Tjilpi

A Pedagogical Day at the Strip

  I hadn't had my hands and feet on the controls of a glider since April 2007.

After that, for some reason, I lost my WILL TO DIE ; and hadn't flown a glider since then.  However, I remain Secretary of the Gliding Club.

BUT...last Saturday I was at the strip at 09:02 ready to go.

It was a "To Hell and Back" day for me.  Overconfidence - like "Hey I know how to fly this machine!" Tiredness  (I had been at the Casino until 4am).  Age - I'm nearly 60.  Or, maybe somebody was sticking pins into a Voodoo doll.

Whatever it was, everything seemed to conspire against me.  But who wouldn't think like that if they have a slight tendency to paranoia.

The day began with Simon doing the first take off, finding a nice thermal which took us to 10, 000 feet where we enjoyed the "Cool, Cool, Cool of the Elevation". 

You see you lose about 3C for each 1,000 feet you climb above the ground.  Our strip is at 2,400 Above Sea Level so at 10,000 feet the temp outside the aircraft is 22.8C below that on the ground - and on the ground it was well into the 40s.  17C in High Summer in Centralia is just soooooooo comfortable.  We found the first cool spot at around 8,000 feet and Simon said:

"Your aircraft"

"My aircraft", I replied.

I just wanted to fool around and get used to flying again with no particular task in hand.  However, Simon was intent on pushing me to learn more.  He began gliding after I did, and went solo before I did, and he knows exponentionally more than I do about gliding.

But hey, he is 15 years younger than me!

I managed my first landing with the comment from behind - "Perfect".

Well, something like that can't help but boost ones confidence.

The next flight was a disaster.  I was too low on final and Simon had to take over to allow us to clear the mulga which would have ripped the plane apart, as well removing, at a minimum. both of our rear ends, which are very close to the ground in a glider.

Simon is a brave man.  We went up for a 3rd flight.  I took the launch; but we didn't get much height and didn't find a thermal.  I was forced to turn back to the strip and do what is call an alternative approach. Rather than landing from the western end of the strip I had to turn in early and land on what has been described as "our aircraft carrier" about mid-deck.

I thought I was going to get a rollicking about that flight - but Simon's first words were: "Perfect. You made all the right decisions - you had no height, no thermal, and nowhere else to go, so you chose to do the only sensible thing and land the aircraft with a perfect final turn and a perfect landing."

This gliding business surely does bring some pleasures.

An essential Centralian Item...

Remember this photo on the right?

I published it in a previous post titled "Lake Miserable". 

The photo on the left was taken just after I moved into 5 Burke Street in November 2003. 

However, after some time the Klever Kleener, which came with the pool equipment you can see in the mid background of the photo on the left, ceased to clean the area in the bottom left corner of the photo you see on the left. 

Algae proliferated and the whole pool turned green.  The inner cement rendering of the pool had not been looked after properly before I bought this house and was in need of a repaint.   

So, I stopped watering the Vincas, which you can see flourishing in the left photo, drained the pool and stared at the miserable view which resulted outside the window, which is that which I look through for most of my non-working waking life.  That view lies behind the screen of my computer, at which, for those of you who know me,  I spend many hours.

The photo above, on the right, was taken at the depths of my depression about my swimming pool.  It stayed looking that way for more than 2 years. 

And then, one day, there seemed to be enough money in the Bank for me to call my friend John, The Painter. 

"Would you like to paint my pool", I asked.

"No"

"Why not?"

"Because the paint will fall off and I'll have to do it again in two years time.  Do the job properly, spend the money and get it Pebblecreted."

Well, you can't get better advice than that - so I went ahead and spent the money and had the pool Pebblecreted.  Here are the blokes at work in mid-winter - which is the time to get a pool man to do a job.   They're too busy in summer. 

Winter is also the time to buy a new chlorinator, filter, pump and Pool Shark.  I thought I was going to have to fork out about $2,000 just for the pump, which had seized up through disuse, and a new chlorinator; but I ended up with a new more powerful pump, new filter with the latest material inside, new reverse cycle chlorinator and a Pool Shark which does what the Klever Kleener was not able to do.  All for $1,950.  What a winter bargain!

And the Pool Shark, which is a modification of the Klever Kleener gets into the south east corner and scrubs the white granite impregnated Pebblecrete whiter than white.

Later, my next door neighbour helped me.  Well he did most of the work, I helped him  We built a little shed to shield all the new gear from our sun which rots most everything exposed to it.

Here is Steves shed; covering the filter, pump and chlorinator.  It's hidden by new growth of the Incas and a local plant which I have yet to identify.

But the whole business gave me heart and I've been watering the Incas, tending the pool and jumping into it, bomb style, most mornings.  Steve knows I'm still alive when he hears the splash, although must wonder if I will surface from my rapid sinking.  The Incas are a delight.

