Buildings and Monuments

Our camera club went on a photo shoot into Brisbane recently to capture building and monuments.
I made a little video of it

A Culture Day

We have Peter and Margaret staying with us this week, from the Hunter Valley. We took them into town today to visit the Art Gallery at South Bank. The Blogger and I haven't been there for some years, we usually visit the Gallery of Modern Art next door at least two or three times a year, so this time we were searching for the old masters and some Aboriginal display.

I had an ulterior reason to go there. We're presenting photos of 'People Interacting' at our camera club on Monday and I needed some pics for that. So while the others concentrated on the masters, I concentrated on the visitors instead.

I did however manage to capture a Peter Paul Rubens amongst the old masters

 And captured another Rubenesque woman near the Aboriginal display

The Queensland Art Gallery is in one of the buildings designed by Architect Robin Gibson & Associates at the Brisbane Arts Precinct at South Bank. Well worth a visit if you ever come to Brisbane.

After we got our art fill, we wandered over to the South Bank eateries for a scrumptios lunch.

750 Year Celebration of the Town of Thun in Switzerland

This post is dedicated to a very special town in Switzerland, Thun, and to two very good friends of mine, Roland and Martin. We all went to school together at one time or another, then we played in the high school band together. Both Roland and Martin played the drums and I played the trumpet. Roland still lives in Thun while Martin and I live in Queensland.

The town of Thun in Switzerland with castle and church

Thun is situated at the foot of the alps, on the Lake of Thun. It has wonderful views of the Bernese Alps, especially the Eiger, Mönch and Jungrau, which attract thousands of visitors every year.

Thun with views over the Bernese Alps

So, this year, the town celebrates its 750th Anniversary. It become a town in 1264 and joined the Canton of Berne in 1384.

In 1964, I was still living there and together with my father, took part in the celebratory 700th Anniversary march through town, in the local band, wearing period costumes.

The town band in period costumes in 1964
(I'm playing trumpet centre,  my dad plays french horn behind me)

My mate Roland on drums (centre front)

Roland and me in school

On Wednesday afternoons we had cadet training which involved either sporting activities or rifle training as this shot shows, both Roland and Martin were off to the rifle range for target practice. A German tourist stopped us and wanted to know, why we were carrying guns. After explaining, he wanted to pose with us and got his wife to take a picture.

Roland, Martin and me posing with a German tourist

So, happy birthday Thun, I'll be thinking of you.

Then and Now

I am continuing processing old slides and photographs and came across this lot taken in 1971 when we built our first home. We had recently returned from a trip around the world, after leaving Papua New Guinea. It was time to settle down. Before we left for Europe had bought an acre (half ha) of land in what was then called Eight Mile Plains and is now called Springwood. We looked around for a house we liked and settled on a 'Beazley' boomerang shaped 3-Bedroom house.

 The day arrived when we met the builder with the bulldozer to level the land and dig the foundations.

The builder arrives with the bullzozer 

I'm supervising the action

The land had a gentle slope

A few days later, we had the foundations in and shortly after the slab. Builders in those days were very efficient and prompt. The Blogger plans the garden. An acre is an awful lot of land

The foundations are in

The timber frame goes up

 Once the frame was up, I pulled all the wires into the ceiling and frames for the lighting and power points. I was an electrician then.

The roof is on

We visited the site most weekends to check it out and sometimes order changes to be made. The builder was very tolerant with us and didn't complain when we asked for things to be moved or improved. Mind you, he charged us for it. Fair enough.

Outside looks a real mess

Finally, after five months, we took possession of the house and moved in.

Our very first house

The funny thing was, our address was Lot 14, Springwood Road, Eight Mile Plains, which a few years later became Lot 14, Springwood Road, Slacks Creek and yet another few years later, 222, Springwood Road, Springwood. So we changed addresses three times without even moving.

The kitchen is finished

Springwood has changed drastically in 43 years, as the picture below shows. What once was a single lane road where passing vehicles had to drive onto the dirt road next to the bitumen, is now a 4-lane road.

This is the road now

Our first daughter Carol was born there. It was a building boom, so we only stayed for a couple of years there before we sold the place for more than twice as much and bought another house, still in Springwood. But that's another story.

