He is a bit sketchy early in the morning…

He sure was.  Just a bit after six in the morning and while Chris got the cameras working Michael started on the sketching - while keeping the hand from shaking too much in the early morning chill. The rising sun was starting to catch the Opera House and the glass of the city. But it was still dark enough to make a black and white pencil sketch entirely appropriate!

While Sydney Lay Dreaming…

Each day this last week the fog has lifted off the harbour in early morning mists and the suburbs have been shrouded in rain. Seattle weather never sits well on a Sydneysider and even though we grumble at water restrictions when the dam levels drop, we do prefer our sunny days and sparkling harbour. But fog makes for great atmospherics under the bridge so we hauled out of bed at 5 o’clock and made for the harbour. Only to be greeted by a picture perfect winters day.  It was so darn good our hour of photography turned into a whole morning and we found ourselves down at the entrance to the harbour seven hours later having breakfast and lunch all rolled into one. Unusual view of Sydney Opera House – not often it is backlit by the rising sun.

Sydney Toytown

A chap called Keith Loutit has been filming and photographing scenes in a rather unique way - combining time lapse photography and a technique that constrains the point of focus. The result is a captivating effect - a toytown effect. I have embedded one of Sydney on this page. Have a look over there on the right - the video is titled Bathtub IV. Very funky.

Lunch at Dee Why

(Napkin scribblings today while waiting for colleague)

Smell of salt heavy.

Pale green (jade) sea glimpsed

through foaming white.

Hissing sand the hearth to scissoring swells,

Paddling gulls anxious about the foam.

Writing on soft tissue napkin.

Gentle chatter of blue rinse set

under a grey sky

and wave chopped horison backdrop.

Norfolk pine fronds lift and

Fall in horizontal rhythm

cued by an onshore breeze

That brought a mornings fall

Of Seattle rain (but warm) that

Puddles the paths, glitters the grass,

Soddens the shoes and forces lunch inside.

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A Drug Arm Storm

The rain shimmered off the road and leapt under the street lights but was completely outshone by the viscous lightening and cracking and thundering percussion which attended it, all right overhead. The end of a warm, humid day but it did make us wonder if we would find anyone out on the streets tonight. Read more

Sydney 2009 New Years Eve/Day

2009 starts as it does with any other year - with plenty of colour and noise,  folk travelling from all over the world to start the year here. It helps that the weather is hot and humid at this time, though new year in a snow bound New York has a certain appeal I have to confess.  Matt, who took this excellent photo (another work colleague talented with the camera), came all the way from the UK via all points of the compass to take this photo. OK, he has been living here a few years now. Pretty hard to dislodge him from this part of the world now I think.

Storm Flowers

The Jacaranda flower rains, especially in the rain. After a couple of weeks in the sun and gently falling in a slow shower in their own slow time the flowers get to a point where rain brings them down more easily. Or so it seems. I fancy they are our storm flowers, arriving at the time our warm and humid weather hits, Sydney days at this time of the year starting out clear, humid and warm and often ending in  a rumbling and crackling storm. Or with the southerly buster which drops the temperature ten degrees in a heartbeat. Our first settlers welcomed the “buster” but I would prefer the warmth to roll on. Fortunately these colours hang around for a few weeks, making even the humdrum drive to work a real pleasure - the Australian suburban bush is leaking rivers of this purple right now.

Cemetary Alive!

A quick note - the pictures tell their own story. “Spring is sprung, the flowers are riz” and the wildflowers in the Gore Hill cemetery (Victorian death lost in the middle of Sydney) are abundant and vibrant and powerfully contrast the stones they envelop. It is a great place to wander during a work day, “looking for the living among the dead” imagining families long gone and being reminded how wise the advice “carpe diem.” (Photos by Chris Gersch)

With my Back to Harry’s, Evening…

It’s been far too long since I stopped here. Stopped at all now that I think about it. The seagulls stand around me silent and sulky. Not a crumb from my pie falls away to catch their eye. But the sky is sunset grey and the harbour is darkening through green to black - its time to settle down after all. The background sounds are soporific. The traffic hums along behind Harry’s Cafe de Wheels (purveyor of fine pies and peas). In the distance sulphur crested cockatoos fight a raucous and strident scrap over nesting spots but they are far enough away to not be discordant. The US Navy is tied up alongside and the occasional drawling accent, softer than the Sydney woman on her cell phone, murmer past as pair after pair of young men with short haircuts make for the city lights. USS John Cain is lit from bow to stern with its Christmas lights as these warships do - painted ladies in port, snarling beasts on the high seas. Apparently visiting to commemorate a round-the-world voyage of the US Navy in 1908-9. The warships signal with the tinkle of bells and the tannoy clips its messages to the crew across the water. I can’t hear the instructions, but there a dozens of them. Orange lights scatter reflections down the harbour as the sun makes for Perth and lights in the apartments along the wharf start lighting up as people arrive home. One imagines a very convenient lifestyle there and I guess the warship announcements every couple of minutes or so would soon fade into the background. Water sloshes along the rocks at my feet - sounds that take me to childhood places vastly different to a harbour city of 4 million people. The homeless of them are drifting past with their trolleys, mixing with the suits walking with more purpose to their expensive apartments. But Harry’s is something of a “leveller” - one of the suits props beside me and eats a pie with a plastic fork and protects his garb with a paper towel. I could prop here all night but tonight has another purpose and I had best get on with it.

Poverty Under Our Noses

Yesterday was one of those glittering Sydney days we all want to bottle and sell to anyone who glances our way - and which we delight to remind anyone living further south (or to anyone living in the UK) is a Spring treat you don’t really find anywhere else. I had reason to be down at the harbour at one point in the afternoon and found myself enjoying the day and figuring there had to be better things than having to go back to the office at the end of it. The previous evening I was reminded there are certainly worse things. A few hundred metres back from the Finger Wharf, one of the most expensive pieces of real estate in the country and home to Russel Crowe, a cluster of homeless men camped under the rail overpass linking the city with Kings Cross and Bondi.  They bicker like birds settling on the wire for the evening, huddled against the cool evening under old blankets, some of them ducking away from the camera but all watching carefully, alert to we strangers wandering through their turf. As I watch these guys hunker down for the night behind the expensive BMW sports car it is not this contrast that is foremost in my mind but the former Navy Commander who found himself in these circumstances a few years ago and was killed by someone deranged who thought  a man living on the street had no right to live at all. How does a Commander find himself in these circumstances? A man on top of his game, with a family in the suburbs and a career stretched out forever in front of him

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