Thursday, 21st September, 2005
On or two minor panic this morning … with battery charging, final packing and then Julia drove us to the airport for about mid-day. We shopped a bit and I joined the twenty-first century by buying a 20 gig iPod – and before everyone gets excited and reaches for the mouse to comment ... its bought with the intention of using it as a means of recording interviews!
The flight was fairly uneventful and extremely easy. BA appear to have resolved part of their dispute with their caterers or have sourced alternatively, for the food was very good.
We passed to the north of Newfoundland, over Labrador and came down between it and the Gulf of St Lawrence, right over the large island at the mouth of the river, which I can’t remember the name of at the moment .. Anticosti?
Great views from the cuising height of 38,000 ft. along the St Lawrence and we flew down the coast; the captain announced at one point that we were passing over Bangor, Maine … but even though the viz was pretty good,we couldn’t see a single box car … let alone a third one.
Its early evening and the sun is skidding across the tops of the clouds turning the western side of them an increasingly vivid pink and against the light, we’re seeing a surprising number of lakes and rivers on the ground below.
With twenty minutes to go, to landing and the Captain making various announcements … I was astounded to see a queue of sixteen, predominantly large, and predominantly American ladies all queuing for the loos.
There had been a steady flow (oh dear I can`t think of anyway else to describe it) of them squeezing themselves down the aisle, knocking your papers off the table and generally huffing and puffing as they went, but nothing nearly as synchronised and co-ordinated as this!
I couldn’t help thinking the tale of the large lady, who went to use the aircraft loo on a long haul. History doesn’t relate as to whether she accidentally nudged the flush button or whether there was some slight shift in cabin pressure … but either way, she managed to form a complete seal around the top of the toilet and got stuck. The Captain had to request special permission to drop altitude in order to release her. Sadly, although I had half an ear out for a muffled sucking noise followed by a squawk, no such excitement prevailed.
We got through US Customs without hitch; the officials are almost unbelievably dead-pan. Not a hint of mirth, not the faintest glimmer in the eye, not a crack of a smile. We were finger-printed, photographed and despatched on our way.
Shuttle-bussed out to the stand where the hire cars are and filled in the forms, fending off the overtures of the lady behind the desk who was trying to get us to invest in a larger model. “Well Sir, it would just be a little more comfortable, a bit more room for your bags and … cruise control.” No joy for her today !! Outside, we viewed the selected model; the cheapest (and smallest) that Dollar Car Hire can offer … and it has to be said that it’s at least twice the size of my Vauxhall at home!
“Right out of the gate, left at the first set of traffic lights, through the tunnel ($3 required) and straight up 89” sounded completely inadequate in terms of an exit route from the city of Boston, but it proved to be all that was needed and after about ten minutes underground in the tunnel, we were eventually on the Interstate pounding North.
We’d anticipated a column of 50 mile-an-hour Hummers all sedately proceeding up the highway, but refreshingly, the Americans seem to have changed somewhat and it was like the Wacky races out there with cars over-taking inside, outside, huge lorries (and I mean HUGE lorries), buses, fire engines all hammering along. We just went with the flow (at about 70-80 mph) and after an hour or so of driving, began to ease off and began to enjoy a slightly more ‘New Hampshire’ pace of life.
We pulled off near Warner and after a brief interview with a gum-chewing red-neck in a Warner Gun Club baseball cap who addressed his responses to my enquiries through the check-out girl on the till … we set off a few miles to Bradford.
First signpost on the right said ‘Candlelite Inn’ and we pulled off there; 10pm ... or 3 in the morning at home. A large wooden, white-painted barn of a building or some considerable age (well, you know what I mean … in an American context). Anyway Anne went in to check the place out (notice on the door “No check-ins after 8pm”, but that certainly wasn’t going to dissuade enquiry) and it turns out to be an award-winning Inn. With the car switched off and in the silence that followed, we could hear the noise of crickets all around.
Set everything that needed charging up to charge … which involved un-plugging nearly everything else in the room and then headed down for a cup of tea. The Americans do like providing tea for the Brits … no doubt about it (‘We know how you guys like your tea …’) but then they offer Coffee-mate or long-life milk to go with it … Ho hum.
Thursday, 22nd September, 2005
Having got to bed at about 4.30am our time … we were up again early to a bright and quite chilly morning with a heavy dew on the ground. We went out for a walk before breakfast. This is apparently the first day of the New England Fall … I suppose, measured as being after the equinox … and it means a quite a lot to them. The trees, for their part, are only just beginning to turn at this latitude; a slight yellowing to the green; the odd yellow, orange or red branch and one or two under-shrubs have completely lost it and turned red.
Nearby there was Covered Bridge – sadly not a particularly exciting one in a Madison County sort of way or from a photographic point of view, but nonetheless dating from the 1850s. Bement Bridge it was called. Also saw a pumpkin-patch doll, various American flags.
From the earliest dawning of the morning and all through the walk we were listening to some very distinctive bird calls. Distinctive, as I didn’t have my binnies with me but they were familiar from the slightly irritating Sesame Street electronic book which the boys had many years ago – one of those ones where you read the story and then press a button on the edge of the book, whenever there’s a small picture in the text. As this one was about Big Bird going bird watching, it had a whole range of (North American) bird sounds … and (finally getting to the point) whatever they were were here !! Either blue jays or yellow-bellied sapsuckers we think.
The Inn is very ‘New England’; lace, quilts, antiques, painted floors (where else would a chipped, painted wooden floor be considered chic) and heavily patterned rugs. All through my walk I had been wondering what I would have for breakfast and had settled fairly firmly on the idea of waffles with New Hampshire Maple Syrup … which seemed an entirely appropriate way to start the trip. Not to be.
Breakfast turned out to be quite a gourmet affair. Something of a cross between a nouveau cuisine experience and challenge to use as many local fruits in a meal at one go. To start with, came a home baked (and still warm) lemon muffin served with strawberry jam. Next, with a bit of a flourish, a beautifully presented plate of cinnamon swirl French toast, served with an orange syrup (!) and a couple of slices of melon, a star fuit and quite unexpectedly, a kale leaf … presumably to complete the effect.
Well, that all slipped down quite nicely (well, apart from the Kale leaf) and then we were offered the third course (politely declined by the healthy Americans on the table next door) but readily devoured on the Moore table in the corner; Lemon pie with cream and blueberry sauce. What an extraordinary breakfast!
Packed and out by 9-30 and venturing out to the car, it was clear what sort of day it was going to be … stretching up into the 70s already and destined for the 80s.
North on Interstate 89, we crossed the Connecticut River and passed into Vermont. As we were well on schedule for the 1pm appointment in Williston, we stopped off for a tub of Ben and Jerry’s best at their main (and original) factory just outside – Waterbury. A really cool establishment !
They ran a competition recently to seek public opinion as to which of their discontinued lines should be brought back in to production and ‘Wavy Gravy’ came out top … so that’s what I had to show support. Anne had Cappucino Buzzbuzz and Maple Pecan.
At Williston Public Library, we met up with Paul, the Geology Professor at UVM who was doing a public talk on his re-photography program. Anne slipped off to hook onto the internet and send a couple of e-mails and I had a very interesting hour hearing about the Vermont Landscape Change Project and seeing how the public can engage in the process. They have quite a considerable archive of images available a particularly interesting set of pics taken in the early 1960s before and during the construction of the Interstates. These images show rolling farmland, grazing cows, stands of elm, document the changes which took place during the very intrusive construction process and finally the retakes reveal a very changed landscape; Less cattle, hardly any elm and the completed Interstate. Much of the imagery showed a cleared landscape. After logging and as roads were being built. One of the questions from an elderly gentleman queried the loss of views due to the increased tree growth; a very similar issue to the increased growth of trees (particularly roadside) at home.
We followed Paul into Burlington after the talk and he took us to 254, the Guest House. Its an old house in an old part of town with mature trees close to the house. The owners were out and we just let our selves in and settled. I changed, got my stuff together and half an hour later Paul was back to take me to the Delahunty Hall for my talk to students at the Geology Department.
About 20 or so Grads and lecturers squeezed in to the lab and I gave them the Spey CMP talk complete with Scott Skinner at the end which stunned them into silence initially but then the questions started thick and fast. Quite strange really; I offered to answer any questions and then I`d started clearing away my gear, expecting someone to ask something. As I fiddled around with the back of the computer, I looked around to find people sitting there with their hands in the air ... completely silent and waiting to be offered the chance; can`t imagine that happening at home.
Our discussion continued through dinner with the Grad class – about a dozen or so students and we sat around informally scoffing Indian takeaway and discussing particularly ways of communicating science, or science-based fact to the public - clearly the image based ways were heading the topic.
Anne meantime was downtown Burlington; refraining as it seemed from leaping in to immediate purchases but certainly scouting the options and making future plans! I finally got back to the guest house at about 9pm and sleep was not far away at all.
Friday, 23rd September, 2005
Awake early again this morning, almost before the light but not before whatever birds they are kicked off with their calling. Anne discovered that the ‘breakfast’ element of our bed and breakfast was in a fridge in the wardrobe … and so, breakfast consisted of a yoghurt and a museli bar.
Paul collected me at nine for our first appointment which was a few blocks along the road with Breck, the Robert and Genevieve Patrick Professor of Watershed Science and Planning – (Are you serious?) its a great title, but only just fits on his card and takes hours to type in here!
He’s recently finished renovating or recovering his house from years as a student squat and has obviously had quite a job on. Plenty to discuss arising from last nights talk – mostly about the basin management similarities of the Spey, Notueko (in NZ) and the Champlain basin; one thing quite different is that the Americans have identified the sea lamprey as a major problem in their basin management plan .. for its detrimental impacts on salmonids ! … as a result are expending considerable effort to knock seven bells out of them; as some of you will be aware, we on the other hand, have identified the critters as being of European worth and have whole rivers designated for their protection.
On to Delahunty mid morning to get into the detail of the picture archive side of the Vermont Landscape Change Programme - enquired innocently at one point as to why the University of Vermont is known as UVM – and not UVT per the other Vermont abbreviations. “Ah, its from the latin; Universitas Verides Montes” – Uni of the Green Mountains - no wonder its known as UVM.
Really interesting look through the web development, evaluation and the finer points of the outreach program, some spectacular photographs of flood events here on the Winooski and quite a remarkable number of buildings surviving in the state.
We lunched downtown and then on for a quick breeze through the Echo centre on the waterfront; big roomy functional space and some nice interpretation ideas – huge tanks with various fish living out in lake Champlain … and a pickled sea lamprey in the resource room.
Anne meanwhile, decided that the life of a student was in keeping and retired to an internet café with book and very large cappuccino for most of the morning and generally kept tabs on the student life in the Downtown, before strolling the waterfront, lunching and meeting us back at the guest house for a drive out along the Winooski in the mid aftrernoon.
The trip was slightly delayed as I tried to get my head around the complex system of navigation out here - you either go east/west or north/south and, well suffice to say there was a bit of wandering around a few blocks east of where I was supposed to be!
We visited the site of a picture postcard and I did a quick retake from nearby; the actual picture would have been from the second floor of the old brick building behind me but nonetheless the effect is spectacular and its amazing how much of the landform in the area and the development has been influenced by a single flood event from ’27. All the bridges were taken out for example, huge terraces cut through the valley sides up to twenty feet deep. It also highlights the sense of the some of the settlers in locating their dwellings and the older farms are just slightly raised out of harms way.
Paul pointed out the design evolution of the old barns, the older ones, which I think they call English Barns have doors on the sides, but these have caused a problem when the snow falls off the roof and dumps itself and blocks off the door. Various modifications have been made like little porch constructions in order to chuck snow either side, but the later buildings have their doors in the end to avoid the problem altogether.
The water control now on the river is made by huge inflatable booms, which they can easily collapse. The falls have been dammed for power take off and have no fish ladders; the way they manage this is to collect the fish in large buckets, haul them up the thirty or so feet, empty them into the back of a truck and drive them along up stream and tip them back in – the truck was there on standby for this process.
We joined half the world in Burlington this evening trying to get a meal; settled on the Three Tomatos Italian restaurant which was great, but unfortunately we were both slightly beaten by jet lag.
Saturday, 24th September, 2005
Out of town sharp this morning; a bright and clear day with light traffic. We took the route through to Williston and set up outside the library to receive the wireless signal. One or two false starts with competing networks, but then a clear signal for the car park! Check the e-mails and then retreated for waffles and maple syrup in the ‘Old Brick Café’ nearby.
Anne was calling the shots today so our route to Quebec took us along to Stowe and then up to Johnson to a factory outlet woollen mill. One turn around the interior of the store was enough for me … however, a couple of pictures on the walls inside caught my attention. I decided quite early that I would wherever possible, grab some retakes myself along the way in the forthcoming weeks, whether it be from postcards or any other publication or product available. I took a couple of quick snaps and then set off outside to get the angles. Not too difficult to find the locations …
Lunch with the Bad Girls in BadGirls Café, Johnson and then on the road north towards Quebec.
Anne spent most of the rest of the day trying to configure her phone to receive the local networks which was not brilliantly successful and started south of the border and continued north through French operators.
Crossed the border remarkably smoothly through Derby Line and made our way to Pats.
As we have now passed the border in to Canada, we are obliged to offer a bilingual version of events:
E: Unable to contact by cellphone and without response to e-mails we spent a bit of time remembering fragments of directions from years ago … a theatre came in to it, but the crucial point that we turned left at it, eluded the memory.
We eventually asked directions in North Hatley and found the barn tucked away just as the sun was going down. Took a few shots around Ste Catherine de Hatley.
Pat had invited Jane and Vince round for supper who we last met many years ago, (1989) when we were out here for a few weeks with Ben asa very portable 9month old; we had a great evening.
F: Incapable d`entrer en contact par cellphone et sans réponse aux E-mails nous avons passé un peu d`heure se rappelant que les fragments des directions il y a des années... un théâtre sont entrés à lui, mais au point crucial que nous avons tourné à gauche à lui, éludé la mémoire. Nous avons par la suite demandé des directions dans Hatley du nord et avons trouvé la grange rempliée loin juste pendant que le soleil se couchait. A pris quelques projectiles autour de la chambre Catherine. Le tapotement avait invité Jane et Vince ronds pour le dîner; nous avons eu une grande soirée.
Do you like hows its coped with "taking a few shots" ... "quelques projectiles" ... good old google!
Sunday, 25th September, 2005
A lazy day. Overcast and leisurely. Pat showed me the original images of the barn before it was converted in about 1973-4 and I spent a couple of hours nipping round outside for some re-takes; a nice commentary of the transition from agricultural community and building … to home with garden.
Anne explored just outside and took a few snaps of the chipmunks playing around in the dry stone walls and tinkered Andy Goldsworthy style with some red leaves in the maize field.
After lunch we decided to tackle the issue of Belmere and set off to Magog and Georgeville and eventually we arrived outside the new and heavily fortified gates of Belmere. (Editors note: for those of you who don’t know it’s a glorious old farm property on the shores of Lake Memphremagog, once owned by Sir Hugh Allan, a Scottish /Canadian Shipping magnate and later through to a great aunt of Anne’s. It has its own photo history from the early days and we visited and stayed here in the mid and late 80’s and were keen to see the changes wrought by the new owner.)
The intercom system connected us with the caretaker’s son and after a few minutes, Junior Cramer, the caretaker himself, came along, slightly on the offensive to begin with but relaxing fractionally as we talked. He was under way again through the gates into ‘the camp’ after a minute or two and although we caught a glimpse of him at one stage later in the afternoon, that was the last we saw of him.
After five to ten minutes, the speaker on the intercom came to life and an answer from Gratton was relayed that he was about to leave the property and he didn’t remember anyone … if we wanted to arrange a visit, we should phone his office in Montreal to discuss. It was hopeless trying to discuss the matter with a flunky and young Cramer’s comment was simply ‘I guess you’re out of luck’.
Well we sat for a few minutes, uncertain whether there was going to be any further dialogue; it had been left kind of hanging. Eventually, I decided to at least get the number of the office in Montreal. At the time it seemed reasonable that he might be on the brink of going and we had arrived unannounced … and so tomorrow morning seemed a distinct possibility following contact.
Just as I was about to tackle the intercom, pen and paper in hand, we heard a car approaching; a blue, V70 Cross Country … which duly stopped the other side of the gates, activated the mechanism and then pulled through. Luckily there wasn’t a puddle for them to drive through or they’d have probably drowned me from head to toe.
I stood to one side as they did expecting some form of acknowledgement … but I might as well be still waiting!
Although his hair was by now grey … it was the bold boy himself, with wife chauffeuring. She, to give her some credit, nodded, he looked straight ahead as they swept by and the gates closed themselves.
I put in a call via the intercom to get the office number and young Cramer gave me this he then chuckled that Gratton had just driven past me. I said that I knew that, but that he obviously wasn’t keen on stopping. I got the office number and we drove on and took a few pictures towards Magoon Point.
It was really dull day and getting wetter, so we drove slowly back across to Pats via Ayers Cliff.
Out this evening to a great meal in the front room of a house along at Hatley, doubling as a French restaurant. It was run by quite a young couple, he as chef she at the front … and they had two mischievous children who were reluctant to go to bed and so noticeable, as they were carted through the dining room a couple of times. It was amusing to see the youngest one get up to all sorts of mischief as soon as her mother had picked up an armful of plates to clear!
Starter of rabbit; lambshank and a crème brulee to finish. Back to the barn quite late and then I spent a bit of time sorting through some music files.
Monday 26th September, 2005
Rain all night and lots of it … a very grey and wet day.
At 9.30, I phoned Gratton’s office but he wasn’t available … the long and the short of it was no to a visit to Belmere. The advice was to call again if we were ever in the area … oh well, in another fifteen years we’ll do a little more preparation.
We packed and I sorted a few diaries, updated the web page and then set off south.
It was wet all day and didn’t improve at all as we dreve.
We stopped of at a liquor store on the way (“You have a good one now”) and also had a quick look at luggage at a ‘luggage warehouse’ but elected not to buy anything just then.
Found Paul and Christine’s house relatively easily … starting from Sth Union street, I was aware it was only five blocks away. We arrived in Paul and Christine’s at 6.30 after a slightly fraught entry to the town from the wrong side.
Down town in hiking boots and sporting umbrellas to Smokejacks; a restaurant downtown which serves traditional Vermont food, locally grown, caught or reared; having said that I had the evening’s special, which was sea bass whizzed in from Maine. For starters a caesars with local cheese – the Vermontians are big on their cheeses and along with the usual ‘carte’ and wine list, there was also a ‘cheese list’. To finish, a crème brulee topped with maple sugar. A really good night and by the time we walked back, the worst of the rain was through. Fell in to bed and slept soundly despite pounding rain.
Tuesday, 27th September, 2005
Slept on the third floor of Paul and Christine’s old house in a leafy suburb of Burlington, near the university campus … and slept very well indeed. Down the various flights of stairs at about 8 .... in time to see the kids Marika and Quincy heading off for school, seated in a tow-along cart hooked on to the back of Paul’s bike.
After a night of more rain and a dull threatening start, by 8-15 the grey cloud curtains had begun to part and it looked like being a spectacular day.
We breakfasted with Christine, by which time, Paul had returned from the hard slog of cycling back up the hill. We chatted for another half hour or so and then he left for work and we got our things together and went along to the Vermont Outdoor Gear Exchange, which is a brilliant idea. A co-operative selling bulk consignments of every brand, style and type of outdoor gear imaginable plus a few rails of second hand gear which they sell on, on commission. Some of the stuff was in fairly good shape, while some was badly knocked about and really needed putting out of its misery to recycle.
Anyway, we got ourselves some rain gear which was the main objective, as it had been had been missing from the baggage until now.
Headed south out of town, first towards the Shelburne Museum, which is a set up like a much enlarged version of the Folk Museum and the folk park rolled in to one. It was set up by a philanthropic lady called Mrs Webb and is formed from her private collection of … well, almost everything!
We elected not to linger too long here, scouted the exterior, looked in the shop and generally baked in the sun along with various heavily perspiring Americans. Quilts seemed to be the general theme of much of the merchandise and maple sugar related products in terms of the consumables … but there is so much more within this collection, paintings, pottery, fine porcelain ... so little time and it looks as if it needs a good half a day to do it justice
Moved on the Shelburne Farms, famed for its huge barns. Built by a wealthy family about a hundred years ago … the Webb Vanderbilts set themselves up in considerable style with vast farms barns, coach barns, breeding barns … and to give you an idea, large enough for an indoor polo match to be held (they were mad about horses). All built of wood.
It’s a working farm set up as a non-profit making enterprise with an educational programme as the aim. It has a school set up within a section of one of the barns and various outreach methods to welcome visiting groups; we encountered the geographers from UVM, who were along on a mapping exercise.
We got a snack lunch in the farm shop and ate it out on a bench. Rolling pasture, with cattle, crops being cut and mature maple sugar woodland form the view. Also bought a history of the farm which contained some archive images which would form a bit of a side entertainment for me as I went around. The place is remarkably well documented as the WVs commissioned the best of the newest photographic `technology` to record their life and times. a few pics to follow ....
Shuttled by tractor and trailer up to the first barn which is about three-quarters of a mile from where you park and from there, you’re on your own … about four and half miles of tracks and roads take you around to the various buildings. There was a tour bus available, but it looked far too constraining and we decided it was a good day for a walk.
The farm barns, which I guess is the most popular of the destinations was a hub of activity. People making cheese, schoolkids … maintenance crews … and animals. People wandering around with calves on ropes, hens, pigs, sheep, cattle and only very minimal signage warning the litigious Americans about the risks of touching the animals and picking up some class or other of disease .. this was, however, supported with notices giving you step by step instructions on how to wash your hands. Anyway, presumably that was liability absolved.
A few interesting re-takes grabbed on the way past and finally took to the road south at about 5pm. We arrived in Woodstock and dined at the Inn … it is after all our nineteenth wedding anniversary. Managed to hook onto the wireless network outside in the car park but then we lost the signal. Got a few hours sleep in the car and set off at about 1.30am for Boston.
Wednesday, 28th September, 2005
Given that this was the early hours of the morning and that this was the day after our nineteenth wedding anniversary (which I did remember!) and apart from on minor detour along the way and the fact that they closed the route described in the rental car directions for getting back to the pound, it was a remarkably slick re-entry into Boston. We dropped the car off at the back of 4, shuttled in to the airport and signed in immediately for the flight up to Montreal.
Checked in with a particularly sour attendant, (but I suppose it was five in the morning) and then went along to the first security check where a young attendant announced with a hint of humour (and this it has to be said has been the only sign of humour anywhere near an American in a uniform that I ever saw … having a uniform in America is a VERY serious business), anyway, he said that we had been specially selected by the airline for extra security checks … in the sort of tone which he might also have added and it comes with a $1m bonus!
With that, the whole vicinity seemed to burst into life, the area was cleared, people ordered to stand aside and about three people started barking orders, don’t touch this, don’t touch that, take off your shoes, walk this way, don’t do that, move over there MOVE OVER THERE SIR, when you hesitate for a moment. Everyone gets really excited about the whole thing … so excited in fact you can’t help wondering whether you’re about to be wrestled to the ground at any moment and given seven bullets to the head and one in the shoulder … but then you remember this is America, Home of the Free and you know that everything’s alright (!!)
To cap it all, who do they get to frisk you? A gentleman of an oriental persuasion who can’t pronounce English and so you haven’t a crue whether he wants you to srit down, stand-up, rift your reg, take a step folwards, back, or do a caltwheer … anyway with time to kill before the flight, once you relax into the inevitability of it all … its actually rather entertaining and I feel a whole lot better for having done my bit for the security of the US of A.
The sun was just peeping over the horizon as we took off and we had a grandstand view of Boston as we went … Air Canada stretched to tea and pretzels in flight which I was remembering for several hours afterwards.
Montreal was a breeze and the transfer remarkably easy and we were able to settle into a relatively comfy snooze for most of the next few hours.
I ended up sitting next to a rather jumpy Quebecker who jabbered away in French and to whom I faltingly replied in Froglish, the upshot being that he wanted me to swop seats so his girlfriend could sit next to him. I haven’t quite mastered @£$% off in French yet, but we understood each other after a while.
Great views over the flat Prairies of Sascatchewan, a slick arrival at Calgary and a free upgrade to a larger car.
We toured through downtown Calgary in search of an italk – a microphone for an ipod and got one from a real Mac enthusiast who knew all there was to know about apple computers – a good job I’ve got limited baggage or he may have made a sale.
We drove three hours south to Waterton Lakes across flat lands with huge open skies and across to the right the snow capped peaks of the Rockies glistened. At one stage we passed a saloon car with a deer rack strapped to the boot and Anne dangled out of the window to record the event.
Arrived Waterton and booked in to the International Hostel and then down to the local bar for a bowl of nachos and a few beers (errr quite a few beers actually) and consequently slept really well. Anne got up early to get some laundry out of the machine and said she could here me snoring through there … anyway that didn’t last as I got a good jab when she got back!
Thursday, 29th September, 2005
We had been aware the night before of the wind gathering pace … it had howled round the hostel all night and had done nothing to reduce in pace by the daylight hours. It had ripped a considerable amount of green leaves from the trees and as a result there were loads of deer all wandering around the town nonchalantly mopping up the windfalls.
Despite a couple of calls I hadn’t managed to speak with Rob, my contact at Parks Canada ... and another call to the office did nothing to solve the problem. However, when we returned from breakfast a message awaited at the front desk of the lodge and we went up to the Parks headquarters, just out of town, for 10 o’clock.
Breakfast meantime was a decidedly pleasant experience. We’d earmarked Zum’s Diner as the breakfast venue and duly turned up there to sample the ‘early risers special’ this apparently was available until about 11 o’clock so there was no rush whatsoever. The ‘special’ featured two eggs however you wanted them (easy over as it happened, though I still haven’t quite figured this out as apparently the other options are ‘sunnyside up’ and ‘hard over’) and two pancakes with maple syrup.
With an eye on both the wallet and the waistline we elected to share … I ordered a pint pot of fresh berry smoothie … blueberries, icecream, ice and cream all smoothed into one and Anne got the special as described above and we had roughly half of each without falling out over the finer details too much! There was a minor scuffle over the last quarter of smoothie.
Up at the parks office the wind was worse. The lake below had huge waves and spray driving down it, but it was a warm wind and the skies were clear. Anne came in for a while to meet Rob and then took off to explore. He and I worked through the various complexities of the Parks Canada photography work … which they co-fund with UVic.
Anne’s morning was rather successful and included a visit to an open area of grassland, where Rob had indicated the prospect of seeing elk; as she sat, a coyote trotted by hunting through the grass as it went.
I had a very full morning of discussion and had the chance to leaf through a number of the images gathered during the Rocky Mountain Repeat Photography Project. Anne returned for me at about 12.45 and we eventually left at 1.30.
Ahead of us a three hour drive through the US border and to West Glacier – the border apparently was closing at 6pm. Sharp. Quite an uneventful drive, some good scenery on the way and some views (particularly on the Canadian side) of the mountains.
As we crossed into Montana, we encountered the usual humourless uniform and on the other side of the mountains, the weather began to change. By the time we were on the ‘Going-to-the-Sun Road’ and crossing the Continental Divide, it had closed in to rain and low cloud. Logan Pass was shrouded and although we got several tantalising glimpses the vistas never opened up. The rain increased and with it the run-off and with that odd bits of gravel and stone on the road surface.
The ‘Going-to-the-Sun’ is a really steeply cut road, built in the 30s with cliffs above (overhanging in some places) and below and as we trundled on it was clear that there was a considerable amount of debris on the move above us due to the rainfall. The odd stone bounced onto the gravel beside us and after the summit of Logan Pass, we had to drive around the odd slab of rock, including quite a large one in the middle of the road … and there was a certain amount of consternation from the seat to my right.
However, we were on the downhill stretch, the worst of the pass was behind us and we cruised down to Apagar, arriving just as it was beginning to get dusk.
As of tomorrow (the end of September) Glacier ceases to function as an entity and this was reflected by the various sales that were taking place and the attitudes of the various shop-owners, keepers and attandents; they were all completely demob happy and couldn’t give a toss!
Our cabin was similarly sized to a large, garden shed. About eighteen to twenty feet long, with a large (ish) bedsit and a small kitchenette and bathroom at the back; obviously of some considerable vintage, it’ll be ideal as long as it holds out the water!
We dined in the bar of the Belton Chalet; a Great Northern Railway establishment which served great value food; Anne with crab cakes and me a with buffalo carpaccio washed down with a pint of Montana Ale.
Back out in to the rain and on the way back to Apagar, we tried to hook into the West Glacier network; only got a couple of bars of reception in the carpark, but unfortunately, access was denied.
Friday, 30th September, 2005
It rained all night, without stopping once and by morning many leaves had come down … gauged by the number lying on top of the car. We sorted a few things for the day and scouted the immediate environs for breakfast – not a chance! so drove back down to West Glacier and joined all the other hungry, late season tourists.
Huckleberry muffins and huckleberry French toast with maple syrup and whipped butter Mmmmmm Yummmmm.
We also learned at this stage that Logan pass had been closed and would remain closed for at least a day due to rockfalls and mudslides … some of the rocks apparently requiring blasting to shift them. Glad we hadn’t lingered any longer up there to get pictures!
From the booth outside, I phone Lisa at USGS to check arrangements for the morning. She was expecting me at 10 so we scouted out way in the ‘suburbs’ of West Glacier … down a forest track and along another until we found the converted cabin where the geologists hang out.
Anne set off to look at fire sites, catch up on Suduko and relax while I had a really good couple of hours discussing the image processes of recording glacial retreat .. and more to the point trying to find out how the resulting message is being relayed through the PR network to raise awareness. The short answer is it isn’t happening, which is a shame as the images they have spanning a century or so of surveyors and visitors to Glacier NP are a gift waiting for someone to take them firmly by the scruff of the neck and shove them under the noses of America to demonstrate the considerable changes of the last century of so.
This afternoon we took a spin down the road to Columbia Falls in search of an internet hook-up and anything else that we might be able to discover en route. We discovered very little except that there is very little depth to the town in this part of Montana. Once you have clocked the diner, the shop selling genuine Indian artefacts, the garage and the liquor store, you pretty well have it.
In CF however, the little café we visited .. sorry, no idea of the name, was obviously at the cutting edge. It is the only venue around offering internet access … and wireless access at that, so when at 5 o’clock last orders were being despatched and the doors closed, we decanted into the car park and parked outside the empty building a continued to work online until the battery was exhausted.
There was a talk by the National Park Wardens at McDonald Lake Hotel this evening and we arrived there at about 7 in time to document the interiors of the hotel and to have a bar supper … still in POURING rain.
The Hotel is fantastic inside, massive stone fireplace where they burn logs about five feet long and six to eight inches diameter, all the time.
The hotel is made out of massive trunks of lodgepole pine … the upright columns, three or four feet in diameter and there are loads of old hunting paintings and dead things clapped onto the walls to add to the atmosphere.
Even the chairs are fashioned out of logs, most of them with the bark still left on and the arms of the chairs and hand-rails have got a polish which only come from about 90 years of use, they are like glass they are so worn.
I fared slightly better than Anne with supper … a selection of sausage kebabs was eminently more ingestible that the soup ‘de jour’ … which ‘jour’ exactly might have been up for debate. The bar tender was in particularly fine fettle as it was his last shift of the year.
The talk was about medicinal plants and was fairly interesting … I’ll say not much more; the differences I would say between a similar delivery in the UK were that it was undertaken in an Ophrah Winfrey style which relied on audience participation … more worryingly was the fact that most of the front row were readily engaged by the speaker and wanted to take part. I think in Britain you’d be sitting there still, waiting for a response to an open question to the audience as I doubt anyone would put themselves forward.
It rained even more during the talk … continued afterwards and as we went home and we fell asleep in our little shed to the constant drumming on the roof.
Saturday, 1st October, 2005
Its still raining! I don’t Belieeeeeeve it.
I thought Scotland could teach the world a thing or two about rain but unfortunately, it’s a bit like the football (and the rugby … errr, and the golf …) we have been outclassed. It has now rained solidly with a single let up for the past 36 hours. The pass is still closed and the mountains are still shrouded in mist … in fact they’re now talking that that’s it for the pass for the winter! In which case we’ll have been in the last couple of cars through in 2005.
This morning we have a telephone rendezvous with the boys … so its off to the wild decadence of the McDonald Lake Hotel once again, which is the only place here that we feel has a chance of making and accepting international calls … and it didn’t let us down.
As for the breakfast report … well it was the buffet this morning; Berry yoghurt, French toast, maple syrup and bacon all taken at a corner table, from which we could watch the antics of our compadres without neck-strain. What more could one ask for?
The couple on the table next door to us, very kindly and quiet pair who according to their exchanges with the waiter, visited the hotel each year and had done for many years, were driven from their table by the arrival of another couple nearby. They excused themselves almost immediately from the capacious dining room, as soon as Mrs Newcomer opened her mouth. She was then left her in search of another audience and fortunately, Anne was in a hurry to get to the phone, or she may not have been able to heed the coded warning signals coming from my side of the table….
Well all seems well at home and we were able to chat with Ben, Nick and Bam at great length and all from the comfort of a 1920’s hotel phone booth tucked away beneath the Lodgepole staircase of the hotel.
Afterwards, we struck out towards Many Glacier. As Logan Pass is out of the frame and the border at the end of the ‘Going-to-the-Sun’ road closed last night at 6pm, we are stuck with the longer route back to Waterton, adding about an extra hour or so.
It took us the day … and it took us until we crossed into Canada to escape the rain. Out on the prairies, it was possible to look back to the west at the tremendous hump of cloud that covers the mountains of Glacier. Just once in a while, they glimpsed through resplendent in a new dusting of snow at their higher altitudes.
We crossed into and out of the Blackfeet Nation territory, discernible due to the lifesized scrap metal sculptures of mounted Indians positioned in laybys at the entrance and exit … both of which had been shot about the head with high velocity rifle bullets. It was also discernible due to the quantity of litter along the roadsides and the frequent incidence where shooting parties (?) (but perhaps only picnic parties) had gone out of town, taken themselves slightly off road, downed a few beers and then scattered the bottles around behind them.…
It was a fairly uninspiring day from a weather point of view and we saw very little of the grandeur of the mountains around … but I took one or two retakes as best I could.
On the way back from Swiftcurrent there was obviously a bit of commotion on the road with three vehicles stopped and a few people milling about on the roadside and emerging from the scrub.
It transpired there was a bull moose working his way along the other side of the roadside belt of scrub and various of the people there were taking in turns to dodge down, intercept and dash back to roadside with their photographic spoils … quite an intrusive process and no wonder that the moose was somewhat intent in its attempts to cross the road and get into deeper scrub. I got a couple of shots and then we left them to their pursuit, leap-frogging each other up the road in their cars and charging up and down the bank to get views.
