Random raves

A conversation with saluqi the other day reminded me that I intend to spend a few days in the Blue Mountains some time, and part of my agenda is to visit the Norman Lindsay Museum while I'm there. I'm embarrassed to admit that I didn't put together the fact that the chap who did all those lovely etchings of naked ladies, and equally charming sculptures, ditto, was the same as the one who wrote The Magic Pudding (the pudding that liked being eaten all day long, hee!). Oops, how embarrassing, but yunno, I'm a foreigner.

I'm currently tossing up whether I want to visit the Louvre collection of Egyptiana (links to extremely wanky Flash front page) which is on at the NGA at present, but it might be expensive and a scrum. Still, next week it's probably going to be less scrum-like, and I'll probably kick myself if I don't go. The only other thing there that's appealing (other than the regular collections, which I should troll through again) is an exhibition on "The Birth of the Modern Poster", and that's not starting for a couple of months. Also upcoming is one on Aussie printmaking, 1801-2005, which could be worth a look.

Finally, I think I'll probably go along to check out the exhibition on photography and war that's on at the Australian War Memorial. I hope it'll be less irritating than the one about "Anzacs" in France, 1916. The statement "It is April 1916, the midpoint of the Great War. Australian units have begun to arrive in France. For the first time, the men of the AIF find themselves at the main battle front of the mighty conflict." might summarise my issues with the exhibition. [Hint: AIF (Australian Imperial Force) and Anzac are not synonymous, although one is a subset of the other.]

So, that's my kultcha for the upcoming week! One good reason for holidays, enforced or not, after all.

Got to the Australian Museum, which was decent. They had a HUGE mineral collection, which is certainly the largest of any museum I've seen (and museums, I've seen a few). It's one of those sciences/hobbies that seems to have gone entirely out of vogue, and I wonder why that is. Part of the casulties of the academisation of sciences, perhaps: it's no longer cool to be going around chipping out your own rocks (not that many amateurs probably wouldn't ruin more than they manage to collect), or making your own incredibly detailed botanical watercolours, or seeing how many frogs you can galvanise with lightening. The trouble is that all those kinds of things have all been DONE, and you now need access to involved and expensive varieties of machinery and processes to make new discoveries. No wonder there is a dearth of interest in the sciences.

Getting back to the rocks, it's evident there was a great deal of sponsorship from the mining companies, which made great reference to the "pioneering spirit" of the early mineralologists... what they had to do with modern mining practice is beyond me. So, there are literally thousands of rocks of all shapes and hues. The exhibition was good at describing the elements that make up the various kinds of rock (it must be said that pyrite fascinates me the most -- how does iron and sulphur combine to produce that?), but left out what I would have found interesting, how people actually ascertained what elements composed the rocks. It could have talked about the early methods through to the modern ones, like weighing, finding specific gravity, hardness, reaction to acids, the streak test (the colour a mineral leaves when rubbed against a white ceramic tile, which is the ACTUAL colour of the mineral, regardless of oxidation), crystal structure analysis, magnetism, microscopy, and onto chromotography, etc. That all leads onto all kinds of science.

So, while it was somewhat interesting (and I don't really find rocks that interesting), it could have been made more so, although museums as a whole have definitely improved along those lines. But once again, it isn't exactly a trendy subject.

After that, I went to the Anzac memorial, which is on the way to the train station and got a bit weepy there, although the constant spiel in the exhibition area on the meaning of the Australian flag was somewhat irritating. I consider myself to be a fairly patriotic New Zealander, but really, the flag doesn't grab me. But maybe Australians are more like Americans in how they feel about it.

But, just to give an indication of what most NZers that I've encountered feel about the flag, let's play a quick game of spot the difference:

and

I can guarantee that 99.9% of the world will not be able to say which one is the Australian and which is the NZ flag. I have even encountered a number of Australians who can't bloody tell the difference. For the record, the NZ flag has only got the four stars of the Southern Cross and they are red in the middle. Australia has six stars, the sixth and six-pointed star representing the six states of the Federation.

So you can undoubtedly see why tons of NZers are keen on a campaign to change our flag. Ditching the Union Jack would be a good first step (since we're getting to the point where less than 50% of the population has ancestors originally from England/Scotland/Wales), but I'd be sad to see the Southern Cross go. The campaign is gaining some momentum, so it'll be interesting to see what results. I mean, making a change certainly worked for the Canadians. The trouble is that some of the flag debate is being tied up with the whole republicanism issue and muddying the waters, where the Canadian experience shows that the two issues are separate. Also, call me strange, but if we HAVE to have a bloody head-of-state, I'd much rather that she lives on the other side of the world and has another country paying for her upkeep.

So, yes, the visit to the Anzac memorial provided some food for thought. I also realised that I'd gotten my wires crossed on Anzac Day: my great-uncle who was killed during WWII was killed at El Alamein. It's the other great-uncle who was wounded in France. It's worth looking at the Commonwealth War Graves Commission website for interesting facts: both of my family members are listed there. The database which is accessible at the Imperial War Museum (well worth a visit when you're in London) has fuller details, such has the cause of death. My great-great uncle "died of wounds", which sounds like a horribly protracted process. Let's hope it wasn't.

Back to Canberra now, yippee.