Here comes the sun

The last night of frost tonight, says the weather forecast. The sun has come out. Crocuses are peeking up. Squirrels, looking plump and fluffy in their winter coats, are vigorously foraging everywhere. The female Canada goose on the lake has made herself a little downy nest on the shore and sits patiently while her male cruises up and down bullying the ducks away. Green buds are bursting on the first trees.
My days are passing terrifyingly fast. I am busy as anything - and yet I don't feel productive. Many hours vanish on email alone. I just filed two columns - and still I feel as if I have not done enough. Stircrazy, perhaps?

With time to read

Rainy days help. But it is a treat to be able to sit down with a book during the daytime. I've never been good at it. Almost any time I sit down with a book I am consumed with guilt and mental listings of things I really should be doing - as if reading is some sort of self-indulgent sin. And, within 15 minutes or so, I am usually up and doing some chore or other. Always as a quick preface to the reading session, something I will just get out of the way now there is the chance. I do some of my best housework whenever I try to read a book in the daytime.
But here we are with some real time and most of the chores done. That's the big plus of apartment living. I have finished the books I am reviewing and have come to the magic moment when I get to choose some reading matter.
First choice was Richard Clark's "Against All Enemies". What an engrossing and disturbing read. But this is the moment for such a book. This book fills in many of the spaces in the jigsaw of media coverage - by going under the skin of events, behind the scenes of bureaucracy and politics. It teaches and reminds one of the history of recent years - spreads out a decade of interlocking events and makes it all make sense. And it leaves one even more worried and frustrated - but at least advisedly so.

April Fool's Day

The year's April 1 marked 19 years of my working for my paper. Nothing funny about that. Scarey - the years rolling by so easily, busy weeks skittering from beneath me. I don't regret. It has been richly interesting and, in many ways it has defined my identity. Of course there have been frustrations and times of stress. Hell, the job, by deadline definition, is pressured. But it also has been fun - none more, I realise, than in the days when I was the one who played the April Fool's Day pranks in the paper.
In these earnest years, April Fool pranks have gone out of style. Howard Stern played a doozey this year, removing himself from the air. And John Kerry's team did a lovely mock press release announcing that George Bush was outsourcing the national debt.
They reminded me of my favorite prank - the year I declared, with particularly ugly artist illustrations, that the city's handsome old Town Hall clock was going digital.
There was a wonderful outcry of indignation among those who had not noticed what day it was. The switchboard was jammed. The Lord Mayor was ropable. He was out for my hide. Ahh..it was a most successful jape.
Those were the days.

Spring cometh

They took away the sand containers and shovels today. Two burly blokes, singing on the job as they heaved the sand bags onto the back of their truck. And the sand vacuum machines have been sucking up the gritty layers, now all the snow is gone and the sun is bursting through. First signs of spring, which I welcome with my first American cold. They do everything bigger and better in the USofA. So it has been quite some cold.

The darling little chipmunks are out and about, chipping merrily in the woods. Squirrels cavort, looking terribly busy. There are signs of their diggings all over the place - hunting for their nut stashes. The red-winged blackbirds are back from their migratory adventures. Ditto the Canada geese. And we even saw a lone swan gliding in among the ducks and geese on the lake in Mine Falls Park.
One forgets the profundity of spring when one lives in Australia. Without a harsh winter, there really is no spring. Just new growth. Here, the stark, leafless trees are showing their first spring life, thrusting forth buds of triumphant red.
In the forthcoming weeks, they will burst with green and this verdant landscape will become impenetrable once more.

On movies

Of course I love the Coen Brothers. And, just recently, I discovered the Polish Brothers and "Northfork" - a surreal meditation on frontiers and death. But, pondering the film industry and just which director would have me lining up at the box office in a state of great excitement, I realise it is Christopher Guest who is my hero.
And that I crave another movie from him.

