Equal pay for work of comparable value

With Helen, I went to Sydney yesterday for what is being described as the 'biggest action since the 1970s' in support of equal pay. 3,000 people at a meeting in the Sydney Town Hall - the best organised, most positive and effective public meeting I have ever attended. Helen's close collaborator on many issues Narelle Clay, president of the Australian Services Union in charge.

What distinguishes this case is that it is not simply equal pay for same work (hard enough historically) but seeking equal pay for comparable work. With significant support from Deputy Prime Minister Julia Gillard.

Here Narelle and Helen at Wollongong before setting out, after they addressed those travelling north, along with Jennie George, first woman president of the ACTU and Arthur Rorris, head of the Labor Council.

A tribute to heroes of equal pay over the years.

There was a march, with some really cute horses.

It was a sunny winter day for a march, Helen in her element.

I was very pleased with this photo below, enlarge (by clicking on image) to see the broil of energy...

This spotless Men-in-Black machine seemed a creature deserving caricature, were it not entirely serious — and surely, in any serious situation, a provocative magnet not just to mature people who think it an object of fun but others who might be inflamed.

Helen's daughter Corina was there, on left below with other organisers of a hugely successful intergenerational feminist conference earlier in the year.

Destruction, deconstruction, making use of..

I think I previously included in this blog our other preoccupation, dealing with aftermath of floods at our place Mount Eurobodalla but have not shown what we have been doing since, see below little movie...

It has become a stimulating and inspiring process, not a burdensome clean-up. I have been very fortunate in finding an artist with a chain saw, David, and we have not only been cleaning up but making new building materials...

I've had a turn, but am mainly accessory. It's good to work with someone who is focused on at least three things at a time, and to be in agreement that the precise use of this material, is something to be determined when we have the products, of which these some samples...we begin with these slabs from paulownia, heading next for the eucalypt that knocked this tree down, see the movie. Below the fork in the big gum tree in that movie there and in photo below, showing trench being dug to get at it, is at least 8.5 metres of straight timber, and above the fork a great deal more. There is another carried-in log of immense whorling complexity, we need courage to decide how to work on it, as slabs lengthwise or across. This paulownia is very simple to decide about!

Fun to re-use: the ancient little caravan, with which we began here 20 years ago, now serving as a timber jinker and as rough support for tarpaulins to cover cut lumber.

This is the big eucalypt referred to above, which we get at next... the not-long-enough wooden rail on top is 7.2 metres.

I had shared a view with a neighbour, in April: we both thought there would be another flood in June. Well, in the first week of June another five inches of rain, following five in the last week of May, and a cyclone in between, so maybe flood at any moment.

The lumber I made safe before the cyclone, but the shed could not be safe when wind lifts the top off a tree and throws it at the shed... So another task ahead in fixing/replacing the shed. Fortunately not the house.

In the picture below, the water is just run-off, not flood. While I was taking this picture below, two very large trees fell fifty metres away, at a time when, 7.30am, there was neither wind nor rain, see my story of it here, if you missed the link the other day!! :-)

I like this way of living in a creative mindset in very direct engagement with natural reality, where you are not in charge, there are other forces, metaphorically comparable to the way the novel runs away from me, stories take charge, characters take charge.

portrait and discovery of other life in Huskisson

I had gone to the Lady Denman Gallery at Huskisson to take a decent photo of my portrait of Murray Peters, if it had not been rejected as substandard by this no-standards exhibition's curator... and there it was! If this doesn't look a wonderful work of art, please blame the iPhone, not the painter.

... and there, see below, as a result of recent road work, I found, emerging from the ground, evidence of early life in Huskisson, or maybe it's future life emergent - Blue Metal Man?

a drop of writing from 24 busy hours

I have been trying, after all the other bedlam, to get back to writing and particularly to the novel.

I have just written this account of the last 24 hours.

I wrote this in part at midnight, in part just now.

In passing it on to my writers' group I said

I submit this as being something that seems to help me find my way back into writing mode. I found myself entering a story that told itself to me as I had to do things. I think I had advantage of some attendant drama, hard to imaging how it was, sitting back here now, but I think something like this can be written almost about anything we do, if we are open sensually and visually and to rhythm and temperature and stress, all things we tend to muzzle or deny. And I am pleased to say I then sat another few minutes at midnight and have, I think, a way forward with the snagged novel, starting in a different part of the story. Next to find out how hard it is to move chapters in Scrivener, hopefully not hard at all... but not now... time to veg out!

Slurping the blog

Apparently to slurp is to download the content of a blog and convert it into a book, which we have now done, still awaiting the delivery of the first book (fret, fret) to check that the printers handle the dark colours well. Dark colours which look good on a monitor may look far too dark on a page.

