Merryjack

The Confusing Library

2011-11-18T12:58:00.001+11:00

Devil Woman by the great Marty Robbins

2011-08-11T12:26:00.001+10:00

Kickass Librarian

2010-12-21T12:23:00.002+11:00

600 Pounds of Joy!

2010-10-18T13:27:00.004+11:00

The Late Great Solomon Burke

2010-10-18T13:11:00.003+11:00

Librarians as Seen by the Media

2010-10-18T12:49:00.002+11:00

Magic Bus

2010-10-03T16:36:00.001+11:00

Keith Richards wanted to be a Librarian!

2010-07-05T16:40:00.008+10:00

After decades partying in a haze of alcohol and drugs, Richards will tell in his coming autobiography, entitled Life, that he has been quietly nurturing his inner bookworm.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/arts/bookworm-just-waitin-to-bust-out/story-e6frg8n6-1225849594245

As a child growing up in the post-war austerity of 1950s London, he found refuge in books before he discovered the blues.

He has declared: "When you are growing up there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you. The public library is a great equaliser."

Thanks to Vicki, a great librarian, for this.

RIP Pete Quaife

2010-07-05T13:47:00.002+10:00

Pete Quaife bassist with the Kinks

Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder

2010-06-07T15:27:00.009+10:00

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder: it seems the brains of men and women respond differently to beautiful landscapes. This may stem from the varied evolutionary pressures on the two sexes in our hunter-gatherer ancestors.

A team led by Camilio Cela-Conde at the university of Balearic Islands in Palma, Majorca, Spain, asked males and females whether photographs of natural and urban landscapes were beautiful of not.

When they looked at a scene they deemed beautiful, both men and women had greater electrical activity in the parietal region, near the top of the brain. In women this activation occurred in both halves of the brain, but in men it was restricted to the right hemisphere (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0900304106).

This might explain evolutionary differences, the team suggest. In early humans, they say, men were hunters who needed mental maps of the distance and direction, while women gathered plants for food and oriented themselves using landmarks.

This fits with data that the left brain handles ‘categorical’ spatial relations, such as landmarks, while the right handles ‘coordinate’ data, such as distance and direction. The team say that what we find beautiful may have evolved from what our ancestors looked for in a habitat.
Ref: New Scientist 28 February 2009.

Terrace Falls, Hazelbrook

2009-08-07T12:42:00.004+10:00

Terrace Falls Hazelbrook, was dedicated for public recreation in 1892, the walking tracks were developed and built by Thomas Gallagher of Lawson at a cost of ₤14. My son Inigo stands at the base of the eight cascades.

Blue Mountains Dreaming, the Aboriginal heritage, 2nd edition

2009-02-23T14:05:00.033+11:00

Contents & blurb, new edition available from Megalong Books, 183 The Mall, Leura, (02)4784 1302, www.megalongbooks.com , rec. price $60.00

If I were a Dewey number...

2008-12-15T14:12:00.010+11:00

Merryjack's Dewey Decimal Section:

565 Fossil arthropods

Merryjack's birthday: = 2565

Class:
500 Science

Contains:
Math, astronomy, prehistoric life, plants and animals.

What it says about you:
You are fascinated by the world around you, and see it as a puzzle worth exploring. You try to understand how things work and how you can make them better. You might be a nerd.

Find your Dewey Decimal Section at Spacefem.com

Right on, nerds rule I say!

Planet Survival Guide

2008-11-07T08:59:00.000+11:00

Cherry Blossom

2008-09-29T16:04:00.005+10:00

From my bedroom window over morning coffee...

My first video

2008-09-17T12:31:00.011+10:00

The Katoomba train arriving Springwood station 5.17 pm, camera - Canon Powershot, edited - MS Movie Maker, music - Beethoven from Windows XP sample, shadow - me.

Yes we are mindful that one of the earlierst pieces of moving film was 'Arrivee d'un train en gare a La Ciotat', made in 1896 by Louis Lumière, which demonstrates a movement towards the camera that became a standard method for staging action for years to come. Audience reaction to the film was great - stories tell of patrons backing away from the screen to avoid the oncoming train. We don't need to go that far though...we now have office chairs with wheels, wheeeee!

Boys' day out - Lake Lyell

2008-02-11T10:55:00.019+11:00

It was a pleasant and relaxing day out at the lake with my sons Inigo and Jaz, the recent rain had cleared but good cloud cover remained, we caught some nice fish both browns and rainbows in the upper reaches, the water level was up to around 50% capacity; we sighted pelicans, cormorants, ducks; enjoyed a fry up for lunch, shared a few home brews, went for bit of a paddle, stayed into the night for moonrise and arrived home at a late hour.

