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Smoky Blue Mountains

25 Saturday Jun 2016

Posted by Karen Lloyd AM in Travel and deaf

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Blue Mountains NSW, deaf, Govetts Leap, Three Sisters, travel

Three Sisters

After our night out in Sydney, we sleep in while the family gets up early and goes to Sydney for another day at the festival. John and I want to see more of the mountains and we’ve had enough of the trek up and down the mountain. I can’t imagine how so many people who live here manage to make that journey to work day after day.

Breda has suggested we might find Wentworth Falls and Leura worth a visit.

Wentworth Falls is small but busy, with interesting antique and home décor stores that give me ideas for things I could make. In a second-hand bookshop I pounce upon a pile of old knitting patterns and am thrilled to find a few worth buying. They are unbelievably good value.

We find a bakery for lunch and soon realise we have chanced upon what seems to be the local meeting place. It’s crowded. People stand around chatting, blithely blocking the counter queue and the aisles between tables. They all seem so excited to have run into each other. John tells the staff the pies are excellent and he will come back.

We drive on to Katoomba. In the 1980s a workmate lived here in a little house on a back street down near the Three Sisters and I once got the train up to spend a weekend with her, walking from the station to her house, my overnight bag getting progressively heavier. As we drive through town I think of her and wonder where she and her children are now. Later, at Willoughby, I ask Marg about her, she still sees her often.

It’s Saturday and Katoomba too is busy. Down near the Three Sisters, tourist buses line the kerbs and people wander everywhere. ‘Hazard reduction’ burnoffs are happening here, we can’t see the mountains for smoke and I doubt anyone can actually see the Three Sisters. Crazy people wander about in the smoke, breathing it in. It’s definitely not the best day to sightsee in the Blue Mountains but if I were a tourist and today were the only day I had here, I guess I too might be wandering around in the smoke trying to see as much as I could.

We take the scenic route to Leura. But we can’t see a scenic thing. The trees and the road are blanketed by smoke and John drives slowly. It’s looking like we won’t be exploring Leura, there’s too much smoke, but when we drive into the village, the air is remarkably clear. It’s a miracle!

Leura is a pretty town. Its main street has gardens down the middle and lots of interesting, if somewhat expensive, shops. We find a citrus scented candle as a small gift for our hosts, the makings of dinner at the local supermarket, and some exquisite chocolate for dessert in a gourmet chocolate shop. Back home John takes over the kitchen and has dinner simmering on the stove when our friends return home from a successful day in Sydney.  John says food always tastes better when someone else cooks it.

Breda has enjoyed browsing the festival bookshop and has brought home some fabulous books. There is even one for me, an early birthday present, about writing. I read it back home in Brisbane and, together with my earlier conversations in Armidale with Ginny and Rod, it helps me break through my writer’s block.

After dinner we play Trivial Pursuit in front of the fire that Rowan has built. His Scouting days have been useful. Some discussion is required on how to divide up the teams and we eventually settle on boys versus girls. Since there are two of us and three of them, Breda and I declare that we reserve the right to phone a friend. The boys aren’t too happy, so we agree to use it only for music-related questions since we’re both deaf and can’t, we reason, possibly be expected to know those answers. And twice we don’t know the answers to questions about songs and we text Maree.

The boys do well but girl power wins! We probably overdo the high fives in our delight with ourselves and Maree.

“It’s only a game!” say the boys.

“Of course it’s only a game,” we agree. High five!

There’s a local farmer’s market on Sunday morning. The family buy provisions and I stop at a stall selling waxed gingham, where a woman shows me how to use and reuse it in place of cling wrap.  I hand over $25 for a 3-piece pack and as we walk away John tells me I got sucked in again. True. It was ridiculously expensive. I could probably learn how to make it for a few dollars but I figure I’ve supported a locally based environmentally friendly cottage business and that’s a good thing isn’t it?

Leaving Cameron and Rowan to enjoy the markets, Breda, John and I set off for Blackheath. On the way we stop to browse a row of antique shops, one in particular has a huge range of goods including more old knitting patterns that John points out. I’m in heaven, two days in a row!  John finds a lovely old lidded serving bowl that is perfect for one of his specialities, mushy peas. Breda excitedly waves me over to an amazing find: a large collection of old sewing materials including a Singer sewing machine, buttons, thread, crochet cotton, trims, and all sorts of period clothes.

