Drive from Bendigo to Hanging Rock. Then on to Melbourne airport, fly to Cairns, and drive to Port Douglas. Quite a day!
Our creation myth, our personal Dreamtime, is that Cynthia was working between teaching gigs for Sandy McKenzie at Peace Corps’ headquarters during the summer after David returned from Korea. He had to get some information from Sandy, who was not in her office, so he talked to that really good looking but probably unattainable bit of crumpet sitting outside Sandy’s office. A bit of electricity was generated and later that afternoon Cynthia called David and asked, by way of asserting her international and hip-artsy bona fides, if he wanted to see the movie Picnic at Hanging Rock, which was having a revival of sorts on the silver screen somewhere in D.C. When David said he’d seen it, they hung up. Cynthia had no Plan B. But David called her back and invited her to sail on a friend’s boat and play some bridge in Annapolis that coming weekend. Cynthia thought about water and bikini attire and a long day trapped on a boat and demurred on that proposal. So, the first date happens by accident. Bumping into each other at the elevator at the end of the day, joining others for a drink and, later as a couple, dinner at the Thai Room for cheap eats.
Thirty-five years of marital discor… scratch that … harmony, ABSOLUTE harmony, and a wonderful son and comfortable home and terrific and entertaining friends and a life of unexpected pleasures later, including … now, finally, the “bridge” to the opening scene of today’s blog …:
We motor out of Bendigo and arrive at Hanging Rock by mid-morning. Yes … too early for a picnic, but we feast on the memories, get a photo and marvel at the place, which is as eerie and full of spirits as depicted in Peter Weir’s film. (Note to Netflix users: Weir went on to do Gallipoli, Witness, Dead Poets Society, Fearless and The Truman Show … not a shabby oeuvre, n’est pas?)
Hanging Rock. Let’s get the geology out of the way for this place is an anomaly in many ways, stranger than Uluru and dissimilar to it in ways still speculative. Possibly, its towering rock formations on a fairly flat plain are the result of lava rising to the earth’s crust but not erupting, resting, instead, for enough time that the lava’s elements separate. The lighter silica rises to just beneath the earth’s surface and only then erupts, leaving towers of rock with odd layers of hardness that remain after the softer magma beneath and around them has been eroded. The remaining rock formations, called mamelon for the French word for nipple, rise 105 meters above the green oval racetrack beneath one side and the forest that surrounds the other three.
Cynthia walks around the base and the adjacent race track for the scenic view of the site while David climbs up and through all the tunnels and crevasses formed by the weirdly eroding rocks. Very few other people are here this early in the morning and the wind whistling through the giant stones does seem like a voice, a presence, part of the Dreamtime and Jeff Clark’s world, rather than ours. It’s a magical place to begin this day and we ask someone to take our picture at the base of the rocks before we go.
The remaining road to the Apex car rental agency somewhat near Melbourne’s airport is unremarkable and we drop off the car and get a lift to the airport. (We note that we’ve put 2,382 kilometers on this Camry, bringing our current total to 6,618, but who’s counting?)
We fly from Melbourne to Cairns, shuttle to the Apex rental office for a car, which we load and drive to Port Douglas, thinking nothing’s going to be open when we arrive around nine at night.
Port Douglas is jumping. More than 40 restaurants crowd the main boutique-lined street on which scantily clad youngsters and middle-agers and oldsters drift by or dine under verandas that shade the sidewalks. Byron would love this place. ANYONE would love this place. We choose a Thai restaurant that tells us it’s a BYO. David goes, buys a Shawn&Smith Sauv B to surprise Cynthia, gets two Coronas (there’s no Singha) for himself and we dine while a live band across the street at the Central Hotel belts out “Ground control to Major Tom.” Temp is about 74, humidity about 35%.
Another day with a bright star at night in Oz.
Two Tramps 