One place where misery is welcome

Loyal readers will know that in recent columns we've looked at how Misery Hill and Misery Point may have got their evocative names. Brian Blundell of a famous local family told us (Gang-gang, January 20) that while he doesn't know for sure when and why the two places came by these melancholy names, from family history he knows of various heartbreaks that befell battling settlers Isaac and Emily Blundell there.

Now we are trying to find from the government what is to become of Misery Hill and Misery Point when suburbia embraces them. We are especially hopeful that the places will keep their melancholy but history-rich names. We live in rather happy-clappy times when misery just won't do, and one wouldn't put it past governments to do nothing to preserve these black-armband names or, worse still, to do something to replace them.

TAMS' advice to us doesn't address place names but says that ''in the area of Misery Point the Molonglo River Park Concept Plan proposes low impact recreational features, which may include hiking trails and low key picnic areas … Commencement of the Molonglo Stage 3 urban development in the vicinity of Misery Point is not anticipated for several years.''

But at least we learn that pains are being taken to bring joy, at Misery Point and Misery Hill, to one of God's creatures.

''The concept plan focuses on conservation and restoration of the pink-tailed worm-lizard habitat and box-gum woodland (BGW), both of which are found in the area of Misery Point.

''A BGW restoration project will commence in the area at Misery Point and the hill above the point later this year … The local community will be invited to get involved with the project through community planting days.''

After the recent garden-shrivelling and morale-sapping heatwave, all suburban Canberrans are rejoicing over last Friday's rain. For a while there our gardens' snails (some of them venturing out with umbrellas) were drunk with joy.

Here is a delightful, rain-welcoming poem by Canberran Michael Thwaites (1915-2005), first published in The Canberra Times in May 1973.

Rain After Drought

Waking to a diapason* in the downpipe

I peer through curtained panes to a curtained sky

Something extraordinary, half-recalled, is happening -

Water falling spontaneously out of the air

Without the aid of bucket, hose, or sprinkler …

Machinery of the mind creaks, jerks, retrieves

Out of archival dust a phrase - ''It's raining''.

The garden hoses gleam like water-snakes

With wetness not their own. Leaves shine. Plants purr

Arching their backs under the rain's caress

And breathe in deep. Earth sighs. Snails, drunk with joy,

Turn catherine-wheels; and - proof the thing's no dream -

The unmended patch of guttering pours its flood

Exuberant as in past remembered years.

A glance at the chart dispels all mystery.

This ridge of High, advancing, rode too high.

Tripped on the Southern Slopes, there met this Low,

In consequence, cleared off in deep depression,

Whence, from a scientific point of view,

Precipitation became inevitable.

But I, still subject to simplistic impulse,

Can only mutter, ''Thank God for the rain'',

Reverting to a phrase which Russian peasants

And primitive peoples use, personifying

A being who in their minds had invented

A system for recycling planet earth

And was, in an early form, the first ecologist.

*a burst of musical sound, as if played by an organ

We're heatwave conscious at the moment and 75 years ago this week (in 1939) Canberra's worst 20th-century heatwave (at least as gruelling as the one we've just had) was at last tapering off.

The Canberra Times published the picture story ''Air-conditioned coach for Canberra''.

It was most unusual then for The Canberra Times to publish a photograph of anything (and so, for example, this is the only photograph in the whole bus-story edition of the paper).

And so we have to suspect that a picture of and a story about something sporting the magic of airconditioning had special resonance because probably no Canberra homes and few if any Canberra motor cars had this new-fangled boon, yet.

And because Canberrans have just suffered a sweltering week, airconditioning was a dream of bliss. Now here, in this up-to-the-minute juggernaut, in this story of a form of airconditioning at last reaching out to touch Canberra, was the futuristic prospect of that dream coming true for all, including householders.

An impressed Times reported that here was ''The air-conditioned coach which has been placed on the Albury-Canberra-Sydney runs by the Murray Valley Passenger Service.

''Powered by a British Diesel motor, it is luxuriously appointed, has indirect lighting, footrests, and sun-blinds. An enclosed cabin holds half a ton of luggage; and the coach carries sufficient fuel for a non-stop run of 500 miles.''