videos

Been in Melbourne all week, so not much to report. New hobby is the canoe video...

It's quite interesting thinking about what to leave out - these both started out with more than 50 minutes..

Winter proper

 One of many Red Hands pieces around Sydney - unfortunately I didn't get to take my classes to any of them this time around, partly due to the weather and partly due to injury. Yo have to be impressed by the chemistry that has kept this in pretty much pristine condition for, I imagine, 200 odd years. I doubt much re-touching has been going on since then. There are quite a few other grey/black images, but they are certainly harder to see.

One of the original design studios in the gentrification of Marrickville, Red Dog, has moved on. We picked up a couple of prints in their fairly characteristic blocky style for an acceptable "last days" price, and here's one of them. The flowers are dead, but I buy Liz so few that she usually keeps them well past their use by date. This lot has stood up well.

Vivid, below.

The first picture shows off the new phone technology; it takes two pictures at once and blends them together. What it doesn't do is offer much control over the inset picture - still, getting this kind of stuff right is as much trial and error as it is anything else, so no doubt when I get my next phone in two years time it will all work much better.

We're at a restaurant called Portobello - not clear why - on Circular Quay. Surprisingly they didn't gouge us for the view, and the bill was less than is would have been at our local pub.

These two shots give a fair idea of the "Light" aspect of the festival. There's notionally an "Ideas" and maybe an "Art" element as well, but really the whole thing seems a bit over-sold.  I mean, I like colour and movement as much as the next person, and I like a crowd too, so I absolutely enjoyed myself, but I can fairly say that if I had missed it I would have missed nothing, The more serious sides of the festival are under promoted - well, to be fair, since I don't pay a lot of attention to the media, I'm probably a hard person to promote to - to the extent that I missed Pharoah Sanders, one of my all time jazz heroes, performing.

This video, assuming it works, will give a good idea of the crowd. It was shot in front of Customs House. The light show there was perhaps the most pleasing, as it exploited the architecture as well as decorating it, but not amenable to video recording on a phone,

I was very impressed at how well the camera coped with the low light - I have a famously shaky hand, as well.

Finally, MCA looking like a 1980's arcade game. Kind of appropriate!

Burnum Burnum

Standing at water level at Burnum Burnum reserve in Woronora, looking up at the hill with the same name. It looks a bit like a giant staircase, the sandstone blocks surprisingly squared, and the tree trunks as balusters. I was surprised, given that the lens is pointing at the sky, that it took a 1/70 second exposure at f3.5 to get this shot. When I have the option, I always try to shoot at much faster speeds to minimise the effect of hand shake. I knew I wouldn't be running today (trying to nurse a sore hip through to next week's big run) so I took down my little point-and-shoot Fuji. It's only defect is a lack of manual focus, but otherwise there's not much

you can't play with.

On other shots of the river taken previously, you might have noticed the power lines that parallel the freeway bridge; I always do. Burnum Burnum is the hill that the pylons are attached to on the north side of the river. There's a nice set of tracks up and around the hill, but I suspect many of them were started by the engineers and technicians who put these in. Like all the best engineering, they're simple and elegant in their own way. Presumably the green and white insulators have different functions.

It was a cold crisp morning. The left channel is the main Woronora; the right branch terminates just out of shot at the Sutherland Canoe Club. Liz had a paddling lesson there from one of the great Australian paddlers, Joan Morison. Amongst the extraordinary number of  her extraordinary achievements is the completion of her 26th Hawkesbury Classic (remember, 110 kilometers at night) at 81, in 2012. She's well worth a google. She died last week, so she's on everybody's mind.

The view NNW is of Illawong.

 I just can't resist these shots. Irritatingly the auto-focus has picked out a leaf in the extreme lower left, but it's not too bad.

It's been wet here for the last two or three days, so there are a lot of fungi around.

