Gang Gangs

I awoke and thought I was in heaven. I felt at peace. My head was clear after a nights sleep free from The Hum.

A perfect symphony of bird calls rang out from the bush. There were no screeching divas with the absence of magpies, wattle birds, crows, seagulls and corellas. The subtle call of the Gang Gang Cockatoos could be heard. It has a quieter squawk than its cockatoo cousins. It is more of a croak. We had seen three Gang Gangs the day before. They are distinguished by their grey feathers and red crests.

I had slept well in the tent despite frequent interruptions from snarling possums fossicking about for food and the occasional wallaby bounding by.

The Glenelg River in south west Victoria is beautiful. Surrounded by Australian bushland, it is protected by its National Park status, amid the ugly pine plantations that go on for kilometers and spoil this environment. The river is large enough for power boats, but favoured by canoeists and kayakers. There are no rapids but a swift current moves the slightly salty water to the estuary downstream at Nelson. Bream are often caught by the fishermen who frequent this place.

We swam, dived and jumped off jetties, fished, sat, cruised in the boat, cooked at the campfire, and looked for satellites and meteors in the star filled sky. The next day we left the clear hot day behind and descended into the cool dark underground interior of the Princess Margaret Rose Cave to be amazed by the stalactites and stalagmites.

On the radio

Ray Jones is a radio commentator on the local community radio station 3RPCFM in the Western districts of Victoria Australia. He is an older guy who has been around Portland his whole life.

Yesterday he interviewed me for his program. The purpose of the interview was to advertise an upcoming event. Maura the Clairvoyant Librarian is touring Victoria as part of the Victorian Public Libraries Summer Read program organised and sponsored by the State Library of Victoria. Maura will predict your next great book to read. She will be in Portland on the Town Green on Friday 15^th January from 11:00am until 2:00pm. The pre-recorded radio interview goes to air on Sunday 10th January and Wednesday 13th January during Ray’s program.

It was an interesting interview and Ray posed some tricky questions, that I was unprepared for. He posed the problem of the possibility of the internet crashing with far-reaching effects, and how our community depends so heavily on its functions. He talked about the deterioration of the English language and asked me who was to blame. He asked if I remembered Cuisenaire. I do.

I responded as the thoughts came to me. I told him (and the listener) that I had recently listened to the talk by Bill Thompson at The Big Issues conference held at the State Library of Victoria. Bill is a journalist from the UK and a commentator on technology and future trends. He stated that the current wave of online based technology is just in its infancy and no-one can predict what or how we will be using this type of technology in five years time.

I commented that the changes we see in English language usage – the deterioration of spelling and grammar (and perhaps our ability to express ourselves and communicate effectively) will only continue to get worse in my opinion. This is mainly due to the growing popularity and accessibility of online writing and conversations, such as this blog. I know my English language skills are not great and I do in fact blame the schooling system in the Victorian public schools in the 1970’s. Grammar was scrapped from the curriculum. (At least it was at the school I attended). I have had to work hard since then to try to bring my writing skills to an acceptable standard.

But further to that we all see how people abbreviate words for SMSing and the sentence constructions when using Twitter and Facebook. How long will it be before teachers start seeing this type of spelling appearing in school work? Maybe it is already.

By the way, Maura is not really clairvoyant, but a performer!! I think so anyway. I have been asked by customers if she is really a clairvoyant.

I have just finished reading The Girl Who Played with Fire by Stieg Larsson. It is the second in the trilogy and I loved it as much as the first one The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I can imagine the movie with Bruce Willis playing the role of Mikael Blomkvist. What do you think?

Dead Koalas

I see dead koalas. Probably at a frequency of one per week. Their fat round fluffy grey/brown/white furred bodies don’t flatten easily apparently. Sometimes I glimpse a leathery black nose amid the gory mess as I speed by on my way to work.

The Princes Highway is the A1 highway that loops completely around Australia. This particular stretch of this major highway is rural, coastal, farming, open and bare to the prevailing cold sea winds from the Antarctic. Wind turbines are multiplying along this coastline.

So where do the koalas come from? Go to? Live? There are some treed areas but often I’ll see a dead one in an area that has no native trees, only Cyprus trees planted by early settlers.

I worry about them. As well as being cute in appearance, they are non-threatening and gentle creatures. They are an endangered species. Sure I see lots of other road-kill such as kangaroos, wallabies, foxes, rabbits, and birds. But it is the squashed koalas that upset me the most. I often see a mangled mess of fur and flesh and blood at the end of black skid marks from car tyres. It is far more gruesome than a Twilight movie. (But that’s not hard).

