GO GO GO GoMA

I am sorry to be missing my blog friends post. I am still on the go, fixing up old posts by replacing photos so that the posts can be printed into a book. It is tedious, boring work. Anyway I had a break last Monday and we went to GoMA (Gallery of Modern Art). We went with our camera club and met hundreds of children there because it is school term break at the moment.
The Asia Pacific Triennial Exhibition is on at the moment and the most popular installation is "Falling Back to Earth" by Chinese artist, Cai Guo-Quang.It is made up of 4 installations ; "Heritage," "Eucalyptus," "Tea Pavillion" and "Head On."
Here is a glimpse of some:

 'Heritage' is 99 animals from around the world gathered to drink from a single waterhole. It symbolises a 'perfect paradise'. It is very quiet and calming in this room. The animals are standing on sand.

 Reflection

'Head On' is made up of 99 wolves hurling themselves into the air, only to hit a glass wall and fall to the ground and then they return to the beginning. It forms a vertical loop of animals as compared to 'Heritage' which is a horizontal ring of animals. It was originally made for Germany's Guggenheim Gallery. This piece represents Berlin's turbulent history. The Glass wall represents the Berlin Wall.

OTHER STUFF

My time for blogging has been eaten up by other stuff. Sorry I haven't been to visit regular readers lately. I am sorting through hundreds of slides, scanning them and processing them ready to include in my book. I had a trial run at publishing the first chapter, only to find the photos were not at a high enough resolution for printing. Back in 2009 I didn't know things about DPI or pixels. So I have to go through all the old posts and rescan the photos and repost them. So I am blogging but rehashing the pages needed for my book. I'll be back when I've redone the posts and scanned more slides for more stories/posts.
In the meantime come for a walk with us.We went for a walk around the city park, South Bank Parklands. We intended doing a long walk along the river side but the temperature shot up to over 30°C so we opted for a stroll around the park instead. I thought summer was over but not yet. We even have another big cyclone heading for North Queensland again. We don't usually get cyclones as late as April.

We emerged from the underground car park to find the street closed and full of market stalls.

The other side of the street are wall to wall restaurants.

 The market offered a variety of goods.

Next to the market is the park, we walked across the grass and joined the pretty arbor which winds from one end of the park to the other. It is about a mile long. It is covered in bougainvillaea and provides well needed shade even in Autumn.

 It wasn't long before TOH was in search of a coffee. We found a table next to a little canal.

 After coffee we continued our walk and came to the man made beach.

 Nearby is the swimming pool.

 We would walk along the arbor until there was another place to visit like the rainforest walk. There are also lots of picnic and BBQ areas too.

 Occasionally we could see the city peeping through the trees from the other side of the river.

The end of the park opens onto the Queensland Performing Arts Centre and the Brisbane Wheel. Out of the shot is also the Conservatorium of Music and Queensland Ballet as well as the ABC broadcasting building. Across the road is the museum, the art gallery, the state library and the Gallery of Modern Art. It is a nice area of town

THE MAGIC OF BLOGGING

In my last post some commenters were interested in that the friends I had back in the 60's in PNG had managed to find one another 40+ years later in Australia. Here is the story of how some of us got back together.

Scooter Club outing 1964-Sogeri Markets

Some of us belonged to the Judo Club and the Scooter Club in Port Moresby, PNG in the 60's. We all came back to live in Australia at different times. Charles and his wife Penny stayed in PNG the longest. In 1980, Del and her husband revisited PNG. She made phone contact with Charles and left her address. Del had also kept in contact with Graham, Ray and Martin. When Charles returned to Australia he managed to find Del again even though her husband had died and she had moved towns. Charles decided to have a reunion at his house in Modanville in Northern NSW. Others had to travel quite some distance to get there.

Charles also writes an article in every bi-monthly publication of a local magazine, 'The Dunoon and District Gazette.' He wrote about his special reunion after 41 years. In his article he mentioned how none of them knew the whereabouts of some other members of our group of friends including me. He mentioned our names but our names before we were married.

It just so happened that, Bill Bergen, a guy I went to ASOPA (teacher's college) with, was visiting a relative in Lismore and he read the local magazine. He contacted the magazine publishers who in turn contacted Charles and told him that a reader knew me (we had a college reunion the previous year). Bill couldn't remember my married name. However, when he returned home to Bathurst he managed to find out my name and rang Charles with the information.

Charles punched my name into Google search and hey presto my blog came up. After hunting around my blog for clues to make sure I was the right person he found stories and information that gave him no doubt that he had found me and my email address. So from an article in a magazine, to a chance reader and the magic of blogging I was found. I was invited to the next reunion and every year since. Charles wrote the sequel to his article in the 'Dunoon Gazette' See the two articles below. Charles writes,"we became like a big family to each other as we were all away from our homes in Australia and away from our families too."

First reunion in February, 2007 (before I was found) photo by Diana (Graham's wife)

The second reunion in July 2007, but my first, was held at the Treasury Building Casino in Brisbane. 

People had travelled a long way for this special lunch. Some stayed overnight in Brisbane.

The third reunion in 2008 was held in Tweed Heads on the border of QLD and NSW. We stayed in cabins close to the Tweed River.