This picture was intended to illustrate the amazing number of grass trees all at very similar stages of development - I imagine because of a major fire through here around 15-20 years ago. However, looking at it now, I can't see a single grass tree - only the charred tree in the foreground (and the charring is not at all obvious in the picture) with the substantial uncharred re-growth that underpin the speculation about the date of the fire. Anyway, take my word for it, in every picture except this, tens and tens of Xanthorreas

Woronora Bridge

This is the Woronora Bridge, built by Bob Carr and co. way back when - roughly 2000 - and a very impressive piece of architecture it is. Of course if you live in Bangor (at the top of the hill on the right) your peaceful isolated bush home now has the roar of a six lane highway less than 50 meters away. But you can get to work quickly. The old bridge can be seen at river level towards the background - it's two lanes wide and has a 15 km speed limit on approach.

The walkway under the bridge is broad and handsome. Wooden planks underfoot make it a pleasant surface to walk on, a little springier than you might expect.

The view isn't bad.

Finally an in-focus picture of a spider's web. (Turns out the phone has a "manual" focus facility)

Gum trees from above. Doesn't quite capture the oddness - from the ground the leaves dominate the canopy, but from above the tree seems almost leafless, well on the way to being dead.

The old road, also from above.

TVT Wolli Creek

Twin Valley Trail

The link goes to a not particularly good video; I have a lot to learn about editing. It's very bumpy. It's taken the 4 days after the heavy rains, so it looks pretty lush.  Usually I run this trail but I'm managing an injury at the moment, so this is at walking speed. Sadly at this stage the running videos are just too bumpy for viewing.

I think it gives a feel for the different elements. It's a heavily compromised landscape; quarry, earthworks, drains, parks and paths. For all that, it has charm.

 After a pruning frenzy, the back garden currently looks like this. This is the two lower storeys; the tops of the two tree ferns and the eucalypt have been cut off. I must say that I quite like the way the tap has held up as an aesthetic feature over the years. It started off as a water feature (and a lesson in the physics of cheap pumps), but now it's just there, gleaming gently. We've just picked a dozen oranges from the tree - considering that we do nothing to really maintain it.

 On Tuesday night Liz and I went to a classical concert at the Angel Place recital hall - this is the lane (China Lane, I think) outside. It was very interesting; a series called "Discovery", with the conductor, Richard Gill, discussing the piece in some detail first, with the aid of both a piano and fragments of the orchestra. The piece was Mahler's "Wanderer", three songs for baritone and orchestra. The orchestra was the Sydney Sinfonia, a training orchestra associated with, and mentored by, the Sydney Symphony. I'm no bigger fan of Mahler than I was previously, but I undeniably know more about what I'm not a fan of.

It was also interesting from the point of view of an educator, because the style was very much what I enjoy, which is a barrage of high speed information, but a well-illustrated barrage with both theory and practice. It wasn't to the taste of all the audience, though, because I heard one punter agreeing with another that the "first bit" had been incomprehensible.

Ability has taken over the whole of the building that we have been occupying for the past seven years now, and thanks to the corporate photos, I got to visit the second floor balcony (senior management). Reflected in the windows are the street trees and the UTS library opposite. I didn't quite manage the light, and the reflection from the upper two thirds has somewhat darkened the lower third.

Tempe Reserve at sunset - Liz is off running somewhere. This is the building site at Wolli Creek station. In the bottom photo you can barely make out the head and tail lights of the traffic on the Princes Highway. Members of the Tempe Motor Boat Association have turned in for the night. It's very tranquil.

Wet Sundays

 It was wet down at Woronora (Burnum Burnum Reserve) this AM, and has been all week no doubt. There were a lot of fungi on the casuarina litter behind the car park. I had a bit of time to kill post run and pre the Liz return, so I tested the camera's macro abilities. It struggled in both of these to sort out the auto focus; the background seems to be winning. Still, call it art, who knows?

I don't claim to be an expert on fungi - neither of these are familiar to me (not that I pay that much attention to my feet generally).

