This will hurt me...

Power. The view to Stowport, Emu Heights, Burnie. April 2013. Harvest , Jim Crace: Set during the the enclosures of 16th century England, and the destruction of one particular village (and an entire way of life). Some lovely writing and careful structure, lyrical in tone and in tune with the gentle harmonies of nature. B+ . Tasmania, The Tipping Point? Griffith Review 39 , Julianne Schultz and Natasha Cica (Eds.): You might not know that Tasmania ranks at or near the bottom among Australian states on virtually every indicator of socio-economic performance. This collection of essays drawn from thinkers, writers and doers from Tasmania (and its extensive diaspora), explores why, what it means and what we might do about it. Equal parts enlightening and infuriating. C . Logan's Run , William F. Nolan: A cracking yarn, albeit not particularly well written. C .

Seeds. Fern Glade, Burnie. April 2013. Wordless Wednesday.

Emu River. Fern Glade, Burnie. April 2013. Today's Sunday Top Five is a simple one: Five Things That *Particularly* Annoyed Me This Week! Large, belligerent girls in bus malls. People who smoke when they walk. Hipsters who can't handle their bicycles. Foul- mouthed bus travelers. People who think that they are asking questions when they are really making statements.

Theme Thursday and something MAGICAL is in the air. The last time that he saw Billy, he was being hit about the head and shoulders with a block of firewood. To be fair to the woman that was hitting him, Billy was not a very nice person. Billy had a problem with his temper. He did not take kindly to rejection. This was a special challenge, because with Billy’s temperament (among other things) he regularly face people rejecting him. Billy also had a problem with his vocabulary, his personal hygiene, his emotional intelligence, time management skills and his general sense of self. While these things are not unrelated to Billy’s assault; they offer an interesting insight into the nature of alienation in post-industrial societies, the failures of our modern welfare (post-welfare) state, the nihilism inherent in a capitalist, consumption-oriented world whereby success is measured by the wheels on your car, the size of your television set and the specific shade of orange on your girl...

Fern Glade, home to the elusive platypus up there in Burnie, throws some great reflections on the water both morning and afternoon. I always like it when you struggle to tell where the water starts and the riverbank ends. This place used to be teeming with a subspecies of Emu (hence "Emu River"), that I fondly call "Mini Emus". They killed 'em all though. Every last one. Bastards.

Look up in the sky down at Fern Glade, and you're bound to have the view obstructed by some kind of tree! Here is a selection of the kind of little beauties you might find. My apologies for the brevity, but work is rather hectic at the moment, and only bound to get worse.

I will admit that this photograph of a platypus is not the best that you'll ever see, but when you're saddled with two cranky and loud toddlers, and faced with the challenge of photographing one of the most notoriously shy and seldom-seen furry creatures known to humans, I consider it a triumph! What is more spectacular, we managed to glimpse three separate platypussies that morning! Such is the wonder of Fern Glade, just five minutes from the bustling city centre of the metropolis of Burnie.

Budget lock in this afternoon and evening, so the photo is a little delayed. The sector that I am currently working in fared much better than it had expected, so they should be happy. No doubt though, people will find plenty to complain about, as people inevitably do. But onto something FAR more interesting, another picture from Burnie. As was a common feature in my first incarnation as a photographer many years ago, I am back down at the Emu River. I failed to get a picture of some platypussies, but did snare plenty of shrubbery.

Now, I already have done a fuller feature on my home state. But today I thought that I would feature a veritable FEAST of photographs from our trip from the delicate South to the rugged North West of the Apple Isle , and my home town of Burnie. It was Henry’s first trip to the ‘Coast of Love’ - as I like to call it - and he seemed to enjoy it. As you can see from this first photograph, the weather was not too kind to us. A real chill in the air, fog and rain greeted our journey northward as we passed through the badlands of the Southern Midlands. This would have been taken somewhere not too far north of Pontville, as we entered the plains of central Tasmania. However, the weather did clear a bit, and allowed me to get a snap of what I like to call ‘the Midlands Steppe’. It’s not REALLY a steppe, but as a fan of all things Eastern Europe, I like to think of it as our little version of "the Great Steppe". As the video I posted earlier today shows, we had a break in Campbell To...