For all their faults and disadvantages there were some positive sides to the pandemic lockdowns. As I often say, ‘good times’ – maybe my memory isn’t what it was. I realise that I planned and prepared for so long to move to an apartment and now I am here, I keep discovering more and more things I like about it. I could stay home and read and write and never leave it, just popping down to the shops when I need supplies – perhaps it’s a case of self-imposed lockdown.
I liked previously living in an apartment in Canberra because it reminded me of life in Sydney – without the crowds and the rush. I had more practice of apartment living here than I realise, because I lived in one in Canberra before, but also apartment-sat for a while after I came back from New Zealand. When I lived in the previous apartment, I used to love the way I adjusted the blinds to reflect the way the light was moving throughout the day – it was like trimming the sails on a yacht in the sky. It feels the same here. It means you are always conscious of the light.
Where Canberra (and Australia) was bornPartly that sense of a new beginning is connected with my move to an apartment, where, as I waited for it to be completed, I always dreamed I could think and write with minimal distractions. Driving back from getting a blood test early this morning as I passed through Forrest and looked up to the hills behind, I thought how much I like this area – it’s where Canberra began.
My days seem full at the moment – half with social engagements, half with endless medical appointments. At least the medical appointments are about confirming that I don’t have anything (mainly), rather than uncovering things I do have. Living in Canberra I am mere minutes away from a hospital. Sometimes I think I moved here just in time, both for my own attendances and for visiting other people. If they had frequent flyer points for presentation at Hospital Emergency, I’d be flying for free.
Hanging around waiting to be assessed, you quickly realise that half the people in Hospital Emergency seem to be there because they play sport, the other half because they don’t play sport.
Recently my brother-in-law was helicoptered up from the coast – with a full medical team in attendance – after his motorbike hit a kangaroo, and he then spent a week and a half in the hospital – luckily we don’t live in America. But I'm in relatively good shape. Too many of my friends have been ‘having falls’ – at a certain age, you stop ‘falling’ and start ‘having falls’.
Veering between serious shit and chicklit
Life in an apartment in Canberra is like living in a big public building near other big public buildings. It’s ironic that we are living on what is described as the attic level, rather than the penthouse. In grand houses and hotels the attic is where the small rooms were where the servants lived.
I realise that in my long working life I’ve had so many different – though linked – lives, all endlessly enjoyable. One of my friends from Adelaide once said in exasperation ‘Stephen, you get all the good jobs.’ It’s true – I’ve moved through community arts, the trade union movement, community radio, museums, Government – in literature, music, creative industries, museums and Indigenous culture and languages – and ended up helping establish the long-running DESIGN Canberra festival, now in its eleventh year. In all of these successive careers I’ve managed to pull off mighty things and been surrounded by people who I admire, respect and value.
Bringing down Higher EducationThere’s a small personal footnote amongst all the vandalism occurring with Higher Education. It’s ironic that amongst all the staff it has sacked, the University of Canberra has lost me in its cuts as well. I was an Adjunct wit the University for eleven years. I brought a huge wealth of experience and skills and cost them nothing. I am a hidden loss because firstly they no longer had the staff to make use of my skills and then they didn’t have any surviving staff who were interested enough to notice that my term as an Adjunct was expiring on Friday. Adieu.
Walking with ghosts
‘Increasingly people I have known for a long time seem to be dying. In fact my generation is steadily starting to disappear. Who is replacing them? We shuffle along in a world that is unravelling, a world – that for both good and bad – our generation gave birth to. We are teetering in a strange balance between building on the achievements of the past and desperately trying to dismantle them. In many countries, the current generation is poorer than the previous one, upending generations of dreams by working class parents and migrants for a better life for their children. In this time of upheaval – both welcome and unwelcome – creativity is needed like never before’, Walking with ghosts.
I'm on the road again – well, on the rails again. On Monday I caught the slow train from Canberra to Sydney, and today I’ve woken up to a third morning in Surry Hills. I’m enjoying the days in Sydney – after all, I did live here for twelve and a half years. I’m mainly here to see the Yolngu Power exhibition at the Art Gallery of NSW, which finishes next week, but I’m also using the trip to see to other business’, On the rails again – a trip about the past and the future.
‘I see the latest report on looming climate change has some pretty dire predictions – like a future of four times the length of heatwaves, up to five times as many deaths due to extreme heat, a massive drag on productivity, 1.5 million Australians at risk of coastal flooding and a potential half trillion dollar hit to property values by 20250 – and that’s just the good news’, Looking down on dire predictions.
‘From time to time my posts on ‘travelling light’ include references to restaurants we have eaten at or enjoyable places we have stayed. However, most of my regular writing about food, produce, restaurants and places we have stayed is on one of my blogs, tableland, which I describe as: ‘Food and cooking land to table – the daily routine of living in the high country, on the edge of the vast Pacific, just up from Sydney, just down from Mount Kosciuszko’, Essen, trinken, tanzen – aber nicht rauchen.
‘In winter my mind turns to food, but since it is never turned away from art, cooking and looking manage to fill in the cooler months – or maybe that’s all months. I haven’t made hand-made pasta for a while but I have made sushi and sashimi – though only once in recent memory – as I resurrect all my food traditions. Cooking, eating and cruising around art exhibitions – that’s winter for me’, Cooking minestrone in an art gallery - pineapple fruit cake, hot soup and art on a cold day