Rich Dad, Poor Dad

Imagine the Australian bushland. Grey and blue and green, a coarse-looking sort of place, with the chainsaw-buzz of cicadas characteristically bearing down on you. The air can be tangible and close, but always it is infused with the smell of eucalyptus, bark, dust and leaf-fall. There are scuttlings and rustlings and slitherings around your feet, and whip-lash bird calls swoop up above.

Now imagine someone has suddenly placed buildings and pathways through there, like milk-cartons in an over-run garden. The bush, for lack of anything else to do, absorbs it in its old, ....... way, and this stamp of civilisation becomes part of the landscape.

The buildings turn grey and blue and dusty green, becoming part of the bush itself, and concrete is indistinguishable from the pale ghostly trunks of the gum trees, and pathways half sink beneath the leaves and bark piling up on the floor. Walkways stories high sling themselves amongst the trees like branches and a labrynth forms.


I went to the University of Newcastle yesterday.

It is not your traditional sort of University. There no lush landscaped gardens and neat courtyards, no castle-like towers or buildings reaching up to a blue and empty sky. Rather, it is an expansive place, with each nook and cranny hidden from the rest, with small, sudden courtyards and winding paths. It seems to have grown from the bush itself. There are rustlings in the undergrowth and one half expects a snake to loll itself out along the path as you make your way from one place to the other.

I didn't mind it, I think. It was deserted when I went for an explore. My friend held our place in one of the long queues snaking through the Great Hall (it was Advisory Day) while I nipped out quickly for a look. Time was limited, and what I saw was only a small fraction of the grounds, but it was fascinating all the same.

We waited an hour in the queue, and then we had to rush off because my friend and her mother, with whom I had come up to Newcastle with, had business to attend to in town. I didn't have an oppurtunity to see the rest of the grounds, which I was a little disappointed about. I'd like to go again.




My friend is rich because her mother is business savvy. It was fascinating hearing her talk on the way home in the car, telling me these things about finances and the stock market crash that recently befell us. I had no idea how terrible it was, nor that we were on a great decline. It was frightening.

The title of this entry is the title of a book she recommended I read about business, money and the economy. She's always had great faith in me. I've know her many years, and she is incredibly clever. She's never been to Uni. Rather, she went to TAFE - and now she's a self-made millionaire!

It did my head in, yesterday, looking at courses and thinking of the future. Do I really want to do Graphic Design? The course is very computer-based, and I'm more a traditional artist. I'm torn in a number of directions - should I try something new, perservere, and get that job at the end of the day?; Should I follow this urge inside me and do English, which I love, instead?


Sigh. Pressure.