The Flume

The walk from the Flume to Hopkins Point is both the path most and least traveled.

This meandering path runs, sometimes walks or just plain dawdles, along the Foreshore, meaning just off the beach curving around Lady Bay. It is a walking/bike path tucked in along the edge of the dunes.  The dune verge is a few hundred meters wide, reaching up to Merri Street and the first row of houses on the other side of the street.

This narrow necklace of sand and coastline vegetation is home to our neighborhood wallabies, many birds, and is chock full of memories. The other ocean, the one of coastal grasses, also ebbs and flows along and throughout the Flume.

For those Stone Harborites amongst us, the walk along the Flume is a bit like that walk to the Point, especially the first one after an absence.  For those Hilton Headers that may be along, it is the walk south to the Calibogue Sound Inlet, or at least to the water tower turn around point.

It is very pleasing to remember walking this Foreshore with niece Sarah and Kevin, and to be back in touch with walks and talks here with my daughter Kate. It is a place to be with parents, and ghosts, spirits, and other kindred travelers past, present, and future. The mind, and spirit, gets both exercise and repose here, as does one’s more physical body.

I am never alone when walking here, when being here. One becomes part of a larger landscape. The appreciation of just being here runs deep and strong.

Wallaby shadows

A magpie friend poses

Two of the many bunnies along the path

Walking to the end of the path to the mouth of the Hopkins River, one of my Warrnambool most special places, is an integral part of this homecoming.

Levitating

There were a few discrete moments I wanted to capture before they drifted away like bubbles rising through sparkling water.

Descending in the elevator at the Vibe in Melbourne an adjacent passenger asked me what I was doing for Christmas, or some such small talk inquiry. I replied that my partner and I were going to Warrnambool. “I’m from Warrnambool” exclaims his partner, who it turns out grew up about a block away from where Ann and I stayed when we were there before, and who told tales of surfing with Maureen, from whom we previously rented.

On the train the next day going to Warrnambool I connect visually with a woman   passing down the aisle. She lights up as do I to her, although nothing is said. I don’t remember her name, but she was, is, a very engaging largely non-verbal developmentally disabled adult with whom I worked when here before.

Also while on the train, Ann sees a fox running through a field.  A few minutes later I see another one.

These little bits of seemingly isolated experiences, along with many others known and likely unknown too, paint an ever-changing pointillism masterpiece.

Today we went to Levi Beach, another ever changing masterpiece of another type: miles of empty beach running east and west, sandwiched between dunes and bush on the north and rough waving ocean to the south. What a feast it was. Ann and I were alone on this seemingly abandoned deserted stretch of the Shipwreck Coast.  Alone, except for the company of shore birds, sea weed, moving shifting sand dunes, bones of birds and fish, flotsam, jetsam (way too many bits of plastic), old boards, tangles of rope, and expectations or hopes of Jules Verne-like shadow creatures emerging from the waves.

Tonight we stepped back in time to the timelessness of Tower Hill: two koalas in a eucalyptus taking over for a partridge in a pear tree, three baby emus, and a giant hare hopping along with a mum kangaroo whose pouch was overflowing with a joey stretching out and trying to nibble on grass and bush in between maternal hops. There were a smattering of blue fairy wrens too, our all time favorite tiny bit of flying flitting about color.

Neighbors. Going home. New Familiarity…?

Our voyage “back” had two legs to it, at least in flight path terms, San Francisco to Auckland (NZ), followed by Auckland to Melbourne. Breaking up the travel time this way actually made the journey a relatively seamless whole. There were no real extremes of physical fatigue or psychic numbness. Rather, we were both more present in a good way, tuned in to the travel and not compelled to tune out any exigencies.

The familiarity of coming back was both calming and exciting.  The sense of place we steeped ourselves in while here before was a beckoning friend even before we were on our way back. Once on the ground and moving through customs, the sense of “it’s like we never left” was palatable, and touched us strongly.

Ann’s bag not arriving with us was barely a ripple in just going with the flow: Skybus, Southern Cross Station, V-Line Country Train tickets for the next day, walk to hotel fittingly named Vibe, and then back to streets in search of the holy culinary grail of Shanghai St. Dumpling. Yum !

I suppose an element of any good story is its “you had to be there moments” in its making. When the story thread is woven with both been there and being there, it becomes an especially rich personal tapestry.  The rich timelessness of the precise moment is book-ended by the before at the “beginning” and the what’s next at the other “end.”

Ann has written about our friend Otha, a Sudanese refugee living in Warrnambool, who speaks the need to close one’s legs: one can not have one leg in one place and the other leg in another somewhere else. You have to close your legs and be where you are.  It is not that way for me though, as I feel grounded in both the world of Chico and that of Warrnambool.  The sense of community and belonging of each may be unique, but both have self in common in how they manifest.

The train trip from Melbourne to Warrnambool the next day is another trip back in time, of immediate newness, and future what to come.  I remember years ago having the same sensation taking the train again from Paris to Dijon after a long absence.  The view into each back yard, the expanse of fields, and the graffiti of the underpasses seemed to have an exceptional clarity.  Interior and exterior vision of a moment in time coming together with timeliness of memory.

Enough said, for I can’t adequately put into words the fullness of being here, and the awareness of there that is integral to it. 

We are met at the station by Kristy, whose car we are given to use while here, and taken to Jacqui’s at whose house we are staying while she heads off to Nepal on Christmas Day. Visit with former neighbors Deb and Wayne to check out their garden’s bounty. Beach walk this morning, delicious Christmas lunch with Juli and David and family, and post meal foreshore walk with Paul.  A bit of Ann and Andy down time at the moment, soon to be followed by kangaroo and koala spotting at dusk when we visit our dear friend Tower Hill.

We are amongst friends.

Thank you all for that timeless gift.

 

Jacqui welcomes us to her home with an American flag.

First Christmas morning walk on the beach - cool and blustery.

Second Christmas day beach walk with our friend Paul.