The second book of our travels has an entirely different air to the first, you can preview it here:

unmese: the blog by Helen Backhouse and Dennis Argall | Make Your Own Book

entry for the Little Archies

My portrait is in for the Little Archies. I think I had vegemite on the lens when I tried to photograph it at midnight before carting it off to Huskisson, better pic later....

I wrote this note that night:

My subject is a very interesting man who interviews every state minister and politician and has said no to more of them more often than any other radio jock, including major stand-up's with you know who, to you know who's fury. Background in driving taxis in Sydney in 70s and 80s and radio in Griffith NSW so probably knows lots of things I don't want to know. Also time spent in the early 70s in the upper reaches of Kashmir. I had photographed him at work in the studio, where, it not being the ABC, he has to do everything to keep the thing on the road for 4 hours a day, 20 hours a week, with management jittering behind him. Without his taking over that slot, there would have been no fair elections, no change of government in Shoalhaven in 2008.

Then I had afternoon tea with Murray and Rosie and sons one afternoon on their semi-rural block, and there was this innocence and amiable generous family aspirational side that came out and somehow they have to be put together.

So I've tried to do that, with it all unfolding (unravelling) on the square metre of canvas (linen, actually, courtesy of the retirement village fete in Gerringong).. and I've just taken the worst and blurriest photo ever taken, which is herewith and no plan at midnight to replace it.

You see it began on the right in bucolia, all the icons of the Shoalhaven. Then he had to be portrayed also with four arms at least, frantic in the studio, There was a gun on the desk it's not there any more. The dark got painted in after other work; I had painted dark forces, including the dinosaur, bottom left, and then changed my mind, covered them with black gesso then changed my mind again, quickly enough, and they came back rather interestingly with a cloth applied to the gesso. The beach and the desk became one, a decision on coupling which was not really mine, which creates a jumble of people on the beach (and the highway) and the desk things. There is a second microphone in the studio, of course, a seductive thing in my experience, which suddenly yesterday turned into a woman with the figure of Jessica, Roger Rabbit's girlfriend (who can forget the unforgettable line "I'm not bad, I'm just drawn that way.") and her head replaced by lips and speech bubble says "Talk to me." And so on... it's been fun. And you may all pass by on the day and say "Fun, yes, fun, Dennis. But is it art?" I'm working on the riposte....

Muz likes the figure on the left, looks like Rod Stewart, he says. Is that me too, he asked at lunchtime today...

photobook of travels in Italy

We have just sent to be printed our photobook of travels in Italy in February-March 2010, you can preview it here:

Un Mese in Italia: Febbraio-Marzo 2010 by Dennis Argall |

Click the title to see how to buy this book, how to make your own book.

Click the little device and words 'FULL SCREEN' to see it larger.

other side of life

We went for two nights at easter to see what had happened at the farm at Bodalla, as a result of the floods in February.

I've put a stack of little movies to record the situation in the orchard at YouTube

pardon the sleepy voice in the beginning of the first film... it does get better! There is also a short film about how or why Oscar repeatedly rolls in wombat poo.

The place has long been for me a lesson in living with rather than controlling nature. It would have been more than exciting to have been there to see the massive tree trunks flying through and some getting stuck, though it probably would have been unnerving to see fifty foot trees ripped from the bank.

Little Archies

For the Little Archies, a local portrait competition, I am wanting to make a painting of Murray Peters. Muz is a well known local, who works impossible hours with six arms and at least three brains steering the local commercial radio station through the morning. Yesterday, being in attendance at the studio to talk about China justice system and Stern Hu, I took some photos. How to get from these photos to a painting, or should it be something other than a painting? Not just a photo...

Scrivener, more value of, and Spotlight on the Mac

In working my way through the structure of the novel in Scrivener today, I realised I had lost an important chapter, a thousand words or so on the history of the protagonist's father in China from the 1930s to 1957. I knew it was important, important in informing my head about the weight of direction of the story, whether it was to stay in the story or not. Somewhere it had dropped from an earlier cobbled draft.

I could not find it by looking in all the sensible places. I found it when I realised I could use Spotlight on the Mac to search for key words not mentioned in other places. I remembered that his patron had been the general who had become mayor of Beijing in 1949, so a search for Mayor of Beijing produced the text, the name of General Nie Rongzhen and all the history which I have now been able to improve with fresher mind and seeing where it is able to fit in the structure of the novel, thanks to Scrivener. Yes, I'm pleased to have an application that works for me, helps me organise, rather than shapes me to its own designs.

Mosaic and paintings

I don't think the writing will flow easily, however, until I get the painting going well again. I have some large items to paint, one to finish. We have been to another mosaic-ing day with Dora. See the report on Dora and Marcus's home page. This was a great way to clear the brain a week after getting off the plane! And we have now a considerable accumulation of tiles and the rest of the necessaries to get more mosaics done on our own. I must work now to produce a painting for SeeChange.