As we neared Waterton, it began to lift a little bit and we re-entered the park.
In the half mile or so following the toll booth, there was a little bit of debate as to what we were actually getting for our $12 per day … and then we rounded a corner and a few hundred yards ahead, was the unmistakeable shambling figure of a black bear stomping up the road. We pulled closer and he completed his manoeuvre onto the verge and down into a the scrub about 20 or so feet to the side. There, in a very deliberate and thoughtful way, he settled himself down among some rose hips and systematically began to eat them all.
At the start of the sighting, he sat amongst a profusion of little red dots of hips … and within five minutes the whole lot had been scoffed! Bushes deftly pulled towards him with a huge paw and the seed heads pulled off in his mouth.
On he plodded, hiding himself behind the odd bush for a few minutes and we settled down to watch him ... really very close ... had he been indiscreet enough to fart we`d have clocked it .. but as it was we could only hear the chomping of his jaws. We watched with the engine turned off and he slowly walked towards us, up the bank. A magic moment in wildlife observation up until the point when Anne, who was on the side nearest the bear, pointed out that she couldn’t get her window closed with the engine off ... this caused a little bit of excitement. With windows firmly shut, he passed within a couple of feet of the front of the car; a fantastic beast with a luxuriant, deep pelt.
We pulled off the road, just outside of town to have a look at the elk which had drawn out of the forest and were scattered around in several large ‘harems’ each with attendant bulls, constantly herding and ‘belling’ heading-off itinerants and challenging other males nearby. The light was poor but they were all going about their business well within camera range of the car.
Checked in to the International Hostel once again and then battled our way to the open fire of the Bayshore Inn for a beer and a steak sandwich.
Sunday 2nd October, 2005
Once again we attended Zums for breakfast. Its transpires that its their last day of operation for the season, so the whole lot were in there at 8 am this morning and heading for a party this afternoon.
Eight o’clock on a Sunday morning was a sharp start for them and us but it was fairly clear and although there`s a biting wind, the day bodes well.
Met Rob at about 9.45 and went to have a look at a few re-take sites in the vicinity. Its amazing walking out on to this prairie grassland, dry and solid underfoot. What particularly struck me was the direct comparison of the Bridgeland Photos on site. Bridgeland was a Government surveyor and arrived at his survey points on horseback or as part of a wagon train; and there across his picture of 1914 is the sharp marks of a wagon trail into Waterton …. cutting across the flat bits of the landscape … and the marks are still there !
I thought they must signify an occasional Parks Canada track, but not so and they’ve had no-one along them certainly in the last 26 years that Rob has been at the site and probably further back than that.
They’re there with the depth of wagon wheel ruts and the slightly different flora associated presumably with more compressed ground and ground within which water would lie.
PC still send their wardens out on patrol on horseback, in fact on this day one of the seasonals was leaving for a two day back-country patrol to a remote hut … alone. Its all part of the job; they are expected to look after themselves and have a radio for emergency which ‘works in most places … though there are a few blank spots’.
Had lunch at the café in Waterton and then out to the Bison paddock for a look at another of Bridgeland’s views … and also a gander at the bison. Huge great brutes when you get along side them … almost better set in the massive view of the prairie with the Rockies behind.
After another session in the office looking through some of the imagery, we dropped back to the roadside area near the elk for a last look .. this time in glorious sunshine. We arrived at about the time when quite a number of people had the same idea so although we were along in the first five or so cars scattered along the road, every soon there were twenty-five. And then the show really began !
We had photographers with medium to long telephotos jumping out of their cars, slamming the door, hauling their gear out of the boot (slamming the door), dropping the legs of their tripods (clunk, clunk clunk) and then getting themselves to the most advantageous position … probably ten to fifteen yards apart and then talking to each other. Did you see that? Look at that light? Hey, have you metered off the grass or his ass? They were from Chicago.
But better was yet to come. A family arrived in a people carrier and decanted a shower of noisy children onto the road side, who then decided that they would try and stalk the nearest group of elk and started crawling towards it through the grass … I have to say that this caused me to get out of the car with my camera. There was nothing on earth that would have prevented me from getting a shot of one of these all American boys getting speared onto the end of sizeable elk rack. Disappointingly, parental responsibility intervened and they were noisily summoned back to the car after ten yards or so.
Had dinner with Rob and Carol as a farewell to Waterton; had a really great stay. As we were heading for a really early start in the morning, we decided just to head out of town this evening and start the process of the three hour drive up to Calgary and either get a room half way up the road or just crash out in the car on the way. Elected for the latter; ill advisedly as it transpired as it got very cold in the middle of the night and we had to run the engine a couple of times to re-heat!
Monday 3rd October, 2005
Drove down into Claresholm at about 8am this morning for breakfast and stopped at Ron’s Diner. Plunked down in the corner at a table next door to a whole bunch of good natured cowboys playing liar dice.
It was a bizarre place; mothers and kids coming in for breakfast, various travellers and seemingly local regulars … including best of all a guy in a Village People outfit, complete with shiny leather short jacket AND a shiny leather cap with the chain around the peak. The old camera finger was twitching at this oddments and variety but I’d left it in the car so no luck!
It was a really ‘happening’ little diner and for the next hour we had bottomless coffees for $1.50 and a couple of eggs and a mountain potato waffles for $3.95.
It’s a clear, flat road and as we left it started snowing ... that fine icy snow … winter is just around the corner I these parts (and as I write this the television news has just announced that there was a foot of Snow in Pincher Creek last night … just north of Waterton – so we got out just in time !)
We arrived Calgary in good time and had a remarkably easy entry to the airport and car-dump … sorted our bags and checked the trip meter on the car –1250km driven on this leg.
No problems with the flight to Victoria; a friendly Air Canada service, which arrived well on time. We only caught the odd glimpse of the Rockies on the way … and of the islands around Vancouver as we approached; the rest of the country was covered in cloud.
Victoria basked in sunshine – quite unexpectedly and after we’d collected the car we decided to have a look around Sidney which is just along the coast from Victoria. There were three second hand bookshops and a really cool gallery called the Peninsula Gallery which had Robert Bateman’s paintings and some huge carvings of whales, done in maple.
We checked out a couple of possibilities for B&Bs locally .. and there were some superb options with end-of-season deals which brought their prices down to a simlar level as what we now know to be the rather expensive hostel option at Waterton (which was nonetheless, the cheapest option there.)
Anne has hankered after the Buttchart Gardens since she was young and so we decided to take advantage of the weather which is forecast not to hold at all, and arrived at 4pm with just an hour and a half to have a look round. The light was perhaps a little bit low … but the colours were superb. The maples are pretty well cooked to perfection all yellow and red, but some of the other bushes seem a little bit slow.
I took a quick swing round the Japanese garden which was tucked away in deep shad but which was nonetheless spectacular and then headed for the sunny parts of the garden to catch the light. I kept hearing these odd thumping noises nearby as I was photographing but wan’t really alerted to what it was until a lady hurried past me and commented that you really needed a crash-hat with these crows around! Eh? But on investigation there were about 30 crows who were systematically working their way through the windfall apples (quite small and hard probably some form of crab apple and were flying up in the air and dropping them on to the concrete stage of the open-air theatre, on the concrete paths and frequently dropping them on the tin roof of a shed nearby … which was the noise.
Headed into downtown Victoria and found the Helms Inn which is ideal; big room, kitchenette, chairs and WiFi on a good deal; its also really close to the Inner Harbour so convenient for Anne to explore the town.
Finally got contact with Eric at the University and arranged for a morning meeting at 11.30 up at UVic. Also got a contact with one of his masters students and arranged to meet Lisa for a pint or two at a local bar the next evening.
Took dinner at Chandlers a restaurant along the Inner Harbour which has been awarded best seafood restaurant for what seems like ever since time began; anyway it was good and pretty reasonably priced ... we had a shared seafood platter which included seared lobster tails, salmon, crab and stuffed mushrooms. Back along the front past the Empress hotel and the Government building … both monuments to colonial rule and nonetheless impressive.
Tuesday 4th October, 2005
My meeting is at 11.30 this morning and involves a half hour drive out to UVic, so we decided to take a quick turn around Victoria. Down to the market square which was just beginning to waken up and features such glories as a fantastic second hand camera shop and the worlds only Condom Emporium … which judging by the exterior has something for every size, shape, colour and errr, taste.
Its a busy place with a number of tourist shops all sporting their own stuffed bears at the doorway .. or stuffed moose and even a bear dressed up as a Mountie.
The journey to UVic was a simple one; out of the hotel, left on to Blanschard (for about twenty minutes) right onto Mackenzie (for about ten), park by the atheletics stadium and walk for about two. All in all dead easy and well done to Anne for finding such a well located Inn – right in the heart of the town and linked by the major routes.
The Sedgewick building was quite a labyrinth of passages rooms labs … and builders, but I eventually found Room 132, and within that Eric the leader of the Rocky Mountain Repeat Photography Project.
As head of the ES department, he’s up to his eyes in strategy, students, builders and his own particular interests which revolve around ecological restoration. The repeat photography is an important component of this.
We grabbed some lunch along at the University Club which was ideal; a very civilised haven right in the middle of the block, with hummingbirds darting around the bushes and feeding on carefully placed (so you couldn’t see them) feeders.
We had a bout an hour and it was enough this first time to get a feel for the project, scoff a bowl of soup with a sandwich and then wander back across. Eric then presented me with a copy of his new book on Ecological Restoration; yippee I thought. Its published by MIT and as such looks exactly like any other academic textbook … but in fact having settled down to it some hours later, he writes extremely well and the message comes across in a very clear way … and on the chapters I’m interested in, it of course draws in the repeat photography instead of filling the pages with graphs and diagrams.
Eric had another meeting at 1 and we parted agreeing to meet again tomorrow at 3pm and I drove back to the hotel. Anne had just arrived back from her explorations and was ensconced in front of the telly with a carry-out sandwich and coffee.
It was half past one; ‘There’s a whale watching boat leaving at 2’ says Anne … Well, there was a bit of a scramble, a quick phone call and then a fifteen minute power-walk along the inner harbour to where we could pick up the launch.
About twenty people on board this boat which once it cleared the harbour, floored itself to a cruising speed of about 35knots; it went at a hell of a lick, slightly worryingly it has to be said, as there are masses of floating logs and other timber debris littering the sea, Our shipmates were mostly German which sent out immediate warning signals about the hot flasks and cookies.
Along the way, our scientist, ‘Natalie Bsc’ chattered away through a microphone about safety, toilets, refreshments and `booees` - bouys to you and i and god knows what to a German … and she also mentioned a little bit about sea mammals. (Why is it they have Rowts instead of Routes and Booees instead of Buoys?)
We arrived off San Juan island where there were a distant scattering of other boats and zodiacs all well apart. The odd splash and fin around the place indicated the presence of a considerable number of Orcas … about 90 they reckoned. As we drifted along, right in front of the boat a whale poked its head up out of the water and ‘spy-hopped’ the boat for a few seconds, before sinking back below the surface.
Inevitably, the bows became quite crowded with clambering Germans, cameras and even include one guy who decided to lie down across the deck so he could hold his camera still … he soon came up with a better idea after he’d been trampled underfoot a couple of times. Having been eased to the back by a series of storm-troopers and shot-putters, the photography was not going quite according to plan ... until I spied that there was a narrow deck extending out over the bows around which they had formed a respectful circle. With the elbows well sharpened and a few ‘excuse mes’ and ‘mind-your backs’ I got out onto it … only to find a beach towel carefully draped over the railings at the end, (joking) but it offered a grandstand view of the proceedings which I hung onto for the first half of the trip in spite of elbows in the back and people trying to poke their cameras over my shoulder. For the second spell I elected to try and get some shots of this melee, preferably with some prize German beef in the foreground … all of which went well until I was turfed from my commanding position by the crew … any way, I got one shot I wanted of a young whale playing around in front of the boat.
Back on dry land, I had a meeting at 6pm with Lisa one of the masters students at UVic and she had chosen the venue (‘OK, I’m just trying to think of somewhere, where you might appreciate the beer … lets meet at The Swan; Wharf and Pandora’). We duly renezvoused. She having arrived a bit earlier than me and had been accosting various lone males as they wandered by.
Anyway, faintly chewy beer but an interesting couple of hours. Lisa had abstracted some of the original survey information from the boundary surveys of the early 20th Century and applied this to a modern repeat survey to document the change in vegetation … supplementing this with the Bridgeland and Wheeler photographs.
Back to the Helm’s Inn at 8.
Wednesday 5th
Not a massively inspiring day; raining outside and the usual procession of joggers, power walkers, itinerants, dog walkers and as Anne observed, a gorilla. All looked decidedly bedraggled. Consequently I decided to catch up on a serious internetting this morning … catching up on various e-mails, checking out a few references but we finally underway down the town via Fisherman’s wharf at about 10 o’clock. Drove out along the south coast of the island watched turnstones, black oystercatcher and harlequin ducks around the rocks, saw some of the emerging and obviously very expensive houses with sea-frontage and then came inland at UVic and took Highway 1 up towards Nanaimo with the intention of getting to Duncan ‘City of Totems’.
It didn’t quite go according to plan; one turn too early and we took the (very) scenic route through Cowichan Bay gazed longingly at the pier and the fish and chip shops but pressed on with Totems in mind. It soon became apparent that the people sign posting the tourist trail had lost interest after Cowichan … and we then discovered that we only had a very mickey-mouse map supplied with the car. After half an hour we had to cut the losses and get back for a fish supper on the quay.
Cowichan was a busy little place even at this time of year and people we spoke to testified to the fact that this was very quiet. They were all really friendly; the lady who was selling fresh fish, the lady in the book shop and the native artist in the boat shed at the Maritime Centre.
Herb Rice, carver of masks and plaques, looks like a native Indian but his manner and accent indicated he had travelled widely and had no hang-ups. His market aside of the odd tourist plaque of ravens or bald eagles or salmon seemed to be bespoke panels for the wealthy … and I should think he makes a fortune on this.
Aside in his workshop were two full sized doors, made from yellow cedar panels with a frame of Douglas. The Douglas was remarkable and it was this that sparked the conversation; the grain was so tight, and very obviously different to the usually available timber that I asked what it was. Herb described it first as ‘Douglas’ but when I pressed him, he described it as ‘old growth Douglas’ in explanation of the tight grain. I can imagine it is the best of materials to work with. The grain spacing was approximately 1mm apart and the frames six inches by two.
He makes his own tools, relying mostly on a short knife with which to pare the timber away in slivers. Its quite a fine steel blade set into a handmade, rough (probably yellow cedar) handle.
Alongside him in the workshop there was a traditional boat building ‘programme’ or course under way with a number of students working with a boatbuilder to produce a little pram-nosed dinghy … it looked like larch or pine perhaps on oak. Quite strangely they were building it inverted, with the keel secured at the top of a series of cut sections and were working down either side, measuring out the planks in pairs as they went.
The exhibit out on the pier showed contained a series of archive photographs of Cowichan during its pioneer and logging days and also an exhibit of various styles of boat and outdoor motor. Right there occupying one of the cases was a ‘British Seagull 40+’ outboard of the same vintage and style as we have at home with all the history noted alongside.
We ate at the Cod Rock Café; a huge bowl of fresh halibut, with prawns and clams served with fries and coleslaw made up a dish called ‘The Mates Plate’… all for about a fiver.
With my meeting back at UVic looming we jumped into the car and set off back down the road arriving at just about 3 o’clock.
Anne at this point headed off for the bus as she wanted to check out the quilts and samplers at the museum of BC and I went in to meet up with Graham (self confessed computer geek) who is applying various methods to try to register oblique archive photographs on to GIS and Trudi, the Rocky Mountain project photographer and PhD student studying aspects of Visual Anthropology (ask away … I had to!).
It was a useful meeting. We were joined at some point by Eric who was generally busy with meetings and builders etc etc and also by Adrienne who is another of the masters students.
I got a sift through the technological work of the project and the most amazing scans and re-takes which they are accumulating ... and managing
Eric had left a message back at the hotel for us, which of course we hadn’t received inviting us over for supper, which was really kind and I accepted on the proviso that I would link up again with Anne before we were due to convene.
I stayed at the department until just after 5 and gained some really useful knowledge.
Back through the late afternoon traffic to the hotel and found Anne who had received the general gist of the message but had failed to grasp that it was supposed to happen in 20 minutes time! A bit of a scramble and at 6pm we swung in by the liquor store to purchase a contribution to the proceedings … except it closed at 5:59:59 and although the guy was cheerily tilling up inside, he wasn’t about to respond to me hammering on the door like an alchy.
Had a great evening with Eric and Stephanie and for half of it, two year old Logan … who was a remarkable little chap for his age.
We got back to the hotel at about 9.45.
Thursday, 6th October, 2005
Woke up at the usual time; about 7am and brought the various internet bits and bobs up to the mark. We packed and stashed the bags in the luggage room at the hotel and decided to have another ‘go’ at Duncan while we still had the car and took a drive up Highway 1 for about 60 km. It had looked mildly promising in Victoria first thing but as we went north, the rain increased and by the time we were in Duncan and in search of Totems, it was raining.
The Duncan totems were quite disappointing, I suppose not helped much by the day. In themselves they were quite distinct and beautiful works of art but the setting was very distracting … but may be a deliberate way of integrating traditional culture into the 20th Century.
We returned the car at about 1 after just about 300km in the few days and got ourselves dropped once again back at the hotel to further re-group and then wander into town for a final look around.
Anne decide to walk us the scenic route to the ferry so we went a block up from the waterfront trundling our roll-along luggage as we went. I was in the lead with two tow-alongs. Steadily we gained ground on a girl walking along in front of us. She had quite a tight skirt on and there was little she could do to speed up but did her best to keep ahead of us. Steadily I gained …. rumble … rumble … from the wheels of the roll-along. She quickened her pace, I kept up with her, expecting her at some point to ‘pull in to the side’ to let us past ... but no, she kept going, both of us chatting away right on her shoulder. I could literally have reached across and touched her but she kept going …. fast …. eyes fixed on the next junction, still a hundred yards or so ahead.
We embarked through customs at about 5 this afternoon, with a sailing time of 6. Although we were all booked up we were inevitably some of the last passengers to get to the terminal and … so we were the last to embark and consequently didn’t have completely first choice of the seating. We sat opposite a large American lady reading a book called Burial at Sea by Paul Garrison … I was imagining that its about a large American lady who smothers her poor hen-pecked husband on a ferry between Victoria and Seattle and throws his body over the side to feed the killer whales … but then again it may not be …. she didn’t look the sort who was going to get into either irony or humour.
Anyway, that`s the Canadian soujourn over ... The rest of the North American phase takes place in The States.
We crossed a couple of wakes in Puget Sound but apart from this it was a smooth crossing. We shared a ‘Salmon Basket’ from the café; a coarsely smoked chunk of salmon served with a pot of Philadelphia cheese, a bagel and a bag of fresh apple segments. Duly scoffed and washed down with a bottle of Molson’s, as Anne said, ‘to settle the stomach’.
Docked on time, but with checked baggage, we were then in the last swathe permitted to leave the ship.
Spied Nicolette through the wire, but it was another fifteen or twenty minutes before we’d picked up our bags along a snake of a queue through the luggage room and then answered the young custom’s officer his questions.
This time it was ‘the eyeball’ that was interesting; he must spend hours in front of a mirror perfecting his blank, unblinking stare. You meet his eyes and wonder in the seconds that pass whether hes just asked you a question. You return his stare and that makes him think of one; ‘Do you have a problem, Sir?’ So you avoid his gaze … but, it doesn`t make his concern for whether you have a problem or not go away.
In order to avoid maintaining his eye contact, I decided that his haircut was far more interesting than his eyes and studiously flicked my gaze around the clean shaven sides of his head and even glimpsed the polished back of his head. The only place where hair was allowed to grow … and not for very long even there, would be on the skyward facing surface. He looked like a slightly chunky, clipped and less yellow version of Bart Simpson.
The ‘home’ we thought we were going to stay at with Nicolette (which was a matter of minutes walk from the ferry terminal) was sold a couple of weeks ago … so now we shifted to forty five minutes the other side of Seattle, it was really kind of Nicky to come and collect and chauffer us across town.
A welcome cup of tea and a luxurious old fashioned bed were all we needed tonight.
Friday, 7th October, 2005
Nicky had a meeting at Beadworld at about 10 am so we breakfasted at a nearby mall with a huge bookstore and associated coffee shop which was hot wired and ideal for getting back onto the e-mails.
Breakfast consisted of that slightly stodgy standby favourite of the Americanos; French Toast, served up with lashing of Maple and a creamy mocha.
We were running late but then cruised in by Beadworld, Nicky’s amazing beadshop with every size, type, colour and creed of bead. Anne decided she was going to make a necklace and I, not really knowing how long it would take … but you know me, anything for a quiet life … decided to make one too.
The first part of the process takes a long time and that is the selection of what you’re actually going to string-up. There’s glass, there’s pottery, there’s wood, there’s stone, there’s metals … and it goes on.
Anyway once the crucial selection had been made, we both settled down at a table. Needless to say Anne’s was an ambitious project, with three strands, bunches of beads, lumps of metal, while mine a fairly simple symmetrical affair.
I guess that I was finished up after about an hour or so … all strung and finished.
It as a cracking day outside so Nicky and I went off downtown and Anne remained ensconced in beadwork.
I was keen to check out the Totem pole in Pioneer Square which features on a postcard I bought some months ago. We parked near the rather leafy old centre of Seattle and there it is 102 years after my postcard image. Close scrutiny reveals that it’s a replica, the rotten older one was torched some years ago and this one re-instated on the spot. The big difference I suppose are the trees which now dwarf the totem and shade the rest of the square. Most of the building remain, but one which features just in the corner of my pc had to be demolished after an earthquake in 1949.
Just nearby is the bookshop owned by David Ishii; a fantastic store and we were able to chat with David about the history of the totem and he fished out some references from his bookstock. He was wildly enthused by the project and took us across to a little postcard shop just across the old Mall and introduced us to the owner, Mary Patterson.
Chatted with Mary for some time and eventually rummaged through the vast stock of cards she has filed away. I bought a few American cards for reference and also a really nice one of Loch Ericht with some cattle standing in the water – probably before the dam was built. Sadly another shop owner, in the same Mall was away at a trade fair as his shop looked fantastic with posters, postcards (and ephemera).
We returned to Beadworld just after three in the afternoon and Anne had not long finished her creation and had really enjoyed her focussed and creative day.
Nicky had another meeting to attend and we rode along shotgun, getting dropped off at a Mall nearby, where we decided to tackle the thorny issue of the mobile phone not working and as a major step forward bought a throw away model for $20 and a load of minutes, so that we can begin to join the telephone age once again.
Picked up at 5.30 and as we cruised round the city watched the sun set on a fantastic day in Seattle. Took a few shots on the way round, but nothing spectacular. We had supper at a Thai restaurant (soft shelled crabs) and got back to the house at about 9.30
Saturday 8th October, 2005
This morning’s pack-up was a hurried one. We were up, out and off all in about 25 minutes … once again along to the bookstore, its warmth, WiFi and French toast.
We hit the airport at about 10.30 and checked in automatically, which was a bit of an adventure as we hadn’t done full automation before, but it worked well enough. The flight was uneventful, with relaxed gum-chewing stewardesses plying soft drinks … or alcohol at a cost.
The coast near Seattle was shrouded in clouds but we got a fair overview of the city as we drew away … and of the various islands along Puget Sound. It’s a beautiful day. Not what was forecast at all; we’ve been really lucky.
We had a quarter of an hour to wait for the car to be prepared and during that time Anne phoned Claire on the new mobile.
We got onto the Highway immediately and took signs for San Fran … and then settled on ‘Golden Gate Bridge’; it’s the slightly longer way round but decided we’d do it. The weather is FANTASTIC. Surprisingly cold air, clear blue skies and sunny.
By some good or bad fortune we ended up going right smack through the middle of San Francisco … on a Saturday afternoon … on a day when what seemed like the whole nation was out basking in the reflected glory of the American Navy. With parts of the fleet alongside and the air force doing their stuff noisily and it has to be said spectacularly overhead, thousands and thousands of San Franciscans wandered about on the side walks in carnival proportions.
The streets, while not quite gridlocked, moved really slowly and certainly didn’t benefit from having the Moores navigating their way through the proceedings, switching through four lanes of traffic at short notice (and back on occasion) and slowing further the already slow procession of cars by dangling out of the window with a camera. Lots of tooting.
We drove past Piers 1 to 20 something along the length of the town. Persil-white Naval uniforms strolled down the street and formations of F15s thundered over the bay, spiralling vertically to tens of thousands of feet high and then plummeting back down to bay level over the bridges. All the rooftops had people on them and all the windows were lined along miles of the street.
We persevered. It must have taken an hour to get through and then we broke a little free and undertook another spectacular cross traffic manoeuvre which really did attract some attention as we cut from the outside lane to get to the viewing pull-off for the Golden Gate bridge.
The bridge is a magnificent art deco structure, with attendant kiosks and booths in the same style. Loads of people; mainly oriental but with a few Russians as well. I spoke with a Russian couple who moved the SF some years ago and had come out on a bus tour. They described their disappointment in faltering and heavily accented English with the fact that the tour had been totally booked out by Koreans and they were unable to talk or understand anything that was going on. They took our picture for us in front of the bridge.
Down below the main viewing platform was some very moderate interpretation but one whole panel was assigned to a 1932 picture by Ansel Adams of the Golden Gate before the bridge … sadly they had not sought to repeat the piece and simply made the point in a short caption that there was life before the bridge.
The bridge crossing was smooth and the traffic, by this time slightly faster. We pulled off once again to the other viewpoint which afforded a better view of the City and of Alcatraz. To look at it, you wonder why it was that people couldn’t simply swim off it ashore … it doesn’t look any further, perhaps less than somewhere like the Isle of May.
Gazing around the hill tops on this side, we could see various congregations of cars and photographers taking what turns out to be the classic view of the bridge … but how to get there was not immediately apparent. Tentative forays down the roads of Marin County and then an unmarked track up into the hills from the other side was our route, but from up there we could see the route back to the Highway and it turned out that an awkward left hander … almost a hairpin turn, across a couple of lanes of traffic would have got us there more directly.
Looking down at this classic view which reminds you of everything from Starsky and Hutch to Dirty Harry was just incredible. As the sun began to dip, the colours of the bridge deepened; it went beyond Golden to a deep firey red.
We left as the south end began to fade in intensity. After a minor hiccup we found the route over the Richmond Bridge to the east side of the bay. Richmond is the double decker one with the east-bound and west-bound traffic on different levels – perhaps the one that collapsed a bit in the last major earthquake?
Finding Berkeley was straight forward but it took another hour and a half to find suitable digs. It’s a busy weekend here and there are weddings, conferences and tourists to accommodate.
After a number of false starts, we checked into the last room at a travellodge and crossed the street to get supper at a small Italian restaurent which it has to be said was going like a fair. We got there slightly before 9, had great food but by 9.30 there was ourselves and another couple of tables … and that was it. America goes to bed early.
Back to Wifi and picture download.
Sunday, 9th October, 2005
It dawned a beautiful day, once again, sharp and clear and sunny.
We decided to check out the town a bit, grab some breakfast and then recce the Art Museum in preparation for the panel discussion this afternoon.
As it turned out, once we had the bags packed and the rooms cleared, we then discovered a flat tyre. There was sufficient air to be able to crawl the 50yards down the road to the garage and review the situation. A quick check revealed a large screw sticking out of the tread and leaking slowly. Option A which was by far my preferred way forward - involved someone fixing it, but sadly was a non starter due to it being Sunday … Option B; simply change the tyre while C seemed intriguing. I’d always fancied trying out one of those aerosol cans full of stuff that repairs and inflates your tyre all in one go and as a can was available for $5 it was the obvious way to go.
Rummaged out the leatherman and unscrewed the screw from the tyre, shook the can, hitched it up to the valve and pressed the button. The instructions are then to drive immediately for 3 to 5 miles. We jumped in and did exactly what it said on the can! And navigated ourselves out of town, back in to town and ended up at a parking space at the top of the town near the museum and went in search of breakfast …which had now become lunch.
Strangely there was nowhere very appealing and after a wander round, we opted for ‘Café Milano’ on the basis that it was the only one that was hooching with people. Inside we discovered it was a student venue; lots of studies going on at tables alongside juices and cokes, earnest discussions over text books and a general buzz as people came and went. Its odd to note that this is Sunday … is before midday … and that these are students. Not making any judgements here … but the Americans are certainly studious.
Strolled in by the art museum on the way back to the car, found our way into the Yosemite in Time exhibition and were able to have a good look around it. Two guys breezed in as we were doing so and I identified them as the photographers Mark and Byron. They were deep in conversation, discussing the set up and I resisted introducing myself at this stage … but it was nonetheless rewarding to eavesdrop.
We did hook up for a chat before the programme started, which was useful.
There were several things very noticeable about the afternoon. The presentations were slick, the equipment worked and the venue was first class and the subject matter was, of course right on the mark.
Rebecca Solnit, the author of the book kicked off and handed on to Mark who introduced Third View with support and clarifications from Byron. To follow, someone gave a presentation about the changing perception of Yosemite, explained through early paintings and photographs which was interesting. Finally, someone else delivered what seemed to be a bit of a rant about John Muir and his early perception of Indians; it seems he formed an opinion, widely quoted and not altogether complimentary … but equally in the context of the time, it was not offensive. I suspect that this additional demonstration of the passage of time and change was not missed by everyone.
I managed to record the whole thing on the iPod which was a major achievement and having checked briefly … its all audible!
Reception and book signing afterwards … and very good nosh it was too ! Arranged to meet up with Byron again later in the week – probably Thursday and with Mark at the end of the month in Tempe, Arizona.
Outside, the tyre remained in tact and the afternoon beautiful. We decided to leave town and get ourselves down to Santa Cruz. It all went fairly well and we only ‘hitched’ slightly in SC itself, when we couldn’t find our way to ‘Downtown’. We eventually took directions for Boardwalk and found good, cheap lodgings on the way. Our promenade out on the wharf and into a couple of bars met with the same answer … ‘Sorry, we’re closed’ … well, it was after 9 o’clock and this is America.
We finally found an beach front bar who agreed to serve us with beer and ‘Skins’ (jacket potatoes) which filled the gap well.
Monday 10th October, 2005
A fantastic morning; quite cold but really bright and I took a wander back down the water front first thing and took some shots of the palm trees and the bay. We were due to drop into the Patagonia Outlet store on the edge of town to stock up on some kit and it opened at 10.
Before we left, Anne made a few phone calls to sort out accommodation in Yosemite for tonight and tomorrow. There had been various recommendations in the last couple of weeks, regarding an hotel called The Ahwahnee, (The magnificent Ahwahnee, The beautiful Ahwahnee was how it was described …) and it seemed like a great idea … particularly in the aftermath of a cold night spent in the car. However, scrutiny of the tariff sheet on line made me decidedly nervous and with Anne in charge of the booking anything might have happened.
As it was, I heaved a sigh of relief when she announced that we were booked into the Curry Camp … in a tent … but that she had gone for the more expensive option, which was a heated tent!
There remained the option of The Ahwahnee for breakfast.
We found our way to the Farmers exchange and found a coffee bar and sat out in the sun supping great coffee, eating pastries and catching up on journals.
The Patagonia shop duly opened at 10 and we set too, getting a number of bits and bobs for immediate use and others for home.
As we left Anne, decided to raise the issue of the tyre … I’d completely forgotten … we’d driven a hundred and something miles and it was holding up fine. However, the female logic works differently and so it was that we ended up in Lloyd’s tyre emporium, just along the road and parting with $20 to get the thing sorted.
It took half an hour and offered another opportunity to lie around in the sun. It was only just as matters were drawing to a close that I wandered into the office and found, on the wall, a couple of pictures of the outside of the building taken in 1940 when ‘Lloyd’ first set himself up.
I took a couple of snaps of the images and then re-took them outside on the street … the first re-takes I’ve done for a few days.
We were bound for Monterey for a look at the aquarium and Anne also fancied a look at 17-mile drive as a snapshot introduction to the Big Sur coast … so it was turning into a busy day.
We drove through the main food producing country of California, fields of strawberries, artichokes and groups of pickers all working out in the heat, mostly in hoodies with them pulled right up over their heads.
We parked in Monterey at about 1 and went straight in to the Aquarium; SUPERB.
Massive tanks, loads of space … everything from jellyfish to sharks to sea otters. Tanks of kelp beds, deep water habitats and all presented with very clever lighting … either natural light channelled in or in the deep water tanks very strong strobes to pick out the specimens. In the background, sufficient to quell the babble of visitors, background music … slow and sonorous for the deep stuff and somehow appropriate to the various other exhibits. The shark section avoided the Jaws theme and went for a variety of native chants to highlight the position of the shark in various cultures; Amazon indians, Haida, Maori and Aboriginal.
They have an aviary with various wading birds in a wetland habitat (which was a little strange), a touch pool with some fairly frisky rays hurtling around getting patted and petted at every turn and a room like a conservatory where every minute or so you get the sound of the roaring of the waves and then gallons of water crashes over the casing and into the rock pool exhibit surrounding the glass outside. Its as if you become a rock in a rockpool.
The kelp tank must be about forty or so feet deep … certainly on two storeys … and the inhabitants surge up and down in the tank in front of you.
At regular times they fed the sea otters … which has the potential to be a bit of a circus event. It was bordering on this but I stayed on the lower floor where I could watch them as they came underwater and avoided the view of the keeper with the microphone up above.
The otters are provided with toys and they have tunnels to explore in their tank. At feeding, they are given tubes stuffed with fish and they roll around shaking the tubes in order to get the fish out … I don’t think there was a way they could use ‘tools’ (stones) like they do in the wild, but later we saw a few offshore lying ‘tied off’ to kelp and working away at shells on their stomachs.
We stayed rather longer than anticipated at Monterey; it’s a fabulous place.
We then found our way along the 17 mile drive … in hindsight what we should have done was the 5 mile coast bit and skipped the endless switchbacks and junctions and speed limits of the rest which took us in to some really salubrious real estate and through Pebble Beach, with its world famous golf course.
We eventually found our way on to the right road to get slightly north and then east for Merced and Yosemite.
It was not an easy road at all and we even had trouble in Merced, trying to find the right road out to the Park. Amazing how poorly signposted it all was and after several stops to ask directions and a final pass through a junction, we eventually saw a half obscured sign for Yosemite.
Approaching the park in darkness, we became aware of the winding road working its way into the valley and large pale patches up on the sides against the night sky… large areas of pale grey granite, bare of all but occasional trees.
Inside the park, we drove through the entrance archway, where the road is carved out under two massive boulders and headed up to Yosemite village.
