i drove and drove and drove. i went to see Wicked. i slept and slept and slept. i did a harbour cruise, i got sunburned. i went to the aquarium and communed with the dugongs. i walked through chinatown. i went to see Wicked again. i slept and slept and slept. i drove and drove and drove. i came across a chinese restaurant next to a motel in a small country town. i ate really bad chinese food and slept and slept. then i drove and drove and then i went back to work.

not a bad way to spend a 45th birthday, at all.

When I was very young, up untill I was about maybe 3 or 4 years old, we lived in a beautiful old house on the central coast of New South Wales, Australia. It was a lovely place to live (as you can see below) with beautiful bushland behind and only a short walk through that bushland to a very private and secluded beach on the shores of the waters of Lakes Entrance. The house is still there (as I have just discovered via google maps) and still looks the same as it did 30 or so years ago.

I was an adventurous child, and one day I climbed up on the railing of the front verandah so that I could sit on it, swing my legs over the edge and watch the world go by. Unfortunately, my balance was not as great as my sense of adventure and it was only a few moments before I fell to the ground below with a thud.

With the wind knocked out of me, I lay there for a moment, before putting my hands down beside me to raise myself up from the ground. It was then that I felt the bite. I pulled my hand up quickly and looked down to see a Redback spider slowly crawling away from the scene of the crime.

Now even though I was very young, I lived in the Australian bush and therefore our parents had taught us from a very early age about what creatures around us might hurt us and what we should do if they did. With that in mind, I squished the spider quickly with my thumb, picked it up and, still hurting a bit from the fall, walked into the house to my mother who was standing in the kitchen and told her what happened.

When she saw the dead spider in my hand she sprung into action, whisking me off to a neighbours house in order to get a lift to the local hospital.

I don’t really remember much more of the story, although I have been told that on the way to the hospital I became quite ill and the area around the bite started to swell a lot. 

After all this, anyone would think that I would have a major hatred of Redback spiders and their ilk, but no. Instead since then I have, felt somewhat of an affinity with them. I found myself being more greatful that at one of the only times time in my life when such a bite could have been potentially fatal, the little creature did nothing more than make me feel a bit poorly and leave me with a bit of a yarn to tell.

That affinity promped me, in the mid 90’s, to create something celebrating both the awesomeness of my friend the Redback and my love of modern and traditional Aboriginal Art, and so my piece ‘Redback Dreaming’ was born.

Now, once again working from a photograph (the original piece residing back in Australia with my brother and his family), I have created a range featuring this design and posted it for sale at ‘Lee Lee and the Bee‘ for the world to enjoy.

every now and then i feel the urge to go up to people like joel meares who can express this argument better than i and kiss them. read it and weep, anti-’calling it marriage’ people. y’all can kiss my fat dyke ass.

Tiger Woods, whose indiscretions have been by far the biggest story in the US for the past two weeks (what troop surge in Afghanistan?), is doing his bit. The golfer’s domestic drama couldn’t have come at a better time to illustrate the absurdity of the “value of marriage” argument against gay unions.

… The government happily endorses the right of the Bachelor to marry a bikini-clad opportunist for a month and get a quickie divorce.

Yet it will not provide that same right for a gay couple who have demonstrated their love and commitment for years – not in Sydney, not in Melbourne, not in Maine, not in California, not even in traditionally progressive New York.

It apparently boils down to protecting the value of marriage. (The value of Tiger’s marriage? US$60 million. That’s how much he’s reportedly paying his wife, Elin Nordegren, to stick by him.)

But by voting down the bill on this or whatever basis, the senate here has done nothing to protect the value of equality.

By not allowing same-sex couples to marry in the exact same way that straight couples do, with the exact same related rights, these governments effectively endorse wider spread feelings in the community that gays are lesser citizens.

The senate sent a message last week that Australia has always sent to its own gay community: you are not equal.

