Street Names with Asides

What good is an address?  Useful as a place-indicator and functional to our scanner/identifier mammalian brains, to be sure.  And Nav-Man and Tom-Tom love them, too.   I’m quite fond of the postie being able to find ours — and friends as well.  

 

However, I prefer my exploration of “Basin,” “Brace,” “Bend,” and “Broadway” to be with my hands on the wheel, wind in my hair, and the road underneath me, rather than sitting in my chair with hands on keyboard and mouse.

 

I’d been shopping online at a bookstore in Australia.  I got as far to the address part of the ordering exercise when I found that, while I was encouraged to type in the name of my street, I was not allowed to type in the street identifier itself.  For that, a fabulous and extensive drop-down menu appeared.  While one expects a drop-down menu for state names, lest we get our abbreviations askew, one does not expect to wade through 200 permutations of road, avenue, and street, nor to have to spend the time scrolling through those 200 options to find the one that suits.  

 

I was suddenly diverted from spending money to wondering many things, as one does, including:  how much research was required to develop such a list, why the list was compiled, who in the Australia Post was having a very, very bad day if/when the list was required, whose nephew was hired one summer to create the list — and, not the least, how many addresses actually included the street identifier “Underpass”?

 

And so I scrolled:

 

Access

Alley

Alleyway

Amble

Anchorage

Approach

Arcade

Artery

Avenue

Basin

Beach

Bend

Block

Boulevard

Brace

Brae

Break

Bridge

Broadway

Brow

Bypass

Byway

Causeway

Centre

Centreway

Chase

Circle

Circlet

Circuit

Circus

Close

Colonade

Common

Concourse

Copse

Corner

Corso

 

Court — I arrived here with some relief, and could have stopped.  But stopping is impossible sometimes, especially when presented with the temptation to explore, so I scrolled on:

 

Courtyard

Cove

Crescent

Crest

Cross

Crossing

Crossway

Cruiseway

Culdesac

Cutting

Dale

Dell

Deviation

Dip

Distributor

Drive

Driveway

Edge

Elbow

End

Entrance

Esplanade

Estate

Expressway

Extension

Fairway

 

Firetrack — Now this is the rural living at its best.  Is this for the postie, for CentreLink or the tax man?  I really like the picture of the little orange scooter that the postie rides zooming along the firetrack three times a week, arrival announced by a trail of dust. While the romance of the picture probably does not live up to the arduous nature of living in a remote area, I still like the image of the lonely postie on his little orange motor scooter, negotiating pot-holes and rivulets, mail bags full of hope and connection with the rest of the world.

 

Firetrail — Ditto.  Firetrack or Firetrail, wombat pads or wallaby runs.

 

Flat

 

Follow — You will notice when you scroll down that there is no “Lead” to complement “Follow,”  which has to make this list somewhat incomplete.  What else was left off, one only has to wonder?  Why was the cutoff 200 rather than 250?  I think this deserves at least one bottle of fine Aussie red out on the back deck to work up a few more, don’t you?  Join me?

 

Footway

Foreshore

Formation

Freeway

Front

Frontage

Gap

Garden

Gardens

Gate

Gates

Glade

Glen

Grange

Green

Ground

Grove

Gully

Heights

Highroad

Highway

Hill

 

Interchange — Really?  On the Interchange is an address?  Scary.

 

Intersection –  Since an intersection is theoretically the point at which two lines cross, your address might be #3 Highway 1 & State Route 392 Intersection?  Do not let your pets out to roam by themselves!

 

Junction

Key

Landing

Lane

Laneway

Lees

Line

Link

 

Little — 689 Storer’s Little?  Little what?  Would any male of the human species actually live there?  Or admit it?

 

Lookout

Loop

 

Lower — 4-1/2 63rd Lower?  I’m particularly fond of this one.  And of course, if you scroll down, you’ll find “Upper” as well.  Wouldn’t it be lovely if the firm that supplied dentures was located at the above address?  

 

Mall

Meander

Mew

Mews

 

Motorway — In a chat with the NRMA man on the side of the M-1, he noted that unless you give a specific address, taxi firms will not pick you up.  Their GPS finders cannot locate you without an address, of course.  However, if you have a breakdown and your car is being towed, you will need a ride — which makes NRMA dispatch a second vehicle to pick you up, as they will respond to “just past the onramp to the M-1 off Ewingsdale Road.” NRMA’s costs are rising due to the dispatch of two vehicles (one to tow, one to ferry people to safety) and there is a small argie-bargie with the taxi companies under way to resolve this issue.  Stay tuned.

 

Mount

Nook

Outlook

Parade

Park

Parklands

 

Part — I know of a person whose property abuts her brother’s in Tasmania  He won’t let her on his property.  She does not care to tread on his.  Maybe her address reads “#1 Her Part.”  I want that to be the case — lots.

 

Pass

Path

Pathway

Piazza

Place

Plateau

Plaza

Pocket

Point

Port

Promenade

Quad

Quadrangle

Quadrant

Quay

Quays

Ramble

Ramp

Range

Reach

Reserve

Rest

Retreat

Ride

Ridge

Ridgeway

Rightofway

Ring

Rise

 

River — Possibly these folks have a mail box at the Post office — access during the rainy season might be tricky.  

 

Riverway

Riviera

Road

Roadside

Roadway

Ronde

Rosebowl

Rotary

Round

Ronte

Row

Rue

Run

Serviceway

Siding

Slope

Sound

Spur

Square

Stairs

Statehighway

Steps

Strand

Street

Strip

Subway

Tarn

Terrace

Thoroughfare

Tollway

Top

Tor

Towers

Track

Trail

Trailer

Triangle

Trunkway

Turn

 

Underpass — Underpass?  A dwelling on the road under the bridge?  How permanent must the dwelling be, one wonders, to warrant an address that includes “Underpass”?

 

Upper — I am an equal opportunity mangler of language, and love the twists and turns that make language dynamic, but using a modifier such as “Upper” as a noun just doesn’t sit right in this instance.  “Lower” rankles too.  Must consult the aforementioned Aussie red to calm down.

