Two Tree Hill

On my silence

2012-01-15T15:57:00.002+10:00

I started a blog and I started to write. I wrote the blog and I wrote a book. I wrote when the babies were sleeping and I wrote when the toddlers were playing. I wrote when the big kids started school and I wrote when the little kid started school. I wrote a book and rewrote a book. I would say that I got rejection slips but I never even got acknowledgement of submissions. I kept writing then I started working again. I put the book away and got busy with life. I worked a couple of days a week when the kids were in school then I got another job and worked most days of the week while the kids were in school. Then the biggest kid finished primary school and it was about time to stop treading water and remember that I had a mind and aspirations to a career.

I got a job of the kind that might lead to something, not just one to fill in time and pay bills (though those kind are good too). I found out that there was really only time for a few things -- work and being a mum and partner. So the writing petered out and the blog fell between the cracks and friends started to write to me to ask if I was okay. I am okay, more than okay. But I'm not blogging though I do still write. I have ideas for books and even occasionally write them down or read other books. I have a job that requires a lot of thought, energy, writing and reading but can delightfully be left behind when I walk to my car and drive home. When I am home, I'm busy spending time with my family and doing the things that keep the household somewhat messily and chaotically lurching forward.

I'm going to leave the blog here though as it is a chronicle of my writing and research over quite a few years. I hope that people might find it and even learn something about the Rosewood Scrub and German migration to Australia. I will occasionally pop in but please don't depend on me to update it. It's become an archive rather than a diary. If you are specifically interested in me - I do tweet at intervals at twitter.com/follysantidote but it is necessarily succinct and possibly frivolous. And I can always be reached by email at follysantidote[at]gmail.com and via my personal email if you know it.

A wedding frippery

2011-07-30T23:04:00.005+10:00

I recently found out that the white wedding dress was an innovation of Queen Victoria. She didn't want to wear a heavy brocade gown and wore something lighter and more summery for her wedding. Somehow it become first the fashion and then the tradition to wear white. So the bride wearing white at a wedding is hardly a tenet of Western civilisation or indeed, even a very long tradition.

From The Royal Collection

A new exhibit on the history of the white wedding dress is opening at the Bendigo Art Gallery and the ABC recently featured a short piece on the collection. Here's the 5 minute news story on the exhibit. I especially enjoyed the Australian focus and the now-elderly bride who was so thrilled that her wedding dress made by her mother was included.

I also like the emphasis on the stories behind the dresses. For me, it is always about the stories.

Dancing gal

2011-06-20T13:17:00.003+10:00

For those of you who know Blithe Girl, you may enjoy watching this clip from YouTube. She's in The Brisbane Gang Show this year. They did a flash mob to promote the show in Queen Street Mall which is the main shopping area in Brisbane. It was great fun to watch.

Click here to watch the clip. And click here to purchase tickets.

Who would have thought my daughter would ever be dancing in Queen Street Mall (or to be honest, able to dance at all?)

Signs of the times

2011-06-14T20:25:00.004+10:00

I was in Sydney on the long weekend to catch up with family. It was a lovely visit. I very rarely see my brother and his family and it was great to spend some time with them. Now that we are "all grown up" (and I put this in quotations because I at least very intermittently feel adult) it's a different kind of relationship. Although there was a moment in the car with my Dad driving when he was cranky at us for not being ready on time then told us off for chattering too much. We caught each others' eye, started to giggle and nudge each other and I felt about 12 years old again.

I love to search out good signage when I'm travelling and post here for your enjoyment my favourite of this trip. My father doesn't like crass mentions of bodily functions so let me just say that this was in a small public room and that people might have wondered about the clicking going on in the cubicle. Not only is the sign funny but it's also a neat little reminder of cultural difference.

Writing slump

2011-05-19T18:30:00.004+10:00

I've lost my writing mojo.

Somewhere between Easter and now, I've lost the motivation to write. I've started a handful of posts and done the digital equivalent of crumpling them up in my hand and tossing them in the bin.

Maybe I'm just tired. Maybe I'm just discouraged. Or maybe I'm just not meant to be writing right now.

I'll keep trying. Thank you for your patience.

If you're looking for something to read about Marburg, Queensland, please take a look at our Marburg news site. There's stories there ranging from new coal exploration leases being applied for in the Marburg area to fund raising morning teas and the enduringly famous Saturday night Marburg dance. Ipswich mayor Paul Pisasale reputedly met his wife at one. What better endorsement can there be?

Splat!

2011-04-26T15:19:00.007+10:00

Just coming out of the strange Easter/ANZAC Day/school holidays calendar mash-up. I've been meaning to do so many things but so far have managed only some rest, large amounts of chocolate consumption and some long-delayed excavation of my bedroom floor. But in response to a special request from my friend Ms AbsurdBeats, two photos of recent wildlife. First, tongue-in-cheek wildlife: our windscreen after a nighttime drive through the Lockyer Valley. And second, a classic Aussie welcome to Girraween National Park.

Happy Easter everyone.

Photo glee

2011-04-06T12:09:00.004+10:00

What I really need to do is a list as long as my arm of chores and obligations and writing. What I actually am doing is playing with my new camera. Its arrival was a saga of parcels sent to the wrong place, enquiries unanswered and persistence. But it is here and I am very happy. Officially it is for work. I actually have a photo shoot job coming up. Unofficially I might just use it occasionally for myself and here for you...

Autumn, Two Tree Hill

New leaves on what we call the vanilla flower bush because the flowers smell just like the vanilla air freshener in cars.

Publishing links

2011-03-30T15:00:00.004+10:00

Things have been kinda up in the air around here lately. I'm busy jumping back and forth between various jobs and levels of sanity. If you're interested and have small feet (European size 37 or Australian 6B), here's a niche shoe website that I've been working on for the last few weeks. Ships worldwide...

However, to keep you up on your toes regarding the book world, here are a couple of interesting links.

The first is a blog reviewing self-published books. You may not be interested in self-published books or the world of self-publishing but these are fascinating reviews full of very helpful information on what terrible mistakes to avoid in your writing. And they are often cringingly amusing (in that sort of "hope I've never done that, must pull out my writing and check" way).

The second link is a blog by the same person who writes the reviews above. This one is bluntly descriptive in its title, How Publishing Really Works. Plenty of material for thought and agonising over.

March sunset

2011-03-26T11:24:00.002+10:00

This is why I live here.

He wrote/she wrote

2011-03-21T10:52:00.003+10:00

Take a look at this interesting site: http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php

And read this article in the New York Times: http://tinyurl.com/3xvh6ad

And the algorithm: http://tinyurl.com/4wep7fb

Then waste a significant amount of time testing this and tell me what you discover.

I discovered that all of my academic and professional writing in the last two years -- articles, reports, evaluations -- was judged to be written by a male. Even the more touchy-feely qualitative work was judged to be written by a male. Okay then. Perhaps academics are trained to write in a traditionally "male" way.

I then selected two blog entries. One was a more scholarly piece: Learning the Vernacular that given the above, I expected would be judged as "male". The other was my entry on the "episode of the snake in our ceiling" which is a more descriptive piece. Both pieces were assessed as having been written by a male.

When I entered a longish passage from my novel, the judgment was that it was written by a female.

I'm not quite sure what I can learn from this. Is my more successful, i.e., professionally validated writing, successful because it is written in a more "male" way? Is it a consequence of environmental factors that I write differently in different contexts? Is academia socialised to favour male behaviour? Where does my blogging fit into this? And how is it that I transition to a more "feminine" writing style in my novel? Would my writing efforts be more successful if I approached fiction in the same way as I approach report writing and blogging? Is there something in non-fiction that is more inherently male than in fiction?

Many more questions than I have answers for at this time and perhaps ever. But plenty of food for thought.

A detour to Birdland

2011-03-13T15:44:00.006+10:00

In the midst of what seems like the world falling apart -- earthquakes and armies and riots -- my children ran into the bedroom this morning to tell me there was a Tawny Frogmouth in the tree outside the kitchen window. Lying in bed trying to drag myself to the surface, I had heard the rapid patter of feet down the hall and sundry whisperings. They had fetched trusty Simpson and Day to identify our visitor before proudly announcing it.

Mr/Ms Frogmouth has been there all day, in spite of children playing, lawnmower buzzing, bins being opened and closed and camera shutter clicking. I think he might be waiting for the cool of evening. Or is he simply waiting for an unguarded guinea pig?

On the subject of birds, last weekend when we were walking along Enoggera Creek down near the Northey Street Farm in Brisbane, the umbrella trees were in full bloom. Each tree was covered by lorikeets that would take off in vast screeching clouds as you walked by, only to noisily return within seconds. I like lorikeets. They are a living illustration of the fact that beauty is not everything.

Inbox of shame

2011-03-10T10:58:00.005+10:00

Someone was telling me the other day about how difficult it is to raise children in the age of access to modern technology and media. It set me thinking about some of the things that are different for me today from when I was a child.

One of them is my Inbox of Shame.

I'm sure that other people's inboxes are full of vital and fascinating emails. Mine is full of emails to myself. I used to write notes to myself on paper, with a pen, sometimes even in a notebook. Now, many of the things I need to remember exist only electronically. I'm so often out and about and internet access is so prevalent in the places that I work, that I send myself emails all the time. I think I rank as my own most frequent emailer (which is sad in a way).

I'm not silly about it. I don't write letters to myself (well only occasionally) but the subject lines say it all:
"a link"
"another link"
"More links"
"Useful article on health journalism"
"For work tweeting"
"Do I need to go to this workshop?"
"For Mr Blithe"
"Possibly interesting blog"
"Have I read this yet?"

When more than say, ten emails in my inbox are from myself, I try to clear out the backlog and put everything where it belongs. A lot gets binned, but then I used to bin or recycle a lot of paper too. Perhaps I need to stop thinking of it as my Inbox of Shame and think of it as the inbox of a busy but environmentally virtuous person. Let's go with that.

Avoiding cliche

2011-02-28T12:47:00.002+10:00

How do you describe the last few days of summer while avoiding cliche? Every phrase that springs to mind: "dog days", "shimmering heat", "brassy sunshine", "warm fug of humidity", "burning footpaths", "breathless sunstained evenings", "car doors too hot to touch", "sudden gusty storms", "melting dregs of the day"...all sound trite and overused.

Has summer really been so dissected and described that there is nothing left to say? Or has my brain simply melted into a puddle of raddled cliches swirling around in what the sun and sweat have left?

Super Vignettes

2011-02-23T13:08:00.004+10:00

OED, Vignette: /vi:'njet/ A short descriptive essay or character sketch.
Me, Super vignette: Extra short descriptive sketch.

*****
A palomino mare and foal: golden horses, white railings, green, green field. Gone by in a flash of gold, white, green.

Grey mare with brown foal and a discussion of genetics. And why Blithe Boy isn't adopted even though he is the only blonde Blithe.

Local pacing trainer ambling along the road in his buggy texting as he goes. Does the law against using your mobile phone while driving apply here?

Unbearably muggy molten days turning to cool, dampness on the wings of a fantastical lightening and wind storm.

Learning some new techniques for plotting novels and trying to figure out when to try them out.

Realising that while I like doing business, there are few things more boring than business network meetings.

Finding a three word description of my business: I sell words.

Being told that I am middle-aged and feeling middle-aged from lack of sleep.

A woman asking for scuffs (backless slide on shoes) at the shoe shop then telling me that she also doesn't like anything over the top of the foot. Me stopping myself from telling her that, by definition, that would no longer be a shoe, just something on which you were temporarily standing.

My big sister running her first half marathon in 2 hours and 36 minutes. I couldn't even run for half an hour. My admiration is boundless.

A huge brown bird dozing in the sunshine on a fencepost being harassed by a pair of lapwings until it finally flaps lazily across the dam. Downthrust from its wings ruffling the brown surface of the water. Walking stiffly to the side of the dam to drink with the lapwings still circling and insanely squawking.

Strange paths

2011-02-12T10:24:00.001+10:00

It's been an odd week or so. The irony is that when I am busy getting things done in real life, my blogging suffers. I started blogging almost four years ago now as a way to get myself writing and to exercise my writing muscles. Now, much of my everyday life consists of writing and reading and I don't need the exercise so much. And I just often don't have the time or energy to write something interesting and significant. If you're interested in brief snippets of my life, you can follow my tweets. Sometimes it is easier to come up with 140 characters than a fully fledged post.

The second irony is that in being busy, I've started writing fiction again in odd moments. I've picked up a second part-time job working in a friend's shoe store. In between pricing shoes and helping people select shoes, I often have quiet moments and the motivation to write. I think my family are a bit horrified that I'm heading down the path of career suicide or are at the very least over-qualified. I point out that it's not a lifetime career choice but a part-time job that pays a few bills and isn't too stressful. I'm working two half days, between taking the kids to school and picking them up. It's a local shop in the next small town. I see lots of people I know, meet many others and find the people watching fascinating. I'm wondering if I could get away with writing a book based on the characters I meet in the mode of D.E. Stevenson's Miss Buncle.

It's also a delight to be out of the university and community consultancy mindset. No-one is talking about key learnings, policy recommendations, transparency, accountability, commitment to social equity, strategic support and all the jargon of bureaucracies everywhere. Not that I don't enjoy that but I can step away from it and see it for the self-contained (though better-paid) world that it is.

I'm also working on helping the shop get into online shopping. It's a slow process starting with needing to get a new computer. I discovered that the computer in the shop was bought second hand in 1998 from the local high school! I personally would never buy a computer that has ever been anywhere near a high school. It's like buying a car from a driving instructor -- the guts have been well and truly flogged out of it (not to mention the germs). Oddly enough, this dinosaur is connected to broadband. It's like the Mississippi River funnelled through a mouse-powered turbine that chokes regularly. Once the hardware problem has been solved, I suspect I've have less spare time for writing but I'll be using again some of my "core competencies" to "strategically position" the shoe store online.

See. I can still do it.

Cool but frightening

2011-02-01T16:28:00.005+10:00

Take a look at this animated image of Cyclone Yasi bearing down on North Queensland. It is expected to cross the coast around 1am on Thursday. Residents are currently being asked to evacuate low-lying areas and to drive south as far as possible, but at least as far as Mackay. Enforced evacuations will kick in later today. Two Cairns hospitals are being evacuated to Brisbane.

Cairns is 1700km from Brisbane, Mackay is 1000km. So people driving themselves away from the coast need to be at least a day's drive south.

And for those congenital sightsee-ers, this message from the Deputy Police Commissioner who according to the ABC says that "anyone foolish enough to venture out during the height of the cyclone will be left to fend for themselves."

"At about 8:00am tomorrow, on current predictions, it will become dangerous to be driving about or walking about or doing anything outside due to the force of the winds," he said. "If people purposely go out and get into strife and create a high risk, sending emergency services workers out into that environment is not practical or sensible."