At Blackheath we go first to look at Govett’s Leap. I’ve never been this far up the mountains nor seen Govett’s Leap. It’s breathtaking. http://www.blackheath-nsw.com/Govetts_Leap.html

Breda gives us a little education on bushfires. Down below us is the Grose Valley. At the bottom, far away and unseen, is the Grose River. When there’s fire in the Grose Valley they generally leave it, it’s too hard for firefighters to get in there. But in the October 2013 bushfires, when fire in the Grose Valley threatened to join up with the Springwood fires, a frightening possibility, they did go in and backburned in the Grose Valley to set a firebreak between the two fires. I get goose bumps listening to her. As beautiful as the mountains are, I doubt that I could live in such a notorious fire zone.

We wander around Blackheath village and check out the cafes for lunch, finally settling on a café in what would have once been the foyer of the old picture theatre. Inside is a massive antique store. John spends ages in there while Breda and I walk down the street to check out a craft market, returning to browse the antiques.

Before leaving home this morning I declared I wanted to stop on the way home and have a drink on the terrace overlooking the mountains at the Hydro Majestic Hotel in Medlow Bath. But I change my mind. Breda and John are flexible. We go instead to see the Three Sisters. John and I have both seen them on other occasions, but Breda declares she will not feel she has done her hosting duties until we have been to see them. She wants to convince John that the Blue Mountains are more than just rocks and trees.

There is still smoke in a part of the vast Jamison Valley but mostly the mountains are clear today and we get a wonderful view of the valley and its famous rock formations. We take our time admiring it all. http://www.bluemts.com.au/info/thingstodo/threesisters/

Over the past few days Breda has been telling me about the trails in the mountains, and the people who regularly walk and run them, in particular an annual run that finishes at night with runners climbing a long set of stairs from the valley up the side of the mountain. She showed me a spectacular photo of a string of lights curving along the mountainside, runners with their headlamps shining in the dark. Now she points out where the paths and stairs are, although we can’t actually see them from here.

Beside me, John gazes out at the view. He’s quiet. I look at him and say, “It is pretty impressive isn’t it? Govett’s Leap and this.”

And finally he admits it is. It’s not just rocks and trees.

That evening, John and I enjoy a gin and tonic that Cameron has made for us while we watch television. As always, Taffy stands beside me, her chin on my knee for a long pat. She’s older now, more mellow, and now when I say and sign, “finished, go,” she goes. Cameron works in the study, Rowan reads on the couch and in the kitchen Breda cooks up a storm for dinner.

Tomorrow we are leaving these majestic mountains. Tonight we enjoy once more the conviviality of these dear friends in this warm and loving home.

We will return!

Writers, artists, rocks and trees

23 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by Karen Lloyd AM in Travel and deaf

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Blue Mountains NSW, culture, deaf, Deaf community, Norman Lindsay, Springwood NSW, Sydney NSW, Sydney Writers' Festival, travel

Sydney Harbour Bridge

John and I leave Armidale early in the morning, heading south. The day before, on our drive through Uralla, Ginny pointed out Moons Bakery, open from 4.00am and a truckies’ favourite. But it’s still too early for us to think about food.

The roads are quiet and we make good time. We pass through Murrurundi and hit racehorse country. The vast Emirates Park, with a picture of a horse and jockey on its stone gateway, has black post and rail fences. I’m surprised. Aren’t these fences usually white? What’s with this rebellious black?

We come into Singleton in the Hunter Valley and see coal trains and power stations. From Singleton we take Putty Road to Windsor, through the mountains and forest, a quiet narrow two-way road with little traffic.

The road seems to go on forever, up and down mountains, winding and straightening out and winding again, with beautiful views over the mountains. We are in the Hawkesbury Valley now. Finally we come into Windsor and stop at nearby Richmond for a break. It was a beautiful drive for me but exhausting for John.

Still, as Breda and I later agree, rather this quiet endless road than the racetrack that is the Pacific motorway into Sydney.

From Richmond to Springwood in the Blue Mountains we take Hawkesbury Road up the mountain on hairpin bends, it’s breathtaking. We pull into a lookout and through the smoke haze see Sydney’s towers in the distance.

I’ve been to Springwood many times. When I worked for Deaf Australia, I often stayed here with Breda and Cameron, getting the 7.30am train to Sydney each day with Breda, but John hasn’t been here before.

We drive around looking for a supermarket, I know there is one on the main street but I can’t seem to see it. Eventually we find one on a back street but the shelves are almost completely bare, as if there is some impending disaster and everyone has raided the shop. We’ve never seen a supermarket like this. What’s going on? Later Cameron tells us he’s surprised the store is still open, it’s been going out of business for months. He also tells us where the other supermarket is and I can’t believe I missed it.

