HAMISH AND ANDY

Hamish and Andy's Asian adventures are cracking me up. We need more ridiculous comedy like this on TV right now. LJ, July 16 2013.

COASTAL NATURE DIARY ENTRY #3

On the 12th, I was down at Racecourse Beach to watch the sun slip from the horizon just after 7am. It was sublime. An angler, casting from a rock platform, was framed by blood orange light. A lone walker powered from one end of the beach to the other. A few Silver Gulls cruised about. My Cocker Spaniel barked repeatedly at the surf. Perhaps she was asking the ocean what exactly it is and what its purpose is. Maybe, she wanted it to stop its relentlessness.

I'm ashamed to say that I haven't seen the sun rise from the ocean since the 90s. I suppose that comes from never living by the beach. Still, I should have made more of an effort. One feels they are really ready to take on the day when they see the sunrise over the Pacific.

LJ, July 13 1013.

COASTAL NATURE DIARY ENTRY #2

A few hours wandering along Racecourse Beach today - this time in glorious sunshine - brought some sort of prion above the breakers (it's been a long time since I've seen one; pity I couldn't identify it; I'm no prion expert), 2 Hooded Plovers (endangered in NSW) feeding on a rock platform at the north of the Beach, Sooty and Pied Oystercatchers, a couple of albatrosses way out, an immature White-bellied Sea-eagle and five whales. Not sure exactly what whales they were as they were way out on the horizon. Only a handful of people and the odd dog were on the beach. Perfect. Who says a beach holiday in winter isn't the way to go? LJ, July 2011.

COASTAL NATURE DIARY ENTRY #1

I put in 3 hrs today watching for whales a bit south of Ulladulla, at Racecourse Beach, in cool, overcast conditions. No luck. Not even a dolphin.

I may have seen, fleetingly, a Sooty Albatross, a bird I've never come across before. Unfortunately, it got swallowed up by the swell and spray and light and day and pelagic magic and I lost it and it fell back into abstraction and states of real grace. So, I can't say it was that species I dearly wished it was; Sooty Albatrosses are rarely encountered by birders.

LJ, July 10 2013.

GOOD VIBRATIONS

For three hours the other day, I worked a Makita jackhammer for the first time in my life. I was doing some home reno's. What a feeling - the chaos, the destruction, the immediate results. Incredible. For a while there I was a real man! LJ, July 7 2013.

FOUR PLOTS FOR MAGNETS

How tremendous it is to have Luke Davies' mesmerising 80s pamphlet Four Plots for Magnets resurrected, complete with 53 additional old poems, a foreword by Luke and an afterword from SK Kelen, courtesy of Pitt Street Poetry. In April 2012 I suggested to John Knight, head honcho of PSP, that he think about bringing the collection back to life. And here it is! My thanks to John for going with my suggestion. And thanks to Luke for dusting off all those old poems. LJ, July 7 2013.

LOVE (POETRY) ACTUALLY

Next month, Inkerman & Blunt, new publisher on the block, is to release Australian Love Poems 2013, edited by Mark Tredinnick.

At the Imaging Centre, a poem I penned about someone very close to me, is in the volume. It's a poem I'm proud of, a work that didn't need rewriting, rethinking; it was written in one take, in Bowral. Part of it addresses survival when faced with the curse that is breast cancer.

My sincere thanks to Mark for accepting the poem. It's an honour to be published with some major Aussie poets.

LJ, July 2013.