KITE FLYING
I've spent the last week heading south from Brisbane, via Sydney to Melbourne, arriving today just in time for this weekend's 2007 PMA Photo Imaging World Conference.

Enroute I enjoyed a couple of hours at Foster on the NSW coast. Particularly enjoyable was a brief headland-top rendezvous with this co-operative kite.

THE GRAND EXPERIMENT -- Two boys, Two Cultures, by Anouk Ride
Paperback
Publisher: Hachette Livre (May 2007)
ISBN: 9780734409201

In 2001 I travelled to Kamchatka in the Russian Far East with writer Anouk Ride. Well a few years on from that trip and Anouk is embarking on an adventure of a different kind - this time it's the release of her first book The Grand Experiment, published by Hachette Livre.

The Grand Experiment traces the lives of two young aboriginal boys sent from their Nyungar land in Western Australia to school in Europe in the 1850s. A Spanish missionary, Rosendo Salvado, was behind what he called 'the grand experiment of the civilisation of the Aboriginies...' his plan was to 'prove that Aboriginal people could be educated and civilised'.

You can read about the book in THE AUSTRALIAN, or you can hear an interview with Anouk from the radio program LIFE MATTERS on the ABC's web site.

The official launch of the book will be held at READINGS in Carlton, Victoria on Monday night 7th May. The Grand Experiement is available now at your local bookshop.