A Month of Sundays

by James O'Loghlin

  It was all over very quickly. Lane was convicted and got two months, and when I went down to the cells to say goodbye he was philosophical.

  ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Thought I’d get four.’

  ‘You could have done a lot worse,’ I agreed.

  ‘Should have pleaded guilty,’ he said, wise after the event.

  Perhaps, after all, he’d learnt something.

  He looked up at me. ‘Reckon we can appeal it?’

  Kings Cross doesn’t cover a large area and one of the many ways in which it is different to a rainforest is that it doesn’t slowly blend into something else. It stops immediately and abruptly. At its southern end is a huge intersection above William Street where about four different roads try and negotiate their way through each other and various traffic islands and pedestrian crossings. While Darlinghurst Road continues on the other side of the intersection it should have a different name, because it is a different street in a different area. On the other side of the intersection Darlinghurst Road suddenly fills with cafés and restaurants of the highest trend factor, full of tight t-shirts, sunglasses, designer casual gear and independent film-makers catching up while they wait for their next grant to come through. The only blip on the trendy consistency of it is the most out-of-place Rugby League Megastore in the entire world. The only team whose merchandise they’d shift would surely be the New Zealand Warriors. Not because of the team, because of the uniform’s colour: Darlinghurst black.

  I sat on some steps with the giant intersection in front of me, between the two Darlinghurst Roads, and while I did the bearded beggar walked past me, out of the Cross and into the trendy part of Darlinghurst Road. A sensible move, surely. There must be more money and easier pickings in the trendy bit. Yet three minutes later he returned, wobbled past me and disappeared back into the Cross. Giving up? Defeated? As nervous of leaving the Cross as I was of being in it? Perhaps, in the end, for him, while it may not be much, at least the Cross was home.

  I left with two overriding impressions of Kings Cross. One was that it screams shithole. Loudly. The other was of waste. Partly of the land, but mainly of the people: there day after day, adamantly scheming and massively fucking up, and trying to scam money to waste on drugs.

  Was it unfair to draw these conclusions, to generalise and to judge? Did judging them help me to feel superior, to believe I’d made more of my life than they had of theirs? Probably, but you still do it, don’t you?

  fifteen

  divided in death

  We went to Five Dock. Five Dock is just north from Haberfield, separated from it by Iron Cove and a park, and it’s a place the Sydney trend towards rendering the outside of houses has largely missed. It’s all about red brick in Five Dock—and by the way, it doesn’t even have one dock, let alone five. We walked along a har-bourside path that was both perfectly and terribly positioned. The perfect bit was that on one side was the water, offering a view across the bay to the shoreside parks of Leichhardt, and in fact to the very same waterside path, as it winds right around the bay and creates a circle by crossing Iron Cove Bridge. The badly positioned part was that on the other side of the path was a busy road that had cars whooshing along it at 80 kilometres an hour, just a metre or two away. For bad road placement it reminded me of the Bondi Beach carpark. Everyone on the path but us seemed to be jogging, and had their ‘I hate this so much, but it is good for me, isn’t it?’ faces on as they bounced by. Then one ran past smiling— it was so unusual I turned and stared after him. Ten metres past us he stopped. No wonder he was happy. His ordeal was over.

  The wind was behind us and we got as far as Birkenhead Point in a jiffy. It’s a collection of new-looking, done up cosmopolitan apartments and shops, but with a flaw. It has a touch of the Darling Harbours: smart, bright, shiny—and empty feeling. It was trying so hard to look smart that it didn’t look real.

  When we headed back we realised that the wind wasn’t just brisk, it was a gale, so our progress was about as swift as Marcel Marceau’s when he performs his walking-against-the-wind routine on stage. It was hot and sunny, which meant we had to try to keep Bibi’s hat on. The challenge was usually to stop her ripping it off her head with her hands, but now the wind had joined her as an ally and her hat was lucky to last five seconds before heading groundwards again.

