Am gathering the necessary fire power for the RADF grant. Darryl Jones sent me a glowing letter of support which I got today.
Today I received the Statement of Significance from Simon Smith, who curates my published archive at the National Film & Sound Archive, on which we had worked together and which is central to my reapplying for a RADF grant. It appears to tick all the boxes, so fingers crossed.
Talk about animals knowing what's best for them. Today, after a couple of months not filming because of shot selection for the night footage DVDs, I filmed a pair of Tawny Frogmouths, perched on a vine up against the white wall of a house in Central Avenue, enjoying the Winter sun.
For our 'Rainforest at Night' DVDs, Steve, with Hugh's help, filmed interviews with Jaap, Mark and me talking about our experience of night filming, our favourite creatures, highlights of our 53 night shoots, the value of our night filming. We were filmed in Jaap's back yard which borders rainforest, but which had a handy plug outdoors to power the lighting.
A video frame and brief text of mine were published in 'The Tamborine Times', the first of a fortnightly series, in which I can inform readers about the species rich biodiversity with which they share the mountain.
Maybe 3 weeks ago, Ray, a neighbour of mine, told me how a bird had snatched his lower denture off his balcony table and I told him that I had seen a lower denture in mulch in the park a couple of months before. I won’t go into why the denture was on the table, other than to say that the bird was after food. Today Ray knocked on my door, wanting to know exactly where I had seen the denture. Its replacement was causing him discomfort. We went into the park and were looking for the lost article, when Andrew, a friend of mine newly returned from a year-long overseas assignment, turned up unexpectedly at my place to say hello. Catching sight of Ray and me doing inexplicable things in the park, Andrew strolled over to make his presence known and find out what we were up to. After introductions he joined in the search and within minutes succeeded in finding the denture, exactly where I had left it at the end of April. Ray could not have been more delighted.
I have been working away on the Night Life supplements and Steve has been assembling the preliminary shot selection on 3 DVDs. Tonight we managed to do another 2 videos for vimeo, bringing the total on my vimeo page to 75. For technical reasons, not all my elegible vimeo videos have been harvested by EOL. For the past 2 months I have not done much filming. Things quieten down in winter, though, for the first time in a few years, we are enjoying day after day of sunshine and clear blue skies, typical winter weather for these parts. I love this weather and have really missed it. We are planning for Steve to film interviews with Jaap, Mark and me for the supplements at the end of July.
Steve and I have been working on Supplements 4 to 6 of the archive. They will all be devoted to the rainforest at night. Like Supplements 1 to 3 they will each be about an hour long. This means we have had to suspend work on videos for EOL. Our night filming season ended on shoot 53 on May 10. Miraculously, given that I am unable to film in the rain, the continual wet weather hardly interrupted our weekly schedule. I have nearly 10 ½ hours of night footage and have finished part of the initial shot selection. Days of watching footage, logging shots and putting them into my lap top converted to Steve assembling them on his hard drive in 2 hours this evening.
Last night, totally out of the blue, we had an intense hail storm. Fortunately the stones were just a bit larger than pea size and not damaging to vehicles. This cloudless morning I looked out of my kitchen window and saw a hail drift against the garage wall, perhaps 30cm deep. I filmed it from various angles, including close-ups revealing individual stones, and then, following a telephone tip-off, a field all the more white with hail because of the brilliant sunshine. The hail storm had cut an uneven swathe through the northern part of the plateau with my home on its fringe. The hail on Tamborine Mountain featured on today’s tv news.
For a long time I have wanted to film Blue-faced honeyeaters. I have seen them in various parts of the Mountain. They are handsome birds and one can get quite close to them unless, as I discovered today, one is trying to film them. They were feeding on several stands of Red hot poker plants. I had seen the birds for the past few days on my morning walk.