Twilightland

It is a week since I disembarked from the 24-hour expedition which brings me to New Hampshire. I think I'm on the clock. I've been thinking that for some days. I've done this trip many time before. I am used to it. Or so I like to think. In fact I harbour the same self-delusion every time. I've come to think it is part of the process. It's a facet of jet lag. And there is no way around jet lag. If you think you have beaten it, it will creep up behind you and slam you into a new miasma.
Holding the kind hand of valium, I had six whole hours sleep over the Pacific last Friday. I have never had such a glorious big sleep in the air. I arrived oh, so perky and full of optimism that a real sleep surely would undermine the old jet lag. Watch me get right on the clock.
Saturday afternoon as we drove home from a lengthy and fairly energetic expedition, I grew noddy in the car. It was pre-dawn in Australia. Naturally my body wanted to acknowledge it. I demanded a large coffee and fought back valiantly. Jet lag be damned.
I woke a little early on the first couple of mornings here, but generally, apart from my digestive system, I seem to be nicely on the northern clock clock. In the afternoons, however, I run out of steam and seemed to squander time in some sort of amotivated haze. The result, of course, is an attack of self-loathing and guilt because there is much I should be doing, that I want to do, I have promised myself to get done... And yet I feel too floppy. Blah. Soporific. Is it the central heating? On Wednesday, returning from a delightful lunch in snowy Nashua with my friend Janet, I almost feel asleep on the couch later afternoon. Bruce came home and found me wrapped in a blanket in a state of torpor. I was quite embarrassed. As if I had been caught being lazy. Today I have no energy and don't want to do anything. I drank three coffees and forced myself out for a brisk walk to photograph the dripping icicles before they melt. It is bracing out there and it helped. But truth is that I am still not myself. I am sluggish and stupid. I know the old power will return. It always does. Eventually. But it is a myth that the west-east jet lag takes only three days. It is a myth I disprove year after year. It is a myth which punishes anyone who is naive enough to believe it. Jet lag takes at least a week. It simply won't be hurried. Ask your bowels. And one of its prime characteristics is that one always gets disoriented about how disoriented one is and how long one has been that way.

Up up and away

With the Festival rolling to a close and the body only just holding up to the double shifts and erratic meals, I leapt on a plane and returned to my other home - New Hampshire.
So, from the hot late Aussie summer to the cold New England late winter.
I never get over the general astonishment at making these huge transitions from one culture and world to another. Here there are big solid rather dirty piles of old snow lying in car park corners - apparently they were 10 ft tall not so long ago. But the air is dry and just seriously brisk with cold. Gloves weather. And my ears get cold. Bruce laughs at my complaints, since it is pussycat cold in his terms. And I have seen New Englanders out there in t-shirts for heavens sake. To them, the worst of the winter is over. Phhtt. I rushed to the stores and grabbed some warm gear from the bargain racks - and I don't care how silly I look, but I am rugging up. Then, of course, one goes indoors and it is all so heated one is sweating. Confusing. I have not had much experience with this clothes-on, clothes-off syndrome since my years in the Uk where I hated it, too. But at least it is a really comfy indoors and I can sit abouty in my sarong as usual. Unlike Australian winter in houses which we don't heat - and go around layered to the nines. I wear windcheaters and ugg boots with my sarongs there.
On the ground here, the presidential challenge is the hottest thing around. At last I have been able to see some of the Bush/Kerry advertising conflict. Bush's strategy seems pretty desperate and transparent to me - but it remains to be seen how much of the population still believes in him. One suspects that, just as Australians are turning against Howard, so are Americans turning against Bush. But politics is a strange beast. We must watch and wait.

Light at the end of the tunnel

Driving home towards a rising moon so huge that it looked as if it would crash into the earth. So many nights in black boxes watching theatre, the world looks miraculous. Then again, there was the weekend of Womad with all the good spirit and alternative culture - and that same wonderous moon hanging over the park with music rising up to meet it.

Boredom envy

Hurtling past town houses in the city en route to yet another show, I heard the sound of a TV set and realised that there is another life. Some people are sitting around snug at home and not going anywhere. Comfortable lounges and cups of tea, feet up. Meals on time, too. I had not had time to eat that night. Throughout the festival meals are grabbed on the run at very odd hours. That night, as I recall, I took the rumble tum for a fast walk to a service station at interval. I bought a banana. Dinner was consumed hours later at home where the choices were not too thrilling. It was some bought pasta stodge devoured at 11.30 hunched over the laptop.
A night at home suddenly becomes the most delicious luxury at Festival time.
It is Sunday night and I have such a treat - the first since the arts orgy began. I did spend 5 hours in the office today catching up on reviews and columns - but I also managed to cook and clean the kitchen and water the garden. Chores become pleasures. How ironic. But at least the battery feels somewhat recharged and ready for the rest of the onslaught.

