Clare and Joe’s last full day in Australia before the end of their break here, so let’s feature them on today’s picture. Taken with the old Fujifilm camera with which I took the first 366 photos on this blog: it still takes a decent shot but the zoom is half-dead so I do need to repair the other one.
After the conference dinner last night, the conference lunch. It’s all about the free meals I tell you. But you don’t always get a table at which to sit.
Reasonably decent photo though this is, unfortunately, photography-wise, today was more effectively epitomised by the fact that first thing in the morning I dropped my camera onto the street, thus, a hard tarmac surface, and it did not come out unscathed. The lens has now got a very small, but (to me) painfully obvious, crack in it. I can conceal it to some extent by hiding it in a dark part of the photo, but it is there. On this photo it sits directly above the head of the woman in the centre of the photo, the second left person visible. That little dark, upside-down teardrop will appear on every single photo I take from this point until I get my lens repaired. Ergo, the job has to be done. I am back using an older camera as from tomorrow for at least a few days… but it’s just an instrument. I’ll get used to it again.
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.
This peak towers over Hobart, at 1270 metres above sea level, and this picture is taken from the very highest point. I’d like to claim I walked up, but as you can see, it’s got tarmac all the way to the top. Anyway, the family were with me and it was by far the coolest and rainiest day of my Australian trip so far. It’s the highest point Joe has ever been, I think.
As my mother has been known to say, I ‘do get about’. This week I have come to Hobart, Tasmania, for a conference. Tonight’s reception was held in MONA, the Museum of Old and New Art: one of the world’s largest totally privately funded museums.
This water feature was an interesting element – I don’t know if it’s ‘art’, but in a purely technical sense I have never seen anything like it before – the precision needed to create clear lettering (in Helvetica font, or something similar) from dropping curtains of water is quite impressive. The words have been picked at random from today’s headlines, apparently – but I don’t know what the Philippines have done to be worth recording in raindrops today.
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.
Pictured as we returned to the mainland from Stradbroke Island: that’s it on the horizon. I like this shot for the way the sea evokes a snowy moor in Yorkshire in January, or possibly silver foil?
This headland sits at the north-eastern corner of Stradbroke Island and lives up to its name, at least, if the sea is what you want to look at. So named by Captain James Cook on 17th May 1770, who presumably did need to see what was going on out there now and again. Clare follows his example, nearly 243 years later.
This particular one didn’t hit Point Lookout (where we reside) although one did come along later in the evening.
Clare’s, to be exact: imprinted on the sand of Home Beach, North Stradbroke Island.
Being 42 