Chronicle of a Special Year
Brigitte & Kit
„On ne voit bien qu‘avec le cœur. L‘essentiel est invisible pour les yeux.“ — Le Petit Prince, chap. XXI
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry (1900-1944)
1966
January, On the „Fair Sky“
February, Italy and Michelangelo
March, Swiss Mountains
April, Perugia 1
May, Perugia 2
June, Perugia 3
July, The Cave
August, Siena 1
September, Siena 2 – Zurich
October, Vienna
November, Zurich
December, Paris
Epilogue, 1967
A well know New Zealand disease is: “going overseas”, “doing the big trip” or as it was still called in the 60s “visiting the old country” or even “going home” (to Britain). It is a direct consequence of being planted on a couple of islands as remote as is possible from everywhere else in the world. The nearest neighbour, Australia, was in those days to all but the very rich, at least two days sailing away and if you went to the trouble to save enough to “go overseas” then rather a bit more for a bit further and rather not to a country with exactly the same culture and problems as New Zealand.
After four years of teaching mathematics at Linwood High School, I had saved enough to be able to “do the big trip”, but in my case I was determined not to do what everybody else was doing. My aim was to learn more about my main passion: Composition. Although I could have done this very well in “the old country”, I was quite sure I wanted to do it somewhere else –– anywhere else, where the culture would be different from everything I knew so far. My mother, Betty, had already done such a trip, a three months course of study at the University for Foreigners (L’Università per stranieri) in Perugia. She had returned from there a few years earlier and had started teaching Italian at Victoria University (in Wellington) and in so doing she was fulfilling a life long dream of involvement in an academic life. As I left the university with my science degree she had started her arts course and her enthusiasm for Italian language and culture had not only given her a first class degree, it had inspired me to learn the language too.
In the middle of December 1965 therefore, I boarded the “Fair Sky” with four hundred pounds in my pocket and a ticket to Italy where I would first extend my basic knowledge of the Italian language and then find an Italian composition teacher. My first choice of teacher was Luciano Berio in Milan, but Berio had already left for foreign shores and was working in America. The fact that I really didn’t know another name in Italy didn’t bother me too much, I was quite sure I would find someone.
On the wharf to see me off were my parents and a few friends:
But yes, it was awful, the departure from Wellington cos a ship goes away much more slowly than a plane. I left it till the very last moment to go on board. All went well and after a while I lost sight of the family and group of friends who were there all together in the middle of the enormous crowd. Then all of a sudden I saw Betty –– she was waving her coat or something large. It was very funny and then very sad. I had to cry.
Two days later we reached Sydney and for one day we were allowed to roam the city. I found out that in fact Australia was quite different from New Zealand. It was bigger and hotter and had many more flies and the centre of Sydney was blessed with a most interesting modern architecture –– tall buildings on slender supports, something I hadn’t seen in earthquake prone New Zealand1. A few days later we sailed up the Brisbane river and stopped again for a whole day. This time I visited a sort of open zoo and saw my first kangaroos, emus and koalas. The hot dry eucalyptus smell was certainly not like New Zealand bush.