Tuesday would see me
reunited with my family. I woke up in time for breakfast, but it was today that I decided to finish what I'd bought at Coles on
the first day. I was quite happy to laze about the room until noon, when Helga
would finish her meeting, but then I remembered the QueenVictoria Market. I'd planned to go here long before taking off out of Taipei. Lourens also wanted to go. It was a short tram ride
away. There were all kinds of stalls
selling cheap items. There were clothes,
accessories, souvenirs, wine, fruit, baking trays and lots of other odds and
ends. I got myself a new
leather belt, a tie, some short socks and small gifts for Kira and Dylan. Lourens also got a few things, among them
baking accessories - he bakes very well.
I took his and my purchases back to Graduate House, while he went
off on his own.
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No sooner had I dropped the bags than Helga called to say she was on her
way. She drove me through the 'burbs to
Tante Erna and Onkel Hans. We were all
excited at the reunion and our exchange was energetic, humorous and loud. Tante Erna had recovered well from her
episode last January. She has trouble
at times choosing the exact word she wants, and she cannot stand or
walk for more than about 10 minutes. But
otherwise her spirits are high and she is as lovely as ever. They're all a bit feral. They never stop talking, and they enjoy
cussing. Theirs is a very tight bond
with plenty of love flowing among them.
Later, Helga took me
back. On the way I mentioned how amazing I thought the trams
were. Her reply might have spouted from
the lips of any Melburnian: "That's because you don't drive a car
here." It was only 6 p.m., so I looked online to see
what was on in the city tonight. There
was a smattering of choices, one being a play called Meeka.
The synopsis read: "One morning at a
Western Australian school in the outback town of Meekatharra, an Education
Department auditor’s head is smashed in with a hammer. The night before, the
teachers hit the grog at a barbie.
Tensions rise. Why’s the auditor
here? The missing money? To find out why the school was set on fire -
twice? Or is something else going
on? And what are we going to do about
it? Before morning recess, a community
will be hit hard by a shocking act of violence no one will forget. Bad behaviour isn’t confined to the school
yard in Meeka. A new play based on a
true story."
Lourens agreed and we
stepped out together. We returned to
Flinders Lane, location of our thwarted visit to Anna Schwartz yesterday, and
looked for fortyfivedownstairs. The
theatre was deep in the basement and it was toasty inside. But it was larger than La Mama Courthouse and
the set was also more complex. We were
greeted at the door by a chatty, melodramatic host, who asked a million
questions as he welcomed us. He also
expounded the ways in which Melbourne was superior to Sydney. Melburnians like to say that more goes on in
Melbourne on a single night than in Sydney during an entire week. While this may be true, the assertion is
likely peppered somewhat by interstate rivalry. That being said, Lourens and I were to attend three performances, and I imagine we might have gone to one each night of our stay, if
we'd wanted.
The plot of tonight's
performance was interesting, as was its direction. I wasn't quite gripped,
though. I had imagined the show
might open with the crime and continue with its implications. Contrarily, the action all built up to the
crime, and the repercussions were dealt with in the play's resolution. Consequently, the dramatic pace picked up in
the last quarter, while what went before was somewhat slow. That it was based on fact did, of course, add
weight to the production.
Exiting the theatre, I needed food. We walked along
Flinders Lane, looking in at all the choices.
A silent video was projected onto the outer wall of a random
building.
We eventually settled
on Subway, where instead of a sandwich, I had their salad. It was huge, cheap and
delicious! Then we returned to Graduate
House. Along the way, I was astonished at how dirty the pavement was. There are so many restrictions in the country and enforcement is not taken lightly; so how is it that people simply drop their trash as they walk about?
On Wednesday morning,
we ate and did some laundry. Then we
made our way out. (In Sydney, I'd wanted to see the Nicolson Museum, which was located on campus, just
behind where we stayed. I'd read that their collection of antiquities
was quite remarkable. Sadly, we never
made it. Here in Melbourne, I wanted to
see the Melbourne Museum, which lay on Nicolson Street, also on campus, behind where we stayed.) As we traversed the
university gardens, it became clear that Nicolson Street was in fact not here,
that the museum lay some distance off campus.
