We found the Twilight Zone yesterday – here in Bathurst. You know the one where Joe Normal is in small town Hicksville and everyone is weird!
We went in search of food and drink for lunch and ended up in a small cafe up a side street. We looked over the menu and thought we should be able to get some decent food. We were still deciding when the waitress came over and so we asked for a couple of cups of decaf coffee.
We noticed the unusual size and shape of this young waitress with piggy red cheek jowls and the glisten of swear across her brow and matted hair, a poor girl happy for employment. We stuck with it as she went to find out what decaf was! It was then we decided not to get any food. She came back – no decaf (whatever it is!) so I ordered iced chocolate and Broni ordered an apple, carrot and celery juice.
We waited and waited while the only other customers seemed eager to leave, accepting apologies from the blimp for earlier mistakes that we’d missed. Eventually, after much juicer noise from the kitchen, the blimp brought out half a glass of brown sludge with a diarrhetic dribble on top and apologised that the juicer had broken and that it was only dishing out small amounts she was showing us. We told them to forget it and she brought out my iced chocolate – which looked ok – unfortunately the chocolate was still in powdered form and the milk must’ve been left in the sun.
As I attempted to suck the lumps through the straw, the blimp’s mother came out with the broken juicer, covered in years of old fruit and veg and explained that the machine had broken, offering it up for our inspection. We nearly chucked, paid and left and ran and ran fast! I was worried someone was going to run after us, grab us and slaughter us in some midnight full moon ritual ceremony – phew! Got away for another day.
So, early a.m. we catch the commuter train with the suits and the smart dressed young ladies into the city to pick up a hire car. Broni handles the controls, this being our first Oz car driving experience together. It’s already a blistering hot day at 9am. Slowly but surely we make it across the city to Wendy’s (Broni’s oldest sister) to pick up some stuff, then on out of the city, where suburbia ends and turns into farms and small town communities.
In the distance we can see the Blue Mountains beckoning us. We stop off for some salad, watching big carrier planes taking off from the army base close by and yippee, I get to take over the controls and charge us through the countryside, to the bottom of the mountains, slowly up, twisting turns, the smell of gum invading our nostrils, sun blazing in blue, oh blue sky faint whisper of cloud.
Not my picture…
We catch a brief glimpse from hilltop back to where we came, a breathtaking spectacle but we are still onwards, upwards, through orchard country and then into the real mountains with burnt scrub bushland, crickets screaming out their mad calls deafeningly loud in unison, cancelling out the radio. Road still twisty we balance on the edge of precipices looking into long deep vale valleys covered in black eerie gum tress caught in last years fires, for all the eye can see everything burnt, charred, like a graveyard to the flora, to nature and it’s wonder, each tree stood like a monument proud into the sky, now beginning to show signs of growth again.
For some half an hour we carry on through this beautiful landscape before descending down into the old coal mining town of Lithgow, and from here we drive for another hour across plains and farms to our destination, Bathurst, Australia’s oldest inland city. And here, at Broni’s parents, we make a brief stop before we head out to some places to look at with the intention of finding some place to get married and as usual, with our positive outlooks and thinking we find somewhere quickly that is an ideal place for marriage ceremony and reception so then we high tail round town to try and find a priest who might marry us outside, something which they are not known to do.
Again, not my picture…
We run out of time doing that but not before a quick run up Mount Panorama round the race course there, where some guy got himself killed in the Janes Hardie 1000, going much faster than us I might add. During the rest of the year the course is open like a normal road, with a picnic stop at the top. Weird driving round roads with tyre barriers and red and white caution markers on the corner bumps.
Back to base we lazy away the rest of the evening in conversation and old photographs.
P.S. The crazy natural amphetamine of youth! Ya!
Main picture taken on top of Mount Panorama with my best man, Rob, March 1995.
