Sydney skyline at dusk

Photo by DAVID ILIFF. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0

A panoramic view of the Sydney skyline as viewed across Sydney Harbour from Kirribilli. Taken by myself with a Canon 5D and 100mm f/2.8 lens. This is an exposure blended image. David Iliff.

Worldwind Sydney



A screenshot from NASA’s globe software World Wind showing
Sydney Harbour inlet at right and Botany Bay at left.

"The spacious harbour with its hundred coves
And fairy islets - seats of savage loves."
From William Charles Wentworth's poem Australasia.
See full poem at Australian Poetry Library.

I am not sure that this was an image that William Wentworth was visualising when he wrote these lines in 1822 but the photographic image does show the many Sydney coves. A cove is a small type of bay or coastal inlet, usually with a narrow entrance that protects it's waters from the currents of the bay. The word cove comes from the Old English word cofa, which means shelter. Australian's are familiar with the word cove as we all learnt at school that in 1788 Captain Phillip discovered and named Sydney Cove, a small inlet in the harbour, which he found suitable for a settlement.

Wentworth wrote the poem Australasia while he was studying, at Cambridge University, in England as an entry into a poetry competition in which he was awarded second prize.

William Charles Wentworth (1790-1872) was an explorer, poet, journalist, barrister, landowner, and politician. He set up the first non-government newspaper, The Australian, to champion the rights of Australians and his many causes such as representative government, the abolition of transportation of convicts, freedom of the press and trial by jury. The paper had a liberal editorial leaning and pitted it's writings against "the exclusives" in Sydney and sought equal rights and status for ex-convicts.

World Wind is a virtual globe developed by NASA for use on personal computers running Microsoft Windows. It allows you to zoom from outer space into any place on Earth with the use of satellite imagery and elevation data so you can see in 3D as if you were there.

Get a more detailed biography of William Charles Wentworth.

Colourful Sydney Street Art: Newtown area

Stencils, paste-ups, murals, graffiti and even tagging - I must admit I do enjoy them all. They are plentiful all over Sydney but some of the largest and most artistic can be found in the Newtown area including Camperdown, Enmore, Erskineville and St Peters where there has been street art since the 1980's.
I love to see the streets used as a canvas for something other than advertising. Streets as a gallery brings the work directly to the viewer. No more posh wine gallery opening nights needed when you can walk past the art every day.

Urban art at it's best: catch it now before it's gone.

Mural by "Big City Freaks" collective, Newtown. Sydney 2014.

MediaServicesAP

 

Beastman and Phibs Street Art, Simmons Street, Enmore

 

Chelmsford St, Newtown 2009 (photo by Tanit11)

 

Daley Lane mural (photo by Jim: visit his photographic blog on Sydney)

A Short History of the Streets of Newtown - literally what it says.

This post is linked up at Create with Joy

Luna Park Sydney

Entrance to Luna Park

 Milsons Point, north shore, Sydney Harbour.

Luna Park is a Sydney icon, especially this entrance which was designed by the Sydney artist Martin Sharp and can be seen from across the harbour at the Opera House.

Luna Park is a name shared by dozens of currently operating and defunct amusement parks that have opened on every continent except Antarctica since 1903. The first one to use the name was in Coney Island, New York.
 

This one, pictured, in Sydney opened in 1935 and is still running today even though at one stage it was closed due to protests of local residents at Milsons Point.

Martin Sharp was instrumental in forming the Friends of Luna Park to lobby the State Government and remind all Sydneysiders of what they would lose if the park was lost.

Bring on 2014

Midnight fireworks display from Mrs Macquarie's Chair, Sydney Harbour. Photo: Wolter Peeters

The colours reflected on the water were amazing - both eerie and exciting. The mood was electric.
I am never very impressed with the choice of music that is played along with the fireworks display but the fireworks themselves cannot be faulted.
Bring on a fresh year.
Bring on 2014.

Engaging Laneways

Kimber Lane at night, Chinatown "Between Two Worlds' by Jason Wing

Improving lighting, strengthening the pedestrian experience and embracing the distinguishing features of the Sydney Chinatown lanes and streets. That was the brief from the City of Sydney to ASPECT Studios when they were engaged in 2009 as lead consultant for stage one of the Chinatown upgrades. The focus was on Little Hay Street, Factory Street and Kimber Lane.
ASPECT Studios worked closely with artist Jason Wing to integrate his public art installation, ‘Between Two Worlds’ within the revitalised public area. The brightly coloured work includes painted cloud motifs on the walls and ground, granite etching and a series of site specific lighting elements which refer both to the site’s history and current community. The laneway now looks so interesting with it's purple light and orange glow.  Does it make you want to see it for yourself?

