Love For All, Hatred For None

You know you are grieving if you find your eyes welling up when you're standing in a shopping centre looking for JB Hifi. Or sitting on a train going to meet someone for dinner and suddenly you are crying and patting your pockets for a tissue.

The massacre in New Zealand shocked us. In Australia we feel pain for everyone in our next-door-neighbour country. Husbands, wives, teachers and classmates come from there. We especially feel deep sympathy for people of Muslim faith, there and everywhere. Our sisters-in-law, brothers, workmates, and friends are Muslims. How could an Australian do this. May we learn not to demonise people. Welcome the stranger.

During a big loss, you might suddenly think of someone else you've loved, who has recently passed. Or not so recently passed, but you will never forget. Grief can widen like a net and catch depression with sadness. After the New Zealand tragedy, buckets of rain came down in Sydney, making a physical gloom to match the mental darkness.

Putting one foot in front of the other can be a struggle. Stop to pat a friendly dog. Little things help us go on.

Walking past a school I get tears in my eyes when I see a banner on the fence. My friend later says "I watched the children and their teacher hang it. I gave them the thumbs up."
The banner says, "Everyone belongs here."

***

Our neighbourhood 'purple of the month' plants the Tibouchinas are gloriously full and can help mend the heart and eyes. I've noticed that when I stop to drink in their glow, other people share the love. A couple stops beside me, a woman saying "Isn't it beautiful, the blossoms are at their peak."

Her male companion points to a tree further ahead, laden with green buds. "That one will be out soon."

The woman says "That's a gum tree." It could promise to be a good one though... I'll check back when I need a dose of purple (or pink, or red) in coming weeks, after the tibouchinas have faded.

Now I'll share a short (true) story - My Australia Day (Invasion Day). 

Fear isn't useful.

26 January, 2019

I'm walking toward the beach in tropical north Queensland. It's a treat to be staying a week so close to sand; just out the back door, across the lawn. I go there all times of day: sundown, mornings, sun at my back, high tides lapping my toes (don't get your feet wet because of deadly jellyfish), and low tides so far out they expose a flat expanse of beach covered with sand dollar trails.

A sign here says big sea turtles nest on this beach, near the town of Mackay. The turtles don't lay eggs until they are thirty to fifty years old. Incredibly, when they are ready to lay, they return to the same beach where they hatched all those years ago. Mind boggling.

This particular afternoon I am heavy hearted. In the morning, a highly intelligent, sometimes unhappy, dear nine-year-old relative had asked, 'What's the point of everything if you are just going to die?' Flummoxed, his mother and I talked about finding fulfillment; following passions; work, love, commitment. We weren't sure we were helping. Afterward I am reflecting on the difficulty of 'finding your purpose'.

A discarded red can of 'Mother' soft drink lies amongst vines on the dune I pass through. I flinch a little - I don't like litter, and I find the jagged style of black lettering confronting. It conjures thoughts of the Third Reich. Some cigarette butts lie near it, yuck.

A group stands a few meters away. Noisy young people, partying hard. I feel nervous and uncomfortable, and veer north up the beach, to avoid them.

As I walk I marvel at the range of creatures and vegetation washed up on the shore line, things that don't often appear on Sydney beaches. Sea stars, huge cuttlebones, coconuts and palm hearts, clam, scallop and crab shells. I put flotsam in my pockets, a plastic cigarette lighter, water bottle lid, fishing line, and an encrusted thong. Even on this pristine-seeming beach, there are items that could choke a precious turtle.

A father and daughter in wetsuits skim through the water on boards. Another family is fishing. Besides these small groups, the huge beach is basically empty. I feel good not being in the city for this Australia Day - away from politics, crowded events, nationalism. I turn around and walk back.

When I pass the trail head where I've come in, the young people are gone. Something glints - a glassy phone lies on the sand! This is the second time I have found a phone on the sand this week. The previous find looked pretty manky from being in the sea and I had put it on a bench near the trail, where it sat for days. Just another piece of junk.

I leave this one where it is, seeing a man and woman in the distance. I walk south toward them, calling out, "Did you lose a phone?"
"No, but thank you" they say, sounding appreciative. They weren't with the group that was there earlier.

