A mainland adventure

The plan was simple: on February 23 I was to fly up to Sydney from Hobart to meet my mom, who was coming in from Victoria, BC, Canada, for five weeks. We were to have two days exploring this iconic city before flying north on the 25^th to visit my friend Phil Hayward and his family in Lismore, in northern New South Wales, for six days. On Phil’s advice, I’d booked seat sale tickets through Rex Air, a small regional airline.

On February 22, the afternoon before I was to leave, we were driving along the Midlands Highway, coming back from a cricket match and my first interview in northwest Tasmania. I said to Pete, “My mom should be leaving Victoria right about now.” She had told me she was leaving on the 23^rd and had made a comment to the effect that she left and arrived the same day. Except suddenly I realized it was only February 21 there. That’s when I had my first inkling that everything might not work out as I’d planned.  

Sure enough, when I arrived at the airport in Sydney the next morning, there was no mom. I went to Denbeigh’s mom’s place and tried to track down my mom on Skype. She was happily drinking tea at my aunt and uncle’s house in Oak Bay, in Victoria, doing laundry and getting ready to leave the next night. I found out then that she was going to arrive an hour and a half after we were supposed to leave for Lismore February 25. I had the teeniest little hissy fit.

Too late to salvage the Rex Air ticket, I booked her another flight for Saturday afternoon, then set about enjoying my two days in Sydney. I hopped a bus for Circular Quay – site of the Sydney Opera House, a finalist in the New 7 Wonders of the World campaign. The shell structure was just as spectacular up close as it is in all the photos. (And I laughed when I saw that Martha Wainwright was playing there the next night, though I didn't go...) 

That evening I went with Helen and her friend Peter to the Helenic Club and ate fabulous Greek food, listened to wonderful Greek music, and met some amazing Greek people. 

Next day I took the ferry to Manly Beach, where I watched kids learning to surf and waded in bathwater-temperature water. I basked in the Australian summer, since it hadn’t really made an appearance in Tasmania this year. That night I had dinner in the Glebe with Denbeigh’s dad and his partner Suzie. It was the perfect mini-vacation.

I headed up to Lismore on Friday as planned, where I experienced the incredible generosity of Phil and his wife Rebecca Coyle, Phil’s parents Roy and Ruth, and Phil and Rebecca’s youngest daughter Amy. Both Phil and Rebecca work at Southern Cross University, Phil as Director of the Higher Degree Research Unit and Rebecca as Head of School, Arts and Sciences. Phil is the founder of the Small Island Cultures Research Initiative (SICRI) and editor of the island cultures journal Shima.

I first met Phil in Japan in 2005, when I attended the inaugural SICRI conference in Kagoshima (the conference where I had two marriage proposals!). The next year Phil and his older daughter Rosa stayed with Mikhala and me when they came to the Island to talk about hosting a conference at UPEI in 2007. Phil came back for the conference, where he and another SICRI colleague, Danny Long, helped me empty my liquor cupboard. But when I was saying goodbye at the Charlottetown airport, he said that was it – he wasn’t coming back until I came to visit him.

Then last summer Claire and I met Phil and Amy at the SICRI conference in Guernsey. We all stayed on Herm Island, and ate meals together in the quaint White House Hotel. We travelled back and forth to the conference on the ferry, the dock for which depended on the tides. It was one of the most memorable experiences of my life.

Phil, Amy, and me on the ferry to Herm Island, June 2010

Claire and Amy on Herm Island

Before Mom arrived on Saturday, Phil and I drove to Terania Basin in the World Heritage Nightcap National Park and walked in to see the spectacular Protesters Falls, where protesters in 1979 had successfully stopped a proposed logging operation. I was surprised to read the interpretive sign that referred to Tasmania:

“The struggle to save the forests of Terania Creek will be remembered as the birthplace of direct action in defence of old growth forests. The successful outcomes of Terania inspired direct action approaches in Australia, such as the 1981 Franklin River blockade, which successfully defended wilderness areas in Tasmania.”

