Australia Day

The day began with no real sunrise just a lightening of greys.

Anniversary Days (for aml)

As well as being Australia Day Monday is also Auckland Anniversary Day.

The following week the writer of the Art and My Life blog has a birthday. http://artandmylife.wordpress.com/ if you want to read about NZ art and life without feeling either patronised, annoyed or bored this is the place I'd recommend

The Spanish wine shop in Glebe Point Road has been selling Cuba '59 for a few months now. It's made by an Australian independent brewer as a tribute to the spirit of Cuba. The Cuban revolution and I were conceived and emerged in the same year. Despite obvious problems with the implementation of good intentions we're both doing OK.

It took me a few weeks to realise that it's not imported from Cuba.

Industrial neglect

I went to the fish market on Sunday, a mixed experience as usual. On the way I noticed that the coal loader is deteriorating even further. Every so often there is a flurry of activity resulting in further sanctioned demolition of the structure. The signs claiming that it was going to be restored, preserved, or an appropriate interpretation rebuilt from or of it have now disappeared.

My prediction is total destruction through neglect, some twee statue in its place and the rumoured apartments and retail complex planned for that section of the foreshore, a little slice of the ugliness that is Port Douglas, will go ahead in the next year or two.

By then the asleep-at-the-wheel state Labor government will have got their just desserts but it will be too late for this and other heritage sites. The city will have been Sartorised almost completely and the Land value and anti-Environment Court will have sanctioned the bulldozing of everything of any historical merit.

Bondi surfers

There seemed to be three places favoured by surfers this morning - three kinds of waves and three clusters of ability.

Coogee pool

A magnificent dawning and a pool of memories -the stellae guarding the first swimmer

On solid ground

After a week of the sun, tides and weather determining activities I now feel like I'm back on dry land.

A bushfire in Killara, 31 degrees in Glebe and the new owners pottering around at 72 all conspire to make me feel back from the sea.

I got two loads of washing on the line but it's too hot to get them in yet. I heard back from the Powerhouse Museum about Ken's objects. The Social History curator may uplift them as a collection. This'll make a change from Kylie's hotpants and blockbustershows from American movies which seems to be the public face of what was a technology and industrial history museum.

This used to be called the Disneyfication of museums but is probably better known now as the Paris Hiltonisation. The superficial made flesh.

I should be so lucky, lucky, lucky.

A passage to the sea

merc's lessons. Things to be mindful of:

1. Sun protection
2. Hydration
3. Fuel (bananas)
4. Approaching the sea
5. Staring at the Ocean
6. What are waves?
7. What is sand?
8. Where do waves come from?
9. What is the tide doing?
10. What is the wind doing?
11. Breathing
12. Where is my mind?
13. Never run into the sea. Walk on sand in seawater with a pronounced thump, stingrays sense you coming and disappear.

Pittwater mornings

We spent Monday to Saturday in a weatherboard cottage at Lovett Bay that my wife's grandfather bought in 1964. Each day began and ended differently and activities were determined by the sun and the tides.

Coogee morning for Merc

January the fifth 1997

Today we are 12 years married.

2009

The local trees have grown so much over the last few years that our back of the bridge view has almost gone. The Darling Harbour fireworks are easier to see and this year someone had their own to set off in the street along a few doors.

We went to Kirribilli for the 9pm lot and then home for the midnight ones. Lots of people at Bradfield Park on Milson's Point rushing around excitedly.