The launch of the 2010 Perth International Arts Festival Program was celebrated at the Perth Concert Hall with a full-house.

Attendance at the Program launch is a must. From receiving the festival brochure in the morning post, poring over the offerings, attempting to set a budget, confirming and adding more choices during the launch, to meeting up with friends and colleagues that we may not have seen since the last festival.

Our first picks from the brochure were:

• Benjamin Britten’s Peter Grimes
• The Walworth Farce, Druid Ireland
• Etiquette, Rotozaza
• Good Morning Mr Gershwin, Compagnie Montalvo-Hervieu
• Hypnotic Brass Ensemble
• Sing the Truth: The Music of Nina Simone

After attending the launch celebrations, we would like to add:

• Lotterywest Festival Celebration with La Fura Dels Baus
• The Society, Jo Strømgren Kompani
• Six Characters in Search of an Author, Headlong Theatre
• 66A Church Road, Daniel Kitson
• Man of Aran, British Sea Power
• 13 Most Beautiful … Songs for Andy Warhol’s Screen Tests, Dean & Britta
• Les Sept Planches de la Ruse, Compagnie 111 and Scenes de la Terre
• Children’s Choice Awards, Mammalian Diving Reflex
• Amadou & Miriam

Added to that are the Festival Films, Perth Writers Festival, and Visual Arts.

Phew! Now just have to get the money out and book.

The queues were long at the program launch, so having read that we could book online we enjoyed the refreshments and mingled.

I was unsuccessful at booking online as I hoped I persevered and attempted to work around issues as they arose, but finally hit the Contact Us button to view a HTTP Error 500 – Internal server error. Because friends said that we would not be able to choose our seats, I gave up with H promising that he would go into town to get them first thing in the morning.

The verandah gable was the last of the large gables to be renovated.

Renovated as in the fascia and most of the battens were replaced.

We have decided to leave the verandah unlined and paint the woodwork cream. Our breakfast table is on the verandah, and it is nice to have the morning sun and feeling of spaciousness from the high pitched verandah roof.

Although we had watched the dolphins from our balcony at the resort, and at other times in the water when they were fishing amongst the sea grass, we went to see them one morning on cue.

The dolphins at Monkey Mia swim up and down the beach, but some come in to the shore at a regular time to be fed by DEC staff.

The recent close encounter with the Monkey Mia dolphins heightened my sensitivity to reading about the wildlife in the area of the West Atlas oil rig spill.

“There were times when we were literally in a sea of oil from left to right and as far as we could see ahead of us – it was heavily oiled water and it was sickening because in this we were seeing dolphins surfacing,” — Dr Gilly Llewellyn, Conservation Manager, WWF-Australia on ABC Online.

The oil spill is 200 kilometres off the Kimberley coast. Would more people stand up and take notice if the oil slick came into the shore?

Lining up to view the dolphins.

A real treat was to take a 30 minute air charter with Margaret of Shark Bay Air over Denham and Francois Peron National Park.

Denham has a wind farm, so I had to have a picture of that. Interestingly, the resort at Monkey Mia does not get power from this, but from a huge noisy generator that also runs the desalination plant.

The contrast of the red dirt and cliffs with the blue of the sea and lagoons is breathtaking.

The gypsum claypans or birridas were once land-locked saline lakes. There are a lot of them and quite intriguing. Some look like scars on the landscape, and others look very regularly shaped as if they were carefully planned and built.

Little Lagoon and Big Lagoon are two flooded birridas. Again, the contrast of the colours was amazing, white, aqua, and red.

We didn’t spot any wildlife, but they would have to be pretty big to be able to spot from the plane anyway.

Thirty minutes is not a long time in the air, and we were soon on the way back to the airport over the historic Peron Homestead.

We have pelicans in South Perth, but I went all the way to Monkey Mia, Western Autralia to take a picture of this one.

I was supposed to notice the dolphins, but I didn’t feel part of the ‘Dolphin Interaction Area’ that morning and sat off to the side on the beach.