Oh wandering spirit in my soul, guiding me away from trouble and blasting me forward into the furnace of life – I embrace you, hold you and cherish you. I cherish this time, this day, this very second. I love my life, I love Bronwyn (deep, deeper), I love myself, I love the earth, the trees, the birds. My inner vision (and outer vision) now expanded with world awareness, my third eye open to positive elements (earth, wind and fire – oh yes, I feel a lot of funk in my life) and all that hippy mumbo jumbo shit.
Like someone said to us today, “you cannot convey to someone who hasn’t been to Australia, the space and feeling of freedom” and also it is that “that intimidates some people while others embrace it” and you see what I feel.
To bring you up to date we spent three pretty torturous stressy days at home together with a lot of all our stresses surfacing and causing us brief frictions but we understand each other and our situation and realistically just why these things are occurring as I probably explained some text earlier. So the last thing we wish to worry about is getting married yet this is what we’ve thrown ourselves into and we trip out to Bathurst where Broni and her 8 brothers and sisters were raised and her mum and dad still live.
6th Mar 2021 – My very first passport tells me we arrived in Sydney, Australia on the 28th of September 1994. We had a stopover in Bangkok where I recall seeing rows of shanty buildings as we approached the airport and the tropical heat made it inside the plane before landing. I don’t recall anything about the wait at the airport there though. I remember a rough landing in Sydney though not certain of the time of day – I think it was daylight but also recall leaving the terminal in the twilight. The customs officers were both friendly and suspicious and once in the open air, as I was told I would, I was immediately hit with the sweet smell of lemon-scented gum trees. I believe it took 23 hours from take-off at Heathrow to touch down in Sydney and besides the expected jetlag, I was full of delirium, joy and excitement.
My first passport. My stupid signature is still stupid too.Visa stating must get married before 12th April 1995.
6th August 2021 – At Heathrow my mum shed a few tears as she wished us farewell. We also saw Paul Weller sitting in one of the cafes waiting for a plane to somewhere.
Blur! Mind blur! I told of frenzied activity before but nothing like this morning. It’s getting to Broni too – not coping very well – but I feel reasonably calm – just methodically r
22nd September 1994
That last incompleted sentence typifies our dilemma – no time!
Stratosphere, Ionosphere, Semisphere! Up here I can see the stars, I’m touching space with my iris, black drunk peehole iris. Europe’s mighty murky down below, I’m stuck in the sun, still on alcholiday. Could be fuckin’ anything down there. We could be time warped back one whole week and we’ll meet our previous selves in a 30,000 feet mid air collision at 580 miles per hour. In the sun! In space, man!
How can I ever dream to read every word ever wrote by anybody ever worth a shit? How do we dream – such strange dreams, more and more my dreams touch reality, particularly when reality is so far removed from normal humdrum, but when, at what point does being away from humdrum become normalcy?
So I think to write to Lou, never wrote him before, but I have an idea after seeing him smash his favourite guitar in rage and whatever I can’t face how his simple songs touched hearts of thousands who come to pray at his altar now, so I’ll tell him of my holiday, how people have to exist on the double edged sword I was explaining to you about before remember? Economy of tourists. So I’ll tell him go out and play, play your music, for yourself, play what you want to hear, for yourself, all others are superfluous, ignore them. He loves us, he told us, sad man, we love him, once again, it’s all life isn’t it?
So, what I’m trying to say. Me and Broni, have worked out is, consumerism – see the connection, don’t sell out to the people who want to pay, do it for your own reasons. Greece, our island, is sold out, presenting us with what we want to see, catering to the big market, but we’re (Me and Broni), we’re small fish.
8th Jan 2021 – Bronwyn and I went to the island of Rhodes in Greece for a quick holiday. This was only the third time in my life I’d been on an airplane and only two weeks later I would be on another couple more for a 23-hour journey to the opposite side of the world!
On Rhodes we messed around on hired motorbikes, saw some ruins and historic buildings. As the Greeks seem to love to eat meat with everything I was stuck with Greek Salad for many lunches and dinners. Ho Hum.
It was damn hot too. Nice preparation for arrival in Australia. We slept with no sheets, even moving the mattress onto the balcony one night. The hotel was my first experience with toilets where you weren’t allowed to throw your toilet paper down the toilet. It was this experience that got me more closely checking what was going on down there in the cleanliness department.
