Standards - lowered.

Ok people, I am changing this blog's philosophy from quality to quantity. The very few people who ever comment (see below on how to comment) always say how terrific the posts are and I have gotten performance anxiety*. So, here it comes, straight off the cuff and weekly instead of whenever I get the guts.
Let's start with...me!
I get to do art here. I get to felt and have an art class and you can't swing a woma** here without hitting an artist of some ilk and it's considered perfectly normal - as most things here are.
There is a place about 80K down the Stuart Highway, then 20K down a dirt track, called Rainbow Valley. Its Aboriginal name is Wurre. It is one of the, if not THE most beautiful, peaceful, holy, stunningly magical places I have ever been. Here is a photo of Wurre.Here is my felt rendition of Wurre from someone else's photo.Here is part of the art show it's in. Oh, I made a lamp too. It's easy; I'll show you some time.The show is at Central Craft. I volunteer in the shop, but I did so even before I had stuff in it because: it's right across the street, it has really neat stuff, I get to meet people from all over Australia, I like working in retail if I'm not being paid for it, there are usually artist there, making stuff and I can watch and learn, and it's just a cool place.
"Craft" here means something more... respectable than what it does in the states. It can be lousy craft-show stuff, but it is more often wood carving, sculpture, pottery, couture, felting, enameling, jewelry, -just not painting/drawing.
My friend Emmy said she is "a craftsperson as artists tend to be a bit...er, off with the fairies."
Am not labeling myself either way.
What else I do is help at Thomas's school 2x a week. Mrs. Smith, his year-one teacher, is amazing. She has 20-odd kids every day. This one needs their shoe tied. That one has a bug bite and needs pawpaw cream. This one needs help spelling a word. That one needs help just because she likes it. This one just wants to keep sharpening pencils. Thomas has been contemplating how his workbook is put together for the last 10 minutes.
Some of the kids can't write 3-letter words; some can write whole paragraphs.
Somehow, she teaches them all something; keeps them reasonably in line and makes them want to come back.
I am in awe of people who teach 7 hours a day, then get up the next day and do it again!

Show's over, folks.
Now, look at the bottom of this post. See where it says, "0 comments" or, "2 comments?" Click on it! Now, write me a comment! Thank you. Sorry to shout.

**PS This is not meant to be an ego stroke. I would write a way better one than this. It's just to see if anyone is still reading or i need to crack some heads.

*Hey pal, thanks for sticking it out to the bottom. A "woma" is about the only snake around here that won't kill you just cuz you looked at it. It's a python that squeezes its prey against something (rock, wall, Toyota Land Cruiser) instead of wrapping its body around it (like a good, decent American constrictor would). Think, like being slammed against a wall and not let back up. Then swallowed.

Sydney - Part Dieux

But, I wanted these top pictures last! Aeh!

Circular Quay ("kay"or "kee"), part of the harbour, was rife with street performers - a didgeridoo player, sleight-of-hand guy, people in lit-up costumes for the light festival.




This unicycle/juggler guy was different. His show lasted about 15 minutes, after which, like most street performers, he asked the crowd for contributions. However, he continued, "if all you have is those one and two-dollar coins, keep them. You know how much a good show costs and I feel mine is worth ten dollars. If you agree, great. If not, or all you have is less, just give me a handshake and a thank you. I feel that's appropriate." He was American.



Sydney struck me as wet and clean and safe.
Now, in Alice Springs, one learns quickly, say by reading the paper once, not to go out at night. Ever. There are lots of drunk people who want what you have. During the day, they are either sleeping or just gone somewhere.
In Sydney, walk along the water or downtown at night and it was all fine and dandy. Why?
Of course, we were there a terribly short time. I'm sure Sydney has her secrets. Like, there are sharks in the harbour.


Walking. I remember lots of walking.

The Harbourview has such a nice view because it's at the wee tippy-top of a hill.





Everything else is downhill- like
San Francisco-style downhill. We could walk down to the ferry, the Olympic swimming pool (we swam where Michael Phelps won his gold, tee-he) and Luna Park! Luna Park was built in the 50's and one man designed all the decor. How about that clown mouth?! I loved the photo when I saw what was going on behind Tom. Go ahead, enlarge it.
We did let Thomas drag us through the park one rainy evening. The man running the kiddie rides gave him a freebie since they were closing early. He was American, too.
All-told we were only in Sydney for 4 days, one was recovery from a way-too-early flight. I could do with more Sydney.

We also somehow crammed in the zoo. The zoo will be the next entry.
Teaser- what costs 175 dollars for a family of three and sounds like, "Can we go home yet?" for 5 hours? Hmmm...

ok,ok, Sydney.

See, my problem with blogging a topic with lotsa pictures is, I rhaps on poetically, then edit and chekc spellign, grammer and punctuation, THEN add the photos which all end up at the top and I have to arrow down, drag, arrow down, drag, until I get them all situated. THEN, I publish it and it's all kerflooey again anyway.
So, lets try a new tack - the photos are on the page and I add in my blah-blah around them. Go.

Tom came home one day in early May and said he had to go to Sydney for some classes and would we like to go along and I jumped up and down and got in the car. Well, a couple weeks later, he said the trip was off. I was a bit.. let's say "moody." He said there was a chance we could go sometime, later. I told him not to tell me until it was all set. A couple weeks later, Thursday evening, he told me we were leaving Saturday morning. I pulled out and washed all the winter clothes we hadn't seen in about 14 months, found a dog sitter and off we went.
Remember we went to Canberra via Sydney then back? You can review "Canberra" blog if not.

Sydney was just SO beautiful. It has many facets- shiny blue, white and green facets.
This will be about the Opera House and bridge and Darling harbour part.


The Harbour Bridge stretches over Darling Harbour. Yes, I find I add that "u"to colour and harbour now. It's like a souvenir.
The Opera House is at the edge of the harbour.
There was a festival of lights on and the sails of the opera house were lit up with projected images: palm trees, leopard spots, swirls... beautiful and totally unphotographable (for me.)

Sydney kinda wraps around the harbour and has a great transit system of trains and ferries. A one-day pass allows you to hop any and go wherever.
I LOVED the men in flourescent vests at the train stations. Their only job is to ask where you want to go and tell you how to get there. Most people getting off the trains were very seriously hurrying dressed in black. The guides see someone carrying a backpack or dressed in any other colour (see that U? huh?) and they cheerfully offer their service.

Our room was on the top floor of the Harbourview Hotel.
Sounds fancy-dancy, but there are many hotels in Sydney which cater to business travelers and therefore, offer really good rates for families over the weekend. It was way cool! They're so proud of their view, the bathroom had a full-length window wall. See? Yes, there was a blind on the user-side.
The train station was almost next door with an incredible wonderful crusty-garlicky-olive-oily Italian restaurant in between

Whilst Daddy worked a couple days, Thomas and I saw some sights. He really, really wanted to feed the seagulls and see the Opera House.
Done and done.
The Opera House is only partially open to tourists. Unless you are attending an actual show, or you pay about 40 bucks a head for the tour, you get to see a little bit inside which coincidentally includes the gift shops.
Uh-oh. I've gone through my 5-photo allotment, but have more to say. Now what? Hey!! Where are my other 2 pictures?!?! Gosh darn you Blogger! (shakes fist)
Ok, arrow down, arrow down, arrow down drag...

Long, long time ago

I know, I never told you all about Sydney, but it's too long and hard, so here is a bit about fossils.

We've gotten to know Sonny, a local rock-hound. Sonny is a grizzled and quirky old codger, just as an Aussie rock hound should be. Oh, they prefer to be called,"fossickers." Fossicking is walking around, looking on the ground, or slightly under it, for neat stuff.
We got to know Sonny mostly by Thomas standing and staring at his market stall with all the really cool, shiny, colorful rocks, crystals and fossils. Sonny is unique in retail in that he will see a kid admiring, say a 25 dollar shark tooth and say, "Here, look a bag of smaller ones for 3 dollars."
"You like that peacock ore? Look, here's one for a dollar."
Sonny is in it for the love of rocks.

He told us about Maloney Creek. My American ears heard "Mlaney Crake," but brain eventually translated. He drew us a rough map and we found it. We took some of Thomas's buds when school was closed for "Picnic Day," perhaps the BEST idea for a state holiday EVER . Maloney Creek is about 100k south of Alice; past the Rainbow Valley turn-off, past Jim's Place home of Dinky the Singing Dingo, into more hilly county, then right there, under the road. A couple strands of barbed wire keep the cattle and the road separate. The cattle get to look for fossils all day.

Most of our finds were cephalopods and gastropods.

Living cephalopods are squid, octopus and the nautilus which these fossils resemble most closely. If you don't know and don't want to look up "nautilus," picture a big snail with tentacles. The cephalopods we found had straight shells instead of coiled. They were the predators, hunting these hills in a great sea. Now, they're rocks.
Trilobites can be found here too, but their fossilized tracks in the mud are more common and we found lots of those. Gastropods are snails.We also thought we found some (live) tadpoles. Seemed strange to me to find tadpoles at the end of winter, but we've come to easily accept strange. Also, the pond was so murky with cow prints and slime, I wasn't too keen to get up close. Turns out they are shield shrimp - a living fossil! Shield shrimp live fast and lay eggs so light, they blow around in the wind and hopefully, land where there will be water one day to hatch them.
Found an article about the shrimp in the clay pans near Alice. There's even a nifty 6 minute video. http://www.abc.net.au/rural/content/2010/s2803581.htm Coincidentally it is written and photographed by Penelope Bergen who will be starting Thomas on violin in a few weeks.

