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.

Coming Up for Air at Picnic Bay: The Day

Black cockatoos. First I've ever seen.
There are over one hundred species of bird on the island.
I saw a few but heard them all before dawn.

I had one full day on the island. Dawn was easy: more photos of Picnic Bay and the jetty to cover that time of day. Then I had to get to Horseshoe Bay. That left a little time, depending on the bus timetable, to get to the Museum. The Museum was essential: what goes into the Museum stays in the Museum. They are not so good on the online sharing boogie so if they have something you want to see you need to go there.

Anyway, I couldn't even get to Horseshoe Bay before the first bus so off to the jetty by dawn it was.

The bus to Horseshoe Bay cuts through the island, west to east. Signage at the bus stops warn passengers standing between Arcadia and Horseshoe Bay. This is because of scary turns and climbs. While these aren't Himalayan you get the point of the warnings when you're on the bus. The road feels safe, the ride is smooth, but there are moments when it feels like you are on a banking plane.

Passing the Forts (couldn't fit them in) and coming out of the wiggly world, the bus brings you to Horseshoe Bay. It's the Island's biggest bay and is home to its biggest settlement. You wouldn't really know about that as most of the houses are nestled beneath trees in the exclusion one behind the shopping strip, a kind of stealthy ostentation. Meantime, shops. I'd left out my legs that morning when I sunblocked. In shorts they were o'er-exposed so I went and found some 50+ at a shop and remembered to grab some soap (the small tube of boutique shower gel had lasted all of two washes). And then I went to the beach.

I've long enjoyed the traveller's tales of my friends without once feeling the urge to do any travelling myself. I'm a little like my father in this as I tend to need a reason to be somewhere. I went delightedly to Arkansas in 2016 as I had extended family to meet and an aunt who remains the sole survivor of the original Jetnikoff settlement in Australia. Last year I found Wellington enjoyable but that was at a work conference. I think it might be because I can't imagine travelling with others and, while I can appreciate the newness of a place, one seems almost identical to the next without a reason for being there. But didn't I just say -- ? Yes, but here's the thing. I can't honestly say that, out of all the years I spent living with this lovely island so accessible to me, I have no memory of ever having been to this part before. It's not one of my memories of the Island. The old boat dropped us off at Picnic Bay or Arcadia. We would have driven around a bit but this bay is all the way across and ... and you need a reason to be there. Anyway...

So, taking some snaps and video I went back to the strip to find the more interesting pub/eatery had opened and it was time for a late breakfast/brunch/lunch/thing. Getting on noon, I ordered a pint o' Great Northern and the platter with chips. I took a snap of it and posted my first and only Instagram food shot of my plate with ... well, see photo.

Embarrassing bit: I cut this feast short to catch a bus that took me past Arcadia which reminded me that I still hadn't picked up any fridge magnets for the work fridge so I got off there and found some sounevirs and went to the beach and took some photos and got the next bus along which made a U-turn and went right back to Horseshoe Bay. Time was actually running out for my visit to the Museum which would have been easily done if the bus hadn't done that strange thing. Then it stopped at Horseshoe again for about twenty minutes while the busdriver went wandering, advising any there listerning to be there early as it fills up quickly. A had a chat to a lovely lady who was visiting her son. This was interrupted by a couple of deafening retirees who were trying to work out the best things to see around Rockhampton. Never did pick that conversation up again. Anyway, the driver came back and we made our windy way back to Picnic Bay with the clock a-ticking.

The bus was full and the driver had to get all the standers into billeted seats as per regulations. A lovely Maori woman sat next to me and we had a bright chat. I got off at the cop shop and ran to the Museum. Well, I ran to the gate, took a breath and passed into the yard of an old house on stilts, my feet crunching the bed of brown paper-dry leaves. At the top of the stairs I saw a silver haired matron who noted me with alarm and told me that she was about to close up. I explained I only wanted to see pictures of the ferry. She relaxed and took me to a display of photos of as many of the boats as they could find with a key to the years of service.

Rough mix of the picture of the Mandalay and the key
that refers to it from the museum display case

Getting the ferry right is as important as getting the jetty right. There are a few candidates as there would have been a few different vessels in service by Hayles at any time. The key was useful but not as precise as I had hoped. Candidates are the Mandalay, the Minerva or the Luana. This is much closer than I've been able to get just through online searching. I'll pick one (probably the Mandalay) and stick to it.

That is the same kind of problem I talked about in the Jetty post; getting the physical thing in the landscape right can both relieve and inspire. But there's another issue which this day brought up and it has to do with a deeper connection.