It was wet for the running, too. I posted some shots from here a few weeks ago - so imagine those rocks with water on them. In fact, pretty much every path was a small stream, causing me to wonder which came first, the path or the stream, in fact, so I ran fairly gingerly. Plus the uphills are hard work; the ridges are very steep.

I've lost track of the rain. The rain gauge has overflowed twice. One night I had 9 pots out collecting the drips coming through the kitchen roof. Factory and office roofs over the city collapsed under the weight of the hail, so 9 pots sounds like an art house movie by comparison.

Saturday AM we had a respite, just enough to get the washing out on the line. And I managed to get out to the inauguration of a new parkrun, at Rhodes, on Canada Bay. The sun almost shone. It's a very nice flat course, roughly half in Bicentennial Park, next to the Olympic stadia, and the other half along the recently reconstructed edges of Canada Bay. My gym is in Rhodes, oddly enough, so I know the area quite well.

This whole area has been built by real estate developers; the land is reclaimed, some amount of toxic industrial residues removed. I was never here before then, so I can't tell you what industrial ambiance has been destroyed. I do know that there is a degree of racial tension between the Asian-Australian flat-dwellers and the European-Australian house-owners. It's a little disappointing that a nation of immigrants has so little respect for immigration other than their own.

Olympic Park looms large in the background - it's not pollution (today, anyway), it's cloud. The weather is the kind of humid where you can't be sure it's not raining. This shot was taken by the marshal at the turnaround point, so it's halfway. Hopefully I'm looking relaxed, but the resolution on the picture isn't up to the enlargement required to check. I did manage a "negative split" - out in in 10:07 and back in 9:58, by my watch. That's quite pleasing, I almost always start too fast.

Autumn footpaths - the day after the storm

Back lane in the threatened Victoria Rd precinct

 On the subject of industrial ambiance, here are some pictures I took last Sunday afternoon, pretty much the first day out in a week. I've been having 2 weeks off running, so I went out for a walk instead. Three of these are in the area tipped for re-development; but whatever happens, it can't be denied that the area does have existing charm. Plus, contrary to some of the propaganda, people. Two printing factories were open. Two recording studios. A couple of shops, and several food factories; a lot of the city & inner suburban restaurant food comes from here. I wasn't the only tourist, either.

The Red Rattler studio/theatre/concert hall was conducting its Sunday afternoon "refresh".pending the Sunday show. And the bowling club was open. although admittedly, not for bowling. But socialising continues even when the rinks are sodden.

Hailstorm - Shepherd Street

Hailstorm - look what blew in!

last couple of weeks

 Morning glory is one of the curses of the Wolli Creek bush, particularly on the human-natural borders, which, given that the whole strip of bush is squeezed in between the back gardens of Homer St and the railway line, means that in some areas it's winning. There are a couple of volunteer groups slowly working their way along the track eliminating the stuff, and doing a fantastic job. So, anyway, it's a pestilential noxious weed, why am I photographing it? Because I have been under the misapprehension that this is the flower from Hartley's Go-Between, and I felt I'd finally captured the

threatening quality that the book completely failed to convince me of. 10 minutes of research have just remedied my ignorance, so now all I have a faintly menacing picture of a faintly menacing flower - perhaps symbolic of its invasiveness. This other picture captures something of the glow of early morning sun; so I'm pleased with the pictures as pictures, even if they're slightly misinterpreted.

Reflection pictures; another weakness. Mangroves along Wolli Creek, although it was the steelwork that caught my eye. It's the bus depot; well, a bus depot for one of the private companies that survives on Sydney Rail's inability

to run a rail network, and school excursions. They're probably just holding on to the land so they can sell to a developer. I haven't included any pictures here, but the south side of Cooks River / Wolli Creek is being swallowed by high rise high density housing. Ten years and I think between the developers and the road builders none of this will be left.

