Chapter 21: Canberra - II

I looked at my notes. They were neither orderly nor compact. But they were terse and they represented, in some way, my thoughts.

return to work

find a place to live (do P&R want the house?)

make friend[s?]?

retire in eighteen months

do something else (entomology; school; write;?)

other?

It didn’t look like much. Six points. The first and fourth were straightforward. The second was tough. Or was it? Did I want to relocate for two years or five or... ? If I were to retire, what sense would a move make? But what might I do? SciTech was a Western thing. And how does one make friends? Not those ladies up the coast. Nor that bloke in the pub. Not a golf club. Nor yachting nor flying. Nor flower-arranging.

I wasn’t sure where to go next. Too many choices. I wasn’t even sure where to go next. Adelaide, perhaps. I’d like to see the Turner again. I had carried Patrick to see the “Alnwick Castle,” which I’d only seen in reproduction, 25 years ago. It was wonderful. They’d been given another a few years ago. I’d not seen it. I recall that I sat in front of a wonderful Corot of a fisherman for a few moments on that visit. Or I could visit some more Bony sites. Perhaps actually go out on a charter from Bermagui. [Mystery of Swordfish Reef]

I heard the phone ring. Several minutes later there was a knock at ‘my’ door?

“Want to talk to Rachel or Patrick?” Charles asked.

“Sure.” I opened the door. “I’ve been thinking.”

“You always advocated that.”

“Ha ha.” I could see Michiko with a phone in her hand.

“Here he is.” She turned to me, “Rachel or Patrick?”

“Either.”

“Hi.”

“I’m OK. Your parents have been both kind and tolerant ... Yes ... I suppose so. Look, I have several serious questions ... Of course you can answer ... Fine.” There was a pause.

“Hey, Patrick! Rachel seemed to feel you should answer serious questions. Right. Well, first, where are you living? ... Same place in Darlington? You haven’t moved to Pennant Hills? Right. About two days a week? I get it. Smart ... Well, I think I’m a lot better ... Not that soon, but within a few weeks or a month ... I don’t think I’ll want the house in Pennant Hills any more. Too many reminders ... Yes. Well, down in the CBD, I suppose ... Walk to the Museum? Exactly. Maybe a two-bed condo ... I might drive to Adelaide via Balronald. Or I might visit some Bony locations ... Oh, Yarra and Bermagui ... Well, I’ve fished two rivers, maybe I’ll try for a swordfish ... It’s not that funny ... Anyway, talk to Rachel about the house ... Maybe she could ask Winnie about condos downtown ... Right. Love to both of you.” I looked around, but my hosts had vanished. I pushed the ‘off’ button.

I saw that Michiko and Charles were in the yard. As I went out, I caught a movement near one of the decorative stones.

“Michiko, I see you’ve a tenant.”

“What?”

“A Cercophonius Squama, a ‘wood scorpion’. Do you mind? I’m reluctant to kill off the non-lethal wildlife.”

“No, let it be. It’ll eat spiders and insects, won’t it?”

“This kind will. The largest can attack small birds and mice. And other scorpions. But not these, they’re relatively shy.”

“Did Rachel say anything important?”

“No. She handed me off to Patrick. I wanted to know whether they wanted the house.”

“I bet not.”

“You’d win, I think. They’re going to the house about two nights a week, so it seems to be inhabited. But they’ve not moved. And I’m fairly certain that I don’t want it. It contains over five years of ghosts, plus the other things from the previous decades.”

“Not like Korngold’s protagonist?”

“What?”

“Erich Korngold wrote an opera, The dead city in which Paul, a youngish man whose young wife, Marie, has recently died, can’t come to terms with the sad reality of her death. He keeps a ‘Temple of Memories’ in her honor, including paintings, photographs and a lock of her hair. When his friend Frank pays him a visit at his house and urges him to honor Marie by moving on with his life, Paul flies into a rant, and insists that Marie ‘still lives.’ There’s more, but it’s a depressing work and I was just advocating not clinging to the past.”

“OK. I’m trying not to. That’s why I’ll sell the house.”

“It’s a big place. What do you think it will fetch?”

“Two. Maybe two-and-a-half. Who knows?”

“Where will you go?” Michiko asked.

“In town. The CBD. Where I might walk to the Museum.”

“That will be another change.”

“Not as much as the one I’m involved in.”

“True. May I change topics?”

“Of course.”

“Dinner? How hungry are you?”

