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The Cove (part 5)

keikomushi — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 04:33:24 +0000

Some trees like to stand tall long after death, whilst others prefer to lay down on the job. Such is the case with the tree in the attached picture.

The Cove (part 4)

keikomushi — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 04:22:57 +0000

Another photo of The Cove down the road, this time it is a picture of one the old dead trees standing tall long after its death. (N.B. At the base, a small shrub has made its residence, feeding off of the decaying plant. Such is the cycle of life.)

The Cove (part 3)

keikomushi — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 04:06:09 +0000

The following picture was taken a few seconds after the last, showing the rolling of the waves.

The Cove (Part 2)

keikomushi — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 03:59:00 +0000

Another picture of the piece of beach that I call The Cove. It is slightly further down the beach from the stretch attached to previous post, The Cove (part 1).

24 Dec 2009

simsurf — Fri, 25 Dec 2009 01:55:06 +0000

241209_1850 copy, originally uploaded by simsurf.

Had another go with the water housing today and i was a lot happier with the results to say the least!

Queensland Gallery Of Modern Art - Southbank, Brisbane

Taz — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 06:35:22 +0000

This week we decided to revisit the Queensland Gallery Of Modern Art, a pleasurable day spent gawking at visually stunning art work and accompanied by some of the best views of the city from the river front gallery. Currently both the Art Gallery and Modern Art Gallery are exhibiting the 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art. Make sure you take the time to check out these incredible displays, our photographs dont do them justice it is something you really need to see in person.

- P4

Taxidermy Elk covered in glass bubbles to excentuate the texture of the animal was by far the most standout installation and the stunning all white room was the perfect backdrop.

The end of the year as we knew it!

chamomilemassage — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 05:44:04 +0000

Well I think I’ve got it all done- I’ve got all the presents wrapped (Don’t think i’ve forgotten anyone) I’ve got all the shopping done,posted all the cards and even have most of the unit tidy…still more to do on that one sadly. I’ve even got most of the cooking done. Tomorrow night we’ll cook the turkey for Christmas day and I’ll make the couple of salads that I will need to do and that will be it.I took the offer of help up this year and so some of the salads and the ham will be arriving with the others.Oh and I’ll need to make the meringues for the Berry Tree which is a dish I’ve been making as the alternative dessert for the last 20 years. Its consists of 3 layers of meringue going from largest to smallest with layers of whipped cream and berry yogurt with fresh berries in between. Its called a Berry Tree as it looks a bit like a Christmas tree.

Our youngest son Jacob will be arriving in time for Christmas Eve dinner (we’ll be having roast pork and John something vegetarian….its so hot here in Queensland that we have our hot meal on Christmas Eve and then cold meat and salads etc for Christmas day. We do have hot Chistmas pudding though). Our oldest son Ben and his wife Lina and her parents David & Bev will meet us at Church on Christmas morning and then will come back to our unit for Christmas lunch. We might even go and have a swim Christmas afternoon-its only a 5 minute walk down to the beach..a good way of walking off a few of those Kilojoules we’ll be consuming at lunch! We will miss Luke our middle son who is in Darwin and unable to come down to join us.

We finish work here at the Chamomile Massage Therapy Centre at 3pm tomorrow and then don’t reopen till 5th January. John and I will be taking 3 days to drive down to southern New South Wales where my nephew’s wedding will be held on New Years Eve. It will be good to have a happy occaison for the family to get together at after my mother’s tragic death in a car accident a month ago.

I guess this will be my last blog for this year.2009 has been a year filled with great joy and much sadness.

It’s also been a huge year for us. We started it in the air on our way to India from Dublin where we were teaching courses for the Brandon Raynor School of Natural Therapies. From India to Melbourne then Adelaide, Brisbane and Darwin.In April we decided to leave off being travelling teachers with the school and settle down here in Maroochydore where we set up our own clinic again. We still teach the Raynor courses from here though-looking at 3 for next year.

