Category Archives: travel

0

Jazz and me

|

trumpet

My own musical career was fleeting. When I was eight I learnt guitar until the teacher moved, and Kapunda being a country town, that was it. I remember strumming in that measured, funereal way to “Banks of the Ohio” and being uneasy at having to sing

 I plunged a knife into her breast

 And told her she was going to rest

 She cried “Oh Willy, don’t murder me

 I’m not prepared for eternity.”

*

While at university I discovered Vince Jones, jazz vocalist and trumpeter and his album For All Colours. Its sophistication reminds me of Frank Sinatra, and “Straighten Up and Fly Right” stars a rowdy Wilbur Wilde sax solo. I then knew that the saxophone could be as cool as a guitar.

The first concert I attended was Midnight Oil at Memorial Drive (Julia) and Vince Jones at Le Rox in Light Square was the second. Standing with other students in the airless dark I note that Vince wears a suit and tie, and in contrast to Peter Garrett’s frenzied jumping the jazz ensemble appears uninterested.

But, I was in. Jones himself once said, “I want to be inside every atom of every note.” Over the next decade I saw him often, usually in the Piano Bar of the Festival Theatre. And then, I don’t know why, he stopped regularly touring Adelaide.

*

One wet Saturday in England I heard a BBC Radio 4 documentary on John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, so immediately jogged up the high street to a HMV and bought it for ten quid. And as rain and sleet lashed our windows, its saxophonic hymn brightened the crushing winter sky.

The storms of Coltrane’s personal life thundered in counterpoint to the spiritual still of A Love Supreme, and within two years of its 1965 release he would be dead.

*

One distant summer some Kapunda boys and I drove across the Hay Plains to spend a fortnight in Sydney with an air-traffic controller mate. He was among rude privilege in a Drummoyne apartment. We parked Woodsy’s Datsun 180B on the street. As we’d daily exit the Western Distributor there was a looming billboard with a huge fanged spider warning us to watch out for funnel-webs. We did. I still do.

Besides playing cricket by the Parramatta River, and body-surfing at Bondi and Curl Curl I hauled everyone to The Basement in Circular Quay. I was a fan of Live at the Basement on ABC Saturday evenings, and Galapagos Duck was the house band, and Don Burrows and James Morrison were often guests. I can’t tell you who played that sultry evening, but I liked it. The wooden tables, the ambiance, the enveloping melodies.

*

Among the more brilliant things about living in England is chucking a sickie, and knicking off at dawn on a Friday to another country. Easyjet flew us from Luton to Cologne so we could explore their Christmas markets.

The city is largely unremarkable save for its compelling cathedral; the Dom. With twin spires ascending to 515 feet, it was the world’s tallest building until the Washington Monument. Similarly astonishing is that in 1162 Emperor Barbarossa secured for the Dom the authenticated remains of the Three Magi. We drifted about its vast interior and leaving, presented some Euros to a nodding priest.

Papa Joe’s En Streckstrump is Cologne’s premier jazz venue so we find our seats early for Sun Lane Ltd, an ensemble from nearby Aachen. Slender waitresses disperse wine and beer. We can scarcely see through the stinging blue smoke. The punters surge in. Bespectacled, ample musicians squash timorously onto the picnic-rug stage. The pianist looks like a sheet has been stretched about a lumpy, wobbling refrigerator.

Standing unnaturally close, an energetic type suddenly clambers up and straddles a nearby stair- and me, as if he and I are posing for a gay fire-fighters’ calendar. I am startled. Forgetting that Europeans are often bilingual I blurt, ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

As the gentleman dismounts the step, and my groin, I mutter, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome!” my intimate twitters.

“Say what you really want!” adds his friend. We don’t see them again.

The traditional jazz is brisk and zestful, and spilling out onto the Rhine’s bank Nina’s “99 Red Balloons” bursts from a heaving club. Lingering at the chilly Alter Markt, the wife sips a concluding gluhwein; the spiced, red wine and we confirm that Cologne jazz goes pretty well.

*

It was nearly an hour commute across Adelaide’s most miserable suburbs; Snowtown territory. After many months afternoon radio had become tiresome; especially when the old-age surrender of organising life around news bulletins, those ridiculous frissons began, so I fought this inevitability, by committing to Miles Davis. I submerged myself in Bitches Brew.

Menacing and swirling about you like a phantasm, the music is a sexual maelstrom, and its recording began within hours of Hendrix and his pyrotechnics at Woodstock. Was it jazz? Was it rock? Was it funk? I wasn’t sure, but I again knew that the trumpet could be as cool as a guitar.

Despite its ominous cadences and rhythms, I found it transportive and therapeutic as I’d make my way home to the beach. Bitches Brew is vital to jazz-fusion, and while the opening two tracks are rightly celebrated, “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down” on side four is the standout. I still love getting lost in this 94-minute ocean.

*

This story begins with Mum and Dad’s record collection. Don’t they all? In among the usual 1970’s fodder of Ripper ’76 and the Best of Abba there’s some curios, and in the not on 5AD or 5KA and certainly not on Countdown section are some jazz albums, one a Dixieland compilation. I don’t especially recall any of the tracks, but these made significant impacts upon my psychology and vocabulary.

The jazz evoked widescreen travel and the speaking of strange tongues and moving about in dazzling metropolises that one day I might be permitted to visit. It was New York and Chicago and New Orleans. It wasn’t that I was trapped in dusty little Kapunda, it was that a planet was out there, and Mum and Dad’s jazz records captured these teeming, thrilling possibilities.

They still do.

BB

0

global revolutions

|

globe

 

I love a globe. There’s simple joy in being hypnotised by the cascading sweep of the Americas, contemplating the distant familiarity of England, and contending with innumerable Stans where once was the muscular bulk of the USSR.

Ah, seduced by a sphere.

For my birthday Mum and Dad bought me a standing floor globe, and Sunday morning Max and I assembled its dark wooden frame before slotting in the tilted ball. Max gave it a spin.

Ocean. Land. Giddy revolutions. Ocean. Land.

Like the best gifts it’s made me reflect.

Alex and Max often chat about the wider world, and as they engage with the possibilities, their curiosity is comforting. Globes encourage this.

“Alex, how deep is the Marianas Trench?”

“Really deep. You couldn’t even touch the bottom.”

And last year, walking by the Singapore River-

“Max, when we’re older, like probably thirteen, Joseph and I are climbing Mt Everest. We won’t even need any oxygen tanks.”

“No oxygen tanks! Really?”

As a kid I had enchanted possessions. The tape recorder and accompanying best of Little River Band cassette I received one Christmas; my first cricket bat- Polyarmoured, and now resting in a cupboard at Mum and Dad’s, and a yellow, wooden skateboard. But, in our house in Kapunda the globe of my childhood held quiet and enduring power over me, like a mystic. Globes conjure memories, and are gateways into our future.

From his Nanna and Poppa Alex also got one for his eighth birthday. With eyes widening he ripped the wrapping paper from the box then hopped about the room with delight. His globe came with a touch-activated light, and when the boys are in bed, it cloaks their room with a snug glow. Living in a corner, it watches over them, a silent sentry as they sleep.

As an adult how did I survive so long without a globe? For too many years my homes were without one; emptier dwellings surely dulled by their absence, and now we’ve three, offering buzzing invitations to our planet’s mysteries and marvels, and voyages and stories. Our imaginative power is enhanced. They’re as essential as milk and I love turning them gently like a monk, fingers on the thermoplastic joy, meditating on unknown places, and the promise of drenching wonder.

Globes urge consideration of yourself, and the bustling world, waiting for you, just outside.

For our boys, I hope as much.

Thanks to Mum and Dad for their gifts of globes, over many decades.

 

tape recorder

0

The Oceanic Adventures of Bev Package: Our Week on a Cruise Ship

|

bev

 

It’d be fifteen years since I last heard it. But it’s irresistible and in the cosy chairs of the Pacific Dawn’s Promenade Bar we all sang along

It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday

A regular crowd shuffles in

There’s an old man sitting next to me

Making love to his tonic and gin

Chugging across the Coral Sea during our week I heard Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” about a dozen times, and often twice an evening. Kieran, a Welsh fellow who looks a little like the comedian Jimeon was our favourite performer, did a grand version, and indeed, the first airing was, with planned theatricality, at precisely nine o’clock on the Saturday.

Earlier, we’d endured a curious, scatting, jazz interpretation, complete with messy harmonica, by a young pianist. We also heard it a couple times on the blustery pool deck.

Although it’s about broken dreams the song rollicks along in 3/4 waltz time and demands those with refreshments to raise and swing them about like pre-fight pirates. It’s an amazing narrative, dominated by the stirring affection with which the barroom tragics: John, Paul, Davy and co are described.

It was his first hit, and in its fifth decade, still works magnificently. Just as “Fairytale of New York” always takes me to Christmas in London, and with “LA Woman” I’m driving in Santa Monica, “Piano Man” will endlessly transport me to that rousing place on the Pacific Dawn.

*

We squeeze onto a water-taxi in Port Vila and transit across Vanuatu’s harbour. It’s an attractive winter’s morning and we’re buoyant with sea spray and the promise of exploration. Rounding Iririki Island, the coast is speckled with dozens of half-sunken yachts, ghostly victims of 2015’s Cyclone Pam. Seeing these dead craft reminds me that idyllic Pacific atolls frequently turn hellish, and that people are really, really small.

Zig-zagging along the main street it’s clear that our massive ship disgorging a couple thousand folks is an event. Some load-up at a duty-free shop and then I see it, that most ubiquitous of Australian chains: Billabong. It speaks of the worst colonial toxicity; a symbol of Australia’s reptilian hegemony and doomed local aspiration. I find it troubling to visit a country which is economically obliged to try to sell me surf wear.

