snail mail

a short tale...

in the middle of september we posted a parcel from malaysia to scotland. we posted it by land rather than by air cos it was cheaper and there was no real hurry. anyway, just as we were giving up hope of it ever resurfacing it arrived in edinburgh last week, a full two months after posting! this made me wonder where it had been all this time and how many people might have been responsible for it getting to its destination. just like the old days. pretty great.

crazy victorian weather...

listen up y'all.

next time an australian person, particularly one from melbourne, tries to suggest we have shit weather, laugh at them... the weather here is mental!

a fortnight ago it was 34ºC, within a week it was 10ºC and now it's back to 20ºC and rising through the week. anybody try to tell me that the weather in scotland is more changeable than that...

HRAFF

just to explain all the references to "(HRAFF)" next to film names down the right-hand side of this page: these were films we saw at the recent, and superb

human rights arts and film festival

check the website out and take a look at the IMDB links for the films we saw. we'll be posting reviews at some point, so check back in the tags section to find out more.

around the bay in a few days...

warning: really long post!

so we decided to have a holiday. we got on a train to frankston and then took the bus down the mornington peninsula:


our first stop was dromana, where we had hoped to visit the information centre and get an idea of places we could stay in the 'hood. however, being us, we got there 5 minutes after the centre closed... it was just beyond typical!

fortunately, the good people of dromana visitor information don't seem in too much hurry to get home after work, so we managed to knock on the door and have two sheets of camping info slipped out to us. it turns out that a lot of foreshore camping (which is what we had planned) has a limited season, so we ended up checking into a caravan park for the night.

it was pretty cool. there seemed to be a few middle-age-plus couples around in their motorhomes and caravans, and not much else. so we pitched toby and anita's tiny tent, made a vegetable barbie (on account of the local amenities not catering for the vegans among us...) and enjoyed the company.

we had a conversation with a couple of the ladies we met that really made me think. they were completely lovely ladies from victoria who take their caravan holidays before the kids break up for summer because places get mobbed, love their country and are full of the joys of life. but their response when we mentioned in passing that we're married was completely novel to us. they said, "wow! you're married? good for you! that's made my day!" and i realised that, although we're in a growing minority among our own generation, there are still people out there who think that marriage is a proper, not radical, thing to do. and they're people that we can share other world views with, not just folk that are completely conservative and beyond dialogue.

and we even got a beach sunset. it feels like so long since we've been at the beach. i guess, besides the day we spent at lifesaving victoria, it has been ages. and in malaysia the water was dirty as anything! the ocean here is pure and beautiful, and this wee trip was perfect for spending plenty of time near it, although we already had the next day planned as an inland day, because of an area we'd spotted on the map: arthurs seat!

so it's not on the map above, but arthurs seat is 304m-high peak that was named by lieutenant john murray upon arriving in port phillip in 1802. unsurprisingly, lt murray was from edinburgh - and clearly eager to bring a little bit of home with him! its existence has helped us engage with the history of the area a bit more, by making the relationships between britain and early invasions a bit more tangible.

this, in turn, has lent us tools to further understand the atrocities that took place with regards to the traditional owners of the land. it's amazing what one hill can do to your perspective!

after our trip to the top of arthurs seat and the trek back to dromana, we were clearer about two things: the relationship between britain and early invasions (as mentioned above) and the fact that this is a country built around car users more than foot travellers or cyclists... and i guess that is something i've found really surprising about it.

in fact, the general approach to the environment here is pretty paradoxical in a lot of ways. people are definitely more aware of their water usage, and more cooperative with the authorities in monitoring that and adhering to usage guidelines etc, and organic (read local, bio-dynamic etc) food is way bigger and more widely available here. and those are wonderful things.but i'm starting to think that there are selfish limitations placed on this environmental awareness that are maybe even completely subconscious.

for example, people are definitely more aware of the effect that climate change has, in the aridity of the soil and air (which will eventually lead to desertification as the planet's surface heats up), and respond directly to that need through conservation of water etc.

even biodynamism and organic farming can be seen as responses to the scarcity of water: it's been shown that biodynamism can encourage crops to flourish in areas where the same crops not grown in this method are suffering due to drought conditions, and
everyone knows the dangers that non-organic farming poses on our freshwater supplies through leaching of dangerous chemicals and indiscrimiate destruction of friendly plants and insects.

however, what about reducing your emissions? and how about minimising your meat consumption? both of those things can have a very profound effect on global rainfall distribution, in spite of the illusory inconvenience they can cause.

