Followers

Friday 19 August 2016

It was a little Kingdom;

A grazing property in the Northern Rivers.

From my diary “Under a hotter sun”.

The paddock;
We walked down to the river flats. All five of us shouldered hoes and bush knives.
We had the task to eradicate thistles, rushes and more weeds that had the tendency to choke the grass.
Thistles grew in abundance. They were never in jeopardy by wild swinging hoes and bush knives by a bunch of determined people declaring war to innocent weeds. Our friend Reg said, where thistles grow the soil is very fertile. What I thought was that Reg just wanted to console us, when he saw the task we had ahead of us.



Part of the property, grazing bulls. Left is Willie and youngsters. we had another old, big one called Jumbo James.


While we hacked and slashed at the big whoppers, my eyes strayed to the riverbank. The water dark and serene. Tiny flower petals fell gracefully and settled on the water highlighted by the odd sun ray penetrating the thick vegetation.
The heat, the buzz of insects, the monotonous task soon led me into a dazed dreaming.
The sunlight sharp like molten silver pierced my eyelids; there suddenly, I glimpsed graceful people whom had lived in this area a long time before us. 



Our Herefords on the move. they had 2 huge paddocks to change from time to time, to give the grass a chance to recover and regrow.


The tall, proud men ahead, strode with long measured paces. Women and 
children with delicate limbs, followed, happily chatting and laughing .
They stopped in their track when they saw me. Their hands with long slim fingers flew up and waved. A very old woman gazed at me; fathomless, black eyes met mine.





The property in time of the flood. The flood rejuvenated the soil  while  the cattle moved up to the higher, sheltered bush area to graze.



The earth stood still, when she reached out and handed me a small woven dilly bag. I hesitated to take it. I had nothing to give her in return. She quietly pressed the gift into my hands a tiny smile on her lips.
My fingers curled around the small bag, felt the exquisite work of the woven fibres.



On the move to the bush.



The chatter and laughter resumed, faded, far away the last tinkle of a child’s laughter died.
My hands hung empty, the fingers still curled around nothing. I felt bereft. The hoe left laying on top of wilting, silvery purple flowers.
The world returned to its endless chores. The buzz and hum of insects, the twitter of a bird, the flap of a wing, and the silent pursuit of underground creatures.




Friendship.



The heat continued its onslaught; sun rays radiated glittering stars into the sky.
Sweat trickled from my hot brow, pale rivulets on my dusty face.
I dried my moist face with my sunhat, blinked into the shimmering heat. I adjusted my sunglasses that had carelessly fallen to the ground and looked around to my family; they were busy at their task.





Pigs and hens love to be outside to forage and enjoy the sun. Poor animals, which  are always restrained and  kept inside and are not allowed to roam, enjoy the outside,  an animal's normal way of life.



I gazed up to this immensely blue sky; swatted lethargically at flies and my spirits vanished when I looked at this sea of purple. The hoes went whack, whack and the purple heads fell to their grave. Their dry, prickly heads hold also trillions of seeds for next years crop. I shuddered when I thought of it.




I am on my way to look for Susi, the orphan wallabi which we took care of as it lost its Mum earlier on.  She had an accident with a car.



The girls had enough and vanished, drawn to the cool, dark river that beckoned and promised relief from the heat and monotonous work. I listened to their noisy splashes.
Peter and I plod on, whack, whack slash one more purple thistle gone.





Lilli and Susi.



The Flame trees of  Home.




Kaneki, a rescue Cockatoo. One day a few wild cockatoos came and visited him. With his funny walk  he went towards them and said:" Hello, hello". The other cockatoos, I guess, thought, he was crazy. It was rally funny



Jacquei and her pet Manx kitten Tomi, also a rescue, the mother died while it was still tiny and the kitten had to be fed with a bottle.



The toys on the farm. One day Jacquie drove into a drain, as she forgot that their was one. She walked home and I heard the horn going and thought something had happened. She asked me where am I, She had a concussion.



Looking after the chooks.






The Herefords.




Mums and calves.




