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WOMADelaide South Australia - March 2010
12th March | 0 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
As people pick through the spaces between rugs and plastic sheets, the sun sets on the last day of WOMADelaide 2010. We settle in our spots and the sun throws up a dash of glorious, almost iridescent, pink across an unusually cloudy sky. The picture is appropriately dazzling. We are all – more than 1000 of us - waiting to see 90-year old Ravi Shankar in what will undoubtedly be...
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Koala Diaries: Limitations of a one-liner
3rd March | 2 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
Have you ever had one of those moments when you realise you have been too clever by half? I think it is called poor communication.
I had such a moment when I was working as a press secretary for a government minister. I was suffering a flight of imagination and creative flair and in my quest for the unforgettable press release headline to slam the Opposition, I alluded to a poem.Yes,... -
Koala Diaries: I feel a protest coming on…where’s my walking stick?
3rd February | 2 comments | 1 person likes this
I am thinking about getting a t-shirt printed with 50 and soon to be a burden on society on it.
Why not? I am it seems technically part of the rule-breaking, hip-shaking, peacenik generation known as the baby-boomers – slogans and T-shirts are our thing.When we were growing up, we were the unnecessarily rebellious generation. No decorum whatsoever. The rebels without cause – the bra-burning misfits who wanted to change the... -
Koala Diaries: Say you want a resolution….
5th January | 4 comments | 1 person likes this
OK I think I need to fess up – I have no resolve. When all around me are making their hit lists of how to be better, braver and brighter, I am twiddling my thumbs.
I hate New Year’s resolutions. The very construction of a list gives me the heebie geebies. It is a ticket to failure …a “to do” list with nothing crossed off…it is sworn evidence of my inherent... -
Koala Diaries - Birthday blues
14th December 2009 | 0 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
I have just served my Blue Heeler the last bowl of home made patè left over from my birthday party - he is doing his best to finish it. Good dog.
I am feeling kind of strange about this birthday. It was a really big one.The birthday after which no youthfulness can be pretended unless you go for plastic surgery, a punishing regime at the gym and a much younger boyfriend.... -
Koala Diaries: Heatwave politics
30th November 2009 | 1 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
It has been as hot as hell here in little Radelaide…the nick name comes from a typically Australian dig at the fact that there is nothing at all radical about Adelaide these days …but they are wrong.
In the last two weeks of Spring here we had temperatures of 40C at 8pm. It was above 37C for four days over that period and the air hovered around 40C for a further... -
Koala Diaries: Steamy thoughts
19th October 2009 | 0 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
I just had a lovely dinner with some journalists and film production folk from China and in all of the conversation that night – about everything from finding husbands, to styles of documentary production – the thing that really shocked me was hearing that it was a regular, everyday thing in China to have an hour-long shower.
I say shocked because despite the fact that we are being blessed with an... -
Koala Diaries: Man, Woman - war stories
21st September 2009 | 0 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
There are days when it is easy to imagine a stifled war going on in Australia. In kitchens and cars, bars and bedrooms, skirmishes break out between men and women in an ongoing battle of the sexes.
I write this knowing that if it were published in a major newspaper here, there would be an instant barrage of hate mail from the dark shirted men, shadowy casualties of the fight, who... -
No mother, no father
4th September 2009 | 2 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
The tap at the window is a sign to look away, don’t make eye contact, ignore the pleas.
That is the sum of expert survival advice on dealing with the thousands of hungry hands in New Delhi.This trip has been for business so we are travelling with air-con and the protection that a shiny car and an elite hotel provides. Cool, clean, separate, yet the barrier feels fragile.I am not the... -
Koala Diaries: No Human Traffic
24th August 2009 | 3 comments | 0 votes yet, click here to agree or disagree
It is a Thursday evening in Adelaide and I have just met friends for dinner and a play at the Space Theatre in our lovely Festival complex. Food was great, service fast and excellent.
The play was wonderful - a vibrant performance of Moliere’s Hypochondria with some witty modernisations of the script. It was an absolute hoot and a great way to cheer up as our weather struggles between winter and...
