Back in the early 1970s, Bukittinggi didn’t have very much to offer the visitor other than a visit to the local gorge, and the zoo.

As is usual, when one is travelling, I had met up with a couple of other guys, and we were knocking around town, when eventually ended up at the zoo.  As could be expected from a country that didn’t have too much excess revenue to spend on the welfare of animals, the zoo was a pretty ramshackle affair. Many of the cages made out of a light-gauge sheet of welded mesh that you see used in concrete slab construction, held together with thick wire.  Health and safety issues were merely an afterthought, as you could walk up to any of the cages and stick your hand in for a mauling if you so desired.

I made the mistake of shaking hands with a cute baby orang-utan, that had its arms outstretched through the rebar. It had the saddest most soulful eyes I’d ever seen. 

Almost human. 

The little orang-utan was about a half my height, but it had hands much larger than the average man.  I was totally misled by it’s placid demeanour, so I reached out to touch it’s hand. It softly and gently closed its hand around the mine, and we stood their holding hands looking at each other, when I felt its grip tighten and it started to pull me towards the cage. That hairy little thing was so strong, and with one arm it effortlessly pulled me closer to the cage as I struggled without success to resist. 

Like any little child, my hairy friend was trying to put the object of it’s curiosity, into its mouth.  Luckily, the two other guys I was with were able to pull me back just before my hand went into the gaping maw pressed up against the wire.  I won’t be doing that again!

The tiger cage was downright dangerous.  It was basically a large wire mesh enclosed area. The wire was about 6mm (about 1/4in) diameter and the spacing of the verticals and horizontals was about 20cm (approximately 8 inches) apart, so the tiger could stick its arm right out if it wanted to.  To ameliorate the chance of a tiger pulling a child through the rebar, there was a 1 m high galvanised pipe about a metre and a half away from the front of the cage. The side and back of the cage had sheets of recycled roofing material made of corrugated galvanised iron about 8ft (about 2.4 m) high, all around the perimeter except the front. To enable people to see over the corrugated iron there was a berm about 2 m high, built around the sides and back of the cage.

In the middle of the cage was a tiger, laying on a large log and it seemed to be asleep. One of the guys was I was with, an Englishman called Andy, for some reason I can’t understand, walked down the berm to the side of the cage and stuck his face up against the old corrugated iron roofing to look through one of the nail holes.

I was standing at the front of the cage when I saw the tiger, that we thought was asleep, which was facing in the opposite direction to Andy, suddenly, with amazing speed and agility spin around and leap the 6 or 8 m (6 or 8 yards) between it and Andy, to come crashing with an alarming bang, down on the flexible corrugated iron, smashing into Andy’s face and knocking him to the ground. Luckily, the welded mesh held and the tiger casually turned around and walked away after having made its point.

RESPECT!

Click here to see a small animation, I have made demonstrating what happened.

We rushed over to the fallen Andy to see that he was as white as chalk and in a state of shock with a bleeding nose. The poor guy was in a dazed and confused state for the rest of the day.  I bet Andy won’t ever do that again.

Sumatran tigers are the smallest tigers, but they still weigh about 300lbs (about 136kg) and I can tell you from personal experience, they are FAST!

When I was a kid and I saw those old Tarzan movies with Johnny Weissmuller, I thought with my childish imagination that a fully grown healthy man would have a chance against a big cat but what I saw at the zoo that day, changed my mind forever about such things. In a contest between tiger and a man, my money will always be on the tiger as it would be no contest. I don’t even care if the guy was Chuck Norris. He’d be cat food.

Travelling in Sumatra at that time was an absolute nightmare due the state of the roads. To get to Bukittinggi I had already been on two, agonising 36 hour long  bus journeys. The roads were just dirt tracks with deep water filled holes in them that you could lose Volkswagens in.

The buses were very similar to the school buses that they use in North America, and as such, they have an extended rear end that hangs away over the rear axle, which of course increases the amount of movement one experiences when one is at the far end of a lever.

Being foreigners, we were always given the worst seats in the bus at the very back and because the seats had been designed to fit tiny little Indonesians there wasn’t enough space between the seats for us to put our feet on the ground.  To compound our discomfort our knees were permanently pushed up against the back of the seat in front of us, which wouldn’t have been so bad, but there were hand rails exactly where our knees met the back of the seats.  So for 36 hours at a time, we had the crap beaten out of our knees.  It was unrelenting torture.