The darkness is complete in here, but in the light of the half moon it is just possible to pick out the massive gorge, sides of the valley. We drove up the south side and could look across at El Capitan and pick out the pinpricks of lights on the face where four separate climbing parties were scaling the wall.
At Camp Curry, I checked in at the desk, had to read and sign a very prescriptive statement about ‘Bear discipline’ which involved the storage of anything vaguely scented in metal storage lockers provided with each tent. This included any food items but also any toiletries … even water bottles that the bears might be able to associate with humans and so with food.
Given that this was pitch dark and about ten o’clock at night, and that we didn’t have a torch and that our tent was way up the top of the camp away from the cars (Tent No 465), Mrs Moore was in reasonable humour as we stumbled our way up though the camp trundling our luggage.
The tent was fine, they’d left a light on in it and we’d soon got everything inside. I nipped off the our bear locker to put a couple of bags inside and then went back down to the car to move my camera gear up to the tent.
As I padded quietly through the camp, it was almost a spiritual experience; you could hear very little other than a general buzz of muffled conversation from the masses of other tents. It was like walking through a huge cathedral at night, the detail of which was gradually becoming clearer as my eyes adjusted. The night’s sky bright and brilliant overhead, framed by the valley rim about 3000 feet above. There were occasional people out enjoying the tranquillity of the scene, standing gazing up at the stars … and as I walked along this hallowed trail in the general direction of where I thought we’d left the car, I had the bright idea of clicking the button on the key fob in order, as soon as I got with in range of having the car lights flash to guide me to it.
Now the trouble is, that in America, there are a number of buttons on these key fobs and, (from the top) they unlock or lock the car, open the boot and the button at the bottom is red (which you can see if its daylight) and its marked ‘Panic’. It’s the one you never press as it sets the car off into flashing lights and honking horns for three minutes quite possibly activating a hotline to the National Guard in the process.
There’s nothing you can do to interrupt it until its run its term.
Well, need I go on ? … I think I’d better;
Unfortunately as this tranquil and spiritual; experience was overwhelming me ... I clicked the worng button.
HONK … (oh, S@£t !!!). Runs up to car frantically clicking any (and probably every) HONK, button I can press HONK, to try to get it to shut up; HONK, nothing. HONK … lock the car. HONK, Unlock the car, HONK. Get in the car HONK, HONK. Start the car, HONK, Reverse the car, HONK … HONK … HONK … HONK. Park the car again, HONK. Get the instruction booklet out of the glove locker, HONK (at least ten times). Read the booklet, more HONK. Follow instructions, HONK, HONK, HONK. Shut door, lock the car (HONK) unlock the car, Eventually …. blissful silence returns to Yosemite and, from the hundreds of happy campers at Camp Curry ... my new friends ... I received a round of applause !
I took a fairly wide detour away from the vicinity, very quickly (!) and duly returned to tent to find wife ensconced by the heater. The news that, errr … well … yes … it was our car alarm going off, was met with frosty disbelief. But by this time the humour of the whole situation had fully overcome me and, within the sanctuary of the tent, I was rolling about the place, I thought it was so funny.
Tuesday, 11th October, 2005
Well it all starts to happen here at 6 o’clock and this morning it was with a piercing scream from one of our fellow campers … not sure what it was about but while much shorter than a car alarm, it had the same effect. Everyone is awake but no ones clapping.
We went down to the dining hall at Curry and the place was mobbed. Hundreds of people, mainly school children, queuing for their breakfast, interspersed with various crusty climbers who were keeping them in check in no uncertain terms. It was pretty clear pretty quickly that it was shape up or starve and the old rucking and mauling instincts soon kicked in until I had harvested a plateful from the dwindling supplies.
On the way back from the hall, the sun had begun to bathe the far side of the valley in light and the huge shaded cliff above us had a halo along its edge.
We set off fairly sharp and parked near Yosemite Village. From there we walked down to the Ansel Adams Gallery. Some quite nice books in stock and three of Adams’ original prints (at about $15,000 each!). Along to check out the Ahwahnee; its great stone and wooden structure set deep in woodland. Inside the rooms are large, very square and it has nothing of the character of say the McDonald Lake Hotel up at Glacier, though it is probably a lot smarter. A very quiet atmosphere inside with various people sitting quietly on the sofas, reading the newspapers … or a few of them working on laptops … (although there was no internet hook-up)
We drove along to what would have been Yosemite Falls, had it been falling and hiked around the trail – nothing too strenuous … probably a couple of miles or so. Past the falls and on the return leg, there was a little bit of interp featuring a picture of some people on a a Sierra Club outing from the 1940s, who were tracing an excavated mill laide. In the interim the track had been lost … it seemed slightly carelessly, as this should have been retained somewhere in living memory but from the shape of some fissures in a rock behind one of the people and a cursory look around, it was possible to re-take the image from nearby. This was the laide feeding a mill where John Muir worked for a couple of years as a woodcutter. It was his introduction to the area. Later on the trail was the site of the cabin he lived in at the time; no trace on the ground, and no photographic evidence of its remains forthcoming, so one has to rely on the plaque.
Along the road we parked beneath to towering El Capitan; 300 foot on near vertical granite and (very) careful scrutiny with binoculars revealed the climbers on various routes, each hauling their massive sacks of gear up behind them.
Anne had a hankering to touch the bottom of the wall and I had a hankering to avoid getting any rocks on my head from above, but anyway we took the short hike into the base of El Cap. A hot place with a good view back across the valley.
We also stopped for sometime at The Valley View; its just a roadside pull-off, but affords the most spectacular angle on the valley’s main features, there is also a marker nearby which shows the level of the floodwater of 1997 – a good 8 or 9 foot above the road suface and probably 15 above the present water level. It must have been a spectacular event.
By now the afternoon was drawing in a bit and we set off for Glacier point, by road, stopping at various locations on the way to photograph odd trees – particularly some large redwoods with a lime green lichen all up their trunks and arrived at Glacier at about 5.
I hadn’t realised but at Glacier Point you are directly above Camp Curry and literally lean over the railings and look straight down at the tent – I reversed the view when we got back down. Its at a height of about 8000 feet and was full of various people with exactly the same idea of watching, or recording the sunset. The breeze was starting up and as the valley filled with shadow and the shadow line gradually crept up Half Dome it became quite cold. There was one guy who had a massive pair of binoculars set up on a tripod and was watching the climbers. Two thirds of the way up, impossible to pick-up with the naked eye and only just possible through our own binoculars, a small team were working their way up the face.
One classic conversation took place within earshot; Man with binoculars happened to mention that someone had died on Half dome a couple of weeks before.
`Oh," says lady. "How did he die".
Man looks at her slightly sceptically (which is pretty advanced for an American!) ... "Well, I`m not sure, he probably slipped and wasn`t roped on properly ..."
"Yes, but how did he die?"
"Well, perhaps he hit hiss head when he slipped and couldn`t hold on".
"Oh" she says, the solution dawning "he hit his head". The fact that he then fell 1500 feet didn`t seem to have been a factor in her mind. Staggering.
We waited while the face deepened in colour then faded to pink and finally to an eerie grey … rattling of film and pixels all the way. Its about an hours drive back down in to the valley and it was obviously completed in darkness. We stopped off at the Ahwahnee for a bar supper; not brilliant. It was OK but really lacked atmosphere, Anne had some form of crab cake and I had a turkey wrap – not much different to those you buy in Tescos … but 5 times the price.
Back at the camp and after a repeat performance of the car alarm trick … though slightly earlier and this time with my wife in attandance (which didn’t really help matters at all. In fact her first response was to run off leaving me to quell the situation once again!). After this incident, I took the batteries out of the remote key fob just to be on the safe side.
It was really good to be able to lie in bed an hour or so later and be able to tut-tut two separate car alarms, though the first time, we did faintly worry that it might have been ours.
Wednesday, 12th October, 2005
We awoke this morning at about 7 to find that the power had been switched off for some end-of-season maintenance work so the place was freezing. We were up and out fairly quickly, took a few shots of the locale and then headed down to the diner for some coffee. This time avoiding the queued masses for breakfast.
We dropped in by the Ahwahnee once more in order to retake the 1930’s postcard image that I’d bought up in Seattle. The place was completey submerged in scrub and trees from that angle … sad really it must have been spectacular before. What was evident from the various paintings inside (painted by a Swede called Widforss) was that the Yosemite valley floor was relatively bare a century ago and that much of the scrub and trees have grown up in the interim under ‘wilderness’ management.
We set off immediately to drive the Tioga Road up and out of the park onto the Sierra Nevada through Twolumne (Twalomee apparently) Meadows. A long, slow haul up several thousand feet passed bare domes of rock with occasional trees sprouting from the cracks. We stopped at various places the most notable Tenaya Lake and went to the camera locations of Muybridge’s 1872 picture and the later pictures by Edward Weston and Adams. It’s a lovely location.
We then did a hike up to Dog lake, which got us to about 9250 feet and then to the lower of the domes at Lambert Dome which must have got us to 9500. The dome landscape is incredible parts of the rock polished like polished marble and other parts lumpy and granitic. Once we came down, we discovered that you weren’t supposed to go up there … so luckily we only read the signs on the way back down because it was great view from the top down over the meadows.
At Tioga Pass, the rock changes dramatically from the plain light grey granites to a very unstable red slate type and the scenery changes completely. We wound our way down on a new road dropping down from the summit in just a mile or two. Beside the road we finally caught up with some Autumn. Its strange but we were early for the fall in Vermont, and Quebec … even BC and Seattle but we’ve finally caught up. There were spectacular stands of aspen, backlit by the low sunlight.
Once clear of Tioga, within a few miles we were passing Bodie and then out onto a massive prairie landscape with thousands of head of cattle all grazing on the grassland. We also passed Mono Lake with its glistening white tufa formations on the shore
It was a long drive and we took a direct route through the hills which I think was the better option as there was less risk of being caught speeding above the sometimes ridiculous 15mph bends, or more commonly 35mph limits.
We arrived at Auburn and Tony O came down to the gas station at the Combie Road junction to guide back to his hill top home.
Inside, Gracie and Bogart, Tony’s two dogs, greeted us. Bogart, having had a bit of a disturbed upbringing … was deeply distrusting and in fact never stopped barking and growling whenever I was near the house. We were briefly reconciled when I happened to catch hold of his ear as he passed my chair at one point but as soon as I released him he was off again.
Thursday 13th October, 2005
Awoke to a glorious California morning on top of the hill at Chateau Ormsby on Timber Ridge. Outside the grasses are all parched brown and the area has a covering of old oaks eeking a meagre existence from the red clay soils.
It was going to be a hot one and the peace of it was only broken when I emerged from the room which was a signal for Bogart to take up his vigil.
I e-mailed Byron at Chico to suggest tentative arrangements for a meeting; my preference to meet today in the afternoon … with a fallback option of tomorrow. He telephoned within half an hour and agreed to this afternoon at 2 and I duly arranged to be underway at midday to make the drive. It’s a long way to Chico and I was advised that the best route was to stick to the interstate 49 South to 80 west to 99 North and two hours would do it. Having a number of other things to do I didn’t check any further. I made a purchase of the Second View book from the cheapest of the ABE options and am getting it delivered to John Fairbairn`s in Denver
We took a quick tour around the ‘Lake Of The Pines’ development with Tony, just down the hill from Summit Ridge. It’s an amazing self-contained country club with a housing community, mainly for retirees.
I set off for Chico at 12. Along the prescribed route but missed the intersection at Sacramento and an hour and a quarter later was still there trying find my way north. I followed the signs for 99, only to find that the only option was south. Somewhat frustrating is the polite way of putting it. Eventually found someone who could direct me and they passed on the vital information that ’99 north’ had to be reached along Interstate 5.
Once I was heading North it was just a matter of time and I sat back to absorb the outstanding delights of ‘Coast to Coast’ live Radio This is a radio station that I have heard intermittently over the past weeks but never for very long at a stretch. The contributions from across America can be surprising … and the way that the presenter manages the programme even more so. The subjects vary; today it was about administrative policy … and basically, if the presenter agreed with the view, you were allowed to speak, if he thought it was going in a way he didn’t agree with he cut off the caller, thanked them for their contribution and then trashed what they were saying. This I can only deduce, is the American version of Free Speech; in order to have it, you have to present a Radio show.
Other notable contributions heard on Coast to Coast included the caller who enquired of the presenter as to whether they had noticed anything strange about President Bush? (‘Errrr, please continue’ was I think the response) … ‘Well,’ she said, ‘its just that he’s been looking slightly different these last days and I just wondered whether perhaps someone may have ‘possessed’ him?’ Another program featured the agony aunt call-in which I think was run by a Dr Sylvia Brown, and include the poor girl who had been deserted by her fiancé of three years when she fell pregnant; He was branded a slimeball, she was told she didn’t need him anyway … and then, almost as an afterthought she was berated for having unprotected sex and bundled off the phone for the next caller. Live entertainment, American style!
I eventually arrived in Chico at about 3 after 168 miles, several false starts and finally being caught in a one-way system and unable to get to the building and parking lot I wanted to because I couldn’t find my way around the one-way.
I spoke with Byron and he advised me to shove the car into the first parking lot I encountered and he’d get me from there.
We finally met up outside the Chico State University administration building and retired to the cool quiet of his office on the second floor. We had a good couple of hours chat about re-photography in general, the Third View project in particular and some smaller projects Byron is beginning to work on.
I set off back at 5.30 … back to Auburn at 7.15 after driving about 100 miles – 68 less than on the way up mainly due to the fact that I took a glance at the map and then took the side roads. Back in about an hour and a half. Anne had had a ‘veg’ day and having read, birdwatched, written and lunched at the local pub. She did also find a massive pine cone which she was busy picking the sap off when I returned. The Drysdale determination is meaning that this is coming with us ... barbecued steaks for supper, cooked up by Tony and a pleasent evening outside in a gentle Bay breeze.
Friday, 14th October, 2005
Spent the initial hour or so computing, finishing off a couple of notes and drawing together some thoughts from yesterday’s foray to CSU.
Took a walk around the property with Tony mid morning and tried to visulaise the plans for the new house extension; an ideal location and an exciting project.
Around the five acres, turkey vultures overhead, several species of woodpecker dodging around the trees … and the most persistent of burrs sticking to legs and wedging themselves painfully inside shoes.
We set off to drive to Napa late morning. An easy enough drive down the interstate.
The ideas was to have a quick look over a couple of vineyards, hopefully try a bit of wine and then seek lodging for the night within reasonable reach of San Francisco for tomorrow’s flight.
We passed numerous signs and vines en route to St Helena, which is quite far up the valley and near to the older vineyards of Beringer and Sterling. We stopped at what was signed as a tourist information point which turned out to be a Chamber of Commerce. Back home we’ve been hearing much lately of the publicly supported trips made by the main movers and shakers in Aviemore who have visited America to learn from the slick and efficient procedures of Uncle Sam. Well, in St Helena, and in fact in Napa in general, we felt far more at home and were left wondering what ‘service’ for tourists the Chamber of Commerce was actually offering.
They didn’t have any suggested dwellings … they certainly weren’t going to offer any advice and when they did dig out a fax sent in by a local hotel noting its vacancies …. No, they didn’t make telephone enquiries on behalf of customers. They did however sit in the Chamber, looking VERY important indeed.
The theme was continued as we sought lunch at a café except importance was substituted with plain indifference and inattention. Its good to see it doesn’t always run like clockwork out here.
Time was only going to permit one vineyard tour and Anne opted for Sterling Vineyards which has a gondola access system up to the vines and also a view back down the valley. An interesting enough tour and then a taste of a variety of wines from pinot gris to cabernet to syrah, none of which, unfortunately quite hit the mark.
The vineyard closed at half five and we left about then. Just along the road was a sign advertising ‘California’s Old Faithful Geyser’ which had every possibility of being a bit of a flop but was it said it had featured in National Geographic and well, a geyser must be a geyser, right? (I’ve changed to ‘right?’ from ‘eh?’ as we’re not in Canada any more) and so we thought why not!
I asked the guy on the desk whether there was anything likely to happen in the next half hour (in terms of an ‘eruption’) and he said ‘oh, yeah, sure … every 15 to 25 minutes at the moment … and do feel free to wait around until half six or so if you’d like’.
I duly duly parted with the required $8 and passed through the gift shop.
Behind the shop and surrounded with bamboo thicket was a pond with a few rocks in it, reminiscent of the sort of thing that frequents the car parks of busy garden centres back in Britain … and indeed the surrounding ground did look like a car park as it had been extensively gravelled – presumably to cover the mud.
There were a number of benches, some with tables and also several deck-chair style loungers. To the left, what turned out to be a French couple were in a fairly intimate embrace, all squished into one chair and from the clinch, Monsieur’s head poked out with a camera clapped to his eye, intently watching the pond. To the right, there was another couple doing the same thing; Sitting there in chairs cameras at the ready.
Close scrutiny of the pond did reveal that there was a certain amount of steam issuing from the vicinity of the rocks piled in the middle and judging by the way the steam was blowing I headed round towards Madame and Monsieur and wandered about in an unobtrusive way. About fifteen minutes later, the cameras had been relaxed and a certain camaraderie was developing between the various expectant observers.
Then there was a hiss, the sound of an underwater fart and a fountain of water rose about three feet in the air and then subsided. There was tangible disbelief and laughter at this pathetic performance. Monsieur was anxiously scrolling his camera, to see whether he’d caught the event on film … and had, while the couple on the other side were almost paralysed with laughter because they’d missed it … but had a picture of the pond … Anne and I joined in with the general buzz but neither had bothered to try for a picture.
After another minute or so, ‘Old Faithful’ suddenly went off … like a fire hose (suspiciously like a fire hose); straight up in the air, quite possibly reaching the 60ft advertised on the hoardings outside.
I snapped away, Anne took a bit of video of the event and the others similarly made their recordings. In the trees above the gift shop there was a flock of starlings getting ready to roost and as the geyser subsided and the sun clipped the horizon, they flew around over head and then chucked themselves in to the bamboo to roost, crashing into the stems and then noisily rattling their way down into the foliage.
Almost as quickly as the geyser started, it stopped. I think we were the last to pull out of the car park, waving cheerily to our Auld Allies as they drew away.
We headed south. The usual battle about timing of arrival at the airport was brewing Anne likes to be there about three weeks in advance just in case … I don’t mind running along the tarmac and climbinga board an aircraft via the undercarraiage ... in fact I`ve always fancied doing that !!!.
The Bay Bridge was threatening closure for some repair work and the Golden Gates can be busy so for peace and contentment, the closer we got the better. We tried a couple of motels in Santa Somewhere or other; both were decidedly dodgy and the second one had never heard of internet and so it was that we ended up in the Best Western Corte Madera which is about 45 minutes from the airport (on a good day, with a following wind).
We crossed the Street to the ‘Pacific Catch bar; Anne tackled the Teriyaki and I had the mixed catch basket - cod, oysters and shrimp with chips and a side salad ... once again we joined a thriving hub at 9, but by 9.30 it was deserted.
Back at the hotel we made full use of the DSL hook-up.
Saturday, 15th October, 2005
By the time we awoke this morning the boys were already en-route to Denver.
A basket of continental breakfast items was delivered to the room at 7.30 and we left the hotel about an hour later. joining the highway immediately and cruising over the Golden Gates and through San Francisco without hitch. We dropped the car off after 1302 miles in the week.
Inside the airport, there was a hell of a queue with what appeared to be half of America going on vacation. We wandered a little bit to see where we needed to get to and eventually ‘stood in line’. During the wanderings I accidentally ran over the foot of one of the United ‘hosts’ and carried on without a second glance, which Anne (who was following), advised me it didn’t go down well. After we’d check our luggage, we then had to join a line for ‘security’ and due to the shortening timescale, we moved across to the First Class … and blow me the bloke who’s foot I (allegedly) ran over had shifted positions in the interim and was there checking the passes.
We arrived at Gate 86 with about 1 minute to spare before scheduled boarding … but as so often happen we stood around for another quarter of an hour while everyone was shepherded on board.
We had middle seats this time on quite a full aircraft and I sat next to a very tall Chinese businessman. He must have been 6 foot 6 and just after I stood up to adjust the air vents for Anne and my seats, he stood up, craned himself across and opened his own full blast.
An icy blast of cold air, very focussed bathed his seat. It was so focussed that the way I was sitting, I actually got a cold nose as the blast skimmed across me. Anne was soon complaining about the temperature and I had to make adjustments. My Chinese friend made no such move and gradually began to freeze. He was so cold he was sitting on his hands and every few moments he would crash his knees together. It was a bizarre performance … but I decided not to interfere, but to just sit back in the seat out of the blast of cold air, occasionally warming the end of my nose surreptitiously ... and watch with interest.
We got the bags and checked the boys’ arrival time. 6.24 this evening – about 4 hours away.
We caught the shuttle bus out to the Dollar car stand and managed to get the car upgraded slightly to a larger model with three tiers of seats. It doesn’t use space well because it has individual rather than bench seating … but with Ben, Nick and Harry to get on board, it’s the better option. We cleared the compound, dumped the bags in the car and the car in a visitor parking and caught the shuttle back to DIA … and there we sat for two hours.
In the main concourse, there’s a collaborative project including Native Americans (or First Nations, I think they’re more correctly referred to). It takes the form of studies and perceptions by them in the form of photographic images and paintings to demonstrate Indian culture in the 21st century. In the concourse, they have three ‘sound showers’ with 3 minutes of introductory narrative about aspects of the display and also backed with native chant and drumming. I would guess it was well funded and clearly aimed at commissioning native artists to ‘state their case’.
The boys cleared the aircraft and customs reasonably quickly. We made the transfer back across to the car and then embarked on Denver and a telephone guided drive across town to John and Lindsey’s and a reunion with the full Fairbairn team and one Maitland representative.
A few beers and a few steaks later, we were well into Colorado life.
Sunday, 16th October, 2005
Not too much to report of these days. The day is fantastic, the autumn colours are at their peak and we all slept fairly well and didn’t wake unduly early.
I’m writing this at Wellshire Golf Course in Denver … and the line-up in front of me at the driving range is (from my right) Nick, Danny, Ben, Harry, John and Tyler all knocking floating golf balls in to the lake. The backdrop to all this is an autumnal Colorado, and the snow dusted Rockies a way to the west.
We were due to lunch and swim at Ron and Sarah’s (Stacey’s parents) no more than a ten minute drive from John and Lindsey’s. ‘Left on University, left on Belview, left on Asbury’ says Danny.
We’re off at half-twelve and making good progress. But at quarter past one we’re still looking for Asbury. East on Belview and back. West on Belview – just in case I’d misheard (Anne was having doubts!) … then really far east on Belview and back.
On the way back, we saw Danny’s landrover sitting at a junction … of Belview and Albion. (Ahhhh, Albion !!!)
Danny’d phoned to find whether we’d left and John had reported ‘About 40 minutes ago’.
The pool felt all the better for the plunge.
A delicious lunch out in the sun and at the back of 2 an important football match on the box; Denver Bronco’s v New England Patriots.
I nipped in and out every now and then to get a general flavour of the adverts and replays … and sometimes picked up a bit of live action. The Broncos won in the end, having had a convincing lead which they gradually lost in the third quarter.
Quote of the day from Danny - ‘Ask Mom, honey, Daddy’s watching The Bronco’s’.
Back to John and Lindseys around 6. Delicious pork fillets for supper.
Monday 17th October, 2005
Today has been designated a day for shopping with the primary aims of getting the boys some school shoes, trainers and the odd shirt at US prices.
Cherry Creek Mall provided the venue but only a couple of shops visited. Foleys was popular.
I visited John Fielders shop in the Mall; never ceases to amaze me how these US photographers make sales of their photographic prints. Huge prints, framed up and costing thousands of dollars.
He had a vast array of books also from his company Westcliffe Publishing including his own Colorado retakes ... (together with a new volume II) and books of other states by other photographers, including Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. These were not nearly as nice as the Colorado one. Sadly he’s out of town at the moment, so I’ll not be meeting up with him.
A late lunch; steak sandwiches and then another quick shop at Orvis where Anne topped up her wardrobe with sale items and then back, late in the afternoon.
All the adults are out for a meal tonight so there was a general showering and changing scramble and we were underway at about 6.30.
Great nosh at the Cherry Creek Grill. A long wait for a table but a good chance to catch up further with everyone. Danny it transpires had managed two or three shoulder dislocations today on nothing more dramatic than jumping out of a truck and digging a hole … there’s old age for you!
When we did get our seats, we were really well looked after by a delightful waitress called Ebony who advised us, served us and entertained us all evening.
Back about 10; a couple of games of ping pong with the boys … for the record I beat Ben on a tie-breaker and somehow Nick managed to beat me twice; I reckon it’s the altitude.
Tuesday, 18th October, 2005
We hit the nearby Starbucks for breakfast this morning, minus Harry, who slept in. Blueberry muffins the order of the day along with a tall mocha … after we took a run downtown to the Reed Photo lab which seemed to be the only professional lab in the city. A massive concern and obviously very well used by Denver’s photographers … many of whom seemed to be dropping stuff off or picking stuff up and generally hanging around for coffee.
It was near the Mile High Stadium so we took a quick turn past it; enough to see the structure, which looks like an upturned Stetson and the sculptures of the herd of ‘Broncos’ running wildly up the steps to the front of the stadium.
Back at the house, Lindsey had returned from the school run and Tyler’s dentist appointment … in time for another appointment at 11. We followed her out from Fillmore to Colorado Boulevard and to the delights of Gart Sports and the Foot warehouse nearby.
A fairly successful shop with various essentials purchased such as shorts and shoes for Nick, shirts and trousers for Anne and a pair of shoes and a cheap pair of trousers for me.
John arrived home just after midday in time for lunch and to travel for a 1.30 tee off at the golf club. John showed off his culinary skills with a spectacular selection of ingredients which and crafted them into sandwiches and wraps.
Anne disappeared with Lindsey to meet up with Stacey and for a bit of foot pampering.
The golfing team left on time and I made my way back to the processors downtown and then completed the spectacular manoeuvre of navigating from there across to the Cherry Creek Mall to pick up a holdall from Orvis, which was on sale and which we now deemed to be the way forward.
I was back at 3ish only to find that somewhere along the line, the door had got locked. It gave me an opportunity to wander around the streets a bit and take some shots of the fall foliage which, it has to be said is stunning at the moment. On this little promenade, I remembered that the back door would be open and when I got back, slipped through the side gate and in for a cup of tea and a seat in the sun reading and writing.
We went to Jim and Ivy’s this evening for supper for a few beers and hamburgers with sauerkraut! – must be one of these quaint Fairbairn traditions – really tasty anyway ... thanks guys!!
Wednesday, 19th October, 2005
A spectacular thunder storm passed through early this morning, lighting up the sky and rolling thunder around the town. All of us were awake at some point as it neared and then passed into the distance.
Anne decided that we were leaving at 8 this morning; a fresh, early start for Taos.
Luckily we didn’t wake up til about then and then there was breakfast … and then there was a last minute dash to the shops ... but we finally got underway just about 11 o’clock.
A straight forward drive to Taos; through Colorado Springs.
We drove under grey skies which gradually lifted as we got further south and west and by the time we reached Taos it was clear and we began to think in terms of sunsets.
We drove through town and went in search of the Ranchos Church, which is a couple of miles to the south and has been immortalised by successive artists and photographers such as O’Keefe, Adams, Strand and Weston.
Its fifty yards from the road and has a bit of a parking lot in front of it and load of wires trailing across the vista – avoidable if you want to. I re-took Strand and Adams and then we explored a little further and the four photographers in our party set about the squat adobe curves. Inside, we met the minister Francis O’Malley from Glasgow ! Its unremarkable inside and the famous luminescent painting of Christ (which glows in the dark in the image of a cross over his left shoulder has been moved to a building next door and is only viewable at certain times.
We went back through town and then headed out slightly for the sunset which touched the horizon at about the time we ended up in Arroyo Secco and at the Abominable Snowmansion; our hostel lodgings for the next couple of days.
After lugging our stuff inside and the boys vowing and declaring that they weren’t going anywhere near the shower in their room, we headed back into town for a meal at Doc Martins at the Taos Inn.
Great food, great wine but a loud and slightly over-powering hostess. There was a general euphoria about our table and they made the mistake of plunking us sort of centre stage, in the middle of the restaurant. Anyway, we did our best to entertain … we can’t help it if they didn’t think our jokes were as funny as we did!
From a food point of view, steaks mainly; great big ones and hardly cooked at all. The wine was local and tasty, but for me the most remarkable item extra to the menu was a quite spectacular rice pudding; fantastic.
Back in the dark to meet our pot-smoking compadres and plan for tomorrow
Thursday, 20th October, 2005
It was all fairly cosy in the hostel last night, but outside, before the sun had managed to creep its way around Mount Wheeler, it was freezing … literally. The ground was crisp underfoot and the air bitingly clear as it hit your nostrils. Anne and I decided to break out quite early for a walk to check out the area.
We found a small café nearby called the Gypsy Café which looked ideal for purpose and we went back to rouse the boys for breakfast. They didn’t need too much rousing and we were soon all next door … in just before the rush … and placed orders. Tall mochas and hot chocolates to drink and then came the dictum ... “When in Mexico …” and so Harry and Ben both had Huelvos Rancheros (Rancher’s Eggs) which was a brave and entertaining decision.
As soon as the plates arrived, Harry thought he’d snaffle a quick preview but took a forkful of a suspicious green section on the far side of his plate which gave him a bit of a surprise. It also reminded him that the water we’d ordered hadn’t arrived. Both boys did remarkably well, amid a certain amount of sweating and a couple of pints of fluids.
For the rest of us, ‘When in Mexico … ’, means that you have pancakes, maple syrup and bacon … just to be on the safe side.
Today we were to explore a little bit of the world of Georgia O’Keeffe and Ansel Adams … but first we went to Taos Pueblo a supposed living Indian community just outside the village.
Its good, but quite contrived. You get charged to go in ($10 … fair enough), you then get charged per camera ($5) you then get assigned a guide who tells you several times what you can and can’t do and what questions he can and can’t answer (nothing for example relating to Indian religious customs) and he also emphasises that it is customary to tip for his services ....
The guide spins you around for about 20 minutes and judging by the wadges of notes being palmed across, makes a fortune for his work. After this, you are ‘free’ to wander at will.
It smacks slightly of the artificiality of some of the African villages which are choreographed for the tourists. There were loads of stray dogs who were probably also doing pretty well out of the tourists. One, which it has to be said is probably the ugliest dog I have ever seen, latched itself onto Harry (standing in for his mother as resident animal soft-touch). This thing had a lower jaw which stuck out a good half inch beyond its upper … and there were others only a matter of weeks old which careered around the place feeding almost as well as the guides off the abundance of tourists.
I chatted to a couple of the ‘artists’ selling their wares and without prompting they gave me amazing descriptions their lives up until the 60s, painting vivid pictures of family life around the fire in the corner of the room, of the music and story telling and dancing which took place on the very spot where we were standing. I’m sure its true, but it did smack of being a prepared line for the benefit of any tourist.
What was quite surprising was that although the guide emphasised the traditional way of life without electricity, central heating and wired phones when you pressed him, he admitted to living outside the Pueblo, in a house with all mod cons and television in Taos. This was a common theme with lots of the villagers and as a result, it’s a bit of a stage set.
After accumulating a whole rake of dogs around us on the way back to the car, (which those of you who know my wife well will appreciate what she thought of that!), we set of towards Abique, taking a road out of town which climbed up through the trees and then set off west through high meadows. The colours of the aspens were fantastic. There is nothing quite like the yellow of aspens when early or late sunlight shines through them; it’s a yellow which you buy in a shop and comes straight from the tube.
Through the day we were able to get a feel for the inspiration of the artists who have settled and worked here over the years; here for example, were O’Keeffe’s pastel shades and forms,... over there, were Strand’s strong shadows cast by the timbers off the adobes … and at times the sharp light caught the landscape in a style of Adams.
We passed O’Keefe’s ‘Black Place’. We also did a bit of exploring off road along a dry river bed to get to her ‘White Place’. Here was an opportunity for a leg stretch and a climb up to some balanced rocks across the hard baked silts. As we drove over the muds of the river, one or two places were slightly damp and it was easy to see that with only the very slightest of rainfalls, the place would have been like the Cresta Run.
The boys also scouted around the area which is clearly used by the locals as a shooting range. A few computer monitors sat on the bank having been blown to bits by bullets. Harry and Nick found used rounds plugged into the hard mud behind these targets.
We drove on to the Ghost Ranch which although having lots of associated landscapes around, had very little that was tangibly O’Keefe. Its now a conference centre and her house is privately owned and out of bounds. Overshadowing these last miles of our journey was the Pedernal mountain – flat –topped like a Dutchman’s cap and a feature in many of her works.
Back near Espanola we spent some time between mile markers 194 and 195 on Highway 84. Here according to an obscure website reference I found some months ago is the locations where Ansel Adams took his iconic image in 1941 entitled Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.
I had heard that the landowner whose back yard is over-looked in the photograph, is a bit iffy about the whole thing and had done nothing to encourage anyone to ponder the same view … in fact, a few days later, as I write this, I hear that he can be quite hostile to photographers seeking a similar image. Either way, I was keen to take a look at the vantage point for this image.
Its a strange one. The picture was a one-off, taken on impulse at what was described as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Adams was returning to Santa Fe, New Mexico after a discouraging day of photography. From the highway he glanced left and "saw an extraordinary situation - an inevitable photograph!” He described “almost ditching the car and rushing to set up his 8 X 10" camera”.
Adams had a clear visualization of the image he wanted but could not find his exposure meter! The situation was desperate: the low sun was trailing the edge of clouds in the west, and shadow would soon dim the white crosses of the graveyard in the foreground and he was at a loss to guess the correct exposure .. the story goes that he suddenly realized that he knew the exposure for the moon and quickly took the shot.
This photograph has been analysed time and time again. Not only do we know precisely what equipment was used but we also know exactly when the exposure was made; Using data from a visit to the site, Dr. Elmore of the High Altitude Observatory at Boulder, Co analysed of the moon`s position in the photograph, checked the lunar azimuth tables, he determined that the exposure was made at approximately 4:05 P.M. on October 31, 1941. Over the years, prints of the image … particularly those directly printed by Adams have sold for tens of thousands of dollars.
And so here we were … right opposite the San Jose church but struggling; we must have made three or four passes up and down the four lane highway trying to suss out the precise location and eventually we were able to pick out the graveyard, buried in vegetation and tucked away behind a couple of buildings.
The location, unremarkable at the time, is no more appealing now !! It has considerable scrub growth, development … and traffic. In the absence of the once-in-a-lifetime cloud effects and an emerging moon, there is little to entice one to shoot a frame.
