Last few km into Bendigo

I finished my last mouthful of water, and got up. Starting out is hard. Thighs were aching,  calves sore, the bit above my ankles was red and swollen slighly,    maybe shin splints?... and my feet stinging and tender, even through my new shoes. Glad I had them, I didn't feel every little pebble through them like I did through my boat shoes.

Started on the little dirt walking track beside me, into and through the Greater Bendigo National Park, which came back to the road, but meant more time that I was off the highway. Then just outside the perimeter fence of the highway, until the edge of town, where a bitumen footpath started.

Looking out for a coffee shop or store to buy a drink.

Got a Boost juice from a big plaza, Lansell Shoping Mall. Got going again, looking for somewhere to put my feet up higher than my body to minimize the swelling in them. Hard to find in cities.

Then I realized I'd probably need to go to the loo soon. No digging stick behind a tree in Bendigo. 5km to go,  I'll have to keep going now, get to that welcoming house, use the loo, have a shower and put my feet up for an hour before dinner.

And that's what I did. Got into my Son&Daughter-in-law's place about 5pm, then we had pizza about 6:30pm, drove back to Harcourt about 7:40pm, collected my stuff in the fridge. Which was surprisingly heavy. Glad that I had left it.

Played some games of Splendor (with a new Mission variation). And the next morning...  I'm hoping to scum a lift with some friends back to Orange for a committment I have there. Hope to be back after that for the next exciting episode....

Much, much, that couldn't be said here, but some got "onto paper".

Thanks for coming with me through this blog.

Thursday

Woke around 6:30am. Packed, cooked a lamb chop, egg, and two bit of toasted olive bread, which i bought yesterday. Cup of tea. I need to travel light today, for the 27k to my son & daughter-in-law's place in Bendigo. So... i left all my excess food and stuff in the fridge, labelled, and checked with the proprietor of the Motel, if i could come back after dinner at my son's place tonight, and get them. She was cool about that.

Tried to go through the next storylet in a first Century record of one the the most admirable humans i know of. Strange how a person determined to help others can get to be hated so much.

Walked most of the way on the outside of the perimeter fence of the Calder Highway. Sometimes there was a dirt track  for mail boxes, or even a bitumen  road there. Sometimes lovely grassy patches.

 Sometimes prickly spider filled shrubby trees or long grass. 

Sometimes I'd cross the freeway to a road along the other side for a few km 

Mostly without hiking sticks today. Sometimes i find one or two if i think thete might be dogs about.

Just passed Big Hill about 10km S of Bendigo, walking in the drains above the road.

I try to wave to people when i can as they drive past, if they see me. 

Stopped for about an hour with my feet up a tree when i got to with 10km from my destination before 1pm. 

At the beginning of a Bendigo Mational Park walking trail:

Had most of my water, and ate a handful of trailmix. I'm under a tree in the shade downhill from this gate.

Sent a text to a few friends saying come with a cuppa if you have time. I think everyone is busy today. No probs. 

Hope to make it to my son & daughter-in-law's place before dinner tonight.

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Retrace old ways. Become a son.

Retrace old ways. Become a son.

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The only ways that forward go: retrace

each backward step, each knot that acts to bind.

And thus undo the tantrum that defaced

the patient work creative love would find

itself a-doing million years of days

(each day might be a thousand years or so)

but ev'ry tiny wing or seed displays

what work creative love can do and know.

Until it owns, as only love can do,

to set it free to be, or choose (as might

a baby god, if GOD would be such who

would make and take such chances, though they're slight.

Creative love which made this gum-tree, and,

the gum nut from which it could then expand;

the also wants to kneel and hold the hand

of tiny babies who don't understand.

And more than "wants to", does on ev'ry day

when any father, mother,  kneels to play,

and help a little one to stand, or say,

a sound that could connect, or mean, or pray.

By "pray", I mean the old word that means ask

for help from someone higher up the line,

to thus enable a more complex task,

or when some wisdom's needed at this time.

The source of all creative-love's at work

(who loves, as parents only try to do),

to teach us love, though we must not just shirk,

but discipline ourselves to this end too.

---

(the things you wake up thinking about) learning to see.. learning to be..

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Oh God! You are the only one who could

have set this whole place up, then disappeared.