Shameless Overdosing

Four days and nine shows. The Festival is just begun. The Fringe, that is. The official Fester starts on Friday. And we have a lot to see before we turn our attention to the serious, high-budget international fare. Not that the Fringe is not international. I have already excoriated a very charming and large Canadian company, sniped fondly at some American "Fakespeareans" and picked a single favorite from among the British comics.
There have been some stunning shows and some disappointments. As always.
There are so many shows the we have to keep the reviews very short and concise. It is the only way to accommodate the volume of them - and our track record of covering everything.
The weather has cooled, which is sheer pleasure for us locals and is very disappointing for the overseas acts who have come from winters. But it beats sitting with a fan in a hot venue - which I have done too often at too many Fringes.
It is hard enough to sustain the stamina without battling heat as well.
And then there is illness - the terror of the critic on this sort of agenda. And those audiences are always littered with sick people. Why do they come out and spread their virulent viruses in enclosed spaces? I hate them with a vengeance - coughing and sneezing from behind me. There is always one there! Always.
So many perils in the arts, eh.

The party has begun

A perfect, hot summer night. People five deep made snake formation through the city as they lined the route for the Fringe Festival opening parade. And what a beautiful parade it was, transluscent shimmering fantasy confections, stilt walkers in glitter, lights twinkling and myriad zany, colorful performers. Even a transluscent camel and a large grouping of Afghan refugees - a good political statement about detention centres for a people who helped to pioneer this country.
I could not stay for the whole parade - since it took 3/4 hour to pass a given point and I was scheduled to be in a theatre reviewing a Canadian musical production. Its promotional material bulged with radiant rave reviews. I'm afraid it did not get one from me.
After the show, Gawain and I meandered down to the Fringe Hub to check out the action. The place was jam-packed. Rock band in deep marquee under vivid lights and masses of people dancing. Lawns and grounds solid with people. Another sound stage with a DJ and music with a visceral beat. More lawns carpeted with people. Bars and food stands. In the cloisters, a zillion people, many in fantasy costumes, drinking and watching sequences of buskers. Much laughter and clapping. Beer bottles absolutely everywhere - which alarmed me until I discovered that they were all plastic. And everywhere, an easy-going happy mood. A lovely mood for such a massive crowd.
And the Fringe has begun.
The city is out at play.
And that is what makes it different from Fringes and festivals anywhere else. The size and the cohesion of the city makes it an event for all. Old and young. Conservative and playful. Adelaide is artsing and partying...and so it will go on until mid-March.

On information overload

The coffee drips through the filter as I go out to reach under the car, which is where the newspaper delivery man always throws the paper. With first coffee it is the speed read of the paper accompanied by latest news on the radio. News on the radio in the car on the way to work with the head spinning ahead to the to-do list of the day. Then the phone messages from PR people, contacts, readers - all on different subjects. Deal with those, turn to the email. Same deal plus newsletters and headlines with added spam. Deal with those. Papers being delivered to desk. Mail. Try to get writing. Sink mind into the subject. Answer phone. Try to resume train of thought. Chat from fellow staff - comments on news or politics. Interrupted by phone. Try to resume train of thought. Boss wants something. Leave desk. May as well have coffee.
Back to desk. More phone messages. More email. Try to resume train of thought. A burst of productive writing. Section editor comes to ask for work for new pages. Discuss and agree. Try to resume train of thought. Another section editor with a request. Add to list. Phone request from associate editor. Chase up request. Try to resume train of thought. Person arrives downstairs for appointment. Go down and sign in. Bring up and deal with. Dispatch. Try to resume train of thought. Phone. Realise that hunger is gnawing. Go out and have quick lunch - special dish being assessed for food article. Very nice. Iced coffee. Back to work. A large burst of productive writing. Deadline met.
Change subject - next assignment.
And so it goes on...

Some don't like it hot

There is a little coolth in the breeze. I am sitting on the balcony watching the soft pink and mauve sunset colors over the sea and little Seal Island. It is very quiet. People have come down to the water's edge to walk and paddle - seeking relief after the day's heat. They are subdued and glad to be outside. Glad to feel the soft, cool water and glad that the sun has gone away. It was 44 degrees down here - and hotter in the city. The hottest February day on record. Doing the morning shopping was slow. The heat seemed to sear the skin. Air conditioners laboured in the stores. By noon, most people had gone home to sit under fans or airconditioners. We did. Put the fans on full and lay about reading. Passive is the only way to go. But still the sweat poured from our bodies and, late afternoon, we decided to go and lie in the shallow waters of the reef. The water was not cold, but it was cooling. We wallowed happily like old seals. There were a couple of children squealing and playing at the water's edge - but otherwise the beach was deserted. No one fishing from the jetty, either. Just too hot for man and beast.
But now, with delicate pink streaks in the sky and a darkening blue beginning to merge with the hues of the sea, dogs are being walked and cars are coming to let their people out for the magic sea breeze. It's bedtime for the birds. Galahs and lorikeets are shrilling and squawking over their territory in the old Norfolk Island pines and everyone is glad that night, finally, has rescued us from the sun's brutal strength.

