A Darwin day

This morning I took off on foot to explore a little of the Darwin in easy reach of the hotel. The hotel is not far from the waterfront so my walk was very pleasant. I followed the signs to the WW2 oil tunnels but instead of tunnels I stopped to take pictures of artwork that was on the way to them.

The neglected and damaged artworks were a challenge to capture under the very shady trees but two of them appealed enough for me to make the effort. The first was a semi-circle of concrete on which were placed moulded flowers – some of which were missing.

The other was again a semi-circle of concrete, this time decorated with mosaic tiles in the form of eucalyptus leaves. These I really liked.

At the end of the pathway I came across a fenced enclosure and got quite a surprise when I noticed a sign board and a peep hole in the fence.

Of course I had to approach the peep hole and take a picture of the screen and the deckchairs. How wonderful to have stars on the screen and stars up above!

Of course my eyes were drawn to the water - there are many ships calling in to this city

I found a set of steps up an escarpment and climbed them to discover yet another piece of artwork to commemorate all the travellers who had landed in Darwin from 1870 to more recent times. This plaque tells you “why”.

The shadows from the trees make seeing the whole of the mosaic a little difficult.

This small section of the mosaic shows how interesting it is and how under-rated it appeared to be – the path was blocked so I had to retrace my steps and I was the only person who was inconvenienced! Not another soul was there except for the young man keeping me back from where the huge crane was operating a little further along the path, and he wasn't interested in art!

Now that I have spent a little time sharing my pictures, it is time I went out and took a few more!

The “Tour”starts tomorrow but the rest of the passengers are arriving this afternoon.

AJ

A character of the Australian Bush

I takes me a while to find my way around my new toys! I thought it was rather strange that I had no manual control over the 70-300mm lens on my new Nikon D90 - well, I found out that all I have to do is switch a lever on the front of the camera near the lens and I have isolated the lens from the auto controls! I am happy now!

With my previous camera I selected an option from the camera menu for manual control - not with this one!

While looking through my pictures - I do that occasionally! I came across this character study I took when I visited Jondaryan for the heavy horse work day. This man was marching across from one place to another when I stopped him and asked if he minded if I took a photo of him.

f/10 1/500 sec ISO 400 28mm

He was a little embarrassed but I chatted to him once I had fired my shot. Fortunately the Olympus camera was still working this day and the first shot was a good one because this fellow was not going to stand still for any longer than he had to! I asked him if he was exhibiting his horses today and he opened up about his training methods and his aspirations. I married a country fellow so I know that the way to get a "bushy" to open up is to talk about his main interest. Since we were at a heavy horse demonstration day it was a safe bet that this man was also interested in heavy horses.

AJ

Festival in Noosa

There were two festivals happening in this part of the world today and I greedily went along to both of them. Rather than send you pictures of fire trucks taking part in a parade or people eating hot sausages I am including a picture of one of the participants in the parade that marched up and down Gympie Terrace, a piper who played most beautifully while standing on the edge of the Noosa River, I have heard many pipers playing and have cringed at the sound but this fellow was really talented and really made the bagpipes sing.

The Noosa River festival probably included more than just the parade but after watching that I moved on to another small town a few kilometres further inland, called Eumundi. When we checked into our accommodation we picked up a copy of the local paper and discovered there was a body painting competition (among other things) happening over the weekend. The camera was brought into use for that! Actually I have more video shots of the event than still picture. I was using a little Panasonic mini DV camcorder and attached the gorillapod to it to give more stability for my hand held shots. Video seemed more informative for this event than still images. Here is one of the girls "almost" painted.

Returning to Noosa I made a detour and called into Tewantin Craft Market and there found this fellow with a snake casually draped around his shoulders. He was promoting himself as a speaker for schools and clubs but I managed to catch his attention and ask if he minded if I took a photo of him.

The snake is a Carpet Snake and a constricting snake. This snake is found in Queensland - I have seen one that was so large it almost reached from one side of a two lane road to the other. A couple of council workers came across it on its way and became impromptu policemen and held up the traffic until the snake was safely off the road! That was pre-digital camera era so I didn't travel with a camera in my bag!

AJ

Creepy crawly

While enjoying a cup of coffee out on the veranda my eyes alighted on a white cross up near the roof. Of course I knew it was a spider's web but that did not stop me from taking a closer look. I could then make out the spider spread across his cross and decided I would try to get a macro shot of it using the Samsung camera.

The Samsung is a very simple automatic camera but like all point and shoot cameras it has many features on it that enhance its photo taking ability. One of these features is the Macro setting. To switch on "Macro" is a very simple action with the Samsung. One of the buttons on the back has to be pressed. Some cameras require you to go into the menu and search through many options to find Macro. However it is well worth checking your camera to see how to turn it on because it works very well indeed.

Once in Macro setting I reached up and tried to take my picture. I had to lean over the railing and reach up above my head while at the same time try to see what was in the screen and half press the shutter release to allow the camera to focus. The spider was a bit suspicious of my actions and zipped around to the other side of the web. I changed my position and he zipped to the other side again. It was quite frustrating!

I had three tries and two of them worked out. The first shot fired before the camera had locked the focus so it was not very sharp. With the spider on the same side of the web as myself it was a lot easier to hold the camera steady and actually see where I had it positioned in the frame!