A few years back I found a bunch of photos of Picnic Bay, including the jetty from 1979, the year The Monsoons is set. There was even a photo of the Hayles office in Flinders Street. It got me drawing again. But the further I got into this the further away I seemed to get in terms of getting the location and the story to play with each other. There was a disconnection that emerged which made drawing real places or crafting imaginary ones daunting. Too real, it was stilted. Too creative and it was a cop out. There are scenes where the surrounds take on a kind of unreality.

Character studies, imaginary botany, a go at
local houses, the boat and the dining room of the house.
Scraps of years of drafting and my wandering aesthetic.

It took me until this year, a multi-decade anniversary, to understand that the only way I was going to resolve this was to return to the physical location. I could take as many photos and videos as I needed but I needed to smell the sea and feel the heat. The idea, set out in the Prelude, was to scrape away the mythology I'd plastered the real place with and to see it again as a real place.

This is why this entry is so dull dull holiday diary.  I'm just getting on buses and taking pictures. But two things are also happening: the place, its sensuality and people, is affecting me and I'm relaxing into it. This is not how any of my characters experience it at their age and era (they're young and bitchy or young and naive) but it allows me to imagine it with a greater confidence. It allows me to imagine the fiction in a physical setting, beyond nostalgia or mythology. They walked here because they were here. Not "me" in "that amazing summer that turned me from a boy into a man" but a crew of names and personalities composited from life and imagination whose interactions build a story called The Monsoons.

I had deliberately not compiled a soundtrack album for this excursion the way I had when I started drawing The Monsoons. That mixer was made of hits 'n' memories from 1979 and had some great stuff in there like The Dickies and Jonathon Richman along with a lot of stuff that sounded like the radio (which I also loved). I didn't bring that along because I needed this to happen in the present tense. I needed (not fond of this word) to be mindful. The old songs just crank up the nostalgia and I needed to know the location now. That was mostly done by being busy with the camera. But there was something else.

All day, at dawn on the Picnic Bay jetty, the ride to Horseshoe Bay and Arcadia, I was increasingly aware of a feeling. It was something that started early in the day. I just hadn't marked it. I'd started this entry with it but then realised it was better at the end as, by the time the next one starts, I am aware of it. Not only was I gathering information and dispelling the nostalgia to get a clear connection with the place and the story, I was relaxing, having fun: I was on holiday. The first indication went like this:

I woke at 4 in the morning. I'd worked on a hangover after all that physical tax and exhaustion and wine dropped me fathoms down in sleep's great ocean. I surfaced slowly to the sounds of birds. A shriek here and whistle there. A squawk and ... well, I found my old notes so here they are:

Not even borrowed light through the blinds. I lay still, woozy from drinking and heavy sleep. I began to discern minimal detail of the room and then, rising though my slowly pulsing head came the sound. Whistles of curlews finding echoes. Bright unidentified voices of birds like lost children screaming in the dark. Clucks and scraping nearby which, when it found some reverb, became a flying fox's squeals and shrieks. And more detail appeared, chirps, caws, searing ululations and squawks turning the aural blackness into a canopy of bright cacophony that told distances outside and the dark between them. Rapid footfalls  scurried on the roof and a banging against a sheet of metal. Possum? I had left my field recorder at home, thinking I wouldn't be able to use it and the memory of that made me wince. This was treasure and it was slipping from me. I dozed as it continued, fading back to sleep.

Coming Up for Air at Picnic Bay: The Jetty

The characters in the story are already on the Island when it begins so this part isn't covered by it but it's one of the best bits of the process. The short sea trip o'er the jade waves o' Cleveland Bay on an auld chugger boat (sometimes called a launch or ferry) felt like a voyage to me as a child. The weird slow rocking motion that made you dance just to walk and the forward slice of the bow as it rendered the skin of the water white and frothy. And as we approached the Island it changed colour from distant blue to the green of the forest and pink of the beach and boulders. It was a day trip but always felt like more. The Island felt tropical in a way that Townsville never did. It was touristy. Its brochures featured a cartoon sun wearing sunglasses and a big grin. It's place names sounded like they were invented by a children's author: Nelly Bay, Horseshoe Bay, Picnic Bay, Arcadia. The old boat stopped at the last two. The buses had open sides and a popular way to wheel around it was in a mini moke, a kind of tiny jeep which, whatever colour it was, had a wartime feel to it. And down on the beach you could still see the perforated metal of landing craft matting sticking out of the sand like stray rusting roots. If you were adventurous you could hike it over snake infested rocks to the old forts. And the carrier that got you there looked and sounded like something from an old movie.

Everything changes, gets faster and bigger. I know that and wasn't surprised to find this, too, altered. Bits of the notes I wrote at the time will be in italics, starting with this:

5/11/2019
They got a bigger boat. The Sealink ferries go more regularly and with more people than in my day. I hauled my luggage on to the upper rear section and for a while sat in a gazango of German tourists from the young and intimidatingly beautiful to the old and unloved. I normally like listening to people speaking in other languages but got sick of it and went into the covered bit with the aircon. there's a bar downstairs but why would you bother for a 20 minute trip unless you were using it as a kind of ersatz tropical cruise with 20 minute escape windows?