Off we marched. By the time we
got there, my miscalculation had left us with only a half hour to peruse the
halls, as we'd be meeting Sue for lunch.
Though our visit was condensed, it was nevertheless interesting.
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I'd arranged with Sue to meet at Finders Street Station. We walked across Yarra River to the Southbank,
where we had lunch at an Italian restaurant
called La Camera. My Caesar salad was
exemplary, and it was pleasant to catch up with Sue again. Sue and her late husband David have been
family friends for nearly three decades, starting when my brother Kevin spent a
year in Melbourne as an exchange student, hosted by Rotary International. David Mair
had been his counselor for the year and also his host parent for three
months. It had been three years
since David passed away and nine years since I'd last seen Sue.
Taking our leave from
Sue, Lourens and I made our way to SouthMelbourne Beach. It was by no means as breathtaking as Bondi or Coogee, but it was
broad and long and there were very few people.
We walked south for a while, stopping for a gin & tonic at beer
o'clock. Then we returned to our room to
clean and rest before the night's entertainment.
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When we'd readied, we
headed out to the State Theatre, a short walk south from the Southbank. En route, we stopped at Nando's. This is a South African franchise
outfit. It was started in
Johannesburg by Mozambican Portuguese people, and now includes 1000 outlets in 35
countries. I'd eaten at Nando's on occasion, but Lourens hadn't, so we chose
there for dinner. We both thoroughly
enjoyed our meals.
Tonight we were going
to watch our Melbourne pièce de résistance.
On the program was North by Northwest, a stage adaptation of an Alfred
Hitchcock movie. Here's the synopsis: ”Roger O. Thornhill is a
suave and successful advertising executive, abducted by thugs who insist he is
a man called George Kaplan. There’s obviously been a mix up. When they don’t
believe him, that’s infuriating. When they try to kill him, that’s frightening.
And when they pin a murder on him, that’s time to run! From New York to North Dakota, Thornhill is
chased by spies, Feds, crop-dusting planes and the inevitable cool blonde.
Years before the James Bond films there was North by Northwest – a lightning
paced thriller that mixed glamour with espionage for a truly irresistible
cocktail."
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The performance was
busy from the start, with lots of movement and action on the stage. Sets were changed swiftly. The cast used American accents (which I personally think is not necessary; I guess it's a
matter of taste). The main feature of the
set was scaffolding. This was once the
windows of an office, once the interior walls of an opulent home, once a train,
once a telephone booth. There was a
sofa, which turned into a car, complete with headlights. Much later, three office chairs doubled as a
police vehicle. Behind all the props, a
video was played on a screen to give the impression of the city skyline as a
taxi navigated the streets; or to show the crop-dusting plane as it tried to
take out the hero; or to offer the backdrop of Mount Rushmore - more about that
later.
Some of the original
music from the movie was used. This was
composed by Bernard Herrmann. A lot of
this work sounded so familiar, and at home in the evening, I went on YouTube to check my thoughts. I believe that
Herrmann's score borrowed an important motif from Dvorak's Slavonic Dance, Op 64 No 8. Go on YouTube and see if you agree.... For this show, additional music was scored by
Ian McDonald.
The show was thrilling,
and the final scene could not have been more imaginative. To portray Mount Rushmore, the brilliant
artistic director did this: Four cameras were trained on the faces of four
actors, who were themselves out of the sight of the audience. The cameras focused on the foreheads, but
included the noses, eyes and chins.
These images were projected live onto the screen behind the action, in
the same pose as the faces of the four presidents in reality. The actors' noses were twitching and their
eyes were blinking, making it at once both superbly inventive and hugely comical. When our hero and damsel
were escaping over the presidents' likenesses, the stagehands brought onto the
stage and continuously rearranged tables of varying sizes, one on top of the
other, then realigned them. The result
was that the characters "climbed over" the twitching noses and
blinking eyes on the screen behind them.
