Yes we’ve had an Aussie visitor to @silibraries but not...

Yes we’ve had an Aussie visitor to @silibraries but not @elyw123 @thesherrin @sebsnarl @tim01@george08 (at Smithsonian Libraries)


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National Platypus day 2014: "Ornithorhynchus—grotesquest of animals, king of the animalculae of the world for versatility of character and make-up"

In honor of National Platypus Day 2014, here's a quote on my favorite monotremes, the Platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus)  and an illustration of the little creature from a volume on display at the Melbourne Museum during BHL Day 2014.

Speaking of the indigenous coneys and bactrian camels, the naturalist said that the coniferous and bacteriological output of Australasia was remarkable for its many and curious departures from the accepted laws governing these species of tubercles, but that in his opinion Nature's fondness for dabbling in the erratic was most notably exhibited in that curious combination of bird, fish, amphibian, burrower, crawler, quadruped, and Christian called the Ornithorhynchus—grotesquest of animals, king of the animalculae of the world for versatility of character and make-up
 - Mark Twain, Following the Equator

Some passages from Fergus Hume's "The Mystery of the Hansom Cab", a 19th c. Melbourne mystery

Fergus Hume (1859-1932), born in England, relocated to Australia where he became a well-known and successful author. His first book, The Mystery of the Hansom Cab (1886), is a mystery set in Melbourne, often in the then disreputable area around Little Bourke Street (none other than the neighborhood I'm staying at!). Alas, no Mother Guttersnipe, Musette, or Sal to be seen, nor, hansom cabs. Below are some passages I highlighted.




The Mystery of a Hansom Cab by Fergus Hume

• Mother Guttersnipe I unearthed in the slums off Little Bourke Street; and I gave what I am afraid was perhaps too vivid a picture of her language and personality.
• "Let me see," said Moreland, crossing his legs and looking thoughtfully up to the ceiling, "it was about half-past nine o'clock. I was in the Orient Hotel, in Bourke Street. We had a drink together, and then went up the street to an hotel in Russell Street, where we had another. In fact," said Moreland, coolly, "we had several other drinks."
• And on either side Gorby could see the dim white forms of the old Greek gods and goddesses—Venus Victrix, with the apple in her hand (which Mr. Gorby, in his happy ignorance of heathen mythology, took for Eve offering Adam the forbidden fruit); Diana, with the hound at her feet, and Bacchus and Ariadne (which the detective imagined were the Babes in the Wood). He knew that each of the statues had queer names, but thought they were merely allegorical.

• Then he went along the Wellington Parade, and turned up Powlett Street, where he stopped at a house near Cairns' Memorial Church, much to Mr. Gorby's relief, who, being like Hamlet, "fat and scant of breath," found himself rather exhausted.
• It was a broiling hot day—one of those cloudless days, with the blazing sun beating down on the arid streets, and casting deep, black shadows—
• It was Saturday morning, and fashionable Melbourne was "doing the Block." Collins Street is to the Southern city what Bond Street and the Row are to London, and the Boulevards to Paris.
• "I don't like Latin," said Miss Frettlby, shaking her pretty head. "I agree with Heine's remark, that if the Romans had been forced to learn it they would not have found time to conquer the world."
• Bourke Street is a more crowded thoroughfare than Collins Street at Night.

• Some writer has described Melbourne, as Glasgow with the sky of Alexandria; and certainly the beautiful climate of Australia, so Italian in its brightness, must have a great effect on the nature of such an adaptable race as the Anglo-Saxon.
• But his guide, with whom familiarity with the proletarians had, in a great measure, bred indifference, hurried him away to Little Bourke Street, where the narrowness of the thoroughfare, with the high buildings on each side, the dim light of the sparsely scattered gas-lamps, and the few ragged-looking figures slouching along, formed a strong contrast to the brilliant and crowded scene they had just left. Turning off Little Bourke Street, the detective led the way down a dark lane. It was as hot as a furnace from the accumulated heat of the day. To look up at the clear starlit sky was to experience a sensation of delicious coolness.
• But here in Australia we are in the realm of contrariety, and many things other than dreams go by contrary. Here black swans are an established fact, and the proverb concerning them, made when they were considered as mythical a bird as the Phoenix, has been rendered null and void by the discoveries of Captain Cook.
• Sorrow is a potent enchantress. Once she touches the heart, life can never be quite the same again. We never more surrender ourselves entirely to pleasure; and often we find so many of the things we have longed for are after all but dead sea fruit. Sorrow is the veiled Isis of the world, and once we penetrate her mystery and see her deeply-furrowed face and mournful eyes, the magic light of romance dies all away, and we realise the hard bitter fact of life in all its nakedness.
• To a young and fervid youth, love's young dream is, no doubt, very charming, lovers, as a rule, having a small appetite; but to a man who has seen the world, and drunk deeply of the wine of life, there is nothing half so sweet in the whole of his existence as a good dinner.

