconic teacher and sportsman — is also there and he once told me, ‘You’ve got it arse about. You hit a cricket ball in the air and a golf ball along the ground!’

    I smile at the adjacent mural more broadly acknowledging Kapunda’s story. Much-loved deli owners and revered citizens Eli, Brian, and Reg Rawady are at the rightful centre. I can still hear their distinctive voices, especially Reg’s bellowing baritone. A town that appropriately praises its people and history is surely a healthy place.

    At Litl Mo’s bakery, I park outside the former Eudunda Farmers store. Inside’s noisy with older folks concluding their morning tea. As I’m ordering most amble towards the door — leaving behind their coffee cups, chatter, and crumbs. A murmuring din bounces around. ‘See you next week, Bill. Enjoy your golf on Thursday!’ It’s an encouraging hub for the town and a bustling café.

    Deciding to eat on the balcony, I spot the dental clinic across the Main Street. It’s new although Dad later tells me it’s been open a while. After too many of Mo’s chocolate donuts, stride across the road to get your teeth fixed.

    My sausage roll is excellent. Scrutinising it after a bite or two, I’m thrilled to spot that neglected ingredient: carrot! The taste is delicate and flavoursome. It’s not massive — no need to compensate for tastelessness or oily pastry. It’s a treat.

    *

    Monday mornings teach you things in a country town. I’ve taken a tranquil drive through memory but have also glimpsed something of Kapunda’s boisterous and bright future. There’s movement beneath the quiet.

    0

    Running North Terrace

    |

    I’m jogging west along Adelaide’s most distinguished boulevard on this dazzling Sunday morning. Much of this street I’ve never explored.

    The footpath is wide and tree-lined, and the streets are hushed, empty. The warm weather’s more akin to October and not late May so I flip between viewing this as serene and approaching apocalypse. Claire had an Auslan interpreting job at the Lion Arts Factory — a burlesque dance competition — so we decamped to the Intercontinental (Hotel not a nuclear-armed ballistic missile).

    Next door, the Adelaide Convention Centre sprawls— so vast, Boeing could assemble planes in it. I enjoy it best at big events like the Cellar Door Festival when over splashes of red wine and among the Merlot-ed masses, Claire and I whisper in snug, secretive ways.

    I pass the medical precinct ­— towering, assured, glittering — on which I’ve never set foot. Formerly overlooking the railyards, it was the road to nowhere. Like much of our privileged world, its function has transitioned from industrial to knowledge, a Victorian badlands to a district of profound applied intellect.

    A duo of male joggers materialises. Relaxed with each other, they’re chatting comfortably. We exchange a chirpy round of, ‘Morning.’

    I cross the terrace at the Royal Adelaide Hospital. It’s among the most expensive buildings on the planet. With relief rather than pride, I nod at this thought. Nuclear plants, much of Singapore, and those futuristic Gulf state mirages, all sit higher up the list. Even the American football stadium at Inglewood, in LA, cost more (five billion) and yet much of it is (fake) grass. How could this be?

    The Newmarket Hotel stands silent, a ghost ship. Its legacy is to the nomenclature of glassware with the butcher, named for the small beer preferred by abattoir workers at lunchtimes. Where can we now find these 200ml tumblers? Maybe in lonely country pubs. Are these victims of the American (read: global) trend for upsizing?

    Peering in at a cluster of UniSA buildings, it’s another mysterious pocket of North Terrace, an architectural Siberia. The intriguingly named Elton Mayo building (a pianist and salad dressing hybrid) has an almost mocking confidence. One day, I should stroll in. He was a celebrated psychologist.

    Striding along now. The Oaks Horizon. We had a couple of stays there with my boys to explore the city. I wanted them to experience Adelaide’s cultural riches and investigated the Botanic Gardens, Museum, and Art Gallery. We also played mini-golf at Holey Moley near Hindmarsh Square. Education complete at the Pancake Kitchen.

    Red and blue flashing lights and my heart quickens. What? Why? A paused police car menaces a white SUV just by the Stamford Plaza. I amble through during that tense interlude when the car-of-interest stops and the pair of police alight — adjusting their belts, straightening their navy caps — and I imagine the driver’s halting, ‘Morning, Officer. Is there a problem?’ What has gone badly at breakfast on this Sunday?

