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--- 194503 [2015/02/17 20:25] – richard_pattison
+++ 194503 [2015/02/17 20:30] (current) – [THE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW] richard_pattison
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 The Sea Snakes are all poisonous, but are not indigenous though the Yellow bellied sea snake is sometimes washed up on our' coastal beaches. They grow to a little over three feet in length. All the Sea Snakes are, of course, good swimmers, and propel themselves through the water mainly by means of a paddle shaped The body is quite different from the land snakes in shape and has a comparatively deep keel on the underside, like the keel of a boat, The most interesting feature of this reptile is perhaps the marvellous colouring. The upper half of the body is a dark brown to black and the underside is bright yellow. As it swims at the surface of the ocean, (it breathes air, like all other snakes), the dark upper body is virtually invisible from above and so protection is afforded from sea birds, who would enjoy nothing better than a snack of snake. Viewed from below the yellow underside harmonises with the colour of the sky above the sea and many unsuspecting small fish swim close to the sea snake and provide it with its staple food. Cheerio till next time.
-=====Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow =====
+=====THE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW=====
+Ray Bean,
+I am one of nature’s whims: an oddity of evolution. Perhaps a throwback to paganism caused by a too high concentration of civilization.
+That is what the public thinks of me because I go Bushwalking. They are right.
+When I call to mind that in a frenzy of Bushwalking enthusiasm I bashed, slashed, brawled, and cursed my way down the Colo River from Newnes to Upper Colo a few years ago, I say grimly, "They are right, dead right”!
+The years have (as years will) brought a little wisdom to my outlook on Bushwalking. I shake my head in tolerance at the spectacle of petulant "Tigers" and other insults whose aim in life is to put scores of miles behind them in the least possible time. Ah youth!
+My attention to Bushwalking has become more abstract, being an essential part of me, but not all consuming. Whereas in the past Bushwalking completely encircled me, I find now I am on the outside looking in: I think with better perspective.
+I am sufficiently interested to know what is going on, and occasionally caught up with the whirl of enthusiasm I go Bushwalking when it appeals to me more than other activities.
+My outlook undoubtedly appears indifferent to those newer enthusiasts, and so I suppose it is.
+Imagine my consternation then, for here I am somewhere west of Wondabyne with no less an illustrious group of walkers than that which contains four S.B.W. ex-presidents and the president!
+What a camp fire! Reminiscences, wit, stories of ambitions, follies, criticisms and clap trap. Have you ever heard Myles Dunphy tell a story?
+Myles tells a story with infinite attention to detail and accurate observation of nature, without the slightest sign of tedium: just vigorous spontaneity and colour.
+And Tarro! Have you heard Tarro play his flute in the quiet of night? As you stretch before the fire which reflects on the slender trunks of beloved gums towering beyond the circle of light until they seem to support the very firmament above?
+Across the fire there is Charlie Pryde, at least I can see his face, for its lighter tones reflect the fire's glow whilst darker clothing absorbs the light and merges into the background.
+On that face is an expression of sheer joy and contentment, and he sits inanimate except for an occasional draw on the beloved weed: his face, by its lines and wrinkles shows every emotion through the passage of years, but at present is passive and un-quickened like time in human turmoil.
+I am jerked out of my contemplation by much laughter, and I realise I have a god story, but the competition is running high and another is on its way.
+So it goes on as you have also experienced it; good fire, good camp, and after partaking of good food, the company of good fellow.
+One by one sleep claims my companions, and all but Tarro have gone to their sleeping bags, and as those who know him must also know that the conversation inevitably turns to music.
+Time we put in its proper place by promptly forgetting about it, and deeper and deeper we delved into music and musicians as two people will with a favourite subject when unfettered by time and circumstances.
+Tarro is eloquent on the beauty of Beethoven's slow movements and by so the strange convulsion of the imagination (probably caused by the recollection of Beethoven’s love of contrast) my mind hits upon a tram, for at this time last night I was homeward bound on a tram.
+A tram! That fiendish inhuman contraption; a moving monument to man’s folly. What greater miscarriage of logic could there be than expecting man to find comfortable transport in a thing of steel running on steel?
+Have you ever travelled from the city on an all night tram? Look at the sordidness of it all. That bleary eyed profligate in the corner, whose alcoholic advocates air conditioning, and the Y ---, Allied Serviceman with the maudlin, synthetic ----.
+That pathetic opposite, with the dissipated eyes and too highly rouged cheeks in a futile attempt to cling to long vanished youth. There is a lad who looks as though he has come off a late shift, he will never know youth, he is terribly tired, he will be boy and then man; old man. It’s the feeling that all is spent force, the seeming hopelessness of it that depresses me, and the crazy tram rolls and lurches its noisy way, sighs, hiccoughs, and continues on again.
+I think of a moron's picnic. Turning away from it all I look out the door to see my image reflected in the glass, whilst outside houses, shops, lights flash past and through my image like thoughts through my mind, and I look at my image and say, "Cynic who are you to pass judgment"?
+I am back at the fire again listening to Tarro and I see his face, his boyish smile, and look into, his eyes and see the sparkle of eternal youth. We sit along time thus, perhaps we talk, or just drink in the beauty of the night, watching the clouds cross the moor, and the moon glistening on the wet leaves above. This I think, in terms of Beethoven, is the "slow movement", the profound, the beautiful, the lyrical, and the tram, the "scherzo" the jest.
+I lie along time in my sleeping bag, and silence comes in out of the night and settles by the fire. Peace, what glorious peace.
+Peace, like tragedy, appears to come in such completeness to man the individual. The tragedy experienced by the masses is small compared to that suffered by some individuals, and I think that such peace as this can only come to the human and not humanity, and were it not for sleep I would be sad.
+To the readers, on behalf of the tripewriter, I apologise, as all errors in spelling etc, are due entirely to it, I regret that it has never learned to smell-----or-----spell.
 =====HAVE YOU PUT OUT THAT FIRE ?=====