*

I’m hoping that somebody can help me with this. Is it true that “Reminiscing” by LRB features on each of Cruise Ship Classics: Volumes 1 – 12?

Yeah, I thought so.

*

I love regressing to boyish wonder and again finding it awesome that a plane like an A-380 can fly. The Pacific Dawn, is also a leviathan which, if dropped onto Footy Park, would flatten both sets of goal posts. Of course if this were during a 2011 Power home game, it’d scare the be-jesus out of the scattered punters and Kochie while possibly also tearing the tarps.

That our ship glides seaward across a rippling bay can appear, from our vantage point, over one-hundred feet above the sea, as the muscular act of a magical god.

Aside from the Promenade Bar my favourite place within this hydropolis was on the pool deck, with my Jonathan Franzen novel, and a crisp Peroni courtesy of everyone’s bestie: Bev Package. How could I not love being drenched in languid holiday rhythms and their drifting afternoons? Up there, our petty urgencies evaporate into brief irrelevance.

*

Each morning over the PA and in his Genoan tones our captain addressed the ship: “So, we are travelling north-east through the Coral Sea at eighteen knots. Later today we’ll cross the Tropic of Capricorn and by afternoon the winds should abate. There’s currently around four to five metre swells, and we’ve activated our stabilisers to give you greater comfort. It’s nineteen degrees centigrade and should reach a top of twenty-three. Up next, a 1973 singalong classic by Billy Joel.”

*

Trudging up the tropical hill to Our Lady of Lourdes Chapel on the eastern coast of Lifou the terrain and vegetation remind me of Singapore’s Pulau Ubin, but without the aggressive monkeys. It’s an energetic stroll across this member of the Loyalty Islands and the view is fetching. Inspired by the beauty and proximate godliness, Bazz and I exchange observations:

“Look out there. See that yacht. That belongs to Richard Branson’s butcher.”

“Sure. Did you know that Sister Janet Mead isn’t buried beside this chapel?”

“Have I told you that Leo Sayer has never toured here?”

We then gathered on the beach, and some confronted the cruel, blue water. Alex and I clambered up to the village market to buy him a coconut. As we came back down the rocky track I see my wife, crying and saying something, but it’s lost in the wind. I think: someone’s been stung by a stingray, or worse, someone’s lost their phone, or even worse, Tex Walker’s done his knee (again).

Bursting onto the seashore, the cruislings are gathered about my brother-in-law Richard and his girlfriend Jasmine. They’ve just become engaged. Months prior to this voyage, he’d bought a ring to make this their moment. There’s tears and hugs and laughter. Families are meant to get bigger. Ours just did.

And with this Lifou is changed. For us, it was just an anonymous islet, a previously unencountered paradise, but now it’s invested, and forever enchanted. Isn’t this what people should do? With love, drape their stories upon an innocent geography, and transmogrify the terrain into something wonderful and harmless and humanly sweet?

*

Billy Joel hasn’t released a new song since 1993, and like many musicians he peaked early. But how fantastic that his biggest tune was born of grinding slog in an LA piano bar. That this song about crushed dreams would make his come rapidly and unthinkably true is a joyful irony.

For most of us, going on a cruise ship was new, and “Piano Man” an old friend, a smiling stowaway, waiting to surprise us. It was excellent to catch up over a beer or two, and like the best of songs it became a unifying motif for us, on our little holiday.

 Sing us a song you’re the piano man

Sing us a song tonight

Well we’re all in the mood for a melody

And you’ve got us feeling alright

BJ

4

Round 6- Adelaide v Fremantle: Sea Monkeys

|

sea monkeys

If talking about the weather is Britain’s obsession, then I’d argue that Australia’s national hobby is yabbying. A crustacean El Dorado, trifling physical labour, kids, and refreshments. Generally yielding inedible miscellany. I love it.

After five long years we’re back in Kimba, and Friday lunchtime the ute of my old mate Bazz clunks towards a dam on the Ballumbah Hill Road.

An exploratory net is thrown in, my boys leap about, and between sips of beer, Bazz and I slap at the late April flies. Out here flies never holiday, never bugger off up north for winter. I remember wearily waving them away at nearby Buckleboo during footy season as I rested in the forward pocket, while some spectators insulated themselves with stout.

Dragging the net onto the bank Alex and Max skip and shriek.

Bazz declares, “No yabbies, sorry boys.”

Pointing at the wriggling aquaculture Alex says, “Are these tadpoles?”

“Yep. Big ones. They’ll soon be frogs.”

Max asks, “What’s that funny one?”

I instantly see my teenaged-self staring at whole-page advertisements within the horror comics I enjoyed briefly. I blurt, “Sea monkey. It looks like a sea monkey.” With exotic smiles and bewitching humanoid figures, sea monkeys belonged in Lost in Space, inspiring Dr Smith to more mission-threatening selfishness.

Sea monkeys taught me a lesson about the cruel gap between advertising promise, and consumer reality.

Thirty yabby-free minutes later, rattling to the Kimba Golf Club, the boys are singing the song they’re inventing, bemused by their own pulsing imaginations,

“Sea monkey, sea monkey, sea monkey….”

*

In opening the breezy afternoon Adelaide’s Tom Lynch forgets physics, which demands a drop punt, and instead sends a tragi-comedic dribbler across the face. It’s inexplicably ridiculous.

Fremantle commences its Behind-Fest as Mayne pushes it right. Then Mundy to the left. I’m sure Ross Lyon could watch a grim, sleet-soaked, third division Yorkshire derby that ended 0-0, and he’d say, “It were rubbish. Constant attack are useless. Too many goals.”

After nine and a half horrid minutes Jenkins gets Adelaide off the duck.

If we still had a VCR (Betamax) it would’ve been wasteful spending eight cents on electricity recording this quarter.

*

The tide’s turning at Coffin Bay. It’s just outside Port Lincoln, which produced Graham Johncock, Byron Pickett and brothers Peter and Shaun Burgoyne. All came from the Mallee Park Football Club.

We’re in the shallows of Long Beach. The boys, running and splashing, running and splashing. Their Mum then urges them to slow down, look and spot the details. Now they see them. Gazing down microscopically, their world inflates like a gaseous giant.

Sand crabs. Pale. Scuttling. Burrowing. Alex scoops some up. They escape, and tumble into the Southern Ocean. Like all younger brothers Max wants to follow, but is anxious as he’s not held a crab before. He jiggles and hesitates.

And then on his palm is a little crab. With curiosity and a pocketful of courage, a crustacean dances across his hand!

This is why we’ve driven seven hundred kilometres to a gentle, enlightening beach.

*

Second term opens with more of the same. To watch a match involving the Dockers is to observe two sloths; one willing and one captive, wrestling under a sodden army blanket.

Recent re-includee Cameron shows poise, and should still be at the club in a decade. Tom Lynch enjoys absolution by collecting plainly, pirouetting twice and snapping precisely. A Renoir in an abattoir.

Behind play Spurr flattens Betts and donates the Crows another. Meanwhile, The Dockers inch up to ten behinds.

Matthew Pavlich gets another minor score after the siren. He’s presented well today during a season in which many saw Pav not as Australia’s (New Zealand’s) favourite dessert, but month-old cheesecake.

*

So, our boys haven’t ever swung at a gold ball, but they’ve now driven a golf cart. Is this wrong? Ahead of tomorrow’s round Bazz wants a hit on Royal Kimba’s back nine.

I’m cart captain, but in turn and on my lap, Alex and Max steer and stomp the pedals. On the 12th Max accelerates up the fairway, but detours through a bush by the ladies’ tee. Crackling twigs and leaves shower us.

We’re only in Kimba three days, but the accomplishments accumulate like boy scout badges. They help in the garden, and Bazz takes them out on an electrical job, and a couple hours later they burst through the screen door. As apprentice sparkies, Alex has fifteen dollars, and Max juggles some toy trucks, bought with his earnings.

On the 16th Bazz pulls another drive left. “What’s going on?” I ask as the cart bounces along the rough. Not for the first time in the decades I’ve known him he self-analyses, “Bad golf made easy.”

We’re halfway across Australia, on a near-desert plateau, but this trip is a sea-change.

*

To commence the second half Betts is slung when not in possession, and then at the opposite end Ballantyne misses. His team-mates are secretly pleased.

Successively, Eddie provides a signature pocket-snap, and Brodie Smith delights with an equally emblematic missile from beyond fifty.

Halfway through the quarter Fremantle have kicked fourteen behinds, and only two majors. Goal scoring is as natural to the Dockers as it is to garfish (grilled).

Obviously using the Chicken Salt (yes, it’s now a proper noun) hoarding as a target, Tom Lynch guides through his second.

The Crows are in control. Rory Sloane continues to play footy the way Ringo drummed for The Beatles: possibly without constant finesse, but with a charismatic enthusiasm that kept things moving along.

In the final stanza the home side accelerates away early as if wishing to escape this dire opponent and direr affair. Adelaide produces some sunny moments, but it’s an oddly cheerless conclusion, and there’s a mechanical, Samuel Beckett-like inevitability. The last three goals go pointlessly to the Dockers, but few will mourn the passing of their season, and their turgid game plan.

I look forward to seeing the Crows and Dogs at the Docklands next week. Can you get Chicken Salt there?

*

If you’re six you run from the holiday cottage to the Coffin Bay jetty in three languid seconds. Max does this each morning.

Late Anzac Day, we’re on the jetty. It attaches us to the glimmering water, welcoming contemplation and quiet gratitude.

Along the jetty there’s ladders, and Alex hovers above one. He wants to drive into the water. The deeper water. Most of his swimming has been in a Singaporean pool.

