Vanessa forwarded an email she received today stating that we had not been shortlisted for the Queensland Museum public art project. It’s a pity, but hardly unexpected.

In addition to my ongoing email exchange with Anna about the Light/Sound Workshop, I have had a brief exchange with Ian Helliwell, who is interested in the history of electronic music in Britain and wanted to know about the musical component of LSW. Based on an essay about LSW I wrote for my degree, I told Ian that we made contact with the BBC’s radiophonic workshop and that the sound component was only addressed when we devised a demonstration or performance.

For reasons I do not wish to go into, John’s visit was not a success. Unfortunately we did not really hit it off. I was able to show John a fair variety of local fauna and flora on the mountain and in some of the adjacent World Heritage Areas. We also did a rainforest night walk.  One regularly hears of internet ‘friendships’ which fail the test of meeting in the flesh. I did not think this would happen to me.

Received 2 emails from Vanessa confirming that our EOI for the public art project at the Queensland Museum had been submitted and receipt acknowledged. It was a lot of fun working on the submission which reflected a genuine pooling of ideas by Vanessa, Kat and me. The EOI had to be about our intentions and approach, rather than about our idea, which I think has a lot going for it. Only Vanessa has what one might call a profile in public art but it is not really established. I’m ever hopeful, but I am not holding my breath, as they say here.

This evening Steve filmed my introduction to the DVDs at the same location we used before, the last house Jaap lived in on the mountain, which adjoins a rainforest creek. He was pleased with the result. A week ago he was on the mountain and recorded 2 hours of soundtrack of the rainforest at night. He had to put up with a truck or two, climbing the steep road which is on the boundary of one national park and with a passenger jet bound for Brisbane flying over another, but declared the sound quality good and clear.

Received an email with John Caddy's flight information regarding his forthcoming week's stay with me at the end of the month. John and I only know oneanother via the internet and I regard him as a good friend. So I am looking forward to meeting him in person and sharing as much of our biodiversity as we can encounter. Other than Clive and Christina, John, who hails from Minnesota, is the only friend who has undertaken to visit me in the nearly 25 years that I have been in Australia so I'm extremely grateful to him.

This evening Steve added the final bit of narration (which required 6 sessions in the sound suite) to the remaining rainforest at night vision, so we now have the bulk of the content of our next 3 archive DVDs. We still need to do some deletions, dissolves and incorporate interview footage of Jaap, Mark and me, plus a yet to be filmed re-record of my introduction. And I need to do the wording for the slick and commission its design.

Following a meeting Vanessa Stanley, Kat Danger Sawyer and I had at my place about collaborating on an artwork, Vanessa emailed me details of a public art project at Queensland Museum on Brisbane's South Bank for which she wants us to submit an Expression of Interest (EOI). The three of us had met earlier in the year at a discussion in Beaudesert at the conclusion of a joint exhibition of work by Vanessa and Jaap and then at Vanessa's beautiful and interesting artwork for the Brisbane Festival at the Powerhouse arts centre in Brisbane. Inter alia we discussed the idea of projecting my videos on walls in Brisbane, but the Museum project gives us an early opportunity to work together.

Today I celebrated my 70th birthday, enjoying reaching the biblical allotment of three score years and ten. Twenty four of us sat down to a terrific dinner at an excellent Indian restaurant, just up the road. We were all on the outer side of four tables forming a square, so everyone could see everyone having a good time, which for me added to the pleasure of the occasion. As did the fact that Nicole, Simon's fiancee, was able to meet my friends and they her, an all round resounding success. Co-incidentally on the day, I received a letter stating that I had been awarded the RADF grant. The work can begin after January 10 next year. A most unexpected and gratifying birthday present.

The scripting continues apace and with it the species identification, with emails whizzing to and fro. Today John Caddy emailed me in reply to a frame I had sent him of a mosquito on a leaf at night informing me that the 'mosquito' was a Crane Fly. This necessitates not only a script rewrite, but a script re-record. Just when I thought I had got off lightly after my friend and naturalist Doug White confirmed yesterday, that what we thought were Bush Rats were all Fawn-footed Melomys. Fortunately the required rewrite can be done before recording.