Our route home, took the direct route back following the Rio Grande and offered us a sunset, just as we crested the rise a few miles out of Taos.
We stopped once again at the Ranchos church as we passed, in order to pay due homage and to take a few night-time pictures.
We then went on to a very dodgy grill in town called the Guadalajara, which certainly showed us what life in Taos is about; otherwise was a bit of a low point.
Back at the Abominable we all retired to our room to sink some beers and sort through the overwhelming quantity of photographs accumulated today on the computer. A good, fun evening in spite of the efforts of the Guadalajara.
Friday 21st October, 2005
Today’s the first day of an annual balloon festival in Taos so we were out in order to catch some of it. We left the Abominable early, all bags packed and stowed in the car; not quite so cold this morning, but we still had to wait a few minutes while the ice defrosted on the windscreen enough for the wipers to tackle it.
We took a run down the length of the town in search of some ballooners, but there wasn’t too much happening – a couple of the car parks had silks all laid out across them but nothing in the air.
Breakfast was becoming not only a priority, but a necessity and we decided to take a break from the balloon preparations and retired to “Michaels” on the main street.
Michael (whoever he was) was doing a roaring trade welcoming the various members of the Church of God from Somewhere or other … all of whom were ensconced in one half of his diner. We were ushered out of sight into the snug on the opposite side.
Harry’s resolve remained and the chillies were ordered once again. Ben’s constitution needed a break and he went for something a little less hot and more substantial. This time Harry made sure that the requisite glass of water was available to hand, but found, just as he was about to imbibe, that it had a large piece of tissue floating round inside it.
By the time we’d finished breakfast, the balloons were getting airborne and we pulled off half way down the main ‘drag’ in the car park of the Quality Inn, just in time to find a balloon touching down in the scrub land behind. We watched for some time and at one point there were fifteen balloons in the air … apparently a mere patch on what would be happening tomorrow when about 70 would ascend.
We got to Sante Fe at about 11 and parked at the back of the town but quite near to the Plaza. One side of the square is completely covered as a passageway and under this, their backs against the wall sit the traders with their various wares spread out on blankets in front of them.
Most claim to be the relatives of the artists as part of the sales pitch and we heard quite often, ‘this is made by my husband’ ‘….. (or) brother’ … or whatever.
Anne and I went into an arcade on the opposite side to get some gauge of pricing. A couple of shops really caught the eye. The Santa Fe Boot Co who seem to make bespoke cowboy boots in all manner of hides, for lots of the rich and famous; testimonies from film stars pinned to the walls list their clients.
Just down the mall was a Mexican working a hand loom and I bought a couple of Navajo style cushion covers … and photographed him. He comes from Chimayo and is a fourth generation weaver.
We re-grouped and made our way around to the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, which was great … but slightly disappointing in that it didn’t have any of the New Mexican landscapes I was expecting, however, most other subjects were represented quite well.
On the way out Anne stopped off a tucked away little shop and bought a really nice silver Navajo belt buckle.
On we pounded across the prairies from Santa Fe to Albuquerque and then on some to Gallup.
We arrived at Gallup just as the sun was beginning its final approach for setting. The boys got some shots contre jour looking along the top of a train that was passing slowly under the bridge we crossed to get in to town.
Anne had made an arrangement to stay at a famous old motel / hotel called El Rancho … which had provided accommodation for many Hollywood stars over the years and we passed this on the way into town before driving the length of the main street and taking a turn up the hill on to some waste ground in order to get some sunset colours.
We abandoned Anne and the car at the top of a slightly dodgy cul-de-sac and after about five minutes, a couple of pick-ups full of Mexicans turned up looking (but as it turned out, only looking) threatening. We hid behind a bush and left Anne to deal with them … Joking!
We relocated to El Rancho in darkness to find that the hotel was hosting a wedding this evening (‘Congratulations to Jen and Tony’ written in neon lights outside).
It’s certainly a place which could tell a few tales. The usual large concourse hallway, log-lined with a mezzanine balcony above and on the first floor level, the walls were covered with the signed pictures of a variety of Hollywood greats and locations shots from a number of films … The Desert Song was one …
We were on the third floor along a painted brick lined corridor reminiscent of old hospital corridors … but the rooms were comfortable enough. Nick slept in with us and Ben and Harry had another room along the passage.
We had a great dinner; a few beers and quite a bit of live entertainment in the form of a birthday party happening in a private room to our right and the strains of the wedding party leaking through into the dining room.
Outside, the rail tracks ran about fifty yards in front of the hotel. For some reason every train that passed felt the need to give a loud sonorous toot as it passed, hence, sleep was not entirely unbroken and at about 5 o’clock some wag on the footplate gave us a toot, toot, toottoottoot, toottoottoottoot, toot, toot! (Ba£$&rd).
I cannot imagine, John Wayne, Ronald Reagan, Lee Remmick or Howard Keele (among others) thinking that this was a great idea, but there we are.
Saturday 22nd October, 2005
We were up early; it’s a glorious morning … slightly frosty in the shade.
Anne had the bright idea for everyone to walk to the ‘downtown’ (“its only half a mile’). Well, it might have been half a mile to the nearest end of the downtown … but it felt a hell of a lot further, consequently, I turned back just short and wandered back to get the car in order that we weren’t spending most of the day wandering up and down the length of Gallup.
When I returned the others were ensconced in a small café and the colour scheme which somehow seemed very 1950s, brought on a Martin Parr moment (for those that don’t know his stuff, his pics are often very bright and graphic …) and I shot off some frames of the décor.
After breakfast (which has now reverted to more traditional fare) we satisfied our belt requirements, with Anne getting the leather component for her buckle, I bought a belt at half price in case I came across a buckle at some point and Harry got himself the full-monty buckle and belt outfit.
Today is Gallups flea market day and we crossed the tracks in order to drive out to the field … which was a very popular venue. Lots of jewellery, but also car parts, engines, tools, clothes, shoes, candy … and rabbits, puppies and kittens. We saw loads of kids walking around carrying bewildered pups or kittens having just bought them for a few dollars. Bought Anne a turqoise necklace; large rough lumps of the rock which look really chunky and bright. It was baking hot wandering around and I was glad to get back to the car.
We were underway towards Flagstaff and Grand Canyon by about 12.30. It’s a long haul across, just relentless miles of massive skies and long straight roads; an amazing number of lorries on the road (for Saturday).
We dipped our toes into Sunset Crater NP literally for a few minutes in order to determine what was available to see for the entrance fee in the limited time available. The answer; not a lot more than we’d seen from the highway outside the park, so we disappointed our friendly, but slightly sniffy Park ranger and reversed out of the Park!
We arrived at the east end of Grand Canyon National Park in time for the sunset (about 20 minutes to spare) and were admitted to the park by ‘Robert’ who had a particularly fetching Park Rangers hat, worn at a slightly rakish angle and restrained from falling over his eyes only by the timely intervention of his ears.
We were at the right end this evening … the west end of the GC seemed to be in deep cloud and shade. It was a spectacular introduction to the Grand Canyon for the boys.
We drove on in dark to find our hotel; the Quality Inn at Tusayan.
It wasn’t explicitly signed and this turned into a bit of an excursion as there were a number of road options. Anne who had been in charge generally of the forward planning and prior booking of this particular phase of the trip, had been hinting at the general cost of staying near the Canyon and as it turned, out all the ‘Rim Hotels’ were completely booked
So we ended up slightly out of the park and the cheapest room was about twice what we’d ever spent before; hence we all came to be crammed into the same room for the two nights.
I rested up in the room while Anne and the boys bought some Imax tickets, got Pizza and then at 8.30 we all met up to see the Imax Grand Canyon movie which was great and gave us an insight into some of the history … particularly the early exploration by John Wesley Powell.
Thankfully, the chilli breakfasts were a thing of the past so there wasn’t too much to worry about in that department, but the room became a bomb-site nonetheless. Harry occupied a campbed across the window, Nick had a bed to himself, Anne and I had another and Ben slept on the floor across the doorway.
Harry spent a bit of time fretting about being carted off by a mountain lion in the night, but his concerns fell on sleepy ears … and by the time we’d had a couple of beers who gave a stuff anyway?
Everybody was so knackered that we were all off to sleep really quickly.
Sunday, 23rd October, 2005
We were all up and out sharp this morning to see the sunrise from between Mather and Yavapai point. Probably not a great sunrise by Grand Canyon standards … probably due to the season. I would guess that in the mid summer the sun rises and sets flooding straight along the canyon. At this time of the year there’s quite a lot of shadow on the south canyon walls. It takes nothing away from the effect of standing on the canyon rim and watching the red glow of light gradually creep in, but from a photographic standpoint, its not optimal.
Bizarrely the bulk of tourists (mainly oriental) all stood facing the rising sun watching its spill through the clouds and photographing the canyon in silhouette. It was only after quite a time, that someone turned around and saw the effect that the light was having down the canyon that the whole crowd shifted from the east railings of the look out to the west railings. It was however a very silent gathering … with only the occasional click and whirr of a camera, the flash of a, err ... well, a flash and the occasional “Ahhhhhh, Soooo” from an excited onlooker.
I abandoned hope fairly quickly and also abandoned the outlook but managed, about a couple of hundred yards up the canyon to join a French contingent who had climbed out off the path and onto a little promontory … it takes a bit of European rebellion to get the best of the views …
A couple of minutes later, standing by my tripod, (alone), in reverie of the changing lighting, I was joined by an American father and son (oh no, they’re going to want to chat!).
I tried the old turning-the-back-and-pretending-to-focus-routine (which has served me well over the years), but … no, not this morning. The opening line set the scene; “Wish we could get everyone to be as quiet as this in church …”
There was a slightly uncomfortable silence which I filled with a muttered “Errrrr, yes” before finding a particularly difficult section of canyon wall to photograph, from which it was impossible to disturb me.
Back down to Tusayan for breakfast in an internet café. We were served by a veritable Mr. Happy, who turned out to be Slovak. Any trace of a sense of humour had been well nipped in the bud … but his coffee was OK and the chairs in the café quite comfortable … so we were there for a while.
We regrouped briefly at the hotel and then made plans to get out along the shuttle bus trail to Hermit’s Rest along the rim to the west of the canyon village. The trip out was uneventful. We jumped off at Hopi Overlook, which is spectacular and then off at Pima and walked the remaining Rim Trail to Hermit’s. This wasn’t without a certain amount of complaining from Anne who felt that the trail was too narrow; as it transpired we’d got our selves off the tarmac road, missed the official trail (large, graded and without a view) and found a little desire line right on the edge … probably a bighorn sheep track … anyway, we did it and it was great.
Lunch at Hermits Rest was not great … but just about sufficed; we cleared out as soon as possible.
Nailed to a post nearby there was a missing person poster for the unfortunate, but improbably named ‘Randy Rogers’ … so we spent a bit of time keeping a look out for him.
Back on the bus we had a tyrantess of a bus driver, who berated people who stood up, had a go at a cyclist she passed and generally scolded anyone who poked their nose anywhere near the bus before passengers had alighted.
After this we needed to get ourselves back to the hotel for a relax in a steaming hot tub … the boys swam and then we just vegged in the sun for a while.
The assembled and motley crew in the car were by now getting the hang of the ingratiating park rangers in their jaunty uniforms and were devising questions to ask as we approached the park booths. There was usually just sufficient break in the collective mirth to show the passa nd drive on quickly before things got out of hand. "Is this the right way for Yosemite?" "Are there any real bears here?" "Has there been any break through on the case of Randy Rogers?" Time for a sharp exit.
The sunset plan involved the El Torvar, which we hadn’t managed to book (and certainly wouldn’t have been able to afford anyway) and we parked nearby and then walked along. It was heading for a very ordinary sunset except that Bright Angel Canyon – straight opposite on the north rim, was filled with rain cloud and as the sun dipped, it lit up a rainbow. We all snapped away at it and then at the clouds which the sun lit from below the horizon to the west.
Snooped around the hotel a bit inside, checking out what we were missing (not much!) and then we retired back to Tusayon to the ‘Yippee-ei-oh’ Steakhouse (Oh dear…you see what we’ve stooped to?)
Well, in fact, it was fantastic. It was going like a fair; we had a great evening; served by a real life cowboy, complete with Stetson !
The mugs were a novelty; they were a screw-top jamjar with a handle clapped on the side. Great service and great food … so good in fact that it was a struggle to finish. We had a quick check through all the people in there (probably 120 or so) in case Randy Rogers was amongst them … and then retired to the same intricate, if not intimate sleeping arrangements.
Monday 24th October, 2005
Up early for the sunrise at El Torval. A motley troop this morning for what turned out to be a very ordinary sunrise … no clouds to really intervene and the light wasn’t nearly as sharp as it had been. We left directly from there at about 7.15 and drove south crossing a pass which got up to a height of about 8000ft.
An hour down the road, we stopped in at Flagstaff at probably the only café in the town which had never heard of internet access. We were served by Josh, whose major claim to success in life, seemed to be the extraordinary beard that he had sprouted (as opposed to grown) from his chin.
I was so inspired by this venue that I ordered a whole round of toast for breakfast. The boys had ‘melts’ – I’m not even thinking about going there!
Phoenix beckoned and we made good time. As we drove , we steadily lost height until as we dropped through the 3000 foot elevation, we suddenly started driving through Saguaro cacti … all favouring the south slopes of the outcrops.
In Phoenix, I wanted to try and catch a meeting on the way though with Mark Klett, the pre-eminent re-photographer in the States and I eventually managed to reach him at home and squeeze in a 2 o’clock meeting.
We hit Phoenix just after midday and went straight to the Heard Museum.
One of the main things I was keen to see there was the triptych multi media presentation which was commissioned some years ago, called (I think Our Land, Our People) which explores the cultures of a whole range of native Americans. It’s a good space; air conditioned with an array of native art.
Some of the dress and the weavings were superb, but other exhibits, such as the vast number of cachinas stacked in their cases were just too much to take in; There were rows and rows of them and about five or six high.
Around the walls were a considerable number of modern native paintings fairly simple themes but not classically ‘naïve’. The museum feels the need to run tours, (which we avoided as we hadn’t the time), but from ear-wigging on a couple as we passed through galleries, these seem to be intent on the interpretation of the art on the walls; what is symbolic, what the meaning of certain styles or content is, how the artist is staing such and such … it would perhaps have been quite nice to have had a native Indian presenting the legend and myth of the tribes and its probably a style of interpretation that the americans appreciate, but its not for me. I’d rather have the time and space to ponder my own judgements and perhaps catch up with a bit more from a taped tour if needsbe.
We drove on to Tempe and the others dropped me at Marks house (discernible by the rusty orange VW Beetle parked outside on the road with partially flat tyres).
They went off and found a charity shop (!) nearby and made various purchases while I sat and discussed re-photography with the maestro.
We set off for Tucson at about 4. Just a straight forward drive along a four or six lane all the way. Huge banner signs in the field at the side advertising ‘Active Adult Developments’ which seems to mean that much of the new housing being built, is being built as retirement ghettos …
Flat desert all the way and we started to see Tucson just as the light was fading.
Our destination was the Rancho Vistoso on Vistoso Highlands Drive which is the latest of the Oro valley developments .. and thus the furthest out. As regular readers will know our after-dark navigation is a bit dodgy not helped at all by the extremely low level of lighting and the American penchant for not illuminating directional signs. We saw it second pass and turned in … but what looked like the reception had closed. We went to the nearby golf club which was just closing up and a very helpful girl said to just follow her and she would press three times on her brake lights (Knock three times … dur dur dur dur dur dur …) to indicate where we should turn; unfortunately she forgot ... and then remembered and we were in the situation of doing a processional u-turn and following her back up the highway to do another u-turn until we got it right.
She took us back to the place we’d been and it was still closed,
Then someone else turned up looking for a reservation and he had a phone number so we followed him for a while.
It turned out that he was booked into the other resort anyway. But, they did let us use the net to check out the reservation number and also use their phone.
No, it was quite definite that the Emergency, Out-of-hours number was not being monitored. However, it was at this point that we noted in the e-mail, the very clear message saying that if you were going to arrive after 5pm, let them know in advance and they would leave a key out in a secure box …. Ahhhhhh, soooooo! That’s what the rank of mailboxes with keypad access was, at the front door.
We continued on the phone … I left a message (which has never been returned yet!) and at some point dialled up the number printed below the out-of-hours emergency number (obviously this confusion happens a bit and so they print the numbers of other, nearby resorts just in case you’re at the wrong place). Anyway, I had a brilliant conversation with the girl who answered.
“Hello, yes, I have a reservation number” ….
“OK Sir, let me have it” (Due recital of number)
“Sorry Sir, that’s not one of our numbers you want to be at the Casitas …”
“That’s where I am” ….
“No Sir, this is the (whatever it was).
I tried again. “I’m standing here and I’m looking at the doormat and on it is written the word Casitas.”
“Oh, so why are you phoning this number, Sir?”
… And it went on, until I realised my mistake and released her from the Basil Fawlty style interrogation. That cheered up the rest of them considerably. And for my next trick ... I decided that the resort wouldn’t be thick enough to go off and not leave a key outside in one of their secure boxes for us so I set out to code break the boxes (not quite with a rock … but ….), while Anne resumed the phone calling an increasingly agitated state.
Logic prevailed and I started with Secure Box Number 1 … and after about a minute of keying in random numbers, yanking unceremoniously on the handle and punching the metal door … it gave up quietly and miracle beyond miracle … and at this point there was a school of thought believing in Divine Intervention, opened to reveal an envelope inside with ‘Moore’ written on it. This contained a set of keys, an electric garage door operating set and a map.
Anne’s investigative skills had turned up a grill down a couple of malls away, which sounded promising. It was empty apart from a rather forlorn birthday party happening just across the aisle.
We were served by ‘Jeff’; it really is one of the features of this trip, particularly when you are accompanied by another four trained observers, that the serving staff in America can provide great entertainment. Jeff was striking deals this evening; if you had a starter with your entrée, it was half price … there was a discount on bottles of wine this evening … and if you didn’t finish it, you were welcome to put the cork in and take it with you … all of which was of course music to the Moore ears.
No-one was ravenously hungry but Jeff’s antics worked up a bit of an appetite and helped our digestion. His encore performance with us came when he presented the bill and forgot all about his discounts … which he rectified quick enough.
He then managed to throw my credit card spectacularly across the room and spent about half a minute trying to pick it up.
Oh, it was a relaxed and happy bunch that found their way back up to the casitas this evening.
Tuesday, 25th October, 2005
I was due to meet up with Ray Turner in Tucson, one of the original re-photographers. Ray’s book, ‘The Changing Mile’ only the second to ever be published on re-photography, was published 40 years ago.
Ray called me at 7.30 this morning to arrange the format of the day and I agreed to follow the directions to his house for 10am.
South on Oracle as far as Grant, East on Grant as far as Swan and south on Swan as far as Fort Lowell were remarkably simple instructions and although the intervening distances were up to 5 or 6 miles a piece … it worked well and after half an hour of driving I was taking the final intricacies of turning at a mailbox, through a horse paddock and right a hundred yards or so into his yard.
Rays house is an old, low adobe house which has been extended over the years. He schooled briefly in Tucson back in the 1930s, his family moving across to accommodate his health problems, before returning to his native Salt Lake City.
He came back to teach at the University after graduating and then doing his PhD in 1954 … and has been there ever since .. he still retains involvement with the Desert Lab and is a remarkable 76 years old and last weekend returned from a fortnight across in Baja California doing some plant fieldwork for his next book.
Opposite the back door of his house is a little covered area with a table and beyond that his study and darkroom and we sat in there for the rest of the morning while I explained my purpose and he told me a little about his work over the years. Which has centred around desert ecology in general and the Saguaro cacti (sa-waar-oh) in particular.
We lunched with his wife, Jeanne, outside in a perfect temperature and then Ray nipped off to attend a medical appointment; it transpires he picked up Lyme disease on some fieldwork escapade or other and is now on the case of trying to get his medication right.
Lunch was a tasty affair; some kind of Mexican stew (thankfully not sweat inducing) and a mug of buttermilk and crackers. Buttermilk is a sort of drinking yoghurt; it tastes a bit like liquid sour cream and was remarkably refreshing.
This afternoon we were to head across town to meet up with Julio Betancourt, a native Cuban who, although nearer to my generation, has worked at the lab some considerable years. We met at his house and spent the afternoon discussing Buffel Grass – an introduced African grass, which Julio thinks at some stage, will herald the end of the Sonoran desert habitat as we know it.
The grass grows profusely in this climate (as it does in the African savannahs) and has been on a State-subsidised introduction programme for some years to expand the range over which cattle can be grazed … and now its really taken off. The dormant plant provides a considerable ‘fuel load’ in the desert and thrives on fires. I hadn’t realised, but fire is naturally absent from the desert system; you could in the words of Julio take a gallon of ‘gas’ out into the desert, tip it on the ground and the fire would be out by the time you got back to the car; it simply has nothing to transmit it … until now and the Saguaros … and indeed the city of Tucson itself … are at risk.
It was an interesting afternoon and I drove back to Vistoso from there, which was just along the road.
The boys had got themselves tucked into golf and the narrow fairways had obviously taken its toll. A net loss of 22 golf balls between the three of them and Nick in particular was all over the place with a round of 165.
Ben managed about a hundred … but apparently there was simply no margin for error and they spent a bit of time getting jabbed by cacti and searching for golf balls. No sign of Randy Rogers in there either apparently.
I was fairly wrecked when I got back and fell asleep for a while, Anne nipped out and did a Safeway’s shop and we had a relaxed ‘family dinner’ round the baseball ...
Wednesday, 26th October, 2005
I was up quite early this morning. I had a talk to finalise which I was going to deliver to the Natural Resources students at a lunchtime seminar. Minor re-shuffles of the Vermont paper required. I got up to Rays for about 9.30 and we set off for the university – slightly confusing we have the University of Arizona here in Tucson and the Arizona State University back in Phoenix; I suspect there is some competition between them.
Ray’s a member of the President’s Club at the uni and that gives us some parking privileges; but either way, downtown parking is a complete nightmare. We went along to Bob Webb’s Office and met with him and Diane Boyer who is the photographic collection archivist. Bob spent time working with Ray and is largely his protégé on the rephotography matters … and is now extremely busy with all manner of projects of his own.
One of the first things Bob asked was ‘What do you know about our work?’ and turning to Ray “Have you shown him our stuff?” Well, not much … and sort of was the jist of the two answers and so a large cupboard was thrown open and book after book held up. “Do you have this one? The answer was ‘No’ to all but one and so a pile developed on the desk in front …
It was great morning I heard a few anecdotes from their fieldwork journeys down the Grand Canyon and we exchanged experiences on various photographic matters. One of the early observations which Bob made when returning to some of Ray’s original photographic stations, was that there was frequently an empty tequila bottle in the vicinity … and we discussed this and the more interesting detritus found during rephotographs such as items found in the canyon from the Wesley Powell and the Stanton expeditions a hundred and more years before.
One of the major differences between the scientists on rephotography missions and the ‘artists’ is this recording of artefacts. Within science circles it is simply documented in a note book – a cursory note mentioning that a broken photographic plate was found at the location for example … to the ‘artist’ it is photographed in situ, recorded and at times collected, as an artefact and a vital component in the telling of the story of change.
After an hour or so, we went to look at the archive with Diane. They are committing the cardinal sin of keeping all their negatives, prints and field notes in the same room; they are aware of it and advise others against … but have not got the space for the alternative.
For lunch we all went along to a Mexican café on campus … it was a great venue; rough and ready and served all of us for less than $20. Mine was some class of a meal called a Red Moley – chicken and red bean sauce … and some home fried Doritos and water.
We turned up at the Natural Resources Building just about 12.45 to meet Bob Marrin who was the seminar co-ordinator. Unfortunately the power point was dodgy so the whole lot went black half way through while it cooled down … and then the sound wouldn’t work. However, there was sufficient volume from the laptop itself for someone to stand up at the end and make a small advertisement for the University Scottish Country Dancing Group, (which meets on a Tuesday if anyone is interested).
There were some useful questions and with more time some remarkably good contacts; There was a guy there from Arizona Water who was desperate to give me tour of his sewerage works; sadly time did not allow. Also a lady working on Bobcats.
The normal curriculum resumed at 2 and we were released back into the baking heat of downtown Tucson and all returned to Bob’s office to collect my extremely heavy ‘loot’ and bid farewell.
Driving out of town, Ray described some of the changes in the city since his first arrival there in the thirties and pointed out some of the feature buildings that would have been in place at that time. I loved particularly the tale he told me as we passed his old school; still a junior school and a great old fashioned building on three floors with dusty playground all around it. This was after the Depression and times were fairly hard; there were quite a few Mexican immigrants working locally and their kids were attending school. Many of the kids were barefoot.
One of the teachers at the school had lost an arm at some point and instead he had a hook. The hook was dexterous to a point and had a spring loaded fork in the end to enable him to hold a pen or chalk (or whatever). The other main feature in the story was what Ray described as a ‘wooden educator’ a shaped slat of wood with a handle which was applied to miscreants.
On this particular occasion, he remembers a Mexican boy being ‘invited’ up to the front (That was the word he used … can you imagine? ‘Would you care to step up to the front, Gonzalez’) and having seen previous performances where the teacher inserted his hook into the childs belt, lifted them clear of the ground and then ‘educated’ their backsides … the little Mexican decided not to hang around. Ray pointed to the window on the first floor from where he jumped, barefoot, down into the playground. ‘Its one of my most vivid memories’, he said, ‘the dust that that little fellows heels kicked up in the dirt as he ran across the yard on his way home’.
Just out of town to the south west lies the hill upon which the Desert Lab is built. It’s a great location. The hillsides are saguaro forest and the buildings just over half way up the hill are stone built from a basalt-like rock (andesite perhaps?). Inside the rooms are cool and lined with old timbers; a bit like a plantation house.
The lab was set up in 1906 and has a chequered history with land being secured eventually by the University and occupied by USGS. This early establishment is key to work that Ray has been doing as the original observers here used photography to document the vegetation of the hill and the surrounding desert during their times. These pictures, re-taken after fifty years and since, at least decadally, form the basis of the long term study. Many of the pictures were taken from roadsides and although the dirt roads have sometimes ‘migrated’ or been abandoned completely, the locations of hundreds of photographs have been re-found.
We spent a half hour or so with Jan Bowers; Jan has worked at the lab since the early 80s (again hired by Ray) and has had a series of ecological essays published over the years,. Her since is perhaps the science of the fifties; high on anecdote and observation and short of statistics and graphs … but for that her work is all the more valuable.
At the back of the lab lie some of the experimental plots … and I find it strange to think that Ray has been following the individual fates of some of these cacti .. since they emerged from the ground … and even so they won’t have reached the point where they start to produce limbs; this happens after they reach 75.
We got back to Fort Lowell at about 5 and it took me another 45 minutes to negotiate the traffic as far as Vistoso. The Pima hills north of the city which I have to skirt around to get back to base just glow pink as the sun falls.
This evening we’re all staying in and Anne decide to do a bit of home cooking.
It’s a relaxed evening; the boys are watching the world series (baseball), I’m typing in notes of my meetings and Anne is distributing hot dogs. After the first bite or two on the dogs there was a bit of a conspiratorial glance around between us all … followed by a ‘Would anyone like any water?’ which was in addition to beer and required in order to wash these things down. Anne was just putting another lot in to boil and enquired how things were going … slight silence; ‘Well, they’re different to what we have at home’.
Having looked at the packet she came up with the entirely believable statement that they were actually dog food. She thought she was so funny and was completely paralysed at the row of blank faces still trying to chew and swallow these offerings. Anyway it wasn’t quite as bad as all that, but they were soya meat hotdogs and hence the difference.
I was quite late going to bed this evening and before I went, the calls of the coyotes outside, filled the night. They must have been close. There were whines and snarls and barks from the bush nearby. Harry managed to get a recording of it on his camera video; I thought he might have gone out stalking them to get a better sound, but he very bravely did it from a position of safety, from behind the flyscreen.
Thursday, 27th October,
Anne had ‘teed up’ an opportunity for me to borrow a golf cart this morning and get a shot around the course with my camera, with the specific intention of photographing some of the cacti on the golf course. These saguaros were at the sides of the fairways, or near tee-offs and had golf balls plugged into them, or were quite seriously damaged on the side facing the tee-off, where balls had bruised and bounced off them.
Ben and I picked up the cart at 6.50 and were back about half an hour later. It seems pointless in mentioning the weather, but it was once again fantastic.
For the rest of the morning Ray and I were going out to the East Saguaro National Park to have a look at some of the original ‘Changing Mile’ photo locations and I invited Ben and Harry along for the ride.
We arrived at Rays at 9 after a quick rummage through some of his rephotography titles which he had laid out on the dining room table, we probably got into the park at about 10. The park has a twenty mile loop road around it which we drove around stopping at about three or four locations to view the changes. The locations we looked at were all fairly close to the road and quite difficult to align, due to the increase in shrub .. I retook a few with Ray holding ‘The Changing Mile Revisited’ up for comparison.
The idea was that we would explore West Saguaro NP ourselves this afternoon and we duly arrived back at Rays at midday and the house about half an hour later. Nick had entertained himself by striking a deal with the golf course in order to go and knock a couple of buckets of balls on the driving range.
For the first part of this afternoons expedition, we made our way downtown and hunted out the Centre for Creative Photography which is based on campus and was set up by Ansel Adams. It holds the Adams archive along with photographs from other prominent photographers such as Weston and Strand and many, many others – among them Klett.
On show was a small selection from the Adams archive, a selection from the general archive and an exhibition of the pictures of Edward Meatyard.
We didn’t stay too long; another time it would be fun to request a print viewing in advance and look through some of the images they have in detail.
We took ‘Subway Road’ out towards West Saguaro and the Desert Museum. A bit of a hiccup at the first museum we got to. “OK guys here we are, lets get in here” … “Errr this doesn’t quite look like what we’re after …. But…. Oh well”.
We paid our dues and tried to use the complimentary tickets proffered by Ray for our visit only to find that the desert museum was another four miles along the road. They were very good about it and refunded our money. The content of this particular museum is stuffed African wildlife …. and as we’d all seen most of the specimens romping around the bush last year, as opposed to hanging up on a museum wall with a rather fixed smile on their faces, it wasn’t for us.
The Desert Museum is fantastic and the drive to it, lined with saguaros; an insight into what an unspoilt desert landscape would have looked like. We were quite late in getting to the museum – just after three; the winding paths around the museum hide an intricate selection of habitats and species found in the deserts, from spiders and geckos to mountain lions and black bears. The bears were the low point; they looked hot and stressed and paced their concrete pit incessantly. We finished shortly after five, having completed all the trails and clocked most of the exhibits …
The whole setting has been made, with wire formed hollow rocks and wire welded plants forming animal cages; it really was impossible to tell the difference.
Back up the road towards the pass we pulled in at one of the laybys to take a shot of the hillside which was by now turning a deep, deep pink and looking slightly bizarre with the almost lime-green stalks of the cacti standing in ranks across it. I put on my walking boots quickly in preparation fro wandering through the brush. As I left the car, I was hailed from my right and saw, through the gloom, the waving arm of an American photographer.
At first I thought that I had drifted into his view and was ruining his sunset but no, he called me over and then proudly told me he had been scouting the road for the last two days and had selected THE best spot from which to take a cactus picture at sunset. He had even marked it by scuffing a cross into the sand just where he stood.
“Would I like to take a shot?” “Well thank you very much …” so I stepped up and took a frame … “Its better vertical …” “Oh, OK” so I took another … “Well, thanks very much …” “Aren’t you going to stay for the sunset? This is the best place.” Anyway, in a landscape filled with unique cacti, I declined his kind offer and moved back to the car and slightly further up the road to where a number of other vehicles were pulled off to the side.
We all split in various directions and I headed out to an old, limbed saguaro about fifty yards from the road. It wasn’t an ideal specimen but by this time the sun was dropping like a stone. Just as I was lining up a pic, I kicked a prickly pear. Big mistake. Two huge thorns went straight through the toe of my boot (ouch!) click (ouch, s***) click hobble, (ouch, s***) click, hobble, click, hobble hobble, click. Took another couple of frames then turning attention to my boot. The thorns had gone straight through the boot and pinned into my toe – difficult to get your foot out of your boot when that happens so there was a bit more swearing and quite a lot of blood, while ‘the operation’ was completed.
Jammed the boot back on a took a few more frames. I took another two thorns out of the boot after I took them off, these had just penetrated the leather but had broken off before penetrating me. Anyway, lesson learned; prickly pear cacti have sharp thorns!
After returning to base and doing a preliminary back for departure tomorrow, we went out to another of Anne’s recommendations. As we arrived at Uno, there was a bit of ‘a domestic’ going on outside; a big burly guy in a stretched white tee shirt, was pointing his finger into the face of his wife/girlfriend/drinking partner and shouting that it was alright for the guy back in the bar … but HE didn’t want to go back into prison again … Ho hum.
Inside, the bar was decked out with clothes lines and pairs of white socks; The White Sox yesterday won the world series and this is apparently, due cause for celebration. Nothing of note during the meal apart from Mr Domestic Violence appeared back in the bar intent on making up with his amore by plying her with a bit more drink.
Friday, 28th October, 2005
This morning we were packing. I originally had intended to meet up with Mark back in Phoenix this morning which would have required an early start, but I was keen to swing in by Rays before we left to say thanks and farewell to him and Jeanne. Eventually got hold of Mark and re-arranged for the afternoon; his phone line had been down.
The passage to Phoenix was uneventful and we took the sliproad off through Tempe and on to Scottsdale – Nick had this bright idea to have a look at The Bridges Golf course, which it turns out is in California.
Anne had researched out a cheaper resort-type hotel and so we set off in search of it armed with the number. Up and down the road twice and then we discovered that it had changed names … and more worryingly, wasn’t as cheap! It was now called The Caleo and impossible to persuade the rest of the team that we should keep looking. So we checked in and I left everyone lounging by the pool, checking e-mail and sun bathing while I went off to meet Mark again.
The intention was that after my meeting I would meet up with them down in a local mall.
Mark had been printing up some images for an exhibition all morning and we met in his front room, a dark, wooden floored comfortable sitting room with easy sofas, rugs on the floor and the walls lined with photographs of cacti, with book cases and with about 70m or 80 of his ‘sun-sticks’. The sun-sticks are an extension of his exploration of time. They are carved and formed during each of his photographic expeditions; carved around the camp fir on consecutive nights and embellished with artefacts and items found in the course of the day. So the top of one for example might have the forked tines of a deer antler seamlessly bound to the top. Another may have a stick, or a cactus skeleton or a rock, another a cartridge case or a brightly coloured firework casing or an old washer. Its very effective. Anyway the point of the sticks is that they are integral to a game. The stick is placed in the ground near the camp and a circle drawn in the dirt around it. Each member of the group whether it be students, colleagues or his family all then place a stone on the circle where they think the shadow of the stick will fall when struck by the first rays of the rising sun. There are probably hundreds of sticks all in varying degrees of intricacy, many are on the wall, some are away at his ‘Ideas about Time’ exhibition and others are stored away.
