No Swimming

No, no swimming. But hey, feel free to have a dust bath, though...
(Photo taken with my old Canon EOS in Northern Territory in 2005)

Opa

Rest in peace, lieve Opa Centa. You've been so terribly ill... yet you carried all the discomfort with dignity and good cheer. Although we will miss you, we know that you have found peace and can finally rest.

Pensive

... before the performance. Naturally. But didn't it go well? See below!

Tess' silks performance

Tess and the Level One circus troupe perform a silks act for the Circus Showcase, held monthly in the Byron Entertainment Centre. Tess is the one at the back, and the younger girls are at the front. Tess and Yarrow enjoy learning circus and trapeze skills with the wonderful CircusArts school (see http://www.circusarts.com.au/ ).

Small pothole on Oliver Avenue

Yes, well, sometimes it rains, and sometimes it pours ... Today I need to bring Tess to the dentist on Oliver Avenue (it only took the dental health scheme people a tardy two years to call her in for her appointment so I'd better make use of the opportunity). I don't know, though, can the Subaru negotiate the pothole left by the flooding on Oliver Avenue? Maybe I should take the climbing gear? A ladder?

I would say that the Council road engineers would be scratching their heads rather ruefully. Not to mention the two guys waiting for the bus there...

Nope ...

.... Let's just give it a miss, hey? Yeah ..... No school today .... C'mon, let's go home ...
(click on the photo for a bigger picture)

Flood in Northern Rivers

The Wilson River has risen 10 metres in 24 hours ... and then the paddocks get a bit soggy (see above).
The towns of Lismore and Grafton are being evacuated, and more than 20,000 homes are without power. Not us here at 308, though... we're here on our eyrie farm high above the valley and luckily the power stayed on despite the numerous trees that fell due to the high winds.

PhD graduation celebration

A wonderful place, a superb full moon rising over the sea, the companionship of much loved family, friends and colleagues, made my PhD graduation celebration a most memorable evening and morning. Thank you so much Fran (and Dieter) for letting us share the space. See here the children dancing on the standing stones ....

Hans leaves today to go on a long journey

Suppose that we, to-morrow or the next day,
Came to an end - in storm the shafting broken,
Or a mistaken signal, the flange lifting –
Would that be premature, a text for sorrow?

Say what endurance gives or death denies us.
Love’s proved in its creation, not eternity:
Like leaf or linnet, the true heart’s affection
Is born, dies later, asks no reassurance.

Over dark wood rises one dawn felicitous,
Bright through her awakened shadow falls her crystal
Cadenzas, and once for all the wood is quickened
So our joys visit us, and it suffices.

-- From C Day Lewis, Feathers to Iron

Hans, beautiful Dad of our gorgeous children, travel well; be safe; be happy. I'll resurrect this Blog - albeit under a slightly different name - to keep you and other far-away family up to date with photos and stories of our girls, and life here in the Northern Rivers.

(For the readers not up to date with developments: I now live at 308 with my much-loved John. Hans, when in Australia, lives at The Myth, and when in Portugal, with his beautiful Niki).

Let me out ...

...Please ...

(My sister Katka's family dog, young Snoopy, at Duncan's house in Maleny, QLD)

Those were the days ...

I found this in my email "out" box, dated 23/08/2004, addressed to my closest colleagues at the university. I had forgotten the email, but not the incident itself (it resulted in a slipped disc, a briefly dislocated shoulder and some bruised ribs). It raises a smile now, a few years on:
>>
Dear people,

Conversation with Tess:
T: Mum, you're not going to work today are you? Not like that you're not.
Me: no, love, I'll stay home today. But how shall I explain to my colleagues why I'm not coming in?
T: Just tell the truth! You're really tired AND you got run over by a couple of donkeys and you've done your back in.
Me: Not sure they'll believe the donkey bit, Tess. It's a bit unusual. Escaped, semi-feral donkeys may not be very common around the university, but hey, this is the wilds of Booyong.
T: To the donkeys themselves they're not unusual; they're just donkeys. And the donkeys haven't seen many lecturers either. In fact they haven't seen anybody I think. Which is why they go completely bonkers when you need to catch them. We're not going to keep donkeys, are we Mum? Horses are heaps easier, they don't go off their rockers like these do and charge you and climb walls and go completely psycho.
Me: Um, no, Tess. We're not going to keep donkeys.
T: Good. They're nuts. How's your back?
Me: Oh, okay I guess. Help me get up.
T: You're not going to work.

love from Mieke & Tess, see ya in a few days ...
<<
It says a lot for my colleagues that they took this in their stride ...