Landscape Architect: Aspect Studios
Location: Chinatown Sydney, Australia

Linked up at Oh My Heartsie Girls

Georges River

View from our place over little moon bay

Georges River in Sydney's south

I have lived here for some time on this beautiful river but was shocked and saddened to find the area has many endangered and threatened animals and plants.
The river was important to the Aboriginal people who lived in the area as it provided both food and transport.



Glossy Black Cockatoo - endangered -

 Photo Quest



Squirrel Glider - endangered

Sooty Owl - endangered

This post is linked up at Create with Joy 

View of Sydney, Australia, from Gladesville road bridge by Les Murray

From the book: The People's Otherworld  by Les Murray       

Theres that other great arch eastwood, with it's hanging highways;
the headlands and horizons of packed suburb, white amongst bisque-fired, odd smokes rising;
theres Warrang the flooded valley that it is now the ship chained harbour...

Read full poem at Australian Poetry Library

ruled by poetry for tens of thousands of years

"The continent on which I live was ruled by poetry for tens of thousands of years, and I mean it was ruled openly and overtly by poetry. Only since European settlement in 1788 has it been substantially ruled by prose. The sacred law which still governs the lives of traditional Aborigines is carried by a vast map of song-poetry attached to innumerable mythic sites. Each group ‘sings’ the tract of country it occupies, just as each initiated person sings the ceremonial songs of the holy places for which he or she is responsible within that territory. A person may unselfconsciously say ‘That mountain is my mother: it is her ancestor and mine; it is the body of our ancestor, and the story we sing and enact there is her body. We are her body, too, and the songs are her body, and the ceremonies are her body. That is the Aboriginal Law.’ "

Read more of this amazing A Defense of Poetry a lecture given by Les Murray.

The last laugh

Jim Anderson's collage Last Laugh 

 

"such infamous scoundrels have the last laugh, and are safely on their way to France." Raffles, Further Adventures Of The Amateur Cracksman by Hornung, E. W.

 

Martin Sharp, smiling in the photo, larger than life reminiscent of his Luna Park entrance art was laid to rest at this church in Sydney. The funeral, and this collage by Jim, were and are rife with artistic imagery - the sunflowers that we associate with Van Gogh and the Eternity that we Aussie's associate with Martin Sharp and Arthur Stace.

 

Stace was a reformed alcohol who spread the gospel by writing his tag, ETERNITY, all over Sydney in the 30's, 40's, 50's and 60's. His chalk message was written in a beautiful copperplate script.

 

Sharp created an Eternity screenprint in 1977 from multiple stencils that was titled Eternity Haymarket! It is now in the National Gallery of Australia, in Canberra.  This is what links him to the powerful word Eternity.

 

While I did not know Martin Sharp he is inextricably linked to my, and many others, lives. I imagine him wandering the streets of Sydney near Kings Cross, walking to his beloved Yellow House, sharing whatever he drank and his ideas with artists and poets. At one point he lived with Eric Clapton, Germaine Greer, and Philippe Mora. I know he stood publicly against censorship with the two Richards from Oz magazine.   He, and they, gave me hope at a formative part of my live when I yearned to know that the stifling nature of suburbia was not the only reality. They awakened artists in everyone and they did it with an irreverent laugh.

PHOTO: Jim Anderson was inspired to continue with his artworks by Martin Sharp. See his art and read his story at his site.

     


Manly Beach BOMB

Braille on Manly Beach (BOMB) was a happening scheduled for January 2010 to celebrate Louis Braille's Birthday. I would love more information about this amazing sounding event.

The blurb read:

"Braille on Manly Beach is an innovative community celebration of braille that involves making a braille message in the form of large dots in the sand. Each sand-dot will be .5 metres high and 1 metre in diameter. This sand-sculpted braille message will be made in the inter-tidal zone (the area between high and low tides) along a 50-metre stretch on one of Manly's beaches. The message will take several hours to make, and then it will gradually be carried away by the incoming tide, merging with the sea in a blend of poetry, metaphor, and spray.

Braille on Manly Beach has been conceived by Anne Walton and Bruce Maguire (with assistance from sand sculptor Dennis Massoud and financial support from the Australia Council) as a unique celebration of the 200th anniversary of the birth of Louis Braille" From e- bility.com

Our New Year's Eve Celebrations

Fireworks over the Sydney Opera House

Happy New Year

Reflections

Sydney Harbour


More photos of Sydney Harbour


From the giraffes house

What a great view of Sydney from the giraffes' house at Taronga Zoo.

