THE CANTERBURY PILGRIM AGAIN

Southland Times, Issue 23308, 18 September 1937, Page 18

THE CANTERBURY PILGRIM AGAIN

Departure .... and Sydney

[SPECIALLY WRITTEN FOR THE SOUTHLAND TIMES]

(By

NGAIO MARSH)

The setting-out on a long journey is like a dream. If the moment of departure comes at night, reality wears thin as the day draws to an end. Everything we do becomes incredible, so conscious are we of the slipping-away of accustomed things. It is strange to hear our friends make plans for the time when we shall be parted by the wide and lonely acres of the sea. New Zealand seems to grow smaller, to become a thin, map-like strip, from whose narrow confines we will soon be separated. Long before the real departure we are already on our travels. The platform farewells, the hurried journey in the train, the embarkation, and the sliding-away of a row of gesticulating figures on a shrinking wharf—all these things are strange to us and seem to be timeless and to belong to no part of our normal experience. Surely there is nowhere a more beautiful coast than the stretch of mountains at the extreme north of the South Island. Last night they were a cold indigo. Their margins were sharp against the heavy sky, they were garlanded with clouds. Their feet were lost in mist so that they seemed to float imponderably above the darkening sea. It seems as if only at the moment of departure are we permitted to discover our own country. The evening clouds rise and there are the hills. No other country, we think, with a sudden wave of nostalgia, can be so beautiful. And an hour later there is nothing but the dark night sea; and we look to the north.

In mid-ocean it is easy to think widely. It is easy to look across the restless and crinkled skin of the water and see it as the surface of a spinning planet. On land our distances are bounded by mountains, by trees, by rivers, and by houses; but here they are bounded by the implacable ring of the horizon, the place where the world turns under. The sky is everything. On board shin one might almost forgive the remark that the world is, after all, a small place. . . . HOTEL AUSTRALIA You forget altogether that it is a hotel where people may live in bedrooms and come down to breakfast and the morning paper. It is simply a collection of superb modern restaurants. You walk from the roar of Castlereagh street into the roar of the vestibule. The vestibule of the Australia is as large and as crowded as a railway station at the peak hour. £ll the voices are highpitched. Young men wait in groups. Young women, as well turned-out as Parisiennes, make entrances magnificently. You go into the winter garden. More surfaces of gleaming wood. Wonderful concealed lighting. Chromium steel, but not too much of it. Crowds and crowds and crowds of exquisitely dressed, screeching Australians. When ,we landed this morning we made this place our headquarters. On the first visit it seemed delightful and exciting. One exotic toilette after another swept in, seated itself, and began to drink. We, too, had drinks; and though our toilettes were anything but exotic, we felt cosmopolitan and grand. When we met there again it was after two hours’ shopping. The Sydney streets are as crowded as Piccadilly and noisier. Every city has its own smell, and Sydney smells of flowers and of food cooked in oil. Everywhere there are flowers —scarlet canna lilies, roses, and the hot, second*-rate frangipani. There are lovely stalls of flowers along the kerbs. The buildings rise high and slim, leaving the streets in shadow. In the afternoon a kind of translucent blueness flows into the streets and fills them with shade. At the end of many of them are cobalt pieces of the har-

bour, with sometimes the arch of Sydney bridge curved sharply across to make a pattern suggestive of a backdrop on the stage. From 11 till one we did desperate things about transhipment to the Esperance Bay. At one we lunched in the winter garden of the Hotel Australia. The women were still beautifully dressed and painted, the place was still crowded, everybody still screamed, and we were still impressed. The lunch was magnificent. From two until four we tried to buy essentials for our long voyage. All the shops were full of superbly dressed screamers. At four we returned to the Australia and found it fuller and smarter than ever. We liked it less. We were very tired, our feet ached, our clothes were jaded. The noise was terrific. ALTERNATIVE From four until six we walked about Sydney. Though the shops were perfectly splendid they did not happen to contain the things we wanted. Our search was fruitless and the noise and the heat increased. We

had arranged to meet again at six in the winter garden of the Hotel Australia. This time we missed each other. The crowd of fashionable cocktaildrinkers was terrific and every woman was dressed by .Worth, scented by Chanel, and made up with the mast costly' cosmetics. After a hectic search we met, and so deep was our loathing for the wonderful Hotel Australia that with one accord we left it and went to a plush and velvet sanctuary, with no lovely modern lines, no graceful curved walls, no concealed lighting, no smart people, and no noise. Here we recovered and when we went out into the streets again the lamps were lit, the sky-signs flickered, the night traffic roared through the streets, and Sydney felt adventurous. We dined in a shabby Italian restaurant —the Florentino—and I have never enjoyed a dinner more. It is a basement room with no more than a dozen tables. The other people were not very smart; but some of them looked as though they did not always take their own thoughts for granted. Our Italian waiter was anxious" that we should enjoy his dishes and we liked them very well. It was about 8 o’clock and a very warm evening when we finally left the Florentino and took a taxi down to the wharves. TO THE DOCKS Tfiere is nothing to compare with a drive through the streets of a strange city at night. As this was a Friday, all the shops in Sydney were open and brightly lit. The pavements were crowded and behind the noise of engines in low gear, motor horns, and voices, was the sound of hundreds of thousands of footfalls. The driver was as violent as any Parisian taximan, rounding the corners on two wheels, shooting trickily through the thickest traffic. Presently he turned out of the main streets into narrow and deserted by-ways that ran down steeply through raffish old buildings towards the docks. And there, at anchor and lamp-lit was the ship that now carries us to England. We walked up the gangway, savouring the immortal flavour of the wharves, the smell of pitch, of wet wood, of dubious sacking, and the tang of the dark salt water between the ship and the piles of the dock. The holds were open and winches bumped and roared. Clatter, bang, bang, bang, DUMP! Pause. Rattle, rattle, rattle. All night long it went on, mixing itself up with our brief and restless dreams; and now in the morning they are still at it. At half-past eleven we sail. (To be continued.)'