Kinglake

Wombat rescue calls in St Andrews and Strathewen brought me to some of the areas hardest hit by the bushfires of February's Black Saturday. The photo above was taken along Heidelberg Kinglake Rd, which winds its way from St Andrews to Kinglake. Thirty-eight people perished in Kinglake, a devastating number for a community of 1500.
Welcome to Kinglake.

Remains of a business in Kinglake's former charming downtown.
This photo was taken from the front gate of what was once an idyllic mountain home.
One can only pray its inhabitants escaped to safety.
Many trees are covered with green shoots, a harbinger of resiliency.
Entire hillsides were scorched.
Just south of Kinglake it's majesty as usual in country Victoria.

This morning's view.

From a booth within Cafe No.5, tucked along a CBD laneway.

Healesville Sanctuary

Took a trip to Healesville Sanctuary on Saturday where mom met her first koala (above) and a menagerie of others.
A pair of 'roos enjoy afternoon sun.
Emus.
Echidnas.
Lyrebird.
Aradhna & mom await a birds of prey presentation.
One of the featured birds of prey -- a falcon. Note the people ducking their heads in front of me.
Koala.
Aradhna & mom debate the feasibility of kidnapping a 'roo.
More 'roos.

You can take the lady out of Tennessee ...

... but you can't take the desire for a box of Krispy Kremes out of the Tennessee lady.

Let's waterboard the neocons!

The specter of neocons rationalizing the indefensible would be funny if their rule hadn't brought about the ruination of the United States' standing as a nation of laws. WaPo's Dan Froomkin succinctly obliterates one such neocon's cowardly argument that torture is evil ... except when it isn't.

Mom's in Oz!

Took mom into the CBD for the first time yesterday. That's her in Treasury Gardens, above.
Mom beside the Fairies Tree in Fitzroy Gardens.
Skyline view from Treasury Gardens.
GPO's clock tower on Elizabeth Street in the CBD.

Massive news from America's heartland: 'Do You Realize??' by Oklahoma weirdos The Flaming Lips has been declared that state's official rock song. From Oklahoma Gov. Brad Henry:

The people voted for this, a song that most of all describes the people and the spirit of Oklahoma, and that best conveys the finite and sacred moments we have with those we love.

While a rock song wears an 'official' badge of any sort like a Hell's Angel wears French cuffs, it's still remarkable to see a band as odd and adventurous as the Flaming Lips recognized in a part of the U.S. normally associated with Very. Small. Thinking.

A Springsteen Incident

Anecdotal majesty from the always spectacular Janice Davidson:

So, Springsteen fan. Check this.

My brother takes his daughter (age 16) to see Springsteen two nights ago in Atlanta. She has become a fan despite, as a small child, pretending to throw up when he would play Bruce in the car. She brings a sign she made that says 'Incident' -- Bruce doesn't take it when he's collecting all of the song signs the first time around. At the end of 'Promised Land', with harmonica wailing, he reaches out -- takes her sign -- and tosses her his harmonica, freshly used. Plays 'Incident', Clarence does a little dance with her, Bruce keeps pointing at her. She's so ridiculously excited, they call me from the show, yelling what I could barely understand. I of course was so pumped up, but so secretly jealous that they were at the show without me. Anyway, had to share.

Envy all around, Janice. This photo says it all:Wonder if she's released her grip on the harmonica yet?

E-dissonance.

Headline & blurb atop today's Yahoo homepage:

U.S. Warns Mexico Travelers
Due to the swine flu outbreak, officials are advising against non-essential trips to Mexico.

Ad headline just below and to the right of this frightening blurb:
Escape to Mexico

Tigers maul 'Roos.

After the first 4 games of the 2009 footy season, the Richmond Tigers were a winless laughingstock whose coach's survival was front page news. Their 0-4 start was particularly headline-grabbing as it was preceded by months of hype surrounding its signing of fallen star Ben Cousins. Completing the woeful script, Cousins was injured in his first game with Richmond and has been sidelined since.

All of this made last night's convincing victory over North Melbourne akin to a biopsy report coming back benign for Tigers fans (like Aradhna and I) that should quell coach Terry Wallace's death watch. The season may still prove to be a write-off, but hell, they ain't gonna go winless!

So right, yet so wrong (cont.).