“Medium. Could we go someplace simple?”

“Pizza? Michiko, could you stand that?”

“Of course. Crust is OK, not Gusto, please.”

“Too non-Italian?”

“Peking duck pizza is nothing I want to try.”

“You’re kidding!”

“She’s not.”

“I’m fine with the other one.”

So we went to Crust Gourmet Pizza on Mort Street. It was crowded, but the food was more than just adequate.

Sunday morning I went for a walk around Turner. Up Condamine to its elbow; then to the name change; back through Haig Park and up MacLeay. I felt better. Better than I had felt a week or so ago, when I was in Port Macquarie.

“Have you any plans?” Michiko asked when I got back.

“No. I needed to stretch my legs. But I have a question for Charles. A scientific question.”

“Yes?”

“I mentioned the Paroo and you agreed that it was the last untrammelled river in Australia.”

“I’m sure I didn’t use ‘untrammelled’.”

“Right. Have you – or anyone in your part of the CSIRO – done anything about that?”

“You mean build a dam?”

“No! I mean an exhibit. Maybe here, maybe in my place. An exhibit on damming, on diverting, on building banks, on dredging channels. On what this does to water quality and the effect this has on vegetation and wildlife!”

“No.”

“Well, how do you expect people to understand? Ordinary people and politicians. Remember the moron who blew up your car. He’d re-route a river to water his garden.”

“CSIRO has a PR department. And every group sends out news and press releases.”

“Right! And who reads those? How much outreach is there?”

“Do you want that job?”

“No. But I think the country deserves better. If every middle schooler went to an exhibit or a museum or a show, things might get better. I’m not sure, but I think that every kind of outreach should begin at the bottom. Not with adults or in the universities, but with pre-teens and teens.”

“OK, boys. Who wants what for lunch?”

“What is there?” asked Charles.

It was a lazy Sunday. Patrick would have told me that it was recuperative. Certainly, on Monday morning, when Charles left for Black Mountain and Michiko and I got ready to go to the Botanic Gardens, I felt invigorated.

“Have you a favourite place?” I asked Michiko.

“No. I enjoy the eucalyptus discovery walk. It’s about two kilometres and I look at many things, so it can take over an hour. I also like the rainforest gully and the short Joseph Banks walk.”

“He was an impressive man. He travelled to Newfoundland and Labrador when he was in his early twenties; then to Brazil; to the South Seas; to New Zealand; to here. He was on Cook’s first cruise on the ‘Endeavour’. I can’t begin the think how many plants he classified and named. Ah, well. When would you like to leave?”

We had a pleasant morning in the rainforest and the Banks walk. We had a salad lunch at Pollen and then explored the eucalyptus walk. I pointed out an iguana lurking by a tree for lunch to come by and several spider trapdoors and ant trails. Michiko tried to interest me in the various eucalypts [There are more than 700 species of eucalyptus and most are native to Australia], but I was more concerned with the animal life they supported.

It was spring, and there were many blooms. The scents were quite overwhelming. “Next month the perfumes will be yet more powerful,” she said.

“I’m not certain that I’d find that pleasant.”

“You watch the animals and their behaviour; I love the colours and the smells.”

“Someday I might do that. Banks was far more interested in the flora than the fauna.”

“There are many types of Banksia.”

“Over 170 species, and only one that isn’t native to Australia.”

“I have a few in my garden. The variation is amazing.”

“Yes. And those are natural adaptations. They changed; we all change, too.”

Michiko touched my arm. “You will change a bit, too. Adapting to circumstances.”

“Nietzsche said: ‘The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind’.”

“The Greeks and the Romans believed in change.”

“Yes. Heraclitus said ‘panta rhei, everything flows’ but I prefer Ovid’s ‘tempus, edax rerum, time the consumer of things’. I think he meant everything wastes away. In the Prose Edda, Thor is defeated by old age. Even the gods bow to time.”

“As the water eats the rock.”

“Precisely.”

“Shall we leave?”

“As you wish. What are the plans?”

“If you’ll stop, we can purchase fish for dinner. Tomorrow, you said you would visit the National Gallery. Wednesday is the open house gamelan concert.”

“I think I’ll unburden you on Thursday, then.”

“That’s not necessary. You are no burden.”

“No. But I am a disruption.” We were back at the car park. “You will have to give me instructions.”

We shopped and drove to the house in Turner. After we had brought the groceries in, I asked Michiko whether she minded if I spent some time on the phone.