We had a good far ranging chat and he drew my attention to a number of projects happening in Europe with which he has been peripherally involved. I stayed a couple of hours, discussed the advance copies of the new San Francisco book which had fortuitously arrived this morning and I also showed him some of my St Kilda work from the summer.
After a bit of telephone liaison, I met up with the rest at Camelback Mall at about 5. It’s a huge air conditioned place and Anne spends her time wandering around wondering why she needs to always feel cold in Arizona when outside its baking. And its true enough, its often not very comfortable sitting round for a meal for the simple reason that the air is chilled.
We dumped the spoils back in the car and made for the City Hall Steakhouse for The Last Supper.
City Hall turned out to be a SERIOUS restaurant and us scruffs were ushered into a cavernous back room along with various other groups of over four people, away from the log fire which was burning out on the patio.
Fantastic food; we just had steak main courses and then settled on coffee for afters.
Anne tried to cheer the waiter up (who was already a fairly happy guy anyway) by telling him about Dalwhinnie (which appeared on drinks list). He was quite funny about it, quipping that we probably all had to take it in turns before coming away in order that someone stayed back to man the village. As final bidding as we left, wished us well for our return to `Dalwheeeeny`.
Back at the hotel, there was a wedding party going full tilt and after due settlement of nosh, the boys went swimming and hot tubbing. Anne and I sat beside a fir warming our toes.
Saturday 29th October, 2005
The boys checked out of their room this morning and transferred their stuff through to ours. My mission in life this morning was to try and offload a whole pile of really heavy books most of which Bob Webb had given me. The hotel offers a free shuttle service to within three miles of the place – useful but all the same I enquired “Shall we take the car down or are you free to run us to the post office and wait to bring us back?” “Sure , no problem, Sir” which you take at face value and off we went.
So Anne and I took the hotel shuttle down to Scottsdale Post Office. $50 later (by the time we’d bought a box, some wrapping and insured postage). …
We hadn’t been one minute in the post office before the driver was inside asking how we were getting on as the hotel was busy. Well, he had to wait about 10 and there was nothing much we could do about it what with queues packing etc etc. Anyway the driver was clearly getting himself into a state of some excitement. I didn’t have a lot of sympathy; anyway he had to stop off at the Mall to collect someone and we jumped ship at that point to meet the boys … who were still in ‘ranging’ mode.
We wandered back the two blocks from the mall and went to cool off in the pool and have a snack lunch. There was time for another hour or so of lazing and then at 3 it was time to leave for the various flights. Harry was due out at about 5 bound for Denver and the Ben and Nick at about 7 for Heathrow.
Harry’s flight was posted as being delayed by a half hour when we arrived so we hung around briefly and then bid farewell and moved round to T2, the International terminal where we parked the car and lugged everything down.
We had a really good couple of weeks and were sorry to see them all go.
This evening we dined in the restaurant in their dining room, called The Baleen.
I knew it was going to be an epic as soon as our waiter, Drew appeared. He was quite a young lad, who spoke in sonorous (probably Bronx) tones and in his suit had the slightly younger appearance of the butler from the Adams Family.
I sat back faintly amazed while he felt the need to explain to Anne what Pommes Frites were and she sat there equally as dumbstruck.
Anyway, better was to come, it was dark and it was cold (due to the air conditioning) and I went and put another layer on, Anne sat wrapped in a shawl.
Along comes Drew this time with an assistant to proffer Caesar’s salad with a side of asparagus and rosti potatoes … except somewhere along the line, the potatoes had transformed in to a fish dish of some description. He realised his mistake and withdrew the fish and shambled off.
I nearly burned myself on the salad plate, it was so hot, but on we went.
We started.
We finished ... And at this point, the bold boy returned apologising profusely and slipped a plate of completely blackened rosti, sitting square as you like in the middle of a pristine white porcelain plate. We’d already decided it was superfluous ... but boy, it was worth a look. So off it went with Drew promising to ask the manager if it would be alright to deduct the cost from the bill. (Oh, Pleeeeeease say its not alright!!!!!!)
Back he came with more apologies … it WOULD be alright; there was no charge for the rosti, thank you very much for coming in and here was the bill.
“Errrr? Any chance of pudding?” (bill hastily stuffed in apron, out with notebook …)
“Of course Sir, here’s me getting ahead of myself “ (Wry smile from the booth, as its probably the first time he ever been ahead of the game).
Very nice bread and butter pudding provided, with two spoons; just what was required and as he was withdrawing … thank you very much for coming in tonight and here was the bill .. thank you very much.
“Errrr, are you needing this booth for something?
"Excuse me, Sir?"
“A lie down perhaps ...”
"I’m sorry?"
“Oh, forget it, we wondered whether you had coffee?"
Oh ... the day is dawning and curtains were being pulled to let light in all over the city of Drew.
“Coffee!! I’ll get you some right away”
“Thank you. One decaf, one regular and both with milk, please”
In came the coffee (exactly as specified) and off went Drew.
By this time it was too much effort to go for the option of sugar which wasn’t profferred so we sat back and watched the performance some more, sipping our coffee.
At the next pass …. “Helllll-ooo, Can we have the bill please? .… expecting a flurry of apron and immediate provision … No. “Sure Sir, I’ll go and have it prepared” and about five minutes later it arrived with the hopeful space left for a gratuity (Ha Ha)
Sunday, 30th October, 2005
It is both surprising and amazing just how much discomfort and indigestion a Caesars salad can cause. And consequently, we didn’t need the 5.10 alarm call – which was just as well as it never came !!
Also the bill we had been promised which would be slipped under our door at 2 am had not materialised and so we went along to the front desk to check out.
“Was everything Ok for your stay?” … so Anne, slightly more awake at this stage of the game and always up for a squabble over culinary matters, says in reply … “Well, not bad. We ate in the restaurant last night … and quite honestly we found it a bit disappointing”.
The quite amazing reply was … “Oh, ha ha, Glad you did! Please sign here” I was on the brink of clarifying whether she was glad we had a disappointing time or what, and stared at the receptionist for fully ten seconds searching for a glimmer of humour or irony … or a hint of confusion, but no and in the end, we had a plane to catch.
Once again, we were specially selected for extra security screening.
Both at Phoenix and at LA; usual stuff, but here they were a lot less formal and you were permitted the odd quip and they even let you smile once in a while without berating you. There was a Brit along the room from me standing having an intimate frisk from some guy brandishing a magic wand at exactly the same time as I was getting the same treatment. Our eyes met and we both nearly lost it … but managed just to acknowledge the situation with a slight shake of the head. Goodness knows what would of happened had our communication been detected. I`d probably be sporting an orange suit (if I was lucky) and being taken down for breakfast aboard a wheelbarrow.
Anne managed to get phone calls out to various people from the airport, but most importantly, speak with the boys who were now safely ensconced back at the Broich.
The Hawaii flight is about five and a bit hours. Good seats. Completely uneventful.
We took the bus down into Honolulu and checked into the Hawaiiana quite an old hotel wedged in between the high rises between Beach Walk and Saratoga St. Anyway, they gave us a good deal and we parked the luggage and set of for a evening stroll on Waikiki Beach.
What a place. Putting one step in front of the other causes you to break sweat. The air is warm and it was some time before wading along the edge of the surf cooled us down sufficient.
Walking parallel to us but just out in the splash zone was a man with ear phones on and a rod down in the water, which I initially took to be an underwater microphone. “Oh look, there’s someone listening to whales” (Disdainful look from the wife) - well it was worth a go ! Anyway, it turned out that he was metal detecting, picking up everyones loose change, ear rings and wedding rings that came off on the beach; high-tec beachcombing.
After wandering around a bit we decided to take up Jim and Ivy’s recommendation and go along to 3660 On The Rise for dinner.
Great choice. I’d already decided that “When in Hawaii ….” I was only going to eat fruit and fish so tackled the menu accordingly.
The Katsu starter (which we shared) was fantastic; possibly one of the best fish dishes I`ve ever had – even the Mrs said she hadn’t ever tasted anything like it! I had blackened snapper and Anne the Oni (another fish). All fantastic and with a very entertaining waiter to fill in on anecdote, tell us about the food and about Hawaii. Drew was long forgotten.
We took a taxi back to the hotel and fell into bed.
Monday, 31st October, 2005
Bit of a dilemma how to do what we wanted to do this morning. Pearl Harbour was the intention but apparently the queues start forming at 6.30 … for a 7.00 opening. Bags (of any sort) are not an option – not even a camera case ! After a bit of debate we decided to taxi out to Pearl and from there get another to the airport later, taking all our bags with us.
Front desk Hawaiiana: “Hello would you please order us a taxi?”
“Taxi? Oh OK” five minutes later a white stretch limo turns up outside …
“Is that for us??!!!”
Off we went. “Where you want go?”
“Pearl harbour, please”
“Ahhh sooo”
“(Me) Is there anywhere where we can get a view over the Arizona?“
“(Him)Arizona ??”
“(Me)Never mind”.
“(Him)You want view?”
“(Me)Yes, exactly somewhere where we can see the whole thing”
“Ahhh Sooo. Diamond Head.”
“Errr OK” (Anne chips in a minute or two later, just as the car is hurtling down side streets and then whips past the entrance to the Hotel we left five minutes ago and says “why do you want to go to Diamond Head it’s the other way”
“WHAT !!”
“(me) Oi, where are you off to???
“(him) You said you want to go to Diamond Head for a view”
Discussion ensued with honourable oriental driver and after a bit more hurtling down side streets and another swing past the hotel we eventually started seeing signs for Pearl Harbour. We were dropped from our limo amidst a pile of rucksacks and camera bags alongside a 400m queue of large and profusely sweating Americans.
I left Anne in some shade and went to scout the possibilities. Bag check in was possible and yes, they would take luggage. Yes, it was possible to get to the book shop and you only had to queue to take the tour. Great stuff.
Checked all the luggage (including ‘all items offering concealment in this time of heightened security’) and then walked along the queue and wandered into the bookshop.
It strikes me that the Americans are only marginally better prepared for the daily onslaught of visitors than they were back in December, 1941. There is one restroom; inside the building and a permanent fifty yard queue outside it. There is no shelter for the waiting visitors and they stand, denuded of any ‘items of concealment’ for up to two hours before they are admitted to the dark and cool of the theatres. They are admitted in groups – into the theatre to see real live footage of the attack and then out and into an exhibit (while the next group are admitted to the theatres). They then queue for a launch to take them across the harbour in the brief shadow of the Missouri to the Arizona war grave (an average visit to the Arizona lasts for 13 minutes), back and out.
There are about 5000 visitors a day and as all the tour guides recommend that you turn up half an hour early and in the morning to avoid the heat and the queues … that’s exactly what everybody does … thankfully we didn’t see the matinee performance which is by all accounts worse still.
Anyway its difficult not to get swept along in the feel of the place which is decidedly sombre and emotional, in spite of the bright weather and Hawaiian shirts. We spent an hour or so in and around the building, mostly in the shade because it was BAKING hot. Given a week in Hawaii, I may have queued for the full tour, but frankly, its such an horrendous prospect and you can see the memorial and the location of ‘Battleship Row’ from the centre, its hardly worth the heatstroke and I don’t feel I’ve missed too much.
Easy transfer to the airport … well as easy as moving out of a highly secure military establishment with a load of bags and rucksacks can be … and we ensconced ourselves into Honoulu airport, hooked up to the net and ordered a Mai Tai.
After a 45 minute flight down to Big Island we collected our car and drove south to Kona and after a couple of phone calls, to the ‘On the Rocks’ bar to meet up with Betsy.
Betsy duly arrived, looking exactly as we remembered her and presented us with Leis – beautiful scented flower garlands; a symbol of welcome. We caught up with the news – sixteen years of it in our case – over a drink. The waves crashing around us on the rocks behind and the slightly surreal sight of the On the Rocks staff preparing for their Halloween extravaganza; all being dressed and made up.
Halloween is a big event in America and on the way to Betsy’s house we dropped by a friend who had laid on the most amazing Halloween show for the neighbourhood.
His garden was strewn with gravestones and skeletons, spooky music drifted from the house through speakers around the garden and smoke machines squirted their goods making a very eerie effect. Our host’s daughter and son-in-law were all part of the act as well, welcoming guests in the drive; she dressed as a fairy, he as a dismembered ghoul.
Visitors were bidden to enter the garden and creep past cobwebs and drifting smoke, lanterns and hanging skeletons. Up on to the deck and then walk the length of the deck, along the far side of the house. At the end, sitting in a sort of dark grotto, hung with spooky objects sat our host, in a huge black cape and with a rubber mask (losing between 5 and 10lbs as he told us) .
Most of the neighbourhood kids run the gauntlet of getting their hands into the cauldron of candy which he holds … but some are tool scared and daughter has to intervene and grab some candy on their behalf.. They take candy from the tub and everyone now and then he will grab an unsuspecting trick or treater.
On the way out, just as you thought the worst was behind you, someone touched you very lightly from a side door … that got the pulse beating I must say.
What an effort! (and what an expense!). No wonder he’s a legend in his own neighbourhood at Halloween.
From there it was a short hop up the road to the house where Betsy has recently moved. She lives there in a garden with coffee, mandarins and bananas growing with her man Joe and two Jack Russels, Leilani and male pup Kaulani.
We’re to stay in Betsy’s studio basement, which is a great space, under the main house and we gratefully piled our bags and then joined them for supper.
Monday 1st November, 2005
This morning wasn’t a particularly sharp start for us - Joe is a ‘trop diver’ so he was off on his inshore coastal rounds at about 6.15, but we took our time to organise and plan the next few days.
Drive locally today, go to Volcanoes tomorrow and the next and back here on Friday was the eventual plan.
Betsy is with us for today and is going to show us some of the sights to the south. The day dawned quite promisingly, but soon began to cloud … apparently a usual feature; clear in the morning and then progressively cloudy as the day wears on.
We went down in to Kailua Kona to begin with, in order to hire some fins and a mask from Snorkel Bobs and then drove south, catching a look at various sights on the way and stopping off at a museum of Kona Historical Society which had a few really nice publications and some prints from their photographic archive on display. Bought a couple of booklets with pictures which looked as if they might have some re-take potential.
We also stopped at the Macadamia nut factory and Anne was able to buy a stock of nuts to send home – another heavy parcel to post!
To the south of Kealakekua Bay we visited Puuhonua ‘o’ Honaunau National Historic Park, known as ‘The Place of Refuge’ an ancient native site on the coast which is a place of sanctuary for defeated warriors and others condemned by their tribes / villages to death. If they could make it to the refuge, their freedom and a second chance could be granted by the priest and they could return to their communities from there. The site has a number of structures within … which include fish ponds, also carvings and ceremonial canoes.
We swam in the bay at Puuhonua, off a ledge beside the road. The water was not particularly warm and Betsy in particular was shivering by the time we got out. The viz was a little bit restricted in places as there are upwellings of fresh mixing in with the saltwater which causes a bit of an effect.
Lots of fish; yellow tangs, puffers, a moray eel, rainbow parrots, wrasse and star of the show an octopus. Which squirted its way along in a leisurely way and then settled over a rock or on some coral and immediately pulsed its body colours to match, We followed it for a few minutes. The colour change was something I’d seen on films before but it really is a remarkable effect in real life; the colours change in waves and pulses, almost like someone is twisting a kaleidoscope to a smooth beat.
We went on to Captain Cook and there we got into the rain and our view across Kealakekua Bay to the white monument erected at the site where Cook landed was dull grey and rainy. Cook came to the islands a couple of times; the first time he was treated like a God … the second, he was killed. He arrived in a season of war and was killed trying to stop fighting between the islanders and his troops. His body was dismembered and various parts distributed throughout the islands to the various kings and chiefs – which is apparently quite a honour. Anyway, they managed to get most of him back together eventually.
Our last call of the day was to drop in to the small coffee farm where Betsy’s step-sister, Bonn lives. Bonn is an accomplished underwater photographer in her own right but has mainly skippered boats and provided support to other photographers and film makers over the years.
It was here that Betsy built a cabin some years ago in which to live. It’s about the size and shape of a chattel, but with screen walls and without a water supply; there she lived for five years. More recently, power has been added and such creature comforts as a water heater and a free standing fridge installed on the ground outside. Water is collected off the roof, pumped through a shower head and cooking undertaken on a gas burner on the deck. Standing on the deck looking at it in the rain, it’s a damp existence I would have got bored with fairly quickly ....
We had a rummage through the fruit trees in the garden; picked and ate mandarins, collected lime, orange and grapefruit, picked fallen avocado off the ground, tried my first ripe guava and my first ripe coffee bean. The rain persisted and we went inside for a welcome cup of tea (drunk out of mugs made by Jason Krypan from Georgeville) and chatted to Bonn about her Faeroese film project based –not the easiest of commutes from Hawaii to Torshavn!
It was dark by the time we left ... and still raining, but we managed to escape the rain as we drove north. We were back in just after seven, beating Joe by about three-quarters of an hour.
A long day for all of us!
Wednesday, 2nd November, 2005
Again, not a fast start this morning. I wrote some logs while Anne and Betsy took in some heat out on the deck during an open air breakfast.
We finally left at about 10 and dropped into Macy’s in the village so that I could purchase a loud Hawaiian shirt. Standing round in a plain polo shirt out here you really standing out in the crowd!
We then stopped in at the Java Lava café with the intention of making a few quick uploads to the webpage. Got ourselves a table, bought smoothies … only to find that the connection was down. We set off for Hilo via the Saddle Road en route to Volcanoes National Park.
Picking your way up towards Mauna Kea, you drive though lush open grasslands on the way, and cut through what were obviously some quite long established ranches. Occasional lines of trees The Parker ranch just to the east is the largest ranch holding in the States and the Parkers seem to run pretty much everything in that area. They have a House of Bruar type outlet in Waimea.
Then you get up on to high plateau where the Saddle Road cuts through. The area is a military training ground so its not necessarily somewhere where you would comfortably linger; its also really windy … quite a warm wind , but blowing at Force 6 or 7.
It wasn’t really possible to get much of an impression of Mauna Kea – its nearly 14,000 ft high and I suppose that we must have climbed to 8 or 9 to get over the saddle, but from the road, its too close or too cloudy to get a view of the top and the observatory.
Once clear of the military camp, you start to get a view of the lava beds, just masses of black rock, some built into walls at the roadside … and with a road cut through. It looks like the moon.
Starting to drop down the other side towards Hilo we passed through Kipuka Puaulu, a Ne Ne (Hawaiian Goose) sanctuary … but didn’t see any. The area closes from November 1 to February 28, presumably for the breeding season.
As soon as we hit the ‘watershed’ and started moving into the east side of the island, the lichens started growing on the rocks and the completely black volcanic lava beds which were almost bare of vegetation, took on a grey tone as lichens simply carpeted the rocks and hung from the trees and bushes. Not sure what the habitat would have been called … it must be above the rainforest – perhaps wet temperate? Dropping further down, the rainforest trees, plants and ferns took over.
We arrived at Volcano village at about 3.30 and checked in to My Island bed and breakfast, owned and run by Gordon Morse – former local journalist, turned tour guide, now turned host. He has a certain style about him and obviously relishes the company of his guest house guests. He was holding forth at the table, as I gather he tends to do, with an attentive audience of new guests who had fortunately arrived just a few minutes before us and we were able to earwig on their briefing without the full blast of it being directed our way. Gordon is really knowledgeable about the islands and has written several books describing some of the sights and some of the history.
As we entered he boomed a welcome along the lines of ‘Don’t tell me. Your name is Moore’. It turns out that all his newly arriving guests this afternoon are called Moore - the others hailing from Tennessee. They were nice enough family, four of them but we quickly exhausted the possibilities of out Tennessee roots and their various Scottish connections.
The B&B is at 4000ft and gets 160 inches of rain per year. Outside it was laying down a good few millimetres in the garden, but luckily, just a few miles down the road, on the crater rim drive it was intermittently dry but really windy.
The landscape in the park and immediately surrounding the chain of craters is just so new and different; flat flows, strewn with boulders blown out by past eruptions and left lying randomly on the surface. Roadside signs urge slow speeds and constant vigilance for ne ne, but sadly, there were ‘nay ne ne’ for us to see,
We left at 4 o’clock in order to be able to get down to the shoreline by 5 and then to be able to walk out towards the active lava flows by the time it was dark – when you can see the orange of the flow. The drive down to the coast offers some spectacular views and we stopped once or twice to record it. As we arrived at the end of the road … or at least the point where the road has been cut off by a flow and where there is a ranger base set up, the red of the lava was just beginning to become visible as the sun dropped.
There were a lot of people there and a line of parked cars, with the result that we ended up with another third mile to walk we were so far down the road. Walking towards the ranger base the stench from the toilets over powered the faint sulphur smell from the lava. We watched the safety video which advised on the dos and don’ts of lava watching. The main don’t was not to go too near the coastal edge as the newly formed lava gets massively undercut and very large chunks of it break off regularly in to the sea.
We took the trail out from the base (along with a couple of hundred others). Many were diverting of to a nearby view point from where you could look along the coast perhaps half a mile and see the active lava edge pouring into the sea and the consequent billowing steam. We elected to take the trail … and then go beyond the trail so that we halved the distance. We settled onto a prominent viewpoint along with another fifty or so people. A few went on but they were very much a minority. It was quite spectacular, but too far away to get decent pictures … and and reviewing the pics I took, its clear that you need to be there just as the light is failing, this would give you enough ambient light to capture some of the rocks and the movement and it would also allow sufficient contrast for the molten flow to register deep red.
We walked back well after dark with torchlight and eventually found the car and then joined the procession up the hill which was mercifully fast and those that were dawdling pulled over to let the queue through.
We arrived back in Volcano Village at about 8.30, in time to be able to get a dinner at the Lava Rock café … it was still raining up there ! Dinner not much to write home about, but the ‘Volcano’ wine was interesting a really fruity, almost sherry taste to it.
We got back to the B&B at about 9.30 to find the lights on but everyone else in bed. I was delighted to discover that the place was hot wired so I was able to check e-mail and deal with the overdue making of various contacts for the Australian leg of the tour.
Bed was welcome but slightly damp and cold – what a climate! Who would choose to live in this when just a few minutes down the road is tropical Hawaii !!
3rd November, 2005
Awoke at 7 as we were on the ground floor and most of the people were attending breakfast … but finally went through to the melee at 8.
Its still raining !!!!! and its not a particularly inspiring day. I continued some diaries. Anne wanted to tour the gardens so donned waterproofs and set off photographing all the flowers . In addition to the Tennessee Moores, there was a Swiss family with delightful children who were great and were taking their extened travels well in their stride … though they were of an age when travel must have been challenging for the parents.
The Tennessees interrogated our movements of the night before.
They had not gone much further than the ranger base but it seemed that even that was a major departure from the norm. ‘If aar family could see us neow’ Mrs Tennessee informed us, in a deep south accent, ‘The’d be SO praad’. It was really touching.
We finally left at 10.30 … in the rain … but true to form and literally a couple of miles away we ran into clear skies and sunshine. Enquiries of the oracle at the B&B had revealed that the golf course offered the best opportunities for seeing ne ne. Sounded fair enough, so off we went. I stopped to chat up one of the starters and he pointed me towards a little dirt track to the side of the course. Yes, they did tend to be around and he had seen some this morning …. he said that we could drive down the track and see what we could see. Most golfers were on the front 9 at the moment but do keep an eye out for them. About a hundred yards down the track and busily grazing on the edge of a fairway stood a pair of ne ne. The wind was blowing a hooley (still) and I left the car to take a wide sweep along the edge and stalk them through the rough area against the wind. It all worked fairly well and risking huge fines and federal prosecution, I got within the 60 ft approach limit. They’re typical geese and as soon as I poked the lens out from behind a tree, the male stuck his head up in the air and watched closely, his mate just continued gobbling grass down her neck as fast as she could. I saw another three further over, obviously two males and a female – the males chasing each other around necks extended, once again, while the female busied herself on the nosh.
After this little triumph we went back into the park and along to the visitor centre. Nothing massively innovative but it had a nice interpretive piece on ne ne which I recorded on the ipod. We drove the crater rim once again, stopping to walk to the edge on a couple of occasions against the strong sulphur smell and buffeted about by the very strong wind. Walked through the Thurston Lava Tube, a short interpretive trail which takes you though native Hawaiian rain forest and the tube itself, which is about 400m long and lit. We left the park at about 1 and drove down to Hilo about 40 or so miles away. We finally escaped the wet and cold; I even had the heater on in the car I had got so cold and damp !! Our route was to take us north along the coast and we pulled in beside the botanic gardens to have a healthy lunch of a hand picked avocado and some cheese. How much better can lunch get?
Another highlight of the route was the Akaka Falls and we stopped to walk the trail and pay due homage; impressive falls and nice habitat surrounding – slightly difficult to get a good picture view but it allowed us to stretch our legs a bit.
When we returned there was a lady selling woodcut prints and we decided to buy a couple. Her spiel was eloquent but automatic …and slightly interesting because of it, she was on a bit of a loop and repeated certain phrases every minute or so … anyway there was a range of woodcuts with Hawaiian flora and fauna and some influenced by folklore.
Our next stop was Waimea and a look through The Parker Ranch shop – this is the one I said earlier was a bit like the House of Bruar. Some nice stuff but nothing went beyond temptation, mainly due to the fact that it was all very prominently branded ‘Parker Ranch’.
Back along the road we were lucky enough to see a short-eared owl (which I think is an island sub species) hunting its way along the roadside at dusk. It was only a glimpse of a few second and by the time I pulled in got the car turned and made another pass, it had either settled or moved on.
Back into Betsy’s well after dark. She had got her wireless access this morning so we got that all plugged in and set up.
Friday, 4th November, 2005.
Today we’re goin’ fishin’ and we left the house at 6.50.
Betsy had put together a packed lunch which interestingly was not allowed to include bananas; ‘You never catch fish when there are bananas on board the boat – it’s a well known fact’.
On the way to Keahou Bay we stopped in to buy a box of doughnuts and some coffee for breakfast. Down at the boat yard, Betsy’s friend Pat was busy hosing down a launch, re-fuelling, oiling and generally making it ready to go to sea. He owns and runs the yard but alternates between hiring fishing boats and working in construction … today he was building and Jan was coming with us to skipper the boat.
Jan arrived complete with cast on her arm; she’s a ‘Cattle Roper’ which means that she ranches cattle and catches them on a rope. One of the ‘Roping’ occupational hazards is that sometimes your thumb gets caught in the rope, and off it comes! Having had a very minor ‘staving’ once or twice which was sore enough, I would imagine that this is excruciating.
Anyway, the occupational hazard happened and she apparently popped it into a bag with some ice and duly headed off to hospital in Honolulu (three quarters of an hours flight away) and with separated thumb in tow. The long and the short of it being that they ran out of time; there is a critical period during which you can re-attach and they missed it, so she is now undergoing a period of painful re-construction and hence the splint.
We headed south along the coast having set lines out the back with lures as big as milk bottles and 4” hooks towards Kealakekua Bay. Just off the bay one of the reels started screaming out but we were slightly too slow to set the hook and whatever it had been detached itself . We spent a bit of time in the area to see whether anything else felt like taking a bite and then headed out to sea towards a number of other boats who were working an area. Here was the tuna school and an attendant pod of Hawaiian Spinner dolphins working their way back and forwards. Took loads of pics as they crossed our wake, rode under the boat, and ran parallel to us. Quite a few youngsters in amongst some of them being nursed by their mothers.
We had lunch at see with the engine shut down and then headed back towards the island to be on the wharf at 2.
Quite a bit of washing down and flushing through of the boat to do and then we stopped in to the post office to ply yet more trade the way of the US postal service. The postmistress was a bit of a grumpy old bat who Anne felt the need to keep referring to as ‘This nice lady …’ which did seem to keep her slightly sedated at moments of high stress, such as when another customer came in … and worse when one came in and didn’t quite close the door. He got a really entertaining roasting for his trouble!
Betsy and I spent a bit of time doing short sprints between the post office and the grocery store to findf a suitable box … then it was a question of raiding the free newspaper stand for packing and the saga continued … but eventually Anne had her nuts packed away, Betsy had been sitting serenely out on the bench had arranged a house-warming party and the pressure was off.
We went down to Kailu Kona, armed with the Kona museum pamphlet and roughly scouted out some re-take locations. The shoreline has changed considerable but one old tree, photographed in its youth at the beginning of the twentieth century, still hangs in there on the sidewalk opposite the palace.
We retired to Lefty’s bar for a cocktail and snack supper while a parade took place on the street outside. The parade is the fifth annual coffee growers event and features lanterns and drumming and was attended by a good proportion of the town who lined the street to watch.
Betsy’s friend Bev joined us and I chatted to her over dinner. She’s a seasonal Park Ranger up at Wrangel St Elias which is the largest National Park in Alaska and spend the other half of the year in Hawaii. She has a evry inetresting (surprising even) view on the prospect of oil exploration up in Alaska which presumably reflects much local opinion – the view is that the area affected is so small that any effect is insignificant. In addition to this would be the communal gain from the investment. Anyway it wasn’t a view I’d heard before … I’d presumed that the whole thing was being driven by Dubyah, but it appears to have local support as well.
In conversation, Bev mentioned a friend nearby called Bill, who lived in Kona and who was doing a repeat photography project in Breckenridge, Colorado. Betsy hastily gate-crashed his evening and we had a meeting arranged for 8 o’clock – very opportune !!
I had an hours chat with Bill and was intrigued to find that he had turned up a completely unique set of pictures to work from and through his various presentations, was turning up yet more completely new archive material. His locations were not exactly precise … but were close enough for the area to be immediately recogniseable. Really interesting … and I taped an hour of discussion with him.
Finally back to Betsy’s house at the back of 9 after an exhaustingly long but really fulfilling day day. Packed our bags and fell in to bed after checking e-mail
Saturday, 5th November, 2005
Today’s a bit of a funny day.
We set off from Betsy’s at 6.30 in order to get to the airport in time for an 8.50 flight down to Honolulu. Our flight to Honolulu was smooth, though once again ‘we were especially selected by our airline …’ so that took a few extra minutes and although we were the first customers of the day, I was delighted to see the number of other fellow travellers standing in line for the treatment.
We got breakfast at the ‘restaurant’ in side the airport. Here the radio was churning out a bit of music and also a string of adverts. One intrigued me; different male voices saying ‘ I’m a soldier … I’m a warrior … I’m a National Guard … I do this … I do that’ and the gist of it was a recruitment for the National Guard ‘to uphold freedom and protect the American way of life’.
I hooked my computer into an empty wall socket by the table to recharge it. The manageress was out within 3 minutes to ask me to unplug it and then she rummaged around for the plug for a neon sign advertising Budweiser. “ You gonner have to unplug Sir, this has to be plugged in’. Perhaps the advertisement for Bud is also protecting the American way of life. True.
Anyway we transferred to Honolulu without hitch and then tried to sort ourselves out for the Sydney flight. Our e-tickets advised of that the flight at about 11.50 but the on screen flight information listed our flight at 10.50 with a boarding time of 10.20. This didn’t leave us much time and we arrived at gate thirty something just a few minutes before the gate was closed … in fact they had to not close the gate in order to admit us to the flight.
So our time was limited and we dashed on board.
We left at 10.50 am on 5th November, 2005 and one would normally expect, after a 9.5 hour flight that they would arrive at about half past seven that evening … not so. Between Hawaii and Australia, due to the fact that you cross the dateline (a concept which rather does my head in), you actually do a 9.5 hour flight and arrive 31 hours later at about six on the evening of the 6th.
Where does it go? Is there a credit to be had somewhere? What actually happens during these missing hours? Where are they? On the face of it, if you continued going round the world in a westerly direction, and kept circulating in that direction, your life would get shorter and shorter and it seems that the only way to regain the time is to fly int eh other direction.
I’ve resolved not to even attempt to reset my computer, until I get home and find out exactly what the time and date is, anyway, I took a few pictures to try to capture the end of November 5th and the very abrupt beginning of November 6th.
Sunday, 6th November, 2005
The day firmly took hold when we landed at 5.50pm at Sydney, Australia. The plane took a turn around the city on its approach and we got a view over the harbour and picked out the Opera House (looked very small!) and the bridge (looked very black!).
We wandered through customs and then reclaimed our bags. The Detector Dogs were busy at work very small beagle-type dogs, wearing a smart DD uniform (!) and snuffling their way through the luggage, quietly jumping up on the trolleys and picking their way through.
Right beside where Anne was standing, it suddenly sat down beside a bag and the owner was summoned by the handler. There was half a packet of biscuits inside … which was confiscated.
Our bags passed muster. We then had to slot everything through another x-ray, this time with the express purpose of looking for any ‘produce’ presumably anything that the dogs might have missed.
Out on the concourse we were met by Dorothy den Hollander an Australian cousin of Annes and a scarily sprightly 88!!! Dorothy stood awaiting us at the arrivals gate, having spent the day at a lecture series at the university. We got a bit of a taste of Sydney on our way back to Dorothy’s house as she whisked us away to the leafy suburb of Woolahara at an alarming speed in her black BMW. Most of the trees are evergreen so Sydney was looking decidedly leafy; the jacarandas are all blue, laden with petals and each one has a blue shadow beneath it where petals have fallen.
Dorthy’s house is called Kilrie which has been in her family since the 1940s, prior to that she was in Melbourne … at another Kilrie near Sandringham … and she also lived for a time at Kilrie in Fife. She has a small flat at the back of the house which is currently occupied by Dorothy’s daughter Crecy, husband Jeremy and children Fraser and Fenna.
We settled down to catch up over a glass or two of champagne and some smoked salmon sandwiches.
We didn’t stay up late, piling into bed not long after 9.
Monday, 7th November, 2005
We let the weekday melee of school and work exits (which takes place before 8 o’clock) clear this morning before venturing down to check out a cup of tea.
Crecy had been investigating some harbour tours for us on the net and we had a number of options; Dorothy was fussing around making tea and toast … tea in a teapot; warmed for a minute, boiled water onto the tea leaves and ‘drawn’ for 8 minutes. It was the best cup of tea we’d had for months!! The American tea, in spite of the selection of pekoes, Earls and Lady Greys, English breakfasts and Liptons etc simply doesn’t match up – probably the water … and also the milk ... and according to Dorthy, the fact that they don’t boil the water properly. She has had, oin occasiona cup of tea made with hot water out of the tap! Anyway this was a treat and I had several cups.
