Ordinarily by now, even though it is often a slow process, I like to think that I would have written more about the holiday especially one so momentous as 7 at 70 but truth is the price paid seems to have been unusually high as I am still ill. Part of me wonders if it is a refusal to come down to come back to my reality. Being away was so nice, so unique, even when I wanted to run away.
I remember years ago when in Canada, meeting someone who had travelled for months, and whilst I could see it was tempting decided it wasn't for me, it seemed to speak of a type of existence too separated for me, yet I cannot seem to go more than a few weeks, especially now without jumping up and going somewhere. Though my belief that the holiday was my last hurrah, in some shape or form, may turn out to be more accurate than I would wish as at the moment even walking up the road is an effort.
Anyway I had originally hoped to sort of just float whilst away, but I was required to get all the paperwork up front, so it was fixed, but really I had only certain points fixed in my counsciousness. When we organise travel it is based on a fantasy, all, sometimes the fantasy is realised sometimes it is not. Often it is exceeded enormously, which is lovely. My individual trip around Melbourne was like that.
Prior to going to Boston, my friend C, had said you could get out to Concorde, but unfortunately my friend is too busy that week to see you. Concorde turned out to be a great place to visit and I totally understood her friend might not be free, but remembering that C also had friends in Australia I had enquired if she knew anyone there who might be happy to meet up. She did not disappoint. Not only did she have a friend, but this friend was a well known sculpture Michael Meszaros, and he agreed to show me around Melbourne, and discuss his working process.
It might have been daunting being with him if I had not so many questions for him and it was brilliant to see both how effective or not his works were (there was only one that slightly disappointed and that was only because in my mind's eye I had imagined something larger and more distinctive) the process by which he produced them and the context which informed his choices. There were lots of parallels to the process the media students went through. Sometimes the brief was fairly limited e.g. something here that would help set off the building, which turned into three wonderful huge birds, other times it was very specific e.g. in the Botanic Gardens, and other times it opened up space for great creativity and emotion e.g. around the women's hospital.
Michael kindly drove me around to each sculpture, we even managed a half hour dash around the Botanic Gardens whilst seeing his work there, which was great as I had run out of energy to see if the day before, and in each location he shared the story of the work. Just outside the women's hospital we met another artist admiring his work. Then if that was not enough he drove me out into the suburbs, past all these wonderful Melbourne houses with their metalwork, to his charming house and studio. Normally I pay to visit such places and here I was invited to a brilliant lunch instead and all someone I did not even know. Sometimes the kindness of strangers is just overwhelming. Michael also designs medals and I know in future I will appreciate them much more having seen his collection of designs. So a huge thank you to him and his wife.
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So most of my time I saw Melbourne through the lens of friends and family, there was only one thing I wanted to do for myself there (toher than the penguins) and that was to see the Museum of Moving Images. I grew up on Australian cinema and in my head I imagined the gallery would reflect that history. It did but only to a certain extent, it actually covered much more but that meant specific favourite movies only got a brief mention. So I will mention Picnic at Hanging Rock, (still haunts me) Walkabout (an introduction to indigenous Australia), My Brilliant Career (read the book too) , Braker Morant (which I saw in New York) Gallipoli, Mad Max and the Getting of Wisdom which is probably where I fell in love with Melbourne's architecture, of the type seen on the way to Michael's. The museum is part of a modern complex, on the other side of the road to Flinders Station, the traditional heart of Melbourne The square it forms one side of now seems to be the modern heart of Melbourne. There I found a sort of exercise class going on and just joined in, and narrowly avoided being on the news and the front page of the newspaper as it turned out to be the start of the fringe festival. I spent so much time dancing, I ran out of energy to get to the Botanic Gardens.
That was also partly meanness as Melbourne has a whole chunk of town which is free to travel to, so one could just hop on and off the trams, but the botanic gardens would involve a cost to get to it. I thought I could walk on paper it was not that far away, but I was wrong. Most of the time I just went up and down from Flinders to the Youth Hostel, but on my last free afternoon I travelled the whole tram route. It takes an hour, has lots of history and meant that I glimpsed lots of places I had otherwise missed. Melbourne is a great city and I did not do it justice, but I had a wonderful time there.
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