A truly remarkable Outing

This morning, we jumped on a bus into town with the U3A Camera Club. Destination the Gallery of Modern Art at South Bank. Now, I might be ever so slightly biased, but I am certain that GOMA at Brisbane ranks amongst the top modern art galleries in the English Speaking World. My well travelled, very arty daughter agrees with me.

Presently, there is one of the most dramatic exhibitions held at GOMA, ‘Cai Guo-Qiang: Falling Back to Earth’ presents major new works by a truly global artist, whose large-scale installations and explosion events have made him one of the most innovative figures in contemporary art. Over the past 25 years, Cai Guo Qiang has held solo exhibitions at some of the world’s most prestigious art institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Solomon R Guggenheim Museum in New York. Following recent exhibitions in Qatar, Los Angeles, Copenhagen, Rio de Janeiro and Venice, QAGOMA presents ‘Cai Guo-Qiang: Falling Back to Earth’ — the artist’s first solo exhibition in Australia and a GOMA exclusive.

Members of the club mingled with the public to capture the exhibits

‘Falling Back to Earth’, presented by Tourism and Events Queensland and Santos GLNG Project, features four installations, including two newly commissioned works directly inspired by the landscapes of southeast Queensland, which the artist visited in 2011. The centerpiece of the exhibition — Heritage 2013 — features 99 replicas of animals from around the world, gathered together to drink from a blue lake surrounded by pristine white sand, reminiscent of the lakes of Moreton Bay’s islands.
 

Animals gather around the lake to drink

At first, it looked to me as if the lake was a coloured plastic sheet, but one of the staff members assured me it is real water. It looks amazing. There is a boardwalk all around the lake for the visitors and sand to the edge of the lake. Visitors are not allowed onto the pristine white sand.

The other major installation, — Head On 2006 — is a striking installation of 99 artificial wolves leaping en masse into a glass wall, on display in Australia for the first time.

Both spectacular and meditative, and presenting a beautiful, thought-provoking vision of our relationship with the earth and with each other, ‘Falling Back to Earth’ is a must-see exhibition. Here, visitors can walk amongst the animals up close, which made perfect subjects for close-up photography.

If this exhibit ever visits your city, I strongly recommend you go and see it.

Book Sale

Libraries always have too many books or books they replace after a certain time. Our libraries in Logan City have a community book store where these book are sold to the public. The store is run by community groups and all moneys stay with the groups.

Well, today it was U3A's turn to run the store and it fell on me to organise it. Publicise it on posters around the area and all the local radio stations.

The Bookshop at the Library

Logan Central Library

Besides Books, we sold DVDs and Audio Books

The Bookshop has a wide variety of books and subjects

We had a roster of volunteers looking after the shop from various groups of U3A. We took it in turns looking after the till and serving customers, many of whom are regulars and come every Saturday morning to stock up on books.

Frances and Michael, a couple of U3A Volunteers

 We had a steady trickle of customers coming in the shop between 9 AM and 2 PM. The shop is open every Saturday and is restocked every week before it is open for another community group. We think the Logan City Council is to be congratulated for providing this fabulous service for community groups to derive an income and for the public to stock up on inexpensive books.

Customers spend a lot of time browsing

We made a decent sum of money and plan to do it again in September.

Power

We have a high voltage / domestic voltage transformer mounted on a power pole between ours and the neighbour's property not a pretty sight to start with, but we're sort of used to it. We also have lots of possums living in the area and they use the high tension wires as their highway at night. They climb over the transformer and short out two phases and their lives. So every so often we hear a terrible bang outside and the lights go out in the street. This has happened three times in the last six months. Usually while I am watching telly or sit at the computer. Well it happened again on Friday night about a qarter into the Dr Blake mystery on the ABC. Most neighbours in these cases, congregate in the street commiserating. After a couple of hours in the darkness, the emergency crew arrived and changed the blown high voltage fuse at the transformer. Saturday (yesterday) I sent an email off to the supply authority requesting them to do something about this transformer as we're all thoroughly sick of losing power so often. Well, what a surprise when this morning (Sunday) another crew arrived with a huge cherry picker and they removed the dead possum on top of the transformer and double insulated the high voltage terminals.

Energex arrived this morning

They cover the terminals while they're working on them

Above their heads are the high voltage fuses the possums trip

Before

After

Back to Normal

So now we wait and see what happens.