Huck Walker's Blog

 

 

Barrington Tops is a huge and wonderous piece of bushland just an hour and a half drive out of Newcastle, Australia.

Welp, there was a cafe in a little town in the foothills of the Barrington Tops called "The Dead Dog Cafe".

 That, there, is a picture of one of the corrugated iron relief images that were screwed to the building to advertise the cafe.

When I visited, the guy behind the counter made an immediate impression; he was angular and fast moving, scanning between the shop floor and the kitchen constantly, his hands grabbing surely at the huge, four group coffee machine, operating it by touch.

It was a damn fine coffee.

I watched him brusquely tell a customer that they didn't serve bacon. They were a vegan cafe. He leaned around them to serve the next customer...

I heard various accounts of this gentleman, suffice to say my impressions of him were that he polarised people. For instance; he thought 'Dead Dog Cafe' was the name to pick for the cafe. The name 'deaddog' is considered by some to be a pejorative name for Dungog. Some of the locals hated it. Some thought it was edgy and hilarious.

Then, what about that image? The black dog... Isn't that commonly associated with depression? Having dead black dogs all around your cafe... again, polarising.

Anyhoo. That's some background.

New cafe owners and a name change. It's now called: "The Barn". Full disclosure; my nephew and his fiance took over the business. They let me paint a mural there! It's not finished, so I'm not posting it yet.

I found four of the discarded iron dogs in a pile at the back of the cafe. I took them home and painted them. I'm hoping that they can go back up on the walls as 'the happy dogs of Dungog'.

Here they are:

I'm going to replace this image with a better one once I can be arsed getting better lighting for them. Also, Don't tell the new owners! It's a surprise.

 Probably not.

We, those who believe we live in a civilised society, decided a while back that slavery should end. Maybe it mostly has ended? Anyhoo, that decision actually cost people jobs and stripped them of wealth; people who built the slave ships, the sailors who sailed them, the slavers who bought and sold the goods, all of them were out of jobs. And if you had paid money for slaves? Well, you lost that too when overnight your 'help' became free citizens. 

I guess that was why some people were so dead against the abolishment of slavery...

 

 

"CoreLogic estimates there are 2.6 million investor-owned dwellings across Australia worth approximately $1.37 trillion. Investor-owned houses comprise 26.9% of all housing stock."

I grabbed this, and a couple of other quotes from this website that seems to be advertising to help people expand their property port-folios: 

https://www.residentialinvestment.com...

 

There is a weird situation here in Australia. There are people struggling to afford housing while others are making bonus monies by owning many properties. Strange, yeah?

 

Negative gearing was introduced a while back with the promise that it would lead to cheaper rentals for people that couldn't afford their own home. It was also intended to encourage a building boom as investors would help to foot the cost of new dwellings with the promise of tax offsets and a steady stream of other people's money into their pockets.

It is arguable whether anyone successfully achieved a cheaper rental situation because of this new situation, but many people with spare capital were able to negatively gear a dwelling and rent it out.

Here is an idea:

Cap the number of investment properties each individual can have to one. This includes any residential properties held in trust or owned by a corporate entity.

I reckon this, enshrined in taxation law, would make a difference to the housing market in Australia and free up some under-utilised dwellings.

Sure, there would have to be some lead-in time so that the housing marked is not flooded with real estate. Perhaps the initial cap could be ten properties, then every year it can be rolled back by one until the limit of one is met.

Here is a bit of info:

- Just 7.9% of Australians own an investment property.

- 92% of people that invest will never pass the first investment property

(Both of these bits of info also come from the above website).  

 So, that's 2.14% of the Australian population that have more than one investment property. That's the percentage of the population that would have to 'downsize' their interest in housing.

I don't think our current crop of politicians have an interest in housing market reform of this kind:

50% of the Australian members of parliament have declared that they have an investment property. (This is a bit higher than the average of 7.9%, yeah?) Oh! but this is actually only what they have to admit to on the "Register" of assets:

"The table does NOT include the properties wholly owned by politicians’ spouses as  they are not always declared or obscurely declared.

We have also EXCLUDED real estate owned via trusts or companies as it appears, per the register, many politicians own properties or hold financial interests in property through companies, trusts and other investment vehicles but they don’t declare the quantity and details of actual investments (making the register less transparent and to some extent meaningless)."

(The quote above is from..:

 https://www.miragenews.com/ranked-how...  )

So, yeah. I would dearly like to trust our politicians, but while they continue to ignore reform that is sensible and achievable, while they are in a privalidged position to profit from the current situation but do not enact policy to bring fairness into the system, they are corrupting their position and failing their contemporaries.