Here they are in close up.  There are two variations in my Vin ca patch. The pink/purple variety dominates but the white variation is there as well.

It being 40C  [=104F] in the shade outside at the moment, it might be time to bomb in ans splash out some water out of the pool. 

Fortunately water restrictions in Central Australia are almost nonexistent compared to those in the rest of drought affected Australia.

We pay for water; but it is more a notional cost rather than an impost.

So I think I can afford to splash some water out!

Ready, setty, jump.

Kathleen Lorraine Winterflood

Kath died in the early hours of Wednesday morning, 19 September 2007. 

I never called Mum 'Kath' to her face.  That would have brought out the words "Gregory Neil - what are you saying?"  So I always called her Mum.

She began life in humble surroundings - that's her on the left in the photo with her parents - Ernest Reginald Williams, an English immigrant, and Ethel Florence Strandquist [Williams]. Grandma Ethel was the daughter of a French immigrant, Francois Peres, and Swedish born Hilda Strandquist.  I do not know much about Granddad Ernie's family although I have been to 5 George Street, Hove, Sussex, England where he was born.

One of Mum's greatest fears was that she would end up like Hilda Strandquist, her Grandmother who, in her dotage and deafness wandered about muttering only in Swedish.  I told Mum not to worry about that, for, when all things were considered, she herself couldn't speak Swedish!

However, in the end she recognized that she had the "D" word.  When I tried to reassure her that things were OK;  she persisted and wanted me to confirm her self  diagnosis of her having dementia. Her insight into her dementia caused her to be severely and sadly agitated.

During her life of near to 89 years she had often been an anxious person.  In the mid 1950s one of her doctors told her to take up smoking cigarettes to calm her "nerves".  But who wouldn't be anxious with a son who made powerful explosives in his Chemistry Lab underneath our two story family home?

One night I made a concoction which nearly took out my left hand, my left testicle and my left eye.  Fortunately I had been prescribed my first pair of glasses one month before the explosion and so my left eye was protected from flying shards of the porcelain crucible in which I was making fireworks for Guy Fawkes Night.

Mum spent two weeks in Hospital under barbiturate sedation following that incident.  However, she recovered and I was once again called "Greggie" - her affectionate name for me - when I wasn't being the terror known as "Gregory Neil".

Mum was a tireless worker. I recall her pride in being certified to dispense prescription medicines from our family business, Winterflood's Pharmacy, when Dad was absent from the premises.  She and he worked together all day in the Pharmacy and then she came home to cook dinner and catch up on housework before getting up next morning to cook breakfeast, make our beds, and set up lunch for we children to take to school when we were little.  She was always on the go - mending, knitting and making things with needlecraft. And, besides that,  she was a good cook.  To my taste her rissoles have never been surpassed.  In my early teens I used to love being in the kitchen with Mum after school.  I had the job of putting the steak through the mincer.  That was followed by bread and onions to clean out the last pieces of mince, before Mum's hands got to work kneading the mince, bread, onions, and other secret ingregients into roundish flattened patties, the recipe for which the Hamburger chains might get their hands on, if they pay me enough!

Mum and Dad began courting in Maryborough, Queensland, when they were about 16.  At one stage Dad lived in the same house with Kath, Ernie and Ethel while he was undertaking his Pharmacy Studies.

Imagine that!

Mum was always keen to point out that their first child, my sister Robin, was born a little over 9 months after Mum and Dad were married on 12 April 1942.    

The photo on the left was taken about 6 months before they married. 

The photo on the right is of Mum in her wartime wedding dress.  You might notice that Mum is wearing very high heels.

I reckon she would have given Emelda Marcos a pretty good run for her money in a race for "Who has got the biggest collection of high heeled shoes?"

Mum loved shoes and clothes and handbags; but preferred a minimum of subtly applied makeup.  She always turned herself out well until the big "D" got to her.

Dad had signed up with the Army prior to their marriage, and soon went off to the South West Pacific campaign for 5 years - which accounts for the fact that my brother Graham is 5 years younger than sister Robin. 

And then 15 months after Graham made his appearance I came along to be "the baby of the family".  And, as I approach 60, I am still treated as such.

Mum stayed at home looking after me, and chasing me around the yard with a wooden spoon when I was naughty until I began First Grade.  She had to stay at home to look after me because I was expelled from Kindergarten; but as soon as I turned 6 it was off to the Urangan State School to begin the brilliant academic career that Mum had planned for me. 

There had to be a doctor in the family - and I was it. 

I resisted by pretending to study Philosophy, smoking dope, and trying to get arrested in Viet Nam War protests; but in the end, Mum won.

Vale Mum.

