Kangaroo Point

Few other suburbs in Brisbane can match Kangaroo Point for its views and natural beauty. Standing atop the ancient cliffs, the views show the city at its best, whether it's as the sun is rising, or as the city skyline lights up in the evening. 

One day last week we took the CityCat and started the river walk at the city end down to down to Joeys restaurant. 

This derelict house and land must be worth a fortune.

 

It has uninterrupted views of the city

We climbed lots of steps up to Joeys. It's 3 years since I did this walk and I could still climb the steps with only one stop half way! You can see the path below and the handrail. We had coffee and cake.

We've had a lot of rain, I've never experienced so much on previous visits, some years there hasn't been any at all. My first week was ok but the last week has been showers every day. But it has been warm. Some showers were quite welcome - like a fine cooling mist. 

∼ Be safe and well∼ 

Polly x

Mother's Day

In Australia Mother's Day is in May but we celebrated the UK one today. We started our day with breakfast at Redcliffe market. I had coffee and a croissant

The weather was glorious

Bluey gets everwhere

People enjoying the beachside pool

After a relaxing afternoon

My daughter made a gorgeous cream tea

   

It was all delicious, and there are scones left for tomorrow 😋

∼ Be safe and well∼ 

Polly x

Rain, Rain, Go Away

Oh dear, the weather bureau clearly didn't receive my request for non stop sunshine!

Today is going to be non stop rain. We are hunkered down and about to play dobble. I usually do very well, but the last time we played I suffered a humiliating defeat, I only scored 1, daughter scored 13, S scored 5.

 ∼ Be safe and well∼ 

Polly x

The Ferry Cats

The ferry is my favourite mode of transport, its' so easy to get around.

Brisbane City operates regular catamaran services along the river.

The KittyCat is the cross-river service. 

The CityCat service operates daily between the University of Queensland St Lucia to Northshore Hamilton, which is about a 2 hour journey in total. The Express CityCat service operates during peak periods on weekdays, providing faster travel from selected terminals. Each Cat has a name.

And there are two new arrivals. The City Council were thrilled to welcome two CityDogs to the Ferry Network. Two of the Council’s CityCats, Gootcha and Kuluwin, have been brilliantly transformed into Bluey and Bingo.

Bluey is an Australian animated preschool television series about a beloved pup Bluey and his little sister Bingo. It has become hugely popular. We watched an episode, it is delightful. 

∼ Be safe and well∼ 

Polly x

Brisbane Art Gallery

We took the ferry into the city. After meandering around the shops and exploring the comprehensive street market, the plan was to visit the city library, followed by lunch then home.

However the Queensland Art Gallery of Modern Art is next door to the library so we popped in for a quick look and stayed for over an hour. We went into the library but didn't stay because my feet were aching and we were hungry. We will visit another day and start with the library which looked amazing.

The art gallery is pretty amazing too.

Portrait of James Davis

by Carl Magnus Oscar Fristrom

James 'Duramboi' Davis had a colourful history. He was sent to Australia from Scotland as a convict. In 1824 aged 15 or 16 he was sentenced to seven years transportation to New South Wales for the theft of a coin from a church collection. Five years later in Sydney he was subsequently convicted of robbery and sentenced to a further three years imprisonment at Moreton Bay. Davis escaped from the penal colony and lived with the Indigenous Badtjala people on Fraser Island. The Badtjala accepted him and gave him the name Duramboi. He was recaptured in 1842.

He later became a successful business man in South Brisbane, where he owned a crockery shop. He died a wealthy man in 1889.

The Bathers by Rupert Bunny

Comet (Dance Machines)

by Patrick Thaidy

Thaidy's 'dance machines' are articulated objects that are central to Torres Strait Island performances. Comet represents the drama and intensity of a comet that appears only once every several centuries.

Shark by Ricardo Idagi

His works are inspired by mask and headdress-making traditions of the Torres Strait Islands. This interpretation is almost a life size replica of a real Tiger Shark. It's made from flakes of turtle shell, feathers, saimi seeds and string.

