It's the kind of overcast afternoon which is best spent alone. I made myself a thermos of hot tea, grabbed a box of cookies, and walked the two hundred metres to "Melbourne", to spend the rest of the day in quiet contemplation and some peaceful reading.
Padma is quite happy to binge-watch some action-packed TV drama on iView which is full of "Mord and Todschlag". Funny how they never tell you their movie preferences until after the wedding cake is cut!
"Melbourne" — or "BONNIEDOON"; I even thought of calling it my own "Shangri-La" — is unheated, but even on an overcast day it feels cosy. Remember those kerosene heaters from the 60s? We used to smuggle them into our unheated boarding-house rooms to survive the cold Canberra winters despite their ever-present fire danger and risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. They are still on sale, and I played with the idea of getting one for "Melbourne". For me the danger wouldn't be carbon monoxide poisoning but the possibility that I would be getting so comfortable there that I wouldn't want to go back to the main house.
Instead of lighting a kerosene heater, I just light a kerosene lantern. Its gentle flame gives the illusion of warmth while the smell of kerosene takes me back to another time and place when life was much simpler.
"Melbourne" is my own little world and my escape from the world. If I had my time over again — how often have I heard people say that! — I would build myself in a matter of just a few days two or three little "Melbournes": one to live in, another to sleep in, and a third fitted out as a kitchen and bathroom. I would connect all three with a covered walkway, and to hell with living in a conventional house. The nearest I ever came to this was when I befriended a German couple in the 70s who lived a self-sufficient lifestyle just outside Mackay - see here.
I have been dipping in and out of Robert Dessaix's book "(and so forth)", which is as unconventional as its title suggests, but kerosene lamps, as cosy as they are, don't make good reading lights, and I may switch over to ABC Radio National to continue to stimulate my never-idle mind.
The tea is keeping me warm, as is the beanie on my head and the fluffy "Puschen" on my feet. The cooler weather means that the only noise from the river is the occasional splash of a surfacing fish, and with all this peace and quiet around me and the smell of kerosene in my nostrils I feel a bit like Tom Neale. If you have never heard of him, then you must be a newcomer to this blog because I wrote of him and his book "An Island to Oneself" more times than I can remember - click here.
I always keep a copy of his book inside "Melbourne", and so maybe I will read it (again!) after I have finished with Robert Dessaix. Then, with the tea and cookies gone and the kerosene lantern spluttering its last, I shall return, ever so reluctantly, to the main house and the real world.
