Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten.

Back to Seven Mile Beach today, this time in the sand dunes dodging tiger snakes and angry crabs.

I had an interesting bus trip this morning. I got on and was faced by an unfamiliar driver. The conversation went thus:

Him: "Are you a regular on this bus mate?"

Me: "Yeah, pretty much every day."

Him: "Great! Great! So, what route does it take?"

Me: "Pardon me?"

Him: "Do you know where it goes?"

Me: "Um. It goes into town..."

Him: "Yeah, yeah, I know that, but what way does it get there?"

Me: "Well, it usually goes straight along here for a bit, then it goes left up the road a bit, then you go through the first roundabout, then at the second roundabout you go right, then you go up this hill, the left, and then left again (still going up the hill), then you hook back in right and go down a hill, then through that bus mall, then you head back on the highway and cross the bridge..."

Him: "Right! Right!... so straight along here, left, roundabout, then right at the second roundabout, up the hill, loop back in to down the hill, through the bus mall, then you head for the bridge?"

Me: "Pretty much."

Him: "Thanks cobber!"

Anyway, we made it in to town.

Comments

smudgeon said…

Slightly worrying. Didn't happen to be a backwards-speaking dwarf, did he?

9 December 2009 at 13:09

Kris McCracken said…

No red room. No dwarves. No odd dancing. No naked Isabella Rossellini.

9 December 2009 at 13:14

Priyanka Khot said…

Lolz! In our college days, we used to tell new bus drivers the route all the time. Nice to know it is a world over phenomenon.

9 December 2009 at 17:26

Roddy said…

Are you sure he was a bus driver? As long as he didn't lead you up the garden path.
The hill you went up wasn't the bridge was it?

9 December 2009 at 20:27

Kris McCracken said…

Priyanka, they don't usually bother asking here, just miss stops!

10 December 2009 at 15:25

Kris McCracken said…

Roddy, allegedly.

10 December 2009 at 15:26

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...

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. ...

This will hurt me...

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