Adventures Old and New

October 4, 2001-Old Stories, New Friend
(photos:
Wearing dorky riding helmut,
Wetting down hat hair in stream,
Making Billy tea & damper)

Took a woman from the temple to breakfast this morning. She’s probably in her 80’s and a widow. She was born in Israel and her father was an orthodox rabbi. He always opened his house to visiting service men and that’s how she met her husband. She was 15 years old. When she was 17, they got married and she moved to Sydney, her husband’s home. He was the head of a large asbestos company and they lost their shirts when that industry collapsed. They were living a very affluent life and it all crumbled. She adored him and her one regret is that he wanted to become Jewish and she wouldn’t let him. She said she was young and thought she knew it all. Her parents were modern orthodox and very accepting of him. They truly loved him. She and her husband moved to Gold Coast to economize after he lost his business. Sydney had become too expensive.

She is a very accomplished person in her own right. She has a PhD in philology. I’m not sure exactly what it is and don’t have a dictionary, but it has something to do with languages. She speaks English, Hebrew, Russian, French, German, and Japanese to name a few. She learned Japanese late in life because it sounded interesting. She taught at several universities and traveled the world lecturing. She danced professionally and mentioned belly dancing as one of her talents.

You can tell by looking past the dissipated woman she is now to see the graceful beauty she was. Her mouth sags slightly to one side. It was marred by an accident that required a metal plate to be put in her skull. She proudly proclaims she literally has a hole in her head. Her hair didn’t grow in for years, but when it did, it was wispy and thin. She wears it up and fastens it with a variety of large artificial flowers. I suspect the flower covers the area of the plate and gap in the hair growth. She admittedly dyes her hair and sprays the front magenta. She tells people who criticize her that she doesn’t ask them why their hair is gray so they shouldn’t remark on her choice. She wears bright colors and elaborate costume jewelry. She’s quite flamboyant and would not go unnoticed in a crowd.

She desperately misses her husband who died three years ago. Her children and grandchildren live far away. Her spirit is hovering under the surface and she only needed a few leading questions to unveil her story. She’s a woman who constantly forgets her age and is surprised when something rudely gets in her way and reminds her of it. She regaled us with tales of people who fought changes and said she and her husband always believed things must change. Whether the change will be for good or not is unknown, but change is inevitable.
Giddyap!

We went horseback riding in the hinterlands this afternoon. It was near where we explored in the national park area on Sunday. It was a 3-3 ½ hour ride with a stop by a river for billy tea and damper. That’s tea boiled over a campfire and bread wrapped in foil and baked in coals. I think it used to be cooked on a flat iron pan on the coals, but modern Aussies have new ways.

It took about 30 minutes to fill out waivers, choose helmets, check shoes, and mount up. When it came to filling in whom to notify in an emergency, I didn’t have anyone to put down. It was an odd and lonely feeling. I decided on Syd Bruce but didn’t know his phone number. He’s in the phone book, so I put his street and town.

They provided boots in all sizes if they didn’t think yours were safe. If you preferred not to wear their boots, they had a gizmo that attached to the front of the stirrup to prevent your foot from slipping through. Hats were standard hard riding helmets but these either had sun visors or rims around them to keep off the sun. Mine had a full rim and David couldn’t resist taking a picture of my dorkdumness.

We were divided into groups by ability and assigned horses. I decided to have an easy time of it so I put myself in the middle group that had ridden 10-20 times despite having owned a horse and jumped. David went into the advanced group. Then they asked if anyone was nervous and I raised my hand. That assured me of getting a nice quiet horse with a pleasant disposition. Murphy turned out to be 17 years old and the little girl who adjusted my girth assured me no one had ever fallen off of him. He turned out to be a very responsive horse.

They told us they wouldn’t let us canter unless they thought we were steady enough at the rising trot. That means posting. The horses don’t get to canter much and tend to go very fast when they do. The saddles were Australian working saddles and the stirrups were English style. The saddles looked like English saddles in that they had no horn, but the cantle (front) was a little more pronounced than English saddles. They also had a more prominent knee roll to steady your leg. If Australian cowboys use them, I don’t know where they fasten the rope when they lasso the stock.

The trail was on a 2500 acre piece of property encompassing a mountain and valley.. There were cattle grazing, rivers, and a main road going through it. We saw some wallabies hopping across our path and a green snake slither across the road. We were hoping to spot koalas, but were unsuccessful. A guide told us that koalas sometimes get so stoned on eucalyptus they fall right out of the trees.

When we stopped at the river for tea, some people took a dip. The weather had cooled off and the rain was hard enough to plop into our hot metal teacups and bounce back into our faces. During our snack we were kidding the bush riders (guides) about Australian time and the TV shows not going on at the hour or half hour. There were people on the ride from Melbourne and they were surprised. They said that shows in Melbourne go on exactly when scheduled. We attributed the non-adherence to scheduling here as just a part of the laid back attitude of Queensland. The conversation went on to how the five different states had different laws for driving age, drinking age, traffic rules, etc. I confounded them by mentioning that we have 50 states and they’re all different.

The horses waited patiently under the trees as we finished our tucker and they nickered as we approached. They knew we’d been clued in that they enjoyed the damper as much as we. After we gave the horses their snack, we mounted up and found that their tack was wetter than expected. We came away with wet bums.

After I’d mounted, my horse did a full body shake to get the rain off. It was a first for me. I’d seen them do it, but had never been on board when it happened. It’s like those old beds in motels that would vibrate when you put a coin into a slot. We did get to trot, but never cantered. There were two kids in the group who were having a hard time and some adults who weren’t too steady either. We hadn’t posted in years and it took a few times to feel comfortable.

The owners provided a rotweiller, 2 Australian cattle dogs, and some cats to play with as a way to relax after the ride. As David always says when asked if he had a good ride, “I got off the horse and it was my decision. That’s the definition of a good ride.”
Aussie Style

The answer to the question about the food oddity of the day is that black pudding is the same as blood pudding. Black pudding is Irish and blood pudding is from Eastern Europe. The names are probably interchangeable. I’ve heard of blood sausage too. There is no need to speculate on what goes into that.

On the news there was a story about a new ride opening at an amusement park in Melbourne. As a promotional ploy, the first people to ride it did so in the nude. The entire thing was televised in living buff. Now that’s something you wouldn’t see in the U.S.

We’re getting ready for dinner now. It’s good old American hot dogs tonight. We have to eat something to counteract the Aussie fare.

Toby