Dr Farvardin Daliri, an academic and artist, has spent his lock-down time making this 750kg sculpture of a laughing kookaburra.
Born in Iran, he has lived in Townsville for 25 years.”It’s a work of love,” he says.“This is the common ground – the land and habitat, owned by Indigenous people for thousands of years. That’s what it is. In this land, birds laugh at us.”
Jim and I love this. We will send it to the kids. We miss Australia (although we were walking along our favorite downtown fishing stream yesterday (there is one), and found a lady with bearded dragons who she was feeding with dandelions. So it’s not a giant kookabura bird, but it’s something).
Did you hear kookaburras when you were here?
We did — we saw them sitting on branches in one of the Botanical Gardens, a couple of times. Now I can’t recall whether it was Sydney or Melbourne. It was like seeing the mobs of wallabies, and the emus — something we’d always wanted to see.
Just saw a couple of kangaroos this morning when I was out for a walk. They sat up with their paws delicately held in front of them as they do and stared at me but didn’t run away.
A lot nicer to see unafraid kangaroos than bears, of which we have too many this summer, in the middle of town (although Anchorage has several creeks and greenbelts running through it, so one is never far from the wilderness). I would think that the kangaroos would be more intimidating than wallabies though.
OMG, that is surreal!
Amazing how creative people get when they’re locked down…
Priceless Gert, where’s the Ogum tree?
Leslie
Just for you, Leslie, here’s the song
Now you can do your own version.
Thanks Gert, it’s going around in my head already.
Leslie
I saw this on Twitter, and it cheered me up too!
My ambitions run more towards the beer can totem pole as featured in the film, Poor White Trash.
I thought you didn’t touch the demon drink, Guy?