Art Life Chooks

Finally!

2012-01-25T08:19:00.003+10:00

Finally, the dogs are barking it on the radio now - here comes the recession we've been trying to paper over for the past couple of years. The GFC was never the coming economic shit-storm it should have been. Now, no amount of freshly minted paper is going to ward off the inevitable.

1930s moment indeed.

Like Iran cares that they are being sanctioned by Western nations about to go down the gurgler.

Thinking now might be a good time to learn Mandarin.

Chart courtesy Urban Survival.

Sucked in

2012-01-25T06:59:00.008+10:00

Propaganda & Power

“The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons…who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.” –Edward Bernays, Propaganda, 1928

I've always had a somewhat hysterical response to American cultural imperialism. There's something pornographic about it that makes me feel dirty. I've been personally boycotting American media for years. Have not consumed any Hollywood for the longest time, but now I can't even escape it on my ABC!!! Fkn Fran is, as we speak, spruiking the Oscars! Grrrrr

The only Americans I pay attention to are outsiders - those with the guts to criticise their culture, like this guy. Well worth the read.

It feeds my suspicion that the Nazis didn't lose the war - they just moved to America.

Scapegoatee

2012-01-14T15:47:00.000+10:00

Just incase you were fixing to believe another wave of crap from the main stream press about which oil country will be 'liberated' next in order to stave off the collapse of the US dollar, please have another think. I have Iranian friends and although they may have left their country for political reasons, none wish to see their families blown away by US warlords.

Iran Is Not Our Enemy from Irani Friend on Vimeo.

Hanging Gardens

2012-01-12T06:43:00.000+10:00

This is fantastic - there's the hand made DYI without many tools version, then the all new improved design.

Seems to me all you need for the prototype is a stanley knife, some empty bottles and a tube of silicone. Perfect for an appartment.

Dine-o-saur

2011-12-30T18:14:00.004+10:00

G-Man's family was a little hesitant about dining on dinosaur, but now I know why they are called that - they are delicious! Took most of the day, between other errands, patchy rain and my back going out of whack to keep the fire going, and then to try to guess the difference in conditions between the dry sandy ground of the fire pit on the instruction video and the cold, wet gully we live in. The sandy plains of the NT are NOT, in any way shape or form the same as the bank of a rather soggy creek bank in SE Queensland.

Extraordinary. Amazing process to gut and kill. I think we may have managed to overcook the beastie. Hard to tell when the meat is buried in a pit of hot coals. I don't think I'd give it more than an hour for a meter long creature. Tastes like a cross between turkey and rabbit/hare. Light brown when cooked, but the real prize is the liver and fat - the fat is apparently fantastic for you skin and hair. The structure of the musculature is interesting - kind of lonf thin bundles of muscle along the back and along the tail. The legs are bunched up much more like turkey legs.

Lots of time and energy for not that much meat and I don't think I'll be going out of my way to hunt the critters down, but as windfall protein and if, in the future, the depression causes food shortages, they will be a useful source - all you need to catch them is a laying hen as bait, it seems.

Bush tucker

2011-12-29T08:04:00.002+10:00

Barni for lunch. According to this guy, you can eat everything on a barni (goanna) except the claws and the head. We'll see. Today.

It's G-man's birthday and his main job this morning is to dig a fire pit to cook the bugger. Yesterday Barni stole his last egg. He's been practically hand reared and would have died of heart failure sooner or later, from the high cholesterol diet of pilfered eggs. He's not the only offender - there must be a dozen living in the gully beside our house. I've seen 6 at once, two in the chook dome fighting over the eggs, being watched by an audience of four others.

This one found himself cornered in Nana's cage. We didn't mean to kill him, just give him a dissuasive belting as he came busting out of there, but G-man was a little too accurate (lucky) with the stick and well, now it is cleaned and gutted in the fridge, stuffed with lemon scented tea tree leaves and parsley. Can't let perfectly good protein go to waste. Besides - he is the old man of the gully and he won't be missed by the smaller males. It'll give them a chance to mix the gene pool up and strengthen the local line.

Really looking forward to this one. I can't believe how squeamish people are about eating reptiles. We eat fish, practically reptiles, as are turtles and bloody chickens - they look really reptilian without feathers. Indeed, the outer skin of the barni which has to be singed off before cooking, smells like burning hair. Must be the same cellulose substance as our own. While I was gutting it, unsure of the precise placement of internal organs, it occurred to me that we are not really very different from reptiles at all - red blooded and pink inside; a very elaborate tube worm. Preparing an animal for consumption is as up close and personal as you can get with a fellow creature and I must say, the goanna is beautiful, complex and I hope, delicious.

Hope our reptilian overlords don't find out.

Old dog, new trick

2011-12-22T17:47:00.001+10:00

This is about as much fun as you can have standing up, here in Queensland - leading the way in huntin', shootin' and 'tootin'. Archery! Who knew?

The range is out in a pretty spot of bush just south of Nambour. They do a training course: for twenty bucks the club trainer introduces you to the bow, teaches you all the safety you need to know, and enough technique to get you incredibly accurate after three days. Only an hour and a half each morning.

Thing that surprises me is the lack of women doing the sport. I'd have thought that with the cult of Diana and all, or at least the whole medieval goth thing that at least a few girlies would have picked up a bow. I guess they just don't teach the classics anymore.

Very pleasing result.
The club calls itself the Sunshine Coast Bowmen. Very cool.

Mr & Mrs Hughes

2011-12-09T13:40:00.004+10:00

They sure do make an adorable couple, but I just can't believe how conservative the children of today are.
I give you Mr & Mrs Hughes.
My son and my brand new daughter, Kate. Married on 3 Dec, 2011. Everything pretty-much perfect.

But Flinthart has figured it. They're not being conservative at all but rather, they're doing retro chic! In my day it was just plain flat out daggy to get married - now it's cool. The future truly has begun to run backwards.

A version of hell

2011-12-08T14:51:00.000+10:00

Well, there you have it - the bowels of capitalism. This is apparently what we should all be free to do - consume without even leaving the comfort of your couch in the free market capitalist utopia of the USA. People have died for this freedom. I have never, and will never, ever buy anything from Amazon.

How much of that crap does anyone actually need?

Fioretti in pastelli

2011-12-07T19:05:00.000+10:00

For the last month or so zucchini have been bearing. I reckon you could live on these babies, given enough garlic, olive oil, butter, salt and pepper, onions and eggs. Frittata is its own food group.

The secret of cooking frittata is to use a heavy pan on top of the flame, then when you see steam coming from beneath the egg mixture, transfer the pan to beneath a grill to cook the top to a golden brown.

There will be a few more weeks of fresh flowers too. Dipped into a batter made with flour and water the consistency of double cream, deep fried in a hot wok of half olive, half vegetable oil and served hot with a good mayonnaise, they are a delicious strictly seasonal treat. As with tempura batter, make sure you use iced water which ensures that the batter will be crisp.

Rain?

2011-11-15T19:01:00.001+10:00

Yellow tailed cockatoos in the valley this afternoon. So hot, everything is burning - all the lettuces, silver beet, rocket. These guys generally herald rain. Dammit - I hope so.

We have a crop of rosella to plant, and many pigeon pea on the new front yard that is currently really only a heap of dirt and rock. Have to build up some topsoil, and will probably end up using all the compost just to plant out.

So, we'll see how accurate the cockatoos are.

Lime Macadamians

2011-11-15T11:05:00.004+10:00

1 kg strong flour (alternately 750g plain flour combined with 250g rice flour)

500g butter

500g sugar

2-400g chopped macadamia nuts (aiming for an even consistency, with the occasional chunky bit)

3 limes

2 lemons

Ensure the butter is chilled. Combine the flour and sugar evenly in a large mixing bowl. Chop the butter into cubes, and rub it into the flour/sugar mix as lightly as practical. Once the mix has the texture of breadcrumbs and comes away from the side of the bowl in clumps, work the chopped nuts through.

Grate the zest off of all the lemons and limes, and mix this through as evenly as possible. Get as much of the juice out of the fruit as practical, and water it down by about 50/50 juice/water. Make a well in the mixture, and add small quantities of juice/water, mixing and kneading as you go, until the mixture binds coherently. Given the amount of shortening, the amount of liquid actually required to achieve this should be fairly small, not more than 250ml or so.

Knead the resulting dough till smooth, then cover (or wrap in cling film) and refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.

Preheat an oven to 200C. Take a portion of the dough, roll it into a thick sausage 4-5cm in diameter. With a sharp knife, cut roughly 1cm disks from this roll. Place the disks on a baking tray (I used muffin trays this year, the disks fit pretty neatly). Bake for either 20 mins on 180C or 15 minutes on 200C, depending on how crumbly you like your shortbread.

(Many thanks to Damian for this.)

Release the hounds

2011-11-14T13:28:00.000+10:00

On account of the hares that have found my garden and the cucumbers, zucchini and broccoli therein, I now have a new secret weapon. After a loooong conversation with the sales guy, I was persuaded from the inherent beauty of a long bow to one of these new fangled compound jobs. Looks like way too much engineering to me, but he assures me that if I want to actually hit anything, this is the best bet for a beginner.

Even though it's apparently set up and 'ready to hunt', it'll still take me about 100 arrows into a bale of hay to get my technique up to scratch in order to get the sight aligned. Not the most elegant of objects, but it only weighs about 3 pound - light enough for me to actually lift and hold still while taking aim.

Am quite looking forward to getting my hands on it. I did some archery at school and wasn't bad. Even thinking of joining a club to get a few lessons before inflicting myself on those waskally wabbits. There's also a bush turkey who will come to understand the concept of territory.

Narcissus gold

2011-11-14T09:26:00.002+10:00

Long stemmed roses are cool, but I'm of the opinion that the degree of difficulty involved in the gathering of a floral bouquet symbolic of ones love and devotion to one's partner earns extra points.

For example, these common, garden variety dam narcissus are extra beautiful because to gather them requires a dinghy, black oozing mud and the possibility of total immersion. To be able to turn up with an armful of these babies for your lover requires forethought and real effort.

As it turns out, G-Man was already in the dinghy re-anchoring a drifting pontoon on a friends dam a couple of days ago, and on his way back to shore I asked him to pluck a bunch of blooms for me. But now he knows that should he wish to impress or suck up to me, an armful of these pretty things will do the trick. Gold.

And only one little duck came back

2011-11-14T07:27:00.002+10:00

One of four survived from G-Man's little duck family. Rodents killed the three siblings in the first instance, then a fkn goanna got into the cage and cleaned up the three chook chicks that Nana had hatched. One lucky little duck, but somewhat traumatised, to the extent that he spends a fair amount of time snuggled up on my lap where there are no dinosaurs.

Roast Turkey

2011-11-13T08:20:00.000+10:00

It's not easy to get turkey during the year unless you grow your own. It only comes into the supermarket frozen about this time of year, and I'm seriously considering firing up the deep freeze, seeing as we now have free power courtesy of the sun, and fill it up with turkey. I grabbed a leg/thigh and cooked it last night. Made it up as I went along, and I have to say, if came out rather well.

ROAST TURKEY
Dry meat and rub with olive oil, S&P and heaps of fresh thyme.
Place into a roasting pan and cover with strips of bacon (kept in place with toothpicks)
Peel as many (whole) small onions as will fit into the roasting dish with the turkey and pile them in.
Put the roast into a fairly hot oven and start it cooking.

Prepare stock - enough to be 1 cm deep int he roasting pan, from chicken stock, a tsp of tomato pure, small carrot, celery and onion. (Take the vegetables out, and about halfway through the cooking of the roast, pour into the pan.

The dish is ready when the flesh is soft and the juices clear.

Delicious. The onions should be soft and sweet, and served with the juices in the bottom of the pan. You may need to pour off fat if your turkey is fattty. Served with pan fried zucchini and potatoes baked in cream.

Crystal balls and goats guts

2011-11-10T11:39:00.000+10:00

Ok, so I'm a prepper. I didn't know there was an official word for it till recently, but yes, I admit it, I am one of those people who always has a cupboard full of supplies. I think I was originally freaked out by that Old Mother Hubbard nursery rhyme - struck by the pathetic image of her hungry doggy peering into the bare cupboard. Or perhaps I've just been too close to too many floods, cyclones and bush fires over the years.

Storm bunker under the house is ready and waiting for the forth coming cyclone season. The garden is dug with drains and the beds built up so they don't get soggy and drown everything. I'm just putting finishing touches to the first aid kit and bagging up dry clothing and sleeping bags etc etc

But this year, I'm considering extending my normal preparations to include preparations for The End of Western Capitalism as well. Storm is one thing, fire is scary, but the unfolding train wreck of TEWC is white knuckles all the way down. You don't need crystal balls and goats guts to know this cannot end well. Greece, now Italy, soon France and then massive deflation of all world currencies on the heels of the crash of the USD.

Of course, I could be wrong, and I have to admit to a teensy touch of Shadenfreud at the thought of all those greed heads coming unstuck, but to wish something like what I fear is ahead on ordinary folk would be obscene. I won't be surprised by full-on horror; domestic unrest, riots, murderous attacks on young protesters, food shortages, mass unemployment and homelessness, forced labour camps and all manner of hand to hand combat amongst the population for scarce resources.

You certainly wouldn't want to be anywhere near a large city as this unfolds. Once the people realise that the government only has the interest of its financial backers at heart, and not them, it's going to get ugly. Sooner (rather than later, I reckon early next year) the meltdown will transform into economic apocalypse, when the great sweaty masses will see their capitalist overlords for the thieving scum they really are.

And then, of course, being so far up the US's arse, Australia will follow - probably not into quite the viciousness of the US. For starters, we are not all armed. But if you live in a city and wake up to find your dollar is now only worthless paper with neither buying nor intrinsic value, and anyway, there's bugger all to buy with it because we can't afford imports, or fuel to get produce to markets and a host of other downer effects of fiscal collapse, it will make the post-flood skirmishes up here at supermarkets look like a toddler's tiff.

Last night I attended a town meeting to decide what the community would spend the Bendigo Community Bank profits on. A young social worker stood up and asked for housing for single men. He told us there is NOTHING on the Sunshine Coast for homeless men. So, you know what they are doing? They give them a tent and send them bush. Welcome 'jolly' swagmen! Already!

So, how does one prep for such a thing? You can't hoard enough stuff - it'll take at least ten years for the world to recover from this pending disaster. It's skills, I reckon. Skills you can barter, or just practice so you don't need to spend money. Geoff has carpentry and a stash of tools - that is always useful, but me? Sheesh, there's not going to be a lot of call for readers and writers. I can teach, but not if the Govt's cupboards are bare - they are laying off public servants left right and centre as we speak. I have my garden and can cook, I can cut patterns and sew - my mother learned that at her mother's knee following the last great depression.

But for now - all is calm, all is bright. Mrs Duck is nesting again, Nana is about to sit on a new clutch of eggs, and our music is sounding amazing. That is my secret weapon - if all else fails, there's always a need for entertainment.

Back in the water

2011-11-09T08:34:00.000+10:00

Up to 3K per session now. I just love swimming training.

Today's moment of infinite beauty: powering down that lane, feeling the water hard against my hands and the work in my shoulders, watching the sunlight split into its spectrum on every ripple, projected down though the chlorine aqua onto the white pool floor.

Magic.

Then, pineapple for breakfast.

November Garden Notes

2011-11-05T12:40:00.001+10:00

Rain. Leaden November skies and Jacaranda blanketing everything. It is the anniversary of Joe's passing. Two years already. I swear, time is going faster the older I get.

Have begun planting out basil seedlings direct into bed 1. Should be ready to cut by the time the chooks go on.

Potted rosellas for a commercial planting,broccoli, Queensland Blue pumpkins, and pigeon pea to plant along fenceline.

Planted today, favourable moon for flowering annuals into punnets:
2 x Pumpkin - turkish turban clear patch at bottom of front garden for pumpkin.
2 x Green sprouting clabrese for spotting in chook beds
2 x Rockmelon bottom of garden north end.
2 x Lebanese Zucchini for spotting in chook beds
2 x rainbow chard for spotting in chook beds
2 x warpaint watermelon for bed 4 to replace bokchoy
3 x sunray bush bean for spotting in chook beds
2 x nero kale for spotting in chook beds

1 x silverbeet - previously failed to germinate
2 x button squash - previously failed to germinate

Geoff has repaired the seedhouse. It was falling down around my ears, but now it is sturdy.

I sooooo get the guy and his shed thing.

Breakfast

2011-11-05T07:45:00.004+10:00

I swear, this is the best season ever for the garden. It's usually so hot by now that everything gets singed and wilts, but this spring has been mild - still cool in the mornings. Geoff gets up early to take advantage of the cool to work out in the paddocks, so when he gets back he's ravenous, and I cook breakfast. Eggs usually, and recently, inspired by the bounty of greens in the garden, I've taken to making omelettes and stuffing them full of whatever looks delectable.

This morning I found a brand new English spinach - last of the season - hiding under a zucchini leaf. A fist full of beans and baby zucchini and chopped corianda. Sweet chilli sauce and tamari for dipping. Who'd have thought - vegetables for breakfast?

Better live it up, seeing as there may be an asteroid landing in the Pacific next week. Apparently, the US government will be doing an 'exercise' offshore to 'test' their warning systems. They will be taking over all telecommunications in the US to tell everyone "This is a test."

I LOVE conspiracy theories, as you know. The madder the better. It's kind of like a hobby, following their paranoia. My absolute favourite is Half Past Human. Very interesting guy. The other one is George Ure's Urban Survival for an amusing take on the world of finance. Anyway, here's the sub-text of the 'test message', according to George:

"This is a test of the emergency action notification system. This is only a test. In the event of a real emergency, you would be buried in rubble, drowning, or already be powdered by the big blinding flash. But your government is all safe in bunkers and we wanted to share that with you by showing off our ability to communicate with possible survivors and reassure citizens that we'll get to helping shortly when the danger is past. For now: Good luck. This concludes this test of the emergency action notification system. Have a nice day."

Just in case, I'm planning a trip to the mountains on that day. A thing that big dropping into the ocean would cause one hell of a wave.

