Far From the Maddening Crowd

Tags

Airey's Inlet, Bass strait, Bunurong, Creed mcTaggart, Cuillins, David Rastovich, eudyptula minor, fairy penguin, fulmar, grippin' the lip, Howard Hughes surfboard, Koolin, Lew Brown, Loyd Grosman, mutton-bird, Namibia, one piece leash, painting zebras, passeggiata, Phillip Island, Port Phillip Winery, rip curl, Rip Van Winkle, Roll out the Barrel, shearwater, Sojourn, St Kilda, stabmag.com, Sumatra, Surf Beach, Teahupo'o pizza, The Nobbies, Tracks-the Surfers' bible, ultimate gypsy, wallaby

You would think that The Nobbies would be an excellent place to get

away from Joe Public, but even with a howling gale blasting in from

The Bass Strait, there is the eternal shrill whine of children whose decibel

level outperforms the crashing waves and predatory shearwaters. Once

placated by a cuddly toy penguin, however, the juveniles are generally

benign, unlike their adult counterparts who simply will not obey rangers’

instructions and whose attention span seems limited to one advance

by a single cohort of fairy bands of brothers before they have to stand up,

blocking others’ views and flashing away at the shy bird-life which is

trying to avoid the unwanted attention of a sea eagle, or a fox, but which

ends up mating under spotlights, beneath the boardwalks, to a perpetual

infantile commentary:

What are they doing?  Oh, look!  A threesome!

Eudyptula minor is a cutie and its nightly parade reminded me of a

Mediterranean passeggiata, except that those on the fringes do not

usually get picked off – or do they?

The whole ambience recalls accounts of the fulmar-dependent,

indigeneous people of St Kilda.  No doubt the mutton-bird eating

Bunurong would have had heaps in common with the original

inhabitants of the Scottish archipelago, although the Bunurong

had not been planted on their terrain, but were the supplanted.

Mind you, the Koolin people sounds rather like the Cuillins, don’t

you think?

I’m ashamed to say that I didn’t savour a short-arsed shearwater,

or whatever the mutton-bird is.  I preferred the duck confit at Port

Phillip Winery, the previous day.

Those of you who have been questioning whether I have morphed

into a fully-formed Sheila yet, might be better employed rating my

surf babe status.  Forget The Husband.  The only thing he surfs is

the internet.  As for Rip Curl experiences, he is more into those of the

Rip van Winkle variety.  Or Lip Curl, when he comes across snippets of

his fame being promoted over this site.  (He can be as desultory as

that lone wallaby that hopped across the dusky beach last night,

silhouetted against a giant red full moon.)  Just trying to divert

attention, I’d say.

We stayed over at Surf Beach in a house on stilts, all weather

boarding and corrugation.  The walls were decorated with a Howard

Hughes, Airey’s Inlet finned surfboard, bearing the endorsement:

Awesome.

I felt like Loyd Grosman- remember the guy who used to traipse

through people’s houses trying to guess what kind of a person lived

therein?  He actually only got the job because someone mistakenly

thought he was a journalist.  I felt a bit of a fraud myself.  But now

that I’ve heard of stabmag.com, I feel that I have some beach cred.

I might even get The Husband some Board Shorts.  Apparently, Life

is better in them.  The guys in the adverts seem to prove the point.

Maybe I could tether one of these Adonises to my side with the

World’s Strongest Leash, a one piece leash technology.  Might just

keep The Husband from wandering off towards the wine aisle in

any supermarket.

Even the reading matter was connected to the ocean and Night

Surfing was the only novel on view.  The blurb confided that it was

about a wave that arcs so high it drops down the sun, stars and

moon from the sky and turns day to pitch.  Hannah is a drop-out

who wants to learn to walk on water and Jake has been a dustman,

or re-cycling engineer, from Liverpool, but he dreams of surfing the

night.  Presumably he has had a shower first.  He has demons of his

own.  Let’s hope that Hannah exorcises them.

Right, enough of those barbed comments, as prickly as the fins on the

surfboards.

I did enjoy leafing through Tracks: the Surfers’ Bible– the next best

thing to a Teahupo’o pizza delivery, apparently.

You see, I had never heard of grippin’ the lip; surfing in Namibia- I

thought it was all desert dunes.  I thought Roll out the Barrel was a

1940s song by Lew Brown and nothing to do with tides and waves.

Painting zebras on a wall sounded artistic to me, something like

decorative murals on a kindergarten reception hall.

Hoovering through the slob sounded like clearing up after the

kindergarten kids had gone home.  And I had never heard of

films such as Sojourn, a surf film about Sumatra, with David

Rastovich.  I really must have been up a gum tree!

Oh, wait a minute!  It’s hovering through the slob.  It’s all this

being on the road.  I’m turning into an ultimate gypsy like Creed

McTaggart.  That’s a different creed from the one I know back

home and which I can recite by heart on Sunday mornings.