Anyhoo... all things change, eventually.

 

 

I have been working on some writing. It's not the second book of the trilogy (sorry peeps) BUT it's happening anyway and I'm enjoying it.

Here is a picture vaguely requested by an ex-student;

Nimble Fingers the Racoon:


Ballpoint on paper (as per usual).

I hope I got it right.

Anyhoo, the writing I'm working on currently is a work of fiction/horror with a totally different approach to my first novel. I've been working on it now for twelve months and should be finished this year. It can be difficult to write while working, which has slowed me somewhat, but I believe I can do this.

Also, don't stare too long into Nimble Fingers eyes...

Drew this last night in the Bleep Temple;


['Lasagna Cat looks for John': Pen on paper ]

Okay, so it's not quite finished, but it was very fun to push out.

Special thanks to the fine postal worker who suggested: "draw a cat with glasses and seven legs"

(may have gotten carried away with the number of legs)

Unreported News:
Minor scuffles broke out along Northbourne Avenue in Canberra today resulting from a minor breakdown within view of the “Summernats Car Festival”. Approximately two hundred young males descended on a broken down V8 Commodore LSL k-frame driven by bewildered P plater, Janice (last name withheld).
“I’d only just pulled over when the first guy, Tony, came over and told me to pop the hood. Within seconds there was a second guy, then a third,” Janice reported. “I only just had time to open the car’s engine thing and get out of the way before the car was just swamped with blokes wearing thongs, faded tee shirts and football shorts.”
Witnesses report that an argument as to whether the fuel injector or the valve springs needed looking was nearing a resolution when someone near the back of the crowd made a pro-Ford comment, sparking a retaliatory pro-Holden comment. Two camps quickly formed within the growing crowd and verbal abuse gave way to an escalating frackus.
“I don’t think it would have amounted to much,” observed Janice, “Then this big guy in an INXS singlet at the back of the car yelled something about how Ford doesn’t make tractors because they can’t get one to go as slow as a Holden, then it was on.” 
Witnesses described a veritable mosh pit of barely pubescent rev-heads and ageing silverback coggers trading blows around the still broken down Holden. Arriving on the scene, Police attempting to intervene were quickly overcome by the corrosive plumes of stale sweat billowing off the increasingly violent mob. 
Peace was only restored by the appearance of a bright purple Kia Rio five door with opalescent finish and freewheeling mags. The unknown driver pulled up adjacent to the crowd, revved loudly and pulled out a “mad burnout” lasting nearly half a minute and laying down twenty five metres of rubber and clouds of acrid smoke directly in front of the horde of automotive enthusiasts. 
“We all stopped when that (******) little hotted up piece of (****) dropped the clutch. Who woulda thought it? A (****’n) Kia?” one visiting car-votee said of the display. “I guess it helped us all remembered why we were really there.”
The whole incident, lasting a little over fifteen minutes left area woman, Janice, bewildered. She later returned to her vehicle to discover the engine totally reconditioned a set of velour dice added to her rear vision mirror. 
Police have declined to comment on the incident.

Highlight of my Sunday
She’s standing in the doorway of the shed. Behind her the sky is a featureless grey slab, the back yard is the dull greens and browns of dormant plant life. “What are you doing?” she asks. There is exasperation there and a lot of bemusement.I’m sitting a little way into the shed. An off-cut of marine ply is on the floor directly in front of me. I’m surrounded by flecks, strips, little wedges, rectangles and arcs of cardboard cut from boxes. There are the improvised tools and construction aids, mostly chosen for their heaviness, pointiness or cutting ability (And the glue! The most important ingredient!). Amidst this mess are are the fruits of my labour; the many neat polygons of cardboard, the bottomless box and five smoothly, arched quadrants that will form the load bearing centre of the construction. The concrete is, of course, bitterly cold. The two pizza boxes I’m sitting on keep my bum from freezing, but not from going numb. My fuzzy hat, complete with ear flaps, is far too big for my head. I have to raise the leading edge of my hat with a fingerless gloved hand to look up at her.“It’s getting there…” I say, trying to convince us both.She looks like she is going to say more. A lot more. But then she says, ‘ok,’ and leaves me to it. I spent another hour on it before going back inside. It really was the highlight of my Sunday because I could tell I would get it done, that it would be at least interesting and that Birgit was amused.The next couple of days were busy, so I could only get to my project in brief bursts; on one day, just enough time to get the lip of the box formed, glued and clamped. Another, finalising the cutting and fitting of the strips along the bow. Thursday night was hectic; I had to keep going until midnight to get the last of the gluing done, to make the oars and fix them into place.Here is a picture of the final product, which was worn to the trivia night on the Friday following the Sunday.


