Playing with mirrors

At the Myer art deco ballroom, some months ago.

Because, what's a ballroom without mirrors in which to admire the scene (and your hair)?

Fab! Fabbri

They're back (at the Mediterranean Wholesalers - see here) so we snagged some. We weren't able to go home in a Fabbri truck, seen on the Boston food website here:

But we found some fascinating Fabbri history here and here, the latter being the official website, which has a range of remarkable period advertising here.



Better than roses, pearls?  But of course!

James

A couple of great things about the Commonwealth of Australia's coat of arms is that it features native flora and fauna (the former unofficial to the authorised design, the latter integral) and secondly that the kangaroo and emu are both edible. (Try finding a unicorn, and you really, really don't want to try lion or eagle...)

Australian passports. The left hand example, issued in 2001, has differently shaped arms than the 2011 example on the right. The logo below the word 'Passport' actually refers to the fact the document has an electronic chip, and isn't a monochrome version of the Aboriginal flag, although exactly the same layout. The smaller arms on the 2011 issued wallet at the top (back) is different again.

Again the contrasts between Canada and Australia are intriguing in this area, as Canada's arms are essentially a British design with some Canadian additions, while Australia's is so appropriate it actually doesn't use traditional heraldic beasts.

When the Australian arms were approved in 1912, in Parliament, MP William Kelly said:

"The emu and kangaroo are so built that they hardly fit into the heraldic atmosphere, and I think we make ourselves ridiculous when we endeavour to carry on the traditions of the Old World with some of the wild creations of our Australian fauna."

I doubt anyone in Australia would suggest more traditional (and therefore non-native) heraldic animals would be a better alternative nowadays. However, making a full size example of the arms smacks somewhat of the chimps' tea party, but didn't stop Museum Victoria:

In contrast of course, Australia's flag, so vehemently defended by certain conservatives is 25% someone else's anyway, while Canada opted for its own flag in 1965. The contrasts and similarities are worth, I think, noting. Australia's flag can be easily mistaken for any of about a dozen similar designs, and when folded or draped, for that of the United Kingdom. But no-one would mistake the coat of arms as belonging to any other country than Australia. Conversely Canada's coat of arms is distinctive only in its details (maple leaves etc.) while the Canadian flag gets 100% recognition in tests.

Heraldry, eh?

James

Wrong Place

Nothing odd about this brand-marketing tourist tat array, except it's in Melbourne's Tullamarine airport.

Presumably there's now Manchester United gear available in Liverpool; CN Tower gift sets in Vancouver; leaning tower tat in Firenze, and so on. Wrong place, folks!

Found Pears

This one's from February 8, 2010 when we still lived in the city, and didn't have a pair of pear trees outside the front door.

We had to borrow someone else's tree and these were the tasty fruits (~ahem~) of Bev's subsequent labours...

James

Hit that food town.

Very exciting. A very important friend - who since we worked together back in the dark ages has become a successful and high-profile food writer - is in town for a few days to do with the Melbourne Food & Wine Festival. As a very important addition, we've agreed to do a flying B&J Food Tour of Melbourne...

So, that'll be The VicMarket-MedWholesalers-Enotica&BooksforCooks-Dolchetti and off to ours afterwards, then! Enough to make you bite on a rose.

Further details soon. Did I mention 'very important'? Good.

Waugh on Cricket

Sadly we aren't allowed TMS here in Australia, ABC's Grandstand having exclusive rights - ironic, as several of the commentators swap seats from one box to the other. (Still, TMS are welcome to keep Boycott.) Cricket wouldn't be worth it without the radio.

At home, a couple of days ago we had a Canadian visitor who was somewhat puzzled by the method of following the game as well as being puzzled (of course) by the game itself. Like the unique nature of the twenty-five day test of quality, having a TV on and mute while listening to the radio is probably not seen in many other sports.

If you want a man to bat for your life...

TMS's Aggers, guesting on Grandstand mentioned he'd interviewed Steve Waugh over on 'the other channel' and after a bit of online searching, this is one we can listen to. As ever, two top cricket analysts make a great interview. Lots of ground covered, and it's here.

Meanwhile today retired Australia opener Matthew Hayden stopped by the ABC commentary box and impressed us, sandwiched between two more regular commentators. I doubt you'd get the average soccer player discussing his chickens, best farm manure, and how to produce a fruit reduction for your Christmas ham and offering the recipe over the airwaves in between the more normal sporting recollections. However remembering listening to the cricket with ABC while a kid on the back of his dad's tractor is just as expected.

