The Great Southern Railway

Perth and the Indian-Pacific
The last gallery we visited in Europe was Venice’s Peggy Guggenheim Collection. Imagine our surprise then, when we saw that the Art Gallery of Western Australia was holding an exhibition drawn from the same Guggenheim Collection. It and a visit to splendid King’s Park were the highlights of our visit to Perth. Another was a pleasant afternoon with cousin and ex-Saints footballer John Sydenham and his wife Jean. We can’t thank them enough for the trip down Perth’s coastline, at sunset, looking over the same Indian Ocean, in which two days before we had been tossing and turning, in cyclonic waves, wondering whether we’d ever reach Freemantle.

We are writing this Travel(b)logue entry, in our small room on the Indian Pacific train, just as the trees and an undulating terrain have returned, after something like a day crossing the Nullarbor Plain. This means we have reached Oodeal (site of Daisy Bates’ encampment). Earlier we stopped for re-watering in very hot Cook (home of five people). Last night we did a coach tour of Kalgoorlie and Boulder, and saw the pub where Eileen Joyce (one of Australia’s best musical exports) used to practice her Czerny scales, prior to her international career as a classical pianist. Hard to believe that a human nugget of gold came from such an unprepossessing circumstances.

A terrain without trees might sound like the ultimate in boredom but we would rank the Nullarbor Plain, possessing a hidden beauty far surpassing much that we’ve seen on the trip, as a window-gluing experience. And it does not stop there, the outback between the Barrier Range and Broken Hill possesses equal beauty. And to see the Menindee Lakes, full of water, at dusk, is sheer magic. But it does not stop there. The country between Bathurst and Lithgow has a majestic wonder but that is just a topographical prelude  to the Blue Mountains. Only the outer suburbs of Sydney, the ugliest part of one of the world’s most beautiful cities, disappoint. No wonder they designate the Indian Pacific as one of the Great Railway Journeys of the World: it’s great not just in distance but in quality too. Not to be missed, in our view. Hang the expense: start training!

Next stop Central Station, Sydney and then home. Flyingbyboat has landed.  

MV Athena

MV Athena: Goddess of Wisdom
Flying by boat was always going to be a challenge. The boats on which we have travelled have chosen us, not the other way about. That is the case with the MV Athena, which is part of the Classical International Cruises fleet, and which visits Australia, specifically Western Australian, in summer months to undertake mainly Asian cruises. Built in 1947, she is the oldest ship currently still in regular service on the world’s oceans and is, with her sleek hydro-dynamic contours, a proper liner, constructed for the rough and tumble of the oceans. Dwarfed by her companions whenever we dock, she is also very small. There are only two hundred passengers plus about that number in crew on her on this cruise. Anyone interested in travelling ‘big’ and experiencing the dubious virtues of economies of scale would be wise to avoid the Athena. For Schumacher was right, small can be, as it is on this ship, beautiful. He could have added fewer too. Given her proportions and modest ambitions, comparisons with the premier league of Cunard, P & O cruise ships would be invidious but are worth making nonetheless. Hard to believe, but the accommodation, service, food and overall atmosphere on this ship equals if not surpasses that on the Queen Mary 2, where luxury is dispensed with a military like precision that is anonymous and friendless. This food is always fresh, inventive, varied and hard to fault. If a meal is below par for a passenger’s personal taste, it is replaced with an alternative. Those interested in attacking their girths steer clear. We especially like the way in which the Chief Chef makes sure his menu complements the geography of the voyage: Italian food when we are in an Italian port, Thai a Thai one.

This is by and large a very happy ship comprising a multi-national crew (much more than that of the passengers) who take enormous efforts and pains to ensure the passengers want for nothing. The entertainment admittedly is more Rock Eisteddfod than Broadway and there are no Intellectual Enrichment Lectures, Jazz Quartets from Julliard, and just (and it is just) occasionally, the Athena becomes a ship of fools (and you wish were back home listening to a CD of Debussy’s La Mer instead of being on the stuff), but providing you can tolerate the occasional outbreaks of tomfoolery (Sexy Belly Competition), the terrible library, the perfunctory bulletins of the Captain, the all too truncated shore excursions, you might just like to consider cruising on the MV Athena. She might have chosen us, but we are glad she did so.

Phuket and Singapore

More Asian assignations
Our next encounter with Asia was Phuket, pronounced forget and probably best forgot. It is Thailand’s version of Bali and attracts countless Australians and Europeans to its once attractive and now spoilt by overdevelopment, beaches. Patong, is ugliness defined. Whatever charms it once possessed (and they must have been myriad) were swept away by the tsunami of capitalism. After hectoring our taxi driver to take us to the authentic Phuket, we eventually arrived at Palai Bay, for lunch at the Phong Phang Seafood Restaurant. Housed in a giant barn, which was open on all sides, it was good as it gets in terms of a view free of Merriots and the food was authentic Thai and of Michelin quality. Pity that we were not able to experience more of the undeveloped Phuket.

Singapore was next, which was hard to digest in four hours, and most of which was spent negotiating the island-city-state’s MRT. When we eventually emerged overground in an area of reminiscent of a set from Metropolis, it was twenty-five minutes walk to our destination, Raffles Hotel. This most archetypal of colonial hotels still looks the part, though like much else in Singapore its priorities now, judging by the presence within its precincts of Cartier and Leica, are now shopping not sleeping. We had set our stomachs sert on eating in the hotel’s Writers’ Room—we had visions of seeing Rudyard Kipling’s fountain pen and Joseph Conrad’s pocket dictionary—only to be turned back by a surly commissionaire—yet another brush with authority. Colin did not meet the dress code! Proof that the ethos of the Queen Mary 2 still dwells on land. In the end, we had to settle for the Hotel’s bakery. We didn’t see Somerset Maugham’s blotting paper but the tea and muffins were very scrumptious. Having downed the last drop of Royal Darjeeling Ftgfop1, it was time to be shipped back to Athena, just in time for afternoon tea.

