semi abandoned cottage

I was out for a drive the other day (to see what I could see) and found the gorgeous cottage situated in about the most wonderful spot you could imagine. Great views and great location geographically speaking. Right on the edge of the plateau, so moist (unlike further west) and "very changable" atmospheric weather (ok, I mean it rains a lot)

I get the feeling it was built in stages as money arrived and needs expanded (a familiar story) and has some very interesting curved roofing over the veranda ...

From the back it was equally compelling ...

and you can see a hint of the weather I mentioned approaching. You can see (looking carefully if you load that picture up) that the back wall not only seemed to have been an internal wall at some stage, but shows sign of that same curved roof in the top of the wall over by the door.

Inside that window (in the old section) we see a little of the decay of semi-abandonment

... as it apparently still used by someone (I assume stockmen) occasionally.

Looking at the exposed tin roof, with plenty a gap, you can be sure it will be as cold as a "witches tit" in there and a place by the fire prized when the winter winds and drizzle are happening ...

Still, people were poorer then and life was tougher.

Time passes and things pass into history. Its sad to see things pass, but then that is the way of things. It is our privilege simply to witness them...

a Quick trip to Mount Perry

a mate of mine was recently up (from here) at Mount Perry, and I thought: "what the hell" I'll go have a look.

I've never been there (although I've been all around it by about 100Km in any direction) and so I thought I'd share some of the experience.

So, after you turn off from the main road (A3) you eventually find yourself looking at dirt ...



with some creek crossings (which may be impassable when wet).

The township of Mt Perry is nestled in a tight valley:

This is from the Western side (looking East, in the late afternoon)

It turns out there is an interesting feature just near the town, a railway tunnel was dug when there as a brief mining boom. It was cut through a hill on the way to Gin Gin, but was never used as a railway. Instead now its a road.

So I took a trip out along there to see ...

There was some nice old country "Australiana" such as abandoned schools (with cows) ...

and some nice scenery.

Eventually I got to the tunnel (which you can drive through)

Here is a quick video of going into the tunnel mouth:

In the entrance there are swallows nesting ...

but further in (in about the middle) is a colony of bent wing bats.

Attempting to focus on this swirling mass of bats was essentially a fools errand, so I took one shot with a normal lens and hoped to freeze something with that.

Which I did ... you'll notice if you load this image some discreet red circles around bats in flight. This is from the middle right, and shows what I believe to be a pair of the "bent wing" bats and I believe too, a clutch of young huddled in the roof.

As mentioned, I recorded them with my audio recorder...so you can put on your headphones and enjoy the walk through the tunnel with me if you like:



I hope you enjoyed the small excursion.

Cold Inside the House

this is an older post from another blog of mine, but its quite relevant again to me (having just come back from Finland... where there is a saying "as warm as houses")

One day, walking around the shopping center I saw this advert for cold and flu medicine. It reminded me of one of the mysteries of life in Australia

That while its not typically cold here during the day we get quite cool in winter overnight. A lack of thermal insulation in most homes means that the heat leaves quickly over night and the radiant insulation (usefully slowing the sun from heating the house in summer) means that in winter we tend to be cold inside our homes, despite pouring a few kilowatt hours of electricity into the home every day (and people wank on about CO₂ production).

I can only assume that its a tradition we have followed from the English.

Academics ponder the issue but builders keep churning out the same designs and Aussies keep buying them.

They then sit around inside complaining about how cold it is while just having argued that "it doesn't get cold in Australia". They even defend the perpetuation of this ... Strange how its often actually warmer outside ...

Why don't we laugh at Australian chimney and fireplace design next

:-)

stepping off the home plate

Well this house on this street has been many things to me

It was where I was born, went to school, came back during University, where I lived after my parents passed away, where I did my masters degree and where I settled with my wife.

The house has seen many changes since my parents bought it in about 1958, starting life as a chamferboard house:

... and ultimately being rebuilt into the one above over years of iterative development.

