blog 75: In which I say a brief and belated goodbye to the last two months of 2014.

My brief recap on November and December:

I had my last school visit for the year talking to the Year 9s at Mt Gravatt High who had studied Don’t Call Me Ishmael. Great kids, great school.
I managed to break our duster and thought for one brief, glorious moment that the days of my onerous house-dusting duties were finally over. But then my wife informed me that she could easily buy a replacement from a shop. Bummer.
My son Joe Bauer and my daughter-in-law Rita Artmann’s new feature-length sci-fi comedy film AUSTRALIENS had its Premiere, playing simultaneously in two theatres at the Barracks cinema complex in Brisbane on November 7th. A wonderful night and a great success. So proud of Joe and Rita and everyone involved in the production. Look out for it at upcoming film Festivals here and overseas and then hopefully at a cinema near you or out on DVD.

Cast and Crew as seen by Joe Bauer. My wife and I are in there somewhere.

JOE in GREEN. RITA with GUN

I shared a session on local places, local stories with Ellen van Neerven (Heat and Light) at the inaugural Eat Your Words Festival at the Uni of Qld. Good friend and fellow author Samantha Wheeler (Smooch and Rose; Spud and Charli) was also part of the day. Congratulations to the organisers and the band of volunteers for getting the day up and running. (And I promise I was more animated on the panel than I look in this photo!)
For a while there all the magnificent poincianas around Brisbane were on fire …… until a couple of these bad boys blew in.
The strange structures that just pop up mysteriously in the bush where I walk started breeding!

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My wife and I had a really lovely Christmas Day lunch with some members of my family. While there, I filmed this video of my sister-in-law Karen clearly demonstrating how her pet Blue Tongue lizard ‘Buster’ would, in her words, ‘WOULD NEVER BITE ANYONE’.

Joe created this really really epic Eric Vale/Derek ‘Danger’ Dale Christmas card.
After Christmas lunch in Brisbane my wife and I flew to Melbourne that night to spend the week with my daughter Meg and her partner Ryan. While there we had a fantastic trip along the Great Ocean Road to see the Twelve Apostles. Spectacular. (And I’m not just talking about that photo of me below!)

Otway Treetops Walk

On our travels my wife Ard even discovered her namesake. I always said she was gorge-ous!

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And I discovered (to my pain) that apparently this was supposed to be some kind of a WARNING sign. Well next time, why not make your message obvious so that the average person can understand it!
On our return to Melbourne, I did some bunny bonding with Basil.
And finally, Ard and I flew back to BrisVegas on New Year’s Eve where we had a very subdued entry into 2015. In fact I just channeled surf the TV for a while, watched an old episode of Rumpole of the Bailey, headed off to bed at around 10.15 pm and slept right through the midnight fireworks.