I used to take a bucket from the laundry cupboard and run up the street to Dub's house. Then we'd collect the cicada shells from the paperbarks up and down the street ... the days work was only complete when the bucket was at least ... well it was complete when we couldn't be arsed collecting any more ... I don't actually remember what we did with them afterward ...
I can only s'pose we just owned them ... hoarded them in a safe somewhere. Buried them in the ground and made a treasure map.
The tea trees were a bugger to get through to the trunks ... they're just too low to the ground. The cuts and scrapes I earned as I macheted my way through them branches to clutch my single cicada shell meant that I left those one's till last ... bloody tea trees. Used to hate playing cricket near those things ... ball'd invariably end up halfway up them in the crook of the trunk and a branch.
Dub lives in Brisbane with his girlfriend now ... haven't visited once in all these years. He came down to Melbourne a couple of times and told me off.
Should drop in on him sometime soon.
Wednesday, September 28
Sunday, September 25
myrtaceae
The streets are in bloom with the callistemons ... the myrtaceae, however, there is no sign of them yet.
though
I know they are coming
Thursday, September 22
the camaldulensis
I come from Melbourne ... my favourite city in Australia to live in as far as I know of.
the music is rife, the people laid back, the weather is ... well is isn't boring ......, and there are trams.
I love trams ... except when you're late for work or class or a date ...
I used to catch the tram to school from the stop outside the old Camberwell town hall. The clock is always wrong and the timetable is also always wrong. I used to be somewhat amused when the tram coincided with the right time according to the town hall clock. At the stop there was a huge ancient old tree. A gum tree with thick arms with a shower of leaves just waiting to fly off. It had obviously been there a century or two. I don't know about before white people came ... it seemed to be a bit far from any other friends ... but what do I know.
it had a little plaque on it with its common name and latin name.
River Red Gum
Eucalyptus Camaldulensis
waiting for trams can sometimes be an eternity, one sometimes holds up another ... and then another. When they arrive, they might as well be a train. The first two pass right by you with the driver focusing on the road ahead as if he may have to swerve out of the way of a wayward pedestrian, leaving the third tram to stop for you as you wave your arm pathetically from the side of the wet road.
Even when it was miserable weather I stared up at the giant old man looking over his plaque hammered into his shins by some miniscule council gardner.
eucalyptus camaldulensis ...
... I've never forgotten it
the music is rife, the people laid back, the weather is ... well is isn't boring ......, and there are trams.
I love trams ... except when you're late for work or class or a date ...
I used to catch the tram to school from the stop outside the old Camberwell town hall. The clock is always wrong and the timetable is also always wrong. I used to be somewhat amused when the tram coincided with the right time according to the town hall clock. At the stop there was a huge ancient old tree. A gum tree with thick arms with a shower of leaves just waiting to fly off. It had obviously been there a century or two. I don't know about before white people came ... it seemed to be a bit far from any other friends ... but what do I know.
it had a little plaque on it with its common name and latin name.
River Red Gum
Eucalyptus Camaldulensis
waiting for trams can sometimes be an eternity, one sometimes holds up another ... and then another. When they arrive, they might as well be a train. The first two pass right by you with the driver focusing on the road ahead as if he may have to swerve out of the way of a wayward pedestrian, leaving the third tram to stop for you as you wave your arm pathetically from the side of the wet road.
Even when it was miserable weather I stared up at the giant old man looking over his plaque hammered into his shins by some miniscule council gardner.
eucalyptus camaldulensis ...
... I've never forgotten it
night shift
my goodness this is boring at times.
working in the psych ward is fun ... but not when you don't see no clients for the entire shift ... However, it does give one a few moments to gather one's thought and make a random website up for the helluvitt.
I have no intention of making this a site whereby I talk about myself all the time. I'm hoping for constant inspiration to make this site helluva lot more creative ... but since I haven't really been webbing for quite a long time and am a bit out of touch with what the F^%* goes on websites then it'll be some time before this inspiration comes.
At the moment I live in Alice Springs ... when you look at the big map of Australia on my wall, it would seem that Alice is in the middle of nowhere ... a GREAT place to dump nuclear waste when Canberra just won't do. I have lived here for eight months or so now and I have gotten used to the place names and the deceptiveness of the distances so much that I have forgotten that I used to think of the outback like that. I've even drawn in the little bits all over the place on one map which, I realise now, is boody useless ... there are thousands of communities and whatnot all over the joint ... though I think the Simpson desert is just a desert with not much to interupt it ... other than the random camel trek to Birdsville, Qld, via Poeppel's corner.
