In stark contrast to most of the reviews on this website, this one deals with a reggae-flavoured hip hop band from Melbourne called Combat Wombat, featuring DJ Wasabi aka Tom Jones. No, it’s not the boring aged Welsh singer, it’s Tom Jones, formerly of Matong, Wagga Wagga, Newcastle and now Melbourne, son of my friend Kate.
When he was 7 Tom showed me how to use a computer… Tom is now a famous pop star aka DJ Wasabe, part of Combat Wombat which is a fabulously successful new band which played last night at the Hopetoun Hotel in Surry Hills.
Combat Wombat at Hopetoun HotelCombat Wombat at Hopetoun HotelCombat Wombat at Hopetoun Hotel
Their music is both political and danceable in that “Jabiluka” kind of way. By this I mean the kind of sounds that I first came across at the Jabiluka protests of the late 90s in the Northern Territory. Most of those attending had a strong commitment to envirionmentalism and social justice, but unlike their parents whose artistic representation of that was folk music, these kids had grown up with dance beats and technology.
Combat Wombat at the Hopetoun Hotel
Amongst the group of us who attended last night’s concert – the group of old people – was a member of a legendary Australian rock band. Peter said he’d been chatting with another “old muso”, a very well known bass player who just couldn’t believe that Combat Wombat’s range of instruments included only samplers and turntables. “I can’t believe they plug in all those leads” was the incredulous comment his friend made.
But drawing upon earlier traditions – Midnight Oil, David Bridie – their show also included background video footage focussing on issues of peace, environmentalism and national identity with The “Irish dancing John Howards” being a highlight.
The music was also terrific. I thought Tom – aka Wasabi – was just amazing. I also thought one of the vocalists – the female one whose name I don’t know – sang with such a huge amount of passion and authenticity.
A couple of weeks ago when Kate and I listened to their CD for the first time together, because of the style of music they play and because of our age, we wondered how we could be inconspicuous at the launch. Dress in black, don’t dance too much… As it was, we were in the front row (though off to the side) and we didn’t have to worry, since it was a really friendly, welcoming crowd.
Now… enough of old people talking about young people’s culture.
I got online at just the right time. I re-set my previous registration. I followed the prompts at just the right time. I tried in both English and Swedish. And I still missed out on tickets for the finals for Melodifestivalen, the Swedish competition leading to Eurovision.
I’m going to be in Stockholm next March, with Melodifestivalen something I really want to attend. And so when I read tickets went on sale tonight at 6.00pm Sydney time, I was ready to go.
Tickets however seem to sell out almost instantly. I’d imagine tickets might become available later. Perhaps a Swedish fan could advise if that’s the case? Or I might need to go looking on the ticket black market? Anyway, I’m sure it will be fine. By hook or by crook I’ll be there.
As I mentioned yesterday, I’ve been umming and ahhing and faffing around for a couple of weeks now, but I’ve finally done it. I’ve booked a flight to Stockholm, arriving March 4 to spend four weeks there.
Unlike the last time, during the summer of last year, it will be a little colder. I’m even hoping there might be some snow, even though I’m generally a “warm climate” kinda guy myself.
Beyond a general idea of “living in Stockholm for a while”, and going to a work-related conference in Copenhagen on March 18 and 19, I’ve yet to work out what I’ll do.
Even though tickets for Melodifestivalen are sold out, I see Sarah Dawn Finer is playing Chinese Theatre during the month, and Bjorn Skiffs is at Circus.
For me the trip is on many levels. I’d like to see, for example, if I could “live” in a colder place than I am used to, where the days are shorter etc. If I can, I’m hoping to live or work in Stockholm for maybe a year. Who knows?
Anyway, I’m gonna be in Sweden/Denmark in March, and maybe elsewhere for a day or two.
Very bloody excited!
Aside from that, it’s been a reasonably eventless day. Well, aside from most of the people I encountered today being in a very silly mood. I blame the weather. It was far too nice a day to remain indoors. Or maybe it’s the phase of the moon?
