As I came home tonight I wandered through Hyde Park.
I know people say you shouldn’t walk through Hyde Park at night, but I’m reasonably okay with things. My feeling is that if you’re a bit drunk you should probably avoid it, because you’re generally speaking, a little distracted. But if you’re sober, and keep your eyes about you, you’re okay.
That said, I could be completely wrong, and sorry to have given you a bum steer.
I had a lovely night attending a function in respect of the forthcoming Sydney Festival. Unfortunately I missed the same event last year due to overseas travel, but it was a good event and a welcome change from the rest of the day.
Although my job is usually quite glamorous it’s sometimes kinda boring too. It’s like any job I guess.
“Sometimes you’ve just got to stuff envelopes”, I sometimes tell colleagues. It’s something you have to do, and often it helps you put everything in perspective about how most of the world lives.
Recently though, I read a rather interesting article about work, and have been trying to see how it might apply in my own life.
According to the Founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg, he tries to divide his days up according to the type of task he needs to achieve.
In his recent blog post, he talks about dividing up his tasks according to being in the zone. He mentions coding as an example of where you need to really concentrate on something.
So I’ve been experimenting with dividing up my days and weeks into the different tasks I need to do. When I need to think about creative stuff, I try to block off some time just for that. When I need to do “people stuff”, I try to get all of my “people stuff” done at once.
There are a couple of really stunning video works in the exhibition, LandSeaSky currently showing at the National Art School in Sydney.
The one that really caught my attention, appealed to both my head and my heart, was a work called Littoral (2014) by Derek Kreckler. As you walk into the space on the second floor, images of large waves at sea are projected onto vertical blinds. Behind the blind, an electric fan slowly oscilates, moving the vertical blinds, giving an actual sense of movement beyond that which is shown through the projection. It’s a physically beautiful work and Kate and I sat and watched it for quite some time, as part of our all-day Saturday “Gallery Crawl”.
Well, not so much “all day” as we started off with some late morning yum cha. From there we wandered to White Rabbit, one of our favourite galleries. I really loved the last exhibition there, though was not as excited about this one, “Commune” which runs until February next year. There are some really good works in the exhibition.
In particular, we both really loved The Remnants of Images (2013), by Hu Jieming, where some wonderful older photographs have been animated slightly with modern images. If you love photography, you’ll really enjoy the way the images have been modified, modernised, and presented.
But aside from that, there wasn’t too much I couldn’t really get too excited about. Though something happened which took me back to the last exhibition and the really really amazing work by Zhou Xiaohu featuring incredibly life like sculptures. They were so lifelike even one of the gallery attendnants mentioned he sometimes became confused. As I entered the second floor today I saw a similarly life-like sculpture sitting on a bench, looking intently at his mobile phone. As I moved closer to have a look I noticed his thumb was slowly sending a text message. I was so intrigued I went up for a really close look. Really close. “Amazing”, I thought to myself. A few seconds later, the “sculpture” got up from the bench and walked away. I can laugh about it now, though I felt mortified at the time.
Kate and Li Wei’s ‘ Human Being’
Throughout the afternoon we visited a few other galleries in the area. We both really liked “The War On Perspective” by Timothy Harland at X88 Gallery. I really loved his image of the now de-commissioned Sydney Monorail, and I suspect I’ll go back and purchase a copy.
We also popped in to William Wright Gallery on Stanley Street where the artist, Ann Graham had an exhibition opening. Upstairs there was a really intriguing body of work, where the artist had made clothing from dog hair. Accompanying the clothing were photographs of people wearing the clothing and the dogs which, presumably, it came from.
We ended the day at the Sydney Opera House for “Now I’ll Have To Kill You”, a comedic story telling night hosted by Glenn Robbins and featuring Davd O’Neill, Peter Berner and Kitty Flanning. It was a rally fun way to end a really enjoyable day. Kate’s on her way back to Newcastle, and I’m home for a quiet night after a reasonably busy week both at work and socially. Time for a bit of catch up TV, I suspect.
Aside from listening to an awful lot of show tunes, I don’t have much to report about Sunday.
Most of my show tune quota came from listening to Elaine Paige on BBC Radio 2.
The BBC has a great new iplayer interface for listening to their radio stations via flash, instead of using those stupid bloody Windows and Real Player encoders.
Although it’s a little more bandwidth intensive, the quality is excellent, and you don’t have to worry about having that software on your computer. This is especially important, as both players seem to want to take over your computer. And for me, as a Linux-nerd, it’s especially good. I think I’ve made my point? :)
So it was show tunes, and a Guiness World Record attempt for doing the most laundry on a Sunday night. The house resembles a laundromat at the moment with clothes drying in all parts of my apartment, aside from the kitchen.