Throughout my life I've been involved with this, helping dad as I could (depending on my age)

to ultimately doing renovations on it myself as an adult.

as my wife and I turned it into a home we wanted to live in, as well as making some steps towards making it our home.

I have no doubt that Anitas influence helped me to shape this place away from what my parents built and into something which was us. It was good to have the opportunity to build a home together even if it was short. Since her passing I have completed many of the works we started together, the downstairs bathroom and the kitchen are now newly renovated.

I have learned many life skills here, developed my relationships with my wife and my friends and developed myself too. Kiitos kulta.

I have left here and come back again many times in my life, and now today I leave for the final time, as I have sold the house.

It was not a decision I took lightly, but ultimately no matter what this place represents to me it is (without those people) just a place.

Over the last few months I have systematically stripped it of all the things which were reminders and items of significance. Some have been discarded and others have been kept. I've tried to be pragmatic about much of it.

So I now step off the "home plate" for the last time ... and head for the other side of the planet to see where the journey of life takes me next.

back yard: moths eggs

Was out hanging the washing this morning and noticed (what is to me here in Australia again) a common sight. I post this sort of thing as I know readers in the Northern parts of the Northern Hemisphere will perhaps think its as wonderfully different as I did the everyday things when I was living in Finland.

They are laid out in a line and alternated left and right on their little stalk.



Zooming in a little closer on that image you can see that the eggs are each suspended on a fine strong thread.


Its a cunning strategy to keep their eggs safe from predators (like ants) but perhaps not safe from clothes being hung on (other people's) washing lines.

I'd be grateful if anyone out there can clear up exactly which eggs these are.

Going birko

Quick note on an old bit of aussie slang.

Basically this is a brand of water boiling electric jug. So without any thermostat to shut it off, when it boils it gets rather excited and agitated.

So it goes birko

addicted to cars

Cars are great tools, but we seem to have (in the last 30 years) wanted to just jump in our car and go where we want without thinking.

I started riding my bicycle to work back in about 1997 (about 17km each way) and found that not only was I getting healthier but I found much more money in my wallet at the end of each week!

However I'm in the minority in Australia ... and its a shrinking one too. Enough car drivers are just insane in their attitude in this area. Ask any cyclist and you'll hear stories of near death experiences.

Ask the average car driver who hates bicycles and you'll hear more simple whinges like "they touched my car" (leaving no marks) "they held me up" (for no more than 10 seconds till the next red light) or "roads are made for cars".

Essentially its just dribble to justify their irrational hate.

I'm glad to see the publication of these findings which indicate that:

Drivers were at fault in 87 per cent of incidents with cyclists and most did not realise they had behaved in a reckless or unsafe manner, according to the Monash University Accident Research Centre and The Amy Gillett Foundation.

Its interesting to read some of the methods and findings:

The three-year study into cyclist safety on the roads used mounted video camera footage, as well as helmet-mounted cameras worn by cyclists, to determine the main causes of road accidents between cyclists and motorists.

Fifty-four events were recorded; including two collisions, six near-collisions and 46 other incidents.

The helmet camera study found that of the 54 incidents recorded, more than 88 per cent of cyclists travelled in a safe and legal way.

Conversely, drivers changing lanes and turning left without indicating or looking were the cause of more than 70 per cent of the incidents, Amy Gillett Foundation chief executive officer Tracey Gaudry said.

“We believe there is a strong argument to introduce a road rule that prescribes a safe passing distance (at least one metre), as well as further educating drivers that they need to indicate at least five seconds before changing lanes,” she said.

After 2000 I started living overseas, in places like Japan, Korea, India and Finland. All these places have an active and functional cyclist population and car drivers who are tolerant of this.

These days I'm back in Australia I've been forced to give up or get injuries.

So, what do we do about it?

I'd love to suggest we force drivers to use bicycles, but we've really started to make our cities in such a way as to totally preclude bicycle transport. We now live too far from work and its almost impossible to use a combination of public transport and bicycle.

How can we go back? Well probably we can't ... so where should we go forward to?

