Mt Coot-tha Botanical Gardens

Clumping Fish-Tail Palm

Trying to explore Brisbane. Took the 8 mile plains bus (169), from UQ lakes yesterday and found Garden City (shopping mall). Bought some pillowcases and a mug. Both needed here. Today, I found my way to Mt Coot-tha. The Botanic Gardens are lovely and I need to go again to explore some more.

There were many amazing plants, but this one took my fancy to summarise my visit.

Morning walk collection

Early morning at the college. Adult corella feeding fledgling in a bottlebrush tree


Poinsiana, Delonix regia.

I noticed a wonderful blog on art (making this find, as always, via flickr. Under a wonderful photo I found:

"At the Object in Transition panel at the Getty Center in L.A.: Paul McCarthy (far left) discusses the sheep plug that hangs over his head like a dagger. “The dark stuff is hair,” he said. We hope he means wool.

"A who’s who of contemporary art conservation (yawn) gathered at the Getty Center last night to hear Rachel Harrison, Doris Salcedo, Paul McCarthy, curator Elizabeth Sussman (of Gordon Matta-Clark, You Are the Measure fame) and conservator Christian Scheidemann talk about conservation and contemporary art. Harrison discussed the problem of removing cobwebs from chicken beaks and replacing cans of exploded grape soda. McCarthy pondered the aging of ketchup.... More...

Tentative explorations

Banyan. Queensland Botanic Gardens

My first ventures into the city, today. Via the botanic gardens. Lunch in the city with Jane, and then after work, a drinking session with the other students. Then to North Quay and a ferry ride along the river under the darkening sky.

Aerial routes

Kegelia pinnata flowers
(The Sausage tree flowers at nightfall.)

QUT is formed by many buildings close together on a small sloping site. As a consequence it is like a mediaeval town with walkways between the buildings which pass overhead. So as well as the earthly routes, the aerial routes need also to be discovered.

En route

Kigelia pinnata
Walking to the ferry through the UQ campus


Walking to my building on the QUT campus


Leaving QUT via the Goodwill bridge. Low tide in the mangroves


Through South Bank past an artificial creek to catch the 109 bus back to UQ

Going to work, and coming home.

At College

Early morning view across one of the lakes at the University of Queensland


Giant pandanus along the path by the lakes

Finally, the move has been made. I am now in Brisbane.

The colleges are on the western perimeter of the lakes, which are just a part of a more extensive parkland which surrounds the south-west of the university as it bords the river. In the morning I walk amongst immense tropical trees to the ferry, with birds foraging: ibis, geese, moorhens, coots, corellas, a brush turkey and a willy-wagtail. In the evening they are settling down, with much noise, to roost. And as I take my swim in the pool under the darkening sky, the sound of screaming birds from the trees above the pool is remarkably soothing, and not unlike the evening shrill of cicadas on a Sydney summer evening.

So, however stressed I am by making this move, I have a wonderfully calming start and finish to each day. All I have to do is hang in.

Converting

Gum blossom, Whale Beach Road, Whale Beach

A person I know was (is?) a Roman Catholic. He is thinking of converting to Judaism. I just do not see this. Apparently one still believes in the same God, but while continuing to accept the old testament God, one now rejects the son of the new testament.

I just don't believe this.

I can only see it as yearning for a community and hoping that one may find it among those professing a different belief.

Tourist on Google Earth

Rivers in Arnhemland

Had dinner at Z & B's on Sunday. We spent the night on Google Earth: started off hunting for my pictures in Palm Beach, moved to WA to show Z my daughter's place, checked out Rottnest, fireworks for Australia Day seen from South Perth, moved to Uluru, Kakadu, Adelaide River (NT), Pine Gap, Norfolk Virginia (to check out the naval base), did the Milford track, thank's to Z's amazing skill in navigating valleys (the Clinton River and the Arthur), checked out the Nevada nuclear test site with its wonderful subsidence holes from underground tests, and crop circles in the Mid-West.

But the best was exploring the former Yugoslavia (now Montenegro), looking at roads, valleys, canyons, rivers, memorials, bridges, all of which had personal stories attached. (Attempting to repeat the same tourism in the following days, I wrecked my copy of Google Earth.)

M-day

Behind the Bondi Beach pavilion

Moving day is getting increasingly closer and I am getting increasingly freaked out. It will all be over soon and hopefully all the things I am panicking about will simply recede, as all the things to be done take over.

The fonts went sadly awry

I have spent all morning fiddling with this blog: firstly, trying to get threed's photos up in a manner acceptable to me, then, trying to fix the fonts which went sadly awry as a consequence of my post, and lastly, trying to put in links properly. (When one writes a message in Flickr involving a link, the necessary HTML is generated for you. On this site, one has to bumble around for oneself, but as you can see, my links now a) exist, and b) form part of a coherent sentence.)

