Thanks for pointing it out to me, Roy!

 

It's been bucketing down all night and most of this morning, but then the sun came out and so did I, to put the finishing touches on my rebuilt treehouse. Remember Henry Ford and his famous "any colour ... so long as it is black"? Well, make mine Mission Brown!

(Should that be "bucketing" or "bucketting"? You know, that rule about doubling the final consonant before adding an "-ing" to form a gerund?)

Back to my treehouse - or tree platform, as an old mate from my New Guinea days pointed out, who is a retired engineer and as obsessed about the precise word as I am about its precise spelling: the tree - ehem! - platform is ready to enjoy a glass of wine in the evening sun!

Thanks for pointing out the difference to me, Roy! A copy of Simon Winchester's best-selling book "EXACTLY - How Precision Engineers Created the Modern World" is in the mail to you! Should I send it to your high-rise in Kuala Lumpur or to your not-quite-so-high-rise in Penang?

View from Roy's "treehouse" in Kuala Lumpur

 

I don't know about you, but ten feet above the river is enough for me!

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Heart of Darkness revisited

Listen to the broadcast here

 

I'd gone to "Melbourne" for my afternoon snooze and, having missed Phillip Adams' "Late Night Live" last night, I switched on the radio for the three o'clock replay. What I heard kept me wide awake!

It was an unflinching investigation about the human rights abuses behind the Congo's cobalt mining operation — and the moral implications that affect us all. It's the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt.

Siddharth Kara's book "Cobalt Red" should be given to every buyer of a smartphone, laptop and electric vehicle at the time of purchase.

Here's one of several YouTube clips. When will the world take notice?

 

 

It seems nothing has changed since King Leopold's times! Remember Kurtz's last words in "Heart of Darkness"? "The horror, the horror."

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Where have all the vowels gone?

 

Lucky for me that I am used to reading some Arabic which has no vowels at all, or I'd never found the hand sanitiser when I visited the Commonwealth Bank to draw out some money to pay off my mate Troy who's helping me with the treehouse.

It's raining today which makes for a welcome restday. I spent time in the pool, and then rescued some more books from my favourite op-shop: a beautiful hardcover edition of "Australia - as painted by Percy F.S. Spence and described by Frank Fox in 1910"; "Mount Buggery to Nowhere Else - The Stories behind Australia's Weird and Wonderful Place Names"; "The Accidental Billionaires - Sex, Money, Betrayal and the Founding of Facebook" by Ben Mezrich; and a lovely UQP edition of "Norman Lindsay on Art, Life and Literature" which I had never even heard of before.

 

Read a preview here

 

Oh, and I almost forgot because I had already started reading it in the car coming home (Padma was driving!) which is where I had left it: "The Art of Belonging - It's not where you live, it's how you live" by Australia's well-known social researcher Hugh Mackay, the very same who also wrote "Advance Australia ... Where?", "Reinventing Australia", "What Makes Us Tick?", and many more. Read some of them on archive.org.

I could've spent all day inside the op-shop as they were playing the old songs: Marianne Faithfull's "As Tears Go By" (echoes of Namibia; are you reading this, Karl-Heinz?); Neil Diamond's "Hot August Night" (back to Camp 1 at Panguna); and "Me and You and a Dog Named Boo" sung by Lobo (which took me back to # 7 Komin Kochin Avenue in Rangoon).

Anyway, I'm back at "Riverbend" now and it isn't half-bad. As Hugh Mackay so rightly wrote, "It's not where you live, it's how you live."

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The not so Faraway Treehouse

 

After the apocalyptic bushfires of New Year's Eve 2019 burned down my treehouse, I have had to do without it, but now I'm only a few days away from moving back onto my little perch high above the slowly-flowing Clyde River.

What stopped me is not lack of motivation but lack of timber, or more precisely, 25 lengths of 2.4m each of 90x22mm H3 Treated Pine, for the decking. Yes, BUNNINGS are open on Sunday but I'll wait until Monday before starting on the last stage of the not so Faraway Treehouse.

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A bridge not too far

 

The original Nelligen Bridge opening was held on Saturday, 12 December 1964. It included a Grand Parade, marching girls, and competitions, and a public holiday was proclaimed by the Governor of New South Wales for the town of Nelligen.

Today's official opening of the new Nelligen Bridge wasn't quite so grand, but it was still a big turn-out, with stalls and sausage sizzled on the banks of the river, and a walk across the new bridge before it opens to traffic in a couple of months' time.

Can you see "Riverbend" in the background?

Almost everyone was there, but not our rich Chinese "friend" who had shown such an interest in Nelligen only a few years earlier. There was no sign of his $360,000 BMW i8 in the carpark. I kept looking for the best-dressed Chinaman, however, this being a very hot day, I also looked out for his $250 haircut; alas, he must've decided not to show up after all.

Strange, as he loves a bargain, and this one had a free sausage sizzle!

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