Greater reliance on cars, greater traffic congestion (another tunnel anyone) and greater costs for transport ...

looks like we've painted ourselves into a corner doesn't it

Aussie culture - what is it?

We often too and fro about this issue, what is Australian culture. While its hard to put down in a bullet point list I would say the beach and the surf would be part of it.

This weekend gone a member of a group of 4 died here on the coast going swimming in the evening. I also heard on the radio that increasingly children are not learning to swim. This is a tragedy, especially so when you consider how easy it is to teach kids to swim.

The latest figures (according to a report by the Royal Life Saving) is that 56% of drownings were children.

One of my earliest memories in my life was learning to swim, which we did at Kindy. Naturally (living in Southport) my family got into Nippers.

Nippers are a great way to get kids into fun safety and sporting events all at the same time.


The above scene is a typical nippers day morning on the beach, with a beach race about to start.

Beaches, family, kids and fun ... surely this is part of Australian culture.

It seems unreal to me that people who would be drawn to the beach would not have the basics of safety such as being able to swim even 50 meters.

Australia has had a vast influx of migrants from locations of the world who do not have a beach culture. It is no surprise that these people are not engaging in things in the same way. Perhaps have come from an urbanized area or a place with no swimming.

But what ever your past has been if you like the beach, and you value your kids ... please teach them to swim.

Backyard spiders

One of the things I find interesting about my home is the amount of neat garden spiders we have. This one seems to love living in my frangipanni tree.

Just for some sense of scale to this image the ends of the branch there are about 3cm thick, so its a fat blobby spider.

I've had a similar species of spider living in my garden in the bougainvillea for some time. That spider looks very very similar but has different markings, so I don't know if this means that the spider is a sub-species or simply changes its exterior colourings and hairs to match.



btw ... never plant bougainvillea if you can avoid it ... nasty climbing weed with horrible thorns.

Back to the spider, the web stretches a few meters across my back garden.


if you don't see it there, then in the zoom in on that image below it should appear a little clearer (use the background to place the location).

prime ministers and books

Paul Keating is certainly one of the more divisive names in Australian politics, finding someone with no strong opinion on him is to find someone young enough to have never known him. But as a Treasure and later a Prime Minister of Australia he was not only highly significant in Australian economic reform, but was extraordinarily well known and respected through out Asia.

Kevin Rudd is our present prime minister, and I think that it goes without saying that he is a formidable debater with a keen eye for detail. However I genuinely feel that he lacks the sort of "stuff" of which Paul Keating was made.

Perhaps he does know quite a lot about China, but knowing and having experience in something is not quite the same as being respected by the leadership of those places.

I read today that Kevin is writing a book ... Paul wrote a book too.

Paul wrote a book called "Engagement: Australia Faces the Asia-Pacific" while the title of Kevin's book is yet unkown that its a"kiddies' adventure story about the PM's cat and dog will be published this month."

Paul publishes the first chapter of this book on his website here. I encourage you to give it a read.

I personally think this underscores the difference between politicians and politics between the 90's and now.

I was in Japan in the time after Keating, so I knew first hand what his influence was. At that time I was more or less still naive about politics (both Australian and International) but it didn't take me long to comprehend there was more behind the man than calling protesting students "Scumbags" and talking about "the recession we had to have".

I fear we are moving into an age of "democracy" where our "leadership" are little more than professional poll and voter mood watchers. Few seem to have ideals which they make public.

When was the last time you voted for someone who you really felt represented you?

So now I think the time has come for us to look closely at the machinery of government and legislation and get that legislation more in line with our community and its needs. The legislation is the "source code" for the machine of Government and the politicans are simply the agents who execute that code.

I think we should all get involved in a code review.

junk journalism

it may seem trivial, but the press should have some sort of responsibility. For instance I was reading this article which asserts that the Government in Australia has undertaken big spending and had poor results. I'm tempted to accept that argument as it stands, but then the author (Stephen Kirchner) starts down a seemingly unrelated topic and discusses a speech by the Secretary of the Treasury who makes a statement and quotes Ken Henry:

But he went on to suggest this expansion "has never been reversed and I think I can safely say that it never will be"

Not so fast Ken!.