Ghost horse

Softly now, don't move ... see there, the brumby stallion ... there, behind the scrub ... there he is ...

(NT, February 2005)

Just sittin' down for a bit ...

... during a walk in King's Canyon, Northern Territory, February 2005. I had been to a CAUTHE conference in Alice Springs and afterwards had gone walkabout for a week in the desert with my friends and colleagues, Noah and Erica. Noah took this photo of me.

With no light pollution for hundreds of kilometres around, at night we slept on blankets under the incredible Northern Territory stars.

On reflection, I think being a university academic is not a bad life at all ...

Can I come in too?

Arrived home yesterday to find a friend waiting at the front door ...

A lovely female green tree frog (Litoria caerulea) posing as alternative to door knob.

Don't worry, I didn't disturb her ... I just smiled as I sidled around her and left her to catch her dinner, drawn by the lamplight shining through the panes of glass. Came back later to take the photo.

Yarrow's voice

Yarrow's on YouTube again! This time she's singing The Eagles' Hotel California. (We needed to record her singing a song for an audition for voice & singing workshops). Lovely voice, Yarrow ... And as Uncle Marc wrote when he heard it: "Little girl with a big voice: WOW!!!! Well, her timing and her diction are better than Don Henley's, and he wrote it!"

Spring has sprung

Quite appropriately, the beautiful Welcome Swallows (Hirundo neoxena) have built their nest above the front door of the farmhouse. The other day I came home from the university to find these eggshells cast out, and four of the tiniest faces peeping over the side of the nest.

Spring has sprung...

Bringing Peter's bull back

I wrote this piece in the Winter of 2005...


I’m down at the sheds, feeding the hens. It’s a cold morning, the lowest parts of the valley white with six a.m. frost; and I see that already my neighbour Peter is working his cattle, on foot - and barefoot at that - with only his kelpie for assistance. The hens fed, I stroll into the bottom paddock to watch, and soon feel sorry for him as one cow after another breaks free and lumbers out of range, cattle leaking through the inexperience of the young dog and slipping through the gaps. As my mare is lying down – an easy target - with sudden resolve I slip a head-collar over her ears and slide onto her back; and she gets up with a sudden lurch. We trot amiably over to Peter and help shepherd his cattle into the stockyards. He’s hopping from one foot to the other to warm his toes. “Thanks. They kept getting away from me.”
“No worries, Pete. Happy to help, I was up anyway.”
“Hey, Mieke, seeing as you’re on your good mare …”
“Um. Yes. With no saddle, bridle and no helmet though ….” I know where he’s heading. He pauses and looks up at me beadily.
“My good bull. The new Brangus. He’s crossed the river and joined Rosie’s mob…”
I sigh. I know what he’s asking. I hadn’t seen the bull for a while and had been wondering where he’d gotten to. But the river is treacherous and hard to cross. I am mindful of my mare’s legs, easily caught and cut on unseen underwater branches and forgotten bits of fence as the current rips coldly. And I know that the bull, after his joyful frolics with his new harem, may not want to come back. And it’s hell, trying to get cattle to cross water.
“He’s my good bull. I’ll take your girls on the tractor, they can help; they’ll enjoy the ride. Together we’ve got a chance”. He knows me well enough to know I won’t leave the girls alone on the farm while I go mustering. “It’s not that I mind him donating a few calves to old Rosie, it’s just that he ain’t here, he ain’t here doing his job with his own…”
His concern for my girls sways me and I relent. The bull means a lot to him.
“Alright. Let me get the girls dressed warmly, and I’ll saddle the mare and I’ll see you in twenty minutes”.

