Home Alone

Hello all. No photos with this update because Ruth and the children are in the UK and she took the camera with her. She said that she "doesn't trust me with it" and put it in one of the suitcases. How long does a man have to live with the stigma of having once filled an entire memory card with photos of his own foot?

That never happened, by the way, but I needed to make something up to try and explain why my wife would have left me camera-less just so that she can selfishly take photos of friends, family and English grass. Where do her priorities lie? That's what I want to know.

I've spent some time in Canberra recently. I was down for a Warhammer tournament (Don't ask. Please. Don't) at the weekend and I stayed on to spend some time with Cornerstone Assistant National-Dictator Paul Roe. He was speaking at a conference for teachers in some of the Canberra Christian schools and I was there to - in his own words - 'make him look good' by not screwing up the photos and other multi-media things that he wanted. I failed in this task by screwing them up. Still, as we were talking to Christians they weren't allowed to think bad things about me so it all turned out OK in the end.

While in Canberra I got to visit Parliament House (where the Aussie leaders make decisions on big national questions - like "Prawns or Snags?" and "Who's bringing the stubbies?") and the National War Memorial/Museum. Did you know that the Aussies have one of the only four copies of the Magna Carta in the world? It's there at Parliament House. It was fascinating to read the Australian translation on a plaque next to the document. For example, the clause "At her husband's death, a widow may have her marriage portion and inheritance at once and without trouble" has been translated as "Don't come the raw prawn with me, mate. If Bruce carks it, then Sheila will be sorted. Fair Dinkum. She'll be apples."

That was another lie. She what's happening to me without Ruth to offer moral guidance?

The National War Memorial was very interesting. It's a massive museum really. Paul and I only managed to get around World Wars I and II and that was quite enough for one sitting. There's a closing ceremony every day - it included 'The Last Post' while we were there. The Memorial has been designed in such a way that you can see Parliament House across the city centre. The War Memorial is the place where you get a real sense of Australian identity, but it doesn't come across as being an identity that centres around the military. It's more that the Australian involvement in wars had shaped the identity of a very young country. The 'Spirit of the Digger', where you do the job without grumbling and trust your mates to see you through is very much at the heart of what it means to be an Aussie. I actually find it refreshing to be around a people who are proud of their history and acknowledge the way in which it has shaped them. I feel that we Brits are currently going through a stage of nervous embarrassment about our own national heritage and that won't help future generations to understand their own identity.

Canberra is a very deliberately designed city, which doesn't suit everybody. I liked it. It had a city feel, but it's pleasing to the eye and very green - I think it only has a population of about half a million people, which is pretty amazing for a capital city. It was also quite interesting to see all of the different embassies around the centre. They're quite noticeable and all in the same part of the city. The building style that the different nations have chosen really reflects their own cultural thinking. The Chinese embassy was full of stone dragons and Oriental bits and pieces, the Finnish embassy looked suitably Scandinavian and functional, the British High Commission was very understated and plain, while the US Embassy took up about four times the space of any other embassy and was crawling with security check-points. Fascinating.

Well, as there's no-one around to cook my dinner for me I'd better go and see what the mouse-traps have caught today. Thanks for reading, and have a good week.

The Hill is Broken

Hi everybody! Apologies for the lack of updates recently, but I've been a little distracted. I've spent the past month feverishly preparing a module on Acts to teach to the little sunbeams down at Broken Hill. Broken Hill is a Cornerstone first-year centre and they asked me if I'd like to spend a week teaching a module. Hence, I've been preparing for that.

Broken Hill is way out in the middle of nowhere, and that's saying something for Australia. It's a mining town and it's also notable for the being the area where they filmed the Mad Max films. The nearby village of Silverton is where they filmed the 'town scenes' from the first film. Ruth was able to go and see Silverton, but I wasn't able to because I was teaching. So I missed out on seeing something cool because I had to work. Here's a photo that Ruth took of Silverton Hotel. It was only when she was showing me the photos back here in Dubbo that I was able to point out to her that the car in the photo, parked in front of the hotel, is in fact the V8 Interceptor car from the film. The same one. Or at least one of them, as they used had about three I think. I've put another photo underneath - a better one of the car that I found on the Internet - and eagle-eyed readers will note that this is taken in front of the Silverton Hotel too. Of all the terrible things to happen to me in my life, not being able to go to Silverton and have a photo of me taken with this car is probably the worst. No exceptions.




Broken Hill is an interesting place. The houses contain a significant amount of corrugated iron, simply because it was light and easy to transport when they were building things. It's several hours from anywhere else in New South Wales and has a real outback settlement feel to it. The mining ensures that there are people and money around, but it also means that the local government had to regularly test soil, water and children for things like lead content. Everyone has filters for their tap water, and it's probably no coincidence that all three our of children were ill while we were there. In fact, I'm sure Ruth has been glowing since we got back - and I don't mean that she's pregnant. "What's a little fallout between friends?"

The teaching was a very encouraging experience for me. They had a really good group of first-year students and I hope I managed to fill their heads with some useful stuff about Acts. I enjoyed trying to make the lessons fun, and I also really like the emphasis that Cornerstone has on practical application - so as well as being able to pass on interesting historical trivia about Luke, Paul and Drusilla the Jewess we also talked a lot about how the principles of mission and church we find in Acts could mean something to us today. I wasn't sure about teaching Acts because my area of expertise is not really New Testament studies, and the group kept asking me difficult questions that I could only hazard a guess at - like "Where is the toilet?". They did seem to appreciate the course though, and I really appreciated them. I also got to play Risk 2210, which is like normal Risk but with a suitable Mad Max/Broken Hill/Apocalyptic theme.


For those who are interested, Broken Hill apparently got its name from a hill in the area which dipped at the peak so it looked like to was collapsing in on itself. The hill is now gone, I believe, to be replaced by a pile of dirt.

Here are a few more photos from Broken Hill, including a photo of me surrounded by my adoring students and one of the typical traffic problems in the town...





This'll be the last post before Ruth and the children are off to visit the UK. They're leaving on Thursday, so will be with you all very soon. Look after them for me. I'll write again some time - I won't say 'soon', but I will write again...