There are no photos fr this section so I drew a page. Then it's just words.
This was written before I did that page
I was thinking of packing this in. From the raw and illformed original novella I'd done back in the '80s to the brainwave to rethink it as a comic the history of The Monsoons as a story has been one of many false starts and stallings. Most recently it's been dormant for almost two years and the thought of it languishing came with pricks of conscience. At some point it occurred to me that 2019 was the 40th anniversary of the events that inspired the tale.
That was in the air already; an old school friend contacted me through Facebook, asking if I'd be interested in coming along to a 40th school reunion. I politely begged off. My connection with anyone who might enthusiastically turn up to such a thing was all but unimaginable. My old school mate Shelly was understanding and left the exchange with a memory of some impromptu joke I'd entertained her with. And that got me thinking. What she described sounded like me but I didn't remember a second of it. I didn't doubt her memory but it might as well have been fiction for all I could recall. And that sealed it.
I was instantly transported by the anecdote back to the seventies with the two of us walking along in school uniform and me ranting against Neil Diamond so vehemently that she laughed. I felt the press of the Townsville sunlight and the dry plus sappy odour of the grass and trees. I had art directed a memory that had faded to invisibility: I had been nostalgic.
Well, what if that kind of fiction had been blocking the other one I was trying to create? This Magnetic Island I was reconstructing had become guesswork. Against the best of my efforts it had become nostalgic. The Monsoons is not a sentimental recollection of the end of adolescence. It's not a fond memory but a scream of despair at the realisation that at seventeen going on eighteen you are soon to be seen as an adult and you have no idea how to do that. So, I had to go back to the Island.
THE BIG IDEA
I had been drawing the Island as an imaginary place. I formed bays and points of sand and boulders and casurina trees copied from photographs. I knew the Picnic Bay jetty that is the location of the opening chapter had significantly changed but to an unknown extent. When I drew figures on it I had to guess the scale. And what did the houses in the small neighbourhood of the Bay look like? It wasn't just nostalgia blocking me, it was sheer ignorance.
I had to go but didn't know when. I thought to stow it in one of the weeks of my annual leave but then remembered that December was when the local Schoolies Week happened and even though the comic is set then I didn't want to live through it. In the end I chose the week of Cup Day. And I was getting excited. I was travelling almost for the hell of it, no conferences or interstate training, just me and some scenery and a lot of calculations. There was a weird allure to it.
Anyway, I gave myself an ultimatum: go and reconnect, prise the remembered from the reality and see what's left. If you still want to do it, do it, if you are left untouched, ditch it. That was frightening but frightening is exciting.
I wrote this:
Melbourne 27/10/2019
I'm filching the title of a George Orwell novel about an ageing man who travels to his childhood neighbourhood to reconnect with his past. It is, of course, a great disappointment with none of the features his nostalgia created for him on the way. His old house is a tea shop, an old flame is ravaged by her life, the old fish pond has been built over: the changes have rendered his old village unreachable. The present that he has grown to detest is the only home he can have. A bomb falls on the village. It's an accident but it reminds him of the coming war (that indeed did come months after the book was published). The novel has always haunted me. I read it in my first year of uni (it was a text), finishing it in the club car of the old Sunlander train that was taking me back to Townsville for a holiday.
Well, I'm about to do what might well seem like the same thing. I'm going to get a plane to Brisbane and then a train to Townsville and then a boat to Magnetic Island, the setting of the graphic novel this blog represents. Why? Do I really expect to plug in to the world of forty years ago and lower myself into a warm bath of living memory? No. The reason why I am haunted by Orwell's book is that I remember its lesson about nostalgia, received before I was old enough to have really developed any of my own. Far from any idea of harnessing any good ol' days, I'm going back to walk around in the difficult weather, the glare and the mossies and document what remains: the motion of the water of Picnic Bay at different times and its colour, the look of Townsville across the bay, that kind of thing, the physical reality of the place. If I can connect to that, to whatever was and is still, I'll continue with the book. If it falls flat, I'll seriously consider shelving it.