  We finally made it back to the car and drove to the Five Dock shops. On the way we, actually I, tried to find the flat where a former girlfriend had lived. I found the road, I found the corner, I even found the shop it was above, but I couldn’t see the door to the flat. Maybe it was the wrong shop or the wrong corner, but being in the area was enough to provoke the return of a trove of long-forgotten memories from the time when I used to visit that flat. It was like stumbling over a box of grade four exercise books in the attic and being whisked back to another time.

  The Five Dock shops are a busy collection of Italian influence. The RSL was a highlight. It was designed Parthenon-style, with Greek pillars rising out of an ordinary Sydney street. Full marks for paying homage to Greek cultural heritage, but it looked out of place by about 20,000 kilometres and 2000 years.

  We went into the wrong café. Damn. The choice was between the smart-looking new Italian one and the plain-looking old-fashioned Italian one. It’s so obvious. Of course you pick the old plain one. It will always have better food. Yet we were seduced by the nice colour scheme and paint job and went into the new one. It was as authentically Italian as McDonald’s is Scottish. Two plastic salads and two small, plain bowls of pasta later we left, and irritatingly saw a group of obviously full-bellied and satisfied people leaving the place we should have been in.

  Next we went to a suburb full of dead people. Rookwood Cemetery is actually bigger than most other suburbs. It’s the largest cemetery in the Southern Hemisphere and has been going since 1867. It’s just west of Strathfield and south of Homebush and is reasonably close to the exact centre of Sydney. Despite the fact that it’s full of trees and is almost park-like in design, it is Sydney’s most densely populated suburb. Over a million people don’t live there. At first it’s like driving into a large country manor. The roads are surrounded by trees and gardens and it’s enormously quiet. There are about twenty different streets in the cemetery, most (apart from Necropolis Drive and Necropolis Circuit) with normal street-sounding names, but there are very few buildings, just graves. It’s a suburb full of low-rise below-ground living. Or not living.

  We turned left then right then left again, and drifted past oceans of graves. I turned the stereo down as a mark of respect and wondered what our mate from La Perouse would do if he took a wrong turn and ended up here. Turn the boombox up to give the spirits a treat, probably. Signs pointed to the Muslim section and the Roman Catholic section, and to the Buddhist, Jewish, Anglican, Presbyterian and Greek Orthodox sections. It seems strange that we continue to be labelled and divided up even after we die. If you’re a Catholic, how important is it really to ensure that, after you’re dead, the other dead bodies that surround you are also Catholic?

  There are no sections for atheists or agnostics, which is a bit of a worry. I haven’t quite worked out yet which group I belong to, but I’m pretty sure it’s one of those two, and I don’t want whoever survives me to have to pretend I fit into one of the other sections to get me in.

  We parked pretty much at random, on the outskirts of a cluster of graves. Rookwood isn’t full yet and behind us were more streets, all prepared and ready but as yet without occupants. They looked like the pre-built Canberra suburbs I remember from when I was a child that had streets, street signs and kerbs but no houses. I looked up at the gentle slope. I might be lying down there one day. Spooky.

  We wandered about an area that was heavy on large family vaults and mausoleums. I’ve always thought that when I die my body won’t be me any more, I’ll be gone, and from what I understand most of the big religions seem to suggest that too, so I don’t really understand why so many put such emphasis on taking
care of the empty vessel after life has left. Here we were in a huge Sydney suburb that was full of bones. Lots and lots of city land used simply to store the dead. Why not put cemeteries out in the country? If the dead do still have some awareness of where their earthly form is, they’d probably appreciate it being taken out of the city for some proper, relaxing, rest-in-peace time.

  There are huge marble family vaults in Rookwood, bigger than Darlinghurst bedsits, many with several occupants, and room for more. We saw one with five occupants, with a place reserved for a sixth who had already gone to the trouble of having his name and birthdate engraved in the appropriate position. When he dies all that will need to be done is fill in his date of departure. It even said ‘Rest in Peace’ which, given that he may still have lots of active things he wants to do with his life, seemed to be jumping the gun a bit. There was even a photograph. It must be strange to come along to pay your respects to your family and see your own grave with your name engraved on it and your own photo staring up at you.

