Eucalyptus on
the Camino and Two Australians add to my Alice in Wonderland moment. The
Australians are my own vintage give or take a year or two and I ask where they
are from – and refrain from rolling my eyes heavenward at Australia. I think to myself well naturally you’re from Australia, your
accent is a geographical chant, and ask civilly – but where in Australia?
Americans always do likewise, as if we, the rest of the English speaking
world didn’t know! When I’m asked I
always reply Glastonbury – and to a
good ear the next question arises: but
you have a slight, er, um, as they hesitate – ah yes, I say, you are right,
a slight Australian twang about my vowels... Cutting to the chase is my modus operandi, I want to get to the main
point with as little flimflam as possible. It's one of my many irritating traits, I know!
Their answer
floors me: Townsville. I drop my momentary prickles, Townsville! Floods of memories rise up. I lived there for years, went back last August
to stay with the dearest of friends, ached leaving it again.
Townsville, where I lived as a child and
rescued Blueboots the legendary Strand lifer whose not too kind owner walked
him up and down the old Strand for years, giving children pony rides on a back scarred
and raw with sores from a badly fitting saddle.
I saved and begged and scrounged and rescued the twenty-two year old Blueboots
for a tenner. Loved him passionately, dreamed, hopelessly, the poor tired
creature into my Prince Hal – Pat Smythe was every horsey girls heroine at the
time. When we moved south my mother
refused to let me bring Blueboots, sold him back to his abuser on my last day away
at school. I never forgave her for
betraying the poor soul. Thirty-five years later the Fates brought me back to
Townsville to James Cook University to write my thesis, and I fell in love with
the Tropics all over again. I loved the
clouds! Full of dark promise, heavy, and
rich; dark promise like the dark mystery of my subject. The name Townsville brings to my mind’s eye a
circular memory, a sense of completion, an etheric Camino pathway as it were,
right here in a eucalyptus forest.
Oh, I say in
surprise and delight, it’s my most
favourite city; I lived in Mundingburra!
Their response stops me right there in the eucalyptus forest, we used to live in Mundingburra too.
We exchange
names and I, who am thrilled at the coincidence, tell Sue I lived in O’Reilly
Street and she responds with we lived in
O’Reilly Street too; my Alice in Wonderland Moment takes on the Cheshire
Cat’s Grin.
They lived
at number 26, I lived at 33 on the opposite side of the road. When?
we ask simultaneously, and discover we lived in O’Reilly Street Mundingburra during
the same years, and through the horror of the 1998 cyclone. Their side of the
street suffered terribly, the park behind them flooded and all the even numbers
of all the houses went under water. 33
O’Reilly was high set, and the street on the odd-numbered side was higher too,
the flood waters only reached my carport, came up to my waist. The cyclone coincided with a King Tide,
Townsville was cut off, declared a National Disaster Zone, cars were washed
away, people drowned, outside communication was severed, residents were told to
remain indoors for days – though on the fourth day a friend and I managed to
get to the Strand to leave food for the stray cats. The old Strand itself was destroyed. Driving through the streets then was like
driving through a war zone. The weir at
the end of O’Reilly Street was flooded, the swollen Ross River a constant, terrifying,
booming roar I could hear from my bedroom for weeks as it thundered over the
weir.
Townsville
population runs around 170,000 over forty odd suburbs. I lived in one of those suburbs and count
close friends on less than the fingers of one hand. The odds are low, but do
Sue and Tony happen to know them? They
certainly do, attended the funeral of a mutual friend only weeks before, now
live in a marvellous skyline apartment complex and neighbour to another mutual
friend, have links with the House of Prayer, the best little sanctuary in Oz
and the affinities, for me, simply grow curiouser and curiouser. But couples are couples, and my excitement is
singular and solely significant to me.
As aware as I am of this I still allow my affection for that past time
and loved place to interrupt their walk.
We reach O
Pedrouzo and the yellow arrow, rather shabbily painted, points right to a bar
and to the continuation of the path through the forest. The next milestones show a kilometre marking
that doesn’t accord with my reckoning of the distance to O Pedrouzo. Tony looks at his map, O Pedrouzo is back there. They are headed for Amenal where they have
pre-booked a hotel; about now we are standing in the forest at San Antón. Oh.