Unhinged right-wingers ... always good for a laugh. From Tom Tomorrow (click to enlarge):
Priceless self-parody from a dandy-looking tea-bagger:
Hilarious viewing as the same pack of f*ckwits who impeached a president for moronic yet private behaviour abandon the moral high ground like rats from a sinking galleon after CIA memos revealed the United States of America ignored its founding principles and tortured prisoners in 2002.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
We Don't Torture
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

And -- just 'cause it's fun -- here's BigMough BillO getting smacked down by KeithO. Again.

Anzac Day

Semi-holiday today as Aussies reflect on the 'Diggers' who've given their lives fighting for their country. Mostly, Anzac Day focuses on the under-fortified soldiers who fought bravely but futilely at Gallipoli during WWI, where thousands of young Aussies died charging headlong into Turkish machine gun fire. Today's Age has a poignant story about a park dedicated to Gallipoli veterans that offered safe haven to Marysville residents fleeing the inferno of Black Saturday.

The article also captures the poisoned military mentality of Gallipoli:

The Great War was exactly a year old, his son home in Victoria not yet that, when Lieutenant-Colonel Alexander White received his final orders.

The men of the 8th Light Horse, the regiment he commanded, were to be first over the top.

In three days' time, they were to charge from their trenches up a narrowing hillcrest known as the Nek, the top of which was occupied by Turkish forces. They were to run the bare 30 metres of dusty, uneven ground towards the fortified Turkish machine-gun positions on a hill known as Baby 700, which commanded a sweeping view of the entire tiny battleground below.

The orders came that the men of the 8th were to charge at the Turkish machine guns carrying only fixed bayonets and, if they had them, homemade jam-tin bombs.

Not a single bullet in a single rifle.

The generals did not want the attack slowed by soldiers stopping to aim and fire.

In other words, the men were sent to their deaths. Darwin was wrong.

Darebin Parklands, Wednesday a.m.

Finally brought my camera to Darebin Parklands yesterday morning. A short walk from our place in Ivanhoe, it's a wonderful stretch of green along Darebin Creek.
What I find especially wonderful about this park is its past history as a site of environmental degradation. (Something this former resident of NJ is sadly familiar with.) Here, a stately mulberry tree stands beside a 19th-century track that was once known as Mulberry Avenue.

Winter's approach is evident in this bark-shedding eucalyptus tree.

A pied cormorant surveys its soggy turf.
A pair of ducks cut through the swampy muck.

This is Australia, after all.
How a red gum tree gets its name.

History schmistory.

Historical markers proclaiming 'Washington Slept Here' are common sights in the Revolutionary War-rich area where I grew up. Historic buildings in the States are revered like pagan idols. In Australia ... not so much. Exhibit #1: This photo of Melbourne's oldest house. It dates to 1842. Developers are licking their chops over the land. Now that a photo's been published in the papers, community activists will likely take up its cause, thus sealing its doom. Why? Developers never lose these battles. This house will next make headlines after it's been destroyed by a fire of 'suspicious origins'. You can bet on it.

Wombats, roos, ashes & dust.

My first night as a volunteer for Wildlife Victoria left me tattooed with too many facets to detail in a blog post. Here, instead, is a compilation of what I'll never forget.

• The dedication of fellow volunteers who've spent hundreds of hours searching for wombats, kangaroos, wallabies and any other wild creature that managed to survive Black Saturday's inferno.
• A surreal landscape that looked, smelled and sounded like ground zero of a post-apocalyptic world.
• Wonder of a night sky ablaze with stars normally obscured by a canopy of foliage that instead extended from horizon to horizon behind the shadows of blackened & burnt trees.
• Adrenaline rush that accompanied each sighting of a wombat or a roo, followed by a Starsky & Hutch-like bolt from a still-moving car -- one hand trying to follow the fleeing creature with a flashlight, the other carrying a blanket or container to capture it with -- and subsequent chase over, around and into impediments like charred tree trunks, charred logs and things too charred to be identified.
• The bloody speed of a wombat racing to its burrow.
• Enormous, starfish-shaped holes formed by tree trunks turned to dust by the inferno.
• Miles of terrain formerly covered by brush, bark and leaves turned to an ash- and dust-covered moonscape with the consistency of sand revealed by a retreating tide.
• Complete, devastating silence.
• Blackened trees covered with leafy growth, sprouts of bright green ferns and scattered tufts of yellow-tipped grass proving nature's resiliency.
• Image of a coal miner at the end of a long shift reflected off my bathroom mirror at 2 am after I returned home, covered in ash and dust.

Freedom is not free.

