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.

old school advertising

appealing streetscape in prague. ordinarily i loathe the painted brick look but this is stylish. which is saying something given it's a billboard for foul pepsi. i wonder if mands would love the painted brick in our living room so much if i did it like this. somehow i think not :)

the turning of the leaves

one of the things i love about canberra is the distinct four seasons we experience. i think it would be perfectly dull to live in a place that was warm all the time. autumn in canberra is crisp, bracing and visually stunning thanks to the proliferation of european desiduous trees.

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.

twisted innovation

some very funky and cutting edge architecture we came across on one of our wanders through the eternally beautiful and interesting city of prague. this was, later research uncovered, built in 1996 and is nicknamed 'the dancing house' (originally titled 'fred and ginger' after fred astaire and ginger rogers). if you happen to be in prague and are looking for it, it is on the vltava river, upstream from charles bridge.

hazell-tinged memories

my cousin rebecca exchanging rings with her partner ali at northwest bay. a very special day and a special location - right across the bay from the house that my grandparents built, that my mum grew up in, and that my sisters & i grew up in. a day layered on top of decades of great family memories.

can a bird actually hum?

this is one of the half decent photos i managed to get of the nazca lines - of the hummingbird geoglyph - as our tiny 6 seater plane rolled and banked at extremely high speed and low altitude over the nazca desert. while i managed to spot all the main shapes bar the monkey - mands, sitting beside me, saw the first few then spend the rest of the short flight barely holding down her breakfast while the woman in the seat in front of me (hi nicole!) lost hers completely. the shapes are quite amazing - some up to 200 metres across and completely indistinguishable as anything other than piles of rubble at ground level.

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!

my type of religion

it's officially called the melbourne cricket ground but in winter it is affectionately known as 'the G', and it is the mecca for the australian football fan. its current full capacity wavers around the 100,000 mark. but even if it's only half or even three quarters full, as it was on the photographed day in question (official crowd count was 73,503 mad screaming blues and tigers fans), and the crowd either witnesses the ball slotting the two biggest posts or senses an umpiring injustice - the mighty fervent roar that echoes around and around in that cauldron is both deafening and thrilling. we worship our football. especially when our side wins. carlton won on the day captured in the above image. so obviously it was a great great day :):) i barrack for carlton blues, and mands for richmond tigers. we try to make it down for one if not both the match-ups between our teams each year. otherwise we hit the ainslie footclub club here in canberra to watch and shout at games on the big screen there with friends. 

hello cocky!

who doesn't love the good ol' cockatoo? arrogant brash noisy attention-seeking birds that they are. we get loads of them (and other birds) around our house here in canberra. i have placed a bowl out on the wall beside our front gate, in which i put a mixed seed and pieces of fruit. these featured cockies and their friends showed up one rainy day to feast on some seeds, then they drank water out of the gutters, before departing noisily - leaving behind a solitary feather which i stuck in the soil of the bottom of the lemon tree pot.