On the last day, of the first decade, of the new millennium.

On special days like this, we don’t have to look far to see that generations past have pondered the balance between what has been, and what can be: maybe as a means of explaining what is; or as a reminder of the keen edge of the present.

Janus
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In Roman mythology, Janus (or Ianus) was the god of gates, doors, doorways, beginnings and endings. His most prominent remnant in modern culture is his namesake, the month of January, which begins the new year. He is most often depicted as having two faces or heads, facing in opposite directions.

Corellas, signalling nightfall and a full moon above the Murray gives way to a dawn chorus and a morning, stretching, ready: on the last day of the decade.  River redgum ride on dusty banks; bikes silent as the river rolls on downstream.  Early morning joggers and walkers, and houseboats backed into the bank, littered with the drinks and detritus of a long night.

There is such history here along the river.  To think of the miles just traversed at 100 km per hour in air conditioned car, and imagine the difference from poking along behind a few thousand sheep, working the long paddock: mutton for the miners, or, against the flow, and upward reach to the heartland of the big sheep spreads.

In Ballarat tonight, bushfire smoke borne on the wings of a saving rain underscores the rapidity of the cycle of possibility.  What began as a ball of black smoke, sinister in the South, ends with the gathering storm, and the drenching rain.

We are, at every point in time, poised precariously between our past; and our future.

It is the last day of the first decade of the new millennium: a long way from the Y2K virus and the spectre of tumbling aeroplanes and crashed systems.

The Bendigo Art Gallery was showing, amongst other things, McCubbin on loan.  The Pioneers. The delight of the triptych, captured, yet again, this theme of passage.  There are the beginnings, the  doubt and questions, followed by the building of home and family and the movement onward to a point where all of this is memory against a backdrop of change and development.

Bendigo: Formerly Sandhurst: pictures of past, with recognisable features of the present.

This first decade of the new millennium has been a decade of accommodations and adjustments: sometimes grudgingly acknowledging special needs and a universality of need for equity.  This has been a great outcome.

We need now, to move beyond this and to really challenge our dominant paradigms. We need , in education, to now look at the accommodations and adjustments needed to meet the needs of a broader spectrum of learners at this point in time. We need to move seriously from ‘school planning’ to ‘planning school.’

And yet, in an aside, it is possible to find a challenge in a simple cafe experience in Daylesford.

Musing on a young woman with dog: sitting outside the cafe. (New Year’s Eve, 2009)

Daylesford Dachsund snapping at flies

and

a chic tattoo

thumbing its nose at the inevitability of time.

Now, like the grapevines above: young and ready to burst forward with lush fruit but,

in time, will too

wither.

There are challenges and rewards looming in the new year.  We have hit double figures: and what a growing up it’s been.

Where were you ten years ago at the turn of the millennium?  And what has happened in between?

Let’s make the next ten a decade of commitment to the big questions:

‘what do we all need to agree upon as human beings to sustain ourselves?’

Have a great new year!

The views and angles from the end of the breakwater are amazing.  Straight across, to the wrecks encased within the breakwall on the Stockton side of the channel, and on to the pines standing tall on the way to Fern Bay.

Kooragang works reminds us of smokestacks past, while the prehensile limbs of loaders pump the black coal into the ready holds of red and black colliers.  They sit lower and lower in the water until they are hustled, prodded and pushed: then steaming outward away from the tugs’ insistent coddling.

Grain elevators dwarf juice containers. Bullock Island: a destination for farmers frustrated by rail strikes, trucking their own wheat to the dockside.

Beyond Muloobinba, the floating dock, the harbour becomes a mix of fishing fleet and pleasure marina: overshadowed by the opulence of fast ocean ketch, ‘Squall’ high on the slips.

We pause in our bike ride, looking back across the remains of Nobbys, trying to imagine what it looked like before they lopped the top off.  The dunes have shifted, and there are old trail tracks exposed in the sand.  All around are both memories and fresh hope.

The wind will be at our backs as we ride up Throsby Creek. Just as well, as it’s already very warm.

Bright red sunset burning beyond the distant hills points the way; way out there, across hills and rich plains of Gamilaroi land. This is also the land of my father and his father, and the great grandfather killed during harvest. To think that a heavily packed four bushel bag of wheat: the object of the exercise of growing the stuff , could actually kill you.  Across that small range, in line with Somerton Gap, is the place of my youth. There are many memories here. I am back in the city of my birth tonight.