It seems like lose-lose. If we accept the flats, it should be as a public-transport serviced (and it is, very well serviced) alternative to freeway commuting to low density outer suburbs. On that basis, I'd make the compromise; bush + flats-as-backdrop is better than a freeway which will eliminate this bushland pretty much completely.

The bats have moved across the river - they've pretty much destroyed their homes on the south side of the river and they're settling in on the north. Let them back into the Botanical Gardens, I say. Why shouldn't the eastern suburbs share the pain?

Of course, everybody has to be somewhere, in the immortal words of Eccles.

Beautiful day. I'm typing this waiting for the next hailstorm. An hour ago we had 21 mm of rain in about 20 minutes. Factory roofs have collapsed under the weight of the hail. I had 9 bowls out

collecting water in the kitchen - beyond a certain intensity, it just doesn't cope. Like Sydney's storm water system generally.

Finally, a picture I'm immensely pleased with. A tribute, I suspect, to having a real camera - well, anyway, a camera with a real lens. Light, spiders' webs, framing; this part of the TVT really washes up well. The week's rain is still making its way down to the creek, so there are pools and baby waterfalls and lots of green everywhere.
Normally I run along here and it's bone dry. Today I felt that discretion might be the better part etc. It was a nice walk.

Later on I took out my boat, which is this silvery thing you see here, a construction style called "barracuda" - I don't know why particularly, although I guess it's to do with the fabric underlying the fibreglass. This is heavier and smaller than Liz's kevlar composites, but not much.

The bottle is a small part of the debris post-flooding from Tuesday's storms. Bottles and plastic bags are the bulk of the evidence.

 I enjoy the built structures as well as the natural world - this is the bridge carrying oil and gas pipelines over Wolli Creek, not the bridge in the above picture carrying the Princes Hwy. The bricks have an extraordinary patina, almost convincing you that they're contributing their own light to the show. I'm not sure if this is an old railway bridge that has been re-purposed for the pipelines; I have a faint idea that I read that somewhere, and I've noticed elsewhere that early 20th century railway brickwork is often very high quality.

I took a lot of these kinds of pictures; this is the best. The bush in the Wolli creek walk pictures above is about 20 metres up from these mangroves - this is the lower of the two daily high tides. Another metre up and you can see the plastic bags at flood level. If you come down here at low tide (the creek is navigable all the way to the weir at Turrella, even at low tide, but the rooks are more problematic) the smell of the anaerobic bacteria around the roots can be a bit startling sometimes.

This is the exhaust stack from the M5 tunnel. Apart from wondering why it's set in a valley, ponder that fact that the creek is actually flowing over a 4 lane freeway tunnel. The State government wants to double its size; except it's going to be hugely cheaper just to plough over the top than expand underground. And, even assuming that we all want to bear the cost of an underground expansion, the collateral damage above ground, both in construction and on-going support infrastructure (more smokestacks, emergency exits, access roads) isn't going to leave the landscape unscarred. And it's borderline now. It won't stand a lot more stress. You can see the difference in the bank vegetation on this side (the south); almost 100% weeds in the space between the depots and factories just behind the treeline.

That's the one threat, and below is the other. This is just one of the tens (and I don't think 'hundreds' would be much of an exaggeration) of blocks of flats springing up along the river and the creek. None of them are any more architecturally distinguished than this.

You can just make out a crane on the left; another block will be going in between the railway line and the block you see now. It's not easy being a bird in Sydney. This white-faced heron probably nests on Fatima island in the Cooks river (roughly behind the photographer), so its family has been coming here for a long time.

Below, a link to a much better photographer than me, and a fine collection of  shots of Cooks river bird life.     Cooks River Birds

 Finally, since the title says "...couple of weeks...", here's the approach to the finish line at St. Peters (Sydney) park on my record breaking run.

And below, the official result.

Next: 10 km sub 40, and a handicap score over 80% (which equates to a time of 19:23 - not so far to go). If you think about that handicap score for a second, you'll realise the record it's based on is around 15 minutes!