Back to the Future

An Australian custom that I did not appreciate on my first visit in 2008 I have come to appreciate in 2018. It only took me five trans-Pacific trips and countless experiences among these delightful people to see their point when, at every public meeting or ceremony, they honor the first Aboriginal people of this land. Usually it is a simple welcome to country in the name of the clan or (in the American parlance, "tribe") who had made this particular locality their home for 50,000 years. I say it took me this long to appreciate the custom because it is so different from our own country, where the original inhabitants were displaced and forgotten, except for those crowded into reservations which we also find so easy to ignore. Here, these native peoples may have, for the most part, vanished as a recognizable subgroup in may cities and communities, but they are not forgotten. Their place names are used, and their original occupancy acknowledged at every public gathering. If I had any criticism of this custom at all it is only to the variation I have occasionally heard. Sometimes when a speaker begins the tradition he or she will refer to a particular group as the original "owners" of the land. In my opinion, there is no need to saddle this ancient culture with such an alien concept as land "ownership" to appreciate the fact they were here first. It is more appropriate to refer to them as the traditional "custodians" of the land, for that more precisely describes their role and reinforces the concept that THEY GOT HERE FIRST!

I thought of this introductory custom while thinking about the author's reading we attended on Friday night. It was delightful, and aside from Thomas Keneally we heard from Brigid Delaney,

Kon Karapanagiotidis, and Sarah Krasnostein. Delaney was particularly enjoyable and her talk had us laughing loudly. Her book is a sort of modern take on the "Road to Wellness," and she described her experiences while she endured a fifteen day fasting clense in hilarious detail.

But you are wondering about the title of this entry, and I will explain. Yesterday we boarded the Nimbin "Grasshopper" tour bus that journeys to the little interior countercultural town famous for its annual "Mardi Grass" festival. Nimbin used to be a lot more freewheeling and lively, but increased police activity and the burning of their beloved museum a few years back has reduced the place to a shadow of its former glory. No matter. We were simply along for the ride, and our driver was none other than Ivan, the same chap who took me to Nimbin in 2012. (He explained he never really wanted a "real" job.) We journeyed down delightful twisting country roads, stopped for

a great little sausage sizzle a the lake, and then made one more stop at Minyon Falls before returning home. Minyon Falls is a magnificent drop down a rocky escarpment, but has been reduced to a trickle due to the drought. While staring down into the deep forest below, I could not help to think of the original custodians of this land, and feel grateful that we are welcomed here after we have honored them.

A Whale of a Good Time

Byron Bay is perhaps the coolest place I have ever been, and bear in mind I have been to Black Rock City. OK, Black Rock City IS cooler, but it only exists for a few days a year while Byron is a permanent encampment of liberal minded folks who have decided to work very hard to keep their funk going. Nothing illustrates that better than the speaker we saw this morning at one of the first events of the writer's festival. David Ritter, CEO of Greenpeace Australia, gave a stirring talk at the Beach Hotel this morning to inspire people and, of course, to promote his new book, The Coal Truth.

Ritter described his own personal epiphany of the growing threat of global warming, and he encouraged people to not lose hope even though some environmental damage is irreversible. What made this totally cool was the audience of Byron Bayers, an obviously liberal crowd of both young and old. Of course a community like this attracts a rougher element of dreadlocked homeless, but you can see among the other residents a real kinship to the spirit of the sixties (as I remember it, anyway).

After the talk we got a few supplies (wine and Cooper's Ale) and returned to our cottage, and then called for a taxi to go up to the Cape Byron lighthouse. I have hiked up to the place before, but Jayne had never seen the stunning vistas from the summit so we decided to ride up, and then walk down. While at the lighthouse we looked out at the Pacific and were treated first to the sight of dolphin pods swimming happily below and then, breathtakingly, we saw the whales. Dozens of these magnificent creatures were swimming out in distances from one to two miles. Fortunately, we had purchased a pair of binoculars yesterday and could see them slapping their tails and blowing their spouts quite clearly. It was an incredible experience, I can assure you. We then walked down from the lighthouse to visit the easternmost point of the Australian continent and follow the trail down to the beach that would lead us home. What a beautiful experience.

We bought tickets to see Thomas Keneally tomorrow night at the Byron Theatre, and while he and some other writers present their talks rock musician Tim Rogers will provide music.

Rogers was one of the chaps who headlined the Beatles White Album concert we saw in Sydney last week, so you see we have come full circle. A literary festival, a whale encounter, and an Aussie rock musician; how can you top that?