I can see the bottom, but it’s a scary step from the lower rung. A pause, then with a triumphant splash, he chests the water, dog-paddles about in innocent, furious circles, and scrambles up into the golden light.

At sunset of our final day on the West Coast I think of my old friend John Malone, and his poem, “Jetties” in which he notes that,

 

People lean

from jetties, dream from jetties

fishing for

tranquillity. They are

walkways into and out of

the mind. Umbilical

chords attaching us to the sea.

jetty

1

Welcome to Bundaberg

|

 

The following essay is a discussion of what makes Queensland a unique state, as observed by an outsider, and using a recent Bundy rum TV advertisement. Here’s a link to the clip-

 

I took a sip.

“He’s trying to kill me,” I thought (politely) to myself.

I took another sip.

“Yep, he is.”

Late Brisbane afternoon with my wife’s extended family. Uncle Fred had poured me a homebrew beer. “It works out at eighty cents a bottle.”

Fred’s a businessman, and his millinery company sells hats to southerners for the Melbourne Cup Carnival. He also travels overseas. He’s been around.

“New York. Shanghai. London,” he scoffed as I stared at my muddy glass.

“Between the Gold Coast and Rockhampton, the Queensland coast’s the best place in the world. Why would you wanna live anywhere else?”

Raising my beer I thought, this bloke’s serious. I stifled a laugh and looked at him.

For Uncle Fred, Queenslander, this is no joking matter.

*

In the colourful history of Australian booze marketing, the iconic VB campaign is king. It features a gallant orchestral score, and John Meillon’s distinctive voice:

You can get it liftin’

You can get it shiftin’

You can get it working a plough

You can get it any old how

Matter of fact, I got it now.

Nodding to Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson, these poems continue to charm.

Meillon was vocally perfect. His recitations were not of the people, but to and for the people. Warm like a sunset and eager, he continued to promote the beer long after he’d downed his last lager; a ghostly advocate; the spirit of beer-drinking and of Australian life.

Yet VB ads often present a work ethic, the idea that clocking off after the day’s duties, a drink awaits: “For a hard-earned thirst, you need a big cold beer and the best cold beer is Vic.”

It’s what you deserve.

This contrasts with the Queensland dynamic. In this we’re often sold the notion that drudgery’s irrelevant. But, you’ve got to have the sense to live there.

Back when it called itself Castlemaine an advertisement in the “I can feel a XXXX comin’ on” series captured that thinking. Allan Border’s on a Great Keppell beach, and lying back in a deck chair, with a few tinnies while Jeff Thomson, Greg Ritchie and Ray Phillips are fishing. That work’s unwelcome in paradise comes through as James Blundell sings

I wish this lazy Sunday would never disappear

And I could hold back Monday for the rest of the year

As captain and saviour, AB’s exempt from dangling a line. Historically, it’s 1987 and he required all his energy to repeatedly resuscitate Australia’s miserable batting. It matters not that AB and Thommo are native Sydneysiders, Queensland is welcoming. Both had become as local as mangoes.

After a curious, homoerotic conga line across the sand, the batsman, bowler and wicketkeeper join the captain for a XXXX. Then like synchronised swimmers, the three fishing rods double over at once, dinner hooked. However, our sporting legends ignore them because, as we know, the beers won’t drink themselves.

The rest of Australia seemingly needs its collective thirst to be won, toil first, to legitimise the rEward of beer. But in Queensland relaxation is king. That’s the promise; life is better. You can forget work.

Things’ll take care of themselves.

*

What does the recent Bundy Rum campaign show us of the Sunshine State?

“Men Like Us Like Bundaberg Rum” delivers many ideas. It’s 2015, but we’re not talking to women.

The second concept is found in the title’s assertion, “Men Like Us.” Meaning, we the blokes from Up North. Not just geographically, but attitudinally. You’re either a Queenslander or should wish you were. The delicious dichotomy.

A beach. Some fellows (one wearing a fez) are cluelessly building a Viking boat. Its anchor’s blacksmithed from cheese graters and saucepans. Upon premature ejection it sinks; all head to the pub, and toast with swirling mugs of Bundy.

There’s rustic defiance in this. An outlook which (again) decries work. Over-achievement? Not us. Technology and modernity? How would these help up here in God’s own?

As a South Australian I envy the confidence, the sense of self-containment. The advertisement’s moderately mocking, but underpinned by a subtextual boast: This is Queensland, this is Queensland, this is Queensland.

Another link to the past is the ship’s Bundy Bear figurehead. Now pretty much absent (where has he gone?), the Bear was Bundy rum. He was everyone’s mate. He had a deep voice. He was the smartest bear (bloke?) in the room.

In one vignette Bundy Bear takes a pre-party bath, into which a housemate deviously drops a red sock. Modishly late, the now pink bear arrives at the gathering, and is ribbed by the boys.

A gorgeous girl admires that he’s, “brave enough to wear pink” and invites him over to meet her girlfriends. Bundy’s more attractive to women than his forlorn, human mates. He’s outplayed them; for he is Bundy, hear him roar!

*

The Bundy ad imagines us as sea explorers. Save for draft ineligibility, we’d surely have got up in a shoot-out with the Portuguese! But, here we are with only imported South Australian half-back flanker Dougie Mawson getting umpires’ votes. Rather than heroically sending boats out; we’re now infamous as a nation, for not letting boats in.

Borrowing from a pirate narrative tradition, we’re also invited us to see ourselves as buccaneers. Again, here’s a scorning of traditional work. Caribbean swashbucklers? No, less glamorously, we’re the world’s best video pirates.

*

My encounter with Bundy was brief. Advertiser drinks columnist Philip White once considered Nelson’s Blood, and I was idiotically inspired. It was first made with rum from the very barrel which stored Lord Nelson’s body following his death on the Victory, at the Battle of Trafalgar.

Modern interpretations of Nelson’s Blood exist, but White reckons the Adelaide variety’s a tankard of Coopers Best Extra Stout, drowned by an unholy baptism of Bundy. No, it doesn’t taste nearly as good as it sounds.

Like the witches around their bubbling cauldron in Macbeth, a friend and I made some at a party. He’s from Wales. The next morning he was driving six hundred kilometres, across the desert. It was truly, ferociously, colossally grog.

*

Itself a type of work song, the sea shanty’s used ironically, with geographical alertness rewarded by

We sail from here to Bogota.

It’s a fun line given the Columbian capital’s landlocked position up on an Andean plateau.

Having launched, the good ship Bundy sinks like a delightfully feeble entry in a 1970’s birdman rally.

Our sails are filled with wind and pride,

Explore the world – well at least we tried.

The pirates survive, and rush to the pub. Their shoddy shipbuilding reinforces the low status of work. Not landing in Bogota? The outside world’s cruel, and treacherous. Stay in Queensland, and get on the rum.

The shanty’s sustained last note reminds me of the opening page (I’ve got no further) of Finnegans Wake on which Joyce included a 101-letter word, evoking the fall of Adam and Eve

bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk!

Our sailors are euphoric. But caution. A bar full of men full of hijinks full of Bundy? Fast forward a fierce hour. We’ve all seen how this film finishes. You’d usher gran out to the Cortina before she’d finished her shandy. Just relax. This is Queensland, nothing nasty’ll happen.

*

The slogan is Welcome to Bundaberg. So, it’s not only a city in regional Queensland, but an aspiration, a sultry nirvana, especially alluring to those of the cold wowserish south.

What can you expect upon arrival? A place in which you’d don a fez, and sink Viking ships. An idyll of cattle and cane, where the living is easy-going. A parish in which work is enthusiastically ignored.

The Lone Star and Sunshine states share much. Tellingly, for his 1940 recording, “Beautiful Queensland” country music pioneer Tex Morton adapted, “Beautiful Texas.” On airless Brisbane evenings Uncle Fred puts the needle on the vinyl, nods at the prudence of his life choices, and sings along

There are some folk who still like to travel

To see what they have over there

But when they go look, it’s not like the book

And they find there is none to compare

This may go some way to explaining the passion for Queensland in State of Origin football.

This essay was originally commissioned for  Long Bombs To Snake, the magazine of the Footy Almanac community. It is 68 pages of quality feature-length writing on numerous sports by twelve of the talented Footy Almanac contributors. My thanks to John Harms for the opportunity. Long Bombs To Snake is available for purchase here-

Almanac Shop

 

cricket

 

 

0

Skyhooks and me

|

ego

Urgency. I reckon this is the best word. For they were always urgent. Midnight Oil was aggressive, and Sherbet was summery. But even when they were brooding, Skyhooks was urgent.

Learning of their 1991 reunification tour, some mates and I instantly booked our tickets. However, on the day of their Adelaide concert I awoke 565 kilometres away on the West Coast as I had to pack up my Ucontitchie Road farmhouse for the move to Kimba.

With my earthly goods flung through the front door of my new house, we leapt into my mate’s SS Commodore, pointed the 4.9 litre beast eastward, and rumbled the five hours, through a January thunderstorm, to North Adelaide’s Old Lion Hotel. We arrived with moments to spare. The pub already stinging in its smoky, hot fug. There were but three beers on tap. Red Symons was at his belligerent Red Faces best. It was a night of huge fun.

I love crowd singing on a live album. It amplifies the sense of being there, when in all likelihood, you weren’t. Great examples include “Army” from Ben Folds Live and,” Don’t Look Back in Anger” by Oasis, but supreme for me is “All My Friends Are Getting Married” from Skyhooks’ Live in the Eighties. When Shirl invites the crowd to sing the chorus they do in such an adoring fashion. Back at the Old Lion this, too, was a highlight of that summer night.

