kangaroos – Chris Collins

Me, Steve, and the Bad Seeds – Part II

Mounts Grenfell and Gunderbooka, then Bourke to Brewarrina. Moving through me even now.

Now, the next day’s drive was an Adventure; a real Adventure, which is what you tell the Gentleman when it seems you fucked up the Google map he emailed you by poking it and moving the checkpoints and now you’ve driven 2 hours out of your way into – not the bush – but a bush; but he took it all in his stride famously.

Our next night stay was at Cobar (follow the only road out of Mungo, turn left, then turn right, keep bloody going) with a stop at Mount Grenfell. This is another significant Aboriginal site with ancient rock art and there was also the option of a little 5km walk around the hill on which I was Dead Keen. We left Mungo reluctantly on a splendid golden morning and got back on the old red road. Drove nearly two hours through more of the Willandra lakes, waving at emus and red kangaroos (let them know we’re friendly) through a land unflinchingly green. We came to see the desert and were overwhelmed by flowers; yellow, white, purple, magenta, pink, and grass; real, soft, good sitting grass, spreading out like parkland. The sky was wide and blue enough to drown in giving a sense of vertigo, like being upside down or underwater. We saw a dust devil, about the size of a tall handsome man; it gathered up, whipped across the road ahead of us with its red right hand, and dispersed. We listened to hillbilly local radio where the interviewee actually said, ‘we look back very fondly at those moments of real humiliation in our childhood;’ and something about making a bikini out of a curtain, like some sort of shit 60s Scarlett O’Hara. Well now, weren’t things better in the old days! When the first anti-vaxxer called in, we cheered. Then here’s about where our little Adventure started when the map directed us off the unsealed red road through the trees onto what …. may have been a footpath?; dodging bushes and logs until we got to a locked gate. Grass up to your knees. Felt like going for a stroll in Leaden Rhoding. Or when Raffa lurches you off the main road in Capriglio to the veg garden in the woods. We made it back to the road. In silence.

This all meant that by the time we got to Mount Grenfell, there was no time for a walk. But it was sunny, and blood red with soft trees and breezes and we clambered the short walk to the site over wide soft grey rocks. Eucalyptus trees were in blossom, there was a hum of bees and cries of butcherbirds and just… a gentleness, after the overwhelming spaces of Mungo. The art was incredible. Alright, look, I’m into the Renaissance, so yeah, it’s pretty simplistic; it’s red, yellow and white ochre on a fucken rock, so gauge your expectations. But there were nifty little emus and kangaroos which were cool. And my favourite; stencils of hands. Apparently these are ceremonial. I don’t know what of, or what for, but that was amazing to see and think: a man stood here, right where I am, and put his hand there. And because it’s not a print, it’s a stencil, an absence of space, something prompts it to be filled, reaches out and invites you to put your hand there and reach across thousands of years and know with something deeper than just your mind, that a man stood there, like you, before.

Right, but don’t actually fucken touch them because they’re thousands of years old, ok, and if it’s ceremonial then ‘reaching out across aeons’ may well miss the point and there’s a barrier in front anyway. Whatever. It was beautiful there and I wanted to stay, and maybe if I wasn’t such a clumtard with the internet, we could have. And so we drove on, cooing over feral goats and kids (who knew?), and the Gentleman made profound comments about it being nice to actually see some of the stuff that just gets talked about a lot in Canberra. You have to stamp through the surface of Colonialism, he said. I liked that metaphor. It reminded me of my feelings when we first arrived about floating on top of Australia, on a veneer, unattached. We arrived in Cobar, ate a Country Thai (or if going by the colloquial ‘Choinese,’ this equivalated to a ‘Thoi’), read some Pratchett and went to bed.

