Shouts From Down Under

I seem to have something in my eyes - they're watering..

Two song versions, by The Piano Guys, prompted me to think about how we interpret someone's creative work, put it across to others, and encapsulate this feeling in ourselves.

Do you remember times you've sat outside under the stars, slept outside camping, or had the car break down. You're there in a situation where you have no choice but to SEE those stars.

Not everyone has this opportunity, and some, like me, forget how brilliant and clear they can be, outside a major city. The sky is so unutterably black, a giant dome of nothing; truly a void. But there are the stars. See up there? Look at that..oh! There's ***** constellation, and *interrupted* Hey, there's a shooting star! Did you see it? Yeah, I saw it. No I didn't see it, where, where? Ohhhh I didn't see it Mum! *starts to whinge and cry*

Yes, sitting looking up at the stars eh? Or lying on a mattress on the tray back of the truck, or car bonnet. The bonnets were tougher back then

That was the life. The slapping when mozzies would sting your neck or elbow, or shins, or toes.

Here. Have some more water melon. She's a beauty this one eh? Nice and sweet. Was a good year this year for these.

Our Dad used to do a batch of Ginger Beer some summers, if he wasn't away shearing. If that happened, if he did come home for weekends, he'd be too tired to be bothered.

So the batch of Ginger Beer would be made from the "plant"; mum doesn't remember where it was bottled up, but possibly the laundry, or in the kitchen. Our house didn't have anything fancy. It was fibro with a corrugated iron roof. two sides had no verandah and most of the windows were glass louvres.
The other two sides were verandah, with a toilet, bathroom and laundry, and a walkway between these rooms and a sliding door into the kitchen.

The bottles of Ginger Beer would be all stacked under the house in the cool. A few weeks later, we'd be sitting around in the shade, of an afternoon, eating watermelon, and the odd time you'd hear a muffled thud under the house. This was a bottle exploding. Sometimes it would be a huge bang. We'd laugh and go on eating. The violent explosions meant the brew would be good when we did open it.

Opening a bottle was a process not taken lightly.

There'd be froth everywhere, even when a lot of time was taken to loosen the toggling cap mechanism. Lots of commentary, advice and encouragement would be said by everyone watching.

Finally you'd be drinking a glass of it.

The Ginger Beer wouldn't be like the stuff you buy now. It'd be very cloudy with bits of things in it. I'm not sure what they were, but it would taste divine. I'm saying - it tasted so much better than today's watered down useless lolly water. And it had a pepper taste.

We had fly paper strips hanging from the ceiling back then. Except the ceiling wasn't there. You could look up above the roof beams and see the underside of the roofing iron, covered in tar paper.
Sometimes opening the bottles of Ginger Beer, in the earlier years when corks were used, the cork would fly up to hit the roof, putting a dent in the tar paper. Of course, when this happened us kids were delighted.

Times sure change, and so does litigation. No wonder we have a world lacking in realness for our younger generations. But take courage people.

Cheer up!

Go outside with your kids tonight. If you live in the city, go for a drive at midnight. They'll either be excited that you think it's ok for them to be up, or they'll think you're nuts for getting them off their computer. But do it! Go, everyone, and drive outside the city, a few miles away, and stop and look at the stars. Nobody has thought of a way to prevent us seeing the stars. Except to invent prisons without windows facing the sky.

I think that nobody should be kept from seeing the stars every now and then. They inspire the best, soften the hardest criminal, and encourage us to think of something much higher than ourselves. If we get too proud, that has to be a good thing, for us and everyone else.



This next song makes me imagine returning to the family station (huge farm or ranch in Australia) after many years away without contact, for whatever reason; much like the old novel by FJ Thwaites, published in 1931, called The Broken Melody.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Broken_Melody_(1937_film) (click on Original Novel)

There was a film produced from this novel, and something I didn't know until just now, he wrote a sequel to the novel in 1935.

Here's everything about the novel, and if you ever get the chance, see if your library has it stored in their stacks, or try to buy a copy second hand.

The main character Digby Judd returns home after many years away, and yes, being a good novel with romance following the conflict like a dogs tail, he has a true-love waiting all those years at home.


The feeling of returning home is captured so well in this novel. And turns me back again to the Piano Guy's piece.

The sound of train track joins clacking, the rousing crescendos, the lonely drifting, the isolation brought into the theme, and, I suspect, the tears of reunion when the prodigal son, or perhaps just someone who had to leave for whatever reason (me), comes back to their roots, their boy / girl hood, the subjects of their dreams, their home.





Sparky