Oh, the test match? What a day's cricket! What it's all about. As Vic Marks of The Guardian said:

This has been a proper Test match, the best of the series by far. There were times during the first two matches when it was possible to wander off around the back of the stands for a pie (in Brisbane) or a Pimms (in Adelaide) in the knowledge that nothing of great significance would be missed. In Perth it has been foolhardy to take the eyes away from the action for a minute.

He added:

Mike Hussey, yet again, was the rock for Australia. He hit his second century of the series in front of an adoring crowd on his own turf. He now has 517 runs in the series at an average of 103 and here England probably only dismissed him because he was stranded with the last man again.

If England win from here, the remaining batsmen will deserve soup-plate gold medals, not just OBEs. That said, it looks like we'll be going to the G on the Boxing Day Test with a live, and exciting series. What more could you ask for for Christmas?

James

Severe Weather Warning

When it rains here, it's a news item. Normally, it's because we need the water, but as per the previous post relating to the one-day floods here, sometimes it's because it's news to us. We keep an eye on the Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) Weather Radar, but I'd never seen dark brown 'heavy' rain on it before:
This was preceded by a new noise we'd never seen before like someone chucking large ball bearings on our naturally noisy tin roof. It sounded like that because it was, essentially. Before the rain proper arrived we had the 'golf ball' hail.

Well, OK, it wasn't golf balls, but it was much bigger than I'd ever seen (no news to Bev) so in the interests of precise blogging and my obsessively non-fiction writing nature, here's a shot of a couple of the slightly melted hailstones with coins to measure against. The hail's about the size of a 5c piece (slightly smaller than a Euro 5c, or bigger than a TTC token!) For those in England, the 50c piece is the same size as the British 50p, the 5c about the size of the 5p.

Now awaiting the showers of fish. Blue Grenadier, please.

James

PS - Someone else got the golf ball hail. This photo from the Age.


PPS: And my friend Rob found this mention of showers of fish in the Northern Territory, here. Be careful what you joke about!

Sketches and scribbles

Last time I mentioned the drawing and painting activity around here, I was frustrated with the lack of depth I was getting in my paintings.


Now it's a week later and I have gained sufficient distance to show you what I was on about! (Click on the images to see larger versions).

This one is a flower-selling kiosk near where I work.

It was closed for an extended Christmas break, like so many businesses do here. It was a hot day and not as many people as usual were out and about, shadows dark, everyone moving slowly because of the humidity.

I realise now that part of the flatness problem I hated about this painting is the choice of angle.

It's at an angle to me where I was sitting, but not enough to create depth, just a sort of sliding flop to the right. Next time, I'll sit somewhere else!

I would also make the transparency of the glass on the booth windows a bit more obvious. It was reflecting on that day, but I could show the shadowy piled up buckets inside.

All is not lost! I liked the scooter parked by the side of the tram stop, next to the kiosk.

There's always something to be learned or to try out. That's why this painting and sketching lark is so addictive.

B

Yesterday it rained

A lot. And in less than an hour at one stage.

There's some great photos here on The Age's website, and I was coming back from a meeting on the other side of town and took these pics.

Even where the road had sufficient camber for run off, the weight coming down meant there was about a centimetre plus of standing water.

And it was hard to see even with the wipers on top speed.

It didn't take much of a dip in the road to flood it.

James

Linden Art is Open

Today we went to the opening of the Linden Postcard Show with a group of Bev's friends who very nicely also talked to James as well. It was a beautiful day, and a great day out.


With over 1,700 works submitted, there was a great turnout of artists and friends for the pretty brief speeches and prize hand outs. As you can see, the gallery is in a beautiful colonial Melbourne house. Sympathy moment goes to the prize winner who kicked over and broke a (hopefully empty) wineglass while going to collect her prize!


After the talk, everyone surged in to check out the art. It was packed - both on the walls and with people.


Initially it was overwhelming, but when you realised that this stage was best used to look at the people who'd come to be looked at in the opening, and save the pics for later, it became a lot more fun.


There were people of all ages, and it seemed quite a variety of backgrounds, from the "Eye em en artiste" brigade to those you don't normally expect to see in a gallery without bolt cutters and an eye mask.


On an initial glance, the sheer volume of artworks was overwhelming, but once it's clear what it's about, it's actually very straightforward. So here are the headlines:

• It's a completely open show - any entry submitted and paid for will be exhibited.
• Every piece has to fit within a 30cm (nearly 12 inch) cube.
• Any artist can submit work, no more than three pieces.
• Several will be chosen by the gallery to become postcard subjects - printed for sale - hence the name of the show.
• Most are for sale from $100 - $400 dollars (£55 -£222, or US$86 - US$347) although one that we really liked turned out to be marked at $7,000 (£3,800, US$6,000)!

