Showing off in style

There were dozens of amazing floats in the Grand Parade on the final Saturday of the Toowoomba Flower Festival however I will not even attempt to share them all with you! However I will give you a little glimpse.

Do you remember the Smurfs? I had two little plastic smurfs as mascots when I was a teenager (before the Ark sank) so it was with great amusement that I shot this picture and the following one.

They look the same - but so much larger and cuddlier! But who is the girl with them? Is she part of the team or is she there to rescue them if they fall?

The characters from Star Trek were also marching in the parade - Storm troopers! Good fun! I don't remember a little black one though. I shall have to watch the movie again!

Here is a vehicle that proves that learning to drive can be fun! I like the "L" plates on the wheels!
The parade was great - there were so many marchers and different floats that the parade took over an hour to pass. The audience were almost passing out from being in the sun all that time so the marchers dressed in all enveloping costumes must have been cooking! I am glad I had lighter clothing on!
AJ

Spring on the Range

I have just uploaded a little video I have made from the photos and bloggie video that I took on Friday of the beautiful gardens that won prizes in the Toowoomba Flower Festival. I hope you enjoy it.
Click on the title at the top left of the video if you would like to see the video in Youtube - in this blog the sides are trimmed off!
AJ

Link to more photos of Spring in Toowoomba

As promised, I have put my photos of the Gardens I visited into an album.
Here they are.

The Spring Gardens of Toowoomba 2011

Enjoy!
AJ

The colours of Toowoomba

It is Spring and every year Toowoomba celebrates Spring in a big way. Toowoomba is a good two hours drive west from where I live on Queensland's Gold Coast and it has a completely different climate to here. Being on the top of the Great Dividing Range at an altitude of 700m it has a more temperate climate with cold winters and low humidity during summer. The soil is an amazing orange red colour and is the envy of every gardener working the heavy clay soils of Mudgeeraba (my home!) Things grow in it!
A Spring Festival is held at Toowoomba for a full week during September and it culminates in a Grand Parade on the last Saturday of that week. I joined a two day tour to Toowoomba that included a tour of the gardens on one day and the parade on the second. Today I will share a mere handful of photographs that I took in the gardens. More photos will be shown in a separate link to a web album later.

Wisteria is one of the plants that would grow here - I have tried but with limited success, the flowers were not as impressive as on this vine - so I dug it out! The cooler climate seems to suit the Wisteria much better and many of the parks and gardens in Toowoomba have either a purple or a white wisteria.

The brilliant mauve and sheer mass of blooms really is a treat for the camera!

Not all the gardens in Toowoomba are filled with colour like this. The majority of residents do not have the time nor inclination to create a flower garden. But the few people who do have a passion for plants must spend a good part of every day at work in their gardens to have them look so fabulous. This is one of the smaller gardens but the grand champion garden was over an acre in size.

Flowering trees give colour above the head as you walk through the prize gardens. How everyone managed to get all their plants blooming at the same time amazes me! I wonder if these prunus will grow here - I guess there is only one way to find out!

Here is one more garden - I was lucky to be able to take a picture without people in it! These gardens are "crawling" with people wandering through them. One gardener said that last year he had 23,000 people through his garden!

Finally, a little indulgence! I tried not to take too many close up shots of "flowers" - I was supposed to be admiring the gardens rather than individual specimens! However this one just begged to have its picture taken!

Click on any of the pictures to see them larger, then click on the "back" arrow to get back to this blog.
I will share my album of photos tomorrow.
AJ

Culture on the 'Coast

I have done so many things this past week that to write a story about what I have seen and done actually stops me in my tracks! Where to begin!
So to be feminine and non logical I am writing about today first!
It was a hot "summer" day today with the temperature over 30'C and the air was filled with the haze of smoke from grass fires (most likely the fire brigades burning-off the long growth as a safety measure)so wandering around was rather exhausting. But at the same time stimulating.
Today many of the different cultures that make up the people who have made the Gold Coast "home" had made a great effort to demonstrate either their dance, music or their foods. It was the Gold Coast Multi-Cultural Day.
I had barely managed to charge my batteries for my Nikon and my Bloggie camera after two days in Toowoomba but I was so pleased that I had made the effort. The colour and the sharing by everyone was wonderful to see. I stayed three hours and in that time I travelled the world!
I had actually arrived ten minutes before the first "show" (Three stages in action, non stop - and all free) and a brightly dressed Chinese woman encouraged me to sit down and she told me so much about the group she belonged to. It is a strange title for a group of dancers but I will share it with you - "Global Federation of Chinese Business Woman of Australia" (Yes, womAn not womEn)They practice a kind of Tai Chi and martial arts with swords that looks more like a beautiful dance than a type of aggressive attack/defence skill. I took some Bloggie of the sword dance so I will share it later on.

