Britni’s Blog: Reflections and anchors

Mucking About in Melbourne

What I did on my summer break

A strange encounter

I was sketching by the bay. I’m no great artist but I have a little watercolour kit and a good pen for bold lines to match the soft colours. It’s a pastime that draws me in and the hours can pass in a flash.

I had a view of the boats in the marina, a jumble of sails and masts, the blue of the bay beyond, the towers of Melbourne a jagged horizon, and I was wondering if it was complete.

A shadow fell over my sketch block. I looked up to see a woman, worn clothing, salt and pepper hair, eyes the colour of driftwood. She pointed at my sketch.

“It needs an anchor,” she rasped.

I met her gaze. “An anchor?”

She gestured at a yacht, racing over the far water. “Every story needs a tie to the wind. A way to hold it firm when times are rough.”

And with that she was gone in the summer breeze, her blue skirt ruffling as she walked.

She was right, you know. I got out my ink pen, drew into the foreground a small cairn of rocks with an embedded plaque, balancing a yacht in my scene’s distance. It worked!

Summer in Melbourne

Funny thing. The summer holiday period in Melbourne is defined by things I don’t care about. The Boxing Day Test at the Melbourne Cricket Ground and the Australian Open at the tennis complex nearby.

The news reports nothing else much beyond atrocities and disasters so it’s a bit of a bust all round.

My sports interest is more focussed on indoors pursuits and for additional exercise I jump on my bike — I’ve upgraded to a Reid Urban X3 that on paper is perfect but in the flesh isn’t quite there — and go for a ride.

Where I live, that usually means a ride along the shore of Port Phillip Bay. Melbourne’s street grid isn’t set up for cycling though of course the advantage here is that the city is basically flat, so there aren’t many hilly areas to contend with. Coupled with a good public transport network, I can leave my car in the garage a lot of the time.

The disadvantage to cycling in Melbourne can be the weather. Often unpredictable, frequently wet, an environmentally-friendly bike ride can turn into a damp and cold experience. I’ve fitted mudguards to my bike and the hydraulic disk brakes make for effective stopping power even in the wet, but still …

Like the Ford Model T, my bike only comes in black. A handsome machine. Attractive, so I carry around a chunky lock. It weighs me down but I know that my bike won’t wander away if I pop into a bookshop or something for a minute or two.

Morning glory

Salty seabreeze on a clear blue morning. Gulls overhead, cocking an eye at me as if I might have a chip or two concealed about my person. Sorry, birds, but I’m off chips.

I like this time of morning. Get into a contemplative rhythm, whip along the bike path, sound the bell for the occasional jogger, watch as the old grey tower that marks my turning point comes into view.

I look out over the beach and sea beyond as I pedal past. Later today the place will be full of families getting sand in their hair and salt on their skin, and most likely a bit too much sun but that’s all part of the experience, along with ice-cream and chips, or maybe a pie. Things haven’t changed much from my days as a girl chasing seagulls along this very beach, apart from everyone having a phone to look at and a water bottle to drink out of.

But for now, deserted.

There’s a ship out in the Bay, as there usually is. Melbourne is quite a busy port and sometimes a cargo ship or six will anchor, awaiting a berth. Big container ships, slab-sided vehicle carriers, roll-on-roll-off ferries taking commercial traffic across Bass Strait to Tasmania.

I always look to see what’s new and (un)interesting. Sometimes you get a warship making a port call. Often at dawn there’s a cruise ship making its way up to the cruise terminal at St Kilda.

Like today. A big blocky ship with a black hull, several decks of balconied cabins, and a bright red funnel.

I recognise her immediately and gaze at her in a kind of yearning. Cunard’s Queen Elizabeth, and I’ll be sailing on her myself later on this year.

Hear the sound of distant dreams

I love cruising. The perfect way to travel, if you ask me. Once you are aboard and unpacked, that’s it until the end of the cruise. Like a big comfy hotel that takes you to all sorts of interesting places without the hassle of packing up and lugging the bags and checking in and out and all that travel friction of standing in queues and working out how the local metro works that takes the gloss off the travel biscuit.

Cunard does luxury cruises. Middling luxury, compared to some smaller cruise ships that are more like big private yachts. Certainly a step up from the mass-market fleets full of package deals and cheap drunks that I used to enjoy so much.

I’m looking forward to my cruise on the Queen and I feel a tiny bit of a proprietary pride in watching “my” ship draw closer. I lean my bike against a wall and find a place to sit, enjoying the sight. Why, but I can pick out “my” cabin and I look at it hungrily.

An older couple are sitting on the balcony watching Melbourne slide past. That’s half the fun of a cruise. A cup of coffee or a mug of juice in the morning, something a little more refreshing in the evening as we sail out. Somebody else is doing all the work, and all I have to do is open my mouth and a crew member will pop something nice into it.

