To the North

I can write on this blog in a lot of detail sometimes, especially if I'm writing about resources or syllabus stuff that connects with teaching. Sometimes when I write along these lines I'll avoid using first person language and it can establish a more formal tone, which makes me sound (or feel) more confident about what I'm saying.

Other times I like to incorporate some anecdotes from my teaching and this only really works if I slip away from third person and take a more relaxed approach.

If I decide to write about my travels then first person is the only real way to do this properly, and I can feel less self-conscious about the travel writing because I know that my audience for these particular blog posts is smaller and more intimate (I generally don't post links to my travel posts on teaching networks because there usually isn't any relevance and, therefore, these particular posts have a readership about 10% the size of my teaching posts).

In the last two months my posting on this blog has stalled.

I'd like to write from the heart for this post. I feel self-conscious about this because I like to maintain a certain degree of metaphorical distance between myself and the audience when I write, however, I just can't write this particular entry in any other way because it's much more personal than usual.

My wife, Nicole, has asked me several times in the last few days if I will blog about our current travels and I had to tell her that I just wasn't sure. We didn't have wifi for the last couple of days so that helped me just not think about it but I knew, at heart, that I was avoiding writing because everything in my life is so bound up with recent personal events right now and it was all too hard.

A month ago my wife gave birth to a little girl that we named Elouise 'Split-Pea' Bartolo. It was too early for our daughter to survive and we lost her. It hurt, and it hurts still. I almost lost Nicole too... she had to have surgery after she delivered the baby herself and her recovery was physically difficult and required three blood transfusions. I... still don't really have the words. It was hard. It still is.

In the last two weeks we both re-integrated into our workplaces after a lengthy absence. Getting back into the routine at work wasn't so difficult after a few days, I found I could do a lot of things through compartmentalising. But coming home each day was like coming home to meet my grief again; it waited for me in the car, in the house. It waits for me anytime I let my mind sit still. Sometimes I write poetry, or I journal, and writing can be sort of therapeutic.

I've always written better than I speak. You can't see the awkward pauses this way, nor do I fill the silence with words that don't really matter. But I haven't been writing as much lately because it's like wrestling with the grief directly and that can be exhausting.

Anyway.

Four days ago Nicole and I packed the car and we struck out north, away from our jobs and away from our home. We've always loved travelling together and I was eager to navigate into this space again to see if it still existed after everything that has just happened. We decided that our journey would focus on finding as many 'big things' as we could and I joked, upon arriving in Taree to see the Big Oyster, that it was fitting we would travel so far to see something so mediocre considering that whatever we do right now would feel mediocre no matter what.

Nicole laughed at that. I love her for sharing my ambivalence in regards to personal pain; we can laugh at the little things while experiencing our pain. We do this while fighting sometimes too - we'll be right in the thick of an argument and one of us will make a ridiculous joke about it. We laugh in these situations and then continue our fight. I like the idea of that - the acceptance that you can be more than one thing at any given time. You know that phrase, "If you don't laugh, you'll cry"? I've always preferred to think of it as non-binary. Imagine each person is really Schroedinger's Cat in the box and that, until you open them up, they're simultaneously laughing and crying.

Owing to the emotional mess that I'm still wading through, I don't think I can take a linear approach to this holiday and recount everything in order. It feels like too much, and I think the facile nature of this approach would scoop out what little life is left within me. Joke.

Anyway.

Here is a collection of pictures that Nicole and I took, and the stories that go with them:

View from the bridge in Bellingen. I remember this bridge from my teen years, when we would visit my Aunty Jan's farm on the river. It's a very picturesque spot.

Usually I'll be driving and then I see some street art and I'll double-back to get a photo. This usually leads to some confusion and frustration on Nicole's part because I don't always get around to explaining what I'm doing until we've pulled up and I've jumped out to get a photo. This pic was taken in Bellingen.

Nimbin is something else. The whole town smells of marijuana, and Nicole and I entered it via the carpark into this little area where a tin shed proclaims itself as a place to procure "Medical Cannabis". Not gonna lie, I felt a bit confronted by the casual pot smoking everywhere - and we got offered marijuana at least four times in the short time we were there. We declined and settled for some pizza in a nice Italian place down the road instead. I'd never felt so bourgeois.

I love this sign. Nimbin shop fronts are a whole bunch of hilarious - keeping the town's unique hippy roots alive.

Growing up, Mum would take us to visit her sister, my Aunty Lynette, in Warragamba. Aunty Lynette and Uncle Phil moved to Glenreagh in the '90s and it was nice to finally take Nicole up the coast to see them and their amazing collection of historical curios. Uncle Phil has a fantastic museum in his backyard.Seen above is a collection of antique stove plates.

One of the more unique items in Uncle Phil's museum is this old American school desk with moveable parchment. The desk opens up and you wind a lever to show a variety of different teaching materials.

Preserved microbat. Aunty Lynette and Uncle Phil have preserved and restored a variety of dead animals they've found in their explorations.

Uncle Phil's bottle collection is quite amazing, and showcases Australia's convict history. Aunty Lynette has a great love of owls and Tawny Frogmouths, and I remember this stuffed Frogmouth very well from my childhood visits to her house. Nice to see it's still on the perch, so to speak.