Canberra.

Catherine was here visiting from South Carolina while Tom was in the states. We were busy. They're both back home, safe and sound and knackered (really tired).
The next few missives will not be in the order of the actual events, but does that really matter?
Where was I... Canberra!
Canberra (CAN-bruh) is the capitol of Australia. Like DC, the politicians hang out there with lots of their supporting cast. Unlike DC, which I claim is half country club and half insane asylum, Canberra is clean and safe and it's fall there.
DC is laid out kinda in a grid with letter streets going one way and number streets going the other. Canberra is also a planned city. I think the plan was to keep neighborhoods quiet and keep tourists confused. The city is several concentric circles radiating outward into overlapping fish scales.
Getting anywhere involved keeping at least 4 lefts and 5 rights in my head. Left on Parliament, right on Qeanbeyan, left on Parliamentarily, right on Oodnaldana, left on Oodnalada, right on Ooodladanadad...
If you miss one, pull over and breathe because you cannot fix it. Just go somewhere else.

The mint was surprisingly interesting with lots of clear road signage to point the way.
They made these pretty Olympic medals.
Thomas loved the huge robotic arm, "Titan." It weighs and dumps coin blanks into their rightful hoppers thence they are off to rotating bins and pressers and punchers and whatnot. Thomas watched, and watched and watched... and watched.
Zzzzzzzzz... oh! Sorry, dozed off.

After that was Questicon, a giant hands-on science museum with all kinds of stuff to teach you stuff without you knowing it. Again, I was using the video camera more than the still, which I share with you all here.

Tidbinbilla is a nature preserve with lovely woodlands populated by swamp wallabies and "planted" animals like emus, koalas, echidnas and platypuses. They are free to roam, within pre-determined, agreed-upon and committee-approved reason. See the wallaby?
Look right in the middle for two dark ears.


There are three 'roos looking from across the pond.



Canberra shopping was fun with a walking mall right across from our hotel. Thomas saw his first sushi train (revolving conveyor belt of little dishes) and enjoyed the seaweed salad, rice rolls and prawn cakes.
A way-too-early plane took us to Sydney 3 days later.

Away from Alice

We got out of here. That is, we had an 8-day trip to Sydney and Canberra.
It was supposed to start with a flight to Adelaide, connecting to Canberra. But how was I to know Alice Springs airport considers itself one of those real airports where you have to show up an hour before your flight and all? Whatever happened to, "No worries, Mate?" I'll tell you what happened - they announce your name once or twice about the time you're dropping your dog off at a friend's house and then they close the plane doors and you have to just, um, make other arrangements. So we did.

They couldn't get us to Canberra but they could fly us to Sydney.
I remembered Sydney and Canberra looking kinda close on the map and the lovely lady in front of us in line said, "Oh yes, and the drive is quite nice." So we did.

The entire trip then went in a similar, "Oh, I messed up, no I didn't, this is better," kind of way.
Example, as we came to our landing in Sydney, I looked out the window at the red-tiled roofs below; there was the Opera House, the blue harbour dotted with sparkling white sailboats, the bridge and.. what's that off the wing? a rainbow? No, a double rainbow! Seriously, it was like that the whole trip.
On landing, we got a nice rental car from nice people. We saw a Domino's Pizza (9 months without) and had a good dinner in our easily-found, comfy hotel room.
Next morning, I got my first real sausage and egg McMuffin in 9 months ("Now, made with pork!") and we headed off along the eastern coast of Australia.
It was a crisp, fall day. The sky was blue, the leaves were turning yellow and red, gold and brown. With the blue-grey of the eucalypts, it was quite a picture.
Oh, you want a real picture? Weeeeelllll, we decided to make a video of the adventure and I was rather neglectful of the still camera.

We did pull over early on the road to see the "Sublime Overlook." We had to see if the Aussie Highway Department idea of "sublime" was the same as ours.

Yep.

I'm telling you, the whole trip went this well.

Black cattle grazed on green hillsides rimmed with rock walls. We stopped in a little town called Berry with hot donuts, antique shops and little cafes. If not for the wombat crossing signs, it could have been Virginia on any October weekend. Even Thomas saw the similarities.

We reached Canberra about dinner time and found our hotel - next to the park, across from the walking mall.

More tomorrow, it's midnight.

to an orange, briefly

Our yard came with an orange tree.
When we got here in late August, it was in bloom. I knew it was a citrus, but had no idea what kind.
It is a beautiful, generous, laden, succulent, bursting with juciness, navel orange tree. Thank you to whoever, about 20 years ago, planted this tree.
Since early June (late fall), we have been walking up to this tree whenever we feel like it and plucking a ripe orange from her branches. Just like that. In our yard.
If you have time, please write a haiku to this tree in the comments. I need to get on with the blogging.