What's wrong with this picture?

What's wrong with this picture is that as of tomorrow, 26 March, I won't be in it! We are waiting at the school bus stop in Newport.

Out the door, down to the bus stop near the Newport shops, then on the bus go Jack and Abby for another great day at their school.

Jack and Abby have almost finished another session of swimming lessons and are doing very well! All that time at Nippers has really paid off. Jack is an incredible runner and it looks as if he will represent Sacred Heart in the next round of cross-country competition.

Pet shops here offer puppy sitting for families wishing to take a puppy home for a night. Our first puppy was a poodle/chihuahua, an adorable little girl, very cuddly and easy to have around, although not a good sleeper. The next puppy was a cavoodle, a cavalier king charles/poodle mix. He was wilier and not so cuddly. There were all kinds of mixes, such as pugalier (king charles/pug), jug (jack russel/pug), schmoodle (shitzu/poodle). Kind of like a test drive.

Last night was my final Rotary meeting with my club here downunder, Rotary Club of Pittwater. It was hard to say goodbye, but it feels as if I have a Rotary home in Oz to return to. They very kindly sent me home with a check to go towards buying stoves for families in Guatemala, too!

I've been in deep denial about returning to the US: suitcase not dragged out of the closet, clothes not washed, sorting not done. But today is the day and I find myself having trouble wanting to be in two places at once. I knew it would be hard to leave Jack, Abby, Tracy and Dan, ok. But I've met so many people with whom I would like to spend more time: Rotarians, young moms, music folk, permaculture people.  This I didn't count on. Oh well, now I really have strings to pull me back here.

Postie on the water

Australia's early settlers were dependent on waterways for transportation and services. Today, mail and goods are still delivered by the mailboat up the Hawkesbury River north of Sydney. Paying passengers can ride along and the trip makes for a relaxing day on the water, glimpsing some of the homes scattered along the river's edge. Most stops have no other access except by water and most residents use a tinnie (small aluminium runabout) to go into a town to shop for supplies, but the mailboat makes stops with mail along the river as well.

I took the bus into central Sydney, then hopped a train on the Newcastle line to travel north to Brooklyn, on the banks of the lower Hawkesbury River. As the cockatoo flies, not that far from our home on the northern beaches, but the wildnerness of hilly Ku-rin-gai National Park is in the way. With my pensioners' pass, the roundtrip is only $2.50 Australian, about $2.20 US plus the time. I can get just about anywhere on my pass, from Blue Mountains to Newcastle, from south of Sydney to northern beaches, about the same area as Portland to Burns, to Eugene, Florence and back to Portland via Hiway 101. The pass is also good on ferries, so I can hop a ferry from Sydney to Manly, Watsons Bay or Parramatta too. It's a deal.

There were about 20 paying passengers on my trip, plus a whole pile of goods to deliver at a couple of stops, and the mail, and a family with a double baby jogger. It made for a cozy lower deck on the first part of the trip! The upper deck is fitted with chairs, but on this day the water was so calm that most passengers were standing as the watched the activity.

The mailboat departs from Brooklyn, accesible by car and only a few steps from the rail station. We offloaded mail and food supplies at Little Wobby Wharf, and the homes along this stretch of the river are apparently built by squatters. But no tin shacks here!

Dangar Island has about 250 residents, with regular ferry service plus the mailboat calling in daily Monday-Friday.

At most stops, dogs were always the first to greet the mailboat. No wonder: the mate tosses bikkies (cookies) to the dogs as the boat pulls alongside the pier! Sometimes, the mate doesn't even tie up the boat, but just pitches the newspaper to the pier.

Big surprise to me was the huge number of jellyfish in the water. Big, orange guys, about 12-15" across the top of the dome and about 8" long. No long stringers, so probably not dangerous. But I'm not ready to jump in the water to find out!

The farther upriver we went, the more isolated the homes. We turned around at Murray, not far from Spencer on the map above. On the lower Hawkesbury, the homes along the river are like Sausalito but upriver it starts to look more like the Alsea 40 years ago. Would Seja, Gandhi (the dog) and I like to live on one of the upriver plots? I suppose so, but getting a garden going would take some doing. The soil is thin and poor, so lots of work to get anything like our deep rich soil in Springfield. The critter count must also be pretty high. I noticed overnight even in our suburban garden the bandicoots or possums raided my tomato plants in the night and snagged the only remaining ripe fruits I was guarding so closely.

The mailboat makes for a fine day when the weather is as good as it's been this autumn, with just time for short nap on the train on the way home.

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Seasons and signs

The change of the seasons on the northern beaches of Australia isn't exactly the high drama of, say, Duluth in November, or Key West during hurricane season, but there are noticeable and subtle shifts to announce autumn. Nippers is done, the last of the boogie board training until next spring. The beaches are pretty empty, but oh, so lovely.

First, the spiders are so fat their webs are sagging a bit, and they no longer hide under leaves. They hang their webs wherever they please, and they are now beyond snagging gnats and have moved up to butterflies, moths and large flying insects. At this point these ladies would fill up the palm of my hand if I wanted to pull one off her web. Which I don't.

Also, the kookaburras have finally kicked their fully-fledged offspring out of nests, so they aren't worrying about fat bugs at 5:00am any longer. These days, they are up at more like 7:30am having leisurely discussions about the day's hunt plans. I miss my alarm clocks! When they laugh, their whole bodies shake with the force of their vocalizations.

