March 2019

Here I am, safely ensconced in Melbourne, and half-way through my visit. Needless to say, time seems to be galloping by as I catch up with people and places and keep tenuous touch with people on the other side of the world. It’s always best to note first reactions, and so I did. I wrote this piece for a magazine, but said journal felt it wasn’t right for them: of course they say that to all the girls.

&

I’m back. Once upon a long-ago time I went to Greece for six months, on a planned holiday that somehow stretched into unplanned decades. I’ve been fortunate in being able to return to Australia, to Melbourne in particular, on more occasions than I once dared to hope, but it’s more than three years since I was here last. Jet lag over, I brace myself for new developments and possibly jolting change.

On the surface, things remain the same: the trams still click and chime through tunnels of trees, the expanses of Royal Park are browned by summer, and the combination of heat and high winds is making the leaves fall early, so that I can shuffle through heaps of dry foliage the way I used to when I was nine or ten, or even older. Marvellous Melbourne will always be that for me, but now of course it’s also marvellous because it’s mixed and multi-cultural: the Somalian women, robed and veiled, float gracefully along Racecourse Road, I see a sign advertising a hookah lounge, and the local library makes a feature of books in Vietnamese. As for ethnic cuisine, you name it, it’s here.

But some changes are more complicated and worrying. I discover that Vinnie’s Soup Vans started operations in the city as early as 1975, but I haven’t noticed them in this part of Melbourne before, and indeed the fleet looks shiningly, spotlessly new. It seems that more people need more help, despite many signs of prosperity. And then I find that the op shop, formerly run by a local church, has closed. Selfishly, I consider this development a personal blow, because the little place has always been a reliable supplier of the second-hand detective novels I cannot do without; it goes without saying that it has also been a great deal more than that to many local people.

While I stand dithering on the corner, I hear some activity behind the church; two minutes later, a quick reconnaissance reveals the presence of a food distribution centre run by women of a certain age. I know little about such ventures, and it becomes clear that this is a smallish effort run by the remnant of the church, which is now closed: a sad but all too common story involving reduced and ageing congregations, with the resulting transfer of a vicar. The woman in charge explains procedures to the foreigner who isn’t quite a foreigner, but who is certainly ignorant of many current features of Australian life. The boxes of produce are laid out in rows and look fresh and appealing; people with the requisite health cards can attend once a fortnight, when the food is available, can help themselves, and then make a donation. Today there is a queue composed of various ethnic groups: an elderly Chinese man is keen to talk, and is not at all discouraged by a language barrier, so we simply smile a lot.

My brief visit ends with a laugh. When I tell my story about the op shop and the books, I learn there are some shelves housing books at the back of the room. One book in particular almost leaps out at me: one of my own old examples of Deathless Prose. Who would have thought it? I chuckle at the coincidence and show said volume to the team. ‘I reckon you know who dunnit, then?’ remarks one. ‘Yes, unfortunately,’ is my rueful reply.

Whenever I am in Melbourne I automatically make a journey into the long-lost past. As I leave on this day I carry, among others, the book that seems almost to have been written by a different person; as well, I carry powerful memories of my grandmothers and aunt, all good women of their various parishes, who strove unobtrusively, like today’s women, to do some small good, to make a little bit of difference to the lives of people less fortunate than they. They well knew the hymn that tells us that In this world is darkness, so we must shine/You in your small corner/and I in mine.

My ancestral women did their best to shine, and in a small corner of North Melbourne there are women who are doing exactly the same.

&

My returns, I suppose, are always a combination of nostalgia and culture shock: air travel whizzes you far too quickly into another world, and it takes time to adjust. But I am always able to anchor myself via get-togethers with old school friends. We are all definitely old, but somehow, when we are together, the years slide away.