I left home on June 23 and returned on July 29. Even ignoring the six, as opposed to the normal two-year interval between journeys, this trip was shaping to be unlike any other. The time and then the cost of producing my book, followed by the pandemic, accounted for the gap. Given its length, I suspected that it would give rise to unexpected changes, regardless of Covid. I was conscious of the need to make up for lost time. My focus was on re-uniting with family and friends. The death of my beloved cousin Leila in 2019 meant that there was no longer a need to stay in London for two weeks. The apartment in Belsize Park wasn’t available, so I booked into a conveniently located hotel for eight nights. Clive, who turned 75 two weeks before my departure, agreed to put up with me for a week which included a two-night stay in Cornwall. I was now in the fortunate position of realising a long-held desire to book an eight-day Rhine cruise from Amsterdam to Basel. Also, I had vowed to visit Bruges the next time I was in Europe, so I added a two-night stay there. I… Read Complete Text
Gina handed over my tickets and vouchers – tickets for flights and rail travel, vouchers for accommodation, car transfers and the Rhine cruise. I leave on June 23. The rail pass is only available as an app. I have hard copies of the six days for which I have seat reservations, but the remaining four days appear to be out of reach. In reality, I will have to go to the rail travel office at St Pancras Station today week, to sort matters out and expect to put up with a long wait. A complicating factor is the rail and tube strikes currently occurring in the UK. Ah, the joys of travel, but then, I stubbornly refuse to have a smart phone.
A pair of tawny frogmouths were perched on my balcony when I drew my curtain this morning. I took several photos as they moved their heads culminating in a pose with open beak, which I have never previously seen. Frogmouths are an attractive subject both because of their striking appearance and their quirky behaviour, such as sitting in the middle of the road at night. Although they look like owls and are nocturnal, frogmouths are not raptors. They lack talons and a beak capable of ripping flesh. Instead, they catch their insect prey on the wing. They are found throughout mainland Australia and Tasmania. When I closed the curtain in the evening, the birds were still there. Next morning, they were gone.
This morning I paid Gina for my accommodation in Amsterdam (both before and after the cruise) and Bruges, and transfers from airport to hotel, hotel to railway station and hotel to boat. On May 4 I paid for the rail pass, after a lot of toing and froing to allow for sufficient time to change trains while avoiding having to linger between trains.
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.