His whole aspect was that of a man who has been unexpectedly struck by lightning.

Flame trees? Royal Botanical Gardens, Hobart. June 2012.

Theme Thursday again and with the mood I have been in of late I thought that I'd hard pressed with this week's theme of INSPIRING THINGS.

However, after putting a little bit of thought to it, I have indeed been reminded me that there are indeed some INSPIRING THINGS within my current purview:

David Ireland's The Glass Canoe. After feeling the guilts for reading so little Australian literature, I'm hailing this 1976 book as a lost Australian classic. Seriously, this is a magnificent snapshot of an 'Australia' that I know, even if the blokes within don't make the cut for our glossy, cosmopolitan view of ourselves as a nation.

Henry's fire. I love my Henry very much, but I've always had a spot of concern with his potential fragility. He's a lovely bloke, but I wouldn't want him to ever not have the confidence to stick up for himself. In this P.C. world of ours the 'gut instinct' advice of "give any bugger giving you trouble a thump" is not welcome or wise. That said, "standing your ground and saying 'no' to wrong-doers" should be a rule of thumb we all apply. But how would Hank respond? After last week's Auskick scuffle (where Henry stood up for a little bloke who was being roughed up by two much bigger blokes) and yesterday's solid effort at righting the wrong of a gutless sucker hit of Ez (from behind no less), young Henry is starting to look a little like Batman!

Nice people. There are still nice people about. Even though the not-so-nice can sometimes dominate, I need to remind myself that there remain a few fundamentally decent human beings about.

Something unpleasant is coming when men are anxious to tell the truth.

This is the moon. Have I mentioned how much I adore the zoom on my camera? It's Theme Thursday you see, and after last week's limp effort, I have been thinking about how I might redeem myself. Then I clicked on the topic and discover that it was BUTTON. We've been hearing a lot about the moon in the past couple of weeks. Apparently some fellas went up there and played golf and what-not forty-odd years ago. The desire to get to the moon, however, was not simply about enhancing opportunities for Meg and Mog titles and skirting local planning by-laws in the construction of new and innovative golf courses. No, all of your Sputniks , "One small steps" and freeze dried ice cream was about one thing , and one thing only : MAD Now, I don't mean mad in terms of "bloke breaks record for number of scorpions he can get up his bum", no I mean MAD as in Mutual assured destruction . When I was a young man you see, there was a lot of talk about the type of m...

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...

This will hurt me...

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