There's something odd about this town. Look at this hedge. Look at the height of the standard telegraph pole towered-over by this hedge and my car, reduced to Matchbox-Series size alongside this hedge. Who clips this hedge ? The shears giant ?
The people of Leura like to call it a 'village' rather than a 'town' and the tiny main street is, to quote a friend of a friend, a kind of 'Disney Village'. There are pot-pourri-style shops, olde worlde cafes and antiques and collectables, and stressed walls, lace curtains and more chintz and curlicues than Sydney's Paddington and Balmain combined.
If you drive down the main street and continue to the very end you come to a cliff edge with an enormous vista of blue mountains and valleys - nothing but old gum forests from there to the horizon. And, just above an ironstone amphitheatre on the cliff's edge, fenced-in, chained together and forever gazing at the vista are the grand figures of Olive Oyl and Boofhead.
A strange relationship. Did Olive Oyl ever meet Boofhead ? Did Popeye ? These are the deep pop cultural enquiries that gripped me as I gazed out at the huge vista myself.
We are lingering in Leura while we wait to move to our next (and permanent) address in Blackheath. And, serendipitously for the blog, there is a strange stencil graffiti on the footpath just outside the house. It seems to be more in the style of the curlicues than under the influence of the comic book detainees. Heading up the footpath there are two more - spaced about thirty metres apart. Hmmm…. three alter egos, avatars, femmes fatales ?
Slavoj Zizek posits ribett ribett ♥ slurp and burp