The motion was pleasant and while the view was restricted there was enough of sea and the approaching island visible through the window.

The coach sized bus to Picnic Bay was already outside the terminal so I didn't bother exploring Nelly Bay, knowing that they are about 45 minutes apart I took this one.  It was check-in time. A lovely drive around the southwest corner of the Island revealed a lot of solid walkways. Tempting but I don't think I'll have time this visit. Nevertheless, great for getting that 10k step target in with a little scenery.

I was dropped off at the cop shop. The driver had been letting locals off outside their homes if they were infirm in any way. The sight of that effortless kindness was relaxing. In any case I should have got off at the last stop as it's the Jetty. That would have been a much better introduction. Anyway, I hauled the case (which didn't like the gravel surface of the shoulder) for a few turns and got to the serenity apartments. 

The entrance is set in tropical foliage and smells lovely, that dry and slightly decaying northern stink (love it!). I had to look around for an office and when the door that said Manager appeared I knocked lightly. Suddenly a cacophony of dog barks sounded in a massive volley. A young smiling chappie opened the door (I saw the dogs first) and assured me they were friendly. I told him I had a booking and then had to explain that I needed to check in. Eventually a young north american woman called Molly appeared and took me to my rooms. She seemed vague and unhelpful in the way the young/those who put up with rather than do their jobs are. The owner, Moira, was overseas but would shortly return. Toiletries over there, cups and cutlery over there.

Holiday unit at Serenity

The place is a good sized unit with a spacious living area - couches, TV, running on to the kitchen area with a large round table with a glass top. Wicker armchairs around it. Bathroom small but shower recess is roomy. Decent sized loo that works. The air con was on and I left it until I went out. Did really feel I needed it, though. There are also fans which do the job fine. Bedroom big enough for a double (just), beside stands with lamps, large walk in wardrobe. My unit backs on to the outdoor laundry which would be handy for longer stays. The wifi is fine and was easy to set up.

I got in and had the first shower since Sunday (having to dodge the back window and carefully close the blinds as her toddler daughter was looking.  I rested until about 5 and set out to cover the bay and jetty in photography. 

Hotel Magnetic from
vintage photo (and my own
vintaging)

Probably nothing of the Hotel Magnetic remains. The single  floor of its replacement, The Picnic Bay Hotel, goes from half way down the block to around the corner. There's a decent enough dining section with wooden tables. I ordered fish and chips and salad with a pint of the local Great Northern. The food came quite quickly, a big pub serve of battered fish good thick chips and a creditable salad. the young French backpacker who served me was meant to pull the pint at the time of the order but that didn't happen so I had to chase it up with the flustered server who'd been left in the lurch. The food was flavoursome and taxidermising. I didn't eat any of the goodies I bought in the North Ward Coles but finished the wine I'd started before. I started notes for the previous day but fatigue got the better and I went for a snooze at about 6.30 and woke at 4 the next morning. I slept on top of the bedclothes and without the aircon or fan as I didn't feel the heat. The apartment can be made dark easily and keeps its cool.

Here's the thing with this part: almost everything I packed into my expectations for this trip involved my connection with Picnic Bay and the old jetty there. If you read the Prelude you'll know that I felt I'd left my main character Gail standing on it in the heat of a December noon, dithering over whether she has the strength to do something. There's a history with this. The first draught of the story was written as a short novella. Between this draught and the typed one (yep, first in fountain pen and then on a typewriter, it was that long ago) I realised it might have served well as a reminder of a moment of my life but I couldn't imagine anyone else getting past the first page. So I started redraughting.

Years later I was still doing this, expanding passages with literary pastiches to the point where the original translucent field I'd intended was now a volcano-ravaged wasteland. I got so proud of what I'd read (Rabelais, Joyce, that stuff) that it felt namby pamby not putting it all in there. If it had been boring earlier it had grown monstrous, bombastic and unreadable. I had become as ineffectual at making decisions about it as my character was at resolving to act. At some point I had to put it in a corner (which I did physically in a great bursting arch-file) and get on with something else. Years after that when I started writing and drawing comics I tried a scene from it and it worked. And then other things nagged for more attention.

One thing I did was start this blog to record (for myself, at least) the context, the times of the setting and any ideas inspired by them to be posted as standalone comics pages. This worked fine but one thing still got in the way: how was I going to get Gail from the beach end of the jetty at Picnic Bay to the sea end to meet the boat and dump her boyfriend? There are a few things she has to think about but that's all that has to happen. That's the first chapter and it's almost entirely set on the jetty. I'd drawn it so many times the idea of forming those lines had become a burden. As for writing it while I could list the things that had to happen and thoughts that had to occur it felt like I was describing an old photograph again and again through a vain hope that one chance phrase might clarify its meaning.

