The Film

Polaroid 250 Land Camera

There are two vegetable drawers in our refrigerator, and one of them is crammed with nothing but film. I brought it with me when I moved to Melbourne almost 4 years ago. I've been paring it down slowly. Film is expensive here, and a large portion of my stash is Polaroid, which isn't made anymore, so I tell myself these pictures need to count. But the expiration dates have now long since passed, and every day I don't use it the film chemistry weakens a little bit more. At this point, each picture is a gamble.

But that's okay, because the results can be interesting. Two days ago I pulled out one of my beloved Polaroid cameras-- a heavy, black-and-silver 250 Land model from the late 60s that, when collapsed, is shaped like a Claymore mine.  I noticed it still had half a cartridge of colour 669 pack film in it, probably loaded sometime back in 2006, or perhaps even earlier. I took it with me to trugo practice that afternoon and snapped a picture of Champ nosing around in the garden area behind the clubhouse.

When I pulled on the tab, I heard the familiar dull whistle of the film moving between the metal rollers; it's akin to the sound of a silk necktie slipping briskly through your fingers. A fraction of a second before coming free of the camera body, I could detect the faint pop of the developer pod bursting and, immediately after, a whiff of the photochemistry that would begin to reveal an image; it's a cool, drowsy scent of something undefinably appealing I wish I could eat. I have the same fondness for the smell of gasoline.

© Peter Sackett

60 seconds later, I got this-- or at least something like it. I scanned the print and gave it a crude tweak in iPhoto to see what colours I could rescue, but clearly, red and magenta called it quits a long time ago. The print itself was even more blue than this. But hey, not bad considering that Polaroid would have classified the film as garbage.

I'm told the cross is a joke and that no one is actually buried there. The tripods are for tomatoes, which will be planted in the next week or so.

I'm not going to be nearly as stingy with this film as I have been. True, they're not making this exact stuff anymore, but Fuji now manufactures instant pack film that fits these cameras, so there's really no excuse for keeping it in the fridge. Time to use it.

The Plastic Menagerie

The remaining details of our New Zealand ski trip are awfully slow in coming, true, but I'll have to put those off just a little bit longer to document the recent arrival of a couple of important packages. The first showed up a few weeks ago, mailed to me by my friend Norm Bolotin-- a writer and historian in Woodinville, Washington, and owner of The History Bank. The second arrived yesterday, while I was out. It required a signature, and so I've just now retrieved it from the local newsagent. This package was sent by another friend, Diane Carlson, VP of Guest Services and Theater Programs at Pacific Science Center, in Seattle. Both boxes-- plain, brown and scuffed-- were filled with Mold-A-Ramas for my collection. Outstanding.

I'd gotten to know both Norm and Diane in the course of my research for my story about Mold-A-Ramas for Seattle Metropolitan. Though I don't name him in the article, Norm was the guy who recalled visiting the Seattle World's Fair as a ten-year-old boy, and riding around the fairgrounds with his father in a Cushman utility truck. He was great to talk with. Norm presides over an impressive collection of Century 21 memorabilia, including a large number of MARs, which he's slowly paring back to manageable numbers. Recognising a kindred spirit, he kindly offered to give some to me: kangaroo with joey, sea turtle (from the Lowry Park Zoo), Model T (Henry Ford Museum), rhinoceros (Milwaukee County Zoo), lion (Brookfield Zoo) and Santa Claus (unlabelled). 

I'll take good care of them, Norm.

Diane's institutional knowledge was also invaluable to me, and she felt it was appropriate that Pac Sci's set of the six MARs originally vended at the fair come to live with me. These include the Space Needle, monorail, Hotei, three wise monkeys, the symbol of the Pavilion of Electric Power, and the Century 21 logo. As a super bonus, she included some MARs currently available at her facility: a butterfly, space robot, tyrannosauraus rex, the Yamasaki-designed arches of the former US Science Pavilion (now Pacific Science Center), and the extraordinary naked mole rats. 

Thank you, Diane. They're in good hands!