We were drunk every evening, definitely experimenting with the local Ouzo. The nearest beach to the hotel was huge and deserted and mostly pebble. I got naked – why not? There was no one else around to see my little dick.
At the main beach we didn’t know that we were supposed to pay someone to sit under an umbrella and we laid our towels out away from them and Bronwyn got into water for a swim. She soon came back due to two little kids that had been sent by the umbrella owners and started throwing stones at her in the water. Jesus – they don’t fuck around for a dollar. We packed up and left and that kinda summed up much of our feeling about the island.
One thing Bronwyn warned me about was the beaches and oceans in Australia. Everyone loves to go there but they can be very dangerous especially for poor swimmers. Having skipped swimming classes at school for most of my life (we had to pay for swimming lessons at school and I told my mum that it was too expensive for us and to save her money but really I was just body shy) Bronwyn taught a few basic things about swimming – most Aussies appear to be good at swimming – and by the end of the week stay at the hotel I was easily doing the five metre widths in the pool! OK – we have to start somewhere.
We bought ourselves and our friends some souvenirs but the bottle of Ouzo we had wrapped in towels and clothes and packed in our suitcase didn’t survive the journey and we sadly washed our clothes when we got back home. That suitcase would soon be packed again.
Lazy now, energy drain by day, by heat, take your siesta noontime, come out and play on pebble beach, dip toes in cool blue Mediterranean waters, jump in, watch those fishies sniff your digits, head back floating, waves rocking your blind body, cradle motion, childlike pleasures, float free, naked, wrapped in Gaia’s waters.
Ah, big time out from normal programmes, from bed to pool to beach to pool to bed, sleep under the stars on white verandahs wake by cock crow and watch the sun rise from its grey resting dreams cast red yellow shadows across small breaking waves turn up the oven a few degress too much for us whiteys, back to bed back to snoozeville before breakfast before coffee and juice and um… a dip well, hell, what’s to do but swim and play learn new water tricks, cool blue blue sit back, feet up, rest weary hangover heads and love life, here on hot earth island love life everywhere.
Swing sweet sexy mistress Come play concertos on my porch as the night time glows dimly into small hours, lay awake with me dance your mysterious dances cross white sheets, sticky in the heat as roosters cackle the glory of the day you are about to see through deep mists sun breaking low, sky, a water colour grey, orange, yellow, blue, engulfing stars forgotten now in numbed and hazy glow like playful seals, we jump in icy fresh waters jump and dive, race and rest, submerged let glory of nature rise from our toes out through our fingers into the earth parched and tortured, sunbeaten into submission light trees stand and fight, dip and sway in hot dusty breeze, the breath of god all over this earth, our little island inside our minds, our simple souls, and touch these people in their simple lives, made them worthy, made them whole weary and tired, ignore the bustle too simple, their lives, to even contemplate a different, new improved way sad we are with all our knowledge blinding us from this, it’s just a holiday it’s fun in the sun, week away from cloud and sad you can see, the way I feel taverna empty of locals full of Krauts and Brits, getting drunk emptying their pockets (as I have too) and it’s just like home, where I am the local and wouldn’t frequent these holes here, set in ancient cities, cobbled streets castles, cannonballs. The jewel of an empire some thousand years before now left to sell Pepsi and pizza in the ruins of it all.
So here I sit on this double edged sword in awe of the country and nature’s wonder toads and lizards creeping up our wall with old people struggling to live by selling sun-hats to tourists who breathe economy into lost cities of generations ago, many before here, paying my contribution in sun lotion Agfa film and cocktails, endless. Maybe tomorrow I will contemplate the suicide of the world.
Breathless at the marvel of Acropolis stones stood so long against the brunt of it all now desperate to find a balance in the modern world.
The new gods and goddesses hustling punters for pocket money, for deck chairs on the beach of fag butts and empty bottles of UV25 sweet green sea tempting sore feet to tread through the barbed wire barricades.
