Final video of Oz day 08

Some more music for you folks.

Last year I had a clip taken of the Whitlam’s, this year it’s Dan Kelly. Lots of shot’s of Australians sprinkled throughout, and some sky divers.

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Dan Kelly sings on Australia day 'Babysitters of the world unite.'

Oz Day 08: Antique Car Show video

You’ve seen the stills. Now experience the colour, movement, and sounds of the Oz Day Antique Car Show (wish I could bring you the smells too.)
Lot’s of people, and music, and there was a fly past by one of Australia’s three jet fighters (I think that only one can fly at any one time.)
Music clip to follow in a couple of days.

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Australia day 08: Last of the Car Show photos

Australia Day 08: The devil is in the details

Damn, I’m still dating things 07!

Made an effort to kneel down onto the super heated sidewalk (sunny day) and take some macro shots.
Old dudes would walk past and inform me that ‘whatever’ widget I was paying so much attention too could now be bought in Sydney, or that they had hundreds of that thingamabob and could give me one if I wanted.
I thought it was a bit strange until I realised that I was surrounded by car nuts (which doesn’t quite convey the depth of feeling these guys had for their machinery.)
They thought I was scouting for parts.’

Australia Day 08

That time again where Oz celebrates itself.

This is a link to last years entry...

oz day 07

This year I got down to the annual antique car show and took a lot of photos, and made an effort not to get sunburnt. This is the first batch...

Bondi to Bronte swimming race 07

Here are some photos and I’ll post a more detailed entry with videos later.

This event was held on Sunday off Sydney’s Eastern beaches.

Walk Against Warming 07

Our country elects a new government in a week’s time, so the local enviro groups organised a ‘Walk Against Warming’ march through the city streets.
We had a march last year, and the blog entry is here....

walk-against-warming-06

…and this is the video of this year’s event.

The band is Watusi who played to entertain the folks who walked. The music is South American inspired and there is another video of these guys here…

2006_Newtown_street_festival

About twenty thousand people turned up, which is pretty poor considering the number of bodies living in Sydney.
I hear that Melbourne had fifty thou.
The usual politicking types got up to make a short speech. The crowd booed the Left wing party representative, cause like other liberal parties all over the planet, it’s hard to tell the difference between the left and the right these days.
The Right wing didn’t even bother to turn up. At least those guys never change.

Festival season (part two.)

Twas a very hot day and I scored a sunburn despite the posh Nivea sunscreen lol
While looking for a coffee, I discovered a stall selling ‘non colonialist’ coffee and chocolate.

www.mayancoffee.com.au

Great coffee (I went back for a second later in the afternoon)
All the staff looked like they were volunteers, and I bought a bag of chocolate coated coffee beans with a hint of cinnamon and chilli.
They were canvassing for volunteers to travel to Guatemala to teach English and suchlike.
Boy the French must be pissed that English and Spanish became the international languages.

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I like these community festivals cause all sorts of folks can be found
wandering between the stalls. Lots of dogs and kids about too. This video is of a dog show, which seems to be traditional at these events.

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There’s the party animals too, and they tend to gravitate towards the
dance party style sound systems. such as at the end of this ‘stream of
consciousness’ type video.


Lots of music, people, and a brutal slaying of a stuffed toy.

Graffiti

Graffiti

Happy Daylight Savings!

It will be nice to enjoy the light at a more useful time of the day.
No more leaving work as the sun sets and arriving home in the dark. I can go for a walk down to the beach, or a jog in the park.

I reckon that this is the best season of the year. It’s much better then ‘Tax Return submitting Season’ (which you either love or hate,) or ‘holiday Season’ (where all transport and accommodation is a lot more expensive.) I’m not going to bore people with how much ‘Flu Season’ sucks.

Other lesser known yearly divisions are the ‘red wine season’ which tends to be the cooler months of the year and is counter-pointed by ‘G&T season’ which marks the warming of the air.

So I’d like to wish everyone a very merry Daylight Savings and a happy G&T on the rocks.

I’ve inserted some pic’s I took in Chippendale of some graffiti.
There was an exhibition of Stencil art being held, and after I checked out the art I lurked around the back streets to see if I could find some uncaged examples.

The first two are part of a collaborative project that was in the process of being created. I think the result was going to me auctioned off.

Entry for October 04, 2007: Crap it was warm today.

And we’re having a bit of a moth plague at the mo.
Happens every couple of years or so.