Like the dolphins, the pelicans keep to the schedule such that the DEC have to have a pelican decoy. It was quite humorous seeing the patient birds line up in a very orderly fashion for the bucket handler. Actually, they were much more polite than the line up for our own breakfast at the Boughshed Resturant after the dolphin feeding finished.

Suprisingly, people left the ‘Dolphin Interaction Area’ as soon as the DEC people finished their formalities. The dolphins were much more visible without the line of people on the shore.

For me, climate change is on the doorstep.

If I differentiate the back of the house from the front, the two spaces each have a different combination of energies or microclimate. For example, the back yard has the air moving quite differently as it tumbles off the multi-story house at the rear. Whereas the front yard is somewhat sheltered from the wind by our own home and the surrounding limestone wall. The back yard is mostly shaded, whereas the front yard is in full sun, apart from one section that has some afternoon shade from the neighbour’s carport.

All the garden ’soil’ is black sand, alkaline, free draining, and repels water.

We are considering installing a greywater reuse system and rainwater tanks as Perth’s 800 mm rainfall is reducing each year. The sprinkler ban during winter and now back to only being able to use irrigation twice per week is not enough to easily manage a lush food producing garden.

At the moment I consider myself fortunate in that I have the opportunity to grow my own food and that it is still a choice. That is, if I don’t grow food in my garden I can go to the shops and I buy what I need. It may not be as tasty, and there will be dozens of other decisions to make such as do I buy the local oranges from Gin Gin, Western Australia, oranges from South Australia, or from California. And that is not including the varieties or whether to buy organic or biodyanmic.

Eventually, we will have the greywater reuse system, rainwater tanks, solar hot water system fixed and back on the roof (currently we are using gas), and a photovoltaic system. We already have a pretty light carbon footprint, but we will do our best to look at ways of reducing it further.

Working with the climate, adapting to it, I feel is a better way of living sustainably and increasing resilience. So no, we won’t be installing the exterior uplights, swimming pool, or airconditioner that appears to be the new home essentials.

Bold is been there and done that.

