THE EARTHRISE DIARY (October, 2013)
© Text Don Diespecker 2013; guest writers retain their ©
Don Diespecker
Smuts was in no hurry
to go and when his people suggested going, he said, ‘Not yet, we are so
comfortable and there is lots of time.’ I gave him a sample of reef and a
specimen or two with which he was very pleased and said he would keep as a
memento of a very pleasant visit to the Diespecker Gold Mining Company and
wished every success so I was glad there was no trouble or hitch of any kind.
All went smoothly and pleasantly.
Rudolph
Diespecker (from a letter to Elizabeth Diespecker, August 1911).
September
slips away and October begins hotly. Days of hot weather follow and the river
reduces, becoming noisier whilst the level falls and the rapids become more
exposed and then dry to become an ugly black stretch of broken bedrock and
tumbled sharp stones from the riverbed (the river in flood is relatively quiet
once it gets up high because the riverbed is the relatively deep; the forest is
noisy too when the wind blows strongly. Hopping about on midstream stones and
bedrock during a progressive drop in the river level is fraught with danger:
the bedrock surface is often like glass at such times and a fall is likely to
break bones. Also the midstream run is through a diagonal trench that I’ve seen
trap a kayaker who had to be rescued…
There has been no good rain for weeks and although the bush here is dry
there have been no fires (fires down south have been horrifying to see on TV).
In the midst of hot winds and blown dust here I’ve been busy writing:
the new novel set locally, editing selected Letters from Earthrise (originally
published in The Australian Gestalt
Journal), writing endless To Do notes to myself, and many emails. My breaks
outside dreamily watching the river go by are less frequent and some of this
time has to be used to clear the windfall branches and twigs and to sweep away
leaves to allow some clear space close to the house. Sweeping the roof in the
early morning before the sun is up is also important. Living on the fringe of
the forest means there is always fuel on the ground. Much of the wood
discarded, like flood debris, will break down and make good firewood but there
is nowhere close to the house where it might safely be stored.
Occasionally during beaks I use the time to find recent and old TSS
(hastily moved during floods) and have been rewarded by rediscovering my plays
and a prize-winning film script (re-reading press cuttings is fun too, but that
soaks up more time).
This October has been a significant month of stress for gardens and
also for big trees: deadwood and living branches break frequently and crash
from on high: I’ve been impressed with the size and placement of such dangerous
missiles: a significant amount of Big Bits have fallen directly on the path
that winds through bracken to the belvedere: some are too big to carry and have
to be axed first; the big ones also partly bury themselves and have to be
hauled free, leaving holes and small craters behind.
That reminds me: the power supply this month has been interrupted far
too often: sometimes by weather conditions and also by Country Energy. At least
the Mac is designed to save the file when the power fails whilst I’m pecking at
the keyboard. The other days lost (in terms of computer time) have been due to
“Planned Interruptions” made by the supplier of electricity during which times
their work crews do essential work on infrastructure (city folk may smirk, but
I still prefer my rural retreat to the mean streets and varied pathologies of
the Big City). We have our rural pathologies, too, of course: dust being one
that comes initially from the road here. Windy clouds of dust billow from the
metalled road: it hangs on trees and all foliage and settles in the grass; it also
settles on the river surface, then sinks and covers the river’s bottom stones
with silt: slow silt I call it
because there has been practically no rain: the lower the river falls, the
siltier the river becomes, particularly near the bridges. The adjoining
Darkwood Road, in this area entirely lacks macadam and simultaneously annoys
all drivers by breaking up and scattering surface stones (late in the month
Council road machinery, signage and a road crew pass by and head upriver: they
are now working at the bridge here as I write). I think of dust blowing from
road to river as an unpleasant problem that starts in the upper sections of
Darkwood Road simply because the road up here is not macadamised: the bitumen
ends at Richardson’s Bridge (some rural roads are more ‘equal’ than others).
The upper reaches of the Bellinger River that deservedly should be pristine (or
as close to it as can be) are being needlessly fouled by dust as well as by
surface rubbish (tyre fragments, oil, grease) washed irregularly into the river
particularly at the bridges.
