Thursday 30 November 2006
Industrial Relations Laws: "just not cricket" *
The rally attracted 40 000 in Sydney, and 50 000 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG) in Melbourne, from where there was a satellite broadcast to 500 venues across Australia.
For more info about the issue, see the ACTU Your Rights At Work website.
For more pictures of the rally and march, click here to go to my Daily Photo Extras Blog.
Previous blogs on this issue:
No Laughing matter" - July 4 2006
March and rally - June 28 2006
News reports: Sydney Morning Herald, The Melbourne Age - "Just not cricket"
* "Just not cricket" - a phrase meaning not in the spirit of fair play, derived from the idea that cricket is a "gentleman's game".
Wednesday 29 November 2006
The Ashes
Tuesday 28 November 2006
Christmas fare
The round shaped packages wrapped in cloth are traditional plum puddings. Even though a northern hemisphere hot Christmas feast doesn't make too much sense in the heat of an Australian Christmas, and we usually stick to cold meats and salads, I am a sucker for plum pud. With custard. A true culinary highlight care of the Brits!
Monday 27 November 2006
Weekend card game
It's hard rubbish collection time. On Saturday my son and his mates dragged in an old lounge, a couple of chairs and some other bits and pieces from out on the street into our backyard. They amused themselves turning it first into a cubby house, and then into a Yu-gi-oh tournament setting.
Meanwhile, out on the street, there's some kitchen equipment to add to the kitchen sink you may recently have picked up on the street in Paris!
Sunday 26 November 2006
The Rising Sun as Australian Nationalist Symbol
A brief history of the rising sun badge
Saturday 25 November 2006
Sunrise II, Botany Bay
Friday 24 November 2006
Thursday 23 November 2006
Boys Just Wanna Have Fun
Wednesday 22 November 2006
Circular Quay and The Rocks
Tuesday 21 November 2006
Out on the patio...
Monday 20 November 2006
Aboriginal canoe tree
This is near where I've been hanging out the past few days.
Sunday 19 November 2006
Smile!
Sorry I can't visit all my blogging friends around the world this weekend. I'm away from my usual post for a few days, and connecting via the world's slowest, seemingly steam-powered connection.
Hope you're having a great weekend, and your cameras are causing lots of smiles!
Saturday 18 November 2006
Christmas windows
Friday 17 November 2006
Old main Post office
Thursday 16 November 2006
David Jones Food Hall
Wednesday 15 November 2006
Morning coffee
Tuesday 14 November 2006
Monday 13 November 2006
Sunday 12 November 2006
Saturday 11 November 2006
Armistice Day - Remembrance Day - Poppy Day
At the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, in 1918, the armistice officially ending World War One was signed in a railway carriage in a clearing in the forest at Compiègne in France. It marked the cessation of hostilities on the Western Front. War continued, however, across the former Russian Empire and in parts of the former Ottoman Empire.
My grandfather was one of the bright-eyed young Australians who fought this far-away war, "for God, King and Empire" (note the British flag in his photo). Unlike 60,000 of his countrymen, he survived Gallipoli, the Somme and Flanders, to come home and marry my grandmother (they met after the war). The picture centre bottom above is them on their honeymoon in the Blue Mountains.
The poppy's significance to Remembrance Day is a result of Canadian military physician John McCrae's poem In Flanders Fields. The poppy emblem was chosen because of the poppies that bloomed across some of the worst battlefields of Flanders, their red colour an appropriate symbol for the bloodshed. French woman Madame E. Guérin introduced the widely used artificial poppies given out and sold today.
Armistice Day - Remembrance Day - Poppy Day (Wikipedia)
Friday 10 November 2006
Thursday 9 November 2006
SOLD! A steal at a mere $7.1 million!
Sold for $7.1 million last week was 'Brise de Mer', the last remaining fully detached house on the Manly beachfront. A company with restoration credentials bought it. Until now it has been held by one family since 1917. It sits on 910 sq metres, and there is approval for a five-unit, six-storey apartment block in its backyard. Let's hope what rises behind is a little more attractive than what flanks it. More here. The outcome seems better than what was threatened a year ago.
Wednesday 8 November 2006
Breakfast fruits
Summer's coming, so peaches, nectarines and mangoes are making an appearance. Cherries soon too. Just the thing for summer breakfasts (and all day, really!) . But it's the last appearance for this year of blood oranges, which I love to juice with ruby grapefruit, lemons and mandarins for my breakfast juice.
