The joyous thing about Election Day is that the stupid, hopeless, awful, infuriating election campaign is finally over. I honestly don’t know what the politicians take us for – well, yes, I do: they take us for greedy, selfish halfwits.Tonight we’ll find out if they were right. 
In Australia, voting is compulsory. I don’t find this a major invasion of my civil liberties. My vote is the only political power I have: I wouldn’t dream of wasting it. Mind you, I live in a safe Labor seat so I’d really need to leave town to make a difference. Round here, the Labor candidates don’t have to try and the rest don’t have much hope. We’re left pretty much alone.
Our nearest polling booth is down the hill at Melrose High, represented by the yellow house on the map, so we staggered off, planning to have a fairly long walk to Farrer afterwards.
View Larger Map
I don’t know if it was standing in the freezing wind in the voting queue, but I found that I was aching all over when we finally set off – even my feet were hurting. We ended up having a much shorter walk , as shown above in red.
Here’s the queue:
Voting queue at Melrose High
The Sea Scouts (!) were out in force, with a sausage sizzle and assorted cakes. It took quite a while to get inside, and even then we weren’t out of the wind because the doors of the assembly hall were wide open. I have such a horror of being too hot that I quite often underdress for standing around in the weather.
Samoyed voting
This was my favourite voter, who didn’t look cold at all.
We tried to leave via the back of Melrose High but found that we were behind locked gates, so we tottered out through the undiminished queue and across the sportsground to Beasley Street.
Along Athllon Drive there’s not much to see – deciduous trees, still bare, and heavily graffitied back fences – and we were a little anxious about being on a cycle path, so we turned back into Torrens as soon as there was a laneway. This is very familiar territory. I was pleased to see a tree full of cockatoos in the lane back to Beasley Street:
Cockatoos
I always hear in my mind a particular chorus from Orff’s Carmina Burana when I see a tree groaning with birds. Never having sung the work, I don’t know which chorus it is, but it’s very sultry and possibly contains humming. There was once a TV film of Carmina Burana which featured lovers (lots, not just one pair) peeping out of a tree – not a tall conifer like the one above, but a round, mediaeval sort of tree:
Tree of Life by Judith Clingan
A tree of birds is a happy sight and remembered sound!
The next happy sight was Mount Taylor under louring skies:
Mt Taylor from the corner of Beasley and Pethebridge Streets
…followed by the Pearce choughs lurching around someone’s front yard:
White-winged choughs in Pearce
…and finally, my ducks welcoming us home:
Anders and Ditte, a gift from Jo
Now I’m going to lie down!
P.S. The Lake George zebras are being repaired and will appear at Floriade with the addition of a baby zebra statue.
Aaahhhh. Good duckies. There.