just working-working, not much else to report at present, besides some wildlife and tamelife. I thought the snakes all came out in October, but I must be wrong about that given the number of baby king browns at the moment (seen one a day for 4 days now). I’m pretty sure that the gap under my front door would only let through snakes with mouths that aren’t big enough to bite humans, but I’m hoping to to have to test this. I’ve blocked up the other big holes but that one’s going to be hard, and it’s my main way of getting cool air in in the evening. Other wildlife includes a heap of birds of various sorts, and a semi-feral cat. I’m not sure if tourists are wild or tame.
Today was a good day for tourist spotting. BE and I were outside the building next to the council office working (it’s the Queen’s Birthday weekend so school was closed, but we worked anyway, although BE thought that real gardiyas should respect the Queen and not work today). We didn’t quite do what Peter Austin is rumoured to have done in Birdsville as a PhD student: that is, to talk Diyari in front of tourists, who thought he was a local and that all the white people in Birdsville spoke Diyari, and they got their photos taken and all. They clearly couldn’t tell if BE was speaking English or something else (something I have always found bizarre, since I’ve never had any trouble understanding her, but then I can’t work out why people think I’m a yank so there’s obviously something about language perception that I don’t get…). We speculated about them for a while in Bardi, then came to my house for some quieter and less public work and dinner (ie lunch). We did the put project stimuli, which was useful (no particularly new constructions for me but it’s good to have them in one place) and a set of photos which show blended animals and other objects (e.g. a beetle with a car as its carapace). They were a lot of fun and cool stuff came out of that. I need to check with the person I was running that experiment for if it’s ok to post a picture or two and more info: stay tuned.
We’re about halfway through the Laves texts now, so we’re on track. I’m of course very behind in transcription.
Anggarrgoon 
Oh, so that’s the Peter Austin whom I saw on Monday at this conference in Paris? I came way too late for his talk (stupid bank), but there was a question-&-answer session where he made a nice remark about the French language policy and got roaring applause.
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