Boatshed

This beautiful Vihuela is now in my care. It comes from the workshop of a  South Australian luthier, Tim Guster.
The soundboard is European Spruce; the finger-board Macassar Ebony; the side and bottom American Rock Maple. Note the striking ‘fiddleback’ grain, and the fine Rose decoration.
Tim makes Harps, Renaissance and Baroque Lutes, Theorbos, Baroque Guitars, Vihuelas, 19th century Guitars and Hurdy Gurdies – these last, in particular, requiring a level of skill well above my level….

….has weathered the storm. I take that as a good omen. I will keep chipping away.

 

We would tend those glades of flowering stone, not quarry them. With cautious skill, tap by tap – a small chip of rock and no more, perhaps, in a whole  anxious day – so we would work.
Gimli, son of Gloin (from The Two Towers: JRR Tolkien).

And so it goes with Ark 1: wood once removed cannot be replaced. Or to paraphrase Dad: Consider thrice, chip once….

 

Here is the short biography which accompanied Mark’s painting, Willunga Hills, at Waverley Homestead National Trust Gallery, Willunga.

We were  up at the Estuary late afternoon, and Sam took these excellent photos on his phone camera (electronic devices can be useful, now and then).
You can see that recent storms have lowered the river bed by some six or seven feet – and unearthed a slumbering giant, hidden for as long as I can remember.
But maybe, after all,  it was cast up on the king tide.
By mid-December it will have vanished.

like me the sea creature
from who knows where
dreaming of summer

Estuary 1

These sturdy beachposts were installed half a century ago, to protect the adjacent shack (long vanished) from the high tides of winter. Now, they have assumed a life and purpose of their own.
I took the photos immediately below in 2015, using my ancient camera and ancient technology..

 

A few weeks back, not long  after a full-moon storm, Sam photographed the same beachposts. As you can see, there has been a massive shift of sand north and/or south – and possibly offshore. By mid-summer, the posts will be half-buried once again.

Acacia pendula: rescued (with permission) from a local wood pile.
Hard as Lignum Vitae; heavy as lead; riddled with hairline fractures; difficult to saw by hand; blunts chisels; (almost) impossible to carve.
In short, a perfect choice for the Boatshed.

Yankalilla River 2

Yankalilla River 1

‘Degraded’ is scarcely an adequate description: more like ‘scorched earth’.
The seedlings are Coastal Wattle (Acacia sophorae) – ground cover to follow.
It is a start.