It arrived

The letter from Jem and Jo and John just arrived. How funky is that. All teh way from Chile to Alice Springs with an earnest address but still one requiring enthusiasm and initiative on the part of Chile Post and Australia Post and our friends in Alice Springs Post Office.

The other day Stella went to our post box and opened it only to find a face on the other side saying “could you come to the counter please”. Alice is the first city in Australia to have talking Post boxes. Its an initiative to build customer relations. The Post box face invited us to dinner. Actually so far she has only issued us with a new Post Box key but we expect the dinner invite as the second phase of the PR campaign.

Alice Springs Festival

Lifes been lots of fun here with the Alice Springs Festival on. Its a bit like the Sydney Festival but much bigger (I think because Alice is so central) Bono dropped in for awhile. Marcel Marceau did his last mime performance in Alice before dying from heat exhaustion and the Beatles reformed for a concert in the Todd River. The picture here is taken of the procession in Todd mall just before John Lennon appeared.

Building cupboards

Stellas father John is staying with us at present helping do some carpentry jobs around the place. he does things the old 1950’s way and i do things the old 1980’s way. It’s kind of funny when we talk about how we are going to do something as it sort of ends up like a 1965’s way of doing the job. sometimes its a bit like listening to Bob Dylan at a live concert when 4 minutes into the song you go. Ah I get it. Anyway its nice having him here getting some cupboards built in our bedroom. He’s cutting it all to fit together so on Saturday will be the grand assembly.

Titjikala Art Gallery Opening

Decided it was time for another blog. Went to the Titjikala Art gallery opening yesterday. It is an aboriginal community 120 kms South of Alice. About 250 people live there which is bigger than alot of towns in the outback. It was pretty neat with watching a little community developing its art expertise. It was funny becausethere were som epeopel from teh national gallery there who bought a couple of things forthe gallery. They purchased this amazing wire sculpture of a bird. I thought they would be really high art in teh way they selected their pieces for the national treasure but I overheard one say to the other. Do you like this one or that one better? Sounded more like buying a shirt at Myer. The Chief Commissioner Clare martin also turned up. Spurred by teh security of APEC they had very close security keeping all of the possible terrorists at arms length.

Hello Blog World, Goodbye Dog World

Well, this is my first post! I meant to try sooner but our wirelss Internet connection is not as relaiable as we would hope. Life on Whitegums has been pretty good so far. The only thing I have found really hard is Maggie dying. Not only did I love her for her doggie self but she was an important link to family life in Hornsby. I have felt a bit disoriented since she died. I also find it hard coming home and there isn’t this little life so happy to see me. We cremated Maggie last weekend. I felt we couldn’t bury her on land she never had a chance to make her own because she didn’t have much energy bey the time she came here. We lit a big fire and put her in a camp oven and now she is a little pile of ashes in a jar which we will take back to Hornsby one day. I’d like to put her in the dirt under the lemon tree where she always dug around after we had bathed her. It’s a bizarre experience cremating a dog and seeing the little mound of ashes after. Kind of wierd to think that’s what we can reduce to. I guess it’s all part of that cycle of life, where things grow and break down, changing appearances as the elements rearrange but still containing the ingredients for life. I made a compost heap on the weekned too.  Another way of actively noticing this cycle of life.

Keith’s Happy Farm

jo french is a blog legend

Now I rang Ryan to make sense of this mysterious bloggy thing and he had decided that uni was the higher calling. Jo however not so infected and still at home cooking toast. She put aside her perfectly toasted toast (a huge sacrifice in anybodys language) and quietly led me to the promised land. I was feeling so confident that i was going to even upload a picky but it all exploded so I might have to go back to for lesson two.

Thats enough for one blog. Yey. My next blog is due around Nov 10th. Stay tuned.