(A true story I told to Carole Whitelock's listeners
on ABC Radio 891, 23/06/09)
In the early 1970’s, while teaching at Elizabeth Vale Primary School,
I organized for my Year 6-7’s a week-long camping trip to the Flinders Ranges. In those days, the Flinders were very much less trafficked
than they are now, and we were able to camp all alone in a beautiful spot
in a deep gorge. It was a fine full-moon night, and after a splendid meal provided by our multi-talented bus driver and my helper-cum-chaperone, Caroline - (who I see still sends weather photos to the ABC) - I suggested
a moonlight hike up the creek in the deep steep valley. About a half of the 40-odd kids came with me, the rest were happy to go to bed early. Everybody felt good.
I had already taught the youngsters to walk quietly, listening to the sounds of the bush, and they were all surprised at just how little noise they could make when they tried (and so was I!) When we were a few hundred yards from camp, I sat the group down in a circle in the meditative pose we had used many times at school, cross-legged with eyes closed. There was not
a sound, the kids had never experienced such profound silence in all their lives, and no-one broke the spell with so much as a giggle or a murmur.
We had only been there for a few minutes when there came a scrabbling rattling noise only twenty-or-so yards away on the other side of the creek-bed. We opened our eyes, and to our delight, there was a pair of Yellow-Footed Rock Wallabies, quite unselfconsciously making their way in our direction, crossing with some difficulty a steep scree slope covered with loose shale. No-one made a sound, we sat spellbound, not even daring to breathe, as the lovely creatures came closer and closer still, until at last they saw us, and stopped stock-still, less than ten yards away.
They stared at us in puzzlement, hopped a few steps, stopping again and again to stare at us, obviously in increasing amazement – they plainly could hardly believe their eyes and ears that humans could be so quiet and so still. Eventually they made off unhurriedly in the direction they had been intending to take, with not a single child betraying the stillness and silence. It was not until the wallabies had gone that the kids dared to breathe again, their eyes wide and shining, staring at each other with shared delight and a new pride in each other and in themselves, that no-one had spoiled the magic of the moment.
On the way home the kids vociferously voted the trip the best time of their lives, no risk.
The Wallaby incident was certainly the best moment of my teaching career.
There may be some of those kids – now aged nearly 50 - among your listeners.
I’d love to hear any of them ring in with memories about that trip.
Bruce
My website http://www.ozzigami.com.au/ Email brucebilney@ozzigami.com.au 0409 060 419
Friday, July 3, 2009
FLORAL EMBLEMS OF AUSTRALIA
Floral Emblems of Australia
[This verse may be sung
to the tune of Click Go The Shears]
The Wildflowers of the Wide Brown Land
The Wildflowers of the Wide Brown Land
grow glorious and free;
The people of each State all chose
The people of each State all chose
their favourite-to-see;
So rich! - So rare ! But - which goes where?
So rich! - So rare ! But - which goes where?
Our picture illustrates :
Rehearse our verse, you'll always know
Rehearse our verse, you'll always know
which flowers with which States.
The Cooktown Pink Orchid's
The Cooktown Pink Orchid's
from Queensland's Gold Coast;
Taswegians love Blue-Gum's
Taswegians love Blue-Gum's
fringed blossoms' gold the most;
Red-and-Green Kangaroo Paw
Red-and-Green Kangaroo Paw
is the Wonder of the West,
Whilst New South Welsh folk think
Whilst New South Welsh folk think
big crimson Waratahs the best.
Canberra's right-Royal Blue–Bells
Canberra's right-Royal Blue–Bells
are such a lovely sight;
Pink Common Heath's Victorian
Pink Common Heath's Victorian
- So common, yet so bright!
For North- and South Australians -
For North- and South Australians -
One ‘Sir’~ named both of these -
Sturt's Pink Desert Rose, and
Sturt's Pink Desert Rose, and
red-and-black Sturt Desert Peas !
Chorus :
Dusty old Acacia,
Chorus :
Dusty old Acacia,
dull deep-green,
Plainest of plants
Plainest of plants
on the bushland scene -
Yet in early Spring the Wattle
Yet in early Spring the Wattle
is a splendour to behold:
Australia's emblem, radiant,
Australia's emblem, radiant,
in emerald and gold !
© Bruce Bilney 1990
© Bruce Bilney 1990
Ph 0409 060 419
Note that the verse names each flower,
Note that the verse names each flower,
its colour/s and its State of origin.
I reckon this song~verse should be taught
I reckon this song~verse should be taught
in every school in the land!
Blossom the School Calf
1980?
I was teaching at Pooraka Primary School, in the unusual, and to me novel, capacity of Primary Science Teacher. I used to teach elementary science to all grades from Reception to Year 7. It was a big double-decker school, 800-odd kids, two-and-a-half classes of each grade as I remember. Each week and lesson period I had to zip around the school to visit the littlies, we'd do bubbles or fizzy stuff or magnetic tricks, then it'd be Year 4 for paper models or pulleys and levers or magnetic tricks, then Year 6-7 for air pressure or Newton's Laws or magnetic tricks . . . Busy I was, yes indeed.
