Chapter 1

It was late September 1996. I had spent 20 months of my two year probationary period at the Long Pocket Labs of the CSIRO in Brisbane. Someone down the hall was playing the Bayside Boys version of the Macarena and I was trying to read Section III of A History of Chinese Entomology, “The Honeybee.” The book had been a parting gift from Yuanyuan Jiang, who was now back in Wuhan. She’d been followed by Melissa, but those encounters had never been serious. I’d also spent two weeks in the Great Victoria Desert [see “Cattle Ticks and Ants”].

But yesterday I’d gotten a call from Janice at Black Mountain. Something I couldn’t identify by Celine was now playing. I closed the book. I wasn’t in a serious mood.

So even though it was just past 10, I left and drove my ute to Franz Ehmann’s Soapbox Gallery in Fortitude Valley. There was a show of Installation Art which seemed to focus on the work of Justin Avery, Jodie Cox, Sebastian Di Mauro, Debra Sara, and Franz Ehmann, himself. I couldn’t make much of anything on exhibit except some watercolours by Ehmann and a structure of Di Mauro’s, which seemed to represent something, though I couldn’t quite recognize what. I was certain it was my fault. The blurb pinned to the wall said Di Mauro was notable for his “innovative materiality.” I had no notion as to what that meant.

It was nearing noon, so I drove to the Lakeside Cafe, which despite its name is a Vietnamese restaurant. It’s also part of UQ. Maybe that’s “innovative materiality.”

I took a table by the open windows and ordered coffee and banh mi – a sandwich on a baguette. I was looking at the lake when a voice asked, “Do you mind?” The voice belonged to a young woman of olive complexion with long, glossy hair.

“No problem,” I said. “Please sit down, this is a university, allegedly a base of freedom.”

She sat down, laughing. “Only academic freedom, I’d assume.”

She seemed to have a non-English trace in her speech; certainly, she was no Aussie.

“I’m not sure I’m entitled to that anyway, I’m not an academic, and I’ve not been a student here for a lustrum.”

“Lustrum!” she said. “That’s certainly not an everyday term in Brisbane!”

“Five years in Ancient Rome.”

“I knew the meaning and usage. But I’m not a student ... nor an academic ... here, either.”

“Oh?” I realized she looked like the young Sophia Loren, in her twenties, as Cleopatra or in that dumb western with Anthony Quinn. She ordered pho with shrimp dumplings.

“I’m a student at Melbourne. I’m up here to swim and work on my dissertation.”

“Dissertation?”

“In Italian. I’m working on the romances of the sixteenth century. Well, the century beginning in 1495.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever read any. I’ve read Dante’s Comedy, but that’s earlier.”

“Yes. Dante finished it in 1320, the year before he died. I’m working on Boiardo, Ariosto and Tasso. But I’ll write about Spenser and Basile, too. So I’ll run from 1495 to 1636.”

“That’s a lot of reading! By the way, I’m Gordy Hollister and I’m in research at Long Pocket.”

“Laura Betti.” I reached across and we shook hands. Very suave and European. “I don’t know where Long Pocket is.”

“It’s in Indooroophilly.

The Long Pocket laboratories were built as a joint research facility between CSIRO Entomology and CSIRO Animal Health to study cattle tick and associated diseases.In the 1970s work began on the biological control of weeds and dung-breeding flies. Weeds researched included lantana, spiny emex and later aquatic weeds.