It's a tough year to be in Queensland.

Onward and upward

2011-02-01T06:00:00.001+10:00

I'm rereading Don Watson's Death Sentence: The Decay of Public Language. It is not just a rant, it's an inspirational rant. Don't read it if you want to feel comfortable in your management-speak and your everyday sloppiness of expression. Do read it if you want to feel challenged to express ideas simply, clearly and powerfully.

In his own words:

Words can be like notes, like expressions of the soul. They can make our hair stand up, they can lift our understanding to a higher plane, make us see things differently. They can inspire love and hope. You can see it happen before your eyes. Words can create a magic halo. But they have to have some thought or sentiment attached; and, like notes, be skillfully arranged.

Go, arrange words, make some music.

Clearing out the baggage

2011-01-31T10:22:00.003+10:00

January is one of my least favourite months. I am often still tired from the year before and that doesn't magically disappear on New Year's Eve. I sometimes wish it would burn up in the brilliant light of those fireworks. That would be a proper end to a year. (Note to self: perhaps I should invent a new religion this year or at least a few rituals).

I often don't know what the new year holds for me and that is stressful in itself for someone who likes to be in control of things or at least know where things (myself included are going). January is also a curious blend of the end of the long school holidays then the sudden transition to school routine for the kids and myself. All of a sudden we're back to timetables, sports, music, Scouts and all the paraphernalia of everyday life. Throw in a flood and I feel totally discombobulated.

This year I am trying to become calmer and more rational in my dealings with life. So on this last day of January I am going to have a whinge about something and then let it go, hopefully never to sully me again.

Before setting off on our epic family drive to Sydney and back after Christmas, I decided to test-drive our local library's digital loan system. I love books and I enjoy techie things so I thought it was great that our local library was offering digital loans. Hours and hours of aggravation later I was just pissed off. So much so that I wrote a furious email to the library which I fortunately diverted to my draft file while I sat on my anger a while. My dissertation advisor gave me the good advice not to send off letters in anger and it's saved me a few times. Not that the crankiness was unjustified but I probably didn't need to burden some overworked and underpaid librarian with my rant. Instead I am going to burden you then let it go…

This is what I wrote at the time:

Dear XyZ,

I recently tried to borrow a digital book and while able to borrow it, was completely unable to play it. I have a Mac and downloaded the recommended version of OverDrive. However, the Mac version of OverDrive won't play the more updated versions of the books. On the OverDrive site the version of the console for Windows is 3.2 while for the Mac it is 1.1. I received the message "This version of OverDrive does not play WMA Audio Books." Your site recommended that I use Flip4Mac but it does not support "content that is protected with Windows Media digital rights management (DRM)" which this content is.

I realise that the library site said that the book was not formatted for Mac but I need to use my Mac to transfer the file to my iPod. The recommendation to simply use iTunes doesn't work as to use iTunes I have to use my Mac. This is a ridiculous situation that a Mac user cannot use a product that is formatted for an Apple product unless they use a PC with Windows software. It is also unhelpful that your site suggests solutions that do not work. Why not simply say at the portal that "only PC users are welcome here"?

It is also a ridiculous situation that once I have "borrowed" a digital book, no other user can borrow it until I "return" it. Why are you using a system based on old models of libraries when you have digital editions that can be borrowed by as many users as want to at a time? Now I have five books that I have removed from circulation that I can't access or listen to and no-one else can either until my three week loan period expires. This seems a very poor implementation of technology whether it is by your choice or by software and book publishers stuck in twentieth century notions of readership and book publication.

I have completely wasted several hours of my time and will in future only borrow "real" books or purchase audio books from iTunes directly. At least I will be sure that I will be able to play them. Perhaps this was not an issue in the past but as more and more people use iPads, iPods and similar Apple products, more and more of your patrons will be alienated. And perhaps you will draw the conclusion that people aren't interested in digital books when in reality they simply aren't interested in obtaining them from sources such as the library. And that will be your and our loss, because your library is a wonderful asset to the community and should continue being so in the future, whatever direction technology takes books.

Yours sincerely,

An irate library client

Letting go NOW...

Flooded with images

2011-01-18T13:58:00.007+10:00

I am often the first person to whip out a camera and take a picture but I have been strangely unwilling this week. This flood has been widely documented and the flood of imagery has been overwhelming. It's hard to take a picture that shows the magnitude of what happened. And it feels wrong to take pictures of others' misery. So I have been constrained by my own misgivings. Here though are a few images of what the water meant to us.

The dam going over the top of the wall.

Marburg Valley with the detention basin full and over the spillway.

The top part of our road after the rain (the bottom of it was still under water).

Anatomy of a road.

Four odd things

2011-01-14T06:54:00.001+10:00

1. In the middle of the rainstorm, our phone rang and it was a telemarketer. Neither flood nor disaster…
2. ABC had a prominent notice on one of their television news bulletins asking people to "converse" water.
3. Our only piece of mail this week was a Telstra bill. See #1 above.
4. I received an email from the mobile library telling me that I had overdue books. The library is shut and I can't imagine that any mobile library is going to be out on the streets for some time.

Life goes on…

Ordinary

2011-01-13T16:06:00.001+10:00

Today was a completely normal summer holiday day. I did five loads of laundry and pegged them in succession on the line. I weeded the garden and planted some cuttings I brought back from the holidays. The tomatoes, basil and chives are thriving and I laid out another tranche of lettuce. Mr Blithe mowed. The children played with toys and pets and squabbled intermittently. We shared cafe lattes and gingerbread after lunch. We made phone calls, checked email, browsed the web, listened to music and watched television.

Nothing in particular stood out other than that it is a lovely day. The sky is blue and powder puffed with clouds. A cool breeze blows and military helicopters pass low overhead. The heavy thunk of the rotors and the grass bending in their passing is the only sour note. I wonder if they look down and see us here on our hilltop going about our very ordinary, everyday activities? Does it comfort them or bother them? Or do they notice nothing in their focus on their grim mission?

For these helicopters are combing the countryside looking for bodies -- preferably survivors but at this stage, they're girded to find victims. Upstream heading west into the Lockyer Valley and the Darling Downs, communities are devastated by the wall of water that came down the creeks and rivers. Downstream heading east into Brisbane, the city watches the river rising and falling with the tide and inflows from further west. Ipswich tries to clean up its CBD while Brisbane waits for a final peak before starting the effort.

We had heavy rain and 36 hours without electricity. Our road washed out. The water found a few new pathways into our house. The valley flooded and roads were cut. But we are lucky.

I thought today that in some ways our experience has been similar to those surviving the 1893 deluge. Perched high on the hill, unable to go anywhere, we simply went on with our lives. We played cards, read, peered down the valley, cooked and ate by candlelight and went to bed early. In many ways we are more fortunate than those more dependent on an urban infrastructure. We have our own water and sewage. We have a generator to run the essentials. I'm used to the fact that a supermarket isn't just around the corner and keep the store cupboard full. At some point we'll have to descend from our aerie and return to the realities of a working life.

But for now, ordinary is good.

Resolutely entering the new year

2011-01-09T19:30:00.004+10:00

I always intend to make New Year's resolutions but somehow or rather time slips by me and I've missed that wonderful opportunity to think about the year gone and the year to come. My thoughts about new year usually occur in the quiet of mid-January. It's not that January is much calmer than other times of the year. The kids are still on holiday. I'm still trying to finish up all the things I promised to get done by Christmas and I'm trying to come up with new projects/funding/income for another year. But there is a kind of lull when I try (again) vainly (again) to organise myself, tidy the house and think of the future.

2011 is a significant year for me. A little over five years ago, I was wondering about whether to have another child. I remember saying to Mr Blithe "But if we have another child, they won't be starting school until 2011!" It seemed so far away. I worried about the effect on my career and life and yet took the plunge (so to speak). 2011 seems to have raced up on me and my baby is starting school in a fortnight. I still don't know what 2011 holds for me and I still don't know what I am going to do when I grow up but here are a few goals:

To clean up the "filing system" on my bedroom floor.
To find some kind of stable work (that is, steady work rather than working with horses!)
To improve my balance between work for money, work for interest and family life.
To write more.
To continue my efforts to be kinder to people including myself and to be more patient.
To be braver.

As part of my efforts to be braver, here is me hanging from a bar over a 2 storey drop at the free fall slide at Questacon in Canberra. I piked twice but managed it on the third go after grilling the poor attendant about potential risks, hazards, approximate height of the drop, average injury rates etc…it's a wonder he didn't just push me off the edge. And yes, the boiler suit is required and is not my normal attire.

Happy New Year everyone. May your year be full of challenges bravely met and goals reached.

Notes to self

2010-12-31T09:17:00.000+10:00

When I am going about my everyday life, I often scribble thoughts and ideas down. I have tried to be grown-up and carry a notebook in which to do so. As with many attempts at maturity I have failed. Instead I jot things on whatever scrap of paper comes to hand.

My personal favourite is the backs of old envelopes so that I feel vaguely environmentally responsible. Sometimes it is napkins and sometimes the tiniest scraps of paper that I find later and try to puzzle out what I was trying to say.

Sometimes you have to do it surreptitiously like when you hear an especially juicy piece of dialogue in a doctor's waiting room. You don't want people to realise that you are writing down what they say. When I am working, I turn on my digital recorder and look vaguely professional. At other times, I am sure that I look furtive.

Cleaning out my backpack in a half-hearted attempt to get ready for the new year, I found a scrap of paper with a phrase I found fascinating at the time. It still resonates:

"We expect to be interested..."

I'm fairly sure that it is from a meeting with a public servant. I'm trying to work out how to use it in my writing without sounding too pompous. Or maybe I could insert a pompous character into a story. The power of the author...

One year apart

2010-12-25T06:00:00.000+10:00

View out the window December 25th, 2009 in Minnesota, USA.

View out our front door after another December storm, Marburg, Queensland, 2010.

Merry Christmas to all

2010-12-23T06:00:00.000+10:00

The point of poinsettias

2010-12-21T10:01:00.004+10:00

When I lived in the US what seems like an eon ago, but was only a decade, I was repeatedly told that the only way to grow poinsettias was to keep them entirely in the dark from October. According to a Martha Stewart special I saw, this meant putting them in a cupboard without a chink of light for 8 hours every night. I was also repeatedly told that it was "poinsetta" not "poinsettia" but hey, that's Antipodean pronunciation for you (and there is an "i" in there). I was also followed around a supermarket in Minneapolis by a gentleman who had overheard me talking to my toddler and who felt the desperate desire to inform me that the red vegetables were "red peppers" not "capsicum" and that I shouldn't be misleading my child. But that's another story.

I remember being gobsmacked at the poinsettia advice (yes I like to use the word gobsmacked as often as I can). Our house in southern Taiwan had a huge poinsettia bush growing through the tarmac front yard that was covered in flaming red bracts much of the year. A word about the tarmac front yard. My mum grew up in leafy northern Sydney and couldn't bear not having a garden. Every house we ever lived in had fragments of garden carved out of whatever was there. In this case we lived in the end of a row of semi-detached houses in a rural township. Our front door opened onto the tarmac but my mother had the property line fenced off with bamboo palings and dug a few holes through the tarmac for trees. Then we had plants in tubs as well. When we moved to Taipei, we had concrete tubs of plants circled with spiky plants to stop my mother's favourites from being casually sat on or leaned against.

I recently planted a poinsettia along our fence in the hope that it will survive the depredations of the neighbour's horses. I haven't yet found good screening plants that aren't also delicious snacks for the livestock. It's a hazard of country life. It flowered merrily and has now gone into a growth phase with lots of green leaves. I'm waiting to see if it will become the towering flame tree of my hopes.

I recently saw a clip from the Smithsonian that repeated the adage about eight hours of darkness but added the necessary detail -- IF you want your poinsettias to flower for Christmas. And there is the heart of the matter. If you want to force your plants to exist in a place where they would never normally live and be part of a festival alien to their origins (they were brought to the US from Mexico by Mr Poinsett, a key figure in the establishment of the Smithsonian museums) then you need to go to great lengths to ensure their compliance.

It says something to me of the lengths to which we humans go to make nature comply with our needs and desires. And it explains some of the driving force behind those English gardens that flourish all over Australia. We can, so we do. Whether we should is another matter. Lest this seem overly stern, let me add that I love the cheeriness of flowers in mid-winter and non-native gardens and bright flowers at any time. I have clearly been subverted.

Christmas sky

2010-12-10T19:26:00.005+10:00

I have been reprimanded. My neighbour thinks I've alienated my readership by not blogging. My mother is disappointed in my last post and my Christmas cynicism. Slugging below the belt, she also asked how the novel was going.

Drawing breath this muggy Friday night after non-stop weeks, sweat creeping down my neck, I offer an image of a tropical Christmas sky. Breathe deep the gathering gloom and project some semblance of serenity in my general direction (please).

Cheery or not?

2010-11-30T18:00:00.002+10:00

Merry Girl: Everyone has Christmas cheer and decorations up except us.
Me: (through clenched teeth) I've got Christmas spirit -- it's just very well hidden.

I am not yet into the guilt-ridden part of the year. It's not quite December so I don't need to feel festive yet. And I have done all of my Christmas shopping which is some kind of record (attributable only to the fact that we're going with a joint present for the entire family) and to the fact that I don't have a wide circle of people whom require gifts (even if some of them might quite like them.) I refuse to feel festive and cheerful until I can't resist any longer. I think the record is the point at which I am actually wrapping presents. I am amazed that some towns have already had their carol nights and that decorations line the streets in Rosewood and Ipswich. I loved it last year when we went away in November and skipped all the stress/end of year related events. But we can't do that every year. And I'm told that running away isn't the solution.

Even though I love warm Christmases and consider them normal -- there is something about the northern Christmases that is just so much more festive. I didn't feel it so much all the years we were in the US but after our sojourn in Europe last year, I finally get the whole cold/snow/northern nostalgia thing. Maybe we should simply jettison Christmas as a celebration in Australia. Some prefer to celebrate in July when it is actually cool. I'm not so keen on the colonial overtones of that.

On the other hand, a hot Christmas illustrates the arbitrary nature of religious festivals and indeed, the whole calendar. Given Australia's long slow drift into agnosticism, maybe we should have a national competition to create an appropriate December festival. Christians can hang onto the religious calendar and everyone else can kick up their heels in a culturally appropriate way.

Some initial ideas:
A week long cricket-themed holiday (the game, not the insect).
A national beach party.
A fortnight off work with pay that doesn't count against leave entitlements.
Appreciate your family day that involves giving of gifts but no decorations.
High Summer Fest
Decorate the Moreton Bay Fig/Jacaranda tree just because...

Other ideas…?

