During brekkie, Jim and Jenni show us photographs of the sheep farm they bought and renovated and lived in about a light year in the past: fifty-plus acres and more than 100 sheep and a variety of other animals. Then David and Cynthia trundle onto the train to Flinders Street station and the Melbourne tram to Rod Laver Arena where David’s going to play … or not.

We forget that you have to press the button in the tram to make it stop at a given destination (unlike in DC or NYC where trains stop automatically at every station). So we have to get off at Hisense Arena, quite a long walk from Rod Laver in the tennis complex. A nice woman named Elaine guides us straight to the counter outside show court three where we will meet Fabrizio-Diego Minelli, ranked maybe 500 in the world, for a hitting session. David changes into tennis gear and unsheathed his racquet and finds a bit of concrete wall near a bathroom block so he can hit against the wall to get his eye and timing somewhat close to normal.

Diego shows up. He’s a lanky 29-year-old Ecuadorean and plays world-class doubles. He’s related to Andres Gomez, who won the French Open in … 1990, I think. Anyway, David and Diego hit for 90 minutes and David was in heaven even though he had a hard time seeing the baseline on Diego’s side and couldn’t hit Diego’s serve worth a damn. Diego is excessively kind and polite and says, “You’re the most consistent player I’ve hit with since I came here nine months ago.” I thank Ravi Shankar for that and for the racquet I play with and for a vague notion of tennis as a calling, which I cannot help but feel surrounded by 3,000 empty seats in the small roofless stadium under the shadow of Rod Laver Arena.

Cynthia takes some video with her phone. I figure I’ll play it whenever I lose my swing and won’t have my personal Baggar Vance to set me straight.

David showers and we walk into Richmond, a bohemian suburb not too far away where our friend Simon Rigg, who has monumental sculptures in front of the Yarra-side casino and in an office building at 101 Collins Street, is having an exhibition of prints and new table-top sculptures at William Morra Gallery. Several of his and Cynthia’s old friends are there — Graeme, Monica, Judy … architects and art world folk — and we sip wine and get some explanation from Simon and after a bit go to a Greek restaurant that’s so trendy its second floor, low-ceiling room ends up packed with so many people you can’t hear yourself think, much less the person trying to talk on the other side of the table.

We disband on the sidewalk and with Jim and Jenni walk to a gelato place and take a few trains home to Williamsburg where we, again, fall into an exhausted but happy sleep.

Another wonderful event-packed day in Oz.