Paul Howson’s Website: Personal Reflections

A Day with The Tintookies

Wed, 03 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Tintookies were famous amongst Australian children in the late 1950s and the 1960s, before television had taken over the role of children’s entertainment. Going to the theatre to see the Tintookies was a special treat during school holidays.

Who Were the Tintookies?

The Tintookies were marionettes — puppets on strings — and they were founded by Australian puppeteer Peter Scriven.

Photo from the title page of the 1966 Festival of Perth theatre program for the Tintookies.

In 1966 the Tintookies came to Western Australia, for the 14th Annual Festival of Perth. The Festival program booklet gives us some background about Peter Scriven and the Tintookies:

Four Podcasts: “Total Education Conversations”

Fri, 21 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In 2010, Richard Waters and I collaborated on the production of a podcast titled “Total Education Conversations”.

Four episodes of the podcast were produced and published on the website of The School of Total Education (SOTE) in Warwick, Queensland, where Richard was the longstanding Principal (subsequent to being Principal at the original Melbourne School of Total Education in the late 1970s).

Our goal with the podcast was to attract an audience of people with an interest in education and in schools which have a spiritual/holistic philosophy. We felt that the practical experience that had been gained through creating and running such a school for 35 years meant that Richard and the team at SOTE were well-qualified to conduct such a podcast.

“Do Not Believe Anything on Hearsay…” The Words of Wisdom and Caution which Guided Alan Marshall Through Life

Thu, 11 Mar 2021 00:00:00 +0000

In March 1974 a few hundred people gathered at Monash University in Melbourne for a weekend listening to “The Personal Philosophies of Some Eminent Australians”.

Eagerly anticipated was Alan Marshall, celebrated Australian author, humanitarian and storyteller par excellence. Mr Marshall was well-known to Australian school children as the author of “I Can Jump Puddles”, the account of his childhood encounter with and triumph over polio.

“The third piece of equipment I carried was a saying that I wrote down in my notebook and I’ll read it out to you and I carried it with me and it’s guided me through life… it was a statement attributed to Buddha.”

At 72 years of age, Alan was able to look back on a life filled with diverse experiences from which he had distilled an unusual wisdom. To convey this he chose not a chronological account of events, but a metaphorical story.

Disappearing Insects and The Invisible Rainbow

Fri, 16 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

“Australia All Over” with Ian McNamarra (“Macca”) is weekly Sunday morning program on ABC Local Radio in which people from around the country call in and chat to Macca. Recently there was talk about the apparent “disappearance” of insects — i.e. that insects were becoming less common than before. I wrote the following email to Macca, inspired by my recent reading of the book “The Invisible Rainbow — A History of Electricity and Life” by Arthur Firstenberg.

What I Learned from Mrs Carbury the Organic Gardener

Tue, 01 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I remember Mrs Carbury in her motorised wheelchair, the vehicle that provided mobility within her small bed-sitter and beyond into her large organic vegetable and herb garden.

The small dwelling, built to accommodate her special needs, was adjacent to a larger dwelling occupied by her daughter, son-in-law and their children, and these two abodes in turn were situated at the rear of a large property in Barkers Road, Hawthorn, an older eastern suburb of Melbourne. The property, which was across the road from Preshil, “The oldest progressive school in Australia”, had been one of the grand estates of early Melbourne.

Remembering Ken Field

Tue, 01 Oct 2019 00:00:00 +0000

The following was written in December 1988 after attending the funeral of Ken Field, former Bursar of Scotch College in Melbourne.

On Tuesday this week I went to Ken Field’s funeral. Ken died last week during his sleep. He had recently been spending most of his time looking after his wife, Dulcie, who was suffering with a serious illness.

The funeral was held in the Memorial Hall at Scotch College where, upon the wood-panelled walls, are hung portraits of past headmasters.

Drought in 2003

Thu, 15 Aug 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I wrote the following on 29th January 2003. Now we are facing the same situation again it seems. Climate is cyclical?

“We are in the midst of a very bad drought. Hardly any rain for months and months. Everything looks dry and parched. People struggle to keep their gardens alive. It is claimed that our town water supply will run out in about 18 months without substantial rain. At Wallangarra, an hour to the south, they are bringing in water by rail to keep the town and its industry going. It must be such a different experience from that of people who live in fertile places with ample rainfall. They would find a drought like this hard to understand.”

Cohousing That Never Was

Tue, 07 Mar 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Sometime in the 1970s the Danes invented a new way of collective living — neighbourhoods designed, built and managed by the people who lived there. The Danes called these communities bofoellesskaber. The English translation, subsequently the name of a seminal 1988 book, is “Cohousing”. The concept has since taken root elsewhere — in the USA for example there are now perhaps a hundred or more “cohousing communities” in place or in the planning stages.

Endless Growth

Tue, 31 Jan 2006 00:00:00 +0000

Have You Been to the Gold Coast Lately? If not, you may be surprised at just how far this city, for it is a city, has grown and continues to grow, consuming it seems ever more of the beautiful hinterland. We journeyed through the area last month. It was only a year since our last visit, but the extent of the housing and the audacity of developers, builders and home owners in pushing the boundaries astounded and shocked us. Those majestic and seemingly impregnible foothills of the Lamington plateau have now succumbed to the intrusion of the land developers. Everywhere you look, on each crest and ridge, there are houses. In places they are still sparse – lone sentinels challenging the wilderness. In other places, whole hillsides have been denuded and are now covered with roads and the signs of housing in various stages of construction.

Moving House

Mon, 21 Jun 2004 00:00:00 +0000

Well today we move house. From the security of our dwelling for the past twelve years to an uncertain future. Of course the future is always uncertain, we just think we know what’s going to happen and that makes us feel secure.

We’re moving because we need more space (our current dwelling is very small), but a consequence is that we’re having to move out of the close-knit cohousing-style neighbourhood that we’ve come to appreciate and into a more suburban, separated alternative. A strange thing how you want to go in a particular direction yet life takes you in the opposite direction. Personally I still cherish the long-term dream of living in a real cohousing community, with a common house and other shared facilities. Maybe this move is a step in that direction?

Marketing A Community

Fri, 24 Jan 2003 00:00:00 +0000

The urban-rural community where I live is facing new challenges. After years of static population, there is movement in the air. For various reasons people want to leave or move around. How to fill the empty houses? Selling them on the “open market” has been tried without much success.

This is not a standard piece of real estate. It’s a unique neighbourhood, with an integrated community school (K-12 – see http://www.sote.qld.edu.au), common spaces, walking trails, play spaces, bushland, and various kinds of residences (from free standing to townhouse style).

Is Software Development a Viable Business?

Mon, 19 Aug 2002 00:00:00 +0000

Living in a small country town in Australia has its pros and cons.

The pros? The environment. The clear open skies and clean air. The peace and tranquility — if you seek it out. The small town community spirit. And you can live at a much lower cost than in the cities.

The cons are cultural and economic. The smart people leave small towns, especially the young. If you have an interest in a niche area, opportunities to find like minded people are limited. For example, I run a graphic design business. Running a graphic design business in a country town is like trying to make trees grow in the desert. It’s a very limited market. One eeks out a very partial living.

About this Blog

Tue, 01 Jan 2002 00:00:00 +0000

This is a blog of miscellaneous topics drawn mainly from life experiences, observations and reflections. As well I write with gratitude about about people I have met who have influenced me. Some of the posts were rescued from an earlier blog and re-published here in 2019 (which explains the dates stretching back nearly 20 years).

Paul Howson
March 2020