I sincerely wish everyone a safe and Merry Christmas and all the best for the year ahead.

Christmas is not only a time to celebrate our Christian faith with friends and family, but a time to relax and enjoy all that the season has to offer.

Whatever Christmas means for you, may the season be filled with joy and peace. I wish you an enjoyable and rewarding year ahead.

Regards,

Yet today as I stared into the tip jar of a Melbourne cafeteria, two Australian million dollar notes were staring right back at me!

Of course these two beauties are fakes but they sure gave me a good laugh.

Some quick internet searching reveals that there are quite a few “million dollar note” manufacturers in Australia.

The note that I found in the tip jar had a picture of Ned Kelly on it and appears to be the work of One Million Tracts, a Christian bookshop. The note apparently contains Biblical verse within the fine print. United Christian Broadcasters are also selling a gospel-themed million dollar note, but theirs contains the image of a Digger in his slouch hat.

Competing with One Million Tracts is MyFirstMillion.com.au, who manufacture a somewhat less-convincing note sporting the image of a generic gentleman in a suit and tie in front of a map of New Holland. An identical note is also being offered for sale by Gloo & VektaHaus, whomever they may be.

Next time you’re out and about, take a careful look at the money you see sitting in tip jars. You might just spot your first million too!

I am very lucky. I live in Australia, a small and relatively safe country on  the other side of the world well away from the world’s centres of power. I don’t know anyone who perished on that awful day nor do I know anyone who was directly affected. Yet the sheer tragedy of that pointless destruction shocked, appalled and angered me as much as anyone else and I know that most Australians were shocked by the attacks on our cousins in the United States.

I vividly remember finding out about the attacks.  Because of the time difference in Australia, it was the morning of Wednesday 12 September when we heard the news.

At the time, I was an undergraduate student at the University of Melbourne’s Burnley College of Horticulture where I was studying the third year of my horticultural science degree.

I recall my mother rushing into my room to wake me and with an excited voice telling me “They’ve bombed the World Trade Center!”. Quickly I awoke and rushed down to the television set to turn on the ABC, who were taking a live feed from one of the US broadcasters. Quickly realising the significance of the event, I rushed into my sister’s room to awake her and I recall saying in a similar manner that “There’s going to be a war”. She never forgave me for frightening her with that comment, but unfortunately I was right.

I had a university excursion that day, so I didn’t have very long to watch the television. Somewhat shocked, I got ready for uni and made my way to the railway station to catch the train. The platform was quiet and the people were sombre. The train rolled in and we went aboard. Again, it was very quiet. Eerily quiet. The carriage was full of passengers like normal but no-one said anything. There was no gossip. There was no chatter. Nothing.

Perhaps my most vivid memory of that morning was getting out at Melbourne’s Richmond station and walking down to Swan Street. Normally a busy and somewhat crowded thoroughfare, it was relatively quiet. No horns were blaring. No drivers were attempting to change lanes without indicating. It was so very civil and most eery. I decided to walk a few blocks along Swan Street to experience it before catching the tram.

When I arrived at Burnley College, students from my class were milling around. We had to catch a bus for an excursion to a seed factory. Words were few and were muttered quietly. Many still hadn’t seen the footage. We boarded the bus and made our way down to a seed farm that was somewhere near the Mornington Peninsula. I can’t quite recall now.

As we entered the factory, we were directed to the facility’s tea room where a television set was showing footage of the planes slamming into the twin towers. Four or five workers were standing there watching with hands on hips and their heads nodding with disbelief and shock. As we entered, our host proceeded to introduce us to the business, but no-one was paying attention. In the end, he stopped and said “No-one’s listening, are they?”. Silently, we all watched for four or five minutes before we recommenced our tour. No-one said much. I recall little else from that day.

As a result of the actions of those Islamic terrorists, our world changed forever. A total of 2996 people needlessly died on that day.

Very soon the United States identified Al Qaeda as the responsible group, and the United States decided to invade Afghanistan after the ruling Taliban decided to shield the fundamentalist terrorist group. Australian Prime Minister John Howard invoked Article IV of the ANZUS treaty, and so Australia became involved in what would be known as the “War on Terror” that would last until this day.

