The Magic Faraway Tree and the Vegetable Song

Beetroot
beetroot to yourself
Lettuce
lettuce get along
Bean so good getting to know you
Peas to you and all of your family - Tim Juliff (1950 - 2011)

So that's it then? His father has gone and there's nobody ahead of him. Nobody higher than him on the tree. - Caryl Phillips, "In the Falling Snow"

Memories of Dandenong Road, East St Kilda (OZ)

It doesn't take much. This time it came upon me completely unexpectedly. The all-consuming sorrow.

I was walking to the local park; taking photos for my blog. I crossed York Avenue. Jay-walking New York-style. And there it was. Right in front of me on the sidewalk. I almost bumped in to it. A tree with a big hollow in it. I was reminded.

My mind went back a hundred years. Dandenong Road, Australia - on our way to Windsor State School. I was nine. My brother Tim, five. Latch-key kids. There was a tree somewhere along Dandenong Road. I remember it was a plane tree. The things we remember ... The tree it intrigued us. We'd stop by it every day. We believed that there were elves and goblins in the hollow. Children of the Enid Blyton generation, we imagined we'd found "The Magic Faraway Tree" of Blyton's story for children.

Tim's gone now. The last time I spoke to him was shortly after Japan's big tsumami and I guess that's why Kyu Sakamoto's "Sukiyaki" song is indelibly linked in my mind to my brother's death.

When our mother died Tim told me that we were now orphans. I hadn't thought about our new status. And now it's even worse. I'm at the top of the tree, as the novelist Caryl Phillips puts it. And there's no Saucepan Man, Dame Washalot, Angry Pixie, or any of Blyton's characters up here. I'm all alone ...

Too many reminders. I'd just about gotten over the hollow tree association when I read a Facebook friend's status for today. "It was exactly three months ago that the tsunami hit the north-eastern coast of Japan," she wrote. So many months away. It was just one week after that tsunami that I spoke to my brother for the last time. We discussed the problems with the nuclear reactors in Japan. I'll call you again in a few days, I told him. Within two days the cancer had taken his hearing. We never spoke again.

And then - today is the shortest day of the year in Australia. The anniversary of something I cannot discuss here, but the anniversary is now painful, though what it celebrates was, at the time, joyous. Every 21st of June I take stock. And now in 2011 the stock is added to.

The sentiments expressed in my brother's "Vegetable Song" are admirable, and if we could all follow them, our lives would be richer.

Richer, yes.

But longer?

Obviously not.

Tim was just 61 when he left us.

I wish all of my friends "peas". And peas to their families too.

Remember to eat your veggies! ASIF Tim did! I remember when he was very little. He used to hide his beans under the table-cloth at dinner time. One day my mother caught him in the act. "Do NOT put your beans under the table-cloth!" she admonished. Straight away Tim pulled them out from under the table-cloth and put them on his head.

Peas, brother.

The Gentle People of New York

I love those dear hearts and gentle people
Who live in my home town
Because those dear hearts and gentle people
Will never ever let you down - "Dear Hearts and Gentle People", Sammy Fain and Bob Hilliard, 1949



New Yorkers Sun Baking at Carl Schurtz Park

Yesterday I decided to walk across to the Carl Schurz Park to see and hear the "Sing for Hope" piano there. Sophie Matisse (yes she's the great granddaughter of Henri) and a number of other New York artists have painted a bunch of pianos and we are all invited to come outside and play. The painted pianos have been set up all over Manhattan, and looking up the "Spring for Hope" website" I saw that the closest was on the East River at the Carl Schurz Park. I took my camera, thinking to take a photo of our "local" piano for my readers.

On my way to the park I couldn't help noticing several signs of the honesty and civic responsibility of my fellow New Yorkers. Traits not often associated with the Apple people.

So I took photos - as EVIDENCE!
In the space of a few blocks I saw several items of lost property hanging on railings, put there by whoever found them, in the hope that they'd be claimed. You can see a couple of them in the photos above. The red cardigan in particular looks very stylish.


Volunteer Dog Walker, East 92nd Street

More evidence of New York's community spirit was found closer to the the park on 92nd Street and York Avenue. Volunteer dog-walkers from the nearby ASPCA walking "rescue dogs". I took a photo of one of them resting at a small plaza.

