The Maroon Diaries

It's not often that I get the opportunity to mark a centenary, but this is such an occasion, so I want to share something special with you. I've had this book for about nine years or so now. A friend of mine found it in a rubbish skip on the street in Five Dock, an inner western suburb of Sydney. He knew it was precious and saved it, but he didn't know what to do with it. It was when I showed him my altered book art that he decided that I loved old books enough to appreciate such a treasure, and he gave it to me. I don't know what to do with it either, either than love it and be amazed by it. One hundred years ago, at Christmas in 1916, this book was presented to Dorothy Wickham Bate for Music. The latest date I can find recorded in the book is 1936. For twenty years, Miss Bate kept this book with her, adding new friends and memories to it regularly. I don't know why she stopped keeping it - there are plenty of blank pages still left - or where it was in all ...

  Oh, dear Reader, it's so exciting - I'm in Sydney, and just thrilled to bits to be here.  It's been several years, and I'd forgotten how much I love this city, which is surprisingly much, given that I can't stand cities generally. Somehow, there's some magical effect here in Sydney that protects me from all the distress of sensory overload and allows me to just delight in the teeming humanity and the heights of human culture.   Maybe it's because this was my first home. At least, the first one I remember. I was born in Melbourne, but my parents moved to Sydney when I was just a year old. I was eight when we left, so that's some pretty formative years that I spent here. So maybe there is some ghost of my childhood spirit, or a guardian angel from my early childhood that still dwells here, and makes this city so marvellous for me. I was actually just feeling really daunted about the trip here, thinking I would be overwhelmed as I usually am by travel...

If you're not from Australia, there's a very good chance that you have never come across the work of Michael Leunig , which in my opinion would be a great tragedy. How much harder it would have been to work out this whole life caper without his divine words of wisdom to guide me along the way. source Leunig is known primarily as a cartoonist, as that's how he came to be known to the world - creating regular socio-politicial commentary cartoons for The Age newspaper. He is absolutely brilliant at managing to capture an incomprehensively complex human emotion or situation in just a few scrawly little lines, but I think we'd all agree that he's not exactly a fine artist. I think it's kind of hilarious that lately he is being considered in those lofty Fine Art circles and given exhibitions and having limited editions released of his scrawlings that are selling for enormous amounts of money. I reckon Leunig would be finding it all rather amusing himself, actu...

Our Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, wants to cut the national spending on the Disability Support Pension. And fair enough. We're expensive, us sick people. I have no idea how much money the government has spent so far on keeping me alive, but I reckon if I knew the actual figure, even I would find it offensive. It's not just the sick people that are too expensive. He's cutting spending all across the welfare and housing sectors, and making it more expensive to get health care or tertiary education. The nation is in debt and in need. We all have to do our bit. For example, as of next year, people under 30 will not be able to receive any unemployment benefits until they show they have been looking for a job for six months. So if you're in your 20's, and you're on a low wage, you probably don't have much in the way of savings. If you lose your job, or you get bullied and abused at work and can't cope with it, or you get sick and can't get to a doctor a...

source: Australian War Memorial I used to be a pacificist. It was so simple - War is Wrong, any violence is wrong, anyone choosing to participate in it is wrong, and that's that. I knew how right I was with all the confidence and ignorance of a member of a generation that has never known war. I grew up in Australia in the 1980's, where there was no war. The blackfellas had long been defeated and their history revised. War was something from history books, something that other, less intelligent countries still did, something you could see on the news, but it was never a part of my life. I was 13 when Australia went to the Gulf War, but I didn't know anyone who was involved, and couldn't see what it had to do with us at all. And because my priveleged, peaceful, Western society was all that I knew, I thought it was normal. I had an image of the history of the world as being mostly peaceful, interrupted by bouts of terror and violence occasionally. I didn't see h...

They grow sugar cane in Queensland. Lots of it. There's even a bit in the Grasshopper song about it. Oh, they grow sugar cane in Queensland They grow sugar cane in Queensland They grow sugar cane  And they load it on a train 'Til it's syrup in a tin in Queensland. I loved that song when I was a kid. I've only just discovered right now, as I looked for a link to give to readers who may be unfamiliar with such obscure Australiana, that the version I learnt at primary school had been abridged and altered a little for the benefit of our tender young ears. Turns out, the giant grasshopper wasn't drinking pineapple juice all over Queensland after all. He was spitting tobacco juice. Well, learn something new and all that. I'm from down south, and I'd never been to Queensland, or seen a sugar cane field, until I was 22 years old. I was on a bus from Darwin to Brisbane - that's three days straight on a bus. On the third day we started driving thr...