I was absolutely dreading the two more trips, I had to make by bus to get to Medan to get out of Indonesia in time to avoid jail due to overstaying my visa.  I wasn’t the only one who felt this way about going on the buses again.  One of the guys that I met up with suggested that we both hitch hike up to Medan.  Any vehicle would have been better than one of those buses.

Hitchhiking was way better than the buses. Not only was it free, it was 1000% more comfortable. We followed the coastal road up to Sibolga, and then we had to head inland over the mountains to go north east to Medan. Just outside Sibolga, we were picked up by a small furniture removal truck. The seats of the truck were filled up with Indonesian so we had to lay down in the back on top of a load of empty acetylene bottles.  The road out of Sibolga climbs into the mountains up a very steep road, and the poor old truck that we were in, really laboured and struggled its way up. As slow as the trip was, at last we were moving forward, and laying on top of the empty acetylene bottles was way more comfortable than being in the back of one of those horrible buses.

Late in the afternoon and about three-quarters of the way up the mountain, we heard a loud bang and a truck came to an abrupt halt.  When we got out we could see a lot of oil on the road. When we looked underneath the truck, we could see one of the con rods had broken and had smashed through the oil sump.

The truck was cactus.

There wasn’t anything my travelling companion and I could do to help, so we thanked our driver and headed off up the road trying to get another lift.  Slowly, we walked up hill through the jungle as the sun went down. It got darker and darker as we walked through the night. The cars just passed us by without picking us up. We were starting to get a bit worried as we were out in the middle of a jungle wilderness. 

My thoughts started to turn towards my memories of the tiger in the zoo at Bukittinggi. If I had been in a vehicle and saw a tiger by the side of the road I would have been thrilled, but after seeing what had happened at Bukittinggi I didn’t want to meet a tiger out in the open.

After walking for about three or four hours our hopes were raised by seeing a hotel at the top of the hill.  Unfortunately, it was a hotel that was under construction.  We were getting a bit desperate for a place to stay, so we went into the unoccupied building site. None of the rooms had doors or windows, and much of the structure didn’t even have a roof on it yet. We found a covered concrete patio with about 30 or 40 cane chairs covered in plastic stacked neatly to one side.

Although the covered patio gave a shelter from any rain that might fall during the evening, it was still out in the open looking directly into the jungle. Both of us were getting a little bit freaked out by now at the thought that there might be tiger a short distance away, stalking us. So we decided to make a pile of all the cane chairs and crawl into the middle of them to sleep. Needless to say we didn’t sleep too well, as every little noise coming out of the bush made our hearts leap with terror.

All our panicky fear was misplaced, because in the morning, we woke up in one piece and still alive.

When I got to Medan I read in one of the English language newspapers about two old men who had been found dead in the jungle in Sumatra next to the dead carcass of a tiger. According to some of the local villagers, the two old men were expert exponents of the Indonesian martial art of “pencat silat“, and it would seem that they had been attacked by a tiger, while out in the jungle collecting wood. I find it absolutely amazing that two old men would be able to kill a tiger with their bare hands, feet and perhaps a machete.  Needless to say it is not much of a victory if you die from the wounds that you received, but they must’ve have been some really tough old guys. They’re probably in Valhalla now, sharing a drink with Ragnar Hairy Breeks and Egil Skallagrimson.

Nine years later in 1983, with the girlfriend from hell in tow, I arrived at the border between Guatemala and Mexico (between La Mesilla and Ciudad Cuauhtémoc), just as the sun was going down. Back then (I don’t know how the situation is nowadays) there was no public transport between these two towns at night. The distance between La Mesilla and Ciudad Cuauhtémoc is only about 4 km and since it was a beautiful warm and starry night we decided to walk along the road through the jungle. It was quite a nice walk, and the first couple of kilometres were very pleasant……. that was until we started hearing, a jaguar roaring in their not far distance.  I nearly soiled myself as memories of Bukittinggi came rushing back. I’m pretty sure we covered the last 2 km of that walk in record time!

Pat Coakley has created a fantastic image on her site “Single for a reason” of what “Dinner at Razzman’s house” would be like based on my posts. Go and have a look, it’s got fires in it that I’d love to sit around.

For a bit of contrast here’s an image (taken last night) of what “Dinner at Razzman’s house” was actually like.  The woman cradling the dog is my neighbour (the best in the world), Sandra. Engogirl (my wife) is the guardian of the chinmea making sure I don’t succumb to my pyro tendencies.