    A convenience store window offers a super deal: two unlikely allies finally together — Farmers Union Iced Coffee and a ham and cheese croissant. I’m proud that South Australia is one place where Coke is outsold — Glasgow and its carbonated Irn-Bru being another. Bravo, iced coffee! Take that Paris! Take that Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré! Take that Atlanta!

    No traffic. Flouting the crossing light’s red man, I scurry over King William Road. I see solitary pedestrians, the homeless interrupted by dawn into forlorn, shuffling movement and I’m grateful for my fortune. Turning around at the former Botanic Hotel, there’s evocations of my untroubled university life. The building’s majestic, its raucousness now becalmed.

    With the sun on my face, the future technopolis of Lot 14 swims into view. It’s only hoardings and a barren block but could erupt suddenly, all dazzling glass and steel. Taking in the University of Adelaide and Bonython Hall’s honeyed façade, I’m reminded, not unjustly, of Bath and Oxford.

    This is a handsome boulevard.

    Kintore Avenue dips down to the River Torrens and hosts the State Library. I spent hours there at uni — the reading room’s newspapers (Ooh, there’s the Wagga News) and borrowing Steely Dan cassettes to play in my HQ Holden. The ease of shaping my days with leisure and study.

    Adelaide remains tranquil and I again spy the pair of male joggers. They’re still nattering and unbothered by exertion. It could be a pre-coffee pretense.

    The casino emerges. Australian cities have increasingly thorny relationships with these, and glamour has largely given way to wretchedness. Seeking dinner last night, Claire and I foolishly walked through one of its eateries. Glaring lights. Cafeteria tables. All the allure of a Soviet hospital. We declined.

    Adelaide Casino’s a boorish, puffed-up pokies barn. You could get in wearing double-plugger thongs. Nearly. It annexed the splendid Railway Station. But I remember being disgorged from the Gawler train in the 1980’s, heading to the one-day cricket and this rushes back to me, riotously. Eskies, flags, Adidas Romes. AB, whistling kegs, zinc.

    I jog on, buoyant, smiling at my younger self and his friends.

    Outside the Intercontinental’s an idling fire truck with Technical Rescue emblazoned on its side. Ignoring these blue and red lights, the hotel elevator then ejects me on the seventeenth floor.

    0

    Our Annual Pilgrimage to the Greenock Pub

    |

    Each of us studies the lunch menu like it’s a sacred text, applies some unnecessary critical thinking, and in succession — as anticipated — orders a schnitzel. It’s a collective declaration of mateship, and an acknowledgement of being deep into our sixth decade. Growing up in Kapunda, we’ve a lengthy and easy friendship.

    Outside’s blustery but we’re in the pub’s cosiness.

    With the dining room’s blazing fireplace, pot belly stove in the front bar, and rib-ticklers (for her pleasure) soliciting purchase in the toilet’s vending machines ($2 each) there’s still much that appeals. Happy groups are dotted about the tables amidst a humming Thursday ambience.

    In a world hurried by notifications, noise, and busyness, the Greenock pub resists performative velocity. Storytelling is our afternoon’s purpose and theme, and we’re now less about bedlam and more about meaning.

    Chris (Rohde) tells us of his recent trip to Europe and Berlin, of steins and asparagus, and staying a drop-punt from Checkpoint Charlie. Of Copenhagen and the Tivoli Gardens. We also hear more about Chris and Letitia Hayward’s golfing and post-golfing explorations of Ireland, Scotland and London. All described as, ‘magnificent.’  

    A photo shoot’s happening in the neighbouring anteroom, and I spy etched glassware filled with wine the colour of ox blood, arranged in a pretty tableau. A silver reflecting umbrella illuminates the human and vino talent, and I nod into my ale at the prospect of a glossy double-page spread. It’s as deserving as any pub. I wonder if there’s a magazine in Germany called Schnitzels Monthly.

