This will hurt me...

Occasionally we must suffer for our art. One day this might mean whipping off an ear or suffering a nervous breakdown. Other times it is biting off the nibs of your Textas... Swings and roundabouts.

Things are looking up. Hastings Caves State Reserve, Huon Valley. June 2011. Some people like trees more than they like people. Some people like trees more than they like ice cream. Some people like ice cream more than they like people. Everywhere I look I see trees. Hastings Caves State Reserve, Huon Valley. June 2011. Have a poem. In a Garden , Amy Lowell Gushing from the mouths of stone men To spread at ease under the sky In granite-lipped basins, Where iris dabble their feet And rustle to a passing wind, The water fills the garden with its rushing, In the midst of the quiet of close-clipped lawns. Damp smell the ferns in tunnels of stone, Where trickle and plash the fountains, Marble fountains, yellowed with much water. Splashing down moss-tarnished steps It falls, the water; And the air is throbbing with it; With its gurgling and running; With its leaping, and deep, cool murmur. And I wished for night and you. I wanted to see you in the swimming-pool, White and shining in

Sometimes Henry just freaks out a little bit. Often, although not always, it involves too much cheese .

You heard! St Johns Park, New Town. June 2011. Week two into the new job, and I'm slowly picking up reading time. One really top book this week, Tom Keneally's Gossip from the Forest , a novel which reconstructs the minutia of the negotiations surrounding the declaration of an Armistice at the end of World War I. Now don’t let that concept fool you, as this is an engaging and impressive work. Kenneally paints vivid portraits of the key characters, and infuses a humanity that is often absent in this kind of work. The novel is a fantastic study of the profound challenge of ending a conflict that featured such brutality. As might be expected, the real interest can be found in the vanquished, rather than the victors. This is magnified as the key Allied negotiators - vain French Marshall Foch and cold British Admiral Weymes - relish their roles as conquerors (even though the the reality was somewhat more complex than that) and that the Germans were something approaching evil incarna

Ezra just doesn't know what to think about it all any more!

It's all happening on the down low. Clifton Beach, June 2011. I've long held to the maxim that the gutter is the best place to be, as the view of the stars is simply unparalleled .

Jen and Hen do some bushwalking the sensible way: on duckboards!

Surfin' safari Antarctic expedition. Clifton Beach. June 2011. They're a brave mob, these Tasmanian surfers. I'l be honest with you and suggest that they're also possibly (probably) very silly. I mean, really; there were barely any waves when I took this, the air temperature was around seven degrees Celsius and there was a very brisk southerly blowing up from Antarctica. I shudder to think how cold the water was.

Scenes from a film: Walkabout II: Due South

The great Richmond flood of June 2011. Richmond, June 2011. We've had a lot of rain about these parts lately (to be fair, we've had our share of cold clear days too, but they're not nearly so dramatic). On one of these days we ventured down the road to the historic township of Richmond™ - that is, if 'history' begins in 1823.... MORE of the great Richmond flood of June 2011. Richmond, June 2011. So this day we eschewed the beach and went to find scones. Instead of small and fluffy Scottish quick breads we found a raging torrent ! The great Richmond flood of June 2011, looking away from the bridge. Richmond, June 2011. That said, the ducks and the geese seemed to enjoy it.

[In one's best Madonna-voice 'circa 1990. Strike a pose...

A jetty and some boats. Dover (I think...). Southern Tasmania. June 2011. One of the challenges of taking photographs from a moving vehicle is remembering which town exactly the photo was taken. I'm pretty sure that this is Dover, Australia second most southern-most town. Any Dover-ites are more than welcome to correct me... That's the trouble with fleeting trips. The memory lags behind the event, and in order to fill in gaps, we develop a tendency to reconstruct events. Clearly the fleeting few seconds that we spent in Dover (or some other town), was not enough!

Everyone in our house – except for Henry – loves crabs. In fact, our most recent expedition to Little Howrah Beach yielded a fantastic haul of good breeding stock for the forthcoming crab racing grand prix !

HA! Hastings Caves State Reserve. The Huon Valley. June 2011. Sunday ALREADY? Bloomin flip, someone has shortened the weekends again... A top five. Oh dear. Today I offer my Top Five Political Philosophers That I Can't Help Drawing Upon In My Everyday Business And Confusing People Because Their Relevance (Although Pertinent) Is Not Always Clear To Those Unfamiliar With Their Work ! Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels : at least people have heard of them, although that often does not help. While I am not a Marxist, their critique of the nature of things (especially work) is often both a succour and a curse. J.S. Mill : usual in a fight, a little bit of Mill goes a long long way... Michel Foucault : everything you wanted to know about power, Michel is your man. G.W.F. Hegel : the granddaddy of many, he can be the hardest to explain to the neutral audience. Thomas Hobbes : life in a state of nature. Enough said.