Happy New Year from Michael Forman (author). This is Where it Starts.

Happy New Year and welcome to 2013!

We made it! I hope you had a great Christmas period/break and had time off to spend doing what you love most.

Mine was different to the usual I’d do at this time of the year. I often spend Christmas with my family. This year, I went on a driving tour, packing up my camping gear and heading south. The plan was to get to Melbourne to spend time with a friend there and head out to Rye (a beachside town about an hour to the south of the city) for Boxing Day

Touring outback Australia is always an eye-opener. So much of it is unpopulated and, at times, a nothingness as far as the eye can see… and the distances between major and minor towns are enormous. My tour (now last year’s) took a south-westerly route along the New England Highway. This is the same highway my parents drove when our family moved to Brisbane. It’s a wheat and sheep region and, at times, it twists over the mountain ranges. It’s slightly greener than Queensland’s interior, but not much. I’d also been to Warwick years ago to shoot a wedding. It’s just a couple of hours out of Brisbane. To me, Warwick is like many outback towns, developed in the late 1800’s and reaching its heyday soon after. That’s not to say Warwick isn’t thriving; it’s just that change doesn’t happen very fast for any outback town. The buildings stay the same. It’s the signs on their windows that give it away. For instance, a bright pink Domino’s pizza sign stuck to a shack in the middle of dusty, tough, man-country towns isn’t something I get used to seeing.

Tenterfield was one of the places the train stopped at. It’s also a place I’d heard about as an adult in a different context, via the Peter Allen song Tenterfield Saddler. I always wanted to visit and see the saddler’s cottage. I had to grab a camera and shoot it. What a tiny place! The whole house and veranda would fit inside my two-car garage.

railway switches @ Tenterfield

On the railway platform @ Tenterfield.

In 1981, I received a postcard from a friend in a place called Parkes – from the radio telescope town made famous in the movie The Dish. I saw the place on my map and knew I had to make a stop there. It’s a fully functional radio telescope, and it’s amazing to watch as it moves slowly across the heavens. (I can be a bit of a geek at times)

Parkes Radio Telescope

Next stop was Dubbo. Aussie has two large zoos. One in Sydney and the other in Dubbo. It’s called the Western Plains Zoo, and it’s run by the same company. I hired a golf cart to get around and see the animals (indigenous ones, too), because the zoo is just too big to see on foot. It was a great day (a hot one), and despite the flat tyre I got on the road heading into Dubbo, the town was fabulous. After the repairs, I was bound for Echuca.

Meerkat @ Dubbo Zoo

Radio stations always fade and crackle into obscurity too quickly in the outback, so there’s no reason to switch them on. I brought my MP3 player along to combat the problem. I’d made a special folder with the Man From Snowy River songs in it – from a CD I have. A trip to Echuca is about the right place to select such music. It somehow enhances the drive. I settled in with a bottle of red after setting up camp and woke to the sounds of TOOT-TOOT in the morning. The nearby Murray River had Paddle steamers, and I couldn’t wait to book a ticket!

I went down to the dock and climbed aboard PS Alexander Arbuthnot  – to smell the heat of a boiler, to listen to the steam choof out of a smoke stack… I think I spent more time watching the boiler man control the boiler than enjoying the waters we sailed upon!

The paddlesteamer trip (the boiler actually)

A giant log at the Port of Echuca

Melbourne is a bitch to drive. After spending so much time on the open road, the city streets looked and felt clogged and awkward. I bumped and jostled my way to Wheeler’s Hill for the final leg of this part of the journey. When I got there, it was my job to pick apricots (before the possums took them for their own). They tasted good.

While I was in Melbourne, I took in a show and saw Geoffrey Rush in A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. It was hilarious and delightfully naughty. Geoffrey’s got great timing and characterisations. What a master. It was also in one of the restaurants where I tried affogato for the first time and coined the term back-spooning over another bottle of red. Instead of drowning the ice cream in coffee or whisky, you load the back of the spoon with it. The pic tells the story. It was then on to Rye for Boxing Day.

Back-spooning ice-cream with whisky in Melbourne

Rye is a holiday town like Hervey Bay. It’s all white sand and blue water. You wear anything as long as it’s a bathing suit. I think you can get arrested for wearing shoes. I ended up singing karaoke with Rolly pretty much all night long.

With Boxing and Christmas Day behind me, it was time to head back. Taking the same route seemed pointless; I’d already seen that part of the world. So I headed east for the Gippsland area and turned on Man From Snowy River again. Lake’s Entrance is to die for. If I had the money, I’d go there and forget the rest of the world. What a treasureful place LE is!

Lake’s Entrance

Cann River was my next stop. Too tired to go any further, I decided to pull over. This town didn’t look like much – situated on a three-way junction within a forest. I didn’t expect much, but the hospitality was completely unexpected. I think I’d like to stay there again and make my way to the dinosaur feature that was mentioned in the brochure. Hold the phone, Cann River. I’m coming back.

A massive gingerbread house in the Cann River bakery

It was time to turn north. Due north was Canberra. I wanted to see the War Memorial again. I was there in 2001 and enjoyed it,so much I wanted to spend more time there. I have no interest in the capital itself, just the memorial. I intended to be in there for an hour and a half and ended up looking at my watch after four had passed. Talk about a time warp!

Aircraft exhibits inside the museum

The ‘fallen’ monument outside the museum

I should’ve limited my time there. That way, I wouldn’t have had the mispleasure of Goulburn. To be fair, it wasn’t Goulburn’s fault. It was the neighbours who arrived after I did. What a night. He couldn’t stop cursing at his wife. I felt sorry for her… and me.

I scooted by Sydney and headed for the coast to Port Macquarie  – Forster – Coffs Harbour, and then westwards to Casino and Kyogle.

Forster

The meandering route over the border ranges back into Queensland was like a welcome home. This was a familiar place. I stopped at the Driver Reviver stand in Beaudesert with my cup of tea and reminisced about my teenage years, when I’d camp at nearby Rathdowney and explore the Lyon’s Loop Rd and Mt Barney regions. Those were the good ol’ days.

Mt Lindesay (watch for references in the novel)

It was time to seal the end of the journey and drive the final few kilometres to my home city. Seeing the Brisbane skyline rise over the horizon made me appreciate home just that little bit more. After 4300 kilometres, I was entering my own driveway. I arrived in time to see the New Year in and contemplate the future. For me, it means publishing a book and sealing off what I’d started six years ago. There’s still a lot more work to do on ITBIM… still more ground to cover in finding the right audience for it. The material (excerpts) published so far at http://www.mfp.com.au/angelwanderer/ is already attracting readers. Almost 500 new visitors a month are being exposed to ITBIM. Not all stay to read on, but some do. Those who do subscribe via email, RSS feed, or through the WordPress Reader. Some say I’m crazy to write about a subject like this. They say most book buyers are women and that I should be writing with women in mind. 

It’s interesting advice. I wonder if all would agree.

I’ve put all major theatre projects on hold until I’m done with ITBIM SEETHINGS. When I’m done, the readers can choose. I never wrote it for women… or for men in mind. It was written for me… for anyone who has suffered the same way Mitchell Felding has.

I hope you have a great year and achieve all you set out to do.

My best wishes to you all, and your families, Michael Forman (Author).