Meanwhile all is calm, all is bright. The photo above from the Flat 1 (upstairs) sun room/dining room shows the "bird cherry" in the backyard turning really beautifully into autumn russets, with the backdrop of unchanging olive-green eucalypts. Bird cherries are one of the exotic weed-trees of the Mountains. A few months ago I posted a photo of crimson rozellas eating the cherries, whose seeds they then proceeded to poop throughout the bush, no doubt. As it's illegal to cut down a tree here without a permit, we had resolved to worry away at it with trained beavers, reducing it gradually to a point that we could make it disappear -- presto! -- without anyone noticing. Lacking access to beavers, I purchased a small electric chain saw and got rid of 2 of the 3 trunks, then lopped some of the lower branches. Now it doesn't look so huge, and it is pretty, so it will stay at least until Christine develops a plan for what might replace it.

Calm at least in terms of weather, but we've run into a bureaucratic snafu with one of the privatised utility monopolies. When the woman at the call centre told Christine that "we must respect our protocols" I thought Christine was going to scream. Everything here is done with call centres, there are no longer the sort of storefronts with helpful humans on the main streets of towns (except for Sydney Water, the public utility), and the call-centre staffs are invariably polite, helpful if your request fits into their "protocols," and utterly obtuse and infuriating otherwise. At the end of the conversation, the call-centre human uttered what has become the standard Aussie banality for everything, including okay, thanks and goodbye -- "nao wurries" -- to which Christine shot back, "What do you mean 'no worries'? No worries for you, maybe!", and hung up. Our "issue" with them will eventually be resolved, we chant repeatedly.

Given that Australians have a "larrikin" image -- rugged, no-nonsense individualists -- it is amazing how much bureaucracy they tolerate. The worst culprit in our experience is the RTA -- the Roads and Transport Authority -- the New South Wales equivalent of the Motor Vehicle Branch (auto insurance here is private, by the way). An acquaintance had a run-in with the RTA because she is called by the second of her given names, and they demanded that registration documents be redone with her first, unused name. But this was nothing compared with the episode reported in the paper, where the RTA demanded that anyone who had a handicapped-parking pass produce proof every 3 years that they still were handicapped. Obviously, the RTA was responding to a lot of misuse of the passes, but they put in a rule with no exceptions, the classic bureaucratic shelter. Thus, when a double amputee was forced to produce proof that her legs hadn't grown back, it made the papers. The woman in question offered to stab knitting needles into her artificial limbs in front of the RTA staff, but they insisted she needed a doctor's certificate. "It's the same rule for everyone," they reportedly chorused. Egalitarianism, Aussie style.

From a neighbour we heard another story that fit the mold. A teenage girl got a part-time, after-school job shelving books at a branch library in Sydney. Because it technically was a public-service position, she needed to get a medical certificate which required a special form that could only be faxed from the employer to a designated doctor, then filled out at the time, which caused a cancelled appointment when the employer forgot to fax the form. All eventually went well there, but then it turned out she also need a police check. "You are aware that she is a 16-year-old schoolgirl," her mother asked the employer. "Same rule for everyone -- sorry!" she was told.

The issue of bureaucracy, work rules and worker protection looks to be one of the big issues in the upcoming federal election. The Howard government, which is pro-free market, has introduced AWA's -- Australian Workplace Agreements -- to simplify hiring and firing and, it argues, improve productivity in the workforce, get rid of deadwood and so on. Historically, Australia was notorious for its featherbedded union agreements, especially in the railways (which were themselves notoriously slow to change: for much of a century, the states had different track gauges; State Rail in NSW recently received international recognition for having the highest rate of subsidy per passenger in the Asia-Pacific, thus the lowest efficiency). The Labour Party is promising to modify the AWA legislation to ensure that workers still have a "fair go." Defending the government side is the minister of industry and employment, a bloke about the size of a tree trunk with, to a Canadian, a name that would guarantee him political success: Joe Hockey. Stay tuned.

And the routed NSW Liberal leader, Peter Debnam, has been replaced by Barry O'Farrell, who always said that he would run for the leadership once he lost 25 kg. His nickname from his weightier time in politics? Fatty O'Barrel.

The song comes out of the Aussie tradition of the bush ballad, a culture of poetry or verse whose most famous writers, Banjo Patterson and Henry Lawson, wrote classics like "The Man from Snowy River" and "Clancy of the Overflow." For example, at the Blues Festival here in Katoomba a few weeks ago, there were bush poets reciting to the crowd from the main stage, much like the cowboy poets at rural fairs in western North America. "A Pub With No Beer" began as poem by a Queensland canecutter named Dan Sheahan, whose local pub (the photo above) was drunk dry by US Army servicemen in 1944 during the wartime US "occupation" of Australia that in itself is a great wellspring of literature and film. With altered lyrics and the borrowed tune, it became a classic hit.

We went into the Big Smoke to visit with the rellies and do an overnight cat-sit with Cyrus, Sarah Jane's kitty, and hit a series of torrential showers that almost brought cars to a standstill. Any thoughts we had of attending the big autumn exhibition, the Royal Easter Show, were put off. Maybe next week. But it was a perfect time, in spite of the Easter crowds, to take in the Archibald Prize for Portraiture, to which I referred back in February, as well as the less-hyped Wynne Prize for landscape painting and the Sulman Prize for genre painting. The Archibald, with its celebrity sitters (different from cat-sitters), attracts most of the attention, but the paintings for the other prizes were definitely more varied and interesting. The artists in the Wynne take themselves very seriously, but many of the entries in the Sulman showed a fine sense of political satire and humour; the winner was a realistic painting called Axis of Elvis, showing Richard Nixon meeting The King in front of a mosque. Go figure. Another painting showed a cartooned, bird's-eye view of the Baxter Internment Camp, part of the draconian response of the Howard government to attempted illegal migration. Regrettably, the pictures don't seem to be posted on the web.

This is Roland Hemmert who lives in Flat 2, as he has for the past 7 or so years. An artist -- a landscape painter, like most Aussies using opaque media, usually oils but also pastels for sketching -- he's lived in Katoomba since 1995, and spends his non-painting time working at Megalong Books in Leura, the adjoining town. He will eventually put up a website -- at least I hope he will -- for the benefit of those who can't attend his exhibitions in the Blue Mountains or drop in on him in his studio at the back of the house with its south light and views over the gum trees in the gully.

Roland took us out to a few of his favorite painting spots along Narrow Neck, the weird promontory that separates the Jamison Valley from the Megalong. All these places are a 10-15 minute drive from home, but the diversity of landscapes is astonishing. A beautiful afternoon, with the briefest opportunity for me to do a little pencil drawing, and a tantalizing hint of the places and painting opportunities that await once we get the house fixed up and take up exploring.