Garden Notes October

2011-10-29T10:14:00.013+10:00

Spring this year has been completely weird. Initially, it began in early August when the front verandah jasmine burst into flower. But all the warm weather seeds I put in didn't sprout because either it has been so cool, or my seeds were too old. Only now has it begun to warm up enough to plant down here in the micro climate of our valley, so during this favourable moon, I've planted:

Seed house bed: Carrots, spring onion, onion, leeks and beets, all appear to be sprouting into cloudy drizzly days. Perfect for germination and the first couple of cm growth

Bed 1: Cleared and planted out with chook fodder (mixed old seeds) and sunflowers for when chooks move on in Jan

Bed 2: Centre cleared of potatoes (Kipfler - nice crop) and planted with Sunflowers for the chooks. Edges still producing leaf for the chooks.

Sown into punnetts:

2 x kale, Red Russian
2 x lettuce Lollo Biondo
6 x bok choi
2 x lettuce, Red Coral
12 x pigeon pea
2 x endive
1 x lettuce, Freckles
2 x kohl rabi, Purple Vienna
2 x parsely
2 x celery
2 x silverbeet
13 x rosella
2 x button squash
2 x capsicum, Californian Wonder
1 x perennial capsicum
8 x green sprouting broccoli
2 x dwarf bean
12 x sweet basil
1 x turkish turban pumpkin
1 x zucchini
2 x thyme
1 x greek oregano
2 x rainbow chard

To do:

Bed 6: Plant out beetroot seedlings and spring onions etc when 15cm tall.

Bed 3: Centre cleared of Turnips. Will plant out with Basil advanced seelings. Plenty of leaf for chooks.

Bed 4: Currently bearing prolifically and harvesting: lettuce, zucchini,

Good soaking rain the last couple of days but not too much; just enough to keep everything moist and out of direct sun thanks to cloud cover. I also have up two hail guards which are shade cloth and can be dragged into position over newly planted beds if necessary. Thank you Geoffrey!

New season paths are laid and the newly dug rock-filled drains ready for this year's deluge. Geoff has also built a bund along the front edge near the gate to deflect flow around the garden gate and down along the side so it doesn't enter to flow down through the path and take all the bark with it. The paths are there to prevent me from slipping in the greasy clay beneath.

Chooks are now permanently housed in the back garden now - no more manhandling them across the great divide of the house to the front. That garden is now covered in several tonnes of rubble. It will be in the first instance a planting of green manure cover - mung beans, sunflowers, weeds, grasses etc to get a cover happening, then begin to sheet compost the area to make topsoil. Eventually, it will be an orchard, but until I can get some fertility happening, it is just a bit of a red, rocky desert at the moment.

Also on the cards is a renovation of the seedhouse. It suffered a bit (well, a lot) of rot from the inundation last season and all the shelves have given up the ghost along with it listing to the left. It is empty of all my gear so that Geoff can fix it structurally, part of which is going to take up that idea of putting guttering along the outside of a house. In this instance, he's going to use old guttering, about three layers deep, in which I can place punnets of seedlings. They can also more easily be covered and sealed off from rodents. We'll see.

Harvesting:
Potatoes, about 2 kg Kipflers
many bunches of parsley, silver beet, kale and coriander
several kg of beans, endless lettuce- several varieties including a new endive - very soft and frilly.
spring onions and leeks
buckets of zucchini and zucchini flowers

Coming On:

aubergine, capsicum, Lebanese cucumber, basil, second flowering of strawberries

Pests in October:
Stink bugs on the citrus. Very annoying, but a daily preen seems to keep them down and actually, they don't do a bad job of pruning the excess fruit.
First grubs on kale. Noticed lacy leaves yesterday

Trees:
Good flower on citrus this year. Villa Franca lemon tree loaded with baby fruit, as is blood orange, mandarin, lemonade and navel. Lime not so, as I pruned it hard last year and there is only a couple of branches of old wood. Same for Dad's navel and the back garden mandarin which suffered a broken limb last year. The self seeded Bush Lemon is going like the clappers. Will graft onto it from my blood orange.

Lost the front Black Genoa fig to the rubble, so have its children in pots and have planted one on the front northern corner of the garden and one in the front central lilly garden out front of the house. Also purchased a new variety, Brown Turkey and planted along side that.

In addition, two new trees - a tropical apple and peach where I can keep an eye on them from the front verandah

Green potato curry

2011-10-25T07:49:00.000+10:00

The garden is just spectacular at the moment - not too hot, and all the spring veges ready to pick; new potatoes, zucchini, masses of coriander about to seed, and thai basil coming on.

Time for curry. I use a commercial brand of curry paste - Mae Ploy - because it is delicious and requires no pounding of spices. I'm particularly partial to the green. I always have garlic, onion and kaffir lime leaves on hand and the necessary bottle of fish sauce, and still working my way though last year's ginger crop. Just about everything from the garden goes into one of these babies.
Not long now till capsicums, aubergines.

It's been a flat out effort to get the garden ready for the wet season which, they say, will be on again this summer. A smaller El Nino this year, but El Nino neverthless. Wonder what it was before they tagged 'big wet' with that name? All the paths are relaid, G-Man's gorgeous compost spread on all the beds prior to planting and enough for a second helping before the wet turns the piles sour.

The Wivenhoe and Somerset drainage channels are in place and it may not even be a problem this year since there is a big shiny new drain across the road from us where it usually floods, courtesy of the new neighbours who are putting up a hill top ponderosa on the block above our trees.

They will be building for an entire year! 80 loads of concrete so far, semis that can't get up the step hill, so they have to off load materials on the road side, and dozens of tradies' utes parking us out. It's not too bad. The young site manager could get a job as a first AD on a film - very conciliatory and helpful and has convinced us he is on our side since the delivery of a dozen loads of clean fill into our front yard (gully). He even arranged for a bobcat to smooth it all down and now, we have an extra parking space at the top of the drive so there'll be no complaining from us. Very sneaky of him. He did it all down the road, so at least a half a dozen residents won't be complaining about noise/dust/traffic.

Only one more sleep now till lunch with JB, PB, NB and MY at the Spirit House. Though it's only just down the road, I've never been there - mainly because there is so much food here on the block, seems silly to go out to eat. I can dine here with G-Man any day of the week, but at table with fine company, food and wine, I can be tempted out. Woohoo.

Spring!

2011-10-09T12:46:00.008+10:00

This year it's chickens, and ducks soon too. Though Nana, the little silky hen whose function in life is to hatch other people's babies, failed to finish the hatch, she got it going and Geoff is now the hatchlings' father.

He and Bum Bum, the birth father, have been out in the back garden sucking on cigars and Martel to celebrate. There'd been a setback in Geoff's fatherhood plans when Mrs Duck's first abandoned brood didn't make it. Big disappointment, but she is now sitting on half a dozen eggs and they'll be out in ten days or so. She started sitting just after Nana. We lost several to the bush turkey who we realised was responsible for sweeping them out of the egg box, so now MRs duck is locked in all day. Not that she particularly cares, she's so completely in the zone.

Ah, the zone, I can still remember it. Those first few months of motherhood where your entire focus is on a small squirming bundle of need. For the birds, it's that window of 25 days expended solely in the service of transferring her concentrated conserved energy to her eggs. I still can't believe it when they emerge. Gets me every time.

Suburban solution

2011-10-04T07:22:00.003+10:00

Great idea for suburban gardeners. And no, it's not hydroponic. The verticle garden uses ordinary soil with some slow release fertiliser mixed in. I'd use worm castings or compost, but if you don't have a muck heap, this is the go. Great for winter - use the sunniest side of the house, or a balcony.

You can get old guttering from demolition yards.

CITRONARAMA

2011-09-25T06:57:00.006+10:00

My lemon crop is in. Great yellow globes of delicious Villa Francas. They are enormous this year with all the rain just at the right moment for this particular variety. One of those babies is the size of a softball.

I'd just opened the last bottle of cordial from the back of the cupboard, so that needed replacing, and that lemon cake, while not on the diet, like the lemon butter, makes excellent gift/bribe/inkind payment tender.

Lemon Drop

2011-09-25T06:55:00.001+10:00

Literally - they are falling off the tree. Great big fat yellow globes. The haul this year is good. And so, to the kitchen!

Mysterious beans

2011-09-24T08:18:00.002+10:00

These turned up in the garden. Unfortunately, I have no idea what they are, whether they are edible or not. It is a climber with big broad leaves. The plant is robust and just one covered the entire fence. Any ideas as to what they might be?

Trouble with beans is you put the wrong kind in and before you know it, theres a cascade of giants, geese and golden eggs raining down on you from above.

Who's your daddy?

2011-09-22T10:49:00.005+10:00

Don't be fooled by this immigration detention crap. All you have to do is follow the money. Who has the most to gain from the Australian immigration detention system? Who has the most to gain from whipping mouth-breathers into a frenzy of hatred and blind fear? Serco, making a profit out of the agony misfortune of those poor bastards coming in on boats, is who.

This alleged debate is completely at odds with who we are, subverts our real culture which was once based on immigration and inclusion. We are being manipulated by those bastards to keep it going. A UK corporation, Serco is little better than big mining, gouging giant holes in our social fabric and disrupting social cohesion. I don't know about you, but I'm not really that comfortable about the reach of these pricks. For my money there's a bit of a moral problem inherent in making squillions of bucks out of misery.

So, has anything changed since the Australian invasion 200 yrs ago? We will all be convicts soon.

Wishful thinking

2011-09-21T21:05:00.004+10:00

Way back in the dim dark 90s, Paul Keating played a master stoke of political bastardry on John Hewson. The polls (such as they were in those days) were not looking good for a second chance at PM, and Hewson was forging ahead with evangelical zeal, pushing his 15% GST. Keating, with nothing to lose, did a very, very brave thing (in hindsight, but seemingly insane at the time) and came out in direct contraction of his own party's policy which appalled the left and frightened the rank and file members. (Yes, Victoria, the ALP did have them once.)

Keating announced that if Hewson was elected, the ALP would not oppose the passage of the GST through parliament, but that if Labor were elected, there would be no GST. You could hear jaws dropping all over the floor of the house. Hewson was at that moment, as they say these days, rat-fucked. Australians HATE being taxed and don't mind punishing a government for introducing same, so when Keating made that tax fait accompli, Hewson had no solid ground and Keating was re-elected.

I wonder, is the political art of fucking rats at the heart of this migration debacle in which the Gillard government is currently engaged? I can't think of a more deserving ratty arsehole than Abbott, and if it is Gillard's plan to out Ghengis Kahn the little turd, then go girlfriend. She has got him in a bit of a twister hold. The Boltbrechtson Joneses will still hate her - no love lost there, and the ALP left would die before voting for Abbot, so they'll bleed to the Greens who'll still be ALP coalition partners no matter what. The only people who are going to be really disenfranchised will be the swinging voters in the marginal seats who all this bullshit is being played to - the four and a half people and a dog who hold the real power to make or break and election result.

The more Abbott tries to explain why he can't support Gillard going hard on the boaties, the more they think him a soft cock. This can only hurt the Opposition's vote. Already Abbott's polls are down. It appears that by inviting Abbott to support the migration act amendments, she has forced his hand - he's damned if he does, and damned if he doesn't.

Don't get me wrong, I still detest the right wing of the Labor party, never was there such a pack of smarmy suits - Julia included, but if they can manage to shut this refugee debate down (preferably for good) and at the same time divert attention from the passage of the carbon tax, it is a win win situation. Or, just wishful thinking.

Spring Harvest

2011-09-03T19:53:00.002+10:00

"It's a big day out in the garden when the chooks move on. "

The first words in my book echo in my head every two weeks at this time of year. The chickens are on their circuit round the garden and I have spent much of today out there with them, planting out their last position.

The garden is looking spectacular after last night's rain, and the little drop we had a couple of hours ago watered in all the planting I did this morning. Two bandicoots have been despatched so the seedlings will have a chance of taking root before the wretches find their way back from an undisclosed location some 10KM away. I've given up on growing my own seedlings. I can't compete with the guy from the Yandina markets, or his hit rate. His seedlings are zombies - they never die! You just stand back and watch them grow.

I get a bit conflicted about the change from winter to spring. Much as I love the fire, and having an excellent excuse to keep my upper arms out of sight, I'm also completely devoted to the bursting forth of my verandah jasmine, and spring rain, and cauliflowers! Only get a handful each season, but they are worth the wait. The other delight is nero kale and impossibly crisp silver beet.

Now I'm back in the garden, life is reforming itself in to more gentle patterns. The festival was terrific but frantic and sucked up a big slab of time. I haven't gotten near doing anything of my own for at least a year since I published Geoff's book and rehearsed and toured the accompanying show with him. Well, as much touring as can be managed on the smell of an oily rag between farm duties. However, we'd never have found the time to rehearse to this extent in Sydney, and it's all sounding pretty good. We'll be in Sydney 18 Sept to play a gig in the Sydney Fringe Fest. Looking forward to that one. Then after that it's practically Christmas and 2012! Time keeps on slipping away on me.

So, sorry about the lack of transmission there for a while folks. (Some considerable while as it turns out). You know, it's a habit thing, when you drop a habit, it's difficult to take it back up again. But I have managed to do the last thing on the 'to do' list from my book - give up smoking. It's over - a forty year habit dropped, just like that. Who knew it was so easy?

Byron Bay Writers Festival

2011-08-01T16:07:00.004+10:00

PERFORMANCE: THEN, AND THEN

Performance Tent 4.15pm - 5.15pm (Friday, August 5)

Geoffrey Datson and Annette Hughes perform works from Datson’s book, Then, and Then

EVENT: PAUL KELLY AND THE FESTIVAL FRIENDS (SOLD OUT)

Hotel Great Northern, 35 Jonson St, Byron Bay 9pm (Saturday, August 6)

A musical Festival treat including: Paul Kelly, Ange Takats, Sean Sennett, Teresa Bell, Geoffrey Datson and Annette Hughes

I know it's been an age, and I'll be back blogging just as soon as this is out of the way. Very excited.

GLOUCESTER WRITERS AND READERS FESTIVAL

2011-03-31T15:06:00.001+10:00

Going to be in this new regional litfest at the end of April. Taking Geoff and we're going to do the hilbilly floor show for the good folks of Gloucester. Never been there before and really looking forward to it. Especially the road trip. Another one! Woohoo.

Anyhoo - go here to check it out.

HELLO SYDNEY

2011-03-09T21:39:00.001+10:00

Setting off tomorrow to drive to the big smoke for Geoff's launch at Gleebooks on Saturday afternoon. Any blog buddies in Sydney, please feel free to rock on up on the 12th March, 3:30 for 4pm. My shout.
Love to see you.

Also on that weekend is the Samurai Trash gig at the Excelsior. Saturday is sold out, but you can still get tix for the Sunday gig.

Woo hoo! Road trip!

Kindle surprise

2011-02-16T23:08:00.000+10:00

Check it out!!! Kindle edition of the book! Who'd have thought?
Amazon can let you have a copy for under $10 - no post and handling.

Drug store

2011-02-15T10:42:00.002+10:00

It's been raining and the garden is just lovely to be in, so I took the opportunity to do a little weeding and was surprised to find several lebanese cucumbers lurking beneath the cover of vine leaves. They sneak up on you - no sooner do you notice them swelling behind their bright yellow flowers than they are a foot long and ready to pick. There are about a hundred more out there setting, so the chooks will be well sick of cucumbers by the time they are finished, but I intend to use a fair few myself. They are delicious juiced up with a little yoghurt and mint.

However, today's pickings are not just cocktail hour and tonight's laksa - it is medecine!

I have a new book courtesy of the good people at ABC books - Grow Your Own Medicine: a guide to growing health giving plants in your own back yard by Mim Beim, and it's a cracker. Easy to consult with simply arranged information about how to grow and use fruit, vegetables and herbs with health as it's central raison d'etre.

So, those cucumbers are not only incredibly easy to grow, they area diuretic and will help control fluid retention. That cabbage contains glucosinolates which protect the liver from damage and improve its ability to eliminate toxins and excess hormones. The shallots, of the allium family like onions, possess antibacterial sulphur-containing compounds that assist the immune system in staving off infection. ANd the lemons? Well,we all know they contain vitamin C, but I didn't know they were helpful with constipation , sluggish liver or iron deficiency.

Sure, the book duplicates the 'complete herbals' I own, and yes, I could just google all this stuff , it's all out there on the web, but the beauty of the book is that the information is organised around the plant, not the ailment. However, if you wish to find a remedy for a specific health issue, there is a comprehensive index to point you to it.

Starting out with a general guide to gardening for the beginner, Beim then includes a section on how to prepare the plants like nana used to do in her kitchen - teas, tinctures, poultices, compresses and creams etc. Then each plant is given a brief explanation, an 'at a glance' rundown of its general properties, followed by its medicinal uses, parts used and how, and then a list of culture notes on how to grow it.

Beim also provides a list of suggested medicinal gardens. I have planted medicinal gardens before but they fell by the wayside. Her groupings of various plants into medicinal properties has re-inspired me to give over a few beds this year to a detox garden, perhaps a sleep garden and my personal favourite - a mood enhancing garden growing damania, gotu kola, lemon balm and St John's wort.

All food is medicine. For starters, it cures the pain of hunger. Our cows know which plants they need to forage for if they are ailing, but we humans appear to have forgotten this vital lore. With more and more chemical and genetic intervention in our western food chain, a book like this is gold if you care about what you put in your mouth.

Full

2011-02-08T18:21:00.000+10:00

Those water guys in charge of releases at Wivenhoe dam during the Brisbane flood crisis must have been SHITTING themselves.

The following four photos show how quickly the floods happened on a farm at Helidon on Monday 10.01.2011.

There has never been water on this cultivation before. Lockyer Creek runs behind the cultivation.
The farm is upstream from Grantham which got the full force of this creek, and another creek (Flagstone Creek) which joins into it just before Grantham.

Check out the time stamp on the photos

Uh oH - Barnes! Where are you?

2011-02-04T20:38:00.006+10:00

Cyclone tracks since 1970. SEQ has had quite a few cross the coast and make a bit of a mess.

