Coming Up for Air at Picnic Bay: The Night She Falls

Townsville shoreline from Picnic Bay jetty

15000 steps and my feet needed putting up. I got back from the museum and more afternoon shots of Picnic Bay. Hat blew off into the shallows and when I went to get it it kept going one step further out. Rather than take my boots off I stamped into the water and grabbed it. Then I had a waterlogged boot and hat. I put them outside in the sun of the verandah, went inside, showered and slept. The last thing left to do was get the jetty by night. Meantime, I had some sleep to do.

I can't remember dreaming but woke in reasonable form at around 5 p.m. Too early for a northern twilight so I stayed in bed looked through my photos, still dozy from the day and the heat. I began to place the figures of the story in the places I'd been, just to think of them there. I even imagined older versions of them pointing out all the changes with snorts of disgust: "tha'd be right, rip the old pub down and put in a beer barn." I was enjoying how easy this had become when I was again overcome with fatigue and dropped back to sleep.

Half past six later I got up, washed my face, packed camera in backpack and set off for the jetty.

I removed the sunset scene at the jetty long ago and haven't planned on replacing it so these photos were more for my own benefit than anything. Also, I had neither the energy nor the inclination to investigate the night life of the bay so I could wake for a day of flights with a hangover. So, the jetty it was.

It took forever for the sun to go down. Meanwhile, I shot a lot of low tide in slowly fading sun and the lights coming on along the Esplanade back on shore. I was too late to video the sight of a plane taking off from Garbutt Airport which looked like a streetlight breaking free from its pole and rising to the sky in a sharp diagonal line. A few people came out to the end of the jetty for a quiet moment, one drunk with a forcefield of aggression around him who turned out to be idly strolling. If anyone did have a bad plan they could have got away with something serious. Never thought of that.

Finally the sun sank behind the hills of the shore and I got some good pictures of the undulation and the crust of light along the Strand. Oh, and a fair few showing the reverse of the opening shot of the comic: the jettty looking shoreward in darkness. See below.

Reverse view of jetty by night.

The sea air and the rest had left me relaxed so I made a slow way back to the beach and on to the unit. An amiable drunk saw my camera and told me how good the koalas were at the Forts. I thanked him and strolled on. I had a bottle of Coonawarra shiraz on the table and would have as much of that as I could stand before leaving it or pouring it down the sink but it would make a pleasant slow sleeping pill as I typed up notes and looked at pictures.

I had turned the tv on once and found, predictably, that it looked like any other tv programming. I don't know what I expected. Perhaps it would be like that idea that an old valve radio would play music from its time. Did I really want to see old single card ads for shops or constipated slideshows for hairdressers or boutiques or newsreader style ones where a local jeweller might wink after a little slogan ("if you don't know your jewels, know your jeweller")? No, but I wanted something more northern than I got. Of course, tv would be like the rest of the homogeneous mass of it around the rest of the country so back off it went. There was a dvd player attached and a small grab of dvds but I didn't even look at them. I really did transfer the photos and videos on to my laptop and make some notes with a few glasses o' red. By 9 p.m. I was plum tuckered out and collapsed again on the bed.

Return
Texted the manager in the morning about checking out. Glitches with the phones but sorted. Tidied up, packed and rolled the luggage out to the bus stop. A few more photos while I waited but I'd got everything I'd need. Bus came and took me to the dock at Nelly Bay and I headed back on a hot and clear morning, riding astern, watching the frothy wake and snapping the island as it went from deep green to blue.




Out of the dock and found the airport shuttle which took me (cash only, as expected) without a booking (they weren't full). Nice trip out to Garbutt Airport. Check-in queue was stalled. We were waiting in a line without anyone at a desk. Eventually, someone came along and picked out everyone who wasn't going to (can't remember) and we then sped through to the gate.

Speed was it. The leisurely approach helped going up and getting used to what I was doing. It done, I needed my home 'n' hearth and some space to get cracking on how to get the ignition going on this project again with the new information. So jet engines and freeway buses it was.





Stopover in Brisbane began with a message that my check-in for the second flight was cancelled and I needed to report to admin. Found an admin desk and learned it was a glitch and everything was gas 'n' gaiters. Got the Melbourne plane and podcasted for two hours until touchdown. Reverse effect of clothing. Same thing as going north: in Melbourne at the start a shirt over a t-shirt was too skimpy but too much for Brisbane; same clothes were too hot for the ferry to Townsville and Melbourne was getting pelted with icicle-hard rain.








Skybus. This has become the first wave of welcome for any travel. Going through the carrot and cheese straws on the freeway and seeing the skyline of the CBD appear and grow close. The freeway is fast and extensive and it always seems as though you're in the centre of the city as soon as you get on to a normal road. The bus goes into a dark hangar dimly lit in orange which makes it feel like about three in the morning. Then you hit Spencer Street and you're "suddenly" back in Melbourne.







The tram stop nearest Southern Cross is a strange place. You can get to it from the bus terminal and it will be all but unpeopled. The trams only ever take about ten or fewer minutes to arrive but by the time they do you are standing on a crowded platform. If you can get in (always with luggage) you need to find a secure place that won't send you reeling at a stop or a turn. Luckily, if you can wait it out, it clears at Bourke Street.

Got back and threw luggage in hall. Still light so went to Coles on Smith St for nibbles. Home for shower, nibbles and a Manhattan with my feet up. Home.

Auld Melbourne turned on a chilly
rainy evening, which it didn't have to do  :)

Reflection: Did This Work?
Well, the thing I carried with me into that cocktail of rye, vermouth and bitters was that I'd just had a real holiday. Inside those brackets lay the experience of removing myself from my normal life and entering a landscape I'd left so long ago that it felt alien. Pleasantly so, I'dd add. Also, I had a restful sensation of having rendered a messy blend of memory, nostalgia and mythology into order: place over here, story over there, the third box is for bringing the two together.









Yeah, but did it work? Well, in establishing the distinction between the place where I spent a week after high school and the place called Magnetic Island that exists regardless of what I did on it had a strong effect. While the characters in part do resemble people I knew at the time they are now more like inventions than they ever have been. This has broken what feels like a lot of barriers in the writing. Neither the Island nor the friends have to conform. It's worth my while sticking to the cultural landscape of the setting but even that now feels enticing.

Now a character can step on to the Picnic Bay jetty, thinking of doing something bad and distract herself from that by thinking of everything else which just leads her back to her own guilt and that's a story. I know what it looks like, feels like under the burning sky of the north, how it sounds and what it smells like as the tide rolls out. Things look at little different - it's a  version of the place I went that had no mobile phones, internet or video on demand but did have punk rock and its evolving wake that gave the world a song like I Don't Like Mondays which every schoolkid in the world knew by heart. That's not nostalgia now, it's placement.














So, now I have to go back to the drawing board (tablet, actually, but also to an A2 sketch pad in the front room with the speakers blaring) and nail my character design properly (that was a major victim of the confusion I addressed with the trek north) and I have to start writing again from scratch. That's not so bad. I had a go at Gail's opening monologue a few weeks back and it flowed with the help of previous drafts and the new freedom I have in the conception of it. It's starting to work again.




So, while I can't expect everyone else who's struggling with a project they've grown to dread to go back to the location (imagine if it was Kosovo) I can recommend the affectation of a journey of some kind, a trek, intellectual or physical, that might help you separate the now from then, the real from imagined or the nostalgic from the genuine recollection. Even if it's hard to start and the world is not waiting for it, if you need to do it you need to start it. So ... time to pull the proverbial finger out, I guess.