Longitude 131 is the place where Uluru lives. Right in the middle of nowhere…
It’s 06:10 in the morning and the mercury is rising past twenty-eight degrees centigrade outside our air conditioned and life-saving room.
Most of yesterday afternoon, it was over forty degrees. When they bus you in from the local airport, they tell you you’ll need a litre of water for every hour you spend ‘our there’. Out there is Uluru, the largest monolith on Earth; a single rock, deeply sacred to the Aboriginal people, most of whose mass, like an iceberg, is beneath the surface of the rocky desert that forms the Red Centre of Australia.
It is ‘just a rock’ but that doesn’t really describe it. Its presence on the near horizon – if you can get high enough within the small town of ‘Ayers Rock Resort’ to actually see it, is formidable. It changes colour throughout the day and is spectacular at sunrise and sunset.
Apart from the photo taken from the air, I don’t have any others, yet. They advise you acclimatise to the dry heat before you venture away from the resort and into the desert.
It is a desert, and a fierce one at that. Our progress is slow because young Alice is only sixteen months and we have to be triply cautious with everything we do. Having said that, she’s coping better than any of us grown-ups…
When you step outside, the world changes. The heat overwhelms you in an instant. Even under the mandatory hat, the heat assaults your head, making thinking laborious, and creating shallow breathing as your body goes into survival mode. I’m sure you can get used to it, eventually, but our two nights here is not going to cover it.
Surprisingly, there are clouds – beautiful white-silver ones. There were even floods of rain in December- a very rare event! The abundant vegetation is the only evidence that it happened.
An hour from now, we get shuttled to the Rock to have our first experience. I look forward to writing about it…
©Stephen Tanham 2017.
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The pictures on the wall tell the story – they’re an homage to how the world was in 1954, the year that Pellegrini came to Melbourne and established his iconic coffee bar.
It was also the year I was born, and a small assortment of Italian-owned coffee bars were a favourite haunt of my mother and grandmother when they met, three times a week, to catch up in the industrial but self-proud Bolton of the pre-sixties. It explains a lot… and I remember it, vividly. I also remember how happy my beloved maternal grandmother was when we were in one of those wonderful spaces.
There’s nothing quite like Italian coffee. The taste is a seamless invocation of how the typically-small coffee bars smelled when you entered, taking your place at the counter on one of the plastic-covered bar stools, unless you were lucky enough to get one of the few small tables.
I think grandma had an arrangement with Nonna Tognarelli in Bolton, because we always had a table…
Pellegrinis is typical of what happens to you when you travel Northwards through the inner grid of Melbourne’s CBD – see, I’m getting the hang of these ubiquitous Australian city terms – Central Business District; every major city seems to have one.
The old and historic tram service will take you, for free, anywhere within the CBD’s rectangle, as will the swish modern ones, which cut across and out, but the former will ensure you stay within the free zone, whereas the latter pose a risk for the unwary!
In the Northern end of the CBD, the shops, bars and cafes become older and much more individual. It’s no accident that the city’s China Town is here, too, with a new version of ‘capsule’ bar stool eating that is reminiscent of Harrison Ford’s furtive meal in the classic film ‘Blade Runner’.
None of this bothers Signor Pelligrini, sitting at the end of his quietly-celebrated bar and having his wife – another Nonna – be part of the occasional tourist’s photograph.
Most don’t, though. They enter, and are immediately sized-up by the quiet and respectful regulars and the genial staff. ‘Are you capable of coffee and quiet?’ their expressions seem to ask…
We are, and were. Sipping our coffee and resolving to come back for my first-ever spaghetti bolognese breakfast the morning after… it looked so good…
It’s a pipe-dream. We have to be at the airport to get our return flight to Adelaide, to rejoin the Aussie branch of our loved ones.
‘Seize the day’ captions the elegant lady in what is obviously a favourite image from that quieter and more contemplative era, long gone… We did.
©Copyright Stephen Tanham 2017.
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I’m not a lover of big cities. I like to visit, but find little ‘humanity’ in their towering steel and glass trophies that seem to impose conditions of spiritual sterility on us – conditions and expectations that take us away from what we are, inside.
Some cities are able to take advantage of natural features to soften and humanise their landscapes, while still embracing the ‘taller and taller’ ethic of self-satisfied commercialism.
Melbourne is one of the latter, though our brief tour, yesterday, as part of our wedding anniversary weekend, was scant experience on which to base any real conclusions, short of a tourist’s review.
