Winifred Atwell’s Grave

There’s a bloke who seems to drink most days at one of the pubs here in Lismore, who seems to have also drunk the Q-Anon Kool-Aid. He’s a big bloke, always wearing hi-vis, and he has a friendly face. But every time I’ve been there lately, he’s been talking rather loudly about various conspiracy theories.

“Trump will return to power within a couple of months”, I’ve heard him tell people. “Big changes are coming”, he’ll add, seeking their affirmation. The looks on the faces of the people he’s speaking to suggest their disbelief.

The other memorable overheard conversation this week was at another pub. “All they have on TV, these days is f…ing COVID, so I’ve learned how to use Netflix”, I heard a bloke say. Yes, I know it’s incredibly important to know what’s going on, but it’s also true the constant media coverage can get you down, and explains why people are looking for distractions.

Maybe the two conversations are linked?

Being home with family in Lismore, I’ve started to spend most nights watching “Neighbours” and “Home & Away”. At first, I found it hard to identify where one program finished and the other started.

But then I’ve started to notice one is set in Melbourne (Neighbours) and the other is set in Sydney. One is mostly set in loungerooms (Neighbours), and the other is set mostly in coffee shops.

“Neighbours” is also way “gayer” than “Home & Away”, with the program currently featuring two gay couples. I know more about these two shows than I thought possible when I came home back in June.

For the most part, I’m working from home, though on two days each week, I’ve been heading in to work at the local office of the ABC. Three days this week, actually.

Most days I’ll catch the bus to the office, and generally speaking, I’m often the only person on the bus.

And then in the afternoons, I’ll walk home, which affords me some exercise (about 3km, 45 minutes) and some lovely views.

I took a break from work yesterday to catch up with my cousin, Barry O’Brien. We have the same great-great-grandparents, Peter O’Brien and Mary-Ann Goward. https://thelimbshift.com/genealogy/peter-obrien-and-mary-ann-goward/ We both have an interest in genealogy and that’s how we first met when he was living in Muswellbrook.

At the time, my radio program was heard on the local ABC Radio station, and he heard me one day mention my ancestry. We met a few months later at the ABC in Sydney, and I vividly remember Drew (who worked at the coffee shop) asking if we were related. There’s definitely a physical similarity.

He was on his way to Queensland for a funeral and called into Lismore along the way. We chatted about lots of family history stuff, and I also took him for a walk around “the block”. He was amazed by the signs indicating how deep the floodwaters were in the record-breaking 1974 flood.

“You know you’re in Lismore when your taxi driver tells you he met his wife in a re-birthing workshop”, I told some friends the other day. They laughed out loud. When the driver told me about his experience, I had to bite my lip to stop from laughing myself. With nearby towns like Nimbin and Byron Bay, it’s such a classic “North Coast Story”.

I remember when the “hippies” came to Lismore for The Aquarius Festival. I was about seven years old, and we were living in South Lismore, not far from the railway station, so it was easy for us to walk down to take a look at things. I don’t exactly remember the reaction of other family members, but I remember being in the awe of these rather odd looking people arriving in our town. Even more, I was in awe at all of the television cameras reporting on the event, which was surely a sign of my budding interest in journalism.

South Lismore has changed in some ways, as I’ve written previously, but it other ways it hasn’t. As I walked around today, many of the buildings of my childhood were still there, albeit with different occupants. The Station Hotel (aka Hogan’s Heroes) is still there, pretty much as it was when I was a child. Across the road, there’s a women’s hairdressing salon, which I think I’ll always think of due to the chemical smell of the brown and blue rince that mum and granny (respecitvely) would receive under the hands of Carole Beddoes.

I called in to see some extended family today. They’re getting quite old now, but still needing to keep up with technology. My job for the day was to set up their Netflix account.

It reminded me of the various times throughout my life when it’s been my job to assist family with odd jobs. During my university days, I spent a lot of summer holidays painting houses. Later, it was erecting antennas for the transition from VHF to UHF television, and then later to digital television. In the last couple of years, my odd jobs have mostly been technology related.

No doubt that will continue to be my role when I return to Lismore in a few years time, and thankfully my family won’t need to wait two or three months for my next trip home.

So, despite the rather exotic reputation the North Coast has for alternative culture and for multi-million dollar celebrity homes, my experience of Lismore is quite ordinary.

On one side of the family, we came here in about 1908, as a group of fairly ordinary farm workers left the NSW South Coast, in search of better conditions. On the other side of my family, we came here in about 1930, due to my grandfather’s post-war job as a linesman with the Post Master General (PMG).

“There’s a bit of snobbishness about Lismore”, my friend Paul said, as we spoke over brunch on Saturday.

He and I have known since we were twelve years old. He grew up on a farm, and went away for a while, including a number of years living in Japan. He came back to Lismore when his father became ill, and has been here ever since. He and his partner have goats and cattle and make cheese under the “Nimbin Valley” brand.

“I want to go somewhere with sunshine”, I said to Paul, as talked about where we might have brunch, finally settling on the cafe at the Regional Gallery.

As Paul and I talked about my plans to return to Lismore, he had some good advice. “You’ve either got to have 1/4 acre or 100 acres. Anything in between and you’ll spend all your time mowing the grass”, he said. He also said, “So long as you’re on the right side of the levy bank, you should be fine”.

There’s no real reason why I couldn’t move back now. I worked from the Lismore office of the ABC on Friday, and will continue “working from home” for the next week.

Even so, I still really like living in Sydney, though it’s true to say my passion for Sydney no longer runs as deep as it once did. I’m also in a position with my career where it makes good sense to stay in Sydney a bit longer. But with each passing visit, the desire to return is getting stronger. I’ve spent a fair bit of the week looking at the photographs in the windows of real estate agents. And it was lovely, yesterday, to drive around with Paul and look at different parts of Lismore where I might live.