• "That puts me in mind of what I heard Dr. Chinston say yesterday," she said. "This is the age of unrest, as electricity and steam have turned us all into Bohemians."
• Well, I believe there are many people like that in the world, people whose lives are one long struggle against insanity, and yet who eat, drink, talk, and walk with the rest of their fellow-men, apparently as gay and light-hearted as they are."
• In a short time they found themselves in Little Bourke Street, and after traversing a few dark and narrow lanes—by this time they were more or less familiar to Calton—they found themselves before Mother Guttersnipe's den.
• In questions of morality, so many people live in glass houses, that there are few nowadays who can afford to throw stones.
• If a man has any mental worry, his life becomes a positive agony to him. Mental tortures are quite as bad as physical ones, if not worse. The last thing before dropping off to sleep is the thought of trouble, and with the first faint light of dawn, it returns and hammers all day at the weary brain. But while a man can sleep, life is rendered at least endurable; and of all the blessings which Providence has bestowed, there is none so precious as that same sleep, which, as wise Sancho Panza says, "Wraps every man like a cloak."

• "No man can be stronger than Destiny," he said, dreamily. "I have lost and you have won; so life is a chess board, after all, and we are the puppets of Fate."
• Standing with her husband on the deck of one of the P. and O. steamers, as it ploughed the blue waters of Hobson's Bay into foam, they both watched Melbourne gradually fade from their view, under the glow of the sunset. They could see the two great domes of the Exhibition, and the Law Courts, and also Government House, with its tall tower rising from the midst of the green trees.

TimTams in the USA! Thanks @TheSherrin ... Now, to get them through the snowstorm

...

QotD: "A sweltering day in Australia ..." Mark Twain, Following the Equator (and the lawn of the SLV)

My lovely day at the State Library of Victoria, was not very hot, but it was warm!

A SWELTERING DAY IN AUSTRALIA. (To be read soft and low, with the lights turned down.) The Bombola faints in the hot Bowral tree, Where fierce Mullengudgery's smothering fires Far from the breezes of Coolgardie Burn ghastly and blue as the day expires; And Murriwillumba complaineth in song For the garlanded bowers of Woolloomooloo, And the Ballarat Fly and the lone Wollongong They dream of the gardens of Jamberoo; The wallabi sighs for the Murrubidgee, For the velvety sod of the Munno Parah, Where the waters of healing from Muloowurtie Flow dim in the gloaming by Yaranyackah; The Koppio sorrows for lost Wolloway, And sigheth in secret for Murrurundi, The Whangeroo wombat lamenteth the day That made him an exile from Jerrilderie; The Teawamute Tumut from Wirrega's glade, The Nangkita swallow, the Wallaroo swan, They long for the peace of the Timaru shade And thy balmy soft airs, O sweet Mittagong! The Kooringa buffalo pants in the sun, The Kondoparinga lies gaping for breath, The Kongorong Camaum to the shadow has won, But the Goomeroo sinks in the slumber of death; In the weltering hell of the Moorooroo plain The Yatala Wangary withers and dies, And the Worrow Wanilla, demented with pain, To the Woolgoolga woodlands despairingly flies; Sweet Nangwarry's desolate, Coonamble wails, And Tungkillo Kuito in sables is drest, For the Whangerei winds fall asleep in the sails And the Booleroo life-breeze is dead in the west. Mypongo, Kapunda, O slumber no more Yankalilla, Parawirra, be warned There's death in the air! Killanoola, wherefore Shall the prayer of Penola be scorned? Cootamundra, and Takee, and Wakatipu, Toowoomba, Kaikoura are lost From Onkaparinga to far Oamaru All burn in this hell's holocaust! Paramatta and Binnum are gone to their rest In the vale of Tapanni Taroom, Kawakawa, Deniliquin—all that was best In the earth are but graves and a tomb! Narrandera mourns, Cameron answers not When the roll of the scathless we cry Tongariro, Goondiwindi, Woolundunga, the spot Is mute and forlorn where ye lie.
Mark Twain, Following the Equator (1897)

Qantas 35: MEL to SIN

Good morning and so long Melbourne!