Walking slowly back, I wonder what to do. I start picking up cans, something I hadn't wanted to do initially because they're bulky. There aren't many, just some weathered 4 X tinnies. When I pass the phone again, I pick it up.

I swipe its screen, thinking I'll try to ring a number in its list, but it's locked. No can do.

Then it rings, my hand feels the vibration. Message on screen says 'Alana' is calling. I swipe to answer: the phone lets me. 'Hello' I say, 'I just found this phone'. 'Oh my god' she says into my ear, slightly shrieking, and then I see she is approaching me and talking to me, a young woman or girl, with a phone to her head. A tall young man (or boy) is approaching with her. They were part of the group that had been there.

'Thank you! My phone!' he says. I say I just picked it up, was going to try ringing someone at the very moment they rang. They are giddy and laughing and can't believe it.

Alana says 'We've been looking for this for over an hour' and 'I'm so drunk' she says, stumbling.
The boy says 'I'm from Moranbah, I need this phone. I'm so happy... My Dad will be happy - he paid for it.'
I laugh and say I'm so glad I found them, or they found me.
'Can I hug you?' the boy asks, and does. 'Sure' I say and hug him back.

They wander off toward the apartments. In this little interaction I feel I found 'my purpose' for this day. I brought joy to someone, and helped clean a beach at the same time.

I feel kind of silly for my reaction to the kids when I had first seen them. Was I afraid of teenagers? (Does a group equal a 'gang'/ was I worried because they were drinking and loud?)

Or did I think they were white nationalists because I caught a vibe off a 'Mother' label, and Australia Day often buzzes with negative connotations. All I know now is, after being inadvertently brought together with a few of the kids, we have good feelings for each other. I had pre-judged them from a distance. I don't know their political beliefs, if they have any, but they seem like decent people, although drunk.

When I pass the 'Mother' can again I pick it up. I take it to the bag where the apartments are collecting cans, with proceeds to benefit turtle rescue.

I acknowledge the traditional Indigenous owners of Blacks Beach who were dispossessed. 
I acknowledge too the sorrows of the Pacific Islanders who were taken in slavery to Mackay to work in sugar cane fields.

Paved Paradise

It isn't pretty but it's a subject I looked at this week: cement. Mostly it's not very aesthetic to look at, but sometimes it can be pleasing to the eye, like the arches on the Annandale aqueduct.

I found out more about some wayfinding aids (mentioned last week in 'Australia, Street'). When town planners 'set them in stone' on concrete footpaths, they clearly thought the designations would last forever. Little did they know the 'municipality' and council areas would be constructed, deconstructed and amalgamated many times.
  

A blink in time: 1906 to 1948. But the footpath sign lives on in 2019.

'Municipality of Petersham' was created in 1906, born out of the 'borough' created in 1871 from townlets Stanmore, Petersham and others. The 'municipality' lasted until 1948, when it merged and fell under the name of Marrickville Municipality. They were happy enough together for nearly 70 years - until 2016 when the 'forced merger' with two other municipalities created Inner West Council.

I'm trying hard not to discuss 'politics' in this blog. But it wants to creep in.

Back to concrete 'standing the test of time'. Its discoverers knew that. It is similar to ceramics: if you use very high heat to cook certain materials - types of mineral dust - they change and can be bound together almost forever. In some archaeological sites, pot sherds or shards are found more than anything else. 

The Annandale aqueduct has a plaque explaining it was made in 1896 from a revolutionary material: reinforced concrete. A royal commission investigated its use; and the builders were forced to post a large 'surety' and guarantee maintenance for three years. More than 120 years later it's fine.

At a California mission site I worked at years ago, we found fired-clay roof tile pieces by the bucket load. 

(The adobe blocks which made the buildings were only sun-dried, and 'melted' when exposed to rain.) Fragments of plates also made up great quantities, especially from dates closer to the present; the California Indians who lived in the area and were recruited to the mission did not make pottery as a rule since they had an incredible range of baskets that could cover almost any task.

