“I will show you fear in a handful of dust” T.S. Eliot “The Waste Land”
INTRODUCTION
Today’s farmer, staring at a handful of dust, sees climate change and possible ruin. Yesterday’s explorer, staring at a handful of dust, saw thirst and the strong possibility of death. Patrick White got a Nobel prize for Voss, a powerful novel about a fictional explorer, probably based on Burke and Wills. The opening up of the North American continent helped to create the Hollywood industry of pioneers, cowboys and Indians. Nick Dyer, after he and Sally had driven across the Australian deserts, felt there was enough pioneer folklore out there to equal the outpourings from Hollywood, if only we knew how. Pa and his two brothers, as returned soldiers, hacked a soldiers’ settlement block out of the bush near Mendooran and called it Pinevale. I suppose Pa was the nearest we got to a pioneer, and I wish now we had asked him more questions.
So who discovered Australia? For about 150 years before James Cook, the Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese and French had explored our coasts. Long before that were visits from Indonesia and China, and, by European reckoning, aborigines had crossed into and started to settle here some 40-60,000 years ago. But at least one aboriginal source sets this date back a further 130 million years. A line ofAnangu women were dancing across the sky along a path which we now call the Milky Way when a baby fell from its mother’s coolamon (bark cradle) and landed in what we now call Gosse Bluff. But a literature search of our guide’s library as the Toyota bumps along past the Bluff reveals the unbelievable claim that this 20 km diameter indentation was created by a massive ball of frozen carbon dioxide. This has to be one of those curious Western pre-postmodern reality renunciations by some post-painterly abstractionist. I prefer the Anangu story.
Why was that mountain in the Hamersleys called Mount Nameless when the aborigines probably had a name for it 20,000 years ago? All aboriginal names mean something useful, such as Terrigal (place of little birds), Tumbi Umbi (plenty of water), Woy Woy (the big lagoon). And many of them have a beauty of poetry, for example Jamberoo, Jerrawangala, Yateh yatah, Jerremadra, Turlinja, Trunkatabella, Wandandian, Minamurra, Muramarang and Lake conjola
Some names are quaint but meaningful, like Coal & Candle Creek, Steel & Flint Bay, Careening Cove, and Crackneck Lookout. But what are the stories behind Lake Disappointment, Desperation Bay, Useless Loop, Cape tribulation, Disaster bay, Lake disappointment, Mount misery, Mount agony, Wreck head, and Salvation Creek? I like the cheerful names of Breakfast creek, Luncheon creek, Dinner plains, Eden, Plenty, and Bounty.
Travellers like collecting numbers. The population of the Northern Territory is 200,000 people and 100,000 wild camels. Road trains can be 50 metres long and iron ore trains 2.2 kms long. Some station hands we met had just finished mustering cattle on a 2.5 million acre station. And Western Australia has 8000 species of wild flowers. MYA means millions of years ago, and the MacDonnells and other orogenies were formed 430 mya down in Antarctica, before Australia broke off relations with Gondwanaland and floated north some 290 mya.
THE ROCK OF AGES
In the late Jurassic the super-continent Gondwana, rotating on molten rock, spun off a tectonic plate containing Australia. As of 1967 this is now our new home, but in an ancient, worn-down landscape. We live at the edge of the Sydney Basin, one of the largest prehistoric drainage catchments in the world. Two river systems fed it: one from northern NSW bearing volcanic rubble, one from Antarctica when it was part of Australia, and bearing quartz, both rivers arising in mountains of Himalayan size. Beyond Sydney harbour the Tasman Sea opened up 80 million years ago carrying Lord Howe Island and even New Zealand away from Sydney and way over the horizon. Meanwhile, Australia is travelling north to China at six centimetres a year. While, over to the right in the Pacific, huge bits of the earth’s crust are still sliding one under the other. The lower crust has left those deep ocean trenches that fascinate marine biologists. And further down, about 100 kilometres, molten lava has found cracks large enough to spout volcanos. Look at a topographical map of the Pacific and the deep sea trenches are paralleled by lines of volcanos exactly where the lower plate would have reached melting point. Safe in the centre of our tectonic plate we seldom get earthquakes and never volcanos. But once were dinosaurs in tropical forests here, and now we have deserts.