Mediterranean meditations

Ports of Call I: Tyrrhenian Sea, 15th November
MV Athena’s version of a Mediterranean cruise, which after leaving a bit of non-place, Civitavecchia, encompassed ‘a day and a bit’ visits to Naples, Venice, Dubrovnik, Corfu and Athens. Named after the Greek Goddess of Wisdom, the MV Athena is a small ship, one size down from the Utrillo, and several sizes down from the Queen Mary 2. Her passenger manifest, on this voyage at least, is mostly Australian, Western Australians at that. We’ll have more to say about the ‘palace’ Athena (named after the Greek Goddess of Wisdom) in our next posting.

Naples was a visit to Pompeii, which included glimpses of Mt Vesuvius, the source of all its troubles in AD79, and a promenade through what remains of its streets, to some of its palaces, eating places, even its X-rated brothels. One was struck about how modern a town Pompeii was—not that different from present day Naples, which struck us, with its monumental buildings and piazzas as a kind of Milan-by-the-Sea, but with just a soupcon more craziness and a lot more garbage. Colin wished he taken more notice of the San Carlo Opera House, which is where the Peroglesi music that formed the basis of Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, was unearthed.  

Ports of Call II: Adriatic Sea
Next stop was Venice, which looks even more special from the vantage point of an arriving ship. This time we decided to take vaporetti to Murana and Burano, with a side stop at Isola di San Michele (like Paris’ Pere Lachaise but in a more kempt state), to visit the tombs of Russian poet Joseph Brodsky,

composer Igor Stravinsky and impresario Serge Diaghelev. Murano, out in the Lagoon, is glass works incarnate. Burano, its island neighbour, which has all the charms that Murano lacks, is a living community (lace-makers and fishermen though we did meet a Thai woman who by marriage had become the proprietress of a restaurant certified as serving true Venetian fare). We also revisited the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, surely the best-appointed gallery in the world and where we were relieved as were others overheard to agree how wonderful and refreshing to see some 20th Century works after the Christian surfeit of Venetian art.  

Dubrovnik, Croatia, is a walled town with, like all the villages, towns and cities, in this part of the Dalmatian coast, displays many Venetian features and influences. Because of its walls, Dubrovnik is World Heritage Listed, which the locals regard with ambivalence, since they say it stymies development. We enjoyed our walk around the walls, with glimpses across the terra cotta roofs and beautiful sea views, and a stroll through some of the tiny, steep alleys of which the old town is comprised. We would have liked more time to acquire more than a post-card view of its history.  

Ports of Call III: Ionian Sea
Also occupied by the Venetians and just about everyone else, including at one stage, the English, was Corfu. Tourists from just about every corner of the globe now occupy it instead. Running alongside its cricket ground in the Corfu’s town centre is the Liston, which is modelled on the Rue de Rivoli, in Paris, and which every Sunday is where Corfucians promenade, in sartorial splendour. One of the best places to take in Corfu is from its old fort, which is sculptured into the cliffs. We ate lunch at a taverna called the Posiedon (quite a common name in this most nautical of cities), a way from the tourist strip overlooking the old and very run down old port. There was nothing old or tired about the food, which would have pleased the sea God himself.

Ports of Call IV: Aegean Sea
Our last and, in many respects, best Mediterranean excursion was that to the Parthenon, Athens, and for which Thom Gorst’s architecture lectures on the QM2 proved to be a good primer. As the guide described the main features of the Parthenon, the various orders of columns, Doric, Ionian, and Corinthian (the most decorated), came back to mind. The experience was a salutary reminder of the fact that the architectural wisdom of the modern world (as well as other, wisdoms: political, artistic, poetic) all had its beginnings in Athens. In spite of the depredations to the Greek economy, the commitment to restoring the Parthenon to its former glory proceeds with gusto. It is of note that the lead stolen long along from the columns has been replaced by titanium, the same element as Colin and Claire’s wedding rings   It seemed a really fitting place therefore for the MV Athena of all ships to visit.

From Europe to Asia via the Suez Canal
Piraeus (like Cherbourg and like Europe in general) is going through a wave of strikes at the moment, as various European governments punish their peoples for the banking debacle that led up the GFC. Industrial action along with inclement action led to the Athena being held up in port for a day, which had the consequence of our trip to the Pyramids being cancelled. Travelling through the Suez Canal was an unexpected pleasure. Seeing large tracts of sand, oases, small towns and minarets was a reminder that we have now changed continents, moved from prosperity to poverty, though the only evidence of this was many broken down abodes for soldiers (again with guns at the ready) on the edge of the canal.

From the beginning of the Red Sea to Colombo, Shri Lanka, we travelled in an International Security Corridor, which meant travelling in a convoy, with warships from many nations, watching us at a distance. The stern of the MV Athena protective nets over the stern, portholes were covered, the ship was blacked out at night and it had a water canon at the ready, should any marauding Pirates of Somalia have the temerity to penetrate the security cordon. Helicopters and surveillance aircraft flew overhead. Overkill perhaps, but perhaps better than the alternative, a stint in Somalia.

