We are sitting in the Queen Victoria Gardens in Melbourne. It is a hot day, but there is shade, and sprinklers, and a pleasant coolness on this bench. Our flight landed at 11.15am, after leaving Singapore at 1.25am, and I have the strange feeling of not having travelled across land and sea, but having stepped through a door into another world.
This world is equipped with a good supermarket, which is our first stop after getting off the airport transfer bus. We pick up strawberries that smell sweet through their plastic tub, bread, hummus, and salad, which we eat without utensils from our bench. We drew, I fell asleep, and then we walked to meet Nat after her work shift; she emerged from her car in brightly patterned scrubs and a big grin on her face.
While bulk of our travel is in Latin America, we lingered in Australia and New Zealand en route, to see family and friends there who will be very far away when we move to the UK. It turned out to be a gentle introduction to life on the road, providing the comfort and sanctuary of people we know well, and letting us wander and explore and rest.
In Melbourne we spent time with Nat and explored the city while she was at work. We went back to the National Gallery of Victoria's Ian Potter Centre and their gallery of Australian art. Organised chronologically, with contemporary interpolations to bring in art from the First Nations communities, the art on display often dealt with themes of looking (visualising or representing a new land, sometimes inaccurately), longing and migration, and land and its spiritual and and physical significance. I found this portrait of an Indian-Scottish woman who migrated from North India to Cornwall particularly haunting, but I remind myself not to tax myself with 'forethought of grief', as the poet Wendell Berry says. My curator brain had many thoughts on the interpretation in the NGV, but I might save that for a separate blog post with Jacob.
Something unexpectedly joyful about the city this time, was that Jacob and I discovered and enjoyed the network of creeks that run through it, forming walkways or places to run and cycle. We ran from Nat's place in North Melbourne down south to St Kilda beach, and walked up Merri Creek from the city centre to Mia and Jem's place in Reservoir. Perhaps most beautiful was the run from Reservoir to Coburg along St Edgar's Creek - so beautiful that I was distracted enough to run my longest run post-injury. The result of all these green pathways, combined with our own hunger to explore, was that we spent most of each day walking or otherwise on our feet. This felt so different, and so good, compared to sitting down at a desk day after day. I remembered a colleague who worked in the library, who took time off work to walk the part of the Camino de Santiago. When she came back, she was shocked not by the pace of Singapore but by its sedentary living.
On Sunday, we spent the day with Mia and Jem. Like the first time I was there, we went to the fantastic Preston Market, looking for fresh produce and Asian specialities for the hotpot they were making that evening. The market was a riot of colours and smells. Men shouted "mangos" and "cherries", the former selling for a $25 per tray. The resulting hotpot was a long, leisurely, delicious meal. I love the process of selecting, dipping, waiting and fishing out various ingredients. These actions remind me of the chaotic steamboat meals around Ama's table on Chinese New Year's eve. As I see my family spread across the world - England, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, possibly America...these memories held captive in meals are precious ways to say "I belong" and "I love and miss you all" from another world.
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