At the park. It was a good day for being outside and there were heaps of people sitting in the shade, reading, sun-baking, roller-skating, walking and riding bikes. I looked everywhere but could not see or hear any evidence of a piano. It was hot and I was too lazy to ask anyone if they'd seen one.

I turned back. I walked along 91st Street this time. I stopped at "The Vinegar Factory", a designer supermarket, known for its expensiveness and pretentiousness. Now I DID hear music. Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 6. "So Upper East Side," I was thinking, when it occurred to me that perhaps I was being Upper-East-Side-pretentious for recognizing it.

Somehow hearing classical music playing at supermarkets reminds me of people who brew coffee when their house is open for inspection - the aroma is said to attract buyers with money. Enough already. I bypassed the one hundred brands of virgin olive oil, ducked past the ducks à l'orange, bought a cornish hen, and left.

Manhattan for Yard Sale

A few meters on I and almost blinked and missed a Manhattan-size yard sale (Australians, read "garage sale"). I bought two glass tumblers from the Polish girl, who seemed as Poles do "in charge". I accidentally gave her two dollar notes and a twenty instead of three singles - I hate the way that American notes are not color-coded like Australian ones! The nice Polish girl called me back. I thanked her for her honesty and walked on.

I strolled along, thinking about New Yorkers and how we are much maligned, then stopped to take my final photo of the day.

A bike, still chained to the railing, sans wheels.

Oh well, who said that New Yorkers were perfect?

Do Baby Boomers Have Aims?

"Siamo qui per servirla could be another option", with a hint of sarcasm - from Word Reference Forums on a good Italian translation of "We aim to please".

Straight out Kerouac, Boomers at a Manhattan Flea Market 

We were talking about aims. Well, HE was. I wasn't. "He" being my husband.

It was over dinner and he told me his current life aim. "Oh," I said. Yes I know. I can be very uncommunicative. It's a family trait on my mother's side.

"So, what's YOUR aim?" he asked. I replied that I didn't have one, and attempted to change the unwelcome subject.

In fact the question puzzled me. Are we meant to have aims? "Life aims", I mean; because that was the sort of aim my husband was talking about. I've never had one. A grandiose aim - I should be so lucky.

But nevertheless, aimless as I obviously am, I dwelt upon the subject later. Perhaps it was an age thing. If you don't have your whole life in front of you, why have an aim? Unless it is an aim to stay alive. Which is sort of a default aim and doesn't count. I dwelt and I dwelt.

And I think I've got it worked out.

I grew up hardly knowing where the next meal was coming from. I had a single mother at a time in OZ when there was no supporting parents' benefit and women earned very little. There were stretches when my mother was unemployed. And there were no unemployment benefits back then. So that just getting to the next day was an achievement.

Me and my Bro.  Outside Wilson Hall, Melbourne University

I remember other girls at school having aims. Like - "I am going to be a lawyer. "I'm going to be a pediatrician." I was in awe of those girls. I just hoped that I'd get a scholarship to go to university and wouldn't have to be a tram conductor. I did not think of anything beyond that.

Melbourne used to have tram conductors. They were invariably women, employed to walk up and down the tram (Americans - read "trolley") checking that everyone had a ticket, and selling tickets to those who did not.

What got it into my sixteen year old head that should I fail my final year at high school I'd be a tram conductor, I don't know. But it did. Negative reinforcement. It spurred me on and I did go to university, enrolling in subjects whose content I had no idea of. I enrolled in psychology because I liked the look of a boy who had already enrolled in it. He was later to become my first lover. So much for sensible planning. Still, the psychology has come in handy ...

I suppose I've just drifted on, ever since. I remember my mother asking me, "Are we shallow?" and I answered yes. We didn't think of the big things we were to busy worrying about the small. Being able to achieve big things never entered our minds.

Send your aims to HERE!

I DID have a fantasy though. I dreamed I'd get engaged in New York to someone who looked like a young Cary Grant. He would propose on a patio belonging to a penthouse apartment in Manhattan. I would be wearing a pink taffeta dress and would look like Debbie Reynolds. In this fantasy I was employed. Some sort of office job. The job didn't play a part in the fantasy - apart from existing. But I do remember that the office building was on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan and there were revolving door at the entrance.

