Just saw the forecast for the next four days - 28, 29, 29, 30 (that's Celsius for you yanks) ... that's phenomenal weather for early autumn. Would mean that six out of ten days have been hovering around the 30 mark ...

Going over yesterday's meanderings ... hey, that www.genesisfineart.com.au - where's the REST of the surreal gallery the ghost gum is in !!?? ... something to checkout next time I hook up ...

Hmmm ... I suppose one can use the forward & backward arrows at the bottom of the page, but I'm talking about the page where you pass your cursor over each image title ...

This time I do make it into the Dandenongs and make good on my promise to visit the Alfred Nicholas Gardens. I was surprised that it costs as much as $4.20 ... and even more surprised that it operates under an 'honour' system. That it, there's a sign detailing the admission prices and then a little 'money box' for one to put ones coins into. Assuming one has the correct money on one's person. I suppose they figure the kind of people who'd go walking around a garden are likely to respond to such a system ... :)

Click ... okay, switch into descriptive mode ... what was the day like? Well, after a couple of nice bus rides (see photos), I hopped off at Grant's Picnic Ground once again and took the Clematis track. It looks awfully flat on the map (provide link), but I can tell you it was a steady climb for most of the first fifteen minutes which got the old heart pumping quite nicely, I can tell you. Along the way, I snapped a photo of a couple of things, including a nicely camouflaged rosella. This one is slightly more distinguishable from last week's effort.

This track led me to the O'Donohue picnic ground from which I followed a couple more nice walking tracks around to the Alfred Nicholas gardens (as mentioned earlier). It is a nice spot, particularly the lake, with its several small bridges and its boathouse (the image of which in that library book is what got me to venture there in the first place) and its resident duck population. One nice duckie popped out of the water and watched me for a while. I think he (or she) was after a feed. I snapped a couple more nice photos - some bees feeding on a most unusual looking 'flower'. I assume it was a flower because bees usually hang out on flowers. It was a nice pinky kind of colour but without discernible petals like your traditional flower. It was a nice day - not too cold and not too hot. So, overall, I had quite a nice time sitting by the lake and contemplating my nice surroundings before heading off back to the bustop, which had a nice scenis view. I even enjoyed some nice sultanas & crispbread while waiting for the bus to arrive and whisk me back to 'civilisation'.

{Apologies for the lack of variety in the adjectives used in those paragraphs - my thesaurus is out on loan at the moment}

Then on the way home in the bus, I spotted a tiny spider on my pants. No more than one or two millimetres in size. So tiny in fact, that as it crawled around on my hand I would not even have been aware of its presence if I wasn't watching it. That was also a nice experience. :)

Oh yes, I switched buses at Ferntree Gully station and had a bit of a wander and spotted two nice ghost gums, would you believe. And they were across the road from the cemetery! :) A nice, scenic cemetery but you'll have to take my word for that as my dinky little camera with its ten shot limit had filled up long before I saw the cemetery ...

A couple more searches (apart from those above) ...

- 'Jesus Sutras' by Martin Palmer

- 'Universe Next Door' by Marcus Chown

- Another weird game of cricket invlolving Victoria - 30 wickets for about 360 runs and not even the end of day two! ... :)

-

I scribbled some other stuff down as I ambled around the nice walking tracks ...

It is approaching that time of the year when the leaves on some trees change colour and then drop. Should keep a camera handy ... :)

- Caption for one of the photos: 'If a tree falls in a forest ...' :)

- plus ... 'Another superbly camouflaged rosella in Sherbrooke Forest' ...

- That lake would make a lovely panoramic shot ... if i hadn't used up most of the camera's capacity before I thought of it ... :)

- bathid scorpion bananas capsicum venom (interesting story I read on train in someone's discarded newspaper)

- - train mural in Belgrave would make a nice photo op too ...

- as would the cemetery with the two nearby ghost gums & the scenic backdrop ...

Yes, the 9 or ten image limit is starting to drive me a bit dotty (or dottier)

At one stage I was spontaneously singing some quite bizarre alternative lyrics to the tune of 'I will survive'. I didn stop to scribble them down as that would have broken the mood. So you'll just have to trust me. that was a nice experience as well.