The Ski Trip

On July 2, Anne, Bronwyn, Alison and I boarded a plane for Queenstown, New Zealand. I certainly didn't feel as though I'd "earned" a ski trip, but the plans had been made many months earlier by the other three, and I was looking forward to my first real stay in NZ. Prior to this, my only exposure to the land of the kiwi had been through concourse windows at Auckland airport, on the way to somewhere else.

The nerdier among you may be aware that Queenstown was a base of operations for a good deal of the filming of the "Lord of the Rings" movie trilogy. The mountains here are every bit as grand and rugged as they appear onscreen, and we were treated to a cinematic view as we drifted over them in a roar of white noise on our southeast trajectory from Melbourne. Slipping low into the range on our approach, the snow-covered slopes loomed in the porthole windows on both sides of the plane; suddenly, without the ability to see their peaks, they appeared huge but scale-less, and perilously close. I was reminded of a scene filmed in an entirely different climate-- at the edge of the Suez Canal in "Lawrence of Arabia" when Peter O'Toole gawks at the sight of a massive ship cutting through the desert.

The airport. I don't know who this is, but I like his posture and the arrows over his head.

The air was cold and clear when we landed, and from the tarmac we passed through the duty-free shop, for gin, and into the line for customs clearance. Anne's shoes, which bore traces of Australian mud, were momentarily confiscated for a good scrubbing by one of the officers. After picking up the rental car, we drove to the hotel to drop off our bags and then headed straight into town to pick up our pre-arranged ski gear.

Brown's Ski Rentals, though thronged with customers, was a crackerjack operation and had me outfitted inside an hour with some pretty sweet-looking gear. I just had no faith I'd know how to make it work. The one and only time I had ever skied was at Massanutten, Virginia with my friend Leigh Carroll, when I was 13. I made perhaps two trips down the slope that afternoon and I don't recall having particularly enjoyed myself. But I did still like the idea of skiing and was eager to learn.

Pixelated Paradise

In the days before this blog, I wrote a piece for Design Quarterly about Adam Reed Tucker's monumental architectural constructions in Lego blocks, then on display at the National Building Museum in Washington, DC. Over a year later, the exhibit is as popular as ever, and continues to appear on the museum's second floor.

Interested but can't make the trip? Read "Pixelated Paradise" from issue 40.

Splinters in the Mix

This is really more of a Twitter sort of thing than an actual post, but it relates to yesterday's first blog entry, "The Reminder". The New Yorker's Leo Carey and Ken Auletta have weighed in on what the proliferation of e-books may mean for the future not just of publishing, but for writing, and the nonfiction variety in particular. Yikes. There's a long preamble, so I suggest skipping ahead to about the 6:40 mark and starting from there. 

Souvenirs from MARs

The Pacific Science Center Mold-A-Rama.

I had a great time researching and writing a story about one of my favourite topics, Mold-A-Rama, for Seattle Metropolitan. "Souvenirs from MARs" is in their July issue, on newsstands now, but they've posted the full text online, along with some nifty animated GIFs. Mold-A-Rama made its public debut at the Century 21 Exposition during the 1962 World's Fair in Seattle. I'd latched onto this topic after getting to know a man named Bill Bollman, who collects and restores coin-operated vending machines. Since discovering these machines for himself, they've more or less eclipsed the rest of his collection. 

The Reminder

I had a coffee meeting the other morning with a close writer/editor friend. It was time to catch up, and also kick around some ideas for a couple of articles we'd be writing over the next week. We also commiserated about the business of writing, and how challenging it can be to match our enthusiasm for it to the publications that demonstrate some interest in what words can describe. So many pictures these days, so little content. And let me tell you, it's particularly bad with design mags.

But anytime you plead the case for good writing, eyes glaze over. People seem to feel that they should care about it, but they can't muster much passion for the cause.  And when you find yourself proselytising to folks who neither know, nor care about, the difference between "your" and "you're," exhaustion and annoyance take hold quickly.

Sometimes it gets depressing to the point where I start questioning if I'm just overestimating my importance and abilities, or if anyone cares about them. I don't mean to suck my thumb; I just pride myself on possessing reasonably good skill at description, and on at least trying to write as much for the reader's entertainment as for my own.

But is anyone reading?

Here is Australia, Fairfax Media, publisher of both The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, our two largest broadsheet newspapers, has announced the impending layoff of 1900 employees, and an anticipated shift to a tabloid format. 20% of those dismissed will come from editorial staff. Not enough customers.

Having finished our coffees, we walked back to my friend's office where I picked up a recently-published issue of a design magazine that I will leave unnamed. Later, I took my seat on the tram and flicked randomly through the pages, stopping halfway through an article about the design of a new corporate headquarters in Sydney. The author had written:

"Clear imageability assists us to orientate ourselves, and find our way about. Psychologically we feel more comfortable in a city with legibility."

I couldn't have written a less legible sentence. And I felt glad I could recognise that.

The Long, Hot Simmer

In the design world, talk is particularly cheap and selling excitement is never easy. The task is made harder still when the commotion comes from a place called Adelaide-- a grandmotherly name for a city of churches. Read my recent report on the highs and lows of design in the state of South Australia, in "The Long, Hot Simmer", in issue 70 of Inside magazine.

The Queen's Birthday

Roo crossing.

While Alison and her friends spent the long holiday weekend in Bendigo inspecting Grace Kelly's wardrobe, on Sunday morning Beau and I sped out beyond the western suburbs to do some geocaching. Beau had identified a tidy string of caches in close proximity to one another in and around the town of Eynesbury, Victoria. According to a sign we passed, it's home to one of the largest remaining grey box forests in the state. Eastern grey kangaroos live here, too, but the weather was too foul for them to be out.

Roadside at Five Ways, VIC

After knocking over a few simple but muddy caches, we stopped to tour Eynesbury itself, a historic town which has been almost completely redeveloped around a golf course. What remains of the original town looks nice; there's an elevated reservoir, and several sturdy blue stone dwellings, a number of which appear to have been adapted for utilitarian use. But the new houses are predictably ugly and flimsy-looking. There was a large site model on display at the sales office that I lingered over, and Beau bought a bag of potato chips at the open but idle convenience store next door. The shop was essentially just a large room that had been set up to sell the bare essentials to desperate townsfolk, and people like us who were driving through and had no other reason to be there. There were perhaps only 80 or so different products for sale, in quantities of only one or two each-- a sleeve of cookies, can of tuna, toothpaste, instant noodles, a tiny jar of mayonnaise, Coke, AA batteries and blister packs of sliced ham. I noted with some amusement that Aeroplane port wine jelly was also among them. Then we walked to the edge of a small lake where Beau rummaged in the bushes and discovered another cache that I had been ready to give up looking for.

The horse from Little River Ripley Reserve

In the rain and chill, that bag of chips had only whetted our appetites, so we crossed to the other side and ate lunch at the golf club, which had been established inside one of larger surviving blue stone buildings-- perhaps a former farm estate-- and expanded with sun rooms and other structural additions. What must have been the entire population of Eynesbury had just come in from the golf course, dripping, and was now placing orders at the counter. Our timing was almost perfect. Beau had a meat pie with chips and salad, and I had a bowl of vegetable soup.

After lunch, we left Eynesbury to find the cache that Beau really cared about-- one in a diabolically lengthy, complicated and far-flung series he'd been following for many weeks. Eventually we pulled into a small parking area off the highway at a place called Little River Ripley Reserve, which consisted of a metal pergola and a decaying picnic table amid a grove of enormous eucalypts that followed the banks of a stream. While I peed on an old grey box, he found the treasure, which included a small plastic horse I decided to keep.

We both had a nice time. I think Beau was disappointed by the rainy weather, but I thought it made for a good adventure. Thanks, Beau!

Sign Language

I'd blogged earlier about my interview with Stephen Banham in The Typographer. The finished article, about the design of signs, has since been published in Design Quarterly.

Click here to read "Sign Language," appearing in issue 45.

