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.

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.

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

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.

     


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...

Rain

ants run around

rain threatens their routine

Sydneysiders contemplate purchasing umbrellas

SQUINT THROUGH THE TREES

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


SHINE ON

Syd
bedazzles us tonight
                  running crazily
                                 carelessly
                                          laughing
into every previously dark nook and cranny
now lit up by her many faceted jewels
At each place she stops
and writes a poem with her firelight
held high
the words emblazoned
in the sky
for only
a moment