One Tree in an Island

I can't remember where I was on my way to or from, perhaps I was on my way to or from nowhere in particular, but this tree near where we live caught my eye, blossoming in a traffic island.

Running the Velvet Gauntlet

After an early morning wake-up and a deconstruction of almost military efficiency, if you disregard all the fannying around and slow-building-heat-induced-shortish-temper, we forewent the cooling swim to bask in the air-conditioning of the car and took the quick route home that didn't involve hairy dusty almost-road mountain climbing, got home in an hour and a half, unpacked the car, did all that stuff and proceeded to stew in the heat of the house.

We resolved to impulse-buy a Dyson pedestal fan after a sweaty nap for Lyra and then headed off into the city to Spring Hill baths for a shady swim, passing easily through the G20 roadblocks and traffic control apparatus, the police very much in evidence with convoys of paddy-wagons in strategic holding areas, but not bothering us. Our run of the velvet gauntlet was easy and eventless.

In the pool we languished luxuriantly, Lyra demonstrating her independent swimming skillz with only a noodle to save her, and even though we had forgotten our goggles in our rush for water, we still managed to have a nice time with lots of fun games like Toss The Baby and Monkey Monkey. There was hardly anyone there and we had plenty of room for manoeuvre; Lyra did a lot of jumping into the pool, Eloise did a lot of classy swimming and somersaults, we made use of noodles until they came out of our ears, and we stayed there until the bitter-sweet end.

We tried to buy more ice creams, but the till had been closed. So no ice cream for us.

Thermadors

Down at the river we all paddled a while before bidding farewell to the fly-by-nights. Marion had her sunbrella deployed, with the pointy end of the shaft shoved into the soft river-bed sand by the side of the denuded flow.

Man it was hot but being in water was nice. A Jack Russell Terrier drifted by on a Boogie Board and Lyra took this as inspiration to steal someone else's and use it in a similar fashion. Generally we just, you know, utilised the specific heat capacity and thermodynamic properties of the water in which we were immersed to enhance our thermostatic capabilities.

After a while Nicole and Lyra retired back to camp for something to eat and a nap.

A steady breeze was blowing up the watercourse and as Eloise, Hannah and Lyra frolicked and I "supervised" along with Marion, the ability of the sand to hold the sunbrella in place against the gentle gusts of wind carrying it away, Mary Poppins-like, was put to the test.

We ended up fastening it with little pegs that came from somewhere or other with guy-ropes at finely attuned angles to maximise the load distribution and set about the business of floating neck-deep in the water with my sun-smock acting as a filter for the fine dust in the water stirred up from the bottom of the river (or as it is technically referred to, the "river-bed"), its white material slowly turning more brown.

I had my hat on, but some of us didn't, and so eventually we sought shade and snacks before we too returned to camp, to find Lyra sound asleep under the only open-air shade to be had, the camping table.

When she woke up and we had had something to eat, we all went into Kenilworth to locate ice cream and cold drinks. Faces were looking pink, some (one) with a bit of sunburn due to possibly injudicious application of sunscreen. Some of us were flagging in the heat. Personally, being, you know, a man and all, I didn't mind it too much. I mean, it was hot, but that's OK, right? I can take a bit of discomfort in the name of outdoorsy adventure. But others, particularly the young, were looking a bit flushed and, is their wont, moaning about it. We found ice cream, and we found cold drinks. I found coffee. We hung around in the shade. We chatted to a few folks. If there was a statistical analysis of the content of the chatting, the word "disgusting" would feature predominantly.

As the heat of the day started to abate, we returned to the river and as shade crept over we figuratively exhaled as the temperature at least seemed to drop a bit.

With just us Gs and the Js and Professor Joan left, we ate pasta and once more sat around the campfire attempting to keep Lyra in check.

That night's nocturnal Lyra-denza was somewhat more subdued than the previous night's but still we elected, with the weather forecast predicting an even hotter day to come, to return to the throbbing metropolis where at least we had fans to move the air around.

