Home away from home

Oooh lookie a post. Maybe. Here are some photos of where I’m at, (literally not metaphorically).

It’s a humble abode. Compact. Neat as a pin, through necessity. Big built in. Very good. Last year’s foals, for neighbours. This is the very best time of their lives—ever co’s they is now free to frolic. But it won’t last and soon it will be a boring, soul destroying life of horses in training for sale for the race, for whatever. They have fun—little do they know.

A view out the window looking back towards home, which is a coupla ks away. Birdlife here is a good too. One large gum near the creek (same creek) has one cockatoo living in a hollow who does a Leunig-like appearance every now and then and sticks his head out to check out the view. One corella or maybe two or three hard to tell, one pair of Nankeen Kestrals, (yes you read that correctly. Nankeen). One grey heron which is actually the original Phoenix bird and a coupla galahs. I think. It’s a real community up there a big tree, with good hollows, a bird tenement. I took some photos last night—but I need a longer lens and better light.

Photo judging this Friday. Fingers crossed for me. Needless to say after six months of living on $250 odd a week I could REALLY USE six grand.

All is well, Luke and Shep are thriving. Owners living in my house are trying not to trash it, but not very hard. I am shocked! They are litter bugs! If ever a house looked like a rental it be theirs. Crap everywhere. I should care? I’ve been chipping Patterson’s Curse. It’s a battlefield up there at moment, slain corpses lying everywhere. It’s started to flower-just, but has not yet gone to seed, so it’s a good time to hack it down. Oedipus and Pusskat fine. Pusskat misses the wabbits. But quite likes the hay shed. This is a trucking/grain/feedlot type place, although Bwcas should not freak out, feedlots ‘round here mean good sized paddocks with cattle being well fed and having quite a good life (up to a certain point) with trees, space to wander etcetera. Grain falling about everywhere means hundreds and hundreds of galahs, cockatoos, corellas, king parrots, western rosellas, crimson rosellas, red-rumped parrots and assorted hangers on have taken up residence or visit daily. Never a dull moment. Welcome Swallows, the aforementioned Heron, who I saw with her mate; with whom she had an intense, short-lived and deeply adoring relationship, which was touching to see, they were briefly deeply in love. (A good example for us all perhaps.) Willy wagtails of course who make it their business to defend everyone and everything from the crows and currawongs. Superb Fairy Wrens, White winged cheoghs, starlings, mynas etc.

The birds back at home are surviving although the Bower birds seem to have split. Dogs. (One very dumb). The rainbow bee eaters have returned to hang off the defunct phone line and the rufous whistler, also returned after a winter away to continue his besotment with the laundry window. Amazing that ones so small and potentially vulnerable, fly such a long way away and then come back again!

Ho Hum, view from afternoon nap vantage.

Puss-Kat coming for a walk.

Colts see cat

and Run away.

I'm just leaving . . .

No, I'm not melancholic but I found this the other day and I think it's an interesting performance. 'Specially the hands. Her hair makes me feel better about mine too. Heh.

Remember folks, while not quite enough

Love is Everything.

(Which reminds me of the Townes Van Zandt line: "Everything is not enough and nothing is too much to bear."

Stuff

I knew that printing out my old blog would come in useful one day as personal ready reckoner. So what was I doing this time last year? Packing boxes and moving. And what am I doing this time this year? Packing boxes and moving. Although not moving too far and planning on moving back here ASAP, which probably means about 6 months. Luke and Shep get to stay put and I get to get fit walking down the road twice a day to feed them.

Where I am going is the 21st Century equivalent of living under a rock where there be, no online weather reports, which frankly, is the only thing about the net I will miss.

Q: If Rupe succeeds in his quest to make us all pay for (ahem) 'news' on the net and as a consequence the vast majority of us don't and given that many of us have already given up buying newspapers (except when we need to move and wrap up the crockery), do you think this could be the beginning of something really beautiful? I.e, the beginning of the end of this largely useless, altogether way too powerfully dangerous and mindless, largely venal, tacky, industry?

A: Probably not.

Oh well. I didn't think so. Doesn't matter, it's just the sort of hopeful thought one who lives under a rock might have.

Q: What do you reckon. Do you think some PNG person has maybe put a curse on Australians trying to walk the Kokoda Track? It's not beyond the realms of possibilities you know. I hear they're big on curses in PNG. Anyway, just another thought.

And another . . . .

Q: It's been awful warm lately for this time of year. For instance, tomorrow it is supposed to be 26ºC. And I've been wondering, as I watch the birdlife 'round here crank up for Spring (which seems upon us already), that maybe climate change in the short-term is not such a bad thing as it could possibly extend the breeding cycle of some animals--birds in particular, which could help to address some of the gross imbalances we have managed as a species to inflict on this little spinning globe.

So that's it. Over and out.

