2002-04-02

**Last week I went away and this is the travelogue**

Wow, I've finally landed for the first time in 36hours. IN that, I am master of my own domain again.

Damien and I left Newcastle on Saturday morning, in order to travel to Maclean to attend his grandmother's 90th birthday party. Quite a big deal indeed. Anyhow the trip up was pretty standard - we were tired and it was along way. A stream of roadside diners that are just petrol stations with a chip fryer, wide highways that cut big grey lines in the green landscape and gucky feelings from eating too much junk food. To me, this is something other than normal and something not quite right. For most, it is the way to travel. It makes me feel lightheaded and stomache-ached to drive for so long and only eat from service stations. Many believe it to be a rite of passage, proving their worth for their holidays cuz they travelled 12 hours in one stretch.

I remember as a child, going on holidays up the coast to see Nanna at Noosa, when we lived in Taree. Dad was of the generation where driving for 12 hours straight was not life threatening, and the public education on the subject was far less visible than it is now. Can you imagine if someone, these days, said "Oh, I'm driving to Noosa today. Its 12 hours drive" ? Everyone would be worried sick and it would be considered kinda stupid, images from graphic government safety commercials going through their minds. But those were the days. Leaving early, often pre-dawn, to beat the traffic - the big Australian, driving call, "Gotta beat the traffic". (In fact I intend to be in Newcastle by Thursday night, in order to beat the traffic heading north for the holidays). Another thing to beat, mainly during the summer holidays, is the heat, so the journey must then start in the early AM. I'm sure many folk over about 25 remember waking up at 5am, going on huge missions in one day to reach the destination, with the heat catching them, despite all attempts to beat it.

Arriving in Maclean at 5pm, it was only one more hour until the whole do started. There were basic instructions for finding Damien's dad and sisters - motel near the river - luckily there is only one and we found them easily. Everyone was there - Dame's three sisters and two partners with the rest of the out-of-town extended family members also booked into the motel. Showers, get dressed and go to the Bowling Club for the do. About 100 family and friends gathered for a buffet feed, and poor old Nan had no idea at all about the do, the folk who had come from interstate and overseas or the crazy. But she handled it well, and has still got all of her wits about her, allowing her to remember everybody. When our Dame went up to see Nan (who hadn't seen him for a few years), she didn't register who it was at first and then her face lit up with absolute delight. She was stoked...

I met a lot of relatives, some remembered, most not. I kept close to Damien most of the night, but if I lost him, I could hang out with his sisters' partners, who were similarly a bit out of the familial loop. ALmost everyone in the huge Scullin clan was just lovely, saying hi to me and saying how nice it was that Dame and I had come all that way. All in all a pleasant evening.

We walked back to the motel, where we would share a room with Dame's dad and his little sister, Erin. Not terribly romantic. I fell asleep watching "Interview with a Vampire" where Tom Cruise does an English vampire accent in an American accent, and looks camp as fuck. It's a really boring movie about two boys who are friends. And vampires.

After a night of the dulcet tones of Dame's dad snoring, we got ready to go see Nan one last time. There was breakfast at some bloke's house - I have no idea who he was and neither did Dame - and then to Nan's for a cuppa. More rello action and then it was time to leave - Dame's dad wanted to get on the road, as he had to work on Monday. That was my cue also and I kissed everyone in the room and left. I liked Dame's family and was glad to have met them - they are very loving and open people.

After leaving Maclean and the relatives behind, I travelled into Yamba, thinking it would be good to stay there for a night or so. But I looked around for awhile and found it certainly didn't engage me at all. Nice beaches, but it is a town in transition from sleepy town to booming beachside resrot hell-hole. And its sad. Glitzy apartments and cafes are starting to pop up, often named "Blue Dolphin Cove" or "Beachcombers Rest" or some other white-sandshoe-pancake breakfast-city-drivin'-four-wheel-drive-ownin' stylee. On this trip I am increasingly becoming obsessed, wishing I could see things as they were before. Before we made it all crap basically. I don['t know if I mean before we became so money obsessed in the eighties, or before we sterilised stuff in the fifties, or before we industrialised at the turn of the century. It could mean before we built such sprawling towns and cities, living simply amongst small communities or before we started chopping trees down en masse. Constantly, I have a feeling of being too late, that I've missed everything good and have to search amonst all this crap for something real. And something real that is affordable, too. In our time, a place to live in a desireable place is beyond the reach of most of us. Why should we dream of these perfect spaces, knowing they aretaken by those who would destroy them? And who would fence them off, gate them and mark them with an 'x'. I feel this almost constantly as I travel around. I am too late.