After managing to find some supplies to contribute to the household pantry, we find Cameron, Taffy the dog and Kasha the host student at home. Breda isn’t due home for a few hours and Rowan has just left for work, delivering pizzas in this his gap year.

The back deck is the perfect place for a late afternoon tea. I love this house, it’s very Breda and Cameron and it backs onto the Blue Mountains national park with wonderful peaceful views of mountains, trees and changing light. Today we have a glorious pink sunset.

I’ve previously met Kasha when talking with Breda on Skype, and it’s good to meet him in person. He boards here for school terms but is going home for an extended weekend. Deaf community families often have deaf students boarding with them like this so they can attend a school that best suits them. We chat about school and home, he seems a nice, friendly, confident teenager. It always gives me hope, for deaf people, for the deaf community and the future, when I chat like this in Auslan with young deaf people.

This is a bilingual household where everyone uses both English and Auslan to varying degrees of fluency. Breda, Kasha and I are deaf, Cameron, Rowan and John are hearing. No one gets excluded and conversation is wide-ranging and animated.

Kasha leaves early next morning and Breda, John and I get an early train down to Sydney, leaving Cameron to work at home on his video productions.

We are going to the Sydney Writers’ Festival, a major reason John and I have made this trip.

Breda and I had been so excited to learn the organisers would provide some interpreted sessions. Two keynotes and a couple more, they said. We interpreted this optimistically and pored over the program, sending in our list.

Oh no, came the reply. All sessions in one venue are being live captioned, so they really could only stretch to a total of three interpreted sessions in addition to the two high-profile keynotes.

Over four days!

Most of the festival program is free but the captioned sessions have an entrance fee. We are so disappointed. But still, we are going. But only to the free sessions. Why should we have to pay for access? Other people at the festival don’t have to.

Today’s interpreted session is about history writing. Breda enjoys it. Although history interests me, I struggle to stay awake. John is unimpressed.

Breda goes to work and John and I stroll along the waterfront from Walsh Bay, under the Harbour Bridge towards Circular Quay. There is a cruise ship in port and everything looks so splendid: the sparkling water, the big white ship, the Opera House, Circular Quay with its ferries and background of skyscrapers. We stop at the Rocks for lunch at the Munich Brauhaus before catching a ferry to Watson’s Bay – because it’s the next one leaving and because being on a boat on the harbour is my number one thing to do in Sydney. Some smoke from burnoffs in the mountains hangs over the harbour but it’s a beautiful sunny day and we drink it in, standing in the boat’s prow, the wind in our hair.

In the 1980s I lived for a year at Neutral Bay and worked at the University of NSW, getting a ferry and a bus to work each day. In the winter dark I’d often sit out on the ferry deck on the trip home, rugged up against the cold, looking at the city lights, the Harbour Bridge, the Opera House, and the clear night skies and watching the seagulls flying along beside the boat, and I’d fall in love all over again with this glorious harbour.

To paraphrase Samuel Johnson, anyone tired of Sydney Harbour is tired of life.

We get the 2.48pm train back to Springwood. I want John to see how spectacular the mountains are in the late afternoon light, but he falls asleep!

“It’s just rocks and trees!” he says. “It’s not like it’s Niagara Falls!”

Next morning, while everyone else works, John and I drive to Faulconbridge, the next town up the mountain, and visit the Norman Lindsay Gallery. http://www.normanlindsay.com.au/

Wandering through the gallery, admiring the incredible art, mostly of nudes, John turns to me and says, “This bloke was a sex maniac!” But he’s impressed.

Lindsay’s talent was very broad: drawing, painting watercolours and oils, etching, sculpture, writing and even model ship building.

The gallery is in the house where he lived. It’s a lovely white sandstone house with big rooms and high ceilings, verandas with columns, a grape arbor along one side, and a large detached kitchen connected to the house by an enclosed walkway with sculpture courtyards on either side. In the grounds are sculptures, fountains, a painting studio, an etching studio and a café. This artist was surely not impoverished.

We take the path down to the swimming pool at the edge of the bush. It is empty of water and a little overgrown with grass but it’s easy to imagine how magnificent it was in its heyday. It is enormous, the concrete edge on the opposite side looking out over the mountains like an infinity pool. Beside the steps down to it are curved stone terraces like an ancient amphitheatre.

“Imagine how many people might have sat here watching the goings-on in the pool!” John comments.

