Tuesday, May 30, 2006

pelican and politics...

Photo by Sandy Scheltema.

Here is a picture of the boat that we (Pelican Expeditions) use for projects, Pelican1. She took us nearly 6 years to build and was probably the last boat building project in Melbourne's docklands. As we were building the area around us underwent that tragic transition from working wharf to a playground for developers. The shed that we built in had been derelict for a little while but we had sponsorship from the Docklands Authority and free use of a marvelous shed. Pelican1 was built to do projects that have an environmental, research and educational focus. Since she has been built she has been on many adventures and we are just managing to hang in there on the financial level.


I mentioned in an earlier entry that one of the 43 West Papuan asylum seekers was still waiting on Christmas Island for an answer to his application. Senator Vanstone shared the result recently that his claim had been rejected as his mother was Japanese (though she no longer holds citizenship) and he should apply there. She avoided the point as to whether David Wainggai had a valid claim to asylum but a closer look at the courts decision showed that his claim was recognised. Clearly it is the Howard governments way of appeasing Indonesia's dismay at the assessment of the other 42 West Papuan asylum seekers. David Waingai's lawyers are appealing the decision. Japan has not accepted any asylum seekers as far as I know and have a history of sending people back to their place of origin, which could be disastrous for David Wainggai.

I have also posted about Atwar Bahjat, an Iraqi journalist who was recently killed. I had been really affected by the report of the brutal manner of her death. The journalist who reported that she had been beheaded has since realised that she was a victim of a hoax. It reinforces the obvious statement that you should not believe everything that you read but I must say I was relieved that the story was not true. The story still stands that she was killed but that she was shot! Needless to say my horror at the senselessness of her death and all other civilian Iraqis remains.

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

bush aesthetic


Last year I finally had the pleasure of a longer delivery voyage on the boat that we use for projects. This photo was taken on an island near Dunk Island in North Queensland. The island is a national park and you can camp on it but it is in a fairly pristine state. The natural world organises itself in a zen-like manner, making the place feel incredibly peaceful.

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

gone quiet...

...mind has been a little frazzled. I felt like I was on a line of something with this blog but some how the line just vanished.

The line was one that gave a sense of connectedness to things and without wanting to sound too mad the line through my thoughts has gone walkabout. So , no motivation to write as there is no fresh twist on this journey. Only silence and a patience that will hopefully allow me new inspiration.

Crikey, you might say, what kind of inspiration do you need to keep up a blogging journal?

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" while someone draws the well-water
I wait for the bucket"

Saga Diary -Basho

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

cold change



I hoped to go for some long walks this past weekend and take some more pictures of the Wild Dod Road while musing some more of its history but.....
we were rained in and hailed in. It felt as if there was a giant outside flinging ice blocks at the house.
While we were hemmed into the house, kind of enjoying the extreme weather apart from ther fact that our new wood heater didn't seem up to the task of keeping the house cosy and enjoying the antics of four eagles hunting in the cold, I read the news of the slaughter of an Iraqi journalist- Atwar Bahjat.


It seems impossible that we can be enjoying our quiet and relatively uneventful existence when such appalling events are taking place. I know that life is, as my teenage step-daughter would say, random, but this particular act of horror on a young Iragi journalist, cut me to the bone. It seems that the situation in Iraq is beyond hopeless when a half Sunni, half Shi'ite young woman can be so callously and horribly killed for reasons that are not even clear to most Iraqis. Beyond the fact that the American, British and Australians have made an extreme mess of a situation that they neither planned or thought could eventuate. Yep, we'll just roll in and give im a bit of democracy and by the way take control of all your infrastructure and leave the politics of these actions to curdle and destroy the fabric of Iraqi life. I am aware of how bad life was under Saddam but I do not believe that getting rid of one tyrant has done one bit of good for the average Iraqi. Atwars' death is just one more terrible example of how not good it is!

I did just a bit of playing around with a picture a friend sent me a lond time ago and it seems a fitting way to finish up. She had been making some landscapes from a home made pinhole camera. I was just playing around with the idea of viewing the landscape from behind a curtained window...

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

media junkie



I am definitely a media junkie. I read two daily newspapers a day. I subscribe to the Guardian Weekly and read all number of magazines. What good does that do, I wonder. I don't know, all I know is that I need to read a lot of news print. The Age in Melbourne is one paper I buy daily, although daily I say to myself that I should stop as it is turning into an entertainment rag. There are still a lot of individual journalists that I hang out to read but they are like flowers in the snow.



This photo is the result of looking at fellow bloggers and being shown a neat site that tells you how to turn photos into images of a model world. It made me stay up too late last night playing with a photo that my stepson Mikki took in Tokyo. here is the link to the model making site- http://recedinghairline.co.uk/tutorials/fakemodel/index.html