Mai Long is an artist friend of mine whose work I love so much that I’ve bought 4 of her works over the last couple of years. I also designed Mai’s website and I’m her webmaster, as such, I do all the updates. Below is an artist’s statement about an exhibition that Mai had in Perth, Western Australia in late May this year, that Mai sent me yesterday to put up on her website.

Due to the sensitivities of the organisation ‘Vietnamese Community in Western Australia’, the Phở Dog installation has been covered.

Here is an explanation by Mai Long (the artist of the work)

Phở Dog is an installation of 12 mythical mongrels named Phở Dog. Part of my artist statement printed in the I love Phở catalogue (p. 44) explains Phở Dog as a ‘character that contemplates difference and tries to understand it in the broader context of human nature and complex political histories – a tribute to the idea that things will never fit into neat little boxes’ … and also… ‘Eating Phở in Australia as an Australian reminds (me) of the unhealed wounds of the Vietnamese
diaspora’ … in addition … ‘This work embodies my wish for a healing, and a search for hope and humour’.

Cuong Phu Le, curator of I Love Pho, informed me of a sensitive response to the Phở Dog ‘Keala’ at the opening night of the exhibition. Keala, a dog interweaving a number of flags and symbols from parts of flags from various countries, was seen to be problematic by the Vietnamese community, due to the five pointed yellow star on red background and the three red stripes on yellow background.

Over the past weeks, increasingly steady pressure regarding the problematic work - threatening ‘boycott’ / requesting ‘removal, or ‘covering the work’ - and negative media generated nationally throughout the Vietnamese community has taken it’s toll. It has been the personal criticisms directed at the curator that have been particularly damaging. Following many in-depth conversations with Cuong Phu Le, I made the decision to cover the entire Phở Dog installation. During our discussions, the curator had also expressed concern over my personal safety as I am scheduled to arrive in Perth 23rd May to run a weekend workshop.

It is with great sadness that I have decided to cover the entire installation of Phở Dogs with a black sheet, as if a shrouding, a mourning, a death-ness, a frustrated silence with mysterious and alien bumps. This is a gesture to acknowledge the suffering of the Vietnamese Community concerned, and at the same time the suffering of all peoples who cannot speak out in the world, and who are censored in their own societies.

I considered just removing or covering Keala, but to censor one would be to treat that mongrel differently to the next, which in essence goes against the grain of the entire concept of the installation. The mongrels need to be seen in context as well as individually. Individually and as a group they illustrate and talk to the whole idea of complexity and the problem of us all progressing equally together, as a healthy cohesive society.

Phở Dog tries to look at complex issues in a humorous light, with a main inspiration being selfmockery as I slot myself into a supposedly derogatory mongrel label (as a half-breed). Selfmockery is a mechanism I have used previously in my art to alleviate the weight of pain and seriousness I have placed on issues that seem so unfair and irreconcilable that you just don’t know where to turn or who or how to communicate them with. In this sense, sadly and ironically, this “blackout” of the Phở Dog installation seems eerily natural. However, I will need some more time to better digest what has occurred here.

Mai Long
27th of May 2008 

Phở Dog installation – by Mai Long 2006 –Casula Powerhouse Collection
Phở Dog Blackout – 23 May 2008 –Breadbox Gallery, Perth

Apparently there are people in the Vietnamese community here in Australia who feel that the current flag of Vietnam is as potent a symbol of oppression and hate to them as the nazi flag is to Jews. It would seem that 33 years after the war in Vietnam ended, feelings still run high. I find it ironic that some people would have us believe that behaving in a non-democratic and fascist manner is somehow better than the way how the Vietnamese government behaves. To such people I have this to say:

Guys, you’re here in Australia now (a country that recognises the current Vietnamese government) and those sort of bullying tactics are not what this country is about. You live here because you enjoy your freedoms. By all means express your opinions but that doesn’t give you the right to curtail the freedoms of others to express themselves.

Below is an example of Mai’s latest work.

Last night my wife and I went to a dinner at my friend, Mark’s place.

I’ve known Mark for about 15 years and we met each other in an outdoors activity club called SPAN (Sydney Perverts and Nyphos).  Mark is one the  guys that I climbed the Three Sisters, naked with. 

The reason for the dinner was to  test out a few Indian recipes that Mark (who is a chef) and Sonia want to serve at their wedding in November.

One of the interesting things that came out in the conversation at the table was that people who get attacked by animals must be bad people.

I told a story about when I was about 12 and I was attacked by a dog as I walked down an alley. I was just walking along with a friend and, unbeknownst to me, a dog was waiting behind a bush. As I came to the bush near the end of the alley, the dog  jumped out at me unprovoked, and tore a chunk out my shoulder and then ran off. It was a pretty nasty bite and I was disturbed to see a hole about  25mm (about an inch) square with muscle fibre hanging out of my upper arm.