These are also days of early morning starts: chores, a medical
procedure or two, distant shopping, IT consulting with Kerry, farewelling my
old Honda and switching to a new Honda Jazz. I enjoy the early light on those
upstream reaches of the Bellinger that can be seen from my bathroom (one of the
best views seen from inside the house) whilst shaving. The hot shower is
followed by the reality check of cold air when I step from the glass Tardis to
dry and dress, then there is breakfast. I suspect that the cold air has
something to do with the lack of ceiling upstairs at this end of the house;
perhaps there’s a part of me that is Scandinavian and craves sauna-like
situations. There are occasionally days when I have to have blood taken (a
medical check) so breakfast is preceded by a big intake of Much Water;
similarly, other days, once a month, when chelation therapy beckons: being well
hydrated is important (that means water,
by the way, not tea or coffee).
Smartly I grab my bag of Don Stuff and head for the old car and one of our last
rides together. There is a dry snakeskin hanging from the cheese tree near the
front steps, more than a metre of it swinging in the hot air. I can’t see well
enough what species might have left its old unwanted covering behind. Rough
bark and a forked branch are good for power-shedding old skins (for snakes, I
mean).
Today is a blood day. I leave Earthrise with the sun lighting the top
branches of the big trees and with the sounds of birds warming to their various
songs. After I’ve left and the sun appears over the river there will be river
light to see, but I’ll be elsewhere, driving. River-light is like yellow green
fire: it flickers beautifully in green foliage on the banks because the suns
rays are bouncing from the rippled or undulating surface of the water before
projecting through the trees. Early mornings late this month are again cool to
cold following the worst of times during the unprecedented fires further south
in NSW.
Do we completely understand why early birds start the day with singing?
Can there be reasons for their singing we don’t yet know of or understand? I
know from listening to ABC RN programs that the butcherbird learns repertoires,
songs that several birds will sing parts
of in turn, each at some distance from the other singer. Is that not amazing?
I get to Bellingen in one
piece and am so well hydrated the swishing seems to slow my walking. It’s cold
out of the car and all because we’re now on daylight saving time here and the
morning has begun an hour earlier than usual. Blood comes more easily from the
newly holed vein and quickly fills the little tube. The first job is ticked
off. I’m on my way again: I remember the nurse saying, ‘Water makes all the
difference.’ If you’re aged, the plumbing will have become difficult to
correctly and appropriately get a needle or canula into. I zoom along to
Fullers and fill up with fuel (the car, I mean) and head for the highway whilst
listening to Breakfast on ABC Radio National. I like my news and current
affairs served up by intelligent journos who not only can write decent copy,
they can articulate the stories On Air. I’m not exactly alone in this liking
but so many others listen to commercial radio stations, some of which broadcast
news that is sensational (the usual violence of umpteen kinds, the ‘human
interest’ stories, a surfeit of pop music at every possible opportunity to fill
in otherwise unpaid-for so-called dead air. Onward to The Highway and Coffs
Harbour and the morning traffic which is fast becoming like Big City Traffic.
I peel off, so to say, and come to rest in a parking place near the
Honda Agency where I meet John and we finalise the agreement. Much of this
little meeting entails Paper Work and Signing and even a telephone call to the
Insurer. I look, listen and learn. And I think sadly on Old Honda parked nearby
on the warming spring morning. She begins to take on mythic proportions; she is
a she, like other fondly remembered experiences and items that aren’t quite
people or friends or lovers; she has safely carried me through all weathers and
I feel myself a sad traitor to her now: that feeling is certainly not akin to
the end of a human relationship for whatever reason, yet it also is somewhat like losing someone from a relationship:
there are similarities. And more gently I move away from that summery street in
Coffs Harbour to rejoin the morning traffic and to stop at the surgery along
the way and collect yet another script, then forward to the car and another
launching into the thickening traffic until I sweep finally into the shadowy
and almost cold parking station at Park Beach Plaza. Next is the Post Office,
followed by a grand tour of the supermarket where I select an ill-chosen
trolley made noisy by some fiendish wretch (or wretches) who has ruined the
wheels, probably to replace plaything wheels on some unseen, unknown hobby or
pastime vehicle requiring half decent supermarket trolley wheel replacements.
Then the return to Bellingen, the PO, and having the prescription filled at the
pharmacy. Rituals. The heat is excessive for spring: it bounces and surrounds
one in the city and streets. There are slowdowns going through the cutting and
a red traffic light along Waterfall Way. I keep to the speed limit. There’s an
off-road monster with its lights on behind me that I’m sure wants to be Out
Front and More Dominant but resists rushing past because he, she or it will be
breaking the speed limit, the one I’m correctly driving at… Am I passive
aggressive? Not really, but maybe just a little when illegally urged by an
impatient driver.
