bulli/coledale/thirroul/austinmer/port kembla a week ago - 3 the bats

 The Bats

bulli/coledale/thirroul/austinmer/port kembla a week ago -2

 

These things had some kind of function in World War 2 (although I suppose they didn't, unless it was preventative) keeping tanks off the beaches. They've been relocated to this lookout so you can have your band photo taken there. 

Ok so that was great, probably 2 degrees too warm for me but everything's too warm for me. Now zoom a few (3?) hours forward to Coledale and we are doing soundcheck for this show. I wander down to the Coledale beach just as the sun is going down (which it does early in this part of the world). 

I wandered up the hill as well - Coledale goes back into the escarpment 2-3 blocks. A train was coming in.

Here's Alec tuning up (I suppose) before we play. We went really well, I think (perhaps not quite as good as rehearsal, but whatever!!!). 

I'll put some Bats pictures up in a little while, for what that's worth. They really had the place jumping. 

bulli/coledale/thirroul/austinmer/port kembla a week ago

So I spent most of the weekend in those places listed above, would rather post pictures than relay the various gossip items as enjoyable as I found them, suffice it to say, it was exactly the kind of thing I needed. It is nice to be reminded I have good friends and even the capacity to make new ones, and it all worked really well tbh. 

These horses were hanging out somewhere and we all turned up to rehearse. So, the plan was that Loaded and True got offered a support slot with The Bats at the Coledale RSL and they asked me if I would play with them, I'm not sure why but I said OK. This was the one rehearsal we had (after Alec sent around a big 30-minute MP3 of the songs). 

The songs are really good, it was a pleasure to play on them. 

We didn't rehearse long, then I went to Amanda and Greg's place where I was staying and that evening we saw Dave Graney and Clare Moore at the Heritage Hotel. Two sets. The new DG&CM album is called Laburnum of the Mind and it's really good. 

A&G have two really nice and skittish small cats, this is the less scared of them (though when I got up on Monday morning at 4:30 the cats really loved me). 

Austinmer cockatoos, they're obviously a horrendous nuisance except I just love those scallywags. 

On Sunday we took a trip to Port Kembla to have lunch basically and see the great bizarre jumble of things they have there.

Guess what these Five Islands are called. I don't mean individually, I mean collectively. 

We walked out on this, I'll make that a separate post, sometimes if posts are too big and exciting, they buckle. 

sydney a week ago, photo dump pt 1

 

Apple maps told me this restaurant (above) was the closest vegan restaurant to the SLNSW. 

sydney a week ago - 2

I did manage to replace my charger cord, unexpectedly. I was able to use the cord that came with a charger pack I had whimsically added to my baggage at the last minute, can't even remember why but glad I did. I would have wasted a lot of time traipsing around Sydney otherwise. As it was I basically - I think - got everything done I wanted to get done, within reason ('reason' isn't something I am thoroughly familiar with when it comes to FIFO research forays). 

I'll tell you what I was doing. Really, two things: I was looking at what Harry Seidler said to his colleagues about Tapiola, when he visited it (and Helsinki) in mid-1966. That was interesting, and I got a few choice quotes (no images, or anything like that, but you know, shrug emoji) and the full detail of when he was there, etc. Will add value to my paper on Australians and Tapiola.

The bigger part of my research was looking at all the boxes of scripts for the radio comedy sitcom Mrs 'Obbs, which ran from 1940 or maybe '41 till 1950, when its star, Dan Agar died. 

The thing is the show had about 1900 epsiodes and these beautifully preserved scripts only number just under 800, but they seem to be sequential and a couple of them (not many) mention years (in the vein of, 'soon it will be 1943'), which confuses me. Well, I'll either figure out or figure out why it doesn't really matter much. 

(Saturday) I consider myself to have done the necessary SLNSW work and I am going to give myself some time off this morning, if going to a cafe and writing up masters thesis assessments is time off, and then I will go to Thirroul this afternoon for the next important phase of my trip. 

sydney a week ago - 1 (unless I can't replace my charger cord in which case, 1 and only).

Greetings from the East Sydney Hotel a week ago. I like it but it is loud! Also, while I was not unhappy with the small amount of time I got to spend at the state library this evening, I am unhappy that somehow I broke my laptop charger, so I am going to have to waste time and money tomorrow replacing that... 

'Unhappy' is going too far also but to blog is to whinge, I always say, and the other thing that irked me was when I decided to get off the airport train at Mascot to visit a block of flats designed by Harry Seidler in Rosebery, and my phone said 'go to bus stop A' and all I could see was 'D' (with a much bigger B than D on it, but whatever) and no plan anywhere to tell you where 'A' (or B or C) was. 

WHATEVS!

people 54 years ago

I have spent a considerable part of the day scanning and labelling some slides given to me for a paper I'm writing. They're pictures taken by a planning academic who is no longer with us but who was in Tapiola in June 1972 and was interested in the town and some of its features particularly things pertaining to transport. He was especially interested in cycling. 

They're great pictures but something that has entranced me is the people in the background just living their lives, seemingly quite wholesomely. You can't see their faces (usually) but you can see their clothes and the way they carry themselves in public. It's really interesting to me, not necessarily because it's Finland and a place I love, Tapiola, although I suppose that's not a negative. Have a look.