Weird. I did end up in Manhattan and I actually worked on Fifth Avenue in a building that had revolving doors.

But it wasn't planned. It sort of just happened.

I suppose if forced I COULD say I had an aim. It would be to be aimless. To accept what the world has to offer and to have the basics needed to survive.

Oh yes. There's another hidden aim. An aim that dares not speak its name. More like a wish. I would like to see or even hear of my grandson. But that's another story ...

And unachievable.

No wonder I do not have an aim.

So yep, I don't have an aim. If any reader has a surplus of them, please send them on.

I can offer them a good home. In a building in Manhattan.

That has revolving doors.

For a poet and a one-man band

And every stop is neatly planned.
For a poet and a one-man band. - Paul Simon, "Homeward Bound", 1966"

Second Avenue, June 2006

The MTA, the New York Transit Authority, has a novel way of squashing criticism, that I hate to say, must have been dreamed up by a woman.

The residents up New York's Upper East side are angry at the state of the sidewalk and bus services on Second Avenue. And rather than tackle the problem that has been going on for five years and will continue it seems for at least another five, the MTA has apparently sought to solve the problem by showing that it doesn't exist.

First the problem.

Every weekday morning, along with hundreds of others, I stand on Second Avenue waiting.

I hate to think of the millions or billions of dollars spent by the City of New York in lost productivity. Because time spent standing, waiting for a bus is time wasted. And there is an increasing amount of time now being spent by New Yorkers standing waiting. Waiting. Waiting.

Five years ago we had bus shelters and space. Look at the photo above. I took it in June, 2006.

94th Street and Second 2006

And here's another, taken around the same time.

Those were the days. People living near 93rd and Second Avenue had a choice of the two bus-stops. Now we have one.

We, the locals, would not be peeved if we had to put up with the inconvenience for a year or two, but it has been six years to date and the end is not in sight. When will we have our sidewalks back? The latest news is that we MIGHT have them back in 2016, but seeing as the completion date has already been pushed back several times, I doubt it.

Look at the bus-stop we have now. One would think that in New York in 2011, that "temporary" should not mean ten years.

Same bus-stop, 2011

And to add insult to injury the number of buses servicing the area has been substantially cut. AND a new system has been put in place. There are now "Select" buses.

"Select" buses have flashing blue lights and do not stop every stop. "Select" buses need to have wide sidewalks where they stop as tickets must be purchased within one hour from machines on the sidewalk at the bus-stops.

I don't know what it is like to ride in a "Select" bus. That is because the sidewalk where I live is too narrow for the ticket machines. To get a "Select" we'd have to walk to either 103rd or 87th Street.

So every weekday morning I stand with a dozen or so other frustrated people, watching the Select buses fly by with their blue flashing lights. Last Tuesday I counted five Selects as I waited for our "Local" bus. The first two Selects had a few people in them. The next were virtually empty. Someone was counting the commuters hailing cabs. He got to eight and then our bus was in sight.

And now for the "solution".

A few weeks ago, as a result of the many complaints it seemed we had achieved a reaction. Perhaps something was going to be done. For one morning as we took our seats on the bus we saw a pretty young woman holding a clipboard. She was from the MTA and was surveying the Second Avenue commuters.

Lining up for the bus - Even New York kids wear black

I watched her and listened. She was like a breath of fresh air as she approached the commuters, selecting the least hassled and ... was I imagining it .... preferring middle-aged males. I listened to her questions, and their answers.

"What do you think of the bus service?" she asked sweetly.

"Oh it is wonderful," came the replies.

"Did you have to wait long this morning?"

"Oh no, hardly at all!"

"Has the service gotten better or worse?" she smiled.

"Oh better, definitely".

Ad so on ad nauseam and nauseatingly.

The women next to me sneered. "Listen to the old fools," she grumbled.

I however, was impressed. I have great admiration for the use of creativity in solving problems.

Suddenly a majority of the people were contented with the lack of service . The men were happy.

Even I was happy. I admired the solution. And I liked the young woman.

