Joe, doing his cool dude act, as we have a drink after seeing a show at the Opera House (Frankenstein: a brilliant version). Mind you, whoever thought that the bland apartment blocks of Opera Quays would benefit the classic view of Sydney harbour from this point is an idiotic philistine of gargantuan proportions. Doubtless that gives him a role to play in the urban planning department of many a municipality around the world.
This is a tree that grows in the Botanic Gardens, and was planted in the 1870s. It is a marvellous tree, which sends creepers down from its branches to seek more sustenance, these eventually growing into substantial new trunks from the top down. The biggest banyan tree in the world is in India, and covers more than 1.5 hectares, with more than 1,000 distinct trunks. This one isn’t anywhere near as big but if you ask me is still the coolest tree in Brisbane.
And, oh yeah, the family turned up this morning… for three weeks 🙂
Light Render is an art installation by Caitlin Franzmann, currently on display at the QUT Art Museum. According to the blurb for this exhibit, in which a video camera is pointed at a mirrored cube and the image displayed on the wall behind, the point is to allow visitors to the gallery to insert themselves into the art work in various ways by interposing themselves into the camera’s line of sight and/or the feed itself. So that is what I have done here – the two man-shaped shadows you see here are both me.
And seeing as this blog is my own ‘work of art’, an extended record of my life, here Ms Franzmann’s work of art inserts itself into my own work of art and everyone’s work of art becomes a small part of everyone else’s…. in some giant recursion. Or something like that.
Irony warning…. I don’t mean to suggest it was like this all day, just this one heavy shower, but this is the only place I have seen rain in the whole 8 weeks I’ve been here, including in New Zealand.
Feel like I should feature on here some of the nice people at QUT (Queensland University of Technology) who have set up this academic visit of mine and are doing their best to make me feel at home. This is Christine, speaking at today’s launch of the HERN (Higher Education Research Network), in the atrium of one of their impressive new buildings (in fact, on the floor above the Digital Barrier Reef which featured back in early February). There are actually a couple of hundred people in this room at this point, but I like the sense of emptiness in the shot.
Incidentally, I think the following universities have featured on this blog at some point, in no particular order: Manchester, QUT, Charles Sturt, Helsinki, Otago, Alabama, Leeds, Birmingham City, Bergen, Bergen University College (these are two different institutions) and the Academy of National Economy in Moscow. The nicest campus? Er…. probably Alabama.
Even if he didn’t sing it at the Sydney Entertainment Center tonight – this man wrote Down By the River. For that reason alone, I’d have his babies.
This is definitely one of the world’s more photogenic cities – I got a whole bunch today that I might have put up here. I know there is a voyeuristic element to taking photos of strangers without them knowing, but look, they’re looking good and I hope I honour them by putting it up here. A fine city, yes. Lots to like.
Just to confirm that I am still getting on with the occasional day’s work while on this trip. In Manchester we are lucky if we can get a sight of the smelly and overtrafficked Oxford Road from one of our office windows, here at CSU in Wagga we have a view of miles of uninterrupted hills, scrub and vineyards.
Also a happy birthday to Joe today – 10 years old, born 04/03/03 (and yes, we have all sometimes regretted that he arrived 14.6 hours too late to have a really numerically cool birth date). Sorry I couldn’t be there, my son.
First night on Stewart Island: not only the most southerly place I have been, but pretty much the most southerly place one can go. Only the very bottom of South America, the Falkland Islands (or Malvinas), and Antarctica are further south than here.
Evening entertainment in Oban, the only settlement on Stewart Island, consists either of going to the one pub, or hanging out here on the dock waiting for the penguins to turn up. We did see one. But as is often the case, it turned out more productive to photograph the crowd and not what the crowd was waiting for. (Incidentally, having got to know her a little tonight, it turns out the woman to second right here is a highly accomplished photographer in her own right, far better than me – see her blog here.)
Since I took this photograph I have been speculating about the reason why this item of clothing exists, and I’ll be damned if I can work it out.
Still, it was more interesting than anything I could find in Invercargill tonight. On to Stewart Island tomorrow.