Morning, Sun, Heat, Charge, Water

Our little tent city was in the shade first thing in the morning, and probably the sensible thing to do if we were early morning types like every other bleeder who lives in Queensland seems to be would have been to, well, get up early and make the most of the fresh morning air with dew underfoot, brewing a cup of joe on the camping stove while rashers of bacon wafted their fragrances over one.

But I'm not a morning person so instead I lolled in my pit, my bedroom in shade, along with my fellow non-morning people, listening to the sounds of our fellow campers (who live in Queensland and apparently embrace this early-morning philosophy thing) brewing up cups of joe and rashering rashers of bacon, etc.

Eventually it became clear around seven o'clock (in the morning that is) that slumbertime was over and so we emerged one by one, with me in the vanguard to blearily breathe the morning air and make vague attempts at grunting conversation while hooking up the intravenous caffeine infusion equipment. I'm not a morning person.

From what I recall, and I am a little hazy on the details, the cool morning air wasn't that cool. In fact it could charitably be described as warm and warming as time went on. Still, I had something for breakfast, I don't remember what, and coffee must have been drunk, because that's what I do, and pretty soon I reckon that the fire was re-lit, because I have a photo of that, and people started to think about swimming, because that's what they did.

I was more preoccupied with getting the car going so I went to see Gibbo (remember him) about his jump-leads, and to apologise for waking up the entire planet in the middle of the night. He was good about the waking-up thing but it turned out that what had previously been identified is an independently-powered jump lead unit was in fact something to do with a leaf-blower. Why you would take that camping is anybody's guess. But not mine.

So I was forced to make another couple of cups of coffee, before scouting the campsite for some jump leads.

I didn't have to scout very far as the next tentopolis I asked had jump leads easily to hand and within a matter of minutes we men were maneuvering to get those jumpers connected and see if we couldn't spark a bit of life into our inert chariot.

The Mazda chuntered into life, much to my relief, and off I drove to get a replacement battery, stopping off on the way for a regal moment, paying close attention not to switch off the car. And thence to Kenilworth to search out a mechanic, which didn't take long.

With a new battery installed, mobility restored, I headed back to the campsite. Our little tent city was suddenly a shadow of its former self as these crazy Aussies were only staying for one night, with the palaver to leisure ratio apparently completely not an issue. But they were all going for a swim before leaving.

I headed straight for the river. The probably ridiculously inaccurate thermometer on the dash was telling me that it was 43 degrees outside, and it was damn hot, and if that doesn't call for immersion in cool water, I don't know what does.

Let's Wake Up The Entire Campsite

Sometime in the middle of the night, Lyra woke up, as she does. I suppose it was either the temperature being roughly the same as it was during the day, being in a strangely soft inflatable bed with unusual covers in a strange-sounding room with a gentle breeze flapping the walls and a door that zipped and the outside right there, practically inside, or some combination of one or more of the above, but she launched into a fine cadenza of screamingly epic proportions that lasted for quite a few longer-than-average dead-of-night minutes while Nicole and I tried to bring her back down to Earth just as a temporary stopoff on her journey back to the Land of Nod.

It was a cadenza that must have woken up everyone within a two-hundred metre radius - if not more - such was its volume and emotional charge with full-throated screaming carrying across the night air like a nail gun in the eardrum.

That certainly set us up for the next day of fun in the inescapable outdoor all-encompassing oven.

O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

You can imagine that, many miles away from civilisation, parked at the remotest end of a huge campsite, and deprived of transport by a mystery car fault, I was slightly concerned at our predicament, and I expect that it showed. Although in the high thirties heat sweat was in profuse supply no matter where you looked, some of my sweat was anxiety-related.

Nathan, amateur (in the nicest possible way) mechanic and car-fixer-upper admitted to being outside his classic car comfort zone, but offered helpful suggestions such as immobilisers or alternators and Lyra with her little playful fingers was in the firing line as theories went, but after running my sweaty fingers through the actual car manual and coming up stumped, I decided to take a chance take a chance take a take a chance chance and phone the Mazda garage which services our chariot, a risky move late on a Friday afternoon.