The Alice is nestled amongst the Macdonnell ranges ... so every day when I jump on me little bicicletta and tottle off to work, I'm greeted by the majesticly crumbling walls that surround the world ... the best is the morning when you come round the corner to face the ranges as the sun slowly slides down them.
It's September now and the weather is warming up slowly. The air is bone dry so it's actually quite pleasant still. Days of 32-35 degrees. You have to drink like a trooper because the air is so dry that the sweat doesn't even have time to feel moist on your skin before it is whisked off to become one with the occasional cloud in the sky ... if you don't drink, then you quickly feel quite tired.
Out the western road, Namatjira Drive, is the most beautiful stretch of road I think I know of ... though I consider my Australian education still in its infancy. Rolling hills, rocks, ridges, eucalypts and mulgas, grass and shrubs, gorges and waterholes, riverbeds and creekbeds ... Mt Sonder looking sombrely at your approach from the East.
Down the Ross Hwy to the East of Alice the road changes from quietly pretty to spectacularly stunning ... it'd a shame to be the driver, have to keep your eyes on the road maybe that's why there's so many rollovers here.
Down 4-wheel-only tracks, off the sealed ones, you'll find out-of-the-way waterholes with less tourists and solitude. If you find a rocky alcove you can sit there and just listen to nothing until the sun tips so far to the west that you shiver in your jocks.
Out the gap there are claypans which we lie in for our beauty treatment for weeks after a splash after a rain. For some reason the water likes it there and stays for a while, all chocolate thick and soothing.
come visit me, 'snot as empty as the map looks.
working in the psych ward is fun ... but not when you don't see no clients for the entire shift ... However, it does give one a few moments to gather one's thought and make a random website up for the helluvitt.
I have no intention of making this a site whereby I talk about myself all the time. I'm hoping for constant inspiration to make this site helluva lot more creative ... but since I haven't really been webbing for quite a long time and am a bit out of touch with what the F^%* goes on websites then it'll be some time before this inspiration comes.
At the moment I live in Alice Springs ... when you look at the big map of Australia on my wall, it would seem that Alice is in the middle of nowhere ... a GREAT place to dump nuclear waste when Canberra just won't do. I have lived here for eight months or so now and I have gotten used to the place names and the deceptiveness of the distances so much that I have forgotten that I used to think of the outback like that. I've even drawn in the little bits all over the place on one map which, I realise now, is boody useless ... there are thousands of communities and whatnot all over the joint ... though I think the Simpson desert is just a desert with not much to interupt it ... other than the random camel trek to Birdsville, Qld, via Poeppel's corner.
The Alice is nestled amongst the Macdonnell ranges ... so every day when I jump on me little bicicletta and tottle off to work, I'm greeted by the majesticly crumbling walls that surround the world ... the best is the morning when you come round the corner to face the ranges as the sun slowly slides down them.
It's September now and the weather is warming up slowly. The air is bone dry so it's actually quite pleasant still. Days of 32-35 degrees. You have to drink like a trooper because the air is so dry that the sweat doesn't even have time to feel moist on your skin before it is whisked off to become one with the occasional cloud in the sky ... if you don't drink, then you quickly feel quite tired.
Out the western road, Namatjira Drive, is the most beautiful stretch of road I think I know of ... though I consider my Australian education still in its infancy. Rolling hills, rocks, ridges, eucalypts and mulgas, grass and shrubs, gorges and waterholes, riverbeds and creekbeds ... Mt Sonder looking sombrely at your approach from the East.
Down the Ross Hwy to the East of Alice the road changes from quietly pretty to spectacularly stunning ... it'd a shame to be the driver, have to keep your eyes on the road maybe that's why there's so many rollovers here.
Down 4-wheel-only tracks, off the sealed ones, you'll find out-of-the-way waterholes with less tourists and solitude. If you find a rocky alcove you can sit there and just listen to nothing until the sun tips so far to the west that you shiver in your jocks.
Out the gap there are claypans which we lie in for our beauty treatment for weeks after a splash after a rain. For some reason the water likes it there and stays for a while, all chocolate thick and soothing.
come visit me, 'snot as empty as the map looks.
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