What I needed to do, as outlined in the Prelude, was to take myself there for real, walk around the place and see it as a location and no more, a collection of features and buildings without the weight of decades of meaning. I had to shed the mythology and dispel the nostalgia ... and see what it actually looked like. And I had to go to the jetty itself and walk it.

So I did.

I strolled down the road from the unit, enjoying the milder heat of the island, hearing birdcalls and voices (and the dull pulse of a cover band at the pub playing 80s yacht rock at a Melbourne Cup party) and there I was.

It had changed. The sheltered area at the end had expanded well beyond the old bus stop one from the '70s. The rail separating the pedestrian side from the vehicle side had gone at around the same time. And it hasn't served as a docking point for the ferry since the 2000s. But, otherwise it's the jetty. I stood where I'd drawn Gail standing, crouched to get the right angle and squinted down to the end and across the bay. And then stood up in shock and realised that all these years I'd got something wrong.

I'd been drawing it pointing at the Townsville shore. To see that, I had to turn my head a hard west, a bishop's diagonal move away from the symmetry my imagination had preferred. Laughing to myself I kept going, the boarded surface feels solid, to the end, working out where the old shelter was and taking so many photos I had no time to stand and ponder the gentle lowering of the years upon me, the veil of youth itself that might descend and cool my brow like a spring rain. Nope, just photos. And in that moment, snap snap snap, I realised, finally, after the crowded plane, hot and busy Brisbane and the interminable train journey, deflating visit to the old homestead and all, I was actually excited to be there and, before I'd suspected it, was enjoying myself. The easy lapping of the deep blue green tide as it rose, the salty air and the shadowy silhouettes of the coastal hills and distant islands gave me and all my purpose a place to be. It was just fun being here. Beaming, I headed to the pub on the shore and ordered dinner.

Coming Up for Air in Picnic Bay: Townsville by Twilight

The heat and glare pressed in as soon as I got into the sun, a single pace out of the shade of the station. North Queensland heat feels solid after decades of temperate Melbourne. Yes, it's the humidity, but even the odd muggy day down south feels mild. I'd changed into shorts and a polo on the train, got my hat out of the main luggage and slathered all exposed skin with 50+ cream. Apart from the hat and the sunblock I was effectively in my old school uniform.

The contemporary station behind me and blocks of newer buildings before me didn't feel out of place. Roadworks changed the route adding a few detours but also more to see. Of course there were changes and many more than I could register, given the time away, but something was dawning on me as I took it in: for every passing familiar feature (The Capitol, a Cantonese restaurant from my childhood was still there) the whole experience felt unfamiliar. This was the town where I was born and raised, schooled and formed, and it felt completely unknown to me.

And then (remember that bit about the school uniform?) I suddenly felt I was about seventeen years old. Not younger and fresher but naive, vulnerable. If someone had come up and told me to move on or stop using the shade of the bus stop as it was reserved for locals I probably would have. Or I'd have given them the forks as though that long obsolete gesture was recharged by this bizarre form of nostalgia. You can't go home again? Well, yeah, you can but you'll just be age you left. There are about three episodes of the original series of the Twilight Zone based on that.

So, that's what I had to do: write my own script: doomed to fail but better than succumbing. I bought a ticket at the ferry dock, stowed my main case in a locker and got a bus out to my old neighbourhood.

The bus driver stopped at a red light by a team of roadworkers and chatted about how long they were going to be as it was disrupting the service. I got the feeling that the information she got was going to get circulated faster than anything official. An old timer got on and chatted to the driver. He might have been a driver himself as they seemed to know each other. A few exchanges about a violent street crime incident brought me crashing back to my brother's text warning me of it. I was heading into an area now dominated by a gigantic shopping complex crawling with the disaffected and discarded underclass of youth. A real throb of panic hit me before I brushed it off like I was doing with the flies. It was like that bit in Altered States when William Hurt is narrating from the isolation tank: "I am no longer observing, I am becoming one of them." I snapped out, knowing I'd just deal with it.

I got off near the corner of Ross River Road and Anne Street, a block away from the old family home. It's a small shopping strip and always was in my timeline. All the shops have changed because that's what happens to local shopping strips. I did a quick stroll just to make sure.

Turning the corner I saw that where the Golden Wattle bakery used to me (scrumptious pie with peas there) was now a legal practice with a sign that reads LAWYER streetside. So Greg's text about street crime was coming true? The sign is big enough to be seen from a block away (and probably in the dark) which is uncomfortably cinematic. This is where I started taking photos.

LawyerWorld. The muted Cavendish Banana Yellow building
used to be the alternative corner shop.

