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.

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(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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