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366 unusual things: days 329 – 333

24th Nov – A beautiful dark-haired girl in a brief flowery skirt and briefer white t-shirt was scooping raspberry ice cream while I waited for her to serve me;  my eyes were fixed on her scooping arm and its six inch high tattoo of a skull and crossbones.

25th Nov – A very unusual day.  Went to Sydney to meet a German couple who have been my penpals for a couple of years.

We sat on the grass for a while in the cool of the afternoon, which for my German friends was unusual.  Where they live, it is forbidden.

Next to us was this work of art by Fiona Hall, A Folly for Mrs Macquarie. Mrs Macquarie was the wife of Lachlan Macquarie, an Australian governor from 1810 to 1821.  On his tomb is written “Father of Australia”.

At the apex of the quasi-Gothic folly is the raised arm and clasped dagger of the Macquarie crest. The barbed wire is a symbol of the white man’s act of dividing the land. The axe and scythe represent implements brought to Sydney by the First Fleet for clearing land for farming.

‘A Folly for Mrs Macquarie’, Fiona Hall, Sydney

The ceiling is decorated with sculptures of bones from native animals that once lived in this part of Sydney;  see below:

Ceiling, ‘A Folly for Mrs Macquarie’, Fiona Hall, Sydney

26th Nov – My dog was so excited when we returned from Sydney that he tore around a corner, spun out and blew a leg.  Now he walks on three.  It’s permanent.  🙁

27th Nov – Learnt from a radio program that one muscle exists only for smiling, the zygomaticus major.  It draws the angle of the mouth superiorly and posteriorly.  🙂

28th Nov – In the library, a pudgy, sweaty guy sprayed himself with deodorant around his neck, down the front of his shirt and over his head.

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Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Liquid

Ailsa has been in some pretty rainy places recently and had no trouble finding reflective puddles of liquid:  http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/11/23/travel-theme-liquid/

But since my source of photos is from Egypt, an ancient country where rain falls little and seldom, I thought of the two photos here below that show ingenious methods of sustaining life in a dry land.  During the Hellenistic era (333 – 30 BC) two technological devices were invented to transfer water to farmlands from the Nile or from underground wells fed by the Nile.  The first photo is of a saqiya or Persian water-wheel, a machine which freed up human labour for tasks other than manually carrying buckets of water from the Nile to the crops, or lifting buckets of water from the river and pouring it into a channel.  The saqiya uses animal power: bullocks, buffalo, donkeys, camels or cows, which tread circles around the horizontal wheel, turning the vertical wheel connected to the clay-pot laden wheel.  The pots are positioned on a set of ropes so they tilt forward when they rise out of the well and empty into a trough before descending into the well to fill again.

Thousands of saqiyas are still in use today in Egypt.

Irrigation, Egypt, c1941

In the second photo, a device called a tambour, or Archimedes Screw, consists of a large tube inside which a spiral chamber turns and scoops up water when rotated by a handle.  The water travels up the length of the screw chamber and is poured out the top of the tube into irrigation channels. Its inventor, Archimedes, is said to have been the first to use the water screw, in 230 BC.  This technology is now rare in Egypt but is still used for irrigation in other parts of the world.

Irrigation and farming in Egypt, c1941
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Weekly photo challenge: Green

The green moss on this rock brought out the amateur photographer in me.  Outdoor workers call it high-visibility green and wear vests of this colour, all the better for us to see them with, but it doesn’t make them as pretty as these rocks by the sea on the south coast of New South Wales.

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Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Mystical & Mysterious

Ailsa has posted some photos of misty, mysterious and mystical forests that stopped her in her tracks:  http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/11/16/travel-theme-mystical/.  She succumbed to the temptation to capture a scene that can’t quite be explained, as did the man behind the camera in Fort Capuzzo, below.

In 1940, when Libya was still an Italian colony,  this frontier fort on the Libyan-Egyptian border was bombarded into the pitiful state you see in the photo below. In 1940 and 1941, Fort Capuzzo changed hands seven times back and forth between the allied and axis forces, finally falling to New Zealand troops who captured it for the last time in November 1941.

In the little grotto, a statue of Mary survived the beatings.  Whether the photographer was Catholic or not, he evidently found her survival mysterious, hard to explain.  So do I.

Fort Capuzzo, Italian Libya, 1941
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Ailsa's photo challenge: Soft

Ailsa’s photos of soft things are excellent pieces of photography.  She found something soft that’s normally scratchy and hard-edged:  grass.  You must see it:  http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/11/09/travel-theme-soft/

I, too, found a photo of something soft in a hard place.

Finding a soft thing in a blokey shed is rare.  When we found this possum curled up on top of an old wardrobe cum tool cupboard, we tempted him with his favourite food, fruit, and he kindly sat up and took the piece of apple for our photographic benefit.  My husband took this excellent shot.

I have to confess that though his fur looks soft, I can’t confirm it.  Possums are vicious;  it’s wise to put the piece of fruit in front of the cute ball of fur and quickly withdraw your hand.

Possum eating apple, Canberra
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Weekly photo challenge: Renewal

Another photo from my father’s World War 2 album:  it’s not a sharp image, but it’s about renewal, and that’s what matters.

