We can part the sea….
Captains Log - 0013/ 09th June 2024 / 0600hrs
There is a band I like. I have always liked them. They represent quite a large part of my musical journey. Every time they have come to Australia I have wandered across the moat to see them (even met them back stage once). The Black Crowes are a nineties Southern American blues band. If you have as many rings in your trunk as me during your time on this planet, you would have heard of them. Hard to Handle, Remedy, She Talks to Angels etc - they have been around a while and lived the rock and roll life. Of late I have been going back to their music and even playing a few on The Ship during down time on my trusty six string. There is one song that they play that whilst driving in the car on my own turns my journey into a stage in front of about 40,000 people with me in front of the microphone belting out the lyrics (believe me, the only time I can hold a vocal note is by myself on a highway - I would never endure any person to my singing talents in public - lacking as they are). The song is called “Wiser Time” and the chorus has always been a little mantra of mine….
“On a good day, it's not every day
We can part the sea
And on a bad day, it's not every day
Glory beyond our reach”
Blurry post concert catch up with Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes some years ago.
Couple the above with a slide blues guitar and Chris Robinsons gospel mixed with life on the road vocals and I can easily become Jake in the gospel church scene in the Blues Brothers reacting to James Brown.
Ninety five percent of life down here in Binalong Bay has been parting the sea. The other five percent is allocated firmly to the navigation of algorithms and bollocks “systems” that despite the promise of an utopian digital ease of life world, seem to continue to appear to be held together with bits of sticky tape and cheap kindergarten glue. Glory beyond our reach.
Glory beyond our reach.
Might as well have a whine about that part of our existence.
The Bay of Fires Winter Arts Festival is on down here. It is a big event for our part of the world and we have a friend who entered and was a finalist so we became part of the scene. I have been privileged to have been invited to Christie Lange’s ceramic studio and hang out with Christie during her alone creative time and have her mentorship as I created what I believe to be a masterpiece over three sessions with clay and ceramic glazes (photo below). When Christie was confirmed as a finalist in the art judging world of the event we bought tickets to the gala night at the Panorama Hotel last Friday night to support her as well as to be part of the arty farty scene (that I secretly quite enjoy).
To buy the tickets you go to a website and press some buttons and give them your secret three numeral digits on the back of your plastic and then you get an email saying “thanks for your money - click here to see your tickets”. Which of course, with the confirmation received I duly forgot about for the two weeks between buying said electronic tickets and actually needing them.
On Friday we dolled ourselves up (changed the flannelette shirt to a collared ironed shirt) and made our way to the gala event. Secured the George Castanza parking spot (we have a superpower - wherever we go, the best parking spot always presents itself - “we can part the sea”), and wandered in to join the line of what appeared to be “never have worn a flannelette shirt” line of humans going to the gala. One person in front of the two “show me your ticket” committee folk gateway, I decided now would be a good time to get the tickets ready for scanning into the QR code of digital door opening world. Scrolling through two weeks worth of pointless marketing emails that I never seem to delete for some reason, I found the right heading and clicked on the link that in big bold letters, highlighted in a red bar, said “Get your tickets”. Simple right. Nope. The rectangle piece of plastic that Steve Jobs managed to convince us we all need, directed me to a webpage with small writing that asked me to provide my user name and password. I mean I had paid for the tickets, I got an email saying I have the tickets, but for some reason I must have skipped the part about about having to sign up for an account and then remember another bloody password to get the actual bloody tickets. I had to wander out of the line, find the pair of glasses that is reserved for seeing things close and then proceed to “register” as a user of a corporate ticketing system to get the tickets to enter. Of course I put in an email address that I use for such things and selected a password that I use for everything so I wouldn’t forget (against all the rules of the cyber police duly noted). But because I used a different email address to buy the tickets it didn’t match and I couldn’t get the tickets without having to go through it all again. At this point I noticed three other people my age or over with glasses perched on the tip of their nose with a strained look of despair in their eyes staring at their phones doing the the same thing. “Glory beyond our reach”.
Seconds away from my phone being launched into Georges Bay, Debi asked for me to pass her my phone with the email open, walked up to the committee gatekeeper ticket reviewer and explained calmly that the AI world is taking over and we need to be human beings to navigate it and pointed to me laying in a corner rocking slowly and sucking my thumb. The lady said yep, pulled out a clip board with paper on it with a list of names, ticked us off and let us in. “We can part the seas”.
We can part the seas.
I mentioned previously that I am now a John Deere ride on lawn mower driver. I quite enjoy disengaging the blades and wandering around the trails of the property. Five km’s an hour is a good speed for me and I can easily disappear for an hour or two, stopping here and there and wandering through the forests in absolute wonder. I love it.
My camera is filled with photos of mushrooms - I seem to have become a fungi voyeur
The other day I was doing just that and ended up going up alongside our neighbors property. It is a beautiful property with incredible views, a horse paddock, sheep and by my casual observations on previous journeys up the fence line, full of many big boy toys with engines, attachments and tools that have been conjured up by upright apes to make our life that little bit easier. On this occasion I saw the neighbor in the horse paddock on a four wheeled motor bike with a trailer. Attached to the trailer was a pipe that was being held by the human and was being maneuvered over the ground. Turned out to be a “horse poo vacuum pickerupper thingy”. Meandering more up the hill I came across the male version of our neighbor in his shed painting a toolbox. John Deere turned off and parked, I wandered over to the gate and said the time honoured Australian greeting over the fence of “G’Day”.
Our neighbor has been here for over fifty years. He turned the property into what was bush into a home and basically a paradise for his wife’s beloved horses and some “rummun” black faced sheep. We chatted about how our property used to be just a bush block before 2007 and how he used to get firewood from the property. His son grew up here and knows every four wheel drive track in this region like the back of his hand. He told me a story about how the previous owner wanted to have a bit of a better view so decided to “top” some of the trees to open up the ocean views. One day when walking around his paddock he heard some unusual moaning coming from the bush. He wandered in to check out the strange sounds to discover our old neighbor on the ground having fallen from the tree with chainsaw in hand. I mean, when I say topping some trees, I am talking about forty meters up. Our neighbor laughed it off and the previous owner must have done the same as we met him and he seemed tough as nails.
During the conversation I mentioned the trail that we have at the bottom end of the property that has been impacted by storm waters over the years and has been badly eroded. Also the fact that nothing seems to have been on it for some time as there are trees growing on it (not forty meter trees, but obviously been there for around five or six years). The neighbor explained to me that this trail was the original Gardens Road before they did the industrial tarred dip that is the boundary to our property (about 370 meters of Gardens Road frontage). This got my attention. He also said that his son has been a little crook of late, but should be right in about three weeks and would be looking for something to do. Oh, and he is an excavator driver with his own excavator. He could clear that up for you. New project for The Ship established - restoration of Old Gardens Road baby!
I came back to the house after about another hour of chatting about this and that (fire wood and eventually some eggs from our still to prove they are chickens is the barter program for excavator works). I hopped onto the computer and began to search for old maps of the area to see if I could see if there was any historical references to the road going through our property but alas the algorithms where only interested in showing me the tourist side of Binalong Bay. Not to be outdone I looked up the Department of “We Keep Old Maps” at the Tasmanian government and sent them an email. The next day I received a copy of an old map (see below) showing the road running through the property.
We can part the seas.
Anyway, I can heard my motherinlaw in my head at this point saying “oh, this is a long read just about computers and neighbors” so I will heed those thoughts and close off here. Of course there has been many other awesome days here at The Ship and I could wax lyrical for thousands of more words - but the point is for this to read with a coffee so it would defeat the point!
Thank you for reading my ramblings again – keep safe and see you next week (maybe).
The Captain.