This is a short journey, though there are a lot of streets named for famous writers (chiefly English) in the city. This little tour goes from Kipling St across Burke and Ruskin streets and ends up at the Addington cemetery where I plucked a sprig of rosemary from beside Daniel Reese’s grave. No-one else was on the trail.
It’s autumn, we’ve had earthquakes and moss grows on the south side of mailboxes. The fruit trees are hedging their bets. The dog made an exhibition of herself when a fellow drove past towing a trailer. Or the exhibition may have been me, shrieking like a banshee at an elderly dog who should know better. I didn’t photograph the sign advertising tomatoes at ‘cheap prices’. I’ll be having a word with the growers about that instead. But as well as walking along and taking photographs and yelling at the dog I thought about stuff. Oh, well. It’s rather grey today.
Lyttelton is now without the Volcano restaurant, famous (among other things) for being run by a man who played a character called Count Homogenized on a children’s TV programme. I let a secret slip there too, in 1997. I still feel bad about that. Next door to the Volcano was the Lava Bar. Their margaritas were excellent. The Gound Deli is rubble, the Royal Hotel is nearly gone despite the ‘Yes, We’re Open’ sign. The Loons is open but it doesn’t look very safe. St Joseph’s is red-stickered and the Lyttelton Coffee Co. appears to be set to go. The Wunderbar gets to live on but I’m not sure where. I have never been to the Harbourlight Theatre and I’ll never get to go. God Save The Queen is red-stickered, and the Lyttelton Museum doesn’t look at all sound. It had a fascinating collection on offer. I hope it has been salvaged. The cannon that lived outside has gone. And the Timeball Station is of no use to anyone on a ship who wants to set their chronometer.
I was told that the cranes on the wharf jumped their tracks in the earthquake but are far too heavy to be manoeuvred back on to them. There is no equipment suitable to shift them.
And the trip through the 2km Lyttelton tunnel is a bit more exciting than it used to be. The front of the Tunnel Control building, sporting thick distorted steel bars, and behind large shipping containers, is testament to the danger posed by falling boulders. My normal route to Heathcote is blocked by more shipping containers placed along the motorway to form a shield against even more rocks being shed by Castle Rock.
It’s all a bit hard to take in.
Buckingbong Primary School was a very small school in Buckingbong State Forest (NSW) just beside ‘Woodlands’, the family property since 1909. Nothing is left of the school now except for a few silvered and splintery stumps of wood and a stone with a plaque. The school closed sometime during World War II, I think, probably shortly after my father was there. They had a nice line in bookplates for their prizes.
My father turned 79 today. I don’t think he knows how old he is, and I don’t know if he remembers anything of his primary school days tucked away in the bush. Probably not.
Not much happened really. It was just another relentlessly beautiful autumn day in our broken city. Not everyone stops to look. And we scored 8/10 in the sports and games section in the pub quiz at the Watershed. I knew that Chris Lewis lost to John McEnroe at Wimbledon in 1983.
(‘Beware the jabberwock, my son.’)
The following is by Joseph de Maistre:
War is divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular. War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it, and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it. War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.
Quoted in ‘ Quadrant’ (April 2011).
‘There were three of us, Dougald McAlister, Jack Thwaites, and myself. The
place was called in the grandiloquent language of the bush, “The
Dinkledoodledum Station” (I like these old native names), because it was
situated in the Dinkledoodledum Creek. Dinkledoodledum–as any philologist
can guess by the sound of it–means the Valley of the Rippling Streamlets.’
(from ‘Australian Tales’ by Marcus Clarke)
One of the city’s forefathers (Rolleston) came a cropper in the February earthquake. Moorhouse remained sensibly seated in his spot in the Gardens, and Fitzgerald is still standing by the hospital. I have spent quite a lot of time in Fitzgerald’s company over the years. He’s the strong silent type. Robert Scott now lies cold and pale at the foot of the plinth that had been his home for many years. It pains me to see him thus. The soldier (with plaque) remains unaffected just along from the Bridge of Remembrance. I’ve never looked at him before.
A ‘state of the village’ report (bottom pictures). And a bit of the neighbourhood (top), modest little backwater that it is. Nothing ever happens here.
The trotting cup
Addington
the member’s stand
Peerswick
Lord module
Michele Bromac
proofPhoto
gryphonelle 