On the Atlas, Suez to Colombo does not seem an overly long trip but it seemed that way. Between them the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden (sandwiched between Yemen and Somalia), the most hazardous parts of the voyage, occupied six days.  Which was followed by three days in the Arabian Sea, whose moderate seas were less than moderate and caused a deal of mal de mer aboard which combined with the cold that flew around the ship with considerable gusto, made for many miserable passengers.

It was a relief therefore to reach Colombo, whose port is the third largest in Asia. We thought we were under siege such was the naval presence but it was merely that Sri Lanka’s Navy was celebrating its sixtieth birthday. In our truncated shore visit we managed to see many of Colombo’s more interesting sites: the markets near the port, the Museum, built by the British, the Cricket Ground, and a most interesting Bhuddist Temple, where an elephant stood guard, consuming bucket loads of bananas and melons.  However there was also a considerable presence of armed soldiers and road blockades that we were assured were there as the Catholic Bishop was being inaugurated and a large number of dignitaries were in town for the occasion but one had the impression that this level of security was commonplace.

Florence

Florence 9th–14th November
Tomorrow we take off, become sea borne again (and must warn our readers that we may no be able to regularly post as we make our way home). It seems therefore quite fitting to have spent our last few days on land in the most glorious of cities, Florence. There is nothing quite like walking around the Duomo, admiring Florence’s greatest contribution to architecture, and seeing it at a distance from the beautiful terraces of the Giardino di Bardini. While here we took a bus tour to Siena (another glorious essay in architecture), San Gimignano (a 13th Century antecedent of Manhattan), and a Chianti fatoria, in classic Tuscan countryside. Incidentally, our fellow passengers included at least three whom we will join on the MV Athene. We’ve really enjoyed Florence, stepping out into streets once walked by Dante and admired by characters in Room with a view. Of course we made mandatory visits to places like the Uffizi and admired the Botticelli’s, the Fra Angelico, went to the Pitti Palace where we were overwhelmed by the scale and breathtaking ostentation. We also indulged in more than a little retail therapy. Leather is almost a perversity here, but we resisted the allure (at least Claire did) of lambskin jackets, kid gloves and wallets, though Colin couldn’t resist a pencil case! W

e also saw an exhibition of Bronzino paintings—he wrote also poetry on the side—in the Palazzo Strozzi, which was magnificent. We may have noticed in this travel(b)logue that we complained about not seeing much Australian ‘art’: well, surprise, surprise there was an Australian painting on display; it was a Bronzino, from the Gallery of New South Wales no less. We also ‘loved’ the Museo Nazionale Allinari della Fotografia, where there was survey of Camera Work, which included one photograph from Julia Cameron, whose work we have first encountered in Freshwater, Isle of Wight. It’s a small world. Next door (well, practically next door) to our wonderful little hotel (Hotel Casci, via Cavour) is the Palazzo Medici-Ricardi and which has a wonderful panel by Fiippino di Lippi.

We also indulged our love of food in Florence, where such delights of the Tuscan cuisine as tripe can be indulged ad nauseam. While we might have written quite a lot of tripe in these pages, neither of us has been courageous enough to eat it yet (there is still tonight), but we have enjoyed the bread soups, the beef stew and sea bass, the fresh artichokes and so on. All-in-all, we’ll be very sad to leave the pleasure and retail palaces of Florence.

Milano

Milan and Milanesia* 6th-8th November
Milan is a disease—at least it appeared that way on Saturday afternoon when we arrived from Switzerland, after a dramatic railway journey through the St. Gothard Pass. The Milanese and visitors were in a frenzy of buying. Thankfully, things have only improved since then: today is Monday and most of the shops and museums are closed although we did visit the Museo Teatrale alla Scala in lieu of the scheduled concert (Valery Gergiev’s Mariinsky Orchestra which we saw in Paris) and the opera (Carmen) which were both booked out. On Sunday we were able to visit the Pinacoteca di Brera which has some wonderful Renaissance and twentieth century paintings.

As our introduction to Italian food we have had two wonderful meals, both very authentic and reasonably priced. Our first dinner in Milan was at a Sardinian restaurant, where the dishes were flavoured with fresh myrtle and the desert with wild honey was superb and today a light lunch of stuffed eggplant and zuchhini flavoured with fresh rosemary and cheaper than the coffee we had earlier in the not to be missed and very stylish Gallerie, near the Duomo. Prior to becoming designer label heaven it was a place where Milan’s café society met. It is still a nice place to have a coffee. However there is danger that the communal values once celebrated are fast becoming excuses for the Gucci’s of this world to seduce locals and tourists with dubious, overpriced merchandise, and all this opposite the Duomo—a celebration of religiosity on a gargantuan scale, enrobed not in designer clothes but stone flesh.

We are only here for two days and have probably not planned the best two to fit in all we should have. However the Hotel Regina is comfortable and well located (has three stars in the Michelin Guide) and we are using the efficient and economical trams to move around the city.

*A propensity to shop at all costs.

Lakeside in Luzern

Luzern and Lake Luzern: 4th – 5th November

An installation in the Musee Carnavelet, inspired by Louis Vuitton, gave us the urge to be water-born again; hence, today’s trip, on the MV Gotthard, which plies Lake Luzern. The day-long lake trip, especially those parts near to Fleulen, is nothing short of lacustrine heaven. Of all the ship and boat trips we’ve undertaken in the last four months, nothing rivals it for topographic drama.

