|
March maundering.
It's 04:40 a.m. The clock radio clicks on. I click it off again, somewhat more forcibly than strictly necessary, but it has the desired effect. I've only had about three hours sleep and so somewhat more force than usual is also required to muster the determination to get up and face the day. But somehow I do. The next 40 minutes are a murky haze of routine, conducted in a semi-unconscious state, but it gets me to where I need to be... it now being 05:20 a.m. and I'm in the street, standing at the side of the road as the newspaper delivery guy screams past in his implausibly small Diahatsu van, newspapers hurtling hither and thither, knocking gnomes over here, landing in fish ponds over there.
The days are shortening rapidly now, and so it is still pitch black and very cold. To complete the misery, as I begin my journey, right on cue it begins raining. But I can't return to the warmth of the home, not because this is a gritty, necessary training run, but simply because it's my daily commute to work, where my boss takes rather a dim view of people not turning up without good reason, especially on the early shift.
Well, in fact this is a kind of a training run. I could take the car of course, which would allow an extra 40 minutes in bed, but I include this early brisk walk as part of my overall traning and the sacrifice is worth it, even if it is cold, dark and raining. Not that any of my work colleagues agree with me. In fact they're fairly unanimous in declaring me mad. I, of course, don't dispute this.
Anyhow, I set off into the dark and cold. A careful ten minute descent of the "awful dread" - a set of rough steps cut into the side of the hill on which I live, gets the knees whining and my quads burning as I have to sort of hover mid-stride in the darker parts of this poorly lit path. However the compensation is the sight of wallabies and possums that frequent this area at this time of day, I mean night. There are almost certainly echidnas, bandicoots and possibly wombats as well, but they are less brazen and I haven't spotted these as yet.
At the bottom of the hill I walk through the Hobart campus of the University of Tasmania, and my arrival today coincides with the cleaners shouting noisy farewells in the car park to each other as they leave, their nightly duties complete. This encounter has happened often enough now that we recognise each other, but we don't make eye contact and so I walk on this morning without acknowledging them - the culture of greeting is strangely different at this time of morning for some reason.
I walk past the Computing, Engineering and Law faculties before turning away from the university and walking along a quiet back street through the even quieter, affluent suburb of Sandy Bay, where half a million dollars will buy you very little but trouble, held up only by the ivy that smothers it.
Near the church a young, scared-looking boy, only about ten years old stands on the corner with a huge bag of God-knows-what. As I approach, a car pulls up and the boy silently climbs in with his bag and they drive off. Oddly, this is the third day in a row I've seen this happen. One of life's bizarre little mysteries I guess. But apart from this strange encounter, all is very peaceful in this part of town.
Soon I'm into the Sandy Bay shopping precinct, and then ten minutes further on, I'm into my old stamping ground of Battery Point. This is a very old part of Hobart, located next to the waterfront, and once upon a time, very, very working class. Now of course, its warehouses have been turned into trendy boutiques, art galleries and coffee shops. The pubs and restaurants however are its main redeeming feature. But at this hour, the tourists and latte set have been replaced by delivery trucks, fork lifts and council clean up crews getting the area ready for the day.
I walk on, reaching the waterfront, where my Dad worked back in the 60s as a marine surveyor and a shipwright. He worked for a time on the apple ships, making good money during the apple season building temporary decking into the freighters taking millions of apples to the mother country England. But then in the early '70s England joined the "Common Market" (the EEC) and virtually overnight Tasmania's apple industry was ruined. So much for loyalty to her dominions... and so the apple orchards were largely grubbed out and instead we sold berry fruits to the USA and Japan. Nowadays the apples are making a come-back, thanks in part to the Japanese Fuji variety, which sell for stupidly high prices in Asia, but here we get the perfectly acceptable "seconds" at far lower prices. Yet despite that, the waterfront is rapidly being taken over by the more lucrative tourist and yuppie set. Packing sheds have been converted into bars and restaurants and even the wheat silos have been turned into crazy-looking luxury apartments. And where once the docks were full of freighters and fishing boats, the more common sight now are massive cruise ships and the smaller tourist boats that you can hire - for around $2000 per hour.
By now the city is starting to wake up, and the streets are filling with trucks and early commuters who can at least enjoy relatively empty streets. I leave the waterfront and pass through one more historic area - an area once called Wapping, that was supposedly the worst disease-laden and crime-ridden slum in the colonies. Today little of that remains, other than a few brass plaques in the pavement telling us where ancient slums once stood. Now it mostly comprises more of the trendy, inner-city apartments so beloved of the young, lazy rich, and a towering 5 star hotel, standing where once there was little but gin parlours and diseased brothels. I love, at least, the irony of it.
Finally I arrive at work, on the site of the old railway station, and wave my pass card at the back door sensor and stop my heart rate monitor/stop watch, which I've been geeky enough to wear today, having just got it back from the repairers. 49 minutes exactly - not bad for a damp morning. Today I'm working in a room that would have stood in the vicinity of platform 2 not so many years ago, and where as a child I would often catch a train home. Sometimes it would even be a steam engine. No such romance now. I work in the government broadcasting service, and instead of diesel-electrics from 6 platforms, it's all satellite dishes, gleaming studios, and an anomolous multiple sclerosis cluster among the staff that has us employees all a little worried.
Being a government employee, my work isn't overly taxing. Most days is just a steady turnover of work, with the occasional deadly dull day or the even rarer full-on panic-station day. But today goes quietly, and I do my seven and a half hour shift in one hit, leaving a little after lunch. I forsake the obvious option of a return walk home, and instead take a short ten minute walk into town and catch the bus back, before crashing for an hour and then waking up feeling like shite. But I have a 60 minute treadmill session to do, and do it I must...
As is often the case, the sessions I dread most turn out to be the best, and this run goes well, and I finish surprisingly strong and fresh. The shin soreness of the other day has vanished completely, and my knees which have been complaining all day, stop aching after the first few minutes, so a bloody good session all up.
|
March maundering.