Lots of grey, furry little bodies, erratically buzzing around the city.

I don’t mind them personally. There are also a lot of flies buzzing around in the warm air right now and those piss me off more.
People at work seem to have been a bit distracted by a few of these little invaders that were able to get inside to office yesterday.
One woman seemed to have a major psychosis going on, cause she spent most of the day gyrating between the cubicles, gazing up at the roof, as she desperately tried to avoid contact with one of the many moths that were knocking themselves senseless against the fluro’s.

At the end of the day, I told her that she should check that the interior of her car was clear, in case one flew out from under a seat when she was driving and caused her to have an accident.
I was kind of joking but she looked at me weirdly and nodded.
She took a leaf of A4 copy paper with her in case a fuzzy body was on the door handle

Bush fire season has started too. A road was closed off to peak hour traffic as a fire blackened the country side. The papers reckon the fires are deliberately lit.
Whole lot of stuff going to go up in flames this year.

This is the last of my posts on the APEC nonsense that we suffered a few weeks back.

I’ve built another of these new fangle Google maps so that you can ‘wander’ around and see where the videos and photos were taken.
As with the previous one, feel free to zoom in and scroll around within the window. The pins can be clicked on and contain videos and photos.
The purple line is the route that I took.

If the pins don't appear, click here to visit the Google map site and view the map there.

View Larger Map

There were cops on foot, cops on cycles, cops with a water cannon, cops riding motocross, and if not for the equine flu outbreak there would have been cops on horse back.
The only thing missing was cops on roller blades!

Where the heck did all these cops come from?
The tourists were in seventh heaven as there was a cop from who they could ‘ask for directions,’ every couple of meters or so.
That is unless an unfortunate tourist took a photo of THE FENCE and then the cops would swoop in and make the visitor delete the last couple of shots in the memory.

I travelled into the city on a bus, and over heard a family talking about attending the protest. I heard the mum describing what the protest was about and one child said ‘mom I don’t want them to use the water canon on me.’

Continuing the APEC protest march entry...

The ‘demonstration’ convened out the front of the Town Hall, where one elected representative had remarked earlier in the week ‘cage Bush, not Sydney.’
There were ‘a thousand and one’ cameras on and around the street. Nothing happened without a lens examining and recording the event.
Cops went ‘high tech’ with periscopes, the TV guys were STILL lugging around shoulder bending monsters, and everyone else had a phone or a ‘point and shoot.’
It was a bit weird seeing all the cameras arcing out over people’s heads, to peer down at what ever was the ‘interest’ of the moment.

This is a video featuring some of the people that made an effort to communicate their support for a variety of issues in entertaining ways.
The bizarre thing is, that Sydneysiders are so self absorbed, that there was never a chance that events were going to get out of control.
Sure, if the issue was with sport, or a patch of beach there would be trouble. But global warming, or fair trade.
Come on, that’s someone else’s problem!

The city seemed to be deserted for the whole three days. What a master stroke. Give everyone in Sydney a holiday, and they’re all off to clog all the arteries exiting the city.
For such a nice city to live in, a lot of people are desperate to get out when there is a holiday in the offing.

Police State of mind

Welcome to Sydney. Famous for its policing which is either over zealous or non existent.

Initially I wasn’t particularly fussed about this group of politicians holding a meeting in Sydney.
But then it became apparent that that our government officials were taking this little gathering wayyyyy too seriously. To the point were they were actively discouraging people from making their opinions felt with a public demonstration.
For months our officials have been talking up potential violence, blowing our taxes on fencing us out of a chunk of our own city, buying water cannons, and digging up an astounding number of police to line the footpaths.
A hundred and fifty million dollars spent on security, that is able to be breached by a comedy sketch show posing as a Canadian delegation.
I can't believe that NSW tax payers are prepared to accept such incompetence and oppression.

The way I see it, I helped pay for the APEC party. I should at least go down and see what sort of fun I was missing out on.I’m finding it hard to believe that for all those years we were bagging out Queensland for being a ‘police state’ when Joh B was around.
Check this shit out...

It's bizarre what Sydney will spend money on. APEC instead of fixing the country tracks we call roads. Desalination plants rather then recycling.

APEC march

I’m taking a short break from the whales.
I was a part of the APEC march which was held on Saturday, by a variety of groups, for a verity of reasons.
These are some quick grabs and I’ll post something better cut, with a write up later.

APEC protest march 08: Rain

APEC protest march 08

APEC protest march 08: Marching

APEC protest march 08: Billionaires

Bush walking.