… This week’s Tiger-gate headlines show once again how thin that sanctity can be. And yet Tiger will rack up a few more anniversaries with Elin and that Broadway pusher has the right to shotgun it in Vegas tomorrow with a girl he meets tonight.

But loving gay couples that have been together for years and want to tie the knot continue to be the true threat to marriage and its diminishing value.

Gold. Read the whole thing right here.

So last night I read Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay (1967). I thought it would at least take me a week to read, but apparently it only took me six hours (with a break to pick up, make and eat dinner). I’ve had this book on my ‘to read’ list for years and finally bought it a few months ago – but never ended up with the time t read it before now! I remember seeing the film version (directed by Peter Weir, 1975) as a kid and I studied it in a film class last year, which encouraged me even more to read this book.

The basic plot of Hanging Rock is as follows: a group of Victorian school girls go on a picnic with two governesses to Hanging Rock. Four off the girls go on a walk to the Rock. Three are ‘lost’ there but one returns. It is later discovered one of the governesses also disappeared at this time. A week or so later (time is very precisely tracked in the text) one of the lost girls is found. But there is still mystery as no answers are given to what happened on the rock, or where the other lost women are now.

Hanging Rock is set in the natural landscape of Victoria at the actual place known as Hanging Rock. The book takes us back to 1900, before Federation, at a time when young ladies still spent time at boarding schools learning lady-like ’stuff’ (like art and dance and embroidery). The dress and manners of the characters are straight out of Victorian England, but infused with elements of the growing Australian identity.

The landscape itself is very much a character in this book. Having grown up in Australia (and having seen the film) it was extremely easy for me to picture the world in which Hanging Rock takes place. However, if you have not seen the film (which I believe is incredibly faithful to the text), therecently released Where the Wild Things Are is also filmed in a similar locale as this book is set.

Beginning on February 14th 1900, the story relies a lot on the theme of love and human relationships. Who loves who and how do they love them? What type of relationship do certain characters have with each other and the other people around them?

The eeriness of this book is overwhelming. I thought it was powerful in the film and it is stronger in the book (God bless the imagination!)

Han aparecido en la red tres posters promocionales de la pelicula mas esperada en diciembre: Nine, dirigida por Rob Marshall la mente maestra detras de Chicago, lo que todos quieren ver es el duelo de divas, aca las actuaciones de Nicole Kidman, Marion Cotillard, PENElope Cruz y la legendaria (por la edad XD) Sophia Loren, lo que me sigo preguntando es porque carajos Kate Hudson y la Vergie estan en la pelicula, ni son cantentes ni mucho buenas actrices…

click en las pics para agrandar

Yesterday afternoon my neighbour invited me to have a look in her letterbox.

On the  (umm…?) 29th day of Christmas, my true love sent to me….

One greeeeeen frooog….

Geez, I don’t know about the frog, but it would have made me jump when I bowled out to check the mail.

(Reckon he might be thinking “Just close the bloody door and leave me alone, ok”)

He’s been there for a week or so now. Not always during the day, apparently, but late afternoon, he’ll be back there, in his penthouse suite.

Somehow, I don’t think it’s quite what they were expecting in their letterbox in the lead up to Christmas!

On Saturday, D. and I drove to Gosford to visit J. (D.’s mummy) and ended up taking a trip to the Australian Reptile Park. I only took 193 photos on my iPhone that day. Yes – only. Needless to say the vast majority turned out to be awesomely poor quality. I need to re-invest in a proper camera!

On the road
(yes, I am so cool I am wearing a candy necklace)
(yes, it was delicious )

Trying to play Pooh Sticks in the little ‘creek’

One of many lizards

Some of many turtles
(and a lizard riding a turtle!!!)
(and maybe also my finger…)

Hugo and J.

Me bravely patting a baby roo
(I’m scared of them – shut up )

Then we watched a man talk about reptiles
(he is holding an alligator and just out of the left side
of the picture is the crocodile)

Then we saw some dingoes
(and this one had bypassed some barriers and was really close!)

