Remembering Bendigo

The last time I was here, he held the doors open for me. I remember because they smelt of rain and wood rot, of the hill we’d climbed to get there, of muddy shoes and misty half formed things I couldn’t name then, of others I still can’t now.

Today, the doors are locked.

I didn’t mean to come back here. It was the Writers Festival that brought me to Bendigo, after all, not the church on the hill. Joel walks around the back, photographing the stonework, bending to read the memorial. I rock forward on my heels. But, I am here, where we were that summer Mum threw her back out, and I can’t leave just yet. There is a light on in one of the second storey windows and only one little grey hatchback in the driveway.

Seeing this place from the car window last night, those tall spires reaching up over the sunset, I didn’t recognise it. Something in my gut did perhaps, some squirming cell dividing in fright. But, it wasn’t until I heard a familiar name in a seminar this afternoon that the memory broke open for me. The road trip to Bendigo, with matching rainbow sunglasses and those ratty Batman socks; Dad singing to Pink Floyd louder than anyone really should.

There is a reason this place feels so familiar, like perfume left on a jumper. I remember counting every set of old, stone steps, running between the hedges and laughing at my sister’s footsteps. Now, the angels of the courtyard sit and stare at the stars through glass. They look no older.

I remember other things as well; long white candles and silence pressing the walls together, a man carved with lines in his face, that cathedral ceiling soaring above it all like a second sky. Until we came here, I don’t remember ever being inside a church before.

The light on upstairs flickers and goes out but I am caught under the stare of the gargoyles of the tower and I don’t move. That name I heard this afternoon belongs to a guest panellist at the festival. She is now an established editor but, around the time I was last standing here staring up at these stone monsters, I knew her as my school librarian. She was the one to first place Harry Potter in my hands – not long before that infamous trip to Bendigo in fact. I remember because the book was on the seat beside me the entire way and the sun through the glass slow cooked its front cover.

There is the smell of my childhood on this festival. Today, I saw my sister’s piano teacher humming over her coffee in a cafe. An old friend sat two rows behind me in our morning seminar before I realised who he was. And, a few weeks before I came here, a man I knew as an eleven year old, was killed in the MH17 plane crash disaster. His name was Liam Davison and he was an acclaimed Australian author. His shadow has lain over this festival for me ever since.

I think I needed to come to Bendigo. I think the festival was just a happy excuse. It has been four years now since I saw Dad or heard him laughing from the living room. He laughed the way lions roar. But, for the last four years, I haven’t quite been able to remember it, the pitch or tone, that precise throaty timbre. Standing here today and I almost can. It’s not the Bendigo wind. It’s not the fact that I haven’t felt cold here once since I arrived yesterday evening.

It’s this cathedral. I am back walking the paths I explored as a child, staring up at the church by which I still compare all others, that made me dream of Europe and monasteries on mountains and stonemasons with cramps in their hands.

I am back at Sacred Heart Cathedral. And I remember because Dad was here.

Sherryn's Festival Blogging Rule No. 27: Anything written after 1 am is exempt from editing.