This is a video of the Numantia falls, taken last week when I had my first expedition with a bush walking group.
We were trekking up in the Blue mountains, outside Sydney.




We drove up to Falconbridge, parked the cars, and then hit the bush.

Had lunch in the bush, and emerged in Springwood around three in the afternoon.

Lifted from Facebook group.

 
I grew up in Australia in the 90’s
   
Just for Fun - Totally Random

• You watched the ABC more than any other station. Those days are long gone.
• You made worms by squeezing your Vegemite or peanut butter crackers together.
• The best parties always had fairy bread.
• The Waugh twins. Go! Aussie! Go!
• The Spice Girls and the rise of Girl Power!
• Super League almost ruining rugby league in Australia.
• Getting the Easter Show guide from the paper and circling all the show bags you wanted.
• You thought everyone in America carried a gun and you never wanted to go there because you were were scared you'd get shot.
• Blinky Bill, Spot and Gumby.
• You always used to see that dried out, white dog poo on the footpath. You never see that anymore.
• SuperTed, Widget The World Watcher and Samurai Pizza Cats.
• Going to the Easter Show with a big group of friends from school once you were old enough to go without Mum and Dad.
• Doing research for school projects by going to the library or looking up an encyclopaedia rather than using the internet.
• Brian Henderson and Richard Morecroft reading the news.
• Paul Keating was some guy that ran the country and John Howard became the only PM you really ever knew because you were too young to care before that.
• Banana Man, Bangers and Mash and The Raggy Dolls.
• Game Boy.
• Waking up early everyday to watch Agro’s Cartoon Connection or Cheez TV.
• Hey Hey It’s Saturday.
• Everyone got the Coke bag at the Easter Show and it was only $10.
• Buying those 6 packs of Coco Pops, Fruit Loops, Frosties, Rice Bubbles, Nutri-Grain and Corn Flakes so you could have a different one each day and then opening the packets really carefully and removing the cereal so you'd have a mini wardrobe afterwards. You also most probably just let your parents eat the Corn Flakes.
• Trying to make the Rainbow Road shortcut on Mario Kart 64.
• Postman Pat, Fireman Sam and Lift Off (that show with the dirty, blind doll named EC).
• Playing GoldenEye on the Nintendo 64 and arguing over whether Oddjob was allowed to be used in multiplayer.
• The original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
• Super International Cricket on the SNES.
• Arguing over which was better – Nintendo 64 or PlayStation.
• Don’t push me, push a push pop!
• Nobody made not jokes... NOT!!
• Bathurst stopped being Holden vs. Ford and all those European cars came in until they came to their senses.
• Who shot Mr Burns?
• Watching Captain Planet and then driving your parents mad by always singing the song.
• That's so funny, I forgot to laugh.
• WWE was WWF and they actually had cool wrestlers like The Rock, Mankind and Stone Cold Steve Austin.
• Playing Gran Turismo and MGS on PlayStation.
• Roller coasters at Wonderland, Sydney.
• You decorated your room with glow-in-the-dark stickers.
• SBS didn’t have any ads. Not that you ever watched it anyway, except maybe for softcore porn.
• You played marbles and could name all the different types like blue moon, oily, candy, red wine, galaxy and red devil. You never played anyone for your god marble.
• Feeling sad when your Tamagotchi died.
• Singing a ram sam sam, a ram sam sam, guli guli guli guli guli, ram sam sam, a rafi, a rafi, guli guli guli guli guli ram sam sam.
• Seeing a small rack of DVDs in the video store and wondering if anyone ever rented them.
• Dolly the sheep.
• Getting up early to watch the Rage Top 50.
• Friends when they were all actually just friends. Why didn't Phoebe and Joey get together?
• Sonic the Hedgehog.
• Watching The Simpsons back when it was funny, every night on Channel 10.
• Power Rangers becoming cooler than the Ninja Turtles, even though the Turtles will always be cooler.
• Watching South Park for the first time and being really excited by all the swearing.
• Watching Hercules and then being disappointed when Xena Warrior Princess replaced it. Nobody was cooler than Herc.
• Blowing on the Nintendo cartridge before putting it in the console to make sure it worked properly.
• Smell the cheese.
• Vulcan, Tower, Flame... Australian Gladiators.
• Playing Mortal Kombat and trying to do a fatality but just ending up punching accidentally.
• Pokemon! Gotta catch ‘em all!
• Watching Hey Dad! and then seeing little Arthur McArthur go on to star in that famous Sorbent ad.
• Full Frontal, not Comedy Inc.
• Wolfenstein, Doom and Duke Nukem.
• Downloading music from Napster.
• Chatting with your buddies on ICQ.
• Going to see Titanic.
• And the winner is… Sydney.
• Mighty Max and Polly Pocket. Max and Polly always got lost because they were so bloody small.
• Fox Mulder and Dana Scully.
• Waiting for Tony “Plugger” Lockett to break that record.
• Australia didn’t always win the cricket.