The lake is also the site of an important convict stockade dating from the 1830s. The young convict Thomas Cook was transported for forgery in 1831 and recorded his experiences in a chain gang stationed there in winter:

The dismal and dilapidated state of the habitation which exposed its inmates to the inclemency of the weather, the wretched and haggard countenances of the men, the severity of the cold, and the want of a second or even one good blanket to save the half frozen men from perishing, the idea of bedding with a second or third man as was the custom so as to create warmth, appeared to me altogether objectionable and many a tear did I shed when contemplating upon my hard fare. I was yet in the dark of the horrible propensities which the coarse and brutish language of my gang mates in calamity, coupled with their assignations one towards he other, shortly told me the greater number of them had imbibed. In referring to this horrid contagion I feel I should reserve its nauseous details out of respect for the delicacy of my readers.

Experiences of a Convict, 1840.

It is hardly surprising that things were just a bit too cosy for young Thomas, because the three pillars of convict society from 1788 to at least 1840 when transportation ceased, have been described as rum, sodomy and the lash (not that there is anything wrong with that!).

Although a little warmer now than it was in the 1830s, the lake's location on the Lithgow plateau produces water temperatures that are cool enough year round for salmonid stocking and it's the nearest trout fishery to Sydney, which makes it popular with locals as well as visiting anglers. Fishing link

Sofala reflections, pale moon rising/setting

2008-01-14T09:46:00.003+11:00

Sofala reflections
Originally uploaded by JohnMerriman

Although not apparent at first, this tiny white ripple appeared in the corner of an otherwise fairly cluttered shot taken on an early morning walk along the Turon river - shooting reflections at 10 megapixels gave enough room to crop to about 10% of the original and there she was: pale phoebe, goddess of the moon. Called Hecate before she had risen and after she had set; as Astarte when crescent and Diana or Cynthia when in the open vault of heaven; as Phoebe when looked upon as sister of the sun (Phoebus) and Selene or Luna, the lover of the sleeping Endymion.

Beneath the surface is a river bed made famous in the 1851 gold rush for the rich alluvial gold it produced and the 10,000 miners who worked it, flecks and even small nuggets of which can still be found almost anywhere along its course.

The ancestors would have known exactly if the moon was rising or setting as well as its phase and worshiped accordingly; living as we do in cities and high rise and of course no longer revering her, except for the dedicated few; we are now mostly unaware of her activity.

Trout fishing in particular reawakens for me the awareness of the old natural cycles, fly casting quietly from the lake shore in the darkness, using the moon's reflection on the water to find the line on the surface and locate the ripples of a rising fish, observing the feeding activity periods that ebb and flow through the night as invertebrates react to lunar activity, changing position as the reflection path angles away, wiggling cold toes, lifting mud-stuck waders...see also the Bard

Charles Darwin at the Weatherboard Inn 1836

2008-01-09T15:38:00.010+11:00

On 17th January 1836 Charles Darwin travelled over the Blue Mountains from Sydney to Bathurst and recorded:

"In the middle of the day we baited our horses at a little inn, called the Weatherboard, the country here is elevated 2,800 feet above the sea."

The inn itself dates from around 1830 and was among the first travellers' rest places to develop along the newly opened western road, first explored by Gregory Blaxland, William Charles Wentworth and William Lawson in May 1813, surveyed by George Evans and built by William Cox with his convict chain gang in 1815. It gave its name to the township of Weatherboard that grew up in the area which was later renamed Wentworth Falls after the explorer and nearby waterfall which Darwin also visited on the day.

The pipes, mug, china, decanter base and bottle base were among material excavated from the Weatherboard Inn site in 1985 and now held in the Blue Mountains City Library. This material was recently submitted for DNA residue analysis and the report has returned a positive match; the following reconstruction is based on these results and contemporary accounts.

Save the China!

Parlour of the Weatherboard Inn, 17 Jan 1836, lunchtime

"Ah now Mr Darwin sir, I'd be glad of another fill o' your navy twist for my pipe, so I would."

"Have a care fellow, 'tis the finest Virginia leaf and the last of a gift from my dear friend Capt Fitzroy of our ship Beagle."

"Well then 'tis a miser ye are sir and no mistake, so to hell with ye and take that! And that too!"

"Hold him! The madman has broken my pipe and mug and now means to brain me with the rum bottle, someone call the landlady, for her best crystal decanter is lost."

"Aye to the devil with ye then and take your damn t'backy and monkey notions too!"

***

The signed portrait above is scanned from my copy of the fifth edition of "On the Origin of Species...", published on 10 February 1869, which incorporates a number of changes and for the first time included the phrase "survival of the fittest", which had been coined by the philosopher Herbert Spencer in his Principles of Biology (1864).

Notes in profile - more about a boy

2007-12-24T10:52:00.003+11:00

Less of the usual self obsessed meanderings - these tend to short visual thought chapters about the world out there and the life experience so far because although we live life forwards - we understand it backwards, if we make sense of it at all. Entries evolve & change often, it's a movable feast...that's life - to change and to grow is to live and who wants to be predictable anyway. By the way they're the other kind of tarts in the interests panel - not the pastries - much more interesting & socially important I think - see also courtesans; this is not to pour scorn on those folks who list the pastry sort and there are plenty of them!

