Happy birthday for last week man - thanks.

I haven't said anything for a while.

I had a birthday. It was kind of spread out across the weekend like a throw rug of gifts and outings. I got a book of drawings, and a novel I'd never heard of. I got a $30 gift card. I played scrabble. I went to a cousins 21st party at Queens, at which I was refused entry until my dad came hahaha. It was really loud and packed in the upstairs bit. We left pretty soon after we had got there, but it was nice seeing everyone.

Yesterday I went to fremantle on the train with a friend. I'd only been for school excursions, so it was really fun going to all the different shops that I'd never seen before. It's a lot better than going into the city. We went to this little store called kakulas sister which is one of those old style food stores with open bags of beans and seeds and tea and coffee.

I kept saying things like "ooh, I've never tried those" and "oh man, those look so good". There was a bag of chamomile flowers which I lent over and smelled. I've never tasted chamomile, or even really smelled it. I think I'll buy some chamomile tea. I'm not really a tea drinker, but I still like it. Then we went to elizabeth's, after some other little detours. There was a section for the antique books. I picked out a book that had one of those old style hardcovers with no writing on it, with some sort of opal/paua shell looking pattern on it. I don't know what it was made of, but that part was embedded onto the cover, and the page edges were coloured too. It looked very old, but I think it was from the sixties. The introduction explained that it was a novel by a german novelist from the seventeenth century who worked under many names, all anagrams of his own. The list was very amusing to read through, all these german three-part names. Apparently he was the father of the novel, before the english 'fotn' who I forget the name of, wrote. It said that people were still passing around these books that they thought were written by different people for years and years, and only very recent research had found out the little they know about his life. It had woodcuts in the front section and everything. It's so interesting to look at old books like that. I found another one which was an old, old book about bees! Anyway, we looked at some other books before leaving. There was an old 50's penguin copy of The War of the Worlds by H G Wells which was pretty cool to see. After that we had lunch, sitting in that park near little creatures brewery. Then we ended up at the other elizabeths, the sister store of the other one, just around the corner. There's a proper fiction section which the other one doesn't have. There was an old penguin book there I saw, amongst all the others in the classics section, that was by Henry Handel Richardson. I read the introduction/bio part. It kept saying that 'she' wrote it when 'she' was here and 'her' inspiration was this and that. I couldn't understand why someone would name their newborn daughter Henry in 1870. Furthur reading revelealed that she, Ethel Florence Lindesay Richardson took the name of her brother, who had died, I think. She said that there was a controversy at the time over whether a woman could write a novel as well as a man, and she wanted to test this.


The book I had picked up was the second in 'The Fortunes of Richard Mahony" trilogy, about a man who comes to Australia for the gold fields. It's apparently one of the best australian works of literature, but was hardly successful or recognised when the books were released. Because the release dates were so far apart, and the story takes a while to conclude.

• Australia Felix (1917)
• The Way Home (1925)
• Ultima Thule (1929)
• The Fortunes of Richard Mahony (1930)
  • Comprising the novels: Australia Felix, The Way Home and Ultima Thule

When it did, with Ultima Thule, it was then recognised as the great work that it was. What's a story without an ending? Then it was released as the one volume.



Maybe I should go back and buy the book. I'd have to find the other two though. Hmmm.

-Oh wow, I just thought, maybe she has a story in my best australian short stories book, and I looked, and there she was! Ha! I love that. iquwpreoiuqwpoieru You don't need to know this. But it's fun.

Anywayyyy, we got some gelato from Il Gelato. I got Cherry. Hahaha, somebody knows I was thinking of them. Anyway, we walked back to the train station, and I felt very at peace, and breezy, and summery. It was the best I've felt in a long time. Fremantle is lovely. Herman Melville was right, about man being drawn to the sea. You can feel it in the air. The cool breeze of the coast. We ate pumpkin seeds on the ride home, and looked out the window at the sun glistening on the brown, port water of the shipyards. We were so close to it, if the train fell to one side, we would all drown. When we went into a tunnel, and all went black, I could see my reflection in the opposite window. I smiled at myself, as if to say, hi, friend. A man kept looking, staring intently at me the whole trip, but I made no notice, and tried not to be judgemental. Sometimes I'll stare back into their eyes, the people who do that. I once did that, with a man, I forget where, and I smiled at him, and he was almost repulsed by the warmth of it. He stared back for a whole second though, which is a long time to have direct eye contact with a stranger. Then he looked away, defeated. I don't know why he was looking at me. A guy with thick rimmed glasses, in that horn-rim shape, you know, I don't remember what to call that, but a guy got on the train and sat down at the end of my row of seats, and I lent over to see if he had lenses in his glasses, because it looked like he didn't, and I find that pretty annoying, and also, I need a new prescription and I'm going crazy looking out for people with glasses, trying to decide what frames to get, or to just stay with these. Anyway, so, stupidly, I lent over very conspicuosly and looked and he saw me do this and I felt really silly, and he looked down and I sat back on my seat and stared out the window, and sort of laughed at myself, inside.