Nimbin is what the tourist guides will call a ‘countercultural centre’, which has been the case since the Aquarius festival there in 1973. This lady was one of a group who were carving sandstone lumps into great sculptures and then just leaving them in the patch of ground where they lay. That’s Nimbin for ya. I liked it.
So his sign said. I’m not sure whether that makes one more likely to give him any money or not, however.
Anyway – enough of Brisbane! Nice as it is, I’m a bit bored of the place. I’m off to Byron Bay for the weekend.
In the Gardens Point library, QUT, this Sunday morning. You see, I do still hang around in libraries now and again, as do the students.
Snapped in the Botanical Gardens this afternoon. Isn’t he peaceful. Bet he moved about half an hour after this picture was taken, however, at the point Brisbane was hit by another rather heavy rainstorm. I like the various symmetries and near-symmetries of this shot.
At the conference dinner of THETA 2013, the gig that has got me to Hobart. These guys also turn up, do their thing, go away again and presumably get something out of it all. There are plenty of people watching them – even if you can’t see them in this photo.
One of the world’s more well-known cricket grounds, but Joe and I were not there to see cricket – the Lions are Brisbane’s local AFL team (Australian Rules Football) and we were both making our debuts there as they hosted the Adelaide Crows. AFL – yeah, an interesting sport, better than rugby, more flowing, but still gives you the opportunity to see large Antipodean men climbing on and hitting each other. I did get a couple of reasonable pictures of the action, but I like this shot: the kid seems to be wondering why his hand isn’t like the big red one to his right. It also encapsulates the fact that there were many family groups there, far more than you’d see at a football match in England.
Being as this is one of the world’s great beach countries it is perhaps a reflection of my own tastes in activity that a beach has not featured on here since February 28th: but let’s bookend the beachless month of March with a return to that environment for a few days, here at Ballina. This girl is collecting shells off the breakwater. I like the strange pose that she’s been caught in, a sort of sense of discovery about it.
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.
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.
Being 42 