CAESAR'S ISLAND

I had never known, until I just looked up Centennial Park on Google, that it was to Busby's Pond that Dad took my sister Barbara and I from our corner shop in Surry Hills. In the afternoons, when the rush had died down, he would rhetorically, and theatrically as with everything he did, ask - who wants to go to Centennial?  -  We both answered Instantly with a frenzy of joyful yeses. 

Our huge labradour Caesar would even forgo his latest culinary acquisition and bound as only a hyper-obeise lab can do towards the car ... with ponderous intent.  

Centennial Park had been Sydney's early water supply and was then drained to become the massive expanse of green which now lies east of the city centre. It was opened by Sir Henry Parkes whose surname must have inspired the second part of its name.

Among magnificent paperbarks, space, ducks in ponds and birds being chased by Caesar, I was happy.

It answers the question for me, how can an inner city boy’s soul resonate with landscape as mine does? The afternoons spent in Centennial Park not just chasing ducks, but stripping off paperbark, playing with Barb and Dad, rolling around with Caesar and staring at the islands that lay in the middle of the ponds might be the answer. The joy of those afternoons associated nature in my soul with release and bliss, an imprint that grows deeper by the year. 

Beyond the shore of our playing area lay a mysterious island. This was the land to which I hankered, a secret world where all kinds of animals, treasure and fables lay; a magical place made even more so by never being entered. 

Sometimes Caesar almost made it across to this faraway planet, chasing a stick into the water. He had those big jowls that fat labs have and boy was he fat. Our customers fed him remainders of meat pies, sausage rolls, battered savs, hot dogs, half eaten sandwiches and chips.

If Caesar wanted to sleep in the middle of the road he did. Cars drove around him.

Mind you, Bourke Street only had a few cars a day back then. Ours was one of them, each couple of years a lovely new-car smelling Holden, one time a pink one. Must have been on special.

Tommie and I walked the park yesterday and it has remained as it was intended, the People's Park. People ride on cycles and on horses. They run and stretch in lycra or practice Tai Chi in red silk. Children are handed bread to feed the ducks and are as excited as Barb and I were.

Memory almost has a scent of its own. In this place it is so thick I am on the brink of convulsing with love for my Dad and for things past.

Tommie chased a duck into Busby's pond. It scampered toward the little island to which my imagination made so many forays.

Fifty years later the island will be named today in honour of all the other islands I have strived to explore.

CAESARS ISLAND.

c ya

Raymond