The next time I go to Coffs Harbour I’m the new owner of the new car,
my fourth Honda: it is only the second time in my 1,013 months that I’ve
purchased a new car. This Jazz model has so quiet an engine that I can’t hear
it at all when I stop at traffic lights: it’s weirdly silent and I’m inclined
to think more often than not, that the engine has died on me… This car has so
many controls, knobs, buttons (electric windows!), switches that I need an
engineer and translator to unpack the meanings in the manual (the fat manual
resides in a fat wallet together with innumerable other booklets and papers). I
have the fantasy that when I walk from house to car I am accompanied by a
ghostly co-pilot and engineer, and that I am carrying an enormous attaché case
of Codes, Ciphers and Authenticating Procedures. The new Honda has umpteen
airbags ready to be deployed at the slightest bang or bump. I will be glad of
them one day, but I’m very afraid I may trigger them all to deploy
simultaneously when trying to engage fore and aft windscreen wipers or if I
should accidentally press the wrong button seeking ABC FM Fine Music. Perhaps I
need days of instruction from a specialist teacher? I dimly remember that my
father once drove a late 1920s Model A Ford in the early Thirties in Victoria,
BC when there seemed to be a short lever on or near the steering wheel that was
the throttle (prior to those times when the foot accelerator became standard).
And I very clearly remember that the last car Dad owned in Canada was a
Graham-Paige, a quite big and old saloon c 1928 or 1929 and that it was a grand
automobile for summer holidays: I still have a c 1935 photo that shows my
mother and I at our campfire and the Graham-Paige near the family tent in the
background. Cars in those distant times also had running boards and the spare
wheel was also outside the vehicle. Some running boards also accommodated a
small cage for the family dog (my first dog, Wolf, a larrikin Alsatian insisted
on riding with my sister, Deirdre, and I in the back seat. Long, long ago.
Now it’s the last week of October and I’m looking through the window at
the breakfast-time river, thinking again while seeing that magical river light.
It’s early on Saturday morning and I’m replete with coffee and eggs and toast.
Coffee is now a Saturday Morning Only New Rule, recently self-imposed. I stand
thoughtfully at the window. The announcer on ABC RN is speaking about the
concert pianist, David Helfgott (regularly seen chatting with friends and fans
in Bellingen). Geraldine says he’s playing better than ever. She mentions the
Oscar-winning movie Shine (Helfgott
played by Rush), the film that celebrates his career. Shine is the word: I’m
looking at the river sparkling and shining. And I see the river light again in
the old cheese trees down on the Right Bank. If flickers, it glows, it’s almost
impossible for strangers or visitors to see it because they aren’t expecting to
have to focus differently. There are no strangers that I’m aware of at the
moment. My eyes know where to see the pale fire of the river light: it
fluctuates movingly in and across the tree’s foliage. Downstream (adjust focus,
please) a couple of fish jump in air, not big fish at all: quite small ones.
And there’s a suspiciously platypus-looking swirl closer to the bank.
I continue sipping coffee, thoughtfully. The view is like a movie for
me: its sparkling and flashing provokes many disparate thoughts: from the radio
news: Malala, the Pakistani schoolgirl recovering from an assassin’s bullet to
the head has come close, also, to almost winning the Nobel Peace Prize. There
is more sectarian violence in Iraq. Boat people. Illegal immigrants. Would-be
migrants in leaky boats have drowned off Lampedusa. Wikileaks. Drive-by
shootings. And crimes against children continue. Surveillance. Hacking.
Corporate crime. Spies.
And there’s
such a crowd of us now, of humans on the planet. I think foolishly of the Roger
Ramjet cartoons: Roger, who could be relied upon to make everything nice again.
