This will hurt me...

You might not know it from his decidedly non -aerodynamic design, but Ezra is actually built for speed . Above, you can see him leaving Henry in his wake as Jen struggles to keep up with him.

Down by the river in Battery Point, you can see the oddest colours just underneath the surface of the water. This of course presents an entirely natural introduction to today's entry in the Saturday Festival of *someone else's* Poetry! Well Water , by Randall Jarrell What a girl called "the dailiness of life" (Adding an errand to your errand. Saying, "Since you're up . . ." Making you a means to A means to a means to) is well water Pumped from an old well at the bottom of the world. The pump you pump the water from is rusty And hard to move and absurd, a squirrel-wheel A sick squirrel turns slowly, through the sunny Inexorable hours. And yet sometimes The wheel turns of its own weight, the rusty Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands And gulp from them the dailiness of life.

When were were up on the coast earlier this month, Henry turned his hand to refitting long-discarded farm equipment. Here you can see an old plough that he fiddled with for a bit and got it up and going and we tilled a couple of acres before morning tea!

It has been a while since I featured Mount Wellington, so here she is in all her glory. This shot was taken down on the foreshore of Geilston Bay. I read this morning that J.D. Salinger is dead. If I may, I would just like to state that The Catcher in the Rye is a poorly constructed book, and Holden Caufield is perhaps the most intensely annoying protagonist I've had the displeasure to have shared a text with. Indeed, I would put it to Holden that it is he himself that is the " phony ". Perhaps it is my class bias showing, but Holden just needed to harden up, the miserable toff bastard.

I couldn't decide between these two, so I thought that I'd give up and post both. Here's a hunky Ez in Burnie looking like something straight out of a Calvin Klein advertisement from Spin Magazine in 1995.

One of Henry's most favourite things in the whole wide world is "dinner outside". Here in Tasmania, "dinner outside" equates to "dining with seagulls". Thus, the other evening, we headed on down to Bellerive beach and feasted on an array of scallops, prawns, squid, blue grenadier, dory and chips at the world famous (well, it is now) Fish Bar . We ate in the shadows of the light towers of the magnificent Bellerive Oval (home of the 2006/7 Sheffield Shield winners, the Tasmanian Tigers) and under the watchful gaze of a gang of seagulls that were loitering about. Which brings me to Theme Thursday . I got the IMPRESSION that the seagulls were up to no good. The cynosure appeared to be a battered scallop (or perhaps it was a prawn), and despite my warnings to Henry and Ezra to avoid encouraging the winged-rapscallions, an imbroglio ensued when a stray chip found itself on the grass next to us. You can imagine the commotion. In fact, in the subsequent kerf

William Leonard Hunt was a well known nineteenth funambulist that went by the name of The Great Farini . The Great Farini made a series of very famous tightrope performances at Niagara Falls in 1860, and his feats included crossing a high wire with a man on his back; with a sack over his entire body; turning somersaults while on the rope; hanging from it by his feet; amongst other seemingly impossible manoeuvres. This, on the other hand, was something rather different.

As you have probably figured out by now, Tasmania is blessed by [ahem] the best beaches in the world . Sure, the water is riddled with rips and generally frigid and full of Great White Sharks and jellyfish, but the sand is tremendous . Above and below I've got photos of the surface of the sand at Fossil Bluff in Wynyard, not more than fifty metres apart. I think I like number two, but I'm not sure. Whaddya reckon?

井の中の蛙大海を知らず。 [or] I no naka no kawazu taikai wo shirazu. [or] A frog in a well does not know the great sea. I think that there is something in that for all or us.

I took this shot just outside the farmhouse we stayed at up in Burnie earlier this month. I do like a nice sunrise through. Here in Hobart, it's morning. It's Australia Day. It's time to go down to Bellerive docks to get some sausages and laugh at people draped in what is a profoundly ugly flag.

Henry has gathered up all of these shells in two minutes flat. Yes, Conchology is an illness...

Richmond is a town about 25 kilometres north-east of Hobart, and is the Richmond Bridge, built in 1823, around the time of the town's first settlement. It is Australia's oldest bridge still in use. Above you can see the view to the West, and below are two shots of the bridge itself. I'll be honest with you people, it falls some way short of the Karlův most (Charles Bridge) in Praha, which is something like 466 years older. That said, chirpy chippy convicts built it (allegedly), and that makes all the difference to Australians!

"De plane boss! De plane!" Tasmania is an island, and this is my fantasy...

I snapped this photo on New Years Eve. I have no idea what kind of plane it is, and rolled a dice that it would be a Yak-3 or maybe a F4F Wildcat. It could just as easily be a Sopwith Camel, for all I know, however. If anyone can identify it, I'd welcome your input. Today's Top Five? My Top Five Boys Names That I Don't Like That End In 'Den' ! 1: Jaiden 2: Raiden 3: Clayden 4: Aiden 5: Slayden (I saw this one the other day)