With ragged ten thousand feet mountains, capped with snow and lower slopes coated with the rusted leaves of autumn, the colour and light effects were spectacular—beyond the capacity of a lens, let alone words, to convey. The commentary on MV Gotthard while brief was intelligent and even included a few stormy bars from Rossini’s William Tell overture to underscore Tell’s contribution to Swiss culture. Even the food and service on board was tasteful and beyond reproach, a million miles from the crass humour of US and UK tour boats (and better still no tips).

On our second complete day in Luzern we explored the old town, which is dominated by a line of towers punctuating the old town’s walls, affording views to the Luzern’s suburbs (which have expanded on to the lower slopes of the Alps), as well as towards the lake and city centres old and new. A highlight of our day was the visit to the Museum Sammlung Rosengart, which holds a magnificent collection of late Picassos and an even more comprehensive collection of Paul Klee’s whose miniaturist, often droll approach, provides a foil to the more visceral Picassos. Lest we forget, we reacquainted ourselves with Utrillo, the painter not the sea going vessel—of whom we have seen very little on our many visits to galleries and museums. This collection is of particular interest because it was donated to the city of Luzern by Angela Rosengart, who visits her beloved collection daily.

Australians in Paris

Paristocratic II: 1^st November

Paris invokes praise ‘big’ time. We’ve enjoyed it from rue to rue, avenue to avenue, boulevard to boulevard, through and through, from its chimneys to its crypts. No wonder the Greeks named one of their better-looking Gods after it.

Even though its public transport system works a treat and one can traverse the city in matter of minutes, only at the pace of the pedestrian and with the mentality of a flaneur can one begin to appreciate its myriad delights, make eye contact with its nuggets of pleasures, which include the Parisians themselves who must be the best dressed and best looking (certainly the sexiest) on the planet. People watching is one the unacknowledged pleasures of Paris.

One of the things we’ve most enjoyed about Paris, is its museums, so much so that we’ve almost become tired of looking. We visited the Louvre and were overwhelmed by its welter of paintings. Two stood out though: a John Constable, of Weymouth beach and Eugene Delacroix’s “Liberte”, surely the world’s greatest political painting. One arm of the Palais Royal contains the Musee les Arts Decoratifs, which not only contains a conspectus of Jean Debuffet's work (Colin’s favourite painter from the second half of the twentieth century) but also one (well, two if you count Mark Newson’s chair) of the few Australian artists we have encountered (a reminder that Australian artists rank fairly low on the league table of global culture), namely, Anne Dangar, an interesting ceramicist, whose pots and plates owe much to the aesthetic of Fauvism and Cubism; definitely a ceramicist to resurrect.

We also visited the Pompadour Centre, Musee D’Orsay (it goes without saying, even though much of it was closed) and the Musee d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, which had been thrown into chaos by its Basquiat retrospective and which many of its most interesting rooms were closed. This did not include however the Raoul Dufy celebration of electricity—a wonderful example of mural art. Our favourite museum though was on our doorstep, just around the corner from our apartment, the Musee Carnavalet and which distils within its more than a hundred rooms the history of Paris. Visitors to Paris, genuinely interested in the city’s history and the provenance of its ‘personality’ should not miss it.

Our Paris Top Five

Colin’s

i) The Bateau Bus, especially that stretch of the Seine between the tip of Ile de Cite and the beginning of Ile St Louis.

ii) The views from the Centre Pompidou’s balconies and outside escalators.

iii) Shakespeare and Company Bookshop

iv) Ile Saint Louis

v) Jean Debuffet’s Galeries Lafayette much better than the original

Claire’s

i) Views through the tiny windows of the tower of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs both outwards towards Jardine des Tuileries and the Eiffel Tower and inwards towards Place du Carousel and the Louvre Pyramid

ii) Autumn trees changing colour in Place des Voges (treetop view through windows of Victor Hugo apartment)

iii) Musee Carnavalet experience including hedge gardens

iv) Promenading in the Luxembourg Gardens Sunday afternoon

v) Marche Bastille at closing time Sunday—clementines at 1 euro per kg (see Alexis's photograph)

Alexis's

i) Seeing Audrey Tautou in the Marais

ii) Bon marche Bastille, for the wonderful fresh produce

iii) Larry Clark's first retrospective ("Kiss the past hello") at Musee d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris

iv) Availability of quality wines at supermarche and cheap cigarettes at Tabac

v) Awesome graffiti and street art

PS: Our stay in Paris was superbly 'accommodated' by Michele at rentmyhomeinparis.com , discovered by Alexis with her excellent online research skills and tenacity.

Pere Lachaise

Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise 26^th October

Claire’s reflections on death and dying after Claire and Alexis visited the cemetery on a clear but cold autumn day—number 69 bus from Rue de Rivoli. If you are thinking of making this trip we strongly advise you to collect a Marie de Paris Plan du Cimetiere du Pere Lachaise from the “Conservation” on Av. Du Puits as the guide book maps are not adequate to navigate this beautiful but complex site and terrain. We also noted that once a famous grave had been spotted then many tourists descended on the location—a ‘pop up’ crowd. However over dependence on the plan and a guidebook takes away from the pleasure of wandering through the cemetery and taking in the visual and atmospheric ambience and of ‘disinterring’ interesting graves by serendipity.

Claire’s tips for the aspiring artists and artistes wishing to avoid premature death: rug up, eat well, avoid drink, drugs and cigarettes, use condoms, stay away from guns and fly by boat.