The next stop was Bourke. The plan was to get there by midday so we could GET A RIDE ON THE BOAT!! which left at 14.30. On the way, we skidded round to Mount Gunderbooka for more rock art. Apparently this ‘mount’ is known as a bit of a mini Uluru; a big fucken rock in the middle of a wide open plain. I can assure you we checked our map very carefully this time. The drive was beautiful, the road was moist red, there were emus running around everywhere – one nearly right into the windscreen, stupid bloody thing – and I kept stopping to take pictures of flowers because I didn’t think anyone would believe me about them if I didn’t. While Grenfell was made of soft and dreamlike greys, Gunderbooka was red and brown; its rocks stacked high in columns and terraces. Great for playing and hiding. There were glorious views of blue hills, blue sky, and lots of shade from butcherbird-decorated trees and lovely fragrant wattle startlingly golden against the reds and blues. The Gentleman said this was his favourite. He could imagine people here, the camp. Here was the beautiful stream, for water, food, for children to play in; here was a soft flowered grassy terrace above it, shaded with trees where a fire could be made and food eaten, and the rocks like the wall of a hall sheltering them, ornamented by art. We drove back along the soft red road admiring birds and flowers, and turning back, we could see how marvellously the mountain stood out. Fucking awesome.

We arrived at Bourke and hopped on the paddleboat Jendra down the Darling. That was pretty great! We had a beer, took pictures of bridges, pelicans and trees and the captain gave a charming commentary which was full occa and worth every penny. Then…well. Bourke was a bit weird. It has a drive-through bottle-o (*English translation: off licence), who thought that was a good idea? a wooden wharf over the Darling and an English steam engine they turn on at midday. That was about it. We did the Bourke Tour of Historic Buildings. Took about ten minutes, and we got a lot of weird looks. Particularly from the guy lingering outside the Court while we tried to photograph it. There were 2 pubs and we had lunch in one and dinner in the other. The latter was a large tin room with a canteen sort of feel to it adjoining an older pub that also seemed to have a bit of an atmosphere vacuum. I suggested getting smashed and leaning in to it. The Gentleman declared firmly that we were leaving, so finish your bloody dinner.

We left Bourke somewhat thankfully the following morning, and to my emphatic delight, discovered our route on to Lightning Ridge would take us through Brewarrina and the ancient Aboriginal fish traps. Being a Woke Canberran, I’ve read all about these in Bruce Pascoe’s seminal The Dark Emu, which I recommend because it is a fascinating enlightenment about the world’s oldest continuing culture. Anyway, we arrived, and a local Elder gave us a tour which was both moving and enlightening. I now understand emotionally the things I’ve read in books. But one of the most beautiful things that Bradley elaborated on (beyond horrific local massacres, segregations, missions separating families and environmental destruction) was that his people belong to the river. They don’t own it. He had a nifty way of repeating himself that was either trying to remember where he was up to or deeply effective subliminal messaging. But belonging to the land, not owning it, just seems to me to encapsulate respect, equality, productivity, and love. Surely this is what Planet A should strive for. And maybe it was the atmosphere combined with the stories, and a lovely day, but the river seemed to be absolutely teeming; frothing; heaving, with life, with animals, and movement. I could understand how it is identity and blood for this group of people. So, Bradley doesn’t watch the telly. But he tells it like it is, hard to hear or otherwise. In one tour, after he’d talked about the ignorance of governments not knowing the historical law they themselves had implemented that gave Aboriginals exemption during WWII to move to the other side of the Barwon river for work, but did not let them cross back again to return to their families; his friend called him up and asked if he’d seen Twitter. No, he said. And there on Twitter, was a picture of Bradley stood next to ScoMo, after he’d told him all this. (English translation: the Prime Minister of Australia). And one of him with the NSW Premier, too. He had no idea who these people were, and if he did, I don’t think he would have held back.

Anywho, these fish traps are the oldest human construction on the planet and archaeologists are arguing between them being 50,000 to 70,000 years old. Right on, Australia. They were beautiful. They’re moving through me, even now.

We got on the road and cranked up Nick Cave.

