Newtown Signs

On July 4, I spent the day taking photos around Sydney's hipster suburb of Newtown, a very interesting area visually. Even the Fire Department has a sense of humour! 

Cemetery of the Dead People's Graveyard for Deceased Persons

John, who loves Grimes (whoever that is) and the grave of Ernestine. 

Newtown

Permission to come aboard, Cap'n?

"No."

Queen Victoria

Listen to the ta-may-tah wit' da melons, the great Herschel "Krusty the Clown" Krustofsky once quoth, and he knew what he was talking about, believe me. And on that note, I've spent my birthday week in Sydney, folks! Here's the first of the sketches I did there: the statue of Queen Victoria outside the building that bears her name.

I've made her look a bit less of an old crone here, not to say the actual statue doesn't look good though. And if you're in Sydney and want to see a beautiful old 1880s building with an amazing interior with stained glass, tiled floors, incredible clocks hanging from the ceiling and heaps of shops, you'd be well advised to check out the QVB. Go now! Tell 'em Pete from Nonesuch sent you!

X

I've spent the last 16 days in Sydney, the longest trip there I have had so far. The following is a pictorial account of some of the highlights (that I had a camera in hand for). These are all digital shots; Lomographs to follow in a later post.

The Harbour Bridge on New Year's Eve. The theme for the night was 'Make Your Mark', and so the motif on the bridge was a giant X. It also changed to a smiley face, a hand, a tick and a peace sign, but I liked X best, as a theme for 2011.

Sparks shoot out from the bridge.

This, oddly enough, is the underside of the Harbour Bridge. I took the photo lying on the lawn underneath, looking up.

Bendy Em, a contortionist. She squeezed into this box, 43 centimetres square!

This artwork was one of many on display in the courthouse foyer. It's called Jar Heads by Sunderland College student Jessica Mills. The accompanying card says: "Slipcast lidded jars with underglaze colours". I like the one in orange – he looks a tad confused.

On January 5th, the bridge is still lit up with its 'hand' sign.

Vintage rock/blues trio Kitty, Daisy and Lewis performed on the first night of the Sydney Festival.

Festival First Night – the stage in The Domain.

Panoramic image of Bondi Beach. I'm 38th from left, in front of the randy Swedish backpackers.

I'm In Sydney

Happy New Year! I'm here in Sydney, and as expected, the city put on a massive fireworks show. 7500 kilograms of them. One and a half million people turned out to see it. We waited twelve and a half hours having staked out our position on a grassy patch close to the Harbour Bridge. Well worth the wait I'd say. In the next post I'll upload some photos I took, but unfortunately, I won't be able to upload the atmosphere of the night. Especially the way you think the sky is going to crack open with all that noise.

Aside from the festivities of 1/1/11, other things are happening which I hope to capture on film and get it uploaded. I managed to shoot a whole roll of film using the Lomo camera of just long exposure shots of fireworks. I managed to do two of these on New Year's Day last year and they turned out pretty good, so this time I decided to blow a whole roll on it. Why not?

Anyway, Sydney's awesome and I hope the start of 2011 was just as spectacular in your city. But it probably wasn't.

A Small Boat

On Saturday, May 15, thousands of people packed into Sydney Harbour to see 16 year old Jessica Watson return after circumnavigating the world. My vantage point was close to North Head in the Sydney suburb of Vaucluse. When Jessica's boat finally crossed the heads, it was hard to make out amongst all the other boats (this is a massively zoomed-in shot, so it looks like crud):


A sky-writing plane had written this message earlier, but I can't read what it says. Something-'live'. I've turned the photo upside down. Any ideas?

The next day I went to Darling Harbour and Jessica's boat happened to be moored there, surrounded by news crews and hundreds of photo-takers. I was surprised the boat is only 10.5 metres long – to think she spent seven months on it. I'm sure there were plenty of naysayers, but the impression I got was that most people were proud of what Jessica did, a courageous feat at a time when people are taking fewer and fewer risks in the world.

To finish up, here's a shot of a road sign somewhere on the Hume Highway in rural Victoria. I think it's awesome that someone named a town Dookie. Did they know what it means as a slang term? If you look closely you'll see that the 'Dookie' part is on a separate piece of metal stuck on to the main one. Perhaps the town was called something else before? And what was it? Some things will have to remain unknown.

To all the fine citizens of Dookie, Victoria: Nonesuch Blog salutes you!

Opera House

Circular Quay in Sydney is a great place to enjoy the sights and the atmosphere. The sights, of course, are the Opera House and the Harbour Bridge, probably the two most famous landmarks in the country. Here's my standard postcard shot of the Opera House, taken last Sunday.

On any given day there are hundreds of tourists milling around on the Opera House steps to get their obligatory photo, but photographing it from front-on doesn't do it justice and it won't all fit in the frame anyway. Since it was my second visit to Sydney I tried to get something different to the first lot, and one of them was this darkened shot with a glimpse of the bridge in the background. It would be better if you could see more of the detail on the roof.

And so the Opera House will continue to attract thousands of tourists, most of whom will end up doing that ridiculous 'star jump' pose on the steps. Grow up, people. That aside, I still find it a great shame that the man who designed the building died without ever seeing it finished.

Next time: A small boat.

Bondi Beach

This is the first of three posts about my trip to Sydney last week. First up – Bondi Beach. Now we all know that this beach, in Australia's wealthiest suburb, is well known around the world. For those of you who haven't seen it, here's a panoramic shot I did.

It's almost empty because last Friday was fairly cold. You've probably seen that Bondi Rescue show that they film here, but let's ignore the lifesaving. There's also skate ramps and street art along the walkway facing the Tasman Sea. Below is an emblem-style stencil showing Bondi's postcode, 2026.

There are two of these; someone drew a cigarette in the girl's mouth on the other one. The next picture is of one of the street artists at work on the wall.

They've covered a lot so far, as you can see the wall is fairly long. The new stuff has a lot of Avatar graphics in it.

Next time: the Opera House and Harbour Bridge.