North by North East

Incredibly…somehow…you’ll be shocked gentle reader but it’s true…we left Adelaide…the crucible of democracy, birthplace of the Arts, rivers of fine wine and bubbling beer brooks.  Crumbling cliffs of Golden North Honey Ice Cream, Menz Yo-Yo biscuits standing stiffly in a row, Woodroofe’s lemonade flowing from the fountains,  King George Whiting the size of blue-fin tuna fighting to get onto your plate.

In short, Hardy Coopers line the streets, solid yo men and women tend the vines, till the fields and strike heroic attitudes in this our desert city.

But, dear friends, like the fairies at the end of time, we turned our backs on the ashes of my Parents and the Temples of my Gods and headed East.

My beloved’s parents and temples still lay ahead.

Our travelling companion, always, was The Sky, the great azure plastered, cerulean streaked, China blue sea.  The upturned bowl of Heaven.  Pomp driven Cloud Armadas hove to above with billowing sails, battles in slow motion.

Now…in Australia everything that sticks up is quite small, the mountains, the Cities, the towers and skyscrapers, the public intellectuals, even the Cathedrals, Gothic though they are, are on a human scale.

And the bush ?  Mostly flat and scrubby but full of every imaginable brown and green, shot through with brilliant yellows and reds, sometimes tired though often vibrant, but mostly a dusty eternal counterpoint to the brilliant blue that we only ever see here.

Miracles continue.  There are ice creams in the desert, a Land Rover on a pole, a pink lake, an Anzac memorial, an old pub, and always all around us, everything that means anything to us.

After a year wandering we have rediscovered meaning and context and place.  Our place.