And it's The Zombies (musical group) in the musical interests, not the other creepy kind because we need a Z - "She's not there" - wow what a song, not forgetting "Summertime" by Sidney Bechet or Jimi's "Catfish Blues" or Jussi Bjorling and Robert Merrill's "Solenne in Quest'ora" or Elvis' eerie falsetto keening on Sam Phillips' recording of "Blue Moon" 1956 or the gorgeous Della Reese on "Someday you'll want me to want you" and Kathleen Ferrier's "Blow the Wind Southerly"- hear a human body sing not just a voice box, Son House' Death Letter Blues. More content is coming, yes we know so is Xmas, actually it's just been but will come again as May West would say. I've just discovered the "British invasion" subject heading which covers our Zombie pals, thanks to Littleverses' blog, not forgetting Frank Zappa.

We notice it's getting harder (stop it May!) to find like minded people of less than a few hundred when one clicks on a movie title, but not impossible: just find more obscure movies or Australian ones, we have only three kindred spirits for some titles and just us for others, ah the joys of solitude.

Personal interests are easier although just as likely to result in some surprising blog companions, zombies being a good example, and courtesans, but what did we expect; still it is a reminder once again of the individual variability of meaning and perception...What does Mister Bennett call himself - "a connoisseur of human folly". Perhaps, along with Socrates, we are being too hard on ourselves; the unexamined life is still worth something, I'm just not sure exactly what that is...

But I digress, although digression is the spice of life, didn't Oscar Wilde say that, as well as: “Ambition is the last refuge of the failure", "Only the shallow know themselves", "The well-bred contradict other people, the wise contradict themselves" and “Those who are faithful know only the trivial side of love"; it is the faithless who know love’s tragedies” and so on... by the way all the dots mean this isn't the whole story but then nothing ever is I suppose...and yes the blog title is at least partly ironic...actually they are self obsessed meanderings, ah well...

more: Every new morning and every sunset is a wonder - we see it because a random genetic event of conception following our 3 million year evolutionary past that began with a cosmic event 13.7 billion years ago brings us to this moment of existence...carpe diem!
Achieve immortality through sharing love and knowledge.
Learn to cook without recipes.
Life is lived forward but understood backwards - so save some time for thought every day and find solitude where you can.

A generation apart

2007-12-24T09:47:00.000+11:00

Dad and me 1950s; me with my son Inigo in the back yard at Wooloomooloo 1970s. When we returned from London we found an old mid-Victorian terrace house for $14 a week in Riley St under the new railway over pass, the place had been operating as a brothel with partitions and filthy matresses in the rooms; we cleaned it up, emptied the piles of used tissues and rubbers into the garden, painted the walls and hung up our old kilims from Turkey and Afganistan, batiks from Jakarta and shadow puppets from Bali. I salvaged some young banana trees from deserted gardens due for demolition and planted them in the tiny backyard, they grew well and the fruit was sweet, is it any wonder...

He ain't no garden flower

2007-12-13T10:10:00.001+11:00

Picture if you will: it's early Spring, I'm pottering around the bottom paddock, head down, bit of pruning, checking fruit trees, clearing irrigation drippers, weeding, spraying a few thistles, mmm quite a bit of fresh roo dung around, some grass has been eaten down too, hang on what's that grunting noise...whoa!

He's standing two metres high and giving me the eye, he takes a deep breath and as his chest expands his muscular arms open showing claws like eagle talons, then he exhales in a series of deep grunts, I'm blinking, he isn't. Then he starts to sway back on his tail, getting ready to transfer his weight and kick out with those great hind feet, the big toes have nails like daggars, so I back off and he calms slightly but stands his ground.

Big males like this have specially thickened skin on the belly to protect them from kicks by rivals in territorial fights, and will easily kill or badly injure a dog or man who comes too close. I notice the flattened grass where he has been lying up in the shade and realise I'm in his territory, safe from dogs behind the paddock fences and close to water in the gully below. If cornered near a river or stream they will clasp a dog in their arms and jump into deep water, the front claws attack the opponent's head and eyes, and they bite. Then the poodles get his scent and race across baying like mini blood hounds, dancing round him like Squirrel Nutkin, me yelling at them to stop, this is too much and he turns his head disdainfully and takes off, up and over the barbed wire fence in a bound and is gone. However this is his territory so he'll be back...

Fishing therapy - on the water, Lake Lyell

2007-12-10T16:01:00.003+11:00

`Nice? It's the only thing,' said the Water Rat solemnly, as he leant forward for his stroke. `Believe me, my young friend, there is nothing -- absolute nothing -- half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,' he went on dreamily: `messing -- about -- in -- boats; messing -- -- '
`Look ahead, Rat!' cried the Mole suddenly.
It was too late. The boat struck the bank full tilt. The dreamer, the joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom of the boat, his heels in the air.
` -- about in boats -- or with boats,' the Rat went on composedly, picking himself up with a pleasant laugh. `In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not. Look here! If you've really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together, and have a long day of it?'

from The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, 1908

Her Privates We

2007-12-06T12:41:00.001+11:00

The lady and her lover have had a run as our personal picture for while, the den was being rearranged so they came down from the wall to lay gently on the scanner; little did they realise just where they would end up...

