I haven’t had much luck with cameras over the last few years. In July 2008, as I began my “big overseas trip” I left my camera “on the charger” back in Sydney, and was forced to buy a new one in Singapore. Several months later, my house was broken into as I slept, and my new camera, as well as my older one, were both stolen. There were no problems as I travelled to Sweden this year, though unfortunately I lost my latest camera somewhere in Hobart a few weeks ago.
So tonight, ahead of my trip to China, I went and bought a new one. When it comes to camera choices I think I’ve pretty much settled on Canon as my favourite brand. Generally speaking, they’re intuitive, sturdy, and take good photographs. All of the reviews and recommendations have always mentioned the superior lens quality of the Canon, and of all of the Canons I’ve had over the years, I’ve always been very happy.
I’ve spent a couple of hours playing with my new Canon, taking those stupid photographs of yourself you always do when you get a new camera. This one combines good features with a compact size. I’m pretty happy with this one, and looking forward to taking lots of photographs in Beijing.
I’m not sure how much I’ll be blogging of this trip at the time, as I’m not sure how much internet access I’ll have, but you can hopefully expect to see some great photos towards the end of the month, if not earlier.
A tip on Australian male etiquette. When you’re standing at a urinal you should only ever look forward, otherwise, you might see things you might not want to see. (Or maybe you will!!)
You shouldn’t look left, you shouldn’t look right, or even behind you. You shouldn’t talk. You should just look straight ahead. This helps explain why there is such a market for advertising above urinals. You have a captive audience.
The advertisement I saw at The Victory Hotel last night took me right back to my earlier days in Wagga Wagga. “I could be the DJ”, I thought to myself.
I also thought of my friend John. In the early 90s, he and I used to go regularly to the “Choices” nightclub. Along with “Cocos” it was the “place to be” on a Friday or Saturday night. “Choices” (which we called “Chances”, while Cocos was nicknamed “Chokos”) was the more “urban” of the two nightclubs. There was definitely a gay “undercurrent” to “Choices” and the music was a little more “sophisticated”.
In particular, I remember the song “Jump” by “The Movement”.
There was a particular version of their song which had the refrain “Jump motherf.. Motherf… jump” which was a huge in Wagga back in the day.
The night before we had been to a trivia night at the “Thirsty Crow”. “If it was 30 years ago and this was happening, I would have been here”, I said to my friend Sue as surveyed the room.
We laughed as we tried to work out which group of people I would have been sitting with. Were we the nerdy crew of ten sitting up the front answering all the questions, but not actually eating or drinking very much? (Hardly). No, I would have been part of the table sitting down the back, eating and drinking, and answering the questions, but also disputing the answers :)
Last night, I was invited to a dinner party which included some people I knew from my Wagga days, but also some new people too. They were SUCH an interesting group of people. It was one of those dinner parties that was both busy and noisy. “Noisy” in a good way, as multiple conversations happened simultaneously which made it great fun.
I’ve known the hosts (and one other person attending) since the early 90s, so there was a lot of reminiscence. We talked a lot about how much Wagga has changed. With the council elections coming up in a few weeks, we talked a bit about local politics. I learned about how one local figure had gone from extreme right to mainstream left.
We also chatted about old friends. I told them about how a former colleague had died a few years ago, and they told me about the circumstances surrounding the death of another old friend, Peter Batey. Peter had enjoyed a wonderful career in Australian theatre, and in “retirement” at nearby Coolac, had founded the “Bald Archy” satirical art prize which, I learned, will be returning in 2023.
“I have something for you, a memory of Peter” my friend said, packaging up some lovely little salt and pepper shakers he had once owned.
I will treasure these, both as a lovely reminder of Peter, and of a wonderful dinner party.
Earlier in the day, we had taken a trip to nearby Coolamon and Ganmain.
Coolamon is much changed from the town it once was. Coolamon is about thirty minutes drive from Wagga, and it was very much a “country town”. These days, there are gift shops, cafes and restaurants. “This feels like a place where people from Wagga might visit on the weekend”, I said to Sue.
And from there, we drove a further fifteen minutes to the town of Ganmain. For a number of years, my friend Kate had lived at nearby Matong, where she ran a farm, and worked in the arts. I shot a little video of the Haystack Visitors Centre which features Kate’s art work on the inside. The video also included the names of people from the times, including a brick featuring her son Tom. He was maybe 7 or 8 years old at the time, but is now fast approaching forty. Time flies.