Plus, she had a lovely smile.

On Being Self Referential

A word that describes itself is called an autological word (or autonym). This generally applies to adjectives, for example sesquipedalian, but can also apply to other parts of speech, such as TLA, as a three-letter abbreviation for three-letter abbreviation". - Self Reference.

I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics exam; I looked into the soul of the boy sitting next to me. - Woody Allen

Self Portrait at Tiffany's

I have always been a bit vague when it comes to the exact meaning of self-referential. I think it used to refer pretentiously to works of art that created by people who are only interested in themselves. An Asperger's kinda thing ... Come to think of it, it is perhaps an "it's all about me" existentialist thing - a New York thing even. I wear black because I am ... but I digress.

I came to be reflecting on the meaning of "self referential" last Saturday round noon, when my cell phone rang. It was a stranger on the other end of the line. And the conversation went something like this.

Stranger: "Hello, is this 646 XXXXXX?"
Me: Yes"
Stranger: "Well you have taken my number. My number is 646 XXXXXX."
Me: "No, I have had 646 XXXXXX for eight years. It is MY number."
Stranger: "No it is mine and now we both have the same number and I just this minute dialled it."
Me: "Well, in that case, why aren't you answering your call?"
Stranger: "Because YOU picked up!"
Me: "OK. I'll hang up now, and you can call it again and I won't pick up this time and you can talk to yourself."
Stranger: "OK!"
[CLUNK]
A few seconds later, my phone rings. I ignore it and play Angry Birds on my iPad.

A Touch of Color at Dumbo

The ringing eventually stops and I forget about the whole bizarre thing. But about an hour later the phone rings again and I pick it up. It is the stranger back again.

Me: "Please stop calling me. I am busy."
Stranger: "But you have my number."

And so on ....

In the end he went away, but I just couldn't resist. I checked my call log and clicked on the number that had last called me. The stranger's number. No answer. "It's me," I voice mailed, "have you figured out your phone number yet, or am I YOU?".

Some time later Mr Stranger actually called again, but this time, to apologize.

Apple Store, Fifth Avenue

Meanwhile I am left self-referentially confused, and no wonder. For lately I seem to be surrounded by some very strange people!

I have a native New Yorker friend who thinks she is the only person in New York dressing in black - my Moon Follows Me" friend.

I have a stranger who thinks if he dials my number he is calling himself.

But perhaps the most strangest is my non-existential referential neighbor who recently bought an iPad 2. Worried that a man she knows might mess with it when she went away on vacation she hid it. Somewhere. Where, she has no idea.

Two Aussie New Yorker Philosophers

If can be proven, as some philosophers think, that an object needs a relationship to an observer for it to exist, does this mean that it ceases to exist when no one can see it? Certainly my friend, let's just call her Jay, left her iPad alone in her room, and while she was away in China it ceased to exist - for her, anyway. What is odd however that it still doesn't exist and she's she's back.

I think I'll put Jay in touch with the man who doesn't have the same phone number as me. He can help set up her non-existent iPad with MobileMe so that she can find it next time she loses it.

Stay tuned ...

Dance for Joy

Tim (center)

Those were the days, my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day - Mary Hopkin 1968

One day we'll all be oral history.

But until then, let us not forget.

The sixties, the seventies. And perhaps even the eighties.

Listen.

"Changes", by Tim (Juliff).

Forgive me for being a trifle nostalgic. I have my reasons.

Recently I have been put in touch with a number of my late brother's friends. Of course, there've been there all the time. As have I. But sometimes, unfortunately, it takes a death ...

Never really close, but never really far apart either, we went our separate ways, Tim and I. But at heart we were at one. Children of the sixties. Flower children. Well, more Tim than me, but even me, the older sister.

Kate (Taj Mahal)

Tim's not here any more. But his friends are, and there are so many of them. Some I remember. Heather for example, who turned up at our mother's house with a hundred daffodils stuck in her gumboots. He'd met her in Melbourne's City Square. And Frances from Canada, who named her son after my brother. "Timothy". And so many others. Peaceful and serene. Or noisy and confronting. Heaps of people who willingly accepted me into their lives.

