The Apocalypse

Today the 1st of June 2010 the news is disturbing. Israel kills 19 on a boat loaded with humanitarian aid for the Gaza strip in International waters. The Gulf of Mexico is filling up with oil from a badly engineered oil exploration drill which B.P. knew may not work in very deep waters. People say that the everglades are deadly silent and divers have reported that there is oil going down as far as is possible to dive.

A mother allegedly kills her children in a messy breakup. A boy sets alight a boys face and chest with lighter fluid while he sleeps -out of it - at a party. The boys are 15. A man is charged with the alleged rape of a 14 year old girl and setting fire to the house where the child was severely burned. A man is seen fighting with a girl in a car at a service station where he allegedly knifes her and sets fire to the car. A passer by said the car blew up like a bomb and by the time she was rescued there was not one inch of skin left on her body. In the process of this horrendous event one of the bowser's ignited.

Today at my favorite vegan restaurant my friends showed me some prize winning photos taken in an abattoir. The live pigs head is to the left of the picture and his eye is looking at the viewer while at the right a pig is hanging by one leg in its death throes. This eye of the pig whose genes closely resemble humans knows what is going to happen to him and is staring into our soul and asking why ?


Another photo is of two little lambs watching through a doorway sheep being skinned in an assembly line.


I took photos like these in China in a market place where people have skinned civets lying curled up in cages while below are the live ones trying to claw their way out. In other cages monkeys and cats looked with their imploring eyes and desperate, frightened Pangolins crawled and curled up over and under, round and around in a cage so small it could not stretch out in. Dogs were drowned, skinned and hung by the legs in rows.

That market was like being a nightmare as our abattoirs are. We subject our fellow animals to such immense cruelty and we justify it as our need for protein. Humans are greedy. Human greed is devouring our beautiful precious planet. The precious and innocent animals and environment are being sacrificed by people more dangerous than a meteorite.

My heart is breaking. Please stop eating animals you can live without it.

Pink Baby Rabbits

When I was a very small child I had a recurring dream that lasted till I was about 9 years old. I was standing on the veranda with some daffodils in my hand when I saw a man coming towards me wheeling a wheelbarrow. The scene seemed normal until I looked up and saw a box on the veranda post with a white hand sticking out of it. It was terrifying. Even more terrifying was the man coming closer and closer to me to get me and put me in the wheelbarrow and cart me away. Worst of all I was stuck to the spot and couldn't move. That's when I woke up screaming.

Dad had two workers on the farm Jack and Tom. Tom was serious and didn't have much to say to us kids but Jack was funny and would play games with us. One of my first memories was going rabbiting with Dad and Jack. I was very small.

Rabbits were a serious problem and Dad spent a lot of time grubbing wattles and digging out rabbit holes. I remember being told to sit in one spot and wait until Jack would come back and give me these tiny pink rabbits that had not opened their eyes and had no fur. I loved them, I cuddled, I kissed them and made little homes for them with small sticks. Then Dad would call me away and then I couldn't find the rabbits and would cry.

A few years ago my older sister told me a story about Jack. She can remember the time when she went to the cowshed where Jack was milking the cows. He said something about showing her something special and pulled out his willie and masturbated until it squirted out in front of her. She must have been only 5 or 6 years old and she never told our parents.

Dad hated child molesters, he thought they should be taken away and shot.

The Stamp Album

I was listening to the radio about collecting and a man began to talk about how he started to collect stamps when he was young. I recalled my stamp collecting childhood. I had 3 passions when I was 9 years old animals, bird watching and stamp collecting. The excitement of going into town to Coles and Woolworths to buy stamps hoping against hope that I would get a rare one was matched with swapping stamps with other kids. I learnt a lot about the world with stamps. I learnt about bad people who figured large in the collection like Hitler, Stalin and Franco but I had a lot of the Queen who I loved more than all the film stars.

I did see the Queen once. She came to Benalla and the family drove to see her. I stood in the front row waving a flag but as she passed in the big black car she turned away and waved at the opposite side and I only saw her white glove and the Duke of Edinburough which was a terrible disappointment.

It was a spring day and the wild flowers were out in the bush. I was wandering around as I did by myself when the next door neighbour's young worker called me over and asked me if I wanted to go up the bush. I guess he was about 18 years old and I hardly knew him but I still went with him. I soon realized that he wasn't interested in looking for greenhood orchids and early nancie's but we climbed the hill anyway and sat in the bald part looking at all the country below us. It was a beautiful sight. I never got sick of looking at that scene and the feeling of serenity that came over me.

The boy started looking restless and moving closer. He asked did I want to do something with him and started unbuttoning his fly. I knew what he meant. All the boys had played with us girls as younger children but this one was different. Alone in the bush I bravely said no. He offered me a stamp album if I did it with him. I will never forget the terrible dilemma I was in. More than ever I wanted a stamp album with good stamps, rare ones he said he had the best. A real collector is transported into a delirious state when offered an object of desire. My mouth filled with saliva as I thought of the prospect of having it.

