Stony Creek Trestle Bridge 1916

 On the way to nowhere (but really, it is on the way to a place called Nowa Nowa) it is easy to forget how much it was worth to be able to transport timber, wool and produce from East Gippsland, if it could be done more directly than had been possible from port to port by boat. This was 1916 and labour must've been hard to find, with tens of thousands of our young men  serving the Empire in European War. This rail bridge was built by Victorian Railways as part of a link from Bairnsdale to Orbost.

Damaged in the 1980's by wild fire, it then became unserviceable. Spanning 276 metres and  18.5 metres high, the members are from single height logs. I am as inspired by the manipulation of the materials as I am by the history, but when we stand under such an old, confident statement made in sweat and timber, it is wonderful to ponder a few hows and whys. This region was one in which resources outnumbered people, and still is. And that's just the way I like it.

we have to look down for relief

I love the crazy geometry when looking askew

photo credit- Nicholas Ditterich

all the light we cannot see; a review of the novel

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book made a big splash and has been reviewed extensively. An analysis by me will add nothing of significance to all this, but there are a couple of things about my experience of reading it that I'd like to record.

Doerr has written invisibly to me in the sense that I wasn't aware of any writing at all, just pictures, situations, ideas, connections, people and story. It felt like a very big and generous story, lacking nothing, laced together in overlapping time periods and contrasting mind sets. The author had me hooked by the end of the first page and won't let go even as I try to get into another book.

Highly recommended


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the blurb on Goodreads:

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, a New York Times Book Review Top Ten Book, National Book Award finalist, more than two and a half years on the New York Times bestseller list

From the highly acclaimed, multiple award-winning Anthony Doerr, the stunningly beautiful instant New York Times bestseller about a blind French girl and a German boy whose paths collide in occupied France as both try to survive the devastation of World War II.

Marie-Laure lives in Paris near the Museum of Natural History, where her father works. When she is twelve, the Nazis occupy Paris and father and daughter flee to the walled citadel of Saint-Malo, where Marie-Laure’s reclusive great uncle lives in a tall house by the sea. With them they carry what might be the museum’s most valuable and dangerous jewel.

In a mining town in Germany, Werner Pfennig, an orphan, grows up with his younger sister, enchanted by a crude radio they find that brings them news and stories from places they have never seen or imagined. Werner becomes an expert at building and fixing these crucial new instruments and is enlisted to use his talent to track down the resistance. Deftly interweaving the lives of Marie-Laure and Werner, Doerr illuminates the ways, against all odds, people try to be good to one another.

Doerr’s “stunning sense of physical detail and gorgeous metaphors” (San Francisco Chronicle) are dazzling. Ten years in the writing, a National Book Award finalist, All the Light We Cannot See is a magnificent, deeply moving novel from a writer “whose sentences never fail to thrill” (Los Angeles Times). (less)

Sapiens by Yuval Harari, a review of the book

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The story of our arrival as a species , the turning points that tripped us into the type of animal capable of imagining a future, the singular moments in that story and the possible culminations of it; these are not things that can be elaborated easily in a single book without leaving gaps or making controversial claims.

Every thoughtful person will struggle with at least some of Harari's conclusions, but he is careful to present a direct and balanced picture of the scholarship on each issue before putting his own view forward. His intention is to provoke a thoughtful response about issues that concern all of us and his thoughts on the directions for our species which now seem inevitable to him are chilling, but arguable.

I admire big picture academics, even more now after reading one of his conclusions- that the central issue that we need to address is not 'what do we want' as a future, but 'what do we want to want?', because there is no consensus on the role, path or limits of progress in this technological revolution that we find ourselves in.

Progress into ethically challenging areas- areas that may require us to redefine 'humanity'- is virtually unsupervised and globally more potent than at any of the critical points which brought us to our present. We are entitled to wonder- 'who is at the helm?'


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The blurb on Goodreads;

100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. 

How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?

In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the earth to the radical – and sometimes devastating – breakthroughs of the Cognitive, Agricultural and Scientific Revolutions. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, paleontology and economics, he explores how the currents of history have shaped our human societies, the animals and plants around us, and even our personalities. Have we become happier as history has unfolded? Can we ever free our behaviour from the heritage of our ancestors? And what, if anything, can we do to influence the course of the centuries to come?

Bold, wide-ranging and provocative, Sapiens challenges everything we thought we knew about being human: our thoughts, our actions, our power ... and our future. 

three minute uke build

This little slideshow (below) runs through the making of a tenor ukulele from Australian Casuarina timber. A joy to make and lovely to play!

making a tenor uke .    robert ditterich from Robert Ditterich on Vimeo.

Beachcomber Basking

These were pictures taken by Peter Medling while Beachcomber was in Paynesville. The sail over there began as a sedate meander before the wind, but became quite interesting as the wind increased when we were into Lake King. She carries a lot of sail for a centreboarder, but we managed the entire trip with just two gybes. Both were deliberate, but there's only one  I'll own up to; as to the other  I won't mention it because she swiftly rounded up (a good thing really as it gave me time to catch up to what was going on...)

Women fishing, Lake Tyers Gippsland, 1860's

c 1867 credit; Carl Walter

Finding a photo like this is very exciting for so many reasons. Of course any photograph from this period is special from a technical point of view, as well as sociological and historical points of view. This one was taken around the time our boat 'Beachcomber' was built, in the same district.

