No Night Sweats N o  N i g h t  S w e a t s No Night Sweats
Sydney's Post-Punk Bands
I Like Music
Slapp Happy are Terrific
A List of CDs
Text is What I Write
Crime Fiction is Silly
[ White Goods ]
 
On my way home lies a stretch of golden sand bounded by steep cliffs north and south and a long, low valley stretching westwards. For nine years (and more) I've looked down at this enticing bay and pondered uselessly about the ceaseless nature of the waves - sometimes big and sometimes small but always pounding relentlessly. 

So I got a shock when I travelled past it recently and all of the standard rough edges were just gone! I'd become used to the rollicking action, dammit! Instead the Pacific ocean lay flat as the proverbial pancake with barely an inching ripple lapping up upon a very, very tidy tract of sand. 

In fact, it looked very different indeed : No white foam - just glassy expanse. No churning swells - just smooth, twinkling crystal. No typically brackish colours - just amazing azures, deep greens and vibrant hued blues reflecting from the close sea bottom. It didn't look like south eastern Australia at all - instead it looked just like the the waters around Lord Howe Island in the Great Barrier Reef or, more scintillatingly, those around gorgeous Capri. 

And so my mind turned inexorably to the day that we spent there (oh, so many years ago) when we'd hiked around the town on the top of the hill and gloried at the views for ages. Eventually we got off the tourist track and wound our way further upwards along the narrowest footpaths I'd ever trodden, past beautifull villas and the occasional vertigo inducing glimpse of blue from (what seemed like) miles below. It ended at a tiny viewing platform hung out over a cliff which I carefully stepped onto. Ofcourse the view, with all that glorious blue, was more than magnificent and well worth the considerable amount of puffing it took to get to it. 

Right in front of the platform was the last villa on the hillside. It had this same totally uninterupted, magnificent view for now and forever more. I contemplated quietly to myself for a secound or two and, instead of thinking about how lucky the owners were (that came later after I turned back to Annette), the first thing that came into my mind was - 'How did they get their goddamn washing machine up here along those bloody small footpaths'. It WAS a tiring walk, after all.
 
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