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FEATURE
        by Wayne Gregson

DO YOU ever come across a situation – a time and/or place – which just stops you in your tracks and makes you want to freeze the moment in memory?

I had one of those the other day after watching the ordination of Christine Kimpton in Holy Trinity church.

Afterwards, I was strolling back towards the office across High St.

It was a balmy, warm evening. The sun had just slipped behind the hills and there was a soft, serene kind of light.

The church bells were going off like a flock of happy magpies and as I crossed the road, there was another sound: the crack and cackle of a social croquet game going on just behind the office and the indistinct buzz of people having fun without all the usual ``Woo-hooing’’ which we seem to have inherited from the Americans these days.

It was perhaps the first time in my life that I’d had an experience which perfectly matched my understanding of the word ``village’’, you know, as in the Vicar of Dibley.

It’s probably because I’m very new to this place that things which so many just take to be the backdrop of their days can almost take my breath away.

Those of us who have lived most of our lives in bigger towns and cities also know that our lives are so saturated with sound and lights and activity that it dulls the nerve-endings, reducing the capacity to experience things.

Friends who come from Melbourne often remark on the night sky over my house: ``The sky’s bigger here …there are more stars in it.’’

Some comment on the smell of the air (or the lack of it), or even the crispness of the light.

There’s something about modern urban life which bludgeons the senses and puts a multi-sensory fog over everything. US comedian Whoopi Goldberg says she hates going to rural areas where she has to breath air she can’t see.

It’s only when we get a chance to strip these things away that we really begin to notice our world in all its complexity. How strange: he less we have around us, the more we can see.

But there’s a catch: we also see some ugliness in starker relief than most people who live in more chaotic places. A piece of graffiti, for example, in Maldon is infinitely more shocking that an entire daubed train in Richmond. A Coke can in a gutter is an assault on the senses here. In Geelong it is almost invisible.

But that’s also one of the finer things about life here: we retain (or in some cases regain) the capacity to be annoyed about these things.

What would most Sydney people feel about plans for a new supermarket on a former gravel quarry? Yet look at the debate it provokes here.

Ask yourself, where would rather live? Where such things don’t get talked about, or where they do?

The former pro-vice chancellor of La Trobe University Bendigo,  Professor Les Kilmartin likes to tell a story which is relevant here. (Actually, he likes it more when I retell it because he says it seems to get more and more interesting as time goes on, but hey, that’s the mark of a good wine and a good story.)

The uni had been trying to attract overseas students to its Bendigo campus and had invited selected officials to visit and see what his campus had to offer.

He had some very senior officials from a South African university as guests and over lunch, one of the South Africans was giving an insight into modern life in Johannesburg.

The group heard stories of car-jackings, murders almost by the minute, race riots, crippling poverty. One professor in the group said that just days before she had had to fend off car-jackers at a red light and then turned into the drive-way of her home to find a body lying across it.

Afterwards, Les was asking the South Africans why anyone from their institution would find life at his place more fulfilling.

``Because of this,’’ said one South African, holding up the local newspaper, where on Page 3, the police rounds story was headed: ``Malvern Star bicycle stolen.’’

The visitor said: ``I want to live in a society where not only does a stolen bike make headlines, but even its make is regarded as interesting.’’

I’ve worked in regional journalism for much more of my life than in metropolitan journalism and I’ve often been challenged by the sneering of city colleagues when you talk about a serious story of a car crash, or a council meeting.

Like the South African, I want to live and work in a community where these things matter. Where the skies are bigger, and where it’s possible to be delighted by the sound of croquet mallets and a church bell.

It’s not so much that life is simpler here, because I don’t believe that. It just has less distractions and allows you to concentrate.