One of the guests (not in the photo) at the table just blurted out, “you must be a bad person!”

Years ago I was closing up a shop that I was the manager of .  I had just opened the front door, to pull down the security grate when a tiny little poodle that had been dyed bright pink tried to savage me.  As I jumped back in surprise, a transvestite sitting on a nearby stoop with his boyfriend hissed out at me, “well you must be a fucked up person!”

P.S.

My mother sent me this comment via E-mail:

“re the Pink Poodle…..if you were a dog, and subject to that sort of crap, you’d be one bitchy little dog too”

I was looking through my old photographs for something that I could put up as a post, when I came across this old photograph of a high school friend of mine called Stephen. 

My family used to move around a lot when I was a kid (no, my family wasn’t in the army), and as a result, I attended six different primary schools and three different high schools.  Because I was in so many different schools I learnt how to make friends and then get over them (when we moved again) quickly. I think this has led to an ability to just move on and start afresh without any nostalgia.

I haven’t stayed in contact with a single person from my school days.  Truth be known, I can hardly even remember more than a handful of names from that time.  It still surprises me when I talk to people nowadays, and they reminisce about “the good old days” at school or when I meet some of their old school friends.  It’s like I’m being told about some strange alien land that I don’t have a visa for and I’ll never be able to visit.  I feel a little envious, but then, I just move on.  That basically sums up the way how I’ve lived a large part of my life. 

Experience, reflect, move on.

Experience, reflect, move on.

Experience, reflect, move on.

Stephen is one of the few people that I remember from high school and in some ways, we shared quite a few things in common.  Stephen’s family had emigrated from England to Australia, and he still had an English accent.  Both Stephen and I were outsiders, who were interested in other things besides, music and sports.

We used to go to auctions together.  One time we went to an animal auction and tried to buy a ferret, because we wanted to go ferreting but we didn’t have enough money to buy one.  Then there was another time that we wanted to buy a hawk so we could try and train it to catch animals.  Luckily for the environment, we didn’t have enough money for that either. 

One funny thing that Stephen used to do at auctions was to buy whatever silver trophies that were on offer.  Stephen’s bedroom was lined with other people’s trophies that have been turned around, so you couldn’t see the engraved names of the actual recipients.  It was almost as though he was trying to create a history of achievement for himself.

Stephen and I also used to like to go skin-diving, and we both got our scuba diving certificates when we were 14 years old.  The fact that we didn’t have any money to buy the equipment didn’t bother us.  We both jumped at the chance when the YMCA in downtown Melbourne offered the course in their swimming pool for a mere $11, and that included one ocean dive with the use of the equipment.

Stephen’s parents were decent down to earth people who always treated me with kindness and respect.  Which at the time, struck me as rather unusual, as most of the other kids I knew, had parents who didn’t seem to take an interest in who their child’s friends were. In the past, I’d been normally greeted with just a grunt and a nod, when I went around to friend’s houses.

Another thing that was different about Stephen’s parents is that they kept a goat so they didn’t have to mow the lawn.  We weren’t living out in the country, we were living in the suburbs.

One day we were in the backyard of Stephen’s place shooting his air rifle at a target with his younger brothers, when his father came home from work.  Steve’s dad was a nice guy and he joined us in shooting at the target.  One at a time, we would fire several shots into the target and then go and see how well we did.  Every time the five of us would walk up to the target to inspect it, the goat would follow us right up to it.  On one occasion when we were looking at the target, one of Stephen’s younger brothers grabbed a hold of his father’s dangling tie, unnoticed, as his dad was checking our results, and stuck the end of it in the goat’s mouth.  As Stephen’s father was bent over, the goat chewed away at his tie and worked his way right up to his throat. 

Suddenly, Stephen’s father felt the weight on his neck and he tried to jump up, but the goat had worked its way right up to the knot in the tie and was still attached.  It made for quite the hilarious scene, as Stephen’s father danced around, trying to stand up and push the goat away from his throat at the same time.  The goat had eaten the tie, fair and square, and wasn’t about to let it go. 

Every time Stephen’s dad tried to push the goat away it would just chomp down harder on the tie and his efforts to free himself, choked him.  The eventual solution was to slap the goat on the side of the head with an open hand to get it to bleat and release an inch of tie at a time.  Slap, bleat, slap, bleat, slap, bleat, until the saliva covered and concertina shaped tie was extracted.  The tie was a mess and there was no way that it could be used as an article of clothing any more.