The small things

2010-11-21T20:56:00.005+10:00

Some of you may have seen that the Hope Diamond has been placed in a new setting as part of an exhibit at the Smithsonian Museums in Washington D.C. Even our ABC had a story on the legendary diamond. All the fuss and exotic jewellery aside, what I love is the story of how the Smithsonian received the diamond.

It was mailed to them in a regular mail envelope, albeit an insured one, delivered by the US Postal Service on a routine run from New York City to Washington D.C. The museum has the original wrapper postmarked November 8, 1958 complete with the mail franks and postal comments. The postage was $145.29 ($2.44 postage and the remainder, insurance for $1 million). Can you imagine sending something like this by mail today?

It's really the small things of history that I enjoy the most.

Image courtesy of the Smithsonian Snapshot.

How to cook guinea fowl

2010-11-12T14:06:00.003+10:00

I suspect that I am the only person I know who has woken up one November morning, felt the humidity and heat in the air and wondered "How do you cook guinea fowl?"

I didn't wonder this in a oh-life-is-so-interesting-let's-find-out-something-new sort of way or a I-am-a good-cook-let's-tackle-guinea-fowl-and-sock-it-to-Iron-Chef sort of way.

I was tired and I was grumpy. The children have been sick and both consequently and subsequently whingy, getting anything done has been difficult. I got spectacularly lost on Monday on my way to a meeting. I hate getting lost and I hate being late to things and it seemed to summarise my life in a nutshell rather than just reliance on poor maps. I admit to a tear or two trickling down my face as I looked at yet another roundabout in the middle of suburban Springfield that led to no-where and wasn't on Google maps.

Back to guinea fowl -- I woke at some dark hour with the smoke detectors going off. We've installed super detectors at the insistence of building inspectors from council and so far they have proven to be efficient detectors of humidity over 99% or heavy particulate matter in the atmosphere typically at the point of the night when you are deepest in sleep and most likely to have heart failure from synchronised alarm systems going off. They are synchronised because the electricians installed one and the inspectors insisted on another approximately one metre away so they can now tag team each other in the middle of the night.

When the adrenalin had subsided enough for me to sleep again, the guinea fowl started up. Our neighbours have acquired four of these things. The neighbours also believe in free range fowl. I have no problem with free range. In fact, I spend extra money to ensure that my eggs are thus. On a practical level though, I have discovered that free range is shorthand for "I'm not going to bother fencing my poultry in properly." I spend a lot of time chasing other people's free range animals out of my previously tidy, well-mulched and poop free yard.

These animals are noisy and stupid or at least manage to ignore people chasing them and cars attempting to reverse. It's likely that they will end up in my kitchen either accidentally or in a "she snapped one morning" sort of way. So I had better know how to cook them.

So far I have found:

- an upmarket roast guinea fowl recipe for a special occasion.
- a recipe for broiled guinea fowls beginning with "Pluck, singe and draw two or three Guinea fowls, wash them thoroughly, and split down the backs; wipe dry and flatten them slightly."
- Guinea fowl wrapped in pancetta or parma ham (because it is naturally drier than chicken)
- guinea fowl stuffed with sausage meat.
- guinea fowl baked with thirty cloves of garlic
- casserole of guinea fowl legs in red wine sauce
- a warm guinea fowl salad
- guinea fowl with red pepper marmalade sauce
- a duck, chicken and guinea fowl three bird roast
- pot-roasted guinea fowl with chestnut stuffing
- terrine of confited guinea fowl

… now I do have something to think about when I wake up early in the morning. What did people do in the days before the internet when they encountered unfamiliar wildlife that they wished to consume?

Monday morning poetry

2010-11-08T10:12:00.006+10:00

Inspired by watching A Poet's Guide to Britain on television last night, all gloomy pebbled beaches and moody surging waves with the white cliffs of Dover thrown in for good measure, a little Matthew Arnold poetry for Monday morning. I particularly like the fact that shortly after writing this, Arnold bit the bullet and became a schools inspector. Pragmatism is a useful quality in real life.

Self-Dependence

Weary of myself, and sick of asking
What I am, and what I ought to be,
At this vessel's prow I stand, which bears me
Forwards, forwards, o'er the starlit sea.

And a look of passionate desire
O'er the sea and to the stars I send:
"Ye who from my childhood up have calm'd me,
Calm me, ah, compose me to the end!

"Ah, once more," I cried, "ye stars, ye waters,
On my heart your mighty charm renew;
Still, still let me, as I gaze upon you,
Feel my soul becoming vast like you!"

From the intense, clear, star-sown vault of heaven,
Over the lit sea's unquiet way,
In the rustling night-air came the answer:
"Wouldst thou be as these are? Live as they.

"Unaffrighted by the silence round them,
Undistracted by the sights they see,
These demand not that the things without them
Yield them love, amusement, sympathy.

"And with joy the stars perform their shining,
And the sea its long moon-silver'd roll;
For self-poised they live, nor pine with noting
All the fever of some differing soul.

"Bounded by themselves, and unregardful
In what state God's other works may be,
In their own tasks all their powers pouring,
These attain the mighty life you see."

O air-born voice! long since, severely clear,
A cry like thine in mine own heart I hear:
"Resolve to be thyself; and know that he,
Who finds himself, loses his misery!"

Aitch anxiety

2010-11-03T16:27:00.002+10:00

How do you pronounce the letter "h"? Do you say "aytch" or "haytch"? Does one or the other of these pronunciations bother you greatly?

Mr Blithe drew my attention to a fascinating article on the BBC website about changing pronunciations. He asked me to guess which sentence in it made him think of me.

I guessed correctly.

It was the one about the "slightly agonised look in some people's eyes" at the sound of the eighth letter of the alphabet being said as "haytch." I have always been emphatic that the pronunciation is "aitch" even if everyone in Queensland pronounces it the other way. Blithe Girl asked me one day if I minded if she said "haytch" at school and "aytch" at home as she was tired of being different. To my shame, I insisted that she speak "properly." Really I need to get over it.

I attribute this to my family's Irish Protestant background where one knew a person was Roman Catholic by their "haytchs" but apparently it is related to class anxiety as well. Whoda thunk? Well I'm actually not too surprised as it was always made fairly clear to me at my middle class English-style primary school that hayseeds and rednecks spoke one way and educated people spoke another. This is ironic because as a result of my wildly divergent educational experiences I have some pretty weird pronunciations in spite of my culturally pure h's. I sound English but say "dienasty" not "dinasty" and occasionally talk about sidewalks and parking lots.

I was amused by reference in the article to a 1928 BBC guide to pronunciation. Did you know that in 1928 pristine rhymed with wine, combat was cumbat and housewifery, huzzifry (or even that they used that word)? Did you also know that more people under the age of 35 in the UK now make says rhyme with lays and not fez?

The British Library is recording changes in pronunciation by recording people reading the opening passage of a Mr Men book, Mr Tickle. This was chosen because it is well-known and will not inspire people to put on their best "posh" voices. I wonder what would be chosen for reading in an Australian context?

Jacaranda evening

2010-10-26T05:54:00.000+10:00

I have been accused recently of frightening people away from Queensland with tales of snakes, floods and assorted wildlife. Here is my apology.

The back paddock

2010-10-25T16:59:00.003+10:00

Prism in my kitchen splitting light
Bright sunshine on the hills
Jacaranda blending into the late afternoon sky

Terrible howling in the gully
No child this
Young woman crying over her horse
Jagged words run together
JillybloodonherfacedeadyesI'msurealreadybloated
Bulldozer edges over sodden ground
Sudden tilt on the dam wall then a slide to the edge
Ten minutes and the burial is done
Angry boy kicking grass in bare feet
"I'm gonna leave this godforsaken fucking place."
All I can think, "Didn't your mum tell you to wear shoes in the long grass?"

Looking over the lush hills I count
Tiny guinea pig mound here
Horse here
Cow beneath that tree
Another horse there

Crows picking over the newly turned earth
Now I know why the back paddock is so green

And then it rained

2010-10-15T05:47:00.000+10:00

Black Snake Creek Festival was held on a cold, damp and windy day in October. The brightest thing was the bunting on our stall (made by my talented sister-in-law), although this comes close.

And then it started to rain. It rained all night. It rained most of the next day. It rained some of the following day. The ground was already damp and the dams nearly full. After the dams filled, the valley started to fill.

Then the creek filled...

And overflowed in various places...

And the children got a day off school. End of story. Except that more rain is predicted for tomorrow.

Credits: all the water photos were taken by Blithe Girl. The bunting can be made to order and I will happily pass on your contact details to Sister-in-law Blithe.

Some things they don't tell you in grad school

2010-10-14T20:47:00.000+10:00

Or maybe they do and you just don't listen. A few thoughts from a long day.

1. 8am is not too early to be at a meeting.
2. An alarm going off as late as 7am is a luxury.
3. A PhD is not the hardest thing that you will do in your life.
4. You will lose an argument to an 11 year old.
5. Academia is not particularly child friendly.
6. Being overweight and unfit is not a sign of moral failure.
7. Sometimes being smart is not enough.
8. Often being smart is not enough.
9. You will still be wondering what to do with your life ten years after graduation.
10. Your [insert trade job here] will earn more than you.
11. Your [insert trade job here] may well have a better perspective on life than you do.
12. It's not just faculty meetings that will drive you to the edge of reason. Life is littered with meetings that will test your sanity.
13. No-one will care about your grasp of of critical cultural studies.
14. You won't care about your grasp of critical cultural studies as long as you have a cup of coffee and know where the restroom is.
15. You will forget most of what your dissertation was about.
16. You won't be unhappy about most of the above.

Unaware

2010-10-08T07:24:00.001+10:00

I didn't even realise until this morning that I hadn't written anything in October yet. Tomorrow is the Black Snake Creek Festival at which Folly's Antidote will have a stall. Next week I have a draft report due with the final report due within weeks.

I have been running a small-scale cottage industry in the early hours of the morning here on Blithe Hill. Children have been pressed into service (if only because they are fascinated by what I am doing and can't be kept away.) Early mornings are scheduled for design and production, "regular" morning for such plebeian things as breakfast and getting the children to their respective schools. School hours are report writing and after school may see some more production. Evenings are split between panic over not writing reports or producing stuff and keeping everyday things running.

I have loads of wet laundry waiting to be hung out and a mountain of laundry to be done. I won't even discuss the state of the rest of the house, other than to say that I think Thomas the Tank Engine may well have staged a coup.

But the end is in sight. Whatever happens tomorrow will happen. And report deadlines come and go. My wish is for the two things not to coincide too often.

In praise of neighbours

2010-09-26T06:00:00.000+10:00

I find myself embarrassingly beholden to other people nowadays. People in Marburg are very similar to the residents of Lake Woebegon with beautiful women, strong men and exceptionally smart children. It all leaves one feeling a little lacking sometimes.

My special area of incompetence is dealing with snakes. I go all stereotypically girly and stand on chairs (although I generally do not scream). We had a snake inside the house last week. It's the first time we've had a snake in the house although we have had snakes in the roof, the yard, the paddocks, the shed…

I picked up our recycling box to take it outside and there was a snake underneath. I didn't identify the type -- I was trying not to hyperventilate at the time. I was home with the kids so I stood on the aforementioned chair and called my neighbour. He actually was busy and declined to rescue me. I do understand that other people have commitments other than rescuing me so I was prepared to sort something out myself as long as that didn't involve going near the snake. I got a big stick and stood guard. At some point Mr Blithe would be coming home. I just didn't want the snake venturing into any other part of the house.

A few minutes later I heard a vehicle pull up in the driveway. It was my lovely neighbour. He had been in the shower when I called and did actually have a meeting to which he was already late. Nonetheless, his kindness prevailed and he took care of our visitor for me before proceeding onwards.

I don't really care if he told everyone he had to rescue me and that I was standing on a chair. At least I didn't have to deal with the snake.

Remember what I said about Marburg residents? Another neighbour told me that all I needed was a mop and a pillow case -- the mop for the snake to wind itself onto then the pillow case for transport outside. She wouldn't be standing on chairs. How can I measure up to these people?

Frivolity aside, I am deeply grateful to the kindness of my neighbours. I'm working on being a better, stronger, not-standing-on-chairs kind of person. Until then, thank you.

Keeping busy

2010-09-25T06:00:00.000+10:00

I'm having a stall at this year's Black Snake Creek Festival (October 9) in bustling downtown Marburg to try to promote my business through concrete examples of publishing and digital pre-press. Several people have asked me "So just what is digital pre-press anyway?" I of course, assume that everyone needs it, if only they knew what "it" was. I would illustrate contract research and grant applications as well, but I don't want send any potential clients into irremediable stupor.

I'll have greeting cards, journals, and postcards as well as hopefully answers to people's questions (and plenty of business cards to hand out).

I'm sharing the stall with a sister-in-law who sells charming children's clothes, toys and gorgeous fabric bunting and a friend of hers. (Sharing a stall with her and her friend, not my sister-in-law selling a friend of hers. It's late and the English it is so difficult -- don't be so picky.)

If you're in the area, come by and see us. You may find out what occupies my late night and early morning hours. Did you know that the light from the monitor of a 27" iMac precludes the need for room lighting? Another fascinating fact from the person behind Folly's Antidote.

If you're not in the area, I'm adding a shopping cart plugin to my website. It's not yet operational, but I'll announce when it is up and running. I'm waiting to launch it till I actually have stock in hand. I can't make any promises though about what you'll find out there.

In praise of mothers-in-law

2010-09-24T23:39:00.003+10:00

The horrible mother-in-law is the stuff of legends. I even have a plant in my garden called "mother-in-law's tongue." It is flourishing by the way.

On the other hand, I cannot praise my mother-in-law highly enough. She is competent, calm, totally unfazed by my children (after all she brought up five of her own) and never openly critical (of me at least). She plays endless games of Scrabble and Uno with the children when even one game is enough to drive me to distraction.

When she comes to stay I stagger out of bed at what I consider an early hour to find her sipping her morning tea and calmly playing round two or three of Scrabble with Blithe Boy. She squashes the children when necessary, defends them and cuddles them, makes dolls clothes, tackles my mending pile, rearranges my garden and folds my laundry.

Lest this all seem one-sided, she tells me that she enjoys not having to make any decisions, or meals or work out when she has to be at places. I try to believe her and make her frequent cups of tea. And she loves being with the kids who return the affection wholeheartedly.

I have yet to be scolded for the demolition job I did on her precious rose bushes that she consigned to my care. How was I to know that I used the herbicide container to spray the roses with white oil (and herbicide as it turned out)? I did however, get three iceberg rosebushes for my upcoming birthday, with the comment that they are "quite hardy."

