If you want to watch and hear some fantastic piano playing then go to my video page and watch Sviatoslav Richter play Ravel's Jeux d'eau; it was his performance of this piece that inspired me to learn this piece and perform it in a competition back in the '70's. 

Herbert Howells was the adjudicator and he awarded me the winning prize telling the audience that he knew Ravel and knew that he would have approved of my interpretation of his composition. You can imagine just how pleased I was at such praise; I was on cloud 9, and I owed it all to Richter.

The weather is beautiful at the moment. Last week we had the rain and now the days are bright, sunny and warm. Of course, the nights are a bit nippy (the temperature went down to 9c last night, but the days are around 24c. Even the daffodils think it is Spring; I took this photo this morning on my back veranda.

We are so lucky living in such a beautiful spot. I have decided to grow some vegetables this year, and to the left of the daffodil, you will see some brown earth peeping through the gap on the railings, and you can possibly just see the green of some English Spinach that I planted last week. The soil is excellent here and almost everything grows.

It is that time of the year again, when the Opera on the Mountain takes place, and usually Grhowever because of our commitment to the Christmas in July even, we decided not to take on this event as well. It went ahead without the Lassiter's being there to film it and a report is below.

Opera Shines Despite the Weather

Despite severe inclement weather, Tamborine Mountain's 'Opera on the Mountain' attracted more than 400 patrons, performers and back-up personnel last Sunday at the Cedar Creek Winery Estate.

Tamborine Mountain Resident's Association Opera Chairman, Ian Shepherd said the four-hour non-stop event has already received rave reviews from the media and guests. “Weather reports about the Mountain experiencing a 'storm bomb' on Sunday afternoon really gave us some concern,” Ian said. “We were prepared to relocate the open air event to the local community centre as part of our contingency plan, but we were encouraged to proceed at the initial site by the performers and many supporters.

“The program was certainly the most entertaining in our short five-year history and was definitely the most challenging. It was a success and that is the main issue.” Ian said the local SES crew that carried out a multitude of background opera tasks on the day had spent the previous night searching for a lost hiker in the Lamington Plateau. (She was found early on Sunday morning).

The Tamborine Mountain crew was able to have a quick breakfast before reporting for duty at the opera venue before 10.00am. “The main beneficiaries of the opera profits were the local SES and Rural Fire Brigade. We are very appreciative of the deep and sincere community spirit that runs high on our Mountain and they need our support,” Ian said.

The President of the Tamborine Mountain Resident's Association, Cr Richard Adams and Opera Chairman, Ian Shepherd welcomed the Scenic Rim Regional Council Mayor, Cr John Brent to the 'Opera on the Mountain' last Sunday. It was Cr Brent's first official visit to the Mountain as the Shire Mayor.                                             P. Steinmuller

It has been raining all day and all of last night; very welcome, but very wet.  Actually is has been raining on and off since Friday, and today is Monday.  Opera on the Mountain was due to happen yesterday, and I heard on the radio that they might cancel.  I understand they didn't cancel but relocated to the Vonda Youngman Community Centre, although I am not sure how they would have all fitted in.  As I haven't set foot out of the house, except to take the dogs for a very wet walk, I haven't seen anyone to discuss it.

 Graham and I were asked to film it again this year, but we decided against it as we will be filming the Christmas in July next month which will be quite a feat, as it will entail three full days of filming.  It is put on by the Make a Wish foundation for the little children who may not see the next proper Christmas.  What we will be hoping to do is to film the whole process so that we can give a DVD to the parents.  We feel this is such a worth while occasion and as the two functions were so close in time we decided to forgo the Opera.  As it turned out we certainly made the right decision.

Yesterday Graham and I went to the High School to hand out How to Vote leaflets for the Local Council Elections. There have been many changes recently to the distribution of the councils within Queensland reducing the number of Shires quite considerably. This has been quite devastating in our area leaving Tamborine Mountain supporting an enormous shire with us, the smallest in area, shoring up the rest of the shire which is mainly rural.

When we arrived at the venue it was quite overcast with rain threatening but as the day progressed the sun came out and as a result my arms became rather badly sunburned; I hadn't even thought about putting on sunscreen.

There was a steady arrival of voters throughout the 3 hours we were there, so there wasn't much opportunity to take advantage of the chairs we had taken along.

Personally I think the whole process of How to Vote cards to be an absolute waste of paper; I realise they are for the purpose of persuading voters who to vote for, not only the person they want to win, but also who to vote for with their preferences. I think that the process of Preferences should be banned; it should be first passed the post and nothing more. With Preferences you might end up with the very person you wouldn't vote for in a fit, and that seems grossly unfair to me.