Heroin overdose (though in JM's case it was and remains heroine overdose) Jim Morrison (1941-1971)*; Basquiat (1960-1988)

Liver cancer Edith Piaf (1915-1963)*

Plane crash Ginette Niveau (1919-1949)

Poverty/cerebral meningitis Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)*

Poverty/tubercular meningitis/addiction to alcohol and narcotics Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920)*

Studio fire Barbara Hepworth (1903-1975)

Suicide by shooting Ernest Hemingway (1899-1960); Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)

Syphilis Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)

Tuberculosis Frederic Chopin (1810-1849)*; Sarah Bernhardt (1844-1923)*

*Buried at Pere Lachaise

Paris

Paristocrats I: 23^rd October

Paris might be the capital of a most republican nation but for the most part it retains aristocratic distinction and class. Having said that, it can let you down. Scene One. Machine-gun touting security guards in camouflage outside Notre Dame seems like the reign of terror revisited. Scene Two. The Champs Elysées might have the Arc de Triomphe at its head but it is no triomphe in itself: it is a shopping ‘corridor’ divided by traffic a la Chicago’s ‘magnificent mile’, moreover, with the many of the same transnational retailers. Seen once, seen twice, thrice…. Scene Three. The Eiffel Tower, which we walked up to, and not up, is best seen from a distance and not close up, where the tackiness of the first level and the souvenir sellers is a distinct let down.

No, the aristocracy of Paris lies off the boulevards in such districts as the Marais (where, thanks to Alexis, we have a most stylish and comfortable), Saint-Germain-des-Pres, on Ile de St Louis, in the passages, rues, parcs, jardins and places, even the impasse, and in the marché where we are shopping daily for fresh produce to cook French style. And of course as with all the cities we have visited the river tour shows the centrality of the river to the city in this case the Seine to the geography of Paris.

Paris is a city in which being lost is a source of unexpected pleasure. Indeed one should dispense with the Michelin, Lonely Planet and Guides Voir and allow the streets to be your compass.

Paris is best appreciated at street level, on foot. Walter Benjamin talked about shops being the art galleries of capitalism. In Paris the shops seem to be more art galleries than actual art galleries; they make a forte of being aesthetic. It is their sheer profusion which makes the city distinctive. They plus the cafes provide Paris with street culture that knocks the socks off New York, its nearest competitor in these stakes. Here we are not referring to the Galeries Lafayette—the mega department store—but the small specialist boutiques that are fixtures of every street and fill the streets with their visual character; shops that just sell electric light bulbs, Mongolian clothes, autographed manuscripts, rhythm and blue vinyl….

Southampton to Paris

Taxi, Tasmanian catamaran, Train: troublesome manifestations, 18th October

Our journey today was multi-modal. It began with a taxi to Portsmouth, followed by a ferry from Cherbourg, the “Normandie Express”, on which we experienced the transition from an Anglophone to a Francophone culture, from good to bon, morning to jour with a Lonely Planet phrase book en main.

Our troubles began in Cherbourg. France is currently at war with itself over a proposal to elevate the retirement age to 62. Industrial action (what in France is called the “manifestation”) is widespread. When we arrived at the ferry terminal we discovered that the taxis and buses were ‘out’ and there was no sign of them returning again any time soon. Thus began a marathon walk (heavy luggage in tow) to Cherbourg’s SNCF, which a local had estimated as about 1 kilometre, which was conservative by at least a third. When we arrived at the aforesaid SNCF with bad backs, bad knees and bad just about every other part of the anatomy, we were pleased to see that the trains were still running (even though we had been told they might be out too), at least that is what we thought. The scheduled 13.56 was then being picketed and plastered with bills of the following ilk: “Retraites 60 ans pas un de plus. Tous dans l’action”. We translated that as a night or more in the Cherbourg Ibis. Towards 14.30 the picketers retreated, the air-conditioning started up, the platform-ed passengers mounted the train, and we spent the next three hours or so ‘pottering’ through the picturesque Normandy countryside, until we arrived, much relieved, at St. Lazarre, where there were more manifestations of the Retraites. However we were able to obtain a taxi to our stylish Marais apartment, in plenty of time to prepare for Alexis's arrival from Sydney via Dubai.

PS: We had toyed with the idea of travelling to France by Eurostar; however that would have transgressed the rules of our particular world game, viz. flyingbytrain is not the same as flyingbyboat.

PPS: Sorry about our last view of the United Kingdom, the coast of the Isle of Wight.

PPPS: Now we are in Europe proper , we thought we would change the font.

Southampton

An old Sotonian

Southampton is a port, a place of arrivals and departures. Ships are its raison d’etre. It enjoys renown for being the leaving place of the Pilgrim Fathers and the ill-fated RMS Titanic, which is feted in this city and which took its toll on the city’s seafarers. But it is also a city of handsome buildings such as the Bargate, the fortified entrance to the ‘old’ town, where Jane Austen sojourned for a short time. It also has a respectable Art Gallery, famed for its Henri Gaudier Brzeska portraits, an exemplary selection of Camden Town School of painters (England’s response to post-impressionists). The Art Gallery is found in the city’s Civic Centre, which is not without its own architectural merits, and whose clock tower cum campanile plays “Eternal Father, Strong to Save” every four hours, a ‘chimely’ reminder that Southampton above all is a maritime city. Given that we have so much of the last four months flying by boat, on the sea or beside it, it seems only fitting that Colin is an old Sotonian.

Isle of Wight

Day trip to the Isle of Wight (14^th October)

The Red Funnel’s “Red Falcon” plies the waters between Southampton and the Isle of Wight, not, with its oil refineries and power generating station, the prettiest stretch of water in the world. It is a vehicular ferry and it serves the worst coffee in the world. The Isle of Wight is special. It encapsulates in a few square miles the best and worst of England: tawdry seaside resorts sit cheek by jowl alongside stunning seascapes of which those between Ventnor and Freshwater Bay, where Alfred Tennyson courted his muse, is a highpoint. Better still though in our view, is the rarely visited Newtown (just west of Cowes). In the Middle Ages, it was the principal port and settlement on the island but has long since ceded that role to the sprawling Newport. What remains are extensive wetlands—they are an ornithologist’s dream—, the Old Town Hall, and a charming port, which makes its mainland cousins look like maritime hypermarkets. Visit it.