And indeed it does. Before I knew it, it was time to leave to catch the train. I managed to remember to pack everything, except my coffee pot! That can stay there until the next time I visit Wagga.
The one thing I’m pleased I did remember was an artwork I purchased. Last weekend we went on the Wagga Wagga Art Trail, and were particularly impressed by the works of local print-maker, Craig Couzins.
Bushfire inspired print by Geoff Couzens from Wagga, now hanging on my wall back in Sydney.
There weren’t many people on the train, so I had four seats to myself, which allowed me to place the frame safely on the floor, and for me to relax comfortably on the overnight train back to Sydney.
“I really like your shirt”, a bloke told me as I stood outside Sydney’s “Hero Of Waterloo”. We had been sitting in a chilly area, and although shorts and t-shirts were fine for the earlier part of the day, I was beginning to feel the cold, and so I wandered out onto the street to enjoy the sunshine.
The t-shirt I was wearing was one I picked up in Sweden in 2008. It’s amazing the number of times the shirt has been a conversation opener, usually from a visiting Swede who looks a little shocked to see a t-shirt that isn’t necessarily the typical of those you pick up in Gamla Stan.
Swedish T-Shirt and Estonian Gay Badge
The bloke who came up to me for a chat was middle-aged Swedish bloke (he said he had a backpacker aged daughter) who moved to Sydney about six months ago, loving being here, and thinking he might like to stay for the longer-term. We had a fairly lengthy chat about life, the universe, Sydney and Stockholm until I began to feel guilty about having abandoned my friends.
Glenmore Hotel Rooftop Bar
“You were flirting with him”, my friends joked when I arrived back at the table. “It was in your body language. You’re blushing now”. they added. “Wedding ring?”, I was asked. My friends are such bastards :):)
It was a day of catching up with a broader group of friends, as we enjoyed the company of our friends visiting from overseas.
The day had started with lunch at The Glenmore Hotel which is, seriously, one of the best, most affordable places to take visitors from overseas. In the midst of some of the more expensive places around Circular Quay, the Glenmore enjoys good beer prices, good food prices, and spectacular views of the Opera House (though ours was disrupted by a visiting cruise ship). In contrast to the last time we visited The Glenmore as a group, they’ve had a major renovation to the hotel, and the place was packed. They’ve done a really good job and we enjoyed the renovation.
When the chilly winds got altogether to much, we sought indoor accommodation at the nearby Harbour View (our third pub of the day).
By about seven o’clock I was anxious to get home, do some washing and ironing for the week ahead, and relax on the couch. Entertaining people can be an exhausting business :)
Graeme and I enjoyed a terrific afternoon at Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum where two of the current exhibitions were right up our street: exhibitions featuring fashions and photographs from Kylie Minogue and about the fiftieth anniversary of television in Australia.
The Kylie exhibition came about through a large donation to the Victorian Arts Centre (I think) of dresses, illustrations, production notes, etc by Kylie herself. The donation has been transformed into an exhibition which features a range of Kylie’s well known clothing including, spectacularly, the 50p gold pants bought at an op-shop and then made famous in “Spinning Around” and the hooded outfit from “Can’t Get You Out Of My Head”.
Although she has been through many “stages” – from the Neighbours days, through Stock Aitken Waterman, through indie-Kylie, through “gay Kylie” – as you wander around the exhibition a “Kylie-style” emerges. I’m not exactly sure, however, how to best describe the Kylie style, but some things do emerge: for example, the clothes are designed to match her tiny size. At one point, an eight year child next to us, honestly said of the denim shorts, “They’re so small, I could wear those”. I think there’s also a multi-layered element to many of the designs and also a “fashion school” ethos in some of the experimentation.
The television exhibition, by its very nature, is far more broad, and thus far more enjoyable. Although emphasising the nostalgia associated with the television programming itself, the exhibition also features some of the technology and seeks to explain how it has also infuenced the output.
Highlights of the exhibition for me included the opportunity to watch some classic moments from favourite childhood programs, including “Number 96”, “The Box” and “Certain Women”. Yeah, I know they’re not children’s program, but they’re certainly strong memories of my childhood that I haven’t been able to relive in recent years, despite the availability of DVD.
