Museum

The Museun of South Austealia has an exquisite collection of Australian Indigenous people's ... our First Nations' ... cultural and domestic items. For visitors with tired legs there are multiple screens placed conveniently at bench seats so a family group or friends, or a loner can view digital images indexed according to Regions or Surveys of anthropological interest including some sound and mixed media files. The display incorporates continuous running 'video ' or movie camera reel originally, at various turns in the trek ..and alongside this item in the section "Play" ie children at play and their play things a series of 'short shorts' was running, of which each was titled simply according to location where it was filmed ie collected. Each play sequence needed no explanation other than children playing having ingenious and co-operative fun in groups, sometimes pairs...such as the game where a small child is hoisted off the shoulders of a bigger child onto the nest made by the offshoot branches and leaves at the end of an massively long and low tree branch. The obliging bigger child grasps the branch and the smaller child calls out and giggles their appreciation at the branch being manipulated up and by the older child taking advantage of the added spring therefore up and down of the end of such a fun tree branch.

In another game using a tyre without its rim or inner tube a child wearing a cape made of some sturdy material like a calico rolled the tyre expertly and at speed around like a hoop then came rolling around snug inside the rubber recess and using his feet at exactly the right moment in the roll to maintain balance and speed. His feet and legs shot out of the tyre periodically and hit the ground at great speed like a rolling grasshopper. My relative in his 70s who grew up in North Queensland in the bush exclained in delight about the display of roller/pusher paint tin toys that he "had one of those!" in his childhood.

I will return when I can to photograph again some of the lovely items that inspired me in the section...spinning tops and string games, and cat's cradle patterns, the serious play of basket making, weaving, making string and so on.

I took a tumble catching my foot in a poorly designed bench seat in the city's Rundle Mall and that saw me in hospital for a few hours as I bled profusely from a cut on the bridge of my nose on which I landed FLAT on mall tiles...among other damage. I was surrounded by helpful people and got carted off in an ambulance. Only sprains; but I'm slowed down for a few days especially it was my left side, wrist and knee. I am left handed. This comes to you entirely tapped tee hee by solely the index finger of my right hand. Tee hee.

I'm beat. Goodnight blip family. It's that hour. Please be as well and as happy as you can be. I never lost track of consciousness or did not know what was going on around me today. I felt lucky as it was, but an afternoon being of sound mind and body in an antiquated and under-resourced A&E department was salutary lesson in just how fortunate I am in general, by definition of health.

As for the fall I had...the City Council will receive a letter fron me with photographs describing how dangerous it is to secure immovable bench seats with outward splayed end 'legs' to a tiled surface, that are completely hollow underneath. It's a short bridge/bench. I stepped my left foot forward, into the inner of the leg but thinking I was past the end of the bench and took a healthy stride forward with my right foot. 'That's my nose' I thought as the volition of my travel threw me straight forward FLAT on my nose. I could feel my nose was FLAT. I opened my eyes to view the tiles my face was FLAT on. 'Yep' I thought, 'that's my nose'. O, vanity, all might be vanity but it kept me clear headed:)

Lucky, eh. I could be dead, at the least brain dead. Projecting up above the level of the bench are perpendicular, albeit they are rounded, metallic extensions of I think a cradle, one either end of the bench I observed after my cousin commented lster ...a lifetime spent in building , engineering & as a hospital orderly ...how shocked he was seeing what happened and its potential. Someone fall on one of those projections (I can easily see) travelling at athletic speed or sit on one forcefully, they'll know about it or otherwise sadly they might not.

My poor visiting relatives, however. I felt so sorry for their worry and fright. :-(