*

Sophomore albums often rate highly. Think Nevermind, The Bends and Astral Weeks. Buoyed by the acclaim of their debut offering, there’s often a young band or artist, teamed up with a noted producer. Their confidence is unparalleled. An equivalent could be, again from 1991, when Mark Waugh made an elegant hundred on debut at Adelaide Oval. However, a friend observed, “It’s not such a surprise. After all, you only get picked for your country because you’re in fantastic form.”

Bearing this in mind, Ego Is Not a Dirty Word is their finest album. I know that Living in the Seventies is the much-loved debut, selling over 300,000 copies, and enjoying the infamy of six of its offerings being banned. But, on this second release, there’s an increased breadth in the songs, with “Love’s Not Good Enough” musing on suburban loneliness, “Smartarse Songwriters” featuring Greg Macainsh’s meta-cognitive explorations, and the title track, pushing the patience of many (I can’t imagine Sir Joh was a fan) with its brazen reference to the triumvirate of Richard Nixon, Leonard Cohen, and in an Australian music first, Jesus.

My favourite is side 2, track 2. I know it’s a hundred types of wrong, but I recently played it in the car for the boys. On the first note of “Mercedes Ladies” they both giggled at the larrikinism of bass line, the cheeky guitars and Freddie’s comical tom-tom drumming. It rollicks along with the musical highlight the double hi-hat chick at the end of each line. It’s a great way to spend three minutes, and encapsulates the band, their time, and their legacy. In this, as in much of their material, Skyhooks satirise the suburbs while also rejoicing in them.

Of course, we’re all apprehended by our creative context. Even here in smug 2016, history will eventually scold us. 1975 imprisoned many with multiple charges: sexism, homophobia, stereotyping. But despite this, Skyhooks also pioneered themes concerning the suburban and the local. It was music of the largely untold other; it was not of NYC or London.

Such is the significance of Skyhooks for me that the mention of Carlton evokes the song first, and the footy team second. The band’s collected lyrics still generate an imagined google map of Melbourne, and a reference to Toorak or Balwyn returns me to my original conceptions of the city by the Yarra. If the Beatles are Liverpool, and the Rolling Stones are London, then Skyhooks is Melbourne. Their music has always presented the geography of a highly human environment, as there’s colourful pictures of grimy pubs, menacing streetscapes, and widescreen vistas too.

Open photo

It was in my school mate Lumpy Nixon’s lounge room (I’m sure there were ceramic ducks flying up the wall) that I first saw, and heard Straight in a Gay, Gay World. I was mesmerised by the guitars on the title track, and the sonic trickery of a swarm of insects hovering overhead on the outro, moving from the left speaker to the right. I was fourteen and this was beyond cool.

The album’s artwork gripped me equally with its triptych of a solitary black sheep, butcher shop and lamb dinner. It was the first humorous cover I’d seen. The art often functioned as a portal to an album’s narrative. I was especially intrigued by Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here and tried to decipher the cover photo of the two businessmen, one calmly ablaze, shaking hands on a Californian backlot. However, I couldn’t unlock its mystical meanings. In our age of Spotify and digital downloads, these happy distractions have largely disappeared. But vinyl’s fighting back.

*

And finally, to Shirl. He’d a remarkably complex voice, blending a tradie’s building site swagger with the footballer’s front-bar cockiness. It was effortlessly confident, and also reassuring, saying, “Why would you live anywhere else?” as it slapped your back and shouted, “Forget about it, I’ll buy you a beer!” He sung to, and for, us. But his vowels were knowingly crisp and aware of the telling subtext. He delivered his stories with affection, while also investing the songs, as appropriate, with a sneer. “Million Dollar Riff” could be his best performance. Shirl was the perfect front man.

I love that I can go years without listening to a band, and then one afternoon find myself dragging out a dusty CD, and with the opening chords, being teleported to a distant, thrilling place. With Skyhooks that place is in the dimming distance and unreconstructed, but from time to time, I really enjoy going back there.

hooks

2

Now You Are Eight

|

Koh lanta

Suddenly and incredibly, you are eight! Alex, how our world changed when you were born on that bright Saturday afternoon, eight years ago.

Among my favourite things is spying on you. Isn’t this funny? You and Max love spy games, but Dad loves spying on you. What do I see when you’re not looking, but I am?

I see so much that makes me, and Mum proud. You’re funny and alert. Like a puppy, you play with creative energy. You love your friends, and they love you too. You like sharing stories, but listen when people tell you stuff too. For you, games and fun must be fair. You don’t like it if others are unkind to you, or those you care about. Because it’s important, you take a stand. This makes you a leader, and we love this about you.

I’ve so many memories.

We’re on Koh Lanta. It’s a fresh, clean morning and the sky’s holiday blue. I’m on a sun lounge out the front of the resort, looking across the sparkling sea towards the Strait of Malacca. You and Max are on the flawless, golden sand. Buckets, spades, toys. Boys and brothers. Do you remember this? I watched you; long-limbed like a giraffe, and miraculous, as if born of the tropical sun itself.

And later, on the same trip- our last while living in Singapore, we do a boat tour to five islands! In the marine warmth, snorkelling above the coral, Mum and Max are bobbing about on the azure ocean, while off on our own, and peering down through our masks, we see it. Silently, and like a whip cracking in slow-motion, is a sea-snake! It’s there for mere seconds, and only we saw it, together, in our private universe. Instantly we sit up, beaming

Did you see it Dad?

Sure did. What’d you think?

So cool.

A momentary sight, but for us, stronger than two electrons in perpetual orbit. For someone as curious about nature and dangerous creatures as you, it’s a thrilling highlight of our three years in Asia.

Last Friday, in the afternoon sunshine, you’re in your blue Strikers shirt and cricket cap. We’re at Glenelg Oval, and there’s plastic yellow stumps and kids, learning and playing, learning and playing. You’re batting. I’m on a bench by the boundary, spying on you. Again!

The bowler pitches it on a good length, but outside the wicket. In a fluid, looping motion, you step into it, and swing the bat. It’s an on-drive, and possibly having seen an Australian cricketer like David Warner do this, you go down onto one knee. It’s cute, but also shows me how carefully you take in the details of your world, how keen you are to do your best and display some robust mastery. You stay low and hold your position, watching until, just in front of me, the ball jumps the rope. Your first boundary! Certainly a treasured event in many years of loving cricket.

Now finally, back we travel, to 2008 when you’re only three months old. It’s May, Mothers’ Day; fetching and warm like a hug. We’re at Wattle Reserve, by the beach, with a picnic of olives, breads and dips, dolmades; unhurried food for a late autumn lunch. You’re there on the rug, in the breezy, timelessness. Smiling, blue eyes alert, enchanted. It’s a movie, a love song, our lifetime distilled. It’s a dreamlike afternoon.

So, as you begin your ninth year, I wanted to find a few moments among the guitars and the bikes, the barbeques and the blur of the cruelly rushing weeks to reminisce on how astonishing our world became on that bright Saturday. The day you arrived; the gorgeous, clever, amazing gift of you, arrived.

glenelg oval

3

The Beatles and me

|

radiogram

Sunday at the Adelaide Grand Prix. Former Speaker of the House Arthur Whyte and his wife Mary were on pit straight. Respected folk from Kimba, local royalty. Every lunchtime Arthur went to the Kimba pub. Blistering heat or punishing cold, he’d have a stout. Just one. Mostly. Arthur lived to ninety-three.

Being outgoing and with a healthy curiosity in people Mary exchanged pleasantries with the man in the neighbouring seat. He was gentle, possibly even a little shy. Sounded English. He made gracious inquiries, asked about life in Australia, in Kimba, on farms. Nigel Mansell seemed to be leading the race, and with the octane thunder booming about them Mary reciprocated.

“So, what do you do?” Gosh, what was his name again?

“I’m a musician.”

“That’s nice. So which instrument do you play?”

The cars were making astonishing noise. It was hard to hear.

“I play guitar.”

“That’s lovely. Do you play on your own? Or with others?”

Mary took a sip of her tea. He was an agreeable chap.

“I just play by myself now.”

“That’s probably easier. So you were in a group?”

“I was.”

“Oh, yes. What was the name of the group? I probably won’t know them, but you never know.”

“They were called the Beatles.”

*

Mum and Dad had a radiogram. Wooden, heavy, solemn in appearance. The turntable sunken into its teak depths. I remember Creedence Clearwater Revival and Anne Murray and The Carpenters.

But what I recollect most vividly is a 45. In the digital age when artefacts like vinyl are discretionary, these seem primeval, unnecessarily real. It was “Love Me Do” with the B-side “PS I Love You.” Both songs crackled constantly when you dropped the needle, but were exhilarating. John Lennon’s harmonica was rowdy while Ringo’s drumming crashed out of that old radiogram.

I was only five, but I was in.

*

The first cassette I owned was It’s a Long Way There by the Little River Band. I’m pretty sure my first record was Ripper ’77; on which the highlights are, “This Is Tomorrow” by Bryan Ferry and, “A Mean Pair Of Jeans” by Marty Rhone. As catchy as it was my cousins Boogly and Froggy and I thought “Blue Jeans” by David Dundas the superior denim-themed pop confection. We’re still right.

Fresh from uni and working on the West Coast I bought my first CD player, second-hand from old school mate Fats with whom I shared a passion for Bush Biscuits, tepid Southwark, and Mondo Rock. Acutely aware of my personal responsibility I went into Allans music along Rundle Mall- just up from the Malls Balls. I bought two CDs- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and The White Album.

Living by myself in a big farmhouse I blasted these out into the dusty summer dark; brutally cold July mornings; before cricket; after school. These provided a soundtrack to my early twenties after I’d left home, and was making my way.

