Melbourne: A Travelogue

What better way to end a wonderful overseas trip than to miss by a day your returning flight? I could see that becoming a much more expensive mistake than it was.

It did mean, at least for a while, that I could take a tour of Melbourne's largest airport, Tullamarine. Many other travellers had clearly already learned what to me was a valuable lession: try carrying a well-padded sleeping bag, as it is as if they intentionally constructed the international departure lounge to be uncomfortable.

At least while aching from the cold metallic grilles they called seats, one can try to admire the surroundings; it is an attractive building. Even if it could be both attractive and comfortable, however, I can see it playing hard on anyone's psyche spending extended stretches confined there.

The planned repetitions, whether the voices broadcast over the P.A. System (which without ear plugs make sleep near impossible), the cleaners mopping the floors to the sheen of several hours hence, or the replenishing of stocks of exhorbitantly priced vending machines, all sum to give the space a timelessness, even while it is the centre of the most thoroughly unforgiving schedules in the city.

There was an upside: not to be found in the airport, certainly, but in the extra time afforded around the city. The night before I travelled to a cosy Greek restaurant close by the CBD to attend one of the few Melbourne Comedy Festival events that barely needed a good review to attract a crowd: “Fawlty Towers – The Dining Experience.”

It was my first shot of – and I suppose at – interactive comedy. If I may take for granted here the talent of the trio guiding the night, the question most deserving an answer becomes how faithful they were to the canon.

The doors to the restaurant remained locked until shortly before the event. At some point during that time, myself and others outside could hear Manuel shouting “Oh, no!” and, later, a fire extinguisher going off. All of which was delightful – if perhaps unintentional – scene dressing.

One notable difference from the tenor of the TV series was that all of the audience in these 'interactions' are 'in' on the act and find it very difficult to take any of it seriously. So, by the nature of the medium, compared to that of television, the actor's behaviour and that of the audience are reversed.

Finally, to cap off what I thought to be the last day, came an unexpected visit to a local marina, after being invited by my cousin to a voyage on her friend's yacht.

It is a tremendously serene feeling, floating across the waters at the behest of only the wind. The sky, apart from a little haze across the Melbourne cityscape, was mostly cloudless, allowing us to travel lightly dressed.

The view of the cityscape miles from the shore was a serendipitous reminder of that from far above in the plane I originally flew in on at night. As could be expected, there was little regular pattern to many of the roads, likely reflecting many separate phases in the city's growth and evolution.

What brought me to Melbourne this time was the invite from another cousin to her wedding. This became a great opportunity to reunite with my father after his twelve year disappearance. His absence from the wedding itself requests a narrative I will avoid tracing, suffice to say he invited me to his residence some few hours north-west of Melbourne. After mentioning these plans to another friend, she convinced me to travel up even further north from Melbourne to visit. This maped out a travelling circuit from Melbourne to Echuca to Finley. The idea was to loop around these closer-to-outback locales for the few days prior to the wedding, then to see a more microscopic sample of Melbourne city and its surrounding suburbs.

My father had kindly arranged my pre-wedding transit several weeks before I arrived, as the train up to Echuca requires a reservation. It was a fine train, clearly fitted for travelling long distances at a time, with dedicated luggage areas and with seating more padded than on the metropolitan network.

He was waiting at Echuca's station as the train approached. I had been briefed about what to expect by various people, yet even so he looks terribly old, and carries himself as a man terribly old for his years would. No longer puffing on the seemingly socially more dignified pipe, he has downsized, if not down-puffed, to the humble – if not for their cost – cigarettes.

Soon we were able to travel to a local – if cross-state, as the area straddles the border – hotel to enjoy a meal prepared as part of an event held between a Rotary club and the Lions club he frequents. The food was fine, and they had a fairly good guest speaker: a sports commentator for the ABC, so at least he had a nice voice.

Following that, we both got a ride from some of his friends from the club back to his house, part of a fairly uniform and boring state-owned block. The outlook that I would need to sleep in and breath in this cigarette debris-littered preliminary coffin was something I could do little but resign to.

Never again.

No natural light breached its windows, supposedly for the plausible reason that air conditioning needs would skyrocket. The fridge and cupboards were lined with bulk-purchased canned foods and TV-dinners: an embarrasment of malnutritive riches.

While the state may ostensibly own the property, the semi-hourly smokes between its walls would invest it with another much more nefarious owner. Its dominion extends over all furnishings, and is always slowly trying to make necrotic furnishings of any living inhabitants. Even in the shower you feel clothed in an impermeable membrane of uncleanliness.

Accomodation with my father includes an apparently well-rehearsed tour of savings made on various household items, almost every comonly-used one mentally cataloged with an RRP and the amount he saved. The occasional catalog entry would recall a stock narrative of the current interest-free loans being paid off, and the purchases they made possible.

Is this the necessary result when debt is your universe, and every savings a cause to celebrate? Furher encompassing by the bizarre revelation that this abode had been furnished ex nihilo.

