and the rains came

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may 27 2010. winter rains have finally arrived. went to apace in north fremantle yesterday and got 37 plants for the north cottesloe gaia reserve. not much work on so i went there and planted 24 before the rain came in. last night vicious winds mean the existant vegetation will have had the first of its winter 'trim' that is to say defoliation through thrashing. it happens every year. the positive side is that we now have plants growing side by side so they are creating shelter for each other. flagwise, ray martin's sixty minute segment on flag and barry cohen's 'the australian' article mean the flag issue bubbles along. i was doing some research on the red ensign, the red version of the courrent flag. interestinly, the australian war memorial in canberra has ten red ensigns for every blue in its ww1 display. i also found a picture of the opening of parliament house in canberra in 1927. there were equal numbers of union flags and red ensigns. there were no blue ensigns! in ww2 many red ensigns were used by troops. a famous photo of the raising of the flag on the capture of grassberg in png reveals a red ensign. this is in 1943. that photo was later used with the flag actually replaced with the blue ensign! thus is perpetuated the myth that 'they fought for that flag(i.e. blue ensign). on my travels a woman said when the queen visited on 1954 the crowds waved the red ensign. otherwise, i'm going to mundaring this sunday to meet a 'young and creative' film maker to see if we can make a documentary about 'southern cross and boomerang'. i'm thinking of starting very small, maybe a vox pop in the street. if we do some easy cheap segments they can be folded into something greater later on. this all depends on cost of course. and small segments can be posted on youtube immediatly.

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