*

Having spent a week in Penang my girlfriend (now wife) and I then flew to London. It remains the world’s best theme park. Is there a better way to spend a day than walking the ancient streets before flopping exhausted, in a Soho boozer?

In exquisite St Johns Wood, Abbey Road’s frontage appears modest, giving no indication to the history, and the thrilling, unparalleled creativity that’s occurred within. But the fence across the front is remarkable for it’s a giant thank you card to the Beatles, electric with graffiti and black-texta tributes. It’s re-painted every week or so.

“Strawberry Fields Forever” unfailingly takes me back to this time and place.  I especially love George Martin’s cello arrangement; it’s blue skies in Hyde Park, a string of Routemaster double-deckers along Oxford Street, and planter boxes bursting with late spring colour on the façade of a Themes pub.

*

What are the most exciting moments in music? Guns ‘N Roses’ “Paradise City” and Axel Rose’s whistle urging his band into the song like a mad football umpire? The Who and Roger Daltery’s apocalyptic scream in “Won’t Get Fooled Again”?

No, it’s George Harrison’s Rickenbacker guitar opening to “A Hard Day’s Night.” The chord’s undeniable, an invitation, a golden promise. Fifty years on, it’s still rock music’s most iconic grab.

*

My favourite Beatles’ album has changed as I have. Curiously, I’ve moved retrospectively through their discography. Starting at the ambitiously expansive church of The White Album, I moved to Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and was then besotted with Revolver, and especially George’s spectacular guitar work on “And Your Bird Can Sing.” Is there a sunnier riff in rock?

Where am I now? Rubber Soul.

The record’s a confident transition by a band sensing that the boundaries might be further than even they’d imagined. It’s a languid listen, but there’s telling experimentation- most notably with Harrison’s use of sitar on “Norwegian Wood.”

But it’s “You Won’t See Me” which is the album’s standout.  At 3.22 it was the longest song the band had recorded. It’s perfectly placed, appearing at track three.

It connects to Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. In it the author explores some dark themes that are critical of much in America- the greed, the selfishness, the appalling lack of responsibility, but he delivers these bleak ideas beautifully, in achingly gorgeous prose, and I’m always struck by the poignant contrast between method and message. It stays with me, haunts me. I like art which displays a thoughtful divide.

For me it’s the driving jauntiness of Paul’s piano, Ringo’s tambourine and inventive drumming, and the uplifting harmonies of Lennon and McCartney. “You Won’t See Me” has up tempo hooks in counterpoint to the gloomier nature of Paul’s seemingly autobiographical lyrics, documenting his challenges with then girlfriend Jane Asher, who might still be the most famous former girlfriend in rock music. This song marks a maturation for the Liverpudlians. It’s colossal fun.

In time I’m sure I’ll bow before other Beatles’ albums, other Beatles’ songs. Just like I always have. The labyrinthine beauty of their palace ensures this.

But tonight, as my family sleeps, I slide on my headphones and press play. Again.
Beatles

 

3

Ringo Appointed Caddy to Tiger Woods: Adventures in Morroco and Portugal

|

marrakesh

‘How do you like my new Fes?’ asks Jerry patting the hat on his melon. Only forty Dirham and he’s grinning like a shot fox. A dozen of us collect closely. We’re in the Medina or old city and New Jersey Jerry; ever-blaring, ever-egotistic and forty-something is taking pleasure from the tasselled headdress- and his own voice. ‘Yes, Jerry it’s great,’ we chorus. Absalom is our guide. Wearing his Muslim robes elegantly, and with snowy hair and trimmed beard he looks alarmingly like Kenny Rogers. He silences the Gatlin boy with, ‘Yes Jerry, it suits you perfectly.’ Through the dust and noise we lean nearer. ‘You are wearing the Fes of a young boy. Recently circumcised.’

With 350,000 people, 10,000 indistinguishable streets and 320 Mosques, the Medina is astonishing. Reaching its zenith in the 13th–14th centuries, the medieval monuments, madrasas (schools), fondouks (hotels), palaces, markets, residences and fountains are utterly engaging. About half the size of an Australian suburb, UNESCO declared it a World Monument in 1981. By morning’s end I am drained by the unbroken attack on my eyes and nose, ears and brain.

Attempting to engage me, one impish boy chirped, ‘Hello mister.’ I ignored him. ‘Hola. Bonjour,’ he continued. ‘Ciao. GutenTag. Aloha. Konnichiwa.’ I laughed. Konnichiwa. In a particular light I guess I appear Japanese. He reminded me of the carpet-seller in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar who, sensing I’d rejected every rug- buying opportunity, edged up to me and smirked, ‘Is it now time to talk about carpet?’

In Marrakech we’re steered into an apothecaries’ souk or pharmaceutical market. Spices, roots and aromatic plants for cooking, magic and pills cram the shelving in kaleidoscopic chains of little jars. The apothecary talks about the local herbs and their various uses. We enjoy listening but of course should have known what was coming. The lecture concludes, a corps of zipping assistants gives everyone a plastic bag and the Big Sell begins.

The apothecary repeats his catalogue whilst the helpers briskly dispense the concoctions. Our entourage includes Americans, Dutch and New Zealanders of every age and attitude and twenty minutes later not a medical secret remains amongst us. ‘These jars contain a potion to combat abdominal dryness,’ he announces and up fly some hands, their owners eager to spend and lubricate. Enchanted containers are urgently thrust at the grateful. He hollers, ‘Next is the haemorrhoid relief cream!’ More hands. ‘Who’d like the Moroccan herbal Viagra?’ I sit tighter on my palms. Never have I become so unintentionally informed about the private rashes, oozings and inflammations of strangers. It was like a nutrimetics party but without the collapsing paper plates of sausage rolls.

Beasts current and cooked, domesticated and dangerous were a mesmerizing aspect of our trip. The Jemaa el Fna or Place of the Dead is the gigantic square in Marrakech which functions as an al fresco circus. Street performers compete for our coins with yelling shoe-shiners and insistent henna tattooists whilst loops of snake charmers rhythmically sway with their hooded cobras. Given that she’s a biology teacher I selflessly sent Kerry among the reptiles as I captured photos and videos from an artistic distance.

And suddenly a snake was writhing around my neck and a lithe wrangler rubbed its anaconda-like girth against my forehead. ‘It is good for fertility,’ he declared. I squeaked, ‘Mine or the snake’s?’

Monkeys (few self-pleasuring!) sprung about the teeming square too whilst stalls groaned with meats and dishes of arresting aromas. Curiously wry rows of boiled camel-heads were Plat du jour but disappointingly we’ve been off them lately. Rooster idolatry is popular on Portuguese china, shirts, towels, hats; indeed everything! Heading along the Atlantic coast road from Tangiers I glanced down to the sundrenched shore and what did I spy? A jaunty row of trotting chickens! Have you ever seen wild hens pushing into the breeze, bouncing along the sand? It was so unexpected yet so childishly familiar and funny that it became an African highlight. Beach chooks! Even now I can see my documentary advertised in the TV guide-

BBC 2- Sunday 8pm

Moroccan Odyssey

Tonight Mikey Randall goes in search

of Tangier’s mystical beach chickens.

(50 minutes)

Despite the coach being guarded whilst we slept in our Tangier hotel (up the esplanade from Celine Dion Café; your heartburn will go on) it occurs at midnight. We are oblivious. From our giant ferry we witness customs police beating and kicking would-be illegal immigrants. They hide down by the waterline- frantic to flee Africa’s poverty for the nirvana that is Europe.

A rolling Atlantic swell surrenders to Gibraltar’s gentler waters. Then in Spain we drive a hundred Andalucian miles and alight at a restaurant whilst Juao, our Portuguese driver, re-fuels. He hears a noise from under the bus. Two continents and an ocean later, a small stowaway escapes; having clung perilously to the undercarriage for fourteen dark hours. He slides into the countryside like a phantom.

The jagged rush of surprises makes travelling addictive. Toledo, indeed, is quite holy and El Greco’s 1586 masterpiece, The Burial of the Count Orgaz adorns a wall within the modest Church of San Tomé. The painting is marvellous but it is also startling that we could saunter in and admire a magnum opus without a wardrobe-sized guard pointing his Uzi at us. If it were displayed in a London or Paris gallery I’d probably shave three times getting to the ticket window.

It was curious to feel homesick in Morocco with its mosques and confronting hardship and intoxicating town markets. Introduced from Australia last century, Eucalyptus trees appeared like old friends and combined with the sparse terrain to suggest the River Murray landscape back in South Australia. I love being amazed when travelling.

I had few expectations for the Portuguese capital but found it wonderful. Prior to visiting Europe my favourite world city was San Francisco and Lisbon often reminded me of its hilly charms and marine vistas. Two colossal structures cross the glimmering Tagus River; the Ponte 25 de Abril commemorates the 1974 Revolution and is strikingly like the Golden Gate; the planet’s most fetching suspension bridge. At over seventeen kilometres; we entered Lisbon on Ponte Vasco da Gama, Europe’s largest and probably the biggest bastard of a bridge that I’ll experience.

In an age when Barcelona, Kuala Lumpur and Florence are serviced by airports hours from their CBD it is remarkable that Lisbon’s is downtown; reflecting that last century the metropolis grew exponentially. The equivalent of Heathrow being in Hyde Park; it was compelling and somewhat menacing- post 9/11 to watch planes climbing and landing near skyscrapers. We loved wandering about historic Alfama and seeing the mighty Monument to the Discoveries before learning that although the world is a village chip-shop one should never order Italian dishes in a Portuguese Indian restaurant.