I hope I never see a live one on the road before my car. Would I swerve and dangerously cause an accident? Or would I plough straight through it? I hope I am never tested. A common topic of conversation in this region is about people who have damaged their cars from collisions with kangaroos and koalas.

Then today on my way home from work I was glad to avoid running over a huge snake sliding across the highway. It wasn’t a brown or black snake – maybe a tiger snake. These too are protected species and I’m glad the one I saw lived.

Alex Miller

Alex Miller has been a prominent Australian author for some time now and I am aware of this. But I have only just discovered him myself. Better late than never I guess especially when you are rewarded with such beautiful writing as his.

Landscape of Farewell (2007) is the first of his that I have read only this week. It is a poetic and moving story of two old men sharing a shack in the Australian outback, while trying to come to terms with the loss of their wives, as well as sorting out the shameful curse of their very different family stories.

Lovesong (2009) is one of the books on this year’s list for the Summer Read organised by the State Library of Victoria. I had read a brief review somewhere and immediately wanted to read it, mostly because it begins in a cafe on the outskirts of Paris. Anything about France and I am sold. So far I love it. Our library staff are reading the books on the Summer Read list so that we can be well informed for our customers.

I am aware of his other novels and know he is a prize winner, so he was an author on my mental list of must-reads. I am delightfully surprised to find he writes beautiful, gentle stories that are cleverly woven around love, family, landscape, and culture. He explores the human relationship in all its complexities, especially where cultures collide. You quickly warm to his very human characters.

Reading his stories now is pertinent for me because I am living in a landscape that is new and foreign to me, while also having left important family members behind. I too am missing loved ones while trying to adjust to an unfamiliar new life. His stories resonate within me in a profound way.

Extreme Libraries

Mount Gambier Library in South Australia is a new shiny purpose built, state of the art, no expense spared library. It opens on 17^th December 2009. I was fortunate to visit this week to attend a library seminar held there. The new building is completed but the beautiful new timber shelves were bare, silently waiting for the new stock to arrive. Contractors and technicians were finishing the main desk, installing the security gates at the entry, and other little last minute jobs. The technology is state of the art with numerous flat screen TVs, fully implemented RFID, a light bright work room with all the tools of the trade and space to spread out, meeting rooms with smart boards, mini cinema areas, a cafe, and the most amazing cave that is the children’s area.

The seminar was titled Best Sellers. Paul Brown from Manukau Libraries in New Zealand presented an interesting, useful and thought-provoking session on Reader Advisory services in libraries. He reminds us that this is indeed the core business of public libraries and I applaud him for this focus.

By contrast, just 78 kilometres away, I visited the Digby Library as part of the outreach services maintained by the Glenelg Libraries in Victoria. This tiny old dusty collection of yellowed books is held in an old Mechanics Institute building. We replaced the small stock of new library books and materials for the local farming community. Outside in the dusty carpark we struggled to get a signal to connect to the internet to make the data upload/download. Meanwhile the sun beat down, sweat dripped from our foreheads, and the horses and goats looked with bored indifference.

This outreach service goes to small community centres in Heywood and Casterton, a Bush Nursing Hospital in Merino, a local shop in Dartmoor, and the Mechanics Institute Hall in Digby.

Two libraries close together geographically, but as extremely apart from each other as is possible in our society.

Too many cups of tea

The first week of my new life was busy, full, and different. I travelled every day between the place I am living temporarily and the town where I am working. It is a seaside rural community with lots of space to think. I like that. It is a landscape that stretches out to the horizon. There is a lot of sky and fields of farmland. The smell of cut grass dominates as the farmers clear their fields and make hay bales for stock feed in readiness for the dry summer ahead.

This week I saw a koala walking along the side of a busy road in the middle of a large town. I worried it would be hit by a car. Eventually it scampered to the grass of the foreshore near the sea but there were no trees for it to find refuge in. Surely dogs must be a problem for koalas, if not the traffic.

I saw whales just off the headland slapping the water with their grey and white fins. I walked to the red and white lighthouse and sat and watched some yachts sail by. The weather has been perfect since my arrival and contrary to my perception of the weather in this part of the world. Every day I drive past the wind turbines that dot this windy coastline. They were still for most of the week.

I have met lots of people for the first time and I find the country attitude refreshing and I will need to relax my city-dwellers angst to adjust. I didn’t realise the extent to which I actually had been urbanised after all.

