This is Phil. 

Philharmonic. In the dark friendliness of Fracas Studio. Dark is hard to find in Byron Bay, with the sun as it is. But dark and cool it is.
Phil records and creates music and audio aids for language teaching.
He has written songs for a New Zealand company teaching Pacific island immigrants English. The songs are classic and original jazz.
Phil’s dad was a New South Wales assistant police commissioner. “My fascist dad,” Phil explains, forgivingly. His mum played piano and a granddad was musical. So Phil’s son looks set for a lengthy career with his Paper Scissors rock band.
Recording studios always have good people.

I’m recording for one of Phil’s clients, a Dutch high-school language-teaching software. 20 pages of single words. They are to be clickable audio aids. So every word has to have attack. Then, a voice-over for a Swedish client. It’s a script for a technological implement, the purpose of which remains unclear.

This is Byron

Byron Bay gives you commerce and karma. Supermarket aisles thronged with Swedish backpackers and Korean language students. Barefoot kids trailing parents down the main street. And the world's best fish n chips.


Hippies and BMWs, tourists and yoga teachers, but no McDonald's or high-rises.


Even the newsagent's uses the local lingo. Best bumper sticker this year?
SAVE THE PLANET. IT'S THE ONLY ONE WITH CHOCOLATE.

Preview!

Susan Spiers (nee Hinebaugh) and I met as teenagers in Singapore in 1960. She was going to the American School there and I was at home on holiday from school in Australia. We started a correspondence that lasted several years. And even when marriages and moving saw it dwindle, then expire, we kept many of each other's letters.
That correspondence will now be exhumed in a new, as yet nameless blog.
I have my old letters to Susan, she has hers to me.
The little I have read so far of my old letters reveals a prodigiously pretentious poseur. My current friends will recognise me easily.
We will let you know when the blog bursts forth.

Back in Byron

What are the issues in Australia? There should be only one: the bushfires. What does climate mean? How do we live with harsh and changing climates? But following the ritual indulgence in sorrow, it is no longer a political issue. The sorrow is real and the instant rallying of people, institutions, commerce and sport/entertainment showed Australia at its solidaric finest expression of empathy and solidarity.
But politics are what steer Australia, combining celebrity exposure, power, male vengeance and an unfamiliarity with democratic discussion. Many would be sceptical that the government will keep its promises to rebuild what the bushfires destroyed. It will be easier to lower the flag on 7 February for a few years, as decreed by the prime minister.
Why this crudeness in the country that rose proudly from colonialism to great physical independence and pride? Partly because our antecedents were autocratic to the point of whipping people. And partly because racial differences are present, wide and obvious, allowing a culture of extremism.
Oh, and the beach ...
It tells me every day not to worry. That the environment is sporadically so pure and energising that hope remains.

#2 Notes from The Translator

True, translation is best done in silence. (Even though no one will hear you scream anyway.) But if the text is not too challenging, I like to add a little music. Select the genre according to what you want to convey in terms of flavour. But if nothing else works, try Glenn Gould and Bach.

THAT’S MY GRANDAD with the cane. It’s a post Great War reunion. My grandfather had served nobly in the Middle East with the 14th Regiment, reputedly tending the wounded under a hail of bullets from the Turks on the heights at Gallipoli.
Australia would like that battle to sum up Australia.
After the war, Dr. Henry Joseph Loughran, returned to his practice in the hilly country idyll of Daylesford, Victoria.
Earlier, when a medical student in Melbourne, Henry J. had dropped his studies to volunteer with the others to fight for Britain in the Boer War. He served two countries bravely, apparently.
He’s small, but he’s got that fancy cane thing going. Dolly magnet.

God what's in there?

Bills, probably. I once discovered an out-of-date bill for clearing snow from the roof of the condominium. We had to pay a fine and it was my fault.
Also all that hard-to-file stuff. A great offer for candied rosehips from Guatemala that might be fun. Only there's no Guatemala binder. Nor one for candied anything.
And there'll be some computer installation discs there, for sure. And maybe a piece of plastic that looks like it has a computer application. To connect the whizoo with the whazoo.
But mainly just surplus information.

As you see, I've cleverly fenced it off. I think it's wise. Who knows? It could spread, seep, seduce. I've got the Maginot Line of tin cups with pens in them. There's a Balinese monkey god on duty -- inherited from my parents. There's a semi-concealed photograph of Dad rowing in the Xavier College eight for the inter-school championships of 1928 or 29 on Melbourne's muddy Yarra River. There's the framed photo of yrs truly on leaving magazine editorship in 1999. And there's the dangling charm of Lukas's booties from when he was just over one year old.
The pile can't escape, can it?