The lorrikeets and cockatoos have so thoroughly demolished the most tender of the bottlebrush, banksia, grevillea, eucalpyt and hakea blooms that the only ones remaining are more like those almost-moldy leftovers in the back of the fridge. These birds are also looking pretty plump right now.

Gone are the oppressive muggy days of summer when the humidity is almost like being in the water. The air is clear, and we've had several days in a row when the wind isn't tearing off my eyebrows or giving my skin a dermabrasion session that would cost $100 in a salon. The blue bottles continue to pile up at the high tide line; yesterday there were enough of them on the beach with enough electric charge to light up the houses on Palm Road for a hour or two. It's the long stinger strings that pack the wallop and several of them, the little floating part no bigger than a plum, had stinger tails up to three feet in length. Even stepping on a stinger on the beach after the critter has expired for 24 hours can send you yowling in pain to find some warm water to pour on the site. Autumn is definitely on the way.

Yesterday on a beach walk I found an Allen Avenue which fronts on Bilgola Beach. My Springfield home is on Allen Avenue, but no terrific view of the azure seas! Note the lifies can take it a little easier now that the beach isn't crowded with summer swimmers.

There's a bench at Bilgola which looks directly out on the lovely cove, and on the front side is a sign dedicating the bench to one Nicholas. What I most like about the sign is the last line..."who loves to surf." Not past tense, but present tense. By my reckoning, Nicholas probably surfed well into his 80's, which wouldn't be at all unusual.

A final sign simply underlines the differences between up-tight US establishments and the more laid-back Aussie world. How many times have you seen it: "No shirt, no shoes, no service and no dogs"? Well, here, the final words would be: "No shirt, no shoes, no worries, dogs ok". Dog water bowls are outside every restaurant and cafe in our little town and well-mannered Aussie dogs go everywhere with their owners. Shirtless (well, at least the mates), shoeless (everyone), we wander in and out of shops, cafes and restaurants, oh, and on the buses too. Nice.

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Music magic

If you've been to the Oregon Bach Festival, you know that magic happens pretty regularly during the Festival's two-week run. Now I've added the  three-day folk/blues/roots festival in the Blue Mountains of Australia as another place of music magic. What a venue! Imagine a town half the size of Ashland and twice the altitude: Katoomba is at 3,336 feet with a population of about 10,000. Place 10 stages into every nook and cranny of the hilly town, indoors or out under tents, and invite 45 soloists and groups, and be prepared for some wonderful music-making. It was cool and rainy or misty by turns, so Sydneysiders and performers from the Seychelles and Africa were whingeing about the cold, but the guest artists from Scotland were as happy as sheep in the rain. The many ops shops (used clothing stores) were selling out of hats, scarves, polar fleece and mittens by mid-day on Saturday.

I volunteered for the festival (I can't work for money on my visa for Oz) and was lucky to be partnered with a young woman from Katoomba. We managed the blues stage in the local RSL club (Retired Service League) for two days, indoors, thank you. The last day we drew one of the outdoor stages but the music kept us more than warm. Music ran from world music to jazz, blues to folk, funk to fusion, rock to country.

The best magic moment for me was on Sunday when John McCutcheon took the stage with his collection of stringed instruments, his sense of humor and his spontaneity. You may not be familiar with John's music, but you know at least one of his songs, the kindy anthem, as he calls it. I think every kindergarten graduation has featured this song, The Kindergarten Wall. Here's part of it:

When I was a little kid not so long ago
I had to learn a lot of stuff I didn't even know
How to dress myself, tie my shoes, how to jump a rope
How to smile for a picture without looking like a dope
But of all the things I learned my favorite of them all
Was a little poem hanging on the kindergarten wall
    CHORUS:
Of all you learn here remember this the best:
Don't hurt each other and clean up your mess
Take a nap everyday, wash before you eat
Hold hands, stick together, look before you cross the street
And remember the seed in the little paper cup:
First the root goes down and then the plant grows up!

John had no more begun the first four words of the verse when three Year Four girls in the front row piped up with all the words and the tune. He called them up on the stage, Stella, Grace and Jeanette, and they sang right along, all the verses, all the chorus, word perfect. He was delighted, we were all delighted, parents were delighted, flash cameras were popping off like popcorn. They called themselves "The Johnettes" and after the concert while having a proper meet and greet with John, told him that their music teacher at Katoomba Public School taught them the song and the whole school knew it. The girls had been hanging out at the festival venues all weekend in hopes of meeting John.

More magic with Dougie MacLean, my favorite Scottish singer/songwriter, who put on three shows during the weekend, the last of which was just perfect. Especially because I got to be stage manager for that one! John wanted Dougie to come up for a number; they rehearsed it for about two minutues backstage and it too was just right. Dougie then took another two minutes to get Josh White Jr in on the tune, and away they went.

I know there were some all-night sessions after the scheduled concerts, as is usual at festivals, but I was way too tired at the end of my days to enjoy those sessions too.

I stayed at the YHA Katoomba hostel, another of Australia's fine youth hostels. Because of the festival, there were a varied bunch of guests: concert goers ages 20 to 80, families, and young backpackers all mingling happily in the big, clean kitchen and relaxing in the art-deco lounge. The only potentially unhappy campers were the folks who were going to participate in the Six-Foot Track Marathon along the 45 kilometers of the Blue Mountains trail early Saturday morning. Late-night blues jams don't mix with early-morning marathoners. Ooops. Pays to check out what else might be going on if you want a peaceful night at a youth hostel! I, on the other hand, can't wait till next year...I'll come back to this festival.

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