A story with all the markings of a creation myth; I can likely take to my grave ignorant of its provenance. How can someone reach their mature years without retaining some of their life history in physical possessions, even the tiniest trivially-transported trinket? Is it a consious attempt to repress thoughts on low times? Did a bank relinquish them as collateral? Did he suffer larceny? Or were they merely pawned to fund another puff?

I will relish memories of the visit for years, a visit which alone reveals that they are where such experiences should stay. Remembrance is the only repeat they deserve. While love for my father demands pity, love for my self could not survive it, and I would not dare recycle that for any of my own children.

Arriving in Finley gave right-of-way to a comfortable and notably breathable respite. The cool morning dark had receded to a clear and radiant sky, emphasising my friend's very welcoming house and backyard. The barks to accompany my entry soon died away, and I was left for a few hours to peruse a Milan Kundera book from my luggage until the end of the day's working hours.

Dad had offered some roses from his front yard (it would be too generously assuming to call it his garden) for my trip up here, and despite my suggesting that I was not making that kind of visit, he insisted I pack them.

While not being able to cite much experience as a guest, my short time here before the wedding revealed in my friend the most consummate host. The next morning she took me to her workplace, introducing me to the assorted instruments of the trade; a very fancy x-ray machine, walls lined with numerous vials (including one that could barely leave doubt as to its function, called “Lethabarb”), a fridge stocked with not only human consumables but also various animal organs. As I was inspecting a brain in a small open container, she casually mentioned it was to be checked for anthrax. ... Lovely.

Shortly before leaving, my friend handed me a filled syringe to administer to a beautiful Alaskan Malamute in her care. There were three ways of administering injections she had described earlier, the most obvious one being the I.V., or 'intravenous.' I had more trouble guessing the next acronym; an I.M. injection – which I would soon make the mistake of delivering - would go right in to the muscle. The injection she invited me to give the dog which would afterwards gladly avoid me was the third variant, the S.C., or sub-cutaneous. A thick fur – what you would expect of a near-arctic dog breed – covers the Malamute, which makes it a challenge to lift the skin away from the muscle.

I'm glad these are not stoic creatures, as when I started to push on the syringe we both heard an anguished yelp. Gladly relinquishing my torture implement, my friend proceeded to a seemingly effortless injection. An appropriate end to a visit which would leave me thoroughly admiring the subtle, highly demanding, yet clearly rewarding craft she dives into nearly every day.

For the afternoon, we would take a very pleasant walk accompanied by her dog beside the Murray river. Due to the recent flooding there was a lingering dampness extremely hospitable to excitable mosquitos. Now at least, the journey very much makes up for my body's experience of its aftermath. Her parents had visted a few weeks before I arrived, and we were retreading a similar path, on which they had seen kangaroos, and a koala very close up. On this day we only found some surprisingly well-camouflaged koalas lining a few branches.

It was quite an eventful next morning, which would later become a near deja-vu experience when I would miss my first flight back home. The bus was scheduled to depart from its Finley stop at 4:50AM. Through some fault – very likely my own, I was shocked alert in finding the time on my cellphone to report 6:53AM. Since only a single bus to Melbourne passes through Finley each day, it would later seem my only prospect would have been hitchiking on a random freight truck. Fortunately my clock was still set to New Zealand time and I was “only” three minutes late. To recall the event much more briefly than it seemed at the time, my friend probably broke a few traffic laws getting me to the bus's next stop, and contrary to expectations I boarded it a very relieved – and profusely thanking – man.

The wedding was that evening, so despite my schedule not being terribly accommodating to missed buses, I arrived with a few hours to spare before being picked up for the ceremony.

While I can now only take little pleasure finding novelty in these ceremonies, a secular format was at least refreshing, and easy as it may be to tread on people's sensibilities, the difference in presentation is so minor that I would have been surprised had anyone been seriously offended.

Few beautiful words left unspoken, the ceremony gave way to a brief congratulatory and camera-snapping interlude, before everyone would fill the impressively capacious and well-arranged dining hall.

The first part of the room to intrude on my senses was, however, the expansive dance floor. It may be an illusion conjured by the competent master of ceremonies and caterers, but the night revealed that even with self-consciousness out the window, ettiquite and appetite are strong restraints on over-zealous feet.

Seating arrangements were such that those adjacent to myself were the most closely related. And as little as the sparse and obscure childhood memories could fill the conversation, they did yield an effective icebreaker. One neighbour was a professional cook, which combined with my newly-acquired amateur intrigue towards anything gastronomy, sent us along an enjoyable thread of inquiry.

The days following the wedding were appropriately occupied mostly with unscheduled repose, neatly accommodating the reflections my journey up to then would allow me.

It is the reflections memories make possible that keeps them self-sustaining, so it is left to me to feel fortunate that the times I had in Australia are worth carrying the rest of the way.