KOOKABURRA

The Cicadas have started drumming. They're everywhere and not unexpectedly for the last few days there's been lots of Kookaburras (and Currawongs) around. And well fed they are.

This fellow (actually there were two) was sitting in the gum outside the bedroom late this afternoon.

COMING OUT

The last few days have been unseasonably warm, and last night I found a Cicada clinging onto some curtains inside the main room just by the terrace door. I helped him out and off he went but without the squark which often happens when you pick them up.

I spent a whole childhood up trees doing just that - picking up Green Grocers, Yellow Mondays, Piss Whackers, and Black Princes clinging onto the giant Liquidambar at the side of the old house and from which I could peer into the top floor of the Anderson's house that they built on what used to be the next door tennis court. No one had swimming pools then, and no one has tennis courts now. The room I could see into was the sitting room. It was all grey except for the ceiling which was white - grey walls, grey carpet, grey lounge and chairs. All grey, like the Andersons.

It didn't take much looking today to find the shells - one, two, four, sixteen -  everywhere. What I hadn't ever noticed before was the fine white stringy thing hanging out the abandoned exoskeleton, like something umbilical.

Curiously, there's been no songsters yet. It doesn't seem quite hot enough, or maybe they need to mature another day or so. But they're out and about.

THE LITTLE ONE

The Eastern spinebill (Acanthorhynchus tenuirostris) is one of the smallest honeyeaters, curious and trusting enough for me to be able to pick him up off the verandah step where he was standing, just standing, almost trancelike.

The arch of the black beak is perfect for nectar gathering especially from the Grevilleas covered in masses of flowers at the moment. Now that's a red eye, and no flash! The lovely olive coloured feathers behind the cinnamon collar suggest he's an immature, and maybe a fledgling I thought by the way he wobbled off through the air after staring at me for a few minutes.

How small? This small -

What was especially pleasing was the amazing detail I lucked on with the iPhone, which I usually can't manage at close range. And one-handed too.

HELLO AGAIN

Yesterday there were 58mm of rain, starting in the afternoon and then all through the night. It was wonderful and much needed, a slow steady soaking. I had managed to get the lawns limed and fertilised just in time, so now it's all well watered down. Today there seemed more bird life than ever, darting and squawking though the Grevilleas and now the predicted evening showers have arrived as daylight fades with the fire going, the candles on the mantlepiece alight, and all the water tanks are full again. I love this house.

We have a new conservative Government although the swing was quite small, and as happens here, large numbers of seats can change hands simply because one or two or three people in a hundred change their vote. That this is called a mandate to do every rat-bag thing they promised to get themselves elected is exactly that - rat baggery. But then they are, rat bags. Not so much beholding to Murdoch and the odious Catholic Cardinal Pell, as creepy as any cartoon version of creepy churchman, but of shared values - a Ministry devoid of women except for the spiteful small minded Julie Bishop, and no minister for Science. Not since the 1930s. Knowledge is toxic to these people. It informs, exposes myth, and defends truth. So there's no room for that, or them. Scientists can count themselves lucky they're not burnt at the stake anymore. Though starved they will be.

And the leader - this person who believes climate change is 'crap', that the planet was warmer when Jesus was alive, and that people zoom up to heaven through the clouds. There's something worryingly suspect about his anti-gay stance, for a man so committed to exaggerating his masculinity, with Putin-esque like photo shoots in speedos, and lycra bike gear, and driving trucks and fighting bush fires, rah rah, and who, while the Prime Ministerial residence in Canberra is being renovated, will lodge at the Australian Federal Police Academy, eschewing a hotel or other residence of character or style, but living in with the boys, with a gym, and common shower rooms perhaps. Now all politicians by definition are bereft of style, but this descent into the common and vulgar is a new low.

Still, the tanks are full. And the pie is ready. I promise I'll be around more often, and do apologise for the yawning gap - the days and nights have been well spent and while blogging seems to be something I just can't do in a hurry, I do intend to do more frequent little hellos and up-to-dates. It is my diary after all.

The mention of which prompts me to note I have just finished read Paul Monette's coming-out novel, diary almost, "Becoming A Man" which I enjoyed very much for the writing and politics (it had been leant to me by someone whom I suspect had much in common with the stunted acceptance and exploration of his sexuality - as for me,  I needed brakes) and have this evening, lying on the bed with the dog listening to the pitter patter on the roof, started on "Berlin In Lights - The Diaries of Count  Harry Kessler".

BACK TO BAYREUTH

Bayreuth at the end of June was a Bayreuth before the festival, before the crowds, and before the heat. In a cool delayed spring, things were at best expectant.