On a related matter:

HAMLET
My excellent good friends! How dost thou, Guildenstern? Ah, Rosencrantz! Good lads, how do ye both?
ROSENCRANTZ
As the indifferent children of the earth.
GUILDENSTERN
Happy, in that we are not over-happy; On fortune's cap we are not the very button.
HAMLET
Nor the soles of her shoe?
ROSENCRANTZ
Neither, my lord.
HAMLET
Then you live about her waist, or in the middle of her favours?
GUILDENSTERN
'Faith, her privates we.
HAMLET
In the secret parts of fortune? O, most true; she is a strumpet. What's the news?
ROSENCRANTZ
None, my lord, but that the world's grown honest.

***

Of course Her Privates We is also the title of the great autobiographical novel of the First World War by Frederick Manning, a book that Hemingway called the finest and noblest book of men in war. Originally censored in the 1920s for its anti-war and sexual content, Manning published an expurgated version titled The Middle Parts of Fortune, but we and the Bard know what he meant...

On the Six Foot Track, with a poet and a piebald.

2007-12-05T13:26:00.003+11:00

The six foot track was originally developed as a bridle path six feet wide, covering the 26 miles from Katoomba to Jenolan Caves in 1884.

Lord Carrington, then Governor General, and Lady Carrington, traveled the track in September 1887 in company with the noted local guide Harry Peckman, known from his versifying as the Poetical Whip, who entertained them along the way with his songs and recitations. When Lady Carrington found it hard going, Harry told her to catch hold of his piebald horse's tail, she at first refused until her husband remarked, "Now then, Lil', do as the guide tells you", her ladyship took the advice and from then on she was alright.

They camped at Little River and broke out the champagne and other good things, Harry gave them billy tea and finished off the bubbly with his brother. Some time later the piebald died, Harry cut off the tail and kept it as a sovenir of Lady Carrington.

The track passes through some of the most beautiful, rugged and inaccessible country of the southern Blue Mountains National Park and may take up to 4 days to traverse or as little as 5-6 hours for runners in the six foot track marathon, definitely not me.

My younger son and I drove in along the fire trail from the Jenolan end as far as the Cox's River and camped overnight at Little River. I photographed these wild ponies as they grazed on fresh pasture after rain. They probably descend from pit ponies released by the miners after the Katoomba coal mines closed in the 1930s.

The rivers were still low with no spawn run fish showing, although a few smaller resident fish showed interst in a dry fly. A school group arrived and took over the Cox's camp ground, they had walked in from the Katoomba end, so we left early and headed back the way we came. No sign of old Harry, just the ponies, there was a piebald one.

William Merriman c.1920

2007-11-28T13:36:00.001+11:00

William Merriman c.1920

William Merriman (1894-1967) wearing his tank corps badge, probably just before emigrating to Australia. Dad enlisted in 1914, served in the Gloucester Regiment and commanded a Mk.iv male tank on the Western Front, was wounded when his tank took a direct hit from a German artillery round killing the rest of the crew, he lay in the mud for three days before being brought in, on the second day a German office gave him water and called him comrade; he was recommended for the Military Cross and mentioned in dispatches.

He qualified as a motor mechanic at the Humber Co. in Birmingham and after arriving in Sydney, he operated the Imperial Garage in the seaside suburb of Manly during the 1920s, and somehow ended up in the old gold town of Trunkey Creek as the local motor mechanic sometime in the 1930s where I was later born. He was not the only returned soldier to find his way to the bush seeking a quiet life.

I still have the iron shell splinters removed from his body, his head wound left a long scar on the right temple that he always turned away for photos, and combined with the prolonged noise exposure, left him with balance and hearing problems for the rest of his life. A whole generation of men returned from the Blood Tub, the Mincer, the mud, the lice, the rats, the shelling, having seen things we cannot begin to imagine, unable to communicate the experience of war to those who had not been there; the few recollections I have came from my mother.

He actually came from a pacifist family, his father a Christadelphian lay preacher and part time butcher, and although as a younger man owned a rifle and would shoot a rabbit for the pot, he eventually gave that up and would not allow a gun in the house. When I was drafted for Vietnam he said he would do whatever necessary to stop my going and I believe he meant it; although fortunately it never came to that.