And then I had to walk past an emu that was playing in a sprinkler
(I’m scared of them – shut up )

Apparently there were cassowaries
But we just thought it looked like Jurassic Park
(or that they were playing poker under the bridge)

And we gave a Bower Bird my blue pen lid for his bower

Better pic of his bower

I made some new feathered friends

D. got eaten by a croc

We went inside the Spider House

I enjoyed the architectural features of the Reptile House

Miss Piggy – so cute

My obedient Bunny

Winner of the Cutest Bin Award

Winner of the Funkiest Bench Award

Para el deleite de la pupila tenemos a estos dos ganadoras del oscar en la premier de la pelicula The Private Lives of Pippa Lee luciendo hermosas, aunque no me gusta mucho el atuendo tan casual de PENE Penelope Cruz con solo estar a un lado de la bella Marion Cotillard eso se olvida, no puedo esperar a ver la pelicula que ambas protagonizan: Nine, con otras grandes como Nicole Kidman, Judi Dench y Sophia Loren.

click para agrandar

Luciendo preciosa en las fotos Nicole Kidman aparece en el Ladies Home Journal para promocionar la tan esperada pelicula Nine, en donde comparte creditos con grandes actrices como: Pene Cruz, Marion Cotillard entre otras, disfruten de la belleza gracias al botox de esta australiana, XD

click para agrandar

Ad break!

I hope you haven’t bought yourself a 2010 calendar yet. Because you’re going to want one of these:

I daresay I’m preaching to the converted – I’m pretty sure most of my few regulars are already fans of BushBabe’s blog and her gorgeous photography of Aussie country life.  But I suppose you just never know, so just click on the pic of the front cover there, or click here, and get on over to her blog and find out how to get one.

++ If you’d like an idea of what sort of images you’ll find in it, here’s a clue. ++

Anyway.. I’ve sent my order in. Can’t wait to get it, and can’t wait for January now!

hot off the wires from AAP:

CANBERRA, Nov 12 AAP – A Senate inquiry into same-sex marriage has received more than 26,000 submissions, a record for an upper house investigation.

The Senate’s legal and constitutional affairs committee is examining a private bill, introduced by Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young, which aims to alter the Marriage Act and give same-sex couples marriage rights.

At the cut-off date for written public input the committee had received about 26,000 submissions.

A committee spokesperson told AAP the number was a record for any Senate inquiry.

Nearly two in every three submissions considered so far are opposed to the bill but the final count could change because of duplicate submissions.

Australian Marriage Equality, which is campaigning for gay and lesbian marriage, is concerned many of the submissions opposing the bill were formula emails sent by Christian groups.

“It’s not really a vote about how many people can click on an email,” the group’s national convenor Peter Furness told AAP.

He urged senators to read a cross section of submissions.

“A lot of people have gone to a lot of trouble to tell their stories.”

But Christian group, FamilyVoice Australia, defended the use of formula submissions or letters.

“It doesn’t mean that they’re (submissions) any less sincere,” spokeswoman Ros Phillips told AAP.

“And a lot of people out there in the street are not very literate.”

The Australian Christian Lobby (ACL) believes the inquiry is an “exercise in futility” because the federal government and opposition are against same-sex marriage.

“Both parties have been clear for many years now,” ACL spokesman Lyle Shelton told AAP.

The record number of submissions showed the community valued marriage and did not want the definition changed.

Mr Shelton also urged the government to step in and disallow same-sex marriage in the ACT.

The territory’s assembly approved a bill on Wednesday that allows same-sex couples to create a civil union through a legally binding ceremony.

It’s the third time such laws have been passed by the assembly but the two previous attempts were disallowed by both the Howard and Rudd governments.

“We expect the Rudd government to step in disallow the bill sooner rather than later,” Mr Shelton said, adding there needed to be certainty.