The Perquisites of Youth

I was 19 when I first came to Alice Springs.   It was January 1968.  I had hitched-hiked down from Darwin.

For 3 days I sat just south of Heavitree Gap, in sight of the mission of the Little Sisters of Mercy. 

Aborigines gathered in the Todd River bed just as they had always done, and just as they do today.  I watched them, and I watched the sun rise and set on the Namitjira colours of the McDonnells.

The 10 year drought, which had lasted from 1956 to 1966 had well and truly broken and rains were falling regularly again.  Massive flocks of budgerigars were wheeling through the sky like radio controlled clouds.

The Finke River was in flood and no cars were able to get to Adelaide over the washed out unsealed South Stuart Highway. As a result, the Ghan, which was able to get through over the old track via Oodnadatta and Marree was packed with cars and people.

There was no room for somebody who hadn’t booked ahead, but I was lucky enough to get a job as a kitchen hand in the buffet car.

I left Alice Springs peeling potatoes and washing dishes as the train made its 24 hour journey to Pt Augusta.

I knew I would be back....

[Text first published by Tjilpi on Tjilpi’s Blog Thursday, 03 February 2005]

This Bl***ing Life

Why do I do it?

Maybe it is the distant friends one makes along the way, who prod one back into their blog pod?

When I was a kid we had "Pen Pals".  That took Airmail Paper and Real Stamps.

I used to correspond with a girl in Ceylon.

Her name was Padmani Daswani.

I remember that.

We exchanged a few letters until one day, she asked me to send her a Koala Bear. 

That was beyond the scope of a 10 year old, so I stopped Pen-Palling.

So, if anyone out there asks for a Koala Bear, you will hear no more from me!

I haven't been taking pictures...

I haven't been taking pictures because the film I bought is faulty. I have a stash of 25 rolls of film from Croatia and my guess is that each roll is faulty. I bought 4 rolls of efke 127 film in March to use in my Baby Brownie. That is when the learning curve began. I had been warned that I should cover the rear red window on the Baby Brownine as it let light in which fogged the brand of film that I had bought. The red window is there so that you can see the frame numbers of the film you are shooting. I'm talking old fashioned film here. The film itself sits on a piece of blackened backing paper to prevent light getting at the film when it is wound onto a spool which is something like a cotton reel with an axle through the middle. I got so excited about the whole photography thing that I acquired a second hand Baby Rollei camera which takes the same sized film but it has knobs and levers and it focuses and has shutter adjustments and all kinds of exciting lenses and viewing devices attached to it. By way of comparison, The Baby Brownie sits there with a single shutter lever to move, and a lone knob to wind the film on.

So, I forgot about the Baby Brownie and I got the Baby Rollei going in order to do some real fotograffie.

But, it all came to an end when I discovered that the frame numbers on the backing paper were appearing on my portraits. You can see them in the photo of Roy. See that number 10 on its side, with two bars around it, just above his left shoulder. And there is a row of 7s on their side, above his head. Not to mention the black squares running in the vicinity of his left shoulder.

So, because of that psychological set back I haven't been taking photographs. I've toyed with the idea of moving to 35mm black and white; but at the moment that doesn't have the attraction of using a 50 year old camera and a film format which was invented around 1912.

I've been on the InterWeb, of course, looking for solutions to the problem of the backing paper data coming out on my negatives. There are a couple of blokes in the US who are having the same problem. They took to developing some of the errant film straight out of the box to see if the backing paper data came out on the negatives. It did. They didn't put the film in a camera. It had never seen the light of day; but still the numbers appeared on the negatives. I began to suspect things like x-rays were affecting the film as it might have been scanned before being trans-shipped by air.  I thought that might make the numbers come out on the film even if it had not seen the light of day.

I really didn't have an answer, and I was not happy.  So, I decided to have a look for myself.

I took a roll of film out of its tin foil wrapping and had a look at it. Nothing. I waved it around in daylight for a few minutes and then I saw the markings appear. The backing paper ink had leached over into the film emulsion and left marks on the film. The backing paper and film are wound very tightly onto a spool. The film is pressed very tightly on the roll between two sheets of backing paper. It is a meat in the sandwich situation. If the bottom piece of bread has mustard on it, some of that is going to rub off onto the bottom of the meat in the sandwich. However, backing paper pieces of bread are not meant to deliver their markings onto the meat. The marks printed on the backing paper are not meant to come off. Although, it has to be said that backing paper markings have been known to come off if the spool of film is very old, or if it has become moist.

However, backing paper markings are not meant to affect NEW film, and that is what I wrote to the US supplier of the rolls of efke R100 I bought.  I'm not sure if I'll get satisfaction. But I'll certainly know the right questions to ask in future.

Maybe I will shoot some 35mm film, while I wait to hear from the bloke in Texas who shipped me the dud rolls.