Fossils lift the lid, so to speak, on the struggle for survival in all this geological hostility, and our own fossil trail started 1968 in Mendooran, at the top edge of the Sydney Basin. Somewhere I think we still have those incredible shards of white pipe clay containing dark pointed leaves of an extinct species that pre-dated the eucalypts. A geologist, David Roots, led our next excursion, 16 of us in middle age, chattering excitedly in a bus, to Jim and Joan Bryant’s south coast weekender. Mornings were theory, the logic of three-point cracks and the tendency of new continents to look like hexagons. Afternoons were field work, on the rock platforms at Rosedale North. Myriad fractures, all caused from flexing of the plates as they move, very slowly, with “all the time in the world”. Here, these fractures are filled with white quartz, some half a metre thick, elsewhere they are filled with basalt, lava long since cooled and solidified. And we lever out specimens from verticals (dykes) and horizontals (sills). As the sand squelches between our toes on a lazy beach, survival is no longer an issue, but those black, jagged igneous claws on the headlands could, and did, rip the bottoms out of passing wooden ships.
“There’s nowhere to stay here, let’s go. Wait, there’s that Age of Fishes Museum. Might be worth a look.” Said Joan. This was Canowindra and our next fossil excursion. There is only one other place in the world with such a spectacular collection of fish, 360 million years old, twice as old as the dinosaurs. During a severe drought, thousands of these bizarre fishes, some armour-plated, some with lungs, some with jaws like a crocodile, crowded together to die in the remains of a muddy river. But before they could rot away, flash floods brought silt down river and preserved them as fossils. Eons later, great slabs of closely-packed fossils, about to be destroyed by a bulldozer, were saved by a passing bee-keeper who realised their antiquity. Driving home next day, a deep road cutting revealed spectacular geological layers. And at the top of the rise there was only a thin crust of vegetation supporting a fragile life that one day might be recorded in nature’s history book of life, sudden death and fossilisation. And later that year we found it.
It was at Wilpena Pound in the Flinders Ranges. “Hey, that’s the drink bottle” we said. And Jaz, our tour leader, was emptying it on a large slab of rock on our 4WD geology excursion. There in front of us was an amazing pattern of multi-cell reef sponge fossils glittering in the sun. But, wait a minute, multi-cell life only started in the Cambrian era, and these rocks are 60 million years earlier. Three days earlier, stopping at Hawker for sausage rolls, we had seen a placard announcing a new geological era, the Ediacaran. Though this was discovered 60 years ago in the Flinders Ranges it took until 2004 before the world’s geological bureaucracy finally gave Ediacara its blessing. So now the world’s geology books are being rewritten.
JOURNEYS IN THE SAND
“To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a Heaven in a wild flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand,
And Etenity in an hour”
(William Blake)
In the last chapter we followed the adventures of our children, and then our grandchildren, growing up on the beaches of New South Wales. After 33 years of camping at Blackfellows Point, it now seems appropriate to encapsulate the magic of those days. Here then are some photos, an article called Cycles, and a Coastal Scrapbook of memories. The painting shows the Point, popular for rock fishing, though I think the beach fishermen catch more. The majestic Maculata gums rise behind the little lake, dried out in this photo.
The Birkmire tent below was our first tent that didn’t leak. Apart from fishing in Tuross Lake
There are adventures in civil engineering, and excursions to the Glass House Rocks, ancient volcanic plugs reflecting in wet sand on our way to the “grotto” pool.