Phil at Protesters Falls in Nightcap National Park

It thus seemed appropriate that the falls were boisterous and full – a result of all the rain they’d received – just as protests still rage here in Tasmania. (The latest is a proposed pulp mill for the Tamar River in the north-central part of the Island.) The rainforest was fragrant and rich, redolent with earthy smells and moist air. Tree roots twisted around other trees to pull them down, making room for their offspring. The lush vegetation was so NOT what I expected of what I always thought to be a drought-stricken Australia… but then neither were the floods that had devastated cities and towns in Queensland in January...

The next day Phil took us to a country market in Bangalow and the famed Lighthouse in Byron Bay – Australia’s easternmost mainland point - before meeting up with Rebecca and Amy for a swim in the teatree-oil-stained water at Lennox Head. The water was perfectly clean; it was just the colour of, well, tea. On the other side of the spit was a gorgeous wind-swept beach - just one of the squillions for which that coast is famous.

We then found front-row seats at the Lennox Head Hotel and listened to a fantastic music duo of the gorgeous Cara Robinson from Ireland on drums and washboard and her hirsute husband Hat Fitz from Melbourne playing dobro and guitar. Apparently the couple thought it was a great way to celebrate their first anniversary: they were still rocking when we left. It was a perfect way to spend a Sunday afternoon. I even bought their CD.

Cara Robinson

Hat Fitz

 

Phil and Rebecca loaned us their car for the next three days, so Mom and I set out on various excursions around the area. I honed my skills driving on the left-hand (I didn’t say “wrong”!) side of the road while negotiating busy towns and winding country back roads. We thoroughly explored the region, shopping and drinking morning coffee at Ballina, seeing what Mullumbimby looked like (small town, two streets!), swimming at Brunswick Heads, and lunching at Tweed Heads, where we could see off in the distance what a local fellow enjoying his lunch hour called “our own version of Manhattan” - the skyscrapers of Surfers’ Paradise which signal the start of the famed Gold Coast. Apparently, in a severe lack of foresight, the skyscrapers shade the beaches.

The view from Tweed Heads

You can just see the skyscrapers in the distance, marking the beginning of the Gold Coast...

Public art in Ballina

More public art in Ballina

Phil, Rebecca, and Amy were fabulous hosts. I loved their house and their 14 acres where Phil is reforesting what was once a banana plantation; the native trees and shrubs are thriving through his hard physical labour and watchful eye. Neither of them would let me help out around the house - they kept saying, no, no worries, just sit and relax. Finally I asked Phil, “When you and Rosa were at my house, did I wait on you guys hand and foot?” To which Phil replied, “Yup.” Oh.

The sunset bench

"All this will be rainforest one day?"

"Youbetcha..."

"... one baby plant at a time!" (i.e., the nursery)

"Yes, Amy, your folks ARE crazy..."

Not much happens in Modanville, so when someone gets a new mailbox...

Phil took us to the charming Lismore airport on Thursday morning. Because only prop planes fly in, Lismore doesn’t need to have the same level of security as most other airports. They just ask, “Are you carrying any dangerous goods?” It was most refreshing.

Next time I see Phil will be in the gorgeous and tropical Whitsunday Islands in the centre of the Great Barrier Reef, just off the coast of Queensland, where the 7^th SICRI conference is to be held June 12-16. I’m presenting a paper on island tourism with a focus on Ten Days on the Island, Tasmania’s cultural festival. Mike will be with me, and we’ll be heading back to Prince Edward Island shortly afterward. I have a feeling, though, that half a world won’t prevent this friendship from flourishing. Indeed, Phil, Rebecca, and Amy (and, fingers crossed, Rosa, too!) already have plans to be in Cape Breton in 2012 for the 8th SICRI conference. Now I just have to convince them that a day or two in Prince Edward Island is essential. After all, I have some more waiting on hand and foot to do.