    A log shifts in the fireplace, and there’s a scrape of cutlery. Easing my chair back, and with our beer rhythm wordlessly established, I fetch another pint of Coopers Draught for Lukey and a Pirate Life for me.

    Chris (Hayward) continues his animated observations. ‘We found a great pub in Soho, and I thought that’d be our local for the week. But then we came across another that was even better!’

    Our schnitzels arrive and these, too, are magnificent. Lukey says, ‘Good that everyone has a schnitzel. About time you all got with the programme.’ Pepper gravy sweetness wafts through the snug air along with the hot comfort of chips and steamed broccoli. These hearty plates — though probably not us — could star in the magazine shoot.

    Talk accelerates to footy and the upcoming Kapunda Bombers premiership reunions. Teams from 1965, 1985, and 2005 will gather in the club. With this comes the mandatory story of Lukey’s stratospheric hanger in the 1985 grand final. It was a colossal mark but the sole VHS tape of the game is lost. I can see the back-slapping, and hear the bellowing laughter erupting above the din of the Dutton Park clubrooms. That the 2025 Bombers are struggling won’t matter one bit.

    We consider relocating to the front bar but linger, preferring the stillness. I love how the Greenock pub is humbly and wilfully unrenovated. In middle life, competition yields to communion — and today and annually for us, this is a chapel. It hosts our companionship and remains a landscape for thought and gratitude.

    This annual lunch is where we reconnect with younger versions of ourselves, even as we sit with our shifting adult responsibilities. It’s also a place to remember who we were — teenagers piling into dusty Holdens blasting Midnight Oil —   and to marvel at how this whole scrappy, beautiful mess is turning out.

    0

    A Gentle Ambush

    |

    Strolling back from lunch on Port Road’s broad and grassy median-strip, a black car approached. Familiar shape and model — but surely not. It glided closer. I zoomed in on the numberplate.

    In our small city of 1.4 million, few things thrill like stumbling upon you.

    Our car. You.

    Walking along, in no physical or professional hurry, I’d been wondering about your morning — and somehow, as if conjured, there you were. Like a kid at a parade, I waved wildly.

    You pulled over. Right lane. Outraging the fretful and the furious. Horns shouted. Arguing with you, with each other, with their contrary planets. You didn’t care. I love that you don’t care.

    I leapt in. We shoved your stuff from the seat — there’s always things — and up and down the Port Road you zipped.

    A side street.

    You park (no honking this time). A rapid exchange. Mornings, work, lunch, the day ahead. A speedy farewell. A kiss.

    I love how secretive forces conspire to let these little joys find me. Small gifts from the day itself. Delightful interruptions from the commonplace.

    Resuming our travel: you vehicular; me perambulatory. You go to the hospital at Woodville for an interpreting job. I return to editing the curriculum.

    It’d been a gentle ambush.

    Taking in the sky’s blue ceiling, I find myself quietly grateful — as though a prayer had arrived before I even knew I’d said one.

    0

    What the Photo Knows

    |

    Whether it’s a repeated holiday, yearly lunch, or the lame recurring joke I inflict upon Claire, I reckon tradition offers psychological warmth. Do you have your own conventions that you repeat over and over again?

    My rituals unfold like this: the deliberate or accidental start, the adhering — however long it endures — and the anticipation for next time, commencing immediately once the event’s done.

    I’ve known Claire since we were thirteen so with much to consider and scribble, head to Port Elliot for a few days to immerse myself. At the beginning of my now biannual writing retreat, I conduct an opening ceremony. This is done by arranging a tableau of items on the townhouse deck’s wooden bench, overlooking Knights Beach. As is our modern way I then take and share a photo, mostly for self-amusement. Like the youngsters.

    So, what’s in the photo?

    I include my Kapunda Cricket Club hat; the Greg Chappell version (c.1982). It’s my oldest piece of apparel and a life-long companion. It represents youthful frivolity and fellowship. Having been on my head during many summers, I hope it inspires a sunny, grateful tone in my writing. Or at least not a golden duck.