A
Korean girl walks briskly towards us, she overshot O Pedrouzo too, misled by
the false yellow arrow. She and I trudge
back together, the yellow arrow was painted by the barman, leading us to the
last bar in town, his. The town itself
is left, and left by a long chalk and
a long walk. She is kind, the young
Korean girl, concerned that my venerable self will find the municipal albergue, walks with me through the town
to where I sent my mochila and, buen Camino, we wish each other as she leaves
me to find her own privately run albergue.
To my dismay
my mochila is not here. The brusque hospitalera tells me they refuse to receive mochilas, their reason is lost on me and I begin to fret. I am told to go back to a café where my mochila might have been dropped
off. It wasn’t. I sit down, quite stunned. What on earth can I do? I feel like weeping and three kind Italian
men make every fuss of me and phone everywhere and then walk with me to the
private albergue of Porte de Santiago
and voila! the kind hospitalero there
had accepted my errant mochila. The men chuckle when they see my red and
white polka dot ribbons, and more, that my mochila
is a Ferrino. One of them has a Ferrino,
the best, he smiles.
The hospitalero asks if I am staying, and
out of my mouth pops, thank you so much
for all your help, but no, I think I want to go on to Amenal, and I think I’d
like a taxi.
I stand at a
loss as I say this, why not rest here? As the words form and fall into being the
snorer who only snores a leetle is
signing in with her daughter. I suspect my
answer is a response from somewhere very deep inside me, from a place of body
wisdom that knows more than I do how exhausted I am after thirty-nine days on
the road. The thought of a hotel in
Amenal, where Sue and Tony have pre-booked, beckons. A real night’s sleep ...
I only have tomorrow to walk – into
Santiago. The hospitalero runs to the street to call me a taxi, I reach over the
desk to stamp his official sello in
my credencial, I want to remember
this place, his kindness; the Italians are sitting in the lounge, surprised I
am leaving. The taxi driver is young-ish
(anyone round here is young compared to me) and speaks enough English. We reach Amenal, it’s only 2 kms along the
road, but there are no rooms. I dread
going back to the albergue and a dorm
for my final night on the Camino. My
taxi gallant takes my life in his
hands – I make phone call for you he
says and I don’t care where it is he is offering to drive me, it will be
perfect.
And so I come
to Lavacolla. Once upon a time there was
a pool here at Lavacolla where all pilgrims ritually washed the dust off their
heels as well as their clothes, and symbolically their soul, to prepare for the
great walk tomorrow. I pause, amazed at
how appropriate, how symbolic a place, I have been brought to for my own last
night. My taxi driver has a hint of the
angel about him, this is his choice for me, an hotel close to the airport and opposite
the small lane way that will lead me on to the Camino tomorrow. I am offered a perfect room, at peregrina precios, and find my window
faces that very laneway. I tip my taxi
driver and thank him just as the storm of all storms bursts overhead. The whole
of Nature is washing me in preparation! Waving goodbye I race back inside, shower
and make myself ready to go down to eat what will be the best meal I‘ve had in
Galicia: organic cidre, langoustines,
filet mignon, steamed vegetables, homemade crème caramel and a bottle of
local mineral water, all for €15, a real extravagance.
The torrential
rain over Lavacolla, the washing place, is a fitting baptism for my walk into
Santiago tomorrow. I wash the ribbons on
my boots, on my backpack, on my walking stick and on my hat in preparation. After walking 700 kilometres my dear
uncomplaining feet have a little moan on each little toe. Fleece for them tomorrow. Tomorrow, too, I can crack open my tiny phial
of hairspray, my lippy, the red and white polka dot Alice band bought in
Burgos. I spend a couple of hours writing
up my journal; so many complexities woven into a day. I note down that passing through St Eulalia a
sung “welcome” greets me, an old pilgrim song, as I walked past a box with a
speaker wired up on a fence; I’d stood in front of the contraption and burst
out laughing at its ingenuity.
Tonight I
feel my epic pilgrimage has expiated every sin possible to commit in one
lifetime and, having resisted the desire to murder a snorer or six, am
glowingly confident I will have earned my right to wear a scallop shell in
whatever form of jewellery I find when I reach Santiago! The storm has blown past, the sunset, as I
look from my window, glows over Santiago, is a glory. I am blessed, cosy, safe and dry and I settle
down to sleep the sleep of the just.
To be
continued – but it isn’t The End! 
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