And! Here is our table group. The theme for the night was “Diamonds”. I will leave it to the reader to decipher how we interpreted this theme.

Lastly, I won the “Mr Squiggle” drawing competition on the night! Ok, it was a tie. (.… or, um… a draw??)

Ok, but this is difficult.

Here is a message to all those few who are waiting for Book Two.

So am I.

I keep waiting for a miracle; that I will sit down and write and that it will come as the first one did.

I am looking at the parameters in which that first book took shape; That first year I was under-employed, working part time while also running the EcoHome with my wife, Birgit. I was doing a Masters Degree in Mathematics Education while also gardening on a daily basis. I was reading and playing computer games for hours on end. I was making music (debatable) and dancing like a mad thing most every weekend. Amidst that I wrote the first 100k words.

I found time. I made time to write.

And when the next six years came along I had this kernel of a book. One that I could mold and shape. One that I could dip in and out of then, in its final year, and with the help of my most precious friend and editor (Meg!), polish it up to the blob it became. 

I'm not crowing. Rather, that person that I describe is gone. I carry around their remains. Most of the time when I think about the second book I feel an overwhelming shame that I have not done more. This is, of course, counter productive, but I can't logic it away.

I hope that my life will soon settle down and that I won't have to work the way I have been. I love the teaching, but there is just so much of it.

I want you, the people waiting, to know that I am still working towards its completion. That I won't let my frustration completely overwhelm me. Those of you who have given me encouragement are oxygen to me.

A special mention to the person who recently yelled across the noisy Gallipoli Club;
"Just get it done! I don't care how shit it is!"
Thanks.
(also, here is an obligatory picture - pen on paper... as per usual)


"CHIKKUMMMMM!!!!!"

Agent



A sterile room, barely larger than an elevator. The walls are beige tending to grey. The fluoro lights make the capillaries in their eyes pop, the dark circles sink into their cheeks.Two chairs. Two men. One table.The one with the grey flecks in his hair is standing. He has dark jeans and a black tee shirt with a single green hand printed on the front. The severed hand reaches and claws, rendered in blocky pixels. The print is fractured with wear and flaking.“So, this is the guy that’s going to be me while I’m doing the thing?”The other man sits, resting his folded arms on the table. His tracksuit is deep blue and loose. Spotless. There is a patch of plastic taped to the top of his stubbly head. He looks bored.“He is the agent,” came the voice from the wall.“But he doesn’t look like me at all,” complained the standing man. His words die to be replaced by the near-silence of air conditioning and transformer hum.“Just sit down, Huck,” said the track-suited man. “They’ll take care of all this before I take your place.” He flapped his hands at his face. “They start with the top and work down.”Huck approached the man but stood behind his chair, grabbing the back rest. He leaned heavily and rocked the chair so that it pawed at the ground like a nervous animal.“What more do you want? I’ve done a billion questionnaires, personality test and associations. I’ve given you everything from my first memories to the colour of my shit last Thursday morning. I’ve told you about my work colleagues, the students in my classes, my family, my pets, my neighbours, my neighbours’ pets…”“Huck, please,” the other man’s foot had found the seat of the rocking chair and slowly pressed down until all four legs settled on the ground. “Just sit down and talk to me.”A long stare. The background thrum. Huck eventually puts his butt into the chair, making sure to twist until his back pops and creaks before resigning himself fully to the seat.“Huck, I don’t need any information from you,” practiced patience in the man’s voice. “I’ve just got to talk to you. I’ve got to read you.”“What do you mean?”“I need to get a better sense of how you move your face. What you do when you are happy. How you are now, when you are annoyed.”“Well, you’re not likely to get ‘happy’ from me today,” Huck spat.“You’re wrong, Huck.” Without breaking eye contact, the man in the blue tracksuit twisted as Huck had, extracting a similar level of spluttering complaint from his spine. “Huck, you’re giving it to me right now. I don’t need long, just enough to get a first-hand sense of your timing, your internal tensions and how they play out through your face and body. You don’t have to be any particular emotional state for me to read your potential for glee, delight, ecstasy or that pedestrian state of happiness you’re determined not to be in. It’s recorded in the architecture of your face.“You don’t even need to talk. It’s all there; as you are listening you are associating, whether you want to or not. You are dipping between de-coding and remembering. How often you swap between these states, how long you stay in each of them is traced out by the movement of your eyes, the twitching of your body and the creases etched in your head. I just need enough time with you to decide between that which is habitual and those actions that are reactions to this situation.”Huck’s ears had flushed. This was the closest thing to blushing he had experienced in years. The man in the blue tracksuit was making his chair look like a couch while Huck was making his own look like a stove top. They stayed that way for some time. Huck seemed determined to resist scrutiny while his tiniest squirming’s seemed to be feeding the man in the tracksuit so that he became ever larger and more relaxed in the small room.“We’re done here,” the blue tracksuit man said, abruptly.“What? What do you mean we’re done? I haven’t said anything!”The blue tracksuit man rose effortlessly.“There’s no point me explaining myself a second time, Huck.” He made his way to the door, pausing on his way out.“You’re not special, Huckleberry, they just need you for this one job. If you fuck this up then your broken body will be shoved into a rolled car somewhere between Canberra and Sydney at three in the morning. Everyone will be shocked and saddened but not surprised and I’ll be off your couch and cycled back into the program.“Do your job. Don’t fuck it up, Huck.”The door closed. Huck deflated into his chair. The transformer hum of the fluoro lights didn’t warm him.
(picture to come)

