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.

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. ...

But when the strong were too weak to hurt the weak, the weak had to be strong enough to leave.

Can you believe that it is time for Theme Thursday already? Today we are not talking chocolate , toddlers , mess or ignominy . No, today we're dealing with ANIMAL . Now I could have posted a picture of a possum, numbat, wombat, wallaby or any other furry killing machine that roams our fair isle, but I figure that I'd use a far more deadly creature as an example of an animal . Some people - I know them as fools - have chosen to embrace that highfalutin idea that human beans are for some ungodly reason superior to animals. Of course, what these imbeciles seem to forget is that were are simple animals ourselves ! Anyone with a baby, toddler, teenage boy or Queenslander in their household could tell you this. Look at Henry [above]. One chocolate frog in the back of the car on a sunny day and all of a sudden it's Elagabalus meets Bacchus for a quick shandy in the Serengeti and we're down on all fours carrying on like a cat in heat. Fair dinkum, anyone who chooses to ...

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...

This will hurt me...

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