Creative Writing
Spies remind
me of a photo in an old Boer War history, After
Pretoria: The Guerrilla War. The
Supplement to “With the Flag to Pretoria.” By HW Wilson (1902). P 702. (The
Public Library of NSW owns a copy). The photo caption is: Willowmore’s Defensive Preparations: The Telephone Section of the Town
Guard with their Field Apparatus. There are more than twenty men in this
picture: all except one are looking at the camera. The officer wearing a black arm
band (marking Queen Victoria’s death, January 22 1901) is looking elsewhere and
is very obviously doing so; he is the Commandant of Willowmore and of
Steytlerville and also The Special Intelligence Officer, as he is described
(very intentionally) in local Cape newspapers of the day: he is my late
grandfather, Capt RS Diespecker (not
identified in the photo). Rudolph was a British Field Intelligence Officer who
had learned his craft in Mozambique, earlier in the Boer War: that’s another
story, too, and you can read my fictionalised version (generously based on
historical fact) in my eBook novel, The
Agreement). The Guerrilla War story has also been written (“Opsaal!”) and
will be published as an eBook if I can keep up the pace.
When I was researching the Anglo Portuguese Secret Agreement (1899) and
the related history of the region, all central to my novel, I realised that
agents of President Kruger’s (South African Republic) secret service (De
Geheime Dienst), the British Secret Service and the Portuguese Police (and
probably, too, the Portuguese Secret Police) were frequently in the same place
at the same time (in the old Lourenço Marques, the then capital of Mozambique).
I’ve always thought that odd: it was as if Portugal had declared neutrality so
that Portugal (particularly her huge province, Mozambique) would seem to be
decidedly neutral. Even more oddly, the British Government had bullied their
oldest ally (Portugal) into not
declaring neutrality in the event that there would be a war between the two Boer
Republics and Great Britain. The British in Mozambique interdicted state of the
art weapons that were being shipped through Mozambique and imported into the
Transvaal with the permission of the Portuguese, (A friendly relationship
existed between the SA Republic and Portugal). British interdiction of
armaments and weapons destined for the Boer Republics were directed from the
Lourenço Marques British Consulate-General. Those operations were the
responsibility of a retired Royal Navy officer. No doubt there were good times
shared by friends and enemies dining and wining in the bars and cafés of
Lourenço Marques. I couldn’t resist writing fictional stories around those
times and some of the events because truth is so much stranger than fiction.
The Cape Colony legal expert who earlier reorganized De Geheime Dienst
for President Paul Kruger was Jan Christiaan Smuts, a Fighting General (one
actively leading commandos) in the ensuing Second Anglo Boer War and later
Prime Minister of the Union of South Africa. He was also the philosopher who
whose book, Holism and Evolution played
s significant role in the development of the modern psychotherapy, Gestalt
Therapy; and he died a (British) Field Marshal in 1950, having also contributed
to the organization of both the League of Nations and the United Nations. Smuts
and my grandfather met in Pilgrim’s Rest in 1911 following the last phase of
the Boer war (the Guerrilla War in Cape Colony). Rudolph Diespecker had a
special mission in the Cape. Jan Smuts had been a Fighting General and a
Commando leader in the Cape at that time. In 1911 the two men, no longer
enemies, enjoyed a friendly discussion. Jan Smuts was the only person to have
signed both peace settlements
reached at the end of WW1 and WW11.
Why am I discoursing on Boer War espionage here? Why not? Some of my
writings are research-based Boer War narratives. All written histories may
engender further narratives: nonfiction articles and books, novels, movies,
documentaries and plays. And when I make time and take a break to sit dreamily
in my garden, much of what I see inspires imagination to meet with my patient
muses: flying insects on windy days are an amazing sight if you’re focused
(see, e.g., my The Midge Toccata)
and so do ants climbing big trees (see my “Lightly Flying” in Turning The Page. Coffs Harbour Writing
Group (2006).
When recently I wrote of observations made at a Coffs Harbour Muffin
Break café, (see recent Diary pieces, e.g., “Don’s Day Out”) I also speculated
about the identities of some who so busily were at the café and concentrating on using their mobile phones. Were
they ordinary people chatting about shopping, extraordinary persons who are
thinkers, scientists, artists and writers, punters, the captains of industry,
assassins, or spies? Eating a gluten free muffin and moodily sipping coffee in
a café is a choice. I don’t have to be a spy in that milieu, being a shopper
taking a break enables my also being a diarist, a novelist, or anonymous
citizen idly seeing the crowd. Now think three sets of spies appearing in
public in Lourenço Marques in 1899, telephone users (and at least one spy) in
Cape Colony 1901, and telephone users in a Coffs Harbour café in 2013: there may be similarities and parallels. Some
Coffs Harbour patrons sit quietly at the Muffin Break café and may even read a
book; some are enjoying meeting with friends; and some use their mobile phones,
intensively. I wonder what’s going on when the mobile seems at least as
important as the refreshments?