Although, I s'pose each mother has a good

go at the same job to her children near 

to term, when they might just about be born,

with eyes and ears, and other senses too,

but no chance yet to recognize her form

b'coz they are protected in a room

that's made within her very self, to save

them, in their undeveloped, immatu-

re, state (which  means they cannot yet behave

appropriately, as though they'd had the tour

of ev'rywhere, they have in fact been to

inside the belly of the Mum of them.

My daughter lived for months that way in leaux

of doing tours of India back when

we visited there, months before her birth,

we reckoned she would be "safe as a house"

for even though she lived within this Earth,

she needed to develop, not espouse

opinions as to whether Mums exist,

or boast about the places that she's been,

or spruke about the things that she had missed.

Another time, they might be by her seen.

And still her mother cares for, thinks of her.

(Though each is also helping others too,

to speak in language understood, preferred.)

I think her Mum has been a bit like you!

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Wednesday

Wednesday

I got out of bed when i saw Costa's light on, about 6am. Enjoyed a cuppa & bicky, loo break, and chatted till about 7:20am. I thought how much I appreciated this man who would not now accept any payment of any money at all. What a representative of creative love he was, while how estranged he felt from anything like creativity, & love. He had some dorper sheep to keep the grass around his dam down. He had served a country in a tank division. He had been a hunter of venison, goat, fish etc, but he confided that he couldn't even kill a sheep now, he got a neighbour to do it and he helped hang the meat after the fact. And he could tell me one story after another of his friends and neighbours' funerals that he had been present at.

We certainly aren't here forever, and in that moment our mortality seemed to be underscored.

Things are not always what they seem.

We hugged. He thanked me for coming. And I collected my walking sticks and headed down the driveway, noting an old steel fireplace that he had made, with a hot water jacket in it to give hot showers while he was building his house. Too heavy for the scrap metal merchant to take with all the other stuff.

A lovely walk along the old Calder Highway. Not much traffic. Stopped and put my feet up on a concrete table and chair setting, at a little rest area, which has fallen into disuse sonce the freeway came through. Had an anzac bicky and water. 

Recalled the next little storylet from that 1st Century Greek document about Yeshua. He seemed to have amazing authority to the ordinary people, more than the Doctors of the Law. I wondered if it was simply the authority of integrity.

Got to Harcourt about 12:20pm, bought a coffee and bacon and egg roll with lovely salad for lunch. Found the room codes for my room etc at TREAD Motel, had a shower, washed my clothes, hung them up and had a half hour snooze. Then planned a children's program that I said I would oversee at Orange on the Saturday of the weekend. And, a friend arrived with dinner in hand, and rang from the car park. We enjoyed catching up, bought a coffee, went for a drive, checked out stone quarries up on Mt. Alexander, and Eucalypts on the way to Castlemaine, bought a drumstick, returned and talked about old times and shared issues and problems. 

I repacked my bag for tomorrow's walk, and plan to leave most of it somewhere safe, and then return in a car from Bendigo, to collect what i leave, to lighten my walking load, so that I have more of a chance of actually making it the whole 27km before dinner time.

What a rich day! 

Wrote up his blog, and to bed about 11:30pm.

Good night.

Tuesday night, Wed Morning.. just North of Taradale

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Got a coffee from the coffee van in the art precinct. Went to get my 2 walking sticks that I must have left outside the servo/ general-store/ post-office, after I first went in to get a pastie and coke around 1pm. They were thrown over against the fence. The man said he thought kids must have left 'em there. A man was in getting his mail or something like that, and as i left i asked if he knew of anyone who might have a bed for the night. He took me back inside to the postoffice man and between them we tried any other options. None had a vacancy tonight. Some suggested Kyneton. Last ditch, the customer man said Tarastone Winery about 2 or 3 km North, just might have accomodation.  So i said thank you and walked along the highway, found it, and walked up the long driveway. A lovely winetasting bungalow. The little dog barked to see such fun, and i followed the signage which said to knock on the house door. A wiry wine grower met me on the way. No they didn't have any accommodation, sorry. We talked briefly, & when i asked if I could possibly sleep in the small hay shed i passed on the way up the driveway, something clicked in him, and he said no. He led me back to his beautiful wine tasting bungalow, to a bedroom which he said was his, & becomes his when the grandchildren visit. And this Macedonian man, Costa, 

said this would be where I slept tonight. I said I could pay, he said we'll sort it out tomorrow. Then he made me a cup of tea, and a cold drink, let me use his toilet, and shared stories about Europe, 53 yrs in Australia, carpet laying, pioneering this farm 33 yrs ago, grandchildren, fishing trips to Bourke and Menindee lakes, & his wife brought me a beautiful roast lamb leg, fresh tomatoes, cheese and bread, a meal i would have been hard pressed to find in a restaurant.

