Weekend at Metung

The power plant at Yallourn North.

Alison, Bronwyn and I drove to Metung to spend Easter weekend and ANZAC Day with their grandfather, John Sedgley. Metung is a tiny place built on an appendix-shaped peninsula in East Gippsland. John lives there alone, on a wooded hillside overlooking the waterfront, in a house called Rosebank.

Bron catches 187 winks.

We'd been warned that there would be some roadworks to avoid as we approached Moe from the west, so we made a looping, inland detour through a town called Yallourn North. We discovered a power plant nearby with three cooling towers that I liked the look of, so we pulled over to stretch our legs and let the dogs pee. As usual, Bron had passed out in the back seat, so we woke her up and made her walk around a bit, too.

I'd recently dusted off my Nikon 8008s camera and started shooting the 35mm film I'd stockpiled and brought with me to Australia. I thought the earth toned towers looked great and vaguely sinister surrounded by the green, bucolic hills of Victoria. From their appearance, I guessed they were designed in the 1960s; smooth and muscular earthenware vessels cushioned by a narrow ring of crisscrossing basket weave threads at their base. We piled back into the car, and two hours later we pulled up to Rosebank just in time for dinner, which had already been prepared.

" A fine vessel she is...a very fine vessel."

The very next day John took us sailing on his boat, Shadowfax. After a perilous descent to the dock down a steep, treefall-strewn hillside (which John, at 94, negotiated with alarming swiftness), we motored the entire way out to Duck Arm on a calm, windless tide, past a string of slim islands that form the meniscus between mainland Australia and the capricious, open waters of Bass Strait. When we arrived, John climbed off the boat and ambled over to the members of a sailing club from Melbourne that had pulled up down the beach. I ran into the scrub to pee and take pictures of GI Joe on the dock admiring Shadowfax.
When John returned, we had coffee and sandwiches, and sailed home with assistance of a steady breeze that had come up. I had my hand on the tiller nearly the whole way back. I love sailing, and it was quite a thrill to feel the tug of the water and the eager lunge of the boat when the sails were trim.

We attended Easter service the next morning at the little Anglican church in town, and sat in the front row so we could see John as he did a short reading for the congregation. Later, we went to Michael and Helen's house (Alison's uncle and aunt) for lunch/dinner, then ended the day with the four of us-- John, Alison, Bron and me-- pretending to stay awake through an episode of "Midsomer Murders".

John Sedgley (white hair, centre) at the afternoon memorial service.

ANZAC Day started early, with a dawn service at the town square on Monday. ANZAC is an acronym standing for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and the day of remembrance is akin to Memorial Day in the United States. Melbourne conducts a good large-scale service, but I think ANZAC Day is best enjoyed in country towns like Metung where the observance is simpler and more intimate, and the ground isn't littered with trash when people leave. About 100 people turned up, yawning and cradling cups of coffee from the local bakery, which had opened early. One man led the brief service from the base of the flagpole, around which both homemade and store-bought wreaths of roses and carnations had begun to collect.

As if on cue, when the service was over a single kookaburra called from a nearby gum, and the crowd dispersed.