Okay, so he’s known for his sunglasses and criticised for faux

surf celebrity; I’m known for my hats and…

I’m morphing into something.  It’s Travel.  It broadens the mind,

as well as the behind.

Skink

Tags

backyardbuddies.net.au, Calais, Cullen Skink, D H Lawrence, Eastern Blue-Tongued Lizard, Freudian, genius, Gumtree, kookaburras, N J Warburton, Queen Mary, Schopenhauer, Simon Cowell, skink, Snake by Lawrence, Tennyson, Tiliqua scincoides, Tulisa

Schopenhauer said of genius:

It’s like an archery contest: the talented hit the mark every time and

everyone can see that true genius gets the mark that no one else can

see.

Wish I could hit the bulls-eye every time in my posts.  Impossible,

but one tries!  I concur with the great man who was among the first

to contend that the world is not a logical place.

Tangential shift to D H Lawrence… I warned you logic is not always

the guiding principle in this site!

A snake came to my water trough…

..and I in pyjamas for the heat…

That good old primary school teacher knew how to engrave

words on your heart as indelibly as ‘Calais’ was inked onto

Queen Mary’s.

Actually, it wasn’t a snake, but an Eastern Blue-Tongued Lizard

and it came to the swimming pool area.  No matter- I

experienced similar emotions of honour, fear, liking, gladness,

but nothing remotely Freudian.  Though one can never be

sure!

And, in case you think I was cowardly for ejecting from my sun-

lounger, the above photo shows an ‘immature‘ version.

Apparently, they are harmless, though they have teeth.

Teeth!

They might hang on if they bite you, or shed their tail, but are

not venomous.  Well, that’s a relief!

Someone is selling one, granted with a tank, for $220 on

Gumtree.  But you’d be up the aforementioned arboreal variety

if you think I would even consider throwing a towel over this

little fella, even given the Scottish entrepreneurial gene that

encourages me to make a bawbee or two out of any

encounter.

Apparently, Tiliqua scincoides (sounds like a friend of Simon

Cowell’s) is a skink.  No, it’s Tulisa, isn’t it?

Maybe she shouldn’t have had the work done.

Back in good old Scotia, they make soup out of them:

Cullen Skink.  That’s another bluff like the haggis scam.

The original convicts down here probably did and the name

travelled back home.

The good thing about these reptiles is that, though they have up

to thirty young, within a day, their offspring are entirely

independent.  No university fees and endless loans.

I did share that feeling of respect- that he/she had been

around before me, and that I was the intruder.

As Lawrence said:

a serpent is a thing created.  It has its own raison d’etre, its own

being; it has beauty and reality.

A pity then that those two whopping great kookaburras that

sit on the fence are probably waiting for it.  But then, as that

very different poet,Tennyson reminded us, nature is red in tooth

and claw.

So, though I won’t be a frequent visitor to backyardbuddies.

net.au/reptiles/lizards/blue-tongued lizard, I will always treasure

the memory of our strange meeting.

The way you flick your tail; the way you show your tongue…

No, no, they can’t take that away from me.

I’ll conclude with  N J Warburton’s 1947 witty observation:

Some creep came to my water trough

And stood there, hopping from foot to foot,

In his pyjamas…

 

 

Far From The Madding Crowd

Tags

byojaku, goldcrest, Higher Bockhampton, Julian Fellowes, Lower Bockhampton, Melstock, Puddletown Heath, Rosemarie Morgan, Rushy Pond, swallet hole, Thomas Hardy, Under the Greenwood Tree, witches' broom fungus, Yale

Thank goodness for the hat -see gravatar.  That Aussie sun is fierce.

Two weeks into this holiday and I have lost my fashionable byojaku

face, though I wouldn’t say that I was a fully-formed Sheila just

yet.

I see that there is an outcry regarding development in Lower

Bockhampton (Hardy’s Melstock).  Professor Rosemarie Morgan

of Yale has joined forces with Julian Fellowes (not Thomas Hardy)

and others opposed to the building of seventy homes under the

greenwood trees by an agricultural college.  That blasted madding

crowd encroaches everywhere.

Anyway, in case urbanisation obliterates an even greater area,

here’s an old tribute to Higher Bockhampton:

HIGHER BOCKHAMPTON

Where bright goldcrests dip over Rushy Pond,

speckled fawns lie, peaceful, in swallet holes,

cushioned on russet-needled floor.  Beyond

lies Puddletown Heath, but here thick beech boles,

sweet chestnut, laurel and hazel copses

shelter grass snakes, which coil in leafy shade,

where Hardy coppiced verse; plot synopses.

Witches’ broom fungus found on some decayed

branches illustrated family trees:

supernatural blight in Paradise,

which brought his fruitless marriage to its knees.

Through opened casements he would watch fireflies,

straining to see some glimmer in the pitch

dark of the cottage garden.  Then he wrote

of class difference between poor and rich;

his real words of complaint choking his throat.