New Fort Design poll!

Seems Lt Amilcar got on the beetle-nut while was I was out briefly (shoring up allegiances among the Topasses, and looking for Sandlewood). He's redesigned the entire fort.

Check the starboard bow, Marineiros, its a new poll!

Banksy

"Any advertisement in public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It belongs to you. It's yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. Asking for permission is like asking to keep the rock someone just threw at your head" - Banksy

Check out more of Banksy's online catalogue here.

West Bank Barrier, Palestine.

Ned Kelly: 'Nobody knows anything about my case except myself'

Sidney Nolan (1945). In my ill-informed opinion, the most evocative of the Ned Kelly series.

A Mãe de todas as Fortalezas - Torre de Belem

As far as we here at BmL are concerned, this is a goddamn holy site. The mother ship. The mother lode.

The mother of all fortalezas.

All BmListas verdadeiras must - at least once - make the pilgrimage.

This is Torre de Belem.

In the pre-dawn gloom, Os Capitãos take early service in the Capella near Mosteiro dos Jerónimos - the final resting place of da Gama and Camões. They then pray to the Virgin of Safe Homecoming on the Torre that these are not their last steps on Portuguese soil, and board the thousand caravels of the great Age of Discovery.

From 1515 on, they will all hoist sail here, by the Torre, on the Tagus, in Lisbon. This Manueline masterpiece was first fort, then prison under the Espanhois *spits*  (who call it "belem", when every true son knows its pronounced "blengggg") - customs house, barracks - but always, always a symbol of Os Navegados.

Built 1515-1521, UNESCO listed in 1983. Take off your tricorn, Lt Amilcar, where do you think you're at?

Welcome to the Jungle (2007)

Well, I don't know about you, but I'd just about watch any film set in Fiji, PNG and West Papua. The fact that this proved to be an absolute cracker was just a bonus. Loosely inspired by the mystery surrounding the disappearance in PNG of Michael Rockefeller in 1961, this 2007 horror-thriller follows two US and two Australian backpackers through the wilds of New Guinea. In a Blair Witch project meets Deliverance style, they film their own progress as things get increasingly remote and freaky.

I won't spoil the ending, though I will note that the encounter with Indonesian guards at the West Papuan border provided a few thrills in itself. I also found the dialogue between the characters - as their own relationships deteriorate - well above average quality, and genuinely amusing. Nice to see the South-West Pacific feature in commercial film at any rate - even if it is through the 'undiscovered tribe' trope. Know any others?

At the Home of all Fortalezas

Os meus BmListas...

Lisbon has called me home on urgent business, and I am currently encamped in Coimbra, reviewing my notes for a forthcoming text on Dutch shipping routes in the greater Solor/ Larantuka region.

Any urgent matters can be raised via the fort-gate suggestions box, and please feed João the tiger-cat if you see him out front. He likes ship biscuits best.

Oh, and tell Lt Amilcar I got him the 'O meu Capitão went to Torre de Belem, and all I got was this lousy camisa' he wanted.

Ate logo!

Vanuatu

Its a beautiful place. Pray tell, punteros, why are we so ill-attuned to the Pacific in general? Particularly those among us - including your 'umble correspondent - who grew up in Quinceland? (I'm prepared to give Sandgropers a free pass on this one).

Is it a generational (X) thing? Were our colonialist forebears more engaged with those imperial territories before the waves of independence in the 1970s? Will the young 'uns be more so than us, owing to the recent Australian interventions in the so-called "arc of responsibility"? Is it because people my age encountered an independent Pacific and lost interest? Or is it simply a case of "hang on, I'm still getting used to the whole Asia deal - slow down!". Or is it something more prosaic, like low rates of travel, and therefore higher airfares? The latter is certainly a dated view these days, what with the decline of QANTAS monopolies in the region.

Anyway, I was there for work, but had one day touring the island of Efate; home to the capital, Port Vila. The bottom picture attests my nerdy interest in colonial history. As you may know, Vanuatu was formerly the New Hebrides and - unusually - under the control of the joint Anglo/ French Condominium (otherwise known as the 'Pandemonium').

But that's easy. Quiz time is harder than that! Whoever correctly identifies the smaller flag below the Tricoleur (not you, World of Yentl) is this month's Capitão do Fortaleza at BmL! (Click for higher-res, if you want a closer squiz.)

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Ghosts of the Yeoman Dream: Lucky Country (2009)

For this to me is what New Australia means, to the landless, the homeless . . . to those who long to be manly, to be true... Come together, in all unselfishness, to trust each other and to be free. To live simply, to work hardly, to win not the gold that poisons but that home life that saves....

I really never thought I'd see an Australian film open with the words of William Lane, the 1890s utopian socialist and teetotaler who took 400 Australians to Paraguay in 1893. Somehow the movie Lucky Country (2009) passed me by without a trace last year. But its a cracker. Best Australian film I've seen in years. Where Lane imagined a collective settlement in the heart of South America, this film is set on a harsh, marginal individual selection somewhere in Australian scrub in 1902. Australian land reform movements of the late nineteenth century did lead to some marginal property being forced from squatters hands by colonial governments,  as a sop to the Yeoman dream: a vision of an agrarian society of smallholders, of a man and his family leading a stolid, moral life on the land, away from urban vice. Of course, in the land of the long white scam, most decent land actually went to the squatters' dummy bidders, and this sets the stage for the film: one Yeoman nightmare, shortly after federation.

The swaggies don't pass by anymore, but three Boer war veterans returning in failure from prospecting do. The rest I'll leave, in case you want to see it.

"Bet ya thought it was going to be all Henry bloody Lawson didn’t ya?".

You can see a trailer here.

Fort Temperança

Here at BmL, we've taken the pledge. The Febfast pledge!

Word from the Capitão is: absolutely no drinking vinho verde and hanging out over the fort walls, yelling abuse at the Holandês, and/or any rebellious Topasses laying siege to our sandalwood booty, for four whole weeks.

Plan is not so much to raise funds for, um, whatever it raises funds for (haven't actually looked - but I will, and will totes donate some of the savings), but rather, to see if we can't erm, circumnavigate certain waist latitudes better after 4 weeks off the weekend boozing.

I'm glad they picked Fevereiro anyway. Only 28 days of this merda.