Two Birds In The Hand

By J. Piers Linkert

"For certain, whether we knew it or not, we were both richer, happier, and better for having gone, though we crossed the country hot-footed."

 

Told through the lens of a migrant who was raised in Australia, this is a personal insight into not quite feeling at home anywhere - of wanting to leave as soon as you arrive. The story follows the author and his partner as they set off, at a whim, on a road trip that would take them through their own backyard. A rusty yet reliable four-wheel-drive becomes more than a means of transport, but a friend who completes the pair. A laconic voice hews out Australian cities, the isolated bush, and the people who appear along the way. 

 

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. Piers Linkert
• Release date: Nov 9, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223393962

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

Another Year

Emily and I found a park near the apartment, on the street where three great housing blocks look out over the beach. We took what we needed to shower and sleep, then headed around a corner. Up the staircase of these mid-century coastal apartments.

I knocked quietly, and we entered. A greeting with love but without fanfare, genuine, and we quickly settled on the couch next to Josh and Michelle.

Episodes from the adventures of Malcolm Douglas, that iconic Australian traveller, played on the television. And we sat there, watching, while I thought to myself ‘We had not seen nor completed a fraction as much as this man, so what have we done?’.

It was perhaps, for us, not the same. He was this explorer, a true bushman - it was his life. He had simply documented the life he had wanted to lead. But for us, any longer out on that endless road, regardless of wealth or time, would have been an aimless wander. Or did we see our trip as something necessary to be ticked off, to say it had been done.

Though we enjoyed almost all the moments on our trip. And despite not living the country as intensely as what may have been, it had been a time well spent.

And I sit here now, drinking a cheap beer, watching those Sydney cockroaches from the corner of my eye, while reruns of Malcolm Douglas continue playing. And Emily, surely still awake, waiting for me to come to bed.

My birthday came quickly. The Saturday before, we went to dinner at a little Polish place, as we had done so often for celebrations. My brothers, a girlfriend, two friends.

It was an enjoyable evening, and afterwards Emily and I travelled on towards the city, as we farewelled our weary company.

The Lansdowne pub - always a good bet for a quick beer. Then, as we moved on, searching again for a new experience, we turned down a street, and paused at a wall.

Music came from somewhere close by, muffled. I looked about me, searching, and then examined the wall of this small alleyway. I found a green button, I pressed it, and the wall moved aside to reveal a slim, middle-aged man sitting on a stool. He invited us in.

A cool little basement bar, which from outside, showed no signs, no lines, no security.

I commented to Emily, what a shame it is for those of us who work so fully in this city, with only precious weekends to enjoy. And those who are so preoccupied with finding a place - or revisiting the past - that we have no time or interest to walk down unfamiliar streets, and listen to music, and press green buttons.’.

My first class at university, where I attended in-person instead of the online study I had completed that previous year. Of course, I was late, underestimating how long traffic and sex in the shower would take me.

I entered the lecture room in silence, looked at the lecturer, and waved my silent apologies, taking a seat towards the back near the door. Art class. I briefly recognised and smiled, at the three who had already occupied the desk which I joined.

I was attentive, it was interesting, though I feared some of my classmates had less interest, and sat bored, straight out of high school and unwilling to comply.

Back to the old, now.

It is routine that ails me. It is routine that draws the curtain on weeks and months, and you look back on five easily forgotten years.

Please, don’t look back and think of the time and think that it was wasted, you did wonderful, you did what anybody would do. There is still so much time, and you will get there, whatever you want to achieve, you will. Don’t be sad for the things that have passed, they were great, but there will be many more. Remember the evening spent, coming back to earth after such dread, and then you laughed so much, and you said to yourself that it was one of the best nights in your life. There will always be more to come, nothing was ever the best there ever was. This apartment won’t be the best you ever lived in, but it will be unique. The things you did here won’t be the very best time in your life. It was exciting and treacherous and terrible and wonderful.

To Emily, among the countless things, I am sorry for reading a book in New Zealand, at the start, rounding those housing estates, to the bus stop, and sat down there with our backpacks against fences, and the nothings of gutters. The beginning of our journey there, yet I dove into some words, what book I cannot even remember. I wish I had been there with you, in that moment. Played a silly little game, like twenty questions, or I spy. I wish I could go back to that moment. I wish I would sit down there with you again and wonder about the future. How memory and distance, and the impossible, can make the simplest of things into the grandest.

We hang onto it all, of memories and songs and things. Things, of a great amount of things we hold onto. Holding onto the final card, the best, the one to save us, until the very end. We bargain and reason and hold onto, all of this. Never are they used, never is there the time.

CHAPTER TWO

Where

On Thursday I was sitting at our office desk. Friday evening, near midnight, finishing a course assignment in this narrow little room. Hypnotised by a thought which came not unexpectedly, though jolting then seizing. It had been over two years living here, in this house in the suburbs of Sydney, a stone’s throw from the University of New South Wales.

This semi-detached cottage with a half sun-lit yard that we made into a home, which was lived and enjoyed and altered. Emily’s mark stood in this little home. In the artwork and the records, in the houseplants and bedsheets and irregular flares of design that blended into daily life. And then - appeared through the dust, suddenly, and made reminders of the talent she possessed.