From the Ridiculous to the Sublime

We have left our comfortable Gold Coast apartment to travel south to one of the greatest addresses on the planet: Byron Bay. It would be difficult to convey just how wonderful this place is, but perhaps if I just say that you can enjoy this community just as much by being a landlubber as being a surfer. This is what some people would call a "hippie" town, with a countercultural vibe in the air you can almost taste. There is also something more going on here.

One of the saddest sights I gazed on in Broadbeach was an abandoned bookstore in a shopping mall full of Vodaphone vendors and McDonalds franchises. It was a metaphor for the depressing conference I attended there; a gathering of professionals hell bent on destroying the very objects they were trained to care for. This place is quite the contrast. Just walking around Byron Bay today I saw three bookstores that were doing a decent trade, and this weekend is their annual writer's festival. In this "hippie" community reading and books are honored as they should be, and among the speakers scheduled over the three day writer's festival none other than Thomas Keneally, the author of Schindler's List and many other works.

I had the opportunity of seeing him at the Mosman Library a few years back and I look forward to seeing him again. What a delight to have the opportunity to meet authors, publishers, and readers all celebrating print! Isn't that what a "library conference" is supposed to be?

Our headquarters here is a caravan park that offers cabins and campsites. We have availed ourselves of the former, a one room bungalow with a kitchenette, bathroom, television, and even a cute little front porch with chairs. We explored the town this afternoon before returning to the cabin with groceries, and we cooked our dinner ourselves. This is the life!

Scan, Toss, Repeat

Once again I am attending a library conference that has little or nothing to do with books. This has been the case with annoying regularity in recent years; speakers that wax eloquent about "user experience" and "resource sharing" all while holding on to their precious smart phones. In fact, that is exactly what their audience is doing. I have attended two sessions this morning and inside the darkened lecture hall one can see the majority of the audience faces illuminated by the glow of their little toys while the speaker attempts to gain their limited attention.

This is particularly sad in the case of Lucy Bloom's presentation. Bloom is a former advertising agency owner who started a worldwide women's health charity, and her talk was filled with amusing anecdotes and insightful commentary. Pity most of the people around me felt the need to "tweet" her former sentences to somebody somewhere else instead of listening to what she had to say at that particular moment. No wonder our students can no longer read or compose coherent English essays; the example set by these "information professionals" is appalling. How can young people cherish the experience of deep reading when "librarians" embrace the idea that digital information makes print expendable?

The conference is here in Broadbeach, a collection of high rise hotels and apartment buildings on the Queensland coast south of Brisbane. Our apartment is absolutely luxurious because the company I had contracted with gave us a complimentary upgrade. The result is we are on the fifth floor of an apartment building enjoying a place which is larger than our house in Bozeman! A full kitchen, a laundry room, and a great dining area gives us more elbow room than we have experienced in a week.

Our next stop after the conference is Byron Bay, where I am sure the cabin I have rented would probably fit in the living room of this place. All the same, the town is charming and I look forward to it. In the meantime it is back to the library conference that has no books.

All Things Must Pass

What could be better than a Saturday night concert at the Sydney Opera House? How about a Saturday night concert at the Sydney Opera House performed by some of the top rock musicians of Australia as they ran their way through the Beatles White Album? Once again we found ourselves in a crowd of geriatric rock fans listening to electric music from decades ago, and we loved every minute of it. Our friends Ronald and Jane joined us for a night out, and we made our way to the Opera House early enough to enjoy a drink before the big show. The band was fantastic,

and their rendition of such tunes as "Oh-Blah-Dee" and "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" was flawless. The audience would not let them go when they finished, so they came back for an encore which included George Harrison's song which I used as the title for today's posting. I never realized how moving that song could be, and I was so grateful to share it with my wife and our friends. (In case you are wondering, I did not take the photograph; our seats were considerably farther back, I can assure you.)

Tomorrow we leave Sydney for the Gold Coast and the library conference in Broadbeach. It will a part of the country Jayne has never seen before, and one that I have only passed through.

Another Visit to the Lucky Land

Why are the Australians so lucky? Is it the beautiful beaches? The sensible gun laws? The growing environmental awareness that is encouraging the banning of plastic bags, straws and other crap so prevalent in the United States?

No, they are probably lucky because they do not have an orange skinned idiot as their president. We in the states can only dream of a society that has universal mandatory voting and other reforms that might prevent a fascist takeover in the future. But this is a travel blog and not a political argument, so on to business.