In the yard to check for ticks. The tick man checked the cattle for ticks.







The beloved pets.




Our jilleroos.



The girls ready to go to school



The beautiful Coldstream River, much fun in summer.









The home in the "Bush"












My garden.




The grazing property;






©Photos/Text Ts 

Tuesday 9 August 2016

Tuesday thoughts; privileged to be a billboard.




How extremely blasé and obsessed has our society become with Designer merchandise. We are supposed to wear the right shoes, dresses and all the rightly named accessories.
Without thinking nations have become billboards for Nike, Pike, Sike, Like and whatever all these names mean or the merchandise produced behind it. 
The name cults go much further. Simple everyday day tap ware must have the right name. I must laugh when they show a  home and the owner describes proudly a tap in all its glory as a Vola 131. I am not disputing that the Vola 131 is an extremely, beautiful and handsome tap, and had its birth I think in Scandinavia in the 1950s 60s,  who cares.  I am amazed that people have come so far in the 21st century to be proud to have a branded tap in their bathroom or kitchen.



Photo/ Malawi charity water.

 We are not just happy anymore, that we have water hot and cold and all shades in between to come out of a tap. No, this  is certainly not enough for many. They need the glory of branded tap ware. A showerhead made by Gucci. The bathtub tried first by Prada and a toilet straight out of the designer guild of Mr. Crapper.

Long live the living billboard masses,  very useful for advertisements.





© Text Ts 

Sunday 31 July 2016

Heaps of books to read.








Dust; Yvonne Adhiambo Owour;  Africa, Kenya comes alive.

Civilisations of Ancient Iraq; Benjamin R. Foster; Karen Polinger Foster.
 How dare our modern, western  civilisation go in there and destroy this ancient world. They did with impunity calling it a cake walk, such barbarians.


A most dangerous book; Christopher B. Krebs.  Tacitus's Germania from the Roman Empire to the Third Reich. It is said that history is always written by the victor powers.

How to manage your slaves; Marcus Sidonius Falx with Jerry Toner. Slavery was a core institution in the Roman world. It almost never occurred to anyone, that slavery might be dispensed with or that it was morally reprehensible. If this would have been published 2000 years ago it would have topped the management charts. Are today's "wage slaves" really so much different? How different are we from the Romans?

The dark side of Love; Rafik Schami. Above St.Paul's Chapel in Damascus,  a body hangs in  a basket over the city wall...


The Towers of Samarkand; James Heneage. ...torn away from all he loves,  Names like Tamerlane, Mongolia, Constantinople, the world in the 14th century.

The Drowning Lesson; Jane Shemilt; I am in yesterday's clothes...a year on Emma remains haunted....

The Stylist's guide to NYC; Sibella Court.  Probably THE Eden for unusual merchandise. Haberdashery; oddities and Curiosities; Kitchen and Table Paraphernalia, and more and more, what does exist is available. 






Now go and read.



Monday 18 July 2016

Sepia Saturday 16th July 2016




Pictures, palaces, and bingo numbers are amongst your possible themes this week for Sepia Saturday 339 …

I want to showcase the Eclecticism, a mixing of various architectural styles and ornamentation of the past. Eclecticism in architecture was very popular in the second half of the 19th century.
Here a variation of rooflines from Australian country towns in Queensland and New South Wales.










Stucco
A plaster used as a coating for walls and ceilings, and often used for decoration; it is common to many parts of the world.






Frieze
A band of richly sculpted ornamentation on a building.

Bundaberg



The part of a building that rises above the building’s eaves. Rooflines can be highly decorative, with balustrades, pediments, statuary, dormer windows, cross gables, etc.





Township of Maclean NSW still steeped in Art deco. Hopefully, all these old buildings will be restored to their former glory and the tangle of wires put underground.




Maclean NSW



Bourke is a town in the north-west of New South Wales, Australia. The administrative centre and largest town in Bourke Shire, Bourke is approximately 800 kilometres north-west of the state capital, Sydney, on the south bank of the Darling River.









©Photos/Text Ts