No surprise to see white, mostly middle-class Republicans participating in Fox News-sponsored 'protests' on tax day in the States. They have the same right to protest as the thousands of patriots who descended upon Washington DC throughout the Bush years to protest Bush/Cheney's deceitful invasion of a sovereign nation without provocation. Those protests drew little attention from Fox News, of course, except for talking heads calling them 'hippies' and 'traitors'.

Strange, though ... 95% of US citizens will actually receive a tax cut in 2009. Never underestimate the strength of multi-millionaire, right-wing demagogues, however, who do stand to pay more in taxes in 2009. They're minions are out chanting about tea parties and such. Quaint.

Funnier still ... Bush/Cheney put the US on course to spend over $2 trillion in Iraq but you've heard nary a toot of protest from these angry Limbaugh/Hannity/Beck/Malkin stooges. Better to spend trillions on bombing brown-skinned people than rescuing an economy left in tatters by The Miserable Failure.

Republicans may be irrelevant, but they're funny as hell ....

Worst. Radio Ad Tagline. Ever.

From an oft-heard drive-time ad by a large Aussie insurance company:

RACV insurance. It's completely complete.

Ugh.

Let There Be Rock

Over 12 hours later and my ears continue to ring like a TV test pattern after Booker T and Drive-By Truckers blew the roof off the Prince Bandroom in St Kilda last night. A rare night when the players on stage seemed every bit as nervous and raring with anticipation as the crowd. A night of one first -- DBT's performance in Oz -- and a second -- Booker T and DBT on stage together. All told, a night I'll long remember and from which my ears may never recover.

Started to write a review last night but didn't get far:

Faint taste of Jack Daniels remains as I ponder the just completed Booker T & DBTs show. Ears numb, shirt damp, hands warm and tingling from clapping, pumping and holding beer bottles aloft in salute to a brilliant fusion of Memphis Soul and Southern Rock. I don't drink Jack Daniels but am easily swayed by the sight of rock heroes passing bottles and swigging and seeming to levitate on stage. Couldn't help it. Sure I could. Didn't want to. Shouting 'a shot of Jack Daniels' to the bartender was my rebel yell. Also put a bit of 'Bama into my blood. Maybe more than a 'bit'. But that's not what this night was about.

Obviously, I was in no mind for heavy thinking. Really, the only thing I was in a mind to do was sit in a circle of fellow concert-goers, pass a bottle of JD and reminisce on our shared experience. Alas, I went to the show alone, and so am left to share thoughts with y'all:

• Booker T and DBT are touring together after collaborating on an album called Potato Hole (available 21 April). They no doubt chose to open their tour in Oz to work out onstage kinks outside the glare of US media, and those of us at the small, low-ceilinged Prince Bandroom -- one of Melbourne's best musical venues -- were the better for it. Booker T, a musical legend who bled Memphis soul while in Stax Records' house band Booker T and the MGs, is clearly not comfortable in role of frontman. A true Southern gentleman, he introduced songs from Potato Hole during his opening set with DBT like a kindly grocery clerk telling an elderly shopper where to find the canned peas.
• Booker T's reticence with a microphone meant nothing once his fingers brought his signature B3 organ sound to life. DBT's Patterson Hood coaxed the band through the new songs and several times shot reverent glances at a man he called one of his boyhood heroes.
• Booker T economically wove his organ riffs into DBT's 3-guitar attack. It was exciting to watch brilliant musicians learning how to play together on stage. Some songs came to abrupt ends, something that will no doubt change by the time this tour resumes in the US after Potato Hole's release.
• Standout tunes included 'Native New Yorker', played with a sweet-as-pecan-pie smile on Booker T's face; the album's title track, a raucous frisson enjoyed by everyone onstage and off; 'Warped Sister', the only song released from the album thus far; and a ripping cover of Outkast's 'Hey Ya!'.
• 'Green Onions' needed no introduction. The Booker T and the MGs classic was greeted with a roar and played with abandon. I felt privileged to witness a staple of American rock & roll performed live. By all appearances, the DBTs felt likewise.
• The Booker T set ended with an anti-climatic cover of Tom Waits' 'Get Behind the Mule'.
• The DBTs returned to the stage 30 minutes later. Mike Cooley, one of the band's two main songwriters and a true rock & roll bad ass, looked like he'd spent that time imbibing healthy portions of charcoal-mellowed bourbon. Hood counted off into 'Lookout Mountain' and one of America's finest rock & roll bands began raining thunderbolts on a rapturous Melburnian audience.
• Here's the full DBT setlist: Lookout Mountain/3 Dimes Down/Heathens/Love Like This/Sink Hole/Righteous Path/I'm Sorry Huston/Where the Devil Don't Stay/Feb 14/Puttin' People on the Moon/Hell No I Ain't Happy/Home Field Advantage/Zip City/Let There Be Rock
• Too many highlights to detail. So much more goes into a transcendent rock show than skilled musicians and great songs: luck, effort, incentive, uniqueness. Every intangible you can name was in the Prince Bandroom last night. It was that kind of night.
• Before singing a breathtaking 'Love Like This', Cooley responded to a man shouting requests thusly: "I didn't come this far to play what you wanted to hear." A Clint Eastwood-meets-Lou Reed moment.
• Booker T watched the DBT's set from the side of the small stage, sipping Jack Daniels from a liqueur glass. He joined the band for the final 3 songs after being introduced by a jubilant Patterson Hood. During 'Home Field Advantage' -- drawled magnificently by bassist Shonna Tucker in-between pulls of JD -- Hood flashed many a goofy grin to Booker T behind his B3.
• Maybe it was successfully finishing their first-ever show in Australia. Maybe it was a passing of the pressure of sharing a stage with a living musical legend. Maybe it was the Jack Daniels. Whatever it was, it turned the night's final song into a celebration. Hood thanked the crowd like a child actor accepting an Academy Award and began describing the night in 1977 that changed his life. A night he saw 3 bands for $3. Saying it was an "honor to be in their land" Hood launched into 'Let There Be Rock', a song whose title comes from a long-ago tour by Australia's own AC/DC. The crowd, unsurprisingly, went fucking bananas.

