Under a hotter Sun; Slap on a hat;

Slap on a hat;

Sunhats are a fashionable summer essential. We had lots of them, wore them and lost them. It is a condemned item like umbrellas; doomed to be left on counters in stores on chairs in cafes were they are snatched as soon as you turn away. There was a lot of interchanging hats taking place in the Northern Rivers area.
Peter had funny bowl shaped hats with a broad soft rim made of blue or white terry towelling. The white ones took on soon an unidentifiable colour. They had to be washed often and got in the process softer and softer. He liked his hat best this way. The hat was used to dry his sweaty brow, to swat at flies that are persistent in crawling up your nose and all over your face. Walk down the paddock and the blasted flies follow in a cloud settling piggyback on you.
He also owned a beautiful, Spanish felt hat. The sales assistant at McKelly’s, carefully swiping the rim with his elbow, said:" Yes sir this hat will keep the sun away!" And this it did just fine. The rain was not mentioned because the rain wouldn’t justify its expensive price tag. Peter wore this hat when he went into town, the sale yard or shopping. It looked good on him, as he is a tall man.Wearing this hat he was fully accepted into the clan of graziers.
At first he owned a high felt hat a la Americana, cowboy style, it had this aura of the far Wild West. He got a lot of comments when he wore it. As hats are such an essential item here everybody wears them it is natural that a hat that cries out to be seen collects a lot of interest. In the end it was lost, stolen, not directly from his head but behind his back at the October fest in Grafton. Somebody must have wanted this hat badly enough to snatch it. Well, no wonder, it was an item much talked about. He lost it and found it never again.
The girls and I were addicted to sunhats. In any store we were torn towards the hatstand.
Not even the untidy heaps on shelves kept us away. We followed the trend, dipping into the depths, rummaging trying on discarding and start the game anew until the sales lady with murder in her eyes asked us if we intended to buy. The girls mainly bought caps, red, blue, yellow, Hang ten and Gotcha! I went for the creations that were coveted for a while. Then they were used for mundane things like work in the garden and at the same time as bowls to hold tomatoes in lieu of something better at the moment. This treatment left them a bit undone so it was not a big tragedy when they got lost.
The exquisite, white or soft yellow hats, their rims decorated with flying ribbons and blowsy old roses. The ones destined to be worn for afternoon tea in the vicars garden.
They were as impractical as they were beautiful. Endless times I chased after them in not a lady like manner. The lightest breeze found them an easy target. With time I too had to settle for bowl shaped, funny cotton hats and yes they had also more than one purpose. All I was allowed now were mere yearning glances towards the creations.
Marie-Louise and Lilli could wear any hat, cap or an old stocking on their head and they looked stunning. Not so Jacky and I. We needed the creations. Jacky bought in Tenerife a huge, really huge huge Mexican hat. It fell over her ears; generously it nearly covered all of her. It was not thoroughly successful there were certain problems with stability and balance. In the end it blew away too and was never seen again.
　
　
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Under a hotter Sun; Kaneki

While I gathered the warm, dry grass to mulch the garden beds, the music of Beethoven’s sixth Sinfonie from within the house wakened my senses already seduced by the sweet smell of the sun-dried hay. I felt this serenity transcend, a brief glimpse of sheer happiness.

This music composed to the core of the European landscape impressed itself, moulded its sounds in harmony to the Australian land.

Kaneki, an aboriginal word for yellow crested Cockatoo, was sitting on the highest branch of a Bloodwood tree. He cocked his head and looked down, gave an approving squawk, shook his pristine white plumage and settled back to his afternoon nap.
We rescued Kaneki from a life in a tiny cage in a dark corner of a hardware shop in Maclean. He was sitting in his cage teased by children with little sticks while we were shopping there. We thought this beautiful bird looked so infinitely sad. We asked the shopkeeper how much he wanted for the bird. He said how much do you want to pay.

We said we could pay ten Dollars and he said done. We thought that he was probably glad to get rid of him. Anyway we were happy to take him home and give him a better life. He didn’t even have a name so we gave him the name Kaneki.
He settled quickly at our place.

At first, Peter made him a long ladder up to the Bloodwood tree. First he had a chain but when he was accustomed to this area we took the chain away. In the morning we took him out of his cage and let him go up the ladder on the tree. All day he was sitting on his tree throwing down leaves and small twigs. In the evening we would call up to him, Kaneki come down, we actually said it in Swiss dialect “chum aba” to him. First he would bombard us in disgust with leaves and twigs but in the end he always came down into the cage to spend the night. Flocks of yellow crested cockatoos would come and visit him. They settled on the tree like big white flowers. Kaneki never flew away with them. Until it happened that he met this really nice looking cockatoo lady. She visited him on his tree and sometimes he flew away with her but he always came back. But then after the marriage his absence from the Bloodwood tree grew longer and longer.

When we saw a flock of cockatoos flying above our garden we would always sing out his name Kaneki. Sometimes he would quickly settle on the Bloodwood tree, but with time he forgot his tree and he forgot us.

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