Costa had been to about 20 funerals recently of friends and neighbours. We commented on not being here for ever, or even for very long.

But during my small stay here at their farm, i had been welcomed so warmly, it was hard to believe.

Thank you Costa & Julia, and the crestive love that connected us through a tenuous collection of threads, end on end. 

I hope to bring my son & daughter-in-law back next visit, for some Shiraz or Cabernet from their  cellar door!

Costa wakes 4:30-5am, and offered to share a coffee before I head off in the morning.

Good night!

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Tuesday

 

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Slept Monday night at the Kyneton Springs Motel. They are building another wing for the second half of this year, so there were building baracades around (for me to hang my washing on). Great service, I hid my two water bottles in the freezer. Good idea for when i stop for a drink mid morning on Tuesday. Cold water melting through the day. How good would that be? 

A super hot breakfast, with freshly squeezed orange juice.. (you can see i appreciate food). 

Got off before 7:30am and went the way suggested by Cathy, the motel lady, lovely track to Malmsbury.

Mid-morning, i sit down, feet on a fence post and reach for my water bottle. .. .. you guessed it. No water bottles. They are still hidden in the freezer back at the Kyneton Springs Motel. I ring Cathy, just in case this was one of the days she goes to Malmsbury (she had told me that she did do that every now and then). No luck. Meetings all day. So, I'm finished with them.  At least she knows to get them out of the freezer. One could be washed and used by someone, it was pretty new. The other was just a disposable bottle. Throw it out.

On the walk I recall that i was going to try to have the first hour of each day like a retreat, recalling and thinking about, and letting sink into me, meditating on, the next story in that First Century Greek document about a teacher, leader whom I take to be more significant than Socrates. Yeshua "bar Natzaret".  Christisn churches the  world over call it "The Gospel - according to Mark". I don't think they understand how amazing this little document is. Well it keeps giving my food for thought and challenging my presuppositions about what I'm here for. Today had this in it:

Then Jesus came into the Galilee

while heralding the news of who's the boss

(that's after John was put in custody),

"It's God!" He said, ".. and he's not at a loss,"

"in fact," his message was, "the time's fulfilled,

for God's reign is just now, right at the door!

Check your allegiance. Your agendas will

not do, if you would trust this news for sure."

Makes me think of what their agendas might have been in those days, and what mine are today….

Into Malmsbury, Hunter Street as shown on Google maps doesn’t exist in this actual world,  you get interesting excursions into blackberry thickets etc. Finally, made it to the bakery in Malmsbury. Tried a few options for accomodation but no connections by phone, or they're open Wed to Sunday, or they couldn’t  get back to me till a few hours later, and then were booked up for tonight. Luckily,  on not finding somewhere, I kept walking to Taradale.

Bought a big coke (to replenish the bottle with water), and  the last pastie in the shop. Looked around at a lovely art centre next door to the servo/ general store, put my feet up in the park and tried ringing anything that smelled like accomodation around here. The Castlemaine info centre was helpful.  Booked into Tread Motel in Harcourt for tomorrow night. Nothing for Taradale, tonight, yet. But i am lying down with my feet up in a beautiful park, the Taradale Mineral Springs Reserve, writing this blog.

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Monday

Second Monday

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Slept last night in Bendigo at my son and daughter in law's place, joined them for a porridge fruit & nuts breaky. Then my daughter in law dropped me to Kangaroo flat where i caught the 8:51am train to Woodend. There I let my friends from last week know that I had left some clothes on the line, just in case someone was coming in this morning. Some were busy elsewise,  but one person was coming into town so she dropped them in to me, where i waited at the coffee shop. Kyneton Springs motel responded to an online request about available rooms and pricing. They had a room for tonight, for $120.00. I agreed, and walked on, stopping for a hamburger with the lot and a coffee at a BP roadhouse on the way. Mostly followed the old Cobb & Co road. Some great phone conversations with my wife, an old mentor, and a man I met last week..