I try not to cry with joy when she announces that she'd like to come stay for the school holidays. Thanks to her I may not have blogged this week but I have spent three full days at work and broken the back of the current research project. Somehow research projects tend to drag out forever when you spend a maximum of three hours at one time on them. I've also spent the equivalent of a day working on Folly's Antidote. I feel as if my working life is vaguely on track and I'm almost at a point where I remember that I like my children.

Curiousity, heroism and buses

2010-09-14T16:21:00.002+10:00

I almost ran into the back of a bus today. I was leaving campus and the bus pulled out in front of me. This is not what caused my almost collision. It was the ad on the back of the bus. Advertising a local university (not the one whose campus I was leaving) it proclaimed: "The university that believes every student is a hero."

I was puzzled by this. Perhaps having taught at university and therefore being a tad cynical about the actual mechanics of teaching, my first thought was that believing every student isn't heroism, it is naivety. Then I realised that it was one of those statements that depended on pacing. It was saying that it believed the students were the heroes, not the university. Still, for all those advertising dollars, I think that they could have come up with a less ambiguous statement of their support of and for students.

At this point I paused to brake...

It was, however, a nice illustration of the wonders of the English language. And I did notice it, so if attention was the measure of success, it was a successful ad. Too bad I am not in the market for a university degree.

On the subject of cynicism and universities, I noticed that members of the tertiary education union at a different university from that advertising above, will exercise their right to strike by not answering emails and telephones on a particular day. Given the average response time to emails and phone calls at universities, I wonder if a) anyone will notice and b) if this is the most effective way of removing one's services. How will I be able to tell on the given day whether it is strike action or a typical day on campus?

I think that I had better simply concentrate on my driving.

Why I live where I do

2010-09-09T19:55:00.007+10:00

Sometimes I have the perfect answer to why I live where I do when it would be so much easier to live closer to work opportunities, or wonderful stores, or cultural activities.

I walk into my living room on a spring evening and see the night sky, the dark hills, city lights rimming the horizon, circles of water dotting the gully and hear this. [432kb wma file download]

----

This is the first time I've tried linking to an audio file. Let me know if and how it works.

A decision

2010-09-07T16:07:00.001+10:00

Seventeen days after the election, Julia Gillard and Labor are back in power. After days of speculation Bob Katter announced today that he was throwing his lot in with the Coalition. That left two independents. I was fairly certain that they must be going to announce in Labor's favour as if the independents had been unified, they would have announced their decision together. I had to do the afternoon school run after a quick last minute check before leaving work that nothing had been announced.

Hauling school bags and cranky children in from the car, my mobile phone beeped with the message "Julia wins." No I don't have Labor on my alert team. It was Mr Blithe knowing that I was away from my computer and that the radio in the car hasn't worked since the car was garaged without the antenna being retracted (twice). The advantage of an old car is that you don't have to worry about it. The disadvantage is lack of automatic doodads that save you from things like this.

So what now? ABC has a nice article outlining what happens once the independents decide. I also like Annabel Crabbe's analysis of why she thought Julia would prevail. Now to see what happens now that both major parties can express themselves a little more bluntly. I suspect it will be less kiss and more tell.

Did I mention that I love politics?

Panic setting in

2010-09-04T16:59:00.001+10:00

It's official…I am a geek. I have suspected as much for some time but I have finally reached the conclusive point. I now have so many different email addresses, blogs, twitter and assorted password protected things that I maintain that I can't keep the login names and passwords straight in my head.

Usually I am fine with the login names but put in the wrong password. My suspicions were aroused when I started hesitating during that vital tab from the login to the password. Then I began fumbling my typing. Then I started getting error messages. Once I was even locked out of an account for 20 minutes.

I'm choosing to believe that it is geekdom attained rather than senility encroaching. And I am making a list for myself. A proper list. One not stored on a computer. A printed out list stashed in my offline files. Otherwise I might forget my computer login and lose access to my entire life.

Right now I'm not sure that that would be a bad thing.

We expect to be very interested

2010-08-31T16:40:00.004+10:00

My plan was to write another post as soon as election results were known. Ten days have now passed and the two major parties are, as expected, bickering over whom has the electoral mandate while the independents relish the chance of having a say in the future composition of government. Not having a government is strangely not disruptive to everyday life. The caretaker government keeps on going and ballot counting reports change almost hourly. I am sure that it is intensely irritating to those waiting to start work in Canberra and to people dependent on federal government decision making, but most people simply continue on with their lives. In one way it is an illustration of the wonder of a modern, peaceful affluent democracy.

Speaking of continuing on with life, I recently spent a day at the Queensland Maritime Museum. There are many wonderful exhibits (more of this later), but a tiny exhibit in a section devoted to people coming to Australia caught my eye. It was just two pages -- a photocopy of a diary entry from an English migrant who arrived in Moreton Bay in September 1866 and an adjoining typed transcription of the page. Clearly picked because of the drama of the later entries, it gives a real flavour of travel in those times.

Click on the photos to get a larger readable image and please bear in mind that this was photographed through glass using low exposure without flash i.e. please don't be too critical of the quality of the image.

Election day

2010-08-21T17:38:00.003+10:00

It was a glorious day in Queensland today -- crisp breeze, bright blue sky, sunshine and early spring blossoms. It was all quite at odds with the dark gloom that enveloped our house. Election day of perhaps the closest and most impossible to call election in Australia's history. I decided not to wear my bright pink sweatshirt as it seemed inappropriate to the seriousness of voting.

Going out the door in navy blue and dark glasses I was contemplating whether we'd need to stock up on liquor to survive the evening of excruciating counting. Having just decided that an entire Dorie Greenspan-recipe apple brown sugar cheesecake would be enough to sustain us through the evening and assuage potential misery, I noticed Blithe Boy's shorts were on back to front.

Remedying the situation, I discovered that he had also forgotten undies. Suddenly a pink sweatshirt didn't seem so bad.

Polls close in 20 minutes. I'll let you know how much cheesecake was required.

N.B. If one is going to expire from cheesecake related excess then this is the recipe by which to do so.

To my friend Absurd Beats

2010-08-20T05:51:00.000+10:00

Flicking through photos of our epic November/December/January travels, I found these memories of a cat in New York. So here's to you Bean -- tolerator of small children as long as they are asleep and quiet.

Who was more tired, Bean, the bear or Blithe Boy?

Quiet contemplation before flight.

The grasseaters or the great competition

2010-08-18T16:32:00.004+10:00

The view to the north this morning (7.44am)

The view to the south this morning (7.45am)

New worlds

2010-08-13T06:04:00.000+10:00

It's hard to believe but I've just launched a twitter site. I'm not entirely convinced of its efficacy, but it's all part of the grand marketing plan.

You can take a look at: http://twitter.com/follysantidote

I've also been Google mapped. It wasn't too painful.

So far I have a corporate image but the reality is not yet terribly corporeal. I'll let you know when I'm about to take over the world.

Life imitating art?

2010-08-12T14:04:00.003+10:00

I've been a fan of Barbara Kingsolver for a long time. I love the way that she writes characters as people in which I can believe. Animal Dreams is one of my favourite books with its themes of social justice, people trying to make something of the world in which they live, families and the complications of love.

Each of my Kingsolver books in my bookcase has a story behind it. I recently bought Animal Dreams because I went into a bookstore to purchase The Lacuna shortly after it won the Orange Prize. I was expecting to see it front and centre of some display, but the shop didn't have it and would take some time to get it in. I'm not sure if it is an Ipswich thing or a "prize-winning novels don't have big readership so we're not going to waste our time" thing. They did have Animal Dreams and I decided to get my own copy so that I can reread it. The bookshop still got some money from me, but I'm not keen to return.

My copy of The Poisonwood Bible was left behind by a paying guest at the swanky hotel/restaurant at which I worked for a pittance in Minneapolis. As an impoverished grad student I was astonished that someone would leave behind a hardcover novel and not ask for its return. It sat in the lost and found cupboard until one day the cupboard was being tidied and the contents tossed. I leapt in to rescue it. At the rate I was paid, it was worth about 8 hours of wages and besides which, it was an author I loved and I was delighted to get a copy of it.

I'm on the lookout for any of her other books at second-hand stores. I've read all of her novels and a few of her non-fiction books. I've even paid overdue library fines for some of them. I'd prefer not to give my money to some big corporation. And I still find it hard to believe that I can actually buy new books without having to scrimp (too much) on the grocery bill.

Anyway, this was to be a post about The Lacuna and not Barbara Kingsolver in general. I finished reading it a few days ago and the story has been gently bobbing around in the back of my mind. Imagine my surprise when I logged on to ABC (ours not the American one) to read today's news headlines and saw that Osama Bin Laden's cook had been convicted for material support for terrorism and received a 14 year sentence from a Guantanamo Bay military tribunal. I immediately went to see what the New York Times had written about the case and found nothing which is odd in itself.

Of course I don't know the details of the case, but it is eerily similar to The Lacuna. The main character in the novel, Harrison Shepherd, child of a Washington bureaucrat and a Mexican free-spirit, spends time working for Trotsky who is in exile in Mexico. He is mainly the cook but moonlights as typist and friend. He moves as an adult to the Carolinas. Eventually the House Committee on Un-American Activities convicts him as a communist on the basis of his having been Trotsky's cook. He is forced to flee, and you'll have to read the book…

Shepherd of course is not a communist, but he probably did materially support Trotsky, if by that, you mean feed him. It makes you wonder about this case, if you weren't already somewhat sceptical of the "war on terror." When you start to look at the world in a particular way, many actions become justified. We all let our ideology colour our perceptions of course, but not all of us are in a position to do something about it.

Perhaps one of the reasons I like Kingsolver is that she expresses many of my concerns about the world wrapped up in a fascinating narrative. She's not preaching or hitting you over the head but simply illustrating the consequences of particular ways of looking at the world. That's what I want from my own storytelling.

Hill country

2010-08-01T20:39:00.005+10:00

Marburg is all about the hills and valleys. Gravel roads wind and twist around the hills and dip into the valleys. Often one road does all of these. Houses seem to be scattered randomly over the land. Some people seem to prefer the hilltops and others tuck their houses into folds in the land or down the bottom of the gullies.

Too often you can speed from one place to another in your busy life and miss the byways. I'm beginning to learn to take my camera and my time; to stop on the side of the road and take pictures; to wind down the car window to listen to the wind in the grass and the birds.

When I moved here I was scared by gravel roads. I wanted bitumen and lighting and signs and cars. Now I admit to a certain fondness for dirt and twistiness and lack of traffic.

No greater love

2010-07-26T21:39:00.004+10:00

I've been talking to snake catchers. It's not a sentence I thought I'd ever utter.

I had decided not to worry to much about the "water" dripping from the ceiling because after all, how often does that happen?

Well, approximately every fortnight as it turns out. Yes, on Saturday, liquid was again dripping from my office ceiling. Whatever was up there was on a two weekly evacuation schedule, or maybe the liquid took two weeks to build up to the point of seepage.

So here I was talking to snake catchers. Snake catcher #1 thought it was possible that the liquid was due to a snake. Snake catcher #2 thought it unlikely. #2 bloke suggested that I get my "man" to go up in the ceiling space again and make sure it wasn't a possum. I tried not to be offended by his entirely accurate assumption that I wasn't the one crawling around in the ceiling space. #2 suggested that if the snake bothered Mr Blithe, then he should just pick it up and move it. And if it didn't want to let go of the beam, to make sure to grab it firmly behind the head.

Mr Blithe did not sound enthusiastic when I relayed this message to him. Given that there was approximately zero likelihood that I would do it myself, I didn't pursue the issue.

Enthusiastic bloke #2 suggested that we were privileged to have a snake in our ceiling and that every Queenslander (the house not the person) needs one. I have no real objection to snakes in the ceiling as long as they remain up there. I do object to stinky liquid flowing into my office.

Mr Blithe decided that instead of crawling around in the dark ceiling space with at least one large heat-sensing reptile, he would approach from the outside by popping off a roof panel or two (not an easy job but possible on a tin-roofed house) and see what was there. Any snake would be unlikely to leap out at him and he could survey potential problems and solutions. As this did not involve me in any capacity beyond moral support, handing up of tools and perhaps, dialling 000, I thought it was a great idea.

Three roof panels later, and one large snake retreating to a dark corner, it was pretty clear that the damage was snake related. Right above my head near the light fixture was where Mr (or Ms) Spotted Python liked to recline while dining. There were leftovers and a large damp patch in the dust.

There was also a large nest of grass and furry bits, let's call them discarded fur coats, nearer to the edge of the roof. Using a long stick, Mr Blithe gently suggested that the snake leave the premises. It was very reluctant but eventually crawled over the gutter, wrapped itself around the downpipe and finally flopped onto the ground and rapidly took to the horizon, we hope, but more likely into the building debris still piled under the house. Mr Blithe then cleaned out the nest and blocked off any future access points.

Leaving home

By this point dusk was falling and there were roof panels to be replaced. Mr Blithe and my father tackled the job. I continued to offer moral support and tools and later, butter chicken. We all act within our capacities.

All I can say is that no greater love has a person than this: removing a roof to look for wildlife, removing a snake, replacing the roof in the dark AND taking photographs for his anti-snake, heights disliking, blogging, averse-to-snake-pee-in-her-workspace partner. Thank you Mr Blithe.

Learning the vernacular

2010-07-14T06:12:00.000+10:00

Australia has a long history of imposing imported ideas upon itself. As a land of migrants, many lonely and homesick, people tried to recreate the landscapes of their past in their new land. Everywhere that has a history of migration is similar. In some ways we celebrate our mix of cultures but in other ways it can be difficult to see the original landscape through the overlays of other culltures.

Last year I saw a fascinating series about gardens on television. "Around the World in Eighty Gardens" explored the whole notion of place and sense of place by looking at gardens that were an imposition on the landscape (a twee English garden in India springs to mind) and gardens that draw upon a strong sense of where they are (a garden perched on rocks by the ocean in Chile like a windswept outgrowth). In Australia the host, Monty Don, looked at a garden in the Southern Highlands that could be any grand English garden and is often held up as a fine example of gardening and two very different Australian vernacular gardens -- Dame Elisabeth Murdoch's amazing country landscape garden in Victoria and a red rock and sand garden in, I think, Sydney. The English garden only succeeded by blocking out the surrounding landscape and turning inwards. The other two gardens looked outwards to the land and reflected the immensity and beauty of Australia. I found them infinitely more beautiful and moving than the more static and inward looking garden.

This series spoke to me because part of what I write about and try to understand is how people understand place and interpret it. When you research and write about migration, you need to dig deeply into people's understandings of where they live and how they try to live when they move to a new place.