How can you 'celebrate' the armed invasion and occupation of the Australian continent for penal slavery and the attempted genocide of the Aboriginal peoples? For me and many other Australians, today, January 26, is a day of mourning, and we call it Invasion Day. The myth of Australia Day was just one of those lies we were taught by society for the purpose of suppressing its true history. Like I said on December 25th , there's no fucking way I'm going to celebrate that. By the time I was twelve years old, I was pretty well educated for a kid, and a star student. But still, after 8 years of public school education, my understanding of the 'settlement of Australia' was that it went pretty much like this - Captain Cook discovered Australia and turned up with a boatload of convicts on January 26, 1788. When they got there, there were Aborigines living there. However, they weren't really people, they were actually just native Australian animals, so it was ok...

"Take three seeds, and put them in the bitterest place." I had been praying deeply, asking for guidance. There's been Stuff going on, people, major Stuff. And when I wonder, 'what will I do?", this is what I do. I turn to the Goddess and ask her to show me the way. And this what what she had to say. "Take three seeds..." It soon became clear that She wasn't going to talk to me anymore until I had taken on this message. It's not so common for me to receive such concrete, deliberate instructions in my spiritual guidance. I was intrigued, piqued and puzzled. Um, what does that mean? So I pondered. It sounded like I had been presented with a Quest of sorts, a mission to carry out just for the sake of following Her wherever She may guide me. I thought of a book I had read a little while ago, a beautiful children's story published in 1872, The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald. In the story, the little princess meets her Grand...

One of the more profound honours in my life is to be goddessmother to a certain little lady who happens to be one of the most extraordinary people I have ever met, and she's only nine years old. I remember the moment back in the summer of '02-03 when I read in an email from Majikfaerie  that she was going to have a baby. A physical presence landed in my belly and in my heart. I knew from that instant that we were part of each other's lives, that I had a charge and a responsibility come into the world. I had to wait a bit to get to meet her and to find out what an amazing person she would become. Oh wow, did I luck out in the goddessdaughter department. Littletree is sweet-natured, funny, thoughtful, kind, caring, and so bloody smart that the whole world had better join me in hoping that she continues, as she grows up, to use her powers for Good and not Evil. And that's not even to mention her incredible sense of fashion and style. I can't imagine what will ha...

Recently I posted this short post introducing my local resident possum when I actually thought to get my camera out while he was conveniently positioned in a good viewing area. In trying to answer Ruthie's question in the comments - are they friendly? - I got a bit carried away for the confines of a comments box and thought that a post on the subject was in order, particularly for the edification of international readers. And, if I'm doing another post, I'll want fresh photos for it. So last night I went outside and followed the sound of the possum. I couldn't actually see it, I just held the camera over my head, pointed in the direction of the noise and let the flash do the rest. Out of several random shots I captured these two images. I'm sorry, dear reader, but I do not have good news. The short answer to the question - are they friendly? - is no, they're not really. They are not shy, but brazen and shameless and completely confident in their ...

This post here  by Kirsty, an Australian woman living in France, at  You had me at bonjour  really touched and moved me this morning. I considered typing a post consisting of my thoughts on this occasion, and it would have been a fabulous post, but my brain just wasn't up for wrapping itself around an essay today. I felt the need to make a more tactile, physical, domestic gesture. And so, to the kitchen, and to the baking of Anzac biscuits. My recipe comes from the P.W.M.U. Cookery Book, first published 1904. My copy, pictured here, is a 1971 reprint passed down to me from a great-aunt. This was the cookbook in my home when I was growing up. I have doubled all the quantities given, because one batch is just not enough. 4 cups rolled oats 2 cups flour 1 cup sugar 1 cup melted butter 2 tbsp golden syrup 2 tsp bicarb soda 4 tbsp boiling water Mix oats, flour, sugar and melted butter, then the syrup, and lastly the soda dissolved in water. Drop by spo...

I'm talking about the possum. But if the possum could blog, he would probably be complaining about me being the unwelcome intruder. It depends on your point of view. This feller here is the current resident of the Possum Hilton, which is a really, really big tree just behind my house. It really is an unusually large and opulent tree for such a densely built-up residential area, standing around 20m high and quite broad too, and makes a damn fine piece of real estate for the modern urban possum. He has a real personality, this cheeky little bugger, he does. He makes it quite clear that the backyard belongs to him, not us, and is the reason why the biodiversity of my vege garden is limited to onions. He loves having his photo taken, and he's also quite good at impersonations. His favourite is the one where he sounds just like a crazed methamphetamine addict who is trying to break into the house by tearing the tin sheeting off the roof.

Today was a hospital day - half the day spent at the hospital while Mr CJ has a nerve-treating procedure, performed by a pain management specialist. Hmmm sounds like fun...not...much! But I have had enough of these hospital days to give me time to apply my philosophy of looking for the beauty in the everyday, of believing it is always there to be found, even surrounded by all the disasters and dramas that go on every day in a public hospital. So today I took my camera around the building and grounds for a little tourist-in-your-own-town action. One of my favourite things about this hospital is that is has its own book stall. What a brilliant idea! It's located as obviously as possible, just inside the main entrance, and there is always something different to see here. Some days the shelves are so chockers with books you can hardly get one out without knocking the whole stand over, then a few days later the shelves might be all but bare. All books are $1 and I think I've seen ...