Here is what was reported in the Brisbane Courier Mail:

ALMOST one-third of Queenslanders did not vote in yesterday's local government elections, according to the Local Government Association of Queensland.

The polls, run for the first time by the Electoral Commission of Queensland, were the first since the State Government's controversial decision to cut the number of councils across the state from 157 to 73.

LGAQ executive director Greg Hallam said today there had been a poor voter turnout."Almost one-third of Queenslanders haven't cast a vote," Mr Hallam told ABC Radio. "Just 70 per cent of Queenslanders actually cast a vote. It might creep up as more come in, but that's down from 85 per cent at the last elections."

FOR THE FULL REPORT AND OTHER NEWS ITEMS SEE THE NEWS FEED ON THE OPPOSITE COLUMN.

 

A good crowd turned up for the wind up of "Dimboola", the play about a country wedding set in the 1960's; the weather was kind and everyone had a good time. Graham and I had put together a couple of CD's of the photos we had taken during rehearsals and the performances and put them in presentation cases. We worked feverishly to finish all the them in time to be handed out to the cast, and I was printing out inserts just minutes before we had to leave the house. Some members of the audience had actually brought presents for the "bride and groom" over the two nights so they were auctioned off adding more money towards the restoration of the Zamia.

President of our group, Warrick, gave a speech and handed out gifts to many of the helpers and we all enjoyed the provided salad lunch.

Following lunch we "went to the movies" in the Howard's converted garage. Warwick Howard used to own the Zamia and he was the first person to show films there, many years ago. He still shows films, however nowadays in his garage, and on this occasion showed a couple of films including a very funny old news reel about life in the Gay '90's followed by a short excerpt from a W. C. Fields film; my word those actors certainly worked hard for their money in those days!

The photo shows one of the actors delighted at receiving her CD presentation pack!

The meeting with the Minister of Immigration turned out to be better than could have been anticipated with the group managing to have around 20 minutes discussion with him. For some reason he seemed to think there were many more 410 visa holders living in the country than there are, so he was put straight on that and many other points. He has promised to look into our situation although nothing is likely to happen in this financial year because the budget is already set.

There has been much discussion lately about the 410 visa and much of it, we have been led to believe, has been done by the new Government. At the recent Perth Community Cabinet Meeting where the issue was raised by a lady called Nita Sadler, the Prime Minister and Minister for Immigration said they wanted to know all about it and one of the local Federal MP's certainly set about making herself a champion on our behalf. The next meeting will be held on the Sunshine Coast here in Queensland this Sunday, and 5 of our BERIA members have been granted a 10 minute meeting with the Immigration Minister, Chris Evans to put forward our case for granting us Permanent Residence.

We are all keeping our fingers crossed that the meeting not only goes well, but the Minister will listen favourably to the arguments. John Wittering, the chief scribe amongst us, has produced some excellent documents that have been well constructed. He has looked at the all the pros and cons that had been discussed with the previous Government, who were not at all sympathetic to our cause, nor did they actually acknowledge any of the positives that were put forward, rather they did what politicians are known for and that is ignore what they don't want to discuss and put forward what they do, so it is like having a discussion with someone who speaks a different language.

Regretfully, I am not able to attend, but I am sure the meeting will be in good hands.

I am pleased to report that the indentification of the mystery spider has been solved; here is the reply I received from the Queensland Museum:

That is a male Garden orb-weaver, Eriophora transmarina. This is a common spider and you are likely to be familiar with the female which is just a little larger (especially in the abdomen) and makes very large orb webs mostly at night. She lacks the special patch of spines on the 2^nd leg that he has. The males have this strange habit of suspending themselves by a single strand of silk from eaves and other vantage points with their front legs outstretched. I imagine they are smelling for females (but that is just speculation).

Another place to look for males of this species is as the dead husks left by the females in their webs!

The female looks so different that it isn't surprising we couldn't identify it as the books only tend to show the female; as you will see from this photo, it looks nothing like the one we have.

Our friend, Peter Kuttner, who produced the DVD archive entitled The Biodiversity of Tamborine Mountain, arrived at our house yesterday, with a spider that he had not been able to identify. I got an old fish tank out of the shed, cleaned it up the we placed the spider in it. At first we wondered if it might be dead as it was all scrunched up, but after a while it did move around. Peter wanted to film it to add to his archive on his website, however his camera was elsewhere, so we used ours and both Graham and I took some stills. We all found it difficult to focus through the glass however it was impossible to get the tripod positioned so that the camera could bend over the top of the tank. Not knowing what kind of spider it is, we didn't want to take too many chances by with it.

I have sent some photos to the Queensland Museum asking them if they can identify it, however I haven't heard back from them yet.

Here are the photos: