A bent tree near Anglesea

from w
A photo taken the other day was of a gum tree bent over at the Burnside Youth Camp near Anglesea. I made a sketch based on it but altered it by adding yellow because so much of the bush at present is bright with late wattle and heath. Pen, pencils, pastels. It was good to drive out along the Great Ocean Road, see the colours of the bush, though not slowing down to see the tiny wildflowers that are coming out. Here is the photo, the sketch and variations.

Gum trees

from w
Just a couple of sketches of gum trees and then charcoal and chalk versions.

Feeling a lazybones today. It's Father's Day but Peceli isn't home yet from Fiji. We've already eaten half of the chocolate cake! We go to Tullamarime airport tonight to pick him up.

More on Father's Day on the Babasiga blog anyway.

Yesterday my friends Ema and David had a small fundraising afternoon tea party for a donation to the Fiji Methodist Church which has had a serious run-in with the military government. It was a lovely afternoon because it was an opportunity to yarn with a friend who was my neighbour in the 60s, a very senior gentleman these days, Rev. Cyril Germon, and we reminisced about old times when Ema was a schoolgirl in the hostel, I was a teacher at Lelean Memorial School, and Cyril headed the Vulitalatala - the Theological Training Centre. Davuilevu was an outstanding place, lively with a thousand young people with a Secondary School, Bible School and Theological College. Peceli trained there, but in the year, 1963,when I was there, he was already out in the circuits, in fact up in Navosa, in the middle of the mountains. Those were the days my friend, I thought they'd never end... and so goes the old song. I asked Cyril what was Peceli like as a teenager student and he said they used to call him 'Prof' because he always had something to say about everything!