Unlike how I imagine most people’s parents would have reacted to such an event, Stephen’s father just roared with laughter. 

It was funny.

As the afternoon turned into evening, I was invited to stay for dinner.  Stephen’s family were different to other families who I had dinner with in the past.  Everybody spoke to each other in one big general conversation about whatever subject was being discussed.  Now when I look back, it’s pretty obvious that Stephen’s parents were fairly enlightened and they encouraged their children to interact in an adult way.  I really enjoyed the way how they treated me as an equal, but to be honest, I wasn’t very good at the conversation with adults thing. Not much practice you see.

To everyone’s horror I asked Stephen’s mother, what she did for a living.  There were quick nervous glances around the table, and then Stephen’s mother sort of stiffly raised her hand as though to say, “it’s okay, were all adults here, I can tell him”.

” I work in an artificial insemination facility”

“ A what?” I asked.

“An artificial insemination facility”

I naively blundered on with, “what’s artificial insemination?” I’ve been blessed with an unusually high degree of insensitivity, and I was oblivious to how I was cruelling the conversation.

After another quick intake of breath and nervous glance exchanges between her and her husband, Stephen’s mother swallowed, took a deep breath, and raised her hand again, in what I can only guess was a calming gesture to the rest of the family and answered me with, ” artificial insemination is when you make an animal pregnant using artificial means”

“Oh………. how do you do that?”

More nervous glances, another hand raising.

” We collect the bull semen, and we put it inside of the cows”

“Really!”

” How do you do that?”

Faces were getting redder and the glances more strained.  Without realising it, I was really testing how enlightened these people thought they were.  I bet Stephen’s mother never thought that she’d have to explain such things to a naive idiot over dinner.

Stephen’s mother was made of stern enlightened stuff, so she went on to explain.

“At the facility where I work, we have a fake rear end of the cow made out a fibreglass with a real cow standing next to it ” “We then bring in the bull and when it sees the cow it tries to mount her but we steer it onto the fake fibreglass rear end”

“Really!”

This was all starting to blow my mind. I could never have imagined before that moment, that such things ever happened. My brain was starting to reel.

“Then what happens?” I blurted out as I was still trying to take it all in.

Eyes were starting to roll now, and Stephen and his brothers had their heads bowed down and they were staring at their plates.  Their father, just bowed his head and held it in both hands.

Stephen’s mother then said ” I sit inside of the fake cow’s rear-end and when the ball inserts himself in there I collect his semen into a container.”

“What?!”

“With your bare hands?!”

“No, no, no, I wear long rubber gloves” was the answer and that I nonchalantly received.

Every now and again, I wonder what kind of parent, I would make.  If I was ever to have any children, I’d like to think that I would be as bravely enlightened and forthright as Stephen’s parents.

After Stephen’s mother’s straightforward explanation about her work, conversation just continued as normal. 

No big deal.

When I look back on that dinner I’m in awe at how Stephen’s parents didn’t make a big fuss about something that would seem very strange when taken out of context.  The bare bones of the matter is, that artificial insemination is a day-to-day reality in agriculture, that is performed by people who see it as just a part of their normal everyday working experience. 

When one thinks about it, we make a big deal about a lot of stupid little stuff in our society. 

Having said all of that, I don’t think I’d be too comfortable telling people that I had such a job.

I was having breakfast in my backyard as usual this morning when the lorikeet in the photo landed in the ficifolia (red flowering gum) about 3 metres (3 yards) away.

Over the last few years my wife and I have landscaped our backyard from a sterile and sun-baked wasteland of lawn into a beautiful oasis of colour and calm. I have my breakfast outside nearly everyday and my wife and I eat outside about two or three times a week throughout most of the year. Even in the cooler weather we light up the chiminea and sit out and enjoy the enviroment we have created for ourselves.

Recently I’ve been counting my blessings (doing the old “be here now” thing) and I feel that I’ve got it made. I’ve got a lovely wife; a great circle of friends; a nice little house that’s nearly paid off; my freedom and I live in a prosporous stable country. I think that the mood of Jamiroquai song “Corner of the earth” from the album “A Funk Odyssey“best describes how I feel when I’m blissed-out about such things.

I’ve also been thinking about Epicurus lately and how what he has to say has so much relevance to my life. He is quoted as saying “ It is impossible to live a pleasant life without living wisely and well and justly (agreeing ‘neither to harm nor be harmed’). And it is impossible to live wisely and well and justly without living a pleasant life.”

