A trip to Canberra is not complete without a trip to Parliament House. Like everyone else today, I marvelled at the architecture and the symbolism of the design. But I suspect I might have been the only one who went for a wander in the nearby bushland. I really love how Parliament House is surrounded by Australian native plants. Here’s a few of the photographs I took earlier today.
There was a brief moment today when I thought I’d bitten off more than I could chew. As I looked around the street signs there wasn’t a single word I understood. Unlike other places I’ve visited in the last few years, I was beginning to feel I’d failed to do (what I thought) was adequate background research about the history and geography of the place. “Oh my goodness, I know more about Chinese history, language and culture than I know about Turkey”, I thought to myself, feeling somewhat ashamed. And so there I was standing on a street in Istanbul, not understanding a single word and struggling to remember those high school history lessons about the Ottoman Empire, my only cultural reference for the country I was in outside of the Turkish restaurants on Cleveland Street, near my home back in Sydney.
“You idiot”, I thought to myself as I reflected on the lack of control I was feeling about the situation. But as I headed back to my hotel room to there was a breakthrough moment. The turning point was when I saw the world “Serpil”. Serpil is the name of a woman I have worked with on-and-off over the last few years. I’m not sure if she was born in Turkey or not, but I know she comes from a Turkish heritage. And there, in front of my eyes was a shop named “Serpil”. I know it seems crazy, but it was enough to give me a “cultural footing” to take that one step further.
I was also reminded of the advice I’ve received from a number of people over the years. “Always say yes, you’ll know when to say no”, a young colleague told me about travelling several years ago. “Always take that one step further. Always take that one left turn off the main street”, several other people have also told me. And so just when I was feeling somewhat bewildered about the lack of familiarity about my surroundings, there was a voice inside my head which said, “Don’t worry about being in control, don’t worry if you don’t know where you are, just go for the adventure”. For me, it was a moment of liberation, where I told myself to just go with the flow, to relax and to accept whatever the day would present.
Yes, I’d been told about The Blue Mosque. Yes, I’d been told about the hamas. Yes, I knew I had to go and get my bus ticket to travel to Çanakkale tomorrow. But did I have any idea about where they were and how to find them? The answer is no. So I came back to my hotel room and, using Google Maps, tried to get some sense of where I was, and what was nearby. Armed with this sense of control, I headed back out again.
The first “thing” I visited was the Sherazade mosque, not far from where I am staying. I’ve only been to a mosque once before, the Gallipoli Mosque back in Sydney. I feel almost ashamed to admit I only have a cursory knowledge of Islam. “What are all the lights about? Is there a ‘front’ to the church, like an alter?” were some of the questions going through my head.
The next “thing” I visited was the Grand Bazaar. I’m not one for shopping at the best of times, and so the endless stalls held little attraction for me. Instead, I looked to the roof and the interesting patterns instead.
“Things” don’t interest me all that much when I’m travelling. I’m far more interested in people. I’m more interested in the way people live. So, as I walked around I started to notice things like the way in which people were dressed. For example, I’d say there are more women wearing the full veil in Sydney than I saw on the streets of Istanbul today. I saw many more women colourfully dressed than I’d expected for a country where Islam is the dominant religion. I saw women dressed in what I guess I would call “traditional clothing”. I noticed the immense physical diversity of the population, reflecting the history of the place. I saw people who “looked” like they were from southern parts of the former USSR. I heard no English, and saw no apparently “Western” tourists, aside from at the explicitly “tourist” spots. I noticed smoking was still reasonably common.
Later in the afternoon, as I wandered around Taksim Square I began to feel that sense of bewilderment again. As part of my “Google Research” earlier in the day, I knew wanted to visit a bar called “Chianti”. I’m a great one for believing you can get to know a city by going to a bar, and hopefully by chatting with some locals. Although I had a map, and had written down the details about where the bar was, I didn’t really know where I was and how to get there. So I went to The Intercontinental (which I knew was closeby) where I figured they would be able to help with some directions. Unfortunately they weren’t much help, aside from telling me it was about a fifteen minute walk. Armed with that information, I caught a cab.
“What will you DO in there?’, the taxi-driver asked me, as we arrived in a rather “dodgy” looking part of town. It’s a question I chose to ignore because, frankly, I had no idea. But armed with the courage that comes from a glass of wine at a 5-star international hotel, I hopped out of the cab and made my way up the stars. The directions said it was on floors two and three. I climbed the steep stairs to the second floor and opened the dark,, heavy door.