The corner of Anne and Patrick was a mix of old and new plus temporal ravages. One corner is still a carpark but now with a bitumen surface. Opposite that is what used to be the Freemans' place. It's been dressed up to look nice now. Diagonally opposite that, where Bob Freeman used to live with his hotted up cars and big jacaranda tree, is now a vet clinic. Opposite that is my old house.

This distorted photo doesn't do justice even to the place
in its current state but it does show how healthy the remaining
mango trees are. Also, a sign of the times: in earlier years
all that yellow grass would have been green.

I knew to expect change, having updated myself through streetview. A couple of years back while drunkenly overselling the size of the pool I had discovered through a satellite image that the pool had been filled. And, while I knew that the fence had fallen in to disrepair and it looked like a big rental property, I was not ready for the exfoliation.

My parents were gardeners but instead of flowerbeds (I do remember some but from way, way back) they favoured fruit trees. The mango trees looked like they had been there from the dawn of time. They bore generously and their shade kept the earth beneath them damp. Everyone has mango trees there but we also had a peach (not successful) mandarins and grapefruit, coconut palms, an odd tangy berry bush, sour sop and a big banana tree/bush/whatever it is. Nana next door grew pawpaw, strawberries at one stage, Lisbon lemons, custard apples, guavas, and too much more to remember. Almost all of that was gone.

As the hedge that wrapped privacy around us seemed to be dying of thirst and exposing the degeneration of the fence it was easy to see in and what I saw was barren. Admittedly, the yard is still massive and the culture of water restrictions rightly allows the lawn to dry and yellow but apart from a few bushes and some non bearing palms the remainder of that little Eden was the mango tree on the corner. A fairly recent streetview check had it cut back to a fraction of its size but it had grown back and was visibly bearing with fruit so numerous they looked like bunches.

The ol' homestead. Long sold and out of the family. Now a rental and in high shambolic state. Then again,
that's the way the lifestyle crumbles. See text for real reaction.

The car in the garage was an Audi and there were a few parked to one side of the house. The land alone would command a fruity rent and even if the once colonial white of the wooden weatherboards was now a solid mission brown which had spoored on to the large two vehicle garage. The long two part gate looked permanently open. Weirdly, the old tin letter box with the plastic address numerals was still in place beside the small pedestrian gate (the carved wooden Jetnikoff sign was, understandably, long gone). The letter box looked crushed. I had seen on a former streetview check that the front gates had suffered a collision. That's why they were open and the letterbox was similarly left as it had been damaged. That, if nothing else, the absence of repair, was what prevented nostalgia as I followed the fence from Anne to Patrick, looking at the damage. This was only the house I'd grown up in if I used my imagination. I had prepared against shock with online views but nothing could more profoundly bring me to this point where the temple of my family life, childhood and adolescence, learning, music, art and literature exploration, political education, the forge of what I became was just this withered husk.

Artist's impression of reaction to seeing state of childhood home in disrepair. Proved false.
Go figure.

A more accurate re-enactment of
my response.

If anything I was surprised to find myself unemotional. A friend later asked if I'd knocked on the door and it was hard to explain why I didn't even think to. I told him that the door to knock on was a large wooden portal with an iron knocker (still in place) like a medieval castle door, then there was a kind of courtyard between the old rumpus room and the house. Even assuming anyone was at home the state of the place (neither of my parents would ever have allowed the degradation) kept me at bay. It might as well have been a forcefield. I took many pictures of this but will only include one. It's not for me to make assumptions about the people under the roof and, while you can work out where it is without a lot of trouble, I won't make it that easy. They don't owe me anything and deserve their privacy. I walked on. Nana's place had a severe and forbidding privacy fence. There was no visible garden. I kept going, retracing my old walk to primary school and got to the shopping complex.

I remember the beginnings of this, the supermarket at the end of the street, dominated by Woolworths called Nathan Plaza. At the time it seemed enormous and filled with all sorts of goodies that could be had in merciful air conditioning. About five years after that a Big K-Mart opened on the diagonally opposite corner. Same but more. I didn't say it to anyone at the time but I actually did remember when it "were all fields".

I approached the complex at the end of the street and noticed, with the haunted street-crime text in mind, a teenager see me and take his phone out. Must have been making a call to a friend, the dirty low-life, my reason jibed. Getting to the corner and crossing into the Woolworths zone and away from the effects of seeing the old place I again realised how hot it was. Getting past the sliding doors and into the aircon was bliss.

If you have seen a large shopping complex anywhere then you have seen this one. Batteries of checkouts demark the supermart from the smaller shops. The latter are like human odour in that unless there has been a great deal of effort put in by the body in question, it is difficult to tell one from the next and you need to get intimately close to discover it. And here in this massive conurbation of retail everything has a brightly lit appeal until a close inspection dispells it. I found a loo and then an exit. The place is large enough to warrant signage to tell you which street you are heading for when leaving.