Jeremy had left early to drive out to somewhere in ‘the country’ for a business meeting … but then discovered that the meeting was in fact in the city at 8 o’clock so he was running badly late. Crecy had done the school run but was now on standby to pick up Jeremy and deliver him to the city. Apart from all that it was very relaxing.
After breakfast, Dorothy rummaged out a very old family scrapbook with newspaper cuttings, sketches and engravings dating from the mid 1700s; an incredible document archive, with some fascinating first hand reports of the Indian Mutiny and the Siege of Lucknow. Also she brought out her fathers game book .. her father being a great uncle of Anne’s who died quite early on in the 20th century. The game book was another fascinating document with reports of early shooting exploits at various familiar places and he invariably shot with his brother (Anne’s Grandfather).
Of particular interest were the entries relating to some driven grouse days at Ettridge!! Part of the Phones Estate. Some of the writing was slightly difficult to decode without concentrating and it was only when I recognised a photographic view looking up the Truim with Loch Ericht in the background that the whole thing began to fall into place … the main problem being that the ‘Ts’ in Ettridge hadn’t been crossed. Anyway it was an interesting insight and fascinating from the point of view that this is familiar ground, with current family connections – these Ettridge shoots took place in the early 1920s. I took a few notes for later scrutiny but didn’t have much time to study things too deeply.
Anne and Dorothy spent the rest of the morning discussing family and delving into the scrapbook. I hooked up to the net and sorted through the backlog of e-mails and web uploads.
Crecy dropped us down at Circular Quay in the shadow of the harbour bridge and we booked ourselves onto a Majestic Tour of the harbour which was leaving at 1pm.
Sadly the skies are grey and there’s a bit of a breeze blowing … not the Australia of the tourist brochures for sure … but equally we weren’t troubled by the heat!
Sydney is a beautiful city. Our introduction from the water showed just how leafy it really is, although there are two distinct developed districts, north and south of the bridge, the rest of the city comprises low houses interspersed with trees and much of the shoreline is state park … and so protected.
After the boat tour we walked around to the Opera House and got a light lunch sitting out on the wharf, before walking around this bizarre building … and also re-taking an old postcard shot from the Man o’ War Steps, squeezed in between the Opera House development and the Botanical Gardens. Its probably impossible to get to the exact camera location … at least without the aid of a ladder … but remarkably little has changed in the intervening hundred years.
We took a taxi back to Woolhara for another restorative cup of tea … but almost immediately we were off again along to Centennial Park to look at another postcard location. Another very early 20th Century card … taken on the central drive and after a slight false start, we found it! The road has shifted very slightly and the trees are probably not the same … but its very recognisable.
Our stay with Dorothy was drawing to a close and Grayem an old friend of the Drysdales was going to pick us up from Dorothy’s and look after us for the next couple of nights.
Grayem lives across in Randwick and we bade a fond farewell Dorothy and whizzed across the suburb to meet Grayem’s wife, Briony at Chez Forrest a three storey townhouse in a quiet part of the town.
A lovely dinner and some great Aussie wine and once we’d got our heads fully round the time changes involved, we phoned Julia in Barbados; Eleven o’clock at night on the 7th, translated into 8 o’clock on the 8th in Barbados.
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.
Wednesday, 9th November, 2005
Up at 5.20 this morning. Luckily Grayem has an early tee off this morning and so was on song to drop us off at the airport for our 6.30 check in.
A brighter day altogether which was all going swimmingly until we had a bit of excitement when they told us that our Qantas flight No 4 wasn’t happening. What wasn’t immediately apparent was that we had been changed under some kind of reciprocal agreement. With a change of terminals and a bit of swift legwork, we were back on track and loading bound for Townsville.
We left pretty well on time, we had a two and a bit hour flight, but because of the time change in Queensland (which is an hour behind) we arrived at only 9 am ! (‘Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to Townsville Queensland. You should put your watch back about an hour ….’ That’s what they said !!!!) There’s also the long running joke about arriving in Queensland … ‘Please put your watches back 20 years!’
The first thing you notice is the heat. It hits you like a wet, hot towel; very high humidity, well up the 30s and even thinking about doing something breaks you out in a sweat.
We picked up the car with only minor discussion. The need to pre-charge the card for this and that always un-nerves me and here, we seemed to be signing away an awful lot which it sounded like we might lose for such potentially minor (or major) events as kangaroo collision.
Having signed all that, I was a bit perplexed to find that there was no parcel shelf in the car … and as such, no means of covering our bags in the boot or offering even a modicum of respite from the baking temperatures within the car. I queried it and after a phone call was told that the shelf had been missing for some time and also that the car (the cheapest two door with aircon) which I was due to have had been returned damaged … so they had to let me have a four door (Errrr, right …. ?). The upshot was that I should be glad I had a bigger car, even though I had no parcel shelf. ‘Sorry about that Mate’ said the young girl behind the counter ... Oh well!
Anne had had a couple of brief correspondences with the Burdekin Shire Council. One the purposes of this leg of the trip was for Anne to catch up with her Drysdale family history and for me to retake one or two images lurking in their family photo albums. Anne’s forbears established the Pioneer Sugar mill near Ayr and her great, great uncle introduced a revolutionary irrigation system which increased the area available for productivity. Her grandfather was also a director of the company in the teens and twenties of the 20th Century.
As we drove across from Townsville, at regular intervals across the fields we could see the billowing stacks of the sugar mills. Still using a steam driven process which hasn’t changed for over a century. We crossed the cane railways … small railways lines running out of the fields, alongside and across the roads towards the mills. All the mills run on a two foot guage … that is, two feet between the rails except for Pioneer, which is the only mill to run on three foot six a Drysdale legacy where he either standardised his rolling stock for the national network … or possibly got a cheap deal on a locomotive or two; the tales vary.
Anne’s contact in the council was going to help us find some contacts with the current mil owners – a huge multi national – and with a bit of luck open a few doors.
We phoned from Townsville and arranged to drive straight down to Ayr and to meet with them first of all. About an hour after we were turning left at the clock in the centre of Ayr erected to perpetuate the memory of John Drysdale, Anne’s great great uncle and parking outside the council chambers.
Inside, things started to get fairly organised, Anne was met by Lyn, the Mayor and introduced to David Jackson, the senior journalist from the Ayr Advocate, the local newspaper, who was standing by camera in hand ready to record everything … which was all a little bit unexpected. There was a presentation of a commorative book about the sugar industry and a whole heap of stuff about the Burdekin in general and Anne was photographed outside with the Mayor.
Afterwards, we were able to sit down and Anne outlined what we wanted to do in terms of seeing some of the old mill buildings and visiting the places where her family lived … and then the Mayor picked up the phone and started making calls. At about this time we were marched down the street and photographed in front of the commemorative clock, for an article in Friday’s Advocate and finally we made good our escape with a list of contacts and phone numbers. Yikes.
The first of the meetings was with a man called Peter Toomey who is involved in putting together a museum collection along at a place called Brandon. We stopped off and in the baking heat of a tin shed looked through the various machines and implements ... most of which was of limited interest, but outside, was a traction engine which had been one of the first in the Burdekin and the guy was sure that John Drysdale had been present at its inaugural outing. Yes …. Well ……
After that we were suitably exhausted to feel the need to book in to a motel as soon as possible and settled on the Country Ayr Motel.
Relaxing in a cool darkened room is excellent therapy for being ‘over Drysdaled’ as I’ve discovered over the last twenty years or so and even Anne was in need of a bit of a break, if only to be able to absorb all the information that was flying around!
The Country Ayr provided such an environment … but it wasn’t very long before Glenis, the President of the local Family History and Historical Society visited us at the room and we had another hour or so of information, snippets and planning.
Outside the skies darkened and the cane fires were lit. putting great plumes of smoke into the air and lighting the sky with an orange glow. For five minutes of so the fires raged through the fields and then they died, leaving the cane, free of debris – trash as they call it locally – and ready to cut. They aim to have the cane fields burnt and the crushing completed at the mill within 24 hours and at this time of year its a 24/7 operation
One of the recommendations logged early on in both our minds was the need to eat Burdekin Barramundi … which is a very large freshwater fish and one which thrives apparently in the Burdekin River.
It turns out that the season closed last week but we enquired at the local restaurant and they had a couple of portions squirreled away which they were delighted to prepare for us. The ‘Barra’ turned out to be really fine fish. Large chunks of white flesh, seared to perfection and served up with local vegetables.
By 9.30, a combination of a delicious dinner, half a bottle of local wine and the heat. We were ready to pass out … and at about 9.31 we did. Anne stayed awake long enough to phone Penny back in Scotland to get some extra Drysdale info, but I was gone and slept really well.
Thursday, 10th November, 2005
Up at 6.30 and in spite of the early hour, its already baking outside.
We had breakfast at 7.15 and although the initial thought was that we’d have it outside; its too hot so we retreated to the aircon.
Glenis arrived at about 8.30 to begin our whistle stop tour of the area and we climbed aboard her 4WD so as not to curtail our explorations.
First stop was to drive along Kilrie Road near Home Hill, in order to visit Kilrie House. Although retaining the core of the verandahs, which would have adorned the first floor have now been enclosed and the fig trees which formed an entrance avenue only relatively recently removed.
Elsa who owns the property now was delighted to meet Anne and we chatted for quite some time and had an opportunity to have a look underneath (the house is raised about 6 or seven feet on stilts to raise it above the Burdekin floodwater) Here it was possible to see the very strong structure of the core of the house and also see the marks on one of the support pillars indicating the levels of floodwaters in the last seventy years.
We had a look at the Burdekin itself. A huge river, looking extremely benign on this day, but bearing all the tell-tale signs of huge potential power of massive volumes of water and loads of debris.
A lone fisherman was ignoring the warning signs for the saltwater crocs and casting his lines out into the muddy flow. We retired back to Glenis’s house … or more correctly her husband Harold’s work shed where there was a group of men sitting around discussing life in a typically Australian way. These were middle aged cane farmers, with battered, sweat stained and bleached wide brimmed hats, working boots, battered jeans and open neck shirts revealing nut brown sun scorched flesh.
They were an interesting group and the meal time gathering reminded me of the sort of characters depicted by Russell Drysdale (yep we’re back to Drysdales again) in his Burdekin River sketchbook. Line drawings of cattle and cane men.
After a restorative coffee we left for Home Hill and after meeting Graeme, who is involved with the exhibition we toured the ‘Power Station’ exhibition and corporately funded exhibition in a shop premises on the main street which has a series of archival photographs enlarged and mounted on the walls, showing the mills in the area and the various events associated with the river … several bridge crossings, flood events and old ferries.
We stopped for lunch … well a packet of crisps and about a litre and a half of fluids. Its baking outside and I should, by rights, be sweating pounds away. At this stage we also tried to arrange a viewing of a private machinery collection owned and largely restored by Tom Callow. An appointment was duly arranged for 2pm and we made ourt way along the dusty cane trackes to the Callow Farm. I had a good laugh when to Annes stockpile introduction which involves variants of `Hi, I`m a Drysdale` he responded `Well now, that`s not necessarily a good thing`. I`m going to be noting that one for the future!
Tom is a cane farmer and in 1984 decided to purchase a Lister JP2 engine to pump some water. Little did he know that it was the start of a collection which after twenty years now numbers over 250 fully restored engines, tractors and pumps and the yard is littered with another several hundred wrecks which have been acquired for spare parts and some which are awaiting his detailed attention. It all seems a bit strange given the amount of trouble I have with only one tractor and one wrecked car outside the house !!
And its not only wrecks, he has a dentist’s chair, a complete jailhouse moved and re-erected at his farm, he has butter makers, petrol pumps and signs and a few railway items from the cane railways.
The restoration process can be a slow one and a steam roller parked in the yard is gradually being loosened off after decades of neglect. Oil points oiled and the great machine rocked back and forth and re-oiled. A day, a week or a month later he repeats the process and eventually it frees completely and more serious work can begin.
After my conducted tour of what is known as Tom’s Toybox, Tom’s wife Jan made us tea and we sat around discussing the whole mechanical process. I was intrigued to hear that they travel as far as Dorset for various steam engine related gatherings and events ,,, we may see them yet in Scotland!
Our final visit of the day is a look at a part of Pioneer Mill … not the 24/7 production part, but the old part in the shadow of the expanded mill is the site of the old Pioneer Houses, all of which have sadly, been demolished and cleared. We didn’t enter the site until about 5 and while Glenis had a notion of where the old buildings had been located, so much appeared to have changed, that the re-photography task was not going to be as easy as I had hoped.
I was stomping around the back of a particularly pungent cooling pond, trying to avoid snakes, keep dry and line up some trees when a young mum arrived on the scene complete with two children on trikes. In a very unnatural moment of comradely conversation … which was mostly designed to determine the likelihood of snake encounter, and/or attack in these parts I asked here whether she knew anything about the history of the mill. No she didn’t, but she knew a man who did; her husband and he was just over this way if I’d like to follow her.
Warren Derrick was watering his roof, which I suspect is the sort of thing you do after a very hot day (?) and was not immediately delighted at being disturbed and asked three times by his wife to ‘come down please’.
Once he did come down and had tuned into the purpose of the visit … and also had a look at a few of the pics that I was matching, he became very interested and we walked back around the lagoon so that he could point out the drain covers for the old house and from that I could work out the camera angles accordingly. Warren also provided us with an important steer as to other unidentified locations by picking up that one shot, which we thought was Inkerman Mill included some wide guage cane railway … immediately identifying it as Pioneer. Like many of the other people we met, he’s grown up here and is a fifth generation sugar miller; he knows the sites intimately but is seldom called upon to remember or record his knowledge in any way.
It was too late for the re-take by this time but Warren then collected some keys and took us in to the old School Of Arts building which is one of the original structures which was moved and re-built as a social club for the Mill employees, but which appears to be fairly run-down in the meantime. Inside there were a few rather poor copies of some early pics, some shots of various prize bulls from the Pioneer Stud (a relatively late venture) and a massive hand written ledger book dealing with wages back in the 1950s.
We left them as it was getting dark and Glenis dropped us back at the motel by 7. We’d invited Glenis and Harold out to dinner so had time for a shower and literally a minute or twos reflection before Glenis returned.
We ate at a bar in Ayr and fell into bed not long after we were dropped off at 9.30.
A long, hot, exhausting day !
Friday, 11th November, 2005
Breakfast at 7 and over this we had a bit of debate as to where and how we would try to see something of the Great Barrier Reef in the next couple of days. The reef itself is about 80km distant from Townsville and, therefore, a long spin in a boat which may or may not be memorable. Closer to home there were several islands on offer … most, it has to be said connecting via Cairns, to the north. I left Anne in charge and set out back to Pioneer to retake the pictures we’d sussed last night.
I managed to line up most of the images I wanted … had to undertake a bit of tree surgery to sort one, but from the looks of the CSR operation (the current owners of the mill) they’re not in to either the natural or cultural heritage … and so wouldn’t miss a couple of bushes.
I got back at 8.30 and during this time, Anne had booked a couple of days on an island within the reef national park, packed our bags and checked out of the motel. I had gone off leaving my credit card in my trousers pocket which had made the former possible. So we loaded up the car and went in search of Harold (this time) who is going to accompany us along to Inkerman mill where he has a nephew working as a senior engineer who can by-pass much of the indifference and make the very strict health and safety precautions seem slightly lesss intrusive.
At 9 we met Wayne Cislowski, described the work and showed him a few Inkerman images. One interested him in particular which was an interior shot looking along the mill machinery and he put on his garb and walked through the works in order to check out whether the present roof laddering system lined up with our shot. It did and he agreed to take me in to re-take the image … provided that I could meet the health and safety needs of the company. Closed toe boots … so I swapped sandals for hiking boots … and Wayne withdrew the other kit from the stores; fluorescent orange shirt, eye protection, ear protection, gloves and of course a hard hat.
Sweating profusely from this get-up we set off back into the mill. The gantry from which I re-took the images must occupy almost the same elevation as a 1920s one, because the camera angle onto the roof is very similar.
Outside, we crossed the tracks and took another angle and as we moved around the camera stations, it was possible to begin to pick out the core of the old sugar mill and visualise the building which had been extended, removed and in a few cases restored in the last 90 years.
One gable end, a notable feature in the 1920s image, suddenly became visible as we moved about and there it was, dwarfed and submerged in the heart of the present mill. As I was getting escorted around turning rapidly into a greasy mass in all my protective gear, Anne had managed to forge a conversation with someone who happened in to the foyer as they sat waiting. This lady had been raised at Pioneer and provided Anne with a whole load of contact numbers and directions as to where she should go.
We left Inkerman having completed what we set out to do, dropped Harold back, had a farewell coffee with Glenis. It had been a whirlwind couple of days and we’d achieved so much ... and heard so much, that it is difficult to try to capture all the information we have started to accumulate.
We drove back in to Ayr and stopped off to buy a newspaper to find ourselves splashed over page 4 complete with photograph and we then stopped at a very small café for a smoothie and in order to re-group. The newspaper story included Anne’s phone number and as we sat in the café some one called in order to claim possible Drysdale links …
The final visit necessary was to try and nail Pioneer, speak to someone called Desley and if possible, see someone called Robin Juffs who ‘is an old Pioneer Man’. If possible, the objective was to visit a building called Pioneer Lodge where the mill board of directors and various dignitaries have stayed over the years.
Deslee proved to be a good contact and agreed to smooth our path at about 3 that afternoon, so we duly turned up in the car park then entered the second office on the right and were assigned Pam.
Pam is a receptionist and was obviously not wildly keen on having to drive us around. Poor girl, she was shaped like a tele-tubby and due to the CSR uniform which all employees have to wear on site as it meets the various safety requirements, she was decked out in a thick blue CSR work shirt and jeans and due to this fact and her bulk obviously thrived on air conditioning. Her trip to ‘The Lodge’ tested her resolve to the full.
The Lodge is a low, 1950s building kitted out in veneers and formica and while housing the original full sized billiards table from Old Pioneer, it contains nothing of the painting or photographic wealth that had been hinted at. The house had only been vacated some weeks before, after a retiring manager had been in residence for some years. This seems to have been the pattern; a series of managers occupying the house in the last twenty years for relatively short periods. Its possible during this time that the place has been incrementally stripped.
I found the old visitors book lurking in one of the bedrooms and we looked though it, with Pam quietly melting I attendance nearby. It dated only from the 50s – presumably new with the house – and included a few familiar names. Lots of entries of Russell Drysdale visiting in his capacity as one of the directors and also in 1977 the visit of one Penny Drysdale !
Back at the office, Robin Juffs was somewhat reluctantly sprung from his office and he took a few minutes to warm-up but once we’d persuaded him round he was full of memory and anecdote. We left at about 5 and after taking a few shots of the mill on the way out, headed towards Townsville.
Just on the Ayr side of town, we’d been given a contact and potentially offered a bed by friends of friends, so decided to try and drop in and sound them out for a bed on Monday. A rather broken phonecall just as it was getting dark and we got directions down to Ian and Frances’ new home near Nome set in a twenty acre plot and being actively worked on!
We hadn’t really developed a plan for the night but had the Comfort Inn in Townsville earmarked as convenient and relatively inexpensive and a good stepping off point for the airport toorrow, but as it turned out, Frances very kindly offered us a bed and we thought no further.
Ian and Frances emigrated eighteen months ago from Deeside; he to work for CSIRO the government environment organisation here, she to take a chair at James Cook University in Townsville.
We went along to a local café for dinner which is run by one of the guys in charge of the a local research lab; had a great time and back at about 10 and fell into our upstairs building site.
Saturday, 12th November, 2005
Ian has an early golf appointment this morning and his arousal was even earlier by the need to go into town at 4am to retrieve his daughter. Anyway he had left by the time we surfaced … I went down to investigate some persistent knocking at the door downstairs which turned out to be a plasterer and a while later we heard Frances returning from her early morning walk amidst a string of Viszlas.
The house is going to be superb. Two storeys with wide verandahs all around. A very traditional feel to the place in terms of design … and in fact it’s an old property, having been shifted on the back of a lorry from its original location on to this new plot. Ian and Frances have put in a pool and divided the ground into horse paddocks and extended the house considerably, by putting on the verandahs; quite a project.
We were away by 10, en route to Townsville to pick up one or two things on the way and then to arrive at the airport to take a seaplane out to the island of Orpheus.
I didn’t have much to do with the planning of this little sojourn and writing this a couple of days later am still blissfully unaware of the damage to the credit card – though the signs are ominous! Anne was getting more and more morose about the prospect of being up here in the tropics within a boat ride of the barrier reef and not having done any snorkelling – so I said to her, why don’t you just sort something out … and then I nipped out to take some photographs and left my credit card behind and well, the rest is going to be history!
Orpheus has a couple of dwellings; a research station run by James Cook Uni and a resort complex which has been operating since the 50s in fairly grand style. It is reputed to have a fine fringe reef around the island … a convenient insight into what the reef has to offer, readily accessible from the mainland. We’re booked in to the resort and apparently we have (according to Anne) a really good deal on it.
We were met by the Seaplane pilot inside the air port terminal and our baggage taken and stowed in the back of the single prop Cessna. It has floats fitted with retractable undercarriage so it’s just outside the terminal, on the runway.
Having cleared ‘security’ … slightly odd as our bags went the short route … we waited briefly at a gate and then wandered out across the tarmac with another couple and loaded onto the plane.
Smooth take-off and out over the Queensland coast where we passed various islands on the twenty minute run up to Orpheus.
Landing on floats in a smooth, blue lagoon in front of an hotel is a very nice way to arrive. I couldn’t quite remember where my impressions of seaplanes have come but it’s gradually dawned on me that it’s probably Biggles. I can picture him in one or two of his adventures swooping over azure blue lagoons with palm trees and scurrying natives below and with exception of the scurrying natives, it’s just like that.
Anyway the Biggles moment was completed on landing. A gradual descent with the ocean getting closer and closer, a slap, slap as we made an initial touch and then a whoosh of spray to the sides and we ‘planed’ across the surface of the bay and coasted up to a pontoon moored offshore.
A small landing craft–type barge awaited us nearby and we transferred for the short trip to the beach. Here, we were met and ushered to a lounge for a fruit punch and a briefing on the set-up. There area five or six other couples some a similar vintage, but most a little older. Anyway as a result, it’s thankfully not Ibiza; it’s quiet.
We had a bit of a look around and then headed in for lunch.
Lunch was great; not speedy … which was to become a feature of the meals times here but it was fresh and appetising.
The daily programme of events is posted on a board and there’s a canoe expedition across to a mangrove swamp at 3 which we decided to take part in as a gentle introduction to the area and what the guided tours will be like.
Most of the visitors appeared on the beach to collect canoes and we were lucky enough to get one that looked slightly older than the others and had thus been rejected by most but it was in fact a sturdy and stable double canoe. During the briefing the guide (Angela) mentioned that the objective was to go across to observe the rays as they drifted in on the tide to feed under the mangroves … she then mentioned that unfortunately they were quite easily disturbed and that sometimes the first visitors in had the best views at which point it was like the start of the Iron Man contest with flailing paddles as everyone struck out for the mangroves which were about half a mile away.
We rather disdainfully hung around at the back of the melee and headed slightly further up the edge of the swamp. The rays cleared out fairly smartly, but once the dust had settled and the crowds had thinned (remarkably most of the paddlers went straight back to the resort as soon as they’d clocked a ray) we went in and although very wary, were able to see one or two large rays gliding through the shallow water and around the canoe.
Back across the bay, the tide was racing in and we id a little more exploring. At the back of the buildings is a set of steps which leads past the ‘lap pool’ (clockwise only please) and out onto a path which takes you up to a lookout on the hill above the resort. We took a stroll up there in time to watch the sun drop down below the mainland. The trees on the far side are short and wind clipped, being open fully to the winds from the Pacific. Also above is the grave of a fox terrier called ‘Mr Nicholson’ who toured the islands back in the 50s and 60s on board a yacht. He evidently had a penchant for his master’s shoes and when he was interred (and it’s a fairly monumental cairn with polished marble plaque), his owner left the last shoe that he was working on by his grave … in the intervening years, the pile of shoes grew and it became a bit of a good luck ritual to leave shoes at the grave. As there were no shoes in the vicinity when we passed and signs of scorch marks on the nearby rocks, it looks as if someone had had a bit of a clean-up.
Wandered back down, Anne went for a swim, I took some pics and then it was time to wander along for dinner.
Dinner on Orpheus is a bit of a marathon; seven courses … but lest there be any further concern as to my increasing girth, it has to be said that the portions are suitably small, beautifully cooked and presented and the whole thing is a very memorable experience.
What is noticeable about this occasion … and we now gather it’s ‘a feature’ of Queensland ‘service’ is that it takes a hell of a long time.
Dinner takes at least two hours … and the ten to fifteen minute gap after your first course (one mouthful of vol au vent) or after a scoop of sorbet half way through, is absolutely fine if you have nothing better to do (and as the view is perfect and the climate perfect and there’s nothing trying to eat you, there is nothing much better to do) but the eager anticipation of what’s coming is a bit wearing – but it certainly works up an appetite. All in all I think I prefer to get it down my neck at a reasonable, but unhurried pace and then bask in the digestive process.
Highlights of this evenings offerings would be soup and the seared clams (Anne being allergic to some shellfish) had reef trout.
Tree frogs calling, the odd raucous call which sounds suspiciously like some form of petrel and the odd flying fox overhead and around your feet at the dinner table rather timid long nosed bandicoot hoover up the crumbs.
A quick tour round the cabin with a torch soon revealed an echidna snuffling around on the grass.
Sunday 13th November, 2005
We were awake fairly early this morning. Anne went for a swim and I sat out in the sun and caught up on a few notes. We went along to breakfast at about 8.30 determined to crack on with what was on offer and get on with the day … but the pace of life took over. Our man of the moment, David had very obviously had a heavy night and short-term memory was non-existent. The order for juice passed him by … and the order for coffee but in the meantime he did appear with a plate of fruit … the main choice of breakfast arrived at least a quarter of an hour later and we reminded him about the coffee (wince and brief apology - something about a back log in the kitchen!) Coffee didn’t immediately manifest itself so I went and made some at the 24-hour bar nearby and returned with it. Ten minutes later up wanders the bold boy with his coffee … not the sort we’d ordered which was just a regular and decaf but some form of latte with frothy milk. Oh well … he tried; (mental note to be extremely explicit with him tomorrow).
There was a snorkelling expedition going at 10 and we decided to go on that and then take a boat and a picnic lunch around to Yanks Harbour and snorkel ourselves for the rest of the day.
I collected a disposable underwater camera from the shop just in case and we went round to the reef in Research Bay with another four others. We dropped off the front of the barge. Quite shallow water and a slightly disappointing reef in that it was suffering badly from bleaching and looked fairly knocked about. The other point was that the visibility was really poor; not nearly as clear as the Caribbean and this put a slightly dull bluish sheen across everything you looked at … enjoyable nonetheless. One or two giant clams and quite a few reef fish.
We got back around to the resort at about midday … and duly collected our picnic lunch (in a wicker basket) and a huge (and heavy) ‘Esky’ or cool box – presumably something to do with Eskimos?
After a few minutes briefing on the mechanics of the boat we set off down the channel and out through the navigation buoys and took a hard left towards the headland.
We rounded to the jetty at Yanks Harbour quite a large floating dock with a fixed walkway out to it and a set of picnic tables set up under the shade of a canopy. We took up residence there, unloaded the boxes and set up our picnic; a box about 12x8 of seafood, another of cooked meats and another of salad along with a loaf of bread, cheese and biscuits. Quite a feast … and we made a very respectable dent in it.
The fishes around the jetty were quite incredible and we spent a bit of time feeding them and then taking some shots. It was hot out on the beach but I wandered along a few hundred yards and then sought some respite in the trees.
We’d planned to snorkel just around the headland back at a place called Little Sandy and as the tide was rising it was an ideal time to work our way in there, take the anchor ashore and let everything take its course in the knowledge that we wouldn’t end up having to carry the boat half a mile across the sand to re-float it.
Grounded the boat and then set off out to the reef buoy off shore. Visibility wasn’t great and we just pottered about on the edges of the coral. There were a good number of fish but we didn’t really get spectacular sightings.
Swimming back to the shore we came in across sands that had been exposed previously and the water temperature was, in places, almost unbearable; certainly as hot as the hottest bath you’d normally have at home.
We lazed about on the beach for a while, until these nippy little crustaceans took a hold. They seemed to frequent the splash zone and took a real grip of your ankles. Back across the bay, we made another landing straight across near to where there’s a colony of Giant clams … drifting over the top of them you could look down and see the shapes but we decided to forgo the snorkelling, because there was no ladder on the back of the boat and I reckoned it was a dead cert for a capsize if you tried to haul yourself in over the side; couldn’t be bothered swimming to shore.
We got back to the resort at 5.45 and had a bit of fun as Anne tried to balance on one of the giant clamshells at the top of the beach, which they have filled with water as footbaths, to wash off the sand. Sadly I just missed the moment as the whole lot tipped over spilling out the water.
We sat along the beach outside the room watching the sun go down.
Dinner was the usual performance and it seems worth noting the various courses for posterity; Amuse Gueule involving a microbe of salmon; Cream of asparagus soup with confit spatchcock and smoked paprika oil; A tataki of yellowfin tuna complimented by a petite salad of pickled fennel, chilli, snow peas and bocconcini, glossed with a fragrent soy and sesame vinaigrette; A whole snapper oven roasted with lime and coriander, served with buttered kipflers and a rocket parmesan salad; Bread and buter pudding with blueberries with kind island double cream; Smoked applebox cheddar cheese with petite poached apples and water crackers. How’s that? Spreads over about two and a quarter hours its quite a measured experience.
Monday, 14th November, 2005
This morning we were determined to tackle breakfast a little differently and pitched up at the dining room at about 8.20 and outlined a few clear preferences when asked … all went smoothly; yoghurt and muesli arrived without hitch, the coffee equally – regular and decaf – the only slightly irritating thing was the sequence of plate clearing and then the few minutes that passed while you sat there eagerly anticipating carrying on with breakfast only to have the waiter pass closely by, who then asked whether it was OK to bring the next course !! Having urged him to ‘get the whole lot out here as quickly as he could carry it’, breakfast progressed at a more normal pace.
We decided to take it fairly easy … a few things to catch up on … a bit of a browse through the shop and a check of the e-mail. Mid morning Anne went and sussed out the possibility of being taken along to the giant clam colony and managed to arrange that we were taken down there ceremoniously, in the resort barge. We swam for about an hour drifting over the clams ... I started to count them at one stage as I swam over them but gave up when I got to 67.
They’re amazing animals … over a metre long, with siphons wide enough to be able to stick your arm in and they just sit there for forty, fifty, sixty years in the same place basking in the sun and living predominantly off the algae that inhabit their outer flesh.
We went back along to the resort and the seaplane came to collect some of our fellow visitors on its way up to Cairns and then whooshed off out of the bay. We packed our bags in order to release us for a leisurely beer and lunch. Delicious cold soup.
All too soon it was our turn to take the barge out to the seaplane dock and at about 2.30 we were clambering on board and then taxiing out of the bay (look left and right as you gout passed the headland … check on the radio … turn it around and then scud across the waves).
We stopped off in Townsville on the way through and then made our way out to Ian and Frances’. Chateau Gordon is quite a crowded digs tonight; we have the room (with the fan) up stairs and outside on the day bed and the hammock are Frances’ cousin and son.
The four of us went down into town to Naked Fish for a ‘signature supper’, which consisted of barramundi on a bed of bananas and didn’t perhaps slip down quite as well as anticipated. Frances has a half past three appointment at the airport tomorrow morning to deliver a couple of viszla pups as air freight for transfer to Melbourne.
Tuesday, 15th November, 2005
Up early; yet another scorcher – there’s little point in going on about the weather out here but the ferocity of the heat at such an early hour always makes me stop and think. What a climate? It’s baking hot and its only 8 o’clock in the morning. Breakfast out on the verandah. Loaded up our bags and were under way not long after 9.30.
We went down into the town to the aquarium and had a look through there. Its quite good and probably dealing well with a difficult subject, but it wasn’t a patch on Monterey … which is but a distant and hazy memory. The tanks are large but once again the visibility was quite poor … perhaps it’s the tropical water … or perhaps it’s the lighting, either way, the effect is not nearly as dramatic.
We did our last minute shopping including a couple of cornettos which were to suffice for the time being, as elevenses and lunch and got the car along to the airport at about 12.30. This was a couple of hours later than Europcar were expecting … but they seemed relatively relaxed about it.
We got a beer at the airport and then went through security where I was casually pulled aside on a random check ... but it was a very relaxed and informal swab of the outside of my camera bag for explosives.
The Qantas flight left about half an hour late and the flight lasted about one hour twenty. The most interesting observation involved the person sitting next to Anne. This was a youngish and apparently well travelled businessman who introduced himself as soon as she sat down and wanted to exchange life histories. The conversation developed further as she took out her Sudoku book and started to do one of the puzzles. Well, he was keen to find out about this new phenomena and Anne, who as some of you will know, is not particularly partial either to having anyone reading over her shoulder or the prospect of having anyone advising on such matters. Interesting dilemma and while resisting any opportunity to be drawn into the verbal exchanges, I thought it was well worth watching quietly from the sidelines.
It didn’t take long for the gentleman to be referred to his own Sudoku puzzle “which could be found in (his) seat pocket at the back of the in flight magazine” and it didn’t stop there … whatever intellect he possessed … which had taken him to whatever level in his profession he had reached, had not prepared him either for the complexity of the Sudoku puzzle in front of him or for the scant instructions proffered by Qantas. So there was per necessity, a further consultation. Anne’s explanation was perhaps not quite how Carol Voorderman might have described the procedure but nonetheless I sat back to watch him tackle his first puzzle.
He elected to do this by identifying common factors and so proceeded to list every number between 1 and 9, which could possibly fit inside each blank square … with the logic that he would then be able to work out all the common possibilities and complete the puzzle. The result was a confusing mass of numbers around the margin of the puzzle, but not one of the squares actually filled in. I nudged Anne and suggested that she might like to intervene lest the situation got completely out of hand and he started having to make further notes on his trouser leg.
This whole process must have lasted about 25 minutes and when she eventually explained some of the simple deduction associated with the first Sudoku moves a glimmer began to emerge and he set forth diligently and quietly. He never uttered another word for the rest of the flight … not even for lunch or coffee … and then as we busied were busily elbowing our way into the baggage reclaim queue, he came up to thank her profusely for introducing him to the game.
The car pick was extremely smooth and efficient and our departure from Brisbane airport suitably slick as well. We headed into town and after a turn through the streets, drew into an underground car park near to Anzac Square.
Wandered through looking at the shops … most particularly frequenting the travel sections one of the book stores, in order to get a list of phone numbers out of the Lonely Planet guide for bed and breakfasts in the town.