I went down a research hole to understand the origins of pottery and porcelain. Travelling to England's Staffordshire District I visited pottery factories and the home of Wedgwood. Even while in England seeds of doubt were being sown, about whether this was the job for me. I thirstily went to exhibitions and free archaeology lectures. Sitting in one lecture about medieval shoes... the speaker droning about minutiae... something snapped in me and I lost momentum. I don't doubt the usefulness of all kinds of arcane subjects; I just found that even I had a limit.

Bowls and plates made from pottery or china last a very long time, or at least pieces of them do.

Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash.com

Another limit I brushed against was digging up bones. Some archaeologists dream of a day they could be privileged to uncover a human skeleton. I dreaded it, and luckily was never asked to do so. I believe in science but also feel unseen connections from past to present and person to person and I didn't want to cross that. I did shake a lot of bone fragments through screens, and tried to learn from experts to identify them, so as not to unwittingly handle human ones. (So many cow bones, fish bones, deer bones, bird bones.) 

I love handling a cool stone arrowhead, or glassy obsidian flake, or smooth grinding stone as much as anyone. But over time for a number of reasons I veered away from archaeology and into 'interpretation'. There is plenty of stuff already dug up, and more to come, and maybe I could be of use helping spread understanding of material objects.

This homeowner built their front fence from homemade concrete

 instead of buying shaped sandstone forms and pillars like everyone else in the street.

Regarding concrete: in our 'throwaway' societies with great pockets full of money, we are able to finance the wholesale destruction of previous concrete buildings. I first saw a stadium demolished in San Francisco. In 1989 they tore down Kezar Stadium, standing since the 1920s on the edge of Golden Gate Park. In my walks, I would gape at trucks being filled with endless piles of white concrete rubble. I simply couldn't figure it out. Couldn't quite believe what I was seeing and hearing.

Kezar opened as a 50,000 seat stadium, where famous football teams played, and concerts. But it was superceded when Candlestick park opened in 1971. Reading this week to see if I could find why Kezar was demolished, I found this: "Cramped bathrooms, minimal concession stands, and most of all no parking were all problematic for Kezar." * 

(There is a rebuilt sporting ground there now, much smaller.)

The knocking down of stadiums has been in the news lately as a political subject, but as I said, not going there...

I used to not understand the material very well. Doing some home handy-work and wanting to patch holes in a driveway, I bought a bag of 'cement' and mixed it with water and poured it in. Later I was told by others wiser than me, 'you can't just use cement, you have to mix it with something to make concrete' - hence the bags of 'sand and cement' for sale that I'd overlooked. Plain cement sort of works, but isn't as solid as concrete.

They put this concrete around metal bars. That's usually what 'reinforced' concrete means.

Cement has been in the news recently, with growing awareness of its high carbon cost. Says someone who knows more about it than me, 'Cement is made of gypsum and lime. You heat them very hot by burning coal.' This makes white cement powder. Add water and it magically turns hard. (But first add sand or pebbles to make concrete.)

High fuel usage is needed to make the lime by burning limestone, or burning crushed shells. 

In early Sydney a lot of mortar for joining bricks into house walls came from Darling Harbour (Cockle Bay) shells. Researchers have pointed out that the shell piles there were middens from Indigenous living sites. Colonists desecrated these 'easy picking' places and when they were gone, people turned to the harder work of prising shells off rocks. If you've ever had an oyster cut, you know how awful this job would be. 

Modern lime for cement is often made from limestone instead of shells. In either case, pits or kilns are where it is burnt. Some old historic areas have interesting looking 'lime kilns'.

'If it were a country, the cement industry would be the third largest in the world, its emissions behind only China and the U.S.', John Vidal said in The Guardian, 26 February 2019. Making cement creates around 8% of global emissions. 

I think we all need to look at the materials we use and ask is there a way to 'reduce, reuse, recyle'? If something no longer suits our purposes, can we 'repurpose' it somehow? I wonder perhaps not how but why things like Roman-built stadiums and aqueducts still stand. We know the materials can last, but it's the will to continue using them that seems to fade so easily now.

* Website by Bob Busser. https://ballparks.smugmug.com/Kezar

Australia, Street

Australia Road writer's blog - thoughts on street names (and roads, and avenues)

I named this blog 'Australia Road' instead of Australia Street although I considered the second one. But I didn't want to steal from John Kingsmill - the late writer who documented Sydney so touchingly in his memoirs 'The Innocent' and 'Australia Street'.