1. Heard a kookaburra in person. Visit the Somerville Theatre during the festival. Not only will you hear one, you’re more likely to get your picnic swooped out of your hands.
2. Slept under the stars
3. Seen a koala. These are not cuddly, really!
4. Visited Melbourne
5. Watched a summer thunderstorm
6. Worn a pair of thongs. Current pair are blue with white spots.
7. Been to Uluru (Ayer’s Rock). Walked round once, and climbed twice.
8. Visited Cape York. Would have except the cyclone made the roads a bit wet for our car that was not insured for ‘off-road’.
9. Held a snake. I think it was a Carpet Python. Was told not to pick up the Brown Snake.
10. Sang along with Khe Sanh. It’s what you did when Cold Chisel played in the pub.
11. Drank VB. Prefer Coopers these days.
12. Visited Sydney
13. Have seen a shark. In Dongara on a field trip, got one caught in our net – twice. Only a little Grey Nurse. Just a bit longer than the broom stick I was told to hold to keep it at a distance.
14. Have used Aussie slang naturally in a conversation
15. Had an actual conversation with an indigenous Australian (Aboriginal).
16. Eaten hot chips from the bag at the beach
17. Walked/climbed over the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Got out the car to stand at one end and have a look, that’s all.
18. Used an outside dunny, and checked under the seat before sitting down. Didn’t have a seat.
19. Seen Chloe in Young & Jackson’s.
20. Slept on an overnight train or bus
21. Been to Sydney’s Mardi Gras
22. Have gone bush-bashing. It is how I learnt to drive.
23. Taken a sickie
24. Been to see a game of Aussie Rules football. ‘East Perth’ came to Newman.
25. Have seen wild camels
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Had a Tim Tam Slam
28. Ridden in a tram in Melbourne
29. Been at an ANZAC day Dawn Service. Prefer to think of all that stuff on the 11th November.
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Held a wombat. And worried that it was going to piss all over me.
32. Been on a roadtrip of 800km or more
33. Seen the Great Australian Bight in person
34. Had a really bad sunburn
35. Visited an Aboriginal community
36. Seen a redback spider. I think they are really pretty. Only squash them if I think the cats are going to be near.
37. Have watched Paul Hogan
38. Seen Blue Polls in person
39. Wandered barefoot in the bush/outback
40. Eaten Vegemite
41. Thrown a boomerang
42. Seen the Kimberlies (used to seeing it as the Kimberleys).
43. Given a hitch-hiker a lift. I’m not usually the one driving.
44. Been to Perth
45. Have tried Lemon, Lime and Bitters. Used to be my drink of choice if didn’t like the house wine or not drinking beer.
46. Tried playing a didgeridoo
47. Seen dinosaur footprints. Went looking for them in Broome, but didn’t see them.
48. Eaten Tim Tams
49. Been to Darwin. Before Cyclone Tracy.
50. Touched a kangaroo. Dead and alive.
51. Visited the Great Barrier Reef. It was here that I decided to give skindiving a go, and decided it wasn’t for me.
52. Listened to Kevin Bloody Wilson
53. Killed a Cane Toad. The ones we could step on, but the big ones we grabbed by the hind legs simply tossed out the pool. They were better swimmers than we were.
54. Gone to a drive-in theatre. Most memorable film at the drive-in was ‘Jaws’. It took me a long time before I would go open swimming.
55. Have read and own books by Australian authors. Tim Winton is my current favourite.
56. Visited Adelaide
57. Know the story behind “Eternity”
58. Been camping
59. Visited Brisbane
60. Been in an outback pub. Is there anything else in the outback?
61. Know what the term “Waltzing Matilda” actually means
62. Gone whale watching. Being so close you can eye each other is a pretty amazing experience.
63. Listened to Slim Dusty. Inadvertently.
64. Own five or more Australian movies or TV series. I go out to the theatre or borrow DVDs from the library.
65. Sang along to Down Under
66. Have stopped specifically to look at an historic marker by the side of the road.
67. Eaten a 4′n’20 pie
68. Surfed at Bondi. Haven’t surfed at any beaches. Surfing is in the same list as water skiing and skindiving.
69. Watched the cricket on Boxing Day. There is usually nothing else on the telly, but I usually get books for Christmas anyway.
70. Visited Hobart
71. Eaten kangaroo. Tending to do it more frequently.
72. Seen a quokka
73. Visited Canberra
74. Visited rainforests
75 Used a Victa lawnmower.
76. Travelled on a tram in Adelaide
77. Watch canefields burning. Only smelt them.
78. Used a Hills hoist
79. Visited the Olgas
80. Used native Australian plants in cooking.
81. Visited the snow. Not in Australia.
82. Chosen a side in Holden VS Ford. Holden
83. Visited the desert. Lived on the edge.
84. Been water skiing. Need strong knees.
85. Read The Phantom. Wasn’t aware that this was a particularly Australian thing, but yeah, one of the few comics that came into the newsagent in Newman.
86. Visited Parliament House. Old and new.
87. Gone spotlighting or pig-shooting. Bunnies and roos.
88. Crossed the Nullarbor. When it was dirt.
89. Avoided swimming in areas because of crocodiles. I don’t want to get close enough to tell the difference between a saltwater or a freshwater crocodile. But I remember swimming in Katherine Gorge with crocodiles, but I was not convinced it was ok.
90. Listened to AC/DC. Still have the cassettes.
91. Called someone a dag
92. Voted in a Federal Election
93. Have been swimming and stayed between the flags. Also make sure that there are people further out than me.
94. Had a possum in your roof
95. Visited the outback
96. Travelled over corrugated roads. Even been on what is called Corrugation Road.
97. Hit a kangaroo while driving. Don’t drive at hoppy time.
98. Been well outside any mobile phone coverage. If I had one, I’d leave it at home.
99. Seen an emu.
100. Have woken to the smell of bushfires

From dalekboy via Planet UCC.

Aesthetic Crossovers in Art and Science (VISA2214) allowed me to explore not only the art and science crossovers in the life sciences, but introduced me to a new way of seeing and interpretation by artists and scientists.

