day 241 – i spent a lazy day at craig’s house.
day 242 – today i planned a stroll down memory lane … actually, the destination was andover lane, the small alley behind the house i grew up in. i caught the train across the city to mitchelton and walked along blackwood road. in the main street, i sat at an outdoor cafe, drank a coffee, and tried to remember what all the old shops had been. the street hadn’t changed much in the 15 years since i last visited, but most of the stores had changed. the old newsagency was the same. as was the doctors, the pet store and a few others.
memories of my childhood came gushing back as i remembered all the crazy things that had happened back then. i remembered the gay hairdresser who tried to style my hair (which i hated). i remembered a kid at my school (ricky heath) who had some kind of bone disease, but because his parent’s had money he thought he was tough and tried to beat me up (he was physically too weak to throw a decent punch). i remembered the aboriginal kid i used to hang out with sometimes and how he drowned during a flash flood (we often used to play and go walking through the culverts and open storm water drains). i remembered the abandoned land the council owned which we kids used as a bmx race track – we’d jump our bikes over the piles of discarded dirt and rocks.
i finished my coffee and walked about half a kilometer to my old house. i walked up the lane and remembered the kids who were my neighbours (including the greek kid, nicholas, who lived down the lane) and the places we used to play. i walked past my old house. the back fence had been replaced by a fence with more privacy, but i could still see the house and it looked pretty much the same as i remembered it. it looked a little run down and the old carport (which was just a corrugated iron roof on some poles) was still there. i’d assumed that the place would have been painted and maybe the carport improved … but the house looked as if it hadn’t had any care since we’d lived there more than 20 years earlier.
i walked to the end of the lane and back around in front of the house. it really did look the same as i remembered it. it was hard to tell if anyone was living in it. i took a photo and turned my attention to my old schools. my house was on a street that overlooked my old primary school (directly in front) and the high school (to the right, built on the hillside). both schools were pretty much as i remembered them. the primary school had a few small additional buildings, decreasing the size of the original playing ovals.
even though it was a school day, i had hoped that if i talk to the primary school staff they could help me locate old school photos. they were friendly and said they’d help if i could come back later in the day. whilst the school uniform had changed, i did spot one little girl wearing the original chequered green dress that students had worn when i was there. the office lady told me it was probably a hand-me-down and the uniforms weren’t available in that style any longer.
the next stop was the third school, back across the main road. when i was a kid, grades 1 and 2 had their own school: mitchelton infant’s school. the primary school only covered grades 3-7. the infant’s school had been just down years ago and the primary school now took on the extra two grades. the infant’s school premesis was sold to a company who now uses it as a mission. i talked to one of the girls working in the office and she said they had no old records from the school. we had a chat and i discovered that she knew quite a lot about the school’s history. i was surprised to learn that the original buildings had been heritage listed by the queensland government and that the buildings couldn’t be torn down or remodeled.
giving up on the infant’s school, i walked back into town and headed to brookside shopping centre. brookside was the holy grail when i was a kid. it’s where all the toy shops were and the location of the famous ‘chocolate soldier’: a chocolate and lolly shop. brookside also had a myer, which is where i got busted shoplifting when i was 13. brookside is now enormous. they’ve expanded it and i honestly got lost walking around the place.
i finally escaped and headed back to blackwood road. i had fish and chips for lunch at a fish and chip shop which i think was the same when i used to live there. then i walked back to the primary school and met the librarian. she showed me a massive plastic box full of photo albums. it wasn’t the entire collection of mitchelton school photos, but it was very encouraging. during my search i found two class photos from my years. i got lucky and found a class photo from the infant’s school (which didn’t even have student names on the bottom), but the second photo i found (year 7) listed me as absent. damn!
the librarian scanned and emailed the photos to me. she told me that there were more albums of school photos somewhere, but was unable to locate them. she promised that (when she had time) she’d dig through the other boxes and see if she can find the remaining photos.
i was happy with the two photos i’d acquired and walked back to the train station.
i returned to craig’s house and took a break. in the evening craig and i went to the cremorne theatre on southbank to see ‘the crucible’. it was a fairly good production and we had a good night. megan met us there and we drove her home afterwards.
day 243 – i spent the day at home. since i was leaving soon, craig’s parents offered to come into the city and have dinner with us (to say farewell). we went to sizzler; an all you can eat buffet. i hadn’t done a buffet in a long time, and i went in hard. i had too much food and beer. i walked out feeling very sick. i thought i was going to throw up, so i walked off ahead to find a quiet spot to vomit. i didn’t puke, but my stomach hurt like hell and took hours to settle down. i have never felt so sick (due to food) in all my life and i vowed never to go to a buffet ever again.
day 244 – i spent the day at home and after craig finished work we went to southbank to do some night photography. we took photos and met inyoung for dinner. i got some decent photos of the brisbane wheel in mid spin. satisfied, we called it a night and headed home.
day 245 – i returned to the queen street mall in town to get a flight to alice springs. the cheapest flights were mid week, so rather than flying straight away, i decided to delay my departure a few days. i met craig and inyoung in the myers center for coffee. we walked to southbank and then caught the bus home.
i took a break and in the evening we returned to southbank to do some more night shooting. this time we decided to take photos from the other side of the river, with a better angle of the brisbane wheel. we took photos and, deciding to experiment, i took out my torch to do some light drawing. this was the second time craig and i have done this (the first being at bong eun temple in korea). this time we had the brisbane river and the wheel as our backdrop. we took a bunch of photos and had a laugh drawing rude pictures (and naughty words) in the air.