It was exceptional! When
the scene and the play drew to a close, I screeched like a
banshee in defiant delight. I wanted to see the whole production again!
Thursday was our last day in Melbourne. I had arranged to meet my
family again, and Lourens decided to go off by himself once more. Steph came to pick me up at 10:00 and we went
directly to Tante Erna and Onkel Hans.
There I met new relatives, Hans's youngest brother Klaus and his son
Steven. Then we got take-out fish and
chips for lunch. Later I started to nod off, and Erna sent me to her bed to take a nap. In the afternoon, I went into Erna's memory room and took pictures of her pictures,
hundreds of them hanging all over the walls, documenting her life and
times. As evening approached, Helga and Ian arrived. Hans brought out his
accordion, and regaled us with those tunes he could remember, while Erna
lovingly watched and criticised his every piece.
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Onkel
Hans also showed me his passport, issued by the German General Consulate in
Melbourne, giving his year of birth as 1836.
Wow! 180 years old!
(While we chatted, Steph got on the phone to take care of a
matter for Tante Erna. After a while, I
became aware that she was talking with us again, but she still held the
receiver in her hand. I asked if she was
on hold. Yes. How long will that be? Could be minutes, could be hours. What?!
Then I remembered that this is also a complaint I've heard from Tonya
about America. I do believe I've also
heard this about Canada and the UK. I
bet it's more prevalent than that. I've
also heard that all too frequently the call is terminated (by accident or by
design) after lengthy waiting times but before the caller's questions have been
addressed, and the process has to be started again. Today, Steph was on the phone for perhaps
half an hour, all the while talking with us until finally she was lucky enough
to have her query resolved. This I
believe to be a Western feature. It
certainly is NOT the case in Taiwan.
Service on that island is quick and efficient, despite the dense
population.
Another industry that suffers a similar retardation is the
medical profession. I've heard of waits
of up to six months to see a specialist, in the US, Canada and the UK. I have no idea what the situation is in South
Africa nowadays, nor did the topic come up while I was in Australia. In Taiwan, it is not necessary to get a referral
from one's GP to see a specialist. One
simply presents at a hospital and takes a ticket. The wait could be an hour or two, but I
personally have never waited much longer than 30 minutes, even when I did not
have an appointment in advance. Making
an appointment in advance means that the staff takes an educated guess at when
your number might come up, and then your wait could be only 10 minutes. Even if you miss the call for your number, the
staff will stick you back in the queue as soon as they can. It is very civilised.
Whereas in South Africa, visiting a bank means standing in a
queue for as long as it takes, in Taiwan, you grab a numbered ticket as you enter. Then you can sit comfortably on the chairs
provided and read the newspapers provided, or watch the news on the TV provided
while you wait until your number is called over the PA system. Once again, very civilised.
The more I am faced with these glaring inconveniences, the less I
envision ever living in the West again. It
is quite remarkable that in the developed world, where everything costs so much
more and taxes are so much higher, the average citizen conversely gets a more
rotten deal.)
Then we all went off
nearby for dinner. We sat in a bistro
cum sports bar beside the restaurant, as it hadn't opened yet. The bar staff said we could order our food
right there, and we did just that. The
whole time we were together, Hans insisted on paying for everything, and these
two days with them were the cheapest of my trip. At 8 p.m. I had to leave. Tomorrow
I'd be out before sunrise to the airport.
Getting home, Lourens
was still not back. I put on a final load of washing and went out to buy some
drinks. As I returned, so did Lourens.
Now we sorrowfully packed our bags.
On Friday morning, we left for the airport together, though my flight to
Sydney was later than his. I decided that going together by taxi was desirable. The alternative was that each of us would
have to separately lug our suitcases on trams and buses. While I waited for my plane, I read on Facebook that friends from Taichung, Peter, LiMei and
their son Louis had also been in Sydney.
Later, Lourens and I bumped into them at
Sydney Airport. They were booked on the
same Scoot flight!
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| (sculpture at Melbourne Tullamarine Airport) |