In Kyneton, I got.. a juice, my room, a cooked breaky for tomorrow ordered, a  shower, clothes hand-washed & hung on a construction fence. Worked on his blog, then had a snooze at 5pm..

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IS LOVE

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I was thinking this morning of a conversation with one of Mike's friends on Saturday arvo about people possibly doing everything to benefit themselves, as distinct from the possibility of people doing things for others even when they themselves still benefit... etc. I hope I wasn't too brusk in my reaction to my acquaintance's statement. I haven't talked much with others about it, mostly conversations with myself, where i mostly understand my motives, and I don't  have to be careful about how I say things to myself. Anyway I  was mulling it over more as I lay in bed this morning  and as I've been walking today. This is where I've got to so far:

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Well how on Earth could I believe love is

existant in these days. Heard it's extinct!

I don't think dinosaurs could even kiss.

And if they did, their programing was kinked.

Or else a transfer of saliva might 

have been important for digestiveness

within a species lacking U.V. light.

No gift "for others' good" has happened yet.

It's only twisted round to look that way.

We know that all is done for species/  self.

Don't We? When honest? Folk like that would say.

So now we have to put love on the shelf

of Disney movies made for little girls

to help them keep their wishful thoughts alive.

The myth of love quite often still unfurls,

is rampant there. That's how it may survive!

The smallest weakest ones believe in love 

to help them not to face realities:

that pow-er is what keeps folk up above

and able so to know the facts like these,

to fight and win, for knowledge is a  pow'r,

& minimizes what must be coerced.

It's kind of Eco-friendly in this hour.

But not all scarcity must be reversed.

But cont'ry to this view of all the world

and one that I hold to, to be more true,

is one where love with open heart unfurled,

has given us the chance to pick and choose

that's whether we'll step up, as baby gods,

or else step down to just programed desires.

The first has selves appearing, 'gainst the odds,

the second one reduces what inspires.

It seems to me there is a sense in which,

since love is only ever done by "selves",

it can not be quite "selfless", that would ditch

the self that would show love. We need to delve

some more, & when we do, we see that love

alone has pow'r to bring a self to be.

Who knows where its pow'r ends? It's from above,

and wants to grow true selves from you and me.

Love's way is not directed to curtail,

but flows around, and goes the extra mile

and doesn't stop. I've heard love does not fail,

nor keep within all boundaries & smile,

as though each thing is good, just as it is,

and all our systems, habits, are just fine

when pow-er and coercion do their biz-

ness, with no other way for us in time.

For love stops not at parts, it sees the whole,

in fact, it makes this universe exist.

From love each atom gains it's very soul.

It's love that makes us solid-ish in mist.

Love fe-ars not the thing that we call death,

for it's more real, as light is, than the dark.

And it's the kind of thing, with ev'ry breath,

that make a life worth living. It's quite stark.

The kind of thing that will go into air

that has through pow-er's exercise been raped

(till gas sustaining life has gone from there).

Seems like it must be super sized and caped,

or mythical, for all those little girls.

And so it is, the smallest weakest one

has more insight than mechanistic churls.

I am convinced that love, has just begun!

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Sunday...

 Another day of resting from walking, with my son and his wife for Saturday night, all day Sunday, and Sunday night, .

Saturday morning, sleep in to 8:30, .. Eggs benedict for breaky at the Spring Hill General store, followed by coffee, then copious cups of tea.

Time to play with a piano, play Splendor again, buy some walking shoes (branded "Keen", and with "way of life" as a subtitle), have dinner at a farm with friends, do some washing, and text, and talk on the phone with friends & family. A very rich day.

The plan for Monday is to catch the 8:50am train from near Golden square back to Woodend, then walk on again from the Full Moon Saloon in Woodend, that I walked to last Wednesday arvo. Off walking back towards Benndigo.

We'll see how far I get tomorrow.

Saturday ..

Many of the folk at Forest farm are determined to keep the sabbath.

And I was allowed to stay and enjoy a sabbath with them. The sabbath starts for them, as with the Jews who keep shabbat, at sunset on the normal Western callendar's Friday evening, and finishes at sunset Saturday evening. So it's not even as simple as identifying Sabbath with Saturday as most people conceive of it in our culture, with our present calendar that has our day changes at midnight.