Making history across Australia

The huge train sat in three portions at different platforms. At 1.069 km, it
was too long for any one platform.
With bands playing and flags waving, we the lucky inaugural Ghan passengers
trundled our luggage to our cabin allocations, watched by the envious crowds
settled in camp chairs and picnicking under trees around Keswick railway
station.

The place thrilled with a sense of history in the making.

And Great Southern Railways was making sure that it was properly celebrated
- so much so that every passenger was photographed for the record books
before boarding the train. Even the undercover police!

Each of us was given an Inaugural Ghan souvenir pack - a canvas tote bag
containing a framed commemorative certificate with our names in beautiful
calligraphy upon them, an Inaugural Ghan passenger trip medallion, badges
and a first day cover.
Our carriage stewards welcomed us aboard. In M carriage, Gold Kangaroo, my
man was Kurao (pronounced `Crow'), a Japanese-Australian whose bi-linguality
was invaluable for the Japanese film crew on board and whose calm efficiency
at the media bar kept all 45 national and international media travellers
extremely happy.

The cabins are not state of the art. They are the same as they have always
been - comfortable sleepers with compact little en suites. I had no
complaints. In fact I loved my little compartment with its large expanse of
window.
Of course Gough and Margaret Whitlam had it rather more plush, albeit more
ancient. Theirs was the Prince of Wales carriage, an historic carriage of de
luxe suites which smelt of cedar polish. The Premier, Mike Rann, Governor
Marjorie Jackson-Nelson and NT Chief Minister Clare Martin had the
Chairman's carriage which had lovely double beds, a formal dining room and a
rather 60s armchair lounge room.
Generally, the sleeper carriages were interspersed with lounge and dining
cars - so there was a lot of convivialising.
Indeed, it was to the lounge cars we poured as the train heaved its way
slowly out of Keswick. And if we thought the send-off there was
enthusiastic, we had not bargained on the crowds which lined the track. Not
just through Adelaide, either. Out over the plains and clear up through the
Flinders people clustered at crossings, waved from hilltops, bridges,
roadsides, farmlands... Of course we had to wave back to them. In fact we
waved our way to Port Augusta.

That was the first stop and the first official function. There were buses to
ferry VIP passengers who had paid $12,000 for this voyage into history,
along with the huge gaggle of pollies who wanted to be part of the action 
but many chose to walk to the waterside marquee. They had to run the
gauntlet of anti detention centre protesters pointing out in banners that
the detainees were, after all, AfGHANs!
This stop was a chance for the first time to see the whole train - well,
almost. There were only a few moments on slow bends, for example, when one
could glimpse the incredible length of the Ghan - 45 carriages and two
bright red locomotives.
This also was a meeting with the original Ghan, now a Pitchi Ritchi steam
engine. The Pitchi boys had brought her up with passenger carriages and a
cargo of vintage cars to show the new Ghan passengers how things used to be.
The old engine was bedecked with gumleaves and looked divine. Everyone
wanted to be photographed with her. But few of the inaurugal Ghan passengers
realised the tenuous life of the old pioneer train - now run entirely by
devoted volunteers and at risk thanks to the exorbitance of public liability
insurance. Pitchi Ritchi had to pay $115,000 last year. When that policy
runs out in July they are not sure when they will stand. They hope for more
State government and regional local government support.
``We've managed to keep the trains running for 30 years, we will manage
somehow,'' said a sterling volunteer.
In Port Augusta there was another set of speeches from the pollies with
Mayor Joy Baluch throwing in her colorful twopence to the delight of the
local crowd.
And there was singing. James Blundell and Joe Camilleri were the train
troubadors seeming to enjoy every last moment of the experience.