Inside, in rather grim surroundings there were maybe a dozen people drinking and smoking. “This is my son”, I heard one of the men say, introducing him to a couple of German blokes. The soundtrack (as with the posters on the wall) was from 1990s heavy metal. Although the crowd was friendly, and I chatted briefly to some of them bloke, I never really felt like they were “my people”. After a while, I bid them goodbye, and decided I would head up one more floor.
As I made my way to the third floor (it was actually the second floor, I later discovered), I rang the bell and was welcomed by the barman. Over a couple of beers I sat, listened and enjoyed the company of half a dozen men in their thirties and forties. Of course I had no idea what was being said, and the English language skills of the patrons were very limited. But I liked the place. It had a nice vibe. I liked the way the barman offered bar snacks which went a little beyond what I’m normally served back in Sydney, including chopped up cucumber. I liked listening to Turkish pop music. I sat and wondered what the nearby bloke was doing as he wrote numbers on a sheet of paper. Lotto or a complex horse racing formula?
“I have to go now” I said to the barman, almost apologetically, after a couple of hours mentioning I was travelling tomorrow and needed to be up early. “I’ll be back later in the week”, I told him.
The day ended in a rather weird manner. As I made my way to my hotel I stopped for a moment to listen as a crooner at a nearby club sang a cover version of the Tom Jones classic, “Sex Bomb”. As I stopped, stood and recorded the music, a bloke came up to me and asked if I wanted my shoes cleaned. “No”, I told him, adding they were fine. A couple of seconds later, he threw some crap on them and told me, I assume, “Now, they need cleaning”.
Here’s the actual exchange as it occured, as I was happily recording the music…
As we stood and waited in line, we laughed about some of our own experiences from many years ago of school photographs. “Which of us will need to sit down in front with their legs crossed?” we wondered. “Have you worn the proper school knickers”, I asked Sue, reminding her to “cross her legs” if she had to sit down the front. The idea of sitting for a modern day “class photograph” was an enticing one, and why we could be bothered standing in line outside the Queen Victoria Building in Sydney on the weekend.
As part of Art and About in Sydney, there’s a photographer re-creating “school photographs” with a modern twist. The “modern twist” is that everyone’s much older, and there’s definitely a much larger level of cultural diversity in the photographs of modern day Sydney than you would find in the photographs of, for example, South Lismore Public School in the early to mid 1970s or Richmond River High School in the late 70s to early 1980s.
It was a really fun project to participate in. Best of all? You got a free photograph at the end.
All of the digital photographs are online.
At the risk of this blog turning into a “Beard Blog”, here’s my one month update on my attempt to grow a beard.
After roughly one month of letting it “grow wild” I went to the barber today to get a trim both “on top” and “down below”. On top, I’m a 1.5 clipper man myself. Down below, I asked the barber if he could just “tidy it up and even it up a bit”.
I’d read a fair bit about how you should let your beard “grow wild” for the first three or four weeks until it starts to fill in, and then go to a barber to get it shaped properly. If you have a patchy beard to start with (like most men do, apparently), your own attempts to trim and shape are more than likely going to make it look even more patchy.
So I’ve held off on purchasing a pair of clippers, and have decided for the first couple of months, I’d leave it to someone who knows what he or she is doing.
The thing which prompted me to go today was the really uncomfortable feeling of whiskers on the lips. I always thought the problem of itchiness would be greater, but it’s been nothing compared to the scratchiness of stray whiskers touching your lips. That, combined with little bits of left-over food attaching itself to the whiskers which touched my lips.
So, having had a trim today, and having snapped a photograph, I don’t think it looks too bad after all. It’s still fairly light on the sides. My ginger heritage is coming back to the fore, and oh, oh, those greys.
The general consensus of people who’ve commented on my beard has been positive. “It really suits you” is the most common phrase I’ve heard.
The one thing I have noticed is I’ve become slightly obsessed with male facial hair now. I swear I’m not about to become a “big old bear”, you won’t be seeing me with a big tummy dressed in leather chaps with my bum hanging out on the way to Mardi Gras, but I have been checking out beards a fair lot. It’s like when I first got a pair of glasses, it was like everyone in the world was wearing glasses. Now it seems the same with beards.
I promise my next blog post will not be about growing a beard.
Not long after arriving in Sydney in the mid-1990s, I remember being blown away by the elaborate wigs of drag queen, Maude Boate.
Maude was a regular performer at the legendary, sadly missed Albury Hotel. Working alongside Maude at The Albury, was barman, Tim Chappell, one of the Academy Award-winning costume designers for “Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert”. Apparently, that’s how some of the Maude Boate-designed headgear and dresses ended up in the movie.