We arrived in Sydney on Wednesday morning and immediately used a combination of public transport options to get to our rental house. Our friends, Ronald and Jane met up with us on the first night and we had dinner at the Colloroy Beach Club; a delicious crab and prawn pasta dish for me and tumeric coconut prawns for Jayne.

A wedding party was right behind our table and we gave brief thought to stealing some of their wedding cake, but Jayne resisted temptation and ordered from the menu.

On Thursday we went for a five mile hike around Narrabeen Lake. It is a beautiful walking path that crosses two lagoons by means of brand new pedestrian bridges. It was a great experience, even though it probably contributed to the blisters I have today. We were joined by two librarians from Mosman, one of whom (another Jane) thanked me for my regular contributions to their website, Mosman Readers! Friday we went to the Vaucluse House, a historic property on the South Head of Port Jackson. Home of the man who first blazed the trail over the Blue Mountains, the place is decorated with period furniture and the grounds are beautiful.

The kitchen garden was particularly beautiful with lots of veggies growing happily in the Australian mid-winter. It does not get cold here, really. After the house tour we went to the Gap to look out on the harbor and the Pacific, and then took lunch at the fishmongers at Watson's Bay.

The State Library of New South Wales has a small collection of Sydney-published Wyatt Earp comic books that I must examine, but that will have to wait until after we go to the library conference in Queensland next Monday. As for today (Saturday) we are off to the Opera House to hear a concert of Beatles music from the White Album. I think hearing "Rocky Racoon" sung by an Aussie ought to be interesting!

WWWD? (What Would Wyatt Do?)

I have been on the trail of a gunfighter. Wyatt Earp, arguably the most famous frontier character who ever appeared on both large and small screens, has been the focus of my research, and during the past few months I have uncovered some interesting items in my travels. I wish I could show them to you, but that will be explained in a moment.

In November of 2017, I went to Los Angeles, California where I visited with Ms. Kate Edelman, the daughter of Louis Edelman who produced the television series “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp. Kate was very gracious and invited me to her home after she learned I had been exchanging emails with Hugh O’Brian, the star of the show, shortly before his death in 2016. We had a very pleasant hour together in her comfortable home where I scribbled furiously as she answered my questions.

My next stop was the Huntington Library in Pasadena, California, where I reviewed the papers of Stuart N. Lake, the author of Wyatt’s 1931 biography and a consultant for the television show. Here is where I first realized that the stereotypes of archivists portrayed as fussy obstacles to researchers are sometimes true. The staff insisted that I could not take pictures of any documents lest I silenced the very quiet shutter noise the electronic camera makes when making an exposure. When I could not do it, the attendant took the camera and fiddled with it mightily, changing all kinds of settings and still failing to silence the click. I finally took it back, went into the lobby, and carefully reviewed the options until I found a way to quiet it. (Why this should even matter in their cavernous reading room is anyone’s guess.) I was also cautioned with what seemed to be severe legal repercussions should I dare to display any document images on the internet, which is why you only see my picture of the impressive grounds of the institution.

Once I gained admission to Huntington sanctum, I was informed that material would only be paged on the hour, that I had missed the first hour, and that only a few boxes would be paged at a time and only one serviced at a time. In essence, these restrictions guaranteed that one could only review a fraction of a collection on any given day. I was also “busted” for chewing gum, which made me feel as if I was still in the third grade. (I would not have been surprised if the clerk had held out her hand and demanded I spit out the offending item just as Mrs. Kubista did back at the Steven T. Mason Elementary School in 1963). An overall unpleasant research experience, but I have only myself to blame. You would think by this time I would be adept at conforming to whatever rules a particular institution insists on, and I failed to do my homework at the Huntington.

My next research trip was to New York City in December where the Billy Rose Theater Archives had for inspection an original screenplay of the television show written by Frederick Hazlitt Brennan. Since I knew the title ahead of time, I was able to watch that particular episode and compare it to the document. The archivists at this lonesome place were more personable, but a byzantine system of requesting an item at one desk, being referred to a second desk to submit it in written form, and then waiting in the reading area until my name should appear on a display monitor seemed overly complicated. My name never did appear on the monitor, but after waiting fifteen minutes and inquiring at the reading room desk I was handed the folder.

My last journey took me to the Arizona Historical Society where I was allowed to review the accession file of the Frank Waters “Tombstone Travesty” manuscript. Here the system was much more informal, and the reference archivist swiftly and efficiently produced the material with a minimum of fuss. Perhaps this is because I have been good friends with the former archivist there and had emailed in advance my precise request to which they answered in the affirmative. An added treat was visiting the museum afterwards and seeing an actual handgun owned by Wyatt Earp on display.