Nice Xavier, no doubt a hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is, suggested that the behaviour that I was describing to him was indicative of a flat battery which caused me a slight bout of relief and soon I was cruising the campsite looking for jump-leads.

I didn't have to cruise very far as the next-door polyester metropolis looked through their trailers-full of equipment and located what looked suspiciously like a set of jump-leads in Gibbo's trailer. Gibbo was away for a swim though so I would have to wait for his return.

I settled down beneath the shade of Marion's enormous sun-brella as the others went off to the river in all those other cars. I lay down, and gently experienced my tender ribs while looking up at the sky hoping in vain for a cloud to form, and eventually closed my eyes just a little, just for a short while.

When I woke up I thought that well actually that since Jumping Gibbo hadn't shown his face, and it was actually really quite warm, and that even if I did get a jump what would I do, since the battery (if it was the battery) was evidently knackered and no garage would be open to replace it, that I should probably stop lying underneath Marion's enormous sun-brella and go for a swim.

So I walked, yes walked the fifty metres to the river, arriving of course at the precise moment that everyone else was leaving and stood just short of knee-dip in the water which was frankly a little turgid with the muddy upwellings of the Mary River and not really inviting me in for a swim. Nevertheless there I stood, standing in the water, enjoying being cool from the knees down and the feeling of not-so-hotness slowly spreading even to the line around my head where my hair met my hat.

And as the sun westered in the sky and shade crept across the water we headed back to find our company of campers was completed, the final peripatetic professor professing to have proceeded providentially. Apparently Professor Claire and her family had stopped off at McDonalds.

So we men, working in a team of men, erected the final polyester pleasuredome (it was kind of square actually) in a most manly way, only resorting to the instructions once in our attempts to perform the colour-coded pole dance and work out where the front of the palace was supposed to be.

And hey presto, before we knew it it was beer o'clock, followed closely by sunset which made fire essential, though Nicole mysteriously wasn't involved. Then as darkness gathered and the campfire roared, flickering over the tents assembled all around, shimmering on the slightly dishevelled bodywork of the assembled motorcade, playing on the faces of the score or so of campers, barbecue o'clock struck and a procession of frankly ridiculous amounts of food made its way from the outsides of people to the insides of people, and a guitar appeared, and there was the strumming of notes and the buzz of light conversation and the crackling of embers.

Eloise was friends with everybody and everybody was friends with Eloise. Lyra moved around having a jolly nice time when she wasn't scaring the pants off all those maternal types with her too-close relationship with the fire. Oh, and she decided to visit the next-door camp and check out their fire too, and their tents, before anyone noticed.

Maybe she was looking for the jump leads.

Can this be all we will desire? Straw houses in the promised land?

The G20 Roadshow - cavalcades, protests, world leaders, trans-anarchistas, paramilitary security, transport disruption and all - is coming to town, and for all sanity-seeking Brisbane residents this is an invitation, nay a demand if not just a firm mixed-message encouragement to get the hell out of Dodge.

Marion had for a while been advocating a camping trip and Nicole took this to heart to the extent that she invited many people from work, and many people from play, many of the former acceding, many of the latter declining. The veritable smorgasbord of fellow short-stay camperoonies created booking difficulties and where we were originally headed for Tallebudgera down on the Gold Coast, for various reasons and a lot of casting around we found ourselves headed for a campsite out at Kenilworth up in the Mary Valley, in the Sunshine Coast hinterland, with a promise of idyllic river-swimming and countryside camping reinforced by the most cursory inspection of the web-based marketing literature.

The elements dealt us an interesting hand in the form of a heatwave, which promised to roll it's velvet glove over us on the very day of our departure so we resolved to get an early start and in a near-miracle of logistical organisation by SWMBO, we were away, fully packed, by 0930 Zulu.