When I first saw the original GFS (Global Forecasting System) for what became YASI, it gave Fraser Coast as the crossing. I'm born and raised in QLD - Ingham and Brisbane, have experienced cyclones as a kid in both both NQ and SEQ, the '74 Brisbane flood in my early teens and a spectacular hail storm in Sydney in my thirties that cut a swathe through the eastern suburbs and smashed my tile roof to smithereens. I have a healthy respect for extreme weather.
Thankfully the system headed north and became the bomb that lobbed on FNQ and spared us. That GFS model now suggests a similar scenario in ten days, maybe two weeks and again, it is initially aimed at the SS Coast. Having lived in Sydney for twenty odd years, I had almost forgotten that the possibility of a cyclone crossing at Fraser Island is perfectly reasonable. It is a weather magnet a the best of times.

Looks like we might be next cab off the rank for a beating.

Here is the plan so far:
1. get hold of a generator,
2. move all the crap out of a brick half-underground carport and set it up as a bunker; line with all spare mattresses
3. methodically accumulate a cyclone store of essentials and set about cleaning up the property of projectiles.
4. Check insurance policy for storm and flood cover, gather together all ID, policies and a cash stash.
5. Start packing up the really valuable irreplaceable stuff
6. Clear the property of projectiles
7. Tie the sheds down.
8, Cross fingers and hope like hell this is all unnecessary
9. FIre up the freezer and fill it up with supplies

Neither of us is young any more - we'll need a full two weeks to get all that together.
The plan is now in full swing.

Living in Quseensland 101: Always build on a hill, and know that no matter where you live between Cape York and Straddy, there is a cyclone with your name on it.

Can't blog. Got to watch cyclones.

2011-01-27T22:34:00.001+10:00

Been glued to Weatherzone since the Brisbane floods, watching discussion threads about the string of low pressure systems heading this way.

Cyclone season is early this year, and the systems are coming in at lower latitudes. There is currently a category 3 storm headed for NZ of all places! The second two models are a long way out (for cyclones, which can whip up very quickly). However, I reckon if I were Anna Bligh, I wouldn't be racing to hand out that recovery money just yet. There is a fair bit more shit and buggery coming up. When those systems cross the coast they'll drop their shit load of rain to the south. Don't think they're going to be doing much mining up here in QLD anytime soon.

These colours represent potential precipitation, white being the most but there are other model charts, with cascading psychedelic computer loops of ocean temperature, convection currents and beautiful wind flow patterns. I think these charts are why I'm so addicted. It's the hook of pattern recognition - humans can't resist the temptation to try to figure out patterns - the more complex the better. Trying to imagine the four dimensional churning of all these plotted measurements of wind, air pressure, temperature, vapor and currents above the sloshing of a vast ocean of water around the middle of a giant ball of cooling molten rock hurtling through freezing space has got me completely mesmerised.

Having experienced a couple in my childhood, tropical cyclones leave me in slack jawed awe. That second system is a 1000 miles wide! It is gigantic. Of course, it could be way off. The modeling is after all done by a computer and system number 2 may not eventuate or make landfall. Such a possibility doesn't bear thinking about. The damage from a system this size will be terrible and the repair bill astronomical, and it could cross anywhere between Byron and Cape York at this stage.

But man, look at that thing! The fact that is might happen next week, as it has many times in the past - makes you feel about as significant as an amoeba in the scheme of things.

Queensland - beautiful one day.....

TC Anthony, due to cross coast Sun 30 Jan. On track and gathering strength.

As yet unnamed, forecast to cross the coast Fri 4 Feb. Just forming up now.

But wait, there's more! System 3 forecast to cross Wed Feb 9.
And with a little friend forming up behind it appears.
And a new one forming off WA for good measure.

PARTY POOPER

2011-01-25T07:26:00.000+10:00

The feeling of patriotism is an unnatural, irrational, and harmful feeling, and a cause of a great part of the ills from which mankind is suffering, and ... this feeling... should not be cultivated, as is now being done, but should, on the contrary, be suppressed and eradicated by all means available to rational men...

Patriotism as a feeling is bad and harmful, and as a doctrine is stupid. For it is clear that if each people and each State considers itself the best of peoples and States, they all live in a gross and harmful delusion. Leo Tolstoy

Planet on Pool

2011-01-18T22:32:00.001+10:00

ABC's POOL site just posted this up on facebook, which is kind of cool.

Have a listen if you have time.

Autotase

2011-01-18T11:50:00.001+10:00

Can't resist posting this - sent to me by my sis-in-law who is a public servant with an endless stream of this kind of crap at her fingertips. Occasionally, she comes up with a goodie.

Pocket Tazer Stun Gun, a great gift for the wife.

A guy who purchased his lovely wife a pocket Tazer for their anniversary submitted this:

Last weekend I saw something at Larry's Pistol & Pawn Shop that sparked my interest. The occasion was our 15th anniversary and I was looking for a little something extra for my wife Julie. What I came across was a 100,000-volt, pocket/purse-sized Tazer.

The effects of the Tazer were supposed to be short lived, with no long term adverse affect on your assailant, allowing her adequate time to retreat to safety...??

WAY TOO COOL! Long story short, I bought the device and brought it home... I loaded two AAA batteries in the darn thing and pushed the button. Nothing! I was disappointed. I learned, however, that if I pushed the button and pressed it against a metal surface at the same time, I'd get the blue arc of electricity darting back and forth between the prongs.

AWESOME!!! Unfortunately, I have yet to explain to Julie what that burn spot is on the face of her microwave.

Okay, so I was home alone with this new toy, thinking to myself that it couldn't be all that bad with only two AAA batteries, right?

There I sat in my recliner, my cat Gracie looking on intently (trusting little soul) while I was reading the directions and thinking that I really needed to try this thing out on a flesh & blood moving target.

I must admit I thought about zapping Gracie (for a fraction of a second) and then thought better of it. She is such a sweet cat. But, if I was going to give this thing to my wife to protect herself against a mugger, I did want some assurance that it would work as advertised.

Am I wrong?

So, there I sat in a pair of shorts and a tank top with my reading glasses perched delicately on the bridge of my nose, directions in one hand, and Tazer in another.

The directions said that:

a one-second burst would shock and disorient your assailant;

a two-second burst was supposed to cause muscle spasms and a major loss of bodily control; and

a three-second burst would purportedly make your assailant flop on the ground like a fish out of water.

Any burst longer than three seconds would be wasting the batteries.

All the while I'm looking at this little device measuring about 5" long, less than 3/4 inch in circumference (loaded with two itsy, bitsy AAA batteries); pretty cute really, and thinking to myself, 'no possible way!'

What happened next is almost beyond description, but I'll do my best.

I'm sitting there alone, Gracie looking on with her head cocked to one side so as to say, 'Don't do it stupid,' reasoning that a one second burst from such a tiny lil ole thing couldn't hurt all that bad.. I decided to give myself a one second burst just for heck of it.

I touched the prongs to my naked thigh, pushed the button, and...

HOLY MOTHER OF GOD. WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. WHAT THE... !!!

I'm pretty sure Hulk Hogan ran in through the side door, picked me up in the recliner, then body slammed us both on the carpet, over and over and over again. I vaguely recall waking up on my side in the fetal position, with tears in my eyes, body soaking wet, both nipples on fire, testicles nowhere to be found, with my left arm tucked under my body in the oddest position, and tingling in my legs! The cat was making meowing sounds I had never heard before, clinging to a picture frame hanging above the fireplace, obviously in an attempt to avoid getting slammed by my body flopping all over the living room.

Note:

If you ever feel compelled to 'mug' yourself with a Tazer,

one note of caution:

There is NO such thing as a one second burst when you zap yourself! You will not let go of that thing until it is dislodged from your hand by a violent thrashing about on the floor!

A three second burst would be considered conservative!

A minute or so later (I can't be sure, as time was a relative thing at that point), I collected my wits (what little I had left), sat up and surveyed the landscape.

My bent reading glasses were on the mantel of the fireplace.
The recliner was upside down and about 8 feet or so from where it originally was.
My triceps, right thigh and both nipples were still twitching.
My face felt like it had been shot up with Novocain, and my bottom lip weighed 88 lbs.
I had no control over the drooling.
Apparently I had crapped in my shorts, but was too numb to know for sure, and my sense of smell was gone.
I saw a faint smoke cloud above my head, which I believe came from my hair.

I'm still looking for my testicles and I'm offering a significant reward for their safe return!

PS: My wife can't stop laughing about my experience, loved the gift and now regularly threatens me with it!

If you think education is difficult, try being stupid!!!!

Fluddites - Then and Now

2011-01-16T17:50:00.003+10:00

This was written by Geoff in the wake of the '74 flood, but equally applicable to now, so I've pulled together a bit of a slideshow to go with it.

It is from his previous album New Depression Songs.

They're from Queensland and they're here to help.

2011-01-15T16:42:00.005+10:00

G-man has just returned from trying to clean out his sister's place in Fig Tree Pocket. She is in Gladstone working so he went down to remove the fallen ceiling from her tenant's stuff so she could salvage it. Well, that was the plan.

However, a tsunami of shovel wielding volunteers had descended on the low-lying mud-drying suburb - ready to help. When he returned this afternoon, he looked shell shocked - not from what he'd seen - he'd cleaned up after the '74 flood - but by the frenzy of goodwill.

"I think I've just witnessed a sack," he said when he arrived home.

"In the 6 hrs I was there, there were maybe 60 volunteers through my sister's house, armed with wheelbarrows, axes, shovels. No sooner had I turned away 10 unneeded helpers at the front door, another 20 had entered through the back door and were going at it hammer and tongs. It was an insane festival of mud and destruction. The river did the first wave of damage and the 'help' did the second. We arrived at 8am as agreed with the tenant and could hardly find a park in the street.' Work ' had already started. Blokes with bob cats, front end loaders and drots were piling debris into trucks as fast as the working bee could drag it through the mud onto the kerb. 3 times we had to stop a well intentioned pump operator from trying to empty the pool."

Perhaps 'army' of volunteers wasn't the best descriptor Anna could have chosen. Armies have a chain of command. This was out of control. They came as an armed and dangerous horde - especially if you were uninsured and hoping to pick though your meagre possessions in the hope that something might be salvageable; in case that favourite pair of shoes just needed a wash, or if you had to get out fast and all your nicknacks from your glory box, on which you had hung all your fondest memories, just needed a bit of a hose down.

Nup - all trashed, all on the stinking piles on the footpaths.

I'm hearing a new euphamism in the air: The flood only got up to the eaves, but the place was totally Rudded when the waters receded.

P.S. If you do intend to volunteer, please make sure either the tenant or owner is actually present before you enter a house, and take direction from them. Don't chuck anything unless directed by them.

Solidarity Forever

2011-01-08T15:29:00.172+10:00

I'm perched on the edge of a single mattress in a two man tent which is pitched in the tray back of a ute, beneath a flapping tarp stretched over the entire car and it's pissing down. Just audible above the roar of the downpour I can hear the bass doof from three nearby stages. It's Woodford, it's wet, and nobody gives a shit. Whole families are here, from toddlers through teens to the long in the tooth, like me. The original Woodfordians would, I imagine, be in their 60s now. Their children are now bringing their own children to the festival. The buzz of excitement crackles like static around the site because it's the first day of the festival and though our socks are soggy and our campsites are sodden - there isn't any dry land, anywhere - the crowd is determined to ignore the discomfort and will the rain away.

Woodford is half my age. When it began I was well past my 'hippy' stage and in the midst of full-on motherhood, commuting between capital cities and well on the way towards the alcoholic binge of a twenty year career in Sydney. Besides - I thought of myself then as a punk rock chick, not a floaty hippy - I'd been here and done that in the mid-seventies. I'd stomped and sashayed at bush dances at the Red Brick hotel, knew by heart all the words to the half a dozen or so albums in my possession - Leonard Cohen, Dylan, Neil Young et al. I'd grown out of being a lonely girl out on the weekend and left it all behind, filed in the back of my brain as 'juvenalia'. I'd swapped cheesecloth and sandals for silk, stilhettos and champaign. Hey, it was the eighties - what more could a poor girl do? The idea of going to a folk festival then was ridiculous. Sheesh, between the races, gallery openings and long boozy lunches, hanging out in a tent listening to people with beards strangle fiddles was not way up there on my agenda. But, as they do, things have changed.

Last year I found myself at a conference at Woodford. AUSFOLK; as G-Man put it, a festival for festival directors about directing festivals. I was to host a conversation with Blanche D'Alpuget who was there with hubby Bob and talking about her recent book about his PMship. Both are big fans and supporters of Woodford. There was no appearance fee, but I was curious about what had by now become a thing of legend - Woodfordia, the festival site, so I did the gig.

To my surprise and delight, just before xmas, an email popped up in the inbox with tickets attached. Two six-day passes, with camping and, access all areas! I pulled up the website and three hours later my head was spinning with the sheer scale and size of the program. I couldn't actually attend the full 6 days - the farm and it's responsibilities don't allow much time for staying out over night, but man, what a fantastic thing they have made. Thousands of volunteers rally their collective force of will, love and imagination to build a village that caters for around 25-30,000 festivillians each of the 6 days. Everything is brought in and erected by their willing hands in exchange for the pleasure and privilege of being part of it and earning their right to a ticket. This is the genius of the festival director, Bill Hauritz - his capacity to inspire and motivate a swarm of talented locals and by giving them the tools and the confidence to be creative thinkers, gets 200% out of everyone. He makes Cecil B. DeMille look like a rank amateur.

For 25 years Woodford has sustained not only its original conception, but has built around itself an ethos which magnifies the original germ of hippy utopianism that gave us all a sliver of hope for a better world during the bad old days of Joh. It's not just about music, but all the folk arts. For example, the lost art of political rhetoric was revived by one of its most impressive masters. Sure, the music was amazing, production values impeccable and the quality of the artists extraordinary but I think that was the highlight of the festival for me.

Rain, again. Last day of the festival. It had eased off for the previous three days when I wasn't able to be here, but now it's roaring down on the bigtop above. About 2000 of us are crammed under its shelter waiting to hear the former PM Bob Hawke tell us why 'every single one of us owes the union movement a debt of gratitude'. He comes on stage, a little stooped with age, but he hasn't changed a bit - that silver quiff, the scowl masking a disarming, flashing grin.

He's amazing - fire in the belly, still, after all these years, all marbles firmly in place. He's stabbing at the air to bring home his assertion and regardless of whether or not we agree, we're hanging on his every word. I know, I'm kind of tragic when it comes to left wing politics - a dewey eyed Whitlamite to the marrow, but then when he's convinced all but a few of his point, he does the damnedest thing; launches into the union anthem Solidarity Forever, and by the end of the first chorus I'm tearing up, by the end of the song I don't care that I'm crying because I'm not the only one - what more can a poor girl do? My hands shake with the emotion of it all and I'm that grateful - to the organisers, to the gifted artists, to Choe who sent me the ticket, but mostly for the fellow feeling in the crowd, and so grateful that I had the great good fortune to be born here, in this time and place and to find myself at one with my fellow common folk.

Here's G-Man's rundown of the music. Go check it out. Brilliant.

It took Old Man Leudeke 3 days to get there. I'm guessing the blizzards in North America slowed him down, then by the time he got to Brisbane airport it was closed due to heavy rain. He explained the world can be a mysterious & wonderful place if you just remain stupid enough. Beautiful songs played against an understated solo banjo.

Two all-girl Scandinavian bands showed the boys how to do it. Recently I'd been trying to get an old eko 6 string banjo sounding good with not much success.

After seeing Baskery I can see what my problem was.

Katzenjammer swapped an unusual array of instruments effortlessly then hung great 4 part harmonies off the resultant sound.
Both these had great stage presence and boundless energy.

Captain Matchbox Whoopee Band (Show as they are now called) 30 years, deaths & one brother in a wheelchair have not wearied them.
A great performance from some old troupers. I'd not fully realised just how black their humour was.

The McMenamins; from Cairns, very cool duo, great originals & do a good cover of Gillian Welsh's Red Clay Halo. Caused me to consider that crowd sizes were sometimes inversely proportional to talent at Woodford.

SEASONS GREETINGS

2010-12-26T08:18:00.002+10:00

Just got this last bit of eating, drinking and being merry to get out of the way, then we're off to Woodford Folk Fest. Should be ... um... wet. Still, looking forward to it regardless.

Have a good one people.

Healthy Hughesy

2010-11-29T09:51:00.000+10:00

Didn't think it was ever going to happen, but I'm now looking forward to the pool.

No, really! Since recovering from that nasty bout of chest infection, I've persisted and am now really liking the feeling of water rushing past me as I plough through it. The trainer is terrific and pushes ever so gently. She has one of those personalities that make you want to achieve and push yourself just that little bit further and harder, just because she wants you to.

Today was butterfly and I actually made a whole length without stopping - 16 times! Sure, it was only 25m, with flippers, but still. You try it. It is a bloody long way when you're 50, over weight and just off the tail end of 35 years of chain smoking!

And, best of all, I've busted through the 90 kg barrier (lost 4kg) and am at that fantastic stage where excess weight is just sliding off. Sadly, it appears to be pooling round my arse on its way, but a heartening hint of muscle is peeking out from beneath the layer of blubber. My current goal is to be able to push off and NOT see the subcutaneous flesh on my arms rippling.

Aside from the swimming season membership, I've lashed out and bought myself a pair of runners. It's about twenty years since I owned a pair of proper comfy sport shoes and now that I've parted with cash, I'm going to get my money's worth. Went to one of those horrible sporty shops full of horrible sporty things, and found a nice girl who sold me a pair of men's shoes - much better option for a girl who grew up on the wrong side of the tracks and wore bare feet to school. Added to that, a pair of 1kg weights and an elastic band thingie with a DVD to show me how to use it and I'm all set.

Yesterday I took the plunge - an hour walking up over heartbreak hill and down to the end of the road carrying the weights, snug in my new shoes. Now I'm kind of muscle sore, but not so bad I need to be reaching for the epsom salts. It's that nice feeling of having done something with your body, rather than that call an ambulance feeling. And weirdly, in spite of being off the fang, I'm not actually hungry.

Added to that, I've been off the booze for few of weeks, and watching portion control and have set my controls for the heart of the sun - 65kg here I come.

Have to go there. No slacking off this time. Have just discovered a shit and buggery health issue which I'm determined to cure with health rather than reaching for the drugs. Nothing serious (unless I leave it go). So, the party really is over, dammit.

Lucky I went hard while I had the chance.

Heheh.