Initially Anne was keen to get out of town for the night towards Toowong, which is where I have a meeting tomorrow and so we took a turn out that way – about 6 km – but there wasn’t any kind of accommodation whatsoever in evidence … so we went back and plucked one of the Lonely planet numbers – Annie’s Shandon Inn, right in the heart of town. We got the last room. It’s run by a really enthusiastic Ozzie and was full to the brim of travellers. We lugged the cases up the very narrow stairs and hit the town for dinner. Our host this evening had mentioned that on Tuesdays and Wednesdays the St Paul’s tavern offered 2 for 1 dinners … so we certainly wouldn’t be going anywhere else! A short walk saw us sat in front of a couple of ‘schooners’ (you have pots – roughly a half pint, schooners – just short of a pint and on occasion pints) of cascade having ordered two huge steaks … all of which cost less that $30 or £15!
Back to our tiny room to re-charge batteries and organise a bit of packing.
Wednesday, 16th November, 2005
Breakfast needed to be quite early this morning due to the need to move the car from the temporary parking space at the back of Annie’s, so we were getting our share of coffee, tea and toast by 7.30. An interesting collection of people staying here from a rather large gentleman … possibly a sales rep, who had two black eyes to Japanese, German, Dutch along with a sprinkling of Aussies and Brits.
Shifted the car as one of the lady executives next door arrived to claim her reserved parking place and we were underway by about 8.30.
Headed out of town for my 10 o’clock meeting to Mount Coot-tha (Kuta) (place of the wild honey) and had a great overview of the city. Old postcards incorporated in the interpretation and a nice sinuous design across the very large patio reflecting the course of the river.
Dropped down to the Herbarium at the back of 10 and managed to find a shady spot to park the car. Met with Rod Fensham who’s a botanist using some of the original survey records to link into vintage photographs … to compare with contemporary pictures … in order to determine changes in vegetation cover. A useful hour or so spent with Rod and collected a few references in the form of scientific papers. Met Anne to wander around the gardens a little bit, after having a breakfast smoothie at the cafe. Masses of school children in the garden today all hurtling around the place and forming long blue crocodiles on the paths and a blue tablecloth across the lawn in front of us. A few water dragons sunned themselves by the long pond and we passed up by wedding lawn No 2 and back to the car.
The journey from Coot-tha along to Toowoomba was most notable for the luxuriant, rich green which all the leaves and grass seemed to be. Much of it looked very reminiscent of parts of Scotland and it was only the occasional garden palm tree, which gave it away.
We headed straight for the tourist information centre, who were incredibly helpful in providing and explaining the maps and even taking the step of narrowing down the field of potential motels for us.
We took a run just up the road to check out Picnic Point an overlook poised on the edge of the Great Divide at the top edge of Toowoomba and settled in down to take in the sun and the view. Back down the hill we checked into the Sun Garden Motel joining a whole mob of jobbing electricians and builders who enjoying the cheap rate as well. Luckily, we got the last room and having dumped the bags went a couple of blocks into the centre of town to check out some of the sites. We were at the end of the day and most places were just beginning to slam their doors but we had a fairly good overview. Toowoomba may just about be the size of Inverness but is a lively, more rural city. The public art is interesting and well maintained. There are a lot of buildings around with character and a general buzz about the place, which isn’t threatening.
As a final look for the day, we went along to the State Rose Garden, which at times must be beautiful. Just now, Toowoomba, known as the Garden City is suffering from drought and there simply isn’t the water to maintain the gardens and flowers they might normally expect to have on show at this time of year.
There were lines of Royal Palms around the rosebeds, each the venue of a lot of roosting birds - possibly galahs – slightly rosy pink underneath, which the setting sun accentuated `til they looked like red macaws flying fast in pairs and small groups and sitting on the palm fronts.
Back at the motel I phoned Doug, my Toowoomba contact in order to make arrangements for the next couple of days and then we followed the recommendation both of the tourist office and the motel receptionist and walked across to the City Golf Club for dinner. This is the night that the Socceroos, the Aussie Soccer team were playing Uruguay for as place in the world cup finals … and here at the golf club the great and the good were assembled in front of a few screens getting very involved in the action. We left at full time and wandered back along in the dark in time to catch extra time and as it transpired, a penalty shoot-out. Australia won in the end with some remarkable saves from their goalkeeper and a bad miss from one of the South Americans.
The night shift departed from the motel, but once they’d gone it was a peaceful berth for the night.
Thursday, 17th November, 2005
We didn’t really surface too early this morning; sorted out the packing yet again and then loaded the car and hit the road for a few hundred yards in to the town centre. We didn’t have a lot of time to spare as I had arranged to meet Doug for a half hour or so at his work at 10 o’clock, just to meet up and to get a bit of an insight into the structure of the college course and the student work.
I wandered up onto the first floor of TAFE. There was a small exhibition of current sculptural work with a fantastic Koala carved from a type of pumice stone. I walked along a couple of corridors noting various ‘imaging labs’ on the way but noting that mentioned ‘Spowart’ on the door. I had just resolved to stick my head in somewhere and ask when the next person coming along happened to be Doug Spowart who had just finished a lecture and was not on the look out for a lost soul in the corridor. He guided me back to his inner sanctum where we had a few minutes introductory and then a tour of the labs and a chance to meet a few of the students currently on the course.
It was a useful meeting at which we could both set out our respective stalls and we resolved to continue the discussion later in the afternoon.
I rejoined Anne outside a bit later than anticipated as the meeting had run on for much the better part of an hour. But we nipped back in to town for a look around the art gallery. Quite a nice space with an impressive track record of exhibitions, commissions and acquisitions.
Just down the road there was a blacked out shop front which at first impression was an arcade but it was actually masquerading as a cyber gaming hall and there were over fifty computers with people of various ages in knocking seven bells out of each other in cyberspace. We got on to a couple of computers and caught up with e-mail. Sadly there just wasn’t the time to update the web page so I made do with leaving a short message on the board.
We lunched at the old GPO for which we had been given a 10% and a buy-one-get-one free coffee voucher from the motel … the food was very good. I just had a Caesars salad; Anne had some form of toastie. At just after 2 we went along to meet Vicky Cooper, Doug’s partner and a recognised photographer in her own right specialising in pinhole work and increasingly in complex montage work on special paper. It was a good afternoon and as a chunk of here thesis work at the moment is water-related, there was a lot to talk about, alongside quite a bit of philosophical discussion on place and connection; which is an interesting angle.
Doug had earmarked a few books for me to look at from his extensive and very impressively catalogued library. His library is predominantly photographic related, mainly Australian, but also containing various odd references of magazines and clippings.
There is surprisingly little in fact from Australia; a few photographers have dabbled at the edges but to be honest, Doug’s work has to be the most innovative and perhaps the largest quantity
Doug pitched up at about 4 and we had a cup of coffee and a bite to eat outside under the shelter of a tin lean-to and a rambling old wisteria bush. The rest of the back yard was covered by the extended arms of a Hills Hoist (note; must get hold of one of these!) they are a huge rotary washing line gadget made of galvanised steel and incorporating a crank handle on the side so the whole washing rack area can be cranked up out of the way.
Afterwards we went into the holiest of holies; the garage just across the yard which had been kitted out as a darkroom, but if now more usually used as a computer lab, and work room where Doug and Victoria put together their artists books and collate their past work
We had a about an hours review of portfolios of Doug’s work going back to the early 80s; really innovative stuff and I am surprised that it isn’t more widely known or recognised. His work incorporating postcards into a view and his perceptions of tourism are innovative and at the time, well ahead of the game.
Dinner was a grand affair set round a long thin, dining room table, very Zen in its concept. Great food and good conversation all evening. We eventually retired to the living room and finally fell onto the sofa bed at about midnight.
Friday, 18th November, 2005
Up at 8. Breakfast an elaborate concoction of fruit and yoghurt; delicious fresh mango, strawberry, kiwi fruit and museli.
We had a bit of time afterwards to be able to look through some of Vicky’s work. Vicky works mainly in pinhole and is increasingly interested in camera obscura. Her major recent work in addition to the artist’s books is a photoshop compilation of images into long scrolls, delicately printed in a limited edition on to special rice paper.
The scrolls represent ‘journeys’ through a landscape, where the observer tracks a path or a route, within the picture and explores the theme.
The presentation of the scrolls is part of the art itself and the Perspex boxes are individually designed and built and ‘decorated’ (scratched) using locally sourced rocks on the outsides. The scrolls are lifted from their cases (gloves on) and hung from hooks on a wall. The term ‘scroll’ is perhaps a pun as these are long – five feet or so – images which on a computer screen you ‘scroll through. In printed form their rolled storage re-enforces the title.
Across in the darkroom, we looked at her current work; microscopic images of water borne fungi. A strange mixing of the scientific and the artistic, which has resulted in the discovery of at least one new species, so far. The work, part of Vicky’s PhD theses is taking place up at the top of the catchment to the north of Brisbane and the connection of this river to others and the thread of the water resource through the country is something she is trying capture in her photographic work.
Doug and I were booked in to Toowoomba gallery to see a collection of retakes commissioned by the gallery in order to visit location of paintings held within their public collection. Its an interesting and possibly unique project, conceived by the gallery and blending the classic artists media of oil, watercolour and print, with photography.
We were also able to have a look through a quite recently acquired archive of caliotypes, including images of Fox Talbot himself and other members of the Edinburgh Caliotype Club. Anne visited a nearby quilting shop and then went and did a bit of internetting.
Back for lunch, which we took outside and we finally left them in peace at c 2.30 in order to set off back towards Brisbane.
There was a minor crease over Anne’s hat, which it transpired was in the shop of the art gallery and was resolved by swing past on our way to the Japanese garden. The gardens were recommended to us by the lady at the tourist information office on the basis that it was her understanding that they were the sixth best in the world … whether this was in terms of scale, variety or whatever, I have no idea. Anyway in reality it covers the area of a football pitch … maybe a little more … and has bridges and islands, bonsai and raked gravel. Its fairly young, having open only about five years ago as part of the University campus, so the trees are still being trained and the bridges look awfully new.
Anne had managed to research a couple of motels on the net and on we drove to Brisbane. We didn’t actually find any of the ones from the web … or at least we did, but it had the no vacancies sign outside, but through a helpful shop assistant we checked into the South Bank Motel which is primarily set up to provide accommodation for folk visiting the nearby hospital. Anyway, it did the job.
En route we made contact with Grayem’s brother Peter and arranged to meet him and his partner Mary for a drink down on the South Bank. Anne and I needed food and we walked up and down the South Bank trying to get into a restaurant, all of which seemed to be over subscribed. We went to the River Canteen twice and on the second time, after a phone call from the front desk, we landed one of the best balcony tables in the house – I guess they realised that time was running out to fill it and so we were as good a bet as any.
Peter and Mary joined us and it transpired that they`d not eaten either. We ate Kangaroo for main course, seared and tender and very reminiscent of beef without any hint of a gamey taste whatsoever. A great evening which Peter very generously treated us to. Back at the hotel just after midnight !
Saturday, 19th November, 2005
We had most of the morning free in Brisbane; just one mission to a bookshop to complete and we set off at the back of nine to wander across the river and rummage the town centre. A breakfast location wasn’t immediately obvious and so it wasn’t until nearly eleven that we settled for a smoothie and a pastry on the South Bank, at a patio covered in tables and ibises amid a throng of family shoppers.
We collected the car from the motel at about midday and navigated across the river and towards the airport, which was relatively straight forward. Dumped the car with an extra 381 Km on the clock from our travels, executed an express check in of the bags and then had an hour or so the gather thoughts before boarding the Canberra flight.
The flight down was uneventful, I read and slept …. Awoke for the in-flight sandwich and then read and slept again, awakening as the wheels hit the tarmac with a crook in my neck.
We disembarked and cleared arrivals with remarkable ease and met Stuart and Duncan out in the concourse by baggage reclaim.
Scooped the bags, got our car with only a certain amount of hassle; extra tax to pay on the deal and general inflexibility. We then followed Stuart around the city arterial roads and towards their house. We stopped at the lake opposite Government house as an introduction to the city, to the flies and to the pollen. It was at this point that I started my second batch of hay fever for the year !! that really is pushing it; once in the UK is quite sufficient.
Canberra’s a strange city, there’s nothing above about 10 storeys high and the city is designed with leafy suburbs and farmland corridors threading between the settlement areas. The effect is that when you drive along the roads around and through the city … or along the small suburban roads, you don’t get the impression of houses and buildings and manicured gardens but of houses fitted into the surrounding bush.
We arrived back at Stuart and Di’s and Anne and Di settled down to catch up over a couple of gins; Stuart and I swigged a beer and then went for a twilight wander up on the nearby Pinnacle Nature Reserve. From the gum tree at the top, there’s a spectacular view around. A view across rolling green fields with scattered gums and beyond areas of fresh green burnt clear by the bush fires of 2003. In another direction here are gum forests, which the fires didn’t reach.
From here it is possible to get some ideas of the area burnt; with at least 135 degrees of vision around affected, extending to over one million acres
We had various birdy encounters on the way, nearly all of them new to me. The search for the friarbird and its attendant leaden flycatcher ended up with the evening’s most significant find a tawny frogmouth which Stuart had been searching for, for some time. As we were standing on each others shoulders trying to get a view into the friarbird`s nest, the frogmouth started its rhythmic call from nearby. It’s a ventriloquial much softer and quieter, bittern boom.
We both legged it in the general direction of the noise thinking it to be about 25 yards away and stopped to listen to get another reference point. The next time it called it was behind us; we’d actually run right underneath, it was much nearer than we had thought. Sitting on the branch two adults and three frogmouth chicks all sat very still and branch-like as I took some shots.
We walked back in darkness seeing a kookaburra silhouette against the last glow in the western skies. Di had prepared a superb roast of lamb, pumpkin and tatties, which we were all ready for.
Sunday 20th November, 2005
Today we’re exploring; a reasonably early breakfast and a lot of picnic preparation on Di’s part and we were underway by about 10. Two cars split neatly into boys and girls. Stuart and I raced off in his car with Lachlan and Duncan strapped in the back. Anne and Di made their own way along to Namadgi National Park which is about 50 km south of Canberra … would we ever see them again we wondered?
We stopped off for a look at a visitor centre en route and so Anne and Di were waiting for us when we finally pulled off the main road and along the track to the car park for the Yankee Hat walk. Baking hot and bright, we set off on the six kilometre walk across grassland with occasional tors and areas of gum trees – snow gums in the slightly further areas.
Lolloping around under nearly all the gums were mobs of kangaroos – Eastern greys apparently - and it’s the first time that we’ve been in any proximity to them. They spend their time in the shadows of the trees, raising themselves off the ground and standing with quizzical expressions. They’re great animals, with expressive faces and very entertaining scratching habits.
The meadows had a surprising number of wild flowers; carpets of hairy billy butons – a sort of yellow scabious, golden lilies, a gorseey type of flower called scrambled eggs, forgetmenots, blue bells and violets.
In the creeks we heard the bobblebonk frog one of six frogs found in ACT.
The objective of the walk was a set of aboriginal rock paintings on a large granite boulder in the snow gums. The various symbols are painted in white, black or red ochre. At some point a number of camp fires have been lit at the base of the rock and the plumes of soot have obscured some of the images. When this happened is difficult to tell; perhaps passing aboriginals, perhaps more recent campers … perhaps even the accumulated leaf litter catching alight during the 2003 bush fires.
Just near the rocks with the paintings a small brown ‘something’ flushed from a nest at Stuarts feet; when it came back after a few minutes, it turned out to be a blue wren – the attendant male of which was a cracking little bird. A few other bits and bobs on the way back worth looking at … and about half a million flies.
After a drop of juice back at the car we relocated to a nearby homestead for a picnic. It lies a few miles along the road and a couple of hundred yards from the car. The venue; the shade of an apple tree, one of several, very old trees in a small unenclosed orchard at the back of the homestead. Today in the heat of the early afternoon, it had its very own mob of kangaroos who had to be reluctantly ‘adios’ed before we could partake of the shade, the view and of course our picnic. Excepting the odd shards of kangaroo poo, it’s the ideal picnic spot.
For Stuart, its mid way between a peregrine site and the general vicinity of a pair of wedge tailed eagles and by the end of lunch he’s got an eagle in his sights and back at the car we got the scope onto the adult, stomping around on the branches of a tree above its nest.
Stuart, Duncan and I went a slightly longer way home which took in and ice cream shop on the way and a good bit of extra scenery.
Back at the house I sent out an e-mail to Darrell, my Canberra re-photography contact giving him the mobile phone numb er to call so we could meet up.
The call came through within fifteen minutes and I arranged to go round at about 8.30 tomorrow.
Monday 21st November, 2005
Up at eight and out of the house at about 25 past, en route around town to the suburb of Evatt to meet up with Darrell Lewis. The navigation went without hitch and I was there within 10 minutes to find Darrell outside watering his garden and generally on the look out for me.
He’s a fascinating guy; started out as a sample collector for a mining company and as such got his first introduction to the Queensland outback by taking on a summer contact to drive out from Brisbane and collect sample in the Victoria River District.
Over the next years he did similar trips, explored the area in detail and got to know some of the aboriginals of the area. He was commissioned to document the aboriginal rock art and returned for a longer period of fieldwork when his wife took on a PhD study of the aboriginal culture of the area.
At some point the notion of gathering a photographic archive of the area, sourced form the private photo albums of the cattle station managers and stockmen came in to being and from that research into the vegetational changes that have happened in the last hundred years.
I was particularly interested in some of the peripheral research which has resulted in documentation of the various graffiti carvings on the isolated Baob trees of the region – many of them going well back to the beginning of white Australian history. Other documentations include the messages and graffiti of passing stockmen exchanged with each other on the sides of the water tanks - apparently they’d just scrape or write messages on the tanks before moving on with their herds – it’s a very course social documentary of the time.
Anyway we had a good couple of hours discussion before I made my way back across town. Anne had been down to the local shops trying to get her hair cut … and she walked down there with Reg, who’s an old guy who lives up the road from Stuart and Di and who was delighted to fill her in on some local detail. Unfortunately for Anne its Monday and lots of places are closed on a Monday including the hair dressers.
We went along to a local café for lunch (iced coffees, ‘wedges’ and a sandwich) which is right next to the secondhand hand bookshop … and yes, it was closed as well. We had a 3 o’clock appointment at the school to collect the boys and after a brief stop off back at the house for juice and a snack we went to Government House with four bikes to cycle round the lake front.
Anne, me and the boys all set off with Duncan directing operations from the front, Stuart set off walking in the opposite direction with a rendezvous set for the Sculpture Park. I guess it took us half an hour or so, we stopped to look at one or two sights including the bell tower (it has a fancy name but can’t remember it) which is an angular structure on a sort of island in the lake, reached across a bridge. It was apparently a gift from the people of Britain … and a whole lot more useful than the very large stone pole with an eagle on top given, by America. Anyway we went round clockwise … and then spent about twenty minutes taking a series of experimental photographs of reflections of ourselves in the shiny public sculpture before returning to the car via the upper patios of the court house. In doing so we passed some interesting talking exhibits of the struggle for aboriginal recognition and parity. It also took us past the aboriginal embassy; a tented settlement from which plumes of blue smoke emanated and piles of logs could be seen stacked across the lawn. This is where the aboriginal representatives live and serves as an uncomfortable statement, which the white representatives have to deal with every time they look out of the window.
Stuart took a quick turn around the lake in the opposite direction and we got back through the traffic at about seven … just very slightly earlier than Di who had been out lecturing after work.
I caught up on a few diaries and generally relaxed for the evening.
Tuesday 22nd November, 2005
Today, we’re going to be around Canberra. Stuart’s got the day clear and is going to be tour guide, but before we go anywhere, I take advantage of the high-speed access to get weeks backlog of diary and photographs up on to the web page.
We got away at about 11; me driving and Stuart in charge of direction and Anne keeping out of it in the back.
Our first stop off was a work wear shop in order to look at the range of Akubra hats as a means of de-Americanising my image. Sadly, the range extended either side of the size I needed so we took details and moved on. The bookshop was the next stop – several items tempting … but nothing purchased – there’s restraint for you!
And finally, the objective of the day, to the National Art Gallery. Here there is an exhibition of Australian watercolours on show, rather simply and off-puttingly called ‘Moist’ … however once you’ve overcome that little hiccup, there are lots of great images including a couple of Russell Drysdales. Also on display were some pictures by a photographer using a ‘Diana’ camera, the use of which we had discussed with Doug some days ago.
Lunch was a spectacularly healthy affair; perhaps even the beginnings of a diet. I had a pumpkin and feta wrap with a fruit smoothie and a glass of water!!
The day was marching on and we transferred across town to the Botanical Gardens. Lots of birds, some spectacular trees and flowers … and a funeral taking place at the cafe.
We got to stand outside the cage, which holds one of the few specimens of Woolomi Pine – which is the pine tree, which was only discovered a few years ago. Not massively exciting and we only stayed long enough to confirm that it wasn’t possible to get your hands in through the mesh and get a cone!
Loads of birds in the gardens including some very tame rosellas, and we also caught up on things like a yellow robin and a couple of new parrots; I took a few pics. We walked through the various habitats; principally the Australian ones, up to the Eucalypt Lawn and then up Rainforest Gully with its spectacular tree ferns. At about five to five they switched on the automatic sprinkler system and that effectively flushed us out of the rainforest undergrowth in time for the gates to close.
Our final visit of the day was to the Telstra antennae on Black Mountain which after the provision of a few dollars and a lift ride, offers a spectacular view over Canberra and allows the whole leafy area to be put into context.
On the way back down the drive, we could listen to the carawongs beginning to roost in the gum woodland, whistling and calling as they did so.
Back at base we tucked into sausage and mash while Stuart tried to recover from a day on the tourist circuit. We’ve obviously got battle-hardened to it all over the last eight weeks.
Wednesday 23rd November, 2005
The usual morning kerfuffle with action, decisions, indecisions and action. Anne went along to the hairdressers (again) to try and get her hair cut, but this time they didn’t have any free slots. We packed a few necessities and left the house at about 11 bound for the Hume Highway and Melbourne.
We had no particularly fixed itinerary; it’s a long way – about 670 km so we weren’t massively hopeful of completing it within the day but decided just to see how things went.
After the dire warnings that the road was one of the most boring on the planet, I didn’t think it was too bad, the topography at the roadsides is varied, there are trees and occasional buildings and vistas … its not for example like driving across areas of desert in The States … or the red centre of Australia for that matter.
We stopped once or twice along the way; once at a tourist information centre just inside the Victoria boundary and there, collected a whole swathe of publications and maps and information about the various districts.
We kept seeing signs on the roadsides urging drivers to watch out for Koalas and so occupied our time through these sections, scanning the roadside gums just in case there happened to be an itinerant bear wedged in a fork, but no such luck.
The next time we stopped we were near Wangaretta. It was about 3 in the afternoon and we suddenly thought to ourselves that Melbourne was an achievable goal after all. So we phoned ahead to Anthony and Bev to check out the lie of the land and the availability of accommodation. Slightly worryingly, they had been expecting us for the last couple of weeks so were kind of on stand-by.
We were still just over three hours away but decided to go for it … and with the general instructions of ‘Drive south on the Hume to Seymour, turn left and drive for twenty five minutes to Yea, then south for an hour to Lilydale. Phone us from Yarra Glen’
The drive down the Yarra Valley was particularly beautiful. There was controlled burning taking place and the low sunlight was filtering through a haze of blue smoke. This effect, combined with the spectacular forest on either side of the road, with its mature gum trees and huge tree ferns was some of the nicest habitat we’d seen on the trip.
I stopped to try to get a shot or two but stopping in Australia is quite difficult. Anyway we pulled in and I wandered back a few hundred yards to try and get a bit of a flavour of some of the views we’d seen on the way down the road.
I too k a shot or two of an old gum tree which had been turned into a memorial with plastic flowers and a cross nailed on to it. Obviously someone had driven into it at some stage.
Back near the car, I saw a cd lying on the ground and picked it up … it had a bit of surface grime, which I wiped on the trousers, stuck it in the player in the car and we had Puff Daddy for background as we completed this leg of the trip.
Well we followed the directions and then got some more local directions round to Bayswater. After stopping in for a couple of bottles at Safeway’s on the way, we turned the corner to find Ant and Bev at the end of their drive waiting for us. It has to be said that the mobile phone made all the difference and saved a lot of flapping around in the final stages.
We got there at about 7.40 had a beer and a general catch-up on the verandah before heading out for a steak at a café type place which also had a ‘Pokies’; basically loads of what used to be one armed bandits but are now electronic gaming machines. They are everywhere in Oz and no self-respecting town goes with out some venue which advertises the presence of Pokies.
Thursday 24th November, 2005
The entire staff of British 4WD Drive Imports was given the day off today in honour of our visit, so that meant that Ant and Bev were going to be driver and tour guide and a bloke called Bill didn’t have to turn up. We had a fairly leisurely breakfast and then hit the road. Ant, who was driving spent the first few miles worrying about not having a specific destination but once we’d identified that Anne was keen to see an old part of Melbourne, that I’d quite like to see a bookshop and Bev needed a Post Office, we pulled into a suburb called Canterbury.
After a wander down the street I noticed an old photograph reproduced on an interpretive panel up on the wall, which showed the street behind us at the turn of the century. It was a re-photographer’s gift and so out came the camera and I spent a short time out in the middle of the road dodging the traffic.
Just along the road we passed the studio of a photographer friend of Ant’s called John Ingham and we called in on the off chance to see whether he was around.
He’d apparently just left … but as we were getting into the car out front, Bev spied him making a getaway from an alley nearby and he duly reversed back down to his lock-up and we were shown round the works.
It was an interesting discussion on the film and digital debate. John used large film right from the early 70s but has recently changed across to a Canon digital … he produces a series of large black and white calendars each year and for this purpose and reckons the printed output is indiscernible. We discussed the problems of archival storage and he seems to be putting his faith in DVDs. I was really impressed with the thirty-inch apple screen on his desk.
We didn’t keep him back long and moved on into the centre of town and parked ourselves under the Art Gallery of Victoria. The feature show there was the exhibition of British ‘art’ from the Sixties which included a mini suspended from the ceiling and the famous Keeler photograph and others which would have been interesting but it turned out that we were in the wrong venue for the Drysdales … so we crossed the river, alongside trams and passing the Melbourne Cricket Ground in the distance and found the new annex building for the gallery across Federation Square.
Unfortunately there were a load of galleries closed for refurbishment but we managed to see the Drysdales that were on show – a number of small sketches and famous images like ‘The Rabbiters’ an interesting mix of other artists work as well including works by Streeton, Mehrtens, Nolan and one or two photographers.
Had a rummage through the bookshop on the way out (in which I could have done some serious damage had we not been under a certain amount of baggage constraint already!)
Lunched at a small café-bar beside the gallery bookshop … which unfortunately served rather small lunches … however, its good for the figure and the presentation of the coffee
almost made up for it … errrr, well …. almost.
The battery on Anne’s camera had packed in and we were heading further and further into deepest and darkest Melbourne … and I was being very brave about not having a camera with me, but finally cracked when I saw another of those interpretive plaques on the wall depicting the street scene in from the early 20th Century … and so I had to go back to the car.
No particularly fixed shopping mission; bit of Christmas shopping but we wended our way back through federation Square past the huge Christmas tree and tried to equate all the tinsel and Christmas lights and cut-out Santas with the clear blue skies, the heat and the flies. In passing through Fed Square we featured on the big screen and spent a little bit of time lining ourselves up at the front of the camera in order to be able to photograph the event.
We extracted ourselves from the underground parking and took a look at Toorak in search of any sign of the large houses which I have copy photographs for from the turn of the 19th Century – as expected we saw nothing resembling … though I think its something I’ll pursue via e-mail in the future.
We then headed for St Kilda … just as a bit of a must-see for Anne and I. This is the St Kilda with the miles of beach, with the pier, with the Art Deco public conveniences and with the exciting, street-walking nightlife (which we didn’t get to see). Its also considerably hotter and more fly-infested than the real thing, but nonetheless, we dipped our toes into the bay and had a photo taken.
It was a long old haul back across town, full of short cuts and dead ends and narrow streets through leafy suburbs. Lots of terraced houses, with intricate cast iron fretwork on their balconies and verandahs.
We made a stop at Safeway’s in order to get some barbecue ingredients and then set Ant loose on the Aussie Barbie at the back of the house. He rustled up a fine spread of steak and fried potatoes which we ate sitting out on the verandah and then retired indoors as the first mossies started to home in on us.
Rolled into bed at about 11pm. Ant and Bev still had 4WD type things to catch up on in preparation for their departure tomorrow. We however, were generally wrecked after our memorable and all encompassing, ‘everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-Melbourne-but-were-afraid-to-ask’ sort of day.
Friday 25th November, 2005
We kept ourselves out of the way a bit this morning as the British 4WD Imports machinery clicked and whirred into suspension for a long weekend away. We had a bit of Christmas shopping to attend to and Bev knew exactly the shops we needed to get to. It still took us an hour or so of not getting very far … complicated by losing each other in traffic, ending up on different floors of a car park and other time consuming little glitches which needed to be sorted.
Finally we’re en route to Geelong which is at the mouth of the Melbourne bay and we have a lunchtime rendezvous with Craig, another photographer friend of Ant and Bev’s. They do seem to collect photographers.
After a sit down bite to eat we had a quick tour of Craig’s set up from where he publishes a very specialised magazine for mini car owners. We suddenly noticed the time and had to excuse ourselves in a hurry as we were keen to get a look at the Bellarine Museum and the village of Drysdale, named after an earlier Anne Drysdale, who settled the area and established a farm at a nearby homestead called Coriyule.
We arrived in Drysdale at about 3 and after one or two false starts located the museum building, the church which Anne Drysdale helped to found and got directions to the museum.
The museum was closed and looked as if it wasn’t going to re-open for a considerable time. Luckily we had collected some tourist bumf which had a phone number and the present Anne Drysdale swung into action. Unfortunately the person who answered it was in Darwin and no she wouldn’t be opening the museum in the foreseeable future … we got a useful steer from someone in the craft centre who suggested that we try the community centre and this turned out to be our lucky break as in there just happened to be someone called Anne Brackley a descendant of another pioneer family who greeted Anne like a long lost relative and couldn’t have been more helpful. After a bit of fussing and some photographs on the steps and comments like “I do wish you’d called before, we could have had a civic reception”, Anne showed us a little book entitled “The Lady Squatters” which refers to the 18th Century Anne Drysdale and her partner Caroline Newcomb, who evidently just took over the land and set up a farm business. There was a minor problem with photocopying the booklet and so `I nipped around the counter and applied healing hands to the photocopier and stood there copying the book while the Annes chatted.
A few phone calls later and Noel Lindsay, who is also closely involved in the museum had been mobilised and had been inveigled into coming down to meet us and show us the exhibition.
Noel and his wife Shirley’s initial greeting was along the lines of “Oh yes, we know other relatives of Anne Drysdale”. “Oh”, says Anne “who?” It turned out to be a fairly distant relative of Anne’s back in Scotland who the Lindsays had visited on other genealogical searches. We spent a bit of time afterwards trying to work out how they were related, but gave up fairly quickly.
The museum is sadly amateur and although the society has a membership of about 70 or 80, only 20 or so turn up to meetings and only 8 of those are classed as ‘active’. It’s a shame as it has a very rich social history on a number of counts; the Drysdale involvement (apart from giving the town its name) is relatively minor. We saw a pic of the Anne Drysdale buggy, which is still privately owned nearby and heard the tale of the apparently missing diary, which Anne may pursue at some point.
At about twenty past five someone mentioned that the last ferry across the bay was at six … we’d initially been under the impression it was eight and so that brought about a bit of five star panic and we hastily swapped contact details and headed for the Queenscliff ferry terminal. Spoke to Ant on the phone – he and Bev had meantime gone and checked into their self catering let and were getting themselves ready for a weekend of frivolity at the Queenscliff Music Festival. Said blustery goodbyes from the ferry queue and went our separate ways.
It’s a 40 minute crossing through the shipping lanes and afforded views of a few seals and some seabirds – gannets to be precise not sure what sort but they looked exactly like the ones at home; presumably a Pacific or southern hemisphere species.
We stopped for chips at a place called Rosebud heading up the road towards Frankston.
“Hello, two fish suppers please”
“You want what?”
“Err, sorry, two fish and chips ….”
“What fish would you like?”
“Just the normal one”
“We have two normal ones; Flake or Blue Grenadine”
“Oh, well then, errrr, what’s Flake?”
“Its local gummy” (Blank look) “Shark”
“Ok I’ll have flake … Thanks”
“And you want chips with it …”
“Yes, two fish and chips … errr, two fish and two chips …”
“So you want two fish and then enough chips for two people”
Yes it was about as tortuous as it reads .. but eventually I got a couple of chunks of fish on a huge bed of chips in a box and all for the princely sum of $10 … or just under a fiver; well worth the inquisition.
We drove on to a dump of a place called Drouin, which had a dodgy motel, but we were both fairly knackered and couldn’t drive any further so we got the first room available. The room was fitted with an air conditioning system and even though it was cooler down here than it had been up country … or even in Canberra, we thought we’d give it a go. Couldn’t work out why the room felt worse after a quarter of an hour only to drag over a chair and discover that it had been set up to blow warm air round the room !
Bit of a re-tune required and then we fell into bed and asleep despite the erratic cranking of the aircon fan.
Saturday, 26th November, 2005
Up and out of here as fast as we could get and under way by 8 o’clock. It’s a dull grey start and not looking at all promising for a motor traverse of the high tops.
We got as far as Bairnsdale and found a really nice café diner come deli and wine seller.
Bacon and eggs and a couple of Lattes soon cheered things up and we bought a bottle of wine just in anticipation of getting into a BYO restaurant in Bright this evening.
It’s a long quite slow slog into the hills and the weather did not make it any more enticing. Grey skies and occasional spit and spats of rain. As we climbed higher there was the odd glimmer of the prospect of it getting slightly brighter. We stopped very briefly in a town called Omeo, which appeared to be almost universally ‘shut’! which was a bit of a shame. It had a frontier feel to it but very clearly mid spring is not the time to visit these places. Once we got to the top, to Mount Hotham village there was even less on offer, empty car parks, stacks of dismantled ski-lift chairs, mothballed machinery and empty chalets. We were at about the level of one or two rather forlorn snow patches.
We took a walk out along Razorback ridge towards Mount Feathertop, for an hour or so. One or two flowers on show but the woody remnants of what had been there in the past was all that remained from some intense bushfires and the views all the way up the road and around showed miles of dead eucalypt stems above a carpet of emerging re-growth. At this altitude, it will take decades to recover.
