Entry for June 15, 2006: Ducks.

I like ducks. Have done for a while now. Less the farm type duck. More the undomesticated, honed in the wilderness sort of duck (park ducks sort of count.)

Kookaburras are cool, when you realise that they are a really big kingfisher. They like to roost in the evenings, squashed up together in a group, strung out along a brunch like a large furry caterpillar.

Rosellas have plumage so bright that when you see one in direct sunlight, you doubt the reliability of your eyesight. They hang out in pairs, like a farming couple. Tough as nails, but sweet with each other.

Willy Wag Tails are the size of a thumb. So small, that it’s hard to believe that internal organs can be so tiny, and yet function.

Cockatoos are impressive when they raise the sulphur coloured crest. But they are so irritating, with a screeching call and the penchant for eating houses, that you will find yourself wondering where you can track down a shotgun.

It’s harder to explain the attraction of the duck. Bright little eyes, the quack is endearing, and the bills are rounded and efficient.

Entry for June 14, 2006: Gosh it’s cold all of a sudden!

Getting up in the Mornings is the worst. My joints feel like their made out of rusty iron.

Threw an extra blanket on the bed last night and that helps a bit.

Looking at the cup, half full. There'€™s an enhanced dynamic about a big city, with the Cold winter wind gusting between the buildings.

The smog has been blown somewhere else (probably causing asthma in the Antarctic,) and there's a greater bustle as people bolt between warm overcrowded bus, to office building, to enclosed mall, to shop or bank.

You know, I get the impression that some people like the spiky sensation of winter on their skin. I have friends that wear T-shirts, whatever the season or weather.

I read a news story about a group of people who dive into the harbour in Melbourne in the middle of winter and swim a few frantic laps. Racing the hypodermic Cold Creeping towards their core. Hauling themselves out of the water, movements stiff and skin rubbery, quickly drying off, and gripping hot drinks.

For these people the cold is less of a hassle, more a savouring of the sensation.

I'€™ve bought a multicoloured '€˜draft excluders'€™ (other wise referred to as '€˜door sausages')

And where the heck, did I hide my gloves? I would have thought the sock drawer (cause they are woollen and are slipped over the end of a limb?)

Entry for June 12, 2006: Queens Birthday weekend!

Woke up this morning and my bedroom window glowed a flat watery blue. All the monochromatic clouds that had been streaming across the sky for the past week had been swept away. Colour and sharp focus had returned to the green leafy trees, and red tiled roofs that my window looks down on.



Today is a public holiday, and we love our holidays here. Americans and Japanese seem to be constantly surprised that this country has managed to avoid ‘third world status,’ due to the numerous ways we have to avoid work here.

I heard somewhere that the Japanese only get one big holiday, and it tends to be a honeymoon. They take hundreds of pictures cause these holiday snaps will have to last them the rest of their lives.

The British enjoy a large number of public holidays too. They have shown a surprising lack of imagination in labelling them all ‘Bank holidays’



We like to name ours, like we do our pets.



There is ‘Australia day,’ which has been renamed ‘Invasion day’ by the indigenous population. This was the day that Cook first set foot in Oz.

‘Queens Birthday,’ causes raised eyebrows in the Brits cause they don’t celebrate the birthday of their monarch. There is an underground opinion here that a recent referendum on becoming a republic failed, as the population thought there might be the possibility of our losing a public holiday.

There’s ‘Anzac day,’ where we celebrate a great wartime defeat. Interestingly, we have been following other nations into war ever since.

And there is ‘Labour day,’ cause we used to have a Labour movement, and people used to care that they were getting screwed.



It’s been raining for almost a week now, so I walked down to the local park to check out the levels in the lakes down there.

Been very dry this summer and these man dug bodies of water were getting so low, that the ducks were queuing to have a swim.

All is well down there now. The fish aren’t wondering where the hell they are going to move to when the puddle dries out completely. A turf war between the eels and the tortoises has been narrowly avoided. And the Pelicans have stopped fighting over who will get to eat the last fish.

Entry for June 10, 2006: Quotes

-Some times I think about simple pleasures that go straight to the blood meat. The red stuff that's wrapped around the bone.

These are different to the things that stimulate the grey thinking meat, which enjoys Complex things like computer games, philosophy, and love affairs.



-I've just been driving around Scotland with a girl who can drive, light cigarettes, change a goodly proportion of her clothes, read a map with both hands, and eat a MacDonald's breakfast, while coolly passing a parked police car.



-Been doing allot of bacon cause nobodies mentioned 'mad pig' disease yet. Or mad chicken, or mad fish.



-I think that there is more to this primal scream thang. I reckon there are primal groans, primal grunts, and primal sighs, as well as the primal whinge, which cuts through you like a suddenly liberated length of super tensioned wire releasing, its energy as it passes through a lump of brain tissue.

Entry for June 09, 2006: Raining again this morning!

I could tell without opening my eyes, cause the tyres on the cars driving up and down the road outside my bedroom window were making a sticky sound where tyres contacted wet asphalt.

Didn’t think much of the scope of the lists on 360, so I drew up my own….

Entry for June 07, 2006: Water, water everywhere, / Nor any drop to drink

Rain eased off a bit today. Shame really, I like the sound of rain falling on things like the car roof, on windows, and bouncing off an umbrella.
There was so much water falling out of the sky last night when I drove home, that the car was cutting quite a decent bow wave.
Went to the movies and despite it being ‘cheap Tuesday,’ the cinema was almost empty.
Xmen 3
It was ok. I don’t think I would recommend it.
Interesting that they killed off half the previous cast.
I wonder if that was to build tension?
You can tell that each movie had a bigger special effects budget then the last.
There was a trailer for Superman Returns and that looks to be ‘properly crap!’
One tries not to think about all the thousands of litres that get funnelled straight out into the sea by the storm water drains.

Entry for June 06, 2006: Second day of rain

And the roads were a lot less hectic this morning.
Sydney people seem to be getting used to all this wet stuff that is falling out of the sky. There was much less queuing across intersections, people’s horns must have worn out yesterday, and the dangers of lightning quick lane changes must have finally sunk in.
Maybe all the people running around on bald tyres slid into the scenery, or each other , yesterday?

Entry for June 05, 2006: It rain all day today.

Again the catchment area was missed.

It’s kind of weird checking out the rainfall map on the internet each day and watching coloured blobs which indicate showers of rain, fall most places, except the Sydney reservoir catchments area.

It’s as though god has decided to elevate the city to the same status as Sodom, Gomorra, or Pompeii, with a supernatural effort to wipe us off the map!

Typical, for decades the councils banned personal rain water tanks. (Something to do with not being able to charge for the water falling onto private properties?)

Now Sydney’s population is growing like crazy, and the level in the reservoir dam is dipping below half full.

Soon they will have to curtail bathing. The new city slogan could be ‘welcome to Sydney, the city of stylish b.o.’

Those choppers that they use to dump giant buckets of water on bush fires could be used to douse the city in Chanel No5.