Have you noticed in this shrinking world how the art of the farewell has been knocked sideways?
When leisurely liners called at Outer Harbor (and we may see one or two in this new year) I made a practice of ingratiating myself with all my friends or their friends who might be travelling.
This entitled me to an hour or so of luxurious-what-might-have-been; strolling wide, white decks; inspecting lifeboats; riding up and down in the ship’s lift; having drinks; reclining in smoke rooms without smoking; sneaking into dining-rooms without dining, saying to prospective travellers that the Titanic went down because the iceberg slit her gut but not to worry, apart from old floating mines and uncharted reefs there was nothing really to worry them.
I was the last visitor to go ashore after stern warnings from pursers; quartermasters and third officers who hovered on gangway guard always knew me. The great dreamer, the passenger that-never-was.
They would wave a kindly farewell as the propellers churned and I screamed warnings about floating objects, aggressive whales and old mines.
And I would stand there until the ship was a white speck and the tugboats frothed their bows back to a cuppa at Port Adelaide.
There hasn’t been much activity lately. One can’t get much magic carpet kick out of farewelling a sheep ship or a container vessel with all its soulless boxes.
Oh, one can go and brood a little over the yacht squadron basin and think of sails like clouds and clean, aesthetic bows razoring St. Vincent Gulf or laying lanes of foam in Bass Strait.
One might even stand at the nearby boat ramp and scream with laughter when a trailer runs over somebody’s toe or watch those awful duels for landing rights.
Ships have passed; or most of them have, and I have nothing to farewell except people at the airport.
Planes are up and gone. The fareweller stands on what is called an observation deck which is railed and contained and where climbing children are eyed with terrible and watchful calm by security men.
There was a tranquillity, a heart-string-tugging privacy when one could stand on a wharf with all the crowd gone; when the streamers whipped around one’s feet like broken dreams; or the hot breath of a kiss from a girl who was an almost total stranger but who wanted to kiss anyway, lingered together with the sharp taste of the last drink.
Now one gets a hot swirl of aircraft smell; one feels sorry for children waving frantically at a haughty jet dwindling in the sky, its passengers already accepting magazines and looking for the drinks trolley; not caring for the wistful ants that are left in little Adelaide Airport with its international dreams.
Grounded, I sit with a lonely milkshake, dejected among the froth and wishing there was somewhere I could go to farewell someone.
Trains? Oh, I’ve seen people off on trains but they are always afraid I won’t leave their roomette in time. They hustle me away. The thought of my accidentally accompany ng them fills them with panic.
They escort me to the platform then scamper back to make mouths through the soundproof window and to use baffling sign language. I don’t understand a thing they’re saying or signalling.
They explode into an eruption of hands as the train pulls out. Then they fall back into their seats and begin discussing me.
But wait. A friend is leaving in his trailer boat from the St. Kilda ramp. I shall take a ribbon of streamer and throw it to him as he steams past the mangroves and the cockle beds while the romantic winds shuffle through Torrens Island vainly searching for a guitar or undulating hips or surf sound.
I shall squint at the tide bubbling and bearing a disposable can on its lip.
Then I will slink home and read the Outer Harbour tides and dream of great white ships and of flinging a streamer of passion from the yearning wharf.
So I’m restless with the hunger for far seas; for islands in the sun and long drinks in the shade, for poignant wharves and bands playing Harbour Lights.
That’s the way it always is for me during summer holidays.
And between Test matches.
Max Fatchen