Around the city of Sydney

I was walking around Sydney on dusk with a friend the other day after taking some family portrait shots in Sydney's Botanical gardens and thought i would share some of the images. I also slipped in a portrait collage I did of a very good friend. They are in no particular order, but I just wanted to share the things I saw through my lens.

Peel Street's heartbeat

During the Country Music Festival, Tamworth's main shopping street, called Peel Street, is alive with a vibe and eclectic mix of different styles of music.

It is alive with buskers who take it in turns to impress and dominate their allotted 20-30 mins of entertaining the local masses. They plug into the power points of the local shops and sing, play and entertain as earnestly as they can for those bursts of time.

They have dozens of styles of country music and they even had a latino band playing. There was a polynesian singer there too. There were children and families who bring their talents to the streets in free concerts. Peel street is a fairly long street and there are dozens of performers all vying for your attention. The atmosphere is like a massive carnival without the facade of Vegas, it is a simple but endearing float through the heart of country music.

There are people who have been busking in the same spot for many years, there are people who make unusual guitars, there are wives who sit patiently thru each set of their husbands or partners musical sets as they belt out a tune. I couldnt help feel the devotion they had to their men and to the songs they must have heard thousands of times. I was so impressed. But then I found one woman wearing ear plugs and realised of course! that is how she gets through it all. Too funny.

There are painters on the street, there are paid concerts you can see in the many pubs and other drinking establishments. There are posters of EVERY singer and where you can see them perform throughout the festival, there is a man who can do the sound of a didgeridoo in the back of his throat and sound absolutely real.

There is even a spot where you can go and have your butt branded with CMF 2010 in the bum of your jeans, WHILST wearing them!! Yeeha

The smells of cooking food, the smell of fairy floss, popcorn and coffee all permeate the air mixed with the sounds of people laughing, clapping and cheering. A pleasant assault on the senses all round I submit.

One shop owner said to me it IS good when you have someone who can sing in tune playing outside your shop, but he didn't.

Busking outside his shop was a rather dishevelled man who obviously has been surrounded by well meaning friends and family telling him how wonderful he was, so every 20 minutes it was cringe factor time for the owner of this shop. I listened and was in awe at the process that anybody in this country can get up and have a go. I applaud the initiative, even if I would not buy one of the CD's he was plying.

Around one corner was an aboriginal band playing the old standards of many years ago, I remember hearing them from my own parents, and there was a couple who decided to dance in the street to the delight of all who were there.

I even found a religious concert happening called Scripture union and smiled as I saw a number of people foillowing that particular style of country music, it was truly an interesting experience. I did note however the few drunkards who were completely unconscious and asleep in the very back rows. Perhaps they were the most in need of another kind of spirit revival.

Just near the scripture union in a side car amusement style van, they had guitars for sale and they were cheap. They looked it, BUT, I found a white acoustic electric guitar which in my recent research would suggest would have been in the order of $200-$400 and looked worth every bit of my assessment price, and so I asked the lady "How Much?" to which she glanced at the guitar and mumbled something and said $80! Trying not to show my enthusiasm I said $80 Oh, ok I will take it. I took the new guitar incredulously at the biggest bargain of the month...and it was, dusted it off and found a permanent black marker and commenced getting autographs on the guitar. More than a few people asked if i was putting it on ebay to sell. But no it will be proudly on my wall as a reminder that I was there at the concert. It has been signed by many of the stars of country music, and even a few stars who have nothing to do with country music who I happened to meet there enjoying the vibe as well! More to be written about some of the stars soon...

Toyota Concert for Rural Australia 22 Jan 2010

I was able to go to Tamworth for the annual Country Music festival (CMF) over the past few days to photograph some of the many events that are on over those days and was amazed at the whole thing. I have been to Tamworth on many occasions but never for the CMF previously. I have never really been a country music fan, but many of the current artists really have a presence and enthusiasm that is infectious and endearing. I had the opportunity to mix and mingle with many of Australia's Country music royalty it was inspiring.

I loved the easiness and relaxed attitude that permeated the festival. It was very hot. It was in the 40 degrees celsius and still there were so many things I loved about it. There was no abuse, no pushing and shoving, and a real sense of people who just wanted to celebrate music and the many varieties therein. I thought of my sister Olive and thought she would have loved this event. I enjoyed it very much. I was hosted by some wonderful people and really feel this slice of hospitable and kind Australia is slowly becoming blurred and lost in the cities. There were so many elements of the warmth of peoples smiles and the general atmosphere there that I really appreciated and enjoyed. There are many more impressions that hit me and I will write them in the next few days.

Thanks to the people of Tamworth and the visitors who helped make my experience what it was. I created a collage of the Friday night concert that saw the wonderful McClymonts play, James Blundell, McAllister and Kemp, Melinda Schneider, Shae Fisher, Felicity Urquhart (Golden Guitar winner), Tania Kernaghan and Lee Kernaghan. What a great concert! If you want to see the collage better simply click on the picture and it will be much larger.