So it seems that he wants to disagree with this and sets up an elaborate argument. But you know he doesn't once say why he thinks it is unlikely that the expansion of Government will be reversed.

So either Stephen gets carried away with his discussion on spending issues and looses the point, or the Editor has chopped it. So the Jury is out for me ... is he

• a dickhead just setting up a strawman argument to make his personal points
• a victim of editorial interference
• or incompetent

dunno, but either way it is just another example of the poor journalism that the Australian seems to be filled with these days.

Like this one, where the headline appeals the the ordinary persons fear that by defending themselves a criminal will go unpunished and they will be punished. But when you read past the headlines you find a different case which is clearly no longer defence and perhaps not even burglary either.

What happened was truly horrific, and my heart goes out to the victims, but the significant departure from the ordinary (and the headline grabber) is:

What followed was described in Reading Crown Court as self-defence that went too far.

[the victim] ... escaped after throwing a coffee table and getting his brother Tokeer, 35, to help chase offenders down the street, bringing one of them to the ground.

Walid Salem, one of the intruders, suffered a permanent brain injury after he was struck with a cricket bat so hard that it broke into three pieces.

Neighbours saw several men beating Salem with weapons, including a metal pole.

I just shake my head that the Australian tries to contort this into something else and then goes on to leave so many very disturbing issues alone and unanswered.

poor journalism

our new Vietnam - lets avoid this one hmm?

I was reading this morning about our governments attempts to cover up injuries to our serving troops in Afghanistan. I fully understand the military need for secrecy to protect sensitive operations under way, but there is also something more important at stake here. That is the future welfare of the men and women who are serving now.

When nine members of the Special Operations Task Group were hit by heavy rocket and machinegun fire in an attack on the Taliban in September last year, Defence had no intention of releasing any details about the battle after the casualties were brought in.

In a briefing two months later, special operations commander Major General Tim McOwan complained that news of the battle "was leaked and found its way into the Australian media".

Because of the leak, Defence was forced to confirm the incident, in which Trooper Mark Donaldson became the first Australian to win a Victoria Cross in 40 years. McOwan said the Taliban exploited the news on local radio stations the same day.

"In essence," he said, "an information release by us afforded them a propaganda opportunity."

Reading the above segment of that article carefully confirms this, but it raises another question. Would Mark Donaldson have ever got recognition for his bravery?

In the years to come the men and women who are involved in the covert operations will have to take their place silently in Australia and pretend nothing had happened.

We know this has had profound consequences on the young people who came back from Vietnam, so why in such a short time are we setting up to repeat the same problems?

It is a political issue if you agree or disagree with our Governments decision to to be involved in Afganistan, but irrespective of that we owe recognition and respect to the people who went into harms way.

We need to send a clear message to our military leaders that while objectives and battles are important so too is the support and understanding of the Australians who are humans not only soldiers. This is something our Armed Forces needs to pull its head out of its ass about and start acting on.

Less propaganda more reality back home please

the great mobile rip-off

I never owned a mobile phone until I left Australia and lived in Japan (in the year 2000). On return home I found that the prices at home were quite extortionate, but thought I'd get one all the same as I'd become used to the ability to contact and be contacted.

To put some perspective on the costs, in Japan I was paying 10c a minute anywhere in Japan any time of day or night using the company AU (no guesses why I liked them at first sight ;-)

Today I read this article in the Australian where apparently:

THE mobile phone is eating a larger slice of the household budget than petrol this year

well bugger me ... seems like someone in the media has noticed.

A quick look around the world shows we're getting shafted on phone costs. How shafted? well I presently live in Finland, where my mobile call costs are 7c a minute. Yes that's right seven cents per minute. And its better than that, as there is no "call connection fee" and charging is by second.

What's more I don't get the cheapest calls possible because I'm not on a plan and I own my own phone, those are 2 cents a minute.