 

Vale

Viaduct

View

Villas

Vista

 

Wade — Wouldn’t this be an address to make a real estate salesperson shudder?  164 Walton’s Wade.  Wellies provided for the inspection?  In a delta, maybe, or at high tide?  On pilings or in the swamps?  A fixer-upper only during the dry season?  Or maybe this is one of those obscure Welsh words that really means “a wide place in the road” but its translation from Welsh into English (like my maiden name) needed to borrow some vowels and became “wade.”  It’s possible, just not probable.  I like the real estate salesperson’s bad-dream scenario better.  

 

Walk

Walkway

Way

Wharf

Wynd

Yard

 

That’s it.  You were expecting more? (by the way, the spelling of culdesac, rightofway, and statehighway is directly from the list, just in case you felt the need to email me regarding spelling issues.)

 

Just to be fair, and I’m sure in response to customers’ feedback at having to scroll through 200 options, the list is topped by “street” “avenue” and “road” — all of which are repeated in alphabetical order as well, just in case they’ve been overlooked at the top.  But if you happen to live on a street called Turner’s Trunkway, or Walker’s Yard, you have a long scroll ahead of you.  

 

It has to be said that it’s Retail 101 to remove barriers that get in the way of customers who want to spend money.  And while I’m glad I stumbled on this wonderful list (which I’ve hugged to myself to chuckle over for months now), I avoid this particular book seller (unnamed, of course) when I’m shopping online, unless all else fails.  Just an occasional scroll through the “ramps,” “ranges,” “reaches” and “rows” is enough for me.

 

Leeches on the prowl

 

Does anybody love a leech?  Beyond leeches themselves, I mean.  Possibly a mad scientist or or even stranger, a celebrity or two.  I don’t know any (mad scientists or celebrities who love leeches), but I may encounter some one day.  At the moment, though, I’m sticking with the eeeeuwww-faction on leeches.  

 

I was a kid when Bogart led Hepburn down some leech-infested river in The African Queen.  It’s the first movie I remember seeing.  I spent most of the movie counting the black Juju-bees under the theatre seats, a place where I huddled in the scary parts of the movie.  For me, almost all the parts were scary.  My mother loved the movie.  I did not.  Besides the licorice Juju-bees under the seats and my mother’s urgent whispered commands to cease scrabbling among them, the most memorable part of the movie were the huge engorged leeches.  On Bogart, I recall, but I could be wrong.  At 7 years old, given leeches and leading men, leeches were the more memorable.

 

The second time I saw a leech, discounting the human variety, of course, was on the linoleum floor of Woolworth’s, a chain grocery store in Byron Bay. Engorged, it had fallen off someone’s ankle and was oozing blood and flopping sluggishly looking for a place to ride out its excesses.  You could almost see it wipe its mouth and rip a huge satisfied “BURRRP!  Aahhhhh.” 

 

Surfers and schoolies who crowd the store on holidays gave the leech and its blood puddle wide berth. The uniformed Woolies staff scurried to remove it before anyone thought that leeches were available in the meat section.  I don’t often see leeches in the supermarket, but this is the tropics, and any odd creature might appear anywhere at any time, including 7 foot pythons and saucer-sized Huntsman spiders– but those are other stories. Truly, it’s a biologists dream-laboratory here.

 

The third leech encounter was surprisingly close to home.  We’d stepped across puddles left by a tropical shower on the way home from dinner at friends, passed through our house, opening windows to let the breeze blow through.  We found glasses and a nice bottle of Aussie Shiraz, sprayed ourselves down with mozzie repellant and for added insurance, lit the mozzie coils, and sat down on the back deck to enjoy a glass of vino and recap the evening.  

 

Distracted by movement, my daughter glanced down at her foot.  “Aaaccckkkkk! What is that?”  A dark slimy creature undulated on her toe.  She flicked the writhing critter off onto the deck.  “I think it’s a leech,” I said, turning on the porch light for a better view.  It looked like a slug, but more animated.  Slimy. Glistening.  It gathered itself, and like a skinny two-inch slinky, and probed the damp air for dinner. You could almost hear it humming, “Fee, fi, fo, fum.  I smell the blood…”  

 

It is unnerving to be so obviously hunted.  The tiny predator stood on one end of it’s 2 inch-long brown

Leech on the prowl

 body, mustard and black stripes emphasizing its length, and probed the air this way and that, searching for the host of its next meal.  An upside-down golf tee, long and narrow, moving like the tip of Dumbledore’s hat, searching.  Searching.  It waved on its stem, and then paused, sensing prey, leaning towards our body heat.  And advanced.  Top over bottom, bottom over top, it flipped across the deck towards our warmth.  Attach, sniff, flip, attach, sniff, flip.  Attach, sniff, flip — the stuff of camp fire horror stories, of anxieties and nightmares.  

 

Leeches have circular mouth-parts on the ends of its body and attach both for feeding efficiency. They feed rarely — possibly every 3-4 months or longer — and this one was ready to eat.  No matter what we did to it, it returned to the hunt.  “HUNGRY!” it seemed to say.  It’s amazing how a leech can focus your attention at an evening’s end and sober you up some, too.  

 

We scattered, searching for weapons to thwart the advancing leech.   

 

First we tried the flip-flop method.  It soon became apparent that you can’t kill a leech with your flip-flop, no matter how many times you thwap it.  Next, we tried Bee-gon, the flying insect spray.  No joy.  We tried a flame, but that’s for ticks, right?  The leech just slipped below the deck to reappear when we ceased our cruelty.  

 

I reached for the spray can of Rid, the tropical strength insect repellant, that lives close at hand on the back-deck dining table.  There was no logic involved, just atavistic intention:  fight off the attack.  No way were we giving up the deck on a hot tropical night.  

 

Bingo!  The deet in Rid seemed to make an impression.  The leech slunk away in defeat, slipping below the deck to seek prey elsewhere.  It did not reappear.  

 

Friends were shocked that leeches could be found in our little tropical neighborhood, but  believe me, they have arrived.  I wondered why they hadn’t made an appearance in years earlier?  

 

When our houses were built, the Byron Shire Council demanded a green belt critter pathway from rainforest to rainforest through our development.  No twig or snag was to be removed nor was the habitat to be modified in any way.  You could hear the swamp wallabies thump through the rainforest at night and watch the bush turkeys, butterflies, and cockatoos forage by day.  The only plants approved by the council for planting were those fire-loving natives.  