Grandchildren paddling out beyond the break and daughters gambolling like seals in the shore breaks: Pop takes his last swim out there where the bottom drops off the bar.

We’d gathered to honour a wish, with no script, and no sense of what is actually meant to happen. There was a sense, though, that these were the memories for so many: the Mollymook days  – when the need to knock off on time to ‘meet someone at the club,’ or the lessons in dealing with the beach were passed on to generations. The Mollymook days – where family had come to share the beach and the sense of holiday fun; and where they all had uploaded a gallery of shared and personal memories which deserved a reprise.

The threads of this tapestry are so interwoven and rich that, for those unable to be there, their thread was still there as part of the picture that had been, and is, being woven.

Beach cricket; shouts of encouragement and fun. Family and friends on the sand. Then, as though at a common thought, we moved to watch as they swam beyond the break, and then we stood, watching, the sound of the waves and the sense that this was just as it should be.

There will be footage on Facebook and talk and memories: more Mollymook stories to add to the collection.

In the background, the boat finals begin. Crews jump at the sound of the  gun: bare buttocks sliding easily on wet seats as thighs drive backward and oars claw at the water, butting out through the break to turn and seek the providence of a rising and falling swell.

There’s a timelessness about these beach rituals for most of us.  Sometimes we catch the wave and sometimes it washes over us.

I reckon he would have thought it was ‘real good.’

Nightfall, and the bats are on the move.  They fly, beating wings against the greying sky, airborne mammals, shrugging upside down through the day and battering out through the sky in defiance of all probability.

In the distance, squeezed in the frame between roofs, the wind turbine swings lazily, yet, insistently: challenging any latter day Quixotes who would want to sally forth on whatever Rocinante takes their fancy.

Ahead of me the TV aerials thrust skyward: reminders of a time spent wanting Sydney – but only grudgingly.  The audio landscape blurs away with the hum of the coal loader, as we rip out the insides of the valley and pump them into the open squawking magpie chick mouths of an energy hungry world.

The wind turbine speeds up, energetically.

Why couldn’t we rehabilitate open cut mines as solar farms?  The infrastructure is close by to connect to grids, and the earthworks are required anyway.

The sky darkens more, and the occasional bat flies a reverse course: returning, almost sheepishly: to their inverted shrug.

The distant susurration of a rain squall crescendoes across tin roofs and glides across the street. Falling sheets are enough to excite the motion sensor and the light comes on.

Tighes Hill; Saturday night.

Soft mauve late October splashes of jacaranda punctuate my view east to where the Sydney Football Stadium squats: a half deflated tire, tired; between seasons: sighing for the heydays.

Look northeast to where the mid week sailors heel into the breeze out around the Sow and Pigs, far beyond the lurking menacing shapes of the battle grey ships: nuzzling against the shore which still beats a grateful heart to Jack Munday for the salvation of at least some of its charm.

The giant Coke sign at the top of the Cross will illuminate later; a beacon to the William St traffic which dodges its own intentions and musing: through the tunnel and home, or sneaking left to a guilty pleasure.

Wedged between me and Bondi Junction sit the solemn walls of the wards of St Vincents, standing in counterpoint to the old buildings of Darlinghurst Gaol.  As I look northward again over Woolloomooloo I reflect on the old population of Irish immigrants, watched over by the eye of the church, from St Mary’s cathedral to the West and the looming walls of Darlinghurst Gaol, and British authority to the East.

I remember the feeling, as a fifteen year old, walking up Oxford St from Central to East Sydney tech, in the old gaol.  The sense of wonder at a ten day poetry summer school: with people who swore publicly and spoke of opiates and ideas. Staying at Grandma’s house at Miranda, and sharing Miranda’s wonder in finding such wonderful things in such a brave new world. Sitting in the floor in the foyer, before a matinee production of Hair: a long way from Wongo Creek

It’s nice to be back in the city: there’s a palpable energy here.

The tower at the Paddo town hall begins to glow as the last rays of the sun catch the clock and the spire, flag proudly shouting at the end of the day: streaming boldly in the approaching southerly.

In the distance I can see the tower at Waverly directing our gaze down past the college and on along the Frenchman’s Road to the Prince at Randwick, where we can pause and see where it points to Coogee and memories of my early career.