September 11 brought a tension into the world that wasn’t there before. It dragged ordinary folk into what had previously been a marginal ideological conflict between parts of the Islamic world and the Christian West. It spooked a lot of ordinary people, even in Australia, into believing that we were a terrorist target. Suddenly Muslims living in Australia were perceived by many as some sort of foreign threat. The Commonwealth Government ran ads promoting terrorist ‘hotlines’ for people to report suspicious activities. “Terrorism” and “Islam” almost became synonymous in the minds of some Australians and it took a lot of persistence to remind people that fundamentalist Muslims no better represent true Islam than fundamentalist Christians represent true Christianity.

Strict security measures were also introduced into airports. Even amateur photographers were treated with suspicion. As far forward as 2005, I was moved-on by the Western Australian police for trying to take a photo of Perth railway station from the street.

As we commemorate the 10th anniversary of September 11 and remember the innocent dead, we should also consider the legacy of what has followed. We should consider how we’ve entered two wars and ended-up with a stalemate in both. We should reflect about how some of our liberties and freedoms have been eroded in the name of ‘security’. We should consider the delicate balance between democracy and oppression. And we should also remember the futility of war which is, I’ll admit, sometimes unavoidable but always wasteful and destructive.

Perhaps we owe it to the 2996 people killed in the September 11 attacks and to the thousands who have become ill or died as a result if helping the victims and to the thousands of soldiers and civilians who have died in the two resulting wars to learn from September 11 and work as best as we individually can towards a world that is harmonious and peaceful.

In fact, I probably shouldn’t do it at all. But when I stand in front of a pond full of ducks with a couple of slices of bread in hand, I am transformed from a mature adult to a child again.

I just love seeing them swim around with eager excitement at the prospect of getting a small piece of tasty bread!

There’s a beautiful but secluded pond near my workplace which contains a rather odd assortment of waterfowl including several hardheads (Aythya australis), dozens of Pacific Black Ducks (Anas superciliosa), a hybrid Muscovy (Cairina moschata), Mallards (Anas platyrhynchos), a White Mallard and Australian Wood Ducks (Chenonetta jubata) as well as a pair of Black Swans (Cygnus atratus) and a substantial number of moorhens.

I have recently made a habit of walking through the park during my lunch break.

Being cold and wet, I assume that duck food isn’t too plentiful at the moment because it wasn’t too long before I noticed that I was being followed by the assorted waterfowl as I walked past the pond.

So I decided to take them some bread and before I knew it about sixty birds had arrived. Even prior to the first piece of bread hitting the water, there was pandemonium as ducks frantically swam across or flew from the other side of the lake. As interesting as it all was, the arrival of the resident black swans was the most spectacular sight.

What the swans gain in size and power they lose in agility, so when it comes to competing for bread, it’s a fairly even contest between the ducks and swans. Soon the swans realise that looking cute is a more effective method of gaining attention…

With two slices of bread for sixty birds, it doesn’t go far (which is a good thing).

I’ll try and be good and not feed them too often, but I must confess that this simple activity brings a lot of joy. Perhaps I will see if I can take them some more appropriate and healthy food in future.

I sincerely wish everyone a safe and Merry Christmas, and all the best for the year ahead!

Christmas is not only a time to celebrate our Christian faith with friends and family, but a time to relax and enjoy all that the season has to offer.

Whatever Christmas means for you, may the season be filled with joy and peace. I wish you an enjoyable and rewarding year ahead!

Regards,

^{Image: Madonna and Child with Cherubs (c. 1650) by Giovanni Battista Salvi (Il Sassoferrato).}

Blogging is a great way for me to practice my writing and share my thoughts and ideas with others. I also enjoy the feedback, especially when a particular post resonates with a large number of people.

In one form or another, I have been blogging since 1999. As regular readers will know, there isn’t a single focus for The Grapevine but certain themes do appear regularly such as architecture, photography, science, the media, arts and even politics. That’s the joy of the personal blog: It can be as broad or narrow as the owner desires.

For some people, audience numbers are important. Genre blogs tend to have an easier time in attracting large audiences because their subject matter is defined and, therefore, so are the interests of their audience. For others, audience is of absolutely no concern. Indeed, there are plenty of bloggers who want (or even need) to remain anonymous.