I opted for the main arterial of Ross River Road. I'd originally intended to swing by the old school and could have done both primary and secondary but the intensifying weather weighed more heavily than the need to repeat the family house effect. Also, I really didn't need to hang around a primary school before the end of the school year looking like a fat,middle-aged sex tourist in Eastern Exotica waving a phone camera around ("no, really, I went here when I was a kid!") So I got a bus back to town.

Before the ferry I took a left along the Strand. This small strip of seaside was essential to my life in Townsville and my memories of it stretch from possibly my first (lying on a picnic blanket in shade hearing the bagpipes of a military band: reconstructed with other family members) to easily the last time I was there (early 1985). A stroll from Bowls Club to Rockpool was mandatory.

The Criterion Hotel, repainted from colonial white to peach and rust, was closed but standing. Official buildings like the Customs House which mixed Victorian bombast with spheres and curves that might have come from a Dr Suess book stood still. The old Ozone Cafe site where the kid me would gorge on the best hambugers in history while reading Sgt Rock comics and sipping on lime milkshakes through striped paper straws. And -- see? That's nostalgia, the stuff I'd come to get rid of. I shed it like snake skin going past the old house. This was different. Maybe I had better reason to associate it with fun, fun with friends, grownup fun. That crap's murder to shake. Brief slideshow follows.

Some Strand Views For You

ANZAC Park gate with two old 19th Century beachside edifices

Fountain in Anzac Park

The Rockpool

View of the Island from the Strand.

But I was shaking it. The Seaview Hotel, now a kind of cavendish banana yellow, was still going, busy. I never knew it by day. I only ever really knew it as a beer garden where the lights were low enough for me to pass for eighteen and the pre-party priming was bought in jugs of bitter ale or pots of Bundy and Coke. Who can remember what garbage we talked (it was more like barking, anyway) but we were always ready when we left for the first house. No, stop it! Enough!




Ok, enough. The Strand now has retained its beautiful row of big shady banyans with their lazy ancient hanging roots and the Rockpool feels looked after, strong and safe. And there's something else. There's a pier. It's too high for boats, it's just for walking. For all the flat heat of the city and my lack of connection with it, this one feature in this one surviving strip of the town at its edge brought forth such simple, impressive beauty. After the stark and treeless streets of Aitkenvale, the barren wastes of my sprouting bed, this retained its allure, its plain delight. I was glad to have retread my old footfalls.

(I had to turn the sound off as this is a phone video and there was no way of recording the edible sound of the waves without the noise of wind punching at the mic.) The land mass on the horizon at the end of the walk is Magnetic Island. The waves below are of a colour I had to imagine for the comic.

The way back was more businesslike. After a few blocks I realised a second run would be anticlimactic so I crossed the road and went via the next streets from the beach to the shopping strip in North Ward (North Ward = great Uni parties, erstwhile best friend Wayne Foley's place and STOP IT!) More '50s and '60s Queensland houses later I found the shops and stocked up on fruit (lovely local mangoes!), cheese and crackers and anything that would sustain life in case the local kitchens disappointed.

At the bottle shop the millennial at the counter asked me about the Melbourne Cup. I gave him a rant about living in Melbourne but being there in North Queensland as the race was thundering, a little about the rising anti-racing movement, but a lot about the Breughelian hell of seeing the screeching and spewing mess that makes public transport a torture on the day. I apologised for giving more than I was asked but he said he'd enjoyed it and let me go without charge

And go I did, starting to feel each of the nearly twenty thousand steps of the day, to the ferry, congratulating myself on getting my planned itinerary in and on time and what a good idea it was to start with the house and end with the strand. I grabbed my case from the locker, found a seat in the waiting area and sat with an eye-closing relief and podcasted until the gate opened. The sea! The sea! It beckoned.

Coming Up For Air at Picnic Bay: Legs

Roma St. Station, Brisbane

Melbourne to Brisbane: Easy but EARLY!

The flight to Brisbane was at 8 a.m. That meant getting to the airport between 7.00 and 7.30 for a domestic shuttle. That meant getting a Skybus to the port between 6.00 and 6.30 and that meant being ready for a tram between 5.00 and 5.30 to make sure everything kind of joined. So that's a 4.30 to 5.00 a.m. wake up with everything packed and ready for the tram/bus/plane.

And there's something else. It's still spring in Melbourne which can mean that it's either warm in the morning or Antarctic. Today it's Antarctic. But I'm going to spend a day in Brisbane and then the better part of two more in the even hotter north. There will be no luggage room for jackets. So a shirt over a T-shirt will have to get me through the 9 degree morning to Tullamarine.

