Counting Down

It's only a few days until I board a plane for New Zealand, and I'm getting pretty excited now (apart from having to leave home at 5am). You can see details of the conference program here. I am particularly looking forward to the Indigenous Cultures Forum. For the closing dinner we've been asked to dress in Kiwiana, which doesn't excite me all that much. Oh well, I can live with it... because I'M GOING TO NEW ZEALAND!!

Committee Bird

A pair of odd-looking birds has had us frantically searching through our field guide this weekend. They are wary, making it hard to spot them through binoculars too. The beak, in particular, was most unusual on a bird of this size. I think it looks like a bird developed by a committee - patching together everyone's ideas with no regard for style and grace. "Hey, let's use a toucan's beak!" "Yeah - and give it eagle's legs and feet" "Great... and since we can't decide on a nest, why not have it lay eggs in other birds' nests?" "Cool!!"

Well, all right - I don't know of any real committee that works like this, but you've got to admit the bird looks odd. It turns out to be a Channel-billed Cuckoo, by the way. Since I couldn't get a clear photo, I've used an image from "The Graham Pizzey & Frank Knight Field Guide to Birds of Australia" - you've got to love any book by a man named Pizzey. Oh, I nearly forgot... for those of you who like birdwatching, I can highly recommend Bill of the Birds as an interesting blog to visit, even if it's in the wrong hemisphere.

Catherine's Latest

Catherine has been doing some painting classes during the school holidays. They start with a blank canvas (about 30x40cm) and a template of that week's design. Three hours later they have a finished product. As you can see, the first week she was a little shaky. Up until this, she'd only done basic school artwork so it was a completely new experience.

The second week she had a bit more confidence. Afterwards she described the various brushes and why they have certain names and uses. She has one more lesson coming up, then it's back to piano classes. While I don't think we have a budding van Gogh on our hands, I think her new-found skills and confidence will give her school artwork a huge boost.

A Beautiful Life

Hermione (our cat) is sleeping on a chair, Catherine is staying with her grandparents in Toowoomba for a few nights, Christopher is entertaining himself on his computer, Garry is having a quiet afternoon in the guesthouse, and so I have a little bit of time to blog. On our car trip home from Toowoomba this afternoon, Christopher and I had a lengthy discussion on what it means to live a beautiful life. He's at such an interesting age for this sort of conversation. He began by saying it's impossible to live a beautiful life - by which he meant that no life can be perfectly beautiful. By the end of the conversation he was describing how someone living a beautiful life can reach out and wrap that around others and make their lives beautiful too.

It put me in mind of the movie, "Life is Beautiful" in which a father transforms the horrors of a Nazi concentration camp into an imaginative game for his son. It's a gem of a movie - both very funny and piercingly sad. What made me think of it is Christopher's concept of making life beautiful for others. A beautiful life is not about surrounding yourself with luxury, it's about making the world a better place for all the people that touch your life.

If this seems like it's too difficult, Christopher's analogy is that you build a beautiful life the same way you decorate your bedroom - you might start by hanging a favourite picture, then tidying the desk and looking out for an ornament that's just right for your room. You don't try to achieve a perfect room in one day - it happens bit by bit. So there you have it - some words of wisdom from an eleven-year-old who wants to "bring more peace to the world and call other people to do the same".

Gecko eating a spider

I took this photo last night, through the kitchen window. The spider put up quite a fight, but the gecko won in the end:



You can click on the photo to get even closer to the spider's hairy legs... if you wish. Catherine and I like the gecko's little eyelashes. Actually, now that I think about it, they probably aren't *real* eyelashes - they just look like it.