"My name is Legion for we are many"

"They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes, and when he had stepped out of the boat, immediately a man out of the tombs with an unclean spirit met him. He lived among the tombs; and no-one could restrain him any more, even with a chain, for he had often been restrained with shackles and chains, but the chains he wrenched apart, and the shackles he broke in pieces; and no-one had the strength to subdue him. Night and day among the tombs, and on the mountains, he was always howling and bruising himself with stones. When he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran and bowed down before him; and he shouted at the top of his voice, 'What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.' For he had said to him, 'Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!'

Then Jesus asked him, 'What is your name?' He replied, 'My name is Legion for we are many.' He begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country.

Now there on the hillside, a great herd of swine was feeding; and the unclean spirits begged him, 'Send us into the swine; let us enter them.' So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the swine; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea, and they drowned in the sea.

The swineherds ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came to see what it was that had happened. They came to Jesus and saw the demoniac sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, the very man who had had the legion; and they were afraid. Those who had seen what had happened to the demoniac and to the swine reported it. Then they began to beg Jesus to leave their neighbourhood. As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed by demons begged him that he might be with him. But Jesus refused, and said to him, 'Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and what mercy he has shown you.' And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him; and everyone was amazed.

(The Gospel of Mark)

I listened to a program on Radio National's Encounter this evening called Out of the Tombs, as I was driving back from having been 'jilted' at tennis (transcript linked) (the transcript to the Encounter program not the one to my being stood up at tennis, for which there is no actual transcript). There was quite a bit discussed in this program, none of it terribly edifying. However one statement stood out.

For various reasons these days, it's not at all acceptable to talk about demonic possession in any serious way, and there is a very good reason for this, but nonetheless, you'd think in the context of a bible 'story' that it would be the one thing people might be the vaguest bit curious about. Not so apparently:

Brendan Byrne: Every time you speak publicly and refer to this incident, the one question that everyone asks is 'What about the owners of the pigs, wasn't Jesus rather unfair in depriving them of their livelihood perhaps?'

Right. The livelihood of the owners of the pigs? And that Jesus is acting unfairly.

Jesus wept. FFS.

Anyway, the way the actor said "My name is Legion, for we are many" was seriously creepy. Made me think about that whole method acting thing, and Heath Ledger and stuff. Also this particular Bible story very much reminds me of the film "The Field" with Richard Harris, wherein, if memory serves me correctly, there is a scene where they drive some cows stock off a cliff.

There are only a handful of stories in our culture, many of them derived from bible stories and the old driving the animals off the cliff seems to be one of them. More of it I say.

Brendan Byrne is the:

Reverand Professor Brendan Byrne
Jesuit priest and Professor of New Testament at the Jesuit Theological College in Parkville, Victoria, within the Melbourne College of Divinity.

Dog Dressage

This is the most impressive clip I've ever seen on the internet to date. HT to Helen.

There is an interesting Dickensian-type quality in this girl's tophat and tails outfit, hands held behind back, as though she's out for an afternoon's stroll with a completely adoring companion.

The music is beautiful. The whole thing is beautiful.

Good-bye Kodachrome

Faithful reproducer of colour and light in a WYSIWYG kinda way. Kodachrome was good and for a time hard to beat. Fujichrome was possibly better and is still, I believe, extant. I have a roll of Fuji Velvia in my old and sadly neglected SLR, its been there for a long time.

There is just no beating the luxe and colour of slide film. And so it is a sad day today as Kodachrome has turned up its toes and will be no more.

The last roll of Kodachrome I sent off to be processed off-shore somewhere, vanished without trace.

So for your viewing pleasure (and mine), some shots from the pre-digital dark ages,taken mostly on Kodachrome.















Bronte Splash













Kitchen window View-Medlow Bath













Ranunculas (my favourite)













Dervish Tombstones Selcuk, Turkiye



















Horse - Goreme, Turkiye














Cassowary, FNQ














Transport. Bodrum, Turkiye



Clicking on images to get full widescreen technicolour experience.



Those were the days. Egads.

Shortest. Day. Longest. Darkest. Night. A. Pom.

Lo (w)! 'tis the sun! Come to show its fiery face
-- briefly.
Through the crystal drip of drop-ped rain,
Warming bum of sodden horse.
A short day today,
The shortest
in fact
Eleven and a half hours
Precisely.
And dark too,
Tonight.
Shortest day, longest, darkest night.
Evah!
Don't go out, no moon about
Tonight.
You'll bump into something
Like a horse or a car perhaps.

(Do you really think you oughta have published this one Caroline? It's pretty bad. Yeah I know, it started off ok I thought. Didn't it? The 'Lo! 'tis the Sun' bit?

Here's a song, to make up for it, "Even Fido is afraid to bark"? I'd go the Julie London version, but Doris does okay)