    It’s well-worn—perhaps even an heirloom. It’s certainly a talisman from another era—something with personal gravy gravity. Just this week, my eldest, Alex, wore my other beloved cricket cap (Kimba CC) while playing an old, broken-down PE teacher in his Year 12 drama performance. It was a star! Upstaged everyone. So maybe I can pass various cricket items down through the generations. Surely, there are more miserable inheritances. I reckon they’d prefer this to a house.

    We can all learn lots from a hat.

    Also in the photo is Richard Ford’s The Sportswriter. Paired with the cricket memorabilia, it suggests a longing for past versions of masculinity—or the shifting seasons of life. The Sportswriter is the first in a series of five stories I’ve read three times across this past decade. It’s about loss, introspection and hope.

    As I’m striving for enlightened forms of myself, I want both hat and novel, as personal texts, to be illuminating. To work like flares in the fog.

    This writing retreat is for contemplative isolation —not loneliness. I generally seek no company — not even during my late-afternoon pub visits — but see the time as an opportunity to swim in words. Not drowning, waving. My sentences take shape from memory and its attendant considerations. Being beside the glittering, pounding Southern Ocean and adrift in language and reflection is spiritual.

    The horizon line on the glass balustrade is enlightening. Did Frank Lloyd Wright once say this? Though it sits near the top third of the photo’s frame, it suggests both elevation and humility—the viewer just above the sea, but not grandly removed from it. I hope this projects gratitude for the occasion and the painterly environment, and encourages the idea that these are combining together, in serene concert.

    This tableau proposes that through the laptop and novel, I’m straddling the border between writer and reader. Additionally, I’m fluctuating between labour and leisure and ultimately, thought and the expression of it. My retreat is simultaneously and indistinguishably all of these.

    It’s my idea of fun.

    Lastly, this is a portrait of myself in retreat— not from life, but toward something. Maybe a particular reckoning with age, or self, or meaning. The animating idea is that we harvest the past to better command our present.

    0

    Charlie’s Good Tonight: The Rolling Stones and the Showdown Mark

    |

    The Rolling Stones carry metaphorical wallop. Mick may love cricket, but I sometimes drag them—unlikeliest of guests—into footy. After all, sport and music can both be art.

    Full forwards are Jagger, midfielders are Keef, and backmen, of course, are Charlie Watts behind his Gretsch set, vacant of expression and caressing his drums almost awkwardly, giving occasion for the melodies and vocals, allowing everybody else to happen.

    Charlie’s first love was jazz, but he kept time for the planet’s greatest rock band. Was it his day job? Like SK Warne, the best ever leg-spinner, preferring deep down, to run around on a forward flank for St. Kilda?

    Did both choose excellence over longing?

    I wonder about Charlie in his Savile Row elegance, offering percussive minimalism to a Wembley crowd while his inner ear yearned for Miles Davis—and the other Charlie (Parker)—in their 1947 version of Out of Nowhere.

    Like Charlie’s rearview of the band, football’s defenders monitor proceedings up the ground, eyes vigilant for imminent threat. They bear the dreadful burden of vision. There’s Mick—elastic, swaggering, now self-parodying—and here’s Keef on his 1954 Telecaster, summoning the spirit of Blind Willie Johnson, cloaked in his own phantoming smoke.

    Kids love goals and a huge hanger—or specky, as we called them at school. Muddling through middle age and with retirement morphing in the fog, footy’s defensive acts increasingly appeal. I’ve never loved so much the redemption of a spoil or a smother.

    Grit has succeeded glamour.

    As we age, do we adjust from attack to protection, our crumbling biology shaping a third-act philosophy? Is there any footballing instant with higher psychological value than an intercept mark? Paul Kelly once described sport’s best theatre as danger converting unexpectedly to grace and, as always on matters liturgical, he’s right.

    *

    Showdown 57 had been pulsating. In the final quarter Port Adelaide was ferocious, generating a fully invasive twenty inside-fifties in as many minutes.

    Emboldened and ravenous, they surge again—and from inside a tangle of smearing limbs, Finlayson flicks his leg and conjures a goal. With thirty-one minutes gone, the margin dwindled to a fraught four points.

    Centre bounce. Jason Horne-Francis snatches the ball and rolls to the outside. He is heir-apparent to the Dangerfield accolade: explosive. But he is also volatile—and this amplifies his peril.