 

Recently, the fire department checked up on the green belt and declared that all the twigs and snags must be cut away and drying brush removed to eliminate the fire hazard, except of course, the natives we’d all planted in our gardens, under the council’s guidelines.   Naturally, the creatures that lived in the underbrush and the snags have thinned out too, and the leeches that lived there in the grey-water ponds have lost many of their hosts.  They seem to have had a meeting and decided to move to more profitable hunting ground.  Upslope, as it were.

 

Aussies are amazingly well prepared for the unusual.  We received lots of friendly recommendations for leech removal.  Just as amazing as the tropical animals themselves, the remedies bordered on the fantastic.  My favorite is Dettol, an all-purpose household antiseptic, found on supermarket shelves.  It cleans wounds, inhibits leeches, and, it has been noted, kills cane toads.  Good to know.  We have cane toads in our neighborhood too.  

 

I’m not quite sure if Dettol belongs in the bathroom with other antiseptics or under the kitchen sink with the critter-killers, roach hotels, and mozzie coils. It just makes sense to have removal remedies at the ready when the leeches are on the prowl.  Attach, sniff, flip.

 

* *

 

For more information about the biology of leeches:  http://www.austmus.gov.au/factSheets/leeches.htm

 

And for cautionary notes on leeches and their removal:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leech

Nav-Girl fancies the back roads

I love road trips — almost any road trip.  There’s an implied freedom on the road.  Get on it.  Keep going.  Wind in your hair, troubles falling by the wayside.  

on the Bruxner Highway

 

I’m not good with maps, however, and this small deficit can be a problem on a road trip.  So I splurged on a Nav-Man, that little GPS device that tells you how to get where you’re going.  I bought it anticipating a trip to Brisbane, where it is essential to have a navigator with an encyclopedic knowledge of ways to maneuver around the labyrinth of one way streets and bridges over the serpentine Brisbane River.  

 

On this trip, however, I was not on my way to Brisbane.  I was on the road to Tenterfield, near the Queensland border in the northern New England Tablelands.  Think sloping pastoral land, vineyards and orchards.  My car was packed to the gills, and at the last minute, I tossed in my new Nav-Man — one of those angel-on-my-shoulder last-minute whims.  I knew my way, but maybe I’d choose a new way home.

 

Timing on the route from Byron Bay to Tenterfield is measured in towns:  Byron to Bangalow, 20 minutes.  Bangalow to Lismore, 25 minutes.  Lismore to Casino, 20 minutes.  Pause.  Stop at McDonalds in Casino for recycling of the cup of tea I had for breakfast, and recharge the bladder with a fresh cup of coffee.  Turn right onto the Bruxner Highway, for one more leg:  an hour and a half to Tenterfield.  

 

The Bruxner Highway is a major truck route from the Northern Rivers coastal area to Armidale, the commercial hub of the New England.  Tenterfield is the elbow in the dog-leg.

 

Casino is my first major stop, scene of a major triumph in my developing Aussie road-trip skills.  Coffee ordering.  Not just any coffee, but coffee like I like it.  You might sense trouble right here, but I’m not talking about double tall, skinny machiatto with a dollop of caramel or anything fancier.  Just plain black coffee.  However, this McDonalds now has a McCafé, so if you order anything but drip coffee (no ice), you have to go to McCafé.  What I ordered was coffee with some room left in it for ice — just a little to cool it down.  That proved to be too much for the kid behind the counter at McDonalds who searched in vain for a cash register button that said “coffee with ice,” and referred me over the invisible line to McCafé.  

 

I moved over to a new queue and a new baristo, (male of the genus barista).  Again, I asked for coffee with a little bit of ice in it.  There must have been a button for such on the McCafé cash register, as this new kid put his head down and went to work.  There was to be quite a bit of activity to create coffee with a little bit of ice, some of it behind the scenes, but still, it was a bit of a surprise that what I got must have been a  McFrappé  — something coffee-ish with more than one dollop of sweet syrup added, milk, and lots of ice put into a blender and delivered with a flourish.  I sampled it, hid my grimace, and surreptitiously put it in the rubbish bin out of sight of the counter.  Consider it a cheap lesson learned.

 

I noodled on this problem for a long time.  Road trips give you lots of time to mentally noodle.  Coffee, not hot.  Translation from American to Australian can be a mine field, in my experience, and I gave this problem a great deal of thought.  

 

I settled on this solution:  I ask for a “long black” and a separate cup of ice at McDonalds — basically a shot of espresso with hot water to fill a coffee cup.  While they may not make an espresso, you do get a cup of plain black coffee.  I deliberately do not queue up at McCafé.  There are too many options at McCafé for straying from the path of your basic cuppa.  Besides (this is a little-known secret), the coffee from both McDonalds and McCafé tastes the exactly the same — espresso machine and instant packages or just plain drip coffee. None elicits anything remotely like, “Oh that was a great cup of coffee!”

 

The counter help seemed OK with my order on this trip.  Once I had my coffee in hand, I stepped outside to my car, poured some of the coffee out of its container, and poured some of the ice in. Contentment settled in.  Now I could enjoy a drinkable cup of coffee without a half-hour wait until it cooled enough to sip without burning my tongue.  One nice mellow cuppa that would take me over the hills and winding roads for an hour and a half into Tenterfield.  

 

 

Northern New England

I pulled out of Casino on that last long leg into Tenterfield with a fresh cup of coffee, just like I like it, adjusted my IPod to the mix I dig, and reveled in the beautiful day and the beautiful view.  Gum groves sped past with golden hills beyond, shadows dappled the road, and the drive seemed oddly easier than it had been last trip.  I relaxed. I was on right on time.  Allison Krause was singing the haunting “Maybe.”  All was right in my world.  I could have purred.

 

Several songs down the track, keeping time to Union Gap’s amazing riffs, I noticed a sign that read “Grafton, 10 km.”  Wait.  Grafton?  Grafton was south.  Way south.  About 45 minutes south.  I needed west.  I pulled off the road and shut off my IPod.  Damn it!  Dispirited, I shuffled around for maps and found one with chocolate stains on it, misfolded, and torn.  

