i swam every day

i do love swimming and being in water but i so often enjoy it as i fear open water because of sharks (yes irrational i know) and am repulsed by public pools, so when mands and i stayed at a small resort in port douglas for our whatever-you-call-the-holiday-after-a-civil-partnership - i took great delight in swimming in the outdoor heated (unnecessary but lovely nonetheless!) pool at least once a day. and i didn't have to share it with anyone else at any time (well ok, mands a couple of times). it was absolute bliss to float on my back and quietly gaze at palm fronds and blue sky.

gratuitousness

i will continue my indulgence in paris for another post. this is one spectacular outlook from the very top of the eiffel tower. there is nothing over-rated about the tower at all - it is beautiful by day and night. it is little wonder that over 200 million people have visited this global icon since its construction just over a century ago. the only negative thing about it is that when you are up it, you are not looking at it. mands got a bit wiggy at the top because it is so high up, it took some convincing to get her up there. but she was glad she went up :)

i do love paris

i really really do. and i haven't even been there in the spring time. only in the autumn and the winter. but even then, and even on a grey cloudy day like the one in the photo, it truly is a beautiful city with so many wonderful sights and experiences. and so pleasant to walk around. it is little wonder that it is the most visited city in the world. the only thing going against it is that there are french people there. but aside from that, it is just simply delightful. i have been there twice and would go back again in a heartbeat. the third time i would stay in montemarte again as i did the first time, which is the 'arty district' up on the hill with steep cobblestoned streets near sacre de cour and the moulin rouge. mands and i saw don johnson (of miami vice fame) when we were in paris, he was staying in a hotel only 5 minutes walk from ours! i may have even taken this photo just before we saw him, as he was walking into a hotel bordering place de la concorde - a major square where this egyptian obelisk is situated, with the eiffel tower in the background. the oblelisk was a gift to france from egypt in the early 1800s - it is nearly 3,500 years old. don johnson is not as old as this, but he is even better preserved.

closer still with zah zoom

i don't know what these little plants (some kind of grass i would venture) are called but they numbered the thousands if not tens of thousands on the walk along the bay of fires. they were soft to touch almost like cotton wool - and certainly looked like swathes of cotton balls to walk through, with the wind blowing them about. it's hard to explain but i really liked them, it think because the way they moved about in the wind they looked like a sea of little furry white creatures happily bobbing about.  

year of the dragon

well it was actually year of the monkey, and this wasn't in china. but i was born in the year of the dragon, chinese zodiac calendar wise i mean, so i have always thought they were pretty cool. these very impressive dragon stair-rails (if you could call them that!) were located in one of the six royal tombs up the perfume river from hue, vietnam. 

the water out of the tap is very hard to drink

daniel johns playing with silverchair in canberra, followed by powderfinger: 'across the great divide' tour. powderchair won the headlining spot in the tour because queensland won the state of origin that year. the state of origin is the annual interstate rugby league grudge match (well, best fo 3). powderchair is from brisbane, queensland, and silverchair from newcastle, nsw. while i don't really watch league, i always barrack for the toads (queensland) in state of origin on principle. having said that silverchair is the better band and should have had headlining spot - not decided by a dumb sports competition!

trapped in a 20s timewarp

as in mands and i are both 20-something in this photo - and will be forever and ever. check those hair colours! we are not so brash now in our 'old age' :) i really like this photo, i think it's a nice one of both of us. we are on the tahune airwalk in southern tasmania - which is a walk literally up amongst the trees (and you know how i love trees!) with a series of walkways nearly 50m above the forest floor, stretching for half a kilometre. it is beautiful down (and up!) there.