I'm organised. Everything joins. Before I can yawn I'm putting my densely packed case on the Skybus rack and going to the top deck to doze to a podcast. Advantage: early morning sounds tough but the tram was almost empty and the typical mass of people to stop movement at the Southern Cross Station stop was a trickle. No suitcase blues for this merry trekker. The Skybus, also, was only about half full and the roads were not jammed. It was a record sprint for the ol' double decker. I got to the terminal and headed air-side with my luggage as carry-on.

Like a twit I'd packed my laptop in the case when experience should have warned me to keep it exposed through security. But apart from a slight protest bother from the staff (blameless, really) I got through and found my gate without drama. Eat on the plane. There was an announcement at the gate about the plane being burdened with carry-on luggage so I surrendered mine to be stowed to Brisbane without a qualm, making a note to check it in for the return double flight.

Took my aisle and was pleased to find that there would  be a gap of a seat between me and my fellow in the row (young woman in business kit). I turned on a cruddy horror flick and waited for Brisbane.

Friend and sometime collaborator Noel turned up at Brisbane airport after a few sloppy attempts by me to start a video blog of my travels and we caught up in a long and enjoyable drive and stroll through inner Brisbane. Brisbane is leafy in the middle (well, leafier than it used to be) and the barramundi 'n' chips 'n' salad at the Breafast Creek is a treat, washed down with original (or "heavy") XXXX.







Brisbane to Townsville: FAMILIAR BUT SPOOOOKY

The Spirit of Queensland replaced the old Sunlander between Brisbane and Cairns. It took ages and now takes ages minus a few hours.

Anyway, I wanted this to slow me down. Flying straight to Townsville would have been too much of a shock. I needed to de-pressurise, the same way I'd go from a busy student life in Brisbane back to Townsville for the holidays. You cannot rush anything on a train.

No more sleeper cabins in the trains o' today so I booked a railbed which is like the cryogenic pods that business class passengers get on Qantas. Very comfy with table service and a kind of steampunk transformation at bedtime.

This is mine in its pyjamas. For most of the day it's more like an extended seat with a hood. If interested, the usb slot won't charge anything higher than an old Motorola so you'll have to use the three-prong in the other chair arm. Do I really have to keep everything charged to 100% all the time? No, but Queensland Rail measure everything north of Rockhampton in light years so you might want to work out your battery usage or just charge things when you can.


Nevertheless, this made for pleasant travel and slumber was not a problem. Mostly. At one point my phone slipped out of my hand and fell between the wall and the arm of the chair. There was no light and it was about 2 a.m. so I wasn't going to bluster around with peacefully sleeping people across the aisle and in the seat in front. So, I tried to reason that I'd be able to get it by the light o' the morning and, with nothing to be done about it now, that I should just lie back and try to dream. But I kept thinking up ideas about how to get it back.




Eventually .... I realised I could use the light of my laptop to work out where the phone had fallen. Some further delirious reasoning allowed me to try the laminated menu to push the thing to a reachable position and there. I was once again among the living and effective of the world.

The first I took on getting the phone back was this shed just outside of the northern town of Paget. That's the first time I've typed it and only knew of it when I checked the exif data on my phone.

Bundaberg  Station. As we passed through I texted my Brother Greg who moved there. He was shocked to discover I was going back to Townsville and warned me about the street crime. In my pre-dawn unslept wooze I googled the issue and almost cancelled my plans to swing by the old house. A brief nap cleared that and I resolved to proceed but with wile. (Details next post.)

 Dawn outside Paget.

My phone camera scruples not to shut its eyes where looking at the sun. Here, then, is the sun rising o'er what always appears to be one single canefield thousands of kilometres long. This is outside Myrtlevale.

Not a classic Queenslander but a style of house I enjoy seeing. Non-Queensland or international readers might need to know that the twin purpose of building houses on stilts in the Sunshine State is against flooding and to promote airflow. Whether either reason applies the design can bee seen from The NSW border to the tip of Cape York (actually, I don't know that that's true it just sounds mighty when I imagine being spoken in an old filler documentary form the 1960s). Still, love seeing houses and yards like this. This is, of course, nostalgia which is my foe for this project but this instance no more gets in the way than the singular odour of Bundy rum and cola. Anyway...



But until I could take those, while I was still drifting between sleep and panic, I lay back in an attempted nap and experienced something long forgotten.

Trains scream. They scream with a quiet persistence. They whisper scuttlebutt like workers overdrawn and raving. They growl beneath the breath of the air con, the real message to these bloated and uncaring things that command their work. They shriek beneath the cooling breath we sleepers gratefully ignore. None of this is noticeable when beams of sunlight course through the windows. It only sounds when those of us like me who can never sleep soundly in unknown beds are forced to. And once you have heard it, the scream of the train, awake when all around you are silenced by unconsciousness, dreaming, exhausted and blank or sleeping off the chaos of the club car, once you understand the pain of the long distance locomotive you too bear it, you too walk in the acoustic shadow of its scream.