If you can stomache seeing the spiders larger so you can see the hairs on its legs and the gleam in its beady eyes, just click on the picture. You will then see it larger than in real life!

Once the deed was done I was able to get back to my cup of coffee and let the spider relax again.

Nothing is safe from my cameras!

AJ

A movie of Emerald Lakes

Just a quick update to give you a link to a little "movie" I have just made of the buildings of Emerald Lakes. For some reason the conversion of the movie has torn the timing something terrible and some shots seem to be "stuck" nothing I have tried seems to work so I apologise for a less than perfect upload.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gb_kySXGfvo

The images are uploaded individually to a web album and they are viewable more easily - and a bit larger!
http://picasaweb.google.com.au/joanren/EmeraldLakesResidentialEstate?feat=directlink
I hope you enjoy looking at the amazing architecture of the French Quarter and of the Italian sector. I loved being there!
AJ

Christmas Day

For me the celebrations of Christmas Day are almost over. I haver returned home from a wonderful day with the family. Here is a picture of my daughter in law, Donna with her two beautiful daughters, Kayla aged five and Chantelle, three. They are all excited and ready to open their presents. And what a lot of presents they got! Christmas is very much a time for children and our day was no exception to that rule! It was the children that received the most presents including the most noisy and the most fun! Although I took lots of photos I switched the camera to movie mode and took half a dozen little movies as well. They are fun to watch. The children got a fun game that was a set of tunnels and toys for two mechanical guinea pigs! The guinea pigs made all sorts of noises and ran backwards and forwards in a most realistic way through all their obstacles. They were really fun to watch - and to take movie of!
So Christmas is now over for yet another year. I have set my reindeer and Santa on the dining room table and have just taken a shot of them because the little Santa seems to be waving "good bye". Since he will be back in the North Pole working on his next assignment - Christmas 2010, this photo is an appropriate one to end this day's blog. I hope you enjoyed the day as much as I did.
AJ

Amazing skies

The sky can be really beautiful and here in South East Queensland there is so much sunshine that very often there are no clouds in the sky at all. Blue skies are great when you want to take a single blossom on a tree with a vivid blue background but when taking scenery the monotone of the sky seems a little uninteresting. Being in it is wonderful, don't get me wrong! But in a photograph a few clouds counter the entertaining foreground. Knowing this I have created dozens of cloud "brushes" so that I can add all kinds of clouds of many different shapes and opacity - however when I saw the sky in the photograph that I have included here, the sky was definitely the focus of interest. I could NEVER have created a sky like this in Photoshop!
This was one of those occasions when I had the camera when the opportunity presented itself. How many times have you wished you had a camera at a particular moment? So a lucky shot! Lucky too that I went outside and actually saw it!
AJ

Multicultural Day

Hot on the heels of Eurofest came the Multicultural Day, also in Surfers Paradise. Once again the day offered music and food and once again I was there with my camera to capture a few of the things that happened while I was there.I was fascinated with the displays that were put on for our entertainment by the Japanese Society. To begin with I watched the nimble fingers of a group of women as they played some unusual stringed instrument. The frets that hold the strings are relocated for each new piece of music. So that was interesting too. While the kimono clad ladies were playing their "harps" (for want of a name) a gentleman accompanied them on a bamboo flute.
Later I returned to the same stage to watch a traditional Japanese Tea Ceremony. As each of the movements was performed (the bowing, turning of the bowl, etc) a woman on a microphone attempted to explain what was being shown. Unfortunately the sound quality was very bad and that combined with her rather poor command of English pronunciation made understanding her very difficult.
Under another tent - storms had been forcast - the music was being played loud and fast for a very wiggly South American girl. She encouraged quite a few people to join her on her "stage" to learn the steps to a dance. It was amazing just how many did join her - but look at the faces, they are new Australians and haven't learned to be reserved like the rest of us! They had a ball!
So two fabulous fun and food filled days for me this weekend, I wonder how I can fill my time next weekend!
AJ

Eurofest - foods of many nations

Saturday was a hot and sunny day and perfect for driving out to join in with a festival that was being held in Surfers Paradise. The festival was called "Eurofest" and it was a celebration of food and music from Europe.We were greeted, on arrival with the exhilarating music of Spain and I had no trouble at all in getting near to the stage to take my photograph of the performers. They were extremely talented but I would imagine a little disappointed at the small number of people present at the time of their performance.Having arrived in time for lunch - deliberately! we lined up at the Hungarian tent to get ourselves a bowl of Goulash. There is no point in going to an event like this and not trying something a bit different. The meat was tender, the soup spicy and I found Colin to have plenty of room in his bowl for my unwanted chunks of potato! There was plenty of potato in the goulash! Potato, Carrot and meat were the only ingredients other than stock. We enjoyed it and then lined up at the Dutch tent for little pancakes with maple syrup and icing sugar. I cannot spell the name so I wont try to write it!
While we were sipping a coffee (we really did enjoy our lunch!) we had fun watching the German Umpah band (that's not their official name!) as they played the chicken dance and lots of jolly beer-drinking tunes.
I am not sure what it is about Australian audiences but they are very reserved! Only half a dozen children and one mother who remained seated, actually danced the chicken dance - I thought everyone knew it! I think back to the time when my boys were under ten (and not embarrassed by their mother's antics) and how I would join in and encourage them and many other children too, to join in. It was fun! Have people forgotten how to have fun?
AJ