Back on the Ghan it was wave, wave, wave again. In cars, on motorbikes, on
the back of utes the people were out there cheering the train's first
journey.
Astounding enthusiasm. All of us on board were touched by the scale of
public response.
The bar was open so long as the train was in progress and coffee machines in
the lounge cars availed all of chosen refreshments. But mealtimes were the
thing. The Ghan has made wining and dining the big ticket. Daybreak
breakfasts to the fresh morning light - fruits and cereals, eggs and
sausages, even coconut panckaes with banana and passionfruit syrup. Lunches
were substantial and aklways interesting - some lovely curries among the
selections and sinful desserts. The meals had names - Finke River lunch,
Davenport Range dinner, Katherine Gorge breakfast. But it was the sunset
dinners which blew the senses. Butternut pumpkin and Bunya nut soup with
sour cream and gremolata, followed by perhaps steamed kingfish with
lemongrass-coconut sauce or maybe herb-stuffed galantine of Barossa chicken
with roasted veggies and Chardonnay cream sauce... Oh yes, and a warm apple
and Munthari berry crumble tart with cinnamon creme anglaise. All this as
the sun softly sinks over the horizon and the dusty pinks transform into
ruddy streaks - with garish yellow, orange and reds giving a last-hurrah to
daylight.
After the lingering dinner, passengers repaired to the lounge cars and a few
drinks. The train carried five dining cars and five lounge cars. We, the
media, had our own section and by night we could chew the fat and discuss
what angles we could find for the coming day. Between us we must have
interviewed every last soul on the train - well, with the exclusion of the
American Ambassador, perhaps. He proved elusive.
We were able to visit the VIPs up front and also the sit-up passengers down
the back. Between you and me, the sit-ups seemed to have the most fun. Old
and young, they bonded and joked and partied all the way.

At Alice Springs everyone was bussed off to a five star lunch on
entertainments in the new Convention Centre. No flies in the Alice when it
comes to turning on the ritz.
And then it was the really exciting part of the Ghan journey - the new $1.3
billion seamless track north to Darwin.
And no more did the train clack or give those lilttle forward lurches. Just
a slight sideways rock and a smooth whooshing sound on the rail.

The rich ochres and blue-green scrubland of the red heart softly easy into
tropical lushness - palmettos, magnetic ant hills and flood plains - as the
Ghan hummed sedately into brand new territory.
Through the picture windows the landscape passed like a living documentary
revealing wild escaprments, drive river beds, rocky hillsides, lonely
station outbuildings and dirt roads leading somewhere nowhere. We could only
wonder, for there is a lot of landscape out there and not too many signs of
human habitation. And yet, at surprising spots along the 2979 journey there
were gatherings of people, the outback dwellers who had driven who knows how
far to see the first Ghan passenger journey from coast to coast.

Tennant Creek was Aboriginal dances by night  and more speechs from the
pollies.
Premier Mike Rann by this time was waxing lyrical. His journalistic
background sang forth as he spoke of dreams fulfilled, the true spirit of
Australia reaching out to the inland.

And there was plenty to bring out the poet in us all.
BY night, lying in one's bunk in the dark cabin, the moonlit landscape
purred past - silver silhouettes of trees and contoured landscape. An
endless shadowplay of natural wonder.

By Katherine, we had entered the tropics and the world was swampy and
monsoonal.
Despite a sea of red mud, the townsfolk turned out en masse to greet the
trainsfolk - bringing displays of all their attractions and displays of
their accomplishments. Kids danced, stockmen whip cracked, air force dogs
leapt through hoops of fire, Rotary ladies made cups of tea, arts and crafts
were sold, Aboriginal performers did ceremonial dances, tourism people
showed photos and brochures - and the Katherine bookshop displayed an
impressive range of books about the area. Katherine, population 11,000, has
the highest per capita percentage of tertiary educated people in the NT.

With outback bods on horses and in their RMs and oilskins, with the standard
of the bookshop and tales of the hot springs of nearby Mataranka, I think I
fell in love with Katherine. I want to go back.

But it was away on the Ghan for the last leg - a last stunning repast, some
last interviews.
And the through the tropical deluge we hummed, getting dripped upon as we
moved from carriage to carriage. In some places flood lagoons were so great
it seemed as if we were driving through lakes.

And as we neared Darwin and the rain eased, the waving crowds grew thicker
and we felt obliged to interrupt our packing to wave back.
And suddenly there they were. The unnoffical Top End welcome - which was a
rear end display. A long line of bare buttocks! Hard to say how many -
between 40 and 60. A lot of bot. Many whoops and waves from the train. It
was not taken as offensive - just cheeky.
A true display of backs to the future.

At the end of the line there was a large marquee seom distance from the
platform - and the pollies were giving their speeches again.
We had come the historic 2979 kilometres from the south - but, oddly, there
were still 15 to go to get from the station at Palmerston into Darwin
itself.
We boarded a bus  and, for the first time in three days, we stopped waving.