Dusky woodswallow

2007-11-23T14:02:00.001+11:00

Dusky wood swallow

This is a slide of the dusky woodswallow (Artamus cyanopterus) on the nest taken by my father c.1963 in the vicinity of Carcoar on the central tablelands of NSW where we lived then. Dad loved birds all his life and began his first childhood taxidermy project with an owl which apparently is one of the most difficult of all birds to work on because of the narrow neck region. He had an egg collection as many english children did in those days and encouraged my early interest in ornithology including my nest, feather and bone collections.

Glenview in the mist

2007-11-21T16:19:00.001+11:00

Glenview in the mist

Our garden was originally developed in the early 1920s in a moist gully near the cliff edge. The bedrock is sandstone so the soil is sandy and contains bands of ironstone, but we just keep adding compost and manure and the cool climate exotics add their leaves annually. Some of the original native vegetation remains - mainly tree ferns (Cyathea australis) some of which I calculate to be over 150 years old.

It's basically a green garden with structure provided by dry stone walls using the local ironstone and by a number of large trees including an 80 year old oak, a tulip tree (Liriodendron tulipifera), liquidambar, quince, ginko, Irish strawberry trees (Arbutus unedo) with their beautiful twisted limbs, Bhutan cypresses, Japanese maples, flowering cherries, dogwoods, azaleas, rhododendrons and camellias. Under plantings include blue bells, hostas, sedums, helleborus, aquilegia. On the sunny eastern slope there are old roses: Madame Isaac Perrier, Black Boy, Pierre de Ronsard, Charles de Mills etc. A dry stone lined water course runs diagonally through the 3/4 acre block and flows after rain, this has helped us through the present drought that began about 5 years ago, and we of course have water restrictions that discourage hand watering.

The garden is a great source of tranquility and peace, and I believe it has healing powers both for body and mind. It has its own micro climate being shady and cool in summer but sheltered from the cold south westerly winds of winter. After winter leaf fall it is warmed by the northerly sun. But it is also hard work and needs sharp chain saws, lopping shears, secateurs and the tree surgeon for the big stuff. For Sale

Polly II on Werri Beach

2007-11-14T11:06:00.001+11:00

Polly is a 12 year old silver mini poodle, the second to bear the name and the current matriarch of the pack, she understands around 20 - 30 expressions as far as I can tell and perhaps many more.

In his intriguing book, If "Dogs Could Talk" Hungarian ethologist Csányi approaches the question of canine sentience using more science and less wishful thinking than one usually finds in the pet section of the bookstore. So how smart are dogs, really? "The average dog living in a human environment understands at least forty to fifty expressions... and is able to act appropriately even in complicated situations." Csányi draws parallels between human and canine evolution in terms of reasoning ability, visual observations and other brain functions. Just as in early humans, individual bonding and group dynamics are the emotional and intellectual drivers for dogs, Csányi notes—a fact that will come as no surprise to pet owners. He demonstrates that dogs can imitate us, feel emotions, cooperate and obey commands, but he follows Darwin in recommending that we not assign morals to animal behaviors. Dogs will develop morals when they develop speech, he says, and he's actually quite enthusiastic about the prospect, going so far as to recommend a breeding program to produce talking dogs. Publishers Weekly. See also New Scientist, 12 March 2005, p. 51.

Highly attuned to human moods and behaviour, she watches us closely and can easily predict our plans, she listens intently to conversation waiting for familiar words and probably learning new ones; she signals by glancing to communicate with us - something no ape can do, she solves problems and teaches the younger ones how to behave.

Some trout flies

2007-11-05T09:53:00.000+11:00

Mainly river and stream patterns at the top and some lake patterns below. Dressing flies is not unlike cooking: one begins by following recipes in books and learning the techniques until branching out and creating variations and original patterns incorporating new materials to meet specific needs or conditions. more

A number of patterns are named after women, for example the traditional Mrs Simpson is named for Wallace Simpson, others refer to my favourite places, people I know, life events and may incorporate reference to the types of fly such as b.h. for a bead head or simply wet or dry.

I designed a salmon fly pattern called Elsa Garrett to honour a Blue Mountains girl who dressed flies for Zane Grey in the 1930s.

I have also like to design and name individual flies or sets as memorials to anglers who have gone to rest, note the Purple People Eater is in there somewhere. I wonder how an all black fly would go, maybe with a flash of silver, called the Johnny Cash or simply the man in black.

Fly fishing problems are essentially aesthetic problems that lead to aesthetic solutions: colour, visibility, shape, size, sparkle, motion, drag, movement, silhouette, sink rate, how a dry fly sits upright on the surface and catches the light at sunset, how an emereger pattern sits just so in the surface film. As John Goddard and Brian Clarke have remarked in The Trout and the Fly, the trout fly is a clean device that lends delicacy, mobility, lightness and elegance to the pursuit of trout.

