Leanne Cole and Laura Macky have a blogging challenge to find a sight that looks superb in black and white: Monochrome Madness.
I presently live in a city where there are no billboards and very little advertising visible anywhere, except occasionally in bus stop shelters. And there are no overhead wires for trams because there are no trams. So when I visited Melbourne last week these very things were constantly capturing my attention, the omnipresent messages and photos in street advertising, and the straight dark lines of overhead tram wires.
When I saw these images of a beautiful man and woman, labelled Man and Woman, disfigured, from anyone’s viewpoint down below in the street, by the tram wires, I made a judgement and learnt two things. 1. It’s good to live without advertising telling me how unbeautiful I am. 2. Trams are fun and functional and I’d be happy to live with wires criss-crossing above me.
Here’s my photo of Monochrome Melbourne.
Toorak Rd, South Yarra, Melbourne, late afternoon, Anzac Day 2014
This month I visited Wangaratta in Victoria. The town’s name comes from two aboriginal words meaning ‘resting place of the cormorants’. I’ve been here many times before but this time I saw a forest and an unfinished cathedral I never knew about.
As I entered the forest I was faced with a fork. I took the left prong.
North Beaches Reserve, Wangaratta
It led to two beaches, or rather sandy strips on the edge of the Ovens River. In the late afternoon, the view was a series of horizontal panels.
Platypus Beach, Ovens River, Wangaratta
Many trees fallen on the forest floor have been sawn into pieces, making perfect hideaways for small creatures hiding from numerous unleashed dogs being taken for their daily walk. This tiny mouselike marsupial sneaked in and out of the layers of timber as I crept closer with my camera. Can you see him? I think he’s called antechinus, one of our native fauna. But I’m no expert.
Small forest inhabitant, Wangaratta
These photos make the forest look a dull green-grey place, but there was the odd orange fungus to break the monotones.
Fungus, North Beaches, Wangaratta
On the way back from the forest I passed a stunning cathedral made from large granite blocks quarried from the nearby Warby Ranges. Unfortunately, even a truly beautiful object has at least one flaw, and a closer look at the church revealed its imperfection. The bell tower was never added when the rest of the building was being constructed, though there was every good intention to finish the structure. The original granite quarry has now been turned into a park, but the granite could be obtained from elsewhere if a million dollars were provided. That’s the estimated cost. Anyone out there with a lazy million, looking for a project? In the meantime the bells hang and ring in this timber and steel tower that looks like it’s just landed.
Anglican Church and bell tower, Wangaratta at dusk
Church side garden
Unfinished wall, Anglican Church, Wangaratta
There are nine bells in all. At the top is an Angelus bell, and half-way down hang eight magnificent bells which were cast in Gloucester, England, in 1806 to celebrate Nelson’s victory in the Battle of Trafalgar. For 171 years they hung in St George’s church in Bolton, Lancashire, until the church became redundant. They were purchased with Wangaratta cathedral funds and brought to Australia, after which the present curious tower was built in 1983. These bells are the oldest full peal in Australia, rung by a team of bell ringers on Sunday mornings and for special occasions.
Taking one trip EVERY month is the idea of Marianne from East of Málaga in Spain. Not that I need to be told to go places – getting out of the house and even out of town once a month is not something I need an excuse for. But, thanks Marianne for prompting me to write about some of the things I see along the way. And thanks for your last trip post here.
This month we went to the southern highlands of New South Wales, stopping at Bowral and Sutton Forest. It’s a region of retirees and tourists and businesses that accommodate one or the other. (I’m neither; I was visiting an aunty, who is retired.) Historically, Bowral was a rural retreat for the well-heeled of Sydney who built a number of manor houses on large estates, many of them now accommodation for expensive weekends away. These days there are also a large number of homes owned by ex-Sydney residents who’ve worked hard all their lives and can afford a comfortable retirement in this cool, green, historical region. Bowral is also famous for its association with cricketer Sir Donald Bradman, which is interesting if you like cricket.
Garden lighthouse Bowral
In Bowral there are big big houses where the rich have indulged their whims. Let’s say you made your money sailing the seas. Then you could build a lighthouse-type structure in your garden and pretend you’re still out there on the ocean watching for land. But not everyone in Bowral’s history has had buckets of money.
There are still a few poor cottages scattered surprisingly here and there.
It’s a place where nature has been tamed to suit the formal tastes of European settlers, with pines in lines and hedges with edges. The garden seat in my header, off to the side under shady trees, was much more inviting than these stiff square plantings. Not to worry, untamed Australian bush is never far away – once you’re out of town and back on the highway, this is all you see either side of the road.
The southern highlands attracts people with money and where there’s money there’s shops, particularly shops that sell non-essentials: craft shops, antique shops, home decorating shops, country clothing shops and book shops (actually, book shops are essential). In Sutton Forest there’s even a shop for everything, called The Everything Store, with an American flag flying beside two Australian flags. There are markets selling fruit and vegies and cakes and nuts. This one had all sorts of things hanging from the ceiling, even a colourful umbrella sheltering garlic bulbs. I was amused by the nut warning, which we find on everything now, even on nuts!
