It’s Christmas Eve in Australia.
I’m keeping a close eye on the signage, watching as the traffic grows and the highway sprouts more lanes. Marvellous public art lines the highway as you approach Melbourne- a huge false hotel, sweeping abstract constructions, coloured panels polarizing the sun’s rays and turning patches of the road orange and green.
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| All this, and kangaroos too |
What a beautiful place.
I got here a few days ago, ahead
of the wife and boy, to set up the next house-sit. For a month we’ll care for
two dogs and a cat in Mount Martha. Think Kelowna, but with kangaroos. Baking hot,
tinder-dry, with vineyards, fertile
farmland, long clean beaches, and cool breezes off the clear blue bay.
We’ve hit the jackpot on this house-sit-
staying in what amounts to a small villa on a hill in a well-to-do modern
subdivision. A kilometre’s walk takes to a tiny village plaza
and a gorgeous
beach, at the height of the Australian summer. Our place has four bedrooms, air
con, satellite, wifi- the works.
The Mornington Peninsula, as it’s
called, extends south from Melbourne on the east side of Phillip’s Bay. It’s
been a holiday destination for settlers since we were fighting the war of
18-goddamn-12 in our crappy, cold country.
The view is magnificent from our
perch on Mount Martha. We watch tankers coming into the port city, helicopters
patrolling the shore for swimmers in trouble. On Wednesday night, we watch the
white sails of the weekly regatta launching from a nearby yacht club. Yeah. A
yacht club.
It’s going to be crazy for the next week, as
city folk head for the shoreline to suntan, surf, and barbecue. It’s a living
Nat King Cole or Mungo Jerry song- girls in bikinis, beach bums, hot rods.
And it’s Christmastime.
I get a little wistful as I think
about Christmas. The lead-up was non-existent in New Zealand. For weeks we
waited for the inevitable onslaught of decorations and Christmas music- only to
find that they don’t do that there yet. It’s like we were 50 years ago, before
Black Friday and A Christmas Story and artificial trees- people only seemed to
get in the mood a week or ten days before the event. And even then, it just
doesn’t work when you have flowers blooming and palm trees swaying.
Why don’t these folks just switch
the whole thing to their winter solstice in June?
Still, it’s hard to get too
upset. I watch the changeable traffic speed signs (don’t get a ticket in
Australia, I’m warned) and follow the spaghetti-lanes through the city,
skirting the downtown on the way to the airport, on the northern fringe of the
city. There I pick up the family. Reunited for the holidays.
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| The morning view from the patio. Sigh. |
I fill them in on the amazing
location as we head back to the house-sit, 90 minutes away. I switch to the
soundtrack for A Charlie Brown’s Christmas for the return drive, to try to put
us in the mood.
The next few days are fine. It’s
not Christmas as we know it- barbecue steaks and gin-and-tonics at outdoor
restaurants, sulphur-crested parrots squawking in the trees. But we’re
together, and that’s what counts. We avoid leaving the house, more to miss the
holiday crowds than anything. The Sci-Fi channel is running Star Trek
Enterprise (my guilty pleasure), and the days are constant, glorious sunshine.
One morning in January I walk out
onto the patio. It’s already getting hot, and can just make out the Melbourne
skyline, floating on the horizon, obscured by haze from a brush-fire somewhere
to the north. I drink my morning coffee- fresh ground, imported. Tropical fruit
and yogurt for breakfast, maybe a swim later in the day.
It’s been three years to the day since
I got knifed by my boss at work.
Fuck him. I think I won.
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