More cliche moments - The Lucky Duck

2010-11-19T08:07:00.002+10:00

It's about 8pm and unusually, we're up, playing music at the big table in the front room, and there's a racket in the duck house.

It's dark, and of course the torch has no battery power, so G-Man has to go out and check it out night blind. He's got a stick, and pokes it into the mouth of the duck house and can feel that at the end of the stick there is something a lot heavier than a duck in there, and so man handles the cage up and over them to reveal - yes, you guessed it - Satan (or one of his minions) wrapped around one of the young males.

"Lazy prick! Get your own dinner!" rolls off Geoff's tongue as the snake unwinds himself from what looks like a dead duck, but as Satan slithers off, miraculously, the duck wiggles its toes and quite audibly inhales. It takes a moment, but he's recovering, breath by breath. The snake must have only just taken hold of him when Geoff went out to investigate the noise. It didn't even bite - just went the strangle.

These are, by now, the most expensive ducks ever raised if you take into account their accommodation, time involved in setting up their pond (old bath) and the tons of chicken starter they consume and strew all over the place for the bush turkeys to hoover up in their wake. They will be dinner for US - not some bloody freeloading snake whose job it is to hunt rats and mice, not take the easy option of sitting ducks.

Hard to tell the extent of the post traumatic stress disorder you'd have if a snake wound itself around you and tried to crush the living bejesus out of you. He looks fairly cool with it all. Unscathed really. I imagine that what you can't see can't hurt you. He's one lucky duck.

It did happen to a friend up here. Satan had climbed into bed with her and was starting to wind around her, getting a handle on whether or not she was dinner sized. Her partner, a photographer, was torn - to leap for the camera, or to her aid. He chose to help her off with the snake but man, what a photo it would have been! Wish I'd had a camera handy last night.

Health retreats

2010-11-09T18:58:00.000+10:00

Trouble with aquatic health regimes is the plague.

A swimming pool, regardless of the tons of chlorine they no doubt dump into the water, contains some pretty virulent lurgies, all of which appear to be currently at work in my ear, nose throat and pulmonary system. It got so bad the other night I had to actually go the the bloody hospital! Oxygen, ventolin, antibiotics and IV panadol! And I don't even suffer from asthma! It was just that I couldn't breathe - just kept hacking and coughing till I was out of steam and Geoff piled me into the car to go down to Noosa to make sure I wasn't actually going to expire.

Scary. I'm OK now, but have had a gluey head for the first two days of the library tour. Bugger not to be on top form, but should be back up there by Thursday.

Will see how I feel on Friday - hope to get back into the pool with increased immunity - fingers crossed.

Moments in Cliche land

2010-11-06T14:19:00.001+10:00

My new ducklings have taken to water like - um - ducks to water!

Hilarious. The school was getting rid of them prior to holidays and as my grandmother hunger is still yet to be sated, I am stuck with small fluffy creatures. Ducks, like dolphins are especially adorable because they have a perpetual smile on their faces.

Here are the ludicrously entertaining Huey, Duey, Louie and Pooey learing to swim in my bath tub.

Addendum: Best roast duck recipe evar.

First you need to make stock as follows: Put the giblets ( but not the liver) in a small saucepan with, if possible, 2 to 5 tablespoons of white wine or vermouth; the small sliced onion, a little piece of carrot and a chopped unpeeled tomato. Let the wine bubble and reduce for couple of minutes. Add a little salt and a bouquet of herbs including parsley, time and celery leaves. Cover with three quarters of a pint of water and simmer gently for an hour or so.

To cook the duck, turn on the oven to low, gas number three, 330°F. If the duck has been trussed with wooden skewer thrust through the legs and its tail end rearing up in the air, remove the skewers so the duck lies flat. Rub it all over with olive oil. Put it on its side in the roasting tin, and leave it to cook uncovered for 30 min. Now poor from the tin all the fat which is run out. Turn the bird over onto its other side. Over it poor half pint of strained stock, hot. Leave it for another 30 min. Turn it breast upwards another 10 min for the skin of the breast to brown. Pour off the stock to serve separately as a source.

There will not be much surplus fat to get rid of, because most of it has already been removed by the first operation of pouring from the team. Heated quickly in a saucepan, adding what flavour you please, such as the finely peeled, shredded and blanched rind of Seville orange, the handful of stoned cherries, a few drops of orange or cherry flavoured liqueur and so on.

Do not throw away the fat from the duck. It is valuable for frying bread, for sauteing potatoes etc.

YOu chave no idea how valuable till you taste potatoes fried in duck fat.

Thank you to Elizabeth David and her French Provincial Cooking. If you can find a copy, snaffle it.

It's official

2010-10-29T20:21:00.000+10:00

Hi, my name is hughesy and I can't remember the last time I had a cigarette. Either I have advanced Alzheimers, or I've really actually given up smoking!

Woo hoo!
Don't even have any cravings. Don't know what all the fuss is about. You just stop.

And, I'm down to maybe a bottle of red a week (on average) and get this - am up to 2k a day in the pool!
That's two whole kilometres. Including many meters of butterfly!!!!

Added to that, I've been out treading the boards. Some people take up golf in their dotage - I've decided to enter my Mamma Cass years.

On the road

2010-10-19T14:12:00.005+10:00

I don't think one can ever do too many book tours - especially all singing all playing book tours!

If you're near one of the Sunshine Coast libraries, come along.

Blood type B

2010-09-26T14:48:00.037+10:00

Went to dinner the other night with an italian friend who has convinced me to investigate the idea of eating a diet that suits one's blood type. He swears by it, and I have to say - for a sixty year old, he looks about 40, so in a tragic fit of feminine desperation at the very idea of the prospect of ever being 60, which looms closer every day, I'm going to give it a go.

The theory is that depending on your blood type, there are certain things that you just can't eat because when digested, they poison your system. My main no-go chicken and pork, but goat, lamb, mutton, rabbit and venison and apparently beneficial. Tomatoes too, and nuts, and shellfish are off the menu (including frogs and snails, but they don't say anything about puppy-dog's tails.) Wheat will be hard to give up - apparently it's really bad, but rice is cool. Of course, this means that half of my culinary repertoire is off the menu - fark, no tomato! Eek.

I want someone to invent Foogle - a search engine that only searches recipes into which you type in all the stuff you can't have and only gives you repipes you can make. This would so be useful for those moments when you've got bugger all in the fridge.

So that's what I'm doing today - trawling the net for recipes that don't contain any of the following:

Meats:
Chicken, Cornish hens, Duck, Goose, Patridge, Quail, Pork
Seafood:
All Shellfish (crab, shrimp, lobster, mussels, oysters, crayfish, clam, etc), Anchovy, Barracuda, Beluga, Eel, Frog, Lox, Octopus, Sea bass, Snail, Striped bass, Turtle, yellowtail
Oils/fats:

Canola, Corn, Cottonseed, Peanut, Safflower, Sesame, Sunflower

Dairy:

American cheese, Blue cheese, Ice cream, string cheese
Nuts:
Cashews, Filberts, Pine, Pistachio, Peanuts, Pumpkin seeds, Sesame seeds, Sunflower seeds
Beans:
Lentils, garbanzos, black-eyed peas, Beans (pintos, aduke, Azuki, Black)
Grains:
Wheat (bran, germ bulgur, durum, whole and white), Shredded wheat, Cream of wheat or any products such as flour, bread and noodles made with these grain products; Wheat (bran, germ bulgur, durum, whole and white), Shredded wheat, Cream of wheat or any products such as flour, bread and noodles made with these grain products; Buckwheat, Corn (cornflakes, cornmeal) and any products such as flour, bread and noodles made with these grain products;Amaranth, Barley, Kasha, Seven-grain, Wild rice, Couscous; Bagels, Muffins (Corn and Bran), Bread (Multi-grain Rye, Whole wheat), Soba Nooldes, Wild Rice, Couscous
Vegetables:
Artichoke, Avocado, Corn, Olives, Pumpkin, Radishes, Sprouts, Tempeh, Tofu, Tomato
Fruits:
Coconuts, Persimmons, Pomegranates, Prickly pear, Rhubarb, Starfruit
Spice:
Ketchup, Allspice, Almond extract, Gelatin, Pepper (black and white)
Herbs:

Aloe, Coltsfoot, Corn silk, Fenugreek, Gentian, Goldenseal, Hops, Linden, Mullein, Red clover, Rhubarb, Senna, Shepherd's purse, Skullcap
Beverages:

Distilled liquor, Seltzer water, Soda

The Difference a Day Makes

2010-09-23T19:44:00.018+10:00

Aristotle Says - Geoofrey Datson 2010

Well, I'm back - finally, after being under ten tons of reality for the past howeverthefucklong its been since I've posted here.

So, hello everyone. Glad to see you're all still there. Yes, I've been lurking, but until now, I haven't really had anything auspicious enough to talk about till today. Today was amazing, in a weird criss-cross-connection kind of a way.

Today I finally got on top of the last of the outcome reports for the festival this year and grant application deadlines for the festival next year. It's been like living under the overhang of a cliff; you know it's eventually going to fall on you, but hey, why move till you can hear it cracking? This is the way of the deadline junkie - our body clock is set to the 11th hour, working on the premise that you might go under a bus at any moment. so live it up and only approach that deadline when it is totally due. Only ever do unpleasant things as a last resort - life is for living, not being a beastly swot. I sometimes wonder what I could have achieved if I didn't have this appalling work ethic.

Today, I can push all that to the back of my hard drive, and move garage band and itunes to the dock and you tube and myspace to my bookmarks bar and get my head into music production - one of the main reasons I moved bush. It wasn't for the chooks, it was for the art life, and music sits right in the centre of that. The festival is kind of close, but there's way too much stupid paperwork attached to it for it to be as complete a pleasure as making one's own art. As well as writing long, I write short. Songs, lyrics. I don;t presume to poetry, I don't have the practice to be any good at those complex forms, but song? I reckon I have a pretty good ear for that folk form. I know thousands of them, and find whole swathes of memory hanging off just the first bar of most.

Today, I'm back into the music. My music - the sound I make as I spin through time. I'm able to immerse myself in it now, now that I can give it full attention. I've been working on Geoff's songs with him recently - him on a host of his hand made instruments - banjos, dulcimers, guitars - and me predominantly on dulcimer, at which I am only a beginner, but it's so beautifully simple to play, I'm starting to get confident with its modal intervals and have relaxed into it. Funny, Geoff wrote all the songs with a full compliment of electronic orchestration at his disposal, but to play them together in real time beats the slickest of production values for sheer pleasure. Our rehearsals are starting to sound really good, so good that I'm now ready to pull my own songs out of the shoebox under the bed and have a fair idea of how I want them to sound. That's when It hit me...

Today I really felt it - I'm a month ago turned fifty. Maybe that's the real reason I haven't been so cyber-social lately; shock and awe. In the first instance I went all fighto-menopausal and sooky about everything; the full wicked witch of the north/ Granny Clampet effect. Then I went all quiet and just got on with the workload, but not before I'd completely fucked up a fifteen year friendship with a female friend, solely on the grounds that she's still only 40! But then suddenly the fog lifted, and I realised that for the first time in my life, I didn't actually give a flying fuck- about anything. Especially not what anyone might think of me, and the pall of self-consciousness that smothered me in adolescence just evaporated!

Today, with the exception of when I gave birth to my son, I truly feel like I fill my skin, living up-against-the-windscreen-no-rear-vision-full-speed-ahead life. Trouble is, at that moment, coming at you from all directions is the event horizon of your mortality. It always seemed so far off in the distant future - until now. That's when the desperation sets in, when you shed that bullet proof bravado you donned all those years ago. I always dreaded finding a self all pink and vulnerable, but in fact, it's the opposite! The more layers of self I shed, the more crystalline I become ( or hard faced bitch if you happen to be in the vicinity). It's spooky, but that's what the long-term research is showing. I guess it's the same thing as trees on their way to being diamonds - the human soul/consciousness/being makes its way down to its hardest, most purified material manifestation - the soul personality that we all aspire to. Swedenborg calls it the angel we are - the vibrational energy we resonate at. Astrology says there are twelve houses, the chromatic scale has twelve notes. And Aristotle says the Bees have no ears "and they cannot learn the song of Spring". Geoffrey disagrees and takes the bee's POV in his song (see above); "bee thinks you'll never teach a human things/as the air is thin, they got no wings."

Today I heard the bees sing that song. I was finishing the last of my deadline and Geoffrey was painting the front room - the house is a shambles commensurate with the hormone hay-wire of menopause. He's got Bob Dylan on and halfway through "Isis" he stops the music saying, come and listen to this! I down headphones and go out to join him on the lawn to watch a million bees swarming in front of the house. A wild beehive! In my front yard! It's up there with the spawning of the Barrier reef, only MUCH louder. A swarm of bees is the sound they imagined when they crafted the cello. It is the sound of them all pressed close, pushing, rubbing, humming together to produce the sound of distilled sunshine - the sound of honey. Their muddling bodies all huddled and intent on the queen took on the consistency of dripping nectar. Amazing! And it reminds me of a scene in a David Malouf novel in which a pubescent girl experiences her first period while being swarmed by a hive of bees. The image was so unexpected, so unlike any image I'd ever imagined, even in my dreams, that it has stayed with me all this time - until now.

Today, imagination bled into reality. One informed and enriched the other and I remember that I'm having the first period I've had for months, and that it might well be my last, and that event horizon just gets closer. So, between now and when I hit the compost heap, I am going to be looking out for days like today. If only i could figure out how to bookmark the link so I can find Today's frequency again. Sadly, humans don't come with a tuner. Or do we?

Today, for the first time in my life, I heard the song of spring. But humans 'got no wings', we can only hear a soft echo of it and call it music.

This one's for you Jane

2010-07-12T11:29:00.009+10:00

Jane of Cooran asked me for a copy of this speech I made to launch a recent exhibition by local artist Kim Guthrie (30 April 2010 Butter Factory Arts Centre. Extraordinary – Arts QLD touring exhibition)

I'll post a copy of the pic if I can find it.

Welcome everyone, and well done for coming along to witness this exhibition.

When Kim asked me to launch his show I wondered what was left to say that I hadn't already said in the introduction to his book Extraordinary, which includes many of the images you see around you.

You may indeed be asking yourself, “what has a writer to do with the visual arts?” However, apart from being a writer, as Trish said, I am also the director of the Reality Bites Literary Nonfiction festival which is to be held here in Cooroy at the end of July.

While putting together the program for this year I found that an overarching theme for the festival was becoming clear: the idea of bearing witness.

A witness is an observer, a spectator, a viewer, a watcher.

A witness sees, notices, is present and undergoes experience, ranging from enjoyment to suffering.

It is what we all do, every day – we witness the passage of our lives.

Some of us, like me, write it down, others try to paint it, some transpose their experience into music and others act it out. One of us has photographed it.

The writers and journalists in the festival have observed their world from their own point of view and, filtered through their consciousness, presented that vision as a stream of written language which we then read.

In reading, we bear witness to the author's version of reality.

To bear witness is to attest to, to confirm, prove, verify, corroborate, substantiate. This is why the arts is a two way street. Every act of witness requires another to bear witness. The writer requires a reader. A painting demands a viewer. The actor needs an audience, otherwise the artistic transaction is incomplete.

Our job (and pleasure) as an audience is to bear witness to the artist's thoughts and perceptions of worlds beyond our own experience.

And that is why we are all here tonight, to bear witness to what Kim Guthrie has seen, here, in this place, at this time, in this community.

This collection of images is fairly recent, but he's been out there, lurking amongst us, recording his take on this lifetime we are all in the midst of.

I own one of Kim's photos, of an old couple in Imbil, standing somewhat uncertainly in front of their museum, a shed full of the accumulated stuff of their life. I bought it because it bears witness to my own life. I see myself in them.

My museum of memory which, while perhaps not composed of the same stuff, is filled with books and paintings and sculptures and drawings, unpublished manuscripts and diaries – many diaries.

The image of that couple, with their pile of accumulated worldly goods at their back, resonates with me and tells me a truth about my own life, and points to the larger truth - you can't take it with you!

Each lifetime is a museum – a time capsule.

And that is what this exhibition is – a museum; of place and time, the personal and the public. It is a visual narrative of where I live and the people I share it with – you.

That old cliché, a picture paints 1000 words, isn't a cliché for nothing. It is true. For a writer to describe the subjects of this exhibition would take thousands of words. Guthrie, in the flutter of a shutter, can tell the whole story in a handful of images. But his work is only half done.

The rest of the work is up to you; to confirm, prove, verify, corroborate, substantiate – to find out what it means to you.

Geoffrey's new work hot off the press!

2010-07-09T02:11:00.006+10:00

This is very, very cool! G-Man and I are the featured artists on POOL this weekend.

If you don't know what ABC Pool is, go check it out. It is run by ABC producers who suck up all our free content, but hey, not complaining, since occasionally we get airplay on our ABC - our 16 cents worth!

In fact, it is deeply gratifying to know that SOMEONE is out there listening!

And, if you're not on farceburk, you won't know that G-man is launching his very first book of poetry at the festival. In fact, its a major work comprising book and a double CD set of recordings of spoken word and sung versions of the printed words.

Then, and Then: a memoir will be launched by song siren Linda Neil at the Cooroy Butter Factory on Saturday 31 July, 5-8pm.

If you're a Sunshine Coast blog buddy, come along - its a free event, and you will have the rare opportunity to see me live on stage playing dulcimer to his various guitars and home made banjos.

If you think you'd like to support your local artist and purchase a copy of Geoff's new work, here's a headsup - it is published in a limited edition of 100, 64pp book and cdx2 boxed set. This means that it's practically a collector's item already. Each copy is signed and numbered.

Further details here.

Just so you know

2010-06-15T18:45:00.006+10:00

Just in case you are unsure about these things, I have discovered that a 'standard' drink is NOT one bottle a night. Each.

Dammit.

Also, it's taken since Feb, but I'm finally fag free.

Now that I can breathe and won't be adding a gallon of vino reddo onto the intake side of things, losing that 20 kg (sigh, which is still there give or take a few kg depending on the time of the month) will certainly be a lot easier.

2 metres of reading to do

2010-04-21T08:44:00.007+10:00

Haven't been blogging for a bit - way too busy on the festival. It's been fairly full on since January, but we've just about got this year's program of writers sorted, the program copy is with the printer and all I have to do now is a bit of reading - well, a lot actually - that pile I'm holding is about a third of it.

