It is not intended as an insult to Australia's stunning scenery, fascinating history or vibrant cities, but by far the most memorable time I spent here was the long weekend when M and I were temporarily folded into the Harver (pseudonym) family. M and I both knew Dan Harver of old, and had a fairly long history with him before he met Elizabeth and they decided to move to Australia, Elizabeth's homeland. Elizabeth, as I realised with some surprise after we had been talking like old friends , and after I had settled, instantly comfortable, into her company, had barely met me by comparison. Not that it felt that way.
We were greeted with equal enthusiasm by Lucie (their actual names are much nicer than this by the way), the most smiley baby in the world, and Bella.
Bella is two and a half years old, crowned by a little halo of white blonde hair, and a mouth which is constantly moving, either to chat happily away, like a sort of innocent stream of consciousness, or to beam up at you, absolutely thrilled, apparently, with life, her lot in it, and the existence of me.
And yes that isn't a typo. For some unfathomable and frankly wonderful reason Bella thinks that I am great. She can't remember my name and refers to me, much to everyone's amusement, as 'that girl', but she follows me around for the entire weekend to the extent that I overhear Dan telling her one morning to 'stop stalking K'. She is hopelessly unable to continue sitting at the table eating her yoghurt ('yogi') or porridge ('po po') in the morning if I appear to leave the room, at which point she slithers urgently from her chair to ask 'where are you going?' She's not whiney about it, just interested. And maybe just happens to be going there herself. If asked to go back and finish her breakfast, she does so cheerfully, beginning the rather laborious (but determined) clamber back up from ground to chair without complaint, only to slither back down again should the opportunity present itself.
There is something infinitely pleasing about a child taking a shine to you. I have a sort of irrational theory that children and animals, being largely immune to the kind of verbal and logical game play humans tend to indulge in to win each other's affections, have a sort of sixth sense about people and so, should they trust you, there us a very good chance that you are to be trusted. There are holes in this theory, I admit, including the famously trusting nature of children, and the territorial aspect to animals, but it's a theory I can't quite let go, and, for the most part, given that most animals trust me and most children do not, this doesn't bode well for my inner nature. Or at least doesn't bode in any clear direction.
The fact is that, at least with regard to children, their own personality plays a large part in how likely they are to want you to play with them. And Bella does happen to be a particularly sociable, sunshiny child. She greets us each morning, and at various points in the day, whenever there has been any separation in fact, by beaming upwards, opening her hands and saying 'Here I am!' As though you have, of course, been spending the intervening time doing nothing other than looking for her. Who knows, I am a bit hooked. Maybe I have.
And so it is that I end up viewing the majesty of the Blue Mountains, the surrounding bush and the old mining history in the area, through the eyes of a child. Dan, in a characteristic expansive generosity, has offered to drive us there on the way to his home in Canberra, having spent the evening together with us on Sydney. I have spent the drive using the time to engage in that particular pleasure of catching up with someone important in your life, who forms a large link in your history, but whom you haven't seen for a long time. We flit between inconsequentials, information about Australia, and the serious business of filling each other in on the past seven years. Its a careful and complex sort of a social dance, balancing a sort of emotional inquisition with small talk and banter. Getting, essentially, to know each other again.
In Dan's case it is a real pleasure. Dan still has all the qualities I remember so fondly in him, but all the things that once bothered him, or made him sad, anything which he was uncertain of in himself, or which I remember as being something he struggled with, have been smoothed over, resolved or erased entirely. I don't remember him as being especially broken, but it feels like he is the same artwork, only the little hairline cracks in it have been smoothed. His life is not perfect, (who's is?), but it feels as though he is content. And there is much in this familial, cheerful lifestyle, that embodies what I know he used to long for, and also, a little to my surprise, that makes me rather yearn for it too.
Oddly enough, later that evening, Dan would tell us, over wine once the children were sleeping, that he felt we hadn't aged at all, and that he had. I couldn't find the right way to tell him that it seems to me to have been rather the opposite process, that he has grown into an ever more perfected version of himself. That both he and Elizabeth have an intelligent , easy humour in them that lights up not just their conversation but their faces. That I have fallen in love with each of the Harver family, separately and as a unit. Trouble is, it sounds a little creepy...
All of this being the case, I am in grave danger of wandering around the Blue Mountains, when we get there, looking obligingly at the views, but with my mind on the conversation. It is rather difficult not to be overwhelmed by the sheer power of the Blue Mountains vista, but it would be possible to view it a little too casually. And it is Bella, of course, who saves me from this.
Having woken up from her sleep in the car she is bright eyed, instantly, plants her hand in mind, insists on sitting next to me at lunchtime, and basically renders my experience of the Blue Mountains just a little bit more amazing, by viewing them through the eyes of a two and a half year old.
