Why? Market Street

Protest - Bust the Budget

Yesterday, Sun 6 July, protest marches were held across Australia in cities and regional towns.
Dubbed "Bust The Budget" rallies, they are in protest at the unfair cuts being made by the federal government. Almost no institution is spared: scientific research, the public broadcaster the ABC, students, schools, hospitals, the disabled, the elderly, the poor, the sick, the homeless, asylum seekers, women suffering violence...

The only groups spared are the very wealthy and the large corporations.

I love this home made sign....someone took the time to show he cares.

(Abbott is the Prime Minister - deeply unpopular, even though only elected last September) and Hockey is the Treasurer. Hockey was photographed with his finance Minister smoking a big fat cigar on the afternoon he delivered the budget in parliament....sort of symbolic of the fat plutocrat....

Mark Foys

The steps of the long-gone Mark Foys department store. It is now the Downing Centre court complex.

You could be forgiven for thinking it's a scene featuring a very elegant young woman with her child and mother in Rome.

Elegant they are, and very "modern" - they're not wearing gloves for the big trip to "town". 

The year was approx 1955. The elegant young woman (aged about 20)  is my mother-in-law, the older woman her mother, and the boy is my husband. 

I love this photo! 

Here's a blog I published in 2006 about Mark Foys

Sydney Film Festival "Together in the dark we share our stories"

I love the Sydney Film Festival. This year was its 60th birthday. Over the past 9 days, I saw 13 feature drama films; 3 classics; 6 documentary features; 4 short documentaries. Can't wait til next year.

The winner of the jury prize was Two Days, One Night, directed by Jean-Pierre et Luc Dardenne

Dramas
Appropriate Behaviour (USA), Boyhood (USA), The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Her (USA); The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby: Him (USA), Love Is Strange (USA), Human Capital (France/Italy), Two Days One Night (France/Belgium/Italy), Black Coal  Thin Ice (China/Hong Kong), The Two Faces of Jabuary (US/UK/France), Abuse of Weakness (France/Belgium/Germany), Rock The Casbah (France/Morocco), Gabrielle (Canada)
Classics
Rebel Without A Cause
Robert Altman retrospective : A Wedding, Short Cuts
Documentary Features
Sepideh: Reaching For The Stars (Sweden/Norway/Iran/Germany/Denmark), Particle Fever (USA), School of Babel (France), Tim's Vermeer (USA), Dior and I* (France)
Documentary Shorts
The Lion's Mouth Opens (UK), The Queen (Argentina), The Other Woman (Senegal), David Hockney In the Now (USA)

Space ship?

This "spaceship" appears to have landed in Wynyard Park in Sydney. It allows light in to the underground entrance to Wynyard railway station.

I think it's rather elegant, and "Parisian", matching the nearby AWA tower / mini Eiffel Tower, which dates from 1939.

It was Australia's tallest building until 1958. It has a viewing platform which is no longer open to the public. AWA was a communications company and it was a radio transmission tower.

Sydney Architecture Walk

I AM SORRY IF THE IMAGE IS NOT DISPLAYING - IT SEEMED TO UPLOAD OK, THEN NOT APPEAR WHEN I PUBLISHED. IF THERE IS A SMALL BOX WHERE THE IMAGE SHOULD BE, TRY CLICKING ON IT AND IT MAY APPEAR. PERHAPS BLOGGER IS HAVING SOME DIFFICULTY?

Today I went on a walk called "Harbourings". It explored the western edge of the city, around the grittier side of The Rocks, and the finger wharves of Walsh Bay. Come with me over the next few days for a glimpse of this fantastic walk with our engaging guide, architect Eoghan Lewis (visit his architectural firm, Supple Design).

First stop was this triangular patch of public space, Macquarie Place Park between Bridge and Loftus Sts and Macquarie Place. Eoghan set the scene for the walk here, explaining how Sydney's thoroughfares followed the natural ridges and landscapes of the city. This place, a perfect camp for the Indigenous inhabitants, was a short walk from fresh water (the Tank Stream spring) - along the track which became George Street, and the harbour with its northerly aspect and prevailing cooling in summer, warmign in winter sea breezes.

The sandstone buildings in the background are the Education Department (left) and lands Department (right). The obelisk was erected in 1818, and is still the point from which distances in Sydney are measured. I have blogged it previously - see here.

An EXCEPTIONALLY retail Boxing Day

Pitt St Mall - Boxing Day start to retail sales (though most things seem to have been "on sale" for months!). It is as if, having missed one day of retail opportunity, a consumerist frenzy broke out.

Never before, and never again!

Latest facade

The newest facade in Sydney is that of the redeveloped Westfield shopping centre (previously Centrepoint) in central Sydney.
Left: A worker puts the finishing touches on the weekend before the grand opening, which was last weekend.

Jacaranda time

November is jacaranda blossom time in Sydney, and I feature a jacaranda shot every year. Above: Outside Sydney Town Hall, and Left; next door at St Andrews Cathedral.

See previous jacaranda shots here.

Taken from Botanic Gardens

Sydney Tower

Taken from the corner of George and Market Streets in the city.

Skittle Lane

Skittle Lane - where it looks like the cyclists have already been skittled!
The lane, between Kent and Clarence Streets was where wharfies and soldiers once enjoyed beer and skittles. The name was suggested by Sydney city historian, Shirley Fitzgerald.

It is now waiting for a make-over, with public art, cafes and small bars to be encouraged.

Pyrmont resident Glen Wall has pleaded with the council to restore the cobblestones in Skittle Lane and for contractors to sensitively maintain the lane’s heritage.

It was a place of boarding houses, pubs, and "nefarious activities", and by 1879, a skittle ground between two pubs, the Star of Peace and the White Hart.

Large latte, please

Coffee break

Lights, camera, action!

I came across this film set outside the Queen Victoria Building last Saturday. It looked like a Bollywood production. I am always surprised at the number of people required in film-making.

Sandstone

This beautiful sandstone building in Bligh St is home of the Lowy Institute for International Policy. It was originally the "New South Wales Club" - from 1886 to 1969 when it merged with the Australian Club, an exclusive "gentleman's only" club.

The Lowy Institute website says: "It is classified by the National Trust and listed for permanent conservation under the 1976 Heritage Act - one of the first buildings to be saved from demolition under the Act. It is the finest Italian Palazzo façade surviving from the Victorian period in Australia.This classic sandstone building built of Pyrmont brick joinery, slate roof and fine Victorian interiors was designed by William Wardell, one of the most distinguished architects of his time."

One of Sydney City Council's public swimming pools, at Cook + Philip Park. It is underground, and a popular place for city workers to stretch out before work, at lunchtime and after work. The lanes get reasonably crowded at times. As you walk along College Street there are large windows you can look through, down on the pool.

The site used to be the City Bowling Club.

The answer to yesterday's question is that the blue ropes belong to the abseiling window cleaners.

I read somewhere recently that Australia's window cleaners are so renowned that they win major contracts around the world, including on that ridiculously tallest building in Dubai.

Orange and yellow

From the rooftop of the Australian Museum

The view from the roof terrace of the Australian Museum towards the city.

The city from Woolwich (Valentia St wharf)