In recent times there has been a terrific expansion of fly fishing in Australia to include salt water tropical species such as bone fish, barramundi, golden trevally, saratoga, mangrove jack, sooty grunter, jungle perch and temperate species such as bream, mullet and whiting, as well as warm water native species including bass, cod and perch. Some of these critters have big razor sharp teeth and can pull like a horse - delicacy and lightness are inmost cases best left at home. more

It does however demonstrate how successful the fundamental principles of fly design have been over the last 500+ years since first described in print in the "Treatyse of fysshynge wyth an Angle" by Dame Juliana Berners in 1496.

Finally we may turn to Isaac Walton, from The Compleat Angler first published 1653, wow what a language:

O sir, doubt not that angling is an art. Is it not an art to deceive a trout with an artificial fly? a trout! that is more sharp-sighted than any hawk you have named, and more watchful and timorous than your high-mettled merlin is bold; and yet I doubt not to catch a brace or two to-morrow for a friend's breakfast: doubt not, therefore, sir, but that angling is an art, and an art worth your learning. The question is rather, whether you be capable of learning it? for angling is somewhat like poetry, men are to be born so: I mean, with inclinations to it, though both may be heightened by discourse and practice: but he that hopes to be a good angler, must not only bring an inquiring, searching, observing wit, but he must bring a large measure of hope and patience, and a love and propensity to the art itself; but having once got and practised it, then doubt not but angling will prove to be so pleasant, that it will prove to be like virtue, a reward to itself.

Curiosity Rocks, Lake Jindabyne

2007-10-31T14:24:00.000+11:00

The Rocks have not looked like this since Lake Jindabyne started filling in 1967, it shows the impact of the current drought cycle that began in 1996 compare. The dam was at below 50% capacity when this was taken with a 19-35 mm lens and polarising filter. With only average snow falls this year, the inflow will have little impact after draw down for hydro power, irrigation and environmental flow for the Snowy River below the dam. more

Those snags in the water are festooned with line and lures, some of which are now part of my angling history display in the den. Some of the old classic lures which haven't seen the light of day for 20-30 years were cleaned up and given a swim with new hooks and still worked well.

I guess the Rocks looked much like this before the dam when the valley was a pioneer grazing community, home of The Man from Snowy River, and even before then when the Ngarigo people roamed here and visited the high country each summer for the bogong moth feasts.

As the weather heats up in October, the moths, Agrotis infusa, more migrate to the cooler mountains to aestivate, the reverse of hibernation, in their thousands, up to 17,000 per square metre, in the cool dark cracks and crevices in the great boulders and scree slopes. They were easily smothered with smoke and scraped off the rocks into nets and skins then carried back to camp, roasted and eaten whole or pounded to a paste, made into flat cakes and cooked on hot stones. High in protein and fat, their taste was described as rich and sweet and similar to roasted walnuts.

This abundance of food encouraged great inter-tribal gatherings for trade and exchange, feasting, ceremonies and dispute settlement. Early European observers commented on the people going up onto the mountains looking gaunt and miserable from the winter and returning after a few months sleek and fat, even the dogs were fat! Not forgetting that the mountain pigmy possum, Burramys, is also partial to a feed of bogongs.

Recently however it has emerged that the moths may contain traces of arsenic probably from insecticide absorbed by the larvae which feed on the roots of pasture plants, so recipes for bogong moth omelette should be treated with caution.

Spencers Creek, Rainbow Lake and Snow gums & granite at Charlotte Pass

2007-10-29T12:49:00.000+11:00

No trip to the high country is complete without the pilgrimage up to Charlotte Pass; from our camp at Lake Jindabyne the road climbs up to the snow line and then through alpine tussock meadows, over Spencers Creek which is usually worth a stop for a few casts and lunch, past the track to Rainbow Lake, built by the early gold miners as a water supply, where the half hour walk is rewarded with a lovely fishing spot, past the parking bays where the skiers stop to put on snow chains, the road side guide posts change from white to orange and are two metres high for visibility in the snow, up to the highest point accessible by road. A boardwalk skirts these ancient gums and rocks leading to a small lookout with a view of Mt Kosciusko and the glacial tarn, Blue Lake, what a view.

The area around Charlotte pass is one of the last haunts of the Mountain pigmy-possum, Burramys parvus, once thought to be the rarest animal in the world, until it reappeared after 60 years of "extinction" with several populations found living within Kosiusko national park. It is the only specialised alpine and sub-alpine Australian mammal, although often sharing its habitat with the more widespread broad-toothed rat and antechinus. Burramys is the largest of the pigmy possums with an average weight rising from 40 grams to 70 grams as it fattens for winter, and grows to 28 cm including a prehensile tail of about 16 cm. more

The Dingo Tree and other dog tales

2007-10-22T15:29:00.001+10:00

My son and I were returning from a long day's fly fishing to a remote Snowy Mountains stream when a massive gum tree loomed out of the darkness, its branches festooned with the bodies of dingoes shot by the local farmer to protect his stock. This folklore practice of hanging vermin as trophies and to deter their ilk probably dates from prehistoric times. Some dogs and pups had been hanging so long only the paws wrapped in fencing wire remain.