Our friendship picked up where it left off 43 years ago. New friendships were made when we met each other's spouses, Penny, Diana and Bill.

Graham took charge of the BBQ like he did 43 years ago. The BBQ was a bit more upmarket though.

Graham 1964 in PNG

"Our family" on a scooter club outing in 1964. I had a broken finger, which had been slammed in a door blown shut by a viscous wind. I grabbed a snooze on a picnic table away from creepy crawlies in the grass, while the others prepared lunch.

Later reunions have already been posted on my blog here

 Reunion Brisbane 2009

Mini Reunion Ipswich 2009

Reunion Stanthorpe 2010

Reunion, Stanthorpe, 2012

Reunion Tamworth 2013

Reunion Tamworth Part 2 2013

HOMBROM'S BLUFF

As I have mentioned before, I was working in PNG in the 60's when it was a territory of Australia. On Sundays my friends and I would go for a scooter excursion usually including a picnic and a swim. It is always hot and humid in Pt Moresby as PNG is a tropical country. It was cooler in the mountains and we often drove into the foothills of the Owen Stanley Mountains which snake through the middle of the island longways making like the backbone of a huge animal.

Once again we took the road up to the village of Sogeri and stopped at the market for some fresh fruit.

We climbed further up the mountain and turned back towards Pt Moresby on a rough road which followed the ridge. It was called Hombrom's Bluff. Looking towards Moresby in the distance we could see the road we had come along. It was a breathtaking view. 

I turned to look in the opposite direction where we could see the road going up to Sogeri where we had just been. The mountains were covered in dense jungle. I often thought of how hard it must have been for our soldiers fighting the Japanese along the Kokoda Track during WW11. It must have been awful.

photo-Charles

Sitting on the ridge overlooking the world below us. From L to R Bob, Graham, me, sitting, not sure who is behind me then there is Elwyn and Del.  Del lives not far from me now and she enjoys reading these stories of our time n PNG.

L to R Graham, Del, Charles, ? , Bob, me, Elwyn.

Everyone helped with the lunch but the boys usually made a BBQ. I have the blue pants and striped shirt.

Soon it was time to descend to the floor of the valley.

My scooter must have been out of action as I was the pillion passenger and turned around to take this shot of Charles, Elwyn and Graham.

We stopped at the reservoir.

photo-Charles

My new found friends, Elwyn (left) and Del (right).  I lost contact with them after a few years and never heard of them again until in 2008 when I was found on the internet. Since then we have had yearly reunions but we haven't found everyone yet. Elwyn is one and Bob another.

BEING SILLY, BREAKING RULES BUT IT WAS FUN.

We are often upset with youths of today being irresponsible and doing dangerous things, but when we were young, didn't we sometimes be silly and break the rules to have some fun? Maybe you didn't but I'm afraid I did sometimes. Here is one of those times.

In 1964 when I was working in PNG, I belonged to a scooter club,  Every Sunday we would go on a ride somewhere different for a picnic.We thought it would be nice if we all wore yellow shirts. We couldn't find any in the stores so we bought white ones and dyed them. Not a good idea but that is another story for another post.

This day we went on a trip to Bisianumu. From memory it was the name of a cattle property up in the foothills of the Owen Stanley Mountains. We left Pt Moresby and scootered up the gravel road to Roana where we stopped at the hotel and had some refreshments. I don't remember any other buildings in Roana, it was a good place to go for a drive and a drink. 

 On this day we were going further up the range. We stopped at the next village, Sogeri. Here there was a native market  full of fresh cheap produce. We bought fruit to go with our lunch.

The road got more narrow as we climbed even further up the range. We finally came to the cattle property. We had previously rung and asked for permission to enter the property to reach the waterfall and swimming hole. We had to make sure we closed the gate after us. We had a friend following us in a VW because he didn't own a scooter.

 Finally after the bumpy road ride we reached our destination. The views were stunning. Rugged, jungle clad mountains for as far as we could see. This and the next two photos were a panoramic view from where I was standing.

 Behind me there was an idyllic waterfall tumbling out of the mountains and...

 dropping over a cliff to the valley below.

 The swimming hole looked so inviting after the hot dusty ride up the mountain but it was freezing cold water.

 I didn't stay in too long. We had a picnic lunch and a laze in the shade. All to soon it was time to pack up hop on our scooters and roll down the mountain. The boys had another adventure for us before returning home.

 We stopped at the flume.

 We climbed onto the wall of the flume and started to walk up. I got dizzy from watching the water swirl past on its way to the reservoir, so I stopped and decided to take photos instead. Scaredy cat again.

photo Charles

 After a while I could hear screams of mirth and laughter and then I saw their heads bobbing down the fast flowing water. They had travelled about 1k, I jumped in for the last few hundred metres.

At the end of the flume the water is sucked into a tube which then empties into the reservoir so you have to defy the swiftly flowing water, grab hold of the edge and haul yourself out before you get sucked in to the tube. Now, I think that was a bit of a dangerous thing to do, but then when we were young and silly, it was fun getting swept along the flume without having to swim.

Joining Sepia Saturday's Water theme