Omens to our Romin's

Dear loved readers,

Well here it is the eve of departure for my first trip away from this continent in over thirty years and the day has dawned in an ominously Armageddon like shroud of red dust. If I’d heard that Lord Carnarvon opened Tutankhamen’s tomb this morning I would not have been surprised except that he had done so back in 1929. The red sky of my five thirty dawn walk seemed to promise a spectacular sunrise but alas it was not so. Rather the light simply rose in sepia tone to reveal cars, roofs and eventually clothes covered in a fine dust of red earth that will be welcomed only by our gardeners. This was whipped by a steady strong north westerly that became confused in the artificial hills and gullies of suburban streetscape till it came from anywhere. Sometime after midday the skies cleared leaving a somewhat springlike vista which seemed only to emphasise the inherent warning of natures passion and wrath that had come to whip the emerald city just as she does our southern rival Melbourne.

If there is a personal message in this phenomena for Alice and I on the eve of our big adventure I’m not egotistical enough to believe it. I’m not ignorant of the fate of Carnarvon and I’m aware of the travails of Moses, Noah, Job and their ilk but still its difficult to believe that this display could have been mounted for my sake only. No I don’t speak for Alice, who knows what she has been up to - well I should, but aren’t parents always the last to know? None the less she shall have to come up with some very convincing collaborative evidence to persuade me not to board that flight tomorrow.

As I say it’s over thirty years now since I last clambered aboard one of the great white birds that visit other continents. That’s approximately half my now substantial lifetime. Back then those white birds never managed to resist the lush gardens of asia. This one shall to propel me back to the continent where I can sate an obvious ancestral longing. I suppose it’s possible to imagine an Australian five hundred years from now, content with that as his origin. Maybe the essential seed of his existence has been sown but I can’t imagine any today who don’t still feel the sense of another beginning.

I should have had as good a chance as any, other than the obvious aboriginal, to feel native to this state that has stood me in such good stead for these substantial years. Had I been raised by wolves, er dingoes, perhaps I would feel as a Greek feels Greek and the Kurd, Kurd but I don’t and never shall. As soon as my mother began to sing to me the childhood rhymes of a foreign to Australian (Gondwanaland) language my detachment was commenced and my European Ancestral fuse lit. From then it was downhill all the way as my educators taught me of Copernicus and Galileo, Greek history and worlds at war, none of which happened in my part of town. No mention ever of the Rainbow Serpent and only the vaguest reference to Bourke and Wills who were after all European and doing what had been completed in Greece thousands of years before.

If I seem to be biased here in reference to Greek whose ancestry is not mine and where I shall not set foot it’s probably because I have prepared for this trip by reading Dead Europe by the Australian, Christos Tsiolkas. Probably not everyone’s choice of pre holiday reading but I enjoyed this somewhat gothic horror tale of ancestral pilgrimage. I don’t expect my own travels to include any so lurid adventures but perhaps with the application of imagination I can in my usual florid style make them palatable at least to my related readers.

Maybe Ill find time to log and blog as I go. That would be good but if not then you can take solace in the knowledge that I’m having too good a time to even think of you and isn’t my good time your foremost interest.

Robert

This was pretty much as the pigeons and I saw it