Encompassing

Recently, here in Canberra, like a flash in a pan, the rock star entourage that was President Obama came and went, turning prime ministers giddy and hard-nosed commentators all warm and fluffy for a few minutes. While the presidents and queens and clone armies of government come and go, like migratory birds without the sense of direction, the city of Canberra remains steadfast. Unfaltering in its provision of flowing circles lined with decadent green, balancing sweltering blue skies with somehow comforting gloomy days of rain, ever ready with an ample supply of floral Australiana. And here I sit, after five years, an attachment formed in comfort and familiarity, yet still delivering contentment and possibility.

At the centre of it all is home, the Australian home, where comfort and familiarity abounds with your own space and belonging. Outside the home, there’s both the annoyance and pleasure of its rambling garden, always keen to turn feral in the warming sun and soakings of spring, but delighting with the vibrancy of its callistemon scattered among the weeds. Both inside and beyond home there is work, and yes, I am forced to earn some money again after all this extravagant living! But even that is comforting for a while – the routine and expectation that you are somehow making a worthwhile contribution to something somewhere.

From home – and from work – Canberra and its surrounds have continued to provide a variety of rediscoveries and comforting familiarities. At its centre, the lake continues to look slightly murky and smell funny in places, but then with the right light and formation of aesthetically pleasing shapes and forms becomes somewhat pleasing in an aesthetic sense.

From this centrepiece of man-made curves and inlets, points north, south, east and west have offered chance and freedom to enjoy the emergence and occasional disappearance of summer. These compass points drawing together a series of disparate journeys, providing a contrived underlying theme to some wearisome prose. I really should write this blog more often as such tenuous connections are becoming increasingly difficult to thread together.

Heading east on our compass for some time and thoughts of stagnant but shimmering man-made inland lakes become a distant memory, replaced by crystal surf and golden sands. For all its pent up frustration at being inland, Canberra is blessed with its relative proximity to such a wonderful stretch of the NSW coastline. A visit was long overdue last Saturday, with my aim little more than to fill the day with archetypal south coast activities. Essentially this means brunch by the Bay, a wander through bushland and windswept sands, ice creams and lazing with a book on the sand, and fish n chips to send me on my way back over the mountain. Food of course always central to the plan.

That’s not to say I have continued to balloon following my exertions with food in the USA. Hopefully things have stabilised on that front, and the light evenings and mild temperatures have been conducive to at least some encouragement for exercise. North of home, and just across that lake, stands Mount Ainslie, my own nemesis for which I have a love-hate relationship. It’s a gorgeous piece of bushland, scattered with roos and rosellas, delightful at day’s end when the fading sun illuminates Canberra’s centre with a warming tranquillity. Such is my familiarity with this place that I know that with some discomfort you can march up the summit in 19 minutes and 58 seconds. Alas throw in a small child blocking the route and you can top out over the 20 minutes by 5 seconds. It’s not a second, seven seconds away.

Mount Ainslie, like so many lumps in the capital, offers that little piece of bushland in the midst of suburbia. But head south and these lumps become somewhat lumpier and decidedly less suburban, as the Australian Alps begin to rise. You can start a track from Canberra and walk all the way through the high country, into Victoria and probably end up drinking a pot of Carlton Draught in Melbourne while discussing the latest drafts for the Bombers.

While nothing on the scale of Alps elsewhere and nowhere near offering the rain shadow experiences of a Mount Rainier, it provides a little buffer for the capital, attracting the heaviest thunderstorms and low clouds. At other times it can be baking hot, an immense bowl of firewood ready for a lightning spark and fierce northerly to run amok. With five years on my account I’ve seen this area green up from the scars of the huge 2003 bushfire, yet blackened trunks remain among the vibrant foliage and cascading waters. A reminder that even with the fragrant menthol and lemon scent unleashed by recent heavy rains, this landscape can turn in a flash.