Also, there is an Australia Street in the Newtown area of Sydney, and I wanted to give a nod to it but not be unalterably associated. (In coming weeks you will hear more from me about it.)

In Newtown the old street signs were attached to buildings.

I first found John Kingsmill's writing in a file at Waverley Library's local history room. The copied pages were included for their sharp detail about landmarks I was researching; Kingsmill grew up in Bondi and Waverley in Sydney's east in the 1920s and 1930s. But, in a file separated from their context, the pages didn't shimmer like the word-pictures the author paints in his books.

Later, in a used book store, I found 'Australia Street' and bought it, mistakenly thinking it had something to do with Australia Street, Newtown. (It's about Bondi.) I never discovered why he chose that title. But I did discover a good writer, concise and spot-on, like the ad man he was; with an eye for theatrical details, like the actor he aspired to be. Some parts of this book (and 'The Innocent') are so funny you will need a hanky, which is better than can be said for a lot of history. 

Maybe he picked 'Australia Street' for his title because of its implied meaning of a home base and a universality of experience. A sort of 'Anytown' idea. 

Another street sign on a Newtown building.

The words on the album poster say 'EVERYTHING NOT SAVED WILL BE LOST'.

Reflecting on 'roads' versus 'streets', I think 'streets' convey a sense of arrival at a destination. Like 'Easy Street', or 'Main Street, USA.' In England, people often call shopping strips 'the high street'.

In Stanmore you know where you stand. 

When I was growing up, I thought 'street', 'road', and 'avenue' were interchangeable.

I had a vague intuition that 'boulevard' was a larger street, and 'lane' was very small. Crescent and circle, obvious; 'parade' a delightful deviation found sometimes at coastal venues.

Kingsmill had a clear understanding of the differences. In one scene he went to visit his friend in Barracluff Avenue, Bondi Beach. "It was no more an avenue than any other Bondi street of the time - unless you counted telegraph poles as trees, in which case the regimented forest of grey posts, ghosts of fallen eucalypts, crowned with a bristling array of wires, turned every street into an avenue." * 

So, an avenue is meant to contain trees, apparently...

These wayfinding aids in Stanmore are comforting.

I'm so glad the letters have been preserved.

Recently I've picked up some other ideas. A 'road' is often the path you take to go somewhere. 'Road to ruin' or the Yellow Brick Road. Could it ever have been called the Yellow Brick Street?

You can be on Parramatta Road, Camperdown, but you must travel twenty or so kilometres before finding Parramatta. And in small, far flung Kandos, New South Wales, you can follow the Sydney Road; it will take a while, but eventually you'll arrive.

This bendy road doesn't lead to Salisbury, but it does lead to the Salisbury Hotel (pub).

Frenchmans Road** in Randwick aimed toward Botany Bay where French explorer La Perouse landed in Indigenous homelands. The road isn't straight, a distinguishing feature shared with some other roads, indicating the willingness of foremothers and fathers to follow landscape. (Most people want to save energy while traveling - why go up and over a ridge when you can go along the crest?)

I acknowledge and pay deep respect to the Eora people who always lived in Sydney and still live here. They knew the best routes and refined their paths over time. Later road-makers followed them. Frenchmans (which used to include Avoca Street) is one of the oldest roads in Australia, dating to 1788 and before.

In other places too, early 'roads' cut later streets at odd angles: Embarcadero Road in Palo Alto, California, presumably used to lead to a wharf (its meaning in Spanish) on San Francisco Bay. Now it's a quirk in a square grid imposed over it.

Australia Road and Australia Street are not common street names in Australia.

Unlike Oxford Street. People were saying during Mardi Gras that there are 123 Oxford Streets in Australia able to share Sydney's Oxford Street celebrations. And I would guess there's about one thousand Victoria Streets - my street directory shows more than one hundred in greater Sydney alone. 

Classical architecture was the favoured look for official buildings. 

This one is on the corner of Australia Street.

Australia Street Newtown might have been named because a lot of very old government type buildings stand there: court house, police station, town hall and more. In a similar descriptive vein, Church Street nearby holds the church and cemetery. 

