Here's a song from one of the early solo albums by The Church's Steve Kilbey. Amazing talent. Too bad he's done so many drugs that he now only writes psychedelic music.
"Othertime"
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Monday morning, a writer I published, James Cain, picked me up at the hotel around 9 a.m. to tour his homeland, The Blue Mountains, which is about two hours outside of Sydney. On the way we made a couple pit stops for food.
In the early afternoon we hit a zoo. It was awesome! I got to feed a kangaroo and a baby emu. I also had my picture taken with a kola bear as I petted it. What else did we see there? Oh, a wombat. There were dingos and Tasmanian Devils, too, but they hid in their caves.
From there we stopped to see the Three Sisters, a popular landmark. It was raining, but that was fine. I took some cool pictures of the forest with mist rising from the trees.
Eventually we reached James' house. He lives across the road from a 19th-century court and jail. It's all housed in one building and has received historical status. Pretty crazy. They squeezed 35 men in a cell about 10 feet by 6 feet. There was another cell for women, but the park ranger thinks they threw men in there as well. And here's the appalling part: fines were quite Draconian. If your employer thought you were faking sick, you got 50 lashes. Blimey!
For dinner we had Thai takeout. James has a pretty big family. At the house were five kids (ages 11 to 1). I think he has one or two more with an ex.
It was pretty funny, his one daughter, Sharif (age 8, I think), asked why I didn't like children. I was a little confused at first. Apparently, the Cain clan were looking at my Facebook profile where I said I didn't want kids. I may have to update that part.
Another amusing anecdote concerned James' son Solomon, who I think is a little younger than Sharif. First question out of his mouth was, "Why do you talk so funny?" Ah, youth. . . .
Before James and his family dropped me off for the 7:20 p.m. train, we went to some little park. It was so high up that I could see my apartment from there. Seriously though, in the park there had been lots of bush fires a year or two ago; most of the bark on the trees are still black. Fascinating.
The train ride back to Sydney took a little over two hours. I walked the mile or so back to hotel and crashed around eleven.
The Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains.
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