A less tempestuous offering sits just a little east from home, a consistent pleasure that always lifts and invigorates, without as much painstaking effort involved as Mount Ainslie. It’s one of my favourite places in the world, such is what happens when you accumulate hours in its company. To many it wouldn’t seem remarkable, just another patch of long yellow grasses swaying in the breeze and gnarly white gum trees pointing heavenwards. And, to be fair, they would be right. But it’s your little place, one that is more than a landscape, a place that has shared your thoughts, your joys and hopes and fears and peaks and troughs. And through it all it carries on regardless, flocks of cockatoos vying for company with galahs and rosellas as the sunlight sparkles across its horizon each eve. Kangaroos gathering in shady hollows with the passage of the sun. Runners and dog walkers following their carefully crafted routines to the letter. And random immigrants capturing the same photos over and over again with the comforting thought that familiarity breeds content, wherever one may end up on the compass.

The Return to Oz

A couple of weeks before the flying kangaroo decided it wasn’t suited to flying, being a two legged marsupial and all, a Qantas A380 transported me from yesterday back to the future. Can there be any better welcome than a sparkling sunny Sydney Sunday morning to remind you what a great place this is? The sunshine continued down to Canberra, though after a few weeks in the Pacific Northwest it was noticeable how grey the green of the eucalypts appeared. Greener was the garden, which occupied my time and provided access to endless Vitamin D in the first week back, alongside a spot of reading, biking, walking, shopping, eating, and drinking.

While my return was somewhat eclipsed by the Queen being in town as well, it was great to catch up with friends, drink good coffee and avoid tall racist Greek princes bumbling through flower beds. After so long away I was particularly keen, despite its grey tinge, to go bush. The time of year especially appealing as winter turns to summer and life lurches forward at a tumultuous pace. Life which includes snakes and echidnas, all observed from a safe distance on a classic country bush ramble around Googong Dam one very warm morning.

In a now fully serviced yet still with dodgy exhaust car, the second weekend back heralded a return to Sydney and opportunity to glow by the sea, feel inadequate amongst the lean, fit, stylish people around me, and take solace in wonderful brunches and sand in the toes. With leisurely time on my hands I took the long way round, detouring via Kangaroo Valley and embarking on a thoroughly enjoyable amble amongst wildflowers to view verdant valleys and sandstone castles of rock. Ticking off one archetypal Aussie landscape, it wasn’t too long before another was in view, and the saturated blues, greens and yellows of the south coast provided welcome background to coffee and cake at Kiama.

Sydney itself provided that wonderful feeling of milling around on a beach with a coffee while still enjoying temporary retirement. The surprising thing is that there seem to be lots of people on temporary retirement or, more likely along the Eastern Suburbs, copiously wealthy to be able to potter around and watch investment returns pile up while the other 99% sleep in tents. Many of these people seem to partake in exercise as a means of filling their days, the multiple steps from Coogee to Clovelly providing a beautiful arena for their aerobic excessiveness. Others simply get someone to tell them to run up to a tree and back several times, oblige willingly, and pay them handsomely. For my part, I took the middle ground – a free walk with moderate briskness.

This exercise just about justified sharing a pizza and chips with a beer and chit chat in Bondi later in the day, and a non-American but equally impressive burger even later in the day. By the next morning, the revisit to Globe for breakfast probably tipped the food v exercise scales deeply out of my favour, so once more some time to walk it off around the sweeping sand of Cronulla and the northern bushland and sandstone cliffs of Royal National Park.

While there was some murk, a choppy ride across the Hacking River, and an unfortunate stumble to a lookout with views violated by a nude bloke with sagging appendages tanning his plums, the return journey to Cronulla was significantly plainer sailing and sunshine returned for what was a blissful hour on the fully clothed beach. How I have missed those Australian beaches, they really are the world’s best.

The remainder of the weekend embraced more in the way of eating and a little less in the way of exercise, though my final breakfast by the beach was followed by 217 steps uphill and back to the car for the return trip to Canberra. By now I was getting dangerously close to embarking on permanent retirement, but with some business related income on the horizon, the trip back started to feel a little like the end of another holiday. Still, there was significant diversion to stretch it out, quite literally diverting to the Wollongong freeway and a fine vista from the escarpment before the long haul home. And, back there, one final event which officially signified the return to Oz. Steak on the barbie maaaaate.