History, Stephen said, is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake.

Things are looking up at Seven Mile Beach! This - and remember that I am not an arborist - is some kind of gum tree that was chock full of magpies.

I like it.

Comments

Roddy said…

Just be aware my son that these trees have a habit of self pruning. They give very little warning. A loud crack, and if you are lucky you are dead. And if not!?... what kind of vegetable do you want to be?
These are the kind of trees that I am removing from Mother Earth.

23 November 2009 at 18:48

Babzy.B said…

Beautiful shot, i feel so little looking up !

23 November 2009 at 20:16

Sue said…

Aren't they called "widow makers" ???

23 November 2009 at 21:26

Carola said…

Kris, something the Germans are looking up

http://hausblog.taz.de/2009/11/pimmel-ueber-berlin/

And I saw you are reading "Im Krebsgang" von Günter Grass. It´s a realy good book. Do you agree?

And greeting from Panama, where things are diffrent - mañana.

24 November 2009 at 05:30

Roddy said…

Exactly little sister!
Sorry Kris!

24 November 2009 at 12:38

Kris McCracken said…

Thanks all.

Carola, that was an interesting link... ;)

24 November 2009 at 14:40

Anonymous said…

I like it too.

My grandmother told me Gum trees were brought to the US to be used as rail road ties. It was soon discovered that the wood was to brittle. Couldn't they have just asked someone on your side?

25 November 2009 at 08:07

Kris McCracken said…

I thought that gums were tough. You needed to import some ironbarks...

28 November 2009 at 09:25

Roddy said…

We used red gum for years until some bright spark decided to go with steel. All the hardwood sleepers are now coming up to be replaced by metal ones. I wonder if they will rust faster than the wood rotted?

29 November 2009 at 21:43

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. ...

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...

This will hurt me...

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