Imaginary Landscape

It is one of those memories that sticks in one's mind, a snapshot of a brief moment in time, meaningless in its triviality, yet it hangs about like a stranger who looks slightly suspicious, a tiny bit menacing, but who also never does anything to support those fears or allay them. So this morning, in the depths of one of my ‘episodes’, after a night of restless sleeping, it pops into consciousness once again, leaving both an unsecured longing and a spark of joy. When we were children, under the age where one could leave us safely at home, we always went shopping with Mommy. She did not drive, never drove in my recollection, except that one fateful evening when she propelled the neighbour’s car up our driveway, into my father’s Buick, our garage and any number of framed Kaiser shade window screens, leaning against the walls so their framing’s new coat of paint could dry. Oddly enough, I do not recall taking the bus to town, nor returning home on it; I recall only waiting for it af...

I am presently reading a book by Bill Bryson, A Short History of Nearly Everything . It’s too bad I didn’t have this book in primary and secondary school. It answers many questions I have had about science since then. It also draws connections that would have made my life (and learning) a lot simpler. Oh well, I have the book now, and that is sufficient. So what if Sister Mary Frances will die thinking I am an idiot? However, there are other questions and conundrums I have that swirl about in my head from time to time, or pop up uninvited to distract me from something I’m supposed to be doing, like defrosting the refrigerator. I used to know a woman in Virginia Beach, Virginia, who was very religious. When confronted with a mystery or question she could not answer, she would respond by saying, “That’s one of the first things I’m going to ask God when I get to heaven.” I always thought it terribly presumptuous of her to expect that she would ever get an audience to enquire about things...

RADAR Originally uploaded by sailor5116 . From one of my contacts, sailor5116, who makes these incredible circles with Adobe Photoshop, and this is one of my favourites. Check out his other photos, and those of my other contacts, too.

During the time I lived in Eucla, Western Australia (population: 40-something; 1429 km from Perth; 1222 km from Adelaide), I edited a little newsletter, The Eucla Telegraph, w ith a distribution between Nullarbor, SA, and Perth. I often included a feature story on a local resident, event or happening. One day, after having worked at the Eucla Motor Hotel from 6 AM to 1 PM, I was at home when someone phoned saying a chap with four camels and a dog had just arrived at the roadhouse. I picked up my pen, notebook and camera and headed over there—just a few 100 metres. This story, which has been edited for inclusion here, is what appeared in the June 2001 newsletter. Chris Richards has been trekking the past three months through the Western Australian outback, ‘learning heaps’, raising a little money for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and heading toward Fowler’s Bay. There, he hopes to acquire more camels and begin a trek up to and along the Dog Fence with paying customers who want to se...

tiny swimmer feet Originally uploaded by Shutterhugs .

I referred in my last blog entry about a photography site called Flickr . I don’t exactly recall how I first encountered Flickr (I have slept since then), but I suspect I stumbled across it (literally, through Firefox’s extension, Stumble , which is a neat little tool for systematically wandering the Internet, directed by preferences you can change at will). Now two years old, Flickr is one of the newest internet communities. At first blush, it looks like a good place to store prized photographs off-site. It is also a chance to share photography tips and issues with like-minded photographers – there are amateur and professional photographers alike there. However, it has grown into its own little community, as it has its own blog and various ‘pools’ sorted according to the latest computer sorting scheme using ‘tags’ and people’s interests – Pink Think, Picturing the Male, Your Dog Nose , I Love My Cat (with nearly 3500 members!), Purple Flowers, Anything and Everything, to name just a...

I t has been too long since I last made an entry. I could blame the hectic pace of the holidays, my frantic social schedule, the demands of my stressful job or even the overwhelming responsibilities of my household. But then you would say, “Liar, liar, pant’s on fire”, and the fire-ies would have to be called, the neighbours would stare, and we’d, neither of us, be any better off. So let us begin rationally – I’m just lazy, easily distracted and fantastically unorganised. I still have nothing weighty or revealing to enter here (as if I ever have); nor do I have any original thought of any depth to share with you. I have, however, had some recollections, insights and thoughts during my blog absence, so here goes: First, I remember being taught how to make the perfect peanut butter and jelly sandwich. (Note to my Australian friends: that’s ‘jelly’ as in ‘jam’ not as in ‘gelatine’.) My tutor was one of our favourite babysitters, Roberta Supranaut. She was a teenager who stayed with us dur...