The world at the time was in several sorts of turmoil, particularly the bitter divisions in North America where communities suffered from the colossal bloodshed of civil war. It was a period of rampant exploitative trade bullying and drug (opium) pushing in India and China by the East India Trading Company and subsequent involvement by the British Government.

The vast colonial experiment was being felt by First Peoples all over the 'discovered' world.

But this is a picture of dignity and serenity; women going about the business of living co-operatively and productively and in ways that had worked very well for them for tens of thousands of years. Some of the great great grandchildren of these women are probably judged harshly nowadays, for not fitting in or maybe for appearing to  lack motivation, but only by those who haven't really considered the things that have been endured by the generations between then and now.

Their 'wealth'- culturally, linguistically and in access to all that they needed- had been energetically translated into Pounds Sterling and stashed in colonial and British banks, at least until our colony was mature enough to attempt to govern what was left of their lives- but that in itself began paternalistically and in a culturally self-serving way.

By then the damage was so severe that governments ever since have had to face the shame of being impotent to the needs of a really  important part of our world community.

I wish that  our communities could look more generously at the state of some of the survivors now, with a little more understanding of the context of their situation.

Rifling Paradise; a review of the novel

Rifling Paradise by Jem Poster
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The beginning of this story is quite dark, as our central character reveals attributes that might make for a sordid sort of tale, but the writing was crystal clear and the quality of the prose led me to keep reading. I'm very glad I did.

The novel is really well paced, somehow suggesting very complex plot development, but delivering a trim and precise tale that ends more quickly than seemed possible. It is scattered with moments of real tension as the author uses the story to contrast several different character types, all responding to the cultural paradigms of the time- some characters stuck within them and some managing to grow through them. A very satisfying read.


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the blurb on Goodreads says:

A gripping thriller set in the wilds of nineteenth-century Australia by the critically acclaimed author of Courting Shadows. 

When past indiscretions catch up with Charles Redbourne, a minor English landowner, he is propelled from England to Australia, where he plans to make his mark as a naturalist. There, his life begins to change dramatically, not least when he meets his host's wayward, artistic daughter. But it is on an expedition in search of scientific specimens in the Blue Mountains that events take a terrifying turn. Vividly conveying the unspoken codes of Victorian society, this is a gripping tale of emotional and psychological reckoning that offers an inspired meditation on the relationship between humankind and the natural world.

the pleasures of a busy workshop

Some recent pictures of work being done by the workshop group. Sharing tools, ideas and techniques with this collection of enthusiasts is an on-going joy.

A low lamp tells a lot about shape by casting strong shadows across a form.

we have inside and outside holds for different processes

a set of bindings ready for gluing

beginning the neck shaping at the heel

finnessing a bottom edge joint

top bracing and doublers

trimming the newly glued back plate edges

little dreamscape drawings

 A few more little images from the 1980's to include for my records. Below a couple of pencil drawings from a series of 'secular icons'.

A drypoint print and a lino-cut both using domestic places to mess with space, and the picture plane, below. They are figurative in one sense, but they aren't about the objects in the picture.

studies for a series of paintings 1976; 'The Boys'

There is so little that I still have of the images that I made when I was younger  which used to haunt my every day thoughts, and the few that remain on paper are deteriorating with foxing, dog ears and yellowed paper. So I'm saving them digitally for me, in a place where they will exist for a while even if my computer curls up it's electronic toes. Please excuse the self-indulgence...

The first five were meant as a horizontal sequence, the others are part of a larger group. Coloured conte on paper.

plane scat

We have a little group that meets in my workshop once a week, and that group is part of a bigger group on Facebook, most of whom just want to see some real time work happening in pictures, and other posts about instrument making and tool use. (on Facebook; Metung Violin Maker's Workshop)

At the moment we have half a dozen tenor ukuleles being made. The uke has a lot in common with an acoustic guitar, without the acreage, and the option of fewer decorative details. But it is also a fantastic vehicle for learning some advanced tool skills including measuring, planing, carving, bending and tuning. At the end you have a very approachable, portable and social instrument.

This process is reason enough in and of itself, in answer to the question 'Why build a uke when you can buy one for twenty bucks?'

PLANE SCAT.
Why would you bother?
Let's put aside the obvious answers about sound quality and craftsmanship for the moment and look at these two pictures. The first is of Susan's pile of shavings and the second is of Daniels. They (like everyone in the group) both achieved several things today, but the 'plane scat' pictured here tells a really wonderful story if you know how to look at it.

Susan is planing slightly curly, hard and rather unforgiving blackwood and has used a plane which she was advised to use as if she was slicing tomatoes, rather than chopping them. So in practise, the plane is angled obliquely to the cut- or explained another way, the blade goes forward while the plane is angled at about 45 degrees to the side, and the ribbons produced are like DNA spirals. The grain is approached at an angle and the blade bites gradually.

She nailed it, and did so in quick time. Approaching wood with a cutting tool will be done differently for every piece, depending on grain, hardness, surface flaws and the size of the plane relative to the area that needs flattening.

Daniel's wood was a completely different proposition and he was able to flatten a great area and depth very quickly, confidently and energetically, taking thicker, front-on swathes from the softer, straighter-grained timber. His ribbons are like scrolls more than spirals.

The point is that to learn this kind of sensitivity to tools and materials is simply exquisite in my humble opinion; whatever the object is at the end, the interaction with these things is at the very heart of the connection between our eyes, ears, minds and hands- not to mention the connection to beautiful materials.

All of this could be done by machine, but none of these experiences can be replicated on a machine.