Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Aloha bound

Breaking news: the Country Mouse and the City Mouse are about to embark on their biggest holiday yet, winging their way across the Pacific to three Hawaiian islands - O’ahu, Maui and the Big Island of Hawai’i.
This holiday seems to have snuck up on me, I certainly haven’t done my usual level of planning (i.e. obsessed over-preparation) and despite this causing me some panic I am now so thrilled about this vacation, that, as of yesterday, it’s the first thing my excited mind jumps to every morning.
Many adventures are planned, including: flying through the air on a zipline in the West Maui mountains; seeing the world’s most active volcano on land and then doing the inverse, snorkelling in an underwater volcanic crater; spending time with a dear friend (Wendy-from-Maui who has already appeared in this blog) and her partner, the multi-talented Mark-from-Maui; indulging parrot head tendencies in Waikiki and searching the star-blanketed Hawaiian skies for the Southern Cross which will, to Australian eyes, be sitting in a whole new place. But it’s more than that.
For a regular couple (i.e. not us) this would simply be an indulgent tropical idyll, but for long-distance lovers (i.e. us) this vacation has a whole other layer of meaning. It is our longest period of uninterrupted time together and our first holiday not ruled from day one by an impending end date. Woooo hoooo......three weeks! Dear Country Mouse, a special Hawaiian message for you - ‘E Hoomau Maua Kealoha’.
The trip raises some intriguing questions: how will we travel as a couple? What secrets will be revealed after such an unprecedented togetherness? What’s your advice for these travelling mice?




Sunday, April 17, 2011

Birdland

Why look down when you can look up? The sky is home to some of my favourite beings – birds. Symbolic to me of ultimate freedom, I am entranced by their arrow-head flying formations, particularly at dawn or sunset when they seem to be inkily etched against the sky.

The Country Mouse and I once had a reflective conversation about life, death and the hereafter. Deciding that we would put our ambivalence about reincarnation aside, we speculated what form we would take if we revisited Earth again. The Country Mouse’s return plans had a particularly feline and particularly male fantasy bent, best not elaborated on here, but for me there was no question. I would be coming back as an albatross.

Who wouldn’t want to fly, to soar, to defy gravity and to do it with effortless ease and grace? I understand why Icarus ignored all those warnings from his Dad and once he was airborne just kept flying ever higher.

I especially love Australian birds - Bellbirds, Whipbirds, Sulphur-crested Cockatoos and Kookaburras. Bellbirds evoke strong childhood memories of car trips to visit my maternal grandparents who lived on the Central Coast. The final stretch of what seemed like, to a child, an interminable car ride was a sharp descent on a winding mountain road and it was here that we always heard Bellbirds.

“Listen! Bellbirds!” my mother would exclaim animatedly (hence the previous exclamation marks) and then start reciting, or urging my sister and I to recite, the opening stanza of the Henry Kendall poem ‘Bell-Birds’.

By channels of coolness the echoes are calling,
And down the dim gorges I hear the creek falling:
It lives in the mountain where moss and the sedges
Touch with their beauty the banks and the ledges.
Through breaks of the cedar and sycamore bowers
Struggles the light that is love to the flowers;
And, softer than slumber, and sweeter than singing,
The notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing.

There is something to be said about rote learning, as educationally discredited as it now is, as I can still almost recite that opening verse word-for-word. And despite my intense dislike of rhyming couplets there is something enchanting about the whole poem; in particular the line ‘the notes of the bell-birds are running and ringing’ just rolls off the tongue.

Bellbirds, which are technically called Bell Miners (and more technically called Manorina melanophrys), are honeyeaters endemic to south-eastern Australia. They were given their colloquial name ‘Bellbird’ because they feed almost exclusively on the dome-like coverings of certain bugs, called ‘bell lerps’, but also (and I think this is the real reason) because of their bell-like call. No loners, Bellbirds live in a large, complex social group - which is nice - I don’t want to feel that Bellbirds are lonely out there in the bush.

The final stretch from Sydney to the Country Mouse’s house takes me along a stretch of local highway with bushland right up to the bitumen. By this time I usually have the pedal to the metal, zooming along and grateful for this final fast stretch and its 90 k.p.h. speed limit. With my mind distracted by thoughts of an imminent County Mouse-City Mouse reunion and the music pumping I am oblivious to the world outside.

But on my last trip up I was in a cruiser mood. The music was off and I was taking in my surroundings as I drove, trying to consciously practice some Buddhist mindfulness. As I was doing my Zen-like best to be present in the moment what should I hear through my open window? Bellbirds.




Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Theft!

The Country Mouse stole my heart. Now Nathan Tinkler, the owner of his football team the Newcastle Knights, has stolen the head coach of my team, the St. George Illawara Dragons - the incomparable Wayne Bennett.

Most intriguingly this news seems to have hit every Sydney media outlet except the Dragons official website, which has even posted other football news since King Wayne’s announcement, but curiously remained silent on the biggest League story of the day.

Wayne and I – we are both heading to the Hunter. We've both been stolen. It’s a sign.