The Senate inquiry is expected to hand down its final report on November 26.

the relevant bit starts about 2:28 but hey, watch the whole thing because, y’know, she’s a thing of brains and beauty.

but, if you can’t be arsed, here is the transcript. you’ll just have to imagine the levels of sarcasm, amusement and complete ownership. lol.

Rachel Maddow: And finally, Sky News Australia, the channel owned by Rupert Murdoch and run by his son James Murdoch, just landed the interview of the century. With Rupert Murdoch. In it the Australian media tycoon said he wants people to pay for all his news organisations’ online content. He said search engines like Google, which index content, quote, “steal stories”. And he said, he intends to stop them.

Cut to video of interview:

Interviewer: “The other argument from Google is that you could choose not to be on their search engine. That you could simply refuse to be on. So that when someone does do a search, your websites don’t come up. Why haven’t you done that?”

Murdoch: “Well, I think we will.”

Cut back to Maddow in the studio:

Maddow: What an excellent idea. Then nobody will ever be directed to any of their stories through Google searches. And presumably, like Google, ‘Murdoch’ will also become a verb. To Murdoch: To magically attract an audience to one’s media product by ensuring that no-one knows it’s there.

*snort*

and there it is ladies and gentlemen, the entire ridiculousness of the argument against aggregation compressed down into four genius sentences.

*sigh*

this hot off the wires from AAP:

An ACT Greens bill to legalise civil ceremonies between same sex couples has been passed by the territory’s parliament.

The bill allows gay and lesbian couples to create their civil partnerships through a legally-binding ceremony before friends and family.

“This legislation is another step along the road to full equality for same sex couples in Australia, and we are delighted that the assembly has passed it today,” ACT Greens MLA Shane Rattenbury, who drafted the bill, said in a statement.

Mr Rattenbury said it was about providing decency and respect and acknowledging that same sex relationships have equal value in the ACT community.

“We understand that this is not same sex marriage,” he said, adding that the ACT had done everything it could within its constitutional powers to address the issue.

“This is not the end of the debate for equal rights for same sex couples.”

The ACT Greens hope the bill’s passage will add momentum for equal rights across the nation.

Gay rights activists say the spotlight is now focused on whether Prime Minister Kevin Rudd will intervene and overturn the new laws.

But Equal Love Canberra spokesman John Kloprogge admitted the community still had some concerns surrounding an amendment that was added to the bill before it was passed.

“We are concerned that ACT Labor’s amendment limiting ceremonies to same-sex couples would exclude heterosexual couples and some transgender or transsexual couples,” he said.

“Civil partnership laws were originally intended to be broader and more inclusive than the amended bill provides for.”

The amendment, which had the endorsement of the Greens, means heterosexual couples would be prohibited from having their relationship recognised under the legislation.

It means the commonwealth’s Marriage Act will remain distinctly separate from the ACT bill and aims to reassure the federal government that the ceremonies won’t mimic marriage.

I’ve checked the time.  Well, it’s around 3.00, but, more importantly, it’s  low tide o’clock.

Perfect time for walking on the beach.
(No I don’t know what we did before the internet. I mean, there are tide charts you can buy in the newsagents, but seriously.. when you can get this online, for the current tide situation for your local beach, why would you?!)

Yeah, it’s cloudy, but I don’t think it’ll rain on us  yet.

Hello island. You’re looking a bit sombre today.

Heading north again… should go south every now and then, but I seem to swing automatically north all the time. Easy walking I suppose…..

Up to the rocks…  really exposed today.  Always different. Sometimes they’re all buried in sand.

Onwards…

You know we’re the only people on this stretch of beach at the moment.  Just for now. Just us….

…. and a bunch of galahs.

Down under, if you called a group of people a ‘bunch of galahs’, you’d mean they were a group of people being silly.  I suppose it comes from the racket a bunch of them can make. (mp3 file link). I saw one once doing a loop the loop over a telegraph wire – was a bit hard to concentrate on the game of tennis I was playing at the time.  So maybe they are clowns, and the idiom is warranted.

