What I had forgotten wasthe smell of money. Not the scent of the meaning of money, but the smell of actual money. Paper money. That strange, passed through many pockets, hands, registers, wallets, under the table smell of money. The dirty aroma of cash. It hit me in the nostrils as soon as the note was passed down the table to me. Forgetting the unhygienic aspects for a moment, there is some nostalgia in a paper bank note, not obtainable from the new sterile plastic bank notes of today. 10 Rand. What the hell would that even buy me? How many grubby fingers have held that note before me? How many bribes, meals, deals and surprises had been bought with it? How many drinks? How many promises of a better future? I promise to pay the bearer on demand it says… what does that even mean?

It looked remarkably new for a paper note, perhaps it’s been sitting in a forgotten section of the drawer of a travel exchange office in Melbourne. Never actually used in South Africa, but sent in an airmail envelope by a relative to a child in Australia, a birthday gift. Instigating a forced return thank you letter for the useless funny looking smelly piece of paper. Incongruously, there is an illustration of a long haired medieval looking gentleman on the front and then a sheep and a bull on the back. Hardly an indication of the lushness, diversity and heritage of South Africa.

The Japanese have a saying ‘money is made for changing hands, but fortunes favour the brave’, whose fortune was this? Was it ever worth a fortune?

My time in South Africa was long ago but moments of it are ingrained in my brain. The richness of the landscape, the beautiful cities, the palpable feeling of fear in the Jo’berg of 20yrs ago, the stunning ocean and scenery of Cape Town.

What I remember most about that part of our trip was the opportunities to visit the black Town ships hidden on the outskirts of the towns and have a small glimpse of the life of the people who lived in them. As far as the eye could see, hundreds of thousands of shacks, shipping containers, walk-ways and burnt out cars. Kids running along next to our vehicle, banging on the window and shouting greetings in native tongues, wearing filthy rags and grubby feet, snot stuck where it has slithered down to their top lip. The overwhelming smell when we got out of the car of putrid potent un-sanitary life. But also the happiness, laughter, songs and joy that were present too.

People looking at me, shyly waving and obviously intrigued by my pale, round body, my blonde hair, my clothing and my camera. Our guide explained that some of the residents never ventured away from the Township and if they did, their interactions with white people were few and far between. Apartheid had demolished any sense of equality, it was safer for them to stay amongst their own.

I flipped the video camera screen around for the children to see themselves, they jostled and pushed to see themselves angled in the frame. Amazed and laughing at seeing their faces in real time for the first time. We visited a school held in a shipping container. The kids sitting on the floor, the heat, the stench of sweat, poverty and genuine anticipation, flies buzzing around their faces as they listened intently. A teacher at the front and these beautiful little sponges, all eager to practice their English with us.

We visited a home, had a meal and a look around. A welcoming lady who lived in a shack, we had to duck down to get inside, the walls papered in old glossy magazines, the floor made of coffee sacks. No furniture at all. Not even a chair. An open fire pit in the middle of the room to cook and boil water, the only feature. What a fire trap, no wonder vast areas of these districts regularly disappeared, instantly ravaged by fire. We chat, she asks about my place and my family. My parents and siblings. Do I have children? She is amazed that I am 27 and have no kids. She says she is sorry for me and she blesses my womb. The idea that a woman would choose education, employment, travel and adventure before family is incomprehensible to her. We eat a simple stew on rice, I don’t want to ask what the meat is for fear my face will give away my horror if we are eating horse or dog.

Originally we had intended to drive along the coast from CapeTown and then head up inland to Johannesberg, but we stayed a few more days around Cape Town before heading East to Port Elizabeth. The drive is exhilarating. Everyone has told us not to stop unless at designated tourist or petrol spots. Too many bandits on the road. Don’t stop if you see a body on the road, even a child. Keep driving. Keep doors locked. Don’t stop at traffic lights. There was no internet or mobile phone, just us and a lonely planet to guide us. The car we hired was a budget rental. We hadn’t worked for 6 months and still had more travel to do, so the vehicle we opted for was very old. The back doors didn’t open and the boot didn’t shut. We taped it with gaffa tape and they gave us a roll for the journey. We could leave it in JBerg after we had finished.

