“Eventually Fox coaches Rusty back out onto the highway which climbs into the Opthalmia Ranges whose bluffs and peaks and mesas rise crimson, black, burgundy, terracotta, orange against the cloudless sky. Gully shadows are purple up there and the rugged layers of iron lie dotted with a greenish furze of spinifex. You sense hidden rivers. Your ears pop with altitude. Closer to the road, on scree slopes the colour of dry blood, the smooth white trunks of snappy gums suspend crowns of leaves so green it’s shocking. Mobs of white cockatoos explode from their boughs. The colours burn in his head. Wide bends reveal the country behind darkened by the shadows of late afternoon. Fox feels his head slump back on his neck. He comes from low, dry, austere country, limestone and sand and grasstrees. Apart from the sea itself the only majestic points at home are the sculpted dunes. Even the graceful tuart tree seems dowdy up here.”
Tim Winton, Dirt Music
One Easter break I went to stay with my friend who lives in Tumut, a country town in South West New South Wales. There were three of us city girls going, and they’d all travelled together on the “boarders’ bus”, an unlikely sort of community which ferried country kids back to their hearth and home once the school holidays began. I had to stay back in Sydney for a few days so I met them by plane, a measly one rickety hour or so to Wagga Wagga – so good they named it twice! – and then the short drive to her place, perched on a hill and surrounded by green just outside of Tumut. Those four days were blissful in the way that school holidays can only be. We rode tandem bikes and watched Centre Stage and drank milo till it made us sick. We reveled in endless, circuitous games of monopoly and staying up as late as we could, prank calling pesky ex boyfriends and chatting about everything and nothing until, eyes heavy and drunk with sleep we drifted off in turns, each gamely feigning alertness. In the mornings we pattered out to the kitchen and clambered up onto high stools, awaiting whatever cooked thing would emerge, steamy and hot and delicious from the linoleum kitchen of her epicurean mother.
On a lazy Thursday we went for a picnic in a hilly grove that could be only be reached by a steep climb through a thick forest that was swollen with green, somehow made more lovely because this bit of earth didn't belong to us. Saturated tourist placards proclaimed that this was one of the oldest woodland growths in the area. All we cared about was that these were the kinds of trees fairies lived in. Tall-trunked, thick-leaved and with branches that were long and coltish like the legs of a baby deer. Perfect. And so tall! Rising high from a blanket of fallen leaves browned with age and decrepitude there is, and could be, no more perfect place to picnic, no more perfect place for a teenager to sit down and feast upon cut ham and soft cheese and flasks full of home-made ice tea. It was something out of an Enid Blyton novel. That day we were smothered by green – it was above us and below us and around us and on us, on our coats and scarves and sweaters and cargo pants. We had mint in our tea and lettuce on our sandwiches and bunches of grapes in our esky. And, when we lay out flat on the rug, arms laced behind our heads, we looked up and saw green. It was peaceful. Isn’t that what green represents, anyhow?
When I thought about it today, I’m a bit smothered by peaceful green at the moment too. On my Thursday Sunday sweater which I’ve been wearing non stop to keep me toasty in the unexpected chill of Hong Kong. In my scent and my bath, figs and geranium leaf all round. All throughout the book I’m reading – Dirt Music for a class on Australian literature at uni – beautiful and haunting and true. Regarding the boots I’ve finally – finally! – purchased and added to my life, crossing another thing off my winter wardrobe planning list. Maybe the real reason I've been wearing (and acquiring!) so much green is that it goes so well with red, which is everywhere in Hong Kong at the moment. Kung Hei Fat Choi!
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