Kookaburra - feathered laugher

I've always liked Kookaburras. What Australian doesn't?

I think I remember reading about them in David Fleay's book on Australian animals when I was a child and definitely loved reading research about their communal nature and things like why they trapeze fly.

It's not surprising that one of the stories in my storytelling repertoire is one I created with prep students about a kookaburra and a rather 'muddle headed' but heroic wombat.

We used to have kookaburras visit us at home. They would sit on the clothes line under the mango tree and laugh and look for worms and bugs in the compost. There are too many construction sites around us now and although we still hear the occaisional one in the distance they don't come visiting like the butcher birds, magpies and rainbow lokikeets.

Still they always sound like home.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

And here's the poem that inspired that video on bubbl.us - you can move it around and zoom to see it.

A Question of Balance

Caught the bus over to the Royal Brisbane Hospital to visit my mum today. She was gardening and took a step back rather then forward, tripped on a rock and landed with a hip crunching force on the concrete drive.

Watching and listening to the parallel dramas of the public hospital ward has really brought this question of balance up in my conciousness this week. Things like - use this painkiller and you will be able to handle the essential physio treatment but it might cause some nausea. Well something has certainly caused a fair bit of nausea for my Mum.

Still, despite the superbug in the ward and the shortage of moniters etc, she is getting really good treatment by the staff and I've learnt a very neat way of taking off the disposable apron and folding it into each of the disposable gloves before consigning them all to the bin, thanks to watching a wardsman.

I got off the bus at the Roma Street busway on the way home and walked across the Kurilpa Bridge and took in the Asia Pacific Triennial again. Watched a video that Suse Wolf recommended. She said it really made her glad that we lived in such a wonderful country as Australia so I was curious. I had to agree really. It was a commentary on the ugliness of the rapid industrial development in the three dams area balanced with the beauty and colour of the pots of flowers the two men were carrying. I hope our Lord Mayor got to see it.

Great Brisbane Bike Ride

Well done Bicycle Queensland for organising yet another Bike Week and the many cycle events on today. I managed the 45km Great Brisbane Bike ride - yey!

We descended down, down into the Clem7 version of subterranean hell and ascended somewhat more slowly into the fresh on the other side.

What a pleasant change it was to be riding without cars and trucks thundering everywhere. There was just the whirring of bike chains, puffing of riders, the clicking up and down the gears and the pleasant warnings of passing speedsters 'passing right'.

Riding with my friends Bill and Isabelle, I remembered the sort of riding I used to do with my sister and cousins as kids - up to Jolley's Lookout and down the goat track to Highvale and back in through Samford. That was a longish day adventure. No one seemed to mind. Must have been a different universe. Today was too in a way, a bicycle universe.

Bit funny though, I collected my t-shirt and stuff at the Southbank finish line and road home, and, would you believe it, coming up that last hill to our place, my leg muscles finally said, 'Enough!' and they all decided to cramp at once. Took a bit of stretching to persuade them that I wasn't going to ride any more k's, at least not today.

Stories about Digital Stories

Got invited this week by Dr Christina Spurgeon to drop along as guest lecturer to her Digital Stories course at QUT Creative Industries.

I really enjoyed telling students stories about the Digital Stories I've either created or helped create in the various community digital storytelling projects I've organised, co-ordinated and facilitated. Digital Stories are one of the wonders of the digital age. If done well, they help keep the old traditional storytelling skills alive in a low cost digital production way. We had some interesting debates about what was 'Digital Story' and what was 'documentary' or 'interview'.

It's great to interact with students discovering the way in which creating a digital story about one of one's own important stories can be so transforming. Hearing their draft scripts was a real gift.

It will be interesting to see how the Digital Story develops in this digital age. The relatively low cost software like MovieMaker and iMovie and hardware like laptops and digital cameras will keep changing and digital stories will change with them for better or worse.

In the meantime, if you would like to see some Queensland digital stories, you can go to YouTube and do a search for 'queensland storylines' (without the apostrophes). There are even some there that I did. Look out for 'Lucas Papaw Ointment' or 'Growing up with the Princess', for example.

Lizard Tales

The Lizard Tales project created by Sophie Chapman as part of the West End Live section of the Brisbane Festival was a real buzz. We made good use of the shade of the trees and the ABSOE lawn and had a really pleasant audience of adults and children.

Sophie is still waiting for the edited audio versions of the stories and I'll post them as soon as she gets them to me but in the meantime here are some photos from the day.

Sophie Chapman & Daryll Bellingham, Lizard Tales, October 2009

Community Story creation event at West End Live

Really looking forward to the community story creation session called
Lizard Tales at West End Live on Saturday 3rd October, 2009

Initiated by Sophie Chapman and now part of the Brisbane Festival's West End Live event, you are invited to come and have some fun creating some new West End stories. Can you imagine what 'The Lizard' might get up to if it woke up and had a walk around West End? Would it meet Kuril the local Indigenous totem in Kurilpa its home? And what would Kuril, the water rat think? Would it go for a climb up Stefan's tower or get a haircut from Phil the Barber?

You'll be able to watch the stories being transformed into illustrations by local artist Emmanuel Hernaez.

Lizard Tales Saturday 3rd October, 2:00 pm to 3:30pm.

Turning new pages.

Sometimes it feels like I've got those Book Week Goes On Forever blues .......

Not really. Been having fun. Just had a great week at the Belmont State School Literary Festival. Told lots of stories and created and recorded heaps as Belmont Stories podcasts. Will slowly add them to my austoryplace blog over the next week.

Felt like I was turning a new page on multimedia/storytelling work with students by creating a new storytelling/creation performance/workshop podcasting session. It was pretty easy fitting it in the 80 minute sessions with the gifted and talented students but an interesting challenge getting it to fit in the 45 min sessions. We did but the stories are pretty short. Even did some with the preps.

Kids loved the sessions.

Speaking of a new page, here's a great video you can find on YouTube. CONTACT is up to there usual good work with young people on Brisbane's southside.