We emptied that place and what I felt was not regret at leaving, but having wasted my time. So many weeks gone by during which I had made no attempts and no progress towards my great goals. I had, instead, created a hundred hobbies, little joyrides; I brewed beer, I became an archery enthusiast, I worked wood and dug gardens - but I gravitated towards what was easy and what gave results quickly.

On the eve of our final weeks there, I foresaw what I had failed to do before.

We didn’t stop packing, and cleaning and condensing and continually throwing out this rubbish that infiltrates our lives. This rubbish that sits around and gathers dust or hides in drawers and cupboards. What use did we have these things for, if not to remind us that we never made the time to use them. And if we did it was once or twice, and back they went into oblivion. A monument to our fast lives and the I just haven’t gotten round to it attitude.

We left on Sunday night to bunk with Emily’s boss in Bondi, the house now being fully empty.

That evening, driving away, tired from the move, I felt suddenly that sensation of when you’re a child. You’re being coached back home late at night, looking at the brake lights of cars and the darkness. Like a half-dream.

How pleasant it was, how long it had been since this had last come to me.

The city which we enjoyed here could be a dream. For some of those who have grown up around one of the greatest natural harbours of the world, moving anywhere else would be unthinkable. To lose the connection to the ever-changing water - eerily black from storms and clouds on one day, then two days later transformed into a crystal playground, where reef or seagrass ocean floors float to rocks with gentle swell. Between every ferry dock and private jetty lay the smallest of precious coves. And for all the tar and cement that sits atop the ground and is shadowed by buildings and the construction of more, there is a soothing empty wild that breaks free suddenly - the Pacific Ocean.

Yet how often have we ventured out onto boats and explored these coves - or walked beside the seashore with be-wondered eyes and gratitude that in such an earthly paradise we live. There are long commutes, and traffic blocks the roads which were never designed for such an influx. Our lives are there to pursue the money that this city brings, and seldom do we break away from these obstacles.

The next morning, we returned from Bondi to Kingsford to make sure everything was clean, and to pick up the last few remaining things. Although we had been there for so long, it was no emotional affair, the shift and commotion had exhausted us, the driving around, the city.

We looked at the green oasis in the yard that I had created. I would have done the same again had I another chance, but it was hard thinking about the meaninglessness of it all - how after all this effort, there was nothing to keep. Emily and I had changed this space into something homely, but it was no longer our home - so much energy exerted into something that was not our own cause. Just a small rental, in the eastern Sydney suburbs, that two students had made their own. Leaving the glossy floorboards behind in steps to the door, at the living room paused, the sunshine wafting through the windows in sections behind us.

To each other we looked, and closed the door.

Emily and I worked on the car at Bondi, taking out seats and panelling, stripping the linoleum, and scrubbing the rust, followed by a generous coating of fish oil which a neighbour had given me. I roughly tailored a jute rug to fit the metal flooring, then it took only a day to build a pull-out timber bed frame. With some hesitating and head-scratching, it worked out so that the cotton futon mattress could be halved lengthways into a couch against the windows, leaving a hallway of sorts on the other side.

I looked around, out of the open carport and onto the street. This suburb was one for study. How many internationals live and work here. How odd are those who walk their hounds and visit the bars. How little it represents all of that vastness, of land and people, all of this island nation.

Emily’s boss kindly allowed us one of the kid’s rooms. We drank one night, and after enough to make us merry, we decided to strip the carpet of this rental. Beneath carpet heavy with the decades, lay a beautiful, ancient timber floor. How you could do such a thing to the bones of trees.

Towards the end of the week, once again, our sprawl was packed, and we left Bondi behind to stay at my brother’s place in Maroubra. There we organised the final touches on Birdie. We named them so because it felt right, and of course, the two large eagle stickers on the front doors. Covered in a faded gemstone blue, we fell in love immediately. This car, neither he nor she, unusual for a machine - it was as if meant to be. A month earlier we had been camping in the north, at some quiet beach, and a thought came to mind that maybe we should escape. Our lease had been a month-to-month agreement. Our studies had moved online. We had student payments and money saved up. Why on earth would we not have? That night we searched for a machine, to take us there and back, and further. And there, as soon as we had looked, it found us. A forty-year-old four-wheel drive. Unregistered, low kilometres, diesel. We messaged the seller immediately. The next day, on our way back to Sydney, we inspected. That evening we paid the deposit, and the day after that, for three thousand dollars, we had bought the best car we could have ever asked for.

It rained the morning we set off, a day sometime in October. The rain passed and the sun shone as we headed north with an easterly crosswind, along the highways and down through the tunnels of this Pacific city. It was such excitement that we felt, on holidays to some warm, exciting place - with no rent or mortgage or responsibility to think of. How free we were on that day.

Why not always feel like this? Like a youth - excited, going out to play. Of course, we all make excuses why we should not, with our commitments to this world of family, economy, taxes and bills, and every other draining aspect this great modern life offers.

And yet we too still carried with us an element of duty. Those student payments required us to carry our laptops, and actually study. But this seemed like, not only a fair trade, but also a little too good to be true - getting paid to complete a degree and travel.

We stayed for one night in Newcastle with family. The next morning