Australian four-year-olds

I notice four-year-olds. Winston of course explains my interest, but circumstances in the last couple days have also thrown the creatures in my way. On the Overland train I could hear young Aurora two rows behind me; actually I mostly heard her mother, reading to her, playing I-Spy, remonstrating. The mother's voice oscillated between a high pitched, loving tone she used to express praise and encouragement and a deep-throated Satanic growl she relied on when the child stepped out of line. Yet it seemed to me that Aurora was an angel, hardly giving any trouble, except maybe occasionally drifting into the aisle or poking her baby brother in the eye--little enough considering the demands an eleven-hour train ride make on a small child. But then maybe the threat of Beezlebub issuing from her mother's mouth accounted for her good behavior.

At one point her mother corrected her for lying. The child had told some mild fib, and what followed was a stern and moralistic lecture detailing the evils of prevarication. Aurora remained quiet for the length of the lesson, but I wondered how much a four-year-old could appreciate the intellectual virtues of the truth.

In Adelaide outside the South Australian Museum of Natural History, I came upon another four-year-old girl, one who could've used a little wrath of God or fear of the devil in her life. She was chubby, ruddy faced child, and as I walked past, her mother took a red water bottle from her hands. "Why, Penelope," the woman said, "you've finished it all. And I said you had to share." The girl thrust her face at her mother and smirked, and I wondered that she avoided a slap. A half hour later I came out of the museum and saw the girl running from her mother. "Penelope!" the woman called, plaintively, "come here and put your jacket on. Penelope!" The girl would let her mother get close then dash off again laughing. The oman was not amused. But she was still chasing after the little monster as I passed down the street.

I had come out of the hostel in the morning to wet streets and an overcast sky. I walked down busy Hindley Street, stopped in at O'Connell's Books (used bookstores have been numerous in both Melbourne and Adelaide), and then spent some time at an internet cafe.

The Rundle Mall, a wide pedestrian street lined with shops, was packed with people--why on early Wednesday afternoon, I didn't know. Street musicians were spaced just far enough apart not to step on each others' playing. Several shopkeepers were out front of their stores holding microphones and standing beside small speakers, describing their wares.

I walked to the north of town to the Royal Botanical Gardens, a large and lovely grounds with big tropical trees, a cactus garden, a pond, lots of schoolchildren, and lots of birds, including pigeons with pointy crests. Beyond the gardens I came to and walked along the Torrens River, a small and placid and perfectly groomed stream. A black swan, a massive bird, came towards me in search of a handout, but I detoured to avoid the obviously dangerous bird.

Eventually I entered the South Australia Museum of Art, to admire a fabulous collection of paintings, mostly by Australians but with the work of a few famous nineteenth century Europeans thrown in for style. I was particularly taken by a Max Klinger etching, showing three naked men on horseback chasing a centaur through chest-high wheat.

Late in the afternoon I returned to the hostel for my backpack and then walked to the bus station. I had an eleven-hour, overnight ride to Coober Pedy ahead of me, and I wished for a train. Other passengers had thought to bring pillows and warm jackets, but alas anything that would have served for the purposes of comfort or warmth me was in my backpack in the compartment beneath the bus. Sometimes I could be smarter.

An African woman with two small children sat across from the aisle from me, a reason for concern when I fist boarded. But she and they were mostly quiet. A man got them settled, and as he left the bus the older boy, another four-year old, called out "bye bye," which made the man laugh and turn back and put his hand on the boy's close-shaven head. Soon after we left the boy fell asleep against the window, with his mouth hanging open. The mother held the other child, a baby, in her arms.

The bus had a bathroom, and I remembered back to an eighth-grade field trip on such a bus, to an auto plant in Baltimore. I had gone in the bathroom at some point during the trip and begun throwing wax tissues squares out the open window. The air flow somehow sent them forward rather than back, and in a moment the shop teacher, Mr. Svrcek, was banging on the bathroom door and bellowing what did I think I was doing. When I opened the door he was livid, and he asked why I would do such a thing. But I didn't know, and I still don't. Sometimes kids are just unpredictable, I guess.