On the way back we passed Lake George which is presently empty and used by farmers to graze sheep and cattle. It’s an endorheic lake, meaning it doesn’t flow into rivers or the sea, and fills and dries out for short or long periods. I’ve lived in this region for 17 years and rarely seen it full or even half full. It all seems very mysterious, and urban myth makers make the most of the disappearance of the water and its destinations. In the past decade the ridge on the lake’s south-eastern side has been embellished with 67 wind turbines, making the Capital Wind Farm the largest in New South Wales. Here’s a photo I took as we drove past: lots of clouds, ridges, wind turbines and sheep. Zoom in to see.
You know you’re close to Canberra when you see Black Mountain Tower come into view. It’s a comforting sight, knowing the long trip is nearly at an end. The layers of ridges of the Brindabella Ranges are so beautiful from this point on the road that it’s like driving into a landscape painting.
Thanks for reading about our trip to the southern highlands. And thanks to Marianne for her challenge to take one trip EVERY month.
This month I took a trip without leaving town: my husband and I hopped on our bikes and rode to the National Botanic Gardens.
I posted about the Gardens not long ago, here. But what I didn’t tell you is that it’s a great place to de-stress. Just take a look at the Eastern Water Dragon up in the header. Is he stressed? Nup. He strolled up onto the café deck from the forest floor to sun himself, not at all afraid of the visitors. The dragons are a thrill for café customers taking morning tea. But of course you can’t go there for coffee and cake and leave without exploring the unique gardens and forests and the comprehensive collection of native Australian plants.
Up in the dry gardens, there are tall eucalyptus trees that are a living support system for other life forms like staghorns and climbing hardenbergia and fungus. How beautiful are the burnt black and rust tones of the flaky bark on that tree I spotted near the bike racks! It’s simply nature imitating art. Down in the rainforest, accessible by timber steps and boardwalks, it’s darker and the atmosphere is noticeably cooler and more humid. I read the sign telling me to ‘breathe’, and instinctively did. The air was fresh and cool and clean. Here, tree ferns and Stream lilies, ‘Helmholtzia glaberrima’, one of the few flowers in these Botanic Gardens, grow in lush gardens beside the stream that flows below the wooden path you’re walking on. Writing about it makes me want to go there right now.
I wonder where March will take me!
Marianne at East of Málaga came up with this idea of taking a trip every month. Check out her February trip post to the Rock of Gibraltar.
On the lower slopes of Black Mountain in Canberra is a unique form of Botanic Gardens. The entrance seems to promise a dry native forest, but the gardens offer examples of all kinds of Australian native plants, and nothing but. We rode our bikes here this morning, and as I walked my bike up the incline of the entrance, I snapped Black Mountain Tower and admired the symmetry of trees either side. This is Canberra. The city of symmetry.
With many native plants hailing from the warmer tropical parts of the country, it’s tricky to keep them alive here in the cool capital where we have several months of frost and very low temperatures. Yet, in an old dry eucalypt gully, a rainforest has been developed with the addition of 2,000 misting sprinklers that keep the humidity high and allow specimens from the tropical north to survive. The rainforest canopy is dense and keeps out any light breeze; the only agitation today is the flitting and scurrying of birds and lizards on the forest floor.
Signs along the rainforest boardwalks say that Australia once looked like this all over, cool and damp, dark green and fungal. These timber boards are gradually returning to that wilderness state, but as they wear down into a more natural form they make a good canvas for shifting shapes.
Marianne at East of Málaga says we take trips at least once a month. Some of us go to countries at the other end of the world and towns on the other side of the continent. But we all leave our dwelling places now and then and, intentionally or not, end up in a park or an orchard or a beach we’ve never been to. Marianne wants to know where we go, where our trips, long and short, take us.
For Christmas I was given The Best Women’s Travel Writing, Volume 9 and over the past days I’ve read six or seven of the stories. I’ve noticed that, like a good tale, each one builds in tension until there’s a turning point, a part where something bad happens and a solution has to be found.
My piece of travel writing won’t end up in The Best Women’s Travel Writing Volume 10; it was just a happy trip to the south coast of NSW, trouble-free from start to finish. Just one day, a short holiday. The only turning point was at our destination, at the end of the afternoon, turning the car homewards.
We like to take our time, to stop and smell the coffee. So after an hour in the car we typically stop in an old country town, Braidwood, for morning tea. This day, we found many of the cafés were closed, the owners away for their summer holidays. But behind the shops of the main street a small bakery-café was still open, operating in an old rusty-roofed cottage, with some empty tables and chairs outside under the grey dry sky. Under the roof, above the door, out of sight here, some dried bread dough letters form a curious introduction to the bakery: “Fee fi fo fum”.
Dojo Bakery, Braidwood, NSW
From Braidwood we drove up over the misty mountains and down to the sea. Our second stop for the day was at Circuit Beach. Last week you might have seen some photos of my family skipping stones here. It was a tricky little bay of a beach, with a multitude of flat stones, trunky gum trees and a small cave.