The Maid

The Maid. (P. Sackett)

The Back of the Pantry

We've postponed grocery shopping for a couple of weeks. For the most part, it's been a beneficial exercise in frugality and resourcefulness. Alison and I don't really go for processed foods, so we don't have deep stores of rations to weed through. But, now and then, it's a good idea to consider the things that sit in the shadowy zones of the pantry, and to see what's still edible among the time capsules in the freezer. Yesterday afternoon I wanted something sweet, and the apples and bananas were long gone. Way in the back of the cupboard, between a jar of clumpy beef bouillon powder and what looked like part of an insect that never achieved infestation status, was this little purple box. When port wine-flavoured jello starts looking like an attractive snack, it's time to go shopping again.

I bought it 7 or 8 months ago because I'd never seen it before, and knew I'd be willing to try it at some point. Today was the day. Aeroplane is the Jell-O of Australia, and, by the way, it's called jelly here. I'm not sure why port wine struck the Aeroplane flavourings team as a good idea. Bertie, the jolly airplane pictured at top right, is clearly meant to appeal to kids, so there seems to be some demographic confusion here.

Flavour-wise, this is nothing like port wine, which is good because I don't like port (evidenced by our collection of dust-and-web-covered bottles given to us by friends). But I don't like this stuff, either; it tastes like weak grape juice filtered through musty carpet padding. Aeroplane offers a few other interesting varieties that I may try in even more desperate times ahead, perhaps when I've run out of syrup of ipecac: blue heaven, "creaming soda", and bubblegum.

Cat Pee

Daisy, Momo, Bamako: take note.

A package from my brother, Scott, who lives in Ellensburg, Washington, arrived recently, stuffed with some items we'd ordered from REI for a New Zealand ski trip we're planning for July. It was part of a plan we had for saving money on international shipping; I'd left my ski pants in the United States, so we had the gear mailed to him and asked Scott to add the pants to the package from REI and send the whole bundle together. 

As I rummaged though the box I discovered this note written by my nephew, Ben, who is 6. It reads:

Please do not let the cats pee in my bedroom. Thank you! --Ben

I dwelled on this for a bit, and three scenarios offer possible explanations:

1.) Ben wrote this to me, thinking I have some regulatory control over Daisy, Momo and Bamako from this great distance. (Alas, I do not.)

2.) Ben wrote the note to his parents, Scott and Kara, who either: a.) deemed it a pathetic and futile request and sent it to me at the expense of Ben's dignity, as if to say, "Dig this, Pete", or b.) have already taken appropriate measures to make Ben's bedroom a less attractive place to tinkle, and  included the note as a charming token from back home.

3.) Demonstrating a textbook example of passive-aggressive behaviour, Ben wrote this to the cats, assuming that while Scott was preparing the shipment, Daisy, Momo and Bamako would succumb to typical feline curiosity and inspect the box, thereby discovering the note and feeling chastised without the embarrassment of a confrontation.

Given that my ski pants smell like cat pee, I pick number 3.

The Chart

I am entertained by simple things. Take the Bristol Stool Chart, for example. It's a reference tool used by doctors and nurses since 1997, and it addresses a serious topic-- gastrointestinal health.

I think it's hilarious. I first heard of the chart from my friend Luce, who works as a physiotherapist at Melbourne Hospital. She knew of my fondness for toilet humour and asked me one day if I'd like her to find me a copy of the chart to hang on my wall-- perhaps in the bathroom or kitchen. I think my reply was something like, "Duh!"

That was a couple of years ago, but she still hasn't been able to find a "nice one" for me. Given the workplace context in which I imagine this chart being used, I'm willing to wait. In the meantime, though, I came across this handy pocket-sized version included with a product called Motion Potion-- one of the lamer freebies Alison got in her bag of goodies after a triathlon she ran last season.

Mike digs a latrine.

Poop is funny on its own, but I also derive pleasure from thinking about how this chart first came to be. First, the illustrations: someone drew or painted these pictures by hand. The Bristol Stool Scale may have been published in 1997, but the style of illustration, cute and storybookish, is straight out of the 1930s. These little brown piles could easily have been censored from the final edits of Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel or Fun with Dick and Jane. 