Secret City (hiding the Secret of its soul)

I have, of course, joined a book club. And our first book is the above titled Secret City; a thriller about political subterfuge and scandal in Canberra. I imagine the Brexit equivalent would wilt in comparison. The verdict? In a nutshell: pile of wank.

There is a Foxtel series based on this book. And no doubt it’s very compelling; I’m looking forward to watching some of it myself. Because by watching scenes of Canberra, filmed with well timed lighting, with real people to represent characters, you can engage your own emotional responses where the writers’ choice to not really bother describing anything frankly failed to do so.

Canberrans who have seen bits of this show do find it a bit of a chuckle. It portrays our small little town (beautiful and remarkably well designed, but little nonetheless) as somewhere glossy, sophisticated and impeccably suave. Which from what I’m gathering has about the same impact on a native as a show about the suave and imperatively important life of a bunch of people working in Chelmsford local council would. The writing does the same; name dropping places with the carelessness of a toddler with lego, adding adjectives to help you out because no one really knows Canberra – ‘prestigious,’ ‘stylish,’ ‘sophisticated,’ ‘exclusive.’ Which conspires to kill your very imagination and effort to find a bit of soul in the place. The descriptions of places are done without heart, without love, just bland one-worders that create a half-hearted image of somewhere cool and interesting. Like when you walk past an All Bar One after a long day at work, and think it looks all fun and stylish with people drinking cold wine in nice shoes and there are fairy lights and warm wood surfaces…but it quickly passes because you remember the atmosphere is about as barren as a salt field and you congratulate yourself on a lucky escape; nice shoes and tall wine glasses are not for you and you retire thankfully to your local that smells a bit and get a pint of warm ale. Because it has soul.

Soul in a place is important and I am worried this book has killed my poetic imagination of soul in Canberra.

I like to read about places. I like to immerse myself; building a construct, a sense of beauty and wonder about a place that I can romanticise is half the anticipation of travel. It’s how I connect to place. These two writers; ex political journalists, must have been excellent headline writers with their sassy verb and adjective choices, but they are not great writers. Miles Franklin, Kim Scott, even fucking Lawrence (and as you may know, I have a lot of opinions about D.H. Lawrence, but damn me, at least he creates a sense of place) actually bother to inspire you with a bit of love in a setting. These two didn’t. And to be great literature, writing must do that, as people and place are tied intrinsically, constantly referring to the other to create the human experience.

Perhaps I’m totally over thinking the thriller genre. Great Literature is not its scope. It just makes me cross that good writers wouldn’t bother. And Henning Mankell made a better job of creating atmosphere and engendering the whole scandi-noir genre, so there’s no excuse. Now: the nitty gritty. The book was hideously formulaic. Every new character introduced had a one paragraph fecking CV; description of their degree and previous ten years, peppered with adjectives like ‘high flying,’ ‘razor sharp mind’ and ‘holy roller’ so you get the idea that, you know, this guy’s a big deal. After that, nothing else they either did or said did a damn thing to develop that one dimensional character any further. Sloppy. So imagine my surprise when I read the blurb for the third book (yes, it’s still not fucking over) introducing ‘loveable journalist Harry Dunkley.’ He wasn’t loveable!! He was a bland bloke whose love of ‘chasing down a good yarn’ and ‘getting the papers in the morning’ was described at least four times in exactly the same goddamn way as if that sufficiently constitutes a personality. An effort to give him depth was the throw away mention of his estranged daughter who occasionally he’d miss a bit but couldn’t be fucked to do anything about it for 784 pages. If anything, he was a bit of a dick. He had a girlfriend, right, which was supposed to be a bit of a tension riser isn’t it, because now he’s got something to lose as he closes in on stuff he’s not supposed to know, and he could never get over the fact she was twenty two years younger. He mentions it three times. It must have been written explicitly for screenplay because there were these periodical recaps and I’m like, Harry? Have you forgotten you told me this already, 300 pages ago? I know, it was a long time. *It felt like it for me too.* Then when the young girlfriend goes off in an unconvincing childish strop and the inevitable attack happens (we saw it the minute he got with her, chaps), she dumps him, and later she tries to ring him, and he ignores her call!! She’s taken a knife to the throat for him, and he gets a bit wrapped up in himself and is now too busy for her, despite being gutted about being dumped and ‘racked with guilt’ as he kept saying. Well, not that guilty.

The Pencil of Rage came out with the portrayals of China and the Chinese. I’ve been reading books on China since these two journos turned up in Canberra as green little reporters twenty five years ago; you know, there’s a lot there what with thousands of years of culture and history and a billion people and I’ve never read such boringly obvious portrayal of a Bad Guy. A character defects, overcoming a life time of carefully tuned ‘education’ because….ooh, we need something emotional to make it convincing…er….fuck it, dead mother. Again, not developed enough to suggest why this character would defect in this circumstance when thousands of others wouldn’t. Lovely bit of world building in ‘Beijing’ ‘a Chinese melody drifted in the background.’ Who needs research eh? And a Chinese woman was described as ‘delicate’ no fewer than three times on one page, confirming all negative stereotypes about the submissiveness and mutability of Chinese women.

Then there was the needless transvestite. I don’t really understand why one character had to be trans. It added nothing to the story. But it was made a big deal of, so it’s not just a general diversity of some characters are black, some are Asian, some are trans. In fact, apart from a couple of Chinese, conspicuously painted as sinister or subversive, there was a complete lack of diversity. And this is the point for me.

Because all these people, swelled with power, feeding their greed and arrogance by dashing about the city at high speed were essentially dicks who demonstrated, despite all their qualifications in economics, no understanding of the real world and its struggles at all. The effects of poverty. Mental health (despite the ‘Mental Health Plan’ the fictitious government unsuccessfully tries to get through the house of representatives, mainly to show the Prime Minister is ‘a good guy,’), the ostracization of first nation people. As an immigrant outsider whose qualifications seem to count for shite, having daily battles with getting out of bed and the wine, it was quite depressing reading. Like I should have tried harder in my career to be important high fliers like these dudes. More assurance from Australia that I’m not good enough, from terribly constructed not-real people.

It is fascinating ear-wigging conversation in this town. Walking past people on their phones or those strolling in pairs (invariably young, athletic types in brown shoes and blue trousers; no blazers) you do catch snippets of Very Important Sounding Things. But is there a disconnect between them having coffee and important conversations (soooo different from teaching where you GET in your classroom, STAY in there, DON’T come out for seven hours, BE inspiring, NO you can’t leave to piss) and the real people they serve?

Look, like the aboriginals. The big elephant in Australian society who are miraculously unrepresented in this city. I have never seen such a white city. Lots of young east Asians at the university and, it seems, applying for hideously boring accounting systems jobs, but apart from that, very little diversity. And this troubles me. Before finishing the crap book, I read a great one about Noongar people of western Australia; struggling with their disenfranchisement and the bad choices they make based on their…lack of choices. Drugs, alcohol, abuse. How to reconnect with an ancient past that is spiritual and beautiful, solace against the modern world that probably many also want to engage with; combining success in modern Australian society through education and inclusion with celebrating traditions. These people were returning to their homeland as traditional owners, but now there are fences, a certain area is a holiday caravan park and the owners don’t have much sympathy for their free movement. After visiting the aborigine exhibition at the national museum, I was quite appalled and upset. How can white people live on the land, daily staring in the face of those they stole it from? Even in America, they wiped out most of the first nation peoples so used the place as a blank canvas to construct their national identity. Which is something Australians struggle with – a sense of belonging, constructing their identity out of ANZAC day – bloody violence and war. That’s not a cultural identity. I’ve had many discussions about this with Morris dancers, who feel connections with the village of their ancestors in England (I did mention this was merely inbreeding, and not meaningful), who know more about regional dances than I do and sort of sometimes miss the point of it being ‘folk;’ of the people, who change and grow. Australian identity is something that is still growing. And I think it should. Because, being a remainer, right, I’m quite into immigration. I am one. And after considering, then rejecting the idea that we can’t send all the white people in Australia back (I would revolt if someone said the reverse in England), there has to be a way for first nation and immigrants to unite over their love of this land. Because we do love it, I love it. I love beaches and emus and kangaroos! Anyone who doesn’t has no soul. And that is something that can bind us. Love, of course.