• The Socceroos couldn’t qualify for the World Cup.
• John Eales captained the Wallabies and we won the World Cup.
• Ray Martin hosted A Current Affair.
• Zoopa Doopa ice blocks were only 20c and if you couldn’t afford it, you asked the canteen lady to cut it in half so you could split it with a friend.
• Listening to boy bands like Human Nature and girl bands like Girlfriend.
• Barbie, not Bratz.
• Happy Meals were only $2.95 and the toys were simple but actually good.
• Person 1: Who farted!?
• Person 2: Whoever smelt it, dealt it!
• Person 1: Whoever made the rhyme, commited the crime!
• Brad Fittler was the best in the world.
• Thorpe won lots of gold medals and wasn’t so gay.
• Opposite day.
• We all loved Pat Rafter and almost cried when he lost to Goran Ivanisevic because our Pat deserved that title more than anyone. Definitely more than Hewitt ever did.
• Playing tackle Bull Rush at lunchtime and having tackling banned. You had to resort to grab 1-2-3 or tip. Same goes for footy.
• Giving a friend a backage in the canteen line. If it was your best friend, you gave them a frontage.
• Pogs and Looney Tunes Tazos.
• Nobody won Wimbledon unless their name was Pete Sampras.
• You ate Smarties instead of M&M’s.
• You tried Dr. Pepper and hated it.
• Service stations didn’t need space for 4 digits on their petrol prices signs.
• Girl germs! Boy germs!
• Goosebumps.
• You had to actually call your friends rather than send them an SMS.
• Hubba Bubba.
• Wearing a Chicago Bulls T-shirt or cap. Wearing the cap backwards.
• Arguing over who got to be Warnie in backyard cricket. Six and out!
• Paul Jennings’ Gizmo books.
• Matchbox cars.
• The feeling of wonder you got, the first time you were able to see the image in one of those Magic Eye 3D pictures.
• The Secret World of Alex Mack.
• Talk to the hand!
• Johnson and Friends, Noddy and Humphrey B. Bear.
• You wished you had enough Lego to build those amazing cities they displayed in the brochures.
• Collecting Yowie toys. Aussie wildlife was way cooler than any stupid Kinder Surprise toy.
• Playing truth or dare with your secret crush.
• Mark Taylor equalling Don Bradman's record.
• Slap bracelets.
• Jurassic Park and those toy dinosaurs where you could pull a piece of the skin out to see its insides.
• Roger Ramjet, he’s our man, hero of our nation.
• We had paper money.
• Good on ya Mum! Tip Top’s the one!
• You could buy more than enough food from the school canteen for only $2.
• Begging your parents to go to McDonald’s for dinner.
• Rocko’s Modern Life, Rugrats and Hey Arnold!
• Noni, Monica and that bald guy named George on Play School.
• Going to World 4 Kids to look at all the toys.
• Watching The Lion King and feeling Simba’s pain when Mufasa died. Disney just doesn’t make them like that anymore.
• Soft serve cones were only 30c and they never tried to up-sell a Flake because they didn’t have it.
• Wanting a Brain or Silver Bullet during the yo-yo craze.
• Nesquik without the Nes.
• Troll Dolls.
• The Kids' Works at Pizza Hut with unlimited drink refills. You made an ice cream mountain covered in choc chips and marshmallows and could never finish it.
• Thomas the Tank Engine and TUGS.
• Ba-na-na-na-na! Ba-na-na-na-na! Make those bodies sing!
• You had to get your photos developed.
• Your family didn’t own a 4WD unless it was a real one like a Land Cruiser or Patrol. Range Rovers were tough and nobody thought BMW would make a 4WD, let alone Porsche.
• Street Sharks and Biker Mice From Mars
• Competing with your friends to see who could eat the most sour Warheads in one go.
• The Channel 9 logo had dots next to it and the Channel 7 logo wasn’t a folded piece of paper.
• No Hat, no play.
• Dr. Dreadful Food Labs. Kids these days wouldn't be allowed that because its not healthy enough. We didn't give a shit about our health in the 90's.
• High five! Up high, down low, too slow!
• Watching Round the Twist and getting pissed off that the actors kept on changing. You still loved it though.
• Cheating in Heads Down, Thumbs Up.
• Watching that game show called Vidiot. Game shows didn't have to be educational back then, like That's Academic... that show sucks.
• Collecting basketball cards, whether you followed basketball or not.
• You always wished your parents had bought you a bigger Super Soaker for Christmas. Christmas is hot in Australia... the more water, the better.
• Collecting hundreds of tickets from Timezone just so you could trade them for some crappy prize that you could have bought from Woolies for ten bucks.
• Healthy Harold day was the best because you got to miss class to sit in a tiny caravan and listen to a talking giraffe.
• Playing handball with Ace, King, Queen and Dunce and making up stupid rules as you went along.
• Skipping ropes and Jump Rope for Heart Day.
• A*mazing.
• The Ferals. Rattus, Modigliana, Derryn and Mixy were cool until they started that five minute piece of crap, Feral TV.
• Hypercolour T-shirts.
• Who Dares! Who Dares! Who Dares Wins!
• Having your very own Dollarmites account and getting really excited when you earned a tiny bit of interest.

