After deciding to apply for a RADF grant to create 100 + new flora and fauna videos of some 1 ½ to 2 minutes duration, I contacted Cynthia Parr, Chief Scientist at EOL, asking her to provide a Statement of Significance in support of my application. Following an exchange of emails, I today received the Statement, for which I am extremely grateful to Cyndy.
Sent the latest in an email exchange initiated by Kat Sawyer receiving a reply from Additions, a new gallery in Brisbane, to a query she made last October about staging an exhibition of her Vanessa’s and my work. I first heard about it via a phone call from Vanessa when I was driving home from the coast on the 16th of last month. We were intially offered a time in April, but agreed that we would prefer a date in October. Kat is presently under work pressure and Vanessa suggested that we try and meet over dinner to which I agreed, while pointing out our need to be productive when we do meet.
Between 25 and 29 January it was the Gold Coast hinterland’s turn to host ex-tropical cyclone Oswald. In my 26 years on the mountain I have never seen it so bashed up by the elements. This time it was the trees which were broken or uprooted everywhere. Property damage appears to have been restricted compared to the hailstorm on 16 November 2008, which resulted in hundreds of houses needing new roofs. Parts of the mountain had over 800 mm of rain. I was without power for 3 days, some poor people for 5 days or more.
Hard to fathom how a category 1 cyclone (the most severe is category 5) which formed in the Gulf of Carpentaria 1,600 km from here, could have been so destructive for so long, with record inundation further north only 2 years after once in a century floods, having tracked down the east coast before losing some of its intensity and petering out in NSW.
I delivered the report on our RADF grant project at my local Council offices. We had to wait for additional information from the grant giver and were cleared to meet today’s new deadline which we nearly missed due to having to abandon the optional audit, causing me to include a refund cheque.
Steve and I have been busy selecting and capturing frames. This has led to several emails to experts asking for IDs. In the last ten days I have heard from experts on birds, moths, fungi, snails and reptiles. Bless them all.
Prince Charles and Camilla visited Longreach today on their trip to Australia and New Zealand marking the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee and popped into the Qantas Founders Museum. Nicole sent an email confirming that she and Simon met them and that she was thrilled and honoured to be chosen to present Prince Charles with a newly published biography of one of the Qantas founders. Bravo Nicole.
Today I attended the private view at Boonah Regional Art Gallery of an exhibition of Jan Drynan’s paintings, an artist I have long admired. In addition to Jan’s main subject of landscape painting, the exhibition included paintings and prints of the anti Coal Seam Gas protest by farmers and environmentalists at a drilling site near her property. On the spur of the moment I decided to buy the painting I liked most of all, a superb Scenic Rim landscape.
Today I delivered the remaining data files and all 116 DVDs to the State Library, well ahead of the deadline for completing the work. Now we have to write a report on the project for which the deadline is 20 December.
Greer Roberts from Ipswich Libraries placed an order for ‘The Rainforest at Night’ following an order from Logan City Library, both within the South East Queensland region and both new customers.
A priority since my return has been to complete ‘The Rainforest at Night’, Supplements 4 to 6 of the video archive. Following an order for 6 sets of DVDs from the Gold Coast City Council, the local shire library placed an order for 2 sets, one of which will be available in Tamborine Mountain Library.