This will hurt me...

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

Donger #1. Howrah Beach, Howrah. September 2012. How many cliffs is too many cliffs? For Ezra and Henry, you can never have too many cliffs. Diving into the Wreck , Adrienne Rich First having read the book of myths, and loaded the camera, and checked the edge of the knife-blade, I put on the body-armor of black rubber the absurd flippers the grave and awkward mask. I am having to do this not like Cousteau with his assiduous team aboard the sun-flooded schooner but here alone. There is a ladder. The ladder is always there hanging innocently close to the side of the schooner. We know what it is for, we who have used it. Otherwise it is a piece of maritime floss some sundry equipment. I go down. Rung after rung and still the oxygen immerses me the blue light the clear atoms of our human air. I go down. My flippers cripple me, I crawl like an insect down the ladder and there is no one to tell me when the ocean will begin. First the air is blue an...

Jocks on rocks?

Henry in colour? Or... Black and white Henry?

Mussels, seaweed and a mountain. Little Howrah Beach, April 2011. You can get a reasonable sense of Hobart from Little Howrah Beach. On the right, you can see Bellerive Bluff on Hobart’s eastern shore. Look closely and you will see the triumphant light towers of Bellerive Oval, home of the all-conquering Tasmanian Tigers.™ Behind that, and across the Derwent River Estuary, you can see Hobart’s western shore nestled in the foothills of what eventually rises up to Mount Wellington, which tends to dominate the vista of the city (except on cloudy days). You can see the Sullivans Cove and Hobart’s waterfront area at centre-right of the picture, with the imposing flourishing meagre scant spattering of large buildings sitting just behind it. Shifting further left you’ll see Battery Point, Sandy Bay, Lower Sandy Bay across to Taroona on the left of the image. At the extreme left you can just about see Long Beach – home of the ‘ big Park ’ – which has featured prominently on the blog, as 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 ...

Bellerive Oval, home of the Sheffield Shield powerhouse Tasmanian Tigers. Bellerive, December 2010. I have had a number of Hi-5 songs stuck in my head for the past two weeks. At this point, I would even take Christmas carols as replacements. If anyone has a foolproof earworm , please let me know!

I rarely see any action inside. East Derwent Highway, Geilston Bay. November 2010. My Computer Meme! Which do you prefer laptop or desktop? I use both. The grunt of a good desktop is nice, as is a big screen. If I’ve lot’s of typing, the desktop is also superior. However, the laptop good for browsing in bed. Surfing the net while on the dunny is also easier with a laptop. My answer? Depends on the task! How many computers do you have in your home? Four, although only three are set up. In terms of ‘ready to go’ – one desktop PC and two laptop Macs. Wireless Internode Extreme ADSL2+ means we’re connected 24/7! Where do you keep it? Desktop = in the living room (to the side); Laptop [x 2] in the bedroom. PC or Mac? I use both every day, but at heart, I am very much a PC man through and through. Make? Ummmm. My brother made it. What is your processor? Intel (??) How much Ram do you have? 2 gigs. How much hard disk? 250 gigs, although I’m permanently running a terabyte drive off the side t...

Authorised by whom? East Derwent Highway, Geilston Bay. October 2010 Like the velociraptors in Jurassic Park , my children's brains are evolving . And like that movie, it is dangerous and terrifying . Take - for instance - the discussion that I had with Henry the other evening. After reports from the Oberaufseherin about rude and unruly behaviour for the second straight day, I assumed my fatherly voice (i.e. drop a couple of octaves and talk slowly) and queried the lad. After confirming that yes, Henry had stretched the bonds of maternal love that day, I expressed my bitter disappointment in the lad, as he had "promised to be a good boy" that morning. "Oh no," interjected the (not very-) guilty party, " you're wrong daddy !" A rueful shake of the head on my part, and a tired, "In what way am I wrong Henry?" "I only promised to try and be a good boy." What could I do? He was correct. I didn't expect such semantics at age f...

Mount Wellington and a tree. As seen from Geilston Bay. July 2010. Once upon a time there was this... boy . This boy lived in a hut made of... cats . The cats - of course - were dead. Well, most of them were dead. One of the cats was... magical . Magical cats eating... mushrooms .

Sand, sun and even a snippet of Mount Wellington. Ez weighs up his options at Bellerive Beach. I believe that he opted to collapse and cry…

Hobart rests under Mount Wellington, as seen from Bellerive. September 2010. I'm going to get myself a kayak and paddle to work every day. You just watch me... Friday Book Club ! If you're a ready, log on to GoodReads and let me know what you're reading and what you're thinking about what your reading... This week! Just finished Stephen Fry's début novel Liar , from 1991. I'm a Fry fan, but I'll be honest and admit that I found this one a little uneven. The most enjoyable parts for mine centred on the filthy-mined 'public school boy buggery years'. It then goes off the rails as it morphs into turgid Philology lecture through to spy thriller. It should be of little surprise that the most enjoyable section are those painfully intense "boy loves boy" sections that are obviously rooted in Fry's own experience of boarding. Indeed, much of this was to re-emerge in Fry's enormously entertaining extent autobiographical Moab is My Washpot .