The Scottish town of MacLean is situated near the southernmost part of NSW's sugar cane fields. Along the horizon you can see the fields burning and it's quite pretty if you happen to see it at sunset. Driving alongside the cane fields is always interesting too as you can see kites and kestrels hovering overhead while they hunt.

Glenreagh made a bid for fame with their own 'big thing' - the Big Dingo - but it doesn't show up on many lists of Australia's Big Things. Time to rectify this, Australia. Glenreagh is a quiet country town about 30-40 minutes outside of Coffs Harbour. Russell Crowe lives there and his massive house, property and tennis court all stand out like a sore thumb alongside his more modest neighbours.

In Lake Cathie you can see the Big Lawn Bowl. It doesn't draw the same sort of crowd as the Big Banana but it's moderately large size puts it on the list all the same.

I guess, technically, this is a small whale as real whales are bigger. It was parked in someone's front yard so we had to get our pictures really quickly.

The Big Prawn in Ballina was recently saved by the local Bunnings, who also added a tail. It's never looked better... but at the end of the day it's also just a massive crustacean in a carpark and none of the locals seem to pay it any attention. I think a plaque would at least be nice.

Byron Bay is a nice place but the buskers get a bit annoying when you a crowd gathers on the sidewalk and you just want to get through so you can eat some tacos.

There are 3 Big Pineapples in Australia. This little Big Pineapple is the lesser known of them, and can be found in the carpark of a service station in Ballina.

The Big Rock Service Station is looking worse for wear these days. It started life as a replica of Uluru built for Leyland Bros. World in 1990 and later became known as the 'Ayers Rock Road House'. Disappointingly, there's a still a sign up that calls it 'Ayers Rock'. I'd normally put this down as an oversight but the huge collection of golliwogs inside makes me think there might be a bit of a racist undercurrent at work. If anyone wants to own an obsolete tourist attraction that needs a few thousand dollars worth of restoration then I am pleased to announce that the owners are currently accepting offers for purchase.

Macadamia Castle near Lennox Head has wisely opted not to create a Big Macadamia (one already exists up in Queensland) and have instead decided, bizarrely, to use a medieval theme to draw customers in. I know when I think of the Australian-native delicacy known as the macadamia nut I find it difficult to separate them from the European middle ages, and it's great to see this tourist attraction making a real connection with that heritage via this giant knight.

This car dealership keeps Taree's dream of a Big Oyster tourist attraction alive. It was hoped that the Big Oyster would become an attraction comparable to Goulburn's Big Merino, or the Big Banana in Coffs Harbour, but this business venture was a failure and it became known by locals as the 'Big Mistake'

The Big Axe in Kew was rebuilt only in the last few years. The original one fell foul of white ants.

Wingham Brush Forest is one of the world's few lowland subtropical rainforests. It's hard to capture the scale of the huge Moreton Bay figs that have helped make the forest so famous. Visitors to the forest must stick to a walkway otherwise they  could be injured by the giant stinging trees, which are also found everywhere in this habitat. Strangler figs and recent drought have led to the death of several of the forest's biggest trees, which now lay collapsed and rotting like huge fallen dinosaurs.

The other most famous aspect of Wingham Brush Forest is the huge colony of Grey-Headed Flying Foxes who have lived here since before European settlement (the word 'Wingham' is an anglicised version of the local Biripi word 'Wingan', which means 'where bats come to drink'). There are approximately 40 000 of this vulnerable species of bat living in the forest and all you have to do is look up to see hundreds upon hundreds of them roosting above. Even while 'sleeping' the sound is deafening; they screech and chatter like chimpanzees and can be seen scrapping with one another for the best positions. Every minute or so you'll hear their heavy wings flapping overhead and a shadow will pass over you and it's like being in the pterodactyl aviary from Jurassic Park III.

I wasn't aware that Nicole was taking this photo until the last minute. I don't know how it happened but somehow we managed to walk through the forest for half an hour without any bats pooping on us.

In Wingham forest we also saw Brush Turkeys, King Parrots, and some fruit doves.

On the way up to Byron we stopped at the lighthouse in Woolgoolga. As we watched the water Nicole spotted a Humpback Whale and its calf migrating north. In this picture you can see the whale engaging in a behaviour known as 'pec slapping', where it repeatedly splashes the water with its pectoral (side) fin. It's believed that this is part of the courtship signals that Humpback Whales use, which makes sense as this is the time of year that these whales travel north for breeding.

 

We had to stop for a while when travelling back out of Bellingen because this young cow had somehow gotten out of its paddock and was frolicking about on the side of the road. Some rangers were attempting to round him up but he wasn't having a bar of it.

This active lighthouse in Port Stephens used to be a WWII base and continues to function as a point of action for local rescue operations.

Pelicans. I can stop and watch animals for hours.

Nicole was eyeing off this glass seagull in Port Stephens and decided not to buy it. The whole way home she kept mentioning it, and even suggested we go back to get it after we'd been driving for an hour. When we got home it magically appeared on the coffee table and Nicole told me it had followed us home. I laughed so hard.