Winchester and Salisbury

Publish Post

Day trips to Winchester and Salisbury (15^th and 16^th October)

‘County’ is a way of life in England. It even has a special raiment: Barbour jackets (Claire has one), tweeds, bulky jumpers, tartan shirts (Colin forewent the opportunity to acquire one), and it is consecrated in county towns such as Winchester and Salisbury, both of which we visited.

They also happen to be cathedral cities, whose cathedrals are generally held to be paradigms of the Norman and Gothic styles respectively. Salisbury’s which figures in Thom Gorst’s unshortened list of the most important buildings, is a glorious building, one of whose features are almost enough to turn the most diehard atheist to Christianity: it is rather like Bach’s St Matthew Passion in that respect. We saw John Constable’s attempt to render its qualities in our recent visit to Tate, Britain. But even he could not capture the impact of seeing it in bricks and mortar!

Winchester’s cathedral is a squatter essay in architecture. Much more ascetic than its Wiltshire equivalent, it is renowned for its flying buttress, Jane Austen’s tomb, and the fact that it floats on a marsh. Indeed in the 1960s an intrepid diver saved it from subsiding into this marsh by replacing its wooden foundations. The cathedral’s precincts contain a decidedly uncharacteristic Barbara Hepworth, a crucifix that doubles as an homage to Piet Mondrian. We adored the view of Winchester from St Giles Hill, which takes in the city’s highlights (and some low lights too) such as King Alfred's statue, Wolvesey Castle, Winchester College and the aforementioned cathedral.

Salisbury is somewhat busier than Hampshire’s counterpart, but this deficiency is more than compensated by one view of the cathedral, which surely would provide uplift for the even most jaded and disconsolate disposition. Like Winchester, a fast moving river (in its case, the River Itchen, of which a larger version passes by Geraldine’s home), criss-crosses the city, powering mills, providing delightful river frontages and 'homes' for the inevitable ducks that seem to grace all photogenic rivers of England, and providing yet more excuses, lest Salisbury has not exhausted their memory cards, for digital cameras to engage in yet another orgy of image making.

Since much of our UK visit has been family related it is not without salience that the maiden name of Colin’s mother is ‘Salisbury’; both are gorgeous in ample measure.

Capital pleasures

Capital pleasures: London 30^th September—2^nd October, 11^th October

Of all the cities we have visited and discussed in this ‘travel(b)logue’ London has been the most pleasurable—would that we could have spent more days imbibing its attractions. London might lack the excitement and brashness and vertical thrust of New York, but its capacity to thrill in a taciturn, almost underhand way is part of its allure. As with the other big cities we have visited, our experience of London was in large measure through the lens of museums and galleries, two in particular, Tate, Modern (TM) and Tate, Britain (TB). In the former a major retrospective of Paul Gauguin had just opened and which in our judgement was a model of curatorial excellence, which threw new light on Gauguin’s Polynesian adventures. Unlike his more famous contemporaries Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne, Gauguin was more of a story teller than an imagist. His paintings, be they in Brittany or Tahiti, plumb deep existential themes. His paintings of women, especially Polynesian women, emanate an animal sexuality that few other painters have ever captured. Claire is now continuing an exploration of Gaugin’s psyche through a collection of his letters to his wife and friends (see further reading).

Tate Britain, across the Thames, was a far more sedate experience than TM. Our favourite rooms were those devoted to early British twentieth century art. Colin’s favourite British painter has been for some time now David Bomberg and those painters who have taken their cues from him such as Eric Auerbach and Felix Topolski. We also quite fancied the works of the Bloomsbury painter Duncan Grant.

On this world trip, we have not seen much in the way of “performance art”, something we remedied on our visit to London, which seems to have more music and more theatre than just about any other place on the planet. For the former we took ourselves off to the Barbican to hear the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andris Nelson in a mostly Russian programme: Prokofiev’s 2^nd Violin Concerto (with Viktoria Mullova as soloist, and who managed to cut through the Stalinist inspired clichés with aplomb) and Shostakovich 5^th Symphony, whose third movement Neilson managed to make sound like Vaughan Williams!

Our next performance treat was Michael Gambon and his tape-recorded voice in Krapp’s last tape. Gambon is being canvassed at the moment as the UK’s greatest living actor. Beckett’s play is a rather short one, and it is pity we did not hear more from him. Much of the action of the play takes place in the dark, and its subject matter is dark in hue and for us resonated with our experiences with old age as described in our post Family ties. It is a play about regret, about visiting past in the shape of Krapp’s voice on tape speaking to Krapp in the present. Gambon’s performance was a tour de force of melancholia, choreographed with precision and eloquence—a sonic chronicle of senility.

We were two nights in the Premier Hotel, in the former London County Hall, just close to Waterloo Station and the mighty London Eye, which, as Claire observed, is the biggest bicycle wheel in the world. Being spun around in one of its gondolas to see over London is not our idea of fun. Admittedly, judging by the number of tourists who descend on the site that would appear to be a minority view. That a Coney Island monstrosity can sit in the same viewfinder as Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament is a horrific prospect and one that a digital camera with enough intelligence (our Leica has) would surely censor.