Fighter and Bomber aircraft headdresses

White Dove Feeling the Universe by Brett Whiteley

The Spirit of the New Moon by Arthur Loureiro

I like this one

  

I think this is beautiful

Spirit of the Plains

The artist Sydney Long thought of the Australian landscape as a special, dreamlike place. The painting features the Brolga Crane - a wetland bird found in Northern Australia. They are known for their intricate dance, during which they toss pieces of grass into the air, leap into the sky, bob their heads, beat their wings, strut and bow even making a trumpeting sound.

   

Karla Dickens work is an ongoing interrogation of the legacies of colonialism, capitalism and patriarchy, and their effects on Aboriginal cultures and the natural world. The installation above confronts the breadth of environmental devastation across Australia - such as rising temperatures, exploitation of resources, drought, extinction, floods and coral bleaching.

   

You can just about see the crows at the top of the images. The waagan (crow in Wiradjuri) acts as a guardian and messenger throughout the installation. Dickens says "I believe my ancestors are visiting if the crows appear. The crows give me strength to fly above my shadows as I walk this life searching for connection and meaning".

Each piece of work is punctuated by her signature tongue-in-cheek text, puns, metaphor and black humour.

'Keeping It Together' depicts forest of glove poles bound together with raffia and twine and symbolises the tenuous feeling of trying to hold the world together as it falls apart.

Many Hong Kong residents live in high-rise buildings. Artist Yeung Tong Lung created this group of paintings by looking out the window of his studio and painting what he saw.

Woodcut print on canvas by Muhlis Lugis

        Betal-nut palm                     Banana               Temple tree, Frangipani                                                                                  my favourite Australian flower

'Paradisus Terestris' by Fiona Hall is a set of fifteen aluminium and tin sardine cans, each revealing a human erogenous zone or body-part. Sprouting above these are botanically correct representations of native flora, implying a collision between Culture and Nature. Each component of the work bears three titles: the local Aboriginal plant name specific to the language group indicated in parentheses, the Latin (botanical) name, and the common English name.

I couldn't photograph them all because there was too much reflection. 

And in a lot of art galleries I have visited there is always something that I just don't get

Untitled by Gunter Christmann

I'm not sure what title I would give it, maybe

Rectangle of grey paint

with a rectangle of black paint underneath

in a blue frame.

Really?

And finally 

The sentence on the screen was constantly changing, I only caught two - "social structure"  and "I am whispering"  I was puzzled. Art is definitely subjective!

∼ Be safe and well∼ 

Polly x

Cinema

Visiting the lovely cinema in Bulimba is like taking a step back in time. I don't think it has changed much since it first opened its doors.

The film we went to see was 'Black Bag', a spy thriller starring Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Pierce Brosnan and other very good actors.
The Plot
British intelligence officer George Woodhouse is given one week to investigate the leak of a top-secret software program code-named Severus. One of five suspects is his wife, Kathryn, who is also an intelligence officer.

It was very good but I didn't guess who the spy was. 

There were only 12 of us in the audience, I have been other times of the day but never seen a full house. My daughter thinks the chain of cinemas might be owned by a nice wealthy philanthropist who just wants to keep them going. I hope so.

∼ Be safe and well∼ 

Polly x

G'Day

View from balcony where I have breakfast

G'Day dear reader and greetings from down under. I'm back in my favourite place with my darling daughter and her partner.

I had good journeys with Qatar airlines, the first leg to Doha was 6 hours. I watched a really good film called Thelma, in which 93 year-old Thelma gets duped by a phone scammer pretending to be her grandson, and then sets out on a scooter with a gun in her handbag to retrieve her money. June Squibb is brilliant as Thelma. I think I watched another one but I can't remember! 

The next leg was 14 hours which happily passed quite quickly watching 4 films, half a documentary about freediving, reading and sleeping.

I arrived on Friday afternoon and have acclimatised to the time difference and so enjoying the glorious hot weather!

∼ Be safe and well∼ 

Polly x

It's That Time of Year Again

As the John Denver song says "All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go". 

I will soon be leaving on a jet plane.

But unlike the song, my reason for going is a happy one.

Yes dear reader I'm going to visit my darling youngest daughter, so the next time you hear from me I will be in Australia, I'm so excited!

