The Queen’s Birthday

Monday, June 11, was a holiday in Australia, the Queen’s Birthday. We set out for a long walk in Melbourne to familiarize ourselves with the city’s layout and after some twenty minutes from our apartment ambling toward the city center we came upon a stately, definitely British-official looking building. Climbing its steps, we were surprised to find ourselves in the state library whose stacks and exhibitions were open despite the holiday.

As it turned out, one of the exhibitions that Kathy had hoped to see was still on—How I entered there I cannot truly say—and we wandered through displays of limited edition prints and handmade artists’ books, extraordinary collaborative works of visual and graphic artists and writers who had worked together in a special program, Edition + Artist Book Studio created at Australia National University in Canberra under the leadership of Diane Fogwell. Although the forms of books represented were less innovative than on display at some of the exhibitions at the Athenaeum in La Jolla, where Kathy once took a class, many of the works warranted extensive reflection. One in particular caught her attention—Jan Brown and Ian Templeman’s collaboration entitled Icarus/A Father Remembers (2004). With Ian Templeman's poem as the anchor, the work showcased Jan Brown’s etchings in a concertina book designed by Diane Fogwell that vividly and poignantly captured Icarus’s father Daedulus’s bittersweet memories of his son’s desire and ultimately fatal flight.
Upstairs, we wandered through another exhibition—Mirror of the World—Books and Ideas, which included materials from the rare books and special collections housed in the library, including sacred texts, geographies and cartographies, beautifully illustrated second editions of Audubon, and continued into modern Australia pulp fiction, the contemporary novels of Peter Carey, and digital books.

But the library itself was an exhibition. Standing several floors above the main reading room made us long for nothing more than a good research topic, a library card (which Kathy registered for and now can be welcomed back for year!), and a quiet seat in the corner. The magnificent lemon light washing down from the dome gave an ethereal quality to the place.

That afternoon, we lunched at Mekong, a famous, local Vietnamese Pho restaurant where Bill Clinton is reputed to have consumed two bowls, and we enjoyed a bowl of vermicelli delicately enhanced with the subtle and gentle flavors of fresh coriander, bean sprouts and perfectly crisped vegetarian spring rolls. We walked home and spent time preparing for our last lectures. That night, Amy joined her colleagues at Café Italia, across from our apartment, and finished the evening with a plate of rigatoni with beef ragout and a glass of Kangarillo Shiraz from Australia. We returned to the same place the next evening and enjoyed a dinner of the same dish for Amy (why not repeat a great thing?) and a “Three Bean Risotto” for Kathy, along with the same Shiraz.

Tomorrow is our last work day and then it’s off to Darwin, and then on to Bali!