I mentioned this to my friend, David. Below, Dr David Tuffley discusses
some of the reasons why busy mobile users may sometimes be seen at cafés.
Free
Internet For The Masses
David
Tuffley
With SmartPhones and Tablet
computers (like iPads) being so inexpensive in 2013, almost everyone who wants
one can have one. But there is a trap: the telcos still charge high prices for
mobile Internet access.
More and more
businesses, particularly fast food and coffee shops, are offering free Internet
access via WiFi to their customers as a way of getting them through the door
and keeping them there for longer. There is a clear benefit for the business
because it costs them a lot less for their wired Internet access than the extra
business brings in.
Towns and
cities hoping to attract tourists are also offering free WiFi in their
signature spaces. In Brisbane, for example, you can access free WiFi in the
Queen Street Mall and Botanic Gardens. There is a fairly modest limit on how
much data you can download, so you can't watch endless YouTube videos, but it’s
plenty for most purposes.
So what is
the shape of things to come? Well, it’s going to become more and more
pervasive. If we look at San Francisco, we see that WiFi is more or less
available across the city. Companies like Google are trialing new technologies
there that rely on constant access to the Internet that guide you about and
tell you what is interesting in the place you happen to be. The trend is
spreading to other urban areas around the world.
The next
generation of SmartPhone can be housed in a heads-up display like Google Glass,
a pair of glasses that work like ordinary optometric glasses, but which have a
tiny video display projected onto them that only the wearer can see. You could
be walking down Market Street in downtown San Francisco and it tells you that
there is a highly rated Mexican restaurant nearby. It tells you that because it
already knows you like Mexican food and it is close to lunchtime.
For some,
this is way too much information, too scary, too privacy invading.
For others it is a step closer to techno-utopia. It’s ok though. It is all
consumer-driven, so no one is going to make you do anything you don't want to
do.
So: when next
you are enjoying a nice cup of coffee take a look around you. Quite a few people
will have their attention locked onto their mobile computers, using the free
WiFi to check their email, read the newspaper, scan the latest stock prices or
plan their next holiday. You can choose to notice the richness of the sights
and sounds all around you. Or you can slip into cyber-space and find diversion
in the millions of interesting things that exist just a click away. This is the
modern dilemma.
Dr David Tuffley is a lecturer
in Socio-Technical studies at Griffith University's School of ICT in Brisbane.
A Postcard from Rajasthan
Sharon Snir
Time arrived and I took advantage of her. Here I am surrounded by hills
on all sides. I’m in this gorgeous valley called Lebua. We have been staying in
a tent for three nights. It’s a huge five-star tent with bathroom,
a sunken bath and God help me, even a TV. One cannot hear the
traffic and that’s such a strange experience here in Jaipur as there is so much
of it. The traffic looks like a combination of safari, circus, city and
village. It’s common to pass ten elephants retiring after a busy day carrying
tourists up the steep hill to the Amber Fort. Between
the elephants there may be any combination of tuk-tuks (auto rickshaws), their
drivers and passengers, Mercedes Benz cars, tourist and local busses (with
twenty Locals hanging on to the sides because there is no more room inside),
thousands of motorbikes with women riding side-saddle carrying tiny babies and
one to three children squeezed between the mother, and in front of the father
holding the handle bars of the bike, and smiling...
There are open trucks too with children sitting in the back, feet
dangling perilously close to the exhaust, breathing in the black fumes to
no-one’s concern but mine. And there is of course the occasional Toyota, Tata
and bath tub (motorized with a lawn mower motor) joining the throng of
beeping horns and near misses as millions of people miraculously amble through
it all, without injury or concern.
I have been writing. My day in Varanasi (once Benares)
was so extraordinary I can say without any hesitation that we were carried,
guided, gifted, whatever the right words are for a journey of spiritual
synchronicity. I want to write a novella about this and how it all came to be.
My late father has played a role in it, I know. After all, it is because of him
that I am here at this time: celebrating his life and acknowledging one year
since his passing.
I almost forgot to mention that there are more cows here than ever
before and lots and lots of pigs. Oren swears never to eat one again. And
goats! The festival of killing and eating a goat draws near, thus flocks of
goats are everywhere.