They appear to be alpine dingoes from the white colouration of those that still have any fur; further inland they tend red-ginger to sandy-yellow to match their environment, while black and grey also occur, possibly as a result of inter-breeding with domestic dogs.

Anyone who has experienced their long echoing howling often in chorus "where the air is cold as crystal and the white stars fairly blaze, at midnight in the cold and frosty air" while camped alone by a high country stream, will never forget it.

The dingo was brought to Australia in prehistoric times by Aboriginal people who used it to hunt game and as a blanket on cold nights, hence the saying 'three dog night' for a particularly cool evening.

In fact sleeping with dogs is recorded as early as the Natufian culture around 12,000 years ago at the origins of canine domestication. My old archaeology professor, Iain Davidson, notes that in the earliest sites of domestic animals in Palestine, Pakistan and the eastern Mediterranean, you get burials of people with dogs. And sleeping with pets is probably now more widespread than ever. More intimate relations have also been recorded.

Dingo remains appear in the archaeological record from around 3,500 years ago along with a new stone tool technology named the small tool tradition.

Dingo motifs occur widely in Aboriginal art and the dingo is a common character in Aboriginal mythology. In the Blue Mountains it is recorded as a food item after being cooked in a pit oven.

Dingoes soon spread across the continent, except Tasmania, and are are a major feral pest and threat to native animals and livestock, probably accounting for the extinction of the Thylacine, known as the marsupial wolf, on the mainland. The dingo never reached Tasmania because the land bridge over Bass Straight was flooded soon after 10,000 years B.P. as sea levels stabilised.

The species Canis lupus dingo evolved from the Indian wolf about 6,000 years ago and is genetically related to the wild dogs of Indonesia and the singing dogs of New Guinea. New genetic evidence continues to throw light on dingo origins.

Breamar Bay, Lake Eucumbene

2007-10-22T14:09:00.000+10:00

This is a silver lake fish flat line trolled on a still overcast day at Breamar Bay. These puppies fatten and grow quickly on yabbies and smelt, cruize the depths in great schools and compete to spawn up the creeks and rivers in Autumn.

Snowy trips tend to be full on: predawn coffee with a shot of single malt to aid the circulation, dawn fly fishing from the bank or trolling from the boat weather permitting with a thermos of fortifying hot coffee, back to camp for breakfast and a warming coffee, out for more fishing, back for second breakfast and a fresh coffee, there might be a hatch on as the day warms so maybe try the dry fly, afternoon snack and a cooling lager to combat dehydration, try some downrigging or a wet fly from the boat or maybe take a lunch pack and a cooler with a bottle of wine and check out the streams, back to camp in the late afternoon for tackle tinkering and liquid refreshment, a nap then a snack accompanied by a cleansing ale, fish the evening rise, open a bottle of red to have with dinner and relax at the camp discussing the day's events and planning the morrow, try a few casts from the bank while sipping on a glass of single malt, return to camp after a few hours and rug up for night fly fishing with torches, waders, tackle and a thermos of warming coffee, return about midnight, clean the catch and add them to the fish freezer, grab a few hours sleep and tackle up again for the dawn activity peak; with little time or inclination for personal grooming, a certain air of crustiness sets in, but the fish don't seem to mind.

I am reminded of the words of that great brother of the angle (although we know that does include sisters also) Isaac Walton from the Compleat Angler, 1653, who was well aware of the need for a fortifying breakfast and that a fellow's drink bottle should always be kept near to hand:

My honest scholar, it is now past five of the clock, we will fish till nine, and then go to breakfast. Go you to yon sycamore-tree and hide your bottle of drink under the hollow root of it; for about that time, and in that place, we will make a brave breakfast with a piece of powdered beef, and a radish or two that I have in my fish-bag; we shall, I warrant you, make a good, honest, wholesome, hungry breakfast, and I will then give you direction for the making and using of your flies; and in the meantime there is your rod, and line, and my advice is, that you fish as you see me do, and let's try which can catch the first fish.

So you see how little has changed in 350 years.

Quinkan Country - Kuku Yalangi

2007-10-22T13:49:00.000+10:00

Australia provides the only example where the hunting-and-gathering way of life has dominated an entire continent up to modern times. This way of life continues to play a significant role in the occupation of the continent, particularly in its northern and central sections.

Australian archaeological sites provide a unique and important record of human occupation over a range of environments spanning at least 40,000 years. Such sites are particularly significant in documenting the special ways in which Aboriginal people adapted to changing climates, as well as to the wide range of environmental situations in different parts of the continent.

The Quinkan region, near Laura, in the south-east part of Cape York, contains many galleries of well-documented rock paintings in shelters associated with the cliffs and river valleys that dissect the sandstone plateaux. One of the sites, the so-called "Early Man" site, contains one of the oldest securely-dated rock art sites in Australia. The artwork at this site consists of pecked and engraved motifs, including animal tracks, sealed by an archaeological deposit dated by radiocarbon dating to over 15,000 years before present.

