Ode to the Bin Man
Ode to the Bin Man
Each week I plan with precious care
the things I leave outside.
I pack them up and place them there
with love and earnest pride
Each time I work to have them waiting
placed the night before.
I know your path will lead today
your feet will pass my door.
I hardly ever hear you,
but I know that you have been.
You leave a trace that you were here
Though my eyes have never seen.
But on one morn, I was caught out
and found under prepared.
The sound of your approaching
had me flying down the stairs.
Pulling on my trousers
Iʼm racing to the gate.
To catch your eye before you go
before you seal my fate.
Spilling out onto the ground
just like my best laid plans.
My heart gives way as you depart
my shame held in my hand.
Itʼs premature collection.
My bins are overflowed.
And now I'm forced to wait a week,
in fear I watch them grow.
The ever growing mountain
of rubbish in my yard
has now become the round-about
around which I drive my car.
And then the folk in China
Tell us that no more
can they take away our pile of shame.
It seems weʼve lost the war.
Oh Romeo where art thou?
Will I ever hear the sound
of your engine strong, that throbbing song?
Where are you to be found?
Recycling man my hero
what will become of you?
Will council grant you leave to go
and find a path more true?
So for now my plastic bottles
pile right up to the sky.
Buried under cardboard stacks
beneath them I may die.
Bin man Oh sweet bin man
I think of you each night.
I hope that youʼll return to me
and set these wrongs to right.
Waiting ever hopeful
that youʼll return posthaste.
For now my house of trash it grows
swelling my hard waste.
Collection however premature
So sweet has found the end.
Into that hole we tip our souls
Farewell to thee my friend.
© Tim Henshall 2019
It's a dogs life.
For many Aussies, Bali is our go to holiday destination. It's close, its cheap, it's beautiful, it's warm and the people are so friendly. Every where you go in Bali there are dogs. We have a special relationship with our dogs at home, they are family. It's not the same in Bali and most of us probably feel a pang in the heart when witnessing the poorly condition of the majority of them. Fleas, ticks and mange are the standard, but also illnesses such as rabies have a high incidence. So, what can we do? Personally my go to is my photography. I am trying to raise enough money to allow me to spend a week in Bali creating digital content (photos and videos) for them team at the Bali Street Dog Fund who dedicate their lives to helping these poor K9s. Operating out of the BAWA (Bali Animal Welfare Association) base in Ubud, they go out each day to pick up dogs for vet care and /or educate the local people on the best practice of looking after a dog. Some of these dogs are well loved and fed, but the way of connecting with the dogs is different, they are not so much a part of the family, so often are not in good health. This is where the education comes in. I love to take photos of dogs. Obviously here the focus is on happy healthy animals who get to lived a blessed life. This is more of a hobby than anything else for me because its a luxury to have photographs of your dogs taken and pay for the service. Spending a week with the BSDF crew will not be about taking lovely photos. It is going to be the most difficult and heart breaking photography work I have ever done. However, I feel it is important and one I feel compelled to achieve. The team there needs updated material in order to keep the sponsorship flowing, to keep the awareness high. I am trying to raise enough money to go, for while I am aiming to donate a lot of time to this, I cant afford to do the whole trip off my own back. That is where you come in! By helping me get to Bali you are helping me to create the content for these guys to attract larger sponsorship amounts that they need to continue their work. I have over 500 Facebook friends. If they each donated $5 it would be enough to get me there for a week. $5! The cost of a cup of coffee.
Please consider helping me get to Bali. Just a small donation from any of you will help.
Thanks.
Tim
Copy and paste the link to go to my Go Fund me page.
https://www.gofundme.com/photography-for-bali-street-dogs&rcid=r01-155087535898-d7b036f16a234444&pc=ot_co_campmgmt_w
Deep Thought
I have found that if you have a good idea, more often than not people will at least give it consideration. It's a bit of a scary prospect pitching a creative idea to anyone, to me my art is part of my self expression, as is my music.
This makes it very personal.
A while back I had an idea to take a photo of Dr.Karl Kruszelnicki in the pose of Rodin's famous sculpture, The Thinker.