On the weekend we visited a historic railway station, perched on the hills near Toowoomba. Spring Bluff is famous for its gardens and for being a lovely picnic spot. It lives up to its promise. What struck me though was a very strong sense of how it is grafted onto the landscape rather than being part of it. There is this little patch of cultivation with a strongly English flavour enclosed by bare scrubby hills on one side and stands of tall bush on the other. As you look at the prim rows of plants, and the strictly regulated garden beds, the wind constantly shushes in the tops of the gum trees. You can close your eyes and imagine yourself at sea. Then you open them and there is a dense ocean of grey-green vegetation pressing in on this chocolate box Englishness. The pleasure from the gardens is tinged with a sense of alienation.

Perhaps that is the story of Spring Bluff -- the possession of a land by strangers, triumph over the steep hills and nature, and a longing for familiarity.

Possum pee?

2010-07-11T11:58:00.001+10:00

A tale of life in the country and associated dangers.

I love where we live. I love the hills and the grass; the wide skies and the clouds; the endless winds blowing the treetops and rattling the windows; the space for thought and dreams. I do not love the wildlife. Well, I love it in the abstract as part of the essential eco-system of which we are but a part, but I do not love it up close and personal. Animals, bugs of every description and size, snakes, birds, neighbours…all essential to the system, but not necessarily things with which I am comfortable.

Sitting quietly in my new desk chair (black, leather, swivelling), reading a description of the very exciting Germany-Uruguay football match that I had just watched, I waited for my weekend morning coffee that Mr Barista Blithe delivers to my hand. Called to the table, I stood up, walked away from my chair and heard the sound of running water.

Children all at table -- check.

None with agonised expressions -- check.

No horses near the house -- check.

Glasses of water and mugs of coffee -- all safe.

Desk chair -- being dripped on by the light fixture above! And dripped on by vile smelling brown fluid!!

I cannot describe my feelings of revulsion. Nor the amounts of paper towelling, rags and leather cleaner vigorously applied.

My first thought was possum pee. Maybe not your first thought, but you are probably not woken almost every morning by a possum landing on the roof above your bedroom and scrabbling across the roof to the tree on the other side. Thump, thump, scrabble, screech, silence -- my 5am wake up call.

Valiant Mr Blithe went up into ceiling space to investigate. Valiant Mr Blithe quickly returned. He doesn't think there is a possum up there, but our resident, and apparently large snake was quite interested in its visitor. Discretion being the better part of valour, he retired and quickly shut the ceiling access.

Could it be snake pee? Do snakes pee? Do I really want to know?

New projects

2010-07-02T18:46:00.002+10:00

After much ado, some about nothing, my new venture is up and running.

Take a look at Folly's Antidote and let me know what you think.

Even better, ask me to do some work for you!

The spice(s) of life

2010-07-02T18:44:00.001+10:00

I'm pausing in the rush of evening meal preparation to perch at the computer. Friday night meals are always simple -- fish and potatoes of some sort with a salad on the side. It's a family tradition. Tonight I'm multi-tasking and making oasis naan and dessert for lunch guests tomorrow. As I looked at my crowded and messy spice rack (why should it stand out from the rest of the house?) I feel a wave of culinary imperialism on one hand and a rush of longing for tropical adventure on the other.

Here I am making naan and curry for lunch, fish and potatoes (how Anglo) for dinner, and a French prune tart for tomorrow's dessert. Into these, I casually tip the treasures that spurred adventures, inspired explorers, caused wars, exploited people and the land. There's cinnamon, cloves whole and ground, cumin, sesame seeds, poppy seeds, chillis, turmeric, ginger, paprika both sweet and smoked, dill, oregano, aniseed, five spice, star anise, cardamom pods, whole peppers…the hot smells of China, the heavy heat of the Dutch East Indies, the dry dust of the bazaars...

Perhaps it is the grey drizzle and cold heavy air of the winter's day but I am momentarily transported. I take these treasures for granted when those in the past have cried out for and fought over these precious pinches of flavour and scent.

The Jaeckels came through the Indies. I wonder what treasures they discovered and brought with them to Australia.

Going to town

2010-06-21T17:43:00.002+10:00

When I talk about the Marburg hills, this is what I mean. This is the route of one of the original roads over the hills, the one that washed out in a cyclone in the 1880s and has since been a dead end road. It's in good condition at the moment having been newly graded. This photo gives you an almost vertiginous sense of what going to town means. To my delight this photo was taken by Blithe Girl with her birthday camera.

Can you imagine tackling it with a wagon and horses or in rain so heavy that you couldn't see more than a short distance around you with water swirling so heavily around the horses' legs that they stumbled? You'd be blinded by the rain being driven into your face by the horizontal wind and sliding as much as you advanced. Even good weather would mean slippery dry dust and rolling gravel.

On the other hand, the valley opens up in front of you like a book revealing every line and fold of the terrain. The hills hover darkly and the grass shivers in the wind. Beauty and practicality -- ancient foes.

Learning stuff

2010-06-17T21:32:00.002+10:00

I panic on a regular basis. I try to do it when I am in the shower or lying in bed so that I don't scare those with whom I share the house. My panic is of the fifty-things-to-do-so-what-should-I tackle-first school. I often lie in bed in the pre-daylight hours mentally arranging my day. I then get out of bed and the day proceeds to go in whatever direction it so chooses, bearing me along spinning and twisting.

Showering tonight (it's way too cold to shower in the mornings right now) I realised that one reason that I have been so tired these last few months is that I have been in overdrive learning new things. I've learnt or am in the process of learning a couple of new computer programs, including InDesign which so far has not been a walk in the park. I've researched accounting software, legal requirements for businesses, commercial insurance and best design and programs for websites. I've bought and set up a new computer and home office. I've ditched Microsoft Word for OpenOffice and attempted to bend Gimp to my needs. I have a website in development and my new accounting software very accurately shows me how deeply into the negative side of the ledger I have so far forged. On the plus side, I am insured for all sorts of calamities that make my knees tremble simply to read about.

I've learnt that while sans serif fonts are great for signage, most book designers prefer to use serif for book contents because it is easier to read for long periods. I've learnt that bold fonts are a sign of amateurism in books. I've learnt about bleeds and slugs (which are nothing to do with kids or gardening). I've put a new computer chair on the top of my "to purchase" list to ease my aching backside.

And on the subject of learning stuff, would you make a decision about working with someone based on the fact that you knew they were a sole trader? That is, do I refer on my website to myself, first person singular, or to we, which seems to imply that there is more than simply me in the enterprise? I personally have no problems working with an independent business, but do you think it would discourage enquirers and business?

The perils of history

2010-06-11T14:18:00.001+10:00

On a good day the children are delightful, the world is beautiful and full of marvellous curiosities, people are charming and I am content with myself and others.

On a bad day, say one when the children don't want to get going in the morning, you have a million things to do including a couple of important meetings at which you have to appear ironed, alert and vaguely intelligent…on days like that discontent rages unchecked.

Particularly, just say, that one of your previously delightful, curious and intelligent children says to you:

"Look Mum, I found this bit of old iron outside, do you know what it is? Oh and I thought the holes were finger holes and I can't get my fingers back out of them." The last was said with some nervousness at the potential parental response.

Given that I was in the car with the engine running and had only stopped my mad rush at the gate to pick up said child who likes to run down the driveway and wait on the gate singing to the birds and listening to the wind, the nervousness was entirely warranted. There was one finger of each hand inserted in the holes, producing the effect of finger cuffs. The fact that it was the middle finger of each hand was not lost on me.

We pulled gently -- no success. Start flashing options -- ambulance (no, probably not life threatening enough); RACQ and their "jaws of life" (probably too big and would take the hand too); just dropping the child at school (possibly some sort of violation of law, if not parental etiquette); okay, spit and wriggle. Success!

Any thoughts on what this is? American readers, please ignore the inch-like markings below the centimetres. It's my favourite ruler, one that I stash in my secret stationery supply drawer, and the markings are old Chinese inches. You have to turn it over to get imperial measurements. It's about 5 inches in length and feels like cast iron.

Life before SMS

2010-06-07T06:39:00.000+10:00

A lot of people in Marburg have post office boxes. The mail delivery is somewhat sketchy, particularly if you don't have town delivery and are dependent on a rural mail service. Sometimes I think people also have post boxes so that they can catch up with the latest news and gossip and see who's doing what in town. If you don't frequent the pub, it's one of the only other options for socialising now that there isn't the thriving town centre of yesteryear.

Australia Post now offers a new service that notifies you via SMS, for a price, that you have mail waiting in your mailbox. Marburg doesn't offer this service. People aren't keen on spending the extra money. Besides which, if there's anything urgent, the postmistress can tell her sister, who can tell me when we both pick up our kids from school and I can stop in town on the way through.

If you're not home when a courier delivery comes, they'll drop it at the post office and our pre-SMS system will spring into action. Result, efficiently delivered packages.

It works just fine, it doesn't go down in a thunderstorm and the only price is privacy. Use heavy brown paper if you plan to send me anything interesting. Of course, that might start rumours of another sort entirely. It's best not to have anything to hide.

Travelling blind

2010-06-04T22:20:00.001+10:00

It's funny how topics align sometimes. A friend in New York City blogged about trying to decide how she wants to support herself, how she can make work work for her. On the other side of the world I'm wading through similar questions. Her situation is totally different from mine but the question is the same (I think): how do I want to live my life?

I have a few more people to consider than does she. Any decision I make has to work with and around my children and partner. I'm not saying that I base all my decisions on them, but anything that I decide to do must work for all of us as a family unit as well as for the individuals that make up that unit.

I've been at loose ends with two contracts ending and no new ones in sight. It's the perennial problem of dependence on grant income for work. No successful grants means no work. There are always projects on the boil, but nothing currently boiling, cooking my dinner so to speak.

I was really disappointed with myself a few weeks ago. I missed a deadline for a writing opportunity and I felt that I had failed completely. The fact that it was a simple misreading of dates, that every day had been frantically busy and that everyone had things they needed me to do for them right that minute, didn't lessen my sense of disappointment.

As I was sitting around flaying myself, Mr Blithe suggested that I (in my words, not his more tactful version) stop whinging and do something more positive. His starting point was that I should use the time that I have now, the money I had set aside to start a business, buy myself a new computer and get to work. His suggestion made sense and I was awfully tired of being disappointed with myself.

So in the last fortnight I have been setting up my new computer and printer, registering myself as a business and all the associated paperwork and trying to get myself organised.

No fanfare yet. I have some paperwork still to pull together and the need to establish myself as a presence, but there is a communications and desktop publishing/digital prepress business getting itself together. My plan is to start this as a side dish to my contract research work and see where it takes me. I think of it as kind of a plan without a concrete plan, the path-free map, or more romantically, unchartered territory. Others may call it something more akin to folly.

Doing grocery shopping this morning, somewhere between the toilet paper and the cereal aisles, Beach Boys blaring on the shop sound system; toddlers squalling and brawling; Blithe Boy reclining in the trolley chewing inelegantly on an apple, my phone rang and I was offered an interview for a really interesting short-term historical research job.

Truly at the moment, my path is not only less travelled but entirely mapless.

By request

2010-05-25T10:45:00.003+10:00

Here is the original of my fabulous work of literature and illustration. I am acceding to this request because fiddling with images etc. is far more interesting than doing my income estimate for the next financial year. On such things does the future of blogging rest.

As with all artifacts there is a story behind the condition and survival of this story. As far as I can work out, I must have written and illustrated the story in 1976 during year one in Malaysia. My beloved teacher must have sent the story to my parents in Taiwan. They stored it folded with several other stories. Somehow it survived 13 subsequent years of moving back and forth from Taiwan to Australia, 21 years in storage in Sydney and now hopefully a final home in Marburg.

When we visited Sydney early this month, my mother handed the folded bundle to me and said that she hadn't been able to throw them out. I had no idea what they were but in the flurry of kids, trains, plane and car, thought nothing more of it. Putting away the last few items from our trip (yes it took me a while to sort myself out completely) I wondered what the bundle was. On the outside were scribbled card scores from a game I evidently played with my siblings and parents. The writing was mine but I didn't remember the game nor at the time did I notice what the paper was. One of my enduringly bad habits is scribbling notes on whatever scrap of paper falls to hand. This habit must have started sometime in my teens so the stories were lying around then and I wasn't one to let a scrap of paper go to waste.

Anyway, I finally unfolded the documents and discovered a remnant of my childhood. I clearly remember sitting in the sunny year one classroom that perched on a green hillside above a stream and with dense jungle close on the other side of the valley. You could look out the louvered windows and see vines, trees and the occasional monkey. I remember gripping my pencil and trying to use my best handwriting. I remember how I really wanted to make my teacher happy.

Now the school is no longer a school. That beloved teacher died long ago and I am most definitely not five years old. But it brings back many happy memories. I'm glad my mum hung onto it all those years.

Going back to basics

2010-05-17T06:53:00.003+10:00

My first ever published story, by me age 5, from the school annual magazine.

Once upon a time there was a skeleton and a witch. they were enemies. one night the witch sneaked to the skeletons house. the skeleton was sitting in front of the fire eating Pancakes. by the corner of his eye he saw the witch. they began to fite. the skeleton won the war because he was stronger than the witch.

Illustrated by me with a very good representation of a witch and a very dodgy looking skeleton. Apparently he did like his food as his house was piled with pancakes and the tree outside laden with shiny red apples. Both interesting choices as I had probably not seen or eaten either of those foods at that age. Cultural imperialism anyone?

Naturally the punctuation and capitalisation were corrected for publication. What else are editors for?

More definitions

2010-05-15T11:23:00.001+10:00

Apathetic: having or showing no emotion or interest. From the Greek "without feeling" a- not, pathos- suffering).

Pathetic: arousing pity, or sadness or contempt...(colloquial) miserably inadequate.

I can't decide which definition suits me best at the moment so I (in the best tradition of the apathetic) flipflop between the two. Politicians have nothing on my changeability at the moment.

On one hand, I am busy and on the other, I am aimless in my busyness.

My goal: to be neither apathetic nor pathetic and to GET BACK TO WRITING.

On the other hand, my house is gradually getting tidy and there is a batch of hot spiced chocolate mini cakes in the oven. It's ironic that when my house is tidy, everyone well-fed and happy I'm unable to write. Perhaps those who say that misery and hardship are required for successful literary endeavors are right.

Defining autumn

2010-05-07T05:49:00.000+10:00

How do you tell that it is autumn? Is it falling leaves and temperatures? Adding extra layers of clothing? Thinking of Christmas?

I know that it is autumn when:

The crows start to wake me up before daybreak.
The guavas ripen (not unrelated to the crows' revelry).
It's the Marburg Show.
I have to add a morning sweatshirt to my t-shirts and shorts.
It's dark when my alarm goes off.
The children don't want to get out of bed in the morning and neither do I.
I can't see my monitor clearly in the mornings with the sun on its northerly trek shining straight in the office window.
It's a long time till Christmas.