“Cycles” (also printed in the Clare College Journal and in Ann’s Leaves from the Family Tree)
About a generation ago a huge storm swept all the trees off the long sand spit. In a titanic battle between wave and flood, some were washed out to sea, some back into the lake, the rest rotted where they fell. For years our children have watched nature’s repair team at work, laying networks of hairy spinifex to secure the seaward dunes, spreading sedge and pigface to restore those facing the lake and, eventually, encouraging the coastal casuarinas to push up through the low green canopy. Within this cycle of devastation and renewal lie other cycles. Twice a day, but on a gentler scale, the same tidal battle takes place. As the lake drains seaward, little waves chortle and bubble as they race round the end of the spit, until they meet head-on the standing waves at the sand bar. Cycles within cycles.
And so, at dawn, low shafts of sunlight transform the mountain peaks from grey to olive gold. On the spit, the wind has sculptured smooth escarpments, tufted cliffs of sand, yellow at dawn, white at midday, and all marked by a variety of adventurers. Mysterious ribbons of sand, like tiny braid, begin and end nowhere. Crabs clear out their front doors leaving urgent, untidy earthworks, and occasional spidery tracks to a neighbor’s front door. Sand-martins skitter to and fro leaving delicate prints. Larger prints indicate wallabies, and much larger ones an ecological intruder, an emu escaped from an emu farm. Where the overhanging tips of grasses are blown by restless winds, perfect semicircles are described in the sand. Overhead, black swans fly in vee formation on their way to make a living, some going south, passing those going north, like Sydney commuters. On the glassy surface of the lake the wing tips of a pelican leave long twin trails of circles as, defying all the laws of aerodynamics, it somehow lifts off and lumbers up into the sky. At the high water mark a dead turtle carries a mantle of shells, one-time marine passengers, also now at the end of their journey. And once we met an exhausted penguin staggering up the beach to die, its flippers sketching its obituary in the sand.
Mid-morning, and a light westerly has combed the roughness out of the waves and smoothed up the faces of a normally indifferent surf, and six surfers have appeared as if by magic. A mini-mal describes graceful undulating arcs while a short board slashes the face, slams the lip and cut backs into the break. Closer in, the little boards that surfies disparagingly call “esky lids”, cream in to the shallows where, today, our grandchildren splash and laugh.
Lunchtime, and the adults are facing a revolution. Responding to a ban on gameboys, the grandchildren have prepared a ten-point manifesto on a page out of a colouring-in book. To their own signatures have been added four from intimidated nearby campers and one from a mysterious ring-in called “Joey”. The adults fight back hard and eventually an interim agreement is ratified – just in time for lunch.
Mid-afternoon, and the bellbirds have been silenced by a deafening chorus of cicadas from the forest of spotted gums. Tall and stately columns, whose curved branches meet in a fan vaulting as beautiful as that of a European cathedral, encircle a tiny lake, now dry enough for wallabies to graze on its reeds and joeys on its grasses.
Midnight, and the crash of an overturned cutlery box signals the start of the battle with the possums. They seem to train their night glasses on us from an overhanging tree as we zip up the tent and turn out the lamp, then they jump to the tent and absail down the ropes to investigate tonight’s pickings. They have been known to loosen lids by knocking tins off the table. But our bread, onions, fruit and weetbix are safely inside the tent, and the marauders eventually move on, in a cycle of their own within the larger ones that fascinate and reward the coastal camper.
THE EUROBODALLA COAST
Here are more fragments from my diaries.
Arriving. On the spur of the moment Joan and I went camping a day early, leaving at 2 pm on the 9th, arriving at the campsite at 7:30 with one hour of daylight left to find a site, erect the tent, gather firewood, build a fireplace and cook dinner. Just made it. As we relaxed in deck chairs under the tall gums with our bowls of spaghetti a huge orange moon heaved out of the sea and climbed through thin strands of purple cloud into the night. Then, without leaving our deck chairs, we washed up, two buckets between us, one for washing one for drip drying, lit the primus for coffee and relaxed at the edge of the tall maculata gums. The big Pacific winter swells change the beaches every year and this year the sandbars are shallow and ideal for children. They swim before breakfast, before lunch, and late afternoon, and I am reminded of a holiday in Tobago around 1942 when Tim and I left the beach reluctantly only for meals and sleep.
