Australian Coins = Racist Stereotype

Why isn't there more discussion - or in fact outrage - about the imagery on Australian coins? Who is the Aboriginal man featured on the $2 coin, or does he not need a name because he's just another example of Australia's fauna and flora? And I suppose it is simply a coincidence that the indigenous plant included on the $2 coin (to the right of the numeral 2) is a Xanthorrhoea - a plant commonly called a blackboy? The 1, 2, 5, 10, 20 and 50 cent pieces were released [...]

2018-03-21T14:55:42+11:00November 10th, 2014|Life|7 Comments
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Smells like home

I didn't realise that I knew what home smelt like until I returned after a long week's absence. I've only been living where I live for less than a year.  I'm still learning about the contours, the textures, the seasonal changes. I'm still trying to find a place for the scissors to live. When I left the taxi and stepped inside, the house didn't smell particularly special.  The scent in there was of cleaning products mainly, courtesy of my ever-helpful other half. But when I stepped outside the breeze carried [...]

2018-03-21T14:55:42+11:00October 27th, 2014|Life|0 Comments
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To a Young Lady on her Engagement (Disapproving)

Published by Ward Lock & Co the book is not dated but is likely from the early twentieth century. This gorgeous little book (Crown 8vo, Cloth, 1 shilling) belonged to my grandfather (1891-1954). It purports to provide "practical information in the subject of correspondence, and specimen letters that may be adapted to meet almost any case."    The specimen letters are hilarious in their seriousness and cover an awful lot of ground.  A random sample (with original capitalisation intact) includes: From a Schoolmistress complaining of one of her Pupils [...]

2018-03-21T14:55:43+11:00October 22nd, 2014|Life|0 Comments
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Our maps shift and move like water

All of us hold in our minds a shifting map of our life. An ordinary, modern map renders three dimensions into two and confidently fields outlines right to the edge of the paper. An online map, like Google Earth, just keeps on going forever. But our internal life maps are more complex, and simpler. They map the actions of our lives, not just the physical locations. They include your first kiss, or the smell of oranges, or the death of your father. Like the maps of old the edges might [...]

2018-03-21T14:56:16+11:00August 21st, 2014|Life|0 Comments
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Digging a Hole

Photo: https://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:Hole_In_The_Ground.JPG Today I dug a hole. That's not a metaphor, I actually dug a hole.  In the ground.  Not being a fast digger, I had plenty of time to think. It was hard work but strangely meditative. Hole is not a beautiful word (unlike hope, for example, which is one of my favourites) but it is interesting in being a word that describes an absence of something.  And although my hole was far from being metaphorical, digging a hole is in fact a wonderful starting point for [...]

2018-03-21T14:56:18+11:00July 29th, 2014|Life|0 Comments
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Vale Josephine Pullein-Thompson

Perhaps I'm a little late to the wake but I was saddened to learn that one of my very favourite childhood authors died a few weeks ago. The Pullein-Thompson pony books (Josephine had two sisters and between them they apparently published around 200!) were dated even when I devoured them, in the 1970s and 80s.  "Oh Joanna, you are a brick.  Mummy will be ever so pleased.  You will come to supper?" But their jolly hockey-sticks style took nothing away from the compelling stories of girls and their ponies having [...]

2018-03-21T14:56:18+11:00July 18th, 2014|Life|0 Comments
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Bridgerule

Elizabeth Veale, as she was then, was born in 1766 and raised in the English village of Bridgerule, on the border of Cornwall and Devon in England’s southwest. The time I spent in Elizabeth Macarthur's birthplace was absolutely the highlight of my trip to England.  But, as I always seem to find, the place mattered far less than the people. The spritely octogenarian, Mr Bowden, who showed me through St Bridget's church and then rang the bells for me.  That's him holding the enormous key to the church! Rose Hitchings, [...]

2018-03-21T14:56:19+11:00July 8th, 2014|Elizabeth Macarthur, Life|13 Comments
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