 

As I said, I’m not good with maps, reading them or folding them.  I usually just hand them over to my husband who is thrilled not to have to watch the wrestling match I inevitably have with maps.  Sacred men’s business, map folding is, and my efforts are an obvious tramping into foreign territory.  He folds neatly.  I give up and wad.  He reads maps with the precision of an architect, which he is.  I get distracted by the colors and spaces like an artist, which I am.

 

I dug in my bag for my new Nav-Man to see what my options were.  Nav-Man is actually Nav-Girl, it turns out — with a dulcet Aussie accent.  The first time I encountered Nav-Girl in Australia, she had an American accent, but that’s what a year in-country will do for you — your accent adapts. As I think about it, it is an interesting choice to have a woman’s voice as the guru of navigation.  Who makes that choice, I wonder?  Anyhow, I appreciate it that Nav-Girl has much more success with maps than I do.  I’m all for girl-power and I pay tribute to those whose skills are superior to mine.

 

I turned on the device and it recalculated, even as I did, still fumbling with the map.  I could turn around and drive 45 minutes back to Casino and make the proper westerly turn for Tenterfield, or I could try to pick up the Bruxner Highway closer to Tenterfield via a more direct path.  On my old crumbling map, the more direct path indicates gravel roads and suspect avenues.  The New South Wales government has done quite a bit of road improvement in the last few years, however, and I hoped that Nav-Girl had the latest info on good roads.  

 

Nav-Girl didn’t even consider retracing my steps.  I asked for Tenterfield and Nav-Girl forged ahead.  I prepared to follow directions — always a tough sell in my neighborhood.  Ask anybody.

 

The first part of the diversion was beautiful and uneventful and I zipped along Clarence Way hoping to make up time.  I hadn’t planned for this kind of touring, but I decided to lean into the moment and enjoy the glorious landscape.

 

Then Nav-Girl got adventurous.  She directed me onto the Coaldale Road, which soon turned to gravel.  My pace slowed and my stomach sank.  I dipped into a concrete lined stream bed, climbed out, rounded the hill, turned left onto a gravel road, right onto the next gravel road, and then right again, following Nav-Girl’s instructions.  I passed no one.  

 

On the upside, Coaldale Valley is beautiful — narrow, verdant in the fall sun, a long trough reminiscent of ancient glacial scoops and swaths.  Some paddocks are fenced and some left to join the National Park up the hill.  I drove on, torn between admiration of the lush beauty and the increasing anxiety of driving among huge properties with mailboxes on the road but houses out of sight.  

 

I started doing what I always do in emergencies — make deals with the powers that be, those that are out-there-somewhere.  I hope I won’t have a flat tire out in who-knows-where.  That my mobile phone can get a signal if I need help.  That the skies remain clear as it is apparent that when the streams are running, properties out in the hinterland of the Clarence River Valley are cut off — and so would I be cut off from escape.  

 

I became very aware of being alone in my little car.  Very alone.  Very small and alone.  Older than when I started out.  Worries and fears crowded closer, even the ones I’m usually successful in keeping at bay.

 

Did I have sustenance in the car?  Any survival gear?  The pickings were slim.  I have a small bag of crisps (stale) from an outpost on the Bruxner Highway.  Half a cup of cold coffee — the sad remains of my triumph at McDonalds, lipstick stained, cup now soaked through and leaking.  

 

I have lots of clothes and some books and a kid’s bike, complete with flat tire.  On the positve side, I have a bike pump to deal with the flat tire.  One for the plus column.  I pair that plus with the anxiety that the last time I was on a bike, I took a header over the handlebars.  Call it even.  That’s how it is with anxieties — they have a long memory and they like to bind old fears  and previous disasters to new situations.

 

The Coaldale Road was joined by Stockyard Creek Road and veered northwest.  This is good.  Small note of relief.  At least we are headed in the right direction.  You go, Nav-Girl!  I considered turning on my IPod and revisiting my favorite songs, but I was leary of the distraction that sing-along requires.  I clutched the steering wheel, shifted in my seat, and drive on.  

 

“Turn right in 500 meters.”  Right?  I’m going north now, toward the highway.  Why would I turn right?  Am I circling the hinterland to head toward my starting-point?  I debated.  Nav-Girl or my own instincts?  My reputation as a poor navigator is well-earned.  I’m usually admiring the landscape, shapes, forms, colors, and shadows rather than following the route, so the “my-own-instincts” option seems the lesser of the two.  If I had to pinpoint my location on my own shredded map, I wouldn’t have had a clue.  So, Nav-Girl it was, even though my trust in Nav-Girl was pock-marked by gravel pellets by this time.  

 

Nav-Girl directed me to rejoin Clarence Way.  What a relief!  I could drive the speed limit and press along — the road was paved, although by this time, it had become a typical country road and the width varied from two-lane to one plus the verge.  Road repairs had been a sometime-thing.  That Saturday morning, I had the road, whatever its condition, to myself.  

 

Nav-Girl directed me through the dank dispair of Malabugilmah before she decided on a more direct route again.  Interpid, is Nav-Girl.  I think I will have more detailed maps with me, next time Nav-Girl and I attempt something as adventurous as Grafton to Tenterfield via the back roads.  

 

“In 500 meters, turn left onto Plain Station Road.”  I’m pretty sure Nav-Girl is playing with me now.  More gravel, more precipitous dips into concrete creek-beds with names no one remembers, more climbing into secluded hills away from the Clarence River Valley.  

 

On one hand, it is reassuring that this much of Australia has been mapped in such detail.  On the other hand, what am I doing out here beyond the beyond?  I know this is a pretty well populated for a hinterland area, but still, help, should I need it, would be hours away. 

 

I wanted a satellite picture to pinpoint my progress — and of course, that is exactly what Nav-Girl is.  But I wanted bigger.  More context.  I wanted Google Maps.  I was putting my trust into a computerized voice and a digital read-out 4” x 3.”  

 

I began to match my digital life-line to my atavistic fears and plan my next steps:  votive candles? little wooden statues fed at regular intervals?  rituals and fire and dancing?  Maybe something on my IPod would be just the thing for getting down, ritualistically?  I am at one with the need to understand the inexplicable and connect with forces beyond my ken.