What the Trees See
I was asked to ponder, “What has the oldest tree on your street seen?” Perhaps the intention of the question was to invite me to dwell on local history, which I did for some time. I discovered that the oldest trees on the street would all be around the same age, which, at most would be around 70 years old. It’s difficult to be certain without more digging into the construction history of Canberra, but it would seem that this part of Canberra was constructed after the two World Wars. Canberra was a fairly slow moving construction project due to a combination of interruptions, like those pesky wars, and maybe a national apathy and some shared spite from the two capital wannabe’s; Sydney and Melbourne.
As much as I actually enjoyed reading some of the history of this bowl I live in, a thought kept nagging at me, a problem with the nature of the task; trees don’t see.
I’m picturing the determined picks and shovels of sunburnt workers tearing up the dusty soil to build this street. The selected saplings are shoved into place and watered. The plants can't see. They don’t have a way to convert the sunlight hitting their leaves into an image. And then, even if they could, those trees have no mechanism for converting this impression of their surroundings into a memory in order to compare it to other  previous memories and arrive at cognition. 
Even if each vegetable was communicating with others via the network of their roots and perhaps some interplay with the vast sprawl of mycelium in the soil, what would they say? 
“It’s still dry.”
“I’m dropping more leaves today.”
“A lot of birds have been chewing on me, but it’s ok because they have also been crapping in my drip zone.”
These are boutique trees. Spoilt Canberra stock, planted and are cared for. They have ‘seen’ the weather and some chemical alterations in the soil. They were ignorant of Summernats and showed little care for the numerous ceremonies in the last half century outside the war memorial. All the tearing down of first generation housing that is happening even at this very moment means nothing to these trees.
I like these trees. They house the magpies. And the magpies see everyone.

 
 Curious Magpie(Ballpoint on Paper)

What the Trees See
I was asked to ponder, “What has the oldest tree on your street seen?” Perhaps the intention of the question was to invite me to dwell on local history, which I did for some time. I discovered that the oldest trees on the street would all be around the same age, which, at most would be around 70 years old. It’s difficult to be certain without more digging into the construction history of Canberra, but it would seem that this part of Canberra was constructed after the two World Wars. Canberra was a fairly slow moving construction project due to a combination of interruptions, like those pesky wars, and maybe a national apathy and some shared spite from the two capital wannabe’s; Sydney and Melbourne.
As much as I actually enjoyed reading some of the history of this bowl I live in, a thought kept nagging at me, a problem with the nature of the task; trees don’t see.
I’m picturing the determined picks and shovels of sunburnt workers tearing up the dusty soil to build this street. The selected saplings are shoved into place and watered. The plants can't see. They don’t have a way to convert the sunlight hitting their leaves into an image. And then, even if they could, those trees have no mechanism for converting this impression of their surroundings into a memory in order to compare it to other  previous memories and arrive at cognition. 
Even if each vegetable was communicating with others via the network of their roots and perhaps some interplay with the vast sprawl of mycelium in the soil, what would they say? 
“It’s still dry.”
“I’m dropping more leaves today.”
“A lot of birds have been chewing on me, but it’s ok because they have also been crapping in my drip zone.”
These are boutique trees. Spoilt Canberra stock, planted and are cared for. They have ‘seen’ the weather and some chemical alterations in the soil. They were ignorant of Summernats and showed little care for the numerous ceremonies in the last half century outside the war memorial. All the tearing down of first generation housing that is happening even at this very moment means nothing to these trees.
I like these trees. They house the magpies. And the magpies see everyone.(picture incoming...)