GPS

Pandanus on the foreshore of Redcliff Beach.


Casuarina. Redcliff Beach.


Mangrove at Nudgee Beach

The beaches on Moreton Bay (and all those that I have seen so far) are so different from what I know as a beach. I think it would take another lifetime to acclimatise me to them.

Pandanus and this incredibly dessicated looking casuarina are to be found on every beach I have so far seen. Shallow beaches, dirty water and warm. But there are all those islands off the coast, so the water is shallow and fed from all the muddy mangrove creeks and rivers...everywhere. Also incredibly salty.

I have brought up the car from Sydney using the old Satnav. But I clearly needed newer maps and so had to buy a new one (no maps available on the old one). So I was determined to venture forth and try the roads and the navigation.

I set out for Redcliff, having seen photos from a Flickr friend, but diverted to various places on the way. So I thought that Nudgee might serve for a swim. Clearly not. Great for fishing. And so I continued on.

The Norfolk pines of Redcliff looked somewhat the worse from the long drought, but it was a swimmable beach and so I swam.

The new satnav is not as satisfactory as the old: it does not automatically tell me to continue straight when I reach an intersection with millions of directions. You need to keep a sharp eye on the number of metres left before the turn or you will turn too early. Also the maps are crappy. We now have voiced streets, but this is not always helpful: Sir Fred Schonell drive becomes "serve ridge..." and Brisbane is pronounced with the last syllable rhyming with rain. Anyway it took me there and brought me home safely so I should not be complaining.

footnoted novels

Lilies and mistletoe. The dam at Pokolbin.


From de Beyer's road

I've been working my way through Walter Scott's novels. They are amazing. I love the long ironic introductions, with their kindly portraits of pompous, garrulous, or ignorant people and others, chatting about books, their readers and their purposes. The portraits from literary and legal life. I love the extensive footnotes, and the fact that he cannot say an unkind word about anyone.

At first you tend to skip the introductions and ignore the footnotes. But by the 10th book or so, they have started to grow on you. Some books have several introductions and prefatory notes. Sometimes they are wonderfully comic. They nearly all seek to show the tale was inspired by some factual happening.

I also love the essential equality of all the characters, peasants chat to queens and dukes, servants give more than as good as they get from their masters and are often funds of great goodsense. Legal eagles and those who aspire to be, wander through the tales and are made gentle fun of.

In any case, I could not recall the device of footnoted novels, which is Scott's practice. And had noted it also in Manzoni's "I promessi sposi" (but used there to quote written sources from the famine (1628) and the plague (1630) and hence function as they do in modern scholarship, while Scott's footnotes often use spoken sources and it's always unclear whether the sources are in anyway available.)

(Of course, when I hunted up footnoted novels on the internet, I found I had forgotten Umberto Eco, and Nabokov and of course, skads of others, including Georges Perec, mostly 20th Century writers. But each of them using footnotes for different purposes.

(The photos are from Christmas at Pokolbin. Such a beautiful place.)

And persisting....

Eastern Water Dragon by the Brisbane River


Mother & chick on the lily leaves. Southbank.

Wondering along on the way to University, I was reminded by gazing upon various animals, of the essential sameness of the bilateral design of birds, lizards, whales, humans, all with the virtually the same sets of bones: elongated, foreshortened, atrophied, different; and thought of the essential stupidity of the argument for God from intelligent design. It would seem that the designer has never got it right and just has to keep on experimenting.

And one does have to wonder about those, who, gratefully accepting all the wonders of modern science when it comes to interventions to save their lives, do not notice a parallel story of antibiotic drugs, rendered less useful, by the rapid evolution of the various viruses and bacteria. The design is neither finished nor final.

How I hate religion! (And there we go. We all seem to need something to demonize.)

To continue

Christmas at Pokolbin

You may wish to read the hysterical response in link from Crikey.com to Michael Backman's column

The original column of Backman's was not that good, but the response, both by the Age and by Margaret Simon indicates just how impossible it is make remarks critical of Israel.