I note how big they are, and that they are not actually blue, though appear so through the clouds from a distance. I count the three sisters (rock formations standing separate from the rest of the peaks) carefully with Bella, three times over just to make sure. I look at how green the bush is (though in fact Australia's colours seem characterised by more of a sort of blue green (think Eucalyptus leaves) than an emerald green. Bella and I look at the little map together and rehearse the route we will take, over to have some food in the cafe, a cable car down to the bush track, walk through the board walk, take the old mining train back up again, walk back to the carpark. We make different noises for the different modes of transport as we trace them with our fingers. As we ride down we look through the glass bottom at the waterfall. Walking through the bush we look at how high the trees are, which looked so small from above, and when there us a rushing noise in them we try to find the animal that made it, and when we can't we speculate on what it might have been. Perhaps a big squirrel. (This concept rather scares Bella, so we adjust this so that it is a 'nice squirrel'. "It won't hurt us", Bella repeats to herself often, clutching my neck a little more tightly than strictly necessary.)
We reach an old mining tunnel with an old mining cart and a model of a horse. We imagine whether the horse was scared going into the tunnel or whether the load was heavy.
We get into the mine train which is very steep. When we starts I am actually quite scared. Bella, who has opted to ride with me rather than her Dad and my Dad (I later realise she means Martin - all men are Dads), is absolutely unfazed, even though she is so small I having to clutch her tightly to stop her sliding straight off the seat, which is facing almost vertically downwards. I stagger off. She saunters.
We walk back to the car looking out at amazing views. We characterise the walk in 'big steps' and 'small steps' as Bella clutches my hand and tries to navigate her diminutive form over tree roots whilst determinedly eating an ice cream.
" are you alright with that, Bella?" Dan keeps asking, amusedly, "do you want Dad to help you?"
No way. Bella hangs onto that ice cream all the way until we are nearly back at the car park before she surrenders it, despite it having several near misses with passing foliage.
In fact, Bella has done me a favour. It is always worth seeing things from a child's eye view and, as a traveller, that constant state of wonder and that gap between reality and your burgeoning understanding of it, is rather easy to slip into. Incidentally, I remember that people used to say that having children 'kept you young'. Nowadays I only ever hear people complaining that now they have children they have aged. What changed? The nature of children? The nature of parents? The average age of parents? Or just the way we report our experience?
All for another day. This supposedly time saving method of amalgamating several days in one entry is actually evolving into a mammoth entry longer than the same number of separate days put together.
The most important and most beautiful part of our time with the Harvers is, literally, our time with them. We drink amazing coffee, eat the biggest and best veggie burger ever, gorge on Elisabeth's amazing salads and conversation and generally settle ourselves into Harver family life the way you snuggle into a duvet after a rainy day.
We do see a lot too, most notably a fantastic nature seeking trip with Dan, in which we see a platypus, black swans, a kookaburra, wild koalas (!), and wallabies. The kangaroos make themselves suspiciously absent. Purely to spite us. But we manage to catch a glimpse of them here and there despite their best efforts to deny us this quintessentially Australian experience.
Also, notably, we visit the home of the Australian parliament, the Harvers living and working in Canberra, Australia's capital city. Elizabeth explains to us the intricately thought out design of the building. Positioned so that, were all the buildings in between to open their doors it would be possible to walk straight from the place of war remembrance into the parliament building, with grass across the roof to allow the people to walk, literally, above the governors, the building reminds me of the feng shui designs behind the Blue Mansion in Penang. The architecture is intended to constantly remind its occupants of the key principles and values they should be employing in their work. Colours and materials used inside bring the mind back to the natural treasure of the Australian environment and ecosystem. I don't know whether the men and women who govern from that building think consciously as they work about the design of the building but I like to think that it works the same way as the feng shui did for its owner, and provides a subconscious jog back in the direction of the principles on which it us built.
Whether that jog is heeded or not is hard to say. I would have to ask one of those men and women. And the answer I received would have to be apolitical and honest.
Given the above requirements, and that I don't actually know any Australian politicians, I think we will just have to leave that to conjecture.
By the time we are packing our bags and leaving, it feels as though we have been with the Harvers forever. I am, as I get into Dan's car and wave goodbye to Elizabeth, Lucie and a slightly tearful Bella, as I hug Dan goodbye and climb onto our coach, full of emotions, and even a little tearful myself.
I hide this with my usual iron self control.
It has been so good to see old friends, to have bridged the miles which separate us, and to have slotted into a temporary glimpse of what family life can look like. It looks good.
All I need now is a Doctors guarantee. That my child would be like Bella. And not too much like me...
No comments:
Post a Comment