Erecting the tent. Mum and I had promised each other to approach the erection of the tent, an intellectual challenge of steel tubes and unexpected canvas folds, slowly and calmly this year and soon the tent is up, clothes lines stretched between trees, firewood collected and stored under a tarpaulin, and Mum is enjoying sitting in the cool sea breeze after the humid 30 degrees of Sydney.
The old school house. On the last day I pay the rent and discover that the caretaker’s cousin is writing a history of the school at Eurobodalla. Eurobodalla shire is huge, probably 100 miles in diameter. Paradoxically, Eurobodalla consists of 2 houses and a wooden bridge across a creek. From 1928 to 1936 the teacher was Henry Robert Hogan, Joan’s father, in the days when children rode ten miles to school on horseback. Five years ago we found the ruins of the old school house on a hill on a bend in the river, all that was left was a brick hearth and an iron bar from which Nana probably hung her cooking pots.
The station wagon squatted heavily on its haunches as Kate, Rosie, Sophie and I set off for Sydney with luggage nearly a metre high on the roof rack. On the 6 hour trip Rosie and Sophie sang along to a tape of “Strictly Boring” as they have nicknamed it. The storm we saw winding and swirling up over the Bulli escarpment eventually blacked out 30,000 houses in the Western suburbs of Sydney.
Flora and Fauna. We are camped up the hill above the lake, amongst the tall spotted gums meeting in fan vaulting high above. Nan, armed only with a camera, has been chasing a 6 foot long goanna until it escaped up a tree. We keep our tent closely zipped up at night. Not so the Druces, who found a bush rat curled up asleep in their onion drawer. Usually there is an eagle hang-gliding above the forest, and black swans, the shape of baseball bats with wings right at the back, commute morning and evening. At 6 am I try to keep up with Mum and the little sandpipers as they stride together round the sand spit. We sit on a log and watch a squadron of pelicans wake up on a sand bar in Tuross lake, warm up and taxi out, like world war II flying boats, to their respective runways. Frogs in the small lake chortle happily all night, possums grumble raucously about campers’ meanness as they forage in cooking utensils in the small hours, and kookaburras start ridiculing us at about 5:30 am. A goanna (iguana or giant lizard which grow to 6 feet) waddles across the campsite occasionally, reminding one of the advisability of keeping tents always zipped up. Rosie, Sophie and Daisy are fascinated by the cunjevois I’ve shown them on the rocks. Cunjevois, sea squirts, look just like seaweed on the rocks, squirt water when you press them and are, surprisingly, one of the most developed of the animal groups, in the same phylum as dogs, cats and monkeys.
The bride wore an attractive, black, waterproof outfit of pleated rubber with short sleeves & neatly concealed zip & carefully matched ankle-strap, as she tried to remember how to ride her surfboard after 5 years. The groom & the father-of-the-bride wisely stayed on the shore, shouting advice. The English visitors occupied a caravan & a cabin with ocean views in the “stalls” while the natives set up their tents in the “gallery” at the edge of the forest.
The wedge-tailed eagle. On account of the mega-tons of sand washed out from the lakes there is now a long walk through the shallows to the surf. I am looking up at a wedge-tail eagle high above the beach when he folds his wings and plummets towards me. He pulls out of his high-speed dive and drops his undercarriage into a shoal of fish. He misses and they scatter like Caribbean flying fish. At sunrise kookaburras waking and bellbirds chiming, so out of tent and up the beach where on the left “jocund day stands tiptoe on the misty mountain tops” of the Great Dividing Range. The main beach is rougher than usual so we swim in the big lake, now closed by a sand bar, and at Piccaninny and Potato Beaches. Excursions include ice creams at Tilba, fish and chips at Bermagui, and fishing on Narooma Lake after which the three outboards race back to the wharf. Isabel, steering, spins us in a circle and we come third. Meanwhile, in Tasmania, there has been a contest between Jaws and Guts. A three metre white pointer grabbed a 13-year-old off her surfboard. But her cousin paddled over, punched the shark on the nose to release the girl, and paddled her on his board, with the shark shadowing them below, in to the beach.