Shark bait on Bellerive Beach looking west over Sandy Bay. Bellerive, August 2010. What a miserable day today. The best Sunday Top Five I can come up is My Top Five Things That I Can Say About It : "Sucked in Australia." "Told you so." "Enjoy it." "Dear oh dear." "..."

Standing in the east, looking over the west. Mount Wellington, viewed from Geilston Bay. July 2010. Time for another exciting instalment of 100 questions! 41. IF YOU COULD GET PLASTIC SURGERY WHAT WOULD IT BE? A cat’s tongue stitched to the back of my left hand. 42. WHY DID YOU FILL OUT THIS SURVEY? It liberates me somewhat by writers’ block, which itself emerged because I’ve not been well, exacerbated by being busy at work. That is, it’s easier than thinking something up. 43. WHAT DO YOU GET COMPLIMENTED ABOUT MOST? My legs. Or eyes. Hair? Something like that. 44. WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF ALCOHOL BECAME ILLEGAL? I’d probably have to write a ministerial brief. 45. WHAT DO YOU WANT FOR YOUR BIRTHDAY? A fancy new whiz bang laptop computer. 46. HOW MANY KIDS DO YOU WANT? I’ve enough already! 47. WERE YOU NAMED AFTER ANYONE? No one that I know of. 48. DO YOU WISH ON STARS? I generally avoid wishing. 49. WHICH FINGER[S] IS YOUR FAVORITE? My right index finger. 50. WHEN DID YOU LAST CRY? I had a...

You'll note that the jetty you see before you here is the very same jetty in the blog header! Amazing! The jetty can be found here on the eastern shore, right on the edge of Bellerive. It may or may not be true that this very jetty was used as the home base of the Great Penguin Hunt of 1882 , where over twenty-seven million fairy penguins were captured and processed into crumbed morsels passed off as chicken nuggets.

It has been a while since I featured Mount Wellington, so here she is in all her glory. This shot was taken down on the foreshore of Geilston Bay. I read this morning that J.D. Salinger is dead. If I may, I would just like to state that The Catcher in the Rye is a poorly constructed book, and Holden Caufield is perhaps the most intensely annoying protagonist I've had the displeasure to have shared a text with. Indeed, I would put it to Holden that it is he himself that is the " phony ". Perhaps it is my class bias showing, but Holden just needed to harden up, the miserable toff bastard.

How disappointed we all were when we made out way under the eastern end of the Tasman Bridge and discovered that there was not a troll in sight! That said, in my general working week, I am certain that at least seven percent of those I am in contact with have some troll ancestry somewhere in their bloodlines...

This bloody great big hand can be found next to the children's park in Montague Bay, itself found right next to the Tasman Bridge. I think that it has something to do with man's inhumanity to man. Or something. Not Waving but Drowning , by Stevie Smith Nobody heard him, the dead man, But still he lay moaning: I was much further out than you thought And not waving but drowning. Poor chap, he always loved larking And now he's dead It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way, They said. Oh, no no no, it was too cold always (Still the dead one lay moaning) I was much too far out all my life And not waving but drowning.

The Tasman Bridge is a five-lane bridge crossing the Derwent River, near the CBD of Hobart, Tasmania. It connects us on the Eastern Shore - the best shore, not just because of Henry and Ezra, but also the location of the Hobart International Airport, the Geilston Bay Community Centre, as well as the home of the 2006/7 Sheffield Shield winners the Tasmanian Tigers (Bellerive Oval) - with the dregs on the other side. The bridge itself if 1,395 metres long, and has a pedestrian foot way on each side for those willing to risk the winds. Today's poem? Australian Kenneth Slessor's Beach Burial Softly and humbly to the Gulf of Arabs The convoys of dead sailors come; At night they sway and wander in the waters far under, But morning rolls them in the foam. Between the sob and clubbing of the gunfire Someone, it seems, has time for this, To pluck them from the shallows and bury them in burrows And tread the sand upon their nakedness; And each cross, the driven stake of tidewood, Bears ...

Again a shot of Bellerive Oval, the home of the mighty Tasmanian Tigers cricket team! The stand there you can see there is the excitingly-monikered Southern Stand, which I am campaigning to have renamed the Danny Buckingham Stand after the rotund big hitter from Burnie who would have played a hundred Tests if he was born in Wagga Wagga. I'll let you know how that pans out... On other matters, like the Tigers, I am breaking records left , right and centre . This post represents number sixteen hundred for this blog. Remarkably, every single one of them has been brilliant !