In the weeks (and now months) since Nancy’s death (the reason I came back to Lismore), we’ve uncovered various bits and pieces of history. There are lots of photographs, a sprinkling of newspaper clippings, and some interesting memorabilia.
We’ve named the latest discovery, “The Disaster Files”, as it’s an album of newspaper clippings about the floods we’ve had in Lismore over the years, along with a handful of photographs.
Famously, Nancy was determined not to leave her house during the 2017 flood because she “had lived through plenty of floods before this, and saw no reason to leave this time”. It’s worth noting the last “big flood” she had endured was in 1989, when she was about thirty years younger, not as a woman aged in her 70s with limited mobility!
These three photographs below tell a story of South Lismore for which there seems to be limited photographic evidence. Most of the photographs I’ve seen of the floods in Lismore have tended to be of the town’s central business district. Yes, there’s quite a lot of photographs of South Lismore from more recent floods, but there doesn’t seem to be a lot from earlier floods. For the most part, I think that’s because South Lismore has, generally speaking, been a poorer suburb, and so people often didn’t have cameras, or couldn’t afford to get film developed.
1974 flood in Lismore : we think Nancy’s car is in the floodwaters outside the South Lismore Railway Station. As a number of people have commented on Facebook, people used to park their cars at the railway station, thinking it would be safe.1989 Lismore Flood. We think this photograph shows the back gardens (flooded) of houses at the bottom of Union Street, South Lismore.1989 Lismore Flood : this photograph was taken from the front door of Nancy’s house at 15 Union Street, South Lismore, looking towards the railway viaduct. Looking back the other way.
The other great discovery was an article about the time when a car crashed into Nancy’s house.
The article fails to mention Nancy, concentrating instead on her former husband, Alf. We don’t talk so much about him anymore, for reasons best not gone into.
South Lismore Car Crash, Northern Star (date unknown)
Interestingly, the article was written by Emma Tom, a local woman who went on to fame and success as a journalist with both the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian. These days, she’s known as Emma A. Jane and her biography/website describes her as an “Australian professor, author, and journalist.“. I must check her website to see if this story is mentioned in her CV :):)
Work-free Wednesday has been continuing over the last few months during the COVID-19 lockdown. As I mentioned a few months ago, I have “excess leave”, and rather than take a block of holidays, I’ve been taking one day off each week.
When it all started, I was going to galleries, swimming, catching up with friends and doing lots of other wonderful activities.
However, with the lockdown there hasn’t been all that much I’ve been able to do outside home. Lots of cooking, lots of cleaning, a fair bit of reading and catch-up TV has characterised the last few months.
And then on Monday, the Art Gallery of NSW re-opened. To limit numbers, you need to “book in” for a time, and that’s exactly what I did today.
As well as lots of new works, they’ve also brought out some “classic” works of the twentieth century. Here’s a few of my favourites currently on display.
Mao by Andy WarholThe awesomeness of Yves Klein blue.The happiness of a Jeff Koons puppy and the iconography of Gilbert & George
It was such a joy to see such wonderful works.
It was also such a joy to be able to wander around and, once again, enjoy the atmosphere of the Art Gallery of NSW.
It’s Sunday night, the end of another weekend, and I am proud to declare I think I’ve made a few inroads into my case of “weekends anxiety”. “Weekends Anxiety” is a phrase I’ve coined to define the paranoia experienced by those of us who work Monday to Friday, and who are of a “particular age”, that makes us want to cram everything humanly possible into the weekend, just in case we don’t have all that many left. It’s an anxiety based on the fear that if you haven’t organised lunch, brunch and dinner on both days with friends, and haven’t played sport, seen a play, or been to a movie, that a weekend is somehow wasted.
The weekend started, however, with a jolt. I woke yesterday morning to one the most dramatic headlines in the Sydney Morning Herald in living memory. With the SMH declaring, “World Wakes To Calamity”, I’d wondered if I’d woken up and had somehow missed a major natural disaster or a terrorist attack. But no, the SMH headline was about the latest United Nations report on global warming. I wondered if there was something of “the boy who cried wolf” about the headline, with the unfortunate resultant action being the broad populace would go on living in the same way, failing to do anything.
With the headline, however, strong in my mind yesterday afternoon, I wandered around Sydney, observing conspicuous consumption everywhere I looked. Have we survived so long as a species because we do recognise the need for change and adaptation, or is there something inherently selfish about our species that will eventually lead to our undoing?
Hopefully there’s room for optimism that humans do understand a problem when it occurs. Even when I went to the Art Gallery of NSW this afternoon (after a few hours at work), I noticed the nutters at Speakers Corner, were banging on about the environment. So I figure if the group of ratbags regularly found in The Domain on weekends are concerned, there’s room for optimism.
I’d gone to the Art Gallery to see the Anne Landa Award for contemporary art, currently on display up stairs. With an emphasis on video art, the award features artists including Philip Brophy, Daniel Crooks, James Lynch, Tony Schwensen, Grant Stevens, Monika Tichacek, and Daniel von Sturmer. Although I don’t really have the inclination to write a complete review, I was really impressed with most of the art on display.
Crown Street Protest
And from the AGNSW, I wandered down through the Botanic Gardens, had a lie down on the grass, and wandered back through Surry Hills. Walking along Crown Street, I noticed something I’d read about but wasn’t absolutely sure about. I’d read about concerns Sydney Water is about to sell off the old Crown Street Reservoir. It wasn’t til I saw the protest signs that I knew exactly where it was, located closer to Oxford Street. The point the protestors are making is that if the reservoir is no longer needed, it could be turned into a small park with spectacular views.