There must be some people I knew from then, family friends, school friends, but I'm not going to make any attempt to contact them. One got on to me earlier in the year to see if I'd be into coming to a high school reunion but I declined the same as the other times. I don't dislike any of them that I can remember and that's really the point of that. If I get recognised (and they'll have to be quick as it's not a long sojourn) it will be incidental.
So, I'll be going to the Island museum to see what the old boat looked like, take as many photos as I can of the houses, water, rocks and forest. With this in the bag I'll practice drawing them until they look like the fictional location that I still have in my head of the story and its own distance from the real thing that it had from the time when I wrote it as a novella in the mid eighties, as the best fiction always feels true.
Melbourne 31/10/2019
I finished all the booking on Sunday, including the accommodation. I'll be flying to Brisbane on Monday, meeting with at least one old friend for a few hours, getting on a train to take the long way to my hometown, walking around there for a few hours before heading over to the Island and checking in. I hope to be starting straight away, taking photos, wandering and soaking it up, typing out notes like this in the room.
I'm staying at a small apartment complex called Serenity which is a few minutes walk fro the beach. Foraging for reviews eventually revealed that after some dodginess the place has lifted its game and is now more acceptable. Negative reviews persist but they drop off sharply after 2017 (and one was so picky that it said more about its author than the place).
Oh, I forgot to say: I eventually settled on staying at Picnic Bay, the setting for most of The Monsoons. I ummed and aahed for a week over whether this was wise but eventually realised it was the best option. I could have stayed where the ferry comes and goes (every hour or so) Nelly Bay which seems the best served by shops and hotels etc. but, increasingly, I realised that staying at Picnic Bay had to be it. It's where I spent most of my time on the Island previously, has the Island's museum which I will need to visit, and is a quieter, less touristy area. I was actually quite chuffed to have finally chosen it.
The basic itinerary is as follows:
Arrive Townsville Station Tuesday morning and get a bus to Aitkenvale for a photo trawl and expected crushing disappointment that it doesn't look or feel as it used to. I'll get off at the old shopping centre, go past the old house, up along Patrick St to the shopping edifice, detour to my old primary school and make to my along Ross River Road to my old high school before getting back on a bus to town. I'll make my way to the Strand from there and walk to the Rockpool and back, past the Seaview, playground and maybe the Ozone Cafe (if it still exists) pick up some goodies at the supermarket before rolling on to the ferry at the other end. Take too many pictures on the water. Bus from Nelly Bay to Picnic and either check in or leave my main bag at Serenity and go wandering at least to the jetty (which I had erroneously thought had been demolished). And then back to touch base, probably rinse off, write what really happened and rest until dinner which will probably be at the pub. Then back to the digs for more productive writing.
Up as early as I can on Wednesday for a day that will include more beach, Townsville skyline and jetty photos, the museum, a bus trip to Horseshoe Bay and about an hour there, back through Nelly or Arcadia and a walk around the streets at Picnic Bay (more photos), dinner at the pub and write up back at the room. Sleep.
Thursday morning wake, wash and checkout. Back to Nelly Bay (see how easy or not the walk is) and ferry to Townsville. Walk through town if time permits and then on to the airport for my 11.30 plane to Brisbane and then Melbourne for an early evening sundowner.
I keep imagining myself in the apartment and should stop but I want to do this so much I'm already living it. My problem won't be fending off nostalgia as much as getting constantly disabused of the above fantasy. We'll see...
November 2/11/2019
Bad day yesterday for hayfever as scorching winds swept the pollen and leaf dust around everyone on the streets. I got home with a wooziness I couldn't shake. Went to an exhibition I enjoyed but couldn't stay so got back and settled into a pampering tub bath with a mai tai and kept it subdued with wine and a comfort food movie (Wolf Man). Two more sleeps till travel. I'm still imagining myself on the Island and it feels like a fabricated memory.
Melbourne 27/10/2019
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