For me, I take a middle road. Audience numbers aren’t the primary concern, but of course I want as many people to enjoy my work as possible.

I tend to write about matters of concern to me at a moment in time. Sometimes, if there is a dearth of information about a particular subject matter on the internet, I will write a piece to fill the gap. This strategy can sometimes have a tremendous (and unexpected) impact, such when I wrote about declining ratings at Triple J, which ultimately led to a published magazine article challenging the station director.

Different people write blogs differently. Personally, I like to research my topics in detail, and this can result in hours of time spent trawling the internet for supporting documentation or evidence, or just in conducting research on a topic. For instance, my piece questioning the State Government’s easing of Stage 3A water restrictions took 5 hours to research and compose.

Social media has become very big in the last few years and whilst I still have personal doubts about the merits of Facebook, I cannot deny its popularity or impact.  Yet Facebook (and to a lesser-extent, Twitter) seem to emphasise the trivial and mundane over the substantive and important. On so many levels, this is a tragedy for society and for the quality of public discourse as a whole.

Whilst there are many blogs which, like social media, focus on the superficial, most still tend to be thoughtful in their composition. Thankfully, and in contrast to some social media, the tendency for the use of full sentences and grammatically-correct English (with all the usual personal idiosyncrasies) makes even these sites a reasonable read.

For me, writing is one of the great joys of blogging: It continually trains me to consider carefully what I write, how I structure my argument and how it will be expressed. Because bloggers each write differently and come from many varied backgrounds (Australia is merely a suburb in the global village these days), I actually gain benefit from reading other people’s work, in understanding other peoples’ ways of thinking, their lives, their cultures, their experiences and their writing. Most enjoyable of all, their personality is expressed in their writing.

Blogs are also inherently democratic. Whilst Facebook statuses are hidden behind privacy walls and tweets are too small to have any real meaning in themselves, blogs are open to all and provide genuine insight.

These days, blogging is very easy. If one has his or her own website, one of the open-source applications like Moveable Type or WordPress can be installed and activated in minutes, with plenty of free design templates available. (The Grapevine is powered by WordPress, with my own custom theme). Alternatively, providers such as WordPress.com, LiveJournal or Blogger provide a hosted blogging platform for free, so people just need to set-up an account and start writing. Naturally, this is the most popular option.

Better still, there are so many applets and plug-ins now available that one’s blog can be linked to a Facebook, Twitter or other social media account. So whilst I condemn Facebook for being shallow and pointless, I still use it to generate an audience for my other creative pursuits, including this blog.

So here I am at the end of the article, and I am not sure I have said very much at all, really. At the end of the day it doesn’t really matter because there’s no editor to work for, no advertising to satisfy and no publication deadline to meet.

And that’s the best bit of all.

Yesterday, I was watching the weather segment when I realised that my image of a cold morning on the Yarra River had been selected!

The ABC uses the same image for several nights in a row, so I was able to record the broadcast this evening. You can watch the segment below (or on YouTube):

If you’d like to have a photo considered for broadcast, you can upload your image to ABV2 via their “weather photo” website at http://www.abc.net.au/victoria/tvweather/upload.htm

Now I wonder if it was worth the bother? The sad truth is that Facebook is a very shallow pool in which to wade.

When I first joined, Facebook was mildly interesting. I bumped into a few people that I’d not seen for a while, so it was good to see what they were up to. I was also able to enjoy the photos, personal observations, and other contributions of my work colleagues, friends and family that I’d previously been excluded from. Those were also good.

But there was a lot about Facebook that wasn’t good.

Signing up on Day 1 was easy, but adjusting all the default privacy settings to a level that actually respected my privacy was very time-consuming.

In terms of coding and functionality, there’s no way to embed image thumbnails nor hyperlinks on Facebook within comments. More incredibly, there’s no way of editing posts. In cases where typographic mistakes are identified or errors-of-fact emerge, the only choice is to delete and re-post a comment. If that is done after someone has commented, their contribution is deleted too.

What surprised me more was the very shallow nature of the enterprise (more than I expected). People who would never talk to me in real life suddenly and inexplicably wanted to become a “friend” on Facebook.