Well, not quite. There’s a danger in cruises. Not enough exercise and too much to eat. A passenger could spend 24 hours a day eating and drinking and by the look of some of them, that’s exactly what they do.

I tend to arrange my shore excursions toward the more adventurous end of the choice. Scrambling up a hill to a lookout or biking along the river bank, rather than vegetating on a cruise bus as someone tells me the history and our walking is limited to getting on and off at the photo opportunity stops.

On that note I give a final glance at the big liner lining up for the cruise terminal and turn my back on her as I pedal back home.

I have a few trips on the books this year, apart from the cruise. A weekend in Finland for a conference, my regular meditation retreat in New Zealand, a winter holiday in Queensland, and a few other bits and pieces.

If I can scrape up the money I might be able to spend a week in Cornwall later on.

We’ll see. Dear Readers, linger on this page. Tell all your friends. Read all my other articles and drop comments and stuff. Ten, twenty thousand readers interacting away and I’ll be set.

Dirt under my fingernails

Back home in the holiday break and it’s a chance to tidy up the garden. Winter is sleep time for my plants, they wake up in spring and by Christmas the place is a jungle and I’m hauling out the mower twice a week.

A good time, while I have the leisure provided by public holidays, to take stock of what worked in the garden and what did not. Some plants thrive, others struggle. I can rearrange some to even up the opportunities, and frankly I can remove some plants entirely if they aren’t what I want.

I have some tattered old gardening clothes — I could go and wear them in the streets and do my own startling of unwary artists — that serve me well. It doesn’t matter if they are ripped by rose thorns or stained by fallen fruit or just liberally caked in mud.

I’m as happy as a pig in the proverbial, rooting around amongst my plants with a trowel or handsaw, doing things I’ve been putting off for the right day.

That day is now.

My herb garden saw a drastic pruning, for example. A couple of rosemary shoots a few years back turned into a farm. Much as I love rosemary — I go nuts over a few sprigs crushed to release the smell and added to a roasting meat or vegetable dish — there was more than I’d be able to use in a lifetime and the prospect of more and more each year!

Gosh, but I smelled fragrant after hauling away a couple of bushes!

I have a few fruit trees, beloved by cockatoos. I can always tell when the fruit is ripe because the birds strip the branches the day before. if I’m lucky I get a few before they all go. Apricot, plums, and apple. Great for jam, if I can salvage enough!

Summer is also the time to ensure the yard is free of elm seedlings. The tree wakes up early after winter, producing a crop of seeds that drift down, carried by the wind to the rest of the back yard. And the rest of the suburb.

A few weeks later and there are volunteer elms everywhere. Little green trees happy to turn into a forest, given half a chance. I usually pull them out when I spot them but of course some make a home in difficult-reach-spots.

I love my elm, a massive presence — joined by a few in nearby yards, it must be said — almost as good as the grove in the local Botanic Garden. I have a table beneath where I can entertain or just sit with a drink of something nice and enjoy a warm summer day in the shade of the old tree.

Flowers abound. I’ve tried to plant enough varieties with diverse seasons so my garden is never entirely devoid of colour. The poppies are amazing when they bloom — an apoppycalypse — and have to be severely trimmed after.

Roses are my favourites for sure. I love their delicate beauty and perfume. A heady experience on a moonlit night after a warm day; who would think that a scented night could be so beautiful?

Mindful messing

There’s a certain meditative effect to working in the garden. Thoughtful, repetitive work. Just the sort of conditions to let my subconscious chew on a problem in my life. I’ll often look up from my work as the final piece falls into place and rush off to my computer to finish a story or nail down a character’s motivation or whatever.

My house and garden and suburb beyond haven’t changed much over the years. A few plants shift around, I update the electronics, I occasionally replace the curtains.

It’s the solid base in my life. As solid as the old tree that dominates the block and gives me so much pleasure.

And yet, I always have this pull to travel, to get away and explore the world, to see new places, to experience the iconic sites I see in the news or read about in books.

I might fantasise about living on a cruise ship and never leaving, forever writing stories of new places found and new friends made, but I’ll never do it.

Home always beckons and I gather all my belongings, brave airports and checkins and queues, hassle with taxi drivers, and come home to a cat glad to see me back, but unwilling to show it, and a house sitter who has rearranged the cutlery drawer and ignored the garden.

Then again, my summer break, my work in the garden, my morning bike rides — these are a mini holiday in themselves and I am sure that around the world there must be many who would find Melbourne exotic and exciting. It may be home, but still it’s a joy to live here.

Who else, I wonder, experiences this dual existence? Home town taken for granted, travel a way to escape, and a return to the familiar a welcome grounding.

This strangely drives me. I can never spend more than a couple of months on either activity before the yearning for the other becomes overwhelming.

At home, I dream of travel to distant places. And once I’m there, I feel the need for my things about me, my bayside suburb, my table and cool drink under the elm, my cat curled up on my lap as I regard the latest exuberant crop of flowers.

Britni