A rain of falling cinders
November 2004, the husband and I were driving south down the east coast of Queensland, the day of the Melbourne Cup and almost the day of the US presidential election. Except for the occasional sight of the coast, the highway was nothing special. Eucalyptus, cows, sugar cane fields, narrow railroads with little trains transporting agricultural products, and more of the same. A while south of Townsville, we ran out of day with no prospects of any place charming to stay the night. We hit a town, a suburb of nothing, really, called Home City or something equally generic.
We pulled into the town's tattered caravan park to camp. The campground owners or attendants were thoroughly drunk from celebrating the Melbourne cup, a two minute national holiday we'd listened to on the car radio earlier. We pitched our tent uncomfortably close to that of a young couple thoroughly tired of of their jobs picking fruit in the hot Queensland sun.
Without warning, the sky produced a shower of...something. Burnt strips of paper-like material snowing peacefully, eerily, all around. Right, so we're in Australia, anything can happen, but what IS this? Is it toxic, should we seek shelter? At least let's keep it out our food. I figured it was either a product of a bushfire, or more likely, some kind of agricultural burning. Eventually I sort of found out what it was--from a song.
The burnt material shower dissipated, only to be followed by the realization that the palms shading the tiny caravan park were the local Rainbow Lorikeet roost. These gorgeous but clangorous little parrots gather around dusk to roost together and make an unbelievable amount of noise together, and woe to anyone who wants to sleep in their proximity if they are still screaming at the time you want to be asleep. Luckily this flock simmered down for most of the evening, except for one outburst in the middle of the night (marauding owl visit?)
Next day we pulled out of that place and spent the day (more sugar cane, eucalyptus, cows, trains) driving to a little town on the coast east of Rockhampton, in order to catch a boat out to idyllic and barely populated Great Keppel Island. Our campground that night was a vast improvement over the previous. Hundreds of adorable flying foxes roosted there, and we saw frogmouth, and the ocean was just through the trees.
One of the most appealing qualities in music for me is a sense of place, evocation of place, especially places with which I have a connection or experience. "Cattle and Cane" by the Go-Betweens is at just about the top of of the list in this department, not only lyrically but through a sound that pulls one into a melancholic reverie close to nostalgia but not quite. Complementary minor key melodies bounce unpredictably through the shimmering dusky air, disjointed by a time signature I've never heard anywhere else. What is that anyway? I count 11 notes per measure. The song transports me back to Queensland, not only to the exciting things, but also to the humdrum and everyday. Yet the song itself is anything but humdrum.
One day at home, much later, I noticed the line about the rain of falling cinders. I can't imagine anyone else writing this into a song.
I recall a schoolboy coming home
through fields of cane
to a house of tin and timber
and in the sky
a rain of falling cinders
from time to time
the waste memory-wastes
I recall a boy in bigger pants
like everyone
just waiting for a chance
his father's watch
he left it in the showers
from time to time
the waste memory-wastes
I recall a bigger brighter world
a world of books
and silent times in thought
and then the railroad
the railroad takes him home
through fields of cattle
through fields of cane
from time to time
the waste memory-wastes
the waste memory-wastes