I was chatting with mate at work who noted the moon had changed, and that probably helps to explain it. Or maybe it’s that time of the year? He updated his Facebook status with “I’m a farm boy trapped in a city – all I want is a vegie patch and chooks”.
“I know how you feel”, I told him. “I’m a Swedish boy trapped in Sydney – all I want is fashionable furniture and clothing, a democratic society and tickets to Melodifestivalen”.
Though it may seem I’m on a “holiday” right now, I’m actually working quite hard. The days haven’t been necessarily overly long, but they’ve been fairly intense. After two years of working from home, face-to-face daily interactions can sometimes be quite exhausting. I’m also juggling aspects of my “regular job”. Nonetheless, there have been many moments of extreme pleasure.
Today, for example, we did an outside broadcast of ABC Darwin from Mindil Beach. During the dry season, the regular Thursday markets attract many hundreds of people. But today, there was an added attraction.
Darwin is currently playing home to a 17-country combined military operation. The massive fly-over attracted thousands of people. “I’ve lived in Darwin for 40 years and I’ve never seen crowds like this”, Nik, my Uber driver told me as we headed down to the beach. Nik seemed to know a lot about aircraft. He told me he had just spent five weeks in Greece, where his cousin in a fairly senior pilot.
“It’s bigger than Territory Day”, a colleague told me.
I was surprised by the size of the crowds too. And the noise of the aircraft during the flyover.
Thousands at Mindil Beach to watch a major international defence operation, and ABC Darwin was there.
Doing a “live outside broadcast” from a beach seems like it’s a pretty easy job, but from my own experience as a radio presenter over many years, I know it’s quite exhausting. “The hardest part is having to smile for two and half hours”, I told our presenter, Liz, with a laugh. Radio people aren’t used to being in public. Behind the scenes, there are concerns about practical things like how you get a broadcast signal from a beach, without power, and with thousands of people using their mobile phones at the same time.
Awesome job by the ABC team, inc Liz, Clarkie, Daleen, James, Maree, Nick, Saskia, Teghan and Rebecca, who was back in the studio.
In contrast to the very “modern” way of broadcasting, I’ve discovered some wonderful pieces of history in the Darwin office.
Spotted these on a shelf at the ABC Darwin office. It was like most of my career in technology in chronological order.A bit of history in the @abcdarwin office. The flag that flew from the ABC building at the time of Cyclone Tracy is on the wall, not far from the radio studio.
The impetus for starting this blog (twenty years as ago) was as a travel record for a 6-week role working at ABC Radio Darwin (then named 105.7 ABC Darwin). In the last few days, I’ve been re-reading (with a smile) those earlier posts. It was my first management role at the ABC, and I’m so glad they trusted me not to mess it up. Twenty years later, I’m back for a short time while a couple of the local managers take a break, and I’m so pleased they’ve trusted me again.
Oh, and did I mention the military personnel were very cute> :)
Of course I would LIKE her, given she first came to national prominence with the autobiographical play, “White Baptist ABBA Fan”. Though I’ve been aware of the music and works of the opera singer, Deborah Cheetham for about twenty years I’ve never seen her live before. Her performance at the National Indigenous Music Awards in Darwin was spell-binding.
Deborah Cheetham
Though there’s a tendency in some sections of the public and the media to group a whole bunch of people together under the banner “Indigenous Music” (political songs, rap, folk etc), her performance of that and of some others demonstrates how broadly superficial, and probably racist, that tendency can be.
Wilma Reading
There was, for example, a young guy from Sydney who played classical violin, combined with didgeridoo. There was a school aged choir from Western Australia. There was pop from Jessica Mauboy, and electronica from “Electric Fields”. And there was the awesome Aunty Wilma Reading who has made her career with show tunes and the like. She performed Barbra Streisand’s “Memories”, perhaps reflecting on the many changes she has seen in the ways in which Indigenous performers have been recognised over the last forty or fifty years. She was inducted into the Hall Of Fame, as were the awesome 1990s pop-folk group, Tiddas.