At the river, the mare balks. She’s been hurt, there, before: the blood at the time flowed red down her leg; but at the time I was heedless and did not notice. I still feel bad about that. I cajole her, bully her into the swift dark current, and against her will she launches herself into the winter waters. A brief period of surging current, and at the other side we are hindered by deep swamp and bog. The mare flounders, up to her belly in peaty bog, and after an eternity of wild snorting plunges, with a mammoth effort she heaves herself up the embankment onto dry ground. I find I am trembling. A huge long snort and the mare shakes herself from nose to tail, and then tosses her head as if to say “I’m here”.

In time, Peter and Tess arrive on foot; having left the tractor, not wishing to bog it, on the river flats further downstream and on the other side of the river with Yarrow for safekeeping.

We commence the muster. As usual, as I am swift on the stockhorse, I am given the role of outrigger, or ‘dogger’, ranging far around the mob to bring them together – circling the mob in a flat gallop I gather them, weaving an unseen net of whistles and calls of ‘move on lass’ and ‘hey up there’, a net of bluster and push. Never handled, never tamed, Rosie’s mob are wild and mad, scrawny, unruly; so unlike the doe-eyed Murray Greys of our river flats. Most of Rosie’s mob have horns.

And so we come closer to the river. The big bull is there in the middle of the wheeling mob: his unlikely, well bred form stark in contrast to the rough bush cattle. They don’t want to get near the river, never mind cross it. Peter has placed himself at the right side of the crossing and Tess at the left. My job is to push the cattle though.

They don’t want to go. At one stage despite my mare’s chest hard against a recalcitrant cow, it breaks free, whirls and with lowered head charges straight towards Tess. Time slows as Tess stands, a horrified expression on her face as the cow thunders towards her yet it all seems slow motion. I dig my heels in the mare’s sides – an unmistakable signal to the sensitive mare who bounds forward with her ears flat and we place her body and mine between the charging cow and my child. At the last moment the cow brakes hard, swerves and heads for freedom.

“Let the old bitch go!” Peter yells.

Tess looks at me. She is still standing where she was, rooted to the spot. “Christ, Mum. That cow went for me”. I lean down from the saddle and hug her to me. She is shaking, and so am I.
“She did indeed, love. I saw. And you stood your ground. Well done. That was very brave.”
“You got inbetween. That cow could have hurt you really badly”.
“Yes, but I couldn’t let her get you now, could I?” She hugs me, briefly, passionately, her young arms hard and tight around my middle.

By now the cattle are crossing the river in wild plunges, churning the water to mud. The idea is to bring them all to the yards, and then separate the bull and let Rosie’s mob go to find their own way back to the hills. The next part should be easy, now that the bull and the majority of the mob are across the river. Soon we reach the disused railway embankment and I think with relief that it will form a natural barrier along which I can herd them.

But no; one cow starts and the rest follow and they surge up the steep slope, a river of brindle and brown, black and white and grey; with the sleek black bull in there with them. They reach the top and disappear over the edge on the other side; their tails giving disdainful flicks as they leap down the embankment.

Peter swears and thumps the tractor. “Christ almighty, I can’t follow them there on the tractor; the other side of that is a sheer drop and the rest is bog and there’s the trees. See if you can bring them back Mieke; meet you at the stockyards end of the railway.” I wheel the mare towards the embankment and in a few leaps we’re at the top where we teeter for a moment, and then she leaps into space and we land with a jar on the steep downwards slope and slide down, the mare on her hocks and me with my heart in my mouth but my trust in the surefootedness of the mare.