i'm not suggesting that everyone scraps their car and becomes raw food vegan, just that we think more carefully about what happens when we start that engine or buy that steak: what are the processes that took place to allow us to do that, and what impact will they have on our annual rainfall in as little as 3-4 years' time?

even just turning off lights. not installing halogen ceiling lights. turning your phone charger off at the wall. a lot of these things seem to be disregarded in the quest to save water... and driving, driving, driving.

sure, it's a big country and yes, it's important to get out and witness the beauty of nature, but why do so many people act surprised when we tell them we got to the peninsula by public transport? why is it assumed that we drove there, without even asking a question? and then it occurred to me...

we are the children of the ones who should have but didn't change the world. instead, they gave birth to the consumerism that has gone on to destroy our communities and cripple our collective conscience. are we going to go the same way?

well, we're not going to achieve anything by succumbing to the school of thought that time is money. time is much, much more than that. time is life. the biggest difference between money and life is that money has an inverse relationship with time while life has a direct relationship with time. in other words, as time goes on, money diminishes while life flourishes. how else is it that the oldest people have lived the most? tautology? think about it...

so, back to the mornington peninsula and our second night, this time with foreshore camping - hooray! we continued around the bay to sorrento, which everyone said was a beautiful town. but we ended up coming home without any photos of it, so i'm not sure we agreed! however, there were some awesome walks around the area...

one of the best things about the mornington peninsula is that it curves around port phillip bay to form an almost lake-like form. that is, the outer edge of the peninsula acts as a buffer for the bay from the rough waters of the bass strait. this translates as really sedate, quietly lapping shores on the north and west coast of the peninsula, and wild, battered shores on the south and east coast. perfect cavorting territory for a pair of homesick scots!

so we wandered around the back beaches for hours, guddling in rockpools and scrambling over the sandstone cliffs. it felt great! we found clusters of anenomes and pools covered by a carpet of starfish, hundreds of beautiful tiny shells of all shapes, colours and patterns, and a whole world of wonder!

it didn't really seem that the trip could get much better, as each beach merged into the next and the waves continued to crash down on giant basalt shelves that lay like giant plates in the shallows of the low tide...

and that's when we saw the echidna! we were coming off the coast onto the track to portsea, where we were hoping to be able to get all the way to the tip of the peninsula, when we noticed a couple of people taking photos of shrubs... as we got closer we realised that they were actually taking them of some creature or something like that, and that's when the echidna popped his odd-looking face out of the ground. with a long snout to poke its snouty-thing into ant-holes and its bumbling waddle on furry paws, i don't think either of us have ever seen anything as cute and funny-actin' as this wee thing!

we didn't make it to the tip of the peninsula, but did enjoy a disappointing tramp through portsea, which is nothing more than a hotel and clutch of modest houses, surrounded by acres of millionaire fantasy homes. seriously, it was like a bad dream! this beautiful landscape littered with disney palaces, tuscan villas, and modernist shoebox condos, all with token tennis court, putting green, and freeform pool. still, the landscape was discernably beautiful...

so, after another night in sorrento, we hit the 9am ferry to queenscliff. it was a windy night that turned into a windy day, so the ferry crossing was definitely one that sheila will be glad she wasn't on; the greyness of the morning and the choppiness of the sea was somewhat reminiscent of scrabster-kirkwall!

we found a great wee café in queenscliff (which sheila Would have liked!) and set about our tea and breakfast before exploring the interesting little town that had been left behind when the melbourne-queenscliff railway stopped its weekly voyage in 1950. prior to that, it was a bustling holiday destination for most urbanites, and the remaining buildings reflect that.

however, it was also an important defense in securing british rule over port phillip bay, and a fort was built in the 1880s to coordinate all the defense outposts around the bay. now the fort is a military college, but the two lighthouses within its walls are still integral to the safe passage of seacraft into the bay.

only the black lighthouse is visible in this photo of the fort, but there is also a white one to the right of the photo, that is closer to the opening off bass strait called "the rip". no boats or ships are allowed to enter the rip unaccompanied by the local pilot boat, on account of how dangerous it is (although it's a 3.5km wide section of sea, only 1km is navigable by most craft and deep boats only have something like 270metres that they can sail through). so, when the pilot boats are leading ships through the rip, they line up the white and the black lighthouses to find the safe passageway through the reefs and currents. pretty cool, huh?

we got back to melbourne via geelong, full of positive feelings about the public transport services in victoria, and realising that the other side of the world isn't as far away from home as it feels it should be...