Its called a labour of love
The scraping and sanding
The careful preparation and maintenance
Maintaining a thing of beauty
In this case the labour of love was my dear old boat
Crafted from Huon pine with precision and pride nearly 50 years ago
A finely crafted floating jewel box
So yes a labour of love
The fine sanding
The careful masking so the lines are crisp
The laying on of the paint and varnish
To bring her beauty alive
Yes a labour of love
Maybe it’s a metaphor for a life of love.
January 2019 Previously published March 2018- This beautiful part of Australia is on fire at this very moment. Horrendous hot fires nothing like anything before. If we don’t act now on the Climate Emergency so much of the nature we love will be lost
The still winds
The warm last days of summer
Moving into Autumn
Called me to the Mountains
The Snowy Mountains
Natures call
The primal call to be in the wild
In an ancient land
A land of Snowgums and Stringybarks
Sacred to the indigenous people of the land
The land of the Man From Snowy River
A land of
Spirits
Ghosts and
Legends
The Snowy’s catching the clouds and sending water in creeks and rivers into the plains below
Little creeks and springs
That flow over waterfalls
feed into the big rivers that water the plains
Water
For cattle
For the native animals
In the bare
Wild nature
The sky smiling
As angels travel
In the beauty of nature
Simple
Free
Alive
In the Snowy Mountains
As summer ends
Colour
and light
stands alone
often in the wilderness
the boundless plains
the culture of different peoples
The colour
of a land
of the wildlife
the people
are the constant
like a beacon
colour and light
like life itself
cannot be diminished
This poem was inspired by travels in Kenya and Ethiopia
The colour and light of the animals
The People
The Land
It was only 10 years old
Im sure looking
at the picture
I hadnt changed
Still the same person I was
10 years ago
Not the first passport
I have had to put down
But the nature of the passport
like life
is changing
the passport of the future will be more electronic
less stamps
no ornate visas pasted in
but with a wave of scissors it was dead
barcode cut off
chip card snipped
Dead
no longer able to see me safely across borders
Many borders there have been
So let me reveal some of the adventures in those old ornate visas and stamps
Singapore, and India
Singapore the bustling humid city state.
Centre of trade between the hemispheres for centuries
The city a mix of colonial and bustling modern edifaces
India the ancient history
Sights and smells that are almost overwhelming
Colour vibrancy and activity everywhere.
Ethiopia, Thailand and New Caledonia
Ethiopia the cradle of civilisation
An ancient culture
Home of coffee
Dramatic landscape from high mountains to desert planes,
Many tribes, and diverse wildlife.
Thailand- the kingdom in Asia
long held traditions
New Caledonia the French called it the Riviera of the South Pacific
A place of beauty
But with the tense undercurrent of colonisation bubbling beneath the surface
Vietnam baring the scars of the American war
An ancient culture its capital a city over 1000 years old
Bustling streets markets and waterways
The last stamps on the page are Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam. The start of my recent European adventures but they have been documented in my recent posts.
Ten years of travel outside Australia, my home country recorded on the pages.
Vale passport!!!!
The vessel
A full moon to guide us
The skipper preparing the boat
The merry revelers on board
Up the river under the Westgate bridge
Keeping watch for other vessels
Under the Bolte bridge
The city skyline full of light
Then at midnight the fireworks
Now it’s 2018!!!!!