    Like a reddish comet, his drop punt slices across the night sky, then begins its return to earth in the forward arc.

    Five games in two years at Collingwood. Five games in his first year at Adelaide. Mark Keane is from County Cork and was skilled at both Gaelic football and hurling— a game featuring amended jousting sticks— with the latter requiring substantial pluck.

    He takes six marks tonight, and all attention lands on the last. Maybe moments late in a match acquire falsely enhanced acclaim, but sometimes in life and football, context subverts the text.

    Keane’s eyes fixate on the ball with a purity of commitment. He crabs backward and across, almost akin to a country hall line-dancer—I can hear Far Away Eyes chugging along—but the Irishman is more slippery of hip.

    His tenure as a backman requires obliviousness to ominous traffic, which can arrive like a freight train—fundamental to the mythic bluesmen so adored by Jagger and Richards.
    Up go his periscopic arms and—clunk—the Sherrin’s path is truncated. It might have been an uncontested interception, but the preceding imagination and gallantry offer Keane instant cult status.

    With this the remaining 107 seconds unfold in a terse sequence of disposals and turnovers before Sam Berry kicks a behind on the siren.

    Did Keane’s grab save the game? Or was it any of a hundred prior events?

    *

    It was a moment at which to gasp and then smile.

    Just like hearing Get Off My Cloud and realising abruptly that while the melody and vocals are frantically urging, and the lyrics are buoyant fun—In the morning the parking tickets were just like flags stuck on my windscreen—Charlie’s drumming was always the deeper, mostly unheralded magic in the song.

    Ultimately, whether it’s music or footy, some of the finest artists are those who don’t take centre stage—but make the centre hold.

    0

    ‘…and the Arab Steed wins the Mystery Pub Stakes in a canter’

    |

    In this City of Churches, stained-glass adorns religious buildings but also those devoted to sinful pursuits. Some argue that pubs and places of worship offer the same functions, but the former attracts a better standard of employee.

    The Arab Steed on Hutt Street is in the bohemian quarter of Adelaide and upon arrival I note the dreamy autumnal light refracting through the bar and am instantly gladdened. Announcing the pub was established in 1849 and depicting a galloping horse, the glass above the doors and windows elevates my hospitality expectations to stylish and sophisticated.

    Claire and I then enjoy a Catholic hour of sorts—communal, confessional, and consisting partly of (holy) wine.

    Late Saturday afternoon can be fraught in a boozer. It’s not our preferred Mystery Pub day and time, as it’s often a twilight when the lunchtime lunchers and piddled punters have departed, and the evening’s effervescence remains remote.

    It can be a bleak, betwixt period of sludgy purposeless and ennui.

    But inside’s a big table encircled by animated diners. They’re female, of a certain age, and generate a heartening front bar context. Strolling through on a quick Cook’s tour, I reach the TAB section.

    The screens cycle from Randwick to Flemington and over to Ascot. A handful of rumpled blokes is cheerfully strategising their next bets while bemoaning their losses. Punting’s a narrative pursuit where the protagonist scripts their own saga of triumph and ruin, all dictated by huge horses and the tiny people perilously astride them.

    Barkeep is young, beardy and kind. He asks what Claire’d like. ‘Just a glass of sauvignon blanc, thanks,’ comes her bright reply. I’ve scanned and evaluated the taps and say, ‘Tell me about the Ocean Alley Ale.’ He explains that it’s a new ‘collab’ between the Sydney psych rock band and Coopers that recently ‘dropped’. The lingo of yoof! I later read the beer’s, ‘a sessionable tropical pale ale that will set you and your best mates up for sunny afternoons that roll into balmy nights.’

    For mid-April, it’s troublingly hot out (and in) and feels like January. However, the pub ceiling, veranda, and alfresco section by Hutt Street are garlanded with atmospheric strings of warmly glowing globes. This is an inviting setting, so we claim a footpath table. Adelaide pubs are notoriously indifferent regarding this, and all the guilty mine hosts should undertake a compulsory study tour of Fitzroy hotels in Melbourne to research evocative lighting design.

    My heart’s then further a-flutter at the sight of an old-fashioned wooden refrigerated cabinet, fitted with chrome hinges and latches, giving it a vintage, almost maritime aesthetic. The top section glows with a striking blue light through glass-fronted doors, illuminating a neat arrangement of beer glasses inside. Beneath this, a row of solid wooden doors with metal fittings suggests older refrigeration units—reminiscent of the iceboxes of earlier decades.

    I recall how all the pubs in Kapunda’s main street had these—the Clare Castle, Sir John Franklin, North Kapunda (recently kaput) and the Prince of Wales. I can still hear the affable closing and opening clangs as frosty glasses were retrieved following cricket on those now hazy Saturdays. 

    To the right, a rack is filled with classic Aussie snack options, including Smith’s chips and Twisties, adding a colourful contrast and casual charm. The whole scene is nostalgic and cinematic with Australiana, blending functional hospitality with retro ambiance.

    Meanwhile, I get Claire an espresso martini and myself another Ocean Alley Ale. How is my beer? A zesty, fruity, summery cup although it’s of concern that Coopers now need to so nakedly chase the kids. The old world’s racing away—maybe in a canter, maybe flat out.

    We chat of work, play, loved ones and (checks notes) make mandatory mention of The Pina Colada Song. Today included an Auslan job for Claire at Gather Round, preceded by an earlier session interpreting for a beekeeper down at Pennington. How uniquely clever!

    Me? I mowed the lawn (badly).

    With the stained-glass light suspended gently like the final note of a hymn, we head home from the Arab Steed for hot chips, our Saturday evening lounge, and The White Lotus.

    0

    Five Things That Made My Saturday

    |

    Saturday afternoon and I’m home alone. Chores are in hand. Nothing on TV and the book I’m reading, the collected stories of cult American author, HP Lovecraft, is more medicinal than recreational, so it sits untouched by our bed.

    On Record Store Day (globally recognised on April 19th) I swung by Mr. V’s on Semaphore Road, and because one of the very best ways to invest half an hour is by listening to a Beatles’ album, I bought this. The music transports me to my childhood. It remains thrilling and urgent and while Paul is my favourite, I can understand why George Martin, their producer, commented that of all the great things he got to do with the Beatles, his absolute preference was mixing the vocals of John. As I type, the album’s on and it’s utterly joyous and innocent and compelling.

    I love our backyard. And the time of peak admiration is, of course, in those first minutes after it’s been mowed on an autumnal afternoon. The breeze is coaxing the trees and shrubs towards folksy dance and there’s bursts of birdsong. I’m in debt to Claire who, with her artistic eye, designed and brought our garden to painterly life. Later, I may sit out here with a quiet ale and admire the view.

    I purchased Glenelg Footy Club’s 2023 premiership jumper at Adelaide Oval during last year’s finals for tuppence and my appreciation of this simple item is twofold. Yes, the dual flags (nice win yesterday over Norwood in the Anzac Day grand final rematch with Lachie Hosie kicking eight goals) but the guernsey is my default running top. It’s frequently a conversation starter and when I’m on the beach in the morning a passerby will sometimes say, ‘Go Tigers’ as we puff by each other. I had it on this morning at the Patawalonga parkrun (my 110th, the 200th such local event and day number 729 of my current streak) and it was a fun 5k (24.49 which is decent for me). I’m grateful for footy and running.

    Dinner is slowly cooking in the slow cooker. Which is what the label promised, Mr Spock. It’s a beef casserole and I look forward to it. I assembled it late morning with the help of a Ball Park Music playlist. Can you remind me to throw in the beans around six o’clock? Thanks.

    It’s a bit of a narrative but Claire has been in receipt of red wine. Needing some for the aforementioned dinner, I opened a bottle of the 2005, McLaren Vale. This was done with nervousness for I anticipated it might have aged as well as the K-Pop song, Gangnam Style.

    How is it? It was a little cantankerous during those early minutes, but I commented to Claire that if I’d been trapped in a bottle for twenty years I would be too. I slopped a few generous glugs into the cooker and popping into the kitchen across the afternoon, both casserole and plonk are doing well.