Archive | November, 2010

DAY 71: Learning about the local Sudanese community

10 Nov

I’VE been really enjoying hurling myself into the local community lately. Okay, I suppose it’s less a hurl than a dipped toe, what with the ukulele classes and lawn-mowing and whatnot, but I have great plans afoot (geddit) for chat warbling, bird watching, wood chopping and steam railways – you’ll see. Hell, I’m even getting a white ute.

There’s also a healthy Sudanese contingent in Castlemaine that hasn’t been anywhere near my toe, and I’ve been curious as to how a community came to be established in this little town in particular. The screening of No One Eats Alone, directed by a local resident, tells the stories of Sudanese women who have settled in Victoria, and it’s stacked with personable characters. The unanimous hit with the audience at the Theatre Royal seems to be when the thigh-slappingly jovial Anghere unapologetically describes herself as the “white dot” of the family — the Sudanese equivalent of a black sheep.

Keeper? Yep, I’m enjoying pretty much everything I’ve seen posted on a local noticeboard so far. Onwards to the Rotary Club!

DAY 70: Taking the Melbourne Town Hall tour

9 Nov

I’VE just spent the past hour Google imaging John Batman, after finding out on the Melbourne Town Hall tour that he was a “syphilitic, whoring alcoholic” with half his face eaten away by the sexy disease. Unfortch, he’s always depicted from the side for this very reason, so no joy. Don’t Google image “syphilis” while you’re eating lunch at your desk, by the way.

On an entirely separate note, here's former Moomba King Molly Meldrum.

Our tour guide’s a lovely old chap who lingers particularly long at the Town Hall pipe organ, behind which we explore three floors and endless rooms full of springs, pipes and whirligigs. Agatha Christie could have plotted an excellent death within the machinations of a pipe organ.

Our guide tears up when he concludes that it’s Melbourne’s most wondrous trophy… yet most people don’t even know it’s here.

Synthy bits of the organ.

Keeper? Done this one!

DAY 69: Walking around a cemetery before work

8 Nov

IT’S eight o’clock and a beautiful morning, so I take the tram to St Kilda Cemetery for a browse. This is a pretty cool Art Deco grave — I wouldn’t mind mine looking like this, for future reference. You can even call me Ralph.


It’s pretty unfathomable (for me) to see headstones bearing the names of whole families, children included, then finished off with “God’s Will Be Done”. You’d have to grit your teeth when requesting that line from the stonemason, wouldn’t you?

Keeper? Yes, will have a saunter around the cemetery in Carlton next time.

DAY 68: Lighting a fire… totally unsupervised

7 Nov

I GO through two boxes of matches and 85 in-head renditions of “Fire… I bid you to burn” before this baby finally gets going in my brand new fire pit (see Day 54). I have to dance around putting spot fires out a fair bit, but I keep it going for a couple of hours without any complaints from Doreen next door or the bastards over the fence.

NB: I have made a fire before at Girl Guides, but it was under supervision. This is not.

Keeper: Yes; very satisfying, addictive work, and I like the way I smell all smokey.

DAY 67: Piloting a plane

6 Nov

I like the way they've tethered it like an old goat.

MY instructor’s name is Andrew, and as we’re yakking away, 7000ft over Bendigo, I ask him why he got the urge to fly. He says he’d always harboured a secret wish to, but thought it too expensive for the likes of him. Then his brother died at 49 and his wife nearly followed suit. That’s when Andrew philosophised you can’t take it with you when you go. He’s been taking people like me for joyrides at $120 an hour ever since.

Upon my arrival at the flying school, Andrew offers me a biscuit and a cup of tea, and draws unfathomable diagrams on a whiteboard. I like him; he’s funny. Then he walks me around a tiny Tecnam P 92 Echo Super so we can check things aren’t going to fall off or fly open.

Climbing in is an intimate experience. I have to fold myself into the left-hand driver’s seat (thankfully this thing has dual controls), and there’s not much in the way of elbowroom. We run through the checks and crank up the propeller, then Andrew gets me to steer us down the runway before he gets us up in the air.

We get some sharp bumps and knocks off kilter as we’re on our way up, which may be “just the atmosphere”, but has me shutting my eyes and gripping the seat with one hand all the same. Andrew’s a trusting sort, as he gets me to keep hold of the joystick with the other hand, even though I might feasibly jerk it in fright if I was a spaz.

Once we clear most of the clouds, though, we’re okay, and weirdly my fear of heights doesn’t kick in – I swore more in my driving lesson.

Andrew sits back with a grin and tells me to just go wherever I want, so I point the thing towards Echuca, avoiding bloody great clouds that loom up here and there. You gotta treat clouds almost like solid objects when you’re in a plane this small, as they’ll throw you around a bit. Oh, and you can’t see.

You steer with both your feet and your hand, but it feels almost impossible to flip this thing over. Every now and then, Andrew fires up the throttle so that the nose veers upwards, and gets me to correct it. Same the other way. On our way back down he shows me how to hug clouds like you would a roundabout, and he goes skimming around one at a cracking pace, like a gleeful kid.

We land with the same grace as a pelican – legs akimbo and arse first – but that’s Andrew’s doing, not mine, and it’s just because the wind comes off the trees and chucks you around. I’m pleased to note my knees aren’t knocking a bit when I clamber out.

Keeper? Going back next week, as a matter of fact.

DAY 66: Getting a helicopter view of the world

5 Nov

Looks non-lethal enough.

I ADMIRE those with a helicopter view of the world – and nobody has more of a helicopter view of the world than a helicopter. Mike meets me by the boathouse to give his remote control one a whirl.