This is the reason that I've spent the last few (unpaid) months of my life putting the festival together - the trade off. A mountain of books by festival authors has arrived and I couldn't be more delighted by the prospect of having to curl up in the cool rainy weather we're having with a cup of tea, uggies on tooters and a pile of essential reading.

I grew up in one of those protestant work ethic households where reading was considered to be a waste of valuable time. I never saw my parents read a book. Homework was OK, but not reading for pleasure . The idea of having a job that required me to read was incomprehensible to my father.

Even now I still have the nagging feeling of being a wastrel when I pick up a book rather than go outside to do some 'real' work. Those childhood experiences go in deep, but not deep enough to counter the excitement of opening a new book, in mint condition, all shiny and crisp and chock full of ideas. So far, I've read 2 memoirs by poets written in some of the most beautiful prose imaginable, a brilliant history, the story of an ex-Qld cop, a book about the science of the mind and consciousness, a brick of a biography and a bit of cool pop science.

Only another two metres to go.

The festival program will be up on line soon. Go check out the festival site and follow it if you don't already.

Fantasto Fiasco

2010-04-11T10:30:00.015+10:00

It's 6 pm on Saturday night, and we've just hit the northern outskirts of Brisbane - that long drag through Carseldine into town - and I'm starting to get my usual reaction to Brisbane; the hair on the back of my neck is up, sweating palms, prickling scalp, and the unmistakable metallic taste of anger rising at the back of my palate.

By Kedron I'm subdued and sullen, with a rising heart rate and churning gut. G-man is calm: I'm in my inexplicable state of Brisbane induced turmoil. He didn't grow up here. I did. He's optimistically looking forward to a night out in town - something we rarely do because it's a four hour round trip and we seldom get the opportunity or a good enough reason to leave the farm. Now that the city is quickly rising up around us, sucking us into its glaring lume, I'm consumed by physical flight response.

We've got tickets to the opening night of The Tasmanian Babes Fiasco at the Arts Theatre, Birmo's book adapted by Simon Bedak. I'd seen Falafel years ago in a pub in Sydney - a riotous muck-up performed in a seedy pub in the inner west. It was a total hoot, and I should have been looking forward to this with the same optimism as G-man but, I'm heading into the heartland of my youth, a place I'd spent most of my waking hours trying to figure out how to get the hell out of.

We park the car and scale the hill to Petrie Terrace in search of the pub where Bedak and crew would be having a pre-performance nerve settling bevvy or three. It's humid and by the time we get to the Normanby Hotel I'm shiny with condensation or apprehension - not sure which. I get to finally meet Mrs Bedak and jump into her lap to snuggle up into her aura of calm self possession, hoping to take the edge of my rising hysteria. A beer would help too.

As we walk along the terrace to theatre I realise that Bedak is in the same state as me - hyper and agitated - but he's got a perfectly good reason. He's about to see a bunch of kids pretend to be the characters he's lifted off Birmo's page. He's going to sit amongst a crowd of people in a darkened room and ride the knife edge of success or failure. He's going to feel every pang of terror at the delivery of each line, each passage of action; is it working? It's a bit like being in a car crash when time passes excruciatingly slowly because your adrenalin has kicked in and you've got all the time in the world to imagine how you could have done it better in the shadow between the action and reaction.

The lights go down. Finally, I feel my oppressive Brisbane cringe relax. I love this part of the theatre experience, in the darkened room where you know there are a hundred other people breathing all around you, in that hushed moment before you become one thing, an audience, its concentration fixed on that red velvet curtain about to open and transport you into an imaginary world - a waking dream. The curtain sweeps aside and there it is, the set, crisp and surreal in a dazzle of light, contained as if in a snow dome.

That's when it hits me like a 'punch in the guts'. The smell. The visual squalor of the set of Tassie Babes triggers a memory so acute it registers as a smell that defines my whole young adult life in Brisbane; stale cigarette, pot-reek, pungent week old garbage, foetid slime-slick fridge crisper, cockroach dirt, rat shit, rot, damp, semen and mouldy sheets, ammoniac piss splashed dunnies, and the stench of alcohol sodden upholstery, rancid fat and the cheesy putridity of empty pizza boxes.

Home.

I'm gone. I'm back there; disbelief disintegrated in that moment. When the characters emerge I'm no longer in my body. I'm there, suspended completely in the present of the unfolding drama of the characters' weird fucked-up Peter-Pan floating life, totally sucked into their car crash of one moment to the next - a whole era of my own experience condensed by Birmo and Bedak into a couple of hours of intense, horrible, exuberant, excruciating, ebullient, manic, tragic roller-coaster of a ride through time and space.

Magic.

And miraculously, as the last of the applause crackles and subsides, and the hubbub of chatter rises and reality resumes its in-your-face clamour for attention, I find that the clench at my innards is gone and I have to ask myself why the play has had such a cathartic effect. The middle of that word is 'art', and I'm pretty certain that is what I have just seen - a work of art. Light-weight escapist slapstick comedy does not have this effect. Tassy Babes may employ all those elements, but it is so much more.

Outside in the foyer the after-party is already hotting up. There's a stack of 'meat-lover's-with-pineapple' pizzas and junk food of every possible kind laid out for the punters to max their already excited conversation into overdrive with a sugar fix of massive proportions. The actors are literally glowing - it's still fairly humid - but you can feel the energy that's still arcing between them leak out and earth itself in the crowd. But best of all is Bedak, surrounded by the cast, his black eyebrows raised in the most adorable look of wonder and amazement at his own achievement, both delighted and unsure, like a little kid who's just run his guts out and won the race but can't understand why he's getting all the backslaps because he's still gasping for air. And Birmo beaming. And me, running up to the actors wishing I was five so I could just hug their legs in overwhelmed gratitude, but stuck with being adult and having to find something to say. But what can I say? Nothing I could possibly say is equal to what they have just done.

Luckily, I don't have the opportunity to stay and drink too much and become ridiculous. After a round of quick 'fuckitybyes', I set out with G-man for the long ride back to the farm.

Beyond the Brisbane outlands, enclosed in a cocoon of hurtling speed, I have the chance to integrate the memory of what I've just seen and heard into a larger matrix of memory and experience and become even more convinced that Babes is a work of art. I feed it though all the other plays I've ever seen (and I've seen a lot, I was an actors' agent in Sydney before crossing over into literature). I've seen the best and the worst, sat in the dark with audiences from the Fitzroy Hotel to the Opera House, been moved by Shakespeare and Tosca, amused by Brecht and annoyed by Chekov. About Babes, I'm thinking Restoration comedy and Coward, farce, comedy of manners. I'm re-running it, recalling scenes, lines, gags and staging.

Then I get it. There are a couple of emotionally charged moments in the play, but one in particular that perfectly and subtly offsets all the mayhem, in which JB and Stacy almost connect, and a line or two of commentary on the moment by JB to the audience. I realise that all that time ago, I was her, Stace. I was that house den mother. I had her sass, her mouth, her desire to create order out of chaos, and her fond hope of something well, better.

Then I'm struck by the violence that permeates the work, expressed in the constant battle to survive, the oppressive only thinly repressed anger at the cops, the rough white-shoe shod power of the developers, the chick on chick bullying and the desire to just leave it all on hold for a moment and just get trashed.

By the Morayfield turnoff, I've finally got a handle on precisely what it is that makes my skin crawl on approach to Brisbane. Those memories, the confused buried feelings I have about that place are all about the violence I've never dealt with, violence I endured and to my shame occasionally perpetrated against others - the street marches, the petty bitching, the public and the personal acts of aggression that formed me and made me into the adult I have become.

I don't mean that theatre is a form of social working, or trauma workshopping, or over-share - it can be all those things. What I mean is that it can hold a mirror up to your life, a mirror that reveals all the spots and blemishes, the scars and lines. You can run, turn away, reach for the spack-filler and pretend it's not you, but it is far more useful to stand there naked, take a good hard look and face the truth about yourself and your past. Art is innocent in this. It can't make you go there - there was nothing to stop me closing my eyes and jamming my fingers in my ears - but if it is interesting and entertaining enough, it can hold your attention for the length of time it takes for you to absorb it in its complete form, with all its resonant complexity. Art doesn't change the world; it doesn't actually do anything. But man, it can make you think if you have the courage to lay yourself open to its meaning.

And so, ladies and gentlemen of the cast and grew of Tassie Babes, to Natalie, Bedak and Birmo, thanks for that.

And to you, the audience who went there with me, thanks for the shared pleasure and pain.

And to anyone reading, reach down the back of the couch and find enough loose change to do yourself a big favour. Go see Tassie Babes.

Back from the dead

2010-03-31T22:33:00.006+10:00

Telstra - what can I say?

PLENTY!

Friday 26

I phoned sales and activation to discuss a letter received in the mail from Ramon Gregory, regarding the upgrade of my account from Bigpond ADSL Liberty (12GB) 1500/256 to Bigpond ADSL Elite Liberty (12GB). My plan was apparently due for renewal, and I called to speak to a consultant who was in the midst of telling me about the various plans available when I was disconnected.

I made another phone call (after waiting or ten minutes on hold) and was connected to a different consultant who then proceeded to tell me that I could renew my plan to a 'bundle including home phone.

I completed the new plan details with him and then very soon after, on Friday afternoon at about 5pm, my internet connection went down.

Following that moment ot truth, I made several phone calls to activations and tech support, each time waiting for extended periods on hold to be put through to consultants who, although they did attempt to be helpful, kept me bouncing back and forth between the two departments.

1. Phoned tech support who informed me that there was a problem with the codes, and referred me back to activations.

2. Phoned activations who told me that the codes were fine, and that it was a tech support matter.

It wasn't. And by now, really too late to do anything much, I went to sleep.

I shouldn't have.

Saturday 27

3. Several more of these calls back and forth between departments were made until I was eventually told by an activations consultant that the codes on my line were for ADSL 1 and not ADSL 2, which apparently is what was in the bundle, and I asked her to drop the bundle and retain the old account codes. She spoke to tech support and then told me that I should turn the modem off, wait half an hour and it would all be restored.

It wasn't.

4 I called tech support again and was told that he could 'guarantee that probably, the activation would take effect the next day'.

It didn't

5 The next call was to activations to tell them that this hadn't happened, and the whole process began again until I was told that tech support had found that the codes were alright and all that needed to be done was to reset the password, but the system was down and this couldn't happen till later in the afternoon and that I should ring back then.

I politely said thank you through gritted teeth, and went off to see if I could entice the neighbour's dog into my yard so I could kick it. Somehow it gauged my mood and stayed on its own side of the fence.

Sunday 28

No joy - bitter disappointment.

Monday 29

5 Monday morning and still no joy. I call to find that but that bigpond's system is still down and monsiur supervisor couldn't access it to reset the password, and that I should call back in the afternoon. Which I did at about 2:30pm to be told again that the system was still inaccessible, but that having done a line search found there was a problem with the codes, not the password, and now I'm wondering what the hell is going on, and if in fact this whole thing is one elaborate April fool joke.

7 I called back tech support to tell them that they needed to reset the password, but in conducting yet another line check, they ascertained that the codes were for ADSL 2, and that I can't access that (yes, I know, I'd already been through all that with a previous consultant ) but this did not seem to move them in their assertion that it had not been changed and that the codes were still incomplete and that it would take up to three working days to recover my connection thanks to the bigpond help desk to where my problem had apparently been elevated. When I tried to tell him that no, this was not the case, that I'd had the codes removed, he hung up or I was disconnected.

8 Again I called activations who again referred me to a tech support consultant who consulted with his supervisor who told him that the 'codes on the line are incomplete' and I asked him to speak to the activations supervisor and get verification from them that the codes, as far as they were concerned were complete. When he came back on the phone he told me that there was some problem out side his control and I was told yet again that the problem had been 'escalated' to the bigpond help desk, which may take 2 working days to rectify - even though no one seemed sure what 'it' might be.

9 Then I found John from Woolongong who was extremely helpful and managed to isolate the problem, get in touch with his supervisor, think creatively and figure out that this whole mess had been because some overzealous sales consultant not only sold me a plan that I could not access due to available speed in my area, but also entered an incorrect activation date throwing the entire order and my internet access into the vortex.

John very kindly assured me that I'd be able to access my internet account 'tomorrow' (29 March) by about 1pm. In the meantime, he set me up a dial up account. However, just as John was telling me how to access dial up, I was cut off (again, again) .

10 Another interminable hold and I got through to tech support at about 5:50pm, havnig been at it since 2pm. However, due to the bad quality of the line, I was unable to actually hear the dial up tech support consultant on my first attempt to set it up, after hanging on and being shuffled (finally) to the mac support section.

11 Then I found myself there again, on hold for 30 minutes to the worst hold music ever, guaranteed to turn any sane reasonable person into a raging lunatic after a five minute hold. To date, I'd spent a total of four hours on hold to telstra bigpond, not including the time spent on hold whilst connected as consultants consulted with each other.

Still on hold but thankfully, the music stopped (but fearful I was about to be disconnected for at least the fifth time in my overall attempts to obtain support) - no, there it was again, just to make sure I was entirely demented by the time I actually got connected to a dialup consultant.

40 minutes later ( and I don't have a speaker phone,) I was also getting a crook in my neck and would have visit the chiropractor at some stage to rectify that.

12 Having finally got through at about 7:30pm, I found that the dial up connection was useless because my hardware is incompatible with the mac support consultant's solution, and therefore, the last hour on hold was for nothing.

I am a mug, telstra is in control of the universe, and though everyone had been terribly sorry for being unable to help, I was still up shit creek without a paddle.

As this is all apparently not Telstra's fault and therefore must be mine for trying to purchase a service from them, I felt somewhat cowed. I'd lost one day of productivity with the prospect of losing at least another half day, unless of course nice John from Wollongong came up against the same death-star defence shield as I did.

Which (natch) he did.

13 Still no connection and yet another session of trouble shooting, answering the same series of soul destroying questions, in spite of trying, as politely as possible, to inform the consultant about the circumstances of my problem which, despite all my assurances that yes, we were talking about the same lights on the modem, I still had to endure till the bitter end, until he'd run out of amo or trouble to shoot at, relented and, put me onto a supervisor who was 'seeing what he could do'.

uhoh, musicgone…
he's back.
and waddaya know? Still no connection.

14 30min spent waiting on the phone; 'Codes now on the line and up to 70% - loading up'.

I'm almost elated.

In vain.

Tuesday 30

4:4pm Still no connection.

Let's call telstra again!

15 But in spite of being armed with the previous supervisor's insistance that I could be connected directly to a supervisor, again, I was dragged screaming across the field of dead and dying corpses similarly being troubleshot by help desk snipers and had to submit to the process of disconnecting and reconnecting the modem - a process I now know more throughly than any of the children at the call centre.

Finally, I speak to a supervisor who has discovered that there are no codes on the line, despite my being assured in the last call that this was fixed, that my connection was at 70%!!!! However, one large incursion into the depths of the deathstarr had been accomplished - at least now they were ringing me back!

5:21pm
Wow, she called. Who'd have thought?
Still no connection though.

Apparently, the codes were still incomplete and wouldn't be back up till tomorrow.

Two days down on my workload now, unable to meet my deadline. Still, unmoved by my plight, the supervisor assuered me that she would ring me back on Wednesday to tell me when the connection was up and running.

Wednesday 31

Meeting out of my office till midday and , surprise surprise, a message on my mobile from Telstra. Couldn't call back till I got home and was seated in front of the puter to (again again) reset my modem, but hey, I didn't have to sit on hold for a million years, and felt grateful for that small mercy.

16 At 3:15pm Ziza, from a call centre situated on the outer regions of a star system in a galaxy far far away (judging by the quality of the reception on a line apparently run by the telco in question) gave me the good news - I was 'coded' correctly and could now rejig my modem and get access.

Like labour, at the end of the process, I found my self feeling grateful for the delivery of the burden I would now have to bear - further dealings with the most pathetic excuse for a service industry ever devised in the entire history of human stupidity.

Had they simply said at the very beginning of the process, ' Piss off peasant, we'll get to it when we're good and ready, and what, you think you have a CHOICE?' I'd have just sat tight and waited pathetically - as is my birthright - and not wasted all that time and energy trying to fathom the depth and breadth of Telstra's infinite capacity to fuck me off.

What was I thinking?

So, if anyone has any suggestions as to which carrier to switch to, I'd be grateful.

South Country Fair

2010-03-18T12:03:00.009+10:00

As you may or may not be aware, I am a blue ribbon champ of the Noosa Show for my Rosella Jam, not to mention 'three turnips, any variety'.

I love those country shows - heavy horses, baby animals, the woodchop comp, but best of all, the pavillion - chock full of hand crafts and cookery, cake decoration and a bounty of home grown produce. You'll never see the stuff in these pavillions in a shop, and certainly not in a supermarket, though you may find a taste of it at a farmer's market if you're lucky. It is all hand made - everything is original, made by the hand of amateurs (that's 'lovers' in French). In fact, if you think about it, the show itself is hand made by amateurs. Millions of volunteers meet in dusty schools of arts halls in small towns all over the country to put together these once a year social events.

Every year I plant my Rosella crop in anticipation of entering the competition for 'jam, any variety'. Last year, not only did I pick up that coveted blue prize card, but a spiffy ribbon to add to my haul, in commemoration of 100 years of the show. Now that's history. The country show is time capsule, but is at the same time contemporary. These shows, though seemingly anachronistic, continue to be a focus for small towns. Even the big shows in the capitals still persist in drawing crowds and still, in spite of all the warnings to the contrary, the same sugar filled categories of cookery endure. And I hope they never change, because the very practice of making these recipes makes you think about our not too distant social history of scarce ingredients, the need to preserve produce, and the possibility that such circumstances might arise in the future as the climate changes, or that we may have to face another global recession.

So you can imagine how delighted I was to receive a copy of The Blue Ribbon Cookbook in the mail, courtesy of Wakefield press. It is bliss! Both a pictorial journey through all the country shows of South Australia, including the biggie in Adelaide and a collection of stories about the blue ribbon cooks and their recipes, though I can't imagine how the author managed to get thems to part with such top secret intellectual property.