When the ladies posed for a photograph for a friend, of course I could not resist grabbing one myself! Don't they look gorgeous? The woman who was chatting to me is in the centre at the back, in green. Surprisingly most of them did not speak English at all.
When the performance had finished I made my escape (or I would still be talking to the Chinese lady!) and made a bee-line for one of the other stages. On the way I came across three little girls in yellow costumes. They looked so beautiful. I chatted to them and asked them if they were going to be doing some dancing somewhere soon. I asked if their mother's had done their beautiful hairstyles and the floodgates were opened! They turned around so that I could admire them all the better and showed off this hand movement and that dance position until I asked them if I could take a picture of them. I took one but the next thing was that three more children were called over - and then more, so I have three photos of these delightful children (different number in each!) who later were on stage demonstrating Indonesian Dance.

What surprised me was that some of them did not "look" Indonesian - but they may have either an Australian mother or an Australian father. (remember that you can click on the pictures to see them larger - click on the "back" button to return to this blog!) They did dance beautifully - I made a point of returning to the stage for their performance.
While waiting near a stage for a different show - it was an Indian song and music demonstration - I was joined by two little girls who had obviously been to the face painting. I can strike up a conversation with children very easily and these two were just so sweet. I asked them if they would mind if I took a photo of them since they looked so gorgeous and I asked them to put their heads close together and look at me - here is my lovely shot of them.

Don't they have the most beautiful eyes? The face painting is lovely too, not the mess that you sometimes find! I wish that I had found out if their mothers wanted a copy of this photo - maybe they will find it accidentally by finding my blog!
I have so much to share that I will be writing again tomorrow!
AJ

Art on the Sands

All this week the foreshore of Currumbin is enlivened with the addition of some most unusual artworks. Every year the Swell Sculpture festival is held in Currumbin and the entries to this competition - with a major acquisition prize of $20,000 - are displayed for everyone to see and judge both on the grassy roadside and on the sands.
Whenever there is something colourful happening in my part of the world I pick up the camera and check it out!
Here is the album of pictures I took. Click on the picture shown here and then chose "slideshow". When the first image appears, change the length of viewing time to 5 seconds or the pictures will change too quickly.
I hope you enjoy them.
AJ

Swell Sculpture Festival 2011

Remembering yesterday

This week has been one of Heritage  - on Sunday I made my first visit to the Mudgeeraba Heritage Centre because there was to be a special commemoration of the turning on of Electricity 75 years ago.
Of course I was not in Mudgeeraba when it was still dark, in fact I was not even a twinkle in my father's eye at that time, let alone aware of a place called Mudgeeraba! But remembering the things that were done that have influenced today has become very important to Australians. Australia's history is not very long but it is very much appreciated.
The volunteers who are responsible for the very presence of the Heritage Centre had been labouring long and hard at restoring a very old street lamp. Many hours of work had gone into the removal of rust and creation of the perspex "glass" as well as wiring so that the lamp could not only act as a dramatic feature to the grounds but be a security light too.

Speeches were made, local politicians heaped praise and the light was switched on - not with a roll of drums but with the blast from two vintage rifles.

Early pupils from the Mudgeeraba Primary School were among the audience and they were the ones who symbolically switched the light on.

This photo does not show the switching on of the light, it is included to show where the light is and how it fits into its new location. The old buildings are so smart and well maintained as are all the artifacts inside and out. It is a pleasure to walk around and gaze on all these utensils from the past. For there is nothing here of real monetary value but it is all of rich memory value.
Nothing like this can be done without money and all is done by donation. A donation towards the restoration of the old street lamp was given to the Heritage Centre by the Mudg Foundation and after all the speeches the Director of the Mudg Foundation, Peter Oschenbein, handed another cheque to the committee to help with further projects.

If you are interested in learning more about the Mudg Foundation, click here.
I have taken plenty of photographs of the Mudgeeraba Heritage Centre so I will write about the place again!
AJ

Sunshine on the mountain

On the last day of winter the sun came out and it was far too nice to stay at home so the picnic box was packed with tea and biscuits so that we could spend the morning exploring the mountain that is very close to home.
Showers were forcast for the afternoon so we only had the morning to do our driving.
Rain had fallen the day before so I felt that it would be worth going to see the waterfalls - there is only a little catchment area so the falls are less spectacular a few days after the rain. The best time of all is when it is actually raining.
I enjoyed the challenge of taking photos in extremely poor light. I am sharing all of the photos that I took that morning (not many) and I hope that you enjoy them too.
Click on the photo and you will be taken to the web album. click on "Slideshow" and change the length of time to 5 seconds once you are in the slideshow, then you will be able to read the captions.
AJ

Springbrook in Spring