During the presence of Australian troops in Egypt, house boats on the River Nile were used for officers convalescing or on leave.  Earlier this year I posted a photo of Shepheard’s Hotel in Cairo where officers also spent time relaxing and renewing their spirits. On the same theme, Dad wrote a poem about time-out for officers and privates, called Seven Days’ Leave, a few verses of which I posted here.

Officers’ Convalescence, River Nile, Egypt, c1941
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Geometry: Andalusian Garden, Cairo

As the Nile flows through Cairo it is divided in two for a short space by Gezira Island.  And on this island there’s a public green space with a geometric layout called the Andalusian Garden.  It was designed by the architect Mahmoud Zulfiqar Bey in 1929 as a gift to his wife, and was originally used as a roller skating rink by members of the royal family.  In 1935 it was opened to the public, and in 1941 when my father was in Cairo during the war he visited this Moorish garden.  The park is now protected by a heritage classification.  Unfortunately the pool in the photo is now dry, but the terraces are still decorated with coloured mosaics which are not evident in this black and white photo, but photos on this blog site show the beautiful colours of the tiles and the excellent design of the garden.

Thank you Ahmad Omar for telling me the name of this garden.  The photo is from my father’s collection which he brought back from Egypt in 1942.

Andalusian Garden, Gezira Island, Cairo, Egypt, 1941
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Weekly photo challenge: Foreign and Spooky

When I saw the themes for this week’s photo challenges, Foreign (WordPress weekly challenge) and Spooky (Ailsa’s travel photo challenge), I knew exactly which photos I wanted to submit. They’ve given me the creeps since I was a child paging through my father’s war album from the Middle East.  While I’d linger over photos of pyramids, camels and Arabs, I’d glance quickly at these two, shiver, and turn the page.

The Foreign theme:  The photos are owned by me, an Australian, and it depicts a palace built in Egypt in Hindu-style architecture designed by a Frenchman for a Belgian, Baron Empain.  The architect, Alexandre Marcel, was inspired by the temples of Orissa in India and Angkor Wat in Cambodia.  The palace’s sculptures of Hindu divinities, mythical creatures and erotic French maidens are so out of place in this Muslim country that they attract the attention of looters and vandals.  The palace is in Heliopolis, now a suburb of Cairo, but at the time of building, between 1907 and 1911, it was a town apart, designed by the Baron out of a stretch of desert he bought from the British colonial government.  The Baron is buried under the Catholic basilica in Heliopolis, also commissioned by him, which you can see in a previous post.

The Spooky theme:  Where do I begin?  Both the interior and exterior of this reinforced concrete structure are crumbling and graffitied.  Once decorated by Georges-Louis Claude in the French style, it had frescoes, parquet floors, gilded ceilings, gold-plated doorknobs, Belgian mirrors, and a spiral staircase in a tower sitting on a revolving base.  It must have been beautiful.  Now it’s bare, the only inhabitants bats and stray dogs.  And ghosts.  Not only is the palace said to be haunted, but some say Satanic rituals are practised there and that some of the mirrors are stained with blood.   The Baron’s sister died when she fell from the tower and his psychologically disturbed daughter died in one of the basement chambers.

Its dark history has kept the palace closed to the public.  Since 2005 it has been owned by the Egyptian government which has made a few attempts to find restorers, but plans have always come to nothing.  This year, however, the government announced a definite restoration project to transform the palace into a cultural centre…

Baron Empain palace gates, Heliopolis, Cairo, c1941
Baron Empain palace, Heliopolis, Cairo, c1941

More photos of the palace exterior in its present decrepit state can be found here.

And Ailsa’s spooky photos can be found here.

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366 unusual things: days 294 – 298

20th Oct – On someone else’s computer I saw, for the first time, an advertisement on my blog.  It’s for an expensive car.  My husband reckons the car maker chose my blog for its readers.

21st Oct – Some kangaroos love the beach as much as I do.

Kangaroos, Murramarang Resort, Murramarang National Park, NSW

22nd Oct – A man I know who was from childhood a practising atheist, and who in recent years became a Protestant, has recently been baptised as a Catholic.  A coincidence for me – I’ve just translated a story about a character who did exactly that.

23rd Oct – 30th wedding anniversary today.

24th Oct – A female politician (the PM) has loudly accused a male politician (L of the O) of being a misogynist and sexist.  Yet I heard today that he cycles long distances every year to raise buckets of money for good causes including breast cancer research, a women’s shelter and Carers Australia.

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Ailsa's travel photo challenge: Couples

For her photo challenge this week, Ailsa showed us some couples captured on camera:  a couple hand-in-hand on the beach and various other couples, human and non-human.  http://wheresmybackpack.com/2012/10/19/travel-theme-couples/

When my father was in the Middle East he was surrounded by men and nurses.  Mostly men.  Sometimes they were soldiers in a war;  sometimes they were larrikins.  (The Australian Oxford Dictionary’s definition of larrikin is ‘a person who acts with apparent disregard for social or political conventions’.)

These soldiers look like they’re on a roof.  Don’t tell me they’re acting as Bathsheba bathing on the roof and King David wooing her with his flute!  Well, then, they’re imitating one of history’s most famous couples.  I seem to remember that Bathsheba was beautiful…