I went along to a community art auction that was raising funds for the local hospital. It was held at the primary school but was in fact a formal event where everyone dressed up in suits, bow ties, and frocks. The guest speaker was the events coordinator from Federation Square in Melbourne. The theme for the art was “tea pots” and anyone could enter. A decorated tea pot along with a painting were entered and then auctioned. It was an inclusive and encouraging creative endeavour where entrants did not seem shy about their amateur creations. Some were poor while others surprisingly good – surprising for the amateur artist. Of course some practiced artists included work and these were fetching prices at this auction of $1000. One ceramic teapot in particular reached this amount, but the artist was an established ceramic artist from South Australia. I actually bought two paintings by default really as the final bidder in the silent auction items.

While living temporarily in accommodation with family I feel unsettled for being “homeless” and away from loved ones. One can’t really do the things at home that is routine and taken for granted. So making cups of tea is the thing to do. It is something. But I don’t need that much tea in my system.

Today between cups of tea I helped in my sister’s garden, went for a swim at the beach, made a curry for dinner, listened to the birds as I rocked in the hammock under the pine trees. Meanwhile my husband, still back in our old life for the time being, told me by telephone that he went fishing and caught three large snapper.

 

The next chapter

I celebrated a major milestone birthday recently with an escape to the wilderness, thinking I would avoid attention and commune with nature in its purity. This was fine and I spent the momentous occasion trekking through 30 centimetre deep snow around beautiful Dove Lake at Cradle Mountain in Tasmania. This area is actually listed as a world heritage place.

Since then I have been prodded and probed, scanned and screened to finally get a clean bill of health. I have new spectacles; have had a massage and facial, haircut and general tidy-up. I have a new job; have planned a new house for a new block of land in a new location. I have a new job and start work next week. I have sorted and packed up my house, thrown out the old stuff, and I leave my old life behind this weekend and start the next chapter of my life afresh. I have finally adjusted to being an “empty-nester” and proud that my three adult children are happy, independent, and confident living their own wonderful lives. Fortunately for me, the only thing I haven’t changed is my husband! And my family of course.

Fully realising that you take your Self with you wherever you go, I have worked on my psyche long and hard over the years and I am confident and happy with my place in the world and this life. But I try never to be ungrateful, complacent, nor take things for granted. Life continues to unfold in its mystery.

To my great delight I am still going to be working in libraries so this is not new, but the branches and people I meet will be. It is such a privilege to work in libraries.

I will endeavour to keep up this blog and my two other blogs: French Accent and Port Fairy House as I make the transition into this new landscape. Goodbye beautiful Mornington Peninsula.

You can change your life

You can change your life. Sounds easy, doesn’t it? But it is not as easy as it sounds. Here are some essential ingredients that you will need:

Be willing. You might think you are willing. You might say you are willing. But do you feel willing? Really feel willing to make the changes necessary?

Be persistent. You may experience setbacks in your attempts to change your life, but you will need to persist with your attempts and not let rejection, disapproval of others, or failure to stop you. You need to keep trying time and time again.

Know yourself. Is this the change that is right for you, or is it something you are chasing because it is seen as something desirable by others? Know yourself well enough to know that this is truly right for you.

Realise reality. Know what the reality of this life change will bring. Visualise this new life. The reality of what you desire may not live up to the imagined life at all. Think it through carefully.

Make sacrifices. Know that you will be sacrificing some things with this change. Life will not be what it was. Some things will leave your life forever.

You have choice. Know that you are free to choose the life you want, but so are others and they may not make the life choices that are compatible with yours. You can only change your own life.

Be brave. It is scary. Once the changes are set in motion you may get nervous and you will need to have courage to keep going. It is too easy to give up and return to old habits and to what is known and comfortable. Don’t mistake this discomfort with unwillingness.

You will always have you. You will take your Self with you. Remember that. You can’t escape yourself. But a new environment amongst a different group of people may affect your behaviour; hopefully for the better.

Uproot. Leaving your old life will feel like uprooting and it is. All that is known to you will be left behind.

Life will never look the same. Once you are on the road to your new life, the whole view of the world will change for you. It is as if the dust has been shaken off everything you see around you and you see the world with fresh eyes; like the eyes of a child; like this old familiar life and scenery is something new.

You will know it when it happens. You will know it when you have crossed the threshold into your new life. You will feel it deep within and you will know that there is no way back, even if you wanted to go back. You can’t. It is in the past. It was your former life. You have grown beyond that former life.

Treasured memories

If you are old enough to remember what life was like before digital photography you will remember: buying rolls of film for your camera; being limited to the number of shots on the film; not being able to delete any bad ones; taking the film to a shop to get developed; waiting a few days before collecting them; looking through the pack in anticipation; throwing out the blurred shots; putting the good ones into a photo album; maybe getting slides made; then boring family and friends with slide nights or photo albums. Then the albums yellowing and gathering dust on the shelf. Remember that?

