This will hurt me...

Tranmere, as seen from Sandy Bay. January 2013. Wordless Wednesday.

Boats on the Derwent. Just off Tranmere, as seen from Sandy Bay. August 2012. Father's Day? Sunday Top Five? I have an idea! My Top Five Interesting Dads In The Animal Kingdom ! Lions . Greedy and lazy buggers, lion fathers. They occupy most of their time lying about in the shade, waiting for one of their wives to bring home dinner. Female lions do pretty much all of the hunting and almost all of the parenting. Of course, this bugger likes to eat first, and is happy enough in lean seasons to let everyone else starve to death rather than go without a feed... Emperor Penguins . You probably already know this, but this dedicated dad holds his missus's eggs on the top of his feet, covering them with his belly for two months in the frigid Antarctic... without eating! Where is is partner? That's rights, she's off shagging and eating! Grizzly Bears. These bears like their own space, they really do. They also like to eat. A lot. Which means that if mamma bear doe...

Hello cocky. East Derwent Highway, the Lindisfarne/ Geilston Bay Border. September 2011. The rural and remote health workforce innovation and reform strategy , that’s what I’ve got on today. I was in two minds as to whether to wear the suit or an akubra (with semi-permanent squint and a gratuitous piece of grass wedged between gritted teeth . As there will be doctors involved, best to go with the suit. I couldn’t pull off an akubra anyway... Then I remembered that most of Tasmania is considered 'remote' and relaxed a little.

Birds on a pontoon, Tranmere in the background. Long Beach, Sandy Bay. June 2011. Two very different books this week. First, Love and Death on Long Island by Gilbert Adair centres on the development of an obsession that in many respects greatly resembles Death in Venice (which I only read for the first time earlier this year ). There’s no doubt that the allusions to Thomas Mann’s classic text are quite deliberate. Like Death in Venice , the story concerns an aging, widowed and renowned ‘high art’ British novelist/academic with classical tastes who is somewhat out of step with the modern world. By a chance of fate, he encounters the figure of a C-Grade teen Hollywood heartthrob. Instantly enraptured by the ‘innocent’ beauty of the lad, and quickly becomes obsessed with the young actor. The concepts that have driven our narrator's life - logic and reason - are ultimately set against a concept that he has up to this point only ever really known in a philosophical sense: passion. Th...

More bloody boats. Racing off Tranmere, as seen from Sandy Bay. December 2010. Every summer in Hobart means boats, more boats, and MORE bloody boats. Honestly, we have boats coming out of our ears. There are too many boats and not enough sharks. I have long been an advocate of a Bill of Rights for Great White Sharks, including enshrining the right of one (1) boat – plus crew – per shark, per month. This way, we could keep a check on this rapidly growing boat population, and improve the quality of life of our besieged Great White communities. Honestly, the way that people carry on when one has a simple nibble out of a surfboard, you can imagine what would happen if one did the full Quint to one of these airy fairy, lardy dardy, goody goody, namby pamby, hoity toity, wishy washy, not in my backyard, chardonnay-sipping, doing nothin' do gooders. They would be calling the WAAAAAAH-mbulence quick smart and we would then have a violent and conceited revenge fantasy on our hands. It is ...