The other connection between Maude and Tim was that both came from my hometown, Lismore. I remember discovering that about Tim about the time he won the Academy Award. But it wasn’t until a few years later I discovered Maude Boate was in fact, Michael Gates, also from my hometown.
Being of a similar age, I knew exactly what he meant. And yet, at the same time as Jim Brigginshaw, the editor of the local newspaper, The Northern Star was writing inflammatory anti-gay editorials, people like Mike Bray and Vera Bourne (the mother of a schoolmate) were hosting Gaywaves on the local community radio station, 2NCR-FM, Mike ran a gay restaurant called “Double Dutch” and the local social group, Tropical Fruits was just starting out.
Thirty five years later, Tropical Fruits is now a multi-day festival (with a pool party and street parade) that attracts a lot of visitors from elsewhere (the actor Alan Cumming was the star celebrity guest this year), and there’s an exhibition at the local art gallery paying tribute to the work of a man who achieved a great deal through his drag persona.
Design-wise, Maude Boate continues to influence how many of Sydney’s drag queens dress. In the short video, Michael also describes how he makes wigs for the stage production of “Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert”.
It’s a lovely exhibition. Well worth a look. But be quick, noting it closes January 30, 2016.
One of the many things Damien and I have in common is an interest in politics. At times, you might describe us as “political junkies”, as we often get together for election nights. We also will often discuss over the phone or through chat major political events.
We’re not, however, what you’d call “partisan”. We have our own political preferences, but we’re definitely not “slaves to the party”.
When I won tickets to see the new Oliver Stone movie, “W” about George W. Bush it was only natural that I’d invite Damo.
We were both, however, somewhat disappointed with the film.
“It was like watching a cartoon”, Damien commented after the film. “Everyone was a charicature”, he added.
I was in total agreement. For me, It was just a film for the “chattering classes”, confirming or re-affirming their beliefs about George Bush.
As we watched the film at the Chauvel Cinema in Paddington, the “chattering classes” giggled at all the expected moments.
For me this was a real disappointment. The death of thousands of people is not something you dismiss with a giggle, and sly “he was an idiot” comment.
“These are serious issues” I thought to myself.
But still they giggled and laughed, as they had their views re-affirmed by a film that barely went beyond the surface.
“They didn’t tell me a thing I didn’t already know or feel about the Bush presidency”, Damien told me as we wandered down the street.
It was disappointing in so many ways. In fact, I began to feel the man “W” was probably more interesting and complex was the film “W”.
It’s such a shame because the last eight years were so important in so many ways. The end of an era. An important change in US foreign policy as they moved to a “first strike” philosophy. The fundamental change as the United States moved back into isolationist mode.
I refuse to believe – as the movie suggested – it was all about a bloke who could never live up to the expectations of his father. It was far more complex than that, which unfortuantely “W” failed to explained. It was, as Damien suggested, just a big cartoon.
That said, I did like Colin Powell and George Bush Senior, as they were clearly the film’s “heroes”, the dramatic counter-balances to “Junior” and played by the actors with a great deal of intelligence and authenticity.
For a brief moment today I was transported back to Tamworth (NSW), and in particular the Country Music Festival. The launch of the Golden Guitars for 2019 was held today at my workplace in Sydney. Attending, I was reminded of being one of the judges, and making my way through a crate-load of compact discs. I was reminded of the many years I travelled to Tamworth to conduct outside broadcasts for ABC Radio. I was also reminded of the warm days and nights in Tamworth during the festival. Though it’s about fifteen years since I last attended, I’d love to return at some point. Attending today brought back some very fond memories.
This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.
Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.
That was an interesting thing to do, which we did not do last year when we visited. Floriade beckoned. Seeing our Parliament House was terrific though. When tv reporters report from Parliament House, it is nice to know where they are standing and what is the background. Seeing the ‘red and green rooms’ with a jocular guide who had plenty of anecdotes was very interesting and entertaining. All Australians should see where their masters work.
Agreed. Have been there quite a few times and worked in Canberra for a while during the 90s, so I figured I didn’t need to go inside this time. Reading through blogs and was just about to read your R post, but it’s gone. I often have a post in draft form for a few days, just in case I have second thoughts.
I agree with you, I love Parliament House and Canberra in general. People are so disparaging about the place but I like it a lot. What I most like about parliament house is standing on the roof with the view out over the city in front. When one turns around, its just scrub out the back – so Australian!