Tuesday 7 November 2006
Gaudì-inspired seats, Neutral Bay
In 2002, mosaicist, Cynthia Turner, drew inspiration from Antonio Gaudì's famous benches in Parc Güell, Barcelona, in making these seats in Sydney's Neutral Bay.
Monday 6 November 2006
Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, Newtown
Sunday 5 November 2006
Von Stauffenberg's Stamp
The story involved a stamp dealer, and a barber, whose shops were next to each other. The real stamp shop owner told me they used a barber shop in another suburb, and melded the two together on screen, because this barber didn't want to take part.
Three of my favourite actors - Sam Neill, Roy Billing, and Wendy Hughes were in the show. So, a small local 'Brush With Fame'.
Saturday 4 November 2006
Friday 3 November 2006
In the backyard (not mine!)
What 's your favourite memory of a childhood toy?
There's also another Aussie phenomenon happening in this pic - the house renovation at the back - the back deck, probably with the kitchen or family room opening on to the deck. Many of my neighbours are from Southern Europe or the Middle East, and they tend to spend a lot of their leisure hours at the FRONT of the house, sitting on porches or verandahs entertaining, sipping tea or coffee, and watching the world go by. Many have moved old chairs and sofas out the front for this purpose. Older Australians, in contrast, have traditionally spent their leisure hours in the backyard - gardening, pottering in the shed, having a barbecue, and so now often the first part of a house to receive a makeover is the back. It accounts for the enormous popularity of one TV show called "Backyard Blitz" where a team makes over a backyard in 48 hours.
Thursday 2 November 2006
Andrew (Boy) Charlton pool, Woolloomooloo Bay
Andrew 'Boy' Charlton (the nickname comes from the fact that he was only 14 when he came to prominence, in 1921) won a gold medal at the 1924 Olympics in Paris, swimming 1500 metres in 20 mins 6.6 seconds. He swam in 1928 in 1932 Olympics, won a further 3 silver and 1 bronze medal, and broke 5 world records.
Pool website
*Woolloomooloo: The first wharves were built in the 1860s. It used to be a rough and tough wharves area, then a public housing area. These days, like everywhere, the millionaires have moved in (eg Russell Crowe owns an apartment in the wharf development), as, world-wide, poorer people are pushed out to allow the wealthy to own the best views and most convenient locations.
Woolloomooloo gets its name from a house of that name built by the first NSW Commissary General in 1801. There is debate about its derivation. From Wikipedia: "Anthropologist J.D. McCarthy wrote in NSW Aboriginal Places Names, in 1946, that Woolloomooloo could be derived from either Wallamullah, meaning 'place of plenty' or Wallabahmullah, meaning a 'young black kangaroo'.
In 1852, the traveller Col. G.C. Mundy wrote that the name came from Wala-mala, meaning an Aboriginal burial ground. It has also been suggested that the name means 'field of blood', due to the alleged Aboriginal tribal fights that took place in the area, or that it is from the pronunciation by Aboriginals of windmill, from the one that existed on Darlinghurst ridge until the 1850's."
Wednesday 1 November 2006
Kevin Little - Stained Glass Artist
Today the DP Bloggers Theme Day is "Something That Will Soon Disappear". 51 bloggers are taking part (click links below)
Almost the first words Kevin Little said to me when I wandered into his workshop to ask him if I could take a photo of him at work were “I’ve been here for a long time, but not for much longer”.
Kevin is 75, and, one of, if not the, pre-eminent Australian stained glass artists. His workshop is right near where I live.
In its heydey, Kevin's business employed 30 artisans here and throughout country areas. He's had commissions from many of Sydney's leading institutions, includingthe Town Hall, Sydney Hospital and St Mary's Cathedral. But, he told me, "There’s not much of a living to be made any more from being a stained glass artist. “The Protestant churches don’t put in stained glass windows any more, and the almighty dollar rules everything. Even restoration jobs are done on the cheap these days” he said. Kevin also lamented the destruction of much of the stained glass in churches and houses as newcomers rip them out. [I'm pleased to say that we had Kevin repair one in our house when it was damaged a few years back.]
As well as work in glass, Kevin also restores furniture and all manner of things including a gorgeous grandfather clock he found in pieces in a kerbside junkout. He collects an array of things too vast to describe, and his studio/workshop is a veritable museum. Every object has a story, and the connections they weave between people are amazing.
Kevin took me on a tour of his world, and I especially loved seeing a couple of fragments of 14th century stained glass, and the “sweatshop” end of the studio, where Kevin showed me the traditional method of drawing a design in chalk, before tracing it on to paper.
See more photos of Kevin and his workshop here.
This is true artisanship, which is not going to be there for much longer.
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