Felt like shooting somethin like this off to 'Your say' ... but I didn't ... Hi there With regards the Wayne Carey 'furore', what else can you expect when you make people into 'heroes' for reasons as flimsy & absurd as the ability to kick a piece of inflated leather a long way? Any society that makes footy players into 'role models' is in a LOT of trouble.

There's a place called Tibet where they don't have Aussie rules players, so they make heroes out of people who embody qualities such as wisdom and compassion. Go figure. Or maybe ... Personally, I find this herd mentality & all the holier-than-thou attitudes to be FAR more distasteful than the idea of two people enjoying a good bonk. Maybe I'm weird. :) I mean get real, people. Ask yourself if you have any action of yours has ever caused anyone else pain ... or whether you've ever exercised abysmal judgement or ... and if you can answer 'No' with a straight face, boy, it must be tough being a saint among us mere mortals ... :)

One of yesterday's links has been fixed today & is quite amusing ... :) See if you can guess which one - you probly won't need 2b Alfred Einsteen or anything ...

"Why do human beings feel such compulsion to discuss (& condemn) the behaviour of people they don't know personally (& are never likely to meet). It's quite insane, when you really take a good look at it."
{I mean every microwatt of attention devoted to this kind of activity is a complete waste. It's one less microwatt available to improving your own self (unless you're already as perfect as a human being is capable of being). If you are going to get all upset & angry at everyone who seemingly makes 'bigger' mistakes than you manage to make, then you'd have to be angry 24 hours a day. And that's one tough way to live. Not a lot of fun. So I wouldn't really recommend it to anyone.}

[  March 15, 2002   '




Today's mantra: "One day a man walks into a pub and he says absolutely nothing at all. Neither does anyone else."

Testing ...

I suppose I'd be best to let it go ... but a few more thoughts/observations on yesterday's kerfuffle ...

I'm saddened by the amount of venom in people's attacks, but i can't say I'm all that surprised. I've always felt that a society where people actually WANT to read the 'dirt' on another person is a deeply dysfunctional society. Then it pops into my head while shaving this smorning ... the amount (& toxicity) of venom used is a precise indicator of the depth of that individual's personal unhappiness. A truly happy person simply would not entertain the idea of indulging in something as insane & destructive as a venomous attack on a fellow being ...

Apart from the fact that it achieves absolutely nothing ... well, that might not quite be true ... if your ego is extremely frail & fragile, you can give it a short boost by a rabid attack on someone else (in much the same way as a drug addict gets a temporary boost - at a HUGE price) ... so sad ...

...

As I sit here, I just flicked on the telly and the first ten mins of a movie called 'Freefall' is worth a peek if you ever see it anywhere. I'll wait for the closing credits to see where the sequence was filmed ... just gorgeous in itself ... let alone the guy leaping off the highest point (with a parachute on his back) ...

Candid Images ... ah, more greetin cards ... :)

Don Jackson - ditto

Claude Fiddler

Interesting site

Another quick trip to the library and one of Steve Parish's books happened 2b on the shelf. Wow - the rhododendron gardens in Olinda are gorgeous ... something else to check out next time ... :)

From that 'surreal gallery' ... wow ...

As I sit here, the movie got more than a little silly after that promising beginning ... :)

They must've figured that you can't maintain the attention span of modern audiences simply by presenting beautiful images ...

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree

More birdy links ...

I can feel yesterday's walk in the old leg muscles. Walking along some bush tracks can be very different from strolling around suburbia on nicely paved footpaths ... :)

Here's a closer view of some of the things I've been attempting to snap recently ... :)

If you poke around that site a bit ... you'll find some of those birds I mentioned earlier ... :)

Hmmm ... the credits of 'Freefall' simply said 'filmed on location in Venezuela' ... not enormously helpful ...

In today's email ... click

Also received a nice eCard ... click, looks a lot like the one in the aquarium, though ours are more uniform in colour ... and more lemony ...

Update ... Victoria does it again! ... how DO you lose a match after having the opposition 6 for 24 ... click here to find out how they managed it ... :)

More leafy links - the very first one is an excellent page ...

Also in today's emails ...

Spoonerisms

Plus a very long email about a whole raft of 'stuff' ... :)

Much of which is already mentioned in this here journal ...

Hmmm ... just after sending that email, which mentions 'stationary clouds' ... click :)

Today's mantra: "I don't think I'm crazy anymore"

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