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Waratah, in the Broken Bay NP, just north across the Hawkesbury.


Tea tree, at the end of the street.


Acacia sophorae seedpods. Earlier in the year the leaves were fresh and full of light. Now they are battered, insect chewed and wind broken.

I am slowly returning to life here. But I am feeling more cheerful. I have work to do and once more have plans.

So many tea trees are out now and this one is from the bottom of the street as is the wattle whose pods I haven't seen before. The splendid waratah is from a walk I did with R. last Sunday who is planning on walking to Everest Base camp in December. So she needs to get fit for walking and I need to get fit. It was a splendid day, a beautiful walk, and the return late afternoon, down the mouth of the Hawkesbury by water taxi, made it pure perfection.

These photos are from my iphone. Still existing with the iphone camera!! I need to earn some money.

Studying

Boronia clad slope, Flint and Steel track, photo Ruth P.

I got the email the other day: my thesis has been accepted without emendation. So all I have to do is get it bound and a few other administrative details.

Kerrie has a student working on what it takes to complete a Ph.D. Strange and funny undertaking. But given all the self doubts, I reckon two or three things were critical. I told everyone what I was doing and having made the step, I couldn't withdraw without enormous loss of face. I had been given a scholarship and that was such a statement of faith in me, and also something that I had to honour by completing. And, finally, and perhaps most importantly, the assumption on the part of my supervisor that I could and would.

You go to work each day and work in your little cubicle, reading the "literature" and writing. You feel like a monk, shut away, studying, or like a Chinese, locked in a room doing his imperial examination to become a Mandarin.

And finally you come away knowing some things you didn't know before, (in my case, learning how to use the library...), but probably not the things you thought you might, when you started.

Jury duty

Diana (one of the figures in the Archibald fountain in Hyde Park)


Phoebus Apollo


Theseus killing the minotaur


The pool in front of the Shrine of Remembrance

Today, I was called up for jury duty. I went armed with a medical certificate. I find it pretty extraordinary that at the age of 68, I am apparently required to do a nearly 4 hour daily commute and 5 days a week work where I may not move, eat or shit, except at the behest of the court. I argued that it would exacerbate existing health conditions and that I should not be called up again for the remainder of my life.

My doctor thought I was not a very upstanding citizen, but then her commute to town is probably less than an hour, and neither is she currently unemployed... (I would prefer to spend the immediate future in finding a part-time job after completing my Ph.D., rather than ruining my health in the service of the state.)

The photographs are taken on my walk through Hyde Park after my dismissal.

Photos from WA

Tash's Jarrah floor


Unidentified pea in the Kensington Bushland


Painted crayfish at Cicerello's, Freemantle

So many people in Perth have these beautiful jarrah floors. Such a wonderful colour and so long lasting. Even Nicole's 1930's cottage has its original jarrah floors.

The fishtanks at Cicerello's in Freemantle a fish and chip shop dating from the 30's were extraordinary. The fish & chips somewhat less so. A great place nonetheless for plebeian dining. And finally, I still don't have an ID for this very spiny pea.

Visiting WA

Ikea beads fitted one by one on circular and square frames


Nicole blew these eggs, papier-mached them, and then she and the girls painted them with textas


Kensington bushland


Kensington Bushland

Nicole has enormous patience in creating things and so do the two girls. The beads require tweezers and both Jamie and Elizabeth (4 & 6) are expert in handling them and deciding what they want to do with the colours.

Nicole wants everyone in the family to contribute an egg and has a dozen blanks still to go. I have done one and will do a second, the first is so awful.

The Kensington Bushland is lovely. It's almost just across the road, and is remnant jarrah and banksia forest. The paths through it are fenced to deter animals and people from entering. I used to walk Harley here every day when I visited WA. But now he is dead, I see it less frequently.

Zoran's eggs

Zoran's eggs

I was trying to do white on white with highlights. Fiddled with the exposure. Failed miserably.

Zoran has acquired three chooks and a chook house in his backyard. He & Branca no longer buy eggs. And Zoran wraps his eggs in plastic wrap so they will not dry out in the fridge. (I photographed them wrapped but I did not manage a good photo.)

They made beautiful bacon and eggs, but I forgot to show how lovely they looked when cooked.

Iphone and fundamentalist Christianity

Vicki's begonias on the carport still surviving despite the sea wind.


Tangle below the verandah. First Iphone photo...


Rachel's flat. Table set for Saturday lunch.

I gave myself an iphone as a present for having submitted the thesis. So, I have been starting to play with it. I love its connectivity with my contacts. If there is an address then clicking on it takes me to a map showing just where they are and in another click I have the route mapped out from whereever I am. (Provided of course there is some public wireless point available.) Another click takes me to an image of that address. If I am hunting for a hairdresser on the net up pop the ones nearest to my phone plus maps the lot...

At the moment, I do not have any of the photographs of my contacts so that a glance at the phone tells me who is ringing. Collecting those photos will be a slow process, particularly since I rarely photograph people so I cannot download any photos from my computer..

Rachel's lunch was interesting. And I blotted my copybook. I have become somewhat obsessional about the increasing influence of Christianity on our politics. The sad thing is that the dominant English-speaking culture is American. I love it for its intellectual richness, but Oh God, as a society I think it stinks. That huge divide between the rich and the poor, between the educated and the completely ineducated. So the influence of fundamental Christians is being felt in this country and in particular, I believe, in the behaviour of the climate change deniers. It seems to me, that there is a significant and influential mob who, believing in God, cannot believe that his favourite species might be wiped back to the stone-age, if we are lucky, or become completely extinct.

The two guests, Catholics, immediately changed the subject. But then, unlike me, who has so recently attended University, they have not seen the Christians at the start of the year manning the entrances of UQ and handing out thousands and thousands of copies of Darwin's Origin of Species, of which the most important part was the introduction purporting to be scholarly and arguing for Intelligent Design. Their children will be subject to this anti-intellectual bullshit, I have no doubt, and we and our government and our intellectual elite, having destroyed our state schools, will be increasingly subject to such nonsense.

A final comment about the iphone, a large number of its books come from project Gutenberg, but sadly, most of these project Gutenberg books are full of typos.