I hadn’t realised that flying business class really does, as the advertisements said, deliver the businessman ready to do business: it certainly delivered the Quaker ready to meet Quakers, and with virtually no jetlag. Two days got compressed into 36 hours, but two periods of sleep, even if the second was relatively short, made it feel like morning when I arrived in Adelaide. The airport were very efficient at processing two big plane-loads of people at once: they send officials along the queues to pre-process so that when you get to the immigration and customs desks most problems and queries are sorted.
So I was spotted at once, coming through to the arrivals area, by Jo Jordan, who whisked me back to her home for coffee and chat and some delicious toasted fruit bread. After a shower, we went out in the car to see what we could see from the top of the highest of the local hills, appropriately named Mount Lofty (though in fact it’s less than 3000 feet high!). It was damp, spots of rain (the locals were delighted, there’s been a heat wave the last few days), and rather misty, so the usual panoramic view of the city was rather muted and it felt cold. So we went back down into the city, and to the central market. This had reminiscences of the Grainger Market back in Newcastle, though it seemed cleaner, fresher and with loads of locally grown fruit and other foods. Australians are evidently keen on getting local produce. We wandered round, sampling some exotic delicacy from a stall in the fish market, and then going through to the food court where there was every kind of Asian food on offer – Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Malayan and the one we tried, Vietnamese. We had huge bowls of beef broth with ‘cold rolls’, a kind of spring roll but in a cold rice-based wrapper around more rice and vegetables. The broth is apparently boiled for ages, and was very tasty, full of beef, noodles and several other bits and pieces.
Well fed, we went back home, Jo having an instinctive sense for my needs which by then were for a nap and a rest for my knee, now making its wounded presence felt. I had a good sleep, and then sorted out a few things, repacking a bit after the journey, and enjoyed a cuppa and the company of Naomi, Jo and Joseph’s granddaughter. Then Christine James arrived to collect me: she’s my host until Sunday, when I move on to the next family. Chris was a little delayed, so I’d not been at her house ten minutes before Drew Thomas arrived to take me away to my first Quaker engagement. Drew is part of Quaker Learning Australia, which is a group trying to tackle the difficulties of providing learning opportunities to a small and very, very scattered collection of Friends. QLA were interested both in my experience of distance learning with the Open University, and my knowledge of Quaker learning in the UK, at Woodbrooke and elsewhere, It was a good meeting, and I was pleased to be able to contribute some ideas and suggestions – which of course has also given me some follow-up work to do! But that’s partly what I came for: to offer what I can and learn what I can, and I’ve already started on both of those. The other unexpected thing is that although I’ve been here barely 24 hours, I’ve started thinking in terms of ‘when I next come’. This is, I think, because the Friends I’ve met, quite a few already, have all been easy to relate to, people who are clearly on the same path as I’m trying to follow and who will be good companions with whom to share the journey.
Back, then, to Christine’s, for a cool fruit juice on the terrace, overlooking the city from the elevated location of the house. The evening temperature was cool and pleasant: a lovely way to end the day. I went briefly on line to check my emails, ‘and so to bed’.