For years I have listened to Dr.Karl and read his books, he is my "Science Hero". He is my go to man for all things science based even though my brain hurts on regular occasions listening to the explanations he gives.
I hoped Karl would be firstly open to the idea, secondly would be able to make room in his schedule to humour me in going ahead with the project, and thirdly, would like the final result! So, I contacted him, and here we are.
I find Karl to be very gracious and generous with both his time and his knowledge. As I set up and conducted the shoot, he and his faithful sidekick Isabelle bounced ideas around, organised weekend engagements and fielded telephone calls. Throughout the whole process he managed to keep his mind on the task of being a model, and in this case it's quite an awkward and uncomfortable pose. Talk about multi tasking!
The whole time I was with him, his stream of consciousness was on high. What we hear on the radio/podcasts or see on TV is who he is in person, there is no stopping the information that continuously pours out on all matter of things. It feels as if he stores so much knowledge inside his head the overflow just has to spill over, but what was interesting and joyous to see is how it's all delivered with such a sense of excitement and passion.
I think this passion for understanding is a huge part of why this man is so magnetic to so many people. He loves to learn and discover things about everything around us, and is so keen to share it with everyone else.
That kind passion and excitement is infectious.
I did not set out to replicate Rodin's famous sculpture, rather I wanted the portrait to refer to it, as I believe it is an appropriate way to depict Karl in what he represents, at least, to me: a thinker who spends a vast amount of time and energy gathering knowledge, processing it, and passing it on.
In the end, I am very happy with the final result and am pleased to tell you that Karl likes it too!
Mission accomplished.
Perspective
Every day on Mount Lampuyang, right next to Mount Agung in East Bali, this woman and her son get dropped off at the base of the walk up to the temple of Pura Lempuyang Luhur, the highest temple in Bali.
There are 1700 steps plus joining paths. 1700...
Along the path there are 7 temple sites, and it took me roughly 2.5 hours of constant climbing to reach the highest one.
This lady has a very small stall just beneath the peak, the 3rd last stall out of many, in the least accessible location, where only (from my very rough calculations) 1/10th of the people visiting the mountain actually get to. Most of the visitors, Balinese and Internationals alike, stop at one of the 6 temples below. Every day, she carries her son and all the food she has at her stall up the 1700 stairs, and down again at the end of the day. She has bad knees and a bad back.
I sat with her and her son for 1/2 an hour, had some food and chatted as best we could about our children, and it was beautiful. She told me that on a good day, she might make 4-500,000 rupiah. That's $5 Australian. Of course I bought snacks and water, more than I needed, but what I came away with a lovely photo, a heart warming memory of these two beautiful people, and a good dose of perspective.
If you walk one or two streets back from the main drag in any developing nation, you get to see the real people, the heart. Here is was a long way from the hustle and bustle of tourist central. The Balinese people are amazing, they are open and warm if you show them respect. I walked up the steps with many families, but only 2 that I started with went all the way to the top, and they were all very happy that I had gone the whole way. "Where are you from?" seems to be the common ice breaker here, but my interaction on the mountain went well beyond that. There were laughs, sighs from tired people, sore legs a plenty. But we made it.
When I look at this photo, its not my best, its basically a snap shot. But for me it holds a very special meaning and it is one of my favourite people photos of any shots I have taken.
Everyone has to eat, pay for the home, the kids and so on. Doesn't matter where you are, the story is very similar. We all get caught up in our own lives, how tough it is for us. If you actually look, there is usually someone doing it way tougher than us.
We all have our stairs to climb, what matters the most is how you look at them. For this woman, there are 1700 stairs for $5.
Its all about perspective.
Against the Odds
Uncle Jack Charles is a survivor. He is an incredibly open and honest man, happy to chat to me, a stranger, about his life and his experiences. What I found was a man who has lived a tough life that is reflected in so many of the stolen generation like a thousand shards of a broken mirror, but has found his place as an elder, a teacher and a healer. Perhaps not only for himself and his family, but for all Australians.