 

A half-hour passed as my little red car made dogged but slow gravel-spitting progress.  I was glad I hadn’t had to rent a car and sign that clause that says you agree to drive only on paved roads.  Whew!  Saved from a half-truth at the car-return!    

 

By then, the road had climbed into eucalyptus scrub and pine forest where granite boulders edged

Granite outcropping -- northern New England

out of the soil.  Eventually, the gravel road became macadam.  More roads joined the Plain Station Road.  Signs appeared more frequently.  Other cars passed.  The road widened for trucks (trucks!) to make the wide turn onto the Plain Station Road from the Bruxner Highway.  I’d made it back to terra cognita, the delicious familiar.  

 

I stopped at the Bruxner Highway and took a deep breath of relief.  And then another.  I clenched and unclenched my hands, and took a sip of cold coffee, wrapped by this time in stained napkins to sop up the leaks.  Note to self:  Mickey D’s coffee cups seem to have a window with an expiration date on it, a time limit for coffee drinking.  I’d investigate next trip.  

 

The highway sign showed me that Nav-Girl had delivered me to the Bruxner Highway as promised — Tabulum to the right, Tenterfield to the left. I was much farther down the Bruxner Highway then I’d anticipated, and had been much longer on the gravel roads than I’d wanted to be.  Still, my breathing slowed and my stomach relaxed.  I was safe for the moment.   I had another hour and a half of hard mountain driving to go, but at least I was back on a road I recognized.  I pulled out my mobile phone and texted my waiting family:  Made wrong turn.  Got lost. OK now.  C u in 1.5 hrs.  xoxo.

 

Upon reflection, I realized I had learned several important lessons from my adventure with Nav-Girl:    

 

*When driving from Byron to Tenterfield, turn right at Casino onto the Bruxner Highway.  Do not head straight south to Grafton.  

 

*Do not concentrate on belting out songs when you’re in foreign territory.  Enjoy the trip at least as much but pay attention more.  

 

*And, I learned to be careful what you ask for.  Nav-Girl fancies the back roads.

back roads

Back again

Just a short note to those who read this blog from time to time.  We’ve had a family health crisis that is resolved for the time being.  We’ve come to terms with “for now.”  We’ve met health professionals who are exceptional and those who might have chosen another field with more success.  We are grateful to those who exceeded our expectations.  Thank you for checking the blog from time to time.

Heft and Mouth-feel

 

Heft and Mouth-feel

My local bakery in Australia makes stunning Anzac biscuits.  Named for the Australia New Zealand Army Corps during World War I, they have morphed from what must have been something akin to hardtack into a rolled oat and coconut cookie with a satisfying crunch.

I try to avoid them when I’m in a slimming mode because they are compelling.  When I have relinquished tight rein on the calorie consumption, I keep them quartered in the freezer, cut when they were still warm, so the oil or butter will stay fresh and the crunch crisp — moist tropical air being the softening agent here. 

I order 2 dozen at a time and parcel out the quarters to friends and relatives for a quick dessert, a snack, or, hell, even breakfast. See?  I’m not entirely in control when Anzac Biscuits dwell in my freezer.  They call to me.  I like to check the inventory from time to time, like Pooh conducted inventories of honey.  In fact, as I write this, I would head for the freezer right now to consider the sweet crunchy bits in my mouth for descriptors, but alas, no such bikkies dwell there now.

When my daughter arrived at our house before we did one spring, she set up the house for us, including the Anzac bikkies nesting in the freezer.  When she went to the bakery to put in her order, the clerk asked her if she was the daughter of that American lady.  Bingo.  That would be me.  I have a certain reputation.

I don’t mind being the American lady — I AM an American lady.   One who likes Anzac Biscuits.  I’m often introduced as “my American friend.”  Rare is the additive “who likes Anzac Biscuits” but I don’t reveal this to just anyone.  But, American, I remain.  

Aussie’s have a national identity compartment for those not born their soil.  An acquaintance of mine will always be “the English woman’ even though she’s lived in Australia for 35 years, is an Australian citizen, and has Australian children.  It makes me wonder if the first generation is always transitional — longing for the remembered good bits of what was once home and enjoying the benefits while dodging the pitfalls of the new one. 

I guess the question is: when does one begin to feel more Aussie than English, more Aussie than American, more Aussie than Cambodian, more Aussie than Japanese?  Is it when outsiders let you be Australian or when you make an internal switch?  A friend of mine who married an American and who has lived most of her professional life in the States, thinks of herself as Oz-merican — internally, and now both legally.  

We humans have been on the move since Africa — adapting, grouping, overpopulating and moving on. One in four Australians was born elsewhere.  Everyone in Australia is from an immigrant family, really, even the First Culture indigenous.  All of us have been, if you look back far enough.  In fact, that’s what strikes me most in cities like Sydney — how many people are there from different cultures, from different countries, and how they’ve made their way to these shores rather than others.  Quirks of fate or deliberate choices.  Or maybe people just kept moving on from discomfort until they arrived somewhere useful, somewhere with a recognizable comfort.

Comfort.  When I was in the states and longing for a bit of down under, I tried to make Anzac cookies on my own.  I used to have a fair hand at oatmeal cookies when my kids were little and Anzac’s are basically a tropical oatmeal cookie — coconut substitutes for nuts or raisons or even a chocolate chip or two.  But my effort was disastrous.  My oven was too hot, and melted the butter, so the cookies got too flat, too lacy, and too crisp.  

The mouth-feel almost as important as the taste.  Mine were more like oatmeal candy when what I was looking for was heft.  That didn’t stop me from having one or two just to get a hint of comfort and my husband had a few more, just to make sure my taste test needed to be verified, but the rest of the batch ended up in the rubbish bin.

I have a friend who loves baking a good dessert.  Of course, she is reed slim in one of those irritating karmic injustices.  She makes nifty Anzac cookies — actually better than the bakery as she doesn’t spare expensive ingredients.  But there is something compelling about those bakery cookies — thick and crunchy.  They can’t sell them fast enough to their regular trade, so they get rancid sitting for days on the shelf, although I don’t know why they don’t freeze them, like I do. I might suggest that when I order my next batch. 