(Official stuff here.)


We really enjoyed looking around, and we intend to go back for a later, more considered look. Who knows, we may take the Piggy Bank and buy something! Discussing it between the two of us and with Bev's friends, we felt that the vast majority of the works were both well executed and presented; most had been well framed or mounted. There was very little pretentious art twaddle or kittens & flower paintings, while there was a lot of humour from the 'laugh lightly once and move on' level, to some quite challenging ideas; and another neat thing was that (obviously) within a 30 cm 'box' there were no big pictures that yelled 'look at me' just because of their size. Something else had to be good: the idea or the execution.

In fact, within a tight set of technical parameters, but completely open subject and media, the artist's challenge was to catch the viewer's eye and then to hold it. No mean feat, but as you may see from the pictures here, any four people would probably pick completely different artworks from the same wall space.


And entertainment was provided by two (pretend) Hawaiian Hula girls on ukuleles - certainly the first time I can remember that type of serenade at an art event!

And then we went off to have coffee and cake, where cake and forthright views on art were shared. James marked it the best gallery experience he can recall for quite a while, and there was plenty of material for the patent RK Gallery Game (which may be explained in a forthcoming blog-post. Or not.)

All in all a good day out, and for those that are in reach of St Kilda ("Isn't everyone, Dahling?") we urge you to get down there. The show is on until 27 March 2010.

James & Bev

Australia Day 4: Pick a flag - any flag

As Bev's said in her post here, flag waving is something that's done a lot on Australia Day, but not so much for the rest of the year. Above is a window display on Australia day at Queenscliffe. The shop was shut, and I'm sure the staff were all at the beach or the barbie, with young Shane wondering who's lifted his beach ball and waistcoat.

The flag is also seen a lot on cars around Australia day, but not often as large and frequent as on this ex-US Naval Jeep. Perhaps he wanted the nationality of the owner to be unmistakable?


One of the great things about Australia is how many things actually are a mess, and don't make a lot of sense. This includes our flag, which isn't even all ours. The Australian flag can be easily confused for the New Zealand one, both being a quarter borrowed from Great Britain's Union Flag, and with stars on. (The Kiwi's one has fewer stars, and their stars are red.) To confuse matters further I thought I'd do a quick survey of some of Australia's flags. So here's a selection.

Seen here being dropped (with accessories) in front of Melbourne to open the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) Museum's Pageant, this is the RAAF Ensign. The bit with the kangaroo in the roundel is folded over, of course.

The Royal Australian Navy Ensign has a white ground with blue stars, and is similar in colours to the Royal Naval ensign.


The Merchant Ensign for civil ships is identical, to both the flag and the Navy's ensign, but on a red ground. Seen above aboard a Sydney harbour ferry and below next to the Australian flag, flying by Cape Schanck Lighthouse on Victoria's coast.

Seen by another lighthouse, Cape Ottway, this photograph by Pam shows the Australian flag again, but partnered with the Aboriginal flag.


The Aboriginal flag has an interesting story behind it, and is unusual among these flags in that although they are all meant to be cared for within a set of rules, it is actually copyright, with the intellectual property belonging to its designer. Today a hoo-hah (as reported in The Age) over Google using the flag as part of a competition design on their website brought this into focus. Winning designer schoolgirl Jessie Du, 11, is a student at Rydalmere East Public School. Her design had the koala and possum beside the central yellow disc of the Aboriginal flag, but;

"The designer of the flag, Harold Thomas, who owns the copyright to the flag, refused to give Google permission to reproduce the design on its website, Google said." The Age went on to state: "Thomas, who lives in Humpty Doo in the Northern Territory, said he refused only because Google did not approach him in a respectful way and had demanded to reproduce the flag without charge."

How very Australian. And very Australian too is flags at the cricket, as seen here at the MCG.

So you were wondering what it is made up of, right? The Australian flag is composed of three parts: The Union Flag (often known by its nickname the Union Jack) in the top left corner, the 'Star of Federation' in the bottom left corner, and The Southern Cross, taking up the right half of the flag. The Star of Federation is a seven pointed star, representing each of six states with a point on the star, and one more point for Australia's territories. The Southern Cross is a constellation that can be seen from all of Australia's states and territories, of course. The Union flag ensures that Australia carries (combined) the full set of the flags of the countries that make up Great Britain, while failing to do the same for its own states and territories. Very Australian.

As Australia is a federated country, each state does have its own flag. This is the Victorian example, with its own Southern Cross.