The car was packed to the gunnels (an optional extra we were really proud to have negotiated) to the extent that there was no room for Eloise, and she had to go in Marion's car, fist-pumping all the way probably.

We were expecting there to be a reasonably massive exodus which normally creates a pretty good bung in Bruce's passage, but we thought to chance our arms. We weren't (or were, depending on whether you're more satisfied with being proven correct or having a clear run) disappointed when we ran into the first knot of traffic around Deception Bay, and when Our Little Treasure started piping up about being stuck and thirsty and hungry and unhappy, and the volume started to increase, we took the strategically sensible but tactically incompetent decision to leave the Bruce at Morayfield to go off-piste.

In true style, we Gavinated our long-cut which proved just as bunged up as the Bruce if not more so, compounding our errors by erring further from the beaten track, missing turnings, winding up on a dirt-track somewhere in the middle of the Beerburrum State Forest.

Not to be discouraged by this sort of nonsense, we made our way back to civilisation in the form of Steve Irwin Way, and then for some reason took a scenic route over the mountains through Maleny and  Montville, and over past the Mapleton Falls to another winding dirt track which frankly scared the crap out of me and my navigatrix as we edged our way down a single-lane dusty ribbon of what could only be loosely described as road which wound its way down the mountain side, a cliff on the right, a precipice on the left, tailgated by a wanker in a Commodore with a death-wish (for us).

We breathed a sigh of relief when we got to the bottom, a further sigh of relief when we found the campsite, and a further sigh of relief when we found Joan waiting for us at the camp site with Marion, Hannah and Eloise who had arrived there an hour before us.

When we got out of the car it was utterly stinking hot so we made camp in the stinking heat, Lyra playing in the car, pushing this knob, pulling the lever, switching this light on, tooting that horn with her tummy. The car was covered in dust from our motorised mountaineering long-short-cut adventure.

Camperoonies trickled in bit by bit, and soon we had our own little canvas village, industriously unpacking, constructing, and complaining about the weather.

We decided to cool off in the river. It was too hot to walk, apparently, so we got into the car to drive the hundred metres to the accessible with the beach and the waterhole.

I turned the key, and the car clicked, the dashboard lit up, and all the lights flashed. The needles shot round to the far end of the dials, then returned to zero. The car did not start.

I tried again. Same result. The one male in attendance came to look, drew breath through his teeth, tradesman-like. Could be battery? Hopefully?

Oh, crappy crap on a crapping crapstick.

Three. Four. Go.

Internal Combustion's Reminiscence of In Vitro Pulsations

Daytime sleep for babies is mighty fine, not just for their sanity but for mine! If Lyra doesn't sleep during the day, then come six o'clock there's hell to pay. Hell hath no fury like a baby scorned, and my toddler's scorn is red and horned; loud and unreasonable, screamingly so, devilish - capricious - infuriating, although it burns with no care for right or wrong, it shines twice as bright, so half as long.

So some food, a book and some sleep is ideal. But a building site next door? An ordeal. Well we could take our chances in the automobile.

Tuesday's trip to escape the construction of next-door's attempt at light-obstruction took us on an expanding locus with toddler sleep as our primary focus. Lyra, however, had other ideas, as befits a lady of her tender years. Transportation naming is her favourite game: there's no limit to the cars that she can name when they're all called "car" regardless of colour; it's a game that soon becomes duller than dull. Er.

Ironically, all those cars kept her awake when the car should be calming her, for f**k's sake, for the gentle low noise of the car on the road should remind her of her original abode in the heart of the womb, in that warmth so deep, with the heartbeat of mother suffusing her sleep.

But no, this urchin's for singing along to whatever she thinks is her favourite song.

Through the suburbs then forests and hills we glide out to Samford Valley, and Camp Mountain we ride along back-roads with animals off to the side, so it's animal noises we play, sleep denied.

There's a barrow of honey off the side there, how quaint. I'll stop off for a picture, to break up the trip.