I started there at the beginning of the school year, and right from the start I went looking for local nature-study-type possibilities. They were very limited indeed. Pooraka School, a hectare or so including a decent green play area, is on busy Main North Road, and nestles in the NW corner of the many-hectare abattoirs stock paddocks (as they were then). No child ever crossed the main road, it's too wide and dangerous and there's nowhere across there to go anyway, and essentially they might as well be in a fully-fenced institution for all the interaction there is with the local community. The only place to look for natural stuff is in the stock-paddocks behind us.
These stock paddocks were only about seven or eight miles out of Adelaide's CBD, and were quite large. Probably a mile by a mile and-a-half, yeah alright one-point-six by two-point-five clicks, (ptui!), divided into biggish fenced sections by barbed-wire fences.
They were cropped with wheat or barley year-on-year, then grazed mainly by cattle waiting for slaughter. Pretty sad really, the cattle and the state of the paddocks both. Well at least the cattle were well-fed, for commercial if not for humanitarian reasons. As for the cropped paddocks, they were wheat in winter, stubble in late spring, and red dust as summer wore on. Nothing of ecological interest whatsoever.
But the whole perimeter of the paddocks was bounded by a double fence, one inside the other, about 8 yards apart. (OK, 7-point-xyz metres). It was neither grazed by stock nor walked on by humans, and was planted with two lines of quite-old trees, pinus radiata on the outside, some lopped and rather sad gum trees on the inner line. Grass and weeds and occasional toadstoolish funguses grew between the trees, and you could find stones and parrot feathers and red meat-ants there. Murray Magpies (mudlarks) and Willy Wagtails nested in the pines, though I wasn't about to betray their presence to the children, even though the few bird species were really the only genuine wildlife left. Most of the kids would have left them alone, but I wasn't prepared to take the chance that a few might have destroyed them. All in all the ecosystem was cactus, as they say.
Nevertheless, within a couple of weeks of starting at Pooraka, I decided to take the Year 7's for a 'nature walk' across the bare paddocks, to see what could be found in some distant and disused old sheds. At least we were out of the classroom, and since no-one ever walked in the paddocks there was a certain sense of outlawism by going there at all. The kids knew where to get through the fences, and we set off in good spirits.
As we neared the sheds we saw a group of half-a-dozen abattoirs workers, sitting down for a break. They saw us too, and called us over. I feared that they were going to give us a hard time, but not so. Instead they showed us a tiny red calf, still with umbilical cord, and looking in desperate condition. She had not even been licked clean, and was almost too weak to stand. The blokes told us that she had been born on a cattle truck 4 days ago, that her mother had already been slaughtered and that she too would be killed if no-one was prepared to foster her.
The kids were aghast as the callousness of the whole abattorial exercise suddenly came home to them,and they were desperate to save the calf. "Oh Mr Bilney, can we keep her, pleeeeeze?" came from every side, and I was done for. I never saw any group of children more moved by pity, nor more determined to get their way.
Holy Cow! Well yes, Calf, but, what to do?
There was a rush of blood to my head, and I picked her up to carry her the half-mile or so (you work it out) back to School. (She was too weak to walk at all.) Now I'm a little light bloke, but then so was the calf, and I managed the task OK. But how she stank! As I said, she'd never had the luxury of a maternal licking, poor little mite, and my clothes reeked for the rest of the day.
So then I had immediately to broach the whole matter with the Headmaster. (OK, Principal, but he was the Headmaster back then.)
Though he wasn't a decisive man, he was fairly decent as HM's go, and he didn't actually ban the kids caring for the calf that day.
How to care for a tiny starving cold little calf? I'd never had any close contact with calves at all, though as a tiny child I had adored my Auntie Mardy's Jersey cow Cutie. (Or was it Q.T.? I never knew. I called her Cute Cow, she let me ride her once or twice, and with a bit of help from Auntie Mardy, she was able to squirt fresh warm creamy milk direct into us kids' mouths - or eyes! - at a distance of 2 or 3 yards. She never thought in metres.)
The first thing was to find the wee calf a name. Names immediately engender enhanced protectiveness, when you come to think of it. I put it to the Year 7's, and instantly Matilda, a big fat pimply frog of a girl with a heart of gold who yet commanded absolute respect amongst every kid at school - most especially, and critically, the Year 7 girls - responded Blossom! There wasn't the slightest doubt that that was the calf's name, she was Blossom from that moment on. And all the bigger kids at the school, but especially the girls, fell in love with her there and then.
First we had to try to get her to feed. As soon as lunchtime came I raced off to a feed store to get a big bag of Denkavit calf-milk substitute, $20 or so out of my own pocket, and some baby bottles from the chemist, (OK, pharmacist), and hurried back to the waiting kids. All the Year 7 girls and some of the boys clamoured to be allowed to be her carers, and on my instructions they washed her with warm shampoo and dried her off. Except for being so pathetic, she was quite lovely when she was cleaned up, with brilliant red translucent hair all over, not a single white one.