I noticed through an internet search that there's an Australia Road in London, but it looks pretty limited so I don't think anyone should be confused by my using it as a title. Confoundingly, this  London example seems to go around four sides of a square area. Not sure what that says as a metaphor. Puts new meaning into 'Road to Nowhere'.

* p. 176, Australia Street by John Kingsmill, published by Hale & Ironmonger, 1991. Italics in quote are the author's. Note: Kingsmill is of his time, I won't pretend otherwise; some parts might not be 100% politically correct by today's standards, but his compassion for people is genuine and strong.

** Frenchmans Road is how it's spelled - the road names board wanted to keep things simple yet confusing. 

The First Straw

Australia Road writer’s blog

about old buildings, natural wonders, and some historical stories I can’t let go, like a dog with a bone. 

The First Straw

I walk because my life depends on it. 

I want what all walkers want. Solid streets and wide paths to plant my feet, greenery with birds and small animals, enchanting houses and colourful structures.

Previously I walked around Sydney’s East but lately I’ve been exploring the Inner West. In tree-lined cool enclaves and ancient lanes squeezed with giddy old factories and precarious terrace houses, murals catch the eye and something (the historic atmosphere, a child, or a singing magpie) is bound to touch the heart. 

Walking this morning I carried a re-usable shopping bag for the errands I had planned. And so, when I saw some stray garbage - a can here, bottle there - I started thinking, well, I could pick it up. But I really don’t want to.

In Tamarama Gully and the eastern suburbs, I used to pick up a lot of rubbish, on Clean Up Australia Day or just random Sundays. But in places like Leichhardt and Newtown, I’ve been more inclined to turn a blind eye. Strolling in a daydream this morning, I entered the grassy area alongside Whites Creek – and there I saw it: the red-striped plastic straw. 

FINE. If that’s the kind of thing that’s going to be tossed out on the creek side, I can’t ignore it.

 Photo by Mohamed Maail, on Unsplash.com

Whites Creek* has a small ‘wetland’ pocket with charming footlong turtles (30 centimetres) who rise to the surface and peer at you through the water weeds if you stand still and watch. I was planning to check them later, hoping to glimpse a foot or an edge of shell. 

Straws have been targeted lately as high priority trash. Whites Creek’s cement-lined waterway leads straight to Sydney Harbour, and from there to the ocean.

Unfolding my bag, I drop the straw in. Now I can’t relax but must stop every metre or so; finding plastic water-bottles, coffee cup lids, bottle caps, and water-bottle LABELS that have escaped their bottles. Ziploc bags, chocolate wrappers, a toothbrush, popped balloon tied to a ribbon, and Styrofoam pieces complete the stash.

I only pick up plastic – that idea started last year during a litter removal jag in Centennial Park. Glass bottles – meh. Metal cans or bottle tops – nah. These items might pose hazards, but are more ‘natural’, and can break down; they won’t join the great Pacific garbage patch one day. And they probably won’t get stuck in a sea animal’s stomach or nasal passage, or wind around its limbs. Besides, if I was going to pick up everything, I’d have to push a trolley. 

At the Great Barrier Reef two years ago, a huge sea turtle ate a wobbly white-ish jellyfish before my eyes. So I easily believe plastic looks like their food – clear or white, and flexible. The veterinarian on Better Homes and Gardens tv show,  Dr Harry Cooper, said in February that it's possible "in 40 years time there may be no sea turtles around". This is the year of the pig on the Asian calendar, but for me it feels like Year of the Turtle.

Passing the wetland later I notice part of the water surface is clear – it’s been very clogged recently – and a longneck turtle comes up to me. Its back and legs and neck are fully visible for the first time. One of its buddies swims close too - it has three normal legs and one smaller, damaged. If I can catch some straws and plastic bits before they hurt any water friends, I’ll do it. 

* Whites Creek is how it is written, even if you just want to put an apostrophe in there.

Clean Up Australia Day is Sunday, 3 March this year. https://www.cleanupaustraliaday.org.au/?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI_PjO5-Pf4AIVjhmPCh0asQusEAAYASAAEgL0g_D_BwE 

[FYI this post is not sanctioned by nor related to them]