For those unfamiliar with the Southern rock stylings of Drive-By Truckers, here's a live clip of them playing 'Let There Be Rock' in 2007:

Fiji's constitution gets kiboshed.

Momentous change has come to Fiji's government in the past 24 hours.

While military commander Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama's coup of 2006 brought international scorn and made the nation a pariah in the South Pacific, it also represented hope for Indo-Fijians tired of being deprived of equal citizenship. The man Bainimarama ousted, Laisenia Qarase, was in the process of enacting harsh laws based on ethnicity, thereby making Fiji's longstanding racism against Indians institutional. Qarase has been engaged in a court fight since the coup. Yesterday, Qarase prevailed, as the Fiji Court of Appeal declared his dismissal and dissolution of his parliament unconstitutional.

In effect, this left Fiji without a ruling government. It was up to Fiji's President, Ratu Josefa Iloilo, to decide the government's fate. Less than an hour ago, Iloilo announced he was abrogating Fiji's 1997 constitution. From the Fiji Times, a paper Bainimarama and his ministers have been browbeating since day one of their regime:

(Iloilo) said he would appoint an interim government to rule for the next five years to implement the necessary reforms required for "true democratic and parliamentary elections."

He assured that he had the full backing of the country's security forces and he directed military commander Commodore Voreqe Bainimarama to "to take all reasonable steps" to ensure the maintenance of peace.

What this means is anyone's guess. On one hand, yesterday's ruling was a victory for constitutionalism, for Bainimarama's coup was ruled illegal as it subverted Fiji's democratic process. So how to judge Iloilo's abolishment of that same constitution the next day? Bainimarama has been under internal and external pressure to call for a general election ever since promising one after the coup, but Iloilo has announced elections won't be held until 2014. A furor would have erupted if Bainimarama had made such an announcement. How will the international community react to a constitutionally appointed President making the same declaration?

Progress is impossible to measure in Fiji. Every positive step is met by a half dozen blunders that reward Fiji's powerful few and punish its impoverished majority. The past 24 hours have been remarkable ones. I hope and pray that life improves for the people I know and love in Fiji.

All conservatives are cop killers.

Adopting right-wing subjectivity is easy. Avoid fairness and reason, disregard logic and exploit tragedy to further your agenda. BOOM! The headline to this post.

Here's how friends described the 22-year-old, right-wing, gun-hoarding coward who shot and killed 3 cops as they responded to a domestic disturbance call in a quiet Pittsburgh neighborhood:

He said he'll be ready if there's ever an invasion of the United States and that he had stockpiled foods and guns for that eventuality.

And:

He feared "the Obama gun ban that's on the way" and "didn't like our rights being infringed upon."

