Australia Summer 2017 Inventory

37 days
14 planes
3 hotels
4 airbnbs
2 public lectures at art schools
1643 photos on Sony 6000
3 Libraries and Archives
8 Museums
Too many Pokemon walks
3 Legendary sightings in Kununurra ( Celebrity Tree Park) 
Too many meltdowns by parents and child
3 illnesses
So much good food in Fitzroy
No Footy games, (cross between Rubgy and Basketball)
One four wheel drive
Backwards driving mostly by me, once on the wrong side of the road.
1 pink lizard sleeping too close to me to get a good night sleep
1 zoo
1 animal sanctuary
4 wallaby road sightings in one night
1 wombat road kill (not due to my driving)
Oysters by the dozen in Hobart (strictly kosher style) 
Incredible warm hospitality, reunions with old friends and new friendships established.
Unbelievable jet lag.
And one nice family photo
END

Charting Port Davey

This map shows the photos we shot on the ipad and charts our boat route which took us from Melaleuca in the east to the Breakseas in the west, which are the small islands on the east perimeter of Port Davey. Our captain/pilot Hugh took us to the outer most reaches but our small craft would have capsized if we had attempted to go beyond the Breakseas. Next major landmass south is Antarctica!

Port Davey

 On the second last day of our Australian journey, we took a single propeller airplane into one of the most isolated parts of Tasmania (and the world) --Port Davey and Bathurst Harbour in the Southwest Conservation Reserve.  Most people don't go there this time of year but there was a break in the weather so we went for it and chartered a plane with Par Avion.  We just had to see the remote places where Critchley Parker Jr. dreamed of making a Jewish refuge and where he died for the cause in 1942.   I've never landed on a deserted runway- kind of eerie that our only connection to the world was through our pilot Hugh's radio.  Critchley Parker Jr. and Caroline Isaacson proposed this site to Steinberg when the Kimberley plan was stalled due to Australia joining WWII.  Here are a few shots from the day including a visit to Critchley Parker's grave site which is so secluded in the bush that we almost missed it. We shared this amazing experience with the famous Tasmanian landscape photographer, Martin Walch.

SOCA Lecture, University of Tasmania

Thank you Lucy Bleach and Bill Hart for inviting us to present our project at the School of Creative Arts, University of Tasmania. Special thanks to the brilliant painter Megan Walch and her husband Jeremy for inviting our son Sacha to their house for a play date with Felix so that we could focus on our lecture. The crowd was so generous and thrilled with our project! So happy we came to this beautiful part of Australia, not that all parts aren't beautiful, but there's something other worldly about this place, the light, the winds, the people, so hospitable and warm. We'll see if we can make it to Port Davey- weather depending...

Left to right, Megan Walch, Louis Kaplan, Bill Hart, Melissa Shiff and Lucy Bleach.

Breakfast with Arnold Zable

 "Fascinating and imaginative work, and, inevitably controversial."

   Arnold Zable on "The Imaginary Jewish Homelands of I.N. Steinberg"

This morning we had breakfast with the highly acclaimed novelist Arnold Zable, former president of PEN Melbourne. The meeting was magical as we had much common ground including being and creating as secular Jews. The dialogue ranged from our mutual interest in Melech Ravitch and his family to his work with Aboriginal artists in Warmun and how Australia is moving toward a model of mutual exchange of knowledge and wisdom.  We also found out that both of our sons have an obsession with game design although his son is about 16 years older than Sacha.  He gave us so many interesting insights into Yiddish Melbourne from a secular Jewish perspective.  Given his amazing work on the plight of refugees and asylum seekers to Australia, it is obvious why our project has so much resonance for him. 

Poster for our next Lecture at School of Creative Arts, Hobart, Tasmania

Public Lecture at the Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne University

Yesterday we gave our first public lecture on Imaginary Jewish Homelands at the Victorian College of the Arts at the University of Melbourne. There was a crowd of over 100 people comprised of art students, professors, curators, as well as one of the most prominent writers in the literary scene of Australia, Arnold Zable. Zable is known for his work on migration and human rights. We're having coffee with him tomorrow.

 Federation Hall, one of the nicest venues we've ever lectured at. 

 Our host Professor Sean Lowry

Curator David Sequeira welcomes the audience to the Imaginary Jewish Homelands event. 

 Melech Ravitch House on the big screen

 Question period

Independent curator/artist Kevin Murray who astonishingly grew up in the small town of Kununurra where we were based in the Kimberley and where Steinberg envisioned the Jewish refuge.