And then there's the writing. What fun! I can imagine the copy writer walking that fine line, imagining how best to describe a piece of shit and not make someone sick or collapse with laughter:

"Like a sausage, smooth and soft."

or

"Fluffy pieces, ragged edges, mushy stool."

It's like haiku. The captions are clinically precise, but reveal a solid command of visual vocabulary. Someone had fun with this even if they tried to hide it.

The Cage Fight

 (© Peter Sackett)

A few weeks ago, while hanging out with the old folks at the Brunswick Trugo Club, I met a photojournalist named Paul Jeffers. He'd taken an interest in the game much the same way I had-- having noticed its oddness and vulnerability-- and decided to start documenting the sport and its players. Before long, we were sharing ideas for other subjects we thought might make good stories. My experience as a supernumerary in La Boheme was one that I came up with. One of Paul's was to follow a 24-year-old Samoan cagefighter named Mikey Ventou'ua as he prepared for his first professional match.
Cagefighting ranks mighty low on my list of interests, varied as they may be. Conversely, it ranks very high on my list of things I don't care a lick about. But I do like a change of pace, and the design writing schtick is feeling pretty stale these days. Sure, I said, let's see what happens.

At ringside with beer.

We met Mikey briefly at his friend's barber shop in Glenroy, about 20 minutes north of the Melbourne CBD. Mikey is short and bright-eyed, and muscly in a way that reminds one of balloon animals. He was getting his hair cut in preparation for the fight; according to Mikey, this was a ritual. Considering this was the eve of his first bout, though, I wasn't sure how fixed a tradition this could have been; maybe he just looked forward to it becoming one. The next night Paul and I, having obtained media passes, drove to down to Geelong to watch the match, which was being held at the local arena.

The place swarmed with people who looked like extras borrowed from "Strictly Ballroom" and "The Road Warrior"-- among the ladies, cheetah-print stretch pants appeared in more-than-average numbers, even for Australia; scrawny, sunburned men with Red Bull baseball caps aggressively sucked cigarettes from pinched fingers; and among all, there were mongrel assortments of tattoos, infected-looking ear and neck piercings, and hair chopped and shaved into mangey patchworks.

Good day for Mikey; bad day for my hair.

Paul and I were concerned that we weren't going to enjoy this at all. We'd agreed that neither one of us liked blood, and there was going to be plenty of it on the floor. As it turned out, we both had a great time. It wasn't that we liked the fighting, but that we had such freedom to roam where we wanted. Cage fighting is just catching on here, and with our media passes, were able to hang out in the back room where the fighters were having their knuckles taped, walk out with their entourage in clouds of artificial fog when their names were announced, and circle the ring freely without getting the least bit of harassment. In the United States it would have been a different story-- we'd be confined to a more limited circuit. Paul was able to get some great shots, and I was close enough that I could hear sweat flying and the splitting of skin. We were both able to focus completely on the action without interruption, and that was a pleasure.

Photos by Paul Jeffers unless otherwise noted.

The Bohemian

A pre-performance briefing with the cast (Photo: Paul Jeffers)

I made no mention of it earlier, but I appeared recently in Melbourne Opera's production of La Boheme. No, I didn't sing. I was a supernumerary-- essentially an extra, or mute actor-- playing the maitre d' of the Café Momus in Act II. About four years ago, before I moved to Melbourne, I'd been recruited as a "super" for Seattle Opera's staging of Aida and had a terrific time of it. Among the cast of an opera, supers are the lowest ranking and, in larger companies, often kept totally separate from the chorus members, dancers, musicians and principles. We're usually unpaid and seldom talked to, or even acknowledged, by the singers. Basically, a super has little to contribute other than their physical presence. So why is it fun? Because I get to be onstage (which I love) and I get see everything that happens behind the scenes. 

