Today I booked my London hotel, including eight breakfasts for less than £90 – which is far less than they would cost here, paying from my UK bank account, having paid for the airfare on February 25 and the balance of the Rhine cruise on April 4.
Today, I had the last sentence of the PRESERVATION paragraph on the home page removed. It read: The Image Library is in the collection of the Queensland Museum.
On January 7, I uploaded a post about updating my Image Library for the Queensland Museum and expressed disquiet because the Digital Asset Management System Administrator, Donna Miller, was unaware of my donation when we spoke on January 6. On January 31 I was told by email, that since the donation was made, the Museum had adopted a more rigorous and time-consuming system for adding images to its digital collection and the resources to process my images in a timely fashion did not exist. Moreover, the curation policy requires that the Museum image portals hold the most appropriate, unique and quality images for either staff, public or researchers. This information and the sense that Donna was unfamiliar with the library’s content only intensified my disquiet. I was nonetheless permitted to re-edit my photos from 2014 to 2018 as per the March 11 post.
On March 29, Donna sent me an email rejecting the donation. In yesterday’s reply, I told her that I could not help feeling that she was… Read Complete Text
Flooding rain has dictated the weather for months in these parts and in much of Queensland. Longreach has had its share. I left a decidedly wet Brisbane on 24.3.22 in the hope of seeing blue sky and sun in the mid-west, but terrified of driving back to the mountain on my return at rush hour, in the forecast persistent rain. We arrived in Longreach early, and I had to wait for Nicole to pick me up. Thursday is usually a busy day for Simon with Council meetings. Nicole had to return to work. She has just taken up her position as General Manager of Aussie Outback Tours, a thriving Longreach-based tourism business, and I was left alone for the afternoon with Pepper, which delighted us both. We were confined to barracks next day. I didn’t venture out because I didn’t have a key. The weather was uncomfortably hot. In the evening we dined at Longreach’s much-improved premier restaurant. Nicole joined Simon and me from a reception honouring Daniel Geschwind, retiring after twenty-two years as chief executive of the Queensland Tourism Industry Council. He is a hero of mine because he has brought his Swiss grounding in tourism excellence to… Read Complete Text
I booked my flight to Longreach (October 8) and back (October 16), for our Birdsville road trip, first mooted by Nicole and Simon when we were at Uluru, after I told them that I would love to visit the Middleton Hotel, a lone and evocative haven, 170 kilometres from the nearest town, on the road between Winton and Boulia. I suggested staying overnight in Boulia, whereat Nicole said we might as well go to Birdsville. I jumped at the chance. The beauty of driving from Longreach to Birdsville and back is that the entire journey will be through essential Australia – the glorious channel country and the red centre.
This afternoon, I sent a USB with the re-edit of my photos taken between 2014 and 2018, plus the related data documents, to Donna Miller, who is in charge of Queensland Museum Images. As I told her, it was necessary but enlivening and fruitful work. The re-edit completes the up-date of my Image Library for the Museum.
The USB also contains 24 video clips shot in 2014, 2015 and 2016. I was surprised to find four night photos dating from January 2018. The camera is used for point and shoot at close range work, which is usually difficult in rainforest, especially at night, in the restricted illumination of the spotlight’s beam. Several entries in the original data documents were listed as unidentified. I was able to update the information for some of them from my website and have received partial or complete attributions from experts whom I contacted, for others. Some subjects simply could not be identified, of which a number may be undescribed species.
The files are date-listed until April 6, 2016. After that they are listed numerically. In order to only list the correct image number, I was be-devilled by Microsoft Word’s automated set-up and… Read Complete Text
Jesse Jarnow listened to the recording of my recollections of the Bickershaw Festival, for which I produced a firework display, and some other reminiscences, which Steve sent him and was very pleased with it. Jesse mentioned that attendees who were interviewed were pretty blown away by the fireworks, which is nice to hear fifty years later.
My travel insurance arrived in the post. Taking Gina at her word, I phoned Suncorp, with whom I have two bank accounts plus car and contents insurance, to enquire about travel insurance. Every time the menu referred to travel insurance I hit the required number, only finally to be told that Suncorp no longer provided travel insurance. Fortunately, RACQ, the state’s premier motoring organisation of which I am a member, have a large travel business and they were able to meet all my needs for $1,365.40, which included a sizeable discount.
I saw the bird on my walk this morning, swimming in the dam, then much depleted, which forms in the paddock next to Driscoll Lane after persistent rain. I knew I had never seen it before and that, as it swam, it looked so unlike the few ducks who were also in the water; even more so when I photographed it on the bank, at up to 28 times optical zoom. The bird was an immature Little Pied Cormorant, lacking the white above the eye of the adult. It is one of Australia’s most common water birds and is found throughout the country. PS I saw it swimming and diving next day, the dam level having sharply risen after overnight rain. Its dive took it a fair distance underwater. I didn’t have my camera with me.
On my walk this morning, a severe gust of wind sucked my cap aloft from my head and took it completely from view. This has never happened to me before. Always, until today, the cap has landed on the ground nearby and rolled along until I could retrieve it. To add insult to injury, I had to curtail my walk because the sun was shining on my bald pate.