emulating kate winslet

we spent a good half an hour or so out on the uyuni salt flats in bolivia, taking photos that played with perspective - the vast expanse of white with nothing really visible on the horizon allows you to do this. so we took photos like mands pushing a 'giant' bottle of vodka on top of me, us standing on a 'giant' pair of dice, and me holding a 'minature' mands in my hand. i'm not sure what i was doing with this particular photo but i do like it anyway for its simplicity. the salt ridge mands is standing on is only a 1cm high or so. in fact in look at it now, it almost looks like a 'giant' mands standing on the top of a wave breaking at the beach! or maybe she is remembering the giant jebus from rio :)

salt on everything - just as i like it

bolivia was my favourite country in south america - i knew next to nothing about it before we went there and loved everything about it by the time we left. when we were planning our trip to south america, we had two must-sees - mands wanted to see the big jebus in rio de janiero and i wanted to walk the inca trail into macchu pichu. these two locations are pretty much on opposite sides of the continent so we simply booked a tour that stretched overland between the two. and when i say we simply booked it, we really did simply book it without looking in any great detail at what else was included in the tour. we were just happy about going to south america. so it was a genuine joy and surprise to do the tour and discover what we were seeing and doing as it actually happened. for example on the first day out of rio de janiero we were in a van going south down the coast and got on a boat only to discover we were going to stay on a brazillian island for 3 days - it was woot! anyway that is not what this photo is about, it's a photo of salar d'uyuni - the salt flats in south west bolivia. salt salt salt as far as the eye could see - it is the largest salt flat in the entire world at over 10,000km squared. i even licked the ground. 

sport(wo)manship

a genuine handshake (not an arm wrestle as the pose may suggest) with smiles on both competitors' (amelie mauresmo 4 2 def by victoria azarenka 6 6) faces after a great grand slam match. not to mention some very nice muscle definition on their arms!! 

bog of eternal stench

this is on par with what i imagine assaulted the smelling senses of jennifer connelly's character in the movie 'labyrinth' when she encountered the bog of eternal stench. ginormous geysers in south-west bolivia spewing out sulphurous 'rotten egg' gas. they bloody stunk. i can still remember that smell!

very very vertigo

i don't usually suffer a fear of heights but i don't mind telling you that when i had had my fill of the views over machu picchu from the top of huayna picchu, which is the little mountain you see in every classic machu picchu shot behind the main city, and turned around to make my descent - i was for a moment absolutely and utterly paralysed with sheer terror at the sight of the return journey, which is featured in this photo. on the climb (in many parts literally climbing) up i didn't take much notice of the lack of safety features - most likely because having trekked over 50km in the prior 3 days up and down mountains, it took every last scrap of energy (more sheer determination!) to make the final 360m vertical ascent up huayna picchu. i didn't have the energy on the way up to notice the lack of rails or ropes or anything resembling an obstacle to a near sheer drop to the mountain valley floor below. however as i went to make my way down, it was ALL i could notice. needless to say i did make a safe return down, but i'll never forget that sickening fear and imaginings of tumbling all the way down should i lose my footing or grip!

i love haggis

twice, and over ten years apart, i did an almost identical 3 day minibus tour from edinburgh up through the highlands and lochs to the isle of skye then back down returning to edinburgh. why? because i loved it so much the first time round! in 1996, it was love at first sight, making scotland my favourite country in europe. then in returning to scotland over a decade later i couldn't resist doing pretty much the same route again, and why not with the same company 'haggis adventures'. the tour again passed through the truly breathtaking sight of glencoe. driving into the start of this massive valley, with two misty massive mountain ridges towering up on both sides, you feel like you are instantly transformed into an ant - you literally feel so small in comparison. this photo gives some idea of this perspective, if you look carefully you can see a teeny tiny itty bitty yellow line in the bottom right hand corner of the photo, this is the haggis bus. it is an amazing place.

cartoon browns

another modified photo, this cartoon effect was in photoshop if my memory serves me correctly. it was a nice photo i took (camera held by me with arm outstretched as you can even see in the reflection of my sunglasses!) in the first place, if i may say so myself - but i like this cartoon result as well. simplified but still honest.... with no wrinkles or blemishes to be seen. an airbrushing of sorts ;) this photo is from way back in late 2003 when we went for a daytrip out to port arthur, this moment on the cruise out to isle of the dead, where a thousand people, mostly convicts and paupers, were buried in the early to late 1800s.