Applying makeup in the green room (Photo: Paul Jeffers)

But Melbourne Opera is a much smaller company than Seattle Opera, and so I mingled with everyone. Though I had a larger role in La Boheme, I was given little direction compared to what I received for Aida; in that production, in which I was only one of almost two dozen supernumerary soldiers, we nonetheless had handlers and several stage assistants to herd us into place offstage, cue our entries, distribute and collect props and apply our make-up. By contrast, in this production I was pretty much on my own. Two weeks of rehearsal. That's was it. I applied my own make-up, watching others to learn the technique. To complete my costume I had to supplement it with items from my own wardrobe-- the trousers came from the tuxedo I wear to Freemason lodge meetings.

Waiting for Act II (Photo: Paul Jeffers)

For those unfamiliar with the story, Act II of La Boheme takes place in the Latin Quarter of Paris, in the street outside the café. As the maitre d', I'm very busy greeting customers and fretting about what to do with the principles, who can't pay for what they order. There's a nifty sight gag at the very end of the act, when I present an enormous check to a wealthy chump who's been stuck with the bill while the others have run off to play elsewhere.

Altogether, we gave six performances-- five at the Athenaeum Theatre on Collins Street, and one at Monash University. Not a single one of them was executed without some sort of minor disaster-- missing props, curtains going up before the cast was ready, plates that bounced off the floor instead of smashing, etc. Supering for Melbourne Opera was fun, though a very different experience from my first in Seattle. I'd like to do it again, but those opportunities seem harder to come by Down Under.

The Rodeo

On Sunday night, Sue, Alison and I drove north from Wunghnu to Tocumwal for the rodeo. Tocumwal is a small country town on the Murray River just over the border with New South Wales, and very popular with weekend holiday-makers. We approached the town at night, and could see their campfires flickering in the dark, tracing the contours of the Murray.

Sue kindly paid our admission of $25 per person, which I thought staggering for a small country festival. All of the action was contained within a single, large aluminium corral that had been erected for the purpose. Spectators either stood, clutching foam rubber stubby holders with cans of Bundaberg Rum & Cola screwed into them, or perched on bails of hay that flanked the corral. A few lucky folks had grabbed seats slightly further away in a small grandstand that had three rows of tiered benches. Preschoolers ran up and down pathways, waving battery-operated plastic lightsabres. Smoking teens congregated around empty fuel barrels in which fires had been lit for warmth. The rodeo action was fast and constant with scarcely a lull between events, but we had to peer between the aluminium bars to see what was happening. Modern country and western music blared over loudspeakers while the announcer shouted the names of competitors.

Sue and Alison scrutinised the program, which indicated that we'd arrived just in time for the "rope & tie," sponsored by Greenways Holiday Units of Tocumwal.  I headed to the opposite end of the show grounds to see what looked interesting among the food and game vendors.


I liked the "Circus Clowns Winning Numbers" setup; the prizes held no interest for me, but the clowns themselves looked old fashioned and slightly creepy, as their open-mouthed, disembodied heads oscillated in unison. As far as traditional carnival paraphernalia goes, these were the genuine article and it was nice to see them, looking vibrant and well-cared for. I wondered if these kinds of arcade attractions were still made. I certainly hope so.

Food-wise, the Dagwood Dog stand seemed to be doing the briskest business. A Dagwood Dog is the Australian version of a corn dog, but with a thicker sheath of fried batter. According to Wikipedia, these can also be called a Pluto Pup or a Dippy Dog, depending on the region. [By the way, all of these names struck me as better than the disgusting moniker "Krusty Pup" favoured in the Pacific Northwest.] Another vendor-- a group of moms raising funds for the local primary school-- sold hamburgers with cole slaw on them. I bought one, deciding it was the healthiest option available.

Before heading back to the show, I lingered a bit, watching a solitary horse that had been tied up next to its trailer beneath enormous red gum trees, with bark that looked ghostly and luminous in the mixture of halogen light and wood smoke that hung in the air. It was the only non-performing animal I saw. Having exhausted the quiet end of the rodeo grounds, I rejoined Sue and Alison just in time to catch the open barrel race.

The Premiers

They even spelled my name correctly.

The big news in trugo? Well, the competitive season has just come to a close and the motley crew from Brunswick won the championship. (That's my team, by the way.)