Maybe you’d like to experiment with Anzac cookies?  Here are a couple of links for experimentation.  One is for a version in American measurements and the next with Australian measurements.  By the way, if you should happen to see “golden syrup” in the recipe, Karo syrup fills the same role.  (-Yes, I have made a pecan pie with golden syrup for an Aussie-grown Thanksgiving dinner, complete with locally grown natural-looking turkey in the early summer November heat.  Works fine.)  

Bald Mountain near the Queensland border with NSW

April 25 is Anzac Day, to honor those who have died in foreign wars, particularly those who died in the disastrous assault on the Turks at Gallipoli during World War I.  As you try these cookies, think of the young men who went adventuring to war half way around the world and died too young, denying Australia and New Zealand young families and eventually people would populate young countries.  

1.  http://projects.washingtonpost.com/recipes/2007/12/12/anzac-biscuits/

2.  http://goaustralia.about.com/od/practicalinformation/r/anzacrecipe.htm

Note:  I include a photo of Bald Mountain from a recent hike near the Queensland/New South Wales border.  I imagine that those soldiers who fought and died at Gallipoli thought about the stark beauty of their homeland when they were so far away.  

Readable Feast

Some things just have to be shared — a great wine, a delicious recipe, a good joke, and fabulous new books. The appeal of these extraordinary books below overrides the need to be cautious with cash these days.  They are worth the price and worth revisiting often.

Two of these books were picked up at my favorite Sydney bookstore, Potts Point Bookshop on Macleay Street, Potts Point.  This wonderful intimate little bookstore is filled with well-selected, unusual and interesting fare, complete with padded bench seats for a quick browse (see the end for details).

Beautifully laid out and delicious detailed is The Artist’s Lunch, at home with Australia’s most celebrated artists, by writer and Potts Point gallery owner Alice McCormick and photojournalist Sarah Rhodes.  

The Artist's Lunch by McCormick and Rhodes

 

Not only does this exquisite book take you into the artists’ studios, detailing and showcasing their art work, but it also follows its theme by delivering rich visuals and interviews about the artists’ take on food and friends.  And yes, ultimately, there are some recipes, but the real feast is in the visuals and the revealing prose.  

Here’s a snippet from an interview with painter Philip Woflhagen:  

Before Catherine and I were married and I was living in Sydney, Catherine had come up from Melbourne to visit and I thought I’d impress her with one of my culinary delights: turkey cooked in pomegranate juice, a Middle-Eastern dish rich in symbolism of fertility and love.  First I sqeezed all the juice from the pomegranates and marinated the turkey.  After cooking it up, I took the lid off the saucepan — it was the darkest meanest-looking purple stew you can imagine.  There was really nothing I could do, so I turned the lights down very low and decided not to say anything.  I served it up.  When we’d finished eating, Catherine looked at me and smiled.  Her teeth were completely purple.  God we laughed.  The acid in the pomegranate had reacted with the cast iron of the saucepan.  We got our iron intake right up there that night and had stains on our teeth for days to prove it.  So always use an enamel dish when you do something with pomegranate! (p. 84)

On a trip up to the wine country around Stanthorpe QLD, we picked up A Good Nose & Great Legs, the art of wine from vine to table by Robert Geddes.  

Also produced by Murdock Books, the superb graphics make the solid information completely accessible without pandering.  I find myself using this book as a reference, but get snagged into interesting bits, coming away with more than I planned.  Here are some notes on Australia’s world-famous shiraz.  

A Good Nose & Great Legs by Geddes

From Chapter 3, Varieties of Wine: Reds and Blends, Geddes writes:
 
Recent DNA tests pinpointed the birth of shiraz to be around 2000 years ago in the Rhone Valley.  Shiraz is understood to be a cross between the now obscure white mondeuse blanche and the extinct dureza.  It had limited planting in France, so Australia largely had the variety to itself until France reappraised it and recently planted huge volumes.  

Is there any place in Australia that can’t grow shiraz?  Certainly there are exceptions but shiraz has shown magnificent ability to adapt to the needs of the industry and the dry, warm Australian climate to consistently produce a distinctive big burst of recognizable flavour wherever it is grown.  Australian shiraz delivers like a fast bowler in their [sic] prime with line, length and finish.  (p. 90)

Also beautifully produced is the graphically gorgeous Dollar Dreaming, inside the Aboriginal art world by journalist (The Australian) and New York Times art critic Benjamin Genocchio, from Hardie Grant Books.

Dollar Dreaming by Genocchio

There is so much to learn from this book that I find myself reading it in smaller doses, although its style is extremely readable.  Genocchio not only chronicles the origins of the Aboriginal art market in Australia, from its inception to the current condition, but he delivers insightful examples of the intersection of the mainstream Australian culture with its contemporary art consumers and the Aboriginal communities as they have are today.  One learns about what stories are told in paintings and what is not revealed, about the cultural pressures on well-known artists to produce, on the legitimate and shadow art trade, and so much more. 

From Chapter Four, “The birth of modern Aboriginal art” is the following:

The first ‘dot paintings’ had few dots at all.  They were, rather, an accurate cursive-style record of cultural traditions, sometimes containing depiction of sacred objects and secret information that were forbidden to the sight of the uninitiated.  It is well documented that once these paintings began to see outside the settlement they provoke outrage and anger within the desert Aboriginal community.  There was even violence, with Aboriginal people hurling stones and boomerangs at an Alice building housing the first exhibition by Papunya Tula artists.  

Forced to respond to these pressures, the artists began to develop a more simplified iconography that was less revealing of secret material.  Dots — previously of little intrinsic importance to the designs, though the shimmering effect they created was highly valued as a symbol of Dreaming power — came to dominate the pictures.  The colour scheme was also expanded.  In short, almost as soon as the artwork began to be sold to outsiders it began to change.  (p. 64)

Indulge yourself.  Dive into this literary feast.  They are easy on the waistline and great for the brain.   

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For more information and locators for Potts Point Bookshop, go to www.pottspointbookshop.com.au or call 02-9331-6642.  They will order and send books at your request.  

The Artist’s Lunch by Alice McCormick and Sarah Rhodes, Murdock Books. ISBN: 978-1921259517.  About $60 AUD or £25.

