Twice before I have blogged about the year that was - events past & lessons learnt. My most recent post The Ballad of Beryl was the culmination of shared conversations and emails and a tribute to an extraordinary woman. Since then, I have been considering what to write. Nothing specific came to me with the same sense of urgency or purpose. Of the various ideas and themes I had jotted down throughout the year I had only been inspired to develop a few. Then, earlier this week I trawled though a year’s worth of diary entries and photographs taken during 2022 to see what stood out.
I found much worth recalling …
January
Day trip to
Adelong with my sister in searing heat. Looked at the falls and gold
works. Photographed them and a mural in
town depicting youths clambering across Kurrajong Hill personified as the head
and face of a (presumably) Aboriginal man, and up the edge of a conveniently
placed air conditioner vent. The imposing
Royal Hotel with its Victorian leadlight and cedar staircase, cream and
terracotta woodwork and wrap around balcony wasn’t serving lunch. With few
other choices we opted for the Adelong Services and Citizens Club. The club’s
exterior is a marriage of Edwardian bank and early 20thC cinema
architecture but the 1970s wood paneling and formica of its interior welcome
you in to try its ‘Chinese & Australian Meals’. We had fish and chips and a
Thai beef & prawn salad. Just
outside the club stands a lone digger statue and roll call of the fallen. A war
memorial is, as Peter Sculthorpe so poignantly evoked in his autobiographical composition, at the
heart of almost all small country towns.
In 2021 our
writers’ group was approached by a media company as a source of articles about items
of local interest. I produced a piece about Janine Middlemost and the charming
quirky clothes she designs, makes and sells in her eponymous shop. The company rejected
it as being an ‘advertorial’ so I expanded it and posted it to this blog as Material Comforts on 3 January 2022
My daughter
and I went to see a local production of Mama
Mia and were hugely impressed with its quality. One of the nurses from the
blood bank we’re friendly with was in the chorus, eschewing her usual dancing
roles pending a hip replacement.
Our dog
Stella had 2.5 kg tumour successfully removed from her abdomen.
February
Animatronic
dinosaurs came to the Wagga Showground. I was more than compensated for an un-
scintillating hour of my time by parlaying the experience into a poem that went
over very well at the open mic.
March
Visited
Canberra to see the Jeffrey Smart exhibition and stayed with husband’s friend-since-high-school
and his partner. Their new poodle pups Yin & Yang and our ageing greyhound
X got along famously. They gifted her their latex squeaking pig on our departure.
Wagga celebrated its second Mardi Gras unhampered by the district’s grasshopper
plague (perhaps grasshoppers don’t like platform shoes and lycra). My husband and Stella rode on the SES float
and our daughter performed hula hoop routines in the parade. I felt very proud.
Junee Museum held an open day with blacksmithing demonstrations and country
music covers. The museum is located in the Broadway Hotel (built 1914) whose
interior boasts art nouveau pressed metal ceilings and walls of gleaming green tiles
interspersed with floral and garlanded decorative ones. We bumped into retired
school teacher Brian Beazley whose wood working skills, ukulele playing and
bush ballad renditions are renowned throughout the Riverina.
April
Already a
veteran of standup comedy with her own hula hooping coaching and performing
business, our daughter, Hooly Dooly made one of her occasional forays into legit theatre
portraying a fairy in Midnight Dream,
local impresario Stephen Roots' country and western flavored adaptation of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Another
theatre highlight was Geoffrey Atherden’s Black
Cockatoo at the Civic, a
compelling account of how a group of activists restores the story of
First Nations cricketer Johnny Mullagh to the national consciousness.
Our son visited Wagga
and I drove back to Sydney with him. During my visit we took the ferry to Wendy
Whiteley’s Secret Garden which lived up to its reputation and enjoyed a late
Lavender Bay lunch. My knowledge of and
capacity to tolerate Sydney roads has dwindled and I got lost several times
driving out to meet friends for dinner at Sydney Rowing Club. It was a public
holiday and the place was quiet but the staff still didn’t seem inclined to
wipe down the bar. Consulting the wine list it seemed that any choice we made would
be a ’sticky’!
Determined to keep up
my aquatic regimen I went for a swim at the Victoria Park pool. Its cold water
and dilapidated change rooms made me grateful for Wagga’s Oasis; however I
acknowledge that Sydney Council has considerably more recreation facilities to
maintain than Wagga does. I guess THE place for regional visitors to take a dip
is the North Sydney Pool (just ask Bridget McKenzie).
