Tag Archives: Australia

Spirited away from Darwin by Wildcat…

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When Salty called yesterday and asked me if I wanted to join him and a few others on a 10-hour trip to return the riverboat Wildcat to her home on the Adelaide River, I gave a noncommittal  reply, told him I’d call him back, and then made up my mind not to go.

My reasons were that I start work very early Monday mornings, my bicycle still isn’t going so that means getting up even earlier and walking to the City, and I knew I’d be so tired if I spent the whole Sunday out on the water in the sun and rain. But I didn’t call Salty, just figured that if he didn’t hear from me, he’d assume I wasn’t interested.

When I got up this morning at 6, I knew I’d make a terrible mistake. I even e-mailed a friend (poor Dave, sorry mate!) about it, first thing in the morning:

I feel like an idiot, passing up on a great trip through the crocodile infested river with a friend and crocodile expert, because I’m worried I’ll be late for my salad-chopping and sandwich-making job the following day. What has become of my life, that I should play things so safe? As though this job, which I only have for one day a week and isn’t really supporting me much at this point, is so goddamn important? What’s happened to my priorities? I’ve been lulled into that sheep-like state, where I do things without thinking, I accept things without questioning. I think the veil was slowly dissolved last night, as I was reading a book called The Country of Marriage by Antony Giardina. I don’t recommend it, unless you want angst and Weltschmerz. It filled me with a slow panic and horror at the way my life seems to have become so placid, so predictable and safe. It was scarier than reading any horror/suspense novel. Scared me into wanting to do something radical and mad, to wrestle the steering wheel of my life from the frumpy woman that’s got it, and go bumping off the road and through the wilderness.

I finished my e-mails, signed off, put away my laptop, and was making my usual rolled oats soaked in orange juice, when Salty rang me. They would be coming down the Sadgroves Creek in a few minutes, and could take me straight off Sonofagun on the way down. Woot! I’d been given a second chance! I said Yes! Yes! and Yes!

Threw some junk into a bag, shut my own boat’s windows in case it rained, and bolted my breakfast as Wildcat appeared. Salty eased her up right behind Sonofagun, and I stepped from one to the other, like off a curb and onto a bus.

Goodbye, Darwin!
vernon Islands

Great weather to the mouth of the river…past the Vernon Islands, roaring along at 7 or 8 knots, sea wind and not much spray. Not very exciting views out this way, but the clouds were heavy with light, the sky was gorgeous with blue.

Donna

At the mouth of the Adelaide River, weather went grey and wet. Not much fun for a while, crawling up the muddy river in the driving rain, soaked through and actually shivering with cold. But it didn’t last too long, and skies cleared at about 3 p.m.

As we chugged up the river, huge Mephistophelian crocodiles (after whom The Spectacular Jumping Crocodile Cruise is named) slid from their mud banks into the water, and came towards us. Wildcat is the boat that takes visitors on that cruise, and all the crocodiles know her engine’s sound, so instead of disappearing craftily, they come right up to the boat, hoping to get a feed.

This wasn’t a show trip, though, and we had no meat on board for them, so there are no jumping crocs among my photos…still, you never quite get over it when one of these prehistoric reptiles is silently turning, its eyes fixed on you, in the green water, right at your feet. It’s like coming face to face with a dinosaur from Jurassic Park…you are looking at something whose kind roamed the earth long before humans existed, and it doesn’t like you very much…but somewhere in its reptilian brain it remembers that your kind were prey for a long time.

Still are, on those rare happy occasions.

Och, what a handsome fellow this one is!

And this old timer had a blunt, messy snout…

This pretty yellow-eyed one was hanging around under the jetty when we arrived.

Salty is THE man to see about crocodiles in the Northern Territory. His Spectacular Jumping Crocodile Cruise is the oldest on the Adelaide River, and was started not merely to make money, but to help educate people about crocodiles, and thereby protect the crocodiles themselves from the sometimes vengeful, exterminating instinct that man has for anything that he fears and does not understand.

When Salty gives the tour, his never-ending stream of facts and figures and cautionary tales about these fearsome creatures is fascinating. When in Darwin, look out for the jumping crocodile logo, and have a look at the wicked picture gallery on their website, too!