I'd refrained from writing more about trugo during the season. This blog is still too brief to support more cute reports about ring-chasing dogs and cranky, chain-smoking pensioners, so I held off. Things weren't looking too rosy for Brunswick anyway. Of seven teams in total, ours was fourth or fifth on the ladder, depending on the week. Only twice during the entire season did we have a complete team (eight players) present on a game day, requiring first-half players to play again the second half, and giving us a severe point handicap nearly every match [players who compete twice in the same game can score no more than 16 points out of a possible 24 their second time up].

I'd been performing fairly well for a first-seasoner, but then I ducked out of three games to fly back to the United States in September. Team captain Gerald Strachan's son Patrick plays extremely well, but due to his work schedule he'd been available only half the time. Doc is a hypochondriac and spent half the season in physicians' waiting rooms, and Gerald himself had a hernia operation and other similar internal maintenance to take care of. And at least a couple of times, certain folks just forgot to show up.

But as soon as the finals began, we started winning. Big. Weaker players suddenly found their swing and grew confident. Gerald healed. Doc became more interested in playing than in worrying. And Percy decided, apparently, that having a few beers at the pub before the game might help him limber up a little. Before we knew it, we'd beaten top dogs Port Melbourne by a healthy margin and claimed the title.

We got our Soviet-looking trophies last Thursday during a small, post-sandwich-and-coffee ceremony at South Melbourne. I'm not sure I'll be able to play next season, so this is a great way to end my first.

Punto

Punto

At 2AM last Friday, my friend Kristel emailed me from Belgium with the news that her cat Punto, a spectacular Maine Coon and also a good friend of mine, wasn't doing well at all; and if somehow I managed to find myself awake at that hour, I'd have a small window of opportunity to say goodbye to him over Skype before she had to make a tearful trip to the vet. By some fluke I was still up, having returned late from a Freemason function, and I'd decided to check my messages before heading to bed. I was pretty well exhausted, but I couldn't imagine not trying to reach them.

I'd met both Kristel and Punto several years ago at more or less the same time, but it's my first encounter with Punto that I remember clearly. I'd been watching television by myself in the sprawling resident lounge of my apartment building in Seattle when a large cat swaggered in, alone. He paused and scanned the room nonchalantly, his gaze landing momentarily on me. "Hello," I said. He blinked, then continued into the room, inspecting the soft furniture. A few moments later, Kristel appeared in the doorway. The two of them had just moved into the building.

After summoning Kristel on Skype, we talked for a few minutes, reminding each other how terrific Punto was, and I managed to catch a glimpse of him resting on the couch beside her. He was quiet and Kristel was deeply upset. We kept it short.

At about the same time I moved to Australia, Kristel moved with Punto back to her native Belgium, and they've been living in Vosselaar, near Antwerp, ever since. In 2010, during a business trip to Germany, I managed to tack on a four-day visit to see them. Kristel and I had a really good time, going for walks through the neighbourhood and the city, and taking the train to Louvain-la-Neuve to see the recently-opened Musée Hergé. And I remember how lucky I felt that Punto, notoriously fickle, chose to hang out with me while I slept.

I miss you, friend. Happy trails.

The Tall Ships

© Peter Sackett

I've been building scale models of assorted structures over the past few weeks, and I'd just finished one of a postwar high-rise apartment.

I took this picture very casually, with my crappy three-year-old iPhone, and I sort of liked the result because it reminded me of the time we stayed with my grandparents in their apartment at Sutton Place South in New York to watch the tall ships sail down the East River, in 1976.

Though that apartment faces the river, this view offers some of the flavour of what it felt like to peer down at the street from the penthouse.

The Mirage

An impromptu breakfast out this morning with the usual suspects took us to El Mirage, one of numerous small places to under-eat and overspend along Lygon Street with decorating schemes that strike a precarious balance between precision and dishevelment. Inside and out, the place hovers somewhere between a Los Angeles barrio garage and an architect's studio.