Like so much in life, we accept it when it is there. A given. A thing appreciated but at the same time taken for granted.

And then suddenly it is taken away. And we who are left behind realize what we have lost.

Golden Gate Park, San Francisco 1976

How come I didn't know that my brother was part of Obama Sign Watch? Or that he'd played at Golden Gate Park, San Francisco? I'm finding out just now, from those who knew the Tim that I didn't inquire into, the Tim who I didn't - for whatever reason, know about - as they come forward. Like me. Missing him.

I wonder what else I missed out on? What else did I overlook, thinking it was always going to be be there?

The flower children of last century.

Yes, we thought it would never end.

Let's savor what there is left.

And get by, with a little help from our friends.

All things must pass.

The Moon Follows Me

I used to believe the moon was following me. When I was in the second grade, I was taught a little about the moon, but still didn't believe it. A reader of I Used to Believe - the Childhood's Belief Site

Moon Over Melbourne

She dresses in black ...
Last week I wrote about New Yorkers dressing in black. Well, it was about more than that - but also about the dressing-in-black-thing and New Yorkers ....

And then it just so happened a few day's after I published my "She dresses in black", that a friend of mine, Cordelia, who happens to be a New Yorker, and who - well it goes without saying, dresses in black - called me.

She was so excited, she related, when she saw the title of my latest post, "She dresses in black". "Oh I was just so SURE," she prattled, "that it was about me! I dress in black and it is my FAVORITE color and so I thought ...."

Hmmm. What's that word? "Chutzpah"? So New York. Almost as New York as dressing in black. I was forced to wonder - hadn't my New York friend noticed that she was not alone in her shades-of-gray outfits? Did she somehow see the rest of New York as being in color? If she did she'd be, as New Yorkers put it, "very unique". And we all know, there's nothing unique about being "very unique". In any case, had my friend not noticed the 18.9 million other people wandering about, "very uniquely", in shades of gray?

She did of course realize, upon reading "She dresses in black", that as in the Beatles' song, "Baby's in Black", there ARE other people in this world, who dress, "in black." However I suspected that she was being modest and uncharacteristically non-confrontational, in agreeing that Lennon and McCartney had someone else in mind when they wrote the song.

I should have known better.

Our conversation drifted. We started to talk about next weekend - Memorial Day weekend. "It's my birthday that weekend," I managed to interject. "We could have dinner."

"Yes let's," she said. "Now I will only go to Tribeca. I REFUSE to go elsewhere. You'll just have to get a hundred subways and meet me there, in Tribeca. No way am I going to the upper east side!"

U-huh? The birthday girl lives on the upper east side! I try to point this out and am answered with a laugh. "But I don't want to go to the upper east side. Didn't I just say?"

Now, I have a number of friends in New York - well TWO at least apart from Cordelia - who have indicated that "we must do something on your birthday". But they are from another country - Miami, Florida and Perth, Australia. That is - they are NOT from - New York!

So ... I reiterated to Cordelia - New-Yorker-Cordelia, "There are some nice restaurants on the upper east side, and unlike Tribeca, not so far from Perth-person and Florida-Not-New-York-person. Or from me."

Cordelia answered in a flash. She was SHOCKED. "Oh but I won't go anywhere but Tribeca!" she New-York-yelled. "I just will NOT go to a boring place!"

"But it is about MY birthday," I protested. To no avail. "But I ONLY go to Tribeca!" Cordelia continued to insist.

You can take the gal out of Australia, but you can't take Australia out of the gal. I remembered my heritage and refused to give up. So "Hey," I said, becoming uncharacteristically assertive. "This is about 'ME!' NOT you!".

It was then that I got the idea. "I'm going to BLOG THIS!" I asserted.

I could hear the smugness on the line. Cordelia was VICTORIOUS. I'd paid her a compliment. I'd acknowledged her New York-ness. Her "her-ness". She was so proud.

The moon was following her.

She dresses in black

She thinks of him and so she dresses in black,
And though he'll never come back, she's dressed in black.
Oh dear, what can I do?
Baby's in black and I'm feeling blue,  - Lennon McCartney 1965

I live in New York. New York, where you can wear anything you like. As long as its colour is a shade of gray. Which is a GOOD thing. Or is it?

Me and Tim - Just out of the schoolyard!

I never really took much notice of it - the color thing. Except as a way to identify the U.S. tourists  that is. In their vibrant pinks, yellows and lime greens. Walking three abreast. Slowly. Encumbering the sidewalks.

But recently, wearing black has been on my mind. Nothing to do with New York, or with tourists from Dallas and Cleveland ...

You see, recently I lost my brother. My baby brother. At 61 yes, he was and still is, my baby brother. It was not the first family death to hit me. My mother died when I was in America. I wrote about my experience in I Haven't Always Swum in this Water. And my father died an expat, in New Zealand - when I was still living in my native land, Australia.

One expects one's parents to leave. But not so a younger brother. Which has led me to have to cope with and think about, grieving. Grieving for the loss of someone too young to go.

The hardest thing about such grieving - well maybe not the hardest, but it's up there - is having no one around to talk to about it, no one  who is fair game, no one who could be expected to understand. Because those people who would understand - those who would "get it" - are also grieving, and the last thing one would want is to burden them still further.

I don't know. I don't have a grievance councellor. I haven't bought a book on how to grieve. But I do know that there's something missing. It isn't the book. It isn't the councellor.

What is missing is the attribution. The proclaiming. The thing that people did centuries ago, when they donned the black arm-bands, the widows' black. The announcement that - "I am grieving". A way of telling the world, "I am in grief".

In this modern world we are all expected to "carry on". ASIF! A few days off work. Organizing the funeral. Talking to family and friends. The obituaries. The service. And then ... it is - "back to normal".

Except it isn't. It is pretend.

And so I am glad I am in New York. Well, sort of. I can wear black and proclaim my grief. But who will notice? I'm just one of the crowd. My grief is a fashion statement to those who do not know me. But to those others?

From  now when I look at my fellow black-clad New Yorkers, I'll wonder. Are they like me, grieving? Or are they just dressing in the New York shades of gray, the New York  uniform?

For me the black is a proclamation of my grief.  Yes, last  month I lost my brother Tim. A person whose only offering to this world was "love". That was his ideal. His hope.  But I suppose that in reality he was just like all of us - doing his best; nothing special.

And I suppose that is what it is all about. Living life truthfully. Nothing special.

RIP Timothy John. (1950 - 2011)

The True Story of Men in Dresses

Such is life. Ned Kelly's last words before being hanged

Come, all my hearties,
we'll roam the mountains high,
Together we will plunder,
together we will ride.
We'll scar over valleys,
and gallop for the plains,
And scorn to live in slavery,
bound down by iron chains - The Wild Colonial Boy

Kelly Territory

I am currently reading True History of the Kelly Gang by fellow Australian New Yorker, Peter Carey. I'm finding it disappointing - heavy going, at times annoying - written as it is in the style of a dyslexic semi-literate, full of unnecessary abbreviations and ungrammatical sentences. I'm all for realism but not at the expense of readability ...

But I have plodded on, determined to finish it. And I've learned at least one factoid for my efforts - where and when Australian men started dressing up as women.

Ned Kelly of True History of the Kelly Gang, was the leader of a bush-ranger gang in Victoria Australia in the late 1900s. He is viewed by Australians as either a criminal or a hero, depending upon political predilection. He is the subject of legends. He was hanged on 11 November 1880 at the Melbourne Gaol for the murder of a policeman.

Sidney Nolan - "Ned Kelly", 1946

Kelly wasn't the first bush-ranger to be admired for his exploits. Before him a number of first and second generation Irish Australians were popular for their activities especially those showing contempt for the "English" and the establishment as represented by the courts, police and landowners - the privileged "squatters".

Kelly has become part of Australian culture, a sort of Robin Hood, epitomizing the underdog. Even the date of his death, November 11 has become important in Australian history. November 11 1918, official end of World War I. November 11 1975, the sacking of Australia's Prime Minister, Gough Whitlam by Elizabeth Queen of England's representative John Kerr.

And paintings. The most famous being those by Australian artist Sidney Nolan. In most of these Kelly is shown in his now iconic "armor".