Next minute I knew we were on our way, driving out of the safety of Cape Town and on the open road. The trepidation, excitement and adrenaline was palpable. How would we switch drivers? The air con wasn’t working, but it was so hot, was it safe to drive with the windows open slighty? In reality the drive was uneventful. Travel stories in those days passed from backpacker to backpacker inflated in intensity and severity. The fear of driving 1000km and seeing the road littered with bodies who would leap up and rob or rape us never eventuated. Everywhere we stopped people were friendly and warm. In Port Elizabeth we visited another Township. We were so enthralled in this experience of being able to be immersed in such a local and poverty stricken area. Voyeurism for the socially aware, left leaning middle class. It was brilliant.

PE is a much smaller city and get a lot less tourists, so the experience was much more authentic. In the Township we visited a graveyard/mortuary, a hospital, a community kitchen; and the highlight was the chance to have dinner with a family and then go to the equivalent of the pub. The pub was basically an open shipping container, with a makeshift bar on one side. Two types of homemade liquor was available. I can’t adequately describe the drink – a cross between rocket fuel, petrol and bourbon. A strong, potent blend of whatever they could find I suspect. Served in empty tins, with a bowl of fried something starchy to make it more palatable.

I loved the music the best though. In the corner of the container was a makeshift band. A few old guys with dilapidated instruments, a washboard, a guitar, drums and some brass. Some hokum bluegrass jazz. A cross between New Orleans and Memphis. Jazz that stuck in the soul so quick you wouldn’t be able to keep quiet or sit still. They pumped out those tunes and I couldn’t keen track. The bodies moving, the smell, the potent booze – a heady mix of thrill and enjoyment. Those musicians had nothing, no shoes, no payment for their work, no proper instruments – but they sang and played like they were in the best jazz venue in the world. The audience whooped and cheered, sang along, danced. I was one of very few women there and my initial hesitation and personal safety for being in such a place melted away. We passed our tins of booze around and swigged down the drinks. Smoked weed and cigars, rollups and pipes. We laughed, sweated and sang. Those people had nothing. But they had everything. In that moment I felt more alive than ever before. I knew I could never help them all but it didn’t matter. They made the best of what they had and were grateful for it.

I had forgotten where I had packed the key to the lock for safekeeping. That fact was not a surprise. The house was chaotic from the move with boxes overflowing  with random combinations of things that didn’t make any sense – bedroom pillows (still in sleep stained pillow slips) packed with kitchen saucepans, cutlery flowing freely inside the cat litter tray (clean-ish, cat deceased), my best dress (silk, on sale from Boss, summer 2014) bleakly visible beneath a Bunnings plastic container of bicycle parts (orderly, important man things).

Despair surfaced. Mixed with just a bit of anger. I had packed as much as I could before I left for my international business trip, leaving a sometimes disciplined, sometimes wildly disorganized adult (male) and a deeply uninterested teenager (male) to complete the packing and complete the move. I was now casting my weary eyes over the results of that fractious collaboration. To shake off the desire to rage and  to put the “potential damage to possessions” into perspective, I mumbled weakly and without significant intent my mantras 1. “people are more important than things” and 2. “Kind thoughts, kind words, kind actions”. I repeated them 3 times and as there was no one to actually rage at in any case, I turned my attention back to the key. I had one hour to find the key. One hour to develop a search strategy and then to deliver a positive outcome.

I decided to sit and recount my steps from the beginning of the day of packing, to visualize it, to find it in my mind and then to find its real shiny silver self. I made and carried by tea to the balcony. As I sat with a sigh I thought about the weight of my stuff spilling out in all directions in the room behind me. The Japanese have a saying that spareness is beauty. Certainly the move had given me a heavy heart. “so much stuff”. “SO MUCH STUFF” My life was not spare. My life held beauty yet I was now convinced that it could be so much more with fewer things: things like my cat’s ashes (sadness held in a little bottle), my self help books post divorce (10 or more of them – surely the one that made the suggestion to name a cockroach after your ex was all I needed?), too many childrens drawings and tiny shoes. Anchors, memories, making the inside of my head scratchy with nowhere for them to be stored out of the way.

I finished my tea and returned to the fortress of boxes to scratch like the bush turkey outside the back door through the mound of my life’s possessions. I put on music, suddenly saw in my mind exactly where the shiny prize lay, quietly, taped to the back of the drawer in my bedside table.

Relief. I could now unlock my physical most important document box of possessions. Could I now move to unlocking my life, shedding all those things that no longer served me well, no longer made my life beautiful?

Dating back to the days of the Greek mathematician and inventor, Archimedes, is that cry of astonishment, of jubilation, or excitement, ‘I’ve found it!!!!’.

It was often associated with the discovery of gold in the nineteenth century. In the USA there are at least 18 states with town or geographic locations called Eureka. It appears on the State Seal of California. In Australia, we associate it with the Victorian gold rush days. It includes the Eureka Stockade, the flag of independence, and the rebellion against the unfair State taxes of the day. It is an exclamation that is part of our cultural fabric.

Who amongst us has experienced a Eureka moment, a discover, a realisation, a solution that may have been hiding in plain sight? Today, I write of a Eureka moment that I was privileged to witness. It was a moving experience that opened a door, and brought great joy to the person involved.

It was December, 1965, in the Occupational Therapy section of The Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick. I was there as part of the process of being fitted with a prosthetic arm, having been involved in a farm accident earlier that year. There were about eleven of us, amputees and stroke victims that were under the care and guidance of a young Occupational Therapist, Margaret. Each morning she would gather us together in the corner of what looked like an old army gymnasium or barracks for morning tea, and to give us an outline of the day ahead. Looking back, we certainly were a group of varying individual challenges for her.

But there was one of our group that she found particularly challenging and frustrating. Her name was Hilda. She was a stroke victim. Apart from suffering one sided mobility loss, she had also lost the power of speech. Margaret was getting good outcomes for Hilda’s mobility, but had struck a brick wall with her speech loss. She was searching desperately for the trigger, the key that would start the recovery process and her research indicated there were possibilities around music.

Then on the morning of December 16^th, Margaret rushed up to our group and excitedly herded us into a corner of the gymnasium around an old piano. Then Hilda was wheeled in; she seemed very agitated, even emotional. It was getting close to Christmas, so Margaret settled down at the piano, and softly started to play Silent Night. What followed was spellbinding. Hilda was in tears as she sang two verses of the carol in perfect pitch and a clear voice. By the end of the second verse, everything else in the gym has ceased, and all had gathered in absolute awe, applauding and cheering wildly. There was not a dry eye in the room. The tune had transported Hilda back to her childhood, to the early days of her speaking ability. She sang Silent Night in perfect German, her native tongue. The family had migrated to Australia when she was only six years old.

For Margaret, this was ‘Eureka’, the key to the door. For everyone else, it was an experience beyond belief.

