Skip to content →

Category: Australia (not WA)

Word power: Richard Flanagan on “a writer’s achievements”

 

It’s presumed that the author starts with an intention and if the book’s published they’ve succeeded in it. But successful books are ones that have escaped the author’s intentions and become something else. Novels when they succeed are incoherent and contradictory and mysterious. Nothing is more secondary to a writer’s achievements than their original ambition.

One Comment

Word power: hey, big (Oz Fed Govt) spender!

This post alerts you to two provocative essays about Australian governments’ approach to “public spending”.

One looks at general home truths, facts, fictions and illusions, with particular reference to our “post-pandemic” economic & social well-being.

The other addresses Australia’s response to “the threat from China”.

According to Richard Dennis, we Australians are reluctant to look into the simple truth hidden in plain sight:

One Comment

Incredible view, via small plane’s opened window (#61 in “a shining moment” series)

 

Light aircraft are wonderful things, most especially when one is allowed to open the window whilst flying over a magnificent place, such as Tasmania’s Freycinet Peninsula.

Musically, this post celebrates both an incredible view, and the singular pleasure of being aloft in a small plane, open to the air.

Comments closed

“Gum Trees” & Fire (#37 in “a shining moment” series)

 

Ever wondered why “gum trees” were so named?

The answer will face your stare, if you examine this post’s image!

It shows a Eucalypt, in the aftermath of the most recent of probably many fires which this tree had survived, very near to the Australian continent’s southernmost point.

Comments closed

Chital, Rajasthan (#26 in “a shining moment” series)

 

Widely regarded as the loveliest deer, the chital has a connection to the cheetah; it is not a predator-prey connection…in the present, at least.

Axis axis was also, in 1803, the very first deer species to be introduced to Australia.

The chital is one of the island continent’s longest-established feral animals.

One Comment

Fishing Expeditions (#24 in “a shining moment” series)

The featured image’s recreational fishers are at a location which is ever-shifting, but quite easy to reach.

The mouth of Australia’s longest river system is just a day trip away, if you live in Adelaide.

This is where the River Murray, the Coorong and the Southern Ocean meet…although the much-abused Murray-Darling system’s outflow is often so un-mighty that only dredging keeps its mouth open.

Comments closed