Two and half days are really not enough to savour the pleasures of London, especially when you include some shopping in Regent Street and Bond Street—of necessity window shopping since much of any the things we would have liked would have tested the limits on our MasterCard. Since we felt rather short-changed by those two days, we decided to pay another visit to London, in part to have lunch with cousin Richard Barnett and his wife Cate and to take in the Diaghilev and Ballet Russes exhibition at the Victoria and Albert, in Knightsbridge. Having seen in Philadelphia the film Coco Chanel and Igor Stravinsky, we were somewhat prepared for this exhibition, or at least those parts featuring the Rite of Spring. One would not think that an exhibition about a ballet company would be all that interesting but this one was, drawing together many fine artefacts, including an iconic curtain by Natalya Goncharova. After a first time visit Harrods (not much better than Sydney’s David Jones) it was back to a now quite familiar Waterloo Station on top of a red double- decked bus, moving at a glacial pace through inner London’s jammed traffic—an incomparable way to eye its capital pleasures.

Family ties

Flying by Boat

Family ties

Only our family and close friends would have known that the prime purpose of flying by boat was for Colin to visit his elderly and frail mother Edna Margaret Symes (nee Salisbury; preferred name Suse) who has sadly been progressively losing her memory as a result of senile dementia. Having not seen Suse since she visited Sydney in 2001, Colin was in some doubt as to whether his mother would still recognise him. Dementia is a strange affliction, whose impact is not restricted to its victims, for it leaves its witnesses also in a mental quandary as to what in a conversation is really understood, what is impenetrable. The experience is not unlike that of dealing with a very young child and having to adjust the parameters of cognitive normality to suit the child's more limited mental capacities (Shakespeare had something to say about all of us returning to our childhood, didn’t he?), only this time the mind is shrinking not expanding. Her mental powers though are not totally decimated: she can still write, still read (without glasses!) and has a droll sense of humour, manifested in eruptions of laughter. Everyone who meets her is endeared by her demeanour.

Much of our conversation with Suse has taken place on paper due to her hearing loss, with us writing questions and answers to her, which she reads avidly (“what an interesting story”, over and over again in rapt concentration, responding with laughter (and sometimes tears) to something in her life, our lives, such as our recent marriage (“seeking my permission: that’s a bit late”) or our trip on the QM2 (“that must have cost a lot of money”; “the food must have been wonderful”) or her visits to Sydney (“I used to live there once, it is such a beautiful place”) or Colin (“he’s so handsome”) {she must be having hallucinations!}. Suse’s mind might be more than a little dishevelled but her body (appearance) is remarkable for a 93 year old and she displays her characteristic sartorial taste, especially for Colin’s clothes, watch, and camera (“they must cost such a lot”). As for tears there were plenty flowing on our first visits and especially from Suse when memories of her husband Tim (Frederick Symes) were stirred up by photos and Suse’s confusion as to who Colin was—husband, son or just a visiting handsome stranger.

We have only admiration for and thanks to Geraldine Colin’s sister who has cared for Suse over many years and particularly over the last years when Geraldine also cared for her terminally ill husband Tony Parker. Geraldine has opened her heart and home to us providing us with a real family visit as we have caught up with Colin’s closest family Geraldine’s daughter Siobhan Richards, and husband David, Suse’s only grandchild and as well with Ashley, Aydan and Declan Richards Suse’s three great grandsons whom she adores. Hopefully these close family snapshots tell a story that is close to your own hearts.

When the Saints come marching in....

Southampton versus Tranmere Rovers: 9^th October

Another saintly experience, this time in the shape of a football match, at the St Mary’s Stadium, the reconstituted Dell, and which Colin remembers from his days as a Saints’ supporter, when Ted Bates managed the team and his cousin, John Sydenham, played outside left. It was not exactly top-division football but we did enjoy the give and the take of the game and the esprit d’corps, and the standing ovations that greeted dextrous passes and moves, and the reprises of the “When the Saints come marching in…” that complemented the give and take, the high points and the low points of the match, as goals were sought and saved, achieved and dashed. This was working class, masculine culture, at its most fervent and organised. Wonderful stuff. And the result: 2 nil in Southampton’s favour. Our player of the match: Guly Do Prado.

Photographs by Aydan Richards, great nephew.

St Ives, Cornwall

From St Denys to St Ives (and to St Just): 7th October

Cornwall is a very saintly place. We came to Cornwall and to St Ives in particular to continue our exploration of the Tate Gallery—the ones in London will be subject of a future blog. The St Ives branch was, you guessed it, closed to prepare for a retrospective of the abstract painter Peter Lanyon—one of a number of painters and sculptors including the Nicholson ‘brood’, Barbara Hepworth, Roger Hilton, Terry Frost, who at various chose to live in St Ives for its drama, light and sense of community. Even though there were no paintings to see in Tate, St Ives, there was a painting of sorts to behold from the gallery’s fourth floor café and which more than compensated for the lack of any real Lanyon’s. The other gallery in the Tate, St Ives complex is the Barbara Hepworth Museum and Sculpture Garden, which consists of her former studio and her garden, where many of her sculptures are located among luxuriant vegetation. In our view some of the best galleries in the world are domestic ones, housed in homes, and so it is with Hepworth’s. Arthur Boyd’s in Bundanoon, NSW, comes to mind. One can sense the ghost of invention in such settings, as one cannot in the cold, clinical setting of the mega-museum, which are often devoid of personality, as if the living has been removed from the artefacts.