Every time we visit the zoo I think that the giraffes have one of the best views of Sydney. This photo captures it but you really need to experience it for yourself.
Don't forget to look at these amazing awkward animals too! Their scientific name - Giraffa camelopardalis - refers to the pattern on their coat. Their irregular coat pattern provides camouflage under the mottled sunlight of the trees that they feed upon.

I wonder if the giraffes enjoy their splendid Sydney view.

Visitors to Sydney always come here.

Tourists, backpackers, sunbakers and surfers in that order.

YEATS AT BONDI a haiku by John Tranter  

Bondi Beach—

that drongo-thronged,

that nong-tormented sea.

"Bondi"  is an Aboriginal for water breaking over rocks or noise of water breaking over rocks.^[2] The Australian Museum records that Bondi means place where a flight of nullas took place.

Growing up in Bondi
On grass-clipping streets and median strips
and cracked concrete that baked in heat and
bitumen on roads that bubbled under feet,
you hurled water bombs at the kids
from around the street and
went to the beach 'cos that's
just what you did.

Excerpt from Adam Gibson's poem

Other poems mentioning Bondi:

Salt by Luke Davies

The View from The Roof (Tipping, Richard) Bondi Pavilion blonde serve of beach bald green headlands stretching away Waverley Cemetery jutting...
 

Elegy in a research laboratory or ode to geophagy (Brown, Pam) (scum of the earth) becomes the subject. With ease, we scorn Bondi Garden Kitten BBQ & eat in....
 

The Taxi (Page, Geoff) which is to shift her from a last tall Bondi morning to backroom afternoons in Ryde, pulls up...
 

Chess (Skovron, Alex) On Tuesday nights you sat the School of Arts in Bondi Road — blackjumper nights of chess across a...
 

Morning of the wreckers (Page, Geoff) My grandmother's house in Bondi Junction the morning of the wreckers … A grey light fills the...
 

From the Centre to the Edge (Marshall-Stoneking, Billy) over like a boomerang. Later, at Bondi, we pulled him by the arms until he looked over the wall along...

Citified

here in the city
the wind is colder
than memory.
people rush by...
why won't they stop and finish this poem?

Spring has sprung

Resplendent in a burst of yellow, Francis Street in Naremburn displays Australia’s floral emblem, the wattle. This photo is from Walk Sydney Streets Photos by Alan Waddell and that is him in the photograph.

Alan's walking discoveries book (including 100 c o l o u r photos) has now been published. It has over 2,400 unusual photos taken as Alan, 94, walked every street in the 287 suburbs of Sydney. It's available here

"Spring has sprung,
The Grass has riz,
I wonder where the birdies is?"
Frederic Ogden Nash

Sydney In The Spring.

A song! A song! with a chorus strong for the sweet September days
When Australia smiles with a lover's wiles in the Sun's adoring rays:
When the low coast sways in a purple haze...
Read full poem

From The Pearl and the Octopus a book by A. G. Stephens  (1865 – 1933) 
To D.O'R  



purple haze

Aboriginal performer at Art Gallery of NSW in August

SUNDAY 21st August - Didgeridoo dance. Share song, stories, dance and music with Aboriginal performer Matthew Doyle at the Art Gallery of NSW.
Matthew Doyle, a founding member of the Aboriginal Islander Dance Theatre Company, is a descendant of the Muruwari people from around Lightning Ridge in NSW and grew up in Southern Sydney on Dharawal land.

Part of Sunday free performances at 2.30 pm at Art Gallery Road, The Domain, Sydney NSW 2000
Telephone 02 9225 1744 or Toll Free 1800 679 278 www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au

Matthew will also be performing again:

Sunday 11 September 2:30pm – 3pm

Sunday 27 November 2:30pm – 3pm

First cars and trains across Sydney Harbour Bridge





March 1932

In 1932 it cost threepence to walk across the Sydney Harbour Bridge.
It cost a car sixpence to cross.
Until the Bridge was built, the only way to cross from the north shore to the city was by ferry or an indirect car trip of around 12 and a half miles. (That's 20 kilometres.)
There are many here among us who do not know the terms threepence or sixpence but may be included in the160,000 who now cross the bridge daily...
or maybe you choose to use the Sydney Harbour Tunnel that crosses under the water in an immersed tube.

Sydney and Sydney Harbour Bridge
taken from North Shore, 19 March 1932 by E. W. Searle.

TRAFFIC STATISTICS
GOVERNMENT SITE ABOUT SYDNEY HARBOUR BRIDGE