AUSTRALIA DAY

Today was Australia Day and is a national public holiday. I applaud any public holiday, and such an occasion as this countries celebration as a mighty fine place to live. We are quite remote from the rest of the world and feel that is a blessing in many ways. It has caused me much reflection on what it is to be Australian and whatever the meaning may or may not imply, I am proud to be a citizen of this great country. The day has all but gone, as the fireworks explode almost directly over my home as I write this post. Not going to photograph it, but just enjoying the freedom's we enjoy and take very much for granted here.

This morning I was awoken by some hot air balloons that came down in front of my house, two in fact, in an unscheduled stop. I didn't want to know why, but they could not go any higher, I took some pictures of that and placed them here for your interest.



It was interesting to see the support crews driving around like lost sheep trying to find access to the actual place they landed.

Half of the neighbours were out to see the spectacle and it was a good feeling of bonhomie amongst us all. After that we celebrated the public holiday by going and having a wonderful breakfast with a glorious soy milk hot chhocolate. Yummmo! Then we went to chowder bay for a look, and even saw a Nudist beach - sign included for those so disposed!


All up it was a great day. I have been away over the past few days at the Tamworth Country Music festival and will write more over the next little while of that experience.

Living the dream?

How do we measure the worth of a person?

I mean is it just in dollars and cents?

It is curious to me that on so many levels we, as a community, society or world judge people purely on how we look. I have heard it said many times that in a job interview the interviewer has decided in the first 1 -2 minutes whether a candidate has the job or not. I have even heard that can be done in seconds.

In a few minutes we make decisions about people who appear on television, are in the media as to whether we like them or not, from a brief appearance. They might look or speak differently to ourselves, have beady or bulging eyes and from a variety of environmental or experiential criteria, we form opinions and sometimes write people off without ever knowing them. They speak too fast, he walks with a limp, he gives me the creeps, she looks guilty and countless other sayings are employed by way of justification for the way we feel. I have been guilty of this on more occasions than I can recall myself.

But it isn't right. I accept that in job interviews criteria for a service organisation require people to be well groomed and speak confidently and represent a company well, but on so many other fronts we cut off people from our experience and cut ourselves off from theirs.

When I catch myself diminishing someones input or expressions I endeavour to look through non biased eyes again and try to give a new paradigm with which to see the person(s) or situations differently. As much to help me understand as to help me better appreciate the difficulties with which we each sometimes travail through.

One such occasion was a former Federal Liberal Party leader the Hon. Dr. Brendan Nelson. He had been receiving so much bad press that it became evident to me that he was a lame duck leader and was overstaying his visit. All these imagined authoritative comments from a person who assumed everything I was hearing in the press must be true, and all it served to show me was that I knew NOTHING. Like the words from the song I've looked at life through both sides now through up and down and still somehow, Life's illusions I recall, I really don't know life at all.

I met this man in a photographic capacity in his office in the federal Parliamentary office in the nations capitol of Canberra ACT. I was humbled and disarmed at his warmth and courtesy, He was not canvassing for votes, it was just him, and I felt it and He, were genuine. His candor both about himself and about his detractors was very generous and warm even for the detractors. There was no bitterness, no malice, just an overwhelming sense of personal and heaven sent direction, (having been raised by jesuit monks) and a desire to do what was right, in his mind for the country, and the betterment of people in Australia generally. It wasn't a speech given with fanfare or verbose oratory, rather a man sitting on a chair away from his big desk in an informal setting with a group of young adults and I was covering the event. I felt after wards and even now, that we need more people like him, who are guided by a moral compass, by an inner desire to lift all boats with the tide.

I walked out of that office slightly under an hour later with such a different view of him as a man. Events occurred and within days he was removed from office in a spill motion and it has happened to his successor as well since.

This experience and many others since this time tells me and continues to reinforce to me that you never really know people until you make time getting to know them. You really can never form flawed opinions about people and can never really judge them until you have walked proverbially in their shoes, as difficult and as impossible as that can be.

I am learning slowly that people whether I like them or not all share common hopes, dreams and ideals. True many may be different, and perhaps many skewed very differently to my own, but on many levels we are the same.

I am 44, the same age as my adopted father died from a heart attack, and as I stood on the precipice of this year, felt it was my year, and hope it still is, but one of the early indicators is that this will be a year where I will be able to choose and do what I most want to be for me. I have noticed significant changes in my outlook, significant changes in my levels of awareness and understanding and changes in the very questions I began with, How do we measure the worth of a person, or said more succinctly, how do I measure my own value or worth, and does it really matter?