I took a few re-takes following the path of the re-photographers of the Diprose motor journey from 1933.
One of the most interesting re-takes was at Blowhard and this came from a turn-of-the-century image of a stagecoach rounding Mt Blowhard … careful scrutiny of the possibilities eventually revealed a stone which appeared on the original image and was one a of a few stones remaining in an old retaining wall below massive reconstruction and enlargement of the road.
Just on the Bright side of Blowhard was the location of the St Bernard’s Hospice and once again there was an early image of this. No time for the re-take, which wasn’t an easy roadside re-take.
We descended to Bright for the night and after a tour through the village settled on a Motor Inn near the entrance to town. Anne went in to discuss the room .. while I sat outside. As I was sitting there, I read the bottom line of their street advertising, which said ‘wireless internet’ – the first one I’d seen in Australia!
Anne came out and said that she’d told them we’d go on – she wasn’t sure about the room and it took a little bit of persuading to get her to change her mind. Got the laptop registered when I signed in and then spent the next half hour or so downloading e-mails and checking through the bank account.
Our plan for the evening featured a restaurant that Anne had read. Unfortunately, the town is full of wedding parties ... the third week of November in Australia is like our third week of May in Britain; one of the most popular times for a wedding and consequently Simone`s was full. Our second choice was also only serving people who had booked. But the third, the Liquid Am-bar had a table – more like a perch really but comfortable enough. It was a fun and lively place and the food was good.
Sunday 27th November, 2005
Checked e-mails again this morning and got a couple of diaries uploaded. It’s a beautiful day; clear blue skies and clean air. We packed and checked out and went down to the village for breakfast at Food, Wine and Friends, which apparently has the best coffee in town. We sat outside and as it was in the shade it was enough to send me back to the car to get a couple of fleeces.
We took a wander round the town and then drove the very few miles to Mt Buffalo National Park. It’s quite a long climb up through the gum forests, the higher area of which have also been burned to a crisp by bush fires. We saw some interpretation at some point, which indicated that a massive fire had gone through in the eighties … and if that’s the case, the recovery is indeed slow.
The road climbs for several miles up hairpins and switchbacks … it was only reading the wildlife signs here and checking with the brochure proffered by the National Park Ranger that we realised that half the signs we’d been looking at before referred to wombats and not koalas (Anne: well what does a wombat look like? The answer is it looks like a koala on all fours ... at least on the road signs!)
We turned off to have a look at the Mt Buffalo Chalet a fairly amazing building built a hundred years ago, set slightly back from the edge of the cliff. The gardens are at their peak just now with wall to wall rhododendron blossom. Based on experience, the first thing we did was to take a stroll round the inside of the chalet and sure enough there was a display of old pictures and thereby the opportunity for some re-takes.
I took one of the front of the building, which wasn’t too successful due to the prolific rhodies, and then we moved on to the Parks visitor centre and walked out to The Monolith a perched granite tor with a Victorian ladder up it to permit access to its top. I’d found a picture taken in the early 1900s of a group of Victorian ‘climbers’ all posing on the steps and was keen to set this in contemporary context.
It’s a climb up through burned gum and some of the charred trunks we passed had a massive girth; they had to have been a couple of hundred years when they burned; clearly there had been no massive fire event for a long time.
Got the re-take, but disappointingly, the lower steps of the ladder had been removed by Parks Victoria in order to meet with their health and safety requirements; it was interesting how they’d tackled the issue. They’d removed five steps to make it very difficult, but not impossible, to scale the ladder. I would guess that this is sufficient to absolve them from the antics of anyone who really wanted to get the Victorian experience. I was thinking that its unlikely our thought police would allow that possibility; the what-if joker would probably be played and the whole historic feature removed.
We moved on to another of the famous landmarks this time called The Horn another kilometre and a half walk and evidence of further health and safety considerations. This time a handrail and steps actually cut in the granite. It was a remarkable bit of engineering – slightly intrusive, but you know, on balance, we saw all ages and abilities of people managing the walk and it provided such a security net to them, its well worth it. I took a re-take of the old shelter near the car park and we moved on to Dixon’s Falls for another walk; this time 4km. It’s about the most exercise we’ve had for a month or so.
Anne had taken photography to heart today and managed to fill two memory cards with pics of plants and other bits and bobs, so there was a certain amount of downloading and sorting as the day progressed.
Anne was keen to have a look at the wine and gourmet drive on the way back to Canberra and so we decided to stay out another night and found our way after a couple of false starts to the motel at Milawa.
Its been a beautiful day in the Australian Alps, with only a brief lapse in the mid afternoon, the skies have been clear and blue and the late afternoon / evening light glorious. We booked into the Lindahwarra Country Hotel for dinner and sat watching the various parrots flying past to roost over the vineyard.
Back at the motel we put in a mobile phone call back to Scotland to Julia, standing out under clear, unpolluted almost frosty skies. She’s meeting the boys for lunch and we arranged to speak tomorrow back at Stuart and Di’s.
Monday, 28th November, 2005
Awoke in Milawa to yet another beautiful day. We’ve a few aims for the day and most revolve around the shops here. We drove along to the cheese factory first thing, which is a couple of miles out of town and although they didn’t actually serve breakfast, there were enough crackers and cheese, jam and chutney samples on offer to satisfy the initial pangs.
We made a few purchases or local cheese and fresh ciabatta loaf and then headed back to the bakery for breakfast. A fresh, fruit-filled Danish pastry later and a cup of Latte (or Laaaarte as the Australians seem to call it) and the other shops were beginning to open their doors. The Olive Shop; packed with everything there to do with olives; bowls, jars, chopping boards, spoons, oil jars .. oil and of course olives – more samples!
Just next door is Milawa Mustards with about twenty different types of mustard ranging from the mild and pleasant honey flavoured variety which you could quite happily smear on your bread to the blow-your-head-off red-hot chilli flavoured stuff at the other end of the table. Somewhere about the middle was a lemon and dill mustard of which we bought a very small pot.
Attached to Milawa Mustards, and run by Anna Bienvenu - Mother Mustard, is a photographers gallery, which exhibits her own work. Anna has been into mustards for the last 24 years, but prior to that she studied photography and having reared children and developed a thriving little business, she’s getting back to photography once again. The stimulus was the fires back in January, 2003 and her initial exhibition “Mount Buffalo – After The Fires” which was full of images of the charred stems against a blanket of snow with delicate shadows. The current exhibition is “After the Fires II” and is a small re-photographic project with quite a few of the original locations being re-visited and lined up.
I had an interesting chat with Anna; her views and the drive behind the work are another point on the overall graph of re-photography and a quite incidental encounter. Our final visit of the morning was to Brown Brothers a vineyard just along the road from the Lindenwarrah and the main objective was to taste the wine.
Checked out the full range of whites and reds and finished off by checking out their port. As a consequence, we took a few back roads across from Milawa to Beechworth and had to have the aircon on full blast to make sure we stayed wide awake!
We stopped in Beechworth a very old town and the place where Ned Kelly was slammed up in the courthouse. I haven’t mentioned old Ned much in this journal, but he frequented these parts; particularly Glenrowan where he withstood a three day siege spending most of it wearing an iron helmet made out of welded plough blades, before finally succumbing along with his gang in a hail of bullets.
Beechworth has a garage called the Golden Age Garage and they run a couple of vintage breakdown cars which I photographed parked in the street. Interesting prospect being attended to by a vintage car when you`ve broken down ... and presumably bringing all the limitations of 1950`s recovery. Ther`s also a nice gallery, which is up for sale … in case anyone fancies emigrating to a very nice part of Victoria!
Just out of town and heading cross country towards Chiltern I was keeping my eyes well skinned for any wildlife at the roadside and just managed to catch a glimpse of a large furry lump wedged up the top of a small tree and slammed on the brakes. The tree was about ten or twelve feet high … was a conifer of some sort and sitting there pleased as punch was a koala. We stomped around the base of the tree and stood watching him for a while.
He (or she) sat with paws firmly clamped around the thin trunk of the tree and slowly moved to the far side as you walked around, keeping the trunk of the tree between his eyes and nose and us – the only way I could snatch a profile shot was to split up and Anne went round the other side and waved her pink hat. A great animal anyway; not the speediest or liveliest of beasts, but endearing and difficult to resist the temptation to pluck it from the trunk and cart it about for a while ... or in the precise case today, very difficult to resist the temptation to reach up and poke it with a sharp stick.
We drove on up the Hume Highway and arrived at Stuart and Di’s at about 6.30 after a straight forward run. There were several travellers who were equally intent on getting to their destinations and the speeds between speed cameras topped 150km/hour at times and the journey was quicker and much more enjoyable as a result.
As we passed Yass – outside Canberra, it started to rain and by the time we got into town it was chucking it down.
Awaiting return was a copy of Drysdale Photographer a book catalogue of Russell Drysdale’s photographs which formed an exhibition in Melbourne about twenty years ago and also an Akubra hat of the right size, which Di had managed to procure.
We had a starter of ciabatta, cheese, olives and dukkah and then Di had cooked up a barramundi for supper so we had a great feast awaiting us with lashings of wine.
Tuesday, 29th November, 2005
It rained all night, Stuart and I are due to meet up with Genevieve Wright of the Alps National Park Service this morning, somewhere out towards the Brindabellas … at the junction of Coppins Crossing and what sound like Uriah Heap Road.
After dropping the kids at school we headed out that way under grey skies and threatening rain. It was mildly encouraging to be able to see the tops of the hills as we drove towards them. Gen arrived on time, driving a large 4WD pick-up; blonde, bubbly and as it turned out 4 months pregnant with twins so slightly less agile than she felt she ought to be.
We set off for Piccadilly Circus; the meeting point of five dirt tracks about an hour out of Canberra and heard a little bit about the background to the project and the bushfires of 2003 as we went.
By the time we reached Piccadilly, the mist had come down and it had started to settle in to rain. There we met Mike Doherty, from CSIRO, on contract to the Parks Service to re-survey the various sites. The trigger for the work was a fortuitously detailed survey of the various reserves and Parks in the Australian Alps back in 1999. In setting up the quadrats a fixed metal stake was driven into the ground and a record of the plant communities present taken, almost as an afterthought, a photograph was taken looking down the slope from the upper mid point, as much as anything to assist the relocation of the plot. When the fires went through the various parts of the alps it was found that all 168 plots had been burned through and from that the idea came to retake and augment the photographic cover with a number of other record shots to record the recovery of the habitat after the fires.
We pressed on up the tracks to the high point in the Brindabellas and by this time it was absolutely p*ssing with rain and visibility was down to twenty yards. We donned what gear we had and waded out through the low wet scrub towards the sample site.
I took a few shots of the process; Gen huddled under an umbrella making field notes, Mike laying out his tape measures and taking his repeat images and Stuart and I standing around, getting wet, occasionally holding a tape measure or the umbrella.
We were soaked by the end of this first plot. Plot 2 took over half an hour to find … and strangely the location notes made no reference to the proximity of a very large wombat burrow – this seems to typify that the notes are being made by botanists and the fact that there is a considerable excavation which we had all passed at one stage or another and about 12 feet from there, hidden in bracken, is the stake, passed without record. Once it was found, the work was completed fairly quickly and by which time also, we were all soaked and getting cold.
Back to the vehicle for lunch, a chance to drain if not dry our clothing and regain some body temperature. Fieldwork in Australia … its not all its cracked up to be !!
There was no sign of a shift in the weather and the roar of the wind through the dead stems of the eucalyptus got louder and louder, the visibility remained poor and the rain continued to fall.
We did one more plot, an exposed rocky outcrop, achieved fairly quickly and then that was that. Fieldwork suspended for the day. Gen drove us back down to the car and we went our separate ways.
Back at the house by 4 and showered to thaw out and made valiant attempts to dry out the gear. My camera had got so wet that the electronic auto-focus has given up and I finished up taking pics with my panoramic, film camera (wonderful, evocative landscapes of the burnt stems looming out of the mist) and so that got soaked as well.
We took Stuart and Di out to their local restaurant this evening, called Rocksalt. Situated right in the heart of the local shopping precinct in a very unpromising location we had a great evening, with a variety of dishes explored; chicken tenderloins, steak and a flourless chocolate cake were my choices. Lachlan and Duncan sat rooted to their spots throughout but joined in for the pudding course.
Back at about 10.
Wednesday, 30th November, 2005
Today is our last full day in Australia and there isn’t too much to catch up on in terms of sightseeing … but shopping? Well, that’s a different story.
I checked my e-mail first thing and then had a ‘live’ conversation with Ben who happened to be on line at the time; I noticed that an e-mail from him had arrived three minutes previously and set a tentative response and we had a half hour of exchanges from then.
We ventured out for the morning and dropped off some film at the processors in order to carry it back in slide form and thereby reduce the risk of x-ray problems. Then parked and took a turn into RR Williams, a famous Australian outfitters famed for its boots, hats and saddles. Tried their various wares for size but made no purchases. Outside the mall a crowd had gathered with TV cameras and various dignitaries
On through the Canberra mall and bought a few ‘Aussie’ things from an ‘Aussie’ shop and then retired to the National Library for a very civilised (and healthy) lunch of Caesar’s salad, juice and a coffee.
Back at the house and Stuart’s supposed to be resuming his labours at the computer. I left Anne who wanted to photograph some birds and nipped down to the local work wear outlet and got a pair of shoes, then into town and collected my film.
As the day drew to a close, we went back to Black Mountain for an evening walk among the gums and the Carawongs.
Took some shots of the trunks of the trees as the sun set and then we went back to the house at about 7.
Thursday, 1st December, 2005
The most notable thing about today is that its Ben’s seventeenth birthday.
Up at 7, showered and packed by 8 and then loaded the car. Said our thanks and goodbyes to Stuart and Di and set off across Canberra for the airport at about 8.25. Its back to being a beautiful day in Canberra after the severe lapses in concentration over the last ten days.
All went smoothly; dropped Anne and the bags, parked the car, dropped off the keys and checked everything through to Hong Kong. The flight was delayed which did set one or two alarm bells ringing about the connection out of Sydney but there was nothing to be done about it.
We queried the connection with the Flight Attendant; her response was a bit surprising “Were you supposed to be on the earlier flight?”
(“No”)
“Did you book this one … or was it a travel agent … because there’s no way you’d have made that flight anyway. There’s only 25 minutes and you have to change terminals. I’ll have a word with the Captain.”
Well that didn’t fill us with confidence that we would be leaving Australia at all today and I began to think about what we could usefully achieve in Sydney …
Back came the flight attendant. “The Captain suggests that you go to the service desk opposite the gate when we land and there will be one of our representatives there to talk to you.” (Talk to me? Please don’t send anyone to TALK to me !!!)
We collected our goods and chattels in a rush and barged off the plane, only to find that there was a bus outside to fill which would take us across to the terminal … we were first off it and raced up the escalator to hear a tannoy announcement for passengers Moore to go straight to the International Transfer lounge. We ran and from 30 yards out were spotted by the Service personnel who had already checked us through.
“Go down, get on the bus and tell him to ‘drive’.
The first problem was that the bus driver was reading his newspaper and was outside a locked door. The second problem was that he had the key … he eventually opened it but wasn’t about to perform any heroics or anything which might have set his pulse running just slightly faster.
We crossed the tarmac airside by bus and then waited for about 4 precious minutes for a plane to shut itself down. We then waited for another as it manoeuvred to the terminal and finally got to a door that would let us into the terminal. More running and straight to the front of the customs queue no p*ssing about … bearing in mind that I had my hat on, I looked a bit like Crocodile Dundee on speed as we by-passed about three hundred people. Luckily we found a switched on operator at the head of the queue who took us to a separate desk and cleared us through.
We ran the last two hundred metres to Gate 31. Anne getting more and more cross from the enforced work out routine. Anyway, they’d been tracking us across the airport, knew we’d left the bus and were just about to start paging … (whether that also included having someone watching two people steaming across video monitors on the way, I don’t know) anyway, they let us on and shut the flight. Phewww!
It took a while to cool down from that one but the flight was largely uneventful. We hit some huge air pockets across the centre of Australia and the plane got chucked around like a rag doll, just as they were trying to distribute food.
Anne suduko’d, I started to sort my Christmas cards and then slept.
Its about 8 hours up to Hong Kong and it went quickly and we were soon descending into the mist and clouds over the South China Sea.
We waited forlornly beside baggage chute number 4 and at some point I thought I heard a voice say over the tannoy about ‘Peeeta Maw’ but ignored it until the belt stopped.
Across at the help desk, they had been trying to page us (velly solly …) and tell us that the bags hadn’t crossed the airport quite as fast as we had and therefore were travelling Cathay Pacific and would arrive later that night (sank yow … velly solly).
Out in the arrivals hall we were about to come under slick Chinese efficiency … we found the CTS desk (Chinese Travel Services – how the hell you’re supposed to know what that means, I have no idea) and then were told to (sit on bwoo chair and wait for driver).
About fifteen of us were herded onto a bus, which started to negotiate the evening traffic from HK Island across to Kowloon. We glimpsed the masses of high buildings, the largest container wharf in Asia (vast!), the bridges and millions and millions of small Chinese types walking determinedly along the pavements.
The Hotel Metropole is north of the main touristy harbour front and as we descended from the bus, we were set upon by anxious Chinese porters who were already climbing inside the bus luggage compartment to retrieve our bags and were ‘velly solly’ when they found we had none; just the hand luggage we were towing.
Checked in to the 10th floor, the enquiry about internet revealed that although the hotel didn’t have wireless … it did have cable ports for access … and you could buy the cable here for HK$30; fine once I found that there were 12 to the pound !
After checking the room we went down to the hotel café for a bite to eat and rolled into bed … well, I say bed, it’s a bit like sleeping on a large door, its so hard but nonetheless slept well.
Friday, 2nd December, 2005
Awoke really early this morning and switched on the computer to find a very fresh e-mail in from Ben. We live chatted by e-mail, for the better part of an hour before he went off to bed.
Anne phoned down to the lobby to see whether the bags had arrived, which they had and so they were brought up. We weren’t too on-the-ball with the Chinese tipping protocols and as we only had a HK$20 (less than £2) note the porter left with a very broad smile on his face and probably went haring down the corridor casting off his uniform and signing himself off for the weekend. We only later discovered the sort of scales of magnitude on the currency.
Today we have an introductory tour of Hong Kong as part of our hotel package and it starts with an 8.30 pick up at the hotel lobby.
We arrived at breakfast at 8 and with only a half hour in order to take full advantage of the buffet on offer, we had to get cracking. There was masses of food ... and masses of Chinese tourists digging in to it, with a few baffled westerners standing around the general melee of action, wondering whether they really did want to try noodles for breakfast.
There were people digging in to bowls of beef, piles of noodles, some disgusting looking rice soup which looks like a thin porridge, to something looking like broccoli … and then there were the usual eggs, bacon, toast, croissant etc. There were people shaving at the table in between mouthfuls of breakfast. It was live theatre and I guess that we were a part of it.
The use of the chopsticks as an automated pincer which feeds noodles and other larger items into the mouth is an art to behold and I was mesmerised watching large piles of noodle being ingested. With head bowed the eating process becomes a rhythm; Grip, lift, chew. Grip, lift, chew. Grip, lift, chew.
But even the Chinese drop some of their food and the ‘safety net’ in place seems to be that on some occasions when there’s a tricky item to lift with the sticks, you put the bowl down, grab the tricky item with your chopsticks (right hand) and then if it slips deftly catch the morsel with the left and pop it in your mouth. Once you’re through that little hurdle you grab the bowl again and get shovelling.
Down in the foyer we met an English couple who were also doing a tour. For one dreadful moment I thought we might be destined to have life long friends, but their trouble was that they hadn’t read their ticket quite right and the tour which they were booked on started down at the Peninsula Hotel, about half an hours drive away in current traffic conditions. I felt sorry for them as they stood out front trying to wave down a taxi and negotiate a passage across town.
About one in four cars in HK is a taxi. Cars are strongly discouraged. There simply isn’t enough space and accordingly, the public transport system (“Light Public Bus 16 Seats”) is cheap and efficient and taxis readily available if you’re feeling slightly more flushed. The duty imposed by the Chinese government on new cars is 100% of cost.
We got picked up at 8.40 and met our tour guide ‘Michelle’. Her badge said she was called something like Ying Tong Diddle-I-Po Michelle, so presumably it’s her ‘professional’ name.
I couldn’t help humming the lines from the old Monty Python song all day:
“I like Chinese. I like Chinese. They only come up to your knees, Yet they`re always friendly, and they`re ready to please.”
She was, she told us, 34 years old and for the rest of the tour gave us a bit of an insight in post Mao China and pre-Chinese Hong Kong. She had no kids … “Why?” her mother kept asking her. To which she kept responding, “Mum, I don’t have time …” “But it only takes a few moments … so how can that be??!! Right”. Oh, how we laughed our way around Hong Kong.
It was a very well rehearsed routine, just like an evening with Ken Dodd. One got the impression that parts of her spiel was a scripted message which she was required to impart to us, but it was entertaining, nonetheless.
She told us about the various standards of living almost proudly; that the workers had 130 sq foot of space in their flats, that everyone had a window, that sometimes you could apply to get two flats, particularly as your children grew up. She also discussed ordered Feng Shui (‘Fungshoy’) lifestyle of the inhabitants.
(Monty Python: “So I like Chinese. I like Chinese. I like their tiny little trees, Their Zen, their ping-pong, their yin and yang ease.”)
We wove our way first around Kowloon picking up various other trippers at a variety of hotels. We then crossed the bridge to the island and got some more tourists.
All through Hong Kong there was action everywhere; the people are always doing something … cars, people walking, cycling, scootering, I seldom saw anyone just standing around. People folding cardboard, squashing aluminium cans, sweeping the streets, watering the flowers, or just getting from A to B in a busy and industrious way.
We caught glimpses of the famous Hong Kong scaffolding, huge structures made of bamboo and saw lorries full of bamboo passing along, presumably to fit on other jobs. The scaffolding has become such an institution, such a part of the development of Hong Kong that it was even included in the Colony’s expo exhibition. Nowadays it is bound using plastic tie bands, but before it was presumably some form of hemp (perhaps polypropylene) and that must have been really time-consuming and dodgy. Deliveries are being made along the streets on hand carts and tow-along trolleys … the wheels of which are often made of wood with sections of car tyres tacked around the edges for the ‘suspension’.
Michelle’s command of English was outstanding; her turn of phrase slightly entertaining at times, but considerably better than my noon-existent Canton or Mandarin.
On the subject of a well known opera singers presence in town … “Papparowti – he here. He like tailor. Make him good suit. Good price. Right”
The avenue of the stars, we were told had “No Bwooce Lee” but that they had recently unveiled a statue to the Kung Fu master to coincide with what would have been his 47th birthday.
She set the scene for the sort of money we could expect to pay for certain things “On the right we have Pen-in-soola Hotel, which sell High Tea at high price … on the left we have Sheraton. Price lower. So, High Tea (pointing to the right) and Low Tea (left). High tea: low tea. So, therefore you like it. Right.”
Our first port of call was The Peak and that started at 11.10, two and half hours after getting on the bus! We were issued with stickers to single us out in the crowd and caught the funicular to the top and received strict instructions as to when we had to rendez vous. I ended up standing on the train which was difficult due to the angle of incline, but it provided more flexibility for photography. I committed the heinous crime of standing within a yellow box marked on the floor of the train, for which there was the potential of a HK$1,500 fine. There were anxious stares from my Chinese compadres as I stepped in and out of it taking pics from the window.
The visitor centre / reception area on The Peak is being re-built and will be spectacular when its finished and of course the view of the harbour … well we all know what that looks like… its amazing. It was quite hazy when we were there but nonetheless one of the great sights.
We stopped off at the Aberdeen fishing village, where all the fishermen live on their boats mid channel (“We stop in Aberdeen fishing village, and you are interesting for that. Right.” ). The men are presumably fishing and their wives are all desperately bobbing around on twenty foot junks ferrying tourists out on half hours trips. (“OK. So that’s velly nice for yowooo“)
The old wifey who handled the boat for us was obviously coining it in (the equivalent of £40 every half hour, I worked out and I wondered how that sort of wealth squared with what Michelle had been telling us on the way here).
She had three words of English; “Houseee boat” which she used every time we got anywhere near where someone was trying to eek out their lives peacefully and then about fifty yards out from the jetty on the Way back, the engine slowed and she used the rest of her vocabulary “Moneeeeee! Moneeeee!”
We stopped off at a jade factory which had a shop outlet and were allowed to photograph the workers as they fashioned really intricate jewellery items. Anne had apparently had a hankering for a string of black pearls since she was young, so she went off the select her Christmas present and then I went along to strike the deal.
Stanley market provided an introduction to market culture Hong Kong style but not the masses of CDs, DVDs, and designer tags that we had been expecting ..
We finally got back to the hotel at about 3pm and Anne set about trying to book dinner. I was keen to have a final trip blow-out meal and also wanted to get a table over looking the harbour.
There were few options available with this criteria and these narrowed further due to it being late on a Friday and everyone else seemed to have a similar idea. Anne eventually found what we were looking for at the Intercontinental and duly booked it for 7.30.
We decided to walk down there – quite a long, but nonetheless interesting slog.
I took a few shots of shop fronts and the various commodities they were selling. Every twenty yards of so as we walked along the street 5 was approached by an Indian offering cloths tailoring, suits, waistcoats and on other occasions a fake Rolex watch.
Our meal was superb made all the better by a very helpful and friendly waiter.
(Monty Python: I like Chinese food. The waiters never are rude. Think of the many things they`ve done to impress. There`s Maoism, Taoism, I Ching, and Chess.”)
Our booth, although, one back from the very front of house had a fantastic view across the harbour and we were able to see the laser light show at 8pm while eating fantastic food.
Anne started with a sushi sampler and then had grilled Pacific prawns. I had a set menu which included everything from a seafood selection to start, then a crab bisque, a superb steak and the most amazing dessert which was based on something called a dragonfuit which neither of us had ever heard of.
We left and wandered back up through the Night Market, arriving back at the hotel after midnight. In contrast to the decadence of the waterfront and to the cosy sophistication of our final evening, two examples of the brutality of Chinese culture stood out; two horrific examples of begging, which because they were so isolated and so out of character to the rest of the goings on, must have been stage-managed.
Walking along a pavement, going with the flow of people traffic, there was a minor hiatus on the sidewalk as we were swept along, which, when you got there, there was nothing else to do except follow everyone else and step over. Lying on the floor, face down was a man with no legs – his wheelchair was stashed nearby and it looked as if someone had simply tipped him out across the pavement. He lay face down, forehead resting on a pad of cloth with a box held at arms length above his head and he shook it every few seconds.
Further up the street, a youth with roughly amputated arm and leg on one side, his body effectively halved and it looked as if it had been done by machete was begging once again from the floor. While their plight is terrible, the next day, we passed the first guy again and with more time and slightly less people on the pavement, I picked out someone standing nearby, arms folded, watching the situation carefully and quite probably reaping the benefits.
Monty Python: “I like Chinese thought, The wisdom that Confucious taught. If Darwin is anything to shout about, The Chinese will survive us all without any doubt.
“I like Chinese … There`s nine hundred million of them in the world today. You`d better learn to like them; that`s what I say …”
Saturday, 3rd December, 2005
Today, we’re on our own and Anne has big plans for the markets.
The day started early with e-mail rendezvous with both boys – about 6am our time and 10pm the night before, for them back home. We wandered down to breakfast at about 9. Not nearly the same number of people, quite probably because we’re later, but also perhaps because it’s a Saturday.
We then walked along to the markets at Mong Kok and Anne began to seriously began to sort through the stalls.
I have never been in a place where there was quite so much stuff that I had no intention of buying. There was nothing. Not a thing!
Anne finally got into one or two side shops that were stocking oddments of clothes but it was a question of working your way through hundreds and hundreds of garments in order to find one or two ‘labels’ which were nice. Its like a huge charity shop … the clothes, once you rummage them out are very cheaply priced and fore quantity, there’s usually a bit of leeway for bargaining.
We also walked the Flower market and the Goldfish market – the latter just tanks, bags and shops full of fish – goldfish, tropical fish, salt water fish. We saw a tank of ‘Nemos’ for sale and a few yellow tangs, quite possibly originating from Joe’s business in Hawaii. Just up from the flower market is the bird market. With stacks of small song birds in tiny bamboo cages, parrots, sulphur crested cockatoos, mynahs and love birds.
… and then there’s the dogs and cats. Beautiful little pups and kittens playing around in pens … and right in the middle of all the pet shops a dodgy looking fry-up joint which presumably purchases the ‘left-overs’.
At the bird market, some of the traders stood around holding small birds in the sunlight, perhaps to make them sing, others just had ranks of cages all stacked up on the street. All the birds looked as if they’d simply been plucked from the wild and the cockatoos in particular, all stood right at the end of their perches with chained legs extended. They stood trying to get as far away from the anchor point as possible.
We ended up somewhere in a huge shopping plaza; obviously a local one as there were no other western faces discernible in the thousands of people packed in there. We went up to the food hall on the fifth floor which was just a babble of Chinese voices – you literally couldn’t hear yourself talk.
Only one of the stalls had any bi-lingual characters labelling the food and that was a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet and so much to Anne’s disgust, that was the hostellery where I decided to get a bite to eat. I don’t think I’ve ever had a KFC before and possibly a Hong Kong-cooked ‘chicken zinger’ is not a very fair judgement on normal KFC cuisine … or maybe it is?
Anne, on the other hand, fancied her chances at a dim sum bar several shops along the way and managed to order something after a lot of shouting and pointing. We managed to secure one seat at a table with three Chinese and so I stood around chewing my way through my zinger while Anne slurped her way through dim sum with the rest of them. One of the Chinese eventually left and I grabbed his seat.
We walked back to the hotel Back to hotel fairly directly and had an hours sleep.
As the second part of the hotel package we have a “Pre-dinner cocktail cruise of the harbour” which should deposit us back on the wharf in time for the 8pm light show.
We caught the Number 7 but from opposite the hotel – not the “Public-Light-Bus-16-Seats” which I’d sort of been hoping for but a commodious double decker. The driver didn’t speak any English and couldn’t be bothered or perhaps didn’t have the time to get involved I trying to get the correct fare off us and just waved us on board. We sat upstairs, side windows open and looked at all the street level bustle and the lights coming on as dusk fell.
It took about 20 minutes to get to Tsim Sha-tsui (or somewhere like that) and we then fought our way through the subway and found ourselves at Kowloon Pier Number 3 and 4 where we made contact with our operastors; “Water Tours”.
Standing on the wharf and watching the various boats and junks bobbing around like corks made us feel quite queasy, but luckily when our boat made its final approach to the dock it looked fairly substantial and stable.
The lights of Hong Kong looked even better after three very large and complimentary gins from the bar and we were on the water about an hour and a half – some of our other travellers were dropped off at buses and restaurants along the way, but we stayed the course and were deposited back on the wharf at about ten to eight.
The Hong Kong light show is, perhaps not quite as described by an English couple standing next door to us, “the greatest free show on earth” but it is fifteen minutes of spectacular, co-ordinated flashing lights and laser. Unfortunately, you have to be standing along the wharf at Ocean Terminal in order to get full benefit of the music which the lights are set to; we just imagined what it must be like.
Ocean terminal was mobbed with people looking at the new Christmas decorations and watching the switching on of the Christmas lights (velly exciting!) It was a completely over the top display of tinsel, baubles and ribbons with thousands of Chinese having their pictures taken beside the display.
We had dinner at Stonegrill, Ocean Terminal another major gastronomic event worthy of note. Here you choose your food and they bring it along with some little slabs of stone heated to about 400 degrees and you cook your own. As you’ll see from the pics, I got 4oz of steak and 4 oz of tuna. It was fantastic.
Before they bring the stuff along to you they come and pin aprons round your neck and as Anne had her jacket over the back of her chair, that gets a special zip on cover as well. Once you’ve been fitted with the appropriate protective clothing, you then get a safety talk about the implications of touching a 400 degree lump of stone and then you get a cookery demonstration.
We were stuffed after that lot, but worked some of it off jogging our way through the streets in order to make sure we met up with the hotel courtesy bus at the back of the Peninsula at 10.30. We just made it and enjoyed the trip back to up the Metropole though a busy Sunday night in Hong Kong.
Sunday 4th December, 2005
A lazy morning. Our check out time was midday and we just stayed around the room, catching up on packing and diaries until it was time to vacate the room.
We piled our bags into the concierge’s lock-up and walked to and around The Ladies Market, just a few streets from the hotel.
If its possible, there were even more Chinese people on the street today. It was like a football (or rugby) crowd as far as you could see in every direction … presumably, because its Sunday.
We made a sortie back to the hotel mid afternoon in order to drop off all Anne’s purchases and to get a bite to eat. We stashed more with the concierge and then went out again at about 4; just locally, but the crowds are unbelievable; ordered, but just incredible in scale, certainly not the place to be claustrophobic but made slightly better by being taller than many of the people there.
Having seen a mass of Chinese people now several thoughts strike me;
For a nation which is increasing in size exponentially, I only saw four pregnant women during our whole time here (from a sample size of thousands!).
The dress is entirely western … but no belly buttons or bared midriffs.
There are lots and lots of smokers.
The Chinese must be getting taller as a race; the older folk are tiny, I dread to thing how many little old ladies I elbowed in the head as we walked around, but they are all at that height and, I’m not particularly tall. My impression is that they are bigger … but perhaps they aren’t Chinese perhaps there’s Filipinos, and other Asians mixed in,
We re-packed everything in the hotel lobby... causing a little bit of angst with an Indian woman, who was moaning about us taking up two seats and we caught the transfer bus out to Hong Kong airport , about 40 minutes from the hotel at 7pm.
Check in was simple and smooth – because we were quite early and then we shopped – or at least window-shopped around the airport, getting lost on several occasions.
We finally settled on a café for a bowl of hummus and Turkish bread and a beer, which was largely paid for by a wad of dollars I’d found lost on the floor of the airport.
We boarded at about 11 and took off just before midnight. Good seats at the back of the front compartment which meant that we had no one behind us pulling on the seats and generally being a nuisance and we were able to sleep quite well after a couple of gins and a bottle of wine.
Monday 5th December, 2005
After the time change of eight hours from Hong Kong time, we arrived in London at 4.35. The new Wallace and Gromit movie was on the in flight (Curse of the Were Rabbit) and I watched it several times … none of them all the way through, but I think I’d covered most of it by the time the twelve hours flight time had passed.
We landed at Heathrow at 4.35, cleared immigration without hassle (should bloody well hope so too!) and then I hooked up at a wifi spot and completed the trip journal.
The Edinburgh flight took off at 6.50 and touched down amid rain and low cloud in Edinburgh at 8am.
We were met by Bammy and whisked through the rain back to Kilrie.