I thought I had largely ceased to covet things. Not so. I have a new wireless mouse to prove otherwise. It came with false advertising: no battery from Singapore as stated. I bunged in a battery. It works. But has no switch to turn it off. I have rung the retailer and told them that they need to improve their game. They offered to take it back, but I suspect I am too lazy to do more than alert them that they are breaking the law, selling these items minus battery. (It is clearly the fault of the company doing the packaging: there was no tampering.) So for anyone wishing to acquire a wireless mouse, perhaps you should check that a) all advertised parts are present and b) there is a switch to turn the damned thing off.

Favourite photos (2): Some of my friend threed's photos

NY 2007
Originally uploaded by threed


Cathedral ceiling Parma Italy
Originally uploaded by threed


cootie infestation
Originally uploaded by threed

My friend threed very kindly gave me permission to post her pictures. So here they are in all their glory.

David Hockney & optical projections in painting

Piece of cloth


Hans Holbein the younger, Georg Gisze, 1532

In Secret Knowledge, David Hockney argues compellingly that artists discovered how to project three dimensional images directly onto a horizontal surface and that this is the basis for the extraordinary realism seen in the work of such artists as Holbein, Vermeer, Velasquez, Caravaggio, van Eyck and many others. (He also argues that it was this capacity to project images which led to the invention of perspective in Western art.)

One of his examples is this painting by Holbein, where it can be seen (in the full painting) that the plane of the table makes several alarming changes. This, he argues, is the effect of having to fit together smaller projections to make a whole. And certainly, while all the various parts of the cloth follow the notion of perspective, there is no overall perspective driving its patterns.

In this painting, Holbein is showing off by recreating the beautiful patterns of the textile on the table, as do other artists in showing off their capacity to recreate with light and shade, the wonderful complex patterns of silk brocades as they fall in folds about the body of the wearer. (And that is what inspired the first photograph)

The arguments are compelling because the distortions in various paintings (of anatomy, & of things which should be flat) are able to be isolated to whole parts of the painting (rather than things within the painting). This painting of Holbein's is an extraordinary exemplar.

Some favourite photos

This morning when I went for my swim, I had thought that I might post (with permission) some of my favourite photos from Threed.

However, none of her photos are able to be downloaded, so I am posting links to them.

NY 2007
cootie infestation
Cathedral ceiling, Parma, Italy

I came across her photos when looking for images of Kuringai Chase: I found a picture of Grevillea buxifolia and started to explore her photo stream, which ranges from the wonderfully mundane to the marvellous. There is an enormous sense of fun, of a desire to play and explore, which has utterly reconciled me to the notion of arty-farty. I can't do it: too self-censoring and critical. But I like looking at her photos.

Disheartenment & Casuarina cones

Casuarina cones

Forest Oak (Allocasuarina torulosa)
plantnet.rbgsyd.nsw.gov.au/cgi-bin/NSWfl.pl?page=nswfl&am...

At the moment, I am feeling quite dispirited with my project of photographing and identifying plants that I see.

When I look at the thread for identified plants in the What plant is that? group, it seems my requests and IDs outweigh by far those of any other person, despite my having discovered Flickr only in September.

My incapacity to look, my failure to capture the critical details of the plant, and my continued ignorance of botanical nomenclature, together with the fear of attempting to key a plant out from the very beginning as one must on PlantNet(without being able to come in at it halfway through as one can to some extent using a text book) currently overwhelm me.

Anyway, should anyone be interested in making an attempt to differentiate casuarinas, to calibrate the measure of my despair and to witness the various interactions of the Flickr plant community, double click on the image of the casuarina cones.

Reflections & sea mist

Reflections Palm Beach

With the big seas closing the beaches, and its being a public holiday, even though I went late to the beach, there were still a lot of people at the rockpool and I didn't feel comfortable with the thought of leaving my camera with my things as I swam. So I walked the beach instead.

Walking north and looking landwards against the sun, there was a shroud of sea mist, giving a wonderful light.

But coming back, I saw this reflection in the smooth water surface of a receding wave. Or more to the point, I didn't. I saw the wonderful smooth surface. Only when I had captured the image, did I see the reflections.

Is this innate or is it learnt, this failure to observe the intangible and the evanescent?


Sunlight through sea mist and Norfolk Island Pines

(Both images best viewed large. Click on them, then go to All sizes and click on large.)

Sea mist & sunlight on Whale Beach Road

Whale Beach Road, late afternoon

The tail end of the Queensland storms has brought big seas for the last three days, so that these trees on Whale Beach Road (wattle, paperbark and strelitzia) are seen with sunlight coming through a sea mist.