I've never had the courage to enter any of the deadly serious categories, like 'rich fruit cake' - that is the seat of the gods. Likewise, I've never quite understood the organic chemistry of chutney and pickles, but armed with this book, and am going to venture into the lemon butter category this year - I have the eggs and the lemons, and now a set of idiot proof instructions thanks to Bob, the Wilmington show champion, and maybe I'll have a crack at Renmark men's only cake competition champ, Paul's Orange cake, decorated it by torch light on the bonnet of his ute.

Anyway, the Blue Ribbon Cook Book is a beautiful piece of book producton that takes a loving look at the strange ephemeral creative expression of the ordinary people who, year after year, preserve the living cultural heritage of the agricultural show. Gorgeous.

Wet wet wet

2010-03-12T09:38:00.003+10:00

It started the day after I went to Adelaide an hasn't really stopped since - 357mm and more on the way. Just got the garden restablished and now all the tomatoes have root rot and the zucchinis have turned to mush dammit. Corn is doing well though. I have two beds planted out which will finish my first home reared crop of meat birds. Corn fed, hand fed mouthwatering little feasts they will be too. Possibly the most expensive chicken in the history of poultry production, but I know exactly what they have eaten, and they will be delicious.

I guess it's why a roast chook was such a special occasion dish when I was a child - mum had chooks in the back yard when I was young, so did my grandmothers. I take rediculous pleasure in saving the best leftovers for them partly becasue it is going to be recycled into future food, rather turning green at the back of the fridge, but mostly becasue I could spend hours watching them chase eath other round the pen after the tastiest morsels. Chicken tag.

It is also pretty funny to wathc the young males size each other up and cockfight. Becasue they are all brothers, they don't actually kill each other, but if they were in a pen with other unrecognisable cockerels they would.

One is already named Picasso, becasue that is what he will become - chicken picasso, however I am looking for fabulous chook recipies for which to name the others.

Suggestions welcome.

That time of the Monthly

2010-03-09T10:25:00.005+10:00

If you live under a rock, you may have missed the recent Germaine Greer ruckus sparked by Louis Nowra's less than complimentary rant about the 40 year anniversary of her Female Eunich in the recent issue of the Monthly in which he manages to become all the things he accuses her of.

So, go make a coffee and come back to be amused by Helen Razer's hilarious Vajazzling of Nowra and follow the links.

Places of the heart

2010-03-07T09:27:00.009+10:00

The thing about a writers' festival that I love most is that I always come away from it having found something completely unexpected , something outside of normal radar range.

This Adelaide writers' week I went to a session about writers as readers mainly to see Charlotte Wood. I already know I love her work and that anything she says will be brilliant and thoughtful and intelligent. Then, this pohm got up. I'd never heard of him, possibly because I don't have TV and was unaware of his BBC profile, or I am a mad recluse and think I have enough information to last me for the next 20 years until I keel over. I'd even missed the opportunity to have a few drinks with him at the Harper Collins cocktail party on the deck of the Murdoch deathstar the night before because I was too busy guzzling as much of uncle Rupert's Wira Wirra Church Block as possible, while catching up with girlfreinds I never see.

Next time, I shall be more diligent about meeting the visiting international authors, because since reading "Sissinghurst" by Adam Nicholson, I wish I'd taken the opportunity to bail him up and talk manure for an hour or two.

He's not the kind of bloke you'd think would be interested in such things, being standard issue English landed gentry, but when he opened his mouth and began to tell his story, he was rivetting - well, to me anyway, and about 1500 other elderly ladies who obviously had seen the program on Sissinghurst - the home of Vita Sackville West and mecca for lesbians world wide.

Adam Nicholson is her grandson and inherited her stately home and garden from his father Nigel. Well, not the property itself - the National Trust owns that - but the right to live there.

When he returned to his childhood home with his own family he found it changed. What had once been a small boy's paradise of nooks and crannies, climbing trees and secret hides had been replaced by the sanitised neatness of the National Trust's version of a great mansion and garden. But worst of all, the park was no longer a working farm. What had once been under intensive cultivation with cattle, sheep, cerials, hayfields and coppiced woodland was now all under commercial cerial crops to be shipped to Egypt or Equador. Sissinghusrt's fields had once provided industry and produce for a whole region, employing many families, it's fertility ensured by age old land management practices, but all that had disappeared in only forty years.

Nicholson's plan is to restore that aspect of Sissinghurst - it's setting, the working farm that held the house and garden in place - the plush green cushion upon which the jewel of mansion and garden rested. However, the Trust was, and still is to a certain extent, unconvinced of his vision, and this book is his attempt to convince them and the reader that his thesis is the right approach, and it is brilliant. His plan is to restore a working farm to supply the Sissinghurst restaurant with produce grown there, and sell value added produce to visitors.

He weaves his own relatively short family history of association with the house into a longer history of the estate and its prior occupants, its great glory during the Elizabethan era and its eventual degradation until Vita buys it and creates the garden. The book is replete with metaphor, fantastic description and a soaring romantic perception of the natural world. He writes beautifully and convincingly about place, and I particularly love this idea:

I think that the farmed landscape is the most beautiful thing the human race has ever made. There is no need to be parochial about this: the great temperate belt, below the great forest and above the great desert, the humano-bio-sphere, girdling the earth, humanising it, is the great human habitat, the monument to symbiosis, to human and natural interpenetration. Is that human devised skin wrapped around the earth no more than a product of an economic desire to survive, to get the food in? Surely not. More than the wilderness, it is our world, essentially co-operative and the great testament to what we are.

My particular problem with Sissinghurst - that I am both in it and excluded from it, that it is mine and not mine, that it has me by the heart but there is no possession there, that in some ways it is a source of life and meaning and in others a trap - all of this is only a heightened version of what our general realationship to place always has to be. We are all disposessed. We are mortal, the earth is not ours and we are transient passengers, even parasites on it. And so almost by definition we must do things on it and with it which stand to be good in the long term.

In my own mind, I have arrived at a particular phrase: the honourable landscape. Honour is the only thing that survives death. Honour is the denial of self and time. Honour understands about the virtue of the broad compass, of taking account of what matters. Honour is not singular. It stands outside the claims of ego, the desire to exploit, dominate or spoil. It understands about mutuality and the folding in of contradictory desires into a single veriegated but integrated whole. It is a social and moral quality founded on a self-renewing respect for the reality of others. It may be a hopelessly antiquated formulation, but that is in the end what I am interested in here.

Me too. Nicholson articulates perfectly how I feel about our farm, this beautiful place that G-Man's father husbanded with great honour for the last thirty years of his life and which we have now inherited, but not in any possessive sense. Our farm is owned by a family trust. All that Joe bequeathed to us is the desire to maintain it, nurture it and its generations of creatures for a new generation of humans to learn to love and cherish. I hope its future inheritors won't carve it up into residential ponderosas, but while I'm still breathing, that won't happen. As Vita wrote in her diary at her son's suggestion that Sissinghurst be given to the National Trust:

Over my corpse or my ashes; not otherwise... They shan't; I won't; they can't make me;... I never would.

Adelaide is ...

2010-03-01T09:09:00.004+10:00

going off - the festival is full on and the fringe is now insanely big. So much so that its no longer a fringe as far as I can tell, and is totally mainstream, which means I will not be going - not that I ever did - I hate fkn clowns.

But the writers' week is, as usual, brilliant. Saw a fantastic bloke speak - a kind of a pohmmy JB - Phillip Kerr. Never read his stuff because its detective gear, but I will now. He can tell a mean story.

After hours is publisher parties, hanging out with their authors and international publishers and trying to remember that I'm an author, and not an agent anymore! Too weird to find myself pitching books to a french publisher when they arejust things I've read and love and nothign in it for me! Old spots that just don't go away.

Had indian with the charming Steven Conte (author of the Zookkeepers War) last night. Haven;t read his book, but then, he hasn't read mine, so we jsut talked about the biz over dinner, and story, and next books. Cool.

However, the exercise regime though it started out with the best intentions, has come to a grinding halt. I walked both ways to the fest yesterday, but on the way back twisted my ankle, and this morningit is up like a baloon and painful, and though I can put pressure on it, I won't be walking too far. Dammit. I was really enjoying the walk.

Thinner chicken dinner

2010-02-26T16:55:00.006+10:00

One for the blubber busters:

Roast Chicken Picasso - this is the easiest, cleanest and most delightful way to cook a chook. Rub it all over with olive oil, S&P. Now, take one whole lemon, prick it in several places with a fork and place it inside the chook with a sprig of rosemary and parsely. Place in an oiled baking tray, sprinkle with more rosemary - fresh if you've got it - and cook in the normal way. The lemon perfumes the meat and steams the chook from the inside, making the flesh extraordinarily tender.

For the baked vegies - go for spuds if you can't resist the temptation, but don't peel them - put them in the oven whole as they are (no foil - oxidised aluminium give's you Alzheimer's, they say). When they're done, cut them in half, scoop out the white flesh and give that to the chooks, or save it as spakfiller, and eat the skins. They are delicious roasted like this with black pepper, and maybe a little of that mayo you've got left in the fridge. You can do the same with sweet potato, but save the flesh of those for a cold salad the following day. If you are desperate for the LOOK of a baked dinner with a pile of white stuff as a side issue but are off carbs entirely, steam some cauliflower and toss it in olive oil and garlic.

For the veg, mix only-just-steamed green veg lightly sauted with julienned carrots in a little butter and a tabspspoon of sugar to caramelise the carrots - these quantities of 'bad' stuff will not blow the diet, but they will make vegetables worth eating. Whatever you do, don't over cook the veg - they should be al dente - never mushy.

input/output log week one

2010-02-26T14:53:00.004+10:00

So, here's my totals for the week - input and output. Not going near the scales for a month.

It's really just for me to keep tabs on balance across a whole week and not obsess about calories and all that shit. That kind of thing can send you mental.

The only way to know for sure what is in food is to make it yourself. I am way too busy to spend hours in the kitchen, so I do fast food. Anything more than 20 min prep time means it's overcooked, and any nutrition that may have been in the dish has leeched out of it. Added to that, life (well mine anyway) is way too short to eat just for the sake of it. It should be a shared pleasure. Even if my portions are now smaller, the meal still has to be delicious and worth the time and energy (and love) invested in it.

Also, water is really important. I've got 2x 750ml bottles in the fridge for those moments when I find myself staring wistfully into is cold hard glare. Hopefully a swig or two of water will satisfy both food and nicotine urges.

Sat 20 Feb

Output: rode to town on the bike - 5 k

Input: Something eggy on toast - scrambled with tomato sauce. (I am so not giving up tomato sauce - an essential food group all on its own! - but when the tomato plants are bearing I'll make my own which won't have nearly so much sugar in it as the commercial stuff.)

Chicken (left over roast) salad - lashings of green vegies and balamic and oil dressing

Grandma's birthday (no way out) Roast lamb - small serve of meat, large serve of vegies and no spud.

One small slice of some gluten free apple cakey thing - no cream.

ONLY FOUR GLASSES OF RED ! Moderation, thy name is Hughesy!

2x750 ml bottles of water.

Sun 21 Feb

Output:

Rode back from town on the bike 5 k

Input:

Something eggy on toast - boiled egg with FINGERS (not soldiers!)

Yellow chicken curry made with a little suflower oil, much onion, carrot, garlic and ginger, stirfied for a few moments with Mae Ploy yellow curry paste till aromatic, coat the chicken in this mixtre for a moment till lightly golden and then pour in 200 ml of coconut milk, and 2 cups of boilin stock. The local organic chook producer's cheapest cut is 'wingetts' which are perfect for this - they are skinned and don't need to be in the pot for very long. When the chook is done, turf in a splach of fish sauce, torn kaffir leaves and a pile of any green vege to hand and only cook till just tender. Garnish with chopped deseeded red chilli and thai basil leaves. Steamed brown rice. Made a whole pot of it with intention of feeding G-man's grazing the following day, but we ate the rest for supper - couldn't be fkd cooking again

NO RED WINE!

Only half a fag - put it out half way

Mon 22

Output:

Nil - on deadline for a bunch of meetings not enough hours in the day. grrrrr

Input:

Something eggy on toast - fried + tom sauce
Many cups of black tea - no milk or sugar (because that's the way I always drink it) and over teh course of the mid afternoon, three strange sugarless nutty biscotti things of unknown recipe bought from the local health food shop, but weirdly delicious.

Pan fried chicken breast marinaded in olive oil, garlic, lemon juice, oregano (not a whole one, a half of one. A whole breast sliced through the centre still LOOKS like a whole breast, just thinner). Swilled some white wine in the pan juices and when it was boiled off, chucked in a pile of chopped parsely and more black pepper.

Green salad with a sprinkle of pine nuts, rocket and wafer thin slivers of pecorino with a splash of oil and balsamico dressing.

NO RED WINE AGAIN! WOW.

Several fags (yes, I hate myself but blame deadline neurosis for the relapse)

Tues 23

Outputs: Morning walk - up to the top of heartbreak hill. 3 k round trip.

Inputs:

Something eggy on toast.

I'm such a creature of habit. After only three days I have become conditioned to love the concept, and find that there is a vast range of dishes to fit this category. Today - croque madame (no cheese version) done under the griller.

Method. Cut a hole in the slice of bread with an egg ring and toast both pieces on a baking sheet under the griller. When you turn the toast, crack an egg into the hole and slide it back under the grill to cook the egg, but not too much - you want that yolk soft and gooey. When it's done, lay the slices of avocado and some generous spoonage of diced tomato on the egg, and place the toasted circle on top, throw on a couple of fresh torn basil leaves, then drizzle with a little olive oil and lots of freshly ground black pepper.

Meetings all day - just fruit for lunch on the run.

Stirfry - lean chicken, snowpeas and beansprouts & rice. Jasmine tea.

NO RED WINE Abstemiousness on a stick.

Wed 24

Outputs: Walk to sugarleaf rd.

Inputs:

Something eggy on toast. Mmmm BLT.

The egg is in the form of home made mayo with one egg yolk, just enough olive oil to emulcify it, a teasp of grainy mustard, lemon juice, garlic, S&P and a splash of white balsamic vinegar and one small dribble of honey. On the toast goes (one only) sliver of grilled bacon, slices of tomato, lettuce and a tablespoon of that golden nectar that is mayonaise. Bacon once a week is absolutely essential for mental health - it's not all about the waist line you know.

Lunch - Vege Laksa

Ayam laksa paste is the BEST and most authenitc I've found up here in the sticks and makes a great laksa. A little sunfower oil in the wok, brown some onions, garlic and ginger and a couple of tabsps of paste, stirfry till aromatic. Add 2 cups of stock and 200 ml of lite coconut milk. Bring to the boil and add vegies, carrots first, caulie and brocolli florets next and any greens last, and only for a moment. If you want, you can whack some cubes of tofu in too - but resist the temptation to fry it. You should have a (small) handful of rice noodles soaking in hot water - drain them and put them in the bottom of a bowl, on top of that use bean sprouts to replace the amount of noodle you'd expect to get in a laksa. Pour on the soup and top with chopped corianda.

Thurs 25

Outputs: two hours scrambling up and down a newly bulldozed hillside sowing pasture grass with G-man. Now THAT's a workout!

Inputs:

Something eggy on toast.

Finely sliced rings of red onion, capers and a strip of smoked salmon on the toast, drizzled with a little olive oil and topped with a perfectly poached egg (and a sprinkle of oregano & black pepper)

Meeting lunch time - nothing - out at a meeting all day

Arvo Snack-Flat bread 'pizza'

One of my fave pizzas in italy is the margerita - it has no cheese - just the bread base with tomato sauce, oregano and olive oil. Rather than make the pizza dough, I just use leb bread as the base. G-Man will get cheese and a choice of other stuff on top, but I actually prefer the simplicity of the combination of totally slenderising ingredients.

Total blowout - I knew the abstenance bubble would burst. A bottle and a half of red. However, did not actually eat anything. We were too busy in the studio and by the end of the bottle, too pissed to be bothered. However, it was a quality blow out - found a bottle of 27 yr old pino nior in the back of the cupboard which, to my vast pleasure, was completely delicious!

Friday 26

Outputs: Afternoon walk up heartbreak hill and back 2 k

Inputs:

Something eggy on toast. scrambled with smoked salmon.

Panfried greek chicken breast & salad

There will be a break in transmission while I go to the Adelaide Festival, but I'm going to be trying to make lite choices - should be interesting. Intend to do most of it on foot - my accom is on the other side of town from the festival, AND, it has an indoor pool which I'll be making the most of each morning.

No doubt, G-Man will take the opportunity for a BBQ'd red meat fest while I'm away. But then, there's every possibility that I might too! There are times when you look down a menu and Venetian calves liver and onions is the ONLY thing you can see.

We'll see.

Ten rules for writing fiction

2010-02-25T12:17:00.005+10:00

This two part article is hilarious - and true, all too true
Enjoy. Part 1 Part 2

Breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dine like a pauper

2010-02-22T23:37:00.004+10:00

Since the start of this rediculous resolve to become fit and healthy - (ergh, just the thought of it conjures visions of lycra and bad sports wear choices) I've already reached obsessive compulsive disorder levels of concentration on the problem of "The 20 KG".

Breakfast is a big problem - I can't usually face food till about 11am, so as it is something I have to make myself remember to do, 'something eggy on toast' it is. And that slice of toast is the only bread of the day. We use that heavy as lead Essene bread made from sprouted wheat instead of the foam rubber variety. It is marginally more expensive than your toasty loaf of sourdough, but lasts for days in the fridge. Sprouted grains have much more vitamins etc than ground grains - which becomes a vegetable rather than a starch, and is much more easily digested.

I have to try to get the lunch thing together and make that the main meal of the day, or poor G-Man will keel over and waste away to nothing with me off the fang and not really prepared to go there with the two separate meals thing - we'll eat the same, I just won't have the spud - easy enough to resist - I don't really like them anyway, unless they are fried in duck fat which, sadly, will be a once in a blue moon occasion instead of every week since having discovered how to render the fat. So, red duck curry is on the special occasion menu only.

The thing I don't think I'll be able to survive without is rice, because stirfried anything is our staple diet, but a mate bought me a rice cooker and since then, it's so effective at fluffing brown rice up with steam, (I actually prefer brown to white - it tastes nutty and the texture is better) I only use a one and a half cup portion for the two of us, so nup - not going off rice - FK that. It is pretty much the only carb on the list, maybe a sweet potato occasionally. But I am going to cut down on the coconut milk - now it's going to be lite, and seriously diluted with home made stock, making my curries a lot wetter.