In March we had my brother’s daughter Cassandra’s wedding to Peter then in June our own son Ben’s wedding to Lina. This was the last time that I saw Mum alive and it was a joyous occaison. Mum and Dad and my sister and sister-in-law had lunch together the day after the wedding before we all headed home in various directions. Just 2 weeks before Mum passed away I was able to give her the exciting news that her first great grandchild (our first grandchild) was on the way and she was thrilled to bits -as are we all. This baby is greatly wanted and will be much loved by the whole family.

John and I have worked hard over this year to get the new clinc established and have been very pleased to see how well it is going-especially as we started in the middle of the economic downturn!

In November we had the worry of Dad’s knee replacement surgery and just a short week later the terrible news that Mum had been killed in a car accident on her way home from visiting him in the hospital. I had to go down to be with my father and brother and sister at this awful time while John soldiered on up here trying to massage,take bookings and look after things until he needed to leave to attend the funeral. Needless to say I haven’t been totally up to speed since we got back and then we had to get cracking with all the end of year things that needed doing plus preparing for Christmas.

So all in year we’ve had a lot happen in 2009.

As we look to 2010 I wonder where it will take us. We know the baby will be arriving in June…definately something to look forward to! We hope that the business will grow and that we’ll be able to take on another therapist. Apart from that we have no idea what the coming year will hold. John and I have both already taken steps this year to get fitter and healthier…..so we can look forward to seeing more results in those areas. …I want to grow closer to my Lord next year-to become more like Him and to be less impatient and critical and unloving to those I interact with…

Do get excited or scared as you stand on the edge of the New Year? What are your hopes and dreams and plans for it?

I do know that the decisions we make and the actions we take will go a long way to influencing how the year will deal with us. I hope that you will be able to say at the end of 2010 that it was a year of growth and blessing and that you will be able to look back and see that you made the decisions that will make it a GREAT year in spite of the negative circumstances that you will no doubt encounter along the way.

So John and I wish you a blessed and merry Christmas and a very happy and prosperous New Year!

Kathie x

Cleanskins: A dose of Roma Therapy

derekbarry — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 13:58:10 +0000

I learned a new term today at work. Sue from Advertising told me I had four cleanskins to work with for next Tuesday’s paper. I looked blankly at her. Cleanskins? Was this something political or was I being offered chicken, I thought. No, Sue patiently explained, it meant I had four full pages without ads to do what I liked with. Cleanskins were an old trade term I’d simply never come across in my short experience. Yet it made perfect sense as soon as it was explained to me.

There have been many moments like that as I deal with the new realities of life as a journalist.

The biggest of these realities is the deadline. Much of my time in Roma has been spent dealing with it. It is constantly at the back of my mind. And it is adrenalin-fueling as it approaches. This feeling comes twice a week in Roma as The Western Star is issued on a Tuesday and a Friday.

My Roma is the one in Western Queensland not in Italy. It was named for Lady Diamantina Roma who married George Bowen, Queensland’s first Governor-General. I wished they named the town Diamantina. Though geography doesn’t matter too much on the Internet, it’s a real pain sharing the name of your town with a major world capital. Though most of the conversation is in Italian, there is plenty of English conversation is about the football team called Roma or the Eastern European gypsies that Hitler loathed as much as the Jews.

My Roma is a small town 480km west of Brisbane in the centre of a district called the Maranoa. I’ve been here three weeks and I arrived slapbang in the middle of summer heat. Already I can tell the difference between 38 degrees and 42 and am beginning to feel that 30 is downright chilly. Yet I’m finding its dry heat more manageable than the suffocating sticky Brisbane equivalent in summer.

But airconditing is proving a must. Aircon is on the faultline of my political principles. The Green in me is annoyed by its flagrant waste of resources but the leftie praises the fact that I’m made comfortable by such wonderful cheap technology. I’m now searching for a conservative side that will make serious money out of aircon made from renewable sources.

In the meantime I’m earning a crust as a journalist. After four years of political blogging, I thought working for a masthead would provide me with good experience and a grounding in the daily realities of industrial journalism.

