protect old growth

a grand old dame in the tahune region in south eastern tasmania.

just one more

one of my favourite photos from one of my favourite days in our trip to vietnam. dragon on the roof of one of the majestic royal tombs beside the perfume river outside of hue. i promise no more dragons. for now.

accidental zen

i am not a believer in god(s) but sometimes i have a sense of greater powers or forces at work in the world. maybe it is just the magical concept of fate or meaningful coincidence. when i returned home from a trip to vietnam and was looking through the many many photos i took there for the first time on a screen bigger than the tiny one on the back of my digital camera, this was one which instantly became one of my favourites of the trip, it encapsulated so perfectly what the whole vietnam experience had come to mean to me. because the truth of this photo is that it was not carefully taken at all - but rather very carelessly out of the window of a taxi racing through the busy streets of saigon as i tried to capture the image of the clouds - only to truly accidentally and unknowingly, yet with perfect partnership, catch the word 'zen' in the same frame.

it's the terror of knowing what this world is about

this image captures just one moment of what was a completely fabulous weekend we spent up in sydney back in 2004. mainly, and i do admit bias, because we went to a david bowie concert. i love love love david bowie. finally getting to see him in concert, as part of his world 'reality' tour, was one of those dreams come true. especially when he sang 'under pressure' which is my favourite bowie song - one of the guitarists (a woman) did the freddie mercury half of the duet. we also went to the police and justice museum at circular quay - the reason being we had recently read razor by larry writer, and a lot of the documents and evidence he used to write the book were in this museum - including said razors used by the razor gangs in the sydney crime scene in the 1920s and 30s. and finally to mardi gras fair day. a really perfect weekend!

jaws VI

this is the first photo featured which i didn't actually take myself or set up camera to take it, but nonetheless i want it here because it documents a significant occasion - one of me face to face with a shark! mands got me a shark dive for a birthday many years ago. indeed, for my 30th she got me a sky dive. some people think there is something concerning and insidious with this pattern of life threatening gifts but i know it's just because she knows me so well :) she also took this great photo. thanks mands! besides, grey nurse sharks are not a man-eater despite having quite a terrifying and impressive set of gnashers. it was literally awesome to be in the water (manly aquarium) with them. at one point i noticed mands (in the viewing tunnel, which runs along the bottom of the aquarium) pointing behind me, i look around and there is a shark coming right at my face. it would have actually hit me in the head if one of the supervising aquarium staff hadn't pushed up against it's stomach so it just glided over the top of my head instead. my eyes would have fallen out of my head if it hadn't been for the goggles! 

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. 

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.

cattitude

it is not with rose-coloured glasses looked upon those who have passed on nor first-born favouritism that i say with all honesty that jack was an absolute saint compared with the little b (also known as lexie). however even the best natured cats have their moments and this looks like it was one of those for jack. i also like this photo because the black and white effect hightlights his tigery stripes.

communist tv

this is a shot i took from a boat cruising through the mekong delta in southern vietnam. i was amazed that people even living in clearly abject poverty had both the money and inclination to buy a tv and some impressive aerials. then our guide informed us that the government installs a tv with a requisite aerial to ensure good reception in every home, and also provides all the programming, to reinforce government messages to the population.