The gothic cathedral of gum trees under which we erect the tent seems taller, and the fan vaulting which gives shade at the top more elaborate. Maybe it is just that there are no other campers and more room. But the real difference of February over January is in the wild life. The chiming of the bellbirds is much nearer and louder. A row of kangaroos watches us as near as 20 metres away, bolt upright on large back paws, little hands held neatly together as if in supplication, faces and long ears locked-on to our every sound and movement. Drop a billycan loudly and they leap away into the undergrowth. Less welcome are the goannas, dragons 6 foot long and 6 inches across an always hungry tummy, crawling across the grass with a noise like a scythe. But say “shoo” and they waddle away, say “shoo” twice and they climb up a tree and hang there on their massive claws, for hours if necessary.
Cricket. I never tire of the south coast drive and now I am getting close. The peach orchards of Araluen are 56 km on the right, then I reach Trunkatabella Creek, Tuross Lake, then the bright green shallows of Piccaninny Beach and, since Joan’s shoulder has kept her in Sydney, Kate has my tent all ready. The little lake is dry enough to support our small cricket team, supplemented by two little roos, attentive at square leg and mid-off. And now stumps (there are only two) are drawn, dinner is served under a large tarpaulin, and a full moon has climbed up out of the Pacific and is illuminating a hollow constellation of puffy white clouds. Round the camp fire Pete and Simon on guitars, Kate on mouth organ and vocals, while Liz’s violin weaves in and out of the melody.
THE KILCARE COAST
Our first camp at Putty Beach. Much later with Shivaji at Terrigal.
Nippers. Once, we were nearly surrounded by an infestation of “nippers”. They seemed to waft up out of the sand in their hundreds, wearing blue caps and looking for all the world like the soldier crabs on the mud flats of Tuross lake near where we camp. I’d better explain. Nippers are junior members of surf life saver clubs, typically starting at 6 years old, and for whom races along the sand and out to sea are organised on a huge, para-military scale, usually invading half the beach. All in a good cause. Many of us have been glad of a hand from a life saver in a strong rip current.
Dive bombers. We took Nan & Jean for a drive round to Pretty Beach & watched a pelican as it banked sharply, lowered its undercarriage, skidded like a water skier between the sand banks & lowered its bulk into a burst of ripples. Halfway to Putty beach on the ocean side is a turnoff through the bushes to the middle of Kilcare beach which we had not tried before, normally deserted & with safe, gentle body-surfing waves on shallow sand banks. We watched as shearwater gulls would suddenly fold their wings & dive-bomb unsuspecting fish basking below the surface. The Gavaghans had joined us (& asked after you, Rebecca) & Sarah & Liz did well on the boogie boards. We asked a beach fisherman what was the best time of day to fish & got the reply we deserved: “Without any doubt, the best time is when they are there!”.
The arthritic eagle.. all met at Bilgola beach for the triple birthday party. After a swim we watched a hang glider twisting and turning above the headland and were surprised when he finally landed on the beach, and then struggled, like a giant eagle with arthritis, along the beach to the car park. I had a chat with him while he was folding up the wire ribs and spars and packing the whole thing away in a huge canvas bag very methodically and slowly (“you don’t want to find you’ve forgotten an important bit of wire next time you are at 7000 feet!”). He didn’t think I was at all too old to start, and there is always the parachute. They meet every Tuesday at Dee Why clubhouse, but Mum won’t let me go.
