I took the class to Manly via the Spit Bridge walk. They were a bit startled by the distance involved - 9 km - but I guess I do more walking than most. It's a good introduction to bushwalking, as it's hard to imagine that there's an easier walk with actual bush, plus the views are amazing and as a bonus there's Washaway Beach, which only a local is likely to find and involves climbing down a small cliff for added excitement. Additionally, we had a nude bather for the authentic Sydney experience. (The locals are always tearing down all the signs; the people of Balgowlah deserve a private beach.)
For me though, the highlight is the trip home on the ferry. I took this with my "real" camera, and the auto focus got a bit confused, which YouTube offered to fix - hence the dancing bridge.
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!
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
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 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.
