Margaret River

The elusive Franky

Here is a picture of our couch. If you look very closely you may be able to spot the elusive couch-dwelling Franky, although her camouflage is spectacular.

NAIDOC Week

NAIDOC week is a veritable frenzy of sausage sizzles, bad 80s cover bands, corroboree and kangaroo tail stew. At work, we celebrated by co-opting a bunch of artistically minded children and putting them to work to produce this fab banner.


I then branded them, cattle style, so as not to lose them.


Finally, I forced them to carry their banner through gale force winds down the street with a bunch of other children, and then subjected them to the torture of two hours of speeches, ceremony, and rock cover tunes. And a great day was had by all!

This is the poster for last year's NAIDOC Week, and the artist's comments about his work.


"Sometimes our culture may seem as though it is a heavy burden. Sometimes to exist and gain acceptance in a non-indigenous society, we question the importance of our culture. Would it be easier to leave it behind? Our culture is not excess baggage we can freely dispose of.

The sphere shaped objects represent the non-indigenous society. I have chosen a smoother and rounded 3-dimensional shape as this shape rolls ahead with ease regardless of surface, environment or where it is placed. The huge cube represents Indigenous culture. It appears to be heavy to lift and would be easier to leave behind as it is a lot more complex to move without assistance. Although the cube is larger in size its contents symbolise a personal significance. The size and colour differences also have meaning. The smaller balls appear metallic and cold whereas the cube is visually vibrant and loud with a sense of warmth. The shadows also play an important part. As the sun rises from the east, this represents indigenous people moving toward a new day."

Benjamin Hodges

Steve finally says something

Hi.
Sarah has just shown me how to use this thing.
A few weeks ago a few of us went on a trip to Darwin for a work conference. We drove there via the Kimberleys and the Gibb River Road. Here are some photos:



These are work-type people.



These are cows.



This is a rock.



This is the price of petrol.



This is how Pilbara men chop wood when visiting the Kimberley: Knock some trees over with the 4WD. Apologies for the coin slot.




This is a hill.



This is crossing a river.



This is a swimming hole in El Questro gorge.



This is the way to Port Hedland.



This is Katherine Hot Springs.



This is Darwin.

Steve.

Red Bluff

We own a car! It's big and green and shiny like a christmas beetle. This was a photo of it, until my misguided vanity and poor photo editing skills overcame me.


We tried it out by driving to a remote surf camp called Red Bluff on the Ningaloo Reef. The camp is basically inhabited by surfers, bored girlfriends, and a couple of golden-skinned gypsy tribes with shining white teeth and ocean eyes.


It's not the worst kind of life. The men surf. The women home school their children, make chocolate slice and get together with the other women for morning tea. Everyone fishes and swims and everything is sun bleached and deeply laid back.

The Bluff itself is a reef break and the water is incredibly clear and full of turtles and manta rays and dolphins. Not to mention many varieties of large and hungry shark. Happily, the tiger shark feeding frenzies were mentioned to us after we did the 30 minute paddle to the break from the beach. It would have been much quicker except we had to keep stopping so I could pant and sob that I couldn't possibly go on. I didn't take a photo of this. But here's one of Steve surfing.


And another spot called Turtles about 15km up the road.


I made a couple of brave surfing attempts, but they tended to end in tears and injury. While nearly drowning about 2 metres from shore, my lost board was retrieved by a child half my age, and I was retrieved by Steve. It was all a bit bedraggling. So after that I had to sit on the beach with the other girlfriends and bake cookies and knit socks. Never mind, I have high hopes for next time!

Pilbara Dreaming

Steve and I have recently moved to the Pilbara. This is big sky country, land of red sandy earth and grey green sprawling scrub.

This is the view from pretty much everywhere, in pretty much every direction.

Port Hedland is commonly considered the ugliest town in Australia. This air-brushed, colour enhanced, tourist bureau snap doesn't adequately demonstrate why.

We are comfortably settled in this stylish asbestos shack arrangement on the wrong side of town. We like to think of it as 'ghetto chic'.

But everyone loves hangin' in the 'hood. And there's plenty of monkeys to hang with....thirty seven percent of the aboriginal population is under fourteen!

Port Hedland is a bit like Barcelona. It's full of trendy modern art installations. For example, people come from miles around to gaze upon this piece of genius, known as the water tower. It also reminds you where you live, in case the heat has left you feeling absent minded.

The experimental piece of public art below looks like a giant pile of salt. What's surprising is that it is in fact a giant pile of salt. 300,000 tonnes per year are exported from the port to fish and chip shops around the world.

This installation piece below was designed by a group of community artists who call themselves The Company. This grassroots collective have creatively used the natural resources of our great red country to create a bizarre, post-apocalyptic art extravaganza covering 350 hectares. Welcome to the BHPBilliton Iron Ore Plant at Nelson Point. It's about 150 metres from the town centre and sprinkles generous helpings of red dust over everything for miles around. Iron ore is brought in from the mines on trains, processed at the plant, and then loaded onto ships bound for China, Korea and Japan where it is converted into Hyundais and Toyotas and returned to us at five times the price.

And at night, its just like Christmas!

But its not all modern art and mineral booms. We're surrounded by spectacular wilderness, gorges, waterholes and national parks. Steve does lots of travel and seems to spend most of his time driving around the countryside attending meetings barefoot and swimming in waterholes when he should be working. It's his ideal job.

He's become very intrepid, Russell Coight style, and has taken to wrestling snakes and lighting fires with nothing but a tiny stick soaked in sulphur and a small cardboard box labelled 'matches'. At this very moment, he's traipsing round the Kimberley on his way to the upcoming Native Title Junket in Darwin.

Last weekend we camped at the Yule River, about half an hour out of town. This is me looking perplexed, hoping that Russell will arrive before nightfall to transform the pile of sticks and canvas at my feet into three and a half star accommodation.

Luckily, by sunset the tent is assembled and we're free to sit back and enjoy the view.