it's been days now.

the last week can be summed up with; police, chains, padlocks, emails, calls, intense negotiations, offers, arguments, cut power and water, fires and a packet of tim tams all the way from sydney that truly saved the day. enough said? the police came, the police did nothing. so a new week with little resolution. jane and i swappped properties and she is in the house under question now, and can stay there as long as she wants, and the consequences etc fall onto her.

i attempted some drawing on the weekend, except left them out to dry only for them to be accidentally watered along with janes plants, may actually help them. been drawing really strange stuff, considering whats on offer. the ute across the road, the satelite dish on the roof, the empty council owned demountable buildings in front of the school etc.

decided to get on with starting to work on a screen printing project with the young guys out here at the art centre. looked through the screens that had been in storage since 2001, there were a few 2 x 1 m that were way to big to manage, or some smaller wooden frames and loose sheets of mesh. so forgetting my perfectly square aluminium frames and machine tensioned fine grade mesh and photographically exposed images back in sydney, i've somehow made some screens from scratch. getting enough tension by hand and abusing the staple gun all the way - its probably good the lack of english that they all understand.
the guys speak very little english, but were really interested to watch and learn (even though i was making a lot of it up as i went). they seemed to appreciate having their own process to work on that was seperate to anything the older dominating women were doing. it was pretty difficult to explain the process of painting out an image as a positive onto the mesh only to coat the negative image and then wash out the positive to be able to print it, but we got there. they now completely understand 'just trust me'. the screens i made up arent the best and we havent attempted to print them yet, thats for tomorrow... fingers crossed (havent looked at the inks yet, hate to think)....

as for whether i stay or go and the accomodation situation, ive been in negotiations with jane and the art school today and hopefully this trip will live to die another day. tomorrow should hold some answers, although we've been saying that for 2 weeks now....

if im staying, i'm heading to town friday overnight, enjoying a well needed beer. postcards will be in the mail. possibly back in town on tuesday when janes going to collect a body to be brought out to titjikala for its funeral.

the job description for a remote area aboriginal art centre manager must be a fascinating read...

untill next time...