Thursday, April 7, 2011

Update: a beach, a barbeque and Bondi

The reality of moving to the Hunter Valley, is, almost unbelievably, becoming a reality. This is good. Yet my situation still feels unreal. I live everywhere but no-where. This is bad. I yearn to set down new roots, to begin a new life in a new place. It can’t come soon enough. But in the meantime it’s time for a few updates and an anniversary story.
Update no. 1: The Great Newcastle Beach Search. The Country Mouse and I recently took the opportunity to hit the sand on probably the last warm Sunday or summer. He took me to a fantastic unnamed beach (a quick check with the National Parks and Wildlife Service seems to confirm its unnamed status) which is just around the southern headland of Merewether Beach. This gem of a spot has a rocky enclosed swimming hole, natural bushland right behind the beach and is free of the tasteless take-away food shops which blight the NSW coastline.
Memo to Newcastle Council: please re-lease the take away food venues at your beaches to professionals who know how to serve decent cafĂ©/deli style food (as opposed to bad, overpriced junk); employ staff who know something about customer service (as opposed to the present staff whose idea of ‘service’ is a permanent sulky pout) and paint and re-design - or preferably pull down and rebuild - the ugly cement buildings (was the Council inspired by Soviet-era summer holiday camps?) which mar the Newcastle oceanfront from Bar Beach to Merewether. I’m begging you - some buildings in concert and sympathy with their beautiful surroundings please!
But back to the unnamed beautiful stretch of beach, a coastal strip between Merewether and Dudley beaches, which the NPWS explains is the ‘last remnant of coastal temperate rainforest in the Newcastle region’. As this beautiful beach abuts the Glenrock State Conservation Area, surely this beach is, or should be, Glenrock Beach? If it isn’t it now is to me. Regardless of its possible namelessness, I love it, love it love it - this beach is absolutely making my Newcastle beach short list.
Update no. 2: Sausage Sizzle Saga - the sequel. Recently the Country Mouse and I made our first visit back to Bunnings since the great sausage sizzle saga. I was somewhat relieved to be back, thinking that the Country Mouse had possibly put me on a Bunnings no-go list after that particular culinary debacle.
We had no sooner pulled up in the car park than the Country Mouse, no doubt emboldened by his starring role in the SSS, headed directly to the ever-present Bunnings sausage sizzle, immediately and loudly engaging the group of men running the stall on my desire for a sausage sandwich minus the bread. Actually I hadn’t even decided that it was sausage time at all, but there was no holding back the Country Mouse – he was in his element.
“She” – I assumed this was me – “wants a sausage sandwich but… (rising crescendo) with NO BREAD! Did you know people in Bronte – in Sydney – eat sausage sandwiches, without the sandwich?"
The men, of course, thought this was hysterical, laughing conspiratorially in a kind of ‘Women! Who can understand them?’ male bonding way. But one sweet man, no doubt concerned that I was struggling with a weight problem, earnestly assured me that the sausages they were selling were low-fat. I explained that the fat wasn’t the problem, I was actually trying to avoid the carbohydrates in the two slices of nutritionally challenged white no name bread wrapping around the greasy meat.
Carb consciousness is definitely a major city-country divide. My country cousins don’t realise that for many city gals carbohydrates are the Anti-Christ; more feared than a Middle Eastern dictator, they are the Gaddafi of the kitchen. Quick - run, hide the carbs are coming!
I try not to engage in this hysteria, remembering all too well how full fat food was the ‘devil’ of the 1990s and watching as people religiously consumed only low fat or no fat products, despite the fact that these products contained double their own body weight in sugar, this amount of sweetening being necessary to make the products palatable.
Given that the carb debate certainly doesn’t seem to have moved beyond the Sydney CBD to regional areas, my attempts to explain ‘it’s the carbs not the fat’ to the by now confused, yet still very earnest, barbequing man fell on deaf ears. He stared at me blankly. But the gauntlet had been laid down. Laugh at me? Watch this! I grabbed a sausage, TWO pieces of bread and an overgenerous squeeze of tomato sauce. And I stuffed the whole lot in my mouth.
Anniversary adventures
There is a wisdom in the saying ‘the couple that plays together stays together’ (actually a corruption of the Christian saying ‘the couple that prays together stays together’) and certainly the Country Mouse and I make having fun a priority in our relationship. But we have another kind of peculiar bond, ours is more medical – the couple that migraines together…understand that hideous headache like no other. It’s not quite as catchy, but it certainly proved the background to our first anniversary together. I woke on the morning of 21 March, barely able to utter “Happy Anniversary – we are one!” before sinking into the pillow with an “Ice pack! Painkillers! Quick!”
By the time we made it to Sydney, where we had planned to spend the night dining romantically by the ocean before spending a special night at a swish Bondi hotel, my splitting head had stopped and I was feeling vaguely normal. But proving that a deep bond means that your pain is my pain I had no sooner come to than the Country Mouse suddenly went down with a migraine all of his own.
Our anniversary dinner ended up being takeaway beef ribs in bed, and our planned blue sky, blue ocean vista and sandy sunbake on the Bondi Beach ended up matching our pain: from the hotel window dark grey clouds filled the sky and set-in rain beat against our window. It was a study in various shades of grey. But as we lay in each others arms and administered pain killers we could at least see the irony and promise each other ‘there’s always next year’.