Seville burst into my Top Ten with a bullet and is illustrious for much; orange-trees lining the charming boulevards, the resting place of Columbus and of course, bullfighting. During summer the Sevillians stroll past the cigar factory immortalised in Carmen to the Plaza del Toros de la Real Maestranza and given that it nudged 54 degrees in August 2003 some sip Cruzcampo beer!

Many stories are relayed of brave bulls. An ancient matador told me the obscure tale of an old bull and a young bull. One lazy afternoon they were gazing down at a field of attractive heifers. The young bull shouts, ‘Let’s run down and shag a few cows!’ The old bull quietly replies, ‘No. Let’s walk down and do the lot.’

True.

Michael and Kerry

January 2005

 CD

0

The View from Afar

|

darwin

It’s a hot and muggy evening in Darwin for the footy. And it’s a hot and muggy evening here in Singapore too. Both cities are former colonial outposts, and I’m watching West Coast and Melbourne in an apartment fourteen stories up, and can see across to the famous suburb of Little India. After the game we’ll head down there for a Rogan Josh Kennedy.

There’s a boisterous crowd in at TIO Stadium, and a grassy mound behind the goals. Both teams get an early goal, and Melbourne’s playing with welcome vigour. Coming to the Demons from Glenelg in the SANFL Billy Stretch collects some early possessions. It’s also the suburb to which I’ll return next week after I fly from here. Today the Tigers won consecutive matches for the first time in, well, eons after last week knocking off current premier Norwood.

I’ll soon be on the Glenelg Oval terrace, or in front of Snout’s Bar, named for 1970’s cult Tiger John “Snout” McFarlane. My mate Bob coached twelve year old Billy Stretch in SAPSASA, the fabled week long carnival for primary schoolers. He told me then Billy would play at the highest level. He was on the field with thirty-five other kids, but playing his own game.

I’ve been lucky enough to watch the footy in some fun places. I saw my Crows get flogged by Essendon in Barb’s Bar in the east of Bali a couple seasons’ back. The highlight of that night, apart from Barb’s rissoles and chips, was Black Caviar’s win in the William Reid Stakes; shown at half time.

I was in Singapore’s Boomarang Bar for the Adelaide and Hawthorn preliminary final of 2012. This was Tippett’s valediction before homesickness forced him back to the Gold Coast suburb of Sydney. I was strangely relieved when Cyril got the Hawks home in the final minute as I was to be at a Hong Kong conference the following Saturday. Barely into my new job, I didn’t think I could be suddenly stricken by illness, and seeking alternative treatment in a Kowloon bar.

During the second quarter West Coast exerts their dominance in front of the vibrant Territory crowd. I think of my only trip to Darwin, again for a training workshop (No, I’m not just a conference attendee!). By the final afternoon I’d had my fill of multi-literacies and neo-Marxist interpretations of Hamlet, so headed out to the Adelaide River for the jumping crocodiles and termite mounds. How many chooks are annually dangled off boats to coax the reptiles to leap up like Nic Naitanui? I couldn’t pause for a Darwin stubby at Humpty Doo, but there’s always next time.

I’m always keen to see how Shannon Hurn performs. The prodigious kicking Eagle is from Angaston which is in the Barossa and Light league along with my home town of Kapunda. Shannon’s dad William was a solid footballer with Central Districts in the SANFL.

Angaston is the scene of my own football misfortune. The season after I finished school the association changed the age rules for senior colts footy. To be eligible you had to be under eighteen at the start of July. A premature baby, my birthday’s in June so, both happy and forlorn, I watched on as my mates won a flag on Angaston oval. I didn’t play in one ever. My friend Trev took what we still reckon is the best mark ever taken by a Kapunda Bomber. A lanky lad, Trev rose impossibly to the crest of the pack, grabbed it and it stuck! This got the loudest roar when the video was shown at their recent reunion.

I spent most of that season in the B grade. We hardly won a game. In the huddle at three-quarter time of the final match we were down by truckloads. Our coach’s address was less Barack Obama than drunken barracker. “Well boys we’re in trouble. Again. And we’re out of excuses. I don’t know what to say. Just go and run a lap. Or something.”

With the West Coast comfortable victors, the crowd spills out into Darwin’s balmy night. And we head down to Little India to continue our balmy night too. My last Saturday in Singapore.

This story was first published in Inside Football. For more go to http://digital.insidefootballonline.com/#folio=1

kapunda

1

Singapore and Me

|

laneway

The captain is a one-armed dwarf

He’s throwing dice along the wharf

In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is King

So take this ring

“Singapore” by Tom Waits

This island is a photocopier.

Delivered and installed on a Monday, everyone gathers around in an uncomfortable semi-circle. However, the collating, duplexing, and high-end printing means we’re swiftly smitten. We ooh and aah. Then, the boss has a turn. Attempting a scan/sort/staple/wrong ‘un he messes it up spectacularly.

They’re technologically exciting, doing whizzy things beyond the boundaries of your competence but, do you know what? You can’t love them. And photocopiers, I’ve discovered, don’t love you back. Ever.

Within weeks, the most frightening phrase in English will blink onto the condescending screen.

Add toner

Then, the phantom paper jams start.

I admire Singapore, but leave not having fallen in love. And it’s sad to not fall in love, because it’s the only place I’ve lived that’s not grabbed my full affection. Maybe in time it will. I know you shouldn’t compare siblings, but as our ferry bumped into the dock in Dover, I fell for England.

*

Koh Lanta has the best beach I’ve seen. Long Beach. Flying into Krabi, it took nearly three hours to get there, but was worth it. When you go to a travel agency, take a booklet from the shelf, and gaze at the aquamarine ocean, flawless sand, and Thai beach resort, it’s Koh Lanta that you’re staring at.

We were there in March, and every day I was on a lounge bed, with book and beer, gazing out at the shimmering water as our boys played by the gentle gulf. These are golden moments, and I know they’re as good as it gets. I know how lucky I am.

Then, I thought about the fragility of beauty, and how infinitesimal our lives might be.

*

Our boys began Auskick in Singapore. Suddenly, they were there, flopping about in their green and gold Sharks guersneys. Of course, the best, most instructive moments as a parent are those when you spy on your kids.

Yes, they’re frequently appalling in your company, but maybe that’s the key function of the family. It’s the moments that we strive for; when you see them, getting it right, with nobody looking. We enjoy those.

I was umpiring the adjacent game, and glanced over at the boys. In a wonderful, painterly scene they were holding hands. I was instantly teary. When I looked back a few minutes later Alex and Max were entirely indifferent to the crazy arc of the ball, and wrestling each other. And the next time Alex was on the ground chatting with his opponent, while Max had wandered off. He was putting an orange cone onto his head, as if Grand Master of a peculiar branch of the KKK.

*

Like denying Warney cheese slices, living with two boys (and a wife and a helper) in a small apartment is cruel. It just is. Sometimes, we can’t adjust to our domestic environments.

I now want harsh light, and space, and private greenery. I want to rush the boys out the back door, and to wheel my own bin out into the quiet Thursday street.

Here in Singapore we swim daily, but are drowning in an obscenely overpriced jail cell. Now, the door’s open, and my harmonica’s in my back pocket. Pssst. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m anticipating my lawn back home as much as anyone.

*

A Tim Winton enthusiast since university I bought Eyrie when home eighteen months back.

I read his words hungrily. The protagonist, Tom Keely, is archetypal of the author’s males: in an emotional crisis of his own invention, and scrabbling destructively within his relationships. For me it was significant when Keely considered reaching out to his sister, living in Singapore.

Singapore. The word zapped me. How exciting. Singapore. Frisson. Terrific that she lives in the Republic. What a plucky and daring soul.

Then, the bizarrely delayed realisation.

Wait a minute. I live there! We’re brave too. Despite the tropical location isn’t this just the dreary triangle of home, work, shops. Home, work, shops? Adelaidean suburbia, but hot and humid? Only if we let it.

Why is it that our lives occasionally read better on paper than in their practical expression?

There’s something incendiary in Winton’s single word that burnt me, and gave me some gruff underage footy coaching. Periodically, we all need some third person perspective.

*

At the Meadow within Gardens by the Bay, in the sizzling sun, with Marina Bay Sands soaring over us, we stretch out on our blanket with Heineken pints, squinting, and drinking in Vance Joy’s sunny pop.

Music festivals can remind you, somewhat savagely, of the youth that has now sprinted past you. But, the Laneway Festival in Singapore is among my highlights. Off we went. Each January.

Thirty years ago we’d be thirty foot under water, but the land reclamation here is mind-blowing. The Raffles Hotel on Beach Street is now downtown and not seaside. The home of the Sling has been slung inland.

The Laneway Festival is Australian, reaffirming, and vital. The wife pats me on the knee, and says, you know, this is not a bad life.

And it’s not.

*

Once taken, Europe’s an incurable drug. It’d been nine years since we climbed off Heathrow’s tarmac, and we’d often talked of the first country we’d take our boys. Italy? Greece? Spain?

So, on a Saturday just before Christmas, we left Asia, stopped during the afternoon in North Africa, and then arrived in Europe that night.

I love that I’m still a country kid who finds astonishment in this. Munich, and sleet slashed across the autobahn, battering our taxi. One day. Three continents, three time zones, three airline bread rolls.

I’m grateful that life in Singapore made this possible.

*

Our world shrinks, and shrinks.

I remember the half hour journey from Kapunda to Robertstown for boyhood football, standing huge and preternaturally hairy man-childs, and cold showers and colder pasties. It was to venture to the edge of the world.

But now, clinging to the equator ahead of my departure I see how small the infinite country of Australia is.

Many argue nostalgia’s the memory of childhood food. Today my mind’s swirling with images of Mum’s sausage rolls, tuna mornay topped with cheese, and plastic cups of Bobo cordial.

It’s time to go home.