As part of the Australian governments assimilation policy Jack was stolen from his mother at less than a year old and sent off to a boys home to be raised as a white fella. He didn't meet another aboriginal person until he was in his late teens. Only now at 67 he is reconnecting the pieces of his culture and family together. How does a person reconcile that loss? How can anyone expect a child to grow up "normal" when he or she has been stolen and another identity implanted upon them? To expect a positive result is in my mind optimistic at best, and utterly misguided.
Jack ended up as so many of his generation did, living a life of crime and drugs. He tells me he was a failed cat burglar, and although some of his colleagues had a respect for his 2nd story abilities he was caught over 20 times, and he jests at his own ineptness for this type of work. in the early 1970s Jack and his friend Bob Maza opened the 1st indigenous theatre in Australia, Nindethana, and his talent for acting took its rightful place ahead of his talent as a cat burglar. The entertainment industry is full of all the stereotypical humans; broken, insecure, egocentric, talented and wonderful, many of them searching for identity in an industry where identity is often falsified. For Jack however, it seems his career in the arts has helped him to reconnect, to find himself. He has walked the long way round. A self described "raging heroin addiction" was a coping strategy, and while probably dulling the pain for a short time it doubtless was a double edged sword, one that led to incarceration. Today, Aboriginal Australians make up a large percentage of the people in prison, another bleedingly obvious sign of how badly the "assimilation" has failed. The pain is only worsened by white politicians still currently calling the shots on a treaty, constitution or recognition of the historical (some would argue current) genocidal agenda of the Australian government.
Jack's story all too familiar for Aboriginal people in Australia. The policies of the colonial government were specifically designed to breed out the aboriginal population. I for one am very happy that it failed so spectacularly. We could have learnt so much from a culture that has been in Australia for at least 50,000 years, and we are only now 200 years after white fellas arrived, beginning to understand the depth of this amazing culture of our country. For the stolen generation they have a double dose of this missing link, they are the people who are missing the pieces of their own jigsaw. Piecing that together is difficult as the genocidal policies of the government broke the chain, took their families, their culture, language and their stories.
Jack asked me how he knew me. I replied that he didn't! I simply contacted him after a friend suggested I do so when I was inquiring about him with the aim of meeting and photographing him as he has the right look for my portraiture, one of those faces that tells a story. It is highly likely however that our family members knew each other many years ago at Coranderrk, one of the missions set up in Victoria to resettle the indigenous people of Melbourne. Jacks great great grandfather John Charles lived there, and my great great grandfather Charles Rolfe was known to frequent the mission and reportedly had a house next door. As a white fella visitor though, there are no records of my relative at Coranderrk, but when i visited 20 years ago the old aunties, then in their 80s, remembered "old Mr Rolfe" fondly from when they were young girls. I would love to know more, but suspect there will be precious little for me to find. I need my own "who do you think you are?" team.
During our chat Jack tells me of a documentary made by Ameil Courtin-Wilson called Bastardy and of how he took Ameil and his naive film crew to his heroin spots for them to film him shooting up, the thought of which makes him laugh. They followed him everywhere for 6 years. It is this openness that really struck a chord with me, he is so real, so raw. And this from a man who lived a life that would have broken most others. Today Jack is a busy man. Still operating from his humble flat, he is the movie star of the housing commission, his mobile phone chiming away constantly with messages from people who all want a piece of his time. He was meeting up with an old mate from the Box Hill boys home after our meeting, a man he hadn't seen for many many years, all part of the healing. As well as the movies and TV, Jack has been asked to speak at prisons all over Australia, the black fellas request a visit from him and all line up to shake his hand after his speeches. Why do they listen to this old man? Having an elder visit who has been there, done that and survived must give them a sense of hope that they too can rise above the odds and achieve something positive for themselves. Jack pulls no punches. No doubt his honesty would have some of the white fellas concerned as he talks of the injustice of the system both historical and current, but my belief is that Australia needs to know just how racist it actually is before it can heal as a nation. While there is a blind spot, there is no healing. The tide is turning, it is taking some time, but it is happening. It takes the strength and love of a person like Uncle Jack to bridge the gap.
Im glad he survived.
