Well that would be the expected outcome... but there is just one thing....
That house!! The old dilapidated highset Queenslander that is decorated with fabric flowers.
A friend who lives nearby introduced me to the home's owner...Jip.
...
Every morning Jip gets up early to decorate his house and garden with artificial flowers. Then he returns to the old highset house for two flags.
He raises the Australian flag and the American Stars and Stripes.“We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them.” he says.
When Jip is not busy in his garden or home, he might spend his day fishing or sitting uptown watching the passers by.
Each afternoon he lowers the flags and takes them back upstairs. Then he returns to collect up all the flowers and bouquets, baskets and pots and brings them up to the enclosed veranda.
He locks the lattice veranda with a heavy chain. If he doesn’t lock up at night, ‘they’ come and steal from him.They steal his flowers.
Jip often has rocks thrown by vandals, shattering his windows.
He doesn’t seem to be deterred by these setbacks. He doesn’t express a great deal of anger. It is as if he has become even more determined to fulfil the needs of his obsessions. He focuses on solutions.
Jip has become quite inventive in the way he goes about achieving his floral mission.
He has long timber sticks studded along their length with blossoms looking remarkably like some kind of artefacts from an ancient tribe of eccentric old florists.
He can bring out quite a lot of flowers at once when they are already attached to the timber sticks.
He has hooks on the sides of the house ready to hold the flowered timbers in their place.
He invented a pulley system to reel his flowers in and out of the house. Some beautiful kind of washing line – for fairies perhaps?
After he locks everything away, he watches the 4.30 news and then he goes to bed.
‘Keith’, can’t ever remember being called by his birth name. At first he had the nickname ‘Chip’. As a young boy, he had the chore of bringing in the woodchips for fuelling his mother’s wood burning stove. The name ‘Jip’ evolved from Chip, and that is the name he was known by ever after.
Jip is over 80 years old, though he prefers not to tell people. He is incredibly proud and self-confident and appears to be very fit for his age.
'I'm fit as a Mallee bull!' he states...and I don't doubt it.
Jip dressed up for our meeting. His hair is neatly slicked back. It had been recently dyed that deep bluish black, that also stains the skin.
He has his favourite shirt on, unbuttoned at the neck to show a silver chain. His shoes are freshly polished.
This old highset ‘Queenslander’ is where Jip and his mother lived for over 30 years until she passed away. He never married.
Jip used to have quite extensive gardens back then, but has scaled down somewhat as the years have gone by.
He enjoys his retirement after many years of hard work. He cut cane for over twenty years and worked in the family dairy for twenty – five more…amongst other jobs he took from time to time
His retirement seems to have delivered Jip to a place of contentment in all aspects of his life.
Through the day he might venture into the garden to tape flowers to the branches of the dormant trees. He says it doesn’t stop the trees flowering again in Spring.
Later today he will go down to harvest pawpaws from the trees in the back yard. Or perhaps cut one of the cabbages he has growing between the flowers in the garden. They have been growing there for two years Jip says. They are small as cricket balls and equally as hard and tough.
Perhaps Jip's favourite passtime is to sit on the benches outside shops in Bundaberg's CBD, watching the 'goings on' of yet another busy day.
There are often cars full of interested observers pulling up on the nature strip for photos to be taken of Jip's floral fantasy house. The cars come and go. It reminds one of Christmas night when you go seeking out all the houses done up with lights.
At Jip’s it’s a bit like Christmas all year round, but more likely - an eternal first day of spring.
Whatever it is, Jip has the prettiest house in the street.
But this is only part of Jip’s obsession – the public part. The secret obsession is revealed when one enters the house.
I follow Jip up the creaking staircase of his old highset 'Queenslander'. A lifetime's multi-coloured coatings of paint are peeling off the rickety trellis gate above. The steps are confettied with it. A heavy chain hangs to the side. Jip will use it to lock up the house at night. I have a feeling of nervous anticipation. One hears strange stories about this place.
"Come on in! Come on.!" he beckons loudly in his raspy voice.
From the ceiling above the gate there hangs a small portable laundry carousel. Instead of the socks or handkerchiefs one would expect to see hung on such an object, the pegs have been used to attach flowers transforming the carousel into a colourful floral chandelier.
Nervously I enter the dark enclosed veranda. I am not sure what to expect. There are several more of the floral chandeliers hanging in the rafters. There are flowers and pots and floral sticks everywhere. I watch my step. A fat ginger cat is following me.
Entering Jip's home is a bit like entering the Sistine chapel. But where there is an air about the Sistine chapel,...an air of familiarity, of past read books and pictures studied...of stories told and repeated through time immemorial,....entering Jip's house is stepping through an invisible portal towards an unknown future. Uncertainty is your companion, where one had hoped for Virgil.
Now they are comprehensively covered with images roughly stuck. A transformation is taking place. The two inner chambers are almost completely collaged with a multitude of printed images covering most of the subjects known to man.
It is quite breathtaking to see.
Whereas the Sistine chapel is covered with biblical characters and scenes, Jip's cathedral is pasted from floor to ceiling with all manner of pictures from magazines, cards, photos and so on. He likes to group them here and there....a wall of cars, a wall of kittens, native animals, children. There is a memorial wall dedicated to his passed friends and relatives.
Up high on some of the walls are shelves like lofty altars, where old framed photos of his relatives jockey for position. A photo of his beloved mother in her wedding dress appears- a vision like that of Beatrice in the Empyrean. She is bought down gently, dusted off , and, presented tenderly to the observer.
The fat ginger cat annoys my leg with its furry feline advances, breaking the spell I am under.
'Be careful or she might scratch you!' interrupts Jip, slapping me vigorously on the arm...shifting me off my feet.
I am released at once from my lofty thoughts by the almost tangible energy of this man. He loves to show visitors his home.
He is excited. He jokes and teases. He talks fast.
He is nowhere near finished his project he says.
"I will keep going until I drop!"
"Channel seven came here once!" he says with pride.
Then... "Where do you want me?"
Photographing Jip is not an easy task, as he talks all the time. Or pulls strange faces.
I have him stand, sit, point. Look this way....NO!..THIS way! Now look that way. Chin up, chin down, on a chair, by a window. In front of the fridge.
Give me a smile....'Cheese" he says with a smile to match. "Now look serious!" That is harder.
I find myself laughing, enjoying this banter.
Jip started his project after a four year bout of depression...a time where he 'lost the world'. He says that was three years ago, but I think it may have been longer than that.
He's not sure why he started the project. He is not sure why he continues with it. He just knows he is going to have to keep on with it until it is finished.
"I think you are an artist." I say.
He nods but offers no opinion.
"I don't know how I am going to get up to those ceilings." he says
There is a real sense of the sacred inside these walls. A feeling of timelessness. These feeling grow despite the rough artistry that is so apparent. One notes a primitive kind of instinct, that expresses itself in the purest form.
It is time to leave.
I have come to feel a strong sense of kinship with Jip who often finds himself misunderstood.
His acting out of faith and conviction witnessed here, in his special place, is deeply moving.
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