   

∼ Be safe and well∼ 

Polly x

A Very Good Read

Lessons In Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus

Believe all the plaudits, this book is brilliant, I knew I was going to love it from the first page. The writing is sharp and delicious, laugh-out-loud funny and shrewdly observant. One minute I was laughing, the next I was plotting revenge on the odious, misogynistic creeps that dominated the workplace. Dr Mason, the obstetrician, was the only kind, decent man Elizabeth met.  

   
Chemist Elizabeth Zott is not your average woman. In fact, Elizabeth would be the first to point out that there is no such thing as an average woman. But it’s the early 1960s and her all-male team at Hastings Research Institute takes a very unscientific view of equality. Except for one, Calvin Evans; the lonely, brilliant, Nobel-prize nominated grudge-holder who falls in love with, of all things, her mind. True chemistry results.

     
But life, like science, is unpredictable. Which is why a few years later Elizabeth finds herself not only a single mother, but the reluctant star of America’s most beloved cooking show 'Supper at Six'. Elizabeth’s unusual approach to cooking -“combine one tablespoon acetic acid with a pinch of sodium chloride”- proves revolutionary. But as her following grows, not everyone is happy, because Elizabeth isn’t just teaching women to cook, she’s encouraging them to change the status quo. Elizabeth is a heroine, she refuses to be quashed.

   

I thoroughly recommend it.

∼ Happy Reading∼ 

Polly x

International Women's Day 8th March

Maria Stadler (1888 – nach 1943), Public domain Image courtesy of  Wikimedia Commons

International Women's Day is celebrated annually as a focal point in the Women's Rights Movement. It focuses on issues such as gender equality, reproductive rights and violence and abuse against women. Spurred by the universal female suffraget movement, IWD originated from labour movements in Europe and North America during the early 20th century. 

The earliest reported version was a "Woman's Day" organised by the Socialist Party of America in New York City on February 28, 1909. This inspired German delegates at the 1910 International Socialist Women's Conference in Copenhagen to propose "a special Women's Day" be organized annually, albeit with no set date; the following year saw the first demonstrations and commemorations of International Women's Day across Europe.

In 1922 Vladimir Lenin declared March 8 as IWD to honour the women's role in the 1917 Russian Revolution and it was subsequently celebrated on that date by the socialist movement and communist countries. The holiday became a mainstream global holiday following its promotion by the United Nations in 1977.

∼ Be safe and well∼ 

Polly x

World Book Day

World Book Day is a charity event held annually in the United Kingdom and Ireland on the first Thursday in March. On World Book Day, every child in full-time education in the UK and Ireland is provided with a voucher to be spent on books; the event was first celebrated in the United Kingdom in 1998.

How good is that.

  

📚 Happy World Book Day 📚

Polly x

Pancake Day

Shrove Tuesday, also called Pancake Day, is the feast day before the Lent fast starts on Ash Wednesday. This year it falls on Tuesday 4 March. Lent is an important part of the Christian calendar commemorating the 40 days Jesus spent fasting in the desert and enduring temptation by Satan.

But why do we eat pancakes on Shrove Tuesday?

The tradition dates back to Anglo-Saxon times when Christians spent Lent in repentance and fasting. On the day before Ash Wednesday the church bell would summon them to confession, where they would be ‘shriven’, or absolved from their sins. That became known as Shrove Tuesday. On returning home, they would use up their last eggs and fat, and making a pancake was the easiest way to do this.

The Pancake Race

No one is quite certain how the world famous Pancake Race at Olney originated. One rather endearing theory is said to be in remembrance of a harassed woman back in 1445 in Olney Buckinghamshire. She was making pancakes when she heard the church bell calling all to confession. Afraid she’d be late, she ran to the church in a panic, still wearing her apron, and still holding her pan!

   
There are numerous ways and combinations to enjoy pancakes - drizzled with golden syrup, maple syrup, with fruit, ice cream, chocolate spread, orange curd. I like maple syrup and mashed banana, but my favourite is plain lemon juice and sugar.

🥞 Happy Pancake Day 🥞

Polly x