Lights will guide you home

2010-05-05T12:00:00.001+10:00

Driving home from the airport in light rain, I knew we were getting close to home. Traffic was light -- it was after 11pm and good citizens of Ipswich and surrounds don't like to be out that late. I could appreciate the new sweeping curves of the motorway, the shiny "City of Ipswich" sign now adorning an overpass and my personal favourite: the red flashing lights of the broken hotel sign shouting what I am choosing to take as a message of everlasting Christmas cheer "Ho... Ho... Ho!"

I don't think Coldplay's very sweet lyrics were quite what was meant by these lights guiding us home.

It was a good long weekend away in Sydney visiting family. It's good to go and it's good to come back. It's even better when it gives you a chance to think and a few fresh perspectives. I'm currently between contracts and trying to put the time to good use. So far, everyday keeping on going has filled in all the gaps in my time. I don't seem to have as much time to do things as I thought I would.

It's been a few months since I picked up my manuscript and I want to go back to it with a fresh eye and try a few rewrites. There's a manuscript development competition coming up that I'd like to submit it to. Ten new Australian writers for young readers will get a week of development with editors from a major publisher. I'd really like to be one of the ten.

* I just realised that this is my 400th post. Thanks for sticking with me even though things have been slow in patches!

Night themes continued

2010-04-22T06:36:00.000+10:00

We went to the Ipswich Festival.
The scouts and the belly dancers were there.
There were no elephants to sneeze or fall on their knees.
And that was the end of the festival, festi, fest, fest, fest.

But here are some photos to illustrate my fascination with night scenes. And there were bellydancers there and lots of music and good food but no poor poetry.

Night rain

2010-04-20T18:35:00.000+10:00

It's the time of year when the days are clear and warm while the nights are gradually sliding towards winter. In the middle of the night clouds blow across the river plains and hills from the ocean and drop a little night rain. It's rarely loud. Sometimes just a patter across the roof, sometimes silent and the only hint is the slowly dripping foliage and wet ground in the morning.

BTR (Before the renovations), we never heard this light benison of moisture. Our bedroom was right in the middle of the house with doors and windows opening only onto covered verandah. When storms were loud, the whole family would pile onto the high bed and we would feel as if we were held tightly and comfortingly in the arms of the house.

Our new bedroom perches above the valley. We hear the wind and rain moving uphill towards us. Sometimes the floor shakes a little in the wind or you hear a strut groaning. One set of windows faces east and we can forecast the weather from their sighs and creaks. Two of the downpipes vital to our collection of water run outside the bedroom. If I don't hear the rain, I do hear the sound of water collecting, dropping and gurgling. It comforts in its own way.

Of photography and maps

2010-04-09T08:36:00.005+10:00

Easter has been and gone. We travelled but not far. I spent a lot of time looking at the hills through which we journeyed. I always enjoy going away with the family because Mr Blithe drives and I get a chance to look at the scenery. He loves driving so it is part of the holiday for him. I enjoy the break from chauffeuring (or is that chaufferage? No -- that sounds potentially odd/too interesting.)

Sometimes I try to photograph the scenery streaming past the windows. I have not yet mastered the art of the moving photograph. Everything is still so green. It looks pretty but I have been here long enough now to think a little anxiously of fire season. Here's an attempt where you can see the hills but also the grass blurring along the front of the image.

Back at work, one of my colleagues sent me a map that he had found of Ipswich in the 1840s. I'm helping to put together a presentation to help launch a new research project and we've been looking at images of how Ipswich has changed over time. I loved this map. The d'Aguilar Range marked on it is the range that marches across the horizon of my daily perspective. Limestone Street is still one of the main thoroughfares of town.

In many ways Ipswich is still the contained town shown and in other ways it has changed completely through administrative acquisition of vast tracts of new housing developments. The mayor has been in the news, spruiking the fact that Ipswich is the fastest growing area in Queensland. I admit to perhaps-false-idyllic small town nostalgia.

Autumn in Queensland

2010-03-29T07:10:00.002+10:00

Terry Pratchett on story

2010-03-25T16:58:00.002+10:00

Or: Why I Still Read Fantasy When I Should Be Sweeping the Floor and Being a Better Person.

Nine-tenths of the universe, in fact, is the paperwork.

And if you want the story, then remember that a story does not unwind, it weaves. Events that start in different places and different times all bear down on that one tiny point in space-time, which is the perfect moment.

Supposing an emperor was persuaded to wear a new suit of clothes whose material was so fine that, to the common eye, the clothes weren't there. And suppose a little boy pointed out this fact in a loud, clear voice...

Then you have The Story of the Emperor Who Had No Clothes.

But if you knew a bit more, it would be The Story of the Boy Who Got a Well-Deserved Thrashing from His Dad for Being Rude to Royalty and Was Locked Up.

Or The Story of the Whole Crowd Who Were Rounded Up by the Guards and Told 'This Didn't Happen. Okay? Does Anyone Want to Argue?'

Terry Pratchett, Thief of Time, London: Doubleday, 2001.

Apologies and thanks

2010-03-20T18:41:00.003+10:00

A quick administrative note: I do apologise to anyone who comments and doesn't get a response. I appreciate each and every one of my readers and love getting comments. However, I don't always get to respond. If you saw my house and the teetering piles of paper that daily threaten to take over (and the associated dust bunnies) you might forgive me. Or simply condemn my disorganisation! I am just learning to live with the shame and trying to be more efficient.

What do you do?

2010-03-20T18:00:00.002+10:00

I realised last night that I have possibly grown up.

I was ironing clothes for today. I managed not to iron clothes regularly between the ages of about 18 and 37. Now I have to iron clothes because I participate in activities where one's professionalism might be judged on the crumple level of one's attire. My fresh face and sometimes frivolous attitude combined with crumpled clothes do tend to work against me so I have to work hard to come across as serious. Having a business card helps. I initially resisted the notion of a card, but it does help to push it across the table and for people to see that at least on paper, I am supposed to know what I am talking about.

Pushing a fat report across the table also helps as do cool presentations. Have you heard of Prezi? It's one of my latest useful technical acquisitions and results in really fun presentations (which of course contain serious and useful information!)

The worst thing to my mind is that last night was a Friday night and I was ironing clothes for Saturday activities. What have I become?

We are in the process of going to school open days trying to work out where Blithe Girl will go in 2012. Marburg doesn't have a high school so we have to go see the options. Hence the ironing of clothes on a Friday night and discussions of whether I can wear shorts and still come across as a serious prospective parent of a student. Two schools down and a few more to go before we have to actually make a decision. 2012 seems very close when some of the schools expect students to apply 18-24 months out.

The hardest thing for me though is to fill out the forms saying what it is that I do. Do I write down what I am paid to do or what I do for love or what I would like to be eventually? What about the fact that I have several (very small) income streams and a few more projects in the works?

Sometimes I wish I just had a nice label that I could apply as appropriate. I just can't decide -- "dilettante", "multi-tasker", "undecided?" Maybe I'm not grown up after all.

Driving forces

2010-03-15T05:23:00.000+10:00

If you live in Marburg and you have a job of any kind or children or an interest in something outside horses you tend to be on the road a lot. You can't do a serious grocery shop in town. There is a corner store for emergencies and newspapers, an antique store, the post office, a pub and a hairdresser. That's a few necessities covered but for the rest you have to drive. Some of the drives are just a small round trip of twenty kilometres or so into Rosewood or Lowood, but most would involve at least 40 kilometres on the highway (to Ipswich) or the 100 kilometre roundtrip to Brisbane or Toowoomba.

I often wonder whether anyone would be able to live in rural areas when our fossil fuels run out. Electric cars aren't a great solution given limited range. I can't imagine rural areas having enough population to sustain hydrogen fueling stations. Maybe there will be some kind of special rural exemption in the future and only people living in the country will be able to buy fossil fuels. I can easily imagine some kind of post-fossil fuel hierarchy of need and regulation. Or the rural areas will simply empty out and the edges of Australia will become even more weighted with people.

Here's a marvellous photo I found on Picture Ipswich last week of the Warrego Highway: our lifeline and curse. This was taken in 1920 outside the pub at Haigslea which is the homestretch to Marburg. It has certainly stopped me complaining.

And in my continuing series on how reading can change your life -- a link to New York Times columnist Verlyn Klinkenborg's article on how to adjust the side mirrors of your car to eliminate the blind spot. Here's the link to the pictorial version of what to do.

Try it. I did and it has made my life immeasurably easier. I hope it does the same for you.

The past in trees

2010-03-09T06:43:00.003+10:00

Sometimes the past is right with us and sometimes the past is a distant place. I look at this picture of Two Tree Hill taken in 1900 and it seems from a distant place and time. Yet I look out my kitchen window every morning at this same hill. Today it is swathed in mist. Through the mist you can glimpse every shade of green from the brightness of summer grass to the dark black-green of crow's ash and the subdued olives of acacia and scrub. It's not heavily forested but the trees are there and many people are doing their best to plant more. A few years ago one of my neighbours helped another plant a hillside paddock with trees. This same neighbour is busy reforesting his gullies. We've done a small bit and hope to do more.

One of my jobs at the moment tracking down historical photographs of Ipswich for a presentation someone is doing in a few weeks. I'm actually getting paid to browse archives. It's pretty fabulous. Some of the archived photos are of Marburg and I am continually astonished at how bare the land used to be. Land became yours when you cleared it within a certain time period. It's a powerful incentive.

It's a stark reminder of the influence government policies can have on everyday life. Today the salinity, flooding and other issues in Black Snake Creek can be traced directly back to government policies -- land clearing, provision of reticulated water but not sewage to the township, development policies...the list goes on. And it is a reminder to me that I have a responsibility to this land as well.

The power of literature

2010-03-05T17:03:00.001+10:00

I ran out of oats this morning and tossed some buckwheat into the porridge mix. It was not a success. At best it was tasteless, at worst stodgy and this is coming from someone who likes porridge of all kinds. I don't know if I cooked it badly, if it was a bad batch, buckwheat just doesn't taste like much or a combination of all of these.

My family were all very polite though clearly not eating with enthusiasm. To me Blithe Girl said, "I really prefer just normal porridge Mum."

To her father she said quietly later, "I was thinking while I was eating that Hornblower would eat this because he had to eat many worse things so I can manage this."

This is why I encourage my children to read.

The battle of the fruit

2010-03-04T17:09:00.002+10:00

Did you know that mango sap contains the same chemical irritant (urushiol) and has the same end result as poison ivy? Three weeks ago I didn't know this and now I do. It is the kind of knowledge born out of pain and itching.

As a friend of mine says "No good deed goes unpunished." On a visit to the lovely historic Ormiston House, my mother-in-law saw the huge old mango trees laden with mangos. Having a yen to make green mango chutney and a tall daughter-in-law along, she convinced me to brave the swarms of mosquitoes under the trees to pick the mangos. I was amazed at the clear sap that spurted out of the mangos as I picked them.

Having a history of skin reactions and allergies I immediately washed the sap off my arms. I didn't realise the extent of the shower of sap though. It was a hot day and I was wearing a sleeveless top, shorts and sandals. My arms were sprayed and sap ran down my wrist at one point.

Almost immediately wherever the sap touched started to flake. No itching though. You could see where the sap had run down my arm. Almost three weeks later though, my arms erupted in blisters: itchy-red-claw-your-arms-off-type-blisters. Day five now and I can almost tolerate my own arms again. Prognosis is for up to five weeks before it will clear entirely although no-one really knows. Meanwhile I am avoiding short-sleeved shirts lest I excessively frighten the natives. I was going to include a photo but I decided that you didn't read this blog to be disgusted by such things.

And this is the interesting fruity fact. Cortisone creams and antihistamines aside, the one thing that really helps the itching is pawpaw ointment: Queensland's very own natural remedy. I like to imagine some sort of fruit salad battle going on under my dermis. And the thing is, I love to eat both these fruits though my current loyalty has to be to the pawpaw (carica papaya).

Who knew the true dangers of sub-tropical living? Shall I give the Jaeckels some kind of dermitological introduction to these?

Autumnal things

2010-03-02T11:53:00.001+10:00

It is officially the second day of autumn today. It is so neat and tidy when the seasons roll over on the calendar. The fact that this bears no relation to reality is irrelevant to its tidiness. Today though is about 15C cooler than several days last week so perhaps the relationship does exist to some extent. Most of the coolness though comes from the tropical low bringing rain that is moving slowly across the state. We've had a day and a half so far of steady rain.

Everything is sodden. Branches are leaning down from trees to the ground, streams run down both sides of our road. Black Snake Creek is a wide sheet of water moving through town. It hasn't gone over the road yet although it did last week when we had a sudden deluge. The kids love to see the streams and waterfalls. I tend to get a bit more nervous and being the driver notice all the little slips of tyre and occasional fishtailing on the mud. The dams are full, our tanks are overflowing. It can stop raining now.

Last night I absolutely did not want to go out. I had a long day at work, it was raining , Mr Blithe had cooked dinner and the kids were planning an evening of board games. I just wanted to stay inside and enjoy the sound of rain on the roof. Instead I went to the historical society meeting and was glad that I went. I had forgotten that we had a guest -- the museum development officer for this area and she had many of the answers to the questions that had plagued me at work.

It's lovely when your work and other lives collide and it's partly why I do what I do. My current contract wraps soon and like everyone I know, I have been writing grants trying to get funding for new projects. What I was going to be working on for the next six months has evaporated but there are a couple of fun new projects in the works if we can come up with the money. The first hurdle is always the grant application. Every agency has different requirements. I'm convinced there are people who spend their time dreaming up ways to cull the huge numbers of applicants. "I know, let's see if they can stand on their heads and sing while reciting the periodic table, then we'll allow them the privilege of filling in the application."

Anyway...some of the hurdles are looking a bit more surmountable so I am glad that I am involved with the historical society and that I dragged myself out on a wet night in the service of history. May it lead to interesting things.

Nighttime antics

2010-02-23T13:20:00.001+10:00

Coming home at midnight one weekend night, there was something sitting in the middle of the road. With no streetlights, you couldn't tell what it was. It was simply a dark lump on the crest of the road. Closer you could see pointed ears. Was it a large hare or a wallaby or something else? Then there it was, clearly a wallaby -- very small and watching the headlights approaching.

It's not an easy hill on which to stop. Actually, it's easy to stop but hard to restart on the angled gravel. But we stopped to see what the wallaby would do. It shuffled off to the left and Mr Blithe let out the handbrake and started. Then suddenly it bounded across the front of the car, small enough that it was hard to see over the bonnet. Where was it going? Was there any way to avoid hitting it? What about all the neighbourhood dogs?

There was a zig then a zag then it saw the way clear. Straight down the centre of the road.