22 December 2005—This is the time of year when advertisers, store managers, neighbours, strangers, and any number of organisations and people start sending cards, communicating messages, and passing wishes that involve snow and snowmen, holly, mistletoe, Christmas trees, singing White Christmas and Let It Snow, visiting department stores to chat with overweight men dressed in wool and fur…but wait a minute! As I write, it is nearly 102 degrees outside. If I were in the city, rather than the country, I’d be at one of Perth’s beaches , slathered in sunscreen (because I’ve been burned in less than 30 minutes), and splashing in the Indian Ocean. It’s summer, snows only in the Stirling Ranges south of here on occasion, and any obese man in a big red suit would drop from heat stroke in no time. The Northern Hemisphere traditions of the Silly Season were carried here to Australia, along with meagre possessions, household goods, leg irons, or whatever transported prisoners and immigrants wer...

Whilst I was trying to force an alert state this morning over my second cup of tea, I abandoned playing Zuma Deluxe (reflexes just not fast enough yet), and resorted to something a bit less stressful, my newest obsession, Firefox Stumbling , whereupon I came to the web page with lists for the top science fiction stories, books, movies and television shows, according to the website’s visitors’ votes. Perusing these lists reminded me of pleasures long past that stay with me even now, some of them so obscure as to be relatively unknown. Granted, some of these books / movies / TV shows / stories are obscure because they are bad; I will admit that. But some are obscure because they are too serious, too upsetting, or somehow outside that Hollywood ‘blockbuster’ mould of happily-ever-after, moralising, all-American wholesomeness that seems to do so well with the movie-viewing public. I began a list of books and movies that did not appear on these lists or that appeared so far down as to hav...

What can one say about Woolly Mammoth? The Ratbag christened him thus because of his great amount of body hair. His real name is Jon, the son of a Greek father and a “Skip” (Australian) mother, as he used to explain. He looks Greek; in fact, he looks great. Jon is a very handsome man, tall, soft-spoken, if a bit obsessed about shiny boots. I often wondered how he managed his police duties, since he was so unassuming and mild-mannered. It wasn’t just Eucla folk (when he lived there) who taunted Woolly. Friends from Perth also rang up, often just to torment him. No one did it with such glee and dedication as Woolly’s friend, who would ring up and announce himself as a representative of Industrial Body Wax, or ask for Woolly as “the bloke with a koala nailed to his chest”. During a radio interview after a horrendous truck accident on the Eyre Highway near Madura when the weather had been rainy and bitterly cold, Woolly told the interviewer that he reckoned the temperature had been “minus ...

First, let me caution you: this is not a treatise on computer or software problems. This is my whinge about insects, critters, creepy-crawlies. It’s such a stereotype—a female who hates bugs. And I don’t know where it came from. But I can’t recall ever liking anything with more than four legs. As a child, I used to systematically engineer ways to stuff up anthills; I ran from bees and wasps; my mother cautioned me how filthy flies were. Finally, as an adult I declared that nothing with more than four legs could live under the same roof. A former husband cautioned me that crickets were good luck (but they kept me awake at night and eat clothes) or that spiders should be left alone because they eat other bugs (not fast enough). I’ll admit that I am biased against the critters, mostly because they’re ugly. I don’t feel quite the same revulsion for butterflies, dragonflies and bugs that have some attractiveness about them. But I still don’t want them crawling around my house. Case in poin...

The Lord's Prayer is 66 words, [Abraham Lincoln’s] Gettysburg Address is 286 words, there are 1,322 words in the [US] Declaration of Independence, but [US] government regulations on the sale of cabbage total 26,911 words. – from the October 24, 1994 National Review The Ratbag came home from work last night and revealed that he and his fellow Western Australian police officers had been notified of a change in procedure regarding throwing someone in jail. Oh, they are still going to put people in jail, but they will no longer call it ‘arrest’. It is now an ‘episode’. And if after the episode, the ‘person of interest’ (not ‘suspect’) tries to escape, or tries to harm himself or herself, or another officer, well, that is an ‘event’ that may result in another ‘charge’ or an investigation. All police must complete a self-paced skills upscaling on this new system. Then they must sit an assessment that will measure their understanding of the new system. They may not undertake the assessme...

On the Road Again Since this was written, we have moved from Eucla (four years ago) to Kalgoorlie and, sadly, Mr P has passed away. But I return to Eucla often for visits and have recently had a book published on the history of Eucla (since 1940). Mr P’s daughter, Rasa, now runs the roadhouse…and the West Coast Eagles had a wonderful season this year. We were driving on the Eyre Highway, somewhere on the Straight (90 miles of it, says the sign, even though they measure distance in kilometres now), and I had all sorts of mixed feelings. I wasn’t past the amazement of having just sold, given away, thrown out or abandoned most of my worldly goods and moved to the other side of the planet. I was thrilled, but I couldn’t grasp that it had actually happened. I find myself walking down the Southern Ocean’s shore or slogging up a sand dune, watching whales basking in the Bight, or a mob of kangaroos hopping across the scrub, or a flock of emus curiously eyeing my camera in the relentless wind ...