Summer Fun

Summer fun, at least in memory, was year-round in the Australia of my youth - from age three to age sixteen. Sydney, so says memory, had no winter, although the seawater, Olympic-sized swimming pool near our house was closed for a couple of months. In summer and winter I went everywhere barefoot. Crime occurred only in the movies, and generally that was American crime, not Australian. The population then was seven million; since then the population has tripled. Hard to imagine what that increase has done to the lives of summer fun revelers and beach lovers. How I miss the yellow sand of Sydney and environs surfing beaches: Manly, Queenscliff, 'Harboard' (forget spelling), Dee Why, Collaroy, Narrabeen, and on all the way to Palm Beach. And that's just North of Sydney. South, I still have yet to explore.

Memories flooding back simply because daughter Diana is going there in a couple of days in order to meet her Southern Hemisphere relatives for the first time. My daughter is a psychologist; I hope her relatives don't find out. In the Aussie-land I remember one dealt with problems by having another beer. Anything academic was anathema. Or so I remember.  I better not return; in age I'd be easy to knock on my 'keyster'.  Ha ha ha ha ah ha ha.....   Oh well, that's why Aussies have always done so well in battle. Cheerfully pugnacious. (Thank God poor ol' Mel Gibson didn't get into fisticuffs with the Malibu cops.)

 

Adieu, and have a few...             (rendezvous)

Barry

So many years, and so many miles

separate Australia (of the 1930's,

late 1940's, and 1984, and today -

dates of contact) that much more

separation has take place than would

normally happen among family members

from the same country, but separated

only by time and contiguous geography.

And, curiously enough, if it hadn't been

for the bonding that came about during WW2

the gulf would be even more enormous.

 

Barry

http://journals.aol.com/bbartle3/Vengeance/