Now before anyone drags out the statistical mumbo on "how big Australia is" and "how we have to cover great distances with a small population" consider this:

Finland has 5 million people, and is hardly small. Wikipedia states that:

"The distance from the southernmost – Hanko – to the northernmost point in the country – Nuorgam – is 1,445 kilometres (898 miles) in driving distance, which would take approximately 18.5 hours to drive.

Population is quite well distributed around so coverage must be better than Australia (ever tried getting signal out of a major city in central NSW?

Given that the Australian population is concentrated along the strip of the East Coast with the greater bulk in the southern end of that its hard to make a case that Australia has a sparce population distribution. In reality the statistics of Australian population density are grossly distorted by the vast areas of emptiness.

Given the size of Australia, and that we have 4 times the populatoin is it really that much different to Finland when it comes to planning mobile coverage?

Actually I think its easier as we have more mountains and hilly areas to put towers onto and more cities with over 1 million populatoin (Finland has one we have three).


Now supposedly we have "competition" in Australia, but if you ask me its more like a bunch of big players all bidding the market up to how much the market will bear. So how much can the market bear and keep grinning?

I think we're on the edge ...

To make matters more filthy, when I was last in Australia (2007) it cost me almost the same to call Finland using my telstra prepaid as it did to call someone in the same town.

HUH?

Yep, it was (and prehaps still is) 77c a minute to call Europe but is still 78c a minute (plus call connection fees ... yadda yadda) to call Brisbane from Brisbane.

So next time you feel like your wallet has been pack raped, what will you do?

keep paying?

Welcome to that Banana republic Paul Keating used to threaten us with...

Gillard takes on the impossible

I never cease to be surprised by our politicians ... I read that Julia Gillard is going to try to stop shonky operators in India who try to mislead students about study in Australia.

Right ... she clearly has no scene of the scale of the place

Julia ... have you tried setting up a stool and holding back the tide with your hand? You've got about as much luck on either count.

racism and violence in Australia

I was reading (with a sad heart) the story of protests in Australia against violence against Indian people which turned into violent scuffles with the police. My first reaction was to wonder what was what the hell is going on and why are people picking on Indians in Australia??

Then I read this (from here):

But a group of "rabble-rousers'' separate from the Indian students may have hijacked the protest, Mr Overland said.

"I think their demonstration was hijacked - it initially started as a peaceful demonstration.

"The organisers of that demonstration then left.

so it seems that its another case of a minority with a separate agenda hijacking the situation for their own purpose. Especially if the following is true...

The police chief said some demonstrators were clearly affected by alcohol, which prompted police to close the nearby Young and Jacksons hotel bottle shop, he said.

"They were going in there and accessing alcohol, and we knew that wasn't going to resolve the issue,'' he said.

"There were some people in there who weren't Indian who were rabble-rousers who had their own agenda and didn't seem to have much very much to do with the issues that are confronting the Indian students.''

A collection of weapons, including knives, was found once the demonstrators left.

"They I think were obviously responsible for some of the tactics that were then used by the Indian students when we moved in to disperse the crowd,'' Mr Overland said.

Penny Wong (cited here) seems to feel that "racism in Australia is confined to a minority of people with extreme views". As a Malaysian migrant she should know more than me (I only went to school with Vietnamese and Greeks, I'm anglo so I wouldn't really know) but I really hope so Penny.

Australia day 2009

I was reading today in The Australian, that Mick Dodson (a man I admire for taking leadership and personal interest in Aboriginal issues in Australia) has said that

To many indigenous Australians, in fact most indigenous Australians, it really reflects the day in which our world came crashing down

I think this is a fair comment with quite a ring of truth about it. He goes further to say that

Many of our people call it Invasion Day, but I think Australia is mature enough now to have a conversation about that, and let's get on with it, like we usually do.

So I'd like to participate in that mature conversation and begin by raising with the following points which I think need to be considered as a premise:

• while for much of human history (certainly western recorded history) Australia remained isolated geographically, this situation was not going to remain so forever.
  