I must do a disclosure at this point. Starting at the newspaper has presented me with a problem about what to say about it in a blog. I’m bound by rules I’ve happily signed up with my employer not to compete against the paper. There are also issues of confidentially and conflict of interest. I like my job here in Roma and people I work with and don’t want to say anything here that would jeopardise it. The views here are mine and not associated with APN Media.

But being here has made me see some clear differences between the roles of blogger and journalist I wanted to talk about.

Firstly there is the power of the masthead. There are few bloggers around worldwide who have the power to ring people up and ask for quotes with a reasonable certainty they will be taken seriously. But every local masthead has this power and respect.

If they are not always treated a straight answer, then at least they usually get the courtesy of a carefully constructed response which you can often query further if need be.

Also you are much more likely to elicit a response from a member of the general public when you identify yourself as a representative of a trusted brand. This means that as a journalist you will have access to a lot of information. It is a powerful tool that needs careful management to avoid being abused.

For all its faults, I’m finding that regional newspaper journalism is still trusted and unlikely to go extinct anytime soon. People engage with local papers because they still fulfill a strong social function.

They also hold up a sizable mirror to local events unmatched by any other media. Radio has the immediacy and bonhomie of local characters, but there is little local journalism. TV is even more openly piped in from remote places. The Internet is either underdeveloped or untrusted or both. In towns like Roma, that leaves papers with a duty to provide citizens with information they need to make sense of a plethora of local events. It is a clearing house of gossip, a fount of news, a big notice board for the community and a window on events elsewhere in the world.

But it is also a commercial entity and I’ve come to see newspaper ads as my friends. Apart from paying my wages, they also fill crucial space that suddenly makes filling a 24 page newspaper less daunting and leaves me with less cleanskins to worry about.

That’s another difference between blogging and journalism. As a journalist I see 40 x 30 centimetre blank sheets of paper that have to be filled regularly where as the only pressure I had on me as a blogger was a self-imposed rule to blog daily or as near to daily as I could. Space is not an issue on the Internet, but lacking this design constraint doesn’t necessarily make it better.

It is this tyranny of the blank page that sets the creative rules of journalism. An Internet post can be one line long or a thousand but the newspaper is more or less the same size every time. The pressure to find stories is relentless and they exist wherever you find them. That means using phone calls, tips, emails, press releases, old issues, wider issues, softer issues. Papers abhor an information vacuum. The white space must be filled. If there is no ad on the space, then there simply has to be editorial content.

This is where photos come in. Picture not only tell a thousand words they can fill the space of a thousand words on the page. And people like seeing pictures of themselves and people they know in the paper.

Being a rural paper, I have to take most of my photos myself. I never ever envisaged myself as a photographer though Fernando Mereilles’ City of God is one of my favourite films. On most engagements I usually first have to get over my terror of my poor photographic technique and the possibility I’ll ruin the photo. So to get over this, I’m slowly trying to act as a photographer, and make more demands of subjects. I’m also taking more photos in the hope that some will come out. There may even be some good ones in there, or least presentable after being tightened up with a crop.

Photography is therapeutic and redefining my idea of being resourceful but at this stage, I still prefer the written form ahead of photojournalism.

It is wonderfully invigorating to grapple with an issue I don’t understand and attempt to unravel it and re-present that for a wider audience. In this, the blog has been very useful training both in terms of research and of threading an argument together in competent layman’s terms.

But a major difference of style is the use of the direct quote which is almost compulsory in industrial media but rare in blogs. Having one source is immeasurably better than none because it enlivens the piece and adds variety with an additional point of view. Stricter authorities such as the ABC demand there be at least two sources and I’ve seen arguments that three should be the minimum.

But getting so many people to talk on the record is not always easy, not even for a masthead. People are cagey or a response needs to be vetted by a media unit. And in a busy world, people are rarely on tap for a ready quote. As the deadline moves ever closer, experts quickly deteriorate from being people who have expertise in their chosen topic to being the person who actually returns your call.

The telephone is my friend. I didn’t use the telephone much as a blogger, I use it a lot as a journalist. It helps I don’t have to pay the bills for the call. I always feel a slight sense of nervous energy every time I dial a number. People don’t hide as much on the phone as they do in email.

