My movies

The little story of the sunbirds in my garden filmed last summer was successful at the Mission Beach festival.

http://youtu.be/6-wPdc6t6KE : sunbird

The project at Open Channel Film School is now available to watch on utube. It has some editing technical faults , the riding shots are not great due to restrictions on the day but the song says it all...

http://youtu.be/zhh8v2M : Open road

Hot Summer in North Queensland

It has been hot camping in my van, quite cooler on the Atherton Tableland; parked at my friend's Claudine near Yungaburra, there was mist in the morning down the valley and I recorded the rainforest birds choir at dawn....the softeness of the colours amongst the tree was soothing.
We pulled out lantanna to clear for replanting trees during the next wet; if the wet ever comes....
it is so dry, in a way I used these beautiful days to restore my house once the tenants left. the front stairs needed repairs and I repainted them...lots of small things to fix and some bigger ones...put some stones at the rear of the house to get a better drainage and avoid termites which had a go at one of the posts; quickly I covered it up with a mosaic as a potential buyer was coming to look at the place...
Noticed that there are no more birds around my place, obviously they did not like the tenants...slowly they are coming back; the sunbird did not return to its nest, gone next door to a better place...frogs have increased in numbers and I even found a rare one, had to check in a book to make sure it was not a cane toad, it is a Torrent tree frog that did not like to be photographed and disappeared amongst the rocks. This owl took refuge at Elaine's house at Mission Beach; looked like it had been injured and could not fly very well.

The place does not feel like my home anymore....I hope I can sell it so that I can go on with my filming...

Cairns Eclipse 14 November 2012

It was great to see the Eclipse, such a magic moment early morning after the sunrise.

Photos by Helene La Poste

Documentary course

In Melbourne, I am fortunate or lucky to find a room close to the school. I am sharing a house with a young couple in Footscray, walking distance to the train station and markets, 10 minutes away from Southern Cross Station , another 15' walk through Docklands to reach shed no 4 where Open Channel Film School is running courses.
It was full on, classes from Mon to Thurs + evening; week end spent doing assignments and research for my project. Caught up with Andi and Tom (keen motorcyclists), thanks to them and friend Tone, got a story together ; but by the time we started filming, the weather was cold and wet, quite miserable to film girls on motorcycles. They were all braved and co-operating when we had to reshoot some scenes... I experienced everything that can go wrong when filming, from difficulties in obtaining permits to film in the Dandenong National Park, later to find close gate  due staff strike on the day; to camera problems....lots of frustrating moments and tears during the editing as by that stage the school was short of money and we did not get enough assistance to polish up the project.

The course was due to end early July, well it was late August when our projects were screened; did not make it to the screening night as I was very sick and it was so cold outside.
Got good feed back and might enter the doco at a Women film festival in UK.

On the way to Melbourne

Had a good run, travelling through Queensland. Stopped in Blackbutt for a few days, waiting for the floods to clear in NSW to continue on.  Visited the Warrumbungle National Park for some walking, a great place....unloaded the bike in Melbourne and rode to Mildura for the Ulysses AGM; met up with old friends who have hired a house boat. we spent more time on the river than at the AGM. We had a great time.

2012 is going too fast....

We are reaching the end of 2012, not sure where the days went, Had no time to work on the blog....
Some people did not get the joke about my post 'Give me a good reason to return to Australia' if you have a look the house was condemned, a ruin, the old 4L car probably would not make it too far ...
Anyway, I did get back to Cairns with a load of goodies such as motorcyling gear....spanish leather shoes.....got a job guiding a group from Adelaide to the Rock via Kangaroo Island, the Flinders, Coober Pedy...was really nice, the desert was so green and we had a ball.
December , cleaned up the house to prepare it for rental; probably did nothing exciting for Christmas as I dont remember it!
 January, went to Brisbane for medical attention; found a van at a good price on the Sunshine Coast and drove back to Cairns.
 Feb: my mate, Peter, from Blackbutt, came to build wardrobes in the bedrooms, a ceiling in the bathroom and helped to paint inside . I got a new oven installed and a dishwasher. spent over my budget but it looks very nice
Peter built a folding single bed inside the van; Larry and his electrician mate installed a winch to load my big motorcycle effortless.

Van all loaded up , I head off South to Melbourne to do a course on Documentary making.