• there is some suggestion that there have previously been indigenous human inhabitants in Australia genetically different to the indigenous inhabitants met by Cook and the English explorers.
  
• certainly much of the actions of the early colonists (and colonial government) was reprehensible and distasteful to us today (perhaps even then). However this is perhaps only so from particular religious view points (such as Christian and perhaps Buddhist views), certainly fights over territory are nothing new in human history and the losers of such disputes can face either death, slavery or (if lucky) assimilation.
• choice of words is not accidental, so invasion or colonisation or migration or displacement are all words which could apply but which need to be thought about carefully (unless we're not after intelligent discussion, but rather a screaming match).
• everyone and every culture undergoes change, like it or not we are exposed to other humans eventually
• what would it have been like if the other culture which encountered Australia and spread its influence into there was any other culture (say Chinese, Japanese, or even something like the Assyrian or Roman cultures)

So as well as dealing with what has gone on, lets not loose sight of the fact that at some stage the Indigenous people of Australia were going to meet other humans. Because they had not been developing (and exploring outside of their world) it was likely someone else of greater technical skills was going to be the explorer.

No matter what, their world would be changed forever. But then our world (the entire planet) has been changed several times over, so perhaps we've just had a little more experience in getting used to changes (maybe).

So, indigenous people can remain in the stone age if they choose (and I think there exists room for that, although some leaders Mr Dodson among them hold that they should not) and accept the attendant limitations of that choice (such as access to medical educational and other modern resources). Perhaps we can even provided a sheltered location for them, away from exploitation of our culture or those from their culture who would seek to exploit them.

However if you want to modernize then like it or not you must accept the limitations of our existing culture and join with it. From that point you can attempt to steer it (as does anyone else) through the channels available such as politics, science and academic inputs.

You will however need to persuade people and provide acceptable alternatives.

No matter what, life is never static for long so you may as well get used to change.

my little colony

when you leave Australia (for work and expat living) people often say things to Australians that make you think "no, we're not just a little ex colony".

But then you read things like this. Now keep in mind that this involves two "respectable" members of society the Minister of Police for New South Wales, and the Member of Parliment representing Wollongong (a significant area in NSW).

Here's just the juicy bits.

A witness told The Australian Mr Brown stripped down to his "very brief" underpants and danced to loud "Oxford Street-style" techno music on a green leather Chesterfield couch he had recently ordered for his office.The witness said Mr Brown "mounted the chest" of Wollongong MP Noreen Hay.The witness said Mr Brown called out to Ms Hay's adult daughter during the performance: "Look at this, I'm tittie-f..king your mother!"

intelligently Ms Hay denys all knowledge of the event"

Contacted before Mr Brown's confession, Ms Hay admitted there was a function, but said: "I can tell you I have never seen Matt Brown without his clothes.[clearly they were in the room on the floor!] If anything such as that was to occur, it was certainly not while I was present." Ms Hay was implicated in the recent bribery and corruption scandal at Wollongong Council before being cleared of any wrongdoing.

just beautiful ... makes me proud to be an Australian (where is that rock?)

How can we not think something is very wrong with our system?

sigh

tolerance

I was reading the Australian today, and noticed this article. I'll take the liberty of quoting here:

THE publisher of a book that contains a section teaching girls how to play the didgeridoo will remove the offending chapter after claims it had made a cultural faux pas.

The Daring Book for Girls, set to be published by HarperCollins in October, attracted criticism from indigenous commentators over a chapter which teaches girls how to play the didgeridoo.

Academic and Aboriginal education advocate Dr Mark Rose said it was an "extreme faux pas" on the part of HarperCollins as cultural protocols around the instrument include a ban on females touching or playing it.


Which suggests that there is no cultural tolerance for people outside of their cultural frame of reference to do as they please. When does this cease to be a matter of respect of differences and a matter of tolerance?

If we can tolerate Jesus in a jar of piss then perhaps some other cultures could learn to be tolerant too?

I know that in Australia we've come from the english settlers and colonists being intolerant of the "Black Fellas", should we move towards intolerance again?