That's why I liked Maclean and will be going back before I go home. It is an old sugar cane town that still has much of that past life evident in the architecture.

All weekend, Damien's family had been reminiscing about their family holidays to Broom's Head. Apparently Dame's dad and all his sisters and his brother would come to Broom Head each and every school holidays with their parents, and by all accounts it seemed like it must be bloody paradise. So, after Yamba so fantastically poorly in my hour there, I decided to go see this promised land of the Scullins. It was a nice enough drive, made a bit more exciting by the presence of Scullin Rd upon my way.

Entering Brooms Head, I could hardly believe it when I saw the waves breaking just metres from the road. I continued into the village, which was one strip of houses on one side of the road, and found the entrance into the caravan park. It was breathtaking how close to the beach it was.

Once in the office I enquired about renting a caravan for the night. No caravans are available for casual hire, only permanents, but there were cabins. Worried cuz I only had fourty bucks in my purse, I asked how much it was for one of the cabins, to which the lady replied by asking how much I had wanted to spend. The fourty bucks was it, and she said she could do that and that she had a cabin ready, but it had not been cleaned after the last lot left. If it wasn't clean enough I was to let them know.

On the way to finding my digs, I went past the park's snack kiosk to find almost all of Damien's relatives there having a seaside outing of fish and chips. They waved me down and I hung with them for about an hour. Carmen, Dame's cousin, gave me her email address, as she lives in Brussels and would love it if we ever travelled and visited her. She seemed to think I might like to go there and play music. Maybe I would. They are a really nice crew, those Dame-relloes.

Score! One of those kinda yuppy beachside cabins for fourty bucks, and it had all the mod cons: microwave, washer, dryer, ceiling fans, TV. None of which I really needed, but I did watch Popstars and LA Confidential that evening. Perched on a hill on top of the beach (as opposed to overlooking the beach, mind you) the view from there was amazing.

I went to the beach almost immediately, to find the water warm and calm. There is an amazing natural ocean baths there, but the tide was pretty low and the water fairly shallow, barely covering my legs. Water temp: 23 degrees. Walking along the endless beach, I though about how much I was my father's daughter and agreed with myself that far more than physical characteristics are inherited through genes. One of the strongest memories I have of my father is the picture of him strolling along the beach. Whenever we would swim, which was often, we would dry off and wander up the beach for about 15 minutes and then turn around and walk back, nattering to each other the whole way. Or not. Silence was never a problem either, and I never wondered what my dad was thinking and he didn't intrude on my thoughts. Talking about lots of stuff, but mostly about kinda intellectual stuff. He read the paper like a ritual. I remember when one could buy both the Daily Mirror and the Telegraph before they merged, and he would buy them both. And then the Telegraph started having a couple of editions a day, so he had to buy them. Now I think of it, I never ever saw him with a Sydney Morning Herald, exept he did buy the Sun-Herald, the Sunday SMH cheesed up for the bacon-and-eggs-breakfast market. So anyhow, we'd usually talk about stuff in the papers, or school, or music or sport. And now I walk the beaches alone, remembering Dad.

Like I always did with Dad, I went exploring the rocks and the headland. And now I know what Dad like about going to these quiet seaside places, not just the beach and the swimming, but just for the beauty. He would stand and look around, not doing anything, just looking at what was around him. I was probably scurrying about in the rock pools, jumping on rocks. Now I go and just look, not thinking anything except about the amazing sight of the massive ocean and the patterns of the waves, and about how I am so small in its presence. Is that what you were thinking about Dad?

There was a lookout, from where I could see the burnt bush all around Brooms Head, left by the past summer's ferocious fires. As far as I could see the trees were black and the undergrowth singed. Even closer, it was obvious how close the fires had come to the houses. It was the same sight I had encountered on the recent Bitchcraft trip to Wollongong. So much of this state burned.

On the way back from the phone in the evening, there was complete and utter racket in the park. Hoards of rosellas had decended for their evening feed on the banksia trees that fill the area, and they were sqarking to eachother in shouty voices. I stopped to listen for awhile.