We catch an early afternoon train down to Sydney where I meet up with Breda at Walsh Bay for the second interpreted Writers’ Festival session. John goes off to do his own thing for an hour, he’s had enough, he says, of writers pontificating.

Breda and I both enjoy this session, especially Don Watson talking about how management-speak (‘agile’, ‘impact’) is taking over our everyday use of language. We duck out a little early to dash for the train at Circular Quay, via what feels like a million stairs through the Rocks.

At Town Hall we weave our way through the crowds outside, to find our seats to see Gloria Steinem in conversation with Jennifer Byrne. John and several deaf people are already there and Cameron joins us soon after.

We have front row seats, reserved because we need to be able to see the Auslan interpreter. Being deaf does on occasion come with extra benefits – and it doesn’t hurt our hearing partners either!

Sydney Town Hall is magnificent, with soaring organ pipes, a gallery above, leadlight and beautifully ornate embellishments. Tonight it is packed. This event has sold out.

Gloria Steinem is inspiring. Even John is engrossed. She talks about her latest book, My life on the road; her childhood with a father who packed the family into the car each year, moving them to a new place; and her own choice as an adult to spend a lot of time on the road, meeting, listening to and working with people.

Afterwards Breda, Sofya and I buy her book and join a long queue. Ahead of me I see Yvonne, a woman I knew many years ago when I lived in Sydney. I catch her eye, she excuses herself from her friends, and we catch up while the queue slowly moves us towards the marvellous Ms Steinem, who signs my book and smiles when I say and sign ‘thank you’.

Across the road we join the rest of our group at a restaurant in the resplendent Queen Victoria Building. Champagne is poured and we drink in celebration with Alastair McEwin, on his appointment as the new Disability Discrimination Commissioner, which he is due to take up in July. We are all so excited to see one of our own take on this influential role.

But Al is still Al, this guy from Adelaide we’ve known for so many years, still making us laugh. We tell him he’s going to have to watch himself now, people will be watching him.

It’s a deaf community goodnight – the “long goodbye” – and we have to run for the train but we make it home just before midnight.

It’s been a great night. All these people I’ve not seen for a while, Gloria Steinem’s enthusiasm for life at 82 and the promise for the future that Al’s appointment brings, fill me with optimism.

Autumn in Armidale

07 Tuesday Jun 2016

Posted by Karen Lloyd AM in Travel and deaf

≈ 5 Comments

Tags

Armidale NSW, deaf, Gostwyck Chapel, Regional Australia, travel, University of New England, Uralla NSW

Gostwyck Chapel

Gostwyck Chapel

Travel isn’t just about the places we go. It’s also about the people we meet and the friends we visit along the way.

Two years after retiring from full time work, I am missing the travel and the opportunities to catch up with interstate friends that were a bonus of my job for 13 years. So when John takes a redundancy and we plan our first short trip, it is mostly about catching up with friends in NSW we haven’t seen for a while.

Our first destination is Armidale.

We drive out of Brisbane on a warm May morning and through the stunning Cunningham’s Gap to the New England highway at a pace that is apparently leisurely. We’re mostly driving at the speed limit, but maniacs come up swiftly and sit on our tail, so sometimes when they take too long to overtake John pulls over to let them pass. That first day sets the tone for the rest of our road trip.

“Bye bye, have a nice day,” I say, waving below dashboard level, as cars speed past us.

“You’ve got to make good karma,” I say to John. “There’s no point getting cranky with them.”

Soon he too is waving. “Bye bye, have a nice day!”

We’d planned to have a few stops along the way with a leisurely look around towns we pass through, but a later than planned start changes this. We stop only for lunch and a legs stretch in Stanthorpe.

Late afternoon we are sitting at Ginny and Rod’s dining table in Armidale scoffing champagne and cheese. Eddie is at uni in Sydney and Mickey is in his room after a hello hug. I love Armidale, it reminds me a little of England and the late autumn colours don’t disappoint. I always expect it to be cold but it is warmer than our last visit, in April last year.

Still, we’re Queenslanders so the heaters are on and the house is warm as we look out onto the chilly front garden and watch the neighbour’s young children play on their bikes in the street, it’s a cul-de-sac, quiet and safe. As the evening progresses, we get hot and start opening windows.

Over dinner the talk roams over politics, journalists, family, books, the parlous state of Armidale’s economy and its University, writing and reminiscing: Ginny and I have been friends a long time, since 1979 when we studied together for our Post Graduate Diploma in Librarianship at the University of NSW.