A Good Nose & Great Legs by Robert Geddes, Murdock Books, ISBN: 978-1740458764. About $38 AUD, £17.

Dollar Dreaming, Inside the Aboriginal Art World by Benamin Genocchio, Hardie Grant Books, ISBN: 978-1-74066-609-1.  About $40 AUD.

The Archibald

The Archibald

Usually I find portraiture under-mesmerizing.  I realize that’s an ugly revealing self-portrait in itself.  My art-in-the-dark professors, in many classes I undertook as an undergraduate, lavished praise on the portraits, but I’ve never been moved by them in a visceral way.  Even Rembrandt — the mystery of camera oscura, the pear-like lighting, the florid flesh as overripe — has that distance of view, the artist’s clinical dissection.  I can certainly admire the composition, the painterly expertise, the innovation — all without involvement.  But somehow in the series of portraiture shows that encompass the Archibald Prize and the Doug Moran National Portraiture Prize — the partnership of painter and subject, of painterliness and subject-ness, the clinical and direct — all come together in an astonishingly gripping show, year after year.  

The Archibald Prize (at the Gallery of New South Wales) and the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize (at the Mitchell Library) — the first a show of paintings of Australia’s famous people, and the second of paintings of Australia’s not-famous people — elevates portrait painting to the sublime.  Here the fusion of the painter and subject maximizes.  Each canvas has its own deliciousness, the sensuous mud-between-the-toes, paint-on-the-skin, smelly-cheese-and-great-wine smearing of paint.  And again, each has the revelation of character of the subject that great photographs ghost but great paintings capture.  Nowhere else has portraiture reached these heights in contemporary painting with such regularity.

Of the 200 entered, about 100 are hung.  The artists’ approaches vary from photorealistic to abstract, from representational to conceptual.  What interests me most, and what meets the threshold of art for me, is that each makes you think, to reexamine what portraiture means, what the self-portrait that we live each day means to each of us and those around us.  It’s rather like listening to Yo Yo Ma and Eric Clapton explore the rise and fall of emotion in music.  

That’s not to say that I agree with all the choices.   There are always a few that give rise to a big question mark hovering over one’s head like a thought balloon. (See Salon des Refusés below.) And there are a few that don’t rise at all to the level of painterly expertise found in the others.  But most, including the Packing Room Prize — the favorite of those who unpacked the show — are mink-on-bare-shoulders sumptuous.  

Not only does the Gallery of New South Wales host the Archibald, but also two more concurrent shows in adjoining gallery spaces: Sulman Prize for the best genre painting executed in the last two years and the Wynne Prize for the best landscape painting or figurative sculpture.  

I’d seen the Archibald’s traveling show which hits a handful of regional galleries throughout Australia each year at various places — at Murwillumbah and at Grafton.  Because the regional galleries are relatively small and the attendance low after the opening, one can get up close and personal with the paintings.  Each regional gallery has an allied restaurant with exceptional fare, and the dual delights of great food and terrific art were reason enough to indulge in both.  But, I’d longed to see the Archibald in its opening venue — the Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney. 

Last year, I did get a chance to see the show in its opening month in Sydney.  The three concurrent shows at the Gallery of New South Wales and the Doug Moran across the Domaine at the Mitchell Library is just one big art banquet worth delving into.  This year, the Archibald, Sulman and Wynn Prizes opens to the public on March 7 and show through May 24.  Luckily, there are a couple of cafes at the gallery for weary feet and lots of places to rest in the great halls between the galleries.

The disappointment for me was that there were so many people at the Gallery of NSW, the lines for entrance long, and the distant view of the paintings impossible.  Far better for close-up scrutiny and the long view, I realized to wait for the regional shows, see it an one’s leisure, without the crowds.  (see schedule below)

That said, however, will the crowds deter me from seeing this year’s Archibald in Sydney?  Not on your tintype, missy!  Count me in!  

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The 2008 Archibald Prize is at the New England Regional Art Museum in Armidale until 8 Feb., at the Newcastle Regional Art Gallery from 14 Feb – 19 April, at the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery from 20 April – 14 June, and the Mornington Peninsula Regional Gallery from 2 July – 23 August.  (www.thearchibaldprize.com.au/exhibition/tour)

The 2009 Archibald travels to Bendigo Art Gallery 30 May – 12 July, to Western Plains Cultural Centre 25 July – 13 September, to the Cowra Art Gallery 19 Sept – 25 Oct, to the Broken Hill Regional Art Gallery on 6 November – 6 December, and to the Griffith Regional Gallery 14 January – 14 February 2010.  (www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/media/coming/aws09_important_dates

The best of the rest of the Archibald, the Wynn, and the Sulman (submitted but not chosen to hang in the main show)?  At the Salon des Refusés, of course. Opening March 8, 2009.  At the National Trust Gallery at the Rocks, Sydney.  For more information:  http://www.nsw.nationaltrust.org.au/properties/gallery/exhibitions/salon/

For more information on the Doug Moran Prize, go to:  http://www.moranprizes.com.au/portrait.php

Pearl Beach

Pearl Beach

Pearl Beach photo credit: Ann Darling

High cliffs protect tiny Pearl Beach from the bite of the wind off the sea and its gentler cousin carries the scent of frangipani, salt-water, and sunscreen.  Two brown children splash and shriek and dodge the spray of the waves breaking over the edge of the concrete swimming pool, tide-filled, that someone built long ago just under the cliffs. Above us, the sky shimmers paint-box blue while a late summer storm builds out at sea.  I gulp cool fresh water and rub the icy bottle over my forehead and down the back of my neck.  It won’t rain today, despite the tease of the clouds.

Lizzy plays in the shallows of the surf, just out of my reach and farther up the sand, on the pile of striped beach towels, Crispen dozes over a magazine, taking an auntie-break while I take my turn on watch.  

We paddle along the beach, Lizzy and I, ducking the waves and floating on our backs.  I hold her until she relaxes in a slight V, letting the water cradle her, sooth her, play with her.  Her curls dance flaxen just under the surface glitter, swooping and swaying as the water rises and falls.

I am utterly content.  I love her.  I love being her grandmother.  There was a time when I thought I might not get a chance to laugh with her, so each moment is a treasure I relish.  I hold this one close and savor it.  I turn it over and celebrate its perfection, this gift.