The only thing better is real life meeting. I’m doing that a lot in Roma and enjoying it too. And I know that if I’m really serious about tackling those cleanskins, I’m going to have to wear out a lot of shoe-leather too.

Charlie's Angels Horse Rescue Inc. Logo

Lucy Gabrielle — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:24:53 +0000

We want to take this opportunity to say a very big thank you to Naomi Baker of Intuitive Creative for her wonderful logo for our charity.

Naomi has many years professional experience in graphic design and always produces work of the highest order. Naomi’s special gift is to be able to see clearly into the truth of an organisation and then construct beautiful visual images to support it.

We just love our new logo and are very grateful for Naomi’s help in getting our message out into the world.

Naomi is available for many types of graphic design work and works remotely with people in Australia and overseas. Please show her your support and visit her website to see how she might be able to help you too.

Hollywood Goodfella: Ex-Kiwis' underworld links revealed

af11 — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 01:30:23 +0000

Melbourne underworld figure Mick Gatto (pictured) was asked by former Kiwi rugby league player Jarrod McCracken to help him recall a A$6.25 million debt, a court has heard. Photo / Getty Images

read full story

Former Kiwi rugby league player Jarrod McCracken called in an underworld figure in a bid to recover a multi-million-dollar sum lent on the basis of a handshake, an Australian court has been told.

air time

simsurf — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:35:22 +0000

171209_0042 copy, originally uploaded by simsurf.

hooked up with aerial master Dru Adler and his lovely partner and fellow ripper angie koops at main beach for some major airtime!

click on the photo to go to the whole set

Holiday Office Hours

clarkrealestate — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 01:46:32 +0000

Happy Holidays

The team at Clark Real Estate would like to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. We have had a wonderful year and would like to thank the local community for all its continued support.

Over the holiday period, our office will have the following opening hours:

Friday, 25th December – Closed
Saturday, 26th December – Closed
Sunday, 27th December – Closed
Monday, 28th December – Closed

From Tuesday 27th until Thursday 31st – Open

Friday, 1st of January – Closed
Saturday, 2nd of January – Closed
Sunday, 3rd of January – Closed
Monday, 4th of January – Closed

New crime and misconduct commission chairman

ileum — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 03:35:59 +0000

Former Supreme Court Justice, Martin Moynihan, will take up the position of Chairman of the Crime and Misconduct Commission in February. He is looking forward to taking up the cudgels…

The Year That Was 2009 - Melbourne

thestarryeyed — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 08:01:49 +0000

Melbourne New Years Eve, Docklands 2009 by The Starry Eyed

Major and memorable events – focusing on Melbourne, in Victoria, Australia, 2009:
(I’ve only included news that I care about, so sorry the AFL and other sporting events don’t make it in)

January

- Heatwave, causes train chaos, blackouts, fires, breaks power usage records, tops of 45 degrees.

- Darcy Freeman, 4, dies after being thrown off West Gate Bridge into Yarra River by her father.

- 2 Melbourne brothers killed in New Zealand glacier collapse.

- student activists squatting at Melbourne University evicted.

- Melb writer Harry Nicolaides released from Bangkok prison after 5 months in jail for insulting Thai royals in a book which sold fewer than 10 copies.

Day Fifty-Four | Earth Fire Wind Water Heart., originally uploaded by The Starry Eyed.

February

- Melbourne’s Southern Star Observation Wheel closed after only a month of operation. As of dec 2009, has been disassembled and is being rebuilt, is yet to reopen.

-underworld killer Lewis Moran sentenced to life in prison.

- Victorian Bushfires – 173 people killed and 413 injured after bushfires (up to 400 individual fires) raged throughout the Yarra Valley, Gippsland, Dandenong, Beechworth and Bendigo regions in Victoria. Bushfire smoke seen as far as New Zealand.

Southern Star by The Starry Eyed

March

- Coldplay come to Melbourne, perform at Rod Laver Arena.