May
The month
began with news of the unexpected death of my wonderful former colleague and,
in recent years, Facebook friend, Chris Bonney. His funeral was in Adelaide on
the 6th and thanks to the widespread practice of streaming such
events I was able to see and hear his send off.
If ever a man was loved and celebrated…
Mona, not the gallery, the ‘community-focused magazine
for women who live in regional, rural and remote communities in Australia’
launched its second edition in nearby Narrandera. I had submitted pieces which
weren’t used in the print edition but which have since appeared on their blog.
It was a catered, feel-good event that served as good promotion for Books On
East and East Street Café. On our return to Wagga, the sat nav decided to take
the back way and we drove for over an hour and a half on unlit country roads
but happily free of encounters with kangaroos.
On 15 May
Scott Morrison and his cronies were roundly defeated by the ALP and my faith in
Australian democracy was restored.
June
Visited a client in Coleambally (est. 1968 pop. 1,331). We met at the only café in town with no chance of privacy or anonymity. Notable facts about Coleambally: all the streets are named for birds, the water tower is called ‘The Wine Glass’ and is surrounded by a mosaic depicting the town’s short history, giving due prominence to the Ruston Bucyrus Erie excavator.
Self referential art at the base of the 'Wine Glass', Coleambally. Can you spot the Ruston Bucyrus Erie excavator?
Also for
work, I got a tour of the Defence Shed and Pro Patria Centre. The latter is a former convent with an impressive
chapel featuring amazing stained glass including a window depicting
Indigenous themes. The facility is being adapted to provide a centre for reflection
and treatment for local veterans. I was going to write a post about the centre
but got stalled so instead wrote a letter to the Daily Advertiser in support of
the project.
Claire
Baker, a colleague from Booranga Writers whose poems I much admire was a
featured reader at the June meeting of the Perth poetry group. As their
meetings are streamed I was able to join in. Claire shared the bill with WA
poet Gabrielle Everall whose singsong delivery of her graphic and gender disrupting
works featuring Severin, a character from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch's novella Venus in Furs, I am still
processing. Claire’s work was polished and poignant.
July
There are
possums nesting in the roof cavity above our en suite. They poke out their
little pink paws through a hole in the ceiling some times. Visited Aurora,
a laser light show in the Albury Botanic Gardens. Photographed buildings and streetscapes
prior. The round trip was tiring – I don’t know how my boss does it twice a
week. Also botanical and lepidopterological, was the exhibition Transformations - Art of the Scott Sisters
at the Museum of the Riverina in the old council chambers. I hadn’t heard of
these 19thC artists before and loved their work.
Attended
performance of Bell Shakespeare’s Comedy
of Errors so disappointing I devoted an entire blog post to it (13 July
2022). I participated (by video – I was
not well and couldn’t attend in person) a reading of works inspired by Helen Grace’s
short films. Mine related to The
Immortals. I have dabbled in ekphrasis
exercises in conjunction with the gallery a few times now. I love that I can
combine my appreciation of visual art forms with the act of writing
August
Sydney’s Griffin
Theatre ran playwright workshops for aspiring local writers under 30 in
conjunction with the Civic Theatre. Participants, who included our daughter,
did a read through of the finished product. So much talent! It seems the
collaboration will continue in some shape or form this year. The Wagga
Monumental Cemetery has always been a favourite dog walking destination. On a
quest to find the unmarked resting place of my husband’s great great grandfather
(see post 2 October 2022) I was
delighted to locate remnant stone work from the Turvey vault, a once impressive
edifice in a suburb of Wagga Wagga moved to the cemetery when a road was
widened. The panel, sans the dog sculptures which used to guard it, looks remarkably
modern for something carved in 1885.
As the suburb becomes more built up it is less usual to see wildlife in the grounds around our house. Kangaroos and blue tongues were frequent visitors when we first moved here. In August a beautiful barn owl alighted on our front balcony and stayed there for hours in broad daylight. A real treat. August was also when we slavishly practiced the ABC classic choir carol Yerbil With Clarence and videoed ourselves to meet the deadline of month’s end. Unfortunately we were pressed for time and sent in raw footage containing more than one expletive (uttered when we stuffed up). The radio station, which released the composite video in December, chose not use us in the finished product. I think we need to learn our limitations. Nothing can compete with the nurturing and sustained rehearsal we got singing in Jonathan Welch’s massed community choir in 2016.