A friend commented to me on Friday last as I was driving to the states New England area of Tamworth that I am living the dream. I laughed it off at his insistence and then exchanged pleasantries and hung up from our conversation. Pleasant though our call was, his words have been reverberating in my head all weekend til now. John Lennon once wrote that

Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans

and I look at my life and wonder have I

"squandered my existence on a pocket full of mumbles"

like promises.

I wonder how people see me, and am convinced it is very different from how I see me. That may be true for each of us. I have been on television some 5 times in the last few weeks, and am slated for 5 more in the next few weeks as well. I have often wondered as I look down the barrel of the camera, do people wonder who is that idiot, or do people even care. I think there are people who watch the show and tell me feedback, that they don't realise how nice it is to hear, not for some aggrandisement, but as a guide to know what is working for me and what isn't through the eyes of another.

I don't know what a persons true worth is, but what I can say is this, I know what it is not.

No money, power or influence and no privileges of birth change the fact that we are all on a rendezvous with death at some stage, and though we can accumulate much in a lifetime, with houses, cars and trinkets that may surround us our true worth is not measured in these remnants.

I have been deeply touched when people who had less than me to speak of concerning any possessions or money bought food for me to bless me with, knowing they went without it was hard to accept, but I learned that the giver of the gift was indeed honoured and blessed when I the receiver accepted the hospitality graciously, though that was hard.

I have learned that a monument when we pass, irrespective of how large the individual may have walked on the stage of life, within a short space of time the individual will be only remembered by a few.

I am in awe of buildings in Paris that have survived since the 1200's or in England where castles have survived for hundreds of years or the grand canyon or other wonders of the world that have remained long after generations of us have passed. it adds a perspective to me that whispers the relative impermanence of what I do here and so suggests I should be looking more to do the things that count and matter most for me.

A casual read of this post may lead the reader to believe that it is a melancholy tone or a fatalistic one, but I don't see it that way.

I am trying hard to redefine what I seek out of my life's experience.

I am wanting to understand that I may not yet have the temporal things I aspire to, and does that mean that I have failed?
or
does that mean my life is meaningless?
Or
is the pursuit of a thing or a goal worthy of the price I seem to be paying to get there?

I work very hard at trying to realise my dreams and there are times when it is so clear I can taste it, see it and feel it, and other times when I seem to be further and further away.

There is at those rare moments, the tendency to bemoan my circumstances and complain why has what I most desire, eluded me for so long.

I have concluded that whilst I would much rather have what I wish for than not, there are many, many people who are asking similar questions of themselves and sometimes with little or no possibility of realising those hopes and dreams, that I am so very fortunate to have.

With the devastation in Haiti and 150,000 people dead, my heart goes out to the families, communities and country that has been disenfranchised from the lives they have known. With the context of their loss, I sometimes wonder if my wish to achieve my goals is even important in the circle of life. I wonder if my strivings are almost obscene when viewed within the loss and hurt that so many people feel at present.

I will conclude by making the assessment, that my worth cannot be measured by any remnants I may have or may want.

I am however the benefactor of so much generational talent, hopes and dreams, that it is my responsibility to make the best use of what I have been given and continue onward.

I will close on the last lines in a piece written by Robert Frost:

Two Roads diverged in a wood, and I took the road less travelled by and it has made all the difference.

May we all continue to reach upward and onward to find the best within us. My journey continues......

Unlikely Friends....

A dear friend sent me this email and I thought it well worth sharing.

Much of life can never be explained, only witnessed.'
- Rachel Naomi Remen, MD

NAIROBI (AFP) - A baby hippopotamus that survived the tsunami waves on the Kenyan coast, has formed a strong bond with a giant male century-old tortoise in an animal facility in the port city of Mombassa , officials said.

The hippopotamus, nicknamed Owen and weighing about 300 kilograms (650 pounds), was swept down
Sabaki River into the Indian Ocean , then forced back to shore when tsunami waves struck the Kenyan coast on December 26, before wildlife rangers rescued him.

'It is incredible. A-less-than-a-year-old
hippo has adopted a male tortoise, about a century old, and the tortoise seems
to be very happy with being a 'mother',' ecologist Paula Kahumbu, who is
in charge of Lafarge Park , told AFP.

After it was swept away and lost its mother, the hippo was traumatized. It had to look for something to be a surrogate
mother. Fortunately, it landed on the tortoise and established a strong bond. They swim, eat and sleep together,' the ecologist
added.

The hippo follows the tortoise exactly the way it followed its mother. If somebody approaches the tortoise, the hippo becomes
aggressive, as if protecting its biological mother,' Kahumbu added.

The hippo is a young baby, he was left at a very tender age and by nature, hippos are social animals that like to stay with
their mothers for four years,' he explained.

'Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.'

This is a real story that shows that our differences don't matter much when we need the comfort of another

Save the Earth....it's the only planet with chocolate...


The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane.