Category Archives: running

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At Large in Largs Bay: a parkrun yarn

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Easing down Jetty Road in Largs Bay there’s a sign pointing towards a Historic Shopping Village. Historic? If I put on my bowler hat, ring the bell apologetically, and enter will there be rations of corned beef, jam, sugar, and tea? Would each cost me 2 and 6?

As sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti the Pier pub appears and from the ghostly stage, I can almost hear Barnesy shrieking, sniff the stale West End Draught, and through the fug, see the frayed denim.

At the parkrun starting area (right near the public toilets) I chat with an English couple. They indicate to the south of the pub where they’ve just moved. They’ve done very nicely.

I ask, ‘Have you done this run before?’

‘No, we’ve been travelling, and this is our first one in eighteen months.’ I wish them well.

The briefing begins. It’s always encouraging, and I’m buoyed by the shared purpose and infectious sense of community. The Run Director explains that in quick succession the course goes over five bridges. Only two more for an Eagles’ song.

A dry fog drapes the city, and this generates an almost Victorian England atmosphere. Gazing ahead, the northern esplanade hides under a white cloak. We’re off and the sailing club is soon in the rear-view mirror as we ribbon out along Lady Gowrie Drive.

A distant siren wails through the mist, and I wonder what strife might’ve befallen folks on a quiet Saturday morning. This is replaced by birdsong, and I push into the brusque wind.

We’re now in Taperoo and over to the right is a geographic festival dedicated to Roy Marten. There’s the Roy Marten Dog Park, the Roy Marten Reserve, and alarmingly, the Roy Marten public toilet. I vow to visit. You can’t have too much Roy, whomever he is/was/might yet be.

This is a popular parkrun with one hundred and seventy-odd participants today. Dan, who I know from the Patawalonga event, reckons it’s a PB course. No pressure then. We’ll see.

We’re right in the heart of the Lefevre Peninsula. I imagine if it could secede from Adelaide, it just might. They’d strike their own currency, and each would feature a Port Magpies footballer. Russell Ebert on the fifty, Fos Williams on the twenty and on the dollar coin Bomber Clifford grinning like a shot fox. Their air force mightn’t be much chop, but they’d assemble a tough navy.

I swing for home and over the rise see the jetty and pub. In their white silence both are majestic and it’s a wintry postcard. Pippi’s coffee caravan remains shut by the footpath and I wonder why. Surely weekend breakfast is peak for the caffeinated.

A large wooden yacht is in a front yard. On a trailer, it’s in poor repair, and I remember it from my student days golfing at North Haven. At least, I think it’s a yacht. Ben Lexcen, if he were still about, could help with my nautical lexicography. I’m sure it’s been there for over three decades, and a better option might’ve been a garden gnome. What’s the owner been thinking all this time?

With the end approaching (today’s run not mortality, I hope) I pass another commercial caravan on the esplanade. It’s a doggie wash van with, as one would expect, a Billy Joel theme.

Puptown Girl.

I’m a slow starter, but usually finish well. A few runs ago in Glenelg, Dan and I did our last kilometre in a decent-for-old-chaps four and a half minutes. The results are emailed mid-morning. My PB remains elusive.

Next week.

Back in my car I strap on my Abraham Lincoln beard and put a shilling in my waistcoat pocket. I’m off to the Historic Shopping Village.

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West Beach parkrun: cocooned in this calm esplanade

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An hour after Saturday’s slow dawn I edge into the throng at the Harold and Cynthia Anderson Reserve. On the neat lawns there’s people from across the athletic spectrum and dogs and dads with wide, black prams.

With a few hundred others I head north in the shared enterprise that is the West Beach parkrun. The congestion rapidly evaporates and peering ahead, the coloured stretch of joggers is elasticising along the esplanade.

To my right is a playground. With my teenaged boys having abandoned this age of innocence, I feel a saddening sting that comes from the despair of time moving quickly, too quickly. As I amble through, I can almost hear the spectral shrieks.

We snake by the Henley Sailing Club, all imposing and vaguely smug in its nautical whiteness. A greyish blue sea is on my left, and the trail chaperones us along the dune and among the hardy coastal vegetation. The city’s close by but we’re immersed in this surprising strip of wilderness.

Here the beach presents as serene and health-giving, somehow more encouraging of a life to be brightly lived. Then we take the bridge over Breakout Creek and the Torrens outlet. We often hear of the mighty Murray, and the mighty Mississippi; well, this is the tremendously modest Torrens but it’s our little river and makes for a fetching ecosystem.

A pair of female runners catches me, chatting about a casino win. Remember how going to a casino was once an event but now holds less ceremony than popping down to the servo in Ugg boots and shapeless trackies?

Pushing on, the Henley jetty swims into view. The talented local poet, John Malone, once wrote that jetties are umbilical cords attaching us to better versions of ourselves. Accepting this premise, every month I stride onto a jetty for the inner benefit of both gazing out to sea and back to the silent, sometimes worrying land. I think it works.

We pass the Henley Beach hotel. It’s a serviceable alehouse but fails to sunnily exploit its location. Rather than embracing the seaside and affirming breeze it seems to defy these. Maybe I should swing by soon to offer it redemption.

At Joe’s Kiosk I turn around and am southbound, encouraged by a clapping volunteer.

There’s an agreeable absence of metropolitan sounds. I’m cocooned in this calm esplanade and the solitude of running promotes a falling into yourself that’s neither acutely aware of the current slog nor meditative. This morning, running just is.

Gulf St. Vincent is gentle today and its mood washes onto me. Last week we had a rearing surf as a winter storm dumped mounds of brown seaweed. For all their ferocity, these tempests offer natural reassurance and a restoring intimacy.

Returning to the Harold and Cynthia Anderson Reserve I quicken and then cross the finish line. Knowing my time is modest I remember to focus on the act of having completed the run. The story’s narrative heave is often more important than the finale. I’m content.

Clumps of joggers again gather on the clipped lawns, their morning exercise now taken. Like me, some will disperse into satisfying and routine Saturdays. It’s the seventh birthday of West Beach parkrun so there’s cake for all. It’s a robust community.

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Milano parkrun

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I was an island in a lake of hugging and hollering and happy chaos, and the energy was catching.

I didn’t hear it, but Claire later told me a grab from, ‘The Final Countdown’ was blasted as we gathered. Given I was about to undertake the Milano parkrun its 1980’s bombast was probably a welcome supplement to the mise-en-scène.

By the start line was an Italian flag, and I joined the run briefing in English during which laminated maps were shared around. Unlike home there would be no defibrillator.

With a crescendo of noise, we were away! Fittingly, the initial dash was on cobblestones and these then trended to dirt with a high chance of puddles.

European parkrun time is 9am as opposed to the Australian start of 8am, largely I guess because during the northern winter it’s then still dark. Today’s idyllic with an invigorating air. Milano is famed for its windlessness; it’s the anti-Chicago. This pleases me.

Dominating the north of Lombardy’s central city, Park Nord extends over four municipalities. Our Uber out here was a Mercedes Benz Vito; it’s imposing black finish befitting this fashion capital. Milan seems a wealthy place with smartly dressed folks, stylish attractions, and high-end eateries. I’m yet to spy a K-Mart.

Around the back of my first circuit, I see that most Italian of sporting landmarks: a velodrome. It’s all whizzing blurs of lyrca and metal. I’ve seen very few cyclists in the city, probably given the narrow streets are bunged up with buses, cars, and trams. Being collected by an errant Fiat Panda can be nobody’s aspiration.

Moving past the fields of wild grass into the home straight, I jog through a grove of trees. Glancing at my old Swatch, I’m making reasonable time given we’ve both been crook with colds and I’m still shaking off jetlag. Being in Europe during our footy season I’m always a little surprised upon a weekend awakening that it’s half-time at the MCG. That’s an arresting symbol of our planet’s vastness.

One lap done and from the volunteers I hear lively Italian urgings and I’m electrified for these anonymous gestures. And there’s Claire waving, taking photos and calling out, ‘Go, Mickey Randall!’ How great to be unreservedly supported in this Saturday pursuit.

It’s both a blessing and a curse that I know what to expect on my second trip around.

I push on.

Although I’m about as competitive as lettuce there’s a healthy sense of rivalry in parkrun. I try to keep close to a guy in orange but can’t. The Patawalonga run in Glenelg appears to attract a wider variety of participants. Here, they’re all athletic and coolly confident.  

T-shirts are instructive texts and there’s a few about today. I spot a couple geezers in garb advertising Sussex’s Run Wednesdays and a white-bearded fellow with one announcing he competed in a 100k event (or at least paid his entry fee). As it’s bright yellow and obviously declares my Australian citizenship, I’m in my Singapore Sharks footy shirt. Did you know the Sharks host the world’s biggest Auskick programme?

Exhausted, I cross the line and find Claire. I’ve extended myself and am pleased. I’ve really enjoyed the various enthusiasms of the morning, and how these exist beyond language. I remain embarrassingly monolingual.

Fellow competitors help themselves to a complimentary drink that looks like cola. Curiosity urges me to claim one. It’s boiling and black and I wonder if it’s coffee which isn’t what I’d generally take after hard exercise. Sipping hesitantly, I discover it’s a sweet tea. Nearby is a plate of pastries.

Ahh, Italy.

During my run Claire spoke with a volunteer and of course he has a friend running a bar in Adelaide and I love this universal desire to locate connections.

Despite feeling lousy it’s the fifth best time of my brief parkrun career. Today, Milano hosts a compact but classy field with nearly two dozen runners getting around the five-kilometer course in under twenty minutes. I finish mid-field.

We head south through the park to the Metro and the lilac line. Duomo, mid-afternoon gelato, and the Last Supper await.

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Patawalonga River parkrun

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The race director stands on a chair beneath a gum tree. Speaking into her microphone she itemises the logistics: safety, prams, dogs, coffee, the defibrillator.

Wait. A defibrillator? Oh.

I’m here for the 79th edition of the Patawalonga River parkrun. It’s my debut.

There are knots of folks in the shade. I meet Rohan. He lives just down the road from us and is a veteran of about seventy parkruns. He’s encouraging and affable in his San Francisco Giant cap. I’ve got on my Denver Broncos hat.

At 8am on the dot we’re away! Within moments the young ones and the lithe old ones have scampered. I keep left, as instructed by the race director.

It’s mercifully flat (running by a river helps with this), and vested volunteers take photos and offer quiet encouragement.

We push on past the treatment works (what a treat typing this noun group is) and towards Glenelg. Blokes pushing prams motor by me. In one pram the baby grasps a pear. I had a pear yesterday at work. It was a highlight.

A Jetstar plane approaches the runway, and I can already hear the silent screams of those passengers whose luggage is instead going to Broome or Wagga or Alice.

I pass Rohan and nod at him, ‘Keep going!’ He replies, ‘Good work, Mickey.’ When you’re new, you only need one friend.

It’s quiet and still on the river. Hardly any kayaks. Overhead, no seagulls. I am often surprised by this, especially on the beach. Maybe it’s the absence of nearby hot chip retailers. Attenborough could tell us why.

A big fella with industrial braces on both knees strides past. I’m reminded of Shaun Rehn in the 1997 preliminary final against the Bulldogs when he ripped off his supports and inspired the Crows to victory. I give him space.

Approaching the King Street bridge, I reflect on this moment, and hope it’s an expression of love for Claire, the boys, our shared future, myself. It’s an investment in a better me and a brightening horizon and unfolding joy. I then think about today’s Gawler races and the time-honoured Bung Fritz Cup. The race that stops a smallgoods-loving nation.

Our finish line at the baseball club swims into fuzzy view. I’ve been tailing a wiry, little bloke. He reminds me of Tommy Haffey but in a black shirt. I want to catch him. I dig in.

He powers on and gets there by a cricket pitch.

But I’m happy. I’ve finished the five kilometres in 28:34 and come 45th out of 110 runners.

I’d prepared a paragraph in which I described winning the Kapunda-born, left-arm decidedly pedestrian medium pace bowling, English teacher category for my age group. However, the record shows that I simply won my age group. I thank the other participants in the 55–59-year-old section. Both of you.

The parkrun is brilliant, and I’ll return.

Some of the participants go to a coffee shop but we’ve passport photos to sort. Italy beckons.

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Coober Pedy, at Dawn

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Headlights like beacons in the leaden wet.

The engine’s both idling and roaring in the passive/aggressive way I associate with a Greyhound bus. Closing in, and the sight of it is evocative.

For me an interstate bus often prompts cinematic images of youthful dreams but also broken hearts. Making my way into the Coober Pedy morning I wonder about the passengers and their reasons for travel.

Above the windshield the destination says Alice Springs.

Minutes earlier I clicked the door of my Mud Hut motel room, eased onto St Nicholas Street and then veered north. Hutchinson Street is the main thoroughfare. I’m keen to explore.

It’s raining, and the day is lightening quickly. I’m almost a thousand kilometres nearer to the equator so the sun dashes up and down the sky more urgently, and with less languid theatre. Long, slanting solar routines belong in the sentimental south.

A sign directs worshippers towards the Underground Catholic Church of St Peter and St Paul. Its subterranean neighbours are an opal buyer and a backpackers’ hostel. I guess religious visitors pray for glistening gems to come to them before diving into a musty bunk.

John’s Pizza Bar then appears under the showering sky. My daybreak run is also initial research for Wednesday evening’s dinner. The building’s a low, forgettable rectangle and scurrying past I decide to seek a more distinctive local experience.

Above the red and blue Ampol servo a nightclub called Red Sands occupies the second story. I suspect the swingin’ hotspot’s no more, but I’m happy to be astonished. Playing cricket at Wudinna a frequent joke while fielding was, ‘What time’s the Minnipa disco start?’ The reply: What time can you get there?

With water already pooling by the pavement The Desert Cave materializes in the west. Above ground, it’s self-pleased and swaggering. I speculate if tourists are seduced into submission by its machismo. But the optimistic architectural view is that it’s illustrative of continuing faith in the community, a symbol declaring this town will endure, and we challenge you to discover why.

Lurching along by the kangaroo orphanage, the rain beats a pulsing tattoo on the tin roofs. Puddles and mud now smear the good earth. The desert isn’t as thirsty as I would’ve thought and like a surly child the ground almost seems to refuse the water.

Suddenly, a drive-in theatre! The huge steely screen hangs over the lunar landscape. Initially noting the absence of the iconic speaker poles I remember that cars now tune their radio to a low-powered FM signal. Shutting for a decade from the mid-80s, funds were then raised to digitise. An utter triumph, it’s the state’s only surviving example, and runs every Saturday from 8.30 until summer pushes everyone and their nostalgia back underground. I’d love to see Jaws there.

Turning back up the main road I pass a garage with its iron doors flung up. A couple of cars have already nosed into their respective bays. I hear a radio. Overhead lights press out into the lifting murk. There’s a mound of discarded tyres, and gluggy smells of oil and diesel cling thick.

Trotting homeward, a ute slides by me, its window down. I catch a glimpse of a goatee and lime-green vest as a miner teases me, ‘If you’ve got that much energy, then come and dig a hole!’

*

The following morning near the Opal Inn Salon Bar the same ute slows and the same miner hollers, ‘If you grab a shovel you won’t have to bother running!’

I laugh and encourage him. ‘Check with me again tomorrow!’

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10,254 days

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Running is an invitation to think.

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.

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Running up that Carrickalinga Hill

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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.

I crunch up the gravel driveway.

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Running along the Yarra

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It’s breakfast time in Melbourne.

Traversing Flinders Street, I jog by the Sea Life Aquarium and make my way through Enterprize Park. I later learn it’s where the first European settlers arrived in 1835. My boys, Alex and Max, are asleep upstairs in our apartment. We’re here for a weekend of footy and exploration.

It’s still and crisp. A cloudless winter morning in this elegant city.

I cut across an empty Queens Bridge Street and step cautiously over the bumpy cobblestones of Banana Alley. I imagine the Yarra was once vital to the economic life of Melbourne. I guess its value today is mostly ornamental. Some rowers are stretching out on the coffee-coloured surface.

There’s buried, industrial rumblings from Flinders Street Station. I press on.

Under the Princes Bridge an Asian man is fishing. Two lines are dancing on the drink. I wonder what he might be after. If the concrete boots aren’t too heavy, he could land a Ganglands War victim.

Progressing along Flinders Walk I pass a gin bar, Junipalooza, which confirms that ‘looza’ is an overused suffix. Has our planet reached peak gin yet? Will Bundy ever be world dominant? No, I don’t think so.

Melbourne’s cityscape is a marvel. Yesterday, as we headed to the MCG for our midday tour Alex remarked to Max that he found the metropolis, ‘architecturally interesting.’ This became a discussion and I’m pleased they express curiosity about these things.

Entering the space of Birrarung Marr I’m struck by birdsong and the accompanying aural surprise in what’s otherwise a vast built environment. It’s refreshing. And now there’s a bicycle repair station between me and the river! What a simple yet generous gesture and I hope the vandals respect it. It’s symbolic of the petit accommodations ubiquitously afforded by Melbourne.

Rod Laver and John Cain Arenas swim into view. In 1988 some Kapunda boys and I left the MCG after a day-nighter. I wanted to watch Allan Border bat but was at the loo in the stadium’s bowels when he came and went for a first-ball duck. Like a scene from a Russian documentary, we later saw hundreds of workers toiling away under floodlights to finish the Tennis Centre in time for the Australian Open.

My half-way point is the Swan Street Bridge, so I nudge along it and head home on the other bank.

Boathouse Drive is quietly industrious with relaxed, flush-looking folk carrying out their oars and boats. They seem to be enjoying the leisurely rhythms of their exercise routine. A barbecue sizzles away on a rowing club balcony.

Wearing a New York marathon t-shirt, a jogger is alongside me. I smile and vow to also buy a similar souvenir from eBay. He then propels past me as if I’m a statue. Disappearing like the roadrunner, I note that he has an athletes’ calves. I reconsider. Perhaps the shirt is authentic.

Southbank is tranquil apart from scattered patrons hunched over lattes and the (now dismembered) Age. Late yesterday when I ran along the river the restaurants were all busy with enthusiastic punters. The emerging trend for Friday nuptials continuing, a large wedding party promenaded past me, with knots of impossibly prosperous-looking couples off to the reception. There were also some boisterous lunches ambling into what sounded distinctly like hour number four. I doubt that I’ve seen any of the participants at this bright, embryonic stage of morning.

Near home I by-pass two mature women waiting for a taxi. Even at my distance I catch a gust of their perfume. It’s from the Chemist Warehouse and surely named Ski Field (for Seniors).

The apartment elevator takes me upstairs.

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Tramping through Tanunda

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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.

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.

2

Good Friday in Battery Point

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Arthur Circus in the heart of Battery Point (no, that’s Claire; Arthur Circus is the location)

Disembarking at our St Ives apartment late on Easter Thursday I decide as I’ve now run 67 consecutive days that this should continue. It matters not that we’re now in another state. So, in the Good Friday morning stillness I jog south on the Sandy Bay Road.

There’s a trickle of traffic and I pass the Doctor Syntax pub: solemn and grey and vaguely medieval. I love that there’s a comic figure, British thoroughbred, play and rock album all named for this medical and grammatical character. Easing down the footpath I vow that we’ll invest an hour late one Easter afternoon. The roadside signage promises all manner of pubby treats. There’s a beer garden too.

Further along is the Sandy Bay bakery with thickening knots of folk on the street, all poised with lattes and brioche things. I pick my way past.

Then I turn off Sandy Bay Road and steer towards the water and Errol Flynn Reserve. Named for the celebrated 1930’s Hollywood star who was born in Hobart, the reserve is neither swashbuckling nor braggadocious. It’s surprisingly modest and utterly lacking in Freudian imagery.

A whale blubber pot in Salamanca Place; yum.

The hushed streets and handsome weatherboard homes and benign, flat river remind me of the play for voices, Under Milkwood and I wonder, slogging along, about Captain Cat, Nogood Boyo and Mr. Mog Edwards, those most magnificent creations of Dylan Thomas. I recall the beginning-

It is spring, moonless night in the small town, starless and bible-black, the cobblestreets silent and the hunched, courters’-and-rabbits’ wood limping invisible down to the sloeblack, slow, black, crowblack, fishingboatbobbing sea

With the Hobart atmosphere resting gently on the bay, I steal across the Royal Yacht club of Tasmania carpark towards the Derwent Sailing Squadron. Many 4WD’s have nosed their broad beaks into the spaces although I spot no sailors on the balcony. Dry-docked craft hang about like timber phantoms.

My destination is the Wrest Point casino, defined by its dire 70’s concrete tower reminiscent of Glenelg’s Revolving restaurant, itself for some time now an empty, hideous blob. If nothing else Hobart’s casino seems persistent. I nod at it. I’m rarely a casino patron but there used to be an excitement in visiting one. Now it seems to me that there’s a sharper sense of occasion popping down the servo Sunday evening for a block of fruit ‘n’ nut.

Completing a U-turn, I’m now on a dirt coastal path with a curmudgeonly sign forbidding dogs. Why escapes me and I then encounter a pair of happily defiant owners and their snouting hounds. People and Hounds- 1, Authorities- 0.

In a playground I pass a ruddy-cheeked couple with a toddler, all surging towards a stationary swing, their worlds necessarily shrunk. Puffa-jackets, flat whites, and singular smiles. They’re having a very good Friday.

Kelly’s Steps leading into Salamanca Place

Swinging into Napoleon Street and as promised by the motel receptionist I confront a hilly challenge. With nothing like it in pancake Glenelg, I tiptoe up its sharp tarmac, my calves pinging like a submarine radar. The sunlight bends in across me with kindly promise and assists my ascent.

Rumbling up the curiously named Trumpeter Street the sail-white and seafaring-blue façade of the Shipwright Arms gladdens me as I drift past. It’s inviting and stately but there’s an abandoned rum can by its front door. What should I expect at a nautical pub in this most nautical town? I promise an hour in its lounge-room like front bar by week’s end (gee, our week’s fast filling up).

Homeward bound through Battery Point, noted bakery Jackson and McRoss sits invitingly on the curb, all close and confident, like many Hobart frontages, as if they’ve been plonked there by the road, direct from London. It’s prosperous and caffeinated and sticky-bunned beneath its green sign. For these peoples it’s already a good Friday.

Drippy-browed and clingy-shirted in the motel foyer I poke the elevator button. Our MONA ferry departs in an hour.

Your correspondent’s beer in the Shipwrights Arms
2

Another Good Friday in Glenelg

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Thrice weekly I cross the river at the King Street Bridge, but today I turn left and jog along the Patawalonga’s bank past the boat haven. It’s already escalating from warm to hot, and the sky is cloudless with that autumn-in-Adelaide vibrancy and healthfulness. Sun-smart, I’m wearing my Glenelg 2019 Premiers cap, and this sets an expectant tone given the Tigers’ season opener later against Westies. The boys and I are walking down for the opening bounce.

Passing the former Buffalo site, home for decades to a full-sized replica of the ship that brought free settlers to the colony, it was also a family restaurant and in its nautical dining room I once heard a kid say, “This is the best buffalo restaurant I’ve ever been to.” The ship is now gone and makes the location less cluttered, replaced by welcome light and space and hope.

Exiting Wigley Reserve I pick my way along to Holdfast Promenade and the ocean which always surprises me by being right there, sparkling and benevolent this morning and, for a kid from parched Kapunda, a repository of awe.

There’s a fluid, manic blanket of kids at the Glenelg Foreshore Playspace, climbing and jumping and yelling while their caffeinated parents watch, judging when to intervene and get the offspring home before the final set of tears abbreviates the excursion and taints everyone’s morning. Peering into Moseley Square, all palm trees and swirling pavers, it presents as the village centrepiece, drenched in Californian hues and optimism.

The old jetty sits quietly, this truncated version (215 metres compared to the original’s 381) built in 1969, and somewhat utilitarian with its asphalt surface. It’s unlike the creaking, kindly wooden piers of coastal towns, but as my former colleague/ poet John Malone once wrote, jetties are an umbilical cord to the vast ocean.

Pushing my way through the South Esplanade there’s a paddle boarder seemingly becalmed in the shallows, contemplating a recommencement of her moderate early-Easter movement across the polished water-top. About me are streams of young mums with prams, and octogenarians on sea-facing benches trading fuzzy names, aiming to make and remake connections among their ever-closing circles.

Just before the Broadway kiosk the green park narrows into a gentle headland. I hear the cool room buzzing with vague menace, but the breakfasters’ chat hovers above it, and the cafe is bursting with our shared fortune and eggs Florentine and holiday cheer and pancakes with berry coulis and ice-cream.

Leaving the beach I now turn left up Broadway past the silent homes and a freshly-cleared block, mounds of sand waiting to again become submerged beneath concrete foundations. The foot traffic instantly eases and my ambling way is mostly unimpeded by dogs and bright clots of purposeful, aged ramblers.

There’s a prosperous row of businesses (florist, organic store etc) at the start of my final block. I glance in the butcher shop window and think of Dennis, the sociable proprietor who began as an apprentice, and later headed up a Melbourne franchise with a string of fitness centres before returning to his first love. Reflecting upon gyms compared to butchery he once told me, “The difference was the meat twitched instead of staying still.”

Yesterday afternoon to mark the beginning of many enchanted things, Claire and I went to the Broady beer garden for two happy hour drinks each- pints of Coopers’ Pacific Pale Ale (habit and brevity mean I still call it Session Ale) and crisp glasses of house white, and elected to leave the car overnight on Hastings Street.

I see it waiting for me now in the gilded sunlight.

2

A Good Friday in Glenelg North

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Shuffling past the Old Gum Tree Reserve at lunchtime my boys are playing golf.

They’ve designed a course and while each hole is unique they share one green, located near the back fence and made with a disposable drink cup. Both carry various irons and woods and they’ve the park to themselves, but I hope the putters don’t suddenly become light sabres or Samurai swords.

Continuing west I mourn that in 2020 we’ve not yet had a BBQ in the park as circumstances haven’t allowed the simple joy of snags in a public place. This now belongs to a distant, almost unknowable era but one day…

empty BBQ

Every Proclamation Day the park hosts formalities and a morning tea to mark the province’s beginning. A few years’ ago a friend, Sarah, took a selfie with Julia Gillard, who was in town for Christmas.

Bounding up to the then PM as she made her way through the scone-loving crowd, Sarah asked the question and so they both paused, smiled and click. Just like that. No burly black suits panicking into their lapel microphones and leaping like bears onto a salmon. I love that this could happen, just down the road.

It’s a kilometre from home to the beach and then another along the waterfront so my round trip’s about four kilometres. While I once ran, to now call it a jog might be hopeful. I could time myself with a sundial.

Over Tapleys Hill Road, I pass the MacFarlane Street reserve with its playground guarded by orange bunting. Alex learnt to ride a bike here. Palm trees patrol the perimeter and on spring mornings magpies swoop me. One once pecked my skull but I was clearly under-cooked as he didn’t come for a second bite. I wouldn’t eat my head either.

pat

Waiting for me is the unhurried Patawalonga River. It’s only seven kilometres in length, but this is decidedly Mississippian compared to Kuokanjoki, the shortest river in Finland which connects lakes Sumiainen and Keitele. It’s three and a half metres long.

The King Street Bridge conquered I reach the esplanade and the sea swims into happy view. To my left is the sand castle-like Marina Pier with its now ghostly restaurants and apartment balconies. Turning right the pavers follow the beach and bounce along the dune line. There’s an energetic torrent of walkers and cyclists.

Glenelg North’s beach is wide and dotted by dogs, and with a gentle sky above it’s easy to momentarily ignore the cataclysm. People appear joyful. There’s communicable resilience.

Rip-rap rocks armour the shoreline against erosion. I recall how in 1983 during a Year 12 Geography excursion with our teacher Ali Bogle we visited this very spot on a balmy Thursday prior to our penultimate Kapunda High School social. I was astonished when Ali told us that it costs a million dollars a kilometre to build this protection.

riprap

The esplanade rises gently as I go, but on a rough day with a headwind it seems Himalayan. The eastern side is flanked by houses, all glass and chrome and dazzlingly white. Soon all will be modern, when the sixties-build apartments are bulldozed.

I often smirk at Number 20 with its outsized silver numerals on the front wall, and remember Shrek seeing the size of Lord Farquaad’s castle, and asking Donkey, “Do you think maybe he’s compensating for something?”

castle

A sunshiny addition to this landscape is Audrey’s coffee caravan. It’s homemade with wooden window frames and pop-riveted aluminium and a chalkboard menu out the front. There’s always a punter or two waiting and drinking in the aroma.

I’m nearly at West Beach and the enviably positioned Sewerage Treatment Works on Anderson Avenue. Gee, poo often enjoys an idyllic (temporary) coastal address. Just short of the dunes there’s a small shelter. Occasionally, a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses sets up a pamphlet display to conscript the dog-walking, beach-loving, track-suited clientele so affectionately referred to in the Old Testament.

JW

Although they cheerfully ignore me I recall the words of Bill Bryson: I don’t know why religious zealots have this compulsion to try to convert everyone who passes before them – I don’t go around trying to make them into St Louis Cardinals fans, for Christ’s sake – and yet they never fail to try.

I turn for home.

audrey

2

Observations from a Pair of Moving Legs

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esplanade

This story is from the change of millennium when old mate Bob and I used to run early mornings along the Glenelg South esplanade. There’s surprising stuff happening by the beach at dawn.

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It is like facing up to an appointment with the dentist. You know that it is going to hurt, that you will make some alarming gurgling sounds and that when it is finished, you will try, with ample humiliation, to spit.

Friday. Dawn. Moseley Square. I twist and fold in a feeble attempt to prepare. Peering into the dark space of the Grand’s Pier and Pines bar, I see a lone cleaner vacuuming away the last scraps of yesterday’s conversation. “Let’s do this,” urges Bob- my accomplice.