I swing around and look to see the tower in Sir John Young Crescent where we ‘re-orientated’ from secondary to primary.  The block thrusts skyward, alone near the Eastern Distributor, giving the finger to the nearby terraces and warehouses: an ode to the Seventies and why my generation exists as such a paradox.

We still have time: let’s make a difference.

Post to – Edublogger World  – 24 July 2007

Here in Australia, our national broadcaster ran a story tonight about the CNN Youtube event with US Presidential hopefuls.

Luckily, the story went beyond the whizz-bangery of the event, (as we’ve come to expect that from the home of Hollywood and other dreams), and  focused more on the key messages which the story took from the event; as a metaphor for a transformed context of image management. I didn’t catch the name of one of the interviewees, but ran to find a slip of paper to write down these words:

“No reason you can’t do something different.”

The democratisation of knowledge and access to influence is a fascinating outcome from our lurch into an internet paradigm. It places the information in the hands, heads and hearts of the curious. And yes, there are times where that curiosity may be morbid or ill directed, as it reflects the absolute diversity of humanity, in all its confronting reality.

Beyond that, there is a world of possibility and opportunity. Blogs, where anyone can find a space to write, create the possibility for discourse which led another interviewee to refer to them as the “new town hall of the 21st century”

Web 2.0, the read/write web, the web of tools which allow collaboration and interaction, is creating exponentially growing possibilities of connection between ideas and realities. It just needs, from us, a willingness to let go. If we have already cast off and taken to the white water raft on the information millstream, then we need to persist. We have the chance to promote a metamorphosis in the way we view education, and the locations where it is promoted. It should also lead to some fundamental shifts in the way that its outcomes are measured and evaluated against a rapidly retreating horizon of possibility.

Click here to view the entry at Edublogger World

Contribution to ANTSEL online conference 2008 – hosting and facilitation by Cybertext 

I wonder how familiar the feeling is? Sitting with laptop open, deadline approaching, and a commitment made long ago to make a contribution to an online conference. Just a few words related to one of the key questions being asked.Let me also add that I’ve never been to the Northern Territory and don’t pretend to have any appreciation at all of what it might be like to lead a school there. I thought, though, that it may be useful to share some thoughts of mine about the things which seem to sit behind the leadership behaviours of those I see who seem to be doing a great job at the business of leading schools. Now, before we go on, a word about semantics. You’ll notice that my previous sentence contained words like ‘job’ and ‘business.’ I’m hopeful that these few words might serve to prompt the reassurance that while school leadership may encompass processes where performance is measured relative to objective and quantifiable targets, it is also a people business. In our schools, all sorts of people work in partnership to add value to the lives of our future leaders. As we lurch ahead into a paradigm more akin to the internet, with its multifarious ways of approaching the same objective, the strength of our connection to some fundamental human values becomes critical.For a couple of years now, I’ve been lucky enough to speak to a number of groups at conferences and other gatherings. One of the recurrent themes has been based on an acronym and an idea thought up in one of those reflective moments that we all share from time to time. This is the idea.

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Education Week Message

I spent part of the weekend at Rosehill racecourse and came home a bit richer on the day. All with not a horse in sight, apart from the odd happy snap of polo ponies at the occasional neighbouring stand. Along with a number of Secondary and Primary Principals I spent time representing our schools at the DET display at Education Expo held at Rosehill Gardens this weekend.  The stand was well positioned and had a forward looking “look,” a look commented on positively by a number of the display visitors.

Part of the richness also came from spending time deliberately focusing on the good that we do, and the good that we can do.  I know that you will all, this week in particular, be trying to showcase the good that your school does, in the best way possible: the demonstration of the joy that children have taken in their learning. We can never forget the look on the face of a child who displays work to a close adult who cares, and who obviously looks like they are comfortable relating to the teacher: as a professional educator and, also, as a significant caring adult within the same child’s life.  The desired outcome is, after all, similarly shared. Most of us want our schools to be places where children are happy, where teachers care and, where children learn. (more…)

The greyness of the gum stood stark on the hillside where it rose gently up toward the grain shed.  Pink and grey galahs would roost in the top branches, gymnastic and abrasive all at once, swinging loudly from the electricity wires which ran overhead.  Salt bush plants dotted the gentle hillside at its base, providing a hurdling track for a little boy, racing homeward after locking up the calf for the night, clearing the bushes with one leg stretched in front, and one leg tucked up, just like the pictures of champion hurdlers. (more…)