For me, the truth of it all is that the policies, laws and wars of Israel are fundamentally racist and unjust.

I still find it extraordinary that anyone can justify or try to justify, making war on a whole population for the sake of two prisoners (the war on Lebanon) or of even several deaths, thereby killing thousands, maiming more and destroying the capacity to stay alive. The war in Lebanon and the war in Gaza are and were fundamentally racist. I would wish that there might be a sufficient groundswell to indict the Israeli government for war crimes.

(And I am reminded of a column I read before Christmas, where a fundamentally nice man, criticised us all - most appropriately - for taking moral positions on things over which we have no control, to feel good about ourselves, while turning a blind eye to our own moral failings... Spot on. But when the disconnect between the discourse and the fundamental facts is so great, it is difficult to believe one lives in the same world.)

(And the picture comes from my peaceful and happy Christmas, and celebrates Don's vegetable patches).

Electronic intifada

Seamist and sunlight. Whale Beach Road.

I have copied this from the electronic intifada.

Joseph Massad, the Electronic Intifada, 20 January 2009.

"The logic goes as follows: Israel has the right to occupy Palestinian land, lay siege to Palestinian populations in Bantustans surrounded by an apartheid wall, starve the population, cut them off from fuel and electricity, uproot their trees and crops, and launch periodic raids and targeted assassinations against them and their elected leadership, and if this population resists these massive Israeli attacks against their lives and the fabric of their society and Israel responds by slaughtering them en masse, Israel would simply be "defending" itself as it must and should."

I can fault nothing in this statement.

Sadly nothing will change with the change of presidents. Neither Australia nor the US will see Israel's acts as war crimes. The world will not become a better nor more just place, while US governments are captive of the Israeli lobby and refuse justice and human rights to the Palestinians. (Obama's inaugural speech indicated business as usual in the middle east: the Palestinians are guilty and innocent and guilty alike deserve at best to be driven from their homes or simply to die. Extra-judicial killing is OK. Clearly, the Palestinians are subhuman: For provocations equivalent to those of the IRA whole regions of the earth must be destroyed. Imagine the same logic applied by the UK government to Northern Ireland. It is quite unthinkable. Why?)

(And these are trees in my beautiful street. And I fear to say this.)

From Sydney to Brisbane

Bluff Rock. Near Tenterfield, NSW.


The Condamine. Warwick, Queensland

I drove up by the New England Highway. Someone suggested to me that it would be the better, safer route. I'm not entirely sure about that. True that for many stretches of the road there was just me. But the distance was longer and it was a two lane highway (one lane one way, the other the other) which I hate as it doesn't allow any room for error.

I used the satnav and hence had no idea about intermediate towns or the length of the journey itself. Staging myself with directions to the next turn (204.7 km to the right...) I hadn't realised that it took in all the little towns on the way, so that there was need for a constant attention to the speed signs and the route to the upper Hunter from Newcastle seemed to consist of a constant chain of towns each extraordinarily close to the other.

Each staging post being a town, petrol and food were largely separated which is not the case for Highway 1, from Melbourne to at least Newcastle, so I had to revisit my strategy for these two items.

From Glen Innes, where I slept the night, all the way almost to Brisbane, it was an easy drive. Still not sure about the two lanes, though. I'll return via the coast and find out how horrible that is.

It was only when I felt that Brisbane was within reach that I started to take photos. (And then my battery ran out. I will be buying a spare.) The Condamine I had to photograph because of Don and it was there that the battery ran out. (There was some stunning scenery, a really beautiful drive.)

Christmas

De Beyer's vineyard. (Taken on a walk with the girls. Pokolbin.)


View across the vineyard to the mountains beyond.


Poinsettia. Palm Beach.

I had been dreading Christmas, but despite its various disappointments, it was much nicer than I had hoped. It was a real joy to have us all together and to be able to enjoy the children and the grandchildren.

Very hard on the N's to organise themselves and the children. I don't expect they will repeat the exercise in a hurry, but it was terrific nonetheless and probably would not have happened but for Don's stubbornness (determination).