With a beep my stopwatch is blinking and running and so are we!

At 6am the Esplanade is two babbling streams of people and dogs: one flowing toward Brighton and the other; lazily at the Patawalonga. We surge southward and a dribbling hound lumbers into my lane and then across to a yawning pine. He autographs it with the shamelessness of a footballer on an end-of-season trip.

On the horizon a tanker drags itself noiselessly toward the refinery. The breeze is crisp. A lanky teenager shuffles plastic tables outside the Broadway café, his black beanie pulled so low that some could suspect him of arranging a bank robbery for mid-morning. I spot a Chupa-chup poking jauntily from his jaw and relax, pleased that he is unlikely to feature on tonight’s TV news. He nods, “G’day boys.” We nod back.

Knots of chatty walkers drink up the seaside zest and provide welcome entertainment. It’s like spinning a radio dial across endless talkback stations- and not without intrigue. A Reality-TV producer (still in plague numbers) could comfortably fashion a dozen gripping episodes from the random snippets we steal each morning. Ambling into Somerton Park I catch:

“…but you’ll never guess,” (an elderly gent to his grandson) “he made the putt!”

“I told Doreen that there-is-NO-WAY-I’m-going.”

“So, do you think his wife knows?”

And a boisterous woman in a pink tracksuit gives her arteries some extra traffic by broadcasting, “and that bloody plumber still wanted to charge me!”

My stopwatch offers no quirky grabs. It only rudely demands acceleration. The yacht club sails toward us. Finally halfway, we anchor and embrace our minute’s rest. “A visit to the dentist’s is less painful,” I splutter, hands on hips- hungry for air.

Bob wheezes, “At least you get plenty of oxygen in the chair.” His hair is stuck firm to his head. We devour the sixty seconds, then turn, resolved, homeward bound. The wind, previously an ally, is now aggressive. I immediately feel I’m towing an old wooden bar fridge. An old wooden bar fridge bulging with brown rows of Coopers Stout.

The Esplanade’s skyline changes constantly. Majestic villas bravely protest the spread of Tuscan packing crates. A developer’s billboard stands loud among the concrete and the mesh of a building site. “Hurry! Only ONE left,” it screams impatiently.

“Now that’s optimism,” snorts Bob. This anorexic block is apparently destined to feature all of two yellow townhouses.

A cheery clot of ruddy sixty-somethings is caught by their chain of cars on a rise. T-shirts cling and drip and they chat brightly in the golden light of the sunrise as only the retired can. A champagne cork, sorry- Australian Sparkling Wine cork cuts an arc across the footpath like a failed firework. Each gent tips a crystal flute into which the hissing fizz is energetically spilled. “What’s the occasion boys?” I ask.

“Friday,” celebrates one of this chirpy clan as he hoists his breakfast drink. A gesture of sweaty fellowship.

“Amen,” I return.

“That will be us in thirty years Mickey,” puffs Bob.

“The cheapest champagne will be a hundred bucks a bottle by then.”

“Plus twenty five per cent GST.” But Bob is given to political alarm.

Pushing on towards the Broadway, we abandon our role models to their refreshments and their broad, leisurely days.

The stopwatch sternly announces that a scant two minutes stand between us and our best time of the summer. The Grand’s sandcastle shapes loom and I try to push myself quicker. “No,” my legs scream. I know deep in my soul that a root canal treatment is better than this.

“Listen legs,” I assert, “do as you are told. And stop talking. You can’t speak. This is not a Douglas Adams’ novel!”

Our finishing line (in many senses of the phrase) swims into happy view. I glance at my now completely despised watch. The Town Hall clock frowns down at us like a disappointed Senior Colts football coach. Again I spy the wandering hound, eagerly leaving his name on a sullen lamppost.

Swerving around some swaying walkers gobbles critical seconds.

“Eleven dollars for O-Rings! What’s the hell is an O-Ring?”

It’s the pink tracksuit, still expounding on the Secret Horrors of Dishwasher Repairs.

We make a desperate, final lunge- and are outside our target time. It was, however, another vigorous run and my pounding pulse is electric and exhilarating. We savour our slow cool down on the bumpy lawn that separates the Norfolk Island Pines from the sloping sands. After, easing along the veranda of the Grand, Bob inquires, “See you in here for a beer tonight?”

“Magnificent idea,” I agree.

Yes, it is the weekend. The glorious escape. Promise and anticipation.

Our next dental appointment is not until Monday.

running