The other thing to do in St Ives if you are not ‘arting’ is to walk. We undertook two, one along the sands to Leland Salting, which on the pleasantest day we have had since leaving Sydney, was a joy. The other was a walk from nearby St Just to Cape Cornwall (where the Atlantic meets the Irish Sea), where we caught up once again with the Coastal Walk. The area around the cape, with its high promontories and rugged bays and distant lighthouses, is about as dramatic as any in Britain.

As we compile this blog on our last evening in St Ives we are watching, from the Pedn-Olva Hotel guest lounge, the high tide swallow the beaches of harbour and drench the walkways around West Pier. Our hotel is perched out over the water (unbelievably on the site of an old copper mine) and we almost feel that we could be on the bridge of the Utrillo on a day when walking along the decks was verboten. Our last meal here however will consist of specialty fare of local seafood and produce, the freshness of which has been a culinary highlight of our three days here.

St Ives is a self-recommending place to visit.

GMT

Greenwich Mean Time: 2 October (Blog-in-progress)

Though we were a bit snotty about Thom Gorst’s architecture lectures on the QM2, they have directed at least two of our UK visits: the one to Bath (future posting), and this one to Greenwich, to see some of Christopher Wren’s buildings (which are now occupied by Greenwich University and the National Maritime Museum and, on the day of our visit, a cast of thousands for the next Caribbean Pirates, starring Johnny Depp) and the Royal Observatory. But first, a note of irritation; the commentary on the boat to Greenwich was presented by a droll Cockney, who claimed to belong to a family of Thames’ watermen and intimated that he was living in a state of penury, which would be alleviated if the passengers would make donation at the end of the voyage, enabling him take a holiday in the Bahamas. A donation in this context did not seem appropriate. When it came for us to disembark he took enormous umbrage, suggesting that our mean spiritedness was typical of down-underers. It spoilt what otherwise was a splendid excursion, demonstrating the slow transformation of London’s waterfront from dockland to apartmentland.

Greenwich encapsulates what London must have been like at the time Wren. The grounds in which his buildings are located are stunning; particularly interesting is Royal Observatory (with its wonderful views over Thames and towards London with Hampstead Heath in the background) and through which the Greenwich meridian passes—and which has been such a significant force in world navigation . It is hard to believe that a mere line in a Greenwich Park can have a profound impact on our time of day. But as the exhibits at the Royal Observatory’s Time Museum demonstrate, had not scientists worked out how to calculate latitude, any form of precise navigation would have been impossible. And we would have still been in England, up-over, not downunder.

Travel hazards 1: losing it

Lost and Found (to date)

1 x Katmandu waterproof hat: somewhere in Chicago

1 x Katmandu waterproof hat: somewhere in New York with sunglasses, see below

1 x Pair of sunglasses, possibly lost on a number 3 bus uptown New York, or somewhere on 5^th Avenue

1 x Moleskin red notebook, of type used by Bruce Chatwin, very precious, since it contains Colin’s field notes; possibly lost in 16/196 Elizabeth St., Manhattan* apartment or in a taxi on the way to the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal 12 on Sunday 12th September, the day of the Brooklyn Book Festival, between 10.15 and 10.45 am

1 x Pair of red multi-focal spectacles red with bronze arms brand unrecalled, in red case, faux alligator skin case, on QM2 belonging to Claire

1 x Pearson and Mason hairbrush on QM2; lost but now found.

x¹⁶¹ x Irreplaceable memories, somewhere and most of the time!

Nothing else found to date.

*Reward of $US100 offered for return of red notebook

QM2

Queen Mary 2: a destination in itself? 20th September:

While we treated the Queen Mary 2 as a means to cross the Atlantic from New York to Southampton, many of our fellow passengers treated it as a destination in itself, and what a destination. It was one that celebrated excess in most of its guises, but particularly the epicurean. It was possible, should you be that way inclined, to eat yourself 24/7, to euphoria and oblivion, providing that is you were willing to obey the dress code and which requires formal attire, meaning a dinner suit for men, ball gowns for women. After 6pm jeans, shorts and t-shirts are prohibited in public areas, infra-dig. Presumably, you starved if you forgot your bow tie or Chanel bag! This is the passengers’ part in upholding White Star Service—and which the QM2 and the other members of the Cunard family of liners which, it was stressed, are not the inferior species of cruise ships—exemplify.

For seven days we have been players in Queen Mary 2’s theatre of luxury, bit players, perhaps even extras. The scenery was art deco, the costume formal and the action, when not set in restaurants, took place in the Royal Court Theatre (with apologies to the one in Sloan Square) where the Julliard Jazz Quartet gave masterly concerts and the Illuminations where, as part of the liner’s enrichment programme, we attended a brilliant series of lectures (would that we had heard more of them) on American politics presented by Nigel Bowles (Oxford University) and another series by Thom Gorst on the last one hundred fifty years of modern architecture, and which upset the forty three Australians on-board because he failed to include the Opera House from his list of the twenty most significant buildings. Number one—by popular voter applause—was New York’s Grand Central Station!

Eating then was not the most pleasurable thing on our transatlantic trip. It was the intellectual not the gustatory stimulation that proved the more rewarding for us. However we both agree what we most enjoyed was the voyage itself (especially as the Atlantic proved more pacific than our Pacific crossing), sitting out on the beautiful wide decks and watching the ocean in all its myriad nuances. And what would be a voyage without the thrill of departure and arrival. We left the United States from Brooklyn terminal, past the Statue of Liberty late on a drizzly Sunday night and arrived in Southampton Water early enough on the following Sunday to see a clear starlit sky make way for a dawn welcome to the United Kingdom.