Circuit Beach NSW
If Circuit Beach is good for paddling and stone-throwing, it’s no good for bodysurfing. So we moved on to Malua Bay and found a beach divided: a flagged area for swimming, and a no-go zone for swimmers. My lot said the waves were piddly, and the surfers might have agreed.
No swimming. Unless you can dodge surfboards.
Real men need real waves, so we drove on till we found a place with a rugged name, Guerilla Bay, where cliffs were steep and corroded, and grey mounds of rock rose above the sea. But you can’t surf water that’s millpond flat. It was only good for stone-throwing, which I’ve discovered looks great in black and white.
Guerilla Bay NSW
We hadn’t given up, because there was always the old favourite to fall back on, a beach which deserves its name, Surf Beach. The sun came out for the first time that day, the others went swimming and I sat on the beach photographing them. They’re in the water, far out, where real men surf. And I’m safe on the sand.
Surf Beach, NSW
Pretty good day, huh? It’s worth the two hours in the car to get there, and another hour driving from beach to beach to beach, and the two hours back again. Back home inland, I laid a few shells on the windowsill to remind me to return to this place of rare pleasure.
But there was another reminder, at my local shop. They’ve started selling Dojo bread that comes up from Braidwood three times a week. It’s good bread, but I need my strong arm to get the knife through the tough crust. Fee fi fo fum.
A few days ago a few of us from my family went to the south coast for the day. We tried four beaches, but this one was the best for skipping stones: Circuit Beach. I took these action shots as my husband and two of our sons sent those stones back into the ocean.
Skipping stones, Circuit Beach, NSWSkipping stones, Circuit Beach, NSW
A window to this artist is not just a transparent barrier between him and the weather. It’s a place for colours and picture tiles and wooden shutters and an iron grill. The plaque says: “In this house the painter Willy Mucha lived and worked from 1940 to 1995. Friends of Willy Mucha.” See how he has inlaid some tiles in the wall around the window frame?
I found a small image of one of his paintings and pasted it below. It’s Collioure in its sunniest colours.
Willy Mucha’s window, Collioure, FranceCiel jaune sur Collioure (Yellow sky over Collioure), Willy Mucha
Two photo challenges this week have prompted me to think of one family’s Christmas effort. The WP challenge was ‘Grand’, and Ailsa’s challenge was ‘Symbol’, in honour of Nelson Mandela. Well, last night, here in Canberra, I found a ‘Grand Symbol’!
Lights are a symbol of hope, always appropriate at Christmas. And when someone wins the Guinness World Record for the year for the most Christmas lights decorating a property, it’s because they’ve made a grand effort.
Last night we drove to the winning house and I took some photos. My camera’s not great for night photography and my skills are barely even those of an amateur, but you’ll get an idea of what it must be like to live in the same street with such a winner. All the surrounding houses were remarkable for their darkness; perhaps they feel a pointlessness in competing. This grand display might even be a bit hard to endure night after night through the Christmas period: there are traffic controls at that end of the street, cars parked up and down all the nearby streets, and of course the multicoloured glow for several hours.
We walked through the garden of lights, entering on the left side of the front yard and exiting at the right. Strings of LEDs, many of them white, some of them red, blue and green, flashed on and off, not rapidly, but at regular intervals changing the show. For me, the glaring white was not pleasant and kept me from lingering long amid the display. It had the effect of mid-summer sunlight on white concrete. In the past, coloured lightbulbs were warmer and, indeed, more colourful. But I know, I know, they’re not ‘green’.
Tall pine tree trunk covered in Christmas lightsChristmas lights decorating pine tree and hedge
However, I appreciate the effort these people have put into their decorations, and it’s important to know that, as each visitor enters, they are asked to donate to the Sids and Kids charity.
Wall of Christmas lightsThe real and the unreal: Moon shining down on a Christmas star
In Wellington, New Zealand, there’s a wooden church that’s a church by name but not by nature. From the outside, it’s small, cream, nineteenth-century, Gothic Revival. Quaint.
Old St Paul’s, 1865, Wellington, NZ
When the ‘open’ sign is displayed, visitors are welcome. And when they step inside, many exclaim ‘Wow!’. They don’t expect to see an interior composed entirely of rich native timbers like kauri, rimu, totara and matai. The eye goes straight to the vault, which resembles the upturned hull of an ancient vessel. And visitors don’t expect an old church to smell so good. The timber has not lost its fragrant essence over the centuries. It reminded me of a small cedar box I own; I’ve had it for thirty years, yet with each opening of the lid it releases a heady fragrance forcing me to inhale deeply. And so it was when I entered this church. I wanted to return, to worship. But it now serves only for concerts and events like weddings.
Interior, Old St Paul’s, 1865, Wellington NZ
Ailsa has posted a challenge this week for photos evoking a particular fragrance. For anyone who has been inside Old St Paul’s in Wellington, this photo will have you breathing and remembering.
