It had become quite chilly during the night and I had been forced to employ the use of a blanket. We awoke for the final time at five minutes to six and our breakfast arrived at twenty-five past seven. I consumed both glasses of pineapple juice, ‘All Bran’ — into which I had had to pour my milky coffee as the cereal had come with an insufficient amount of milk — spaghetti, which came with a whole tinned tomato, and toast with honey. Tiki received her compote of fruit, which included a single prune, and bacon and eggs. I gave her my bacon in lieu of the pineapple juice.
As we were about to depart, a woman, who was presumably a guest from one of the rooms, warned us to keep an eye out for the white lines that are painted at intervals across the highway because, she said police in aeroplanes time vehicles travelling between such lines to determine whether or not motorists are exceeding the speed limit.
Tiki drove and covered the entire one hundred and forty miles to Melbourne. She really took exception to me warning her not to get too close to trucks in front of us, but she hasn’t been in a vehicle when it has had its windscreen shattered. I was threatened with the statement of fact that I’d be “left in Melbourne” if there was one more critique uttered on her style of driving.
The dual carriageway, which stretches the entire way from Seymour to Melbourne, bypasses Kilmore. We didn’t actually enter suburbia until we were ten miles from the city’s centre. The traffic, especially that heading away from Melbourne, was bumper-to-bumper. Tiki continued to drive as I did my best to navigate us through a terrifying maze of streets and tram tracks.
We remained on the Hume Highway until we turned to the left and into Bell Street at Coburg. Heading in an easterly direction we passed Pentridge Gaol and once past the suburbs of Preston and Bell turned to the right and on to High Street. Suburbs such as Croxton and Northcote appeared to be dominated by what many Australians by birth refer to as ‘New Australians’.
At Fitzroy we joined Queen’s Parade thence Hoddle Street, Punt and Toorak roads before eventually turning to the left and into Caroline Street, in South Yarra. We parked atop the hill and once I had surveyed a silvery blue Aston Martin of the 1950s, complete with a wooden dashboard, walked back down it. I espied Susan and Roger’s Ford ‘Escort’ sedan and noticed that it bore a dent in one of its mudguards which, I was to be informed later, was caused when a P-plater reversed his vehicle into their car while it had been parked in front of the property that they hope to purchase in suburban Mooroolbark.
Susan had not expected us to arrive for another hour and their rented home unit was untidy to the point of being unwelcoming. The burglar alarm at a nearby shop had sounded all night and the pair had received little sleep. Susan had rung for the police and had confronted the lady who owns the store.
Roger was absent as he was completing some shopping and, therefore, we didn’t meet him until half past eleven. The stairs that lead to the unit are uncarpeted and they smell similarly to the hallway to our father’s unit. When I mentioned this fact to Susan she reminded me that “Brutus” had stayed with them recently.
I parked the ‘Galant’ at the rear, in front of another block of units. After lunch the four of us walked for about a mile along Toorak Road and through the shops of South Yarra. Amongst Melburnians South Yarra, according to Susan and Roger, ranks second only to the suburb of Toorak in terms of wealth and prestige.
We reached Como Avenue where impressive and expensive houses stand. Having turned to the left, Roger produced his money before Tiki could ours and paid a dollar for each of us to enter Como House, which looks much like Vaucluse House in Sydney. I photographed the other three in front of the building, choosing to ignore the dirty fountain in the foreground.
Our return walk took us along the southern side of Toorak Road as the sky began to spit rain. Two tins of ‘Rondo’ — Susan and Roger shared one — and one of Schweppes ginger beer for me, cost the sum of ninety cents. We window shopped at ‘Jox and Sox’ and were informed that a chap often models the shop’s merchandise on the street as, indeed, do women at a nearby ladies’ lingerie store.
Once we had arrived ‘home’, at a quarter past five, Roger went downstairs to wash their car. Susan put on a tape of John Denver’s hits that includes those of three years ago namely, “Back Home Again” and “Annie’s Song”. She and Roger had attended a performance of his at the Myer Music Bowl.
Meanwhile, a strong smell of garlic filtered up from the unit below.
At seven o’clock and after I had handed Roger four dollars to cover the cost of petrol, they transported us to view his place of work which is directly across the road from Port Phillip Bay. He guided us through every room of the three-storeyed building. The gents’ bathroom even includes a sauna! He told us that the architects, who originally owned the building, had had it installed.
Roger returned us to South Yarra via South Melbourne where roughly-dressed characters were busily tying Christmas trees to lampposts along Domain Road, in which Malcolm Fraser’s mother resides. As we passed through the park at the Domain, thousands of people were walking to ‘Carols By Candlelight’ at the Myer Music Bowl. It brought back memories of how a crowd, estimated to have consisted of some two hundred thousand people, had gathered there a decade ago to witness The Seekers perform.
Back in the unit we listened to the radio station, 3KZ, before switching to 3MP, which is based on the Mornington Peninsula, and its disc jockey, ‘Baby’ John Burgess. He was working for 2UW, in Sydney, at the time I observed him cross a street in Double Bay. He played “Mull Of Kintyre”, the current hit by Wings, and “How Do You Do It?”, a hit of 1963, by Gerry and The Pacemakers.
We talked about New Zealand and I learned that Susan, too, had stayed at Waitomo Caves in the red ‘Tomo Hut’ youth hostel. Susan and Daryl are sleeping on an inflatable li-lo on the floor of the lounge room. From the single bedroom I can hear the raspy voice of a man as he repeatedly sings “Jingle Bells” through a megaphone down in Toorak Road.