At the moment this post goes online, I’m probably asleep in Eden, which is a town in coastal NSW. If the bus doesn’t break down en route, if nothing goes wrong, if… if…
I have to write much now that my thesis has been submitted for examination, and it’s cold in Canberra, and Eden is in the middle of whale season. Three excellent reasons to catch a bus and visit the Sapphire Coast. I’m not going for long. When I’m back I might tell you about some of the work I did there. I don’t want to jinx my writing by promising vast amounts of it.
I’ve been through Eden a couple of times. I’ve written Eden into a short story (“After Eden”) and into a novel (Borderlanders). I might see if I have the courage to tell the owner of the pub from Borderlanders that one of their staff members is in a novel. I haven’t told anyone in Robertson (further north, in the mountains) that the whole town is in both story and novel so… maybe not. We will see,
I’ve never spent more than an hour in Eden, because I’ve always been there on the way to somewhere else. It’s on one of the most spectacular roads in the country, Highway #1, that goes (mostly) right around the coast. I’ve dreamed of travelling the whole way round, but can’t see how to make that happen. I can, however, go to Eden.
Eden is one of those places that’s not well known but is rather special. First, whales. Also, tourist-watching, though I suspect it’s the wrong season for the giant boats. Eden is, in fact, probably the Australian equivalent of Nantucket, if the whalers from Nantucket worked with orcas.
Mostly, the town is a lovely place where I can walk down to the sea even on a bad day and it’s not nearly as cold as Canberra. We’ve been warned that the wind straight from the Antarctic is coming again, from tomorrow. Canberra will be bitter-cold for up to a week. In Canberra, as I love saying but don’t love experiencing, that Antarctic wind travels directly over the biggest snowfields in the country and collects cold from the coldest mountains in the country and Canberra is its first city after all that collected cold… Canberra has a very solid wind chill factor on Antarctic days.
The Sapphire Coast and its hinterland has complex and fascinating history, lovely cheese (best grassland in mainland Australia, around Bega), and is part of an overland trail that dates back thousands of years. I can’t walk the trail, and I doubt I can get to Montague Island to greet penguins, but Eden contains enough architecture and history and whales and museums and a good local library so that when I get mental cramps from writing, I will not be bored. I will take pictures and research later fiction. Or I will walk five minutes to the nearest beach and watch for whales.
If all has gone well, this is where I am right now, while you’re reading. Maybe at the beach, looking at Twofold Bay or out over the Pacific. If you’re reading from California, wave at me, just in case.
Now I want to go to Eden!
Your observation about the effect of the Antarctic winds on Canberra reminds me of what people say in Wichita Falls, Texas: “Ain’t nothing between here and the North Pole except a barbed wire fence, and it’s usually down.” Wichita Falls is at the southern end of the North American Great Plains and the wind can get nasty there in winter. Not as bad as farther north, of course, and it doesn’t get a lot of snow in the winter (though often just enough ice to shut things down) because it’s pretty dry there. But still, colder than one would like, especially in a place that goes to the other extreme in summer: triple digits Fahrenheit.
It sounds like Canberra. We get hot summers, but (except when the summer wet migrates from the equatir) it’s very dry. But who needs wire fences when the biggest thing between us and the South Pole is the Great Southern Ocean?
We’re not close to antarcta, however. The wind that brings us its air is one of the great global forces.