On a totally different level, it was just amazing to see how plain some of the television costumes were in real life, including the Aunty Jack costume and a fairly plain house dress from the “Mavis Bramstom” show.
In all, we probably spent about 30 minutes at Kylie and 90 minutes in the television exhibition. Both were good in their own ways, and represented a very good $10 entrance fee investment.
I recently travelled from Sydney to the NSW Central Coast to record an interview with Helena Brunner for The Limb Shift. From world-record-breaking athlete to artist and musician, Helena’s journey is one of incredible grit and reinvention. Keep an ear and an eye out for her full story when the podcast launches later this year, but for now, here is a look at Helena’s life, and the great conversation we had.
Helena Brunner, an artist and performer from the New South Wales Central Coast, has navigated a life defined by both profound trauma and remarkable adaptation.
Her journey was irrevocably altered in her youth by a near-fatal motorcycle accident, an event that reshaped her physical reality and set her on a path toward recovery and self-discovery.
While working for Australia Post during her university holidays in the late 1970s, Helena’s life changed in an instant. Regarding the accident, she recalls:
“I was just going past Vaucluse Boys High School and there was a taxi coming up from Watsons Bay. He didn’t have his indicator on. And so I continued on through a giveaway sign I had pulled up and we had a head on collision”.
The physical consequences were catastrophic. Helena suffered a “degloved” leg, describing the severity of the injury with stark clarity:
“My foot was laying on the back of my thigh”.
Following the crash, Helena spent five and a half months in the hospital, undergoing numerous operations in a desperate attempt to save her limb.
Eventually, facing ongoing infections, chronic pain, and an arduous recovery, she requested an amputation in December 1979. Reflecting on this difficult decision with the perspective of time, she notes:
“It was a dog’s dinner. I was never going to be able to walk on it. I was in excruciating pain and I was non-weight bearing the whole time on crutches. It looked like an alien’s leg”.
She further adds that while the mental loss of a limb was devastating for a twenty-year-old athlete, “in hindsight, which is always easier, isn’t it? It should have been taken straight away”.
Despite the trauma, Helena’s spirit remained unyielding. A former competitive swimmer, she was introduced to the Amputee Sporting Association shortly after her surgery.
Driven by a new sense of purpose, she began training and, within only three months, found herself competing internationally in Japan. Describing her experience arriving at the games, she says:
“I arrived there, I knew nobody. There was a small team… I saw them in their green and yellow tracksuits… and did my event, and broke a world record”.
Helena was recently inducted into the The Central Coast Sporting Hall of Fame. A personal tally of 5 gold medals at the 1984 Summer Paralympics saw Helena win the most gold medals for the Australian team. Held in New York, she competed in the A4 category and won 5 events, in the process setting World and Paralympic Records in the 100m backstroke, 100m freestyle, 400m freestyle, 4x100m freestyle relay and the 4x100m medley relay. She also won a silver medal in the 200m medley and a bronze medal in the 100m breaststroke. Regarded as one of the world’s best amputee swimmers during her career, she set 14 World Records and won many international events. Awarded the Order of Australia Medal (OAM) in 1985.
This early foray into adaptive sports highlighted the necessity of connection. For Helena, the community she found within the Amputee Association was vital. As she explains:
“Finding a community is what a lot of people have talked about… just someone who you don’t have to talk about, oh, this happened and that happened. And it’s just someone who you can talk to”.
Helena Martha Brunner received the Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in the Australia Day 1985 Honours for service to swimming
Helena’s professional life has been multifaceted, spanning years as a teacher and choir conductor at Empire Bay Public School.
Her approach to her disability in the classroom was transformative for her students. She shares:
“When I used to take my leg off and put it on the desk. The faces were magic”.
In recent years, Helena has channeled her energy into her art and music, which serves as a vital tool for mindfulness and self-expression. She notes:
“I feel very present when I’m painting and drawing”.
Her evolution as an amputee is also reflected in how she presents herself. Where she once felt compelled to hide her prosthetic limb, she now embraces it, opting for stylish, visible “chrome covers” rather than traditional, flesh-coloured ones.
Ultimately, Helena’s philosophy is rooted in persistence and the courage to try, regardless of the outcome. She offers this advice to others:
“Having close friends and family is very important and trying not to let things hold you back. Have a go. Even if it doesn’t work out or you don’t, you don’t succeed. Success is good though. Even if it’s you setting yourself a goal, you know, and you achieve that goal”.