Sharon Snir is
a Sydney NSW, teacher, author and psychotherapist.
Oct 24 2013. Thursday. Thursday. The
cool change has dropped the temperature nearly ten degrees since yesterday. The
river is dappling in a light breeze and the sky looks stormy again. Yesterday
there was a thunderstorm and some thundery showers in the afternoon. Stronger
winds earlier brought down more twigs, branches and leaves like brown rain. I
live in the forest, after all. Falling leaves and timber never stop even in
still air. I see another big branch on the path to the belvedere (yet again):
it’s gouged another hole, was hefty enough to have erased me. Flying ants arose
after the showers; the air was ready for their hatching. There followed furious
flight activity just above the lounge room roof as seen from upstairs. What
does this mean, I wonder? My head is still whirring from too many hours at the
Mac.
Oct 29 2013. Tuesday. Blankety blank!
It’s surprisingly warm in the early morning. Stormy weather is predicted. The
morning walk is almost hot at 07:15. I totter down the dusty and stony road
(the roller, the grader and a front-end loader have left the site). Away from
the bridge and further along the road the surface is littered with dislodged
stones and all our windscreens are again at risk. I ready the camera whilst
walking because the foal and a couple of mares are close to the fence. I come
to a sudden stop and take a picture before the mares glare close protectively
around the little one, but I have my picture.
For the record: the Council road crew (plus machines) have been
sculpting the banks at the east side of the bridge. What was almost a 4-WD
descent from Darkwood Road close to the concrete approach to the ‘beach’ on
that side (much used by locals and others for car parking, picnics and
sometimes camping) now has a grand sweeping wide access and looks like a
splendid car park. It will be used excessively, I imagine. Loose sandy spoil
from this work now lies next to the concrete approach and on the downstream
side of the concrete. Those who use the bigger beach opposite my house plunge
down as if descending a sand dune. I hope no vehicle does the same: it will
have difficulty in returning to the road. I mention this because it so often
rains immediately after the Council road guys repair the road…and I’m sure it
will rain today.
A storm is brewing. I see the hot wind blowing clouds of dust. About
noon I take a break and wander through the dry garden but the wind is getting
up and the big trees are swaying and bending like huge fly-casting rods. It’s
not safe anywhere near the belvedere. I have a quick walk over the bridge and
down onto the upstream beach: dust and silt lie in the big tyre tracks made by
the Council machines. River water has run into the tracks to make strange
little billabongs. The dust has settled in the tracks and become silt. Tadpoles
swim in from the river. I select a few small stones to use to repair the garden
wall behind the belvedere, damaged in the February flood, and hurry back. The
big brush box trees between the house and the carport are creaking and
groaning. One of the big three trees there has been dead for years; each of the
three leans toward the carport. I have a bad feeling about this. I go inside
and start switching off the computer, disconnecting the phones, pulling plugs,
closing windows. Branches are flying now, big ones bouncing and battering the
roof and blowing leaves away then blowing and further distributing more leaves
over the steel roofing. The storm breaks. Within ten minutes the electricity
here fails and the power is off from a bit after 13:00 to about 18:35. Two
storms visited here this afternoon with clear blue sky in between.
I switch everything on again in the early evening and write on for a
while longer, and so to bed.
Finally: remembered events and scenes
this month.
The weeping coral tree next to the belvedere was almost destroyed in
last February’s flood: limbs were torn off and flood debris hung in the remains
for months providing a screen of privacy between the sunnier parts of the lawn
in winter and visitors on the beach across the river. After pruning and
cleaning the tree has new branches and green leaves and the first of the
seasons sprays of flowers. Viva the indestructible weeping coral tree!
I heard a radio program about leaves, particularly eucalyptus leaves:
they don’t easily break down and disintegrate: they’re unusually tough and seem
designed to remain hard and whole for long periods. I’ve been raking them for
exercise: they are as tough as old boots and show little sign of decomposing,
even when rained on, even when dried crisply on hot days.
I’m hoping to encourage the country life for the new car. When next I
drove to Coffs, I took the Honda into the big parking station next to
Woolworths and left her at the second level in line with the green trees in the
Mall (beneath which sit many coffee drinkers texting and phoning). I revisit
Muffin Break. It’s very different here at 09:00. Where do the 08:00 mobile
phone persons go, other than to work?
