bilateral kellerberrin

today i met:

*phil and rosemary:
cristina knocked on my door late morning and wanted to go for a bike ride. She was keen to find josephine, the girl she had made friends with at the party in tammin on sunday night. Josephine does dot paintings apparently. We rode down to the ngungar co-op and stuck our heads in the side door. Some guys were chopping up timber so it took a minute to get their attention. A girl came and told us where to go to find josephine’s place, near the hockey field. We headed over there, but when we found the place, a fella (her brother?) came out to the drive and told us she was out. he didnt really look that happy for us to be there, so we pushed on.

Up the road we so saw some beautiful brown horses in a small enclosure. A man was grinding some metal pipes across the way, and after a few minutes he turned off his grinder and came over to see who we were. We complimented him on his horses: he said they weren’t his, they were only kept in his field. The horses were for the paceway. They looked much healthier than the ones roger had shown us last week. Cristina asked him if he had any religion. This is a question she is asking a lot, as part of her artistic research here. No, he said, but i do woodturning. This was as good an answer as any. We introduced ourselves. His name is Phil. Cristina wanted to see some of his stuff.

Phil’s lathe work was skillful, and beautifully turned, out of recycled local wood. In the living room, he carefully showed us each vase, platter, and goblet, explaining how it was made and the wood used. Phil had been living in Keller since the mid 50s, working first as a farmhand, then mechanic. His wife rosemary was there too, and i asked her about a sporting achievement certificate i saw on the wall. She’d been given that for her service to golf, encouraging kids to take up and continue the game.

Rosemary said there werent many kids still playing, there werent that many kids around in general. She explained to me that when the farms become harder to run and make a profit, they sell up to larger outfits, who work more economically, with fewer workers. Depopulation follows. Rosemary was worried about the decline of the town in recent years. She’s lived here all her life.

One of Phil and Rosemary’s daughters works in Cunderdin, where there are a lot of businesses run by Plymouth Brethren. Perhaps tomorrow we will go there to pursue Cristina’s religion project…

*roger:
roger popped around to tell us about the plans to head to kokebin rock tomorrow. Turns out the place cristina and i visited yesterday was actually mount stirling. And, my hunch about the decrepit building at the base of the rock was right – an old church. He said there are plenty of abandoned mini-settlements along the route to kalgoorlie, as there used to be a well every 15 miles so horses could have a drink. Around these wells, small communities would spring up. So, tomorrow, we head to kokebin around three, with wine, cameras, food for a sunset barbecue, and his sister up from perth. We might even camp out.

*Pauline, and John at the Hardware:
pauline came in search of roger, who is supposed to be painting the prev, but keeps skiving off to spend time with us. He was outwardly irritated at her presence, especially when she did that quintissentially mothery thing of trying to wipe off some paint from his face with a saliva-moistened finger. Pauline wanted his opinion on paint tints, as the colour she had chosen (apricot liqueur) was too dark. Although i had been planning to go to the hardware store for vegetable seedlings, I told her i was pursuing pointlessness anyway, and would be happy to help out with the choice of paints.

Pauline was right, apricot was too bright, and kinda disney. She needed something a bit more subtle. So we ended up at the hardware, where John tinted up a 1/3 version of the apricot, even though that colour was “off the menu”. He seemed like a very “can-do” sort of guy. At roger’s advice i bought some celery, parsley, chinese vegetable, broccoli, and cauliflower. He said these were the sort of things to plant at this time of the year. He’s going to sort me out for some manure, or worm castings.

…..

to begin with, i just wanted to note down a few things about the people i had met. It didnt occur to me til later to continue it as a “project”. I guess the idea is that by doing this, i can just live day by day, accumulating experiences without really trying, and produce a body of work that way. It’s a sort of low-effort method which also allows me to just observe, myself and what goes on in the “meetings” i inevitably have each day. One rule i have set is that i should not type these things up until the end of the day (it’s now 11.39pm) – perhaps this is to allow the events of the day to settle and the important things to rise to the surface from my memory, rather than racing to my computer to hammer them out straight away. Also, I won’t backdate – if I don’t write it on the day itself, I miss out. I am aware of the difference between just jotting down things, and writing things when i have in mind to possibly present them to a public later. It changes both the meetings themselves (am i more attentive?) and it changes the way i write too.