Week 12/2026: Semaphore & Juliet

Week of 16 March 2026

Another late post! So much going on . . .

This post is wholly researched and written by me. I do not use AI in my writing. I will always bring you my stories in my real human voice.

Semaphore & Juliet

Semaphore Score

On Thursday I went to a talk with Margaret Woodward and Theresa Sainty about Margaret’s Semaphore Score exhibition that I wrote about last week, and how she worked with Theresa to incorporate palawa kani, the language of Tasmanian Aboriginal people, into the work.

It was an interesting conversation that supplemented Margaret’s artist talk last week.

Margaret spoke about the experience of signalling Theresa’s welcome message in code at The Unconformity in 2025 and how it had seemed like everything had lined up to make this happen: the words, the weather and the place. She said there had been an energy that everyone who was there had felt.

Theresa observed that the original code book had been written in the language of oppression, and that Margaret’s work represented the coming together of two languages, one of which was not allowed to be practiced at the time the dictionary was in use. She spoke about truth-telling and about the original journals of the colonists, who had recorded some of the speech of the Tasmanian Aboriginal people. These recordings represented their oral history and it’s the only way to access the history that’s been taken from them. The journals also played a big part in helping Theresa and others to reconstruct the language known as palawa kani.

She also pointed out that these journals had said exactly what the colonisers had done, which means they hold truths that had been kept hidden for many years.

Margaret spoke about her time in the archives doing her research and how she felt it dissolved boundaries between past, present and future. She noted how some words and phrases from the original dictionary are relevant to today but take on a different meaning in 2026 to what they had in 1868 when the dictionary was compiled.

She said it was exciting for her when people take the code and make their own messages. The web log, where the messages are transmitted, reveals something about the place they are written in. She said the messages written in Queenstown were very different to those currently being written in Nipaluna/Hobart.

I wonder who wrote this one?

& Juliet

& Juliet is an imagining of what might have happened if Juliet hadn’t died at the end of Romeo and Juliet. Written by David West Read (Schitt’s Creek), this show is set to well-known pop songs by Max Martin, originally performed by 90s pop stars like Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys and Katy Perry.

I went to the Theatre Royal to see John X Presents’ production of the show on Saturday afternoon. I booked at the last minute and managed to score myself a seat where the person in front of me’s head was right in the middle of my line of sight, so I know never to book that seat again!

The story didn’t go where I expected it to, which was cool, and the whole show was a lot of fun. I recognised several of the cast members from other shows.

I was super impressed by the Auslan interpreter, Ben, who translated the entire two-plus hour show. And in the finale, the cast had all learned the song “Roar” in Auslan, which was a wonderful way to end the performance.

Congratulations to everyone involved. I had a great afternoon.

Habit tracker

• 15 minutes morning exercise sequence (7 days): 7/7
• Hip or shoulder sequence exercises (5 days): 5/5
• Walk (7 days): 5/7
• Thinking time (4 days): 1/4
• Morning planning routine (4 days): 0/4
• Mid-day journalling (7 days): 2/7
• Work shutdown (4 days): 0/4
• 9.30 shutdown (6 days): 0/6
• Evening routine (7 days): 5/7

Summary of the week

This week I learned

There is a reason I put my yoga mat by the front door on Sunday night. It’s so I can collect it on the way out the door on Monday . . .

The origin of the word ‘female’ has nothing to do with male. It derives from the Medieval Latin femella, a diminutive form of femina, a woman. It was altered in Middle English to ‘female’, which gives the impression that a woman is a version/variation/subset of a man. (Male deriving from the Latin masculus.)

I also earned that the word ‘interlard’ means ‘to lard, or stuff, lean meat with fat’. Metaphorically, it means to mix the solid part of a discourse with fulsome and irrelevant matter. Thus we might say, ‘to interlard something with oaths, compliments,’ etc.

Or bureaucratese.

This week I noticed

A pop-up ad on a website that says “Unlock next-level directorship” and I read it as “next-level dictatorship” and I think that says a lot about the world.

The prime minister and a bunch of dignitaries including the king and queen of Denmark were in town on Thursday.

Photos of the week

On Saturday there was a hazard reduction burn on Kriwalayti/Mount Nelson.

It made the city very smoky.

Reading

• Let Them by Mel Robbins
• Dopamine Nation by Anna Lembke
• The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories. From Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce. Selected by Michale Newton

Watching

• & Juliet (John X Presents)
• Deadloch Season 2

Listening

• Bohemia by Van Diemen’s Band
• PBS Radio (IrvineJUMP!)