Epicurus promoted ethical reciprocity (treat others as you would like to be treated) 300 years before Christianity appeared and started to claim credit for such a concept. He also came up with a very useful little list (for this confusing consumerist, status driven, hero worshipping world we live in) of what is necessary

• Freedom
• A life free of pain
• Shelter
• Friends
• Food

unnecessary but nice

• A big house
• Meat every day
• Wealth

and what is totally unnecessary

• Power
• Fame

If you’d like to know a little more about Epicurus and a few other philosophers I like to recommend the following book by Alain de Botton, The Consolations of Philosophy

My friend Peter has recently bought an underwater housing for his digital camera. Neither Peter or I have done any underwater photography so, since yesterday was Peter’s 50th birthday he took the day off work (I work at home so I can just about take time off whenever I want) and we went to Clovelly beach to try it out.

It’s pretty hard to take photos under water as the viewing screen on the digital camera isn’t really bright enough and the scenery is too low in contrast to make out much detail. The mask also made it impossible to use the veiwfinder so it was just point the camera in the general direction,  push the button and hope the photo will be O.K.

Clovelly has quite a lot of marine life and the fish that live there a fairly tame so it’s pretty easy to get close to them.

Even though the fish allow you to get close enough to take a photo they take off after a very short time making it difficult to take a photo. I took about ten photos of the fish (I think it’s a young female Eastern Blue Grouper Achoerodus viridis) in the picture below and only one was any good due to the fact that I couldn’t really see anything useful on the digital screen, so I was just pointing and shooting. Most of my shots were of the blurred fish darting away.

During our Vietnam trip last year my wife and bought a bronze statue of a Qilin in Hoi An.

Hoi An is an old port town with a large ethnic Chinese population. When I travel I like to buy some local artworks but in Vietnam that was a bit difficult because most of the stuff on offer seems to fall into roughly six categories.

1. Cheap and very nasty. As in real junk.
2. Bland decorative, of the kind one sees in hotel chains (now I know where they buy their stuff).
3. Antiques that if they are real, you can’t take out of the country.
4. Art with real merit but way out of my price range.
5. Bad copies of anything in an art history book.
6. Traditional items for local consumption.

We opted for category six.

The Qilin is a Chinese mythical creature with the head of a dragon and the body of a horse covered in scales and fire. They are considered good omens and the Japanese call them Kirin and the Vietnamese call them Kỳ lân.

Qilins are associated with the arrival of sages and the one we bought has a child holding books, riding on it’s back. Legend has it that the mother of Confucius saw a Qilin before she gave birth to him. Statues such the one above are placed in homes with the hope that a child will grow up to be a great person of learning.

We chose this particular piece because it was far and away the best realized bronze we saw in the two weeks we stayed in Vietnam. I love the stance as it reminds me of how the old Tang Dynasty artists posed their ceramic horses. Of course the statue lacks the svelte and graceful lines of the Tang era and it’s stockiness is more reminiscent of the Ming era. Don’t think for a minute that I think that this statue comes from those times. I know it was made recently in a town, not far from Hoi An called Phuoc Kew (no, I’m not kidding).

The bronze weighs 5.5kg (about 12lbs); stands 28cm (about 11″) high and it is 34cm (about 13″) long.

On a recent trip to Melbourne we (my wife Engogirl and I) visited our friends Liz and Karl for dinner in their back yard.

Karl made three delicious dishes for the main meal, Boeuf Bourguignonne, Goat Rendang curry and avocado salad which was followed up with orange cake and mango for dessert.  I know the purists out there are rolling their eyes but it all went together very well.

As we were tucking into our dessert a Brushtail Possum (Trichosurus vulpecula) dropped in to see if it could mooch some food. 

Australians reading this blog will know that Brushtail Possums are very common but I’m sure any foreigner visiting here would be charmed to see one so close. Many people feed the possums and they can be quite bold and for that reason one should be very careful around them as they can do a lot of damage with their sharp teeth and claws if they decide they are under some kind of threat.

I was out in the front garden pruning back my wattle trees (Acacia longifolia) when I came across this spectacular weevil. It was about 2.5cm (1″) in length.

 I identified it by going to the CSIRO website and according to the ABC website it was one of the first Australian insects to be described from material collected by Joseph Banks (the botanist who voyaged with James Cook on the Endeavour) back in 1770. 

Although this weevil is quite beautiful they are considered a pest in the home garden as the adults eat new acacia growth and the grubs eat the roots.