Tiddas, inducted into the Hall Of Fame (without Lou Bennett, who could not attend)
There were so many wonderful performances on the night from many artists, including Emma Donovan, Dan Sultan, and Uncle Jack Charles.
I first discovered Liam Benson‘s performance, photographic and video work when the art collecting group I was part of Hawkesbury One bought some of his early work. He had just recorded a couple of performance pieces, Ophelia and I Believe In You. I really loved both works because of both their playfulness and their conviction. Though in some ways fanciful, Liam WAS the portrayed character.
Liam Benson at Sydney Contemporary
He’s back at Sydney Contemporary this year with another wonderfully playful performance. He’s dressed as a woman in a gorgeous white dress, and as he walks around, people are encouraged to draw on the dress with coloured pens. People were really getting into it, as Kate and I stopped to observe. He says he’ll embroider the images, and this in turn, creates a permanent record of the performance. Wonderful stuff.
It’s Tuesday night and “summer” has returned to Darwin. After last week’s “cooler” weather, the warmer temperatures are back with us. I spent the weekend in Kakadu National Park and really noticed the difference.
I spent two days with travel company, Aussie Adventures, and a further day travelling with a friend and her family.
I was the first to be picked up by Peter the tour guide, who comes originally from Newcastle, but who has spent the last couple of years in Darwin taking adventure tours, making use of his degree in Environmental Science. I was so excited at the prospect of travelling that I didn’t sleep very well that night, so the 6.30 start was a bit of a struggle.
By 7.15, we had picked up all of the passengers from Darwin, a total of 12 people, aged mostly 25-35, although there were a couple of grey-nomads and two Norwegian backpakcers. Only half of the twelve would, however, stay with the tour for the weekend, returning instead to Darwin that night.
The first few hours of the trip were spent on the bus, as we passed the Marrakai Plains, Adelaide, Mary and Wildman River areas into Kakadu National Park. By the time we arrived at Ubirr Rock, an Aboriginal art site which overlooks Arnhem Land, I was well and truly ready to get out of the bus.
Unlike the trip with Damien a couple of years ago, this one was less rushed and so we had a couple of hours to explore the site and to enjoy the atmosphere.
In addition to the Aboriginal art, Ubirr is also quite special because you can observe three different types of land at the one sight – wetland, stone country and tropical savannah.
In the afternoon, we visited the Aboriginal cultural centre at Cooinda, where we camped that night, and enjoyed a 90 minute
cruise on Yellow Water.
Yellow water is a tranquil land-locked billabong that hosts a spectacular natural aviary of birdlife and crocodiles, which we managed to get very close to. So close, in fact, that one of the crocodiles got a little upset and made a splash so big half the people in the boat become drenched.
Yellow water is a tranquil land-locked billabong that hosts a spectacular natural aviary of birdlife and crocodiles, which we managed to get very close to. So close, in fact, that one of the crocodiles got a little upset and made a splash so big half the people in the boat become drenched.
By Saturday night there were just six of us left: a recently married English couple; an older couple from Melbourne, a midwife from Western Australia and me. They weren’t an exceptionally brilliant bunch of people, but they weren’t total drop-kicks either. That night we had dinner at the bistro, sank a few beers, and watched a singer, Mr Wilson, who sang everything from Slim Dusty to Pearl Jam. He also sang “Home Among The Gumtrees” (four times) with appropriate dance movements. At about 11pm, and after the fourth version of “Home Among The Gumtrees”, I hit the sack.
We spent Sunday morning at Maguk/Barramundi Gorge, a waterfall with Katherine Gorge/Nitmiluk-like sandstone walls. After the one-kilometre walk – through a creek bed and over rocks – we were pretty pleased to swim in the plunge pool at the end.
Although we were told Saltwater Crocodiles are found all throughout Kakadu, and they make every effort to clear spots such as Maguk before the season is opened to tourists, we were all a little bit nervous about jumping in. All of us, bar one, swam over to the far end of the falls, which was pretty hardgoing, given the strength of the current pushing back.