I have run my own website since 1998, so I probably come from the “old school” of the internet where people hosted personal websites and interacted via forums and blogs. Blogs have really taken off in the “Web 2.0” era, and this has been a blessing. There’s nothing I like more on the internet than to read informed, thoughtful and heartfelt opinion on topics, even those for which I have opposing views. I also enjoy the discussion that follows.

Likewise, I thoroughly enjoy writing blog articles and interacting with my readers. The comments following my recent article about the Bacchus Marsh “Avenue of Honour” provide a good example of this, as does my famous post about Triple J.

Sadly, Facebook seems geared entirely to discourage this sort of depth and texture. Actual discussion is rare. Instead, it favours triviality and superficiality. The online quiz results, spam advertising (in the form of “liking” something), “gifts” or stupid status updates just become tiring after a while. The pointless bra colour meme was especially notable in this regard.

I won’t suspend my account just yet, although as the New York Times reports, this is an increasing trend. But I will definitely pull-back on the posts and see how it pans out. Basically, I am just losing interest.

Facebook always did seem over-hyped. As it turns out, it is.

I sincerely wish everyone a safe and Merry Christmas, and all the best for the year ahead!

Christmas is not only a time to celebrate our Christian faith with friends and family, but a time to relax and enjoy all that the season has to offer.

Whatever Christmas means for you, may the season be filled with joy and peace. I wish you an enjoyable and rewarding year ahead!

Regards,

 
_{Image: Madonna and Child with Cherubs (c. 1650) by Giovanni Battista Salvi (Il Sassoferrato).}

The photograph was of a topiarised specimen of Chamaecyparis lawsoniana, which I Christened the “Happy Conifer“.

The shrub grew in the the front garden of a house in Vermont South. Seeing it again, a smile immediately came to my face, not just because of its appearance, but because of the story that lay behind the Happy Conifer’s creation.

^{The Happy Conifer in Danielle Court, Vermont South. Photographed by the author in 1999.}

As you can see from the photograph, the conifer had been clipped into a lovely big face, complete with bristling big eyebrows. Standing on the corner of two streets, it almost appeared to have a personality of its own.

Despite its jovial appearance, it is the story behind this topiary’s creation that I find most interesting. For the Happy Conifer was in fact a happy accident of sorts.

The owner of this property (whom I don’t know personally) appeared to be very keen on growing conifers. In fact, his entire garden consisted of hundreds of different species, all beautifully trimmed into neat shapes. Sometimes I would see the owner trimming his plants, standing atop a trestle that he’d especially erected for the purpose.

Clearly, I was not the only person who’d noticed his dedication to horticultural art, because someone with a more devious motive made a decision to do some topiary of their own.

The Happy Conifer is Born.

One Sunday morning when I was passing by, I noticed there’d been a sudden change in the landscape.

Maybe it was drunken Saturday-night prank? Maybe it was just a dare or an act of coniferous jealousy? Whatever it was, I quickly noticed that someone had passed-by under the cover of darkness and hacked a giant face into the conifer. Appreciating the effort that went into this garden, I felt somewhat sorry for that poor man who spent all the time clipping his plants. Yet at the same time, I have to admit to being somewhat amused because it really did look funny.

I was expecting that the gardener would probably let the face ‘grow out’ and write it off as a nasty act of vandalism. But instead, it seems he may have been amused too because rather than disappearing, the face underwent some ‘plastic surgery’ over the next few years. Slowly it was transformed from a few crude shapes into a piece of sculpture!

Obviously, I was not the only resident curious to watch the transformation. Another local resident went to the trouble of submitting a photo to the Burke’s Backyard magazine in 1998. Norma Shaw’s image, reproduced below, clearly shows the Happy Conifer during its transitive years.

^{A photograph of the Happy Conifer by Norma Shaw,which appeared in Burke’s Backyard magazine in 1998.}

After many many years of amusing Vermont South residents, the Happy Conifer met its demise not too long ago, in a storm. It has since been removed. Having myself moved away from the area, I have no idea whether the same people still live in that house in Danielle Court,  Vermont South.

Nevertheless, having brought a smile to my face, I thought it only reasonable to spread the joy to others; the sort of joy that only a shrub with a face can provide.