Irish Murphy's, Ballarat on the site of Camp Hotel, 38 Sturt Street, erected 1907, original 1861 on the site of the Little Engine Mine. Haha! Best Guinness on tap I've swallowed since ever! Trailed around the town for ye olde but although the streetscape promised plenty there was nuthin! No pubs at all, sir! Continued through the drizzle & wind in wrong-weather sandals, admiring the solid city architecture. Top of town spotted pub-like appearance across the road from the Cathedral but disappointingly it was an immense cafe, generic post-pub, bah! Almost gave up then & there, prepared to investigate the Cathedral but breakfast was long overdue (surprisingly no buffet car on the train). Asked Chimney & Friend at pavement table if there were any old style pubs or any pubs at all in Ballarat? And, joy of joys, they offered simple directions to Irish Murphy's at the bottom of Sturt Street, further down from where we'd already fruitlessly & soggily tramped.
Installed now beneath pressed ceiling, charmed by the woodwork & various signage, Test cricket on wall television, small stage in the corner by the street windows for the music Ms Chimney said she'd be attending "tonight", and judging by the traffic off street through the rooms seems we're only at the beginning of the infinite pub. Likewise, only the beginning of the infinite Guinness, the tallest, creamiest pint. Thus begins a round of salutes to the living & to the passed, recalled in absentia in the infinity of recollection, --recollection of infinite regard, so much so I repeat the thought came by years ago, at Wollongong university, guest of Ron Pretty & John Scott, in the course of writing, making a poem, --natural enough to our own though generally bizarre : is life lived, I thought, only in order to be remembered? The extraordinary length & breadth of it, Twentieth Century's literary practice of elongation, mind loosed to infinite expansion of what daily life loses as the assimilable thus forgettable minutes, days, --longeueres…
