So it seems James Murdoch is emerging as the heir apparent for Rupert Murdoch in News Limited. Every time I see the Murdoch family mentioned I can’t help but think of The Simpsons. Rupert bears a significant resemblance to Monty, and James bears a significant resemblance to Smithers. I’m sure it’s a co-incidence, though.
“We’ll miss you when you go back”, Pat said to me last night. I’ve been home in Lismore for the last couple of weeks, and have really enjoyed being here. I’ll be back for Christmas, and maybe another trip before then. I see the Lismore Show is on at the end of October, so I might return home for that.
Though we lost a lot of photographs in this year’s floods, some of the past weeks has involved going to Officeworks, printing off the very best that have been digitised, framing them, and putting them back on the walls.
For several years now, it’s been a family routine to go through old photo albums, and either scan or photograph the collection and back them up. We’ve done hundreds (maybe thousands) that way. As it’s been a group effort to select the photographs for digitising, it’s also been good fun, as we’ve remembered (or sometimes not) the circumstances/situations.
So my advice? If you have some old photographs, digitise them and back them up. You don’t necessarily need a scanner. You can just use a mobile phone or camera.
“I’ve backed everything up to Google Photos”, I told a relative last night. He asked if that was going to be enough, wondering if I should also back them up to a hard drive. I told him I didn’t think Google was going to go broke anytime soon, and also mentioned hard drives are more likely to go under a flood than Google is. Of course, there are lots of other backup options, too.
Though Lismore still has a long long long way to go, this trip has been characterised by a greater sense of optimism. There is still a lot of trauma in the community, including amongst family and friends. As someone from “away”, I find people still talk about what happened during the floods earlier this year. They want you to know.
I was in Spink’s Park the other day, taking a photograph of the Queen Victoria Fountain, and a man stopped to talk. I think he assumed I was not from Lismore, a visitor, and he wanted me to understand what had happened here. We chatted for quite a while, and I explained my connection.
I went into a local shop the other day and saw a photograph I took (and put on Twitter) on the counter in front of the register. I chatted with the couple who owned the store about their experiences, both with their business and home which had been impacted by the floods.
This has happened a lot.
There’s a short-hand conversation you can have with people in Lismore about this. You just need to ask where they live, and you know instantly what they’ve been through.
It’s different in Sydney (and elsewhere).
“(In Sydney) people’s eyes just glaze over when you talk about the floods. When they ask about the flood and want to know how it’s going, they expect you to say it’s okay. We’ve mopped up, and we’re getting back to life as normal. But when I tell them it’s pretty fucked, they lose interest. Let’s keep the conversation alive, as there’s so much ahead of us,”, I’ve told a number of people.
As we chatted over a family dinner the other night, I was amazed to hear about the number of extended family and friends who are living in “pods”. Pods are caravan-like accommodation that has been provided by the state government. Others are “couch-surfing”, going from house to house, and staying with family and friends.
Back in the day, one of the oddest things about flying in and out of Lismore was the stop-off in nearby Casino. Literally half-an-hour away by road, and eight minutes by plane, the aircraft would take off from Lismore, head towards “Parrot’s Nest” a location half way there, and immediately begin the descent. Passengers from Lismore would silently grumble to themselves as one or two people usually joined the flight, before we recommenced our journey to Sydney. I’m pretty sure Casino Airport (or more precisely aerodrome) is closed these days.
That’s probably why there was a twenty minute stop-off in Grafton, as I made my way this morning back to Sydney. Even without the stop-off in Casino, the journey between Sydney and Lismore still had its complications. As I got off the plane for a bit of fresh air at Grafton Airport, I overheard the incredulity of a passenger and his family, when he reported he had flown from Sydney to Grafton via Lismore, a north-bound destination. So obviously Sydney-Lismore-Grafton is one big loop.
“I can’t remember the last time I flew in and out of Lismore ”, I said to Michelle, as we drove this morning to Lismore Airport. For the most part I fly in to Ballina (it’s cheaper, due to greater competition), and my family picks me up from there.
But this week’s trip also involved a couple of days working on the Gold Coast, and a couple of bus trips between Coolangatta and Lismore, as well as today’s trip back via Grafton. The bus trip from Coolangatta Airport to Lismore took about two and a half hours, and was very pleasant. Most people got off at Byron Bay and Ballina, and since I was the only person travelling to Lismore, the driver offered to drop me off at home. “It’s the first house past the roundabout”, I told him. How good is that?