Once down we hunt the mob together again as they scatter in the trees and mud. Time and time again one cow after another breaks out, and I race to head her off, and turn her back, leaning at forty-five degrees as the horse and cow wrestle shoulder to shoulder until the cow wheels and slows and heads back to the safety of the mob. All this time, the bull stands separate, aloof, watching, noncommittal. One particular cow seems to be the leader, and she’s intent on heading back to the river. But where the hell is everyone else? Why am I doing this alone? I can’t do this on my own; it’s madness. My mare is dripping sweat, my shins are a mass of bruises from clouts with various cattle, the ground underneath is treacherous, the small wood disorienting; trees and branches snatching at my hair and my arms.

The lead cow breaks away again and we head her off; shoulder to shoulder; until my thigh is hard against the cow’s shoulder as the mare turns on her hocks and pushes the cow back. The cow balks, shoves; her horn catching me on my inner thigh, nearly upending me out of the saddle. I swear under my breath but don’t give up; give the mare her head, she knows the game, knows what she’s doing. We push the cow back to the mob.

All of a sudden the mob gives up. I don’t know why, but all of a sudden they have had enough. Or maybe they see that I have had enough. I don’t know. Meekly they turn; they join the bull; and they amble towards the low part of the railway and over the embankment, down to the stockyards. The bull knows where he is, now, can see where he’s going. He walks calmly into the yards and Tess slams the gate shut with a cry of relief. I rein in my exhausted mare; run my hand along her neck; let my hand run briefly over the bruises on my thighs. They’ll take a while to heal, but the bull is back.

The wild mob head back for the hills but the bull doesn’t even watch. He’s looking at his own herd possessively, rumbling greetings in this throat.

How does an emu sit down?

Like this.

Photo taken by Anjes at Currumbin just after a shower of rain ...
Suggested caption (Hans): “I know, I know. It’s a design fault, OK? Now walk on already.”

And here it is ....

... The MYTH tattoo. And some very special sign language.

Love you too, darling girl!!

Lisaaaa!

Now here's a true Myth girl. Lisa's so much part of The Myth, she even has the word "MYTH" tattooed on the inside of her wrist. Photographer, dancer, psychologist, sister, transcriber, traveller ... all of these and more. Love you, Lisa! Happy birthday darling girl.

The dichotomy of shampoo

Two recurring questions / requests have recently been posed by a number of friends. They are 1) do I miss Amsterdam; and 2) could I please post some more of my own writing on the blog. This post covers both requests, I hope. I wrote the following snippet in late 2006 when I visited Amsterdam for the first time since leaving Europe in 2001.

The Dichotomy of Shampoo

In my friend Denise’s shower I lather my hair with shampoo, “Sebastian collection”, which exhorts itself as “a shampoo that uses expanding texturizers to make the hair's fiber feel bigger: fluff it up!”. I follow that with “Xtah raw sensuality” a “hydration conditioner” designed to “tame the frizz and generate those sleek locks”.

Do they cancel each other out, I wonder; like some mathematical formulae of negatives and positives, leaving my external demeanour one of mild confusion; a marketed smoothie of contrasting objectives; a feminine concoction of illogical mood swings.
I turn to the back of the conditioner bottle for some deeper insights. “Raw hydration, daily sensual conditioner for hair. Penetrating amino acids derived from botanical sources plus body-enhancing proteins to help promote optimal condition. The slippery feel creates a unique experience while vanilla spice & orange blossom entice and calm the senses. Color safe. For all hair types.”

For all that the text itself would be rated M-for-mature-audiences if showed on the wide screen, I am none the wiser. Indeed, if I go by the label my senses are both enticed and calmed at the same time. I run my hands over my body: is it a unique experience? My body feels quite ordinary in its own contrasts: soft from childbearing in some places, lean and taut from the rough and tumble of farm life in others; a scar here, a blemish there, the oft-charted shores of familiarity. As I later stand by the window, wrapped in a towel, my wet hair dripping trickles down my back, I consider whether I am separately enticed and calmed or whether these colours, safely or unsafely, mix to a plasticine grey. I don’t know.