We tried to get her to suck the bottle, but to our dismay she didn't seem to get the hang of it easily at all. One of the female teachers had spent time on a farm showed us how to stick our fingers in the milk and then in Blossom's mouth, and we worked at it, but it was still very difficult to get much milk into her. That was so for not just days but for several weeks: she was quite a trial to feed for most of the term. I discovered very early that she should have received a first meal of colostrum from poor dead Mum, and we simply couldn't provide that, we hoped for the best.
But where to keep her? You remember Dear Reader the double fence around the stock paddocks, well we fenced off a little space at the open end - the other end was the side fence of the school - and it made a nice little calf paddock. Well not really all that nice, it had no green grass at all (February in Adelaide!) and precious little dry grass either, not that Blossom would be ready to eat grass green or brown for many weeks anyway. Still it was fairly safe, and indeed Blossom was never hassled by anybody to my knowledge. She had shelter from the worst of the cold winds at night at the SW corner from the caretaker's shed, and dappled shade in the heat of the day from the pine trees to the NE. We gave her carpet to sleep on, and all in all, as an orphan calf, she was as well set up s she could reasonably hope to be.
Every day the girls were there, before school, at morning recess and lunch time, and after school too. There was rarely a moment when Blossom was not surrounded by half a dozen or more kids, mostly but not all female; quite a few boys, but they mostly craved a bit more vigorous forms of play, and in any case many of them seemed a bit bemused by the notion of caring for a baby something. At ages 11-13 girls are so much more responsible than boys, and nowhere have I seen that so demonstrated as in Blossom's case. There were many girls whom I could safely trust with her care, while probably no boys who showed themselves worthy of such confidence. Not that the boys were ill-disposed towards little Blossom, they just weren't so sensible. Some of the girls would sit there with her and each other all lunchtime, sharing matters girly, and even though I sometimes had to chase them up to see that they had mixed the Denkavit properly, or that they had spent enough time in the onerous task of actually getting enough into her, I knew that no harm would ever befall her by silliness or inattention.
Though she was never very robust as calves go, she gradually grew, until I could probably not have picked her up if I'd tried. (Not that I ever did after the first time.) I had to replace the $20 bags of Denkavit more and more frequently, the school never offered to share the cost and I never asked, I wouldn't have lowered myself, several of the other teachers were quite sniffy about the popularity Blossom reflected on your chronicler, even though it was plainly good for the kids' morale and confidence and caring experience, and the Headmaster was really pretty insipid in my support, even though I think he recognized how valuable an exercise it was for those kids.
Weeks went by, Blossom blossomed, and soon I was getting kids to try to find a bit of greenfeed for her. At first she wanted just nibbles, but even then there was so little calf-edible tucker around that she rarely had a proper feed. But at last the rains came, and in ten days or so there were blessed green grass shoots coming up. Sparse and insubstantial as they were, Blossom demolished the meagre handfuls (OK, handsful) the kids brought, and looked for more.
One day an old fellow I'd never seen before came to me, saying he lived directly opposite the calf enclosure, acroos the more crossable Pooraka Road, behind a galv fence which I'd never seen over. He had been watching me and the kids and the calf though, and I glowed when he told me how much he thought of the job I was doing. His house was set in an almond orchard, 2 or 3 acres (or a hectare or so to be exact), and new grass was sprouting everywhere between the trees. His block was safely fenced all round - Would I like to agist Blossom there during the school daytime?
I was nearly in tears of gratitude (as I am now at the memory), and the kids just couldn't thank him enough, their sincerity and manners made me proud. We put a lead round Blossom's neck and walked her across the road, obedient as could be, when you realize she'd never been a yard or metre outside her yard. (Not metre!) As she reached the open gate and saw the vista of greenery before her, she jumped for joy, clicking her heels - no lie! - and instantly got stuck into the grass. It was a wonderful moment for all of us. It was the only time she ever did that, but once was perfect.
Every day before school Year 6 & 7 kids would walk her with care and caution across the road, and after school they would solemnly conduct her back again. The sense of importance and responsibility in walking her across the road was more to the boys' taste than just keeping her company, and a couple of the most sensible were always on hand after school. Although now the kids couldn't be with her at playtimes, they recognized that she was growing up and needed solid food. They still had to give her Denkavit daily, but by now she had learnt to drink from a bucket, though she was never "bullish" about it like other poddy calves you see. In fact she was never "poddy" at all, indeed I could have wished her more so earlier, but she was plainly out of danger by now.
I was teaching at Pooraka Primary School, in the unusual, and to me novel, capacity of Primary Science Teacher. I used to teach elementary science to all grades from Reception to Year 7. It was a big double-decker school, 800-odd kids, two-and-a-half classes of each grade as I remember. Each week and lesson period I had to zip around the school to visit the littlies, we'd do bubbles or fizzy stuff or magnetic tricks, then it'd be Year 4 for paper models or pulleys and levers or magnetic tricks, then Year 6-7 for air pressure or Newton's Laws or magnetic tricks . . . Busy I was, yes indeed.