Then some really dull music, Autechre? Mike Oldfield? Surely Mike Oldfield can loosen her grip?

An hour has passed, she has slipped her straps, and we've reached the end of a no-through road. There's no end to her strength in resistance to naps, but my determination has plateaued.

So we head back: 

"Oh look! There's a car. And a car! That's a car! And another one, look! There's a car! A car! Daddy! Look, there's a car! There's a car! There's a car! There's a f**k!"*

It's on Pickering Road, five minutes from home, that she finally loses her struggle. Her eyelids flutter, her head droops a little, and a left-turn allows her to snuggle.

* that's Lyra-talk for truck, unfortunately

Queensland Ballet Provide Incidental Musical Backdrop For Serial Acts of Unsolicited Intimacy

After an awesome day's sleep afforded by the rest of us hoofing it to Lone Pine for a few hours, Nicole woke up non-grumpy and raring to go to the only good thing about the G20 Summit which will be here next week, the G20 Cultural Celebration (the only good thing I'm aware of, I will qualify, before the Thought Police come along and shut my ass down in the interests of publicity whitewashing).

Today's entertainment is an open-air twilight performance of Coppelia by the Queensland Ballet, at the Riverstage, and along with little Maya, one of Eloise's dancing chums, and a stroller laden with goodies, we trundled down there to experience the celebration and see what the night would bring.

First of all, it brought ballet exercises for all the young aspirants, who crowded the mosh-pit in front of the huge stage behind which the amphitheatrical lawns ascended to the peripheral pop-up (probably, that's the phrase of the moment) catering establishments.

Then some interviews on stage which I don't think anybody really listened to, fascinating though they probably were.

All the while, Lyra making herself busy exploring the stage, and whenever music came on, breaking into a pirouetting waltzing ballet-trot around the mosh-pit, gracefully (I use the word advisedly) meandering between the people, occasionally stopping for a cuddle from a stranger's leg, sometimes stopping, and must standing arms outstretched to receive the adulation of the crowd.

We noticed a familiar Chinese face chatting amiably and a queue began to form to have photographs with him. He turned out to be Li Cunxin, the Director of Queensland Ballet, and as I understand it, the very Personage Previously Known As Mao's Last Dancer. He point at Lyra and smiled in a friendly yet occidentally enigmatic way.

So we joined the queue and had photographs with the Director of Queensland Ballet, oooh!

I exchanged some noncommittal platitudes with the Great Man, and we moved on. It was a nice thing for him to have done.

Before long, as part of the educational background of what goes into a ballet performance, and to give the children something to look at, the dancers began to perform their warm-up exercises on stage, pulling unlikely poses whilst being sternly corrected by Madame Za Za (not her real name).

And, as dusk gathered and peals of classical music rang out across the summer evening, Eloise and Maya watching intently from the fence, the dancers continued to perform their stretches and leaps and grand jetties or whatever. And Lyra made herself comfortable with various families she liked the look of, looked up stranger's skirts and garnered sweeties from whoever would give them to her. Which was everybody.

As the light failed some little girls decided to take a little revenge on Lyra's clothing excesses and played a chasing game which ended up with her in a storage area by the side of the stage, and having been retrieved from that predicament by my good self, proceeded to attempt to invade the orchestral area where the players were preparing to play. The security level was readjusting itself to Toddler Alert.

The performance itself soon kicked off, and an epic in three parts it was. I'm sure it was inspiring but as Nicole and I were taking it in turns to track the Monkey and keep her from going too far in terms of over-familiarity with the general public, we saw precious little.

There was some impressive leaping and some mighty fine displays of physical dexterity and buttocks you could fry eggs on, after they'd been cracked between them. I don't know how many Andrew those boys had down their tights, but By George, if I had to guess the flavour of their packets of crisps I'd be going for smoky bacon.

I mean, look at the size of that thing that I've only digitally enhanced slightly. OK, that's a fallacy; I've enhanced it quite a lot.