I looked at him, his desperate wild face close to mine and realised the cost would be to great and I was scared. He grabbed me by the arm, the big strong boy but I broke his grip and ran down the hill running as fast as my little legs would go with him after me crashing through the trees and trampling the wild flowers.

I got home battered and bruised. Mum never noticed that anything was wrong and I never told her or anyone, such was my shame. There never was any stamp album and I never went near that boy again.

The Village Restauranter

He arrived in the village with a swagger. Overconfident and with an inflated sense of his own importance he told everyone he could that he was going to make the best restaurant in the street and that the other cafe's might as well pack up and go. He was an unattractive man - the sort that was creepy but hard to say why. His restaurant was called Japanese but had nothing Japanese about it except sushi and hand rolls with bizarre fillings. His coca cola sign at the front topped it off. This restaurant was going nowhere we said to each other indeed it was a bit of a joke especially as all sorts of rumors about his last restaurant were circulating involving rooms rented upstairs at inflationary prices to girls of a certain profession.

His other restaurant in the street more akin to his background was going fine and as he swaggered from one to the other he tried to ingratiate himself with important people in the village. At the time he had set up his third restaurant in the street whose window was adorned with strangled skinned ducks covered with burnt flesh and gaping mouths, his wife died. He told everyone in the street without a tear that she had some teeth out, went to the casino gambling and came home in the morning, collapsed and died.

Time went by and the Japanese restaurant was sold. I saw him at the chemist printing photos and smiling lecherously and the photos - an attractive young women in bathers at a beach setting. I thought to myself that didn't take him long. Not so long after in I saw his phot0 in the paper with his creepy smile and paunchy belly charged with being criminally responsible for his wife's death.

It is alleged that he took his wife, a diabetic and ardent gambler to a dentist and got her molars removed because she was complaining of pain from her teeth. That after he brought her home he refused to take her to a doctor even though she was very ill. He even told his wife's distraught sister who rang from Malaysia that he couldn't take her to hospital because there were no beds. It was alleged in court that his wife was a very wealthy woman whose family had begged her not to marry this gold digger who apparently had a penchant for wealthy women but she did anyway.

His restaurants have been replaced with more successful restaurants. He hired the best legal team he could buy. The hearing continues.

The village

Today at the coffee shop I heard a story. You all know Bill H the photographer who specializes in photographing pre- pubescent or pubescent children with little bits of cloth around them.

Many years ago I went to see an exhibition of his at a very up market gallery in Richmond. The photographs were very large and expertly printed - I'd say commercially and the tones were very soft and beautiful. They photos were composed like a set from a play, ladders, curtains draped from high and props like crosses and ropes and cushions. This is what I recall anyway. Against this were pubescent, anorexic boys and girls looking extremely wasted lounging, hanging and draped in this backdrop. Some appeared to be dead and was there a boy on a cross? I can't quite remember but all in all the impression I got was that it was border line and decadent. I'd heard he'd hired junkies and kids from the street to take these photos.

The Curator at the National Gallery at this time wouldn't acquire his photos because of there ambiguous nature. He sold his work by truck loads. He became the toast of the jet set. The new curator acquired lots of his work and all over the country curators stocked up on this amazing arty talent not once questioning their dubious nature.

At the time there was a very laissez faire attitude to the sexuality of the young. My daughter got stopped in Chapel St at the age of 14 by Renee E - a very popular genre photographer at the time - asking her to pose for a playboy centre fold. I spoke to him on the phone and he was very defiant. He claimed he didn't know her age. I asked him if he'd mind if someone asked his son to pose for photographs in a gay magazine. Touche. He kept arguing but I think he got the point.
Even on the radio I heard people trying to legitimize the sexual love of children. I remember being frightened and bewildered thinking I was in some kind of nightmare. For me childhood was a very scary place especially when some horrible man had designs on you.

I guess everyone knows about the last scandal about this photographer. He's older than me and still taking photos of children. This time it hit the headlines. People were arguing for and against. The art community was outraged. How dare they interfere with a persons artistic merit and subject matter. This man was no pervert. He had a reason to take these photos- to show the dilemmas children of this age of puberty go through. The Australian Art Council is now drawing up plans for guidelines for artists who portray children.

Meanwhile at the coffee shop I hear that a friends band and all bands who play in a venue in Northcote have to employ an extra person to monitor the decibels of the band or they will be fined and this popular venue may be closed down for all. Youthful and aspiring musicians may lose another venue to play and be heard and become popular.

The irony is ,is that the vexatious complainer who live behind the venue is none other than the famous and notorious photographer of children.

The Love nest crumbles