Balls

Bibliodyssey

One of my favourite blogs is Bibliodyssey, and I am adding the link to Phosphorescence (below the moon on a WineDark Sea). The creator of this blog combs digital archives for images arcane, exotic and extraordinary. Here are some sparkly bits ...


A post on Indian folk art.
The Night Life of Trees,
Art by Bhajju shyam, Durga Bai and Ram Singh Urveti.
Design by Gita Wolf and Rathna Ramanathan.
Copyright Tara Books Pvt. Ltd, 2006.




A post on the art of Yuko Shimizu. Draft, intermediate and completed illustrations. Copyright Yuko Shimizu.




A post on book illustrations.
Cover illustration by R.Crumb, published by Black Sparrow Press, Santa Rosa.
Bring Me All Your Love, Charles Bukowski, 1983.



A post on nuclear power plant wall charts.
Guangdong Nuclear Power Plant: Twin unit PWR station located at Daya Bay, People's Republic of China. Wall chart insert. Nuclear Engineering International, September 1987.





A post on beastly botanicals.

'Ausberg. this manuscript features eccentric plant renderings and quite obviously refers to the Medieval herbal tradition ... the handwritten text is variously in Latin, German and Italian and the manuscript is made out of paper.'

Kingfisher

On a low, low tide, the Kingfisher lies with her ribs exposed, laden with cormorants sunning in the dawn warmth. She is a steel barque, a coal hulk, blown ashore by a hasty summer wind of 1885.

On the northern shore, at Pelican Point, if you tread carefully between ancient flagon and car tyre flotsam, the engine block and anvil jetsam, you can still find little black pieces of her final load.

Australia Day

Way Way Waychincup

I commented to Aussie, when I took this picture, that mobile phone cameras always seem to flatten out landscapes. Mount Manypeaks, towered over us on the trek we made, after we met Gyroscope and went hunting for the mythical second sealer's oven. Towered? Well alright, compared to New Zealand mountains it's just a big hill showered with stones - like some giant rock-eating monster lost his dinner during a nasty case of gastro.

The inlet (or 'embayment' as Old Salt calls it) is Waychinicup, one of the rare stone-bound inlets in the south west. In the picture above, the white water shows the inlet mouth. Most inlets around here are bound by sand bars, opening yearly to the sea when the rivers are swelled with winter rains. This inlet is guarded by massive megalithic bosses of lichen-clad granite and its belly is coated in the same.

Waychincup is home to the 1080 weed, the bane of early cattle and sheep farmers. Three of those tiny heart shaped leaves will kill a man, and yet the local fauna are immune to 1080, making it an ideal bait for foxes and cats. Shame about introducing 1080 to eastern states areas where the locals are not so savvy, but still, D.E.C. will work it out one day ...

This place is considered a 'biodiversity hotspot', meaning that more species of flora and fauna are found here per square metre than most places on this planet, excepting perhaps the Amazon and errm, a few other spots.

All the critters who live here are big and well fed. The carpet sharks are like Cessna aeroplanes, the possums are friendly and the bungarras don't give a shit. We met a Dugite on Tuesday, thick as my arm (trufe!), trying to climb a perpendicular stone, only to fail and flop, unhappily, at Aussie's feet.

'Jesus (#%$* standard snake expletives *$%#)!'

The carpet python was friendly. She just lay there, looking at us ...

Gyroscope's Human Smoke Machines

Yesterday.
Greedy, Aussie and I decided to trek and find the mythical second sealer's oven at Waychinicup. Last week, a fellow history guy rang me. His son had found a sealer's oven on one of his fishing trips. "It's right up on top of the hill. East of the inlet. Ramjet walks over there through the bush to catch kingi's off the cliffs."
"Can you get in there by boat?"
"No way! It's mad, that bit of coast."
I know all about mad coasts. So why would a nineteenth-century sealer build an oven right at the peak of a hill, on a bit of coast where he couldn't even put a twenty foot whaleboat in?
Methinks, the presence of the 'oven' actually means Cairn Man is back, building his phallic territory markers, an Andy Goldsworthy version of 'Kilroy woz 'ere'.

Anyway ... why the hell am I digressing?
Much more exciting things happened to us, yesterday. We did not find the second sealer's oven, of course, or I wouldn't be chastising myself for digressing, would I? Now. Where was I?

We provided a bit of local flavour for a Gyroscope film clip instead!
Yes! Gyroscope!
Driving along the road to Cheynes Beach, we flashed by thirteen dead bungarras and a blue drum kit. The bungarras had all been squashed by heedless drivers but the blue drum kit was alright, even though it was sitting amongst the recent bushfire grounds. We had to stop.
"We're making a music clip for Gyroscope," a lovely blonde told us, waiting for our gasp of recognition. Thankfully Aussie provided that. And we were in.
We graciously provided a 'verbal', "My name is ... and I give consent to Universal to use my image for anything, ever. Please. Thank you."
Then they cranked up the speakers, cracked the champagne and started filming.









These are our famous feet. Forget about Gyroscope, just feast your eyes on these feet. These are smoke machine feet. We were human smoke machines yesterday, fluffing up the cinders, stompin' the Albanian granny dance to Gyroscope's new tune.

Tankin'