We followed slowly, its dark marked hind legs comical in their gait as it bobbed down the road ahead of us. Past one neighbour then our driveway. It could keep going and we'd turn. We thought it had escaped but no, it veered onto the dark ribbon of tarmac leading up our hill. We hadn't taken the incline so slowly since getting the driveway sealed. What would the wallaby do? Would it head right over the gardens, through a fence and into the freedom of the back paddocks? Would it chuck a u-turn and head downhill for the road and the more distant fields? What about the lush paddock to the immediate left? It offered shelter and safety.

But no, it led us right up the driveway and paused next to our pitiful attempt at a bottlebrush hedge. We stopped the car and cautiously unloaded sleeping children. Would it want to come home with us? No. It waited just beyond the circle of light cast by the front light. Teeth were brushed, sleepy children tucked into bed and we ourselves staggered towards bed. Hopefully the wallaby did too.

Talking to myself (again)

2010-02-10T05:57:00.000+10:00

Before going to Marburg I wondered what the chances were of the area immediately around the Elizabethkirke having shops and specifically bakeries. Not that these HAD to exist, but I like my fiction not to be too improbable. And people always pick up things like that.

"There's no way there could be a bakery there." "What a load of bollocks. This writer , whatever her name is, has no idea what she's doing," I hear people saying. Don't worry -- I often hear conversations in my head. Sometimes in a houseful of kids it's the only way of having an adult conversation.

I am pleased therefore to report that there was not just one bakery near the church, but three in the immediate vicinity. The bakery pictured -- excuse the gloomy photo as it was after 4pm on a winter's afternoon and my trigger finger may have had frostbite -- was immediately opposite the church. The photo was taken in the intervals between a steady flow of traffic which seemed to mainly be buses, streaming between the footpath in front of the church and the bakery. Crossing the road to the steep hill going into the old town, I passed two other bakeries.

The Jaeckels must have had good business acumen. And I can now think up narky responses to those voices in my head.

Please close the door

2010-02-08T05:58:00.000+10:00

My mother used to tell me to close the door behind me. I am here to tell you that it is a good idea. It has nothing to do with keeping out draughts, or politeness, or anything like that. It has to do with history and discovery and excitement.

Here's the door:

It's the front door of the Elizabethkirke in Marburg: the much fought over, many times realigned, sometimes Protestant, sometimes Roman Catholic, always religious and political church anchoring the bottom of the hill in the old town of Marburg.

The door doesn't look so imposing does it? Here it is close up.

And here is what you see when you remember your manners and close the door behind yourself:

It's the Prussian crest emblazoned on the back of the door. Remember that the Prussians made Marburg their administrative seat in 1866? Clearly they wanted to set their mark on the town and this was a pretty impressive show of what...arrogance, pride, authority? God and Prussia overlaid. It adds a layer of understanding to how it would have felt to be a resident of Marburg in the 1860s when the Prussians were asserting their authority and their idea of German nationhood.

Changing my mind

2010-02-07T06:00:00.000+10:00

As a writer I always privileged imagination over experience. That is, I thought that you didn't have to really know a place or thing to write about it. As I think more about my writing, I've realised that the best, the most evocative, the most immediate writing for me does come out of my own experience.

A brave and good friend read my manuscript recently and commented that the section on Marburg was dry compared to my description of Batavia. She could see and feel the jungle and the islands, but Marburg didn't leap off the page. Even though I had been to Marburg in Germany, I hadn't been attentive at that time to the atmosphere and place. Hey give me a break. I was a fairly newly wed graduate student on her first trip to Europe, meeting many newly acquired relatives, none of whom spoke English. I was simply overwhelmed.

My writing about Asia on the other hand came from the experience of living there, smelling the decaying jungle, feeling the sweat, tasting the food -- real life.

This time when we went to Marburg, I went to taste and smell, look and experience so that I can write in a more immediate real way about the Jaeckels and their life. I walked from the castle to the church. I sat on the steps of the church feeling the cold stone and eating hot bratwurst. I noticed the contrast between the freezing air and the hot food, my warm hands and my cold face. I listened to the river rushing past the town in full spate. I walked alongside the river detouring where the path was closed due to high water. I wandered through the Christmas market that flowed right up to the walls of Elizabethkirke. I smelt the almonds roasting, the dead leaves and the damp cold. I noticed the contrast between the dark, cold early nights and the bright lights of the shops. I pressed against the windows of bakeries to look at the piles of Christmas goodies and everyday loaves. I watched the shopkeepers and how they talked with customers. I saw the icicles hanging off the statues and the fountains boarded up for winter. I drank in all the everyday details.

And I hope that this will reflect in my writing and rewriting and writing again.

A tentative sigh of relief

2010-02-06T17:28:00.002+10:00

I've spent so much time moaning recently about my computer woes that I have become boring. Years of using Macs had left me blase and immune to the computer woes of others. Then fate turned and bit me. All those years of importing information from various computers and piling new software on top of old information caught up with me.

Some kind of internal conflict meant crashing programmes. Even Firefox abandoned me. Anything requiring intensive graphics ended up in kernel crashes. I was not happy. I couldn't run Gimp or even Preview. I couldn't do anything with our trip photos. Some days I couldn't even get an email message written before Firefox bid me farewell. The computer became an expensive stereo. Apparently nothing can kill iTunes.

It's early days yet but Mr Blithe may have ridden to the rescue. He's run a diagnostic programme that identifies and fixes software conflicts and issues with preferences. So far so good. You may even see some photos soon. Or see me cheerful. Try not to be too shocked.

Attention urban homesteaders

2010-01-30T13:38:00.006+10:00

A query for you. How old is too old? And we're talking jam here, not people.

As part of the general life improvement plan I have tracked down and examined all my jars of jam and other preserves as part of the process of moving them to a new cupboard. Is there a life span on these? How old a canned item would you eat? Does it depend on the item?

I have two-year-old jam. Would you eat that? What about a three-year-old Christmas mincemeat made with suet? There are no obvious signs of mould or other disintegration. Would you try it if it smelt okay? Or would you play it safe? Does it depend on how hungry you are? Or your philosophical stance on food resources?

What about unlabelled preserves? What would you do about them? I have a longstanding "discussion" running with certain close family members who do not label their preserves. Otherwise nice sensible people, they insist that you will know what is in the jar. Other than this not being the case (there was a tense showdown one Easter over confusion between plum jam and dark marmalade and there are the slightly confusing jams that are mainly one thing but also had a piece of some other fruit thrown in lest it be wasted), there is always the food safety aspect.

Any advice gratefully received.

Good intentions gone wrong

2010-01-30T12:26:00.001+10:00

I was full of good intentions. I was going to blog a lot. I was going to post pictures. I was going to sort out the house. I was going to whip up a great report for work in no time at all. I was going to be a better person. These were just general life ambitions not specifically New Year's resolutions.

Actually I have been working on a couple of the things. On other things there is so far no sign of improvement.

The Blithe children are back at school -- two this week and one on the upcoming Monday. I went into my office for the first time in two months this week. My chair was the wrong height, all my paperclips had disappeared, and there was a suspected snake in the skirting boards. (Quick backstory: someone saw a baby snake come in the sliding doors to the building last week, slither down the hallway and disappear into the one open door it found. Animal control initially found it then it disappeared into the walls. This, apparently, is life in Australia).

It was great to be at work. I sat down and wrote for six hours without having to sort out a single squabble. (Sometimes however, my parenting experience comes in handy with clients -- I won't say which). I did sit with my feet raised off the floor though.

For the last fortnight is has been very warm here. Almost every day has been in the mid to high 30s celsius. The computer, in addition to a suspected conflict somewhere that was imported when we transferred profiles from the previous incarnation, doesn't like the heat. Every time I have tried to do anything graphic intensive I have had a core crash. Solving this issue in a cost-effective (read zero cost) way is top of my "to do" list. I am trying not to blame myself for my non-delivery of photographs.

The better person part though is entirely my fault.

A favourite place

2010-01-19T18:22:00.001+10:00

I have a favourite place to lie on our lawn. It's a bit of lawn that runs downhill that somehow feels like an armchair and miraculously has soft, ant-free grass. On one side is a curving wall that Mr Blithe made from stones found on the property and in front of me the view swoops through green hills, to the valley and distant blue mountains. In the afternoons, it is shaded by the shed and increasingly by a teenage mulberry tree that rustles its leaves drily.

I go and lie there around about five o'clock in the evening when I don't like my children any more, my computer isn't doing what I want it to, my job seems distant and impossible, I haven't had time to write or a moment to myself and I'm just hot and tired and grumpy...

I lie down, wiggle my toes in the grass and begin to notice the breeze on my skin, the birds in the long grass, the impossibly blue sky, the sunlight in the top of the gum tree, the bouganvillea bright against the sky, the intense yellow of the leopard tree flowers against the dark green leaves -- that the world is in fact still there.

It's not a miracle cure, but it helps a lot.

Something about Blithe

2010-01-15T11:53:00.001+10:00

Vivi noticed recently that I popped up as Blithe Auden and queried why. Like all things it has a simple and a less simple answer. The simple answer is that I was fiddling with my blog settings and decided that I should use my full nom de plume. I didn't realise that this would show up on the posts. You may have noticed that it has reverted to Blithe.

The less simple answer relates to why Blithe Auden anyway? Why a nom de plume? Well I didn't want an internet presence under my own name for obvious security and personal reasons. I didn't want to write about my own town and area under my own name. Have you read the classic (1934) Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson? That's what happens when you write about your hometown. People who know me, know that I am Blithe and that's fine. People who don't, well that's fine too.

Why Blithe? Well I just like the name and it's a bit of a homage to one of my first fictional crushes, Gilbert Blythe of Anne of Green Gables fame. And it links nicely to the sidebar quote by Auden which leads neatly to the Auden and another homage to a poet I like.

In the end, it was simply a nom de plume that I didn't feel sounded entirely stupid. You have no idea how long it took me to work it out though.

The problem of brevity

2010-01-13T18:03:00.002+10:00

I've made a list of all the places we visited: 32 places in approximately six weeks. And I've started to sort the photos. Here's the list sorted by country.

Germany
Frankfurt, Kuppingen, Herrenberg, Tubingen, Stuttgart, Rutesheim, Isney, Wangen, Munich, Burg Hohernzollern, Heppenheim, Marburg.

Vomp, Austria

Italy
Salò, Desenzano, Sacca di Goito, Bancole (Porto Mantovano), Verona, Venice.

Bern, Switzerland

Heathrow Airport, UK

US
Boston, Massachusetts; Connecticut, New York City, Dover, New Hampshire; Newburyport, Massachusetts; Minneapolis, Minnesota; St. Paul, Minnesota; Chicago, Illinois; Los Angeles, California.

Australia
Sydney, Brisbane.

This list doesn't include places we drove through or petrol stops, nor does it include brief visits to towns in the vicinities of places we stayed. You might begin to perceive my organisational difficulties and the sheer problem of remembering all the details, let alone boiling it down to a single descriptive sentence and photo for each.

The eagle has landed

2010-01-10T14:27:00.002+10:00

Or rather slowly drifted home mired in jetlag.

Before I say anything else, I hope that you had a wonderful Christmas and that 2010 will be a year full of good things for you.

It was a wonderful time away, but I am feeling disoriented now that I am home. Perhaps it is the waist-high grass that greeted us, or the shock of going from -20C and snow to 33C and humidity or perhaps just the contrast between home and traveling the world.

Another reason for not doing the laundry

Whatever it is, it is time to think quietly over what I've seen and done over the last six weeks, to get back to writing (and work), to work on neglected projects and start a few new ones.

My goal is to try to summarise each place we visited with one sentence and one photograph. Brevity is my new mantra. I'll post the results if I succeed.

In some ways I feel a bit like the public speaker tapping her microphone and wondering if it is working. Is there still anyone out there? Have I been forgiven for abandoning you my readers for such a long time?

Falling off the edge of the world

2009-11-18T16:08:00.001+10:00

It just feels like I am falling, or rather it feels as if I am in the process of doing so. In actual fact, I am preparing to travel from the far edge of the Antipodes to the middle of the earth or at least Europe. I'm doing the Jaeckels' voyage in reverse and much faster. Whenever I get anxious about the prospect of 24 hours in a plane with a clutch of children, I think of months at sea in a creaky wooden boat with the distinct possibility of not arriving intact in body, mind and soul. I may not be intact in those areas myself by the time we arrive in Germany, but I will have been reasonably speedily and efficiently delivered by an elongated flying tin can. I may even have been fed, entertained and if the stars are aligned, have snatched some sleep.

The "to do" list is diminishing. We have passports, international driver's licenses, plane tickets, car rental, accommodation arranged and friends contacted. I catch myself chanting a little mantra while driving -- "Keep to the right unless overtaking" -- in some kind of attempt to overwrite ingrained driving habits. I'm hoping the mantra doesn't take effect till I am actually out of Australia or else I will suddenly become newsworthy in a bad sort of way.

I don't know what kind of internet access we will have while we are away but I do promise eventually photographs of Marburg, Germany. I want to walk down the street that the Jaeckels' bakery is on and imagine the smell of fresh bread in the air. I want to see if I really want to rewrite the book or what to do with it. I want to be able to see if I can see them there. If so, perhaps I can see them properly in the book. It's not as if I believe one has to go to places about which one writes -- after all who could write sci-fi then -- but that I need to sort out for myself what I want to do with the book.

I can't decide if I should just be thrilled that I managed to write an entire novel, whatever happens to it. As part of that, I've asked a couple of erudite friends (my lovely literary ladies -- sorry but I couldn't resist the alliteration) to read the manuscript and give me their frank opinion. Then I can decide what to do and when I do, I'll let you know.

The frog marks the spot

2009-11-04T06:03:00.000+10:00

Wandering around outside with the camera the other day after taking pictures of the gloves on the washing line, I leant over to smell the yellow and white frangipanis that are the first to flower in summer. We also have a twisty old lichened pink, yellow and white frangipani and a brand new baby dark red frangipani (or so we are told as I have yet to see a flower). It was but $1 at the markets so I won't feel too cheated whatever the colour.

I admit that I moved the gloves on the washing line to get a better picture. Once you've taken this step, other little "adjustments" come more easily. So I decided to take a picture of the frangipani and removed a few wrinkly brown flowers to "improve" the image. There was a small green spot on one flower. Hand hovering over the flower I saw that it was not a spot but a tiny frog.

Preparing for change

2009-11-02T19:38:00.003+10:00

Today in Marburg, Queensland, Australia: 30C (86F), perfect blue sky, puffy clouds, light breeze, dry grass rustling, laundry moving gently in the breeze.

Today in Stuttgart, Germany: 12C (53F), light rain, thermometer moving southwards.

Today in Salo, Italy: 9C (48F), fog, humidity 100%.

Today in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA: 7C (44.6F), overcast with a forecast for sub-zero centigrade temperatures later in the week.