How do I know they’re galahs? (Silhouetted against the cloud like that..)  I can just make out the  the pink breasts and heads.

And just nearby… a kookaburra. (Singing…”Kookaburra sits in an old gum tree…”   hey, have you heard about Men at Work being sued for copyright infringement by using the tune to Kookaburra in a flute riff in the famous song ‘Down Under‘? )

Hmm, anyway… where was I?  That’s right.. a kookaburra in an old dead tree..
He wasn’t laughing at the galahs, though…

…. and meanwhile I’m getting a bit carried away with thinking I can take artistic
photos of dead trees…

Time to head back.
Ooh dear, looks a bit black back in the direction of home…

Still a bit of blue around. (More of that bloody island, but I liked the colours…)

This is turning out to be a bit of a birdwatching walk.
All day I’d heard this sound .
Definitely those yellow tailed black cockatoos.
They are big buggers. Noisy buggers too (as you can hear from the sound file!)
I can hear them again down here… There they are! Let’s try and get a bit closer…

Better be getting back. The kids will be home from school by now.

[I'm cheating a bit - this was actually yesterday afternoon. It did start raining not long after I got home, we had storms all through the night, it's rained on and off today, and right now (;ate Friday night) it's bucketing down outside.
Local town/city has had more than here I reckon - officially 375mm (about 15 inches) of rain in the past 24 hours, and it's still going. Bit of local flooding going on...]

While I was sat on the couch eating my lunch, Patch was patrolling the windows in the hopes a bird may become his friend. So imagine Patch’s delight when a shingleback lizard ambled past the windows along the side of the house!

Look at his stumpy tailed butt!

Mr. Shingleback would not be Patch’s friend
(no matter how loudly Patty cried)

Just when I thought he was leaving,
Mr. Shingleback turned around for another tour of our backyard
(he was maybe having trouble getting out…)

wish i could vote for her. this from AAP:

SYDNEY, Oct 28 AAP – A Generation Y feminist pole dancer named Zahra Stardust will be the Australian Sex Party’s candidate for the Bradfield by-election in December.

The party announced its candidate on Wednesday, saying the 26-year-old hoped to restore a historical imbalance of male protagonist politicians in the Sydney electorate.

“In an area that claims 50 years of conservative representation from white, heterosexual, able-bodied, suited, male protagonists, the Australian Sex Party is excited to provide a modern, outward looking female candidate,” she said in a statement.

“We look forward to hearing from and consulting with the youth and women of Bradfield about issues affecting their rights, priorities and desires.”

Ms Stardust, a law graduate whose real name is Marianna Leishman, has a colourful resume.

Among stints at the United Nations and an ongoing masters degree, the feminist “Gen Y” writer also twirls fire, teaches pole dancing and swings from a trapeze for a living.

She has worked extensively with refugees and in indigenous affairs, and “hopes to seek resonance” with people in the Bradfield electorate who care about social justice and human rights issues, the statement said.

On her agenda is campaigning to legalise gay marriage and abortion, examining child sex abuse in religious institutions, and pushing for more sex education in schools.

Voters in the blue-ribbon seat, vacated by former opposition leader Brendan Nelson and which takes in Sydney’s leafy northern suburbs, will go to the polls on December 5.

Ex-Optus executive Paul Fletcher is the Liberal candidate, while Labor has said it will not contest the seat.

And the bad news in that story is the last sentence. WTF is it with Labor not even bothering to blood someone in the field? Farkin’ idiots. c’mon k-rudd. you want diversity and new faces? give them a chance to find out what campaigning is about.

twat.

we’ve had another hit of dust today … nowhere near as bad as last month’s effort that was eerie weird … but it was coincidental that i came across a most excellent post on Slate from christopher hitchens, about the dust storms and australia’s sense of history. great perspective.