The Admiral. We have found a new ferry service to WoyWoy. A small and decrepit launch, with a rather incongruous captain in white naval uniform, takes us from the jetty where Sophie caught all those fish. We meander through the channels, under the Rip Bridge and past the mangroves to WoyWoy. There is a commentary from the “admiral” on the way back, about the pelicans dive-bombing us as we pass too close to their sanctuary island, and about Spike Milligan’s campaign (his mother lived in WoyWoy) to save another uninhabited island from the clutches of property developers. Back to Sydney in time to go with Aunties Ann and Mary, and Nana, to see the firework display on New Year’s Eve. One can’t really describe fireworks, except to say this was the biggest and most spectacular ever on the harbour.
THE SPINE OF AUSTRALIA
So far we have been exploring the coast of NSW through the eyes of our children and grandchildren. Here we will push west, to the Great Dividing Range, following it down from top to bottom. In the next chapter we go further west, to the Northern Territories and Western Australia. Since our excursion through South Australia started in Lake Eyre you will also find an account of it later, under SALT. And, since we did find snow in the mountains, you will find this under SNOW.
The Great Dividing Range runs down the East coast and here are some of our journeys, from North to South
Cape Tribulation. “The crocs here can run across this sand flat as fast as horses” says our guide so we break into a trot to catch up the party nervously edging back to our vehicle. We don’t want to be sacrificial tourists. We have just learned about sacrificial leaves that soak up salt, turn yellow and drop off the mangrove tree, thus preserving the tree from salination. Mike Toogood was with us, one of the last times we saw him. In 2006 we flew up there, with Rebecca and Shivaji, to join M, C, F, A and M at their camp site, and to learn checkers from Maya. “This is YOUR area, and this is MY area”.
Bobo Creek. Kate and Pete now have 42 acres out from Taree. At the time of writing I have been up there but once and, since EXPLORING AUSTRALIA is an ongoing project, I will arrange updates in later chapters. I don’t know which experience was the most exciting, teaching Isabel to drive the Pajero in the paddock, or watching Jesse killing a six-foot red-bellied black snake.
The Warrumbungles leapt out of the plains looking like a huge volcanic eruption, which I suppose is exactly what it was. After 6 months in England, Pa had momentarily forgotten the gender rules of Australian hotels when he ushered us into the Coonabarabran Hotel. As in the cowboy movies, conversation cut dead as we walked in. So the barman firmly turned us out into the corridor which doubled as the ladies lounge. Pa was taking us to the Siding Springs Observatory, on the first of our many visits to the Bungles.
Wollombi. On our fortieth wedding anniversary last year Joan’s Mum and sisters gave us some money for a weekend away and we lost it. So when it turned up in an envelope in a drawer last week we decided to spend it quickly before it got lost again. Twenty-eight years ago we got lost (seems to be a habit) when we were coming back from the Hunter Valley (no, it wasn’t the wine tasting) and drove through Wollombi. It hasn’t changed since, except for the addition of Capers Cottage and its guest house. We seem to stay in strange places and meet unusual people. Built of convict stone (the cottage, not the people) from Sydney Hospital renovation, the stones were lost in the Blue Mountains (yes, truly) for years, then six semi-trailers hauled them for six days, to the top of a hill looking up the Wollombi valley. So this is where we are sitting (not on the stones, they have been assembled into a heritage guest house since), admiring the view and talking to a young couple. Warwick is a plastic surgeon from Adelaide and Mimi, an American, does African dancing. Her female friends back home are pessimistic about Bush and his abilities – they think they will all be wearing burkhas in ten years. We tell them about the course we are doing on fundamentalism, which doesn’t do much to raise the hilarity level, so we talk about African drumming instead and enjoy the wine, the food and the view.
Mount Wilson. The old fibro cottage was still there when we drove past recently. John had tried, unsuccessfully, to register its address with the Post Office as Fibrocitis. The big painting which he gave us is looking west to Lithgow from the veranda. Luigi, an Italian poet, lived up the road. Wynn’s Rock, down the road, once sheltered a bush ranger and Kate once gave me a heart attack when she leapt the safety rail above a 1000-foot drop.