- Sound Relief concerts held in Melbourne and Sydney to raise money for victims of the Victorian Bushfires and the Queensland floods. Features artists such as Midnight Oil, Coldplay, Taylor Swift, Kylie Minogue, Jet, Wolfmother, Kings of Leon, Jack Johnson, The Presets, Architecture in Helsinki, and many more.

- Earthquake felt across Melbourne and Victoria, 4.6 on richter scale, epicentre just north of Korumburra in South Gippsland.

-Emirates plane almost crashes at Melbourne airport during takeoff due to the wrong numbers being entered into an aircraft computer, pilots forced to resign.

-Man attacked with meat cleaver in Port Melbourne has face slashed, case of mistaken identity.

Coldplay by The Starry Eyed

April

- a gorilla, named Yakini, uses a palm tree to escape from Melbourne zoo enclosure.

- storm crosses Melbourne with winds reaching up to 150km/hr.

- major heroin ring smashed with arrests in Sydney and Melbourne, heroin seized worth AUD$9 million.

- announced that new suburb to be created in Maribyrnong, in Melbourne’s inner west, potentially size of Castlemaine or Lakes Entrance. Construction to begin in 2012, to cost up to $1 billion.

Swine Flu Hanky / Design Glut

May

- Indian Students start rallying over ‘Indian related’ attacks.

- Swine Flu starts spreading in Melbourne, first cases reported are from a primary school. As of Dec 2009, over 37,000 Australians have been infected (of those reported), and 191 people have died.

- Melbourne woman arrested in Thailand for stealing a bar mat.

June

- first death from Swine Flu reported.

-Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise and daughter Suri arrive in Melbourne, stay at Crown, visit Aquarium, watch AFL, Katie films ‘Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark’.

July

-Swine Flu at its peak during the winter months.

- a pet dog returned to Melbourne owners after being found in QLD 9 years after going missing.

August

- 7 Chinese films withdrawn from thr 58th Melbourne International Film Festival.

- Four Melbourne men arrested, members of suspected terror cell, in second-largest counter-terrorism operation in Australia’s history with 400 police raiding homes across Melbourne and Victoria.

September

- Michael Jacksons white glove sold in Melbourne for $49,000.

-Swine Flu vaccinations begin.

- First case of Tamiflu resistance found in Australia.

October

- Metropolitan Train hits baby in pram at Ashburton Station, baby ok.

November

- Conjoined Twins joined at the head, Krishna & Trishna, separated.

- Britney Spears performs in Melbourne, and other Australian capitals. Holidays in Sydney, turns down a marriage proposal.

- Tiger Woods plays in Melbourne.

- Schoolies week in Gold Coast labelled ‘worst ever’.

- Tony Abbott becomes new liberal leader of the opposition.

- Kevin Rudd apologises to the Forgotten Australians.

- Fire out of control on an oil rig off the coast of Western Australia, has been leaking for 10 weeks into the Timor Sea.

- Asylum Seekers leave Oceanic Viking after more than a month, which created debate over immigration policy.

- Metro Trains (operators) take over from Connex, delays reported.

- Heatwave.

- Thunderstorm, 100km winds, worst damage in Eastern suburbs

December

Queensland - Beautiful One Day, Scary As Hell The Next

frigginloon — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 00:35:22 +0000

Boo!

You know what I hate? When a friggin aggressive brown tree snake coils up on a shelf next to two sleeping kids and has a major hissy fit. Hate that. The two little kids aged 1 and 4 were sleeping peacefully in their Cairns home when the friggin snake writhed onto a book shelf between them and began knocking off the books (not an avid reader I presume). Enter unsuspecting mom. As she turned on the light the grumpy rogue arched to strike, scaring the bejeezus out of her. Children-snake , snake – children! For 20 minutes the beast kept the woman at bay , if she so much as moved closer to her sleeping kids it reared itself into the strike position. Enter snake hostage negotiator David Walton, who said he hadn’t seen anything like it and that it was the biggest brown tree snake he had ever friggin seen.

Psst Hell yes they are venomous!

