My Old Neighbourhood: Bennelong

Today's Telegraph Mirror recounted how a twenty year old Macquarie University student was hit by another young fellow with a skateboard in the small hours of the night in the main campus. Epping rail station has been transformed into a glittery version of its old self. Couples buy dinner in reasonably priced packs in the Carlingford Asian Village upon coming back from work - and do not have to cook anymore. The main thoroughfare of Epping Road is more choked with traffic than ever before during weekday and weekend rush hours. Higher density housing have cropped up beside the six-lane road. Prices of groceries in Eastwood are apparently a better bargain than Cabramatta and Flemington, the other competing suburbs of similar fare.

As the nineties began, I loved walking in the mornings to the then unassuming rail station just two streets away in Epping. I had my first taste of autumn biting winds standing on the platform. I cooked dinner amazed at the stillness and darkness of the road outside the kitchen window. A teenage boy, I recall, fell outside the block I was in, and there followed the commotion of an ambulance arriving and a distraught mother. I was insistent on getting a car, a Ford, as I did not want to lose the freedom of having one in my home island. The post office was so important to me as well.

Eastwood had a mall, but it was so quiet. What amazed me was how the KFC outlet in that suburb had closed, a strange phenomenon when fast food in all forms was a booming business elsewhere. I noted the elderly demographics on the streets and in the home gardens. Then the number of Korean residents increased, perhaps encouraged by the churches - and I had my contact with Koreans outside their native country, a place and culture I thoroughly enjoyed when visiting before coming to Australia. Gradually one side of the rail line had businesses dominated by Hong Kongers and mainland Chinese - but the Korean shops stuck to the other side of the station.

The day I arrived in Sydney for the first time I stayed at Waterloo Road. Macquarie Shopping Centre had free parking for all vehicles. I sat on a bus that skirted this centre on the day when Sydney was surrounded by a great ring of bush fire one January. I caught a glimpse of how high strong and high winds were fanning real flames so close to people's homes. North Ryde bus terminus was where I learnt about the Sydney state transit system.

Mum came to stay with me in my various places in Marsfield, Eastwood and Dundas. Cooking is so important to both of us - and I appreciated moreover the orderliness of things that she brings to a household. We explored together the diversity of things that only Australia can bring - fruits, blooms, food ingredients, friends and weather. Mum enjoyed her walks to Eastwood Mall - and I encourage her to see what the mall has become today.

I still frequent this old neighbourhood of mine, especially on weekends. These suburbs may have changed, but never the fondness for them in my heart.

A Kind of Hush

I had thought it had been a kind of rush for the whole day....and night. Such feelings were however mixed with doses of satisfaction and inner contentment, more of a kind of food for the soul.

It commenced with just food, partaking of vegetarian wraps with the Hindu worshippers on a mid-Sunday morning. The meal may have been simple, but the communal communion was sweet and embracing. Two little Indian boys sitting at a nearby canteen table were engaged in a banter of conversation in all innocence as childhood can bestow. The nearby temple was full of people engaged in ceremonies for an important holy day. Having grown up comfortable with this culture, to me, it was also food for the soul, even just as an observer. One of my fellow visitors, Phylis, remarked that it reminded her of elements of Jewish prayer. It struck me there and then that the world' religions can be somehow related, and that there is this invisible but strong bond of a string that connects to all things holy. The worshippers were decked in their Sunday best, holy smoke prevailed and there was the lilt of song in a sung prayer - we could have been attending the Papal Mass at Randwick Stadium in Sydney's eastern suburbs that very same morning.

The hush continued at a hilltop Buddhist temple complex which brilliantly shone under the blue sky and mid-winter Wollongong sun. The bare branches of deciduous trees and the flowering native succulents underlined the essence of Buddhist philosophy and thinking. A few of us wandered to a room dedicated to portraits in oil. The theme was perhaps womanhood. The expressiveness of the artists jumped out literally to me. A nearby pond, usually brimming with flowering lotus in early summer, had been mostly drained short of the muddy centre, which was now a playground for the resident ducks in winter.

Religion need not be organised. It can appear in the forms of Nature, and that late afternoon, I felt religion not in another man-made house of worship, but in the clean sweeping sand of Geroa, an hour by car south of Wollongong. The ocean side golf course links already put me in the mood. And then the seduction of an empty beach appeared and totally caught my heart and soul. It was windy but there were no surfing waves. Despite this, the vibes of the place appealed to my inner self and offered a calmness, just like in the Hindu or Buddhist temple earlier.

To wind up this special day, I found myself in the company of good friends a hundred kilometres from my Wollongong home, in a beloved recreation of Austria. We could not resist having our fav dishes of duck, snapper and pork, in a bush setting restaurant manned by true blue Austrians. Then we whizzed past the Sydney Bahai Temple by night, a circular structure with a light at the top. We had to return to the Austrian-German restaurant to retrieve a handbag forgotten in the midst of relaxed laughter and social enjoyment, but one of the staff members, brown-haired and blue-eyed Mario, was already waiting for us to return it.

So as it had been throughout this special Sunday in mid-July, the special kind of hush continued under the moonlight as I drove back to Wollongong late at night.

Calming and Magical

For just a rare hour and a half, I was engrossed in a captivating conversation with someone I felt so comfortable with. Someone I can trust, relax with and respect. And open my heart to.

You don't ask for it. There are no expectations. Then it all fallls into place - the vibes, the flow and the synergy. It is so reinvigorating. My conversational companion takes the lead by talking about something exciting to make me change dimensions and to embrace a more nurturing dimension. I let go of my imposed inhibitions and my caution learnt the hard way in some unfriendly places, now seemingly so far away. I can feel my whole self liberated like cold water doused on a hot day, or letting my senses glow in the warmth of enjoying the company of someone I instinctively feel so calm with. I cross the threshold into the dimension of what I know is happiness - so difficult to define but I am so sure I am in.

I enthusiastically follow the lead offered to me. I offer mine back and we then exchange flows of encouragement, tinged with humour and ease. We lavish our opened souls with the temptation of food and drink. My gratefulness swells inside asking myself how fortunate I am to know this person and be able to expwerience these magical snippets of talk and interchange of ideas. Each of us then get bold - we ask each other questions, and I know in my heart, these are questions from me that I have longed to share with someone like this. I expect confrontation and challenges to my sense of things, and I get them, not in a negative way at all, but in a way I should be provoked for my own good. I accept the need for me to change and to review. I am so glad I got it from this person in front of me, who looks at me, my inner self and my dreams through sunshades but through which I can see the eyes and the eye of the heart. Oh yes, it was a sunny day with blue skies, even in the so-called winter of my neighbourhood. I realised how lucky his lady partner is.

It is so unreal, this experience but I know it is real. I ask for opinions, I make my observations, I share things that I have not told anybody else. A calm and open heart leads to a similar mind - and then the state of contention which I recognise as a hallmark moment. Each of us do not want to leave this optimal moment. I want to get further insights and I want to offer more of my thoughts. We have to leave, but there is no regret - I have been sustained to last more than what I deserve, and I thought my lunch mate has also enjoyed it. I secretly hope that what has been given to me in this electrifying encounter has also been returned back to my giver. I don't say it, but my straight talking companion said it - it was great having this opportuntiy to talk about things that should be thought about, but which we hardly have a chance to. I just said I find it so good about the insights I had obtained, but I know it was much more than insights. It was simply magic.