The week ahead is reasonably busy. A dance class on Monday. On Tuesday, Damo and I are going to watch a recording of The Chaser. Wednesday night will be at the pub. And beyond that, I’m hoping to catch up with a couple of friends for dinner, including Mark who is back in Sydney for a few days.
Why is it that my weekends are quite boring with almost nothing planned, and yet I seem to have something on every weeknight? Actually, I do have a house-warming next Saturday night. But generally speaking, weekends are spent faffing about doing nothing, and watching tv, and my weeknights are almost always busy. It’s not right, is it?
After the closure of the Surry Hills Shopping Village, the search for my new supermarket continues. Though it’s not exactly “desperate” (as I have quite a few supermarkets within walking distance), I still haven’t settled on which one I’ll start using after the three year closure of Coles.
It’s official: the Surry Hills Shopping Village closed last Sunday. They’ll re-open in two or three years, after the re-development which will include lots of apartment accommodation.
Ahead of the closures, the supermarket shelves were allowed to empty themselves (no re-filling) and many of the items were significantly discounted. “Why don’t you stock up?”, the young bloke at the bottle shop said to me, offering a pretty reasonably discount on some bottles of wine.
There was a heavy run on cask wine at the bottle shop, I noticed.Frozen pizza also seemed pretty popular in the “dying days” of Coles.The first time I really “felt” the closure was on Thursday morning, when I had to visit the local service station to buy some milk. Again, it’s not a big thing since the service station is at the end of my street. On top of that, they have a brand of milk that I really like. On the downside, it’s pretty damn expensive. Ordinarily, I would have gone to my local supermarket the night before, and would be well and truly ready for my start of the day coffee.
Though I would ordinarily pop into the supermarket a few times each week for minor shops, I’ve found myself going down the more expensive route. I bought a loaf of bread from the awesome Bourke Street Bakery, and a few small items from the equally awesome, Maloneys (on Crown Street). They’re both terrific, but they are more expensive than I’m used to.
I also made a shopping visit to Aldi’s on Oxford Street. Ordinaily, I’d only visit Aldi for those (often) weird specials they have. A suitcase. A radio. That kind of thing. But on Tuesday, I called in and bought a few small items, including some cheese and some fresh produce. “Their fresh produce is quite good and quite cheap”, I told my friend on the phone. She agreed, noting they’re generally quite competitive.
It was a rather curious experience to visit Oxford Street on a weekday. Ordinarily, Oxford Street is a place I would only visit at night-time, or on the weekend. On a weekday, it’s a much different place.
And then today, I visited Woolworths Express, just up the road on Bourke Street. The supermarket range and price was just as I expected. The only confusing things for me were how to use my rewards card, and how to find the checkouts. The supermarket is on two levels, with fresh produce upstairs and grocery items downstairs. The signs for the checkouts were somewhat obscured, and so I found myself walking around a little confused. “Should I ask someone for instructions, or will I seem like some crazy old man?”, I thought to myself.
I still haven’t tried the Coles at Waterloo. I also have the option of supermarkets at Town Hall (a quick trip on the light rail) and at Bondi Junction (a quick trip on the bus). Either way, I’d really love to see the opening on our part of Crown Street of a small convenience store where I could buy daily things like bread, milk and fresh produce.
Who knew that it would be so hard to adjust to new habits after 25 years of entrenched shopping habits?
“You can have my thongs if you like”, I said to my nephew Sam when he mentioned he had no shoes to wear. We were on our way to Ballina Airport so I could return home to Sydney. “Sam, do you have shoes?”, Michelle asked her son, to which replied he had spent the last fortnight going barefoot.
A few more photographs of the rescue involving him, Pat and Jack have emerged. I draw your attention to Sam’s “tanned” legs. His legs are not “tanned” (they’re normally quite pale), but in these photographs, they’re covered in floodwater, along with petrol/oil which entered home from the nearby service station. He’s wearing a pair of boots in the photographs, though none of us knows when, where or how he obtained them.
Though Pat and Jack’s place is now “home”, there’s another place I also call “home”, the house where I grew up. It’s a house that had been in my family since the 1930s. After the death of my mum in 1984, I no longer had a strong connection with the house, though my granny and uncle lived there for a number of years, and later it was bought by another family member. But for me, it’s always been “home”.
Visiting the home in Casino Street where I grew up.
Having lived through the 1974 flood in the house, I was curious to see how it had faired this time around, so Karran and I went for a drive. (Her cousin lives next door, so we had a look there too).
“There’s someone out the front taking photographs of your house”, Wayne (one of the current owners) told me a friend inside had told him. He and his wife Noreen came out to say hello. “I thought you were from NBN” (the local TV station), he laughed.
We learned about their experiences during the flood, and they kindly invited us in to take a look around. I also shared with them a photograph of what the house looked like 52 years ago when it was transported on the back of a truck from another location.
In 1970, to make way for a weigh-bridge in Kyogle Street, the house was relocated to Casino Street, South Lismore.