One of the assignments was to produce a prototype. As I was still considering the question ‘what is art?’ it took some time to decide on an approach that I perceived as suitable to complete the work. However, the prototype gave me an excuse to review the histology slides from my Medical Technology degree which was an added bonus.

From the many slides, I selected two views and prepared some digital images.

I did not wish to create a temporary piece, so settled on making a paper mache object. My idea was formed from remembering that a long time ago, anatomical models were made from paper mache.

During the lectures and tutorial sessions I learnt that ‘things’ can be be classified into non-human animals and human animals. I decided to create a cat as I thought I could observe my own pets and use the photographs to realise the 3D object. Also, I liked the idea that I was superimposing human animal cells on a non-human animal.

Having not made paper mache before, I found some resources on the internet to provide some guidance. I found the initial making of the shape or form somewhat frustrating, but the layering of the paper mache over some weeks was time pleasantly spent. Time really did slip by as I got absorbed in the project.

Green Cat (liver cells stained with naphol green)

Red Cat (lung cells stained with H & E)

The final part of the assignment was to give a presentation. I took my prototypes in our cat cage covered in cloth. It was quite fun to see my classmates looking into the cage to see if my biological art was alive. My presentation probably does not stand alone, but it is included here as part of the documentation for my project.

Green Cat and Red Cat are not yet completed. I have been asked to consider giving them a face. I’m still thinking on this.

July through November I did not read as much as I usually do. This may have been due to the increased amount and different type of reading that was required for one of my university units. Also, I found I was just too tired to read before sleeping, which is when I do most of my recreational or reading for pleasure.

However, I still managed to read the following, not necessarily in this order:

• Helga’s Web, Jon Cleary
• In a Dry Season, Peter Robinson
• Moon Island, Rosie Thomas
• A Simple Life, Rosie Thomas
• Sea Glass, Anita Shreve
• Hiam, Eva Sallis
• Riven Rock, T.Coraghessan Boyle
• The Twins, Tessa De-Loo
• The Alchemist: A Fable About Following Your Dream, Paulo Coelho
• Playing for Pizza, John Grisham
• Reader’s Digest Select Editions including: You Belong To Me by Mary Higgins Clark, Archangel by Robert Harris, Cloud Nine by Luanne Rice, and “N” is for Noose by Sue Grafton
• The Stallion, Harold Robbins
• The Tumbled House, Winston Graham

All of which will be wild released over the coming week as I feel I have some serious BookCrossing to catch up on.

Most of the books were obtained through the local library as discards or donated to raise funds for the local library or from Grandad’s box of books.

Currently making my way through Moran v Moran. Definitely not something to read between mandatory or necessary reading for research and study. The book was donated to the library fundraiser and has newspaper cuttings inserted as bookmarks, and various sentences underlined. Definitely will look at some ‘lighter’ reading after this one.

Yum!

If you had asked me before today whether I like croissants, I would have given you a straight no.

Today, I can tell you I like very much the sourdough croissants that I made with Yoke this morning.

We tasted and scoffed plain sourdough croissants, sourdough croissants with chocolate filling (i.e. shaved bitter chocolate), and sourdough croissants with an almond filling.

The workshop also consisted of making a Tarte Tatin and slow-roasted vegetable quiche both made with croissant dough. We had the quiche and Tarte Tatin for lunch. Phew!

The making does not require any special kitchen equipment (unlike the Wholegrain, Sprouted Wholegrain and Essene Sourdough breads), but I will need to clear the end of the kitchen bench to be able to roll out the dough 75 cm x 30 cm, and a wider rolling pin will make the task that much easier. Like in previous workshops, all the dough was made with organic or biodynamic ingredients and wholemeal wheat or spelt flours.

Fortunately, the pre-formed dough and formed croissants can be frozen or refrigerated so I don’t have to eat 32 croissants all at once. Knowing what goes into them, I think they will be a special treat! However, I’m looking forward to having some dough ready in the freezer and refrigerator. And just so you know, it takes hours for the dough to become something you can eat from the freezer or refrigerator.