I started there at the beginning of the school year, and right from the start I went looking for local nature-study-type possibilities. They were very limited indeed. Pooraka School, a hectare or so including a decent green play area, is on busy Main North Road, and nestles in the NW corner of the many-hectare abattoirs stock paddocks (as they were then). No child ever crossed the main road, it's too wide and dangerous and there's nowhere across there to go anyway, and essentially they might as well be in a fully-fenced institution for all the interaction there is with the local community. The only place to look for natural stuff is in the stock-paddocks behind us.
These stock paddocks were only about seven or eight miles out of Adelaide's CBD, and were quite large. Probably a mile by a mile and-a-half, yeah alright one-point-six by two-point-five clicks, (ptui!), divided into biggish fenced sections by barbed-wire fences.
They were cropped with wheat or barley year-on-year, then grazed mainly by cattle waiting for slaughter. Pretty sad really, the cattle and the state of the paddocks both. Well at least the cattle were well-fed, for commercial if not for humanitarian reasons. As for the cropped paddocks, they were wheat in winter, stubble in late spring, and red dust as summer wore on. Nothing of ecological interest whatsoever.
But the whole perimeter of the paddocks was bounded by a double fence, one inside the other, about 8 yards apart. (OK, 7-point-xyz metres). It was neither grazed by stock nor walked on by humans, and was planted with two lines of quite-old trees, pinus radiata on the outside, some lopped and rather sad gum trees on the inner line. Grass and weeds and occasional toadstoolish funguses grew between the trees, and you could find stones and parrot feathers and red meat-ants there. Murray Magpies (mudlarks) and Willy Wagtails nested in the pines, though I wasn't about to betray their presence to the children, even though the few bird species were really the only genuine wildlife left. Most of the kids would have left them alone, but I wasn't prepared to take the chance that a few might have destroyed them. All in all the ecosystem was cactus, as they say.
Nevertheless, within a couple of weeks of starting at Pooraka, I decided to take the Year 7's for a 'nature walk' across the bare paddocks, to see what could be found in some distant and disused old sheds. At least we were out of the classroom, and since no-one ever walked in the paddocks there was a certain sense of outlawism by going there at all. The kids knew where to get through the fences, and we set off in good spirits.
As we neared the sheds we saw a group of half-a-dozen abattoirs workers, sitting down for a break. They saw us too, and called us over. I feared that they were going to give us a hard time, but not so. Instead they showed us a tiny red calf, still with umbilical cord, and looking in desperate condition. She had not even been licked clean, and was almost too weak to stand. The blokes told us that she had been born on a cattle truck 4 days ago, that her mother had already been slaughtered and that she too would be killed if no-one was prepared to foster her.
The kids were aghast as the callousness of the whole abattorial exercise suddenly came home to them,and they were desperate to save the calf. "Oh Mr Bilney, can we keep her, pleeeeeze?" came from every side, and I was done for. I never saw any group of children more moved by pity, nor more determined to get their way.
Holy Cow! Well yes, Calf, but, what to do?
There was a rush of blood to my head, and I picked her up to carry her the half-mile or so (you work it out) back to School. (She was too weak to walk at all.) Now I'm a little light bloke, but then so was the calf, and I managed the task OK. But how she stank! As I said, she'd never had the luxury of a maternal licking, poor little mite, and my clothes reeked for the rest of the day.
So then I had immediately to broach the whole matter with the Headmaster. (OK, Principal, but he was the Headmaster back then.)
Though he wasn't a decisive man, he was fairly decent as HM's go, and he didn't actually ban the kids caring for the calf that day.
How to care for a tiny starving cold little calf? I'd never had any close contact with calves at all, though as a tiny child I had adored my Auntie Mardy's Jersey cow Cutie. (Or was it Q.T.? I never knew. I called her Cute Cow, she let me ride her once or twice, and with a bit of help from Auntie Mardy, she was able to squirt fresh warm creamy milk direct into us kids' mouths - or eyes! - at a distance of 2 or 3 yards. She never thought in metres.)
The first thing was to find the wee calf a name. Names immediately engender enhanced protectiveness, when you come to think of it. I put it to the Year 7's, and instantly Matilda, a big fat pimply frog of a girl with a heart of gold who yet commanded absolute respect amongst every kid at school - most especially, and critically, the Year 7 girls - responded Blossom! There wasn't the slightest doubt that that was the calf's name, she was Blossom from that moment on. And all the bigger kids at the school, but especially the girls, fell in love with her there and then.
First we had to try to get her to feed. As soon as lunchtime came I raced off to a feed store to get a big bag of Denkavit calf-milk substitute, $20 or so out of my own pocket, and some baby bottles from the chemist, (OK, pharmacist), and hurried back to the waiting kids. All the Year 7 girls and some of the boys clamoured to be allowed to be her carers, and on my instructions they washed her with warm shampoo and dried her off. Except for being so pathetic, she was quite lovely when she was cleaned up, with brilliant red translucent hair all over, not a single white one.