My favourite story of the night is one Ginny tells about one of Rod’s children from his first marriage visiting one day many years ago to sit him down and tell him that everything is his fault.

“I was trying not to listen,” Ginny says, “but then I walked past the door and peeked in and noticed Rod was asleep!”

“It was boring!” Rod declares.

I am full of admiration for his dispassion.

I’m the only deaf person in the group and no one signs fluently. But everyone includes me and does their best to make it easier for me to lipread them. When we get stuck John helps out with a bit of sign language.

Ginny and Rod are always a great source of food for thought. When we mention how entertaining we find David Marr’s and Gerard Henderson’s verbal sparring on ABC TV’s Sunday morning Insiders, Rod comments that David Marr doesn’t understand working people and you don’t have to scratch him very far to find the bourgeois.  He gives me a copy of Marr’s Quarterly Essay on Bill Shorten and emails me a copy of his unpublished response to it. Both, when I read them back in Brisbane, are educational and intellectually challenging.

But Rod can be difficult to lipread, and I don’t have to always be the centre of attention, so sometimes I give us all a break and leave him and John to chat, John loves talking politics with Rod, who once worked for Gough Whitlam, one of John’s heroes. He gives John a signed copy of A Certain Grandeur: Gough Whitlam in Politics.

In the morning we have brunch at a trendy café and wander around the centre of town, admiring the beautiful old buildings, shocked by the staggering number of empty shops. Whole arcades are empty. We walk past Barnaby Joyce’s electoral office and the men make jokes about Deputy Dawg that go over my head.

We check out Rod’s favourite second hand bookshop, chockful of books often hard to find. Rod tells me this is because academics leaving town offload their large collections here. I buy a hardback How tea cosies changed the world.  Later, in Springwood, when I show this marvellous book to Breda she asks me to make her a quirky tea cosy for her next birthday.

Rod drives us south to Uralla, where on last year’s visit we wandered around the antique shops and I bought a lovely old soup tureen that John doesn’t like because it’s green. From there we take a narrow road through rolling drought-brown pastureland to the tiny Gostwyck Chapel, built as a memorial to a fallen WW1 solider, at a fork in the road and surrounded by beautiful old elm trees. The chapel is lovely and I’m disappointed it’s closed, I love old churches. We wander over to a nearby creek, across its dry bed, and back over its rustic white wooden bridge. In the distance we see Deeargee woolshed, it’s massive. http://www.uralla.com/gostwyck-chapel-deeargee-woolshed-60.html

Back in the car we drive through farm properties sparsely populated with sheep, back to Armidale and out to the University of New England. Ginny and Eddie both did their Bachelor degrees here a generation apart.

We wander across the campus to Booloominbah House, once a White family homestead and now the campus administration building. http://www.une.edu.au/campus-life/campus-information/booloominbah-historic-house

Another White family homestead, with fascinating stories attached to it, which we have previously twice admired is Saumarez, out near the airport. http://www.visitnsw.com/destinations/country-nsw/armidale-area/armidale/attractions/saumarez-homestead

Over afternoon tea at Booloominbah we wonder what will happen to this imposing old building and its once thriving university, which now seems in its death throes. There are few students to be seen and, Ginny tells us, fewer staff, the tennis courts we walked past are unkempt and the whole place feels deserted and sad. It should feel full of life, a place where things are happening, where young minds are dreaming of how they will change the world.

That night we have dinner at the recently refurbished historic New England Hotel (Peter Allen sang here), snug and warm near the fire. Afterwards we wander up the street to a café/bar for coffee and dessert, with Ginny pointing out buildings and telling me stories from her youth here.

The bar is deserted and the bartender tells us we can’t have coffee, they’ve just shut down the machine and are closing early because there wasn’t much custom.

Ginny is incensed. “We’re customers!” she tells him as the rest of us walk out. “You’re going to go the way of other businesses here if this is how you operate!” She joins us outside and indignantly tells me what she has just said, adding sadly, “It’s contagious!”

We go home and finish off last night’s chocolates with coffee. I feel so sad for Ginny that this town she has always loved so much and to which she and Rod moved the family three years ago, is doing so poorly. We talk about their plans to leave this place and start again somewhere new. There is hope of better times and my spirit feels replenished by this time spent with these much loved friends.

John and I drive out of Armidale early next morning, bound for Springwood in the Blue Mountains. As I look at the last of the autumn leaves I hope fervently that next time we visit (as we surely will, it’s on a major highway) things will be looking up for this lovely New England town.

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