A child's depiction of a bush-ranger called 'Khat'

Most Australian children grew up hearing about bushrangers and the Kelly Gang. It was essential reading in primary school.

What is not so generally known however is the cross-dressing behaviour of at least one member of the Kelly gang, Steve Hart. Movies about the Kelly gang do not show this aspect of bush-rangers' lives but apparently Hart was not alone in his cross-dressing behavior, which included riding his horse side-saddle. Earlier, in 1835, escaped convict, Edmund Carmen,was caught by police in countryside near Wollongong dressed in a woman's gown and cape. He was found guilty of improper conduct, given 50 lashes, and sent back to Sydney, being ordered never to return.

Nowadays people are used to seeing Australian men in drag. The 1995 film, "Priscilla Queen of the Desert brought to world attention the high profile enjoyed by drag queens in Sydney. And of course Australia's most famous cross-dresser, Dame Edna Everage has been camping it up for decades. More recently Chris Lilley plays a Year Eleven snobby/bitchy girl called Jai'me in the Australian TV comedy series, "Summer Heights High".

Sidney Nolan, "Steve Hart", 1945

I'd seen Nolan's painting of the Kelly Gang's Steve Hart, but until I started reading Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang I'd not been aware or the origin of the bush-ranger dressing-up-as-women thing. According to Carey, and a number of other sources I've since googled, it all harks back to the "Molly Maguires." - an organization of Irish miners. They were was dubbed the "Molly Maguires," after a group of Irish peasants who dressed up as women to antagonize their landlords.

Why they did this is unclear, as is the origin of the name. But the practice was apparently common in Ireland with a number of groups, mostly peasants who were anti-authoritarian due to the tyranny of English landowners. Like Ned Kelly the "Molly Maguires" represented themselves as custodians of the community.

I sometimes wonder what Ned and his gang would think of modern Australians. Yes it's true, men still dress as women. But Australia is still not a republic. The "Colony" of New South Wales and the "Colony of Victoria" are no more. But just over 35 years ago the Queen of England's representative, on the anniversary of Ned Kelly's hanging, dismissed Australia's democratically elected government.

The outgoing Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam stood on the steps of Australia's Parliament House and said, "Well may we say "God save the Queen", because nothing will save the Governor-General!"

As Ned himself said, with his last breath, "Such is life".

The "Risen Christ" - Really Mister Ellis!

I sort of think I knew Bob Ellis when I was at uni in Australia, a hundred years ago. Well maybe not. But I know his name. He's an aussie journo and this week he commented on the killing of Osama Bin Laden.

He wrote for The Australian Broadcasting Commission - the 'ABC' - "How secretive and shabby the Americans are".

Ellis wrote, "There was a magical-realist quality to Osama Bin Laden. He looked like the risen Christ, and was often thought dead and came always back to life. His broadcasts needed always to be authenticated because the CIA wanted him dead. He’d humiliated them so enormously they kept saying he was dead. He was 'on dialysis', they asserted, wrongly; he had to be dead by now. 9/11 was so clever. He had to be dead.

And once again they are covering up, and in denial." - Bob Ellis 2011.

Well I dunno Bob. I haven't exactly followed your career. But I certainly don't remember hearing your outcry against the killings in Somalia or Darfur.

I read a bit of what you had to say about the Americans going after Bin Laden, Bob. But not all. I just couldn't hack the misinformation.You spoke of Osama's "widow". I wondered why you used the singular.

Yes I agree, in a perfect world, Bin Laden should have appeared in a world court to be tried as a killer. But the world isn't perfect. So let us weigh up the odds.

Do you prefer to lump the president of America, Barack Obama, with the likes of George W and even worse, Palin and Trump? Believe me, he is not of the same ilk.

Along with other Australians, I was here in New York when the Twin Towers went down on Bin Laden's orders, murdering nearly 3,000 of my fellow New Yorkers.

If I am going to be outraged at the killing of the guy who ordered this, at the guy who did not believe women should be educated and who thought gays are evil, then I am a fool.

The fact remains. Bin Laden wasn't a nice person and it is not a perfect world. If we want to be outraged there are plenty of people to outrage against. And Barack Obama isn't one of them.

He has my vote. And I am proud to say it.