There is another flag that most Australians would recognise, that comes in pairs. One example is seen here, and it's the flag you swim between at the beach if you want the lifeguard's cover. I'm not sure how fast you need to pedal to stay on the water, or if it's for the fish - you know, that 'one that needs a bicycle'...

Sorry. So to finish, I'd like to introduce another nation's flag. The 26th of January is shared with India as they celebrate their Republic Day, and despite the recent sad events, most Indians share a great time and their marvelous culture with us in Australia. This final picture was taken on Australia day a couple of years ago as the Indian contingent in the parade passed by.

James

Australia Day 1: 1788 and all that

Today is Australia Day. It's the 222nd anniversary of the First Fleet arriving in what was to become Australia on 26 January 1788, starting the European settlement of Australia that has continued to this day. The Sydney Museum has an excellent model of the First Fleet ships on show (below) and I wonder how many of those aboard realised they were arriving in mid-summer?

Understandably, there is a view that the Aboriginal peoples who were already living here may have a rather less positive perception of the arrival of these convicts, sailors and marines. Although it has no effect on the tragic history of Aboriginal rights and life since that day, it's often forgotten that Australia really is entirely a land of immigrants as all the humans arrived from overseas - the earliest remains found in Australia are Mungo Man from 40,000 years ago. Estimates often giving a remarkably recent figure (in pre-history terms) of between 40,000 to 50,000 years for the first colonisation of the continent, although some believe it to be much earlier.

Of course the First Fleet was a direct result of the arrival of Lieutenant James Cook in His Majesty's Barque Endeavour on one of the world's great voyages of exploration. (The introductory image at the top shows the replica of HMB Endeavour sailing up the Yarra in Melbourne.) Again, an aspect of Cook's exploration of the Eastern coast of Australia and the arrival of the First Fleet is that it could so easily have been a French story, as the French Navy were literally on the spot - or in the natural harbours - at both events. While there are a scattering of French names (particularly in Tasmania - itself based on a Dutch navigator's name) it's a monolingual Anglophone culture in law. Yet it could have been like Canada, with a foot in both French and British culture and language, or a member of the Francophone world like -er- Monaco.

Often overlooked near the Circular Quay in Sydney is this mosaic map (above) showing the very first developments of what was much later to become the city of Sydney, Australia's eternal second best conurbation.

Of course, the First Fleet was the beginning of a social experiment that failed at its origin - to export 'the criminal class' from Britain, and to develop colonies with these prisoners. No one has yet managed to export their 'criminal class', so that part was a failure, but we seem to have managed to build quite a habitable country on this unprepossessing foundation. The convicts would try to escape from the marines and soldiers (obviously to get to what would become Victoria and Melbourne from the rather inferior Sydney and New South Wales) as seen above at Sovereign Hill historical re-enactment. But to get away they would have to get through the Blue Mountains (below) one of Australia's natural wonders which is essentially untouched except for the viewing platforms and coach parking (not included in the picture).
And when it's been another great Australia Day here, and we are rolling home with a beaut sunset to the West, it's the start of another cold, winter's day in Britain. We've just celebrated five years and one day here, and it's bonzer, mate.

James (a Melburnian)

Night sketching

We've both been laid up with a bad virus / chest cold this week, so it's been quiet chez Tacc.

So this drawing is one that happened before Christmas -- on the evening of the 21st to be exact -- after we went out at 10:30 to have a cold drink on a hot, hot night.

It had been 38 degrees all day, and late after dark even though it was still well over 30, everyone was out, moving slowly, strolling or sitting in front yards. As we sat at the end table at the cafe, I drew this group of very merry Greek neighbours having a drink and a loud, enthusiastic gossip session. Like an early Christmas party, all back-slapping, out-out-OUT-doing, and all in very happy Greek.

First the pen sketch.

Then, after a couple of days to look and think a bit, washes of India ink added. I washed in the darkest areas several times, and chose the light areas to make the wall recede and the people the centre of the picture, but not too close. Shadows, several layers of grey, and speckles of ink for the cement sidewalk.


It looks really different, doesn't it? I wanted the sense of how dark it was, and the ambient light from the wall-lamps in the cafe, but all the shadows truly black.

I enjoyed drawing the hanging heat lamps (obviously not in use that night!) and the structure of the porch. I can do better people studies, so I would do that again, but it's a nice start for the first attempt at a night scene. I have some others in mind, so it will be fun to apply what I learned.

Is it finished? Not sure. I'm wondering about a few loose lines of charcoal over top. We'll see.

Bev