Strange Days

It's the middle of the day in the middle of summer and it's so dark I have all the lights on so I can see the keyboard. The rain has been non-stop for ever. It seems. A part of my old tin roof is leaking. Intermittently. But I am dry. This is Australia. Bushfires and floods in the same week are standard.

The poor weather has motivated me to once again arm wrestle the digital demons that rule my little laptop. Most of the time I don't understand the digital realm. It has its own logic and pecking order. A truce has been settled and the 11001101 army allow me to log into my own blog. Well I didn't buy my blog but I have visited it for awhile and I do feed it type and pixels. So it's mine. Like Granite Bay is mine because I have visited it for 40+ years.

Ownership is an odd concept around here - especially on Australia Day, which we just had. One of my friends once said "we don't own the land, the land owns us". Her family has been here for thousands of years. The rest of us came here on boats some time in the last 200 years or maybe even last week.

When I whinge about crowds on all manner of crafts, my friend will gently remind me that Australia ain't the same as it was 250 years ago and the crowded surf point is a metaphor for the country. We all arrived here on all manner of crafts. Hoping for a better life. There's ample opportunity for aggro selfishness or for sharing, for being well mannered or being rude. 

Happy belated birthday to Australia. Here's to a better life for all of us - traditional owners, long term locals, fly-in-fly-out miners, wage slaves in the city, battlers in the bush, aliens in UFO's, nature spirits, new migrants and refugees on leaky boats.

(materials used in today's blog were sourced from Germany (cameras), Japan (cameras, film, scanner), USA (film), Great Britain (film), Australia (images, food, electricity, water), China (clothing, analogue camera), Brazil (thongs), Switzerland (watch), New Guinea (coffee) and the whole earth (air))

Monochrome Monday (Must be)

Messy x Mercy

175000 properties have lost power so far in the first of the towns hit by Tropical Cyclone Yasi. Early reports indicate that there is extensive damage but no loss of life. Mercy! Still too early to tell for sure as the storm rages towards the middle of the Australian bush and communications are sketchy. Inland towns that have never had a cyclone EVER are about to be battered. Latest updates here.

From a surfing point of view, Yasi has not produced the goods. 1600 kms to the south, it's wet alright, but the wind is north east and the water choppy and messy. But we aren't complaining. We're happy to have Mercy today, after all the flooding, death and destruction we have had this mad summer.

Gimme Shelter

"Oh, a storm is threat'ning

My very life today

If I don't get some shelter

Oh yeah, I'm gonna fade away"

"The floods is threat'ning

My very life today

Gimme, gimme shelter

Or I'm gonna fade away"

from Gimme Shelter by the Rolling Stones 1969 

28000 people evacuated. I can't begin to imagine what it's like up North right now as folks prepare to be battered by the biggest and meanest cyclones in generations. Waiting. Waiting. Knowing that this monster is creeping their way, bringing wind gusts in excess of 280 kms per hour, tidal surges 7 meters above normal and rain in deluge proportions. Our thoughts and prayers are with you.

And by some perverse twist of nature, we will receive some beautiful, long interval swell 1600 kms from all this destruction.

Deus x boogie

Bike above from a Deus tee.

I have been enjoying the Kiwi surf magazine called SLIDE lately. It seems to have images and stories about places I haven't seen a thousand times already. A recent issue had an article on a motorbike company - in a surf mag? Well, why not, I say. The crew from Deus ex Machina make beautiful machines and they surf. Their design aesthetic links with legendary surfwear larrikins Mambo, which was started by one of the Deus crew. So here's my tribute to motorbikes, the Oz bush, heat and waves. And film. Peddle to the metal!

Granite Bay shrubbery meets Noosa Woods campground in a1936 camera.

Exile on Vinyl Street

I feel compelled to land some type on this phosphorescent canvas before my eyelids close for the day. The reason is nearly 40 years old. A tale of too many drinks, drugs, deals and divas - across two continents, including chateaus used by the Nazis and tax exiles trying to make a bit of vinyl music.

So popular retelling has it. And today the wonderful people of iToons will re-re-release the Rolling Stones' double album Exile on Main Street, a wonderful, crazy, crankin', ragged double vinyl with cover layout by John Van Hammersveld (you know the Endless Summer poster) and photography by legendary lensman Robert Frank, himself an exalted chronicler of exiles on main streets.

JvH Poster courtesy of Audio Absinte

If you are in Brinetopia glue yourself to the original Tube and watch the documentary on ABC1 9:30pm Thursday 20 May 2010.