Location: https://w3w.co/mercy.dame.kite

I took this photo today of a gentlemen attending to his fishing lines down on my jetty at Sylvia Curley House.

Only it’s not down at Sylvia Curley’s anymore… it’s a slightly upgraded, tourist friendly jetty at the National Museum of Australia.

Sylvia Curley House was the nurses’ residence for the old Canberra Hospital. I lived there for many years across the late eighties and early nineties. This jetty was right beside the residence, and I spent many wonderful summer evenings with friends and colleagues decompressing from the shifts, perhaps sipping a beer or two (and eating my favorite takeaway cheese-bean nachos that could be obtained from a hygienically sketchy takeaway van not too far away)…deconstructing the world as we pondered out over the star sprinkled lake.

It was my jetty. OK, perhaps it was our jetty.
These were the best of times.

But that was then. The hospital is long since gone. Sylvia Curley House is long since imploded, in a political clusterfuck that killed one person and injured nine others.

I wont go into all that.
But even across all these years I do still consider it my jetty (sorry our jetty).

Today there was this guy quietly fishing…deconstructing the world as he pondered out over the lake. I didn’t mention that this was my jetty. That would be silly.

It was a peaceful scene. I think it was Billy Connolly who said: “I love fishing. It’s like transcendental meditation with a punch-line.”

I asked him if it was OK if I were to take a photo. He just smiled and nodded.

I have seen him here before. He probably fishes here all the time.
It’s his jetty now.