Two days with work on the Gold Coast were both productive and enjoyable. Although there wasn’t much time for sight-seeing, I still found time to pop down to the beach, and enjoy a little of the nightlife of Surfer’s Paradise.
It was awesome to spend a couple of days with my family in Lismore. I had work to do during the daytime (working at home on Thursday and a few hours in the office on Friday), but the nights were free to enjoy.
I caught up with some long-time friends from different parts of my life (school and work) who knew each other through Facebook, but had never met each other. With common interests in food, they had already made plans to meet in a couple of weeks time. So it was great to catch up with them, and to introduce them.
Though I knew her younger brothers from school, she was a fair bit older than me, and so I only knew her by name, and only recently through Facebook. Althoiugh we have the same greater-grandparents, Peter O’Brien and Lena Noonan, we were unaware of the many common relatives we have. She works as a nurse and had actually nursed my aunty and two cousins (on the female side of my family). She lives not far from one of my cousins, and so I suggested next time you see him, “tell him you’re an O’Brien”, and the connections will flow.
Closer to home, my family seems to be going okay, despite some set-backs last year. Pat had a knee operation, and is stumbling around the house a bit. There was lots of talk about illness and funerals! But there was also lots of talk about the younger generation coming through, with kids starting pre-school and primary school, and another nephew now finding himself in Year 9. “He’s not in Year 9, is he?”, I said to Michelle. It seems like only yesterday when he was a baby.
I also told my family of my plans to return home in retirement. Though I’ve ummed and ahhhed about it over the years, I think I’ve finally concluded Lismore is where I want to spend my retirement. “There’s some good nursing homes around”, some younger family members told me. “I’m not that bloody old yet”, I replied.
“And where will you live?”, I was asked. “I won’t be living on the flood plain”, I told them, “It’ll be somewhere on the hill, so you can move in, and bring the cars over when it floods”, I added.
The movie which haunted me throughout Europe will soon be available at my local video shop. The same video shop I haven’t been to for years because I was so embarassed at the $27 overdue fine I had to pay eight years ago (or thereabouts).
I was on my way to Sydney University for a “Media Industry Night” put on by one of the student groups. In comparison with the main drawcard – Ray Martin – I was a minor player, though quite a few of them were interested in what I had to say, even if a couple of them confused me with James O’Loghlin. “We’re both bald”, I reassured one of them, when he realised the mistake he’d made.
It was a really interesting reminder of my own university days a thousand years ago. Most of the students seemed to have no clear idea of what they want to do when they finish their courses, echoing the experience of most of my peers back in the 1980s.
In common with these kids I lived through a reasonably difficult economic period. “Everyone goes on about how we are gonna cope, as such a materialistic generation”, one of them said to me at one point. He was reassured, I think, when I mentioned similar comments were made about my generation.
Despite what’s often said about the generation gap, I think we all go through similar experiences from generation to generation. I think it’s too simple (simplistic) to make generalisations about Gen X, Gen Y and whatever comes after that.
There was only one occasion when I had to turn my head and smile at what I thought was one of the naïve thoughts/ideas of youth when we discussing some issue or such. One of the guys picked up on it, I know, though he didn’t draw attention to it.
Later though, he asked why I’d bothered to come in a genuinely inquiring way. It was then I pointed towards Ray Martin and said “Ray didn’t have to come, either but he did” alluding towards a genuine sense of altruism.
I could have been at home watching television, or playing on the internet, but I really enjoyed my experience visiting Sydney University tonight. Despite what you often read about the cynicism of this generation of kids going through university today, they seemed like a genuinely nice bunch, with a genuine sense of optimism towards the future. I hope they do well.
In the kind of pattern you follow when you mow grass, there were three or four men with metal detectors on Coogee Beach this morning, methodically making their way up and down the sand. Along with a couple of early morning walkers, a few English backpackers still out from the night before, some council workers, and a young couple getting far more intimate than I thought was polite in the open air, the metal detector men were in charge of Coogee Beach at about six o’clock this morning. How do I know this? Well, I was there too.
The sky was beautiful when I woke early this morning. It was about 5.25 or so, and with uncharacteristic enthusiasm for the day, I decided to hop on the first available bus and head down to the beach. Reminded of the last time I’d been on the beach at dawn – the morning after a friend’s wedding on the Gold Coast – I thought the day presented me with the ideal opportunity to take in that ocean air and generally marvel at the wonder of nature.