We enjoyed lunch at the Anbangbang Billabong and then visited the Nourlangie Region. Curiously enough, Nourlangie Rock is incorrectly named, as the name Nourlangie is an anglicised version of the word Nawurlandja and refers only to the smaller rock, not the larger one.
Kakadu Rock Art
The rock is home to some spectacular art, including a few examples of “contact art”, meaning art which portrays contact with Europeans, and not just Dreamtime Stories.
It was explained to us that each story can have up to a dozen different layers and that almost all of the “dreamtime stories” we hear are the ones usually explained to children.
As we approached Jabiru, I phoned Rachael (mobile contact starts about 10km outside of town), and made arrangements to meet with her and her family for the remainder of my weekend in Kakadu. As they were watching sunset at Ubirr, I spent an hour or so at the Gagadju Crocodile Hotel, which is designed in the shape of a crocodile which you can see quite well, I’m told, from the air.
As I made my way towards the camping ground, I became lost and rang Kate, who had stayed there a week earlier, for directions. Jabiru town was originally built as accommodation for workers at the nearby uranium mine, which can be toured. I would have like to have done that… maybe next time.
Bocce in Kakadu National Park by headlight
On Sunday night, we enjoyed dinner, a couple of glasses of red and played a late night game of Bocce, with cricket to follow on Sunday morning. I played on the girls team on both occasions.
On Monday afternoon, driving back from Kakadu, we visited the spectacular Mamukala Wetland, where it’s possible to watch the birdlife from a covered observation platform.
I spent Sunday night with my niece, Julie, her husband and child.
I had no real plans for the day, aside from a bit of house-cleaning, reading and some catch-up TV. It’s been a busy week at work, and I have another busy one ahead of me. On top of that, there’s the possibility of the Federal Election being called tomorrow which will involve some time in at work also. So my big plan for day was to do nothing much at all.
But then half way through the morning, I got a text message from my friend Kate. She had also woken up with no major plans for the day, but had a sudden desire to catch the train from Newcastle to Sydney to indulge in a bit of a gallery-hopping. She was keen to see the world press photography exhibition at the State Library, the Jeff Wall exhibition at the MCA, any other current exhibitions the AGNSW and White Rabbit before they close. I’d already seen the current exhibitions at the MCA and AGNSW, and so Kate and I met mid-afternoon at the State Library.
Although I’ve enjoyed the exhibition many times in the past, I wasn’t really in the right mind-frame today for the world press photography exhibition. I understand it’s “press photography”, and the subject matter is often very grim and uncomfortable. But as I walked around the exhibition today, I couldn’t help but feel the exhibition lacked some balance in the subject-matter. In contrast, to the death, destruction and unhappiness of the lives of those in the world press photography exhibition, the neighbouring exhibition, “Black On White” (which featured photographs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people) showed the variety of human experience with moments of happiness, joy, and humour and as well as anger and sadness.
I was also really blown away by some the current works at White Rabbit, the gallery which specialises in contemporary art from China. In particular, there were two fantastic works which I really loved.
There’s a large installation made by Zhou Jie, which portrays the CBD of Beijing. The work is made entirely from porcelain.Under Heaven by MadeIn Company aka Xu Zhen. I also really loved the work created by MadeIn Company, aka Xu Zhen. It’s a multi-layer work where the paint has been applied using piping cones (not paint-brushes).
I always love visiting White Rabbit, because of the imagination, high-level craft skills, and boldness of the works they feature.
Later, as we planned to have a quiet bite to eat at our favourite Sichuan restaurant, Red Chilli we had an amusing co-incidence. As we walked into the restaurant, at the same time I locked eyes with a radio colleague, Kate locked eyes with a businessman (and his father) Kate knows from Beijing. As it turns out, they were with each other, and so we ended up all of us having a wonderful meal together. Surprise!
