Random thoughts and observations
Australia’s reputation for being insular and ignorant of world affairs was confirmed at the Davis Cup tennis this week. It’s beyond belief that we managed to play the wrong Spanish anthem. It’s hard to imagine such a debacle happening anywhere else in the world. Okay, at the Winter Olympics once the Austrian anthem was played [...]
Imaginings of Sand by Andre Brink is a powerful, sad and thoughtful book. It’s set in South Africa’s Little Karoo, a harsh and forbidding landscape, at the time of the country’s first democratic elections. A liberal young Afrikaner woman, Kristien Muller, returns home from Britain to see her dying grandmother (Ouma), whose house was burnt [...]
My comments yesterday about commonsense and alpine weather proved prophetic today as I walked along the Blue Rag Range near Mount Hotham. The forecast was for a fine day with southerly winds freshening later. We were expecting 29 degrees here and 13 at Mount Hotham. The prospect of a southerly change warned me to expect [...]
Today I completed the aptly named Razorback walk from Mount Hotham to Mount Feathertop. I started at 8.30am and avoided the weekend rush. It was my first time on this track and I was a little apprehensive. All the guide books say to allow four hours each way for the 22km return journey and hikers [...]
Lloyd Jones has immortalised himself in New Zealand literature through his outstanding novel “The Book of Fame”. It traces the story of the famous 1905 All Blacks, known as “The Originals”, on their pioneer tour of Britain, France and the United States. The story is written as a collective diary in concise prose that’s almost poetic. The use of language is something I’ve never encountered before, but it works very well. The narrator is never revealed as a single player. The personal pronoun never appears; instead it’s a team voice that speaks.
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