Oh, soft clean waters consume us Let us all fall into the sea, drag us under.
The filament in the light bulb above my head is broken I cannot repair it until the everyday DIY man has spoken And when he speaks he speaks with a lisp Everyone is laughing – they all think he’s pissed
I don’t care what they say Mr Repairman came to see me today I did not laugh, he did the trick He made everything absolutely spick And spanner in the works – wash my dirty shirts – until it really hurts The swallows flew the nests – they were eggs no more I mark my card as they fly by Kiss my friend in the eye They were eggs no more he fried
28th Jul 2024 – Fresh Forest Cottage, some 7 or 8 years after Mum and I left and a long time before I saw again. The open window is where my bedroom was, where the howling noises all came from and a thousand cigarettes smoked and a thousand cans of beer drunk.
28th Jul 2024 – This is how I remember the garden once walking through the gate. Gillespie’s (the garage) just visible on the right where more howling and drumming was often heard. I do recall that this part of the garden had changed a lot when I saw it again some ten or fifteen years later. No surprise really. It stopped me from wanting to go in a look around though as I hoped to keep my memories intact.
Screaming along the runway, engines roar, hearts in mouths as we, cloud bound go. Panic abates, ears pop, whiteness overwhelms us, then free, like a rock slung to the heavens, bright sun gleaming cross the snow ground, bubbling like a witches brew or soft as a crash mat below. Til dreams hit of freefalling, waiting for that soft spring catch. But heart surrendered body as the white night envelopes til, yikes! Hard ground racing upwards, a glimpse of heaven, a walk with angels traverse the europes by the air, 30,000 feet above mad farmers, raging rivers, ants in our eyesight, twisting snakes like a rising Atlantis, brave mountains puncture low cloud fall, Alpine wonder but just a brief gasp of breath, a mere molehill on horizons, as we many mile per hour go from one place to another. In a few brief hours, sun warming our toes, we find destination, a Mediterranean island in green seas, lapping white crest tops biting at its edges. We being to fly low, deceleration pops our eardrums as we marvel at this rare beauty to our right as we slide by. Then with a touch of the wheel we turn about so slow. I fear we may stall in this awful manoeuvre, but a beat on the throttle takes us in nice and easy. We seem to be gliding ’til wheels tiptoe the tarmac and suddenly we’re racing to slow before the grass starts and thankfully we do and our captain goes ‘phew’ in private but tells us to have a nice day. So off then to adventure and off with our raincoats where dark young men impress my sweet darling with their dark young minds.
Ring-a-ring-a-ling. At the front door of the manor house, we strike the old ship bell, hanging glumly by the door, like a statue more than a device, not a temptation for most, I’d venture, as a more normal doorbell sits right next to it on the wall, but a huge invitation for our playful minds. Ring-a-ring-a-ling.
Dodging fast storms brewing up in the olde-Englysh heavens, wind sweeping each new development along in a flash, one second bright warm sunshine tempting off pullovers, next second torrential downpour of warm wet sees us scurrying for cover under the trees. The cricketers carry on regardless. We all know it will pass by in a matter of a blink or two.
So dodging these slight nuisance rainfalls, we end up at Lower Farm, a converted old farmhouse with twisty apple trees and the most delightful sweeping weeping willow, majestic, from the earth, skyward towering, then falling back in a dance of tears. Around the perimeter, the flower beds, the villagers stand behind their stalls, like a half-hearted car boot sale (minus cars), selling old toys or tempting us to play their games.
A traditional small English fete, with most of the villagers participating, all monies donated to the church (more on that later) and in fact, most I’d imagine, buying or donating money to each other’s stalls.
When I say half-hearted, I’m only comparing to more extravagant affairs and don’t intend to sound so mean because this was a quaint, peaceful playground for the village, so English, as only the English can be. Imagine this tiny village, probably no more than a hundred dwellings and many of its people gathered here in hopes of keeping its community spirit alive, fighting off the evil of big city life invading from the North in the shape of Milton Keynes and its parish council takeover bids.
1994ever 