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My Latest 8 diary entries:

Pete's Churchill Odyssey 2005

8th Nov 2005
Whistle-stop Sydney ...

Tuesday 8th November, 2005
Grayem had suggested that we have an early morning swim and a brisk walk down at Coogee Bay in the morning, in order to work up an appetite for breakfast.
During the night, it poured with rain … and I mean poured. Tropical. Torrential … whatever you want to call it accompanied by thunder and lightning and it was still dabbling with showers when I surfaced at about 7.30 in order to go for the walk and swim. While not wildly enthused by the prospect of freezing my parts off and getting soaked to boot, I was equally keen not to be branded as a woossey Pome so the ‘Are you sure you want to go?’ from Grayem was met with a measured amount of enthusiasm and as he obviously didn’t want to be branded a woossey Aussie – and he’s an exemplary host … we were underway as planned.
Well, the sea was grey and mountainous, it was blowing a five or six and it was raining. Not the Australia I was expecting; more like Skegness on a particularly bad day. (mental note to berate my friend and future host down in Canberra who emigrated from Aberdeen partly in favour of the weather!)
We did the brisk walk … like as quickly as you can achieve it, battling against the wind and spray and then retired to the car by a short cut. Anyway that was sufficient exercise for honour to be satisfied and ample justification for the cooked breakfast Grayem whipped up on our triumphant return.
After a shower … and after Anne had surfaced, we sorted the day. Briony had a couple of things to drop off in the north of the city … and I had a couple of cards of Balmoral Beach and Mosman’s Bay to re-photograph, which were relatively near to where she was heading.
Off we went; Balmoral beach was the first stop; very grey but not raining and showing some signs of brightening up. The location was relatively straight forward to find and I rephotographed it. Sadly the 1905 image has quite a number of people of the day on the beach in long skirts and sporting parasols and it would have been nice to have got some contemporary fashion into the frame … but its simply not the day for it. After completing Briony’s deliveries we spent an opportune moment or two (as we passed) in looking for the angle on another postcard, this time of Mosman Bay. We stopped off in Mosman for a coffee and walking along the High Street, I glimpsed a lady pinning a notice up on a wall and the old postcard reproduced on the notice drew my attention …. it was advertising an exhibition of local postcards! Something about deltiologists … which I can only assume refers to postcard buffs and it had opened the day before at the local library.
Inside the exhibition was a stack of card depicting Mosman’s Bay and I looked carefully through them all. There were similar but none the same as the pics I had with me so I spoke with one of the librarians who gave me various contacts with the library there (I offered to let them have a scan of my images, which they were thrilled about) and she also directed me very precisiely to where the location of the picture I have.
Armed with this information, we made tracks in the direction and made a pass along the waterfront to suss out the likely angle; It was clear that it was taken from up above the road we were on … and equally obvious that the road had considerable modern development along it. We went for a quick look and the initial prospect was gloomy until Briony spotted a covered car parking area with an open back almost cantilevered behind the new houses and I nipped round there.
The view while perhaps not exact were certainly with in a few feet and while I lined a few things up and wasted a few minutes checking the location against various features, out came a ferry and hovered briefly in the exact location of the ferry in the original postcard from 1905. At that moment the whole image came together; it was a really satisfying moment.
Mission accomplished, we retired home for lunch and to plan the afternoon, which Grayem was in charge of.
Our first stop was along a cliff walk to the south of Bondi Beach which houses an annual display of sculptures which are set along a cliff-top route ‘sculptures by the sea” is the simple title and the website is all those words put together with either dot com, dot net or dot org after them. A very inspiring exhibition.
At the end of the walk I tackled my Bondi postcard images, which again, date from about 1905-06. There were a few problems with the angles largely to do with the submersion of some rocks which features in the pics, as a result of what appears to be a massive build up of sand. Not sure whether there’s a seasonal angle on this or whether perhaps the postcards were taken (or one in particular) was taken after a particularly severe storm from the east which took out the sand for a while … anyway, got the pics and careful layering on the computer will reveal just how good the camera locations of the retakes were – no time today to really work on them in the field.
We dropped into the Royal Sydney Golf Club for a restorative pint, which was very welcome indeed, and sat watching the practice and eighteenth greens.
We went back to The Avenue through a part of Sydney called Paddington. Its an area which has lost of wrought iron work on the front of the houses. I gather that this is as a result of ships being sent back to Australia empty with iron pigs inside as ballast … so it was a relatively cheap commodity at the time, which could be readily utilised to decorate and smarten some of these terraces.
Back to base late in the afternoon and then had a fantastic dinner of lamb cutlets followed by crème caramel, beautifully prepared by Briony.

Next: To the tropics
Previous: A harbour tour ...


Diary Photos

Bondi

Bondi 2

An art work called `By Catch`

Sculptures by the Sea

More Sculptures by the Sea

Greyem and Briony

Man o` war steps

Mosman`s Bay

Sculpture

Watson`s Bay
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