After a few minutes sitting on the beach I walked towards the water. It was then I noticed an older man doing laps in the unofficial ocean pool. As the waves crashed around him, he looked up at me, and with a totally exhausted look on his face, acknowledged me in the kind of way that says, “what are you doing here?”. Making my way over towards the nearby rocks, I found myself a nice spot to watch the ocean. And despite the nearby woman with her child, and the backpackers sitting on the rock ledge above me, I felt some brief inner peace for just a moment.
And there’s nothing like a bit of nature to do that for you. Even though I’m not really a “beach person” (my skin is too pale and, since the light to too bright to read, I get bored sitting doing nothing), it was great to have a brief moment where I could re-connect with nature. As a “boy from the bush”, I need a bit of nature every so often, and I guess this early morning desire to visit the beach may have come from that inner desire to re-connect with some essential aspects of my soul. Spiritually revitalised, I headed back up the road, picked up the paper (nothing much to read), and had coffee and toast overlooking the beach.
Several years ago, while attending a major media event here in Sydney, I walked the red carpet with a colleague from work and my then-partner. The cameras were flashing with an intensity I’d never experienced before, as they snapped the likes of Jana, Ray and Jim. And then when it was our turn, you could see the slightly blank look on the faces of the photographers as they saw us, and paused briefly before turning away to re-load the film in their cameras.
In another famous red carpet moment, when the same then-partner at I were at a function at the Sydney Opera House, we were photographed by one of the local newspapers and even had our names and suburbs taken down. Within minutes, the same photographer had snapped Bryan Brown, Rachel Ward, Ruth Cracknell and Gary McDonald, and thus we very quickly realised we wouldn’t be appearing in that week’s edition of the Wentworth Courier.
There was, however, an occasion at Tropfest last year when I received a text message from a friend in Western Australia who had seen us walk along the red carpet. As we walked the red carpet at the State Theatre, tonight, however there was absolutely no thought in my mind we would be stopped and interviewed for something on Foxtel, even if I do work on a daily basis with one of the red-carpet reporters.
Amidst the likes of Catherine Zeta-Jones and Guy Pearce, there was a sprinkling of Australian celebrities including Claudia Carvan, Annalise Braakensiek (pictured), Mike Goldman and Daniel Johns (who, with platinum blonde hair, bore a remarkable resemblance to Mr Humphries from “Are You Being Served?”) There were others too, although their names don’t readily spring to mind.
We were there, of course, for the new film, “Death Defying Acts” about the life of Harry Houdini, which featured Zeta-Jones and Pearce, and which was directed by Gillian Armstrong.
We all agreed the film was okay, though not entirely spectacular. Afterwards,. as s a few of us dissected the film, which concerned a would-be love affair between Houdini and a woman who made money as a confidence-trickster of sorts, we all wondered loudly about the purpose of the film. The cinematography is good, the actors are quite good, the story is quite interesting, but we all wondered “why”. In stark contrast to most films, these days, however, it was just about the right length.
If you would have asked me yesterday if I was keen to attend a gallery opening in a Kings Cross car park, I would have definitely said no.
For the past week I’ve been pretty crook. I haven’t been sleeping well. I haven’t been eating well. I swear, I have the world’s biggest cold sore on my lip. I left work early on Friday, and spent most of the long weekend in bed sleeping trying to recover from whatever illness this is. “You should take a week off, just stay at home”, a friend said to me earlier today.
I’ve been worrying about friends and family who all seem to be going through really difficult times at the moment. My life is fine, nothing to worry about there. I feel like I’m absorbing part of their trauma, as if it’s my way of helping them. Sharing the load and all. In reality, there’s not a lot I can do from a distance, though I sometimes fantasize I could be/should be, the knight in shining armour who can come in and solve everything. The best I can do is pray.
As is often the case, my retreat from stress and discomfort is for my body to go into my own self-indulgent melt-down and find sleep is the solution.
By today, though I was beginning to feel better in myself, even if the fortunes of family and friend may not be the same. So when Kate asked if I wanted to go to a gallery opening tonight, I jumped at the opportunity.
Even though we had the address, it took us a while to find the pop-up gallery run by the Alaska Art Projects in the Kings Cross Car Park. The streets of The Cross are often difficult to navigate. And yes, as you can see from the photograph, it was quite literally an art gallery on the second level of a carpark.
It was all very cutting edge. All very pop-up. Though we didn’t think all that much of the art works on display, we did enjoy the space, we loved the sense of adventure of doing a gallery in a carpark, and the people we chatted to were genuinely very lovely.
After the gallery, we grabbed a bit to eat at a Kings Cross restaurant, the name of which escapes me. Excellent food, though.
Two delightful hours.
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