Interlude: Australia!

It looks like just a little ol’ island on a map, but that’s because the ocean is so vast. I’ll bet most Americans don’t know that Australia is bigger than the 48 states. As for me, I’ve always had a physical and pyschic connection to the place.

Just look at that ashtray, for example. My Aunt Mary was an Army nurse during World War II stationed in northern Queensland, I believe. She came home from the war with a number of strange souvenirs, including this. (There was a second one, but I broke it up to play with the bullets.) The base is from a shell casing marked “37INGUN” and the cigarette rests are 1942 Australian shillings. Another thing she brought back was a wallaby pelt that’s pretty ratty-looking these days, a fact I know because it’s draped over the back of my desk chair.

These things and more used to be in a shipping trunk in my grandmother’s attic in Chestertown, Maryland. Over the years of my childhood, I wheedled and stole them away. For a time we lived nearby in Washington, D.C. or off in the hills of Blacksburg, VA and visited Granny and Granddad in the summers. This was before air conditioning, and it was always hot and humid on the Eastern Shore. I could usually get permission to go up into the attic and “explore,” where it was even hotter still, and whenever I found something irresistible like the wallaby skin, I’d take it down to Granny and ask if I could have it. A few times I must have snitched something or other, but I honestly can’t remember. What I do recall is how “cool” it felt climbing down the pull-down attic staircase and re-entering 95° air!

There were other things beside the war souvenirs. My aunt had also brought back a substantial collection of Australian children’s books. When I was just a little boy, I’d spend hours poring over the pages with filled with pictures of animals I’d never seen. A bit later, when I learned to read, the books turned even more bizarre as things acquired names: besides kangaroos, which I’d heard of, there were “cockatoos,” “wombats,” “billabongs,” and more. It was like entering another dimension. Nothing like this existed for me except inside an old oak vanity at Granny’s house, and no one else I knew had books like those, that was certain.

The imprinting never completely faded, and I still need to go to Australia. (Anything to get out of the mud.) I even have a couple of Australian friends, one of whom has visited me in Taos and sometimes comments here at FarrFeed. Another, whom I’ve never met, is a long-time correspondent and the technical adviser for this website. That means if I ever show up, there are at least two people who have to buy me a beer and show me a cheap motel. This is golden, right? It’s too big, though — how can I learn anything from just a visit? That’s like flying from Afghanistan to Cleveland and forming an impression of America.

(Buy my book and send me there for a year, I need to do something crazy.)

Related posts:

1. The Wallaby Skin