Similar temperatures in Boston, New York City and Chicago -- all on our agenda.

In only three weeks I'll be explaining to the children the purpose of those odd items hanging on the washing line today. And they'll be glad of the ski jackets, beanies and scarves hanging next to the gloves. I wonder if in years to come they will think white Christmases so romantic. And yes, we are planning to visit the original Marburg. Maybe my writing life will be reinvigorated by a wealth of visual detail. At the very least it will be fun to see again the places where I've placed the Jaeckels.

Three relative instances

2009-10-28T06:44:00.001+10:00

Yesterday I got a letter (well okay, an overdue library notice) from the Ipswich Library, beautifully stamped on the front with the logo "Ipswich 150, 1860-2010." I dumped it on my kitchen counter unopened because I knew exactly what it contained and didn't feel up to dealing with it. I saw it this morning and I thought, "Oh that's nice, 150 years old, wow." (In my defense it was 6am when I noticed this and I hadn't had coffee yet so my brain processes weren't up for anything more sophisticated.) Then I thought, "Hmmh I'm supposed to be some kind of historian - what are some sort of anecdotal comparisons I can think of?"

When Mr. Blithe was a very young teenager, 30 or so years ago, his family went to visit his mother's relatives in Germany. On coming back to Australia Mr. Blithe was asked to do one of those "what I did in my holidays" school talks with which we are all familiar. He told the class that while he had been in Kuppingen (which is just south of Stuttgart), the town had celebrated its 1000th birthday. His teacher corrected him and insisted that the town could not possibly be 1000 years old. Of course it was. When we visited 15 years ago, we saw a wonderful exhibit on the Roman ruins and artifacts of the area and indeed, the prehistorical archeology. But his teacher couldn't imagine that a town could be that old and indeed, that it had that long history of awareness and layers of time.

When I started studying Chinese history at university one of my first lecturers told me that he had decided quite early on in his career to specialise. He didn't do any Chinese history after 1000BC. If he kept a lid on his interests he was able to read everything available on the subject and be an expert. If he ventured past 1000BC, then there was just too much to know and he wasn't able to have a comprehensive grasp of everything. As a first year uni student I was overwhelmed by the amount of pre-1000BC Chinese history. Even writing this now, I had the urge to write 1000AD instead of BC because BC just couldn't be right.

Of course we now know that Australian history far predates white colonisation and that Australia is one of the oldest continents with a history to match. In that history 150 years is a very small part. When you look at the vast sweep of Australian terrain and think that for 150 years, there has been a city clinging to the edge of it, tenuously at times, it is relatively amazing. And when you place the dot of Ipswich in relation to the rest of the world, you get a sense of how far people came to get here. Sometimes you wonder how they managed to survive and why they stayed here.

Snippets of memory

2009-10-26T06:49:00.003+10:00

26 June 1931
Mrs Mary Portley, 72 years

"She was a great reader and always a very keen student of politics even in earlier days when women were not supposed to have opinions of their own on matters of political importance."

24 July 1931
Mrs Edith Bulcock

"She was a most kindly, generous woman and an ardent worker, especially for her church."

28 October 1932

"Relic of Alexander Bradshaw Collingwood."

December 19, 1942
Mrs Rose Gerber

"…was of quiet retiring disposition, and was respected by all."

For women it was about their disposition, whom they married, and their offspring. I do like Mary Portley's obituary though.

I also picked out a few names that I particularly liked: Apolonia, Queenie, Mirley and lots of Augustas. Adolf was still quite common as a name for one's son. I'm guessing it fell out of favour in the next decade or so.

For men it was about what they did, often long recitals of places been, wives married, children produced, jobs undertaken, worlds conquered. There are lots of words about men: "well-known," "highly respected," high esteem" but little about their personalities. A few hints are occasionally given. Two of my favourites are a description of a man as having a "quiet, manly disposition." And the lovely:

"Of a quiet retiring disposition, he had fine manly characteristics that are typical of those who have lived in and traversed the wide spaces of the West and North."

A world apart

2009-10-20T06:59:00.002+10:00

It's been a funny year for computers. I am not a generally consumption-oriented person. I like to get something good and hang onto it. Hence the combined middle-agehood of the household cars, clothing from op shops, decade-old shoes, piles of books from uni (20-ouch years ago now), old furniture...the list goes on. But we have cut a swathe through computers over the last 12 months. Our back landing is piling higher and higher with casualties.

The last Mac lasted about 7 months. Admittedly it was used when we got it, but it curled up its toes and gave up right after the big dust storm. It was a G4 "windtunnel" and I guess the windtunnel sucked up a bit more dust than was optimum for operation. We now have a G5, elderly in computer terms, but it seems to work just fine.

But it does mean days, if not longer, of discombobulation, finding a new computer (thank you eBay and Mr Blithe), waiting for parts (in this case a specialised Mac cable that didn't come with the computer and had to be ordered from the Apple Store). The trusty iMac keeps the household plugging away in times like this, slow but so far reliable now that its blown-out connection to the internet has been jerry-rigged. That was a storm about 18 months ago. But you have to work out what was on which computer and what version and what needs to be done without the backup of computerised records or even a browsing history. Memory sticks are very helpful here. I know that time is passing me by though when memory sticks have more memory than the first computer I used.

I hear people talking about the need for taking precautions and I have to tell you here that the computers are about as protected as they can be in a regular household. There are surge protectors, safety switches and backing up (perhaps not as frequently as required). I think that this is just rough terrain for computers. There's wind, dust, heat, cold, power surges, lightening strikes, storms and general wear and tear.

Early settlers didn't have computers but they faced all these things and more. And they didn't have the internet to order things delivered to one's house.

The new desktop image on the G5 is of the Brisbane River in 1870. I stare at it when I am meant to be working, trying to get an idea of what life really was like back then. It is such a world away from computer problems. Can I get my mind around it? Should I even try?

The smell of water

2009-10-17T09:39:00.002+10:00

Sometimes you read books of the adventuresome type, I’m thinking Wilbur Smith, Lawrence of Arabia or Hammond Innis, or diaries of early explorers and they describe how the lone adventurer, usually male, is striding across the land. They’re rugged and dusty or injured and dusty or tired and dusty and they’re looking for water. They stride or stagger or crawl over a rise in the ground and they can smell water. I always read that claim with a grain of salt, thinking it some sort of literary (or mass market) license.

Thursday night I found out that it was true. I was coming over the Tallegalla hills, driving though staggering mentally, the car full of groceries and the darkness shifting from twilight to something deeper. It was that time of night in the country where you really need high beam to see properly but you can’t because you can just see someone’s taillights in front of you and you don’t want to blind them. So you’re easing your own way through a small puddle of light and hoping that nothing too big will leap out of the darkness at the sides of the road. Usually it’s only a hare but I can tell you that they make quite a thump.

I wiped my sweaty brow. Well not really, but remember I’m channelling early explorers here – it was actually a beautiful cool evening with pockets of warmth left over from a long dusty day. I downshifted into third to turn right towards Marburg and suddenly all I could smell was water. It was the most intense amazing smell of dampness and life wrapping around me.

I know that it is because the top section of the Marburg-Rosewood Road runs alongside Black Snake Creek at a point where it spreads out into a maze of small ponds and rivulets. But I could imagine Cunningham or Sally Owen or her unnamed husband (if there was one) pushing through the heavy scrub up from the flat plains over a steep embankment, wondering what was going to be on the other side. Pausing on the ridge they would have continued downhill towards a distantly perceived valley running northwards and hit this wall of scent -- the glorious promise of water. And if they were smart they would have seen all the evidence of long-term aboriginal camping.

Me. I’ve learnt that the smell of water is not just literary license and that I’m happy to be driving home even if it’s late and I’m tired, rather than pushing through the scrub or dragging teams of oxen.

Come to the festival!

2009-10-09T06:00:00.002+10:00

It's that time of year again, Marburg's Black Snake Creek Festival, running tonight and all day tomorrow. Come listen to music, see the art show, look at quilts, check out the Rosewood Scrub Historical Society and a myriad of market stalls and of course, buy a hamburger from the school burger stall.

There's a rumour that there will be line-dancing schoolchildren on the Saturday and a great parade.

I managed to get myself organised and put some photos into the art show. I had a quick preview of some of the entries on Wednesday and the show promises to be great. There's a art show opening reception, a poet's breakfast and music of all kinds. Our neighbour has been practicing diligently with his band. It's pretty good as far as I can tell (at least from 500m away).

Take a wander over to Marburg's blog and check out the events and timetable.

I'll see you at the festival!

Deathly interesting

2009-10-08T06:39:00.002+10:00

I love obituaries. Does that raise eyebrows? Not the deadly dull obituaries of most people today, but the ones that tell you something about the person who died, what they did and what they considered important. The other day at the historical society, doing my open house duty, I was reading through obituaries in The Rosewood Register and Marburg Mail and the Queensland Times for 1938 and 1939. Why that period? Well firstly, it was the time period covered by the folder I pulled out and secondly, I kept reading because it was about the time period that there were many deaths of Marburg pioneer families. I read of ship voyages, shipwrecks, land selection, storms, family deaths, successes and a few failures. I'll bring you a selection over the next few weeks. Maybe you'll see the appeal.

Queensland Times
July 21st, 1939

Mr John Schulz

The death occurred on July 9 of a very old and respected resident of Marburg. Mr John Schulz at the age of 95 years and 10 months. He came to Australia with his parents, brothers and sister, at the age of 21 years, in the sailing boat La Rochele. After seven years in Australia he sent for his intended wife, Miss Caroline Barlet [Bartel?] and upon her arrival they were married in Ipswich. They had five children and in 1880 his wife died. In 1885 he married Miss Emma Windoff and they had nine children, three of whom died.

Mr Schulz took up shepherding upon arrival in Australia, then started farming at Mt. Walker, later taking a selection at Marburg, then known as the Rosewood Scrub. He remained here for the rest of his life. The funeral took place in the late Mr Schulz's private cemetery. The Baptist Minister, Pastor Evans, of Minden, officiated at the graveside. He is survived by five sons, Messrs Fritz, Bundaberg, Gustave, South Nanango, Wilhelm, Esk, Hermann and Adolf, Marburg, and six daughters, Mesdames Michael Goos, Tallegalla, W. Beduhn, Wondai, A. Schneider, Oxley, F. Kuss, Ropeley, N. Meissner, Biloela, and J. Berlin, Marburg.

Historical question of the day

2009-10-06T07:11:00.003+10:00

Why did Ludwig Leichhardt ("The Dauntless Explorer" who disappeared mysteriously about his task in 1847) carry gelatine amongst his supplies?

Sometimes your children stump you. Blithe Girl was studying famous Australians at school (though Leichhardt like most early Australians was a migrant). She told me that Leichhardt was carrying gelatine in his supplies and that their task was to find out why. I'm not sure that the school has returned to the question but I, self-styled "Dauntless Explorer of the Internet" have.

Here's his provisions list:

"17 horses, 16 bullocks, 550 kilograms of flour, 90 kilograms of sugar, 40 kilograms of tea and 10 kilograms of gelatine."

My initial thought was that the gelatine was for photography. However, gelatin silver photography was not introduced until 1871. Instead the answer was simple and explained by the man himself.

October 18, 1844

We have regularly balanced our loads, and made up every bag of flour to the weight of 120 pounds: of these we have eight, which are to be carried by four bullocks. The chocolate and the gelatine are very acceptable at present, as so little animal food can be obtained. The country continues to be extremely boggy, though the weather has been fine, with high winds, for the last four days. Tracks of Blackfellows have been seen; but they appear rare and scattered in this part of the country. Though we meet with no game, tracks of kangaroos are very numerous, and they frequently indicate animals of great size. Emus have been seen twice.

Why would one eat gelatine? According to the Gelatin Manufacturers Institute of America, gelatin (American spelling) is 84-90% protein with 9 of the essential amino-acids. It doesn't go off though it does get sticky, it can be easily carried and though not tasty, was considered better than starving to death. Interestingly though, according to some sources, gelatine is one of the few foods that cause a nett loss of protein if eaten exclusively. There is also a link to CJD. I doubt Leichhardt was worried about any of this.

If you are interested in Australian botany, Leichhardt's journal is fascinating for his descriptions of plants especially in what is now the Scenic Rim area. Sadly he was a better botanist than navigator.

The scrub opens more and more; a beautiful country with Bricklow groves, and a white Vitex in full blossom. The flats most richly adorned by flowers of a great variety of colours: the yellow Senecios, scarlet Vetches, the large Xeranthemums, several species of Gnaphalium, white Anthemis–like compositae: the soil is a stiff clay with concretions: melon–holes with rushes; the lagoons with reeds.

Fixing oneself

2009-10-02T07:06:00.003+10:00

Does anyone remember The People's Home Medical Book? Published in 1922, it was a mainstay in many family houses. In Australia it came bundled with The People's Home Recipe Book and The People's Home Stock Book (animal management rather than soup-making) under the overarching title of The People's Home Library: A Library of Three Practical Books. The Rosewood Scrub Historical Society possesses a battered copy that has seen much use. It is clearly the sort of book that was in constant reference by all members of the family.

Oddly enough, Marburg is now less well supplied with medical practitioners than probably any time in the past. At one point there were two hospitals in the area, including Dr. Sirois' famous establishment. Rosewood had it's own midwife who delivered many a baby at home or in her house at the corner that now has the traffic roundabout at the top end of town. Nowadays Rosewood does have several GPs as does Lowood or people can choose to go further afield to Ipswich, Toowoomba or even Brisbane.

A lot of basic medicine took place at home though and this book was the bible of self-help. Advice was given on everything from women's health to sugar diabetes, freckles to obesity (or adiposity), drunkenness to acne and snake bites.

A few snippets forthwith. First, to help your with planning for your weekend.

Alcohol
Symptoms: These are too well known to need description.
What to do: Produce vomiting by giving lukewarm mustard water, using from 1 to 4 teaspoons of mustard; or give one or two teaspoonfuls of alum dissolved in lukewarm water; or, give lard or salt or produce vomiting by tickling the throat. You may also give strong coffee [Ed. Before or after the vomiting?] Apply cold to the head and warmth to the arms and legs. Use artificial respiration if necessary.

And a beauty tip (one of the nine options offered so freckles must have been a serious problem):

Freckles may sometimes be removed by wetting a piece of saltpeter [sic] and rubbing the freckles two or three times daily.

Other freckle removal options included a paste of bitter almonds and barley flour; borax, sugar and lemon juice; glycerine and lemon juice; washing with buttermilk and rinsing; leaving sour buttermilk on one's face overnight; grated horseradish in very sour milk; crushed strawberries; and a long bathe in borax and lemon juice.

I think I'll put on my hat and sunscreen and stick to coffee.