How could somebody get THOSE paranoid and delusional notions tattooed onto his obviously addled brain?

Take a bow Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly, Coulter, Savage, Beck, et al. This is your moment! Your lust for ratings and attention through hate-filled rants about President Obama is having the desired effect! Men defending their right to bear arms and blowing away cops, leaving grieving widows and fatherless children!

Meanwhile, untold thousands of lunatics stockpile guns and ammunition throughout the US, awaiting their day in the spotlight, goaded by hate-spewing media superstars.

For most US citizens, the election of Barack Obama was a glorious resurrection of America's hopeful promise. For others, brainwashed by thousands of hours of liberal bashing on Fox News and AM radio, it was time to lock and load.

Smackdowns via Colbert & Stewart.

While I no longer reside in the US, I still appreciate and give thanks for the wisdom of its founding fathers to guarantee the right of free speech to all citizens. It's the simplest line of demarcation for democracy: A country either grants this right, or it doesn't.

In today's US -- maybe more than any time since the 1960s -- an ocean-sized schism has formed between progressives and conservatives. Two of the leading conservative voices are media superstars Glenn Beck & Rush Limbaugh. The American tradition of free speech makes it possible for them to be handsomely rewarded for expressing what many would call seditious opinions to an audience unable to accept President Barack Obama's historic victory over John McCain.

Thankfully, free speech invites competition and, in the case of Beck and Limbaugh, vastly superior opposition. First, Stephen Colbert skewers nutbag Beck's exploitation of the horrors of Sept 11:

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The 10.31 Project
comedycentral.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor NASA Name Contest

Second, Jon Stewart puts a ferocious boot to Limbaugh's big fat ass:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Rush Limbaugh Leaves New York
comedycentral.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

Must-see Melbourne.

One of Aradhna's clients gave her a list of Melbourne's 'secret' must-see spots many months ago. On Sunday, we checked one of them -- the historic Fairfield Boathouse (above) -- off the list.
First stop: Breakfast in Fairfield.
Like a well-camouflaged bird of prey, Aradhna orders at the counter inside.
Trojan horse? Indigenous totem? Whatever it is, it stands guard beside Fairfield's train station.
The boathouse is in the northwest corner of Yarra Bend Park.
Aradhna and I availed ourselves of the local grog.
Adorned with Victorian flourishes, the boathouse was built in 1908, closed in 1980 after years of neglect, and re-opened in 1985.
A water pipe bridge beckons from above the Yarra ...
... and delivers with lovely views looking north ...
... and south.
The bridge was also a fine place for a self-portrait.
Afterwards, we walked to the Westgarth train station in Northcote for the quick ride to Eaglemont. This mural is on the side of an abandoned newsagency across from the station.
I think it's brilliant.

I'm just sayin' ...

Call it a preemptive strike:

A baby's first smile, a toddler's first steps ... all the way through to seeing your child walking up the aisle.

These are the moments parents treasure -- but one social scientist says they give us an unduly rosy impression of raising a family.

Dr Nattavudh Powdthavee -- who does not have children himself -- is pouring cold water on the idea that being a parent makes you happier. "Social scientists have found almost zero association between having children and happiness," he said.

"In a recent study of British adults, for example, we found that parents and non-parents reported the same levels of life satisfaction."

The economist, from the University of York, believes he can explain why the benefits of parenthood have been repeatedly overstated.

He said most parents remember milestones like a first smile, and think these rewards more than compensate them for the challenging task of raising children.

But Dr Powdthavee claims that any small bursts of happiness are cancelled out by the day-to-day chores of having a family.

Note the irrelevant pointing out of Dr Powdthavee's lack of children. I don't recall ever reading an article about cancer research that included a similar inclusion, i.e. "Cancer specialist John Genius -- who does not have cancer himself -- has made a breakthrough discovery ..."

Kevin 'hearts' Barack.

The only national newspaper in Australia is the Murdoch-owned Australian, so you can bet editorial staff compete for scoring the best cheap shots at progressives. Feast your eyes on the way a crafty Australian staff writer figured out how to label Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and President Barack Obama as 'soul mates':

The US President has made much of his rapport with the Prime Minister after their first face to face talks in Washington. Reports of the meeting carried around the world have described the pair as political "soul mates".

One must read to the bottom of the article to find the scapegoated source of said 'reports':

"They are ideological soul mates," said Alan Dupont, director of the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney.