Back from the wilderness …

.. to start the autumn with flying colours I finished my first book in six weeks, a collection of poetry and prose put out by Southerly. The review I wrote, finished this morning, is for inclusion on a literary review’s website but I felt something move inside me when I completed the article and sent it off by email to the editors. It’s been six weeks since I read a book, and what’s on my ledger next is something about marriage published 90 years back. 

It’s also a book about a place I am familiar with, Sydney Harbour, where I grew up half a lifetime ago. 

Like many of my friends I mucked about with boats and I have boats in artworks in the new hang I made for my living room (see below). A big item is being worked on at the framer’s currently, a valedictory flag my uncle Elmer received at his place of work when he quit, which I’m having mounted and readied to hang so that it will last decades.

Like the 1988 painting of a stranded yacht shown above. Mum had it on her apartment wall in Maroochydore when we lived there, and I’d had it up in one of the bedrooms but brought it down to feature more prominently because I thought it deserved attention. My nautical theme continues in other works shown, and additionally I include family snapshots (brother, father, uncle) plus a cartoon an artist in Hawaii made one time we visited the archipelago. 

In Waikiki the water’s always fine, it’s getting too cold in Sydney for swimming.