He’s attached a dodgy-as camera to it that’s secreted inside a Bic-style lighter, which can give you great shots of the city or sunbathers. The helicopter’s pretty hard to control. It threatens to hover off into the Yarra a few times, and it seems the slightest gust of wind or kack-handed move sends it crashing down onto the tarmac. Which is awesome. Mike is very sporting, even when his favourite toy whizzes off to explore a tree for a bit.

Keeper? Has anyone made a remote control pterodactyl yet?

DAY 65: Performing a cleansing ritual

4 Nov

I BOUGHT a bundle of sage from Newtown in a fit of Jetstar Blindness. This is when you buy destination-appropriate things that are then totally inappropriate back in your own town. Like thongs in Melbourne.

I asked Google for a few spells, but then Jessica – who knows her onions – told me not to make an actual spell, as it may come true in the most unnerving way. Like if you want to attract a bloke he might end up stalking you, or if you ask for a plane not to crash into the ground, it might crash into another plane instead – that sort of thing.

Apparently it’s okay to just cleanse the house with the sage, though. It might, at least, cleanse that mysterious ‘spare room smell’ out of the spare room before Mum and Dad come over from Pomgolia, or the Mr Thumpy smell out of the laundry. I’m a bit suss about the previous owner, actually. I found weird shit in the attic, like banished, framed pictures of a woman with an ’80s ’do; cartoons ripped from the newspaper pasted inside a cupboard; sponge effect paintjobs all over the ceilings; and seemingly endless collections of bean bag beans. Put them all together, and what have you got? Exactly. Well dodgy, huh? Let’s cleanse.

Sage tea helps me keep my temper at special times of month, but bizarrely, burning sage smells completely different – like pot, as it turns out – so I’m going to have some explaining to do to my parents, and I was hoping we’d finally got past all that.

Keeper? Only if someone creates an awful stench that needs to be got rid of.

Day 64: Surrendering to mindless gossip

3 Nov

I can hardly bloody hear anything for the tapping of my keyboard.

EVERY day I am privy to mindless gossip on my commuter train when I’m trying to update you with the important stuff of the day before, like making curtains. Usually I pull tortured faces and eventually stuff my headphones in my ears with a big sigh, to listen to that soothing Panics mantra, ‘Don’t Fight It’ on repeat.

Today, I am going to both exercise my observational skills (see Day 7, A Eureka Moment) and practise acceptance (Day 47, Learning how to ACT), by listening intently to the gossip and learning something. My own anecdotal style is so meandering, and my conclusion so elusive, that perhaps I’ll pick up some tips as to effective timing and delivery.

My carriage is packed, so it’s like someone’s fiddling with the radio dial, with everyone sped up, Henry Higgins-style. “Wittering,” Dad calls it.

“So your work is telling you that you can’t have Facebook in your personal life? Well excuse me, you don’t dictate to me… See this is why I don’t like the way they try and control your life.”
What I learned: If I try not to go up an octave when saying something self-righteous, I may sound less self-righteous.

“Daniel rang me Sunday just after the show. I said, ‘Ah yeah, I’ve just finished the last show.
He said, ‘It’s raining heaps in Bendigo.’
I said, ‘Yeah, I know – I’m in Bendigo.’
I think he thought the show was in Melbourne. He probably would have come if I’d told him.”
What I learned: Filler is acceptable and may lead to something exciting eventually: just keep flinging mud until something sticks.

“It’s their 25th wedding anniversary. What shall I text? Love you long time?”
“Look at you, you’re the golden child.”
“Aw, fuck you.”
What I learned: Some mates are good for banter; some mates are good for sentimentality. Expecting both from one person is expecting too much, so choose carefully.

“He must have been at Coles for 30 years now. So has that big tall bloke.”
“Awwww, yes, yes.”
What I learned: “Awww yes, yes” is the most accepted interjection on this train, and way more effective than my own version – “Mm” – as it conveys enthusiasm and takes longer to say. Useful for those one-way conversations where the correct response is undetermined.

Keeper? Yes. And I should probably get my ears syringed. I can just about eke out one-liners of gold around me, but I’ve already shifted seats once, so whole conversations elude me.

DAY 63: Learning about immigration

2 Nov

 

All stand.

NEXT time I need a dose of “you think you’ve got it bad” I’ll come back to the Melbourne Museum of Immigration. The ceaseless sound loops of wails, gunfire and wet farts (I shit you not) that illustrate migrational misery should put things into perspective. And then I’ll walk back to work at Southbank and remind myself that it’s Southbank in AUSTRALIA and not Southbank in London. Hooray!

Keeper? Yes.

DAY 62: Learning the ukulele

1 Nov

IF THERE’S one thing that you can be sure of in this topsy-turvy, ever-changing world, it’s that blokes will thrash out ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ over whatever you’re trying to do or say in band rehearsal. I’ve been in and out of ropey bands since I was 16, and that fact has remained constant.

So it’s no surprise to find that, upon joining the local country town ukulele group, the familiar strains of that less-than-original riff comes screaming plinkily out of the souped-up ukulele of the 10-year-old boy next to me. And this is while the rest of us are trying to learn ‘You Are My Sunshine’.

Our tutor, a lovely dapper young chap in a velvet jacket and waistcoat, smiles through gritted teeth: “They’re trying to drag me screaming out of the 30s… into the 90s.”

Keeper? I’ll be back – and I’ll have have learned the solo. (Shouldn’t be hard; it’s only one finger.)

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