(copied from the original transcript; being, my diary)
{ DAY 1 : FRIDAY }
Blip. Day one of Port. Jay and I got here mid afternoon yesterday after 4 hours of split shift driving. Largely uncomplicated, The highway/freeway combo meant we had very, very few turn offs and we didn't have to think too much. Roadworks plagued us and we were constantly caught in the white noise of an untuned radio, for my CDs had melted in the heat. We were two teenage girls and a station wagon named Clyde with a mattress in the back for accomodation, and we journeyed mostly in a comfortable silence between I-spy bouts and pitstops at places like Coopernook and Bulahdehlah. Our halfway point was this stop.revive.survive stop beside a golfcourse, an eerie, deserted place.
Ack. But I don't feel much like writing now. I keep getting distracted and losing the ends of my sentences. So I'll stop for now, and do what everyone else is doing - watching the BBC version of Pride and Prejudice while we sprawl about the lounge room.
{ Post Note: Our first evening here, the night before after our drive, we all went out to the Pancake Place for dinner. There, I resolved never to tease Tea again (even though, in my opinion, it is one of the foundations of our friendship). Though I slipped a few times (slightly, no big remarks or anything, quite mild) I am still keeping up the mocking-drought. }
{ DAY 2 : SATURDAY }
Next Morning -
So it has been a full day and still I have not written any on the matter of the trip. Early morning Day two. Jay and I crashed on the unit floor of our mates' who are staying here for schoolies {Post Note: the prior night we spent in a tent at a camping ground, listening to a rabid koala keening and grunting through the night}. Our Roadtrip was indeed to join them here and avoid accomodation costs, and also watch my Dad and his boys play at the State Cup, but the two of us instead have been playing it very much by ear. We watched Kiera Knightly's Pride and Prejudice last night, but it was lost on me after being subjected to the BBC version - that's how I see Lizzie now, I suppose. And on Lizzie - I don't much like her as a character - she irritates me a little, and not in the good reminds-me-of-my-english-teacher-in-melodramatic-mode way that Mrs Bennet does. THough certainly not as bad as Lydia does. {PN: I want to find a nice old version of the book to read}
Ess is washing up. An early riser, you see. And now she'd cleaning the kitchen. Me, I wake to the slightest noise if prompted, and in sleeping in the adjacent lounge with Jay on our mattress it was pretty much inevitable I'd be up in a few moments, albeit a little zombie-ish.
So now I'm writing. Yesterday. Yesterday the four of us went op-shopping in town. It was a hot, greasy sort of day where you go pink around the edges no matter how often you re-apply and getting in the car is torture. We went quarters in two pairs of suspenders (our 'communal suspenders') and the other three, Ess, Jay and Tea, found a few old books and things. I'm a little concerned right now as to how we'll get all our stuff home (Ess and Tea brought their unicycles here, of which I have been trying (doggedly and in vain) to ride) but I suppose we'll just see how it all goes.
Other than op-shopping we did little. Today we plan to go to the markets in Wauchope and then stop by the sporting grounds to watch the D boys and girls play. {PN:They boys sadly played terribly and lived up to the unfortunate D mantle of talking the talk without walking the walk. My dad also stuffed his neck and was unable to continue playing}
Well go to the beach soon I hope. Mucho Love, Indi.
It is evening and I am perched outside the unit block looking vaguely out into the distance. It will be twilight soon. { PN: While at the units Bea's Twilight [Stephanie Meyer] books did the rounds, nearly everyone reading them in the time between arrival and departure. She had started and epidemic. It was near bedlam when the Jacob-Edward debate inevitably flared up}
We visited the markets and op-shops today. It was sweltering hot. I hopped from umbrella to umbrella for relief. We visited a book-fair too - fill a plastic bag for $5, I say that's pretty good value. The four of us - we have an obsession with old books, inspired mostly by Ess, and we found some really interesting ones thatr, for one reason or another, were suitably significant in some individual {PN: and special} way. Me, I found Shakespeare and an old italian 'linguaphone', and a french-to-english dictionary. Tea: 'Chess and the Game of Death'; Ess: old scriptures and books with fascinating covers; Jay: poetry. Ess loaded up on linen too to make dresses out of - it'll be Tetris trying to fit everything in the car.
I'm learning to ride the unicycle - and making adequate progress with it. When I get off I cans till feel my body seeking balance - or at least, perhaps learning to be more comfortable with being out of balance, as Janine Antoni says.
After seeing Dad briefly at the State Cup (he'd hurt his neck, so there was little to see - though we were sidetracked by general touch footy awesomeness..) the four of us decided to trek up along the beach and rocks to the black obelisk surmounting the outcrop that rises above the beach near the units. Along th way we were unsurprisingly sidetracked though { PN: by a sculpture we interpreted as a giant pencil piercing a round concrete disk} , and the hike didn't come to fruition - instead, we scaled the other rocks, cliffs, caves and pools along the shoreline, each of us going our own wyas along the stormy, jagged rocks. I climbed about in my cons and looked down into the foamy rock pools, all deep turquoise and storm-blue and dark, and though I had inhibitions at first due to the creeping rain I followed Ess along the shoreline and we sought the other beach together { PN: we wanted to see if it was possible to cricumnavigate the entire coastline by rock and access each of the beaches} along the blackening, slickening rocks. We wanted to see if it was possible to traverse the entire coast by rock {PN: There you go. } We made it to the beach, Ess barefoot the entitre way.
When we arroved back at the unit (all grimy and blustered with sweat and heat) Ess and I took the two unicycles out to find a place to practice. Walking part way through a trail we found in the bush we came across an apartment block with a good, long fence for balance. Practicing here (i am getting better - managing to go a couple of seconds without scrabbling for purchase) we were discovered and comandeered by two little girls ( who swore alarmingly proficiently) on their bikes. Immediately they favoured Ess, for she could ride her unicycle and made a much more impressive spectacle than I, falling off every two seconds, and we were roped into piggy back and bullrush.
{PN: I realised I better write about the markets a little to preserve them in my memory here, and it is for that reason that this entry was particularly un-chronological}
We went to a few markets in the morning at different places in the area, one out woop woop in Wauchope and the other at the local Uniting Church. Later, I hope to recall a particular tree at the Wauchope markets, all garlanded {PN: Even at the time I didn't know if that was a real word or not } with lucid, bright orange budded stalks, that rose up in the middle of a yard behind the Church to droop its little petals over all. Wauchope was a very rustic sort of town and it was a soothing sort of experience going about the stalls there before the small old stone Church.
I remember the colour purple - like a Cadbury purple, deep, most likely from the low-slung canopy of a stall or from the lavendar products of Ernestine inside the church.
Now I sit curled in a large chair at 11:30pm (late by my standards) waiting to pick up some friends at a club in town. I'm tired.
Blip, Indi.
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