Category: Creative


I just returned from over two weeks away on holidays in Canberra and at Callala Beach (Jervis Bay). It was a very relaxing time away with the family doing very, very little (a stark contrast to normal life!)

We spent the first four days at Canberra, doing every tourist ‘thing’ we could fit in to our schedule: Parliament House, Questacon, National Museum, Telstra Tower, Australian Institute of Sport, Cockington Gardens, Planetarium, and more! It was great to get ‘distracted’ by the destination!

The remaining ten days were spent at Callala Beach, on Jervis Bay, near Nowra. Lots of time doing very little. In fact, the most ‘productive’ activity was sorting 5,000 digital photos on my hard disk, and culling it down to 2,000. From that, we selected 300 which we then printed on paper. Quite an effort–especially considering I tweaked all the photos in Photoshop first (levels, dodge and burn, and even some desaturations into B&W).

I returned to face 400 emails, but got them down to 100 quickly. Spent a day answering them, and now I’m back on track, but feeling a bit exhausted. Maybe it’s time for another holiday…!

The Futter Hall at The Kings School-- The new venue for TWIST

The continued growth of TWIST, the music conference of Emu Music and Youthworks is causing more growing pains. As a result of three years of capacity crowds, despite increasing the venue size every year, we need somewhere larger.

To solve this problem, we will be moving this year to The Kings School, in Parramatta, to a venue that can seat in excess of 1000 people.

This year’s conference will be held on Sat 12th – Sun 13th August, 2006. Our guest speaker is John Dickson.

For full details, including online registration, visit www.twist.org.au

Singing at the TWIST Live Recording

It was a great thrill to be a part of the TWIST Music Conference last weekend. This important event provides training and encouragement for people involved with music ministry in their local church.

During the weekend, I MC’d the main sessions (including the special live recording on the Saturday night for the upcoming EMU Music Live CD). I also conducted training sessions on the topics “Youth Ministry and Music” and “Rethinking Church”.

To read more about the conference, check out the recent article in sydneyanglicans.net titled “TWIST – but don’t shout.” You can also visit the official TWIST website at www.twist.org.au

Read article online at www.sydneyanglicans.net, click here. To discuss the article, visit the forums at sydneyanglicans.net.

Last night I attended the Nathan Tasker concert in Chatswood. What a great night! Nathan has come an incredible way since he first started playing songs in front of his school mates in the early 90’s!

I had the privilege of managing Nathan’s music career during the time he launched his first two CDs. It was an exciting and rocky road, especially with the mega concert at the Homebush State Sports Centre in 1997 that turned out to be a little less mega than we had hoped!

Nathan continues to write wonderful songs that present the gospel of Jesus in a way that is both faithful to scripture and musically outstanding. His band last night was excellent, perfectly capturing the CD arrangements, whilst adding a great ‘live’ feel.

For more details on Nathan’s music visit http://www.nathantasker.com/