Dr Phillip Law died yesterday, at the age of 97, in Melbourne. I had known him since 1999, when I first started working on the arrangement and description of his records at his home in Canterbury. I should write more about this, but right now I’d just like to remember him.

When he moved from Canterbury to Balwyn Manor, we kept in touch, and a few times we went out together for morning tea – we both absolutely loved the passionfruit kisses (sponge, real cream and passionfruit icing) at the cafe close by.

I went to visit him regarding further work on his papers in March 2008 and took Iris, my then 11 month old daughter. She was in to everything of course, knocking over wine bottles and curious about it all. I thought that perhaps Dr Law, not having had children of his own, might find her annoying. But he didn’t. He thought she was wonderful and loved her curiousity. He held her for this photograph, and said it had been the first time he’d held a baby in a very long time, and I know it gave us all pleasure. If she grows up to be half as curious as Phillip Law, she’ll be lucky, like him.

Vale Phillip Law.

Media

• Antarctic pioneer dies, ABC News website (Melbourne), 1 March 2010.
• Australian Antarctic pioneer dies at 97, Australian Antarctic Division website, 1 March 2010.
• ‘Mr Antarctica’ Phillip Law dies in Melbourne aged 97, Courier Mail (Brisbane), 1 March 2010.
• Antarctic pioneer Dr Phillip Law dies, aged 97, in Melbourne, Herald-Sun (Melbourne), 1 March 2010.
• Mr Antarctica, former Geelong teacher Phillip Law, dies at 97, Geelong Advertiser, 1 March 2010.
• Phil Law ‘Mr Antarctica’ dies, The Mercury (Hobart), 1 March 2010.
• Mr Antarctica dies in Melbourne, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 March 2010.
• Dr Phillip Law 1912-1910, (Audio interview with Tom Maggs, AAD) ABC News website (Canberra), 2 March 2010.
• Antarctic pioneer dies at 97, The Canberra Times, 2 March 2010.
• Australian Antarctic explorer Phillip Law dies, The Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 2 March 2010.
• Geelong’s Antarctic explorer Law dies at 97, Geelong Advertiser, 2 March 2010.
• Pioneer who opened up Antarctica dies at 97, Sydney Morning Herald, 2 March 2010.
• Vale Dr Phillip Law (1913-2010), Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery website, 3 March 2010.
• Phillip Law was the ice master, The Warrnambool Standard, 3 March 2010.
• Scientist planted strategic flags on Antarctica: Phillip Law, 1912 – 2010, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 March 2010.
• Phillip Law, Telegraph (London), 5 March 2010.
• The Daily Goodbye (obituaries), The Washington Post, 9 March 2010.
• Phillip Law (obituaries), The Scotsman (Edinburgh), 12 March 2010.

My photographs of the Berlin Wall, taken in 1989, are amongst the most regularly viewed in my Flickr photostream. Understandable in the lead up to the twentieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall on 9 November this year.

Some of them are mine and a few are a fellow traveller’s, collected by me at the time of my visit (and later) in January 1989. Walking some of the perimeter of the Wall, looking at that stark sign, ‘Sie verlassen jetzt West-Berlin’, was sobering and I wanted to remember it from all angles.

I wrote about it in my travel diary. All year I’ve been meaning to go back and revisit those memories, which I was sure would be fresh, vivid, insightful – but that is not quite the case. I am as happy for my twenty year’s younger self to stay buried between those pages as Harry Potter would have been for the owner of Tom Riddle’s diary to do the same. My observations are indeed very much of the moment and seem, to me now, shallow – real, true, but shallow. Perhaps that was the value of committing them to paper – instant thoughts without the value of reflection, time bound in context (fleeting, youthful, passing through).

The strongest memory wasn’t committed to paper. My friend and I spent a day in East Berlin, passing through Checkpoint Charlie first thing in the morning, converting the requisite amount of Deutsch Marks into the East German currency. We went to one of the museums, walked around and generally marvelled at the difference a wall can make, wondered what we could buy with the money the East Germans so desperately wanted us to spend. The answer to that was books – my friend and I were both students of German at Melbourne University.

We found a book shop. There was a queue to get in – the number inside at any one time was strictly regulated. We stood in the queue with the locals and I, in English, unquietly, said to my friend how ridiculous I found it. The East German man in front turned to me solemnly, “We think so too”.

It was humbling. That’s what I remember.

Berlin Wall on Flickr

I uploaded my scanned images of the Berlin Wall to Flickr more than three years ago. My tags included “Berlin Wall”, Berlin, “Berliner Mauer”, mauer, “1988-89 trip”, Germany, scanned, and have ensured that my images are found, shared and appreciated.

Flickr is the perfect vehicle for resurrecting and sharing history from the depths of visual memory and old boxes of slides and photographs. The Flickrverse is currently being encouraged to share memories (via text and images) in the group Experience History: Berlin 1961-1989. See also Das geteilte Berlin 1945-1990.

Several of my Berlin Wall images have been added to galleries curated by other Flickr users, a new concept in Flickr which I haven’t yet explored, but should: Berlin Wall in Color, The Berlin Wall / Die Berliner Mauer, and the intriguing Smoke Screens & Mirrors.

I remember now the thrill I felt on seeing place names on the green road signs familiar to me from the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency books on a conference trip to Gaborone, Botswana in 2005 – tantalising confirmations of the reality of being in a different place.

Before we reached St Andrews last Saturday the green road signs started including the distance to Kinglake and I felt sad.

The market was enjoyable, higgledy-piggledy amongst the forest in the town. It has a hippy feel. There are handmade soaps, the ubiquitous South American knitted items, true handmade knits and children’s clothing, African baskets, pony rides for purchase and gas bottles, recycled into mesmerising marimba-like instruments. I bought a McCalls Afghan book for a dollar and a prim little century-old tome, Homely Words for Mother, along with some very nice tasting French-style candied nuts and chai from the Chai Tent.

We were done by ten, so extended our morning by driving from St Andrews to Yarra Glen via Kinglake.

The road is extremely windy and narrow. The signs advise large vehicles not to enter. Not long after leaving St Andrews signs of the bushfires became evident, and very soon, signs of the inferno. We stopped talking in the car. I don’t know how the people who live in this area cope with driving this desolate road on a daily basis. As far as the eye can see – and that was a long way because the way was clear – miles upon miles of matchsticks. I’ve seen burnt trees before, and they have burnt brown leaves. These trees had no leaves. All that remain are charred trunks, hence the incredible clarity of the view and the grimness.

People are still living in caravans and tents. People are out rebuilding fences and lives. They are also remembering lost loved ones, harrowing mementoes strapped to trees. I wept.