The stress of metal under weight at speed and the big black night beyond came into my head like it was 1981 all over again and I was hurtling exhausted back home from exams to lazy afternoons, gin and tonic, and the refreshment of fine new faces. Well that last bit wasn't going to happen but it was pleasant to hear as I bumped my skull on the overhead compartment the gent across the aisle say in sympathy: "I felt that." I smiled back and said, "so did I."

That guy puzzled me, too. In the railbed beside him was a woman in her thirties at the latest and he was easily in his sixties. She read, mostly or isolated herself with earbuds. Whatever hold he had on her was strong: if she got up for a leg stretch or a loo break she always came back. I had to admit, as I imagined her standing at the carriage door and gazing out the window,  that jumping from trains only happened in movies. Later, when the staff came through to convert the seats into their bed form and put all the sheets 'n' stuff on. She darted in front of him, held her phone at arm's length, aiming it for composition and took a selfie with a serious expression.

He was on the train at the insistence of his daughter (all the clear evidence of my eyes and reason could not trump my goofy, unfounded fancy) who pointed out that this was a line he hadn't yet been on. He enjoyed train travel and this trek was being done in honour of a late friend who had taken many journeys with him when they were both soldiers. It was a warming story (better than the bullshit one I'd come up with) and he was clearly glad to be pulled from retirement drudgery in Sydney to chugulug through the thickening tropics.

We were to come in handy for each other. The guy in the seat behind them, a frizzy ginger mountain who sat in one of the pair of railbeds he'd booked while he took the other over with gadgetry. Most of the time we heard little more out of his than a few squeaks and farty rattles from the video game he was playing. He came back from the Club Car agitated, ranting to himself about how whingeing poms had nothing on whingeing Australians. He talked in circles but they got wider as more spokes were added to the wheel and the looping tale went spinning.

I think he'd gone to the Club Car and kept playing his video games loudly (partial deafness) on his tablet and when asked to turn it down or off refused. I say refused but what I think it was was more like recoiled in anger. He kept coming back to the staff member who'd insisted he comply and it was there that the escalation took force and swelled to critical mass. He had seen the woman before take a negative interest in him on other trips. It was because ... well, he had other issues as well but I've violated his privacy enough. I'll just stick to what I know.

Storming back to his railbed, he started his rant. HIs accent was a broadened northern but his diction was clipped and his phrasing precise. However much he harangued the light and air around him he didn't swear once (which is more than I could say for myself faced with the same humiliation) At no time, however loud and punchy his ranting got, did he threaten anyone around him.

I remember these points particularly because when he was evicted from the train at the next town the local cops came and asked us about it and we (me and the father/daughter team) witnessed his ranting but made sure they knew he wasn't an on-rail security procedure. The police were fine. They even seemed a little embarrassed at the vehemence of the train staffer who'd called them and quite happily joined in a discussion that somehow arose from this about Italian families in the north. I volunteered that my paternal grans had been cane farmers around Ingham which was by now pretty much an Italian town. The cops went on their way after taking our details and were never heard of again. Well, they would have been but they didn't need to follow anything up so I'm assuming it worked out. Perhaps I should say "hoping".



At that point we were approaching Townsville. The glare was already mighty at 8 a.m. and the heat almost penetrated the double windows.

The purpose of this leg was to see if it sparked memories and what might they be. Did this feel like coming home after a year at uni? No. I enjoyed the general experience, the slowdown of travel, the sounds and the refreshed landscape speeding past my window but at no time did I mistake this for the same journey made decades ago. The train was new and faster but it still felt like a long ride. I was temporarily escaping being busy (work rather than study but still). But there was no finale to it. My parents have both gone for around a decade and even if they were alive, they sold the Aitkenvale place in the '90s to move to Brisbane. I had no intention of seeking out anyone I knew from the time. I was heading for a city I only knew as a younger person with a head and nervous system alive with different sensations and values. The city I would find might have some physical familiarity but it might as well be like going somewhere I had never been. Truly, perhaps, this was walking in my past free of nostalgia.

The station has been moved from Flinders Street to the place in the photo. Made no difference to my plans but I do miss the old colonial era architecture of the original station. Townsville has no domestic rail services, just industrial or government/commerical like the train in the pic; as far as the rail is concerned it's a longer than usual stop on the way to Cairns. Shrugging at that, and waving off my unplanned travel companions I made my way from the station (with enough 50+ sunscreen to look pornographic) and found a bus route that would take me to both my old home and the ferry to the Island. Felt good.

And how did it go? Next time on ... Coming Up for Air  ... at Picnic Bay...