BoBo

0

Posh: Bye, bye Becks, Hello Ringo!

|

sausage

Hello. Is it me you’re looking for?

A month on and we’re still recovering from the rush. A gargantuan week as the UK whizzed along in a mad passionate whirl. Of course I refer to October 25 to 31 which, if you’ve forgotten, was British Sausage Week.

Up in the Peak District we bought and fried six sausages from Tideswell’s butcher but these gastronomic impostors were stunningly devoid of texture, aroma and flavour. The week was saved only when we strayed past a York pub window and read its British Sausage Week (BSW) testimonials. Mr W of Leeds wrote, and I beg you to contemplate this during Christmas, ‘My wife still talks of the sausage the chef here gave her two years ago.’

York is staggeringly handsome and we liked spending our anniversary there ambling among its abbey, across the River Ouse (why it belongs to all of us!) and atop the Roman Wall which smartly entraps the city. The Minster is a towering, honeyed church and humbling to behold.

However we didn’t venture in as the six pound fifty ‘compulsory donation’ appeared a little, well, un-Christian. Gladly, St Albans Abbey demands no fixed fee but visitors may part with their pounds through a credit card swiping machine, positioned conveniently in the bookstall at the cathedra’s entrance.

Dining in York’s improbably haunted Golden Fleece pub was tremendous, despite the ghosts! Continuing my uncertain flirting with Real English Ale I purchased a Yorkshire Terrier and straining it through clenched teeth, the taste and temperature made me wonder if every pint of this distinctively Northern brew came directly from a yapping dog’s kidneys.

Sitting hidden by undulating green hills is Tideswell whose market square is hugged by stone shops. Tindalls is stuffed with exquisite home-cooked breads, cakes and pasties and apron billowing, stood Mother beaming behind her wooden counter. Father’s glass cabinet parades black-pudding, scotch eggs and streaky bacon and in their olden store, eternally 1952, the doorbell chimes welcomingly and foodstuffs are dispatched eagerly in thick brown paper.

Also noteworthy are the chippy (chip shop) advertising not opening hours but frying times and that, courtesy of the summer sun’s disappearance at 11pm, the Tideswell Cricket Club competes in Wednesday evening fixtures. How fantastic is that? Time was wretchedly against us so we couldn’t visit Castleton’s most delightful emporium, World of Icing but, hopefully, another day…

Exploring European cities aside, our preferred pastime is rambling, with Roxy, about the countryside and Derbyshire presented abundant opportunity. The hamlet of Litton sleeps in an autumnal hollow. It is hushed apart from a sporadic dog bark. Their branches blazing burgundy; trees watch its placid streets, leaves like a Hawaiian lava flow. We swim through the footpaths, our shoes drowning in swirling colour. The village green is pocket-sized and wooden stocks speak of an unruly past… A boisterous tractor roars past unexpectedly and lurches to a halt. Bounding down from his cabin, a green-capped farmer nods at us and ambles into his lunchtime pub.

Friday evening in Litton’s Red Lion was the finest pub experience we’ve had in either hemisphere. Tilly the Airedale transversed the antique entrance, a jovial fire bellowed and homely chairs creaked with rustic tales and belly laughter. We’d been in the bedroom-sized bar but a minute when Harold pumped my paw, thrust a Black Sheep at me and opened a yarn about his 1992 Australian holiday; notably punctuated by wearing his pristine Crows tie during a roasting Christmas at Christies Beach.

The grimacing Terry doles out the falling-down water in this family-run pub whilst matriarch Joyce steers her kitchen and insists on autographing her little home-made booklets of home-spun poetry. The titles are flawlessly kitsch: Re-Joyce, Jump for Joyce and the forthcoming Orange Joyce. We bought copies for Kerry’s grandma in Gympie.

Retreating bar-side after some tremendous lamb shanks I’m button-holed by Joyce’s husband, thirty years my senior but insisting, Yorkshirian style, on calling me Sir. He asks of Adelaide and cricket and St Albans as if these are the most vital things in his world. Meanwhile Kerry chats merrily with the rugby-loving couple from Portsmouth who is also commemorating their second anniversary. Afterwards we retreat to our cottage and its popping, cracking fire. Perfect.

Steering the Fiat Punto at the appealingly tranquil Eyam proved fascinating for we learnt that in 1665 it lost much of its population. Shortly after unwrapping a package of cloth from London a local complained of feeling poorly. He was soon dead and the Plague again lowered its cold noose. Panicking, the minister urged his brethren to quarantine themselves in their houses and only collect provisions from designated places and mercifully this self-sacrifice partly confined the disease.

Strolling the 4WD-ed boulevards we read solemn plaques describing the demise of families of eight in as many days. 350 were ultimately claimed but it is tricky to picture Eyam suffering any modern disaster beyond the Agricultural Society cancelling, due to heartless disinterest, the 1964 Strawberry and Fig Conserve Competition (Open Section).

Easyjet flew us from Gatwick to Cologne one weekend so we could explore the renowned Christmas markets. The city is largely unremarkable save for the utterly compelling cathedral; the Dom. With twin spires ascending to 515 feet, it was the world’s tallest building until the Washington Monument. Similarly astonishing is that in 1162 Emperor Barbarossa secured the authenticated remains of the Three Magi for the Dom. We drifted about its vast, almighty interior and leaving, willingly presented some Euros to a courteous priest.

Papa Joe’s En Streckstrump is Cologne’s chief jazz venue so we find our seats early for Sun Lane Ltd, a trad ensemble from nearby Aachen. Slender, smiling waitresses disperse wine and beer. Bespectacled, elderly and ample musicians timorously squash onto the picnic-rug stage. The pianist looks like a superfluous sheet has been stretched about a lumpy, wobbling refrigerator. We can scarcely see through the stinging blue smoke. Like sailors to a knock-shop, the punters still surge in.

Standing abnormally close; a gentleman suddenly clambers up and straddles me and a nearby stair as if imagining that he and I are posing for a gay fire-fighters’ calendar. I am startled. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’ I declare, overlooking that Europeans are bi-lingual.

As the gentleman dismounts the step and my horrified groin I mutter, ‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome!’ my intimate twitters.

‘Say what you really want!’ adds his friend. We don’t see them again. The jazz is brisk and zestful and spilling out onto the Rhine’s bank, Nina’s “99 Red Balloons” bursts from a heaving club. Lingering at the chilly Alter Markt, Kerry sips a final Gluhwein; the hot, spiced, red wine and we confirm that Cologne is hip.

Our staff room corner houses year 7 pupil information and photos. Posted earnestly, but these summaries are memorable for their crude and po-faced honesty. This one, of course, is accompanied by a hilariously glaring youngster’s face.

Lazy girl. Hates maths. Mum hairdresser.

Such psychometric insight and sophistication! Now, dear friends, I leave with a question; with which six words would you summarise yourself?

Enjoy a splendid Christmas, especially if you missed British Sausage Week.

cologne-cathedral

This story is from the collection I call The Ringo Tales which chronicles our travels during 2003- 2006 when we lived just north of London, and spent time in Europe and North America. It can be found on this blog at https://mickeytales.com/2014/02/22/the-ringo-tales/

0

Bjork og Ringo og Snorri Porfinnson

|

The_Solfar_Stephanie_Benjamin_363147-950x610

I’m going to see if I can write this letter about Iceland without mentioning Bjork. Shit. Failed already.

If all bus trips were as compelling as Sunday’s journey from Iceland’s international airport to Reykjavik then I’d like buses much, much more. Normally I like buses as much as I like, well, buses. It was an eccentric twilight; difficult to see where sky began and earth stopped.

An other-worldly light leaked between the two and combined with the snow and treeless lava fields to make me think of the moons of Jupiter or a post-apocalyptic film. If a Ray-Banned Arnie had raced past our bus on a black motorcycle I would not have been surprised.

After checking in we rushed outside to frolic in the tumbling snowfall. It was familiar- Pizza houses and supermarkets but also distinctly Icelandic with street-signs like Braeoraborgarstigar and Tyrggvagata and the constant, charismatic impression that this city and country are unique.

Next morning we eat a hearty hotel breakfast whilst peering out at the dark streets. Despite it being late winter the sun rises only at 9:30am. Exploring the city we drift down to the harbour through the fluffy stuff and slush and admire the mountains lurching furiously out of the icy ocean. The devilish wind makes us say ‘fuck’ many, many times.

We amble to Hallgrímskirkja which surveys the city from a hill. This church symbolises Iceland: white, jagged and uplifting in its un-European-ness. Its steeple stretches seventy-three metres towards the leaden heavens whilst inside is equally fascinating in its austerity. Barren walls, no stained glass, limited religious iconography.

An organist pumps his mighty keyboard and the church is bursting with sound. But not the pious and sombre stuff of German and Austrian cathedrals. The swirling, psychedelic melodies bring to mind 70’s band Yes and their album Tales from Topographic Oceans which, of course, is wholly appropriate.

Next we trawl Reykjavik for the Phallological (that’s pecker, johnson or willie to many of us) Museum and its sperm whale, arctic fox and bull exhibits. Apparently the late bull’s appendage had been salted (that’s salted Cletus!), dried and lovingly fashioned into a walking stick. This we had to see! Tragically the museum is gone and, eyes weighty with tears, we dragged our feet towards a café and sought solace, as people have since time immemorial, in burgers and fries and refreshments.

Iceland arouses not only a young bull’s walking stick but men made ecstatic by matters volcanic. The Golden Circle tour took us on a blizzardy route past an implosion crater, Gullfoss waterfall and Pingvellir where the North American and European tectonic plates are diverging.

