Melbourne airport, Tuesday 11:35 a.m. and after a good number of attempted text messages and calls that just ended up floating in the ether, Wendy eventually tracks me down outside the domestic arrivals terminal. She concluded, quite logically due to my journey originating in Wellington, it would be international, but I must’ve neglected to inform her about the transfer made in Sydney.
It was very generous of her to pick me up, and I was grateful for such good company. We had a few stops to make, first to a music shop so I could buy some strings and a jack-to-jack lead, second stop: lunch, third stop: the manicurist for a layer of acrylic on three nails (of my picking fingers), fourth stop: an Ozzy sim card, and a bit of shopping. With all essential tasks completed she dropped me off in the rain outside Southern Cross station.
It had been such a long day already, and now I was faced with a good forty five minute wait for a train to Warragul, the town in which Dominic lives, then once on that train, there was another two hours fifteen minutes of travel time. The train pulled in, we rendezvoused, and I headed for an evening of food, wine and good company with Dom and his lovely wife, Christina. These long, long days of travel can feel worth the attrition for the beauty of their completion; perhaps a metaphor applicable to life also!
Wednesday, and I prepare for the Guitar Masterclass to be held at the Victoria Railway Institute Hall. Dom prints off a stack of manuscript and guitar tabalature for me, more than I’ll need - it’s always better to go into these things with more subject matter than is needed, that way to avoid any potentially awkward moments as one subject or exercise draws to its natural end, and needs to be followed by the next. Nine people attended in all, a good number, all very friendly, amiable and inquisitive.
On Friday it was the Burrinja Cultural Centre in Upway. Tonight I not only had the pleasure of seeing one or two familiar faces from the concert I played in Emerald three weeks earlier (see post: “The Good The Bad And The Purgatory”), but also had the privilege of meeting Nick Charles - a well known guitar player in these parts and beyond - who turned up with his partner, Penny. It was great to meet Nick; and speaking with each other later, there may well be one or more irons in the fire for joint ventures somewhere down the line.
Back to the Railway Institute on Saturday for the Warragul show, a self-promoted evening - Dominic not only being the “self-promoter”, but also the provider of all things sound, lighting and refreshment-wise. Not a huge audience tonight, but more than we predicted.
The final show of this Victoria stint was a more unlikely venue: The Cranbourne Uniting Church. For anyone who isn’t familiar with Uniting Churches - as I wasn’t - it’s a collective of three faiths: Presbyterian Church of Australia, Methodist Church of Australasia, and the Congregational Union of Australia. You find them all over Australia. Maybe one could liken it to what has happened with a few football teams in the UK; with attendances falling, it can make more economic sense to share a ground with the team down the road rather than incur the unmanageable costs of remaining independent. Football and the Church, both suffering from a decline in attendees, and both religions.
The hosts and the audience at Cranbourne were some of the warmest people you could hope to meet. Nick and Penny turned up again - I really appreciated that. And the biggest of surprises that evening was the most unlikely appearance of friend, Keith, who I’ve known for years, and who I’ve never previously seen outside the boundaries of Preston. He just happened to be visiting his son in Melbourne, spotted I was playing nearby, and there he was. As he stood there facing me, for longer than just a moment I thought I hadn’t gone anywhere, and that this Antipodean experience had been nothing but a journey imagined or dreamed.
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