Digital photography has revolutionised the way we capture images of our lives and then share and preserve these images and treasured memories. Now we can click like there is no tomorrow. We can delete any bad ones as they occur. We can take hundreds and thousands of photos.

How do you organise your photos? Chronologically? In arbitrarily named subject folders? Saved to CD or external hard drive? We all need a management software system to manage our files of photos. We all need to have the organisational skills of librarians to make sense of our systems. And it all takes time.

My trip to Europe last year produced 2000 digital images on two cameras. At home I had to sort, delete, label, save to CD, and this took me ages. I produced a digital photo story set to music then made into a DVD but I still haven’t had any images printed for a photo album or book.

Books of photo collections are all the rage now aren’t they? You can get these done at many shops, or online. You can choose the images, the layout, borders, etc and produce a professional looking coffee-table book. Cool! Printing photos for an album is still done but with the DIY systems everywhere you have to allow time to do this. But who does that anymore?

Photographic images have become transient. Who bothers to try to capture our memories anymore? Facebook and twitpics, make sharing images immediate and then forgotten. Google Earth/Maps, photo blogs like leavemehere, and Flickr provide meaningful structures that allow us all to benefit from the clicks we are all doing. It also provides us with feedback when others are enjoying our work.

I recently created a slideshow of my best photos that I had gathered over many years, and I put it onto Slideshare. It was not long before I was notified by Slideshare to tell me that this slideshow was featuring in the top 10 mentioned slideshares on twitter. After one month online it has had 338 views and 24 downloads with no promotion on my part. Another photo of mine of a place near Hobart in Tasmania was found on Flickr and added to Schmap with my permission. And it seems that this is not an uncommon occurrence. Read this by writingtravel.

There are still many people who do not understand the laws of copyright. There seems to be a misconception by some that if it is on Google it is free. Or if it is in the public domain it is free. This is wrong of course, and those who do want to illustrate their blogs with photos that they copy from the web can do so by using photos from a Free image archive like freeimages or freephotosbank or from the Creative Commons. Or try to contact the creator of the image and ask for their permission, like Schmap did with me. Or indeed create your own! Blog writers lose credibility if it is obvious that they are sourcing and using images without any attempt to cite the creator, and their blog loses its place in my full blog-reading schedule.

When you do place your images online you must not be naive enough to think that someone somewhere is not going to copy your lovingly created image and use it for their own ends. Hopefully they will be used for Good and not Bad. I have come across people in my work as a Librarian in public libraries who see nothing wrong with copying images from a Google Image search then printing them, making posters and selling them at local markets. Entrepreneurs yes – legal no. And it is disappointing for the creators of the original image to think that others are making money from their work and creativity.

What do you think?

Here comes the sun

Photo by Ryan James Bentley 2009

Sunday with no plans so I went for a walk. I knew there would be cyclists on the main road taking part in the annual Around The Bay In A Day event. I had gone for my ride yesterday avoiding the crowds.  15,500 cyclists wearing colourful lycra pedalled their bikes in both directions looping 250 kilometres around Port Phillip Bay.

At Anthony’s Nose three large men in bulging lycra asked in their English accents if I would take their photo. With the silvery bay clad in morning light as a backdrop and the tall buildings of Melbourne peeking above the horizon as small black pegs (their destination) I took the picture of these jovial men. They told me they were from Sydney and came down each year especially for this event. Finding time to stop at a cafe for breakfast was a priority they said. I wish I had my phone with me so I could have taken a photo of them for myself.

Later in the day I drove to Mornington to see and hear a friend sing as part of the Two Bays Choir. The Annual Mornington Food and Wine Expo was in full swing when I arrived. The main street was closed to vehicles and instead filled with tent stalls where local wineries offered samples of their wine, and all sorts of food was being made and sold. A rock band played loudly at one end of the street and another at the other end. It was difficult to find my way through the crowds of people, children, dogs, and stalls. The cafes, restaurants and hotels were open for business and diners were eating and drinking, spilling out onto the footpaths.

Eventually finding the stage where the choir performed I sat and enjoyed their efforts despite the competing sounds from the rock bands and crowds of exuberant people. As I was about to leave a group of 14 people gathered and sat in a circle with bongo drums. A joyous rhythm of drumming began and a crowd gathered to lap up their sound and spirit.

I drove home along the beach road as the sun made its way to the western horizon. Boats were still out on the golden bay and people were fishing, skiing, or just motoring around. A barbeque dinner at home with family finished off a great day. Springtime in Melbourne heralds the arrival of longer days of sunshine and everyone gets out enjoying themselves in this glorious weather.