I remember a childhood interest and stand watching small black ants
ascending to heaven or thereabouts: they take food scraps from ground level and
walk straight up the great trunk of an old Flooded Gum. Though I can’t see
their destination my inner romantic imagines them going all the way to the top
(about 50-m) where they perhaps have one of the best downstream views of the
Bellinger slipping past Earthrise. I wonder, do small black ants dream of the
river and tell each other stories of adventure?
About
my eBooks
For those readers who browse
for eBooks, here again are the first of the online books that I’ve begun
self-publishing. These digital books can be found on Amazon/Kindle sites.
(a) Finding Drina is a light-hearted sequel to my two print novels (not
available as eBooks) published in one volume as The Agreement and it’s sequel, Lourenço
Marques. Finding Drina is
written in three parts and in three different styles that also are intended
homage pieces (to GG Marquez, Ernest Hemingway and Lawrence Durrell); thus this
little book is also meta-fiction (novella, about 30-k words).
(b) The Earthrise Visits is an Australian long story set at Earthrise
(about 20-k words): an old psychologist meets a young literary ghost from the
1920s (his girlfriend meets her too) before a second old literary ghost,
unaware of his spectral state, arrives unexpectedly.
(c) Farewelling Luis Silva is an Australian dystopian long story partly
set in Australia, Portugal and France (about 23-k words). A sniper meets an
Australian Prime Minister, an old lover and a celebrity journalist; three of
them meet a terrorist in Lisbon where there is a bloody assassination.
(d) The Selati Line is an early 20th century Transvaal train
story, road story, flying story, a caper and love story sequel to The Agreement and Lourenço Marques, lightly written and containing some magical
realism. A scene-stealing child
prodigy keeps the characters in order (novel, about 150-k words).
(e) The Summer River is a dystopian novel (about 70-k words) set at
Earthrise. A General, the déjà vu sniper, the Australian Prime Minister and the
celebrity journalist witness the murder of a guerrilla who had also been an
Australian university student; they discuss how best to write an appropriate
book about ‘foreign invasions’ (novel, about 70-k words).
(f) The Annotated “Elizabeth.” I examine and offer
likely explanations as to why my uncle published a mixed prose and verse novel
in which his mother is the principal protagonist and I suggest why the book Elizabeth (published by Dick Diespecker
in 1950) is a novel and not a biography, memoir or history (non-fiction, about
24-k words).
(g) The Overview is an Australian novella set at Earthrise (about 32-k
words) and is also a sequel to The
Summer River.
(h) Scribbles from Earthrise is an anthology of selected essays and
caprice written at Earthrise (about 32-k words). Topics are: family and
friends, history of the Earthrise house, the river, the forest, stream of
consciousness writing and the Earthrise dogs.
(i) Here and There is a selection of Home and Away essays (about 39-k
words). (Away includes Cowichan (Vancouver Island), 1937 (my cabin-boy year),
The Embassy Ball (Iran), At Brindavan (Sai Baba in India). Home essays are set
at Earthrise and include as topics: the Bellinger River and floods, plus some
light-hearted caprices.
(j) The Agreement is a novel set in Mozambique and Natal during
December 1899 and the Second Anglo-Boer War: an espionage yarn written around
the historical Secret Anglo Portuguese Agreement. Louis Dorman and his brother,
Jules, feature together with Drina de Camoens who helps draft the Agreement for
the Portuguese Government. British, Boer spies and the Portuguese Secret Police
socialize at the Estrela Café (about 62-k words).
(k) Lourenço Marques is the sequel to The Agreement. Mozambique in
September 1910. The Estrela café-bar is much frequented and now provides music:
Elvira Tomes returns to LM from Portugal and is troubled by an old ghost; Drina
and her companion return with a new member of the family; Louis faints. Joshua
becomes a marimba player. Ruth Lerner, an American journalist plans to film a
fiesta and hundreds visit from the Transvaal. Drina plays piano for music
lovers and plans the removal of an old business associate (novel: about 75,000
words).
(l) The Midge Toccata is a caprice: a little collection of stories
about very little taking insects, the midges at Local Sector 1655 (aka
Earthrise). These tales are tongue in cheek fables as well as homage yarns
inspired by Lewis Carroll and intended largely for readers of all ages who
enjoy literature, particularly literary fiction (about 26-k words).
A special thank you to my guest writers, David and Sharon.
Best wishes to all, from Don.