When faced with the inevitable setbacks of life, she acknowledges the struggle—especially the bouts of depression that accompany periods of reduced mobility—but remains steadfast in her belief that “usually something comes out of it, some other opportunity”.
I thought by now I might have been sick of it. I thought I would have shaved it off, concluding it was a silly experiment. I still don’t have what you would call a “thick and luxurious beard”, but I’m actually quite happy with it, and have no plans to remove it when I return home in a couple of weeks.
Already I can anticipate some friends who’ll be honest enough to tell me it looks shabby and uneven. They’ll be the ones who’ll help me reality check against the comments of others who’ve told me it looks good and really suits me. The reality, of course, is somewhere in between.
When I began to grow this beard at the end of December, it was a matter of necessity. I’d flown home from Sydney to Lismore and had left my razor blades at home. Feeling lazy, I couldn’t be bothered buying new ones, and just didn’t shave for a few days. After a couple of weeks later, I made a more conscious decision to grow a beard. Even though I’m not the most hirsuite person in the world, I read that (with patience), for most men with my genetic background, the beard would eventually fill-in and not look so bad.
Five months down the track I still don’t have anything approaching the facial hair of George Michael, Sean Connery, or George Clooney. On top of that, it’s patchy in parts and the colour varies from reddish-brown to grey-white. I also think it makes me look older, and fear that I’ve become one of those men who has grown a beard to compensate for the lack of follicles on the top. I’m also slightly worried I’m making the progression into “bear” territory.
And yet despite all that, I really quite like it. In particular, I like not having to shave every day. Although I’ve thought about clippers, I really couldn’t be bothered, and suspect my efforts would make it look even worse. So instead every few weeks when I go to the hairdresser for a trim on top, I’ve been asking them to tidy my beard as well. By and large, it’s working out okay.
Yeah, it’s scruffy. Yeah, I look older. But I like it, and so, for the time being (things may change), it’s here and it’s gonna stay.
After months and months of decline, our local record store in Surry Hills is no more. As I walked through the mall today I looked with surprise at the empty shop. So, too, did a bloke coming towards me. In the entire time I’ve lived in Surry Hills life at the shopping centre hasn’t changed that much. Yes, they had a renovation a while back, and yes, they changed the name from the Redfern Mall to the Surry Hills Shopping Centre, but otherwise it’s been pretty much the same for a number of years. The only change has been an incremental one: as the record store went from being a vibrant place I went to on a regular basis, to a combination record and video store, and then books came in, and then finally a few weeks ago they moved out entirely. It’s been a discount clothing store for the last few weeks, and now, even that’s gone.
The former record store at Surry Hills Shopping Centre
Record stores have been an important part of my life. As a child I would go to Palings in Lismore (or occasionally Chandlers, which was usually cheaper, but had a smaller range). As soon as school finished, I’d go straight to town hoping the latest ABBA release would have arrived. Back in those days, we normally had to wait a week or so before the new releases came to Lismore from Sydney. I got to know the people behind the counter. And they got to know me, and would put things away for me as soon as they arrived. And they’d order things in especially, even without asking knowing I’d be interested.
Throughout my university days I was a regular at Rocking Horse Records in Brisbane where I paid far too much money for import dance music.
And from there, I moved to Bourke where the only place in town you could buy records was at Trev Randall’s newsagency. In the midst of Slim Dusty and co, there were actually some good releases.
And then when I came to Sydney, there was the record shop at the local mall which I continued to frequent for many years.
But like most people these days I haven’t bought an actual CD – something physical – in quite some time. Actually, that’s not true, I buy the occasional CD, but nowhere near as many as I used to. Partly it’s because I’m older, and the youthful desire to collect the top forty, the latest releases, the club hits etc, has passed me by. I’m happy to listen to music on the radio now, on countless internet stations, or on Foxtel where there’s thirty radio channels. And of course there’s the possibility of downloading either legally or illegally.
I’m in the process at the moment of uploading my favourite mp3s to the new storage facility on Google Docs. Although I have everything backed up physically, I think it’s a good idea to back it up in the cloud also. And I guess all of these things has combined together to bring about the decline of the local record store. Still, JB Hi-Fi has survived, and they seem to be doing well with their particular sales model. So I don’t think the record store is dead just yet.
Meanwhile the local video store seems to be surviving, though it’s been years since I’ve been there also.
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