Putney Sees Major Improvements

We interrupt our story with news from Putney.

It's not the same old Putney anymore!

The downtown area of Putney, especially the Peagarden Park district, has seen many improvements in the last year. A new light rail line was added to make it more convenient for commuters to get to the West Putney neighborhoods from Downtown Station. More trains have been added to decrease the maximum waiting time from 30 minutes to 15.

New streets and buildable lots have also been added in the Peagarden neighborhood bordered by Jones Street, Cecelia Avenue and the railway lines. We'll have stories about what the residents are doing here, in good time.

A bike road has also been built all around Putney Bay, complete with a  ferry ride available at the mouth of the bay. Commuters love it! Also, some interesting bicyles have been seen using this new path, particularly some belonging to the dedicated surfers who travel during the wet winter months to catch the big waves off Putney Head. Our roving reporter found this home-built specimen:

With thanks to a  creative, dedicated and very real surfer somewhere in the Sunset District of San Francisco!

Road trip!

New Island's southern coast west of Victoria Harbor, near Drum Cape
 We left town the next morning, and headed west on Route 2, along the coast.  Maggie (as she likes to be called) drove the Reva. "This thing darts around like a butterfly", she said, "compared to that Zil, which I believe is without power steering, and drives like a tank!"

I had the map, and here is where we are now:

As we approached Newport, I noticed the road didn't go much further, but Maggie seemed to know where she was going. She drove through Newport, a pretty town hugging the side of some large sand dunes, and then through smaller Ocean Grove to tiny Lida, a tribe-settlement of orchardists. Thr road ended in the tribe commons, and Maggie said "Let's get some groceries at this little store and we'll walk up the river for a picnic."

Renting a Reva

Margaret trying out a new Reva Electric

with the cool leafy paint job.

As a guest of the island, the Ministry paid for my rental car! Margeret drove me to the Aftermath car-rental agency near the downtown railway station in the classy Russian Zil, and then she wanted to try out the newest car for rent - a Reva Electric. After wrestling with the sluggish Zil, she had fun tearing around the block in the lightweight Reva. "Hey, I like this!"
On New Island, the Reva has become most popular road car, traveling at 35 mph with a range of 50 miles before needing a charge. Besides a fleet of Revas the rental place offers this Cyclecar below, which is designed for the more rugged back roads and good on most of the Path System. I tried one of these while Margaret was on her joyride.

It's not very fast, requires some stamina, but it handles quite well!
So when Margaret returned, I threw my bag in the Reva, and at the last minute she said, "Here, you'll need a map, and a driver - I'm offering my services."

I meet Margaret Mullen at the Australia Dock

The 1959 Russian Zil

I disembarked from the Charles Ames feeling eerily refreshed. It was about 9 am, sunny, breezy, with a certain strange energy in the air, or maybe it was my imagination. Anyway, I felt pretty good while I looked around for Margaret Mullen. I soon spotted a woman waving at me from a big highly polished turquoise-and-chrome sedan that looked strangely like a '58 Dodge. I walked over to her and she asked, "Are you the illustrator?" 


I said "Yes I am, and you might be Ms Mullen?" She said "Yes I am, and I put my bag in the back seat and climbed in. "What a car," I said as we shook hands. "Yes it's a rather elderly Zil Cabriolet that the Soviets left here in '92. We love to show it off but we don't drive it much because it's a fuel guzzler." She said this over the loud clinking of the turn signal as she slowly moved us through the crowds and lorries and eventually off the dock.

Within twenty minutes we were across the bay pulling up to the Hall of Ministries building on Government Hill - the old Russian Colonial headquarters. The complex was mostly built in the style of the Livadia Palace on the Crimea, in Ukraine, during the reign of Czar Nicholas II. I was awed by the whole layout - several very white buildings surrounding lovely flower gardens. Margaret parked the Zil and we walked right in - no guards or security checks!



Nice place

   

On Board the Charles Ames

Well, I entered the Rudyard office, and no one one was there. I called out but nothing stirred.

But then someone emerged from the toilet in the back.  A petite older gal wearing an official-looking cap that said "tickets" slowly ambled to the counter, and when I asked about catching the steamer to New Island, she informed me the boat was about to disembark! While I fumbled for my ticket she picked up an ancient phone on the ticket counter, which seemed to be a direct line to the dock, and asked if one more passenger could be fetched out. "Yes Indeed," she said into the phone, looking at the ticket I was waving at her, "I'll get him over there." 

"Come with me," she ordered, leading me beyond the counter, through a long hallway, past the toilet, and out the back of the building. Awaiting us was a bicycle-taxi, complete with a two-person back seat, a luggage rack, and the Rudyard name on its awning-fringe. She took my bag, ordered me to sit and then she pedaled furiously to the dock -  a fast trip since it was mostly downhill from the ticket office! There was also no traffic here - only an eerie silence and a solitary pedestrian enjoying the late afternoon sunlight. We rounded a corner and there was the Charles Ames - big and white with only a few rust stains on her hull..

The dock was equally empty, but for a few people waiting to see the boat off. The steward was waiting for us so I gave the tickets gal a grateful tip, grabbed my bags and ran up the gangway just as a long, deep, resonating blast from the ship's horn announced our departure. The ropes were tossed free, the gangplank lowered, and we were under way...straight into the setting sun!

A quick snapshot of the Fremantle dock from the bicycle-taxi

Finding the Rudyard Steamship Company

My Ticket

I told everyone who mattered that I was leaving "on an assignment" for about a month (I really didn't know how long) and also had to make arrangements for my cats and the mail. No one I knew had heard of the island, but I decided I had to go there. The tickets, after all, were genuine!

After what felt like an endless series of flights, (Wisconsin to Chicago to San Francisco to Honolulu to Fiji to Melbourne to Perth) I finally arrived at the Perth-Fremantle airport.Outside the terminal, my heart fell when the cab driver had never heard of the Rudyard Steamship Company. It didn't show up on Mapquest either.

 Margaret Mullen had explained to me when she sent my tickets that  the only way to get to New Island from Australia was on the Rudyard Line. So we cruised Fremantle's docks and dockside back streets until I spotted this building...

"Stop" I said. He asked why and I said, "Because we're here - there it is." He looked all around at the old buildings and asked, "Are you sure?" and I said "Yes." and so he shook his head and said, "OK, you da boss!" and let me out. I didn't ask why he was so doubtful - maybe he just couldn't see what I saw.

The building looked deserted, as did the entire neighborhood - no one anywhere -  so I tried the door...

How I found my way to New Island

The drawing that started it all.

After spending several years painting scenes of unknown coastlines, strange mountains, and isolated settlements, I received a letter one day in 1995 inviting me to create some paintings and drawings of an Indian Ocean island I didn't know about.

I grew up on the California coast of North America and became enchanted by the ocean's power, the beaches and the local coastal landscape that was quickly being built-over. I moved north to the Oregon coast, and then to Wisconsin in the vast continental midlands. No ocean, but a good place to raise our three daughters. 

To keep my sanity, I made drawings and paintings of the beaches, towns and entire coastline-views of a thinly-populated place entirely from my head. One of these drawings found it's way to Australia, and eventually to the offices of the newly-formed Ministry of Trade of The Commonwealth of New Island.  

Apparently The Minister of Trade's secretary, Margaret Mullen, spotted the drawing in her boyfriend's* living room and said, "That's my place out on the Western shore. I have a beach cottage there...and that's my daughter's cargo-trike! Where did this come from?" He could only mumble about his mum finding it in Putney.

Margaret found my name and address on the back of the drawing, and wrote to me with her question, which, of course, I couldn't answer in any logical sense! Along with my befuddled reply, I sent back several photos of other imagined places, all of which, it turned out, exactly resembled local beaches and towns on New Island! She showed these to her boss, the Hon. Wainwright Stevens, Minister of Trade, and they both agreed I might be the right candidate to help them advertise the island to attract tourism and foreign investment! 

I soon received a long and compelling letter, sent by the Minister himself, asking me to visit New Island in order to provide images of the island for the Ministry.  Mr Stevens explained the island's recent independence from Russia and his nation's goal to attract at least 100 foreign settlers by the year 2000. The Ministry needed a capable illustrator to visually tell the island's story. He explained that photography is a no-no on New Island - a long story having to do with the island's Russian-ruled past...

His letter included open-dated tickets to fly first-class to Western Australia and then board a Rudyard Line steamer from Fremantle, Western  Australia to Victoria Harbor, New Island. Ms. Mullen will meet me at the dock. Wow!

I accepted, and herein begins my tale.

*The boyfriend's other girlfriend, who lives in Perth, Western Australia, was in Chicago, USA, and found the drawing at the Gold Coast Art Fair, where I had a booth. She bought it because it looked like the boyfriend's homeland, and later sent it to him for his birthday. I remember her saying she was going to take it home to Australia and that it was small enough to pack in her luggage...