If you were looking for locals, the place to start was down the hill by the river in the Shopping Centre, the Rotmain Centre (named after the river), a plain two storey could-be-anywhere affair but warm inside with the ground floor full of food outlets. Behind the Centre runs a pretty little stream, its banks wild and grassy, which we would cross over on an old stone bridge to the hotel just beyond.

It was a simple pleasure then to wander the old town, from The Town Square along the main street, Maximillian Strasse (both now pedestrian zones which sort of work, but sort of don't when there aren't the crowd numbers to fill them up) heading up towards Richard Wagner Str and then Wahnfried.

Little side streets left and right were all but empty, waiting under heavy skies.

,

Off to the left and down the hill, the glorious treasure of the World Heritage Listed baroque 1748 Margravial Opera House is now covered for restorations, its gorgeous (painted wood) interiors away from the public eyes for years I expect.  How this wonder has survived war and fire is a miracle itself. 

(Here's some of last years without-flash photos, which aren't allowed of course, but the guide was lovely, and kept turning her back).

There's a few Frederick's in this story: 

Frederick, Margrave of Brandenburg-Bayreuth was the cultured and beloved ruler/monarch who was responsible for the building of the Opera House, which would later attract the attention of one Richard Wagner because of the size of its stage, but be rejected because of the size of it pit and small (500) capacity no doubt. And so evolved the building of the Festspeilhaus. 

                                                                                    Frederick von Brandenburg-Bayreuth

This Frederick's first wife, by arrangement, was to the rather more dominant and thespian Wilhelmine of Prussia who would indulge her talents as writer, director, actor and the like in the great splendour.

Now she was the sister of Frederick the Great (Friedrich der Grosse), amongst a zillion other things responsible for, mature years lived, and now buried at Sanssouci (where rumours of his sexual interests, or not, swirled). He was the young officer who was captured fleeing away from (father) if not to (England) with another young officer and companion, Hans Hermann von Katte, whose beheading for treason he was forced to watch, himself pardoned.

                                                            Frederick the Great as Crown Prince

DACHAU

The real reason for leaving the sun and food of Italy and going back over the Alps to Munich was to drive from there to Bayreuth where K had some meetings. 

Leaving Munich in drizzly rain we went first to Dachau, just off the A9, and on the way - as if Dachau is on the way to anywhere. For all that one reads, or sees, or hears, or is warned about, this hideous place remains as something that can only be experienced. There are few words if any, except those of the survivors, that suffice. We hardly spoke in the hours we were there; it is unspeakable. I was tempted to say inhuman, but the bald fact of it is that is is human. It is what humans do. That's the horror of it. And it is silent. And empty, a completely empty godless place.

(The assembly area with the maintenance building beyond, with the admission room and bath house on the right, all now major memorial exhibition rooms)


All entry and exit was through the gates in the Jourhaus, notoriously claiming "Arbeit Macht Frei".

It is well to start with and seek some consolation at the International Memorial just inside the Jourhaus.

The camp, a model for all others, was essentially a double row of barracks (34 in total of which two have been reconstructed) divided by the camp road which now runs towards the religious memorials and convent. Initially designed for 6,000, there were over 30,000 (some list more than 60,000) when the Americans arrived in April 1945. Block 3 was the realm of appalling Rascher and his medical atrocities.

There is now a crossing at the far end of the camp, over the water ditch and through the barbed wire, into the vastly bigger area that was the SS training ground, headquaters and barracks. Immediately beyond the first line of trees is the crematorium building whose rooms I would discover were not all for ovens, oh no. To my unexpected horror there is one huge room in which were piled the dead awaiting cremation, and another the most dreadful sickening proto gas chamber.

LOOKING OUT LOOKING IN

We travel by train a lot and the romance still holds a little although that horrific disaster in Spain has rekindled the thoughts you often have flying through France at 300km/hr that there is not much room for error and a lot of trust involved. But then our greatest danger is probably some wing-nut on the freeway down here.

Getting from Milan to Munich seemed a straightforward ask, but it was a bit of a fiddle and all thanks to Deutsche Bahn not the least for incredibly (welcome-to-europe or something) cheap fares.

From Milan

 on this sparkly number

we changed at Verona (and up the Brenner Pass through Innsbruck) for Munich. Not quite so glam but inside was nicely old fashioned and we shared a comfortable compartment with a German couple heading home after what sounded like a rather grand 60th birthday bash in Verona.

The clouds sat low, and light rain was falling, smudging the dirty windows. It was only when I uploaded some snaps of the autobahn and found one that was reasonably interesting

that I saw the face at the window.