  Almost every vault had fresh flowers laid outside. Or at least I thought they were fresh. On closer inspection it turned out that most were plastic. Who are the people who put them there trying to fool, the dead or the living?

  It’s quiet, of course, and peaceful. Not really spooky at all. It doesn’t feel as if the dead are around. I don’t think they are around. Rookwood, like any other necropolis, is ultimately for the living, not the dead. The dead, I suspect, if they did have any continued existence, wouldn’t care one jot whether their bones were in a nice wooden box surrounded by the bones of lots of other people who held the same beliefs as they did or at the bottom of the ocean. It’s we living who care. It’s we who are left behind with only our memories and a sense of loss who need to create something concrete in an attempt to maintain a connection.

  We wandered over to the already prepared but empty bit and found out it was opened by the then Archbishop of Sydney, George Pell, and dedicated to the memory of Mary McKillop.

  We wondered whether it was okay to eat our homemade sandwiches near the graves, but we were hungry so we did. It’s amazing what a difference six feet vertical, in fact even one or two feet can make. The scene was delightfully calm, and quite beautiful, but if all the remains had been above ground it wouldn’t have been.

  As we strolled back to the car another car stopped next to us. A woman stuck her head out the window and asked us how to get out. She looked quite stressed. Rookwood’s a nice place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to be stuck there.

  Near our car an old woman, stooped and with a walking stick, hobbled to a plain grave, then slowly and painfully knelt down and cleaned it of leaves and twigs. Then she laboriously rose to her feet again and stood looking down at it for several minutes. Who was below? Her husband? Her mother? Her son?

  It made me realise that every one of the graves contained a story. A huge story, the biggest story there is, the story of someone’s life, and more than that, a part of the story of the lives of everyone who knew them.

  I realised Rookwood is more than a place to store the dead. It is a place to communicate with someone who has gone, or to communicate with yourself while you think about them. I thought about all the people for whom a visit to Rookwood was a regular part of their life and was glad I wasn’t one of them, glad that I was just a tourist.

  As we drove out I reconsidered my earlier judgment on the merit of using so much city land for the dead. Rookwood has another use too, a use for the living. It’s a place for peace and contemplation, for remembering and regretting, for wishing and hoping, for thinking and wondering, for crying and maybe even for smiling, and if it gets used for those purposes even a bit, then it’s land well used.

  I went to the Lane Cove National Park on my own, just for a change. As it was a national park, Lucy was happy to give it a miss. She and Bibi were still asleep when I crept away at seven thirty. Lane Cove Road is six lanes wide and heads north from, not surprisingly, Lane Cove. If you are heading north and turn right on Riverside Drive (before you get to De Burgh’s Bridge) —which isn’t easy across three lanes of bumper-to-bumper traffic at 8 a.m. on a weekday—you find yourself almost instantly on a dead quiet road surrounded by lush bush: Lane Cove National Park.

  The contrast from the highway is immediate and striking. The road meanders down and around until it comes to the gates of the national park. The gates were open but there was no one home. There was, however, a ticket box into which you can slip $6 in return for a day pass, but there’s no boom gate so it’s an honour system. I was honourable. The road curved around and about for a couple of kilometres and then I turned off to the left and followed a track for a hundred metres toward the Lane Cove River.

  There was a small carpark where rubbish was very thoroughly catered for. There were five separate bins: one for Picnic Rubbish, three others for Plastic Bottles, Aluminium Cans and Glass, then another for more Picnic Rubbish. I had the core of an apple I had just eaten in the car and was confused. Technically it wasn’t picnic rubbish because I hadn’t had a picnic, and it certainly didn’t fit into any of the other categories. So I tossed it into the bush.

  I set off walking along a track that soon came to the river, but after a hundred metres had to turn back. I’d left my honour-system car pass in my pocket. Although I hadn’t seen another car or person since I’d entered the park, I’d feel like an idiot if I got a ticket from a vigilant ranger. So I trotted back, laid it out on the dashboard and started out again. The track followed the river and I headed upstream. There was dense bushland on both sides of the water and I felt utterly alone. It was excellent. Occasionally a plane would fly over and that was the only reminder of civilisation.