We tried to get her to suck the bottle, but to our dismay she didn't seem to get the hang of it easily at all. One of the female teachers had spent time on a farm showed us how to stick our fingers in the milk and then in Blossom's mouth, and we worked at it, but it was still very difficult to get much milk into her. That was so for not just days but for several weeks: she was quite a trial to feed for most of the term. I discovered very early that she should have received a first meal of colostrum from poor dead Mum, and we simply couldn't provide that, we hoped for the best.
But where to keep her? You remember Dear Reader the double fence around the stock paddocks, well we fenced off a little space at the open end - the other end was the side fence of the school - and it made a nice little calf paddock. Well not really all that nice, it had no green grass at all (February in Adelaide!) and precious little dry grass either, not that Blossom would be ready to eat grass green or brown for many weeks anyway. Still it was fairly safe, and indeed Blossom was never hassled by anybody to my knowledge. She had shelter from the worst of the cold winds at night at the SW corner from the caretaker's shed, and dappled shade in the heat of the day from the pine trees to the NE. We gave her carpet to sleep on, and all in all, as an orphan calf, she was as well set up s she could reasonably hope to be.
Every day the girls were there, before school, at morning recess and lunch time, and after school too. There was rarely a moment when Blossom was not surrounded by half a dozen or more kids, mostly but not all female; quite a few boys, but they mostly craved a bit more vigorous forms of play, and in any case many of them seemed a bit bemused by the notion of caring for a baby something. At ages 11-13 girls are so much more responsible than boys, and nowhere have I seen that so demonstrated as in Blossom's case. There were many girls whom I could safely trust with her care, while probably no boys who showed themselves worthy of such confidence. Not that the boys were ill-disposed towards little Blossom, they just weren't so sensible. Some of the girls would sit there with her and each other all lunchtime, sharing matters girly, and even though I sometimes had to chase them up to see that they had mixed the Denkavit properly, or that they had spent enough time in the onerous task of actually getting enough into her, I knew that no harm would ever befall her by silliness or inattention.
Though she was never very robust as calves go, she gradually grew, until I could probably not have picked her up if I'd tried. (Not that I ever did after the first time.) I had to replace the $20 bags of Denkavit more and more frequently, the school never offered to share the cost and I never asked, I wouldn't have lowered myself, several of the other teachers were quite sniffy about the popularity Blossom reflected on your chronicler, even though it was plainly good for the kids' morale and confidence and caring experience, and the Headmaster was really pretty insipid in my support, even though I think he recognized how valuable an exercise it was for those kids.
Weeks went by, Blossom blossomed, and soon I was getting kids to try to find a bit of greenfeed for her. At first she wanted just nibbles, but even then there was so little calf-edible tucker around that she rarely had a proper feed. But at last the rains came, and in ten days or so there were blessed green grass shoots coming up. Sparse and insubstantial as they were, Blossom demolished the meagre handfuls (OK, handsful) the kids brought, and looked for more.
One day an old fellow I'd never seen before came to me, saying he lived directly opposite the calf enclosure, acroos the more crossable Pooraka Road, behind a galv fence which I'd never seen over. He had been watching me and the kids and the calf though, and I glowed when he told me how much he thought of the job I was doing. His house was set in an almond orchard, 2 or 3 acres (or a hectare or so to be exact), and new grass was sprouting everywhere between the trees. His block was safely fenced all round - Would I like to agist Blossom there during the school daytime?
I was nearly in tears of gratitude (as I am now at the memory), and the kids just couldn't thank him enough, their sincerity and manners made me proud. We put a lead round Blossom's neck and walked her across the road, obedient as could be, when you realize she'd never been a yard or metre outside her yard. (Not metre!) As she reached the open gate and saw the vista of greenery before her, she jumped for joy, clicking her heels - no lie! - and instantly got stuck into the grass. It was a wonderful moment for all of us. It was the only time she ever did that, but once was perfect.
Every day before school Year 6 & 7 kids would walk her with care and caution across the road, and after school they would solemnly conduct her back again. The sense of importance and responsibility in walking her across the road was more to the boys' taste than just keeping her company, and a couple of the most sensible were always on hand after school. Although now the kids couldn't be with her at playtimes, they recognized that she was growing up and needed solid food. They still had to give her Denkavit daily, but by now she had learnt to drink from a bucket, though she was never "bullish" about it like other poddy calves you see. In fact she was never "poddy" at all, indeed I could have wished her more so earlier, but she was plainly out of danger by now.
Friday, January 23, 2009
Being fascinated by tessellations, of which I have managed to create quite a few (which you may view on my website http://www.ozzigami.com.au/, go to my tessellations and punography page) I went looking in my local library for references to MC Escher, who started it all. ( 'it' in this case meaning specifically lifelike tessellations since the word really just means 'tilings' which have been around longer than the Wheel!) There I found just 2 references, one is a big book of Escher's designs, "ESCHER The Complete Graphic Work" which oddly is not true to label, at least 2 of his tessellations, Sea-Horses and one of greyhound-like Dogs are missing! Anyway the other book is Jane Langton's "The Escher Twist". I have borrowed both books. Her title interested me strangely: a decade ago I wrote "A Yarn with an Escheresque Twist", an anecdotal account of a series of concatenating events which formed a sort of Moebius strip in my life. I'm going to put this on my blog, both this letter to you and my story, it's sort of interesting, (at least to me). As for Ms Langton's book, it's certainly a bit turgid and not necessarily very believable, and it ends up a lot neater than most things in life and death . . . but then . . . it is called "The Escher Twist", Escher's work is all of the above, (and in Spades, as they say) so that's fair eh!