masquerade ball of sorts

this is one of my sisters, georgina, at my 30th which was basically a drinks and nibbles in the backyard affair but i required that people wore masks. if i remember correctly i think this mask was actually anna's (my other sister) but gina had borrowed it for a moment. anyway it's a pretty cool mask. mine was a jester (of the court) mask with the floppy hat points (the technical term being liliripes!) with jinglebells on the ends. 

all in, all out

my mobile camera (sony ericsson cybershot 3.2MP) takes fairly decent photos, and has some funky inbuilt effects settings. one of them is solarize - which overexposes the image, causing the colours to bleed into one another - resulting in blocks of colour and blurred line definition. this image is taken on that setting from the first floor landing overlooking an infamous 'clappers' poker night. i was taking the photo after i did a spectacular fail on an 'all in' bluff with a really crap hand. this is not an unusual occurence on these evenings :)

art comes in a spray can

i am a total fan of graffiti when it is not offensive, not watant vandalism. in fact i wouldn't even call it graffiti at all, i would call it street art. banksy does street art. stupid bored teenagers do tagging which is graffiti. one of the many reasons i love melbourne is that it has loads of awesome street art. i can't help but take photos of it every time i'm down there. this particular one was in a little alley off flinders street which i took while waiting for friends to go to a tapas bar. the character looks a little 'where the wild things are' max-like.

the australian dream

is owning your own home. my sister gina and her partner just got the keys to their new place in taroona yesterday - lots of work to do (including replacing this rusty letterbox!) but it's a labour of love when it's yours, and the end result carries with it a real sense of satisfaction. i love older places like the one they bought, they have so much more character than the new mass produced concrete boxes. it was lots of fun helping them pulling up ancient carpet and lino, and ripping down wallpaper today.

there's a mouthful of wine left there

this is a bit of an abstract one which is about my personal associations with the image. it's the end of a delicious christmas day lunch with a scrunched up and admitted un-christmassy-looking napkin, the end of a good glass of wine, and the start of a good (ie tasmanian) beer. you're full and content and sharing some good times with three generations of your family. you're making memories. it's been a good day and you're happy with your lot in life. or rather, i was :) 

art, um, autumn

part of loving trees is that i really love autumn! this is an image showcasing the natural beauty of berlin - the stunning tiergarten in full autumn glory. this massive city park stretches for kilometres through the old west berlin right up to the brandenburg gate and the reichstag. mands and i were staying in a hotel near the fringe of the park so many a time we walked through it on our wanders to various sights in our week in berlin. nature is art.

jess and her dad

dad is the bigger, more unstable looking one on the left. i am the more carefully composed and sturdier one on the right. we built our traveller's cairns by the water at the bay of fires when we were there a few weekends ago. i wonder if they (we!) are still standing there. how long will we stand the test of time, nature, or more destructive-minded folk passing by?

up to date with the tetanus shot, no worries mate

a more positive (well to me) shot of barb wire. this image is very australian to me, a segment of a rusty old leaning fence with long dry grass in the background. i took this the other week walking along the bay of fires with mands and my parents. we were all a bit scared there might be some snakes in the grass. i even jumped at a tiny lizard scurrying off the path at one point.

barb(aric) wire

this is the remains of a wall at sachsenhausen, a concentration camp north of berlin. i don't really want to say anything more other than the grey clouds in the background are appropriate. i only took a handful of photos when i visited this site. it still makes me feel sad to think about it. actually the one other thing i will say no country or race is without a chequered history or a mistake.

grand slam thank you ma'am

serena williams won the 2009 australian open women's singles final last night in melbourne. i took the above photo while watching her convincingly win her round 3 match in the rod laver arena last saturday morning. she really is a power player - no wonder, she is built of 100% muscle!