the toilet and the tower (8)

this is a sight common to me in my bicycle commute to work. while it's ordinary as it comes, and it is probably a really boring photo for others, there's something i really like about it. well i like the view itself, which is what i've tried to capture. the juxaposition of a toilet block with the black mountain tower. to be honest i probably like the look of the toilet block more, oddly enough. at least it's been gentrified to a degree with some interesting and colourful graffiti, whereas the tower is still a plain grey concrete 1970s spaceship-like object propped atop a hill called a mountain. canberrans like naming big hills mountains. which is quite endearing in a parochial way. this photo also shows something else i love about canberra - the abundance of green in the form of nature reserves. this location is a mere 5km maximum from the city centre. lots of green makes for serene living.

no sign of miranda

an outing or event that fulfills a lifelong dream or wish is always charged with some excitement or emotion. i finally got to walk around and up into hanging rock in victoria last year. and the sight of it struck a real chord in me. it felt truly truly eerie. so quiet, no noise except the wind through the trees and an occasional bird. we were the only ones there at the time. it was easy to imagine being a schoolgirl wandering through the ancient rock formations....

bouncing off clouds

a bright sun reluctantly setting on the end of a long summer day in lyneham. view from our back courtyard.

serenity now

mossy trees, misty rain, still waters of dove lake, cradle mountain location, not a single person to be in seen, complete natural serenity. these are more than a few of my favourite things.

a fairly impressive nightlight

i wonder if everyone else with their bedroom looking out on this sparkling glittering view falls asleep every night with the curtains wide open like we did. i couldn't keep my eyes off it.

where life moves slowly in a good way

one of the most stunning sunsets i have ever seen was watching the sun set behind the mekong river, sitting on the top of a hill in luang prabang, in northern laos. life is laos moves at a slow and leisurely pace compared to other south east asian countries, you truly cannot help but feel relaxed there and just happy to be. what a wonderful place it would be to live.

how's the serenity?

the almost perfect serene stillness of an autumn-tinged lake burley griffin taken from in front of the high court of australia across to the national carillon, with the tops of the defence buildings at russell visible over to the left. i like the low moon already visible hanging in the sky too. not such a bad photo given i took it with my mobile.

where we came from

day 2 of the inca trail. about 8 hours of walking the path of the ancient incas en route to machu picchu. the crossing over 2 mountain passes (while nearing the second, this photo shows mands pointing back towards the first one, aptly named dead woman's pass), and down into 2 deep valleys. moving through about 7 vastly different temperate ecosystems from tropical tangled thick jungle to open near barren plains on the flat tops of mountains. blazing sun, misty rain, white snow (the last sighted in the distance on mountain tops only, thanks be). and as i have said before, i would do it all over again.

grey concrete rainbows

and what's that there at the end? ain't no pot of gold. maybe a trough of gold. this is a shot of commonwealth avenue bridge shooting over lake burley griffin, which is our man-made lake here in canberra. it's a snap i took with the mobile phone camera on a lovely big bike ride mands and i did around the lake (well around a hell of a lot of it!) back in january. i like the strong symmetrical lines of the bridge lanes with the faint sight of parliament house at the end. it almost looks like it's fading away...

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 :)

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. 

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.

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?

four seasons in one day

one time when mands and i were down in hobart visiting my family, we thought we'd go for a drive up the mountain. as in mountain wellington featured in the previous post. the weather was lovely and clear when we set out but of course when we got up the mountain the clouds rolled in and my god the wind!!!! it was freeeeeeeezing. so windy and cold. we only lasted a few minutes out of the car then it was abandon all ye hope as we jumped back in to bolt back down into some semblance of warmth, and as we started out on our descent there was this beautiful sight of the sun valliantly bursting through the clouds far off on the horizon. i didn't get out of the car to take the photo :)

my mountain

i am from tasmania, as my profile states. i go back there a lot because far and away all of my immediate and most of my extended family still lives there while i rebelliously reside on 'the mainland' (this is what tasmanians call the rest of australia, why bother with individual state and territory names when you can just use 2 words to describe the lot!). tasmania is a beautiful state, with tons of natural beauty. indeed about a fifth of the state is world heritage listed. mount wellington, which features in this photo and, i would dare say, in every photo of hobart known to man, is not world heritage listed but it is spectacular in its domination of tasmania's capital. it seems to have its own extremely volatile weather system as well, and whatever mood takes it effects the entirety of hobart town. it is not unusual to see snow on it in the middle of summer. i took this picture in 2003, i think it might have been mands' first visit to tasmania - whether it was or not, i recall my mum took us to show her the 'best place in hobart to take a photo of the mountain'. for your reference and future photo-taking, this location is at the end of newcastle street in battery point.

a lot more trees than the grand canyon

touted as being the blue mountains' "very own grand canyon" can i just say i found govett's leap lookout at blackheath to be far far more impressive than the famous three sisters (i am fairly certain my reaction exactly to that particular NSW natural icon was "is that it?"). govett's leap however was nothing short of breathtaking with a drop of over 600 metres down to the canyon floor, and fantastic sheer rock faces around the rim, with the massive valley stretching all the way out to the horizon. mands' family live in the blue mountains so far and away most of our time there is family time but i am making a note to myself right now to do one of the walks around govett's leap next time we are up there. a fact worth nothing is that this place is not named after a man who leapt to his death or anything gruesome (local tourist myth) - rather this govett was scottish surveyor working in the area in colonial times, and 'leap' is the scottish word for waterfall (many of them in the gorges making up the valley) or cataract.

flamingo volcano

to justify the repetition (although i make no apology - there will be more photos to come from this day) the previous photo was about the flamingos and the lagoon, this shot provides some context with a snow capped inactive volcano in the background. it was actually very very cold on the day in question - despite the sunny clear blue skies and dessert-like environment. the ants on the far side of the lagoon are people. 

day 2 inca trail

with the mists clearing to reveal clear blue skies, it was a fresh and breath-taking start to day 2 of the inca trail, looking up at the mountain peaks towering over us, and of which we had slept in the shadows the night preceding, our campsite halfway up the main incline to dead woman's pass. we were informed by our guide, wearing a sly love-scaring-the-tourists smile, that several hikers die every year attempting to walk over the pass. i loved every minute and every metre of the 45 kilometres of the inca trail, and would do it all again in a heartbeat.