In Praise of Post/Thoughts on Distance

I just spoke to my mama who told me that the big box I had shipped home from Australia had arrived.

I would like, therefore, to take the opportunity to salute the postal workers of the world.  To send 10kg 17,000km took six working days and cost much less than any courier company quoted me.

The only thing is, that, knowing the box is at home, but I'm still here, is making me a little bit homesick.  Still, not much longer before I'm shipping myself (weighing in at slightly more than 10kg) in the same direction.  You really have to look at the map to appreciate what a long way it is: all the way from the bottom right corner to the top left.

In fact, it's so far that Google doesn't know what to do about it.

The Back of Beyond

(image via Australian Screen aso.gov.au)

This week I went to hear the writer Peter Temple share his thoughts on becoming an Australian writer (he was brought up in South Africa but now best known for his crime novels set in and around Melbourne.)

During his amusing and thought-provoking talk, Temple mentioned a documentary called The Back of Beyond which, he averred, every Australian baby-boomer had seen and formed part of Australia's collective memory.  His description of the film sounded fascinating ... he described scenes of desert strewn with (somewhat improbable) dinosaur bones, a laconic everyman postman hero and two iconic 'lost children'.

Today I went searching for the film and found some clips here, courtesy of Australian Screen.  As an insight into the place of the Outback in the Australian psyche (particularly at a certain time) it takes some beating.

Ooh, MONA

Hints to Lady Travellers has been a) fighting a cold and b) organising her tax return.  But she really wants to tell you about her trip to MONA so has taken this break from a) and b) to c) post some pictures and talk about herself in the third person.

MONA is the Museum of Old and New Art, located just outside Hobart.  The owner, David Walsh, made his money from gambling (the story goes he came up with a very clever system for beating the casinos) and spent a lot of it on art.  MONA is not your typical, hushed-voices art institution.  It's idiosyncratic, playful, lavishly appointed and all-in-all, pretty jaw-dropping.

My co-conspirators and I were lucky enough to be staying onsite in one of the MONA pavilions (this is not where I add that our trip was kindly sponsored - we paid ourselves, but I have to say that the accommodation is very reasonably priced for the level of service.)

The best way to get to MONA is by taking the ferry from Hobart.  We left at dusk, and were treated to this first view of the museum, looking like the lair of a Bond villain:

You climb these steep steps to get there,

but chairs are thoughtfully provided for rests.

The pavilion had amazing views, Aesop products in the bathroom, original art on the walls, a good selection of food and wine ... though we provided our own picnic.

The next morning after a lavish breakfast, we went to explore the museum.  Here's the queue outside - not bad for a Monday morning.

I have many pictures of the artworks, but am not allowed to post them here.  I thought I might get away with this picture of one of the seating areas, though, as an example of the crazy excellent attention to detail:

The art is a personal selection - and it shows.  The pieces are wildly varied, some I really liked, some not.  It includes some of the most famous Australian artists (there's a wonderful Sidney Nolan piece called 'Snake' which consists of hundreds of individual panels and has never before been displayed in its entirety) and big names from the contemporary art scene like Damien Hirst.

There is no text on the walls: an iTouch given to you as you enter helps you locate works by GPS and includes various reflections on the different pieces.  

What struck me most about this place is that it's really fun - and reminded me that art, is, at its core, about play.  This is borne out by the installation housed in its own little shed near the ferry dock.  It contains a live feed from the French artist Christian Boltanski's studio.  The feed is pretty boring - I'd say like watching paint dry, except that would be more eventful.  I am a big Boltanski fan but this installation feels less like art and more like a joke ... and maybe that's the point.

(View down to the Boltanski shed.)

MONA is well worth the detour - in fact well worth visiting Tasmania for this alone.  That said, the local scenery is also stunning and I wish we had more time to explore further afield.

That wraps up my Tasmanian adventures - except to add that there is a prize for the first person to correctly identify the source of today's post title.  

Mr Tulk

I have written of my love for the State Library of Victoria on a previous occasion.  But I thought the café, Mr Tulk, deserved some special love of its own.  Named after Augustus Tulk, the first librarian, this is my favourite place to go for a coffee or lunch in Melbourne's CBD.

It's good for breakfast, good for coffee, good for lunch, good for cake, good for after-work drinks on Friday.  Their flat whites are impeccable and the chocolate blueberry muffins worth a detour. The décor is appropriately bookish and the place is always full of people reading.  Naturally.

I went there recently with Georgie and Sunny and had the excellent chicken coleslaw salad (kind of an Asian take on traditional coleslaw - no mayonnaise).

Perfect for when you need a break from sight-seeing or studying.
















"They call me MISTER Tu-".  Actually they don't, they call it Tulk's.

Ho-ho-Hobart!

(To go with Can-can-Canberra.)  So I finally made it to Tasmania (leaving only the Northern Territory and Western Australia to go.  'Only' - they're only ginormous and very expensive to get to from Melbourne, but that's another story.)

Tasmania is the size of Ireland, for those of you who like to know these things.  It is regarded with some suspicion by Australians from the rest of Australia who believe that Tasmanians are a little bit odd.  Errol Flynn was from Tasmania.  It used to be called Van Diemen's Land.  It is now known as Tassie.    Here endeth the facts.

Hobart is a beautiful, small port town with lots of evidence of its colonial past.  We spent a sunny Sunday there, mostly going from one eating establishment to another.  I highly recommend the degustation lunch at Garagistes.  Below, my photo tour of the day:

 

The last few were taken from the ferry on the way to MONA - but that's a story for another day.

Packing Can Be Deadly

Packing for a return home is not half such a bother or a worry.  You know just what things must go without the trouble of selection, and you also know that the going is a necessity, and that if they refuse to accommodate themselves to the limited space of the boxes, force may legitimately be employed. 

(Lillias Campbell Davidson, Hints to Lady Travellers)

Packing to go home, while perhaps less stressful than packing to go in the first place, is not without its challenges.  Like, how are you going to fit everything you accumulated after almost a year in Australia into your checked bag allowance - bearing in mind that excess baggage costs $50 a kilo.

Yesterday I started the process of sorting my belongings into three piles:
1. to give to the Salvos
2. to post
3. to pack

This involved much weighing and at one point it occurred to me that I should also weigh my suitcase.  When pulling it down from the shelf on the wardrobe it (all 4kg as it turned out) hit me in the face.

How I wish I could be like Sir Richard Burton*, who famously instructed his long-suffering wife to 'pay, pack and follow'.  But, alas, I have no wife and, contrary to Miss Campbell Davidson's suggestion, force has only resulted in a bruised nose.

*The 19th century explorer, not the Welsh actor.

Art Collector

Inspired by Mighty Girl, I have, over the last few months, been working on my own Life List.  One of the entries is 'buy, exchange, or otherwise acquire a piece of art every year'.

With this in mind, and also because I thought it might provide an interesting souvenir of Australia, I attended the Affordable Art Fair in Melbourne on Friday evening.  To begin with, I didn't expect to find anything to buy, but then one piece caught my eye.  It's a print, by an aboriginal artist, and every time I passed it (once, twice, three times) it spoke to me (buy me, buy me, you know you want to!)

I'm not going to post a picture of it here, but it is very colourful, very Australian, very beautiful.  It will remind me of this vivid country every time I look at it.  And if you want to see it - well you'll just have to visit me.