QotD: "The Australians did not seem to me to differ noticeably from Americans, either in dress, carriage, ways, pronunciation, inflections, or general appearance." Mark Twain

"The Australians did not seem to me to differ noticeably from Americans, either in dress, carriage, ways, pronunciation, inflections, or general appearance. There were fleeting and subtle suggestions of their English origin, but these were not pronounced enough, as a rule, to catch one's attention. The people have easy and cordial manners from the beginning—from the moment that the introduction is completed. This is American. To put it in another way, it is English friendliness with the English shyness and self-consciousness left out." Mark Twain, Following the Equator (1897)

 

Gene Tan is keeping the audience on its toes during keynote at #VALA14 #P3

Arriving at the Melbourne Convention Center for VALA 2014 #vala14

Breakfast at the Queen Vic Market

Long black and croissant

Southern Cross, 4th time around ... The skies aren't like LA around here ...

This is my fourth time "Crossing the Line" (so to speak). In 2010, I visited Brasil and Australia; then, in 2012, South Africa.

I was able to spot the Southern Cross on those trips, especially on the trip to South Africa where I stayed in a lovely light pollution free area of Cape Town for part of the trip).

But on this trip to Australia, I was in a perfect spot. Lorne, a few hours from Melbourne on the coast, had a perfect light free sky and clear skies, so it was easy to spot.

In fact, the night I went Southern Cross spotting, I was looking skyward when a man in a suit with an American accent asked "Are you Australian?" I said no, sorry. He said he was looking for the Southern Cross, so I pointed it out and him and said, "The skies are so different here." And he replied, "Yes, much different than LA."

Different indeed ...

Here's the post from South Africa.

Some passages from "On the Beach" ... the end of the world as we know it, down under

On the Beach (1957) by Nevil Shute is possibly one of the first novels set in Australia that I read, probably back around 1975 or 1976, I read it during a period when I was working my way through various apocalypse novels (Fail Safe, Alas, Babylon, etc.). Perhaps the most meditative of them, it is also the most calmly intense as the residents of Melbourne and a few Americans (from the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion) slowly await death as radiation makes its way down from the northern hemisphere.

From On the Beach by Nevil Shute

Northern hemisphere people seldom mixed well, now, with people of the southern hemisphere. Too much lay between them, too great a difference of experience.

He shook his head. “Not a thing. It’s the winds. It’s mighty difficult to dodge what’s carried on the wind. You just can’t do it. You've got to take what’s coming to you, and make the best of it.”

It told him that a civilian scientific officer of the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation had been ordered to report in Scorpion for scientific duties. This officer would be under the command of the Australian liaison officer in Scorpion. His name was Mr. J. S. Osborne.

At the corner of Swanston and Collins Streets an Italian was playing a very large and garish accordion, and playing it very well indeed.

It wasn't the big countries that set off this thing. It was the little ones, the Irresponsibles.”

I think the next step is that I call a conference with C.S.I.R.O. and anybody else who may be concerned.

“I don’t knit. I don’t do anything restful. You ought to know that by now.”

The news did not trouble her particularly; all news was bad, like wage demands, strikes, or war, and the wise person paid no attention to it.

After lunch, smoking before they did the washing up, she said, “I don’t think I want to go to Melbourne again, Peter.” He smiled. “Getting a bit piggy, isn’t it?” “It’s horrible,” she said vehemently. “Everything shut up, and dirty, and stinking. It’s as if the end of the world had come already.” “It’s pretty close, you know,” he said.

The human race was to be wiped out and the world made clean again for wiser occupants without undue delay. Well, probably that made sense.

“I’m going home,” he said quietly. “This is a grand country, and I've liked it here. But it’s not my country, and now I’m going back to my own place, to my own folks. I like it in Australia well enough, but all the same I’m glad to be going home at last, home to Connecticut.” He turned to her. “I shan’t see this again, because I’m going home.”

Good morning to Louttit Bay, Lorne

QotD: "Down the road to Lorne -- ... / West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin --" Kipling

Buy my English posies!
     You that will not turn --
    Buy my hot-wood clematis,
     Buy a frond o' fern
    Gathered where the Erskine leaps
     Down the road to Lorne --
    Buy my Christmas creeper
     And I'll say where you were born!
West away from Melbourne dust holidays begin --
They that mock at Paradise woo at Cora Lynn --
Through the great South Otway gums sings the great South Main --
Take the flower and turn the hour, and kiss your love again!
- Rudyard Kipling, "The Flowers"


 

Global BHL meeting tech count: 4 iPad, 5 Wintel,, 1 Mac, 1 Nexus, 2 Android, 3 iPhone. 12 people #bhlib

Global BHL meeting, day two, Lorne, Australia

Escargot and flat white at Louittit Bay Bakery

G'morning Lorne, as the sun rises over the Southern Ocean

Global BHL meeting under way in Lorne, Australia

All nodes but Egypt represented plus some guests from Atlas of Living Australia and Melbourne Museum