The Lucky Country was the title of a celebrated 1964 book about Australia by Donald Horne. It seemed to say that Australia was a fortunate place—lots of natural resources, a good distance between itself and the wars of other continents, a dry and invigorating climate, a spirited and enterprising people. In fact, as with that other title The Ugly American (which actually describes a charming and humane and brave American in Southeast Asia), the fate of the book was to have its title taken literally when it was intended to be ironic. Horne intended the implication of a country that was living off a happy-go-lucky illusion of its own making.

Later authors such as Robert Hughes have inked in some of the darker side, from the original prisoner-slave colonies that populated the coastal areas to the near annihilation of the ancient peoples who are lumped together under the anthropological definition of Aboriginal. But Australia still has a lucky feel to it. (I speak as one who was recently invited to lecture at the Sydney Opera House. I had not thought of myself as spectacularly fat until I made my appearance, but it remains the case that the audience would not leave until I had sung. True fact.) The country has been almost immunized from the recent international economic slump, because its principal currency-earning export is iron ore, and as long as the gigantic mines keep digging it up, the Chinese will carry on buying it. The population is booming and young, with a large wave of talented immigrants from Asia who have changed the face of the big cities and helped make them the rivals of anywhere for cuisine and fashion and movies.

However, nature remains boss, as she does everywhere. If Australia were truly lucky, it would have an interior and navigable river system like the Mississippi-Missouri. As it is, all the real centers of population are beside the ocean, and a whole continent supports about 22 million people. These people may not think very often about the outback, and nor of course does the outback think about them, but deserts have a way of recalling themselves to the attention of the urbanites. Thus the twinge of last month’s hectic and somber sunrise, the gift of the vast wilderness at the heart of the continent.

read the whole thing. it’s a joy to read.

Mats är nu i tropikernas helvetesstad, Cairns.

Han berättade att han sparkade en Cane toad -minns inte hur långt- och det är hans personbästa hittils.

Någon annan som vill sparka lite groda?

Jag tror att jag mår illa.

I have mixed feelings about Bill Bryson. On one hand, he is a superb story teller. He captures the history and the culture of Australia so vividly and so effortlessly in Down Under that I wish he wrote a book about every country in the world. On the other hand, he is boring when he actually writes about his travels (which is kind of ironic for a travel writer). He is prone to cheap humor and exaggeration whenever he tries to transform his rather mundane trips into standup routines.

But I truly appreciate how much he loves nature. There probably is a naturalist in Bill Bryson. You simply don’t expect reading about the following things in a travelogue:

* The Giant Gippsland Earthworm. This earthworm can grow to 3 meters in length! I’ve been to Gippsland a few times but I never heard about this monster.

* Nothomyrmecia macrops, a very primitive ant. The story of how this species was discovered is remarkable.

* The Edicara biota discovered by Australian geologist Reg Sprigg. This is a collection of fossils more ancient than the Cambrian explosion. How come people don’t talk about the Edicara biota in evolution/creation debates?

I read Down Under by travel writer Bill Bryson while I was in Sydney for a short vacation. I found this story from the book irresistible. In short, somewhere in the 1980s, Australian scientists detected an unusual earthquake in the middle of a unpopulated desert. The waveform was unlike anything that was recorded and geologists couldn’t explain what it was. Nomads living near that area reported bright flashes in the sky. Four years later, after the Aum Shinrikyo Cult in Japan (the one whose members released Sarin gas in a tokyo train station) was busted, it was discovered that the cult owned a large property in Australian outback. The site happened to be where the earthquake was. Australian police raided that area and found a secret lab with sophisticated equipments and traces of radioactive materials. It was suspected that the Aum Shinrikyo Cult tested a small atomic bomb there.

I am very skeptical about the story because of Bryson’s tendency of exaggeration, but it captures the myth of Australian outback so well that I’ll pretend it is true.

Bryson made some very insightful observations about Australia:

1. The country is so big and so sparsely populated that you can detonate a baby nuke undetected.

2. The country is so isolated from the rest of the world that people outside Australian don’t hear about weird things like this.