Vignettes of Country Life

1. The Cygnet Cafe.

We went inside. It was a cavernous room held up in the centre by two beams that looked like polished trees. The counter was at the back. On the counter was a basket of scones, each one the size of four. The woman behind the counter pointed forcefully at the scones, obliging us to buy one. It is like that in the country.

2. 440 Main Road Clare.

We drove through Clare. looking for number 440, and stopped just where it was, more by good luck than signage. We walked up a muddy path and through a wonderland of large farm equipment into a cavernous barn. Cavernous! That word again! It is like that in the country. The barn was full of indescribable quantities of indescribably dusty things. Our thing was a dot matrix printer. It was in there somewhere.

3. The Woolworths Supermarket.

There is a certain lure to a supermarket. We just had to go in. We would need something for our dinner when we got home, after all. The supermarket was a cavernous one. They are like that in the country. Except for the small dying ones.

4. Lunch in Clare.

Everything on the menu at the pub was $9.95. You could even get ham steak with a pineapple ring. But we ended up at the bakery. We always do. Sometimes it takes a while for us to come to that conclusion. It was a prize winning bakery. They are all prize winning bakeries in the country. One of us ( not me ) had a Riblet Roll and the other a falafel.

5. Oranges in Zonta Garden.

We walked along the Main Road of Clare, towards the edge of town. There was a little public garden on the high side, with seats, a table and two stone slabs donated by the local quarry. They were massive slabs, such as you would expect to see in the country, upended, and their purpose was to block the view to the Main Road. Here we ate two oranges. It is strange eating oranges without a knife, the bitter scent of orange skin on your lips and fingers.

6. A Walk in the Backblocks.

Clare is a biggish country town. That means that there are backblocks. We walked along a road parallel to the Main Road, but two streets over. A young man drove his car out backwards, stopping at his letterbox to check for mail. He hadn't got any. Then he revved and hooned towards the town. It is like that in the country. We passed an old house that had once been grand, It was called Bleak House, which made us laugh. It was next door to a house that had a stone dwarf and a pumpkin on the wall.

7. The Drive Home.

Both there and back I was the passenger. I saw green wheat fields, and single flat bottomed trees, moving backwards as if on rollers. I saw cows and sheep and horses, also moving backwards. A man in a vineyard, snipping at a vine.

Torrens Lake

It's been raining! Now
the Torrens Lake is filling
up again. Some weeks ago the weir gate
was said to have malfunctioned and the water drained away into the sea.


It was dirty water anyway, with
blue green algae in it. There were rumours
that a council worker may have had
something more to do with it than failing to prevent the great escape.


Anyway. It was a huge
embarrassment. The Film Festival
and the Fringe were due to start
and the confluence of visitors would ridicule us for our stinky mudflats.


The Torrens flowed no more
by Elder Park, the beautified embankment.
Someone offered to donate some water
to refill it from an unused quarry that they owned up in the hills.


That water turned out to be
unsuitable, too high in sulphate. It would
have harmed the water fleas and fish,
so was abandoned as an option and we waited for the rain.


Last weekend I went with Allan to inspect,
thinking it our civic duty. We were
surprised to see the Torrens Lake
filling up a little on its own, drawing water from an aquifer underground.


It looked so natural. The water level
very low, the river banks exposed and tree
roots too, mudflats, now cleared of cars
and wheelie bins and witches hats, bristling with clay-encrusted bottles.


The Popeye barges stranded, at odd angles,
paddleboats lined up along the brink.
The fountain infrastructure looked too fragile,
but the Paper Boats in contrast were supported by huge rusty metal rings.


The stink was not so bad.
There was a smell of creosote
and ducks. The ducks and black swans,
seagulls and one pelican looked as though they'd never liked the Torrens Lake so much.