My son photographed this location on his recent solo expedition to Cape York.

Rock engravings, Carnarvon Gorge

2007-10-22T12:00:00.000+10:00

Hidden in the rugged ranges of Queensland’s central highlands, Carnarvon Gorge features towering sandstone cliffs, vibrantly coloured side gorges, diverse flora and fauna and Aboriginal rock art. This is a powerful womens' fertility site - I'm not sure the word erotic even applies - ultimately it's the fertility of the earth that we are seeing here; note also the engraved net motif which occurs elsewhere within this massive art complex as a white painted image among red hand stencils.

Mt Banks walk, September 2007

2007-10-17T15:41:00.000+10:00

The main view is from the walking track on the western approach to Mount Banks. In 1804 George Caley and his party approached from the eastern side, suffering from hunger and exhaustion they could continue no further and struggled back to Sydney. The Blue Mountains were to remain impenetrable to the colonists until 1813 when Gregory Blaxland, William Charles Wentworth and William Lawson followed the ridges not the valleys and found a route to the fertile inland west of the great dividing range.

The vegetation changes as you approach the mount from Montane heath on the exposed Narrabeen sandstone dominated by Eucalytpus stricta, allocasurina nana, Leptospermum attenuatum, Patersonia sericea (see flower pic above); to Moist basalt cap forest on the slopes, dominated by E. fastigata, we found a rich deep soil with wombat warrens and active birdlife.

The flesh of the common wombat (Vombatus ursinus) is described as tasting like ham and was a prized traditional food; children would be sent down the burrow feet first and would call and beat on the tunnel when they located an animal which was then dug out; they would also be night stalked and speared.

It is interesting that the word for wombat in the Dharug language of the lower Blue Mountains is wombat, although in Gundungurra, which was used in the upper mountains around Katoomba and in the high valleys, it is goolung. The inland Dharug language is related to the coastal language used around Sydney Cove in 1788, whose speakers, the Eora, acted as informants to the colonists and provided much of the local nomenclature, hence the animal's common name as we know it. If the settlers had asked the mountain people their name for the animal instead, we might now be calling them goolungs not wombats; not quite the same ring to it though...

Axe grinding grooves

2007-10-17T15:34:00.000+10:00

Look closely and you can see the axe grinding grooves in the sandstone bedrock in one of the many dried out rain water pools adjacent to Mt Banks in the Blue Mountains National Park. Almost every depression contains multiple grooves which have been revealed by the continuing drought.

Water in the pools was used to whet the grinding process to polish and shape the axe blank and a man could sit for many hours sharpening a fine axe. Each groove represents the manufacture of a single stone axe head which was then hafted to a wooden handle. The earliest grooves may date from around 14,000 years before present. Stone axes continued to be made until soon after white settlement in 1788 when they were swiftly replaced by steel hatchets.

Mt Banks was named by the explorer George Caley in 1804 to honour his patron Sir Joseph Banks the noted English botanist, and marks the furthest westward point of his futile attempt to cross the Blue Mountains.

Prehistoric rock engraving

2007-10-17T15:28:00.000+10:00

I rediscovered this hand sized circle engraved into the sandstone under a layer of rotting leaves on the cliff edge at Katoomba. After trying some ordinary shots for about half an hour, the late afternoon sun slanted through the cloud for a few seconds and revealed it in relief. The second photo shows the view from the cliff edge with the engraving in the foreground in front of the rocky spire. You can stand on top of the spire, carefully, and look out over the vast space to the cliffs on the other side of the valley at Sublime Point - breathtaking.

The Gundungurra people occupied this part of the Blue Mountains in the recent past and it may date from that period of more intense use beginning around 3-4,000 year ago, or from the end of the last ice age around 10,000 years before present when regular seasonal use appears in the archaelogical record or even from a period of earlier intermitent occupation around 22,000 years BP.

Engravings like this one were made with stone tools by first pecking a series of holes and then abraiding the connecting walls, you can see a small remaining section of the left. It is one of only two known circular stone engravings in the Blue Mountains and like many religious objects its simple form belies its deeply sacred nature.

Thredbo river fish

2007-10-17T15:24:00.000+10:00

The Thredbo is fed by snow melt from the Australian alps within Kosciusko National Park and is now a major spawning stream for fish from Lake Jindabyne, one may fish up and down the river all day and never see another human being, which is the way I like it.

I made this 7' 2 piece split tonkin cane rod from an old 12' 3 piece rod my father brought out from England in the 1920s, the reel is a Hardy Princess from the 1950s, the floating line a traditional double taper Hardy, the fly a 14#red tag tied parachute style, the fish was released.

This trout is a dark river fish, insect fed, mature and muscular from a life in fast water; quite different from its fat, shiny silver cousins downstream in the lake that gorge on yabbies and cruize the thermocline, feeding open mouthed like whale sharks in the gloom, through clouds of plankton.