Which brings me back to finding soul. Apparently the hill where Parliament sits is a significant site for the Ngunnawal people – it is a woman’s mountain and important for their rituals. Not so easy to wander up there anymore and continue your culture. It’s like there was soul here, but perhaps nasty politicians took it all. And in looking for soul, I see it more in the trees and the hills than I do in this city. So I’m still looking for it. I’m finding it in odd little alleyways, cluttered with parked cars, murals painted on the wall and a load of bins…which is the secret entrance for a funny little windowless cocktail bar. I’m finding it under the trees at a cheap taco place round the corner from my flat, where they always seem to have secret meat you can just ask for. (Not a euphemism.) And I find it in the brilliant Smiths Alternative bar and music venue that doesn’t get a look-in in that stupid book because its ripped up, weathered sofas that render the pavement a hazard under the arcades of the Melbourne building is the sweet home of the Lost. Students lie on sofas all day, homeless men and women take their rest and drink the free water, smoking and reading the books; hippies resolutely not wearing shoes will play the piano and there is a particular smell. And, marvellously, good wine.

There we go.

The Perks of the People

Is it just anthropologists that are interested in people? Can any coffee drinker with a keen ear, nosey disposition and romantic notions about ‘people watching’ that they picked up in some gormless guide book to Paris be interested in people? Are we all anthropologists? Or are all people just interested generally in all people?

People-interest oscillates between those noble, benign feelings towards humanity one has when you invariably don’t have to interact with them, like on a country walk in the early morning, or when you’re feeling very generous with just your friends down the pub; and then the deeply felt misanthropy that surfaces when other people’s children throw shit fits in supermarkets. I am guilty of all these oscillations and naïve good intentions. But so far, the Australian people interest me deeply. Having just finished writing a satire of D.H. Lawrence’s collected works, I hesitate to make sweeping generalisations on an entire population throughout thousands of miles with the sagacity of a fortnight’s experience. But the people I’ve spoken to are delightful.

First, the lexicon of the Australian people (people-of-Canberra-Barton-well,theonesItalkedto) is quirky and highly endearing. That’s patronizing. What I mean is, I can’t help just smiling whenever I hear an Australian talk. My first experiences were superficial interactions in shops and bars. But my GOD they’re polite. Having endured service by untrained muppet teenagers who have never seen a pumice stone and wouldn’t know a courgette if 10kilos killed their mother from a great height, or who are clearly too busy flirting with their colleague or whoever just walked in from school, I have to admit we’re not great at service in England. It’s very different here. The standard salutation in these circumstances is ‘Hi, how’re you?’ which is really, unnecessarily nice! One can’t help launching in to a familiar discussion of your day’s movements (since you asked me for a tale…). One woman in a jeans shop pulled this one on me; after I stammered my reply and reciprocation, she told me her name and instructed me to let her know if I needed anything. I nearly gave her my number and asked if she’d like to meet for coffee because I’m new here and don’t have any friends yet and… Confusing friendliness for an Englishwoman. And I must stress, this is not the hollow, robotic blandness I have seen in America with its infamous ‘have a nice day!’ (keep smiling or they’ll take you out back in a bag!), but genuine.

Consider the only time the English interact with strangers. The country walk – you pass another couple out at their leisure, they stop their conversation as you approach and each of you gears yourself up for the altercation. Then there is the awkward spasm where you only have to say ‘morning!’ but manage to confuse the starts of words and and for god’s sake, don’t look at them. Our standard greeting is ‘alright?’ which succeeds in uniting two syllables into one vowel-y grunt, and the super effortful reply of ‘yeahyou?’ also manages to be a several toned single syllable. Here, if I encounter someone in the street or on a walk, they look me square in the face and offer their communication so clearly, so comfortably, so genuinely that I have to stop myself from hopping off my bike, grasping them warmly by the hand like a Dickenzian Pickwickian and telling them what a lovely day I’m having.

There are two incidences I’ve noticed where friendly human exchange is not forthcoming here. One is during your morning walk or jog. I find in England there is such profound respect and admiration for anyone that can be determined enough get up at six and march their arse at pace round the field/lane/block through the frost in the damn dark that my panted ‘mornings’ (I can now pant two syllables while running) are always met with slightly pitying but very encouraging responses. And solidarity amongst other mad bastards doing the same. Like a little pact. I find this hugely gratifying. Here, everyone is healthy so just get on with it and don’t expect wild praise just because you got your heart rate above sedentary.

The other incidence of the absence of warmth is flat hunting. It’s a very surreal and highly competitive scenario. You have fifteen minutes to view a flat, at the leisure of the estate agent. You gather outside in your guerrilla groups; couples sizing each other up – who looks like the better earner? – students with their wealthy parents, pairs of friends. You start counting how many there are. They’re all your competition. You go inside and all thirty-six-odd of you rampage around the place, getting in each other’s way, opening doors into each other, having muted conversations about the things you like, as Yates phrased so beautifully when he described it. You say loudly something negative about a cupboard, then run home as fast as you can to put your online application in, always clocking those that left first, wondering ‘what the hell is their game?’ It’s pretty freakin’ brutal.

So after two bloody weeks of this, we finally have a place. It’s an apartment in the city centre, cute little split-level affair with the two bedrooms, main bathroom and en-suite down a short flight of stairs. Then one large room with a smart little open kitchen on the right with an island unit. It’s very professional middle class and I can’t wait to start pretentiously arranging ikea blankets and display fruit. Balcony’s a bit shabby but hopefully plants and umbrellas and stuff will soften the brickwork. We move in this week. I am surprisingly tired of meals out, although the prospect of cooking the eternally popular ‘snausage gnocchi’ in forty degree heat doesn’t thrill me.

Other charming phrases we’ve heard in the last week are the abbreviations. If you can take a longer word, chop it in half (or preferably just down to its first syllable) and stick an ‘o’ or a ‘y’ on the end, job’s a good’un. Now this is not wholly unfamiliar to boaters, after Cow Roast is ‘Berko,’ I like to walk round the ‘ressy,’ are you going to the festival in ‘Ricki?’ So I’ve slipped into this quite readily (my favourite is ‘eggs benny’ – I’ve always found the phrase ‘eggs benedict’ needlessly pretentious) and I enjoy the squirm of pleasure I furtively observe Australians doing when they feel they have assimilated another pom. I also love the phrase ‘heaps of,’ and ‘get-go.’ Also ‘ks’ instead of kilometres. But the favourite has got to be wheeler-dealer Dean’s judicious and heavily frequent use of ‘Look’ every third sentence when he was selling us a car. It’s an alright car – ford focus, automatic, bit squeaky (then turn the goddam radio up), white… but we have a car now, and a running joke, so we’ll take that.

It’s been a bit of a funny week, seeing as I have been alone applying for jobs and piffling away at my silly writing while Yates goes out and earns. Not sure how I as a feminist feel about that one. Ironically, unliberated. I have been acclimatising to the heat because after three days of barricading myself into the hotel room, I realised life can’t just stop because it’s hot, so get out there, get sweaty, stay in the shade, drink water and commit to your twice daily shower. It’s a shame not to look at this blue, green, white and gold world. I went to the art gallery. Educated myself on a bit of aboriginal art. So a lot of what you see is called dot painting, and apparently, it’s what the desert looks like from above. There’s method in there. There are symbols mixed into all those shapes, for rivers, campsites, kangaroo tracks. Not just random colours and triangles yo. Lots of the pictures had names involving dreaming: woman dreaming, fire dreaming, egret dreaming, naughty boy dreaming (perplexing). On investigating this, I was told dreamtime is sort of all history, as well as the mythical creation of the world. This is, I gather, because of the oral tradition of the aborigines, everything from before your grandparents (Chris interpretation – I suppose then, the last people that can tell you stuff about a certain time) is ‘dreaming.’ Sort of beautiful.

Then it was the weekend, and we could do more exploring! We had a lovely time at the botanic gardens. We saw lizards! And we found a tinder party on the eucalyptus lawn…. And kangaroo tea towels. Then on Sunday we went to Tidbinbilla!

This is one of those unfamiliar words carelessly pronounced at me in the first week. I had to get the chap to write it down to make sure he wasn’t joking. Apparently it was great for all your standard Aussy wildlife. We’d been up into Namadgi park (just approaching the Australian Alps) the week before and I caught myself thinking, well it’s bloody hot, and we already walked around in glorious eucalypt covered hills last week. Tidbinbilla is amazing though, and I am vetting and spotting most places for Teck appropriateness and where I will take my family.

Tidbinbilla is an enormous nature reserve that you drive round. But there are loads of places of interest, where you park up, get out, use the loo (there are lots, but check under the toilet seat!) and then go for a walk. You can do 11k walks around the place, and lots of little ones…which easily add up to that. So it’s the sort of place you wanna pack a picnic for, take a ball or frisbee, a book and spend all day. Do some walks, chill out, have some lunch, do another walk. It was beautiful. And as we strolled around this enormous open site with nine thousand metre, green cloaked mountain peaks all around us, and yellow ragwort-like flowers adorning the grass, it occurred to me at once that I could see no one. There is not a damn spot in the whole of the vastness of the Lake District where you can’t see the little bright red figure of the gortex-wearing hiker somewhere on a ridge or against a sodden hill, but here, no one. Just Yates and I, and thousands of these funny little cricket things that had beautiful patterned yellow wings that could properly fly with them. Thousands of them in the air, how I imagine our butterfly population used to be a hundred years ago.
We finally saw kangaroos too. Scratching kangaroos, lying down kangaroos, hopping kangaroos, baby kangaroos. It was awesome. And swamp wallabies. We hunted for platypus very patiently, but didn’t see any. We visited the koala enclosure and saw some sort of displayed, like in a zoo and they are bloody cute, and we spotted one up in a tree. We heard kookaburras. We saw turtles and swallows, cormorants and a musk duck. It wasn’t forty degrees, it was shady and breezy and it was incredibly beautiful. I can see why a culture of respecting the land has persisted here for millennia; why my ancestors who travelled to western Australia battled isolation and hardship to stay here.
And when we thought there could be nothing more lovely on earth, we went to Gibraltar falls, which is the most end of the world freaking beautiful place on the planet. It’s a waterfall with gentle little streams and rock pools weaving their way down to the larger drop, in the palm of the mountains that rise up above it on all sides. And despite all the tiny yellow signs saying ‘danger, drop,’ it’s a local goddamn swimming pool. Loads of people in swim stuff luxuriating in the cool streams and pools and always with the beautiful blue, green and white of the bush to look at. Heavenly. I thought a place like that only existed in films or on the internet. So grab a picnic, a couple of beers and a book, and stay there till it gets dark.

In other news, I gave a killer karaoke performance last weekend too. Pub quiz again tonight, and I’ve been swotting.