Anyway, here's my 1996 story,
"A Yarn with an Escheresque Twist" :
Having developed some special nets for making the 5 Platonic Solids, I rang the SA Curriculum Centre to see if I could gee some interest at schools. I found myself talking to Will Morony, AAMT President. He was mildly interested in our nets, but told me he was planning to go to ICME 8, The International Convention of Mathematics Teachers, in Seville, Spain, in a few weeks, and that he wanted to find a tessellation to distribute there as a sort of Australian visiting card. I was astonished: I had mentioned nothing about tessellations, and I had no idea that mathematicians were even interested in them. Anyway I wasted no time in telling him about OZZIE the Magic Kangaroo; when he saw the design he said instantly that he would like to use it. I worked up a variation to fit on a peel-&-stick icosahedron (pretty!) and while in the throes of having it printed I visited the AAMT office. There I noticed the cover of AMT Vol 51 no 4 1995 edition, featuring a locally-made chessboard with a very clever surface design, an Escher-like lizard breaking through the squares. I contacted its creator, Mark Shearer of Glyph Fine Marquetry; within days he had produced a stunning OZZIE-tessellation chessboard, which attracted many compliments when displayed in Spain.
A few weeks later I received a phone call from Dr. Paul Scott, Associate Professor of Pure Mathematics at Adelaide University, and longtime Executive Editor of Australian Mathematics Teacher, (rated by many as the finest Mathematics Teachers journal in the Universe.) It transpired that Mark Shearer had mentioned OZZIE tessellation to Paul, who graciously invited me to write an AMT article. [ Me! - a Maths article !!! ]
When I went to meet Dr Scott at his office, I was delighted to spy his splendid collection of geometrical models: beautiful coloured stellations, some of which must have taken many many hours to make. Naturally I presented him with a set of our unique dazzling peel-&-stick polyhedral nets. Within a couple of days he rang me to tell me he had constructed the solids, and that they now occupied pride of place in the very centre of his collection! And best of all, he offered to review them in AMT.
OZZIE gloried in full colour as the centrefold in Vol 52 No 4 1996 issue of AMT. Two pages further on was Paul's glowing review of our Plato's Jewels. I will quote just these two key comments: ". . . brilliant! . . . Highly recommended!" (emphasis Dr Scott's)
Where does the Escherness come in . . ? . . Remember, I rang Will, intending to talk about Platonic Solids, but instead OZZIE Tessellation took centre stage. Then Paul rang me to talk about OZZIE, and our common interest in polyhedra took over, closing a kind of Moebius loop of events. Nice!
Anyway, here's my 1996 story,
"A Yarn with an Escheresque Twist" :
Having developed some special nets for making the 5 Platonic Solids, I rang the SA Curriculum Centre to see if I could gee some interest at schools. I found myself talking to Will Morony, AAMT President. He was mildly interested in our nets, but told me he was planning to go to ICME 8, The International Convention of Mathematics Teachers, in Seville, Spain, in a few weeks, and that he wanted to find a tessellation to distribute there as a sort of Australian visiting card. I was astonished: I had mentioned nothing about tessellations, and I had no idea that mathematicians were even interested in them. Anyway I wasted no time in telling him about OZZIE the Magic Kangaroo; when he saw the design he said instantly that he would like to use it. I worked up a variation to fit on a peel-&-stick icosahedron (pretty!) and while in the throes of having it printed I visited the AAMT office. There I noticed the cover of AMT Vol 51 no 4 1995 edition, featuring a locally-made chessboard with a very clever surface design, an Escher-like lizard breaking through the squares. I contacted its creator, Mark Shearer of Glyph Fine Marquetry; within days he had produced a stunning OZZIE-tessellation chessboard, which attracted many compliments when displayed in Spain.
A few weeks later I received a phone call from Dr. Paul Scott, Associate Professor of Pure Mathematics at Adelaide University, and longtime Executive Editor of Australian Mathematics Teacher, (rated by many as the finest Mathematics Teachers journal in the Universe.) It transpired that Mark Shearer had mentioned OZZIE tessellation to Paul, who graciously invited me to write an AMT article. [ Me! - a Maths article !!! ]
When I went to meet Dr Scott at his office, I was delighted to spy his splendid collection of geometrical models: beautiful coloured stellations, some of which must have taken many many hours to make. Naturally I presented him with a set of our unique dazzling peel-&-stick polyhedral nets. Within a couple of days he rang me to tell me he had constructed the solids, and that they now occupied pride of place in the very centre of his collection! And best of all, he offered to review them in AMT.