September
At the
Forum Cinema we saw of Jodi Comer’s tour de force performance in the National
Theatre’s production of Prima Facie captured
on film. Booranga Writers hosted a workshop by
poet Nathan Curnow. Nathan told us that rather than a poem being all about the
writer conveying a message, it ‘sets up the scaffolding for the reader to have
an experience’ and warned us to ‘beware adverbs’.
Made a pilgrimage to Newcastle to see Peter our artist friend of 25 years plus who was about to celebrate his 85th birthday, to catch up with two friends we have known almost as long (since my early public service days) and to see my first cousin once removed, Beryl, in respite care. We booked dog friendly accommodation in Merewether and took Stella with us. With her we walked on the beach, visited the Honeysuckle waterfront area and several cafes and pubs. Our landlords kindly looked after her when we went out for dinner. At the Lock Up gallery we saw eclectic high energy work by Deborah Kelly and at Peter’s lock up (storage unit) we saw his latest work and he gave us a painting of his we’d admired since the days we all resided in Glebe in the 1970s. We came home via Cowra where dogs are welcome in the Japanese gardens. This is the last picture of the three of us together.
Last trip with Stella
OctoberAfter
several unsuccessful attempts to cultivate nasturtiums from nursey stock we
grew them from seed this spring and by October they rioted across the terraces
of our garden in glorious saffron and crimson shades and copious fleshy green
umbrella leaves. Their profusion framed the area where we laid our beloved
Stella to rest when she died suddenly and unexpectedly on the 12th,
a few days shy of her 13th birthday. We planted Stella Bella day lilies and a tea tree on her grave – they are
flourishing.
At the
Civic we saw Sunshine Supergirl, Yvonne
Goolagong’s life dramatized. If anyone had told me that plays about Indigenous
sporting legends would be amongst my favourite theatre in 2022 I would have
been skeptical but this and Black
Cockatoo were amazing. Arts
journalist/curator Julie Ewington delivered ‘We Need To Talk About Art’ at the
gallery. She is a huge advocate of jargon-free unpretentious captioning and
artists’ statements. At The Curious
Rabbit our daughter was one of 7 performers shimmying and lip syncing with a
satanic edge in Hallowed Queens, a drag show for Halloween. Almost as
camp and tremendous fun were David Hobson and Colin Lane pretending to be
ignorant of each other’s milieus and then wowing us with the duet from the Pearl
Fishers in Men In Tails at the Civic.
November
I turned 66
in November and more than any other gift I wanted a dog back in my life. The
day after my birthday we drove to Bethungra to check out a Kelpie X puppy at a
refuge called Iron Dogs. Of course we were unable to resist Reilly (now Sheila
O’Reilly) and she has joined our household.
I sensed
that seeing my cousin Beryl in September would be our last encounter. She died on
13th November. Karen James, a Wagga-based fellow family historian and correspondent
of Beryl‘s was kind enough to accompany me to Lake Macquarie for the funeral. I
could not have asked for a more good-humoured companion and despite the sadness
of the occasion we had some lovely outings not least to the beautifully situated
local art gallery which was showing the finalists in the Lake Art Prize.
More drag and burlesque were in store at Cabaret Schmabaert conceived by Leeton hoop and flow performer Dizzy Dilemma. The hilarious and sophisticated acts featured deserve a regular showcase. The Civic Theatre turns 40 in 2023 so its season launch was more flamboyant than usual. Jonathan Welch gets his second mention in this post for tricking us into a vulgar spoonerism and getting us to sing nursery rhymes at the top of our voices.
December
Another poet colleague, Joan Cahill, launched her latest collection. I got the all clear after a skin check for melanoma. We made an abortive attempt to see an exhibition at CSU’s HR Gallop Gallery. In the middle of the day the doors were unlocked but the gallery was in darkness and we were unable to find a light switch (I suspect the lights were on a timer and because adjacent class rooms were not in use no-one considered the gallery might attract visitors). What we could discern in the gloom of Donna Caffrey’s, Sam Bowker’s and others’ work looked wonderful. I hope we have another chance to see it. Then there was Christmas/New Year with a just manageable amount of food preparation and excessive consumption of the results, lots of cooling off in the pool and, for the first time in 3 years, completion of the ritual 1000 piece jigsaw.
So much
more I could have included but this has turned into an epic. Happy New Year everyone!