It certainly brings you back more in touch with and aware of the world around you... sunsets anyway, but also the habbit of not working means one is kind of setting boundaries to our habits of work, against workaholism, and some encouragement for play, for games, and visits, & conversations with friends and family. Good things that happened a lot at Black Forest Farm. As well as Mike, who welcomed me at first, I met Peter and Kelly, and Isaiah, and Olivia, and Steve and Rick and Maryello (sorry about the spelling), and Tim.. and often we had extended and deep conversations you would rarely have in the life of the rat-race. Conversations that I hope haven't finished. In fact some of them, like me, mentioned that they hoped these could continue and that we'd be able to keep in touch. I hope so too. I hope some of them can visit me in Orange after this walk or in between stints... 

So, on the Sabbath, I slept in. I wrote the blog past two down, thinking of what i appreciated about that deep creek crossing. Had some toast with Mike's marvellous marmalade on it (I finished one bottle of his marmalade). Then tried to get in that interview below, between friends popping in. We never got to capture the last ten minutes of his story, but you'll catch the gist of it.... anyway his wife got home with Mike and their pre-teen daughter. She was a quadreplegic, but they had 23years together, before she died in the last decade. It was very difficult, but Mike says he wished they could have had much more. He is grateful though, for that time after her death that they had together. 

I am very blessed to have been so quickly welcomed into life with this extended family kin and kith.

What a privilege to be allowed to walk with creative love, and to be introduced to all these people known personally by creative love.

I become more and more convinced, as I share life with Creative Love, that this IS  the only way to walk through life  (where walking, pilgriming, becomes a metaphor for the whole of my life on this planet, from cradle to grave).

          ..........         .@.         ..........

As well as full of joy, like a new birth,

these topics, more "responses", are quite grave.

And deeply can affect our life on Earth,

our whole approach to it, how we behave!

          ..........         .@.         ..........

Well, Saturday evening, just before sunset, my son and his bride drove down from Bendigo and picked me up, for us all to spend a day together before their working week takes off again on Monday. A lovely meal, hearing some piano and cello, they taught me a few notes and let me play with both instruments, and a spledid game of Spledor.

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Interview 1.1c & 2.0 with Mike

 Audio: Interview 2 (the volume was a bit low at times) please let me know if it is too bad a quality... in the comments

cross deep creek

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Back story:

The whole story is probably too long and too small, and much of it happened within my own head, to tell, unless we had a cup of something warming, with time on our hands. But as I was leaving Bulla moving towards Bendigo, last Monday morning, maybe 7am, a few km. down the road i came at the bottom of a valley in the road, to a small blue-stone bridge just two lanes wide with a narrow approach on either side (with no walking access).  It would have been a pleasure to walk over, except that there were two lanes of traffic travelling at speed across it, one in either direction. It might have been easy enough to get a big enough break in the traffic latter in the day, but i had got up early to get on the road, to cover some distance that day. So i started looking for ways to get to the other side… the creek at the bottom looked deep (& i was to find that it was in fact called "Deep Creek"), the stone bridge was high, but seemed to have a ledge of extra stone jutting out 1m just below the top, but on finally getting to it, with the idea of shimmying sideways across the bridge on the outside edge, i saw that the stone on that ledge was cut at 45 degrees so water would fall off. I could imaging my boat shoes doing the same, with no other good hand holds apparent. This next hour was truly an adventure, and a lesson for me that I will look back to.

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Look round about, and up and down, and such,

and follow ways that have a chance to work.

And if you see it can't help very much,

turn back, turn back, don't just keep on, or lurk.

I guess there might be ambiguity, 

in that word "lurk" - it's not all bad you know 

(I think it all depends on what moves me..

it's hard to quite explain, but it will show

in where my eyes go to, between each step, 

and how I be within, as I step out.

If I am running from something that's kept

on haunting, scaring me, my fear will shout

down all the gentle whispers come to aid,

or thread's invisible, that must be felt

(I s'pose it matters whose thread has been laid,

for me my great, great,.. grandfather has knealt

and laid the thread himself, with care and hope),

and there's the other option: moving to

a goal or future, brightens, doesn't dope

you out to what's about and hap'ning, who

might help, or know more of this very place.

The fun that's come from just one hour or so

of doing this, might grow, and even trace,

its roots back to a nursery tale, and go-

ing with creative care across a space,

but ready to go back to "solid ground"

and start again, in other words re-trace,

while looking steps ahead. That's what I've found.

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