Growing up in Australia in the 90’s was rad.

Walking to work

Went on the ‘Right to Work’ demonstration last Sunday.
No riots unfortunately
The people I was with and I did the traditional thing and stopped in for a drink in a pub half way along the route.
Was disappointed that the tail of the group rolled past outside in the middle of our first drink.
We quickly sculled and rejoined the stragglers.

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Entry for April 17, 2007: Easter in Melbourne (cont)

The one thing I had my heart set to do, during my visit down south, was to spend a bit of time warming a seat in a proper cigar bar
One evening we ended up at the big casino that lurks on the bank of the Yarra river.
Turned right and walking through the door, and we were swamped in a crowded shopping precinct which must have been the ‘family friendly’ face of the casino, and it was jammed with people.

We found the bar and were instantly transported to a quiet place where soft conversations mingled with the blue cigar smoke wafting around the low ceiling.
I noticed that a decent breeze was keeping my smoke alight so there must have been an efficient aircon whisking the smoke away.
She had an elderberry and champagne cocktail, He had ten year old Taliska Scotch.


My companion was attractive, and smart, and could squeeze out a cute chuckle, with nice lips, round of bosom, and she was funny.
There was one of those ‘out of phase’ periods where I couldn’t remember any details, but we both ended up in bed, half undressed…
And then the momentum faded.

Has anyone else been stopped in their tracks by another person’s history?
At the train station I’d met a previous boy friend (he had his front teeth when she had gone out with him.)
She’d let slip that recently she’d made a random pickup in a club…
And also got laid at a party last week.

I couldn’t bring myself to dive under the waist band of her jeans (alright, that’s a lie, I did some half hearted delving but her knickers held tight against her hips by some sort of super elastic, as was the impressive binding of her bra.)
We had a nice kiss and cuddle and grope, but I don’t think either of us were completely satisfied.
Say what you like about intimacy and gentleness, but there is nothing quite like finishing off the night with a jolly good pounding, a few screeching moans, and maybe a small blasphemy yelled at the head board.

Where is the halfway point between clumsy virgin and town bike?
To find a woman who knows her way around the paddock (for our international readers a ‘paddock’ is what we call a football field) but doesn’t have carnal knowledge of the entire home team (and the visiting team, both sets of training staff, and the lad who runs the hotdog stand?)

Not that either extreme is a bad thing. I’ve known some gracefully ignorant virgins, and quite a few of my current friends have slept with half the city.
These are all wonderful women, who I have little lust for.

Why would a woman would reel off a list of previous plumbers…
or wax lyrical about her progress through the members of the surf lifesaving squad…
or let slip that she had had a kid when she was at High School and had put him up for adoption?

I reckon it’s a test to fathom the depth of feeling of the current tradesman who is ‘seeing to the plumbing.’
‘If he’s still here in the morning, then he must like me a bit?’

Speaking of which, we had breakfast in a café hidden away in one of Melbourne’s ‘lanes.’
There’s a shot from our table in the accompanying video (the compiling of which has taken me a week and so I’ve ‘multi parted’ this blog entry to fill in the time.)