The Spectacular Jumping Crocodile Cruise

P.S. I think I may have overdone the links…I know, it looks like I’m advertising in exchange for a free t-shirt! I’m not, though…just over-enthusiastic about the crocs, themselves, and Salty’s been a good friend of the family for a long time. :) If you ARE going to head to the river to see crocs, you may as well get the right guides.

Loop The Loop

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Loop The Loop poster

The radio interview with Loop The Loop’s musicians, Gene Peterson and Adam Page, that I had managed to hear snatches of—over the clang and clatter of the kitchen at work—simply did not do this show justice. There was, I recall, some banter about rubber squeeze toys, and a brief tootle on a zucchini flute…but the radio announcer didn’t manage to describe the show with more than the usual adjectives “amazing” and “wonderful”, already used indiscriminately on everything—from charity concerts for Japan, to Sunday churchyard cupcake sales.

Which turned out a good thing, because I went to last night’s show expecting 100 minutes of 1930s Jewish-American television humor by two doped-up ex-surfies, pulling homemade instruments out of their Wicked Camper Van. I expected a lot of “Whoa!” and “Hey, Dude,” and to witness musical skills equal or slightly better than those of Toad Suck, Arkansas’ 5th grade band class.

It was nice to be wrong. Peterson and Page cobbled real, dance-able, enjoyable musical pieces together last night, using about 30 instruments—classical, traditional, vocal and body instruments, besides the bizarre ones made from zucchinis, typewriters, or vacuum cleaner pipes—combined with funk, reggae, and carib rhythms. And The Loop, of course.

Performance oriented Liveloopers will take real-time audio samples, and loop these samples on the fly, allowing the musician to sample new material while the current loop is playing.  It’s a quick way to extend half-a-dozen sampled instruments: a phrase of saxophone, some toots across the open mouth of a glass pop bottle, some righteous percussion, a bit of spoken word, beatboxing, vocal turntablism, and singing…into one big, rich, layered, harmonious sound…immediately, in real-time, onstage, using whatever you’ve got on hand.  Or on your chin.

The Beard
Highlights of last night’s show, for me, were:

  • Adam Page’s rock Tribute to his beard (included Tibetan throat singing!), using samples taken of ‘microphone+beard+mustachio’ encounters
  • a groovy rendition of “Harry John Grove”…the name was provided by a member of the audience, and if I were that eight- or nine-year-old boy, hearing Page beatbox, sing, and embellish my name in funkadelic sounds would probably have changed my life forever. Would not be surprised if Harry doesn’t want to be a pilot, anymore, but wants a Real-Time Looper for Christmas, instead.
  • Grant Peterson’s live and loop-free playing of the drums with one hand, and a keyboard with the other (hence the appellation “Phenomenal Percussionist”)
  • A showdown between the two that saw Grant playing the life out of a typewriter, bath toys, spoons, and Adam rocking the zucchini, a miniature harmonica (the kind that comes on a keychain) and some awesome didgeridoo using a vacuum cleaner’s pipe.

Barbie guitars

  • A musical confrontation between a child’s pink battery-operated keyboard, and a small pink ukelele
  • There was, of course, some very grand music, as well: jazz piano, saxophone, a drum solo of Animal the Muppet energy, flute, and ukelele music.

miniature drumset and power drill

I’m sorry if you missed this one-night only show…it was a feast for the senses, and good fun, too. Shame people weren’t told more about it, it was really too good to miss, not something you’re likely to experience everyday (not in Darwin, not anywhere, really): two consummate musicians, a hundred minutes of creative, fearless, masterful music, a rich and substantial performance rounded out by a sauce of cheeky fun.

Loop The Loop T-shirts

Find Loop the Loop on Facebook, and on their website.

Good for Nothing: A book launch and exhibit

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Lots of people in Darwin have seen Kris…he’s mainly known as “that bearded guy that rides everywhere on a weird bike”. People have seen him carting ladders, or a dozen loaded crates stacked up into pyramids, or whole trestle tables, on his home-built recumbent bike (he’s secretly proud of the way he can transport almost anything on his bicycle), and have come across him riding as far out as Humpty Doo, or Litchfield, or out in the Tanami Desert…with rubber thongs on his feet and just a sleeping bag and a jug of water in a milk crate on the back.

What most people don’t know about Kris (because he keeps very quiet about what he does…he is the embodiment of “the cat that walked by himself”, his own person) is that he pours 70% of all his living energy into projects that have no obvious purpose, nor promise any of society’s conventional rewards.