With panelling removed, the original boards were revealed, and the colour (green) of my childhood bedroom was just as I remembered it. “That’s mum’s room, that was the kitchen”, I told Wayne and Noreen who were generous in allowing me to take a look around.
With floodwater up to the top of the windows, the house was empty. This was our kitchen.
We spent a few hours on Thursday going through and trying to restore some old photographs. Many turned out okay, but others like this one were quite fragile, so I snapped a couple of backups while I still could.
With John and Sharron, probably around 1975
Also this week, my brother-in-law, Jack was highlighted in the lead story on Prime 7 Local News (North Coast). The camera crew arrived late morning, ahead of the visit by the Prime Minister, and spent some time filming in the house and chatting with Jack.
On Facebook, a friend commented “Good job Jack. The PM visiting a dairy farm and norco felt like he was visiting 1950s Lismore… definitely not reflective of today’s community…”
As you can see, there’s a lot ahead of us.
Here’s an article I wrote for the ABC website about the amazing work done by volunteers and friends/colleagues helping us to recover.
I’m back in Sydney for a few weeks. There’s not a lot I can do until we have a better idea about the future of the houses. I also figured we have more than enough people currently at Michelle’s place, and one less person might make things a little easier.
There was a moment today when Sue and I felt like we were on the set of a 1990s Australian film. We were having lunch at one of the two pubs at Lake Cargelligo, a town of a couple of thousand people located not far from the geographic centre of NSW.
“We’re not in Kansas anymore”, Sue said with a smile referring to the other people in the pub at around lunchtime. As we entered the pub, we were greeted with a smile by the young man behind the counter. There was music playing on the jukebox, and there were maybe half a dozen other people sitting around enjoying their beers.
“I could hear you playing ABBA from down the street”, a bloke declared as he walked into the pub. “If you can hear ABBA, you know I’m on duty”, the young man replied. “I almost didn’t come in”, the bloke added. It was like that scene in “Priscilla” when Bernadette demands they play “no more f$%ing ABBA”.
I guess it was the ABBA soundtrack (five or six songs in a row) that contributed to the idea we were in a 1990s Australian film, though it was definitely more “Priscilla” and not so much “Muriel”.
We were at the Royal Mail Hotel in Lake Cargelligo. We stopped there for lunch, as we drove from Parkes to Griffith.
Along the way we had also stopped at Condobolin (which I’ve blogged about separately) and the wonderfully named, “Bogan Gate” made famous a couple of years in this You-Tube video.
This video about Bogan Gate is hilarious, and I’ve been following Mitchell ever since.Naturally enough, we had to stop (briefly) for a look around Bogan Gate.
But today’s journey was all about getting from Parkes to Griffith.
Dating back to the early 1990s, when I lived and worked in Wagga Wagga, I have had fond memories of visiting Griffith. There was the wine, there was the food, there was the beautiful environment, and there was the strong Italian cultural influence. I remember reading once that about half of the city’s population had some Italian heritage.
And so when Sue and I began planning this current holiday, I strongly suggested we should extend the road trip a little further south than originally planned.
Since arriving, we’ve gone for a walk up and down the main street, Banna Avenue, and it was pleasing to see there were only a few empty shops (unlike some of the other places we’ve visited on this trip). We had a pretty tasty pizza tonight at Guieseppe’s Restuarant, and we’re looking forward to further exploration of the food and wine scene over the next day or so.
I’d previously mentioned to Sue that it was also important for us to visit the cemetery, which is dominated by large headstones from the Italian Catholic community. Four years ago to the day, Sue had been in Italy, and had visited the village where her grandparents lived. “We have headstones like this back in the village”, she said, “though probably not as large.”
Griffith Cemetery
“I wonder what the cemetery will be like in fifty years”, I said to Sue. “Is this a moment in time where they’ve paid respect to the settlers of the last 50-100 years? Is it something the younger generations of Italian descendants will continue, or will they too move to cremations and lawn cemetery style burials?”. Whatever happens, it’s a fascinating place to visit, and if you’re ever in Griffith, I’d highly recommend taking a look. We found it absolutely fascinating to walk around, to read the inscriptions, and to wonder about the lives of the people buried there.
I went to the opening tonight of a terrific exhibition – Joonba, Junba, Juju – currently on show at the University of Technology, Sydney.The exhibition, which is a joint effort between arts centres in the Kimberley, focuses on dance and the artefacts or props used in dance, like spears, boards, and masks, as well as videos and photographs.The opening night of the exhibition had several different joonba (an East Kimberley word for corroborree) and juju.
I recorded a brief report for the team at ABC Kimberley (Broome) which included Chris Griffiths from Waringarri Aboriginal Arts and Gija artist, Phyllis Thomas. They spoke about the importance of sharing traditions both within their own communities, as well as other communities around Australia.