My friend Colin and I went for dinner last night at RQ, one of my favourite restaurants in Sydney. As usual the food was excellent, but it was also very noisy last night and we waited far too long for the main course. Last night was my ex’s birthday, and oddly enough, his doppelganger was seated at the very next table. Unnerving to say the least.
So yeah, I made it through Saturday confident that I’d made good use of the free time afforded me. Today, however, was a different case.
I’ve spent most of the day watching television and playing around with this website. As you can see, I’ve moved “blog house” again, for the second time in as many years. I was with Netregistry for a few years and they were quite good, but then when they re-focussed away from personal accounts, and wouldn’t allow me to buy extra space, I went looking for another service.
So for the last year or so I’ve been with Byethost, supporting WordPress until this week when I realised what an amateur operation they really were. To be fair, they were trying to improve their service, but in doing so they changed database names and passwords without notification. When I politely suggested they had not communicated the changes well, I received this bullshit excuse… “To prevent mass email abuse, we have not emailed customer to give advanced noticed of the move”. Yeah, sure! Several attempts to make the changes led me to seek ticketed support which was always “half done”, leading to mistakes upon mistakes. So I’ve moved to WordPress where there seems to be much greater customer focus because….. “the customer is always right” (not wrong).
That managed to waste, if you like a few hours. So although Saturday was good in addressing a case of “Weekend Anxiety”, today wasn’t so good. Part of my “work on myself” for the year will be to accept that it’s okay to waste some time on the weekends when my work life is already quite busy. (The tune of Cats in Cradle springs to mind).
If only my social life could be as measured and metred as my work life. Some weekends I don’t have all that much organised, and others I’m so busy I could hardly scratch myself. Take the weekends of February 17 and 18, when I have four social invitations on the Sunday alone. It doesn’t rain, it pours. In all likelihood, I’ll get to only three, since I have to work (of sorts) on the Sunday morning. Still life’s like that, and in the meantime, I must repeat to myself, “I must overcome weekends anxiety”.
I haven’t been exercising (walking) enough lately, so I went for an aimless wander around my neighbourhood today. I hadn’t noticed these trees before in Moorehead Street, Redfern. Gorgeous, aren’t they?
Twelve months ago tonight I was preparing to head off to Pride Park in Stockholm for Schlager Night.
I’d heard about the annual celebration of all things Eurovision and Melodifestivalen for a number of years and was very excited by the prospect of four or five hours of live music in a crowd of, maybe, 30,000 others with an almost unhealthy interest in three-minute sing-a-long Swedish pop songs.
Schlager Night at Stockholm Pride 2008 – Lena PH
Tonight, in contrast, I’ve just spent two or three hours passed out on the couch, fast asleep, and with the television playing Fox News.
I had a brief reminder, though, of this night twelve months ago when Graeme called from Sweden with a cheerio call.
He and Grant have been there since Sunday, enjoying the ups and downs of a Swedish summer. “One minute it’s insanely hot, the next it looks like it could rain”, he told me.
They’ve managed to do a fair bit, though, in the few days they’ve been there, including having seen Alcazar perform a live set of some of their hit songs. Very jealous.
They also managed to pick up some “mini raincoats” from Pirate Bay, which they were selling at Stockholm Pride. “Keep up the good work people kept saying to us”, Graeme told me, as they walked around the park. Even more jealous!
The call woke me from my slumber on the couch which is pretty much where I’ve been since arriving home.
Or at least since Sue and I chatted on the phone about our future travel plans. Previously we’ve chatted about Darwin and New Zealand. Tonight we pretty much settled on Vanuatu which we both thought offered us the relaxation we both desire, as well as a small degree of exoticness. And it also looks pretty cheap! If you’ve been there and have some thoughts, we’d appreciate your input.
The reason I was a bit tired after work today is two-fold. First, I’m doing a new job at the moment, and am going through a period of massive information download. And second, I’ve been out the last three nights. The combination of long and intense days, followed by busy social activity, had slowed me down briefly.
The phone call from Graeme, tonight, however cheered me up to no end.
I made a brief appearance on ABC Radio in the Northern Territory today, talking about Radio Everyone, a pop-up radio station in support of #globalgoals
When I left the hotel, the weather was fine. As is often the case in Brisbane, the weather turned from sunny conditions to rain. You can see it in my glasses. My plan for the day was to visit Gloria (at the cemetery), visit my former university, and then generally hang out in Brisbane.
Visiting Gloria at Mount Gravatt Cemetery. She says all is fine, and will catch up with us sometime soon. Hopefully not too soon!!
And from there, I walked to my old university, Griffith University.
One of my strongest memories of Griffith University was of the bushland.But in contrast to my memory of bushland, there’s a lot of new development at the university. Yes, there’s still lots of bushland, but there’s also a lot of development. The landscape of buildings from the early 1980s, compared with now, is more significant. I couldn’t find the former residential colleges where I lived, though I’m told they still exist.Later in the afternoon I caught up with family members for lunch and conversation, which was terrific. I love this photograph with Sharron, with whom I share a lot of DNA!The day ended visiting the Sportsman’s Hotel. Amusingly, there was a “Bears Celebration” underway, and I recognised a few people from Sydney.