The ‘kids’ and our darling granddaughter of the shining eyes are a ninety-minute flight away, back in Adelaide. We miss them, already; but two days out is not too bad, and we return on Sunday to take them all on holiday to Alice Springs and Uluru, the red rock at the heart of Australia’s ‘red centre’ which has been sacred to the Aboriginal peoples for millennia.
Like the world of the Druids in ancient Britain, albeit it seen through modern eyes, I try to gain some insight into the the relationship between the land and the people it produced, while travelling.
More of that later in our personal adventure; for now, Melbourne offers everything you could want within the limitations of a city ‘machine’.
The south bank of the river Yarra is lined, for at least a kilometre, with restaurants. It’s a party riverbank, and delightful, if expensive, to the post-Brexit Brit!
Australian rates of pay are good, so the cost of living is balanced out for the locals; but expect a shock if you’re a traveller…
North of the Yarra, the old city is bounded by a square created by a ‘tube-like’ metro rail system, very much like London’s old Circle Line. Within this rectangle, criss-crossed by a modern tram network, lies the history of the state of Victoria’s capital, where the old town is cherished and celebrated.
The ‘Lanes’ are arcades that cut through the main streets, reminding you of a Chandler-esque time, when great writers and their private detectives or villains would hover for coffee and cake… I’m in the wrong country, I know, but I don’t know Australia well enough to make the indigenous comparison. The lovely and friendly natives of this city will forgive me, I hope!
There’s a ‘but’… There’s often a ‘but’.
It’s forty degrees out there…
And a day-full of British energy leaves you like steam off a hot plate in about half an hour.
Another coffee and cake, then? Well, it is our anniversary…
©Copyright Stephen Tanham 2017.
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I had wondered what the ‘experiential chord’ would be on this trip; arriving for the first time in this vast continent of Australia to spend most of January with my eldest son, our daughter-in-law, and our granddaughter, Alice, now sixteen months old.
‘Experiential chord’ is how I think of what experience does to you–for you, as it assembles the parts of what’s happening into a purposeful theme; much as a guitarist puts together multiple notes to create a chord, which has power and harmony combined, and makes the perfect basis for the song to be laid over it.
The song, in this case, is a very unexpected lesson in the soul’s perception in the physical world. The chord is an unfolding of day by day delight in seeing a young soul come to terms with her relationship with her universe: full of newness, full of wonder, full of Being-in-the-moment.
In…
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Guard your tongue in youth,
and in age you may mature a thought
that will be of use to your people.
– Big Chief Wabashaw
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It’s 07:31 on Tuesday 3rd January 2017.
As the hastily-grabbed selfie shows, I’m being force-fed very small peanut butter sandwiches. My glasses, now covered in the sticky delight, have learned to stay out of the way, but my mouth has no choice because Alice has decided that we need to share part two of her breakfast…
This is the reality of our Australian adventure, and something wonderful is happening… I’m getting to bond with my granddaughter.
When she was born we had only a little time together. Matt and Medi, my son and our daughter-in-law, lived in Rotherhithe, across the river Thames from Canary Wharf.
We live in Cumbria, which is as far from London as you can get without entering Scotland.
The inevitable result was that we didn’t get chance to spend enough time with infant Alice for her to remember us. When we arrived in Australia, a few days ago, we were strangers to her…
Now, though, here in Adelaide’s Crafers West, with Matt just departed for a full day of Doctor’s duties at the Royal Adelaide Hospital; Medi expected home soon from the same job after a full night shift, and Bernie nursing a cup of tea in bed, I’m alone with the little darling.
For the past two days, she has been losing her uncertainty and, hopefully, discovering that Grandad smells a lot like Daddy… We are having a wonderful time.
It’s quite nice, a peanut butter sandwich for breakfast, even if the waitress is a little rough with those tiny hands…
©Stephen Tanham, 2017.
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Monday 2nd January, 2017
After a twelve-hour flight from Dubai, we arrived, late at night, in Adelaide. Medi, our daughter-in-law, collected us from the airport with much hugging. They have recently purchased a newish mid-sized four-by-four which converts to be a seven-seater, so our small stack of suitcases were easily swallowed.
The first (night time) impressions were of a very California-like environment; long, straight roads, with small shops and community-sized shopping centres lining the route. This wasn’t the centre of town – Aldelaide is a big city – but on the edge of the famous Adelaide Hills, which, from our knowledge so far, form a series of high ridges, a few miles inland from the coast. The district of Crafers West sits atop one of the ridges and is a beautiful place to live.
The downside is that the newly-emigrated family are exposed to at least two attendant dangers: the risk of fire, and the proximity of fauna. There is a particular focus on poisonous insects: spiders etc, which although important, particularly to the safety of young children, is not the source of constant panic that you might expect…
There is also the local Koala Bear, a beautiful creature who sleeps halfway up one of the prolific Gum Trees, a short walk from the house. I’ve yet to pass him with a decent lens in my pocket, but a good photo is promised before the end of the trip!
Bush-fires are a major hazard in this part of South Australia, which is hot and dry in the summer, though we have seen mainly clouds since we arrived…. not the first time one of our trips to the sun has been dominated by English style weather. We’re probably ‘rain-gods’, as Douglas Adams would have said! Better weather is forecast for the rest of the week. I’ll let you know…
One of the highlights of our trip so far has been a visit to the Woodstock winery and wildlife park, an hour away, due south along the coast.
Woodstock is one of the major wine producers in the McLaren Vale region of South Australia. Its formula for visitors is friendly and welcoming and they’ve put a lot of thought into making it pleasant for the kids, too. AS well as the focus on high-quality winemaking, there is a playground and a small wildlife park, whose highlight is feeding the kangaroos several times a day.
Some very tame and well-fed kangaroos
More on that, later… Firstly, we had some wine-tasting to do – well all of us but Medi, our driver – who volunteered to stay dry so that we could fully enjoy the outing.
Matt and Sam, Medi’s father
The formula is simple: you go into the tasting room and they give you a list of their wines, including sweet dessert wines and some very nice fortified wines – port by any other name. You can try as many as you wish, and there’s no pressure to buy.
We did buy, though, of course… And left, slightly tipsy, an hour later and clutching a box of the winery’s finest. Medi’s mum, Tara had, happily, offered to entertain young Alice in the playground while we were imbibing, so everyone had enjoyed themselves.
But then, by a stroke of luck, the local kangaroos and a stray wallaby, needed feeding…
Matt, a kangaroo, Alice, Medi and Tara, Medi’s Mum
We stayed, watching a delighted Alice feed, then stroke the very docile matriarch kangaroo which is used with young children.
Then Dad collected young Alice in his strong arms and it was time for the comfortable seats of the Holden and the journey home. Some of us might have slept, I couldn’t possibly comment…
To be continued…
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Like the joy of the sea coming home to shore,
May the relief of laughter rinse through your soul.
As the wind loves to call things to dance,
May your gravity by lightened by grace.
Like the dignity of moonlight restoring the earth,
May your thoughts incline with reverence and respect.
As water takes whatever shape it is in,
So free may you be about who you become.
As silence smiles on the other side of what’s said,
May your sense of irony bring perspective.
As time remains free of all that it frames,
May your mind stay clear of all it names.
May your prayer of listening deepen enough
to hear in the depths the laughter of god.
John O’Donohue,
‘To Bless the Space Between Us’
The team at the Silent Eye wish you a
happy and peaceful New Year.
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My eldest son and our daughter-in-law left for a life in Australia in July of this year, taking with them our only grandchild, Alice.
As recently-qualified doctors, both were dismayed by the politics being played by the UK Tory government with respect to the NHS.
They are now enjoying a life style in which they are respected professionals, and their four bedroom rented house costs the same per month as they can charge for their tiny apartment in south London.
We thought it would be good to show some support for their new life by visiting, and will be spending most of January in Adelaide, a considerable part of it child-minding a sixteen month old bundle of delight called Alice…
My usual posts will be suspended while I try to document this adventure. It is our first trip to Australia and everything will be very new.
We’re looking forward to the sunshine, though thirty degrees plus of their midsummer heat may be oppressive – apparently it was forty degrees on Christmas Day!
It’s 08:20 in the morning and I’m sitting up in bed writing this on my phone, which is where most of these posts will originate – the phone, not the bed.
‘Conspicuous consumption’ was the word Bernie used to describe our first impressions of Dubai. The hotel is big and glitzy and opens to a huge shopping mall called the Mall of the Emirates. Everything is about three times the price of the UK, but Brexit has probably been responsible for a chunk of that; thank you, Sunderland.
Everything is very ‘faceted’: the shapes of jewels are evident in the styling of many things. The Arabic natives seem to have uniform of long white gowns and, sometimes, headdresses. The rest of the society is polite but rigidly hierarchical. At a mall cafe dinner last night we asked for some bread crumbs to be wiped from our table. The man who had shown us to it went away to get someone of the right ‘level’ (an Indian lady) to carry out the task…
But, it’s clean and polite, and, at the end of this one day stopover, we’ll have a better picture.
More later…
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Morecambe’s School of four-dimensional magic opens for Christmas… have a good one!
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