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Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it...

I still have the robot on the job. Here you can see the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery . And here is a poem: Soliloquy for One Dead Bruce Dawe Ah, no, Joe, you never knew the whole of it, the whistling which is only the wind in the chimney's smoking belly, the footsteps on the muddy path that are always somebody else's. I think of your limbs down there, softly becoming mineral, the life of grasses, and the old love of you thrusts the tears up into my eyes, with the family aware and looking everywhere else. Sometimes when summer is over the land, when the heat quickens the deaf timbers, and birds are thick in the plumbs again, my heart sickens, Joe, calling for the water of your voice and the gone agony of your nearness. I try hard to forget, saying: If God wills, it must be so, because of His goodness, because- but the grasshopper memory leaps in the long thicket, knowing no ease. Ah, Joe, you never knew the whole of it... I like Bruce Dawe. He just my be my favourite Austral...
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Hold me now, oh hold me now, until this hour has gone around. And I'm gone on the rising tide, to face Van Dieman's Land

Theme Thursday again, and this one is rather easy. I am Tasmanian, you see, and aside from being all around general geniuses - as I have amply described previously - we are also very familiar with the concept of WATER. Tasmania is the ONLY island state of an ISLAND continent. That means, we're surrounded by WATER. That should help explain why I take so many photographs of water . Tasmania was for a long time the place where the British (an island race terrified of water) sent their poor people most vile and horrid criminals. The sort of folk who would face the stark choice of a death sentence , or transportation to the other end of the world. Their catalogue of crimes is horrifying : stealing bread assault stealing gentlemen's handkerchiefs drunken assault being poor affray ladies being overly friendly with gentlemen for money hitting people having a drink and a laugh public drunkenness being Irish Fenian terrorist activities being Catholic religious subversion. ...
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Technological discoveries are the spermatozoa of social change.

Escapee dog walks on air. Table Cape, Tasmania's North West Coast. February 2012. This Theme Thursday we are not talking about monkey's in rhinestone vests, we are talking BUBBLES. "BUBBLES?", you ask. Yes, BUBBLES. When I say BUBBLES I don't mean a thin, hemispherical film of liquid filled with air or gas (i.e. 'I'm forever blowing BUBBLES in the air"). Nor do I mean a globular body of air or gas formed within a liquid (i.e. 'fart in the bath'). No, when I think BUBBLES I think of something insubstantial , something groundless , something ephemeral . Not wanting to burst your BUBBLE S , but BUBBLES are usually impracticable illusions. That monkey you bought and stuck in nappies? It's never going to be human! That dog you saw floating in the air up at Table Cape? It was just rounding the crest!
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