Way back when I lived in Townsville, I'd breathe an audible sigh of relief as I drove home after a long day's sinecure as the accountant for a city firm, and turned onto Cape Pallarenda Road that ran alongside the sparkling blue ocean- see here.
I feel the same sense of relief whenever I leave the Bay and turn onto the Kings Highway and see the Clyde Mountain range looming in the hazy distance. Seven kilometres on, as I turn into Sproxton Lane, my sigh is just as audible as it was way back when.
Batemans Bay holds no attractions for me. It's no longer a small coastal town but a big brash shopping mall, and that's all I go there for. I bought everything I needed to hole up at Riverbend for another peaceful week-end: apples and pears for my two nightly visitors, the possums, sticks of dried liver and raw mince meat for Rover, and bread, milk, cheese, and some more mince meat for my own savoury mince for the weekend.
And, needless to say, I also bought a couple of books: a little charmer of a book, Sydney, by Delia Falconer, and How literature saved my life, by David Shields. As it happens, he's preaching to the converted.
P.S. Having just reached page 87 in this little gem of a book, Sydney, I'm compelled to quote from it, "At the bend in the old-fashioned ridged escalators of the Menzies Arcade was one object of fascination for me - the dark Jungle Bar with its hanging plastic vines, next door to the Arthur Murray School of Dance - both places struck me as disturbingly libidinous." In my days, the Jungle Bar in Menzies Arcade was the place to meet other Territorians down on leave - and sometimes down on their luck - from New Guinea. Those who found the wilds of Sydney more daunting than the wilds of New Guinea sought solace in each other's company in the Jungle Bar which didn't seem libidinous to me, perhaps because I didn't even know the word at the time. Sadly, the Jungle Bar is now no more nor is the Italian barber shop next door - click here.