World's Best Job Just Got Better

00dangermouse — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 03:54:35 +0000

Ben Southall He has spent the last six months with the so-called Best Job in the World, but Briton B

Hollywood Goodfella: mafia cocaine cartels allowed to buy Gold Coast nightclubs

af11 — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 18:59:21 +0000

A GANG of wealthy criminals from the southern states with links to mafia cocaine cartels infiltrated Queensland’s tourist strip, buying into some nightclubs that were used for cocaine parties and to house special gangster rooms providing drugs and prostitutes to local criminals, according to leaked Crime and Misconduct Commission documents.

read full story

Meet baby C - Ipswich newborn photographer

kylieeatherphotography — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 11:37:06 +0000

Yes, I’ve been neglecting my poor blog, and fellow blog readers. Life has just been crazy for the last couple of months both business and our children’s social life. I have a few post catch ups coming.

Tonight’s special post makes me g from old house to the new this blog post is the follow-on from C & R shoot back in November. Master C finally arrived!! He’s gorgeous, squishy and a pleasure to photograph. Oh didn’t C make daddy proud when he finally let out a wet one!! Thankyou C & R

more illustration goodness

somethingswedid — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 22:24:58 +0000

orry for the lack of updates recently – I’ve been on a bit of a Blogiday touring the Dandenongs, Healesville, Phillip Island and the Mornington Penninsula. I have also departed my wonderful Melbourne home and am now ensconced in my tropical hideaway in Brisbane. Photos of those adventures are all to come…

In the meantime, how about some pretty pictures to cheer up a rather event-free Wednesday (event-free due to me being trapped inside my new abode thanks to a door-expanding-in-heat episode)? I did let my hair down out of the window and belt out Bonnie Tyler’s ‘I Need a Hero’ at the top of my voice. But alas, four hours later I was found in a pool of my own sweat.

But less nonsense, more talent. This time, I’m featuring the work of illustrator Sergio Membrillas:

I’ll soon have an update on the road trip for you and will be taking my camera out and about in Brissie this weekend to document my new city. I’m particularly looking forward to the photography at the Museum of Brisbane and the The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art at the Gallery of Modern Art.

South Straddie 16 DEC 09

simsurf — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:33:56 +0000

_DSC0165, originally uploaded by simsurf.

Hit south straddie for a bit this morning. Click on the photo for the whole set of photos.

Some People Shouldn't Walk Erect

frigginloon — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:31:08 +0000

And you call me a dumbass!

The life of a RSPCA inspector can be a hoot, especially if you live in Queensland and especially if you have to deal with humans on a daily basis. Take for instance the person who rang to report a neglected animal incident. They told the inspector a cattle dog had been tied up in the same spot for months without food or water. When they went to investigate they found a concrete statue. Another caller rang in a panic saying there was an injured blue tongue lizard in their driveway but were too scared to go near it. Turns out the lizard was a rolled up newspaper.Then there was the case of the sheep with a tumor hanging off it’s back. Hmm, that would be it’s friggin tail lady! Anywho, it’s Christmas and the RSPCA and other animal groups will be busy attending to unwanted presents, of the 4 legged variety, so please don’t forget to donate a little something. Hmm, or maybe give them a ring!!!

Choosing the destination - Brisbane

deniamariano — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 00:33:03 +0000

Brisbane, capital of the state of Queensland has about 2 million people in its metropolitan area.

Why choose Brisbane?

The city is very organized and clean
Climate hot and dry, often very pleasant – milder winter
It’s easy to move around the city and public transport is very efficient
Well structured, offers a good selection of universities and technical courses
Cost of living below cities like Sydney and Melbourne – you can live with about $ 800 per month
The city is in the process of economic growth and need of labor force
The coast of Queensland is the most beautiful and visited around Australia

Why not?

The weather is nice, but it is very hot in summer
Good entertainment options, but nothing compared to other major capital
Employment opportunities are smaller than in the big cities, especially for skilled labor
It has not beach within the city – you need to move to Gold Coast (30 min)

Photo by Denia Mariano