OZZIE gloried in full colour as the centrefold in Vol 52 No 4 1996 issue of AMT. Two pages further on was Paul's glowing review of our Plato's Jewels. I will quote just these two key comments: ". . . brilliant! . . . Highly recommended!" (emphasis Dr Scott's)
Where does the Escherness come in . . ? . . Remember, I rang Will, intending to talk about Platonic Solids, but instead OZZIE Tessellation took centre stage. Then Paul rang me to talk about OZZIE, and our common interest in polyhedra took over, closing a kind of Moebius loop of events. Nice!
Wednesday, January 21, 2009
"TROMPE L'OEIL" Art ( or PUNOGRAPHY )
There is a whole raft of artwork generically referred to as trompe l'oeil ("fool the eye") art. French people would pronounce that "tromp ler-yee" but it's too damn hard for English-speakers, so we corrupt it to "tromp loy-ee". (The French say 'lingerie' "lanz-yair-ee", well what would they know, it's "londjeray" as all English speakers know.) Well anyway it's easier - and perhaps truer too - to call all kinds of trompe l'oeil art PUNOGRAPHY, (say it pun-og-graphy), meaning "art with ambiguity". There are many different types of trompe l'oeil: mirror art, curved mirror art, invertable art, optical illusions, impossible perspectives, oh never you mind, I'd never be able to name all the different types even if I tried, because some examples are unique to sole artists. One of the most famous and prolific trompe l'oeil arists was none other than Leonardo da Vinci, but I won't elaborate, you can find some examples yourself.
As I say there are many trompe l'oeil artists, but deservedly the most famous is MC Escher.
As I say there are many trompe l'oeil artists, but deservedly the most famous is MC Escher.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Homage to Escher
I have written a bit about ("lifelike") Tessellations already, but I just can't leave the subject alone. I adore them, they hold a special fascination for me as little else ever has had. In this respect, as in others, I feel I am flowing willy-nilly along mental streams first explored by The Master, M C Escher.
It was Dutchman Escher (1898-1972), who discovered that creature-like forms could be drawn in such a way that the outline of one creature on one side would also form part of an outline of an identical, or similar, or completely different creature-like form on the other side. Nowhere in any previous civilization is there any record of anyone having created such a design. Escher himself found that fact astounding, and so do I. He said of his new insights into the regular division of the plane, "I am head over heels in love with it, and I still don't know why."
I first saw "Sky and Water", one of Escher's best-known designs in 1969, when he was still alive, and I thought it the most remarkable artwork I had ever seen. I have never changed my mind about that. On the contrary, Escher's work continued to grow on me, and fired me with the ambition to create some tessellations of my own.
I have just got hold of a copy of a book I last saw many years ago, "ESCHER: The Complete Graphic Work" (J.L. Locher Ed., Thames and Hudson, 1992, reprinted 1995). Strangely, it is not true to title, since at least 2 tessellations I know of are absent: one of greyhound-like Dogs, and one of Sea-Horses which is one of my very favourites. Whether there are others missing I do not know, but in any case what is there is astounding. Escher's draftsmanship, his "ordinary" drawings, his impossible perspective drawings, all of these are amazing - in fact they put the "MAZE" into amazing! - but I could never come within cooee of his skills and insights with regard to these aspects of his work, nor would I try. For all their quirky brilliance, none of them gets to me the way his lifelike tessellations do. That is where my interest begins and continues. It is only in this area - and not even all of that - that I have dared to attempt to create designs that I hope Escher would himself salute.
I wrote this ambition in verse, years ago:
Once I saw sketch of Escher's - Sky and Water is its name -
It's Ducks and Fishes actually, but precious just the same -
Those beasties blew my brainbox! - I was never so impressed ! -
So then I tried to tessellate - Put Escher under pressure, Mate!
- Well, excel them, at any rate:
To better Escher's best!
Why in verse? you cry. Well, because:
I've often thought, verse uses words
As Escher uses fish and birds:
Every image, still, yet living,
Bound by meter unforgiving,
And every rhyme must suit each sound
Of every meaning it wraps around,
And every line must hold its place
Like Escher's creatures, locked in space . . .
I write a great deal of rhyming verse, perhaps partly as self-consolation for not having Escher's facility with drawing. In particular I try to write pithy verses about my tessellating designs.
It was Dutchman Escher (1898-1972), who discovered that creature-like forms could be drawn in such a way that the outline of one creature on one side would also form part of an outline of an identical, or similar, or completely different creature-like form on the other side. Nowhere in any previous civilization is there any record of anyone having created such a design. Escher himself found that fact astounding, and so do I. He said of his new insights into the regular division of the plane, "I am head over heels in love with it, and I still don't know why."
I first saw "Sky and Water", one of Escher's best-known designs in 1969, when he was still alive, and I thought it the most remarkable artwork I had ever seen. I have never changed my mind about that. On the contrary, Escher's work continued to grow on me, and fired me with the ambition to create some tessellations of my own.
