Last night we drove back from Bathurst, over the beautiful mountains, unfortunately covered in a dense fog, scary for me to drive through, up those tight turn tracks with ten ton trucks overtaking in their haste and knowledge of the roads (poor little scared foreigner I am) straight into the city like an arrow from the mountains.
We quickly stop off at the flat to dump a car full of Broni’s stuff (more clothes, workbooks and electric piano(yeh, brush her up on her ivory work because she’s great when she gets her act together on the piano)) and then we’re off again, we don’t ever stop, to Marrickville for a family and friends meeting on mental illness.
Broni’s brother G_ suffers from schizophrenia, he was there with his elder triplet brother C_. (the triplets, C_ is the one who made good, so to speak, and has a job, wife and five kids, A_, the middle trip started the mega famous band Icehouse and could be described as on the rock and roll journey of experience and has been known to go off the rails from time to time, married and divorced and a child by someone else and then there’s G_, born tiny and recognisable in boyhood photos as the not so happy chappie, now 37 and coping with his illness)
For someone who sometimes loses control he’s quite together and the meeting tonight helped me understand a little bit about mental illness plus I get to see a bit more of G_, like all the rest of the brothers and sisters of this Smith generation are fairly simple to work out, you know where they are coming from, G_ needs a bit more time to consider.
So, the meeting’s cool and there’s more to be covered over the next three Wednesdays, so we promise to go to them for our own interest as much as for G_’s comfort. We give G_ a lift home, not far up the road and drop C_ off at the train station but we end up driving him all the way up the north of the city home cos hell, we feel like it and he promises us some food and drink, something we’ve forgotten in our long day.
We drive for miles and miles eventually reaching his place, where the promised goods are delivered, we also pick up Broni’s piano music which their kids had been using while Broni had been in England, so after this short relaxing break we trek back across the city, on the harbour bridge at midnight, wow what a sight, the city’s lights tiny beacons of life, parties happening, people working late, lights for no good reason, and then we get lost and then we get found and then we get home and get ourselves tucked up in the security of our luxurious double bed, spoonlike.
We get up early to take the hire car back, which we do with no hassle and stop off for breakfast in a beautiful vibrant but secluded cafe. The waiter is a charmer, sweet french accent, soft tone, looks intelligent and moody, the waitress, his girlfriend or wife, beautifully sexy, all in black, moody and sultry, they’re both running around like crazy at this crazy hour of the morning, their french friends sat at the end of the cafe sneaking quick snatches of conversation. The food is delicious. Betty blue sits on the wall in posterol glory no spelling error, the very definition of France and its beauty.
A cold whisper of darkness came over me as I stood waiting for service in the post office. Both doors were wide open as normal, outside blue sky and sunshine. When I’d finished and stepped outside onto the wide clean sidewalk I saw the reason for my cold shudder. Up in the heavens something was a-brewing. The sky had divided into two, one side bright blue the other a steely grey, like the rumbling of oncoming evil and bad tidings, a low bubbling cloud so unlike the beautiful clear sky that it was now taking over.
The building on the left is the 24 hour pub, conveniently located opposite the station and usually occupied when I was catching the train at 7am.
I ran home excited and at the turn at the top of the street I saw out into the distance the enormity of the storm as it came in across the ocean. As my eyes flicked across the long horizon a bolt of lightning shot down to earth about a mile away. The wind was whipping the tall eucalyptus trees into a frenzy of excited rustling noise, deafening the low mellow tone of thunder in the distance.
Blue circle – our apartment was around here. Red circle – the 24 hour pub Botany Bay is directly south just a couple more blocks
I dragged Broni out to see, she’d promised me storms and here they were, and we ran back up the street, over the road and up to the train station for a better view. Things were now very grey, but still visible a line across the sky where this storm was invading our beloved sunshine. Cracks of thunder and shots of lightning whizzed around in the distance as gradually the drops of rain became harder, heavier and more numerous. We stood in the eye of the storm, getting wet in the delicious rain, soaking our bones and then ran home to dry off in the shelter of our flat.
This photo from the station bridge is the same spot we were observing the storm.
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.
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.
1994ever 