Waltzing the Magpies: A Year in Australia

Bumpy Landing

CBumpy Landing ~ I spent much oOuly and June smoothing our arrival in Western Australia. For Immigration I filed a cabinet offorms. Through the University ofWestern Australia, I rented an apartment for the first two weeks of our stay in Perth. To banish turbulence from the flight, I booked seats on Qantas from Los Angeles to Perth, explaining that I needed an aisle seat because once my legs cramped so badly after a long trip that I almost had "surgery." For the flight from Hartford to Los Angeles, I couldn't book seats, and American Airlines stuffed us into the last row of the plane, practically leading to actual, not fictional, surgery. I cancelled automobile insurance and from our agent obtained a testimonial stating that neither Vicki nor I had caused a car wreck during the past five years. Seven years ago in Perth, I bought a Toyota from Rod Evans at Brooking Mazda. Brooking had closed, but through the Internet , I traced Rod to Mazda City. I telephoned him, and Rod assured me that he'd find a dependable used car and hold it for our arrival. Easily I shifted from automotive to medical matters. I arranged physicals for the family. Vicki and the children were in good health. But I fretted about myself, the condition of a fiftynine -year-old male being more a matter ofchance than pills. Happily , I proved in sustainable shape. After the physical I visited Robert Friedman, a dermatologist, who trimmed me into fleshly topiary, loping off buds that might have bloomed in Australia. A college student, my older boy Francis, was not accompanying us to Australia. Instead he planned to spend the year in Europe, studying in Italy in the fall and Germany in the spring. Because his wisdom teeth were impacted, I arranged for Dr. Grippo to pull them out. At times days seemed classrooms devoted to educational matters . I enrolled Eliza in St. Hilda's Anglican School for Girls and Edward in Christ Church Grammar School, generally thought the leading schools in Perth. On June 21, Edward flew to Queensland, where he spent the summer working as a jackeroo on Tumbar Station . Because applying to colleges would be difficult enough without having to request forms from Australia, I solicited applications from a gaggle of schools: Oberlin, Carleton, Duke, Sewanee, Middlebury, Bowdoin, Tulane, and Virginia, among others. I telephoned admissions officers. Although application forms were not generally available until the middle ofAugust, officers promised to speed them to me so that I would have them in hand when I left Connecticut. Most schools got the applications to me. Those that did not I nagged, usually successfully but sometimes unsuccessfully . Over the telephone an admissions officer at Amherst assured me Edward's application was in the mail and would arrive "tomorrow, the next day at the latest." Six days later the application had not arrived. "I will mail an application to Storrs this afternoon ," the officer then assured me. Nine days later we flew to Australia without the application. In July Vicki cleaned house and held a tag sale. She cleared $217.85, or 7.46% of a roundtrip ticket from Hartford to Perth. Three roundtrip tickets cost $8,759-45. For its part Edward's ticket to Queensland, including a leg from Queensland to Perth, but not a return flight to Connecticut, cost $1,824.19. To earn airfare, I taught children's literature in both sessions of summer school. Three mornings a week I lectured from 9:00 to 12:15, giving students two six-minute lavatory breaks. By eleven-thirty students were weary, and one day, two hours and forty-six minutes into class, a girl turned to a boy sitting behind her and referring to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, exclaimed, "Are we down the rabbit hole or what?" "Swept down the burrow," I said, "and Tam 2 SAM PICKERING shoveling in words by the peck." In the haste to earn tickets, I rarely slowed. Moreover, money was seldom out of mind. To pull Francis's teeth, Dr. Grippo charged $1,289, ofwhich I paid $486.3l. Francis was in the chair for twenty-one minutes, the expense to me, I told Vicki, "amounting to $23.16 a minute." Because I owned two small dogs, I didn't rent the house. Instead Aaron, a graduate student, occupied the house and in place of rent cared for the dogs...