Harsh sun floods the plinth deck out front, populated with young-to-middle-aged bed-headed folks wearing aggressively cheap sunglasses and tattoos. Inside, a high arc ceiling of faux brown maple curls over the tables, in high contrast to retro celadon wallpaper and butterceam-painted brick. Tables are routinely wiped clean and there's no crusty build-up on the Tabasco bottle, but dust bunnies congregate in corners, quietly multiplying. Specimens of gluten-free muffins are held in stasis nearby within a gleaming glass display case, not a crumb in sight.

After half of a good latte, I decided I'd steer clear of the ever-popular but seldom-satisfying eggs benedict, and chose the potato rosti, which promised a poached egg alongside a combination of roasted spuds and feta. What arrived gave the impression of a plateful of condiments arranged in a circle, staring at the empty centre of the plate, each waiting for the other to take the lead. None did. Ringing the plate's perimeter: rosti-- tiny, thatched balls of pan-fried potato strings, good on texture but light on flavour, and with no detectable feta; the promised poached egg, sitting blankly; a haystack of peppery but undressed rocket, from which I plucked a few rubbery, wilted leaves; and a small ramekin of brilliant red sauce (the only true condiment, but a little flat) made of tomato and red capsicum. With no obvious starting point, there was little choice but to mix one with the other and hope something interesting happened. It didn't.

The ingredients were small and tame enough to make a fork feel too large and clumsy a tool for the job. Chopsticks might have helped, but would have left too much of what was in low supply to begin with on the plate. It made for quick but unsatisfying work, the fleeting image of breakfast vanishing from my plate in a few swipes.

The Joeys

During dinner at the Shamrock Hotel in Numurkah a few days ago, Sue McGorlick mentioned an acquaintance of hers, Rachel, who rehabilitates orphaned baby kangaroos, or joeys. I'd been thinking about kangaroos and Australian road kill as a story topic for some time, so I asked Sue where this woman lived.

"Right here, in Numurkah," she said.

Rooster leans into a good scratch.

A couple of days later, on a sweltering December afternoon, Alison and I drove the short distance from Wunghnu to Rachel's house, a modern single-storey brick bungalow with an inner courtyard enclosed by a wooden fence. Outside, propped in a chair on the front stoop, was an effigy of Santa Claus in his heavy red-and-white cold-weather outfit; his cherubic face was covered with a rubber mask of the wolf man, gnashing his teeth.

"That's for the bad kids," Rachel remarked as she opened the gate to let us in.

Grazing in the middle of a patch of grass, amid flower beds, a large dog house and a portable swimming pool, were two Eastern Grey kangaroos in miniature: triangular heads, the ears of a wild hare and bodies engineered for propulsion. In profile, their leg-tail configuration reminded me of the legs of Mies Van der Rohe's Barcelona chair. Lizzie, the female, had been rescued from her mother after she'd been hit by a car in front of the college campus at Dookie, a town about 20 minutes south. Rooster, the male, was discovered hopping nearby, also without a parent. The two were the same age, but not siblings. Rooster's mother had likely met the same fate. According to Rachel, joeys can survive in the mother's pouch up to four days after she's been killed, so it's always necessary to take a close look when a downed kangaroo is discovered.

Lizzie prepares for a nap.

I had expected the joeys to be feral and aloof, but they enjoyed being petted and scratched, straightening their backs and leaning in blissfully. Their fur was surprisingly soft; on the ridge of Rooster's back it grew in both directions, permanently tousled. Lizzie's coat was fleecier and more Steiff-like, and on her belly she already had a tiny pouch of her own. I wrapped my fingers gently around Rooster's tail. It was heavy and bony. It felt like a garden house filled with wet cement, and as strong as a buggy spring. Rooster hopped away a few feet across the yard and then back to me for more attention.

Bag o' roo.

When it's time for bed, the joeys sleep in homemade cloth bags that Rachel hangs on a couple of door knobs in her living room. When she brought them out, Lizzie and Rooster climbed inside and Alison and I each got to hold a bagful of baby roo until it was time to leave.

Rachel explained that in another four months Lizzie and Rooster would be too big for her property and they'd be transferred north to a place near the border with New South Wales, close to where they'd be released.

"As sweet as they are now," she explained, "they go feral very quickly once they go back to the wild."