Outside, the sky is heavy with dark grey clouds. The Amsterdam harbour stretches its windscuffed water to the far bank where the neon, freon and halogen lights of the factories, shipyards and refineries proclaim the industriousness of the Dutch nation. Seven stories down below on the grey quayside a man cycles past with his dog trotting alongside. Under the streetlamps the rainslicked wet concrete reflects them so precisely, so clearly, that the dog, mirrored on its paws, seems to be trotting on an echo of itself; while the man, seemingly precariously; cycles on the narrow reflection of his own tyres.

Maybe that’s what it’s like. Perhaps in all of us there is this dichotomy of emotion, the contradiction of desires, as we trot on the shadowy mirror image of our own paws through life; as we teeter precariously on the narrow tyres of our choices. For me, right now, it’s the ambivalence of my feelings towards the Netherlands – there is the joy of seeing my much loved friends, my adored brother; the delight in skirling bicycle wheels over cobbled canals; the thrill of the band’s live music weaving through my body and striking gentle chords of regret that I no longer am part of this scene. These feelings are counterbalanced by the gusts of cold wind ruffling the equivocal harbour of my heart as I look over the water: and I yearn for the rolling green hills of my farm; the subtropical trees silhouetted on the high ridge; the susurrating chuckles of the kookaburras heralding a new blue-skied day easing over the red earth of my great south land. Against the reminiscence of these vibrant hues my feelings for the Netherlands are not “color safe” as they blend and merge to a muddled grey, and I feel disloyal to this city so genuine in its valiant attempt at liveability, throwing its defiant architecture at the winter dark.

Briony's canvas

... is Tess' arm.

With a permanent marker, a sunny afternoon, and an hour to spare.
How cool is that?

Body Art by the Bonfire

Anjes has just arrived home again, and what better way to celebrate than a good bonfire. Briony (body artist extraordinaire) had some great new body paints that she and I were keen to try out. Hans and John had some superb curry recipes. Britt had some new songs to try out. Toby had some hugs to dispense. The Tree (you know, The Tree) beckoned climbing sprites, somersaulting youths and laughter hidden among the leaves.
So friends and family were invited and bonfire was lit, bodies painted, wonderful curries tasted, and young voices soared under the crystal clear stars.
In the morning there were farm-fresh scrambled eggs cooked on the hotplate; pancakes baked on the open fire by Yarrow; a brumby mare to be tried out; sweet custard apples; and The Tree with climbing sprites, somersaulting youths and much laughter heard hidden among the leaves.
Afternoon somehow nudged us to the beach for swimming and fishing and ballgames ... Hot fish and chips to finish the day.
Thank you Anjes, Britt, Tess, Yarrow, Briony, Tui, Sam, Toby, Ongel, Grandpa, John and Hans for sharing a wonderful weekend at Moreton's Myth.

Dawn at Bald Rock

Yarrow said to John, who was here to do some natural horsemanship: "And this week we're going camping, somewhere wild, where we can have a campfire and see the stars, 'cos if we don't, Mum's going to go loopy".

And so we went. So that Mum doesn't go loopy.

With four children (Tess, Kel, Yarrow and Eve) and a Forrester packed to the brim; following my good and dear friends Michael and Giovanni in their 4WD, we made it after many lovely hours of calm and winding roads to Bald Rock National Park. Tents, campfire, birdlife, kangaroos, and the high wild heights of the Rock.

On the last day Tess and Kel, enchanted by the opportunities for scrambling and climbing offered by the Rock, wished to climb it one last time, in -6 degrees before dawn, to see the simultaneous sunrise and full-moonset from the top.

Tess said, sitting high above the world with her arms curled around her legs for warmth, as the light from the early sun caught her eyes and set them aglow:

"This is so beautiful. I'm never, never, never going to forget this day".

More photos can be found here, on Michael and Giovanni's site.

Thank you M&G for sharing such wonderful adventurous times with us.

Running with the Brumby mare

Here is Rascal Darius running with his dam when he was only a day old. The mare is our very own Duchess, a brumby caught in outback Queensland during a muster. All credit to my good friend and neighbour Bruce (The Kangaman) who took this stunning photo.