Toeval is logisch.

Here one can see the Dutch ships Heemskerck and Zeehaen battling through the notorious Southern Ocean. Of course, this is but a re-creation, as no photograhs survive of Abel Tasman's little holiday down south in 1642. I think that they got wet and mouldy. Or something.

I occasionally wonder what might have happened if the Dutch got serious about settling Tasmania and crowded the Poms out. Given their tendency to set up plantations for cash crops in Indonesia, maybe they were too lazy to get their hands dirty and make a go of it in a sparsely inhabited land like ours.

Perhaps it's a good thing though, as clogs give me blisters and I’m not the biggest fan of herring. That said though, tulips are lovely and grow rather nicely down here, we get plenty of wind for windmill-related hi-jinks. So maybe we missed out. Maybe the Dutch could have sent out some tall blonde women instead of all those filthy convicts and we could be cruising on bicycles through an immaculate red light district (based on a canal) rocking out to Golden Earring’s Radar Love smoking joints and nibbling on a bit of paardenrookvlees while slurping down some jellied eel on the side. We can eat the oliebollen when we get to the coffee shop.

Or maybe I need to get out and meet some more Dutch people.

Comments

smudgeon said…

You missed the national pastime of watching reality TV shows

Can you believe Tasman & co. took one look at the west coast & decided there was little of value? Rather hasty, considering the amount of silver, tin & other useful rocks dug up over there...

19 January 2009 at 09:59

Kris McCracken said…

Me, they also like "water sports", don't they?

21 January 2009 at 14:34

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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