Never did do dairy much - but no yoghurt anymore. Or great lumpen slabs of cheese, dammit.

The garden has come back to life since the rain, so I'll have a supply of fresh F&V in about a month - so less trips to the supermarket and access to the row upon row of shite they disguise as food behind all that packaging.

And the fags. Substance replacement therapy. Water - great big gugly swigs of it to ward off the craving. Only lasts a couple of days anyway. Needing to actually breathe after the bike ride left me feeling like a complete loser.

And the booze. Seeing as I'm giving up fags that will have to go to, because of the association - my will power is just not strong enough to go off the fags and stay on the booze. They are blood brothers, and have to go together till the nicotine is out of my system. Then, no more CRAP booze, because with fifteen bucks a day extra in my pocket, I'm switching to the good gear.

Suggestions required - around the $20 - $30.

However, unless the tucker that is allowed is palatable, there is no way I'm going to be able to stick to this regime, so the philospophy is - breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, and dine like a pauper. Theoretically this should cut down the consumption of alcohol: a pauper's dinner isn't likely to justify a bottle of good wine, a prince may consume it at lunch time, but unlike us mere mortals, he rarely has anything to do for the rest of the afternoon, and even a king wouldn't consider a tipple with his Croque Madame!

Blubber Busting Tip # 1 - Allow at least 45min for a 5 min bike ride

2010-02-20T21:43:00.007+10:00

Well, off she went, that intrepid foolhardy Hughesy, off to town on an actual bicycle. Had a meeting at about 4pm. Left here at ten to. Plenty of time - only a minute or two to push the bike up heart break hill, then down hill all the way, a Wind in Her Hair coast!

What I failed to factor into the time and motion equation were three -damn, THREE! - gentle climbs between the bottom of the heartbreak and town. Man, I thought I was going to expire.

I am not a timelord. According to G-man, the car ride into town is at the very least ten minutes, and those humps reduced my pedalling to less than walking speed and burning thighs. By the time I arrived at the meeting at 4.30, I was gagging, driping in sweat and needed at least two tumblers of H2O before I could even speak.

The bike is currently parked under the house of the woman I met with, and she very kindly drove my sorry carcass home.

Still, if I can manage to actually move in the morning, I'm going to ride that sucker back, even if it takes me all bloody day. And this time, I'll remember the bloody helmet.

Rule # 1 - don't leap into an exercise regime you vageuly remember yourself capable of twenty years ago.

Therein lies humiliation.

Off the fang; off my arse

2010-02-20T08:35:00.006+10:00

Ergh. I'm on a mission thanks to bloody birmo and his health crusade.

20kg. Sheesh, I don't know how it happened seeing as I've made a point of not ever owning a set of scales. I've been going to see a naturopath to try to get some relief for hayfever - the drug solution doesn't work, so I'm looking outside western medicine for possibilities, and she weighed me. It was a bit of a shock to find that I weigh the same as the average A grade rugby leage player.

She has put me in a course of iodne to get my metabolism up, and I'm looking at a goal of 75kg. Going to have to cut out the booze, fags, fats, sugars and carbs and get off my fat backside and exercise. I guess must be a mid life crisis. The idea of turning fifty this year has put me into a bit of a tail spin. There's a whole pile of stuff I want to get done before I keel over, and if my parents are any indication of what I have to look forward to in my dotage - alheimer's, morbid obesity and diabetes - I've only got 20 years left, and only ten of those relaitvely healthy.

So, I'm going to try for twenty really good, mobile, intellectually sharp, fit years. Well, that's the plan, anyway.

OK Hughsey, off you go then, get off the bloody computer and hit that hill.

G-Man's farming tip of the week

2010-02-17T21:48:00.001+10:00

Allow at least three hours for a five minute job.

Quote of the week:

2010-02-16T20:44:00.006+10:00

What you give is the only thing that truly belongs to you.

Anna Goldsworthy's russian piano teacher Mrs Sivan, from Anna's memoir "Piano lessons".

That is all grasshopper.

Amamoor Amore

2010-02-08T13:58:00.003+10:00

Spent the weekend up at Amamoor, south west of Gympie. Friends own a sprawling property bordering state forest, way way up the top of the Amamoor Ck valley, and what a spectacular place it is, surrounded by wild bushland out in the middle of nowhere.

View Larger Map

The view from the house overlooks chiarscuroed mountain ranges with a boulder strewn creek running down below. On the Saturday night the sky was clear, with low cloud rolling in from the north east, but by late in the evening, it started to rain - and rain - and rain. Then all day Sunday it rained full on and the creek came up. The plan for the weekend was to walk the beautiful creek bed, climbing staged levels of gentle cascades and crystal clear rocky pools, but by the time the party set off, the cascades had turned into raging torrents and thundering waterfalls.

G-Man, wary of breaking a limb or worse decided not to risk it and walked back to the house to where I was. I had completely chickened out because I had hayfever and an ear full of fluid that was bound to affect my balance. No rock hopping for me. But the others did it.

On the way back they checked out the creek crossing at the entrance to the property and found it way too deep to drive out, so we had to sit out a second night. Thankfully we'd overcatered for one overnight BBQ and breakfast the follwing day, but the smokers were afraid - supplies had dwindled. By morning the creek had gone down a little, but certainly not enough to cross with my tiny little 4x4 Vitara, so it is stil there. We have to go back Wed to collect it if the rain stops.

It was pretty hairy - the road crosses the creek 13 times - most of them just concrete fords. The deepest was half a metre - no way my car would have got through - and it's on loan from a friend - not even mine!

But man, it was bloody exciting. Wonderful weekend. Thanks guys.

Love Your Flag of Convenience

2010-01-28T14:33:00.003+10:00

FLAG

Here is the G-Man's take on the flag issue, after my bad hair day on OZ Day.
The music uses snippets of a jam we did a week ago with our Iranian muso mates, Mohsen Squared (they are both called Mohsen, and very fine players).

Real Australians do not wave flags.

2010-01-25T22:00:00.004+10:00

In Western philosophy, misanthropy is connected to isolation from human society. In Plato's Phaedo, Socrates defines the misanthropy in relation to his fellow man: "Misanthropy develops when without art one puts complete trust in somebody thinking the man absolutely true and sound and reliable and then a little later discovers him to be bad and unreliable...and when it happens to someone often...he ends up...hating everyone.

I'm with Aristotle. Here I am, optimistically believing in the essential 'good' in mankind, but what do I get? FKN Australia Day.

It hasn't been this bad since the seventies at the height of the Australiana craze that gave us the apalling 'football, meatpies, kangaroos and holden cars', Paul Hogan, Baz Lhurman, occerist shite (I'm looking at you Singo) advertising campaigns to flog low grade uncompetitive products to the dumbest end of the market. But thanks to way too many years of Howard politics and the rise and rise of bogan insensibility, now I have to suffer the embarrasing spectacle of every second car in creation festooned in FKN Australian Flags. Not only that, all the long sufferening staff of my local IGA have to dress as jingoistic morons to take my cash at the checkout in their 'fight back' advertising campaign to sell me "Australian' products for this 'one day of the year' marketing exercise. And everone, it seems, is in on the act - if you're marketing lamb, it's appartenty 'International Australia day"!

Oh, paleeze.

Then, down at the beach today, every lowlife and their dog is sporting an Ausflag bikini/boardie/towel/beach umbrella and all I want to be is FKN HVK with a gun, and a sniping position from which to cap the muppets. The only thing Australia day inspires in me is misanthropy. I find myself bubbling with rage and loathing of my fellow [sic] Australians. All the shallow sentiment, all the bullshit longing for belonging, all the hollow platitudes, turn my stomach and make me wish them ill.

Hello! Real Australins DO NOT WAVE FLAGS for Fk sake. We do not respect authority, we do not rally around empty nationalist symbols. We are post modern. We define ourselves by what we refuse to be. We do not and have never wished to be American in this - or Nazis for that matter. All I see when a car goes past with those ludicrous fluttering flags are nascent brownshirts.

Perhaps it's just Queensland - maybe in the rest of this great sunburnt country the extremities of stupitidy aren't so obvious. Maybe the extent of fkwittedness isn't so pronounced, but man, up here, it's a battlefield. I have NOTHING in common with an aesthetic that demands total removal of one's frontal lobe.

So, a pox on all the houses of the ignorant fools who think that waving a flag is going to sustain the values of a (mostly anglo and white up here at least) minority populace that thinks that a culture of cricket, alcoholism, biggotry and escapism is sustainable in the face of immigration and reconcilliation. And I extend my misanthropy to first generation migrant kiddies who think that draping themsleves in a tatty piece of fabric will allow them access to the fat aussie bastard club too.

And all this crap about a new Australian flag? Fk it - lets not have a bloody flag at all. Let's be the first country in the history of civilisation to give the whole idea a miss.

The absence of a flag and all the low grade racist crap that goes with it is something I'd actually consider saluting.

3 days, 2 guitars, 1 dulcimer & 5 slabs of beer

2010-01-12T12:22:00.006+10:00

Apart from the cow disasters, we did manage a little joy over the festive season. Friend and long time musical colleague of G-Man's, Phil (Beck) Beckett came to stay over. We recorded this over a couple of intense days. Beck is an amazing drummer, but also plays guitar and writes a mean pop song. His is the first track - Last Day which, as it turns out, we did on New Years Eve.
G-Man is main vocals and guitar and I'm doing harmonies and playing Dulcimer. It's rough and ready, but it's all recorded on the fly with no electronic footling or overdubbing later on - what you hear is what we played, live in the Green Room (our studio).

A total hoot, and about the best fun to be had in the breezy cool of under-the-house with an instrument in your lap and a couple of slabs of beer at hand. What can I say - it's damn thirsty work.

Track 4 is for you HVK - a theme song.

Madonna and child

2010-01-11T13:53:00.003+10:00

This is all that is left of Number 6, the cow that died with her calf on board. She went down in a dry creek bed on Christmas Day and was pretty much in this state a week ago, except that the black stain around her bones was a bit slicker and oozier than it is now. It is as if her body liquified and was sucked into the thirsty bed.

If you enlarge the picture by clicking on it you can see her full term calf's bones lying within what would have been her belly, which confirms my theory that it was either in breech of transverse presentation and she couldn't deliver it.

The thing I find astonishing is the rate of decomposition. 10 days for all that flesh to simply melt into the ground. You can't watch something like that happen without it crossing your mind that we share the same fate; all that life, all our dreams and imaginings, all that energy will bleed back into the same earth in the same way.

But I find it strangely exhilarating rather than depressing. Getting up close and personal with death is oddly refreshing to the soul in that it renews your sense of purpose and moves all those 'things to do before I die' to the top of the list of daily priorities.

All we have in life, really, is time. Best not to waste it.

Not so happy new year

2010-01-03T11:17:00.003+10:00

Another cow down, but this time with either three day sickness or tick fever. Either way, her back leg is stiff as a board with paralysis, and though it's now seven days since we found her at the top of the hill with her calf marming at her to get up, she's still alive, just not kicking.

When we first found her, she looked terrible, shaking and panting and we had to visit the woman down the road to see if she'd be available to put her down - she has a gun and a licence for it - but it being Christmas, no one was home. The vet was also no where to be found and as we'd had a cow recover from three day sickness before, we decided to give her a chance. That's been G-Man's entire festive season, every couple of hours he's headed up the hill to pour water down her throat and offer her lucerne and molassas. And still, she's hanging in. She doesn't appear to be in any pain, just unable to mover that stiff back leg, but I'm getting worried that if she doesn't get up soon, she'll be too bloody weak to get up at all, and it will all have been for nothing.

Makes you think when you're faced with a sick animal. Conventional wisdom says that the animal should be 'put out of its misery'. Sure, she's elderly for a cow, and lack of nutrition has left her immune system low on steam, but she is still breathing and eager to drink, which makes me think that she's still eager to live. Who the hell am I to go reaching for a bullet on her behalf. I know what it's like not to be able to get up for days because of a slipped disk in my back and certainly don't expect anyone to be thinking of putting me out of my misery. We did everything we could to make Geoff's mother comfortable after her fall and consequent broken wrist and pelvis, and my own mother is currently in hospital having had a turn, and no one is thinking of reaching for any final solution for her 'suffering'. So bugger it - we are here and have the time and the patience to make Number 82 as comfortable as possible untill the swelling goes down in the hope that she will get up and walk again.

We've since found out that three day sickness can take weeks rather than just three days. Perhaps it may not actually be three day sickness. Perhaps she lost her footing on the newly muddy slope and fell awkwardly and has broken her hip. On Monday we'll get the vet out to look at her and tell us what her chances are. If it is a broken hip, then maybe the only option is to have her euthanased, but the vet can do it with an injection. After tending to her there is no way I could do the deed. Having looked into her eye for the past week I am comvinced that she is as conscious as I am - a big animal like that has got to have a level of consciousness to match its complexity.

The three month old calf has had no choice but to wean itself, and has thankfully been adopted by another member of the herd who broke through two fences to get to it. take it into its custody and teach it to eat grass and suck water from the dam. Besides, it was impossible (but wildly comical) for us to catch the little critter in the open field, and she's saved us the trouble of poddying the youngster.

Fingers crossed for Number 81.

Brush with fame

2009-12-28T13:04:00.004+10:00

I've been spending a bit of time getting my photo file in order and came across this one from some considerable time ago in a previous life. On the left is a twenty-eight year old truckie's daughter from the beigest of bland suburbs of Brisbane, and on the right, the one-time Prime Minister of Australia, Gough Whitlam. We are in Venice, dining with artists after the opening of a pirate exhibition staged by my then husband, Ray Hughes.

Never in my wildest dreams, when I gratefully took advantage of the free tertiary education his government provided some ten years earlier, did I imagine that I would sit at table with the great man himself. I was, as you can see, what became known as a dewy-eyed Whitlamite.

Although it looks like he is imparting some gem of wisdom, he is actually telling a joke.

I can't imagine how my life would have panned out without that passport out of the burbs, to aspire to something more than barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen (although I did manage to fit that in too). I will always be in debt to the Australian people for that all too brief moment of opportunity.

Business as usual

2009-12-25T06:30:00.008+10:00

Finally, a drop of rain; enough to actually grow the grass! It's patchy, but there was a good solid soaking of 15mm last night, and today is overcast with intermittent drizzle so it won't evaporate immediately.

Even though today is apparently a holiday, the cows don't observe it, so it's business as usual around here.

First thing this moring we moved the breeders into a new paddock to keep them far enough away from the weeners (Panda's calf is still neurotic enough to go through a fence if she can see her ex-mother). That was fairly painless, but still, Number 6 was not with them. She being heavily pregnant, had gone off by herself to calve. G-Man was worried about her and went off on foot to find her on Friday, and found her down. As he approached, she got up and charged him so he figured that if she was well enough to get up and knock him over, she was fine.

But there was still no sign of her in the herd this morning so, after we'd given two young heiffers their injections, we went off with a biscuit of lucerne to try to entice Number 6 back to the herd. There's safety in numbers. But we were too late. We found her dead in a gully. I suspect that she must have gone into labour and been unable to deliver the calf.

She'll decompose over the next week - carrion to crows, goannas, and various species of ants till she's a powdery pile of skin and bones. Poor thing. You feel so damned guilty when an animal in your care dies. There's little we could have done for her out on the field. Really, we should have sent her to market after her first calf died - probably still born. But then her second was fine, so we decided to keep her. But this, her third, was either dead in utero or too large to pass through her pelvis.

Still, it's not all doom and gloom. Number 76 delivered a healthy calf yesterday "and his name shall be called Jesus".

Birth and death continue to turn around the hub of life here in the valley - business as usual.

Bah Panforte

2009-12-17T16:43:00.009+10:00

I'll say one thing for Christmas. It does provide excellent opportunities for approach avoidance of the million things I still have to do this year.

One entire morning spent on a batch of Sienna Cakes and a couple of brandy sodden, six-egg fruit cakes. Then of course a trip to town to get all the paraphernalia for gift wrapping and icing - mmmmm icing.

Sigh.

Back to work woman!

Here's the recipe just in case you already don't have enough to do:

Panforte di Sienna

2 tsp. powdered Cinamon

6 oz whie plain flour

4 peppercorns

1 tsp. cloves

1 tsp. ground corianda

1 pinch nutmeg

Half pound candied melon rind

1 oz. candied orange rind

4 oz walnuts

Half pound almonds

8 oz. sugar

juice of half a lemon or 2 tbsp water

3 oz honey

Mix t tsp. cinamon with 1 oz. flour and set aside. This is called polverino and is sifted on top of the cake to protect it from the heat.

Mix all the dry ingredients together with the fruit and set aside.

Cook the sugar, honey and lemon juice in a double boiler till it is all dissolved and part caramelised, then pour into the dry mix and knead to a smoot consistency.

Grease and dust with flour a shallow tin (I use a flan tin with the removable bottom), and place in the bottom either a peice of flat wafer or a round of rice paper, and press the mix into it to a depth of about three quarters of an inch.

Sift the polverino on top and bake atabout 160 degrees centigrade for 30 - 40 min. Let it cool in the mould. The cake can be kept for 2 - 3 weeks.

Right on cue

2009-12-17T08:39:00.003+10:00

Well done nana McHugh.

There's another six parked beneath her fuggy feathery fluff.

Got home from the Burger Brisneyfest to find G-Man covered in mud - again. He'd just dragged another cow out of the sludge. Got to somehow entice them out of that paddock and back to the lean pickings of our fields. The only grass we have left is bladey grass, which they hate - very sharp on the tongue - but sprayed with molassas it transforms into cow candy.

He's currently up in the container paddock with a box full of sprinkler fittings, lengths of ag pipe and a pump setting up a watering system to try to get something ANYTHING growing.

"What I write, it will come true"

2009-12-11T13:32:00.005+10:00

I'm starting to think I have some woo woo psychic visionary power. Stuff I write has a spooky habit of coming true. In that last post I speculate about the empty dams becoming a potential cow trap. Well, it happened yesterday morning.