Hours of each day are spent on whatever his current obsessions may be; Kris doesn’t merely squeeze his passions into the gaps of “free time” left over after a boring ordinary work day…much the opposite, Kris squeezes a little bit of boring, everyday life into whatever gaps are left after he has spent the best part of his day on weird or wonderful projects to please HIMSELF.

He approaches his projects with the discipline and focus that most people reserve for jobs they are getting paid (or somehow rewarded) to do. I have seen him spend many, many hours over a period of 12 years or so, researching and cataloging the mythical, fantastic, unusual beasts/creatures of every culture…sorting them into groups, and then making a small painting of every single one. It’s all been compiled into a handbound book with carved teak covers, handwritten pages, illuminated majuscules, gold leaf, and some 170 original paintings; it is known in our household as Teratologus. A few of our friends have seen the book, but it is not something he talks about or passes around easily. It’s not that it’s a secret, but that it represents too much hard work and…dare I say it?…love, to be exposed to people who would never understand such a project.

Questions like “What’s it good for?“, or being told that “You are very privileged and lucky to be able to live your dreams,” are sad and disappointing. Some of the best things in life aren’t “good for anything”. And as we don’t have much time on this planet to do all the things we want to do, we’d rather not waste our precious minutes trying to explain creativity, imagination, or living without imagined fears, to people who, themselves, aren’t good for much more than criticism and worry. We feel sorry for you, but we can’t help you.

Recently, Kris has been into bicycles. Specifically, bicycles in Australia…not the bicycle as status symbol or state-of-the-art lifestyle wank…but the bicycle as a simple machine that has changed very little, essentially, over the centuries, and is one of the most energy-efficient and accessible modes of transport, loved the world over.

He’s spent the past three years researching the topic. He’s built 5 recumbent bicycles over time, and made two trips from Darwin to Port Augusta, and to Broome, on his home-built bikes. He wrote a book about his trips, research, the philosophy and practicality of human-powered-versus-fuel-consuming transport, of slow-versus-fast transport, of boxed-in-versus-in-the-open transport, and the different mindframe a long-distance cyclist develops…a sort of Zen and The Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, for bicycles, called Bicycle Dreaming.

After four days of hard slog on the Gibb River Road in the Kimberley, WA, during the heat of the day, I was looking for a shady spot to hole up for the afternoon when I bumped into this marvellous billabong. I propped “Kraken” against a spindly tree on the side of the road and waded into tall grass. 50 metres in I discovered a clear patch of water with sandy bottom and rocky ledge. I was parched and tired. I sat down under the first tree at the edge of the water, had a feed, long drink and a short nap.
I had a leisurely scrub and rinsed my clothes….I spread the rags on hot stone shelves, had another swim, and settled myself in a cool spot. The sun was far too high in the sky to climb back into the saddle; I had plenty of time, and I started scribbling about bicycles in my notebook. I was going to write about interesting things and marvellous places, about great and crazy people, and their legendary exploits, all of it in one way or another connected to bicycles. I was going to describe how I see the world and how it affects me.
At that waterhole in the Kimberley I was at peace. Every half an hour a dusty 4WD would roar past, windows rolled up, rattling their way over the corrugation as fast as their suspension would allow, looking dead ahead,…oblivious to the countryside. Some of them noticed my bright red bicycle leaning against a tree, but none of them noticed the waterhole I was sitting at. They came here to see the country, but their cars made them blind.

—excerpt from Bicycle Dreaming by Kris Larsen

He made a lot of drawings for the book, in pen and ink, and because he was in the mood, painted up a dozen large posters about bicycles, too…loosely based on the old bicycle posters of the early 1900s, but with humor and a wilder imagination.

We held a book launch and exhibit of all Kris’s bicycle-themed works at the Darwin Visual Arts Association yesterday evening. Was so surprised by the numbers of guests who turned up—thanks to all our good friends, who were so supportive and made the evening a busy, talkative, enjoyable one.

We hope you enjoy the books and the artwork that you took home, may they inspire you to never settle into a comfortable, lazy life of non-doing…may they  awaken you to the fact that Making Your Dreams A Reality has nothing whatsoever to do with Having Enough Money, or Being Entitled, or Being In The Right Place, or Coming From The Right Social Stratum. That’s bullshit.

Possessing a dream is all the entitlement, ability, and birthright you need to make it happen. Stop telling yourself lies because you are afraid. Do it now...it is later than you think.

urban snails follow each other down a wide highwaythat has collapsed, and drop one by one into the sea

Kris’s new book, Bicycle Dreaming, is available within Australia via his website.

Festive Faking for the Holidays

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I have been experimenting with felt circles and embroidery for the past two days. I was trying to make flowers but—and I blame the Morphic field for this—everything I have made so far looks like an elaborately decorated cookie. Better than actually baking trays of cookies, at least. Me and sugar, we don’t like each other much.

At a time of the year when everyone in the Christianized world is baking pretty things, or is preoccupied with eating and decorating, with buying yet more things, and with social get-togethers of one kind or another, my lover and I are settling in for a couple of quiet weeks at home, to read some books, draw and paint, to make things, and ride out the Christmas storm on our boat…with the pelicans and the crocodiles, who don’t give a damn about it either.

We don’t make a big deal out of Christmas in my home.  I long ago decided that, as far as  my life was concerned,  the cons of Christianity far outweighed the pros. And if I can’t get excited about the substance behind the holiday, then I can’t really work up much enthusiasm for the empty shell of overeating, enforced heartiness, compulsory family reunions and frantic shopping that’s left. Furthermore, my belovéd and husband, Kris, was raised by atheist parents in communist Russia; when he did espouse a religion, he chose Islam, for its sobriety, circumspection, and austerity.

I, on the other hand, was raised in the Philippines, where the holiday that commemorates the birth of a boy to a Jewish-Aramaic couple takes the form of a nationwide hysteria that brings forth, among other delights,  13-hour gridlock traffic jams in the cities, a sharp incline in crime, and a plague of street-hardened-urchins-turned-’carolers’ who descend upon people’s homes as soon as night falls, banging on large tin cans as viciously as they are able, shouting—

shouting, not singing (in their whole lives have these rough little imps heard a single word that was gently sung and not shrieked threateningly at them?)

—their carols in words so far removed from the language they were originally written in that they could not be more meaningless if they had been taken from the Ket language of Central Siberia (these kids don’t have a clue as to what they’re bellowing, it’s just a tradition of the season, god help us, and a lucrative one, and so it thrives.)

Quiet folk, who work for miserable wages all year so they can spend it at this time, escape their own homes (and the thirty groups of carolers that nightly beleaguer them) by going to the malls, where the Christmas decorations have been sparkling, and the Christmas music has been on shuffle-repeat, since October. It is also a tradition to squeeze, with thousands of others like them, into the parking lots, onto the escalators, into the food courts, down the shop aisles, and past the deft hands of the pickpockets of whom—along with traffic cops, urchins, beggars and muggers—it can honestly be said, love and value this time of the year more than anyone else.

To my adopted country, Australia,

You cannot imagine how refreshing it was to arrive in a city where “the Christmas Spirit” didn’t follow you home, caterwaul outside your front door in a pack, prowl around the back of your house nicking any small thing that was foolishly left in the garden (like the stepladder at my mom’s house, last year), and then run a roofing nail along the side of your car as it left. Thank you for leaving us in peace. I love you.

XXX, N.

Christmas dinner at home, when the last of the carolers had rattled noisily away at 10 p.m., was an emotionally fraught affair. The combined stresses of having to endure your family and possibly other relatives for long stretches of time (maybe even having gone shopping and then sat in 4 hours of traffic with them), Mum’s brittle exhaustion from having done “all the work”, Dad’s peevish, infantile insistence that nobody touch the food on the table until he had taken a dozen blah photographs of it (like we would never eat again? it’s just food. get over it. we’re starving. it’s late.), the bickering that would break out among us while we were eating, and then more fights after dinner as paterfamilias tried to drag everyone to church for the midnight service, despite our feeling quite the opposite of loving, peaceful, joyful…

Santa suit in the bottom drawerOh, Christmas! Your every little scrap of prescribed, fabricated festivity, the comic wretchedness of the Christian, suburban, middle-class family bound by tradition to punish itself this way, year after year, is lodged in my memory like the splintered bones of roast bird. I consider myself lucky to have escaped your rosy red claws, at last.

If you are crazy about your family, you don’t need a time like Christmas to remind yourself or to display that affection. If you’re not all that crazy about your family, not even Christmas with The Puppini Sisters in Dolby Sound can make it better.