How many can claim to have slipped on the ice, and then their arse, right atop the chasm where the good earth itself is being wrenched asunder by the tectonic plates? My left cheek was in America and my right cheek; Europe. For days my bum was tender proof of this primeval terrain’s violence.

At 66 degrees North, Iceland clings to the Arctic Circle in the mid-Atlantic but the warm Gulf Stream makes it is surprisingly balmy. During our stay it lingered at freezing whilst the locals smugly boast that in 2004 Reykjavik shut down when it sizzled at a record 24.8 Celsius!

Roughly the size of England, Iceland is bigger than commonly imagined but with a mere 295,000, a population similar to Coventry. Whilst more tourists visit each year, in 2004 barely 340,000 nipped by the birthplace of Bjork. Shit. Failed again.

Ale was only legalised in 1989 and March 1 is celebrated as Beer Day. However with barley milkshakes rented at £6 or $AU15 a pint one learns quickly to relish each drop.

Geysers. Not Norf London lads but Iceland’s eco-attraction: steamy, farty gas fountains. Skating across glassy paths among boiling puddles as the horizontal rain and hail gently bruised our faces I contemplated my likely injuries. Slip on the dicey ice and break limbs or slip on the dicey ice and skid face-first into a searing geyser or bubbling mud vat from which I’d no doubt be retrieved by two rangers called Erik who’d then respectfully surrender the messy sack of my parboiled chubbiness to Kerry for dour identification. Still it was worth it. I am confident that no other St Albans-based Australian teachers own amateur video of geysers grumpily erupting, at least, fifteen glorious feet.

Back in the dry of our hotel the TV mercifully thawed us with the Jetsons. In tonight’s episode: George is promised a pay-rise by Mr Spacely! In his excitement he tells Jane, Elroy and Judy to buzz out and buy themselves a few futuristic treats. And you know what? Mr Spacely changes his mind about the raise! Poor George. Like most of the planet, Icelandic television is now a swampy morass of reality rubbish and MTV clones with endless gold chains and slow-motioned, open-topped Californian cars.

Not so long ago there was only the national Icelandic broadcaster and it followed but two peculiar rules. No TV whatsoever on Thursdays and no TV during the nightless month of July. Now, I’d vote for that, wherever I live. A national broadcaster acting like your mum! On a summer’s afternoon she wades into the lounge room, snatches the cricket off the box, and then kicks you out of the house for your own good. And guess what; George’s family, Rosie the household robot and Astro the dog forgave him. All ended well!

The Blue Lagoon is an outdoor geothermal spa and for three hours on our last morning we luxuriated in its calming waters, improving our wellness. Wellness. Surely one of the silliest contemporary words. It was great but odd to have a cosy, submerged body whilst one’s ears were turning blue in a blizzard! Running across the snow from spa to sauna is among the coldest three seconds of my life.

An ancient Viking tradition – feasting on rotten shark meat, escaped our festive plates on this, the island in Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth and we eventually jetted into the lunar dark. Our Icelandic Air flight is delayed because of the snow and then because Great Britain’s entire air traffic computer network crashed.

How many of you have flown on a plane called Snorri Porfinnson? Bjork has.

Shit. Sorry, it won’t happen again.

iceland

This story is from the collection I call The Ringo Tales which chronicles our travels during 2003- 2006 when we lived just north of London, and spent time in Europe and North America. It can be found on this blog at https://mickeytales.com/2014/02/22/the-ringo-tales/

1

Sea Snake!

|

sea snake

Alex and I each wrote a poem about our encounter with a sea snake in Thailand. We talked about the snake, and then wrote some notes on the plane trip home. Here they are!

Alex’s poem

black and white stripes

sliding through the coral like a very fast slug,

like fat string

we were excited

so dangerous it can bite off an elephant’s tusk

we told Mum and Max

we felt extreme

nobody can ever find it

that was the best thing ever!

 

Dad’s poem

Andaman Sea

limestone peaks like monuments

flotilla of speedboats

we’re on the surface

kicking languidly

peering down, together down.

snorkelling in the oceanic cool

above the coral

our bubbling sphere

like Bangkok motorbikes, tiger fish

whizz across our masks

 

patterned like a cavalcade

a sea snake whips over

the ragged seabed

 

with muscular purpose

it glides beyond our sight

once gone, we sit up on the azure

gasping, snorkels flapping

 

Did you see it Dad?

Sure did. What’d you think?

So cool.

 

ours is an indifferent world

but, sometimes,

on anonymous Fridays

it still permits moments such as this

 

intimate paintings

vivid watercolours
thailand

0

A Yarn About Writing Yarns

|

skyline

I nod goodbye to the cleaner. Always gracious, she simply gets on with it. Aunty Chong’s nudging seventy. She’s paid two hundred dollars a week.

My school has a half soccer pitch. On its eastern wing, roots push up through the soil. Being by Orchard Road means this grass rectangle is worth hundreds of millions. Modern economies can be ridiculous, but Singapore’s is unfathomably so.

Traffic’s roaring along Grange Road, and I move through the thick heat. I turn onto Bishopsgate, with its modernist homes at thirty and forty million a pop. How can this be? Singapore often places opulence and poverty together in hideous proximity. I think of Aunty Chong.

I pass home, where it’s just us, and seven hundred and twenty-seven other condominiums. More people live here than Kapunda, the country town I’m from. The Singapore River travels sluggishly today. I arrive at the Zion Road Food Centre.

I’m in shorts. I only wear shorts. Apart from the wedding last March at the Fullerton Bay Hotel in Collyer Quay, but I reckon if I’d turned up in boardies, I’d have been fine. Well, maybe a few hours into the reception. The bride was Australian. They may have played, “Eagle Rock.”

Like the nation itself, the hawkers’ centre runs on obedience. Signs insist upon no smoking, touting, littering, bicycling, dogs, or pet birds, which is probably compassionate as there’s ducks hanging everywhere in their gastronomic gallows. Remember, pet birds have feelings too.

But there’s chicken rice. Fish steamboat. Pig organ soup. To avoid the chaos of free will, all seating is fixed. On each table is a plastic number.

Additionally, here in the republic, public restrooms often have labelled urinals. Join me and listen now to, say, a banker. Please don’t stare, but he’s phone up and zipper down.

Mate? I’m just in the loo. Yeah, urinal U3. Nah, U3. Nah, someone else is at urinal U2. Nah, mate, unfair. The Joshua Tree is a great album. Yeah. Yeah. Bono wasn’t always a tosser. Hey, get me a pint. Heineken. I’ll be there in a minute. Righto. Don’t let Stephanie leave.

On Thursdays I park outside, beneath an umbrella, as it’s often punishing sun or rain. With a Tiger in my tank (lager, not the carnivorous cat) I write.

It still astonishes me how my phone can get radio from distant lands. I’m probably like Bill Bryson who once remarked that he remains surprised electricity doesn’t leak out from the wall sockets.

As a radio listener I’ve tried to assimilate. About a month ago, a rock station launched. It confidently declared a national first, promising, “Singapore’s Only No Repeat Workday.” No, really. I’ll be disappointed if one afternoon, I’m skiddled by a Black Thunder loaded up with icy cold cans of Coke.

So I listen to footy talk, to catch the teams and previews, surfing between 5AA, 3AW, and Triple M. There’s curious contrast in sitting near Boon Tong Kway, while listening to Richo’s prediction for the Bombers and Magpies clash, or Stephen Rowe’s hyperventilations as a whiff of Hokkien Prawn Mee drifts across.

5AA host: Let’s go to Bill from Rosewater.

Bill from Rosewater: Hello there. I’m a long time listener, first time caller.

5AA host: Welcome, Bill. What’s on your mind?

Bill from Rosewater: I want to talk about the umpiring in last Sunday’s Port game.

5AA host: Utterly disgraceful. What’d you think, Bill?

And so on. But do you know what? I love it. It’s the familiarity of the accents, as secure as Christmas lunch, when the pudding comes out. It’s our dialogue, begging, on behalf of our discarded simplicities. Maybe it’s aural homesickness.

When I’m not in Australia I spend disproportionate time thinking about the bloody place. I devour its media, its music. Trawl its websites. About twice a year I reacquaint myself with Coopers, but it’s like the Indian cricket team. Brilliant at home, unaccountably poor in the other hemisphere.

I feel sad for the people who’ve declared they’ll never again live in their homeland. Canadians, Americans, Brits. If this is possible, they’re professional refugees.

So why are whites are ex-pats, when everyone else is an immigrant? I’ve been an ex-pat twice, and like the expansiveness, the exuberance of it. Australia is home, but I’m not sure at what point we’ll say enough, and stay put.

Singapore soon turns fifty, but is still under shadows: China, Malaysia, England, as local obsession with the Premier League is pathetically immature. Enjoy it sure, but to slavishly dedicate most of your sports reportage to it? To care more about Tottenham than your own Tampines Rovers?

Even Australia looms, as our boys drown their breakfast cereal in milk from near Melbourne. And we recently had some steak. Bewilderingly, it came from Omaha, Nebraska. So, that’s now two Nebraskan products I’ve had. Bruce’s album with its songs of despair and death. And, last Saturday, a modest segment of cow.

*

Soon, this will be done. We’ll return to Australia. I know Singapore’s weather the July day we fly home: 32 degrees, with a chance of an afternoon thunderstorm. Then, we’ll watch the Glenelg Tigers, and hop on a tram to Adelaide Oval, to yell at the Crows.

In the meantime, I stroll down here most weeks, and invest an hour. Keyboard and cup. Channel footy noise into my ears. Dwell upon ladder positions, hamstrings, handball receives.

After, the boys and I flop around in the pool for a boisterous bit. Puff them out. I like the late week rhythms, the easy routines. I especially like the time to write.

Our home and away season’s underway.

zion