I have just got hold of a copy of a book I last saw many years ago, "ESCHER: The Complete Graphic Work" (J.L. Locher Ed., Thames and Hudson, 1992, reprinted 1995). Strangely, it is not true to title, since at least 2 tessellations I know of are absent: one of greyhound-like Dogs, and one of Sea-Horses which is one of my very favourites. Whether there are others missing I do not know, but in any case what is there is astounding. Escher's draftsmanship, his "ordinary" drawings, his impossible perspective drawings, all of these are amazing - in fact they put the "MAZE" into amazing! - but I could never come within cooee of his skills and insights with regard to these aspects of his work, nor would I try. For all their quirky brilliance, none of them gets to me the way his lifelike tessellations do. That is where my interest begins and continues. It is only in this area - and not even all of that - that I have dared to attempt to create designs that I hope Escher would himself salute.
I wrote this ambition in verse, years ago:
Once I saw sketch of Escher's - Sky and Water is its name -
It's Ducks and Fishes actually, but precious just the same -
Those beasties blew my brainbox! - I was never so impressed ! -
So then I tried to tessellate - Put Escher under pressure, Mate!
- Well, excel them, at any rate:
To better Escher's best!
Why in verse? you cry. Well, because:
I've often thought, verse uses words
As Escher uses fish and birds:
Every image, still, yet living,
Bound by meter unforgiving,
And every rhyme must suit each sound
Of every meaning it wraps around,
And every line must hold its place
Like Escher's creatures, locked in space . . .
I write a great deal of rhyming verse, perhaps partly as self-consolation for not having Escher's facility with drawing. In particular I try to write pithy verses about my tessellating designs.
Friday, January 9, 2009
Fanta-Pants, Mollydookers and Tessellomaniacs
How many nicknames are there for redheads . . ? . . Mostly I don't care a hoot, they're fun, Fanta-Pants, Ranga, Ginger, Blud-Nut, Blue, I don't care, though Carrot-Top is pretty wet, carrot tops are green. But one young RH woman told me recently a couple of her workmates had started calling her Med-Head, I reckon that's really pretty nasty, no other interpretation. It sounds really actionable to me, I reckon they better look out, especially since she had attitude worthy of her flaring curls, and she was both embarrassed and a bit laughingly resentful. Lighthearted insensitive ridicule or real hatred, it seems to me to be right over the top in terms of abuse, I resent it too, both on her and on all RH's behalf.
Similarly there are lots of names for Left-Handers. Kack-Handers, Mollydookers, South-Paws, isn't it funny how minorities get nicknamed and often treated with suspicion just for being in whatever little way distinguishable from the herd! Like Red-Heads, Left-Handers through the ages have often been persecuted as children of the Devil, the very word 'sinister' is Latin, originally meaning simply 'left', but just look at what it has come to mean through phobic
associations. I'm both redhaired and lefthanded, just as well for me I'm not living in the Middle Ages, I'd be barbecued quick smart eh.
Anyway MC Escher noted an interesting thing about Left-Handers: I remember reading that at one stage the Dutch burghers (if that's the word) named a group of (I think) 22 young local trompe l'oeil graphic artists whom they regarded as outstanding, and it turned out that (I think) 17 of them were left-handed. Escher himself was too, and he speculated that the extraordinary predominance of left-handers in that group was more than coincidental. He was quite fascinated, and said that he'd like to investigate the phenomenon further sometime. I don't think he ever did, but it does seem to me to offer a tantalizing avenue for research. As a result of reading this I asked Andrew Crompton, a noted English tessellator, if he was left-handed, and Yes he is. It may be for example that the brain-scrambling effects of being left-handed in a right-handed world tend to turn people from more ordinary forms of communication and towards pictorial ones . . . or is that drawing a long bow . . ? . .
Similarly there are lots of names for Left-Handers. Kack-Handers, Mollydookers, South-Paws, isn't it funny how minorities get nicknamed and often treated with suspicion just for being in whatever little way distinguishable from the herd! Like Red-Heads, Left-Handers through the ages have often been persecuted as children of the Devil, the very word 'sinister' is Latin, originally meaning simply 'left', but just look at what it has come to mean through phobic
associations. I'm both redhaired and lefthanded, just as well for me I'm not living in the Middle Ages, I'd be barbecued quick smart eh.
Anyway MC Escher noted an interesting thing about Left-Handers: I remember reading that at one stage the Dutch burghers (if that's the word) named a group of (I think) 22 young local trompe l'oeil graphic artists whom they regarded as outstanding, and it turned out that (I think) 17 of them were left-handed. Escher himself was too, and he speculated that the extraordinary predominance of left-handers in that group was more than coincidental. He was quite fascinated, and said that he'd like to investigate the phenomenon further sometime. I don't think he ever did, but it does seem to me to offer a tantalizing avenue for research. As a result of reading this I asked Andrew Crompton, a noted English tessellator, if he was left-handed, and Yes he is. It may be for example that the brain-scrambling effects of being left-handed in a right-handed world tend to turn people from more ordinary forms of communication and towards pictorial ones . . . or is that drawing a long bow . . ? . .
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