
The photo above depicts Castle Saburac's previous life as a Blue Mountains school bus. Built the year I was born, (1981), this metal rooster was one of half a dozen buses I would travel on daily to get to school throughout my primary and high school years.
Lying in the aisle with my eyes closed upon purchasing the bus I was enveloped with an audio-visual montage of overlapping experiences, travelling through the tunnels of my childhood into the future... The smell of vinyl, rain, chewing gum under seats, the cracked laminate off graffitied windows, cicadas, lunch boxes, fingerprints on steel, eucalyptus drops, afternoon storms, and morning winter mist all flood my olfactory pathways laying an obvious constellation across a weblike map printed with invisible blood ink which points towards all directions simultaneously. With this compass now realised the bus whispered in a grainy diesel voice "I am ready for adventure, I am ready to expand, turn the key"...
Lying in the aisle with my eyes closed upon purchasing the bus I was enveloped with an audio-visual montage of overlapping experiences, travelling through the tunnels of my childhood into the future... The smell of vinyl, rain, chewing gum under seats, the cracked laminate off graffitied windows, cicadas, lunch boxes, fingerprints on steel, eucalyptus drops, afternoon storms, and morning winter mist all flood my olfactory pathways laying an obvious constellation across a weblike map printed with invisible blood ink which points towards all directions simultaneously. With this compass now realised the bus whispered in a grainy diesel voice "I am ready for adventure, I am ready to expand, turn the key"...

...And expansion continues... Since 2010 my family and I have been living, growing and adventuring in Castle Saburac, calling it our magical home ...as the doorway inside becomes an exit from the outside flux, an internal world breathing with an infinite momentary hum... The internal organs of Castle Saburac are warm, friendly, dreamy and alive, and throb a swirling ambient white noise akin to crickets and micro bats sending secret coordinates to each other with orchestral morse code hummed through poppy stalks plugged into the ends of almost muted cochlea machines constructed from saxophone/lobster claw amplification hybrids slowly revolving at 16 RPM in mid air...While constantly sprouting interesting elements absent from the periodic table, the inner zone provides the smokey bearded grandfatheriness feeling of stable timelessness. Our two children, Liminal and Phaedra are blossoming into wild beauty, anchored within this inner 'heldsphere' and the stable gravity emanated therein, while, to open the entry door thrusts one through a portal into the ever-changing landscapes of the outer unknown...

While the books on the shelves remain the same, the stories within develop more robust character identifications and richer meanings with which to relate to, and extend from into the world. So too, opening the door from the stabilised chaos-magic innards that we have fostered and nurtured over the years unto the outside is like a fresh reading of a Dostoevsky or Murakami novel- always presenting a fresh understanding of the characters of life, new landscapes painted with a morphing palette,- sunsets upon mountains sepia and sparkly, the first sunrays reflected across a still ocean as magpies tear open the fabric of night.
At the end of the day however, it all boils down to modes of living, ways of existing, enjoyable methods to circumnavigate that which alienates, bypass the industry machine and its agents... Choosing to live with Goodness, creativity, connection, beauty and quirk. And this, as with any mode of existence, has its sacrifice... its pros and cons. Like humanoid Wombles upon the axles of a giant feathered terrain voyager, we embark, we glide, we anchor, we transform, we embark, we continue, we pause, to rescue miscellaneous debris along the way, shaping the future by reshaping what has been discarded by the past. The present overflows with uncertainty, things lay around everywhere, sleeping, temporarily shut down, while nearby, consumption deems imperfection invisible, difference obsolete, as the channel of consumption is carved deep, and its movement fast and direct. Where does this river end? And what is its true purpose aside from flowing, seemingly without end? Are all modes or streams only destined to eventually merge with the source, returning together as droplet mass via varied and dichotomous orienteering, or will some streams inevitably become dammed, flooding the lives of those outside of its hungry ethos. Whatever the case, to wake the sleeping debris and reutilise its character and form is enjoyable and bypasses the insatiable need for more...
The railings of the bridge
Were moving by the glass
The opportunity to leave
Was coming up fast
The situation passed across my
Mind once more,
And I decided that I needed
Less not more
Less not more
Less not more - The Residents.
The railings of the bridge
Were moving by the glass
The opportunity to leave
Was coming up fast
The situation passed across my
Mind once more,
And I decided that I needed
Less not more
Less not more
Less not more - The Residents.