A Lasting Legacy Thursday 18th July - Corbie

The tourist office suggested that the Post Office at Villers-Bretonneux would be the nearest place we could obtain change to feed the electricity and water machine at our mooring, which seemed a bit odd given the preponderance of bakeries, supermarkets and other facilities in Corbie, which were apparently not in a position to do so, nor was the Post Office here for that matter.

More than just a place to get change though, here is the place where the relationship with our country runs deep indeed.   It is truly astonishing to see the town hall with the usual inscription  "liberty, equality, fraternity” framed by a pair of rampant kangaroos, the Australian flag flying in its forecourt.  The reconstruction of the school was funded by the state of Victoria and each blackboard apparently still bears the inscription "N'oublions jamais l'Australie" (Let us never forget Australia).

For us though, the most poignant reminder of the past horrors was this modern piece of wall art, so clearly inspired by a number of monuments nearby dedicated to the fallen “war horses”. To feel the gratitude for those who were here so clearly conveyed even a century later is quite overwhelming. Their legacy is a huge burden to carry and we can't help but wonder if as a nation we are still equipped to do so.

The Art of Carrying Bread Wednesday 17th July - Corbie

We go to the bakery daily when there is one within a shouting distance, but even after a decade we haven’t quite mastered the dark art of carrying baguettes so they don’t arrived damaged in some way.

It’s imprinted on the DNA of the locals.  They wander home seemingly without a care, coddling their loaves like the precious commodity they are. For the purpose of the journey at least, bread and man are one.   They never suffer the careless breaks and squashes mid-loaf from holding them in one hand (isn’t that what the paper wrap is for?), nor do their loaves arrive with the ends missing from being scraped against doors and shopfittings while leaving the bakery, or flattened and bent from being tucked just a fraction too tightly into the shopping bag.

Perhaps if like them, we got into the habit of carrying a spare, we’d have a chance of getting one of them home intact.

A certain lack of tranquility Tuesday 16th July - Corbie

We’d been happily moored in the quiet of the town quay beside the silos for a couple of days.   It’s a lot more salubrious than it looks, quiet, and only a few hundred metres from the centre of town, surrounded on three sides by a leafy green backdrop.

Then the rains came, or at least the forecast did, giving notice to every farmer that ever there was that it might be time to get the wheat in.   Farmers do this with machinery working from dawn to long after dusk filling great big dusty bins which great big tractors tow to town so that they can be unloaded into great big silos, clanging and roaring and billowing clouds of wheat dust as they go.   

Ahh yes.  Anyone paying attention would remember that we were moored beside the silos, and would perhaps rightly conclude that all those great big tractors caused our quiet to suffer, and the dust caused suffering of a different kind.   Fortunately in this event the town provides a more peaceful alternative mooring just a few hundred metres further away, barely out of earshot, but upwind and in the middle of those leafy green surrounds.

War and Rumors of War Monday 15th July - Corbie

The Australian government is said to have spent more than a hundred million of our dollars in the construction of the Sir John Monash Centre in the Australian cemetery near the village of Villers-Bretonneux, and it has all the attributes one might expect of a museum conceived a century after the actions it commemorates.

It’s a curious place, contemporary with the feeling of being “not from round here” and almost devoid of the usual crusty artefacts dug from the trenches.  Instead modern multi media displays with more than five hours of commentary play in three languages via personal devices should one have the fortitude to take it all in.

In one way it’s a fitting tribute for the eyes of a new generation, in another perhaps it’s simply there for the gratification of Australian pilgrims, coming variously to pay homage to the lost or to pat themselves on the back in pride of the sacrifice of their forebears.  No matter, for this is the region in which the Australian troops of the first world war left an impression so indelible that a country’s gratitude is still present a century later.

Everyone loves a parade. Sunday 14th July - Corbie

The National Day parade in Corbie was everything one would expect from the sort of small town where everyone is someone else's cousin.   

There was no mass display of national defence, no tanks rolling through the streets, in fact there was no seething throng of people being held back by the crowd barriers either.  Instead the town’s fire brigade brought up the rear of the rag-tag little parade with both of it’s units.   A dozen boy scouts, a few volunteer fire fighters, three gendarmes and a city band which might very well have been inspired by the Keystone Cops enthusiastically provided the marching tunes in such a way that everyone in the parade could be confident of being in step with at least one instrument.

We gathered at the memorial for a wreath laying ceremony which might have been a trailer for a Pink Panther remake.  Dignitaries in their tricolour sashes and funny hats watched solemnly, old soldiers formed an honour guard and the band failed to perform one of those marching manoeuvres where columns are supposed to turn back on themselves, instead falling about in little bunches of arms, legs, instruments and giggles, giving us perhaps a more potent symbol of our times than all that had gone before.

Let's go. Saturday 13th July - Lamotte to Corbie

The calm that descended last night as the sun gently lowered itself into the river did not last.  

It turns out that someone in the band that had caused us so much pain on the night of the Music Festival has another uncle running a cafe, this one just a few hundred metres from our otherwise idyllic spot.  In spite of the presumably constant practice since we last heard them, they haven’t improved a bit although fortunately they haven’t learnt any new songs either, so the pain of listening to their entire repertoir was blissfully brief.

Quite understandably from our perspective at least there were no encores, but we decided to move on in the morning just in case they’d been invited back tonight.

Wombat! Friday 12th July - Lamotte

When a shadow moved in the shrub next to our window last night, at first we thought we’d seen a rat although we certainly hadn’t smelled one.   

A few minutes later the shadow climbed a little higher, skilfully pruning branches without the aid of secateurs.  Then we noted that its tail was too short and its body too fat to be of that particularly malicious species. The fact that it had a tail meant we could be fairly sure it wasn’t a guinea pig, and not that we’d ever seen a beaver as far as we could recall, we were pretty sure it wasn’t one of them either.  

Our attempt at fauna classification was admittedly a bit half-hearted, but we presumed it to be one of the vole family we more usually see swimming near the water’s edge.  We were never introduced, and she continued to ignore us into the evening diligently collecting her prunings and dragging them into what we presume was a burrow just out of sight below the landing, either that or she’s building a bonfire and planning to smoke us out of her backyard.