We run out of the water and walk along the sand, spent wavelets tickling our ankles.  Here, right here for a castle, don’t you reckon?  We sit and dig and pile and dribble, the sand rough on our hands and the water silken.  We hunt clumps of seaweed and broken shells, gnarled twigs and rocks on the way to sand.  We festoon our castle moat to tower.  

We ease back to the sea to float once again, to let the sand fall away, to be held safe in this gentle afternoon.  

*****

Note:  Pearl Beach is in New South Wales,  a 2.5 hours’ drive north of Sydney, just south of Woy Woy.  Drive south out of Woy Woy, past Umina Beach on the way to Patonga in the Brisbane Waters Area and watch for the signs to Pearl Beach.   

And from my friend Ann regarding the name “Pearl Beach”:  The tide comes in and as it retracts it forms a string of pearls on the beach!!  The only place you can see it easily is from a wonderful headland – called Ettalong Point Lookout.

Grammar and Me

Author’s Note:  A small aside, here, from the usual Oz-ponderings, produced during a month-long INTENSIVE course in Teaching English as a Second Language.  

Grammar and Me

Grammar wore braids — steel-grey braids crossed over the top of a center part and anchored behind the ears.  Grammar’s blue eyes matched a grey/blue nylon print dress jerked determinedly into place and a hand-knit grey sweater slung across the shoulders.  Grammar had a wrinkled serviceable face, intelligent and animated.  Grammar demanded nothing less than your best, and grammar knew when you’d produced an inferior product.  Grammar’s name was Mrs. Noble.  Mrs. Marjorie Noble.  I took every class I could from her in high school.   

I can see Mrs. Noble at the green chalkboard, diagramming sentences.  They look like chemical formulas to me or trees with side-ways branches.  I am concentrated on the green spaces in between the shapes,  I did not see the point of learning the names of the sentence parts.  I wanted to use language freely, to rebel from structure, from established form into new form, because at 17, I was sure I’d have a brilliant new form unknown in the Western World.  

I respected Mrs. Noble as I respected few adults in those days.  And as much as I needed the structure demanded from her, I abandoned the delight in language, even as I embraced its form.  It has only been in the last few years that I have come to love using language again, to enjoy breaking the rules and allow words to lap and play at the edges of my own vision. I learned to be correct and dissect, but I lost the joy. 

I know now that any discipline has structure, has rules, has a framework;  it doesn’t matter what that discipline is.  Learning the rules gives one a starting place for rule-breaking, for free-flowing riffs and blue notes.  An exploration of the rules gives one a chance to develop meta-associations with other threads of discovery, connecting the dots from far-off places.  

Architect Mies van der Rohe said there is “ecstasy within the box” and that is what structure and discipline are: a box.  I have a friend who is a terrific poet.  Poetry is a form that requires enormous discipline.  When times are good, we spend a week on Lake Shasta with our friend.  At night, by the light of a Virgin of Guadalupe candle and a serious consideration of the vintner’s, distiller’s, and brewer’s arts, he reads his poetry.  I lay my rekindled interest in language at his feet.  How beautifully the words flow, echo each other, juxtapose, and clash.

Now grammar has more than steel-grey braids.  Now grammar is discipline which delicately tethers unrestrained freedom.

Bubbler Crabs

Bubbler Crabs

I’ve felt like a bubbler crab lately.  I’ll bet you have too.  

Bubbler Crab

These little sand-colored crabs occupy the highest low tide line, ensuring a twice-daily banquet delivered by the tide .  When I walk my local beach at low tide, I see whole colonies of them — identified by the little balls of sand they leave behind.  

Their colonies are about a meter wide, and stretch for a block along the sand, stop for a meter or two and then start again for another block — a good half-kilometer or so all together.  Some areas are crab metropolises and some are lonely outposts of crab-dom.

Twice each day, these tiny creatures come out of their holes and glean the sand for food, molding the cleaned granules into a ball forced up through the mouth-parts, then discarded on top of the sand, another ball already begun. The sand balls are the leavings, the crusts of bread left on the plate, the shells, the gristle, the clumps of fat, pits, seeds, stones, grit, and other inedibles of sand bubbler crab cuisine.  

Each line of sand balls occupies the edge of a trench that a crab has mined, and each ball represents the limit of the outward expansion until the next mining operation is undertaken.  And always, an escape route is cleared for a quick retreat back into its home hole.

Bubbler Crab Colony

The sand bubbler crab is perpetually wary.  Silver gulls, menacing giants in sand-crab juxtaposition, prey on the knuckle-sized creatures.  The crab’s frenzied gleaning and cleaning gives it away.  Darting home or freezing in place are the necessary but risky survival strategies, depending on how far the crab has ventured from its home hole.  Near = dash home.  Too far = freeze in place.  Only the crab knows how far is too far or how near is near enough.

Once the sand dries out, the eating frenzy and ball creation ceases. Gulls head for more promising territory, leaving the odd red-legged sentry behind.  The sand crab tidies its hole, ejecting little puffs of sandy detritus, and readies its den for the next tide.  It will poke an eye-stalk out of its hole (or perhaps a leg to get the eye-stalk into viewing position), but will zip back into the hole at any hint of predators, footfalls, shadows, or any other likely danger.  And it will wait for the advance and retreat of the tide for another smorgesbord of minute morsels.

I, too, am hunkered in my little hole, cleaning out the overly sandy bits, and waiting for the next tide.  Rather than living in dread of the next silver gull of disaster to view me as a tasty treat, however, I’m trying to be wholeheartedly positive in the present (a daily challenge), while planning for the future. 

Point Byron

I glean the details of my Oz-life for little story bubbles to leave on my life’s beach and relish the people we hold dear.  That doesn’t mean I don’t obsess over election trends, fingers tapping and scrolling and feeding on shifts and feints and obfuscations.  And I am clearing a path of retreat, just in case freezing in place proves to be a less-than-useful strategy.  

I’ve felt like sand bubbler crab lately.  I’ll bet you have too.  

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For more on the amazing sand bubbler crabs, check out this video:  http://videos.howstuffworks.com/animal-planet/29027-fooled-by-nature-sand-bubbler-crabs-video.htm