Archive for December 2011
31 December: NEW YEARS EVE – Toowoomba
TOOWOOMBA NEW YEARS EVE 2011 FIREWORKS
Not Sydney but it’s all we’ve got (and we can walk home in 5 minutes!)
A great five course dinner with friends, the fireworks was course two, Champagne, exotic cheeses, home-grown baked veggies, Felicity’s rack-of-lamb and Beverley’s famous raspberry sauce!!
Fireworks in 'Frogs Hollow' Toowoomba 7.30pm December 3, 2011
2012 HAPPY NEW YEAR!!
26 December: Xmas Lunch with Ruby + Sandy
A Christmas ritual is lunch with our Mothers – Vicky’s Mum passed away this year so Ruby and Sandy Barrie were our main connection on Boxing Day.
Sandy and Ruby preparing late Xmas lunch
25 December: Magic Revealed – Xmas Light Displays
Clown shape - Christmas Wonderland
Have you ever been enthrawlled by the sight of those amazing Xmas light displays that become such a feature of the Yuletide season? Darkness hides the ‘how it’s done’ and all you see is the vibrant colours and the shapes formed.
SEE MORE IMAGES IN THE BEHANCE FOLIO – CLICK HERE!
READ ABOUT THE “CHRISTMAS WONDERLAND” – CLICK HERE!
Two Angels
Spikey star
25 December: Lunch in the Park
We Hope You All Had a Great One Too ! !
Christmas lunch in Toowoomba’s Botanic Gardens
Toowoomba Botanic Gardens setting
Smoked trout, salad, fruits ad watermelon – A Christmas Dinner feast
A bull ant tucks in as well!
Lying back after lunch – looking skyward
Maybe Christmas is for the birds!
20+21 December: Heading Home
It always rains when we turn for home. The Newell Highway, rain and big B-Double truck rattling along the flood tortured bitumen is an experience that is full of tension.
Drivin' down the highway - Photo: Vicky
Another thing – Don’t check into motels that are too close to the highway. Sometimes, in the dead of night, it feels as if the truck is coming through the room …
The sun did shine @ Forbes …
Outside the Forbes Courthouse
Santa up a pole
19 December: Milawa Bread, Cheese and Wines
A Mt Buffalo snack - Olive breads, soft and hard cheeses and nuts
North-eastern Victoria is renown for fine foods and wines – While at Mt Buffalo we feasted on sour dough and olive breads made locally. The olive bread came from the Milawa Bakery and when we left the mountain we went in search of some more of the luscious bread. Milawa Bakery is situated in the Cheese Factory so we stocked up on some Christmas delicacies.
Just nearby Brown Brothers vineyards stretch across the landscape, and they have wine tastings at their cellar door – we went in …
Out the cellar door with a few bottles
For more on the Milawa foods:
15~18 December: Mt Buffalo National Park
Revisiting the mountain will require many posts. Here is a taster …
To see the FULL Mt Buffalo image package visit our ‘PLACES VISITED’ Blog – alongthetrack.wordpress.com
Victoria Cooper and Doug Spowart in the Mt Buffalo Chalet garden
Doug and Vicky at the Gorge lookout, Mt Buffalo National Park
Vicky photographing flowers at Mt Dunn, Mt Buffalo National Park
Doug photographing near The Horn, Mt Buffalo National Park
14 December: Hume Dam
View of water from the dam wall
We’ve visited the Hume Dam that block the flow of the Murray River near Albury – After all the recent rains the dam has filled.
Looking towards the dam
The water height has varied from the last time we saw it te years ago …
A comparison of dam water levels @ Bell Bridge 2000 ~ 2011
14 December: Dining lunch @ the Niagara Cafe Gundagai
Stepping back to the 1950s and 60s – Dining in a cafe with cubicles and the locals.
The phrase ‘when I was young’ is so cliché and yet as one grows older fragments of past memories emerge from everyday experience. The fragments trigger memories of simpler – less complex times and simple pleasures.
The town of Gundagai is part way along the Hume highway between Sydney and Albury. We stopped in town looking for a place to get some lunch – a takeaway maybe, the simple staple of the Australian traveller – a meat pie, tomato sauce and a can of Coke. Bakeries in the town looked closed, swish fine dining cafes looked too predictably up-market.Mid way along the main street was situated the quaint facade of curved glass, tiled step and menu taped to the window of the Niagara Cafe. We walked in to a 1950s bench-styed dark stained seating area. At each table salt and pepper shakers sat astride red-capped dark sauce bottles and a menu. The table tops were a pea green and walls covered in newspaper reports, horse racing photo finish pictures, paired Australian and Greek flags, annotated photos and other ephemera.We checked out the menu ….
Here are a few images – SEE THE BEHANCE FOLIO – Click Here
The front door of the Niagara Cafe
A couple of patrons
13 December: James Turrell – Skyspace ‘Within without’
On three occasions we have visited the Turrell Skyspace artwork @ the National Gallery of Australia during our time in Canberra. Turrell states that:
My work is about space and the light that inhabits it. It is about how you confront that space and plumb it with vision. It is about your seeing, like the wordless thought that comes from looking into fire.
For us the Skyspace was like visiting a physical and visual phenomenon. The images that follow record our experience of the artwork – and some of the fun.
An external view of the Skyspace installation
Inside the Skyspace installation – standing before the stupa
Vicky looking up towards the sky opening
4 views of the Skyspace opening
Sitting in the sun spot – two separate views
A wedding photographed in Skyspace
Vicky photographs fellow visitor
Sun circle projection
Inside Turrell’s Skyspace with friends doing selfies
The two of us before the stupa at the end of our visit
A wedding photographed in Skyspace
wotwedid 