I almost can't bear the idea of leaving Australia in a week and a half. Not so much the summer ("stinking" hot, as my mum always says) but the light, the accents, the crazy trees, the landscape... There's been so much of a home-coming for me in this trip - I feel like everything in me is just singing for the joy of being back.

On Boxing Day Joanne and I took off for Hanging Rock. We brought some food for a picnic (required activity at Hanging Rock) and drove out on the Calder via Woodend. Getting there found that there were bargain-priced scones-with-jam-and-cream, and couldn't resist. Sat at the cafe and had a Devonshire tea and then wandered up the rock.

It was pretty busy - and unfortunately, most people didn't seem to have the same impulse as Joanne and I to sit quietly and ponder the emptiness. I was inclined to hide away from people. Sat with my notebook taking notes on bits and pieces - lots of things to look up, follow up on. I want to be writing poems! Walking home in the dark last night I was thinking about writing, and subjects... I feel like I'm close to the new thread. Need to "listen with my heart's ear." I'll get there.

Apparently the rock itself is some sort of rare volcanic rock that other than here is only found in Scandinavia. Down the bottom it always looks so lush, and then you get up to the top and find these trees that are as grey and bare as the rock itself. It's been a few years since I was there - I went with Pete a long time ago, and sat at the top of one of the highest rocks and read him the last seven chapters of the final Narnia chronicle - I'd been reading the books to him over a few months. Since then, I don't think I'd made it back. But then, I remember before going to DC I was getting antsy because it had been a few years since I'd left Melbourne... the occasional trip to the Dandenongs aside.

Pete and I went to the zoo a few days ago. We're also planning a trip out to Healesville, probably next weekend as Pete is working during the week. I keep forgetting that he's not a man of leisure anymore. The zoo was distressingly busy - and, sadly, it wasn't just kids that thought it was a good idea to knock on the glass to try to get the animals attention. It made me pretty mad. Especially when a couple thought it was a good idea to let their three-year-old, who was holding food, walk right up to an emu wandering around the Australian section, and then laughed at their daughter when the emu took her food and she started crying. I suspect I'm something of a misanthrope, some days!

I went to Herring Island yesterday, a small island in the middle of the Yarra, near Como. It was nearly 40 degrees all day (over 100 fahrenheit for those that can't handle the proper system...) so it wasn't the ideal day for it, but Parks Victoria only run a boat service on the weekends. It only takes half an hour or so to walk all over the island, so we managed to see everything and get away relatively quickly. There are sculptures scattered over the island, which was interesting to see - they've been there a decade or so now. The Park Ranger told us they've been having trouble with a lot of the trees - the salt builds up around the island, and when trees get to a certain size, they think their roots are hitting the salt, and they're starting to die off.

Caught up with a few people last night - Amy, Aaron and Julian. Went to Section 8, an outdoor bar in a disused car park in Chinatown, then for dumplings for Amy's birthday. Good to see people! Should be spending New Year's Eve with them in some park in the city too.

I've been reading Australian stuff ferociously since I've been home - Quarterly Reviews and poetry and history... I'm hungry for it all. I feel more and more like I'm going to become an Australian specialist. So I suppose I'm stocking up on reading material to take back with me as well. Not that there'll be a whole lot of time, but - we'll get there, I suppose.

Now I'm just waiting for Joanne - we're going in to the Melbourne museum and then to a film at Cinema Nova. A nice slow day... I've got a pile of Australian movies out from my video-store-boys yesterday too, so I may watch something tonight.

At the moment it’s all writing, all the time—I don’t particularly mind. I feel that this semester has been one long class. I’ve learned so much—especially about the ways I think, and about ways to approach my formal writing. These things don’t so much overturn what I already had figured out as supplement.

Now it’s crunch time—my three big assignments are all due this week, one on Tuesday and two on Thursday. The essays I’m writing have been moving—sometimes slowly, sometimes more quickly. (My Dickens paper was all I worked on yesterday. It was good to get so much work done, and I feel that it’s going to be a good paper—it’s good to have a full draft of it now, that I can tinker with early next week.) Right now, though, I’m working on getting a full draft of the other two completed. I’ve moved out of the “DQ” (the area of the library right near the Dickens Quarterlies) into the conference and seminar rooms of the English department, which have been renamed “The Situation Room” and “The Bunker” respectively. Apparently we’re a much more present group of grad students than has been here in other years. I like the collegiality that has been set up.

Thursday is also when I hope on a plane to come back to Australia for a few weeks. As I don’t have a real television in the US, I anticipate I’ll spend some time being incredibly lazy, lying on the floor with Scout, watching movies. I’m still in shock that I haven’t seen more movies since I’ve been here. Oh well!


Because I’ve been lazy (read: insanely busy) I somehow never got around to posting my few pictures from Tennessee nor recounting the thanksgiving experience. Suffice to say: food, yum. I counted 29 Baptist churches on the highway—actually not that many for such a long drive (10 hours) but the Baptists don’t seem a very highway-centric denomination. More into the small towns the highways all bypass. I may get around to posting the list of churches, or else they may turn into a found poem.

I met Jorie Graham a few weeks ago too—I don’t always love reading her poems (some of her recent books have one or two absolute stunners, and then more that are fascinating, but also seem loose in some way I can’t define) but I’m always interested in them. And I am a fan—can’t help it. I was talking to David Gewanter about this last week, and I think it is simply that the “tyranny of distance” negates the possibility that I can play it cool with overseas poets. I love Australian poets and poetry, but I suppose I sometimes feel cut off from the rest of the world so much sometimes, that now I feel like fainting every time I get to meet a new poet. And it’s lovely that I actually get to meet some of them! I’m hoping that next year I’ll finally get into gear and do some interviews