The cows are in the field on the neighbour's place, opposite our front veranda , and I woke up to the incessant marming of a calf. I went out to investigate and could see the calf in question with a group of others being looked out for by the designated babysitter, so didn't think anything more of it. G-Man got back to the house at about 5:30 AM (some hours after Sparrow Fart) and the calf was still going for it, so he walked along the creek bed to investigate further. There, up to her shoulders in putrid ooze, he found its mother.

He came back and got ropes, waders, chains and the tractor and set off to find an access away to the field, and sent me off to keep the mother calm. She must have been stuck in the mud for several hours sternly warning her calf away from the danger. Every time it got close to her, she mooed something in cowese that seem to say, "stay where you are, do not come any closer", becasue it appeared to do as it was told.

The poor old girl was exhausted from trying to climb out of the bog. By now the calf was really hungry and kept returning despite best efforts of the babysitter trying to steer it up the hill. On one occasion as it advanced towards us, I could see the high tide mark of mud up to its shoulders and realised that in fact it was the calf that had gone in the first and the mother, in an effort to save it (which she did) got herself into trouble.

G-Man, our hero, waded into the sludge and got the rope around her neck and under her front shoulders and attached it to the tractor, and with advice from Dave (the guy who drives a cattle truck who we'd rung because we'd never had to do this before) tried to pull her out. However, she was so slippery that the rope just slid over ahead, pulling her front legs up under her chin. After two attempts, he had to get back into the bog again and retie the rope, this time with a loop under a black leg and tail as well.

We were both terrified that the force might break her neck or pelvis, but there was nothing else we could do -- we don't have a gun and I don't think either of us could summon up the will to kill her until we'd tried everything else. He got back up onto the tractor, tensioned the rope and and then started pulling. She was so slippery that she slithered up the bank quite easily, looking for all the world like a newborn emerging. Which she was I guess, reborn.

She was all tensed up during the pull, but when she realised she was on dry land that wasn't giving way beneath her, she flung her head back and closed her eyes. At that point I thought she was a goner, that we'd broken something vital, but within a minute she was up. Her hindquarters were shaking -- the muscles must have been burning with lactic acid from the struggle - but she had her head down and was eating, without so much as even a rope burn.

We lead her out of the paddock and back to the herd who were, I have to say, wildly delighted to see her back, not least of which her calf, soon to be seen greedily sucking up a muddy milkshake.

Lucky number 61.

Long time between drinks

2009-12-08T08:55:00.004+10:00

It's got to rain soon.

If it doesn't, I don't know what we'll do with the animals. It hasn't been this bad since we've been here, or maybe it has and I've repressed it. Here, in the middle of the rainiest part of the SE, barely a drop has fallen in our valley. All the pasture is dried brown, crunchy as sticks underfoot, and the cows have become fractious. We had them in the tree paddock yesterday becasue the dam there is just about empty, so that field will be useless when the water is completely gone. But there's bugger all in there for a cow to eat, and they let us know, at every opportunity. They'd congregate at the gate and start bellowing their disapproval whenever the G-man or I could be seen, which was pretty much all day since the paddock is opposite our house.

Barbed wire is no match of a hungry ton of beef and if they really had a mind to push through into the neighbor's paddock across the road, they would. So I bit the bullet and rang, asking if we could let our cows into their property. They are cattle people from Rocky and understand the concept of starving animals, and I'm that grateful to them for their generosity. We've got a heap of nursing mothers and they are just bags of bones from lack of nutrition.

I even had to let the garden fall into ruin this year - no water to keep it alive, and if it doesn't rain soon, we'll be on dam water ourselves until it shrinks to a puddle of mud, a potential problem of bogged cattle.

So, a pox on you Tony Abbott and all your business as usual climate change denying cronies. It is happening, it is real, it is clear and present danger. Come to think of it - a pox on you too Ruddster and your bullshit carbon trading scheme. No invisible market hand is going to be able to arrest it. It is already underway. It is bigger than you and your desperate three year cycle of electioneering vote buying crap.

What we need is a survival plan, not a business plan. Bastards.

Still standing

2009-11-25T07:36:00.003+10:00

I'm sitting at my computer, it rests on a table, which stands on the floor surrounded by walls and a roof over head. But it might have been different had we not been terribly lucky last night.

If the woman at the top of the hill hadn't gone out to the bar fridge for that vital second bottle of wine, she wouldn't have smelt smoke and looked out across the valley to see the grass fire glowing on our shared boundary.

The power had gone off and when she called we were sitting in the livingroom playing acoustic music by lamp light. We're so low down in the valley that we were completely innocent of the fire - couldn't even smell the smoke.

G-Man went off to find some high ground to figure out where it was and met the Energex guys on the road in - they were looking for the power outage problem and beat the Rural Firies who I'd called on 000. Five guys with torches set out across the paddock (no road access) to find a downed line which, when it fell, was so hot it had set fire the long grass on the neighbor's property (our grass is grazed right down). Had this happened only a couple of nights ago, before yesterdays rain, when a windy storm blew up in the evening - I reckon we'd have had a bit of a conflagration on our hands.

There's a total fire ban here at the moment - everything is parched - and all those reports of the Victorian bushfires last year started cycling through my mind as I shut all the doors and windows to the house. Then I realised that was it - my whole bushfire plan.

Part 1: Shut the house. Part 2: Go out to see if you can put the fire out. Part 3: Run for your life.

Then I had to ask myself - what would have happend if the fire had got down into the scrub by the creek that winds around our house block, then, heaven forbid, up into the tree plantation? No naughty children playing with with matches to blame, nor any psycho fire bugs. The power grid started it and, apparently, that is somehow immune from blame. Becasue we're so addicted to the elecricity, we view a downed powerline as practically an act of God.

The lines that criss cross the bush are all potential incendiary devices. If it's going to get hotter and drier in this country, we are going to have to do something about the antique technology we've strung up above increasingly volatile bushland.

Thank you to the Rural Firies though. Very grateful you got out of bed to come to our aid.

Low tech incubator

2009-11-24T16:42:00.002+10:00

... and here she is, Nana McHugh - my little silky bantam who is currently sitting on a clutch of a dozen hens eggs with which I sneakily replaced hers. By my calculations they should hatch around about the same time as we celebrate the birth of that little Middle Eastern kiddy. I wonder if Nana will be as amazed by her own immaculate conceptions? Heheh.

The colour of pomegranates

2009-11-22T20:38:00.009+10:00

I bought a pomegranate down at the IGA (yes, the IGA- who'd have thought it?) There they were all conspiculously flushed and embarrassed by finding themselves in such a common place. I've known of them and eaten them, but you don't get them turning up at the supermarket any old day of the week. They are exotic here.

I'd heard a Radio National broadcast on the country viewpoint food on Friday segment -- an interview with a bunch of guys with a bit of an idea to cash in on the antioxidant magic of this fabulous "new" wonder fruit, so they were at the front of my brain and registered immediately.

With my beautiful pomegranate in hand, I picked up some snapper as well, thinking; pan fried in butter, pomegranate juice, a little salt and pepper, a splash of champagne - instant delicious. And it was. Delectable.

But even more delectable was that the explosion of flavour on G-Man's tongue prompted a memory. Not long after we met, he saw a film at a film festival in Sydney; The Taste of Pomegranates by Russian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov. I wasn't with him, we didn't know each other that well, and he certainly didn't know at that stage what was in my mind or what had formed my consciousness - we were still at the tits-and-arse stage of our relationship. But now almost 10 years later, with the knowledge of our common points of connection through art, books, music and shared aesthetic on board, he remembered the film.

What had been at the time an ephemeral moment, is now Googlable. He typed in The Colour of Pomegranates and there it was, the entire film, available, out there in the uber-consciousness of the web. I'd never seen it, and have to admit that I have never seen anything more gob-smacking beautiful in moving images. I sat there gasping, weeping, amazed, aware that the filmmaker's aesthetic had lived in my own mind and informed my imagination without my knowing his. Every image, every association, my whole aesthetic is encoded in this film. I think I could watch it over and over, forever. It is every dream I ever had, the synthesis of all things that I have taken in and kept as reminders of what I think beauty might be. The whole history of art, the expression of Western civilisation, all our race memories flash dreamlike, a fantastic portrait of my inner imaginary life.

What a revelation it must have been to see it on the big screen.

WARNING: This video contains poetic associative imagery and is not suitable for escapist entertainment audiences. If you are suss about art, don't go there.

Hey Birmo - one of your bunnies is loose

2009-11-11T16:05:00.004+10:00

Life imitates art imitates delusional reality.

It appears that ex Swans honcho and star crossed lover Jeffery Edelston has popped the question to twenty six year old, totally-sincerely-in-love-with-the guy and almost certainly natural blonde, Brynne (OMG, look at those funbags!) somethingorother. The wedding invite is a 15 mintue video.

Bwahahahahahah

Oops,

Aw, what a lovely old fashioned couple.

Rememberance day

2009-11-11T14:01:00.005+10:00

Ah, what a beautiful day:

First no parallel importation on books

Then no Traveston Dam

AND A TAX RETURN too boot!

Thankyou umpire, thankyou ball boys.

All up hill to Christmas

2009-11-10T20:59:00.004+10:00

Man, I think my brain is going to break.

Just got through the weekend; three open access sessions on Saturday for the Regional Rights project in which I make myself available for hour long personal consultations with budding writers. Then on Sunday, a full day writers' workshop on the nuts and bolts of creative writing and another four open access sessions on Monday. In the meantime I've been writing a report for the mentorship winner which involves a close read of his manuscript plus editorial notes, and also reading this monumental, vast family saga 350,000 words, written by one of the short listees -- an amazing thing that left me gasping by the end of it, an emotional rollercoaster.

But prior to that was a full week working with our Iranian mate Mohsen on his manuscript of collected poetry which is a delight and pleasure, if a little emotionally gruelling.

The work is collected from material he wrote when incarcerated in Villawood a four years. Dark as.

Somewhere in there I had to find time to practice cello, do the regular householdy things, and work on my book. Consequently I haven't had a lot of time to be reading through your blogs or writing mine. Not to mention the garden, which has fallen into ruin this season.

I figured it was time to let it go to weed anyway and give the beds a rest. Besides, there's been so little rain the past few months that I'd have drained the tank trying to water and keep it alive. We've just had the first decent rain of the season and can finally put in green manure crops to get a little bit more organic material into the soil.

And the pace it doesn't look like it will slacken off until mid-December.

Into the music

2009-11-01T08:41:00.005+10:00

Here it is - my lovely cello.

Rehearsal for the choir yesterday. I've nailed the bass part for Vivaldi, Mozart and the Dvorak. They aren't difficult by any means, what is difficult is learning to play in ensemble and get the dynamics of the music happening. My sheet music is covered in marks and little 'notes to self' about how loudly or softly to play, up bows, down bows, attack on the string and little pairs of glasses drawn to indicate that I should look up from the music to look at the conductor.

Getting the bowing right is the most difficult. We have to sit so close together that if you get your bowing out of sync, you could end up with your neighbor's bow up your nose.

I'm one of those annoying people that can pick up most things and do a fairly slap up job of mastering it fairly quicky, but this! Arghh! It is the first time in my life I've come up against something that I can't do. It will take me the rest of the life I have left to master this sucker.

Still, beacause I can't play the bass part by ear I've been forced to finally learn to read music. I am now able to instantaneously recognise C,G,D and A on the bass cleff and match them to the open stings of my instrument! The other notes still are a bit of a mystery though. I still have to write the finger numbers above the notes.

I wish I was 6 yrs old and had a parent to nag me to practice.

Perhaps Flinthart or Nat might consider adopting me.

Zinc wire of Angels

2009-10-15T19:27:00.006+10:00

Man, this dictation software is pure poetry. That title was supposed to be 'sing choirs of Angels'. Zink wire of angels is kind of tangental to what I'm talking about though, so I'm letting it ride. It conjures the sound that is happening just behind me, the squeaking of my cello's strings de-tensioning in the dry heat. I'm in rehearsal for a Christmas concert and so breathless with excitement it's ridiculous.

I am in a cello choir. For the next couple of Saturdays, about 15 middle-aged women (and one bloke) will drive to a tiny country Hall in Eudlo, just south of Nambour, to play together. It is just about the most adorable thing I've ever been involved in. We sit in a circle, in our part groups, in the midst of a large wooden speaker box, and fill it with the honey notes our instruments. Our teacher is a world-class player and has just moved to Eudlo. There is almost no opportunity at all for adults like us to play in ensemble, so when the opportunity comes up you grab it with both hands.

Even though I'm still not much more advanced than beginner (because I never practice, and I don't have a parent nagging me to do it, and it makes my shoulders ache and my neck stiffen up, the lure of that sound has got me hooked. Oh, and the morning tea. And the drive, which is pretty gorgeous. It's a bugger of a climate to play a baroque instrument in, they were never meant for such extremes of humidity and the virginal will be a million times worse to keep in tune.

Apologies for being so off the air lately, I'm flat out with the residency workshops, and for the past two weeks I have revisited planet parenthood which was a shock to the system. I can do kidlets in small doses any day, but two weeks? Woah. By the end of my niece's stay we were both counting sleeps till mummy came home. However, I did get a front row seat to the modelling of the 10-year-old fashion show of loot her mother brought back from Singapore. Beautiful Chinese silk pyjamas - two pairs, a fluffy merangue ballgown covered in ribbons and bows, a fairy floss creation, and a Bollywood outfit to die for in blue sequins, with bangles, junky Indian jewellery - the full catastrophe. At one point she looked like she'd died and gone to girly princess heaven, ecstatic - angelic even!

The trouble with not being a geek.

2009-10-10T13:08:00.004+10:00

Well, will you look at that.

I'm sitting here with my arms folded, some considerable way from my computer screen, cuddled up in a comfy chair and not bent over like some kind of weird wicked old which hunched over her cauldron. I just installed and trained that Mac speech software Birmo was on about and am totally amazed by its accuracy.

The hardest thing to get used to is not watching the type as it comes up on screen because there is a delay while it figures out what you are talking about. Rather, you have to force yourself to stare off into the middle distance and let the computer overhear you thinking aloud.

It takes half the effort of actually sitting there typing and I am so impressed I can barely speak!

However, it wasn't easy because sadly, I am not a geek (i.e., even if I do read the fine print on computer software sites, it doesn't actually mean anything). The Mac Speech program propbably did say I needed Macos 10.whatever, but as I have a fairly new machine, I figured I was as up to date as anything. When I get it, it's not until it spits the program out like a bad taste, I realise that I need to upgrade the operating system. I make a few phone calls and, assured that it should be cool to get Snow Leopard because yes, I do have an 'intel core duo' (WETFTI), two days later the disc arrives in a cloud of dust from the TNT truck which was sent out to deliver this precious piece of gadgetry.

All excited, I load it in, only to have it tell me that it can't install because I don't have enough RAM - thanks Mister Jobs. So, what initially only cost me three hundred bucks adds up to more like $500, but hey, its worth it in chiropractic care for my aching typing neck.

Unbelievable accuracy when you consider what the computer is actually doing and in not in any position to make poetic connections or comprehend context.

no net nanny

2009-09-23T17:40:00.002+10:00

www.getup.org.au/campaign/AddYourNameToSaveTheNet

ok folks - to the barricades

Get up is running a campaign to keep nanny rudd's mits off the net.

Go there and sign the petition.

End times a comin'

2009-09-23T14:51:00.001+10:00

Cough, cough, splutter chough

Need V want

2009-09-19T19:09:00.004+10:00

I dunno, I just think I NEED one of these...

SATAN is back!

2009-09-13T12:21:00.000+10:00

Satan is back on duty - thank god!

The mice have figured out every single device we could come up with to catch them, so Satan's return is just in time to prevent a plague of the little bastards. They were so thick and blase this year that G-man was able to catch one behind the curtain with his bare hand.

Satan has taken up a top spot under a bench on the verandah, coiled up against the glass. He must have shed recently (they like to do it on the dry wood of the verandah or the rafters under the house) because his exquisite skin is bright, shimmering iridescent green, blue and copper. Being able to get up that close to him on the other side of the glass is amazing - his whole body is one long sinuous jeweled and tooled work of beauty.

We've had the long dry days and cool nights, jasmine, wattle and citrus blossom, but it's not really spring until Satan is back, curled up like a cat in the sunny patch on the verandah.

And the winner is....

2009-09-12T08:53:00.000+10:00

Me again!

Second year in a row, first prize turnips!

On my way to the show to check out the jam results, but this turned upon the web this morning by a turnip lover with an eye for quality (and irony).

Heheheh

Here it is - the full haul:

First Prize - Rosella Jam

First Prize - 3 Turnips

Second Prize - 6 Limes, any variety

The life writers

2009-09-07T10:10:00.001+10:00

I've been rubbing shoulders with these chicks since moving here, standing beside them at the IGA maybe, or I've pulled up beside them in traffic, or perhaps waited in line behind them at the bottle shop, but until yesterday, I had no idea who they were and that they have led the most amazing lives.

Yesterday was the first workshop in the series I'm doing for the residency and it was great! I had the best time! Teaching people who really want to know something is about as close to heaven as it gets. It's the first time I've taught adults and I am now completely hooked - one of the most rewarding experiences of my teaching career to date. Sure, some of them want to be published - who doesn't? But one young woman just wanted to find out how to write a story.

In my book I describe a storm and imagine that we might lose our roof. As I observed the storm sailing out of our valley, I had no idea that a couple of years later I'd be sitting in a room with a girl whose life it landed on. She lost everything - her house, her business, her health, but worst of all, her resilience. That storm not only shattered her jaw, but her whole sense of self.

She just wants to be able to tell herself her story, to get it down on the page so she doesn't have to carry the weight of it around like rocks in her pockets. And she will too - she's clever and bright and articulate and man, what a story!

Garden devastation

2009-09-03T10:27:00.000+10:00

Argggh!

Everything, well, everything soft green and tasty, has been chewed down to the stalk. Cabbages, caulis, lettuce and a whole bed of seedlings - shredded. And I know who it is too - the bloody mini-pecks. They've never done it before, and I've had them for six years. Why now? Suddenly their dietary preference includes human food.

They are in serious danger of becoming human food themselves if they don't cut it out.

One more week of running about like a screaming banshee, brandishing dangerous garden weaponry, and that's it. If they fail to cease and desist, they are up for the chop.