(My) Photo of the day, Or Because this land's the place I love and here I'll stay

This picture was taken last week, but I have decided to use it today. You see these guys down on the waterfront every Wednesday, and they always seem to have plenty of takers for their cruises. It would no doubt be very pleasant, as the Derwent is reasonably flat right all the way down south (until you get out into the ocean, that is. Then it gets hairy!)

Contrast this with the number of attempts to set up a catamaran service that could cope with the Bass Strait crossing, from George Town to Melbourne. These Tasmanian-made vessels do very well in around the globe (in the Mediterranean, Baltic, Caribbean, the eastern seaboard of North America, Japan, the Middle East, they even supply the US Navy).

While the ‘Devil Cat’ was an extraordinarily cool-looking vessel without doubt, it unfortunately did not seem to cope well with Bass Strait’s unique tendency to big swells, especially in winter. My father worked on this run for a short while, and tells wonderful stories of seamen endlessly swabbing the decks as most passengers could not avoid the losing their breakfasts, lunch AND dinners on the course of the journey.

UPDATE

It turns out that this post was number 400. I just thought that I better note it!

Comments

maria elisa said…

Thank you for the visits to my blog

27 May 2008 at 21:43

Kris McCracken said…

I always like to visit.

30 May 2008 at 08:49

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...

There was nothing left. No reason, no conscience, no understanding; even the most rudimentary sense of life or death, good or evil, right or wrong.

Here is a self portrait. I’m calling it Portrait of a lady in a dirty window . Shocking, isn’t it? However, it is apt! Samhain , Nos Galan Gaeaf , Hop-tu-Naa , All Saints , All Hallows , Hallowmas , Hallowe'en or HALLOWEEN . It’s Theme Thursday and we’re talking about the festivals traditionally held at the end of the harvest season. Huh? No wonder Australians have trouble with the concept of HALLOWEEN. For the record, in my thirty-two L O N G years on the planet, I can’t say I’ve ever seen ghosts ‘n goblins, trick ‘n treaters or Michael Myers stalking Tasmania’s streets at the end of October. [That said, I did once see a woman as pale as a ghost turning tricks that looked like Michael Myers in late November one time.] Despite the best efforts of Hollywood, sitcoms, and innumerable companies; it seems Australians are impervious to the [ahem] charms of a corporatized variant of a celebration of the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darke...

In dreams begin responsibilities.

A life at sea, that's for me, only I just don't have the BREAD. That's right, Theme Thursday yet again and I post a photo of a yacht dicking about in Bass Strait just off Wynyard. The problem is, I am yet again stuck at work, slogging away, because I knead need the dough . My understanding is that it is the dough that makes the BREAD. And it is the BREAD that buys the yacht. On my salary though, I will be lucky to have enough dough or BREAD for a half dozen dinner rolls. Happy Theme Thursday people, sorry for the rush.

This will hurt me...

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