Sawpit Creek. “Camp is full, you’ll have to go bush” says the ranger, so we do. Kate and John set off for water and it is dark before they return with buckets of icy water from what must have been the Snowy River. “What’ll we do about a toilet?” Joan gives me a look “There is a tree, and here is a spade”. The tent leaks so we dry our gear each morning when the sun gets up. The struggle to survive keeps us fit. Not so in the luxury of the Henshaw establishment, a ski lodge higher up the mountain, where they are busy trading coughs and colds. We invite them to tea, standing five deep under a tarpaulin slowly filling with water. John Henshaw is watching the bulge above his head. His expression combines the polite resignation of a guest awaiting a drenching, with concern for the Spartan lifestyle we have so ill-advisedly chosen.
JOURNEYS OF THE MIND – GENDER
“Laze and Gem” is the way to start a speech according to Affabet Lauder, and it also provides an excuse to revisit an old film, The Battle of the Sexes. Here the Gem, Peter Sellers, is locked in battle with one of the Laze, his boss who is also an efficiency expert. Reaching backwards for a knife in the kitchen drawer, he raises at arm’s length an egg whisk by mistake. In the huge literature on gender, the male seem to have contributed the most to the battle, leaving the female to actually win the war. Let us kick off, so to speak, with Jane Austen: “…it appears to me that the usual style of letter writing among women is faultless, except in three particulars…A general deficiency of subject, a total inattention to stops, and a very frequent ignorance of grammar.” Hamlet pulled no punches: “Frailty, thy name is woman”. Bernnard Shaw claimed that “Women fall into three categories: the beautiful, the intelligent and the majority”, and suggested that “If Helen of Troy’s nose had been quarter of an inch longer it would have changed the history of the world”. Men will compare and advise each other on courtship tactics, as when Fabian warns Sir Toby Belch that “you are now sailed into the north of my lady’s opinion; where you will hang like an icycle on a Dutchman’s beard”.
But the female has fought back. In a feminist placard “A woman’s place is in the house, and the senate”, and on the internet: Q “What do you do when you see your husband staggering across the backyard?” A “You reload”. And when we inefficient males cannot find something, they offer to have a “girl’s look” for it.
Sociologists have analysed the instruction in railway toilets “Gentlemen Lift the Seat” concluding that it is either the definition of a gentleman or some form of loyal toast (Beyond the Fringe). And anthropologists studying dowries have concluded that “The father of daughters waters another man’s tree”. Feste, a clown, suggests that “Many a good hanging prevents a bad marriage.” But Williamson, also a playwright, is critical of Shakespeare’s solution in As You Like It: “Not just ONE idealised wedding but FOUR. Four female ciphers racing like lemmings towards total personality eclipse.”
JOURNEYS OF THE SOUL – DREAMS
Shakespeare said: “ We are such stuff as dreams are made on”, but my own recurrent dreams don’t seem to explain me. From Barbados I carried a recurrent dream in which I wondered what lay north of Chalky Mount. From Bristol that I had forgotten to pay the landlady for years, and that I had left a car to be repaired, also for years. In recurrent surfing dreams the break was always a slowly crumbling wall of rock, but washed with water so it was rideable. Sometimes the farthest wave was a tall parapet from which I could see half of the Pacific Ocean.
But how about the poets? Hamlet is philosophical: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy”, and he is deeply worried: ‘To sleep, perchance to dream”. Romeo has overslept: “Night’s candles are burnt out, and jocund day stands tip-toe on the misty mountain top”. With Thomas Hardy, “Tess was awake before dawn – at the marginal minute of the dark when the grove is still mute, save for one prophetic bird who sings with a clear-voiced conviction that he at least knows the correct time of day, the rest preserving silence as if equally convinced that he is mistaken”. But Evelyn Waugh is less poetic: “John woke queasy and despondent. All over England people were waking queasy and despondent”. And Robert Bolt is quite cynical: ‘The nobility of England, my lord, would have snored through the Sermon on the Mount.’