What I had forgotten, is how good the coffee was at The Little Red Fox Cafe. So many crappy coffees over the past month had me drinking too much Coke, just for the caffeine hit. But here I was, sipping the soft brown nectar of the gods. I was totally absorbed in my brew, but then, something caught my eye – a small orange ribbon, the end of it just hanging out from the crack in the sofa cushions I was sitting on. Now I was fixated on this ribbon. Should I pull it out? No, maybe I’ll just leave it hanging there. Another sip of coffee – now it tasted ordinary – shit! OK, I thought, I’ll pull the ribbon out. I took hold of the end, looked around the café – no one was paying me any attention. The Japanese have saying about this I thought, something like “don’t look like an idiot”. So I tried to pull the ribbon out as casually and coolly as possible. It slid out about 5cm and then got stuck. Shit – again – I sipped my coffee, now it didn’t taste at all good – I gave the ribbon a gentle tug. Nothing. Sip – tug – sip – tug – sip – TUUUGGGG. I was now pulling very hard, those Japanese wouldn’t have been happy – I looked like I was having some sort of fit. I sat back on the sofa and stared at the ceiling. Please help me – I said to the weird pattern that I saw up there. Then I had a thought – maybe my own body weight was trapping the ribbon. Aha! I casually stood up and sat on a chair which I had moved unnaturally close to the sofa, so that I could continue to tug away at the strange orange ribbon. I gave a gentle tug, nothing – damn. I tugged at it as hard as I could, whilst still seated, still it didn’t budge. Originally I had thought this ribbon was a lost hair tie or maybe a discarded piece of gift wrapping, but clearly it was neither of these. It was connected to something, but what? I sat back and stared at the ceiling again. Just then the waitress came past and took my cup away. I’ll have another one please – I asked – even though I knew the taste was gone. I needed more time to unravel the mystery ribbon. Next minute, everything changed. My coffee arrived, but the waitress tripped and coffee went everywhere – all over the sofa and floor – thankfully not on me! Shit! As she cleaned up the mess, she tucked the ribbon under the cushions of the sofa, so it was no longer visible – as if she knew it was there all the time. Mysterious, but now what? I got a new coffee – it was brilliant!! The best coffee I’d ever tasted. I just sat there sipping away – should I just forget the ribbon and drink my coffee? “Yes” said my brain. But I couldn’t. I started to formulate a plan to get that ribbon out once and for all. I’d drop something onto the floor, then after I moved the table to pick it up – I loved the idea – I’d kick it under the sofa. This would give me an excuse to manhandle that bloody thing! OK here goes – I dropped the teaspoon under the table – it was a low coffee table – so I had to move it to pick up the spoon. I stepped forward, whoopsy daisy, I accidentally kicked the spoon under the sofa. Now I bend down, slip my hand under the cushion, grab the ribbon and pull HARD. There’s a loud ripping sound – oooooh shit – then the ribbon starts to come out. I pull and pull and pull, so much ribbon, it is now covering the floor. I can’t stop, it just keeps coming. The other customers are pointing and laughing, but I can’t hear them, the ribbon just keep coming out, now it’s changing colours and still it comes – WHAT THE FUCK IS HAPPENING????

My stomach aches, my feet are heavy. I hold onto the railings and squeeze hard, using my grip to balance me. I look at the sea of people on the floor below me rushing to get home. Rushing to meet friends and lovers. Dragging toddler’s home from day care. I’m caught in a panic. I can’t go forward and I can’t turn around. The people behind me tut and grunt as they are forced to go around me but I can’t bring myself to move my feet. I get a hit from a shoulder pushing past me. It hurts and sends me off balance for a moment. I apologise after the man who is quickly lost to me and doesn’t hear my words. I’m stuck…

Someone pushes past me again and I feel the disgust on their breath. I know I am in the way. I know I need to move but I struggle to release my grip.

After too long, I don’t know how many minutes, I  take my toe and push it out over the step. I slowly, painfully push it down over the edge reaching out like a person in the dark. Reaching to see if there is ground beneath me. I transfer my weight down onto the step below and with it my body follows. I am not in control, I am in the hands of gravity. It is pulling me down. Disgust has spurred me on. Disgust from the stranger, disgust from people passing me by and now lost in the crowd, disgust of my own inability to move. But disgust has shifted me forward and I do start to move. Moving down the stairs. Down into the crowd beneath me.

The girls were not girls in the way that had come to be thought, feeling in their bodies like boys which is to say more things were permitted, and the boys wore pink tutus not as a phase to go through but just because they felt like it.

To school, on the tram, the bus, walking down the street late at night they were these things and wore these things and felt safe. And any looks that came their way were not because they were outrageous or strange but because around them spun an orb of delight and fancy and infinite possibility. Those who could not themselves imagine being boys because they were not, or wearing such things, nonetheless smiled in recognition of the desire, the freedom, the tulle. Oh, the tulle.

Those days we felt ourselves lucky and even though I had no god, at night in the very quiet I said a word of thanks for what I had. I thought thank you and being grateful were like particles that would travel out into the ether, atmosphere, stratosphere and join with other similar vowels, consonants, syntax and form a collective orb that would keep us all safe. Keep those girls who wanted to be boys and the boys in pink tutus walking the streets safe. Keep them. All. Safe.