  A few hundred metres along the path I found a dead rabbit, just lying there, eyes open, cause of death unknown. There’s no Rookwood for bunnies, just the great outdoors.

  There were whipbirds everywhere. I couldn’t see them but their distinctive calls came every few seconds. A gradually increasing whistle climaxing in a cracking-whip sound, a few seconds’ pause and then an answering ‘tchew tchew’.

  It’s the male who makes the first sound, the female the second, and the calls have at least two functions.

  ‘Wwhhiiiiiiiiip!’

  ‘Tchew tchew.’

  Can firstly mean:

  ‘Hey, honey, you around?’

  ‘Yeah. I’m just over here, babe.’

  That is, it can be a male and female who are already together just checking out where the other one is.

  Or it can be a dating ritual for single whipbirds. This, however, usually takes at least two, and often a lot more, rounds, so:

  ‘Wwhhiiiiiiiiip!’

  ‘Tchew tchew.’

  ‘G’day, ladies, I’m new in town and I’ve got a pretty good voice, don’t you think?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess it sounds okay.’

  ‘Wwhhiiiiiiiiip!’

  ‘Tchew tchew.’

  ‘You want to get together for a coffee?’

  ‘I’ll see how I’m placed. Give me a call a bit later on.’

  ‘Wwhhiiiiiiiiip!’

  ‘Tchew tchew.’

  ‘Hello, it’s me again. Remember, from before?’

  ‘Um . . . Oh yeah, I remember.’

  ‘Wwhhiiiiiiiiip!’

  ‘Tchew tchew.’

  ‘How about that coffee?’

  ‘We don’t drink coffee. We’re whipbirds.’

  ‘Wwhhiiiiiiiiip!’

  ‘Tchew tchew.’

  ‘Oh sorry, yeah. Well, what about we meet at that bunch of flowers halfway between us for some nectar.’

  ‘Okay, why not? Just a nectar, right?’

  As I strode along the track and made up other conversations the whipbirds might be having, I also noticed there seemed to be more males calling than there were females answering. Perhaps it’s the same with every species. Although at one point there was a male call followed by six female replies, and then nothing more from the male. It was eith
er six different females trying to crack on to the whipbird equivalent of Brad Pitt, or the same female replying six times, with the male suddenly developing a dose of commitment phobia.

  There had recently been a fair bit of rain and things were growing over the track so I had to do a bit of ducking. After about half an hour the track popped briefly out onto the national park road to cross a bridge. As I walked over it a lycra-clad women power-walked past me. I felt like running after her to tell her she would be having a much better time if she came off the road and onto the track, but I didn’t. It confused me. How could she be switched-on enough to see the benefits of disappearing into a national park, and then only want to walk along the road?

  After an hour and a half I pulled myself up onto a big rock at the side of the track and lay on it looking at the river. It was brown but still looked good. Trees overhung it on both sides. I’m not usually very good at sitting still but I sat there for ages, just tired enough to feel I deserved it, and relaxed enough to let go and not think about anything.

  Up river, close by, must have been some mini-rapids, as the sound of water bubbling over rocks was loud. Once I was staying at a beach house very close to the ocean and one of the other guests, an inner-city Sydney dweller, complained that the noise the waves made was keeping her awake at night.

  ‘The sound’s actually a lot like traffic,’ I said. ‘Pretend it’s traffic.’

  She gave me a ‘don’t be a smart-ass’ look but she didn’t complain about it after that. Maybe it worked.

  On the way back it started to rain but I didn’t care. I had a cap so my glasses weren’t vulnerable. I passed the place the rabbit had been and it was gone. Who? How? When? Why? No idea. Fifty metres from the carpark, after hanging on for the last half hour, I had to duck in the bushes for a leak. Then I walked another 11 metres and saw a fully decked-out public toilet.