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Monthly Archives: September 2017

Postcards from the past: Afamia, Syria

28 Thursday Sep 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos

≈ 9 Comments

January, 2001

We drive out of Hama, Abu Farouz, the American, the yellow Mercedes and me, in sunshine that intensifies the rich colours of the earth tractors are churning up to an incredible depth. The landscape is bright green with accents of the subtler green of olive trees. We pass paddocks where potatoes are being harvested into big plastic bags which are then piled high onto stained glass trucks. In a doorway an old woman sits, rubbing the dirt off potatoes from a plastic dish. Women dressed in a crushed velvety array of colours – bright purple, cerise, vermilion, chartreuse – work on hillsides against a background of bright green, bright brown, bright orange. Children are heading off to school: boys in shiny khaki suits, immaculate and uncreased, little girls in pinafores, older girls, head covered and walking more sedately. A group of boys sit on a rocky outcrop clapping, while their mate dances wildly.  In a town, men cluster round a truck loaded with potatoes: one of them examines a loose one, long and cream, and then tosses it back onto the truck. Carpets hang over the sides of houses and washing flaps. Shopkeepers sit outside on stools or purple plastic chairs, talking or sitting alone , calm hands folded in their laps. Men stride along lugging a wheel, an exhaust pipe, a great coil of plastic piping. Women in high heels ride pillion and sidesaddle on motorbikes, behind their husbands. The road narrows and we pass a tractor hidden under a rounded load of tree loppings. Brightly dressed women chip and weed. The crops are wheat and cotton and pistachios (if I understand Abu Farouz.)

We stop at ruined castle (Qala’at Sheisar) on a narrow spit of land between two gorges: arches and remnants of towers stand against the blue sky. I climb higher, delighting in placeness rather than castleness. We drive beside a river with an arched bridge and a derelict wooden water wheel.

Finally we reach Afamia, beautifully sited against the snowy background of the Anti Lebanon range. The mosaic museum is in a restored Ottoman khan, the stables part, around a central courtyard, a place of low arches and niches. The floor space is full of mosaics, marble sarcophagi, memorial stones (I can almost read the Latin) and statuary. A small one catches my eye: two figures, headless and entwined, his hand on her breast. I’m freshly astonished by the way little squares make graceful curves; how the mosaic artists create shading. I’m more attracted by the intricacies of the borders: the centres seem to feature nature red in tooth and claw. One mosaic has been reinstalled on the floor, giving the appearance of carpet with its tiny tiles.

I walk a kilometre along the colonnade. The stones that form the roadway are still in place. One set of columns has barber’s pole fluting, apparently very unusual. Men in leather jackets leaning against motorbikes stand watch a bit back from the cardo, waiting to pounce with marble heads for sale: “I found in a tomb over there.” I resist buying anything.

As I wait for my companions I stumble towards a ruin and realise I’m stomping through the furrows of someone’s crop.

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NB I know it as Afamia: it’s also called Apamea.

For a general overview of Syria’s heritage

For an image of Apamea looted.

Wordless walk: from Bogola Head to Barunga Point

26 Tuesday Sep 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos, wordless walks

≈ 9 Comments

Tags

Barunga Point, Bogola Head, Eurobodalla NP, nameless beaches, nameless headlands

 

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RegularRandom: 5 minutes with Bogola Head rust

24 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in challenges, photos

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Bogola Headland, old vehicle, RegularRandom, rust

Where the winds have brushed the tops of trees into a backward sweep, looking far down the coast, surrounded by orange flowers, an old vehicle lies deconstructed and sinking rustily back into the earth. Although we’ve finally found the elusive Bogola Head, and presumably the equally elusive Bogolo Formation, I pause to photograph, while J goes ahead and negotiates the steep steps cut into the rock leading down to the beach.

As I do so I wonder how this vehicle came to be here. Maybe the headland was once farmland, and the farmer put his tractor? truck? out to pasture in this beautiful place after many years of faithful service.

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This is my contribution to DesleyJane’s RegularRandom where this week she uses overhead light at night to photograph a cupcake. I too use overhead light, in my case the sun at roughly midday.

Note to my friends: I’m easing off blogging a bit, so if a post doesn’t appear daily it doesn’t mean anything’s wrong.

Hotchpotch 9

22 Friday Sep 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in hotchpotch, photos

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

fruits, Ones, shells, sunset, waterlilies






Finally, in homage to Sue and her Ones, two full frontal Ones. The man and his dog appeared in the frame just as I took the photo, aiming merely for an image of the track.

This One was captured in Warsaw. Concrete was raining down from the roof during renovations, and I whizzed down to take a photo of the debris. The man, presumably there to warn tenants before they got dinged on the head, didn’t want to be in the photo, and I caught him hopping the low fence to disappear somehow before I snapped.

Postcards from the past: Krak des Chevaliers, Syria

21 Thursday Sep 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos, Postcards from the past

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

castles, Krak des Chevaliers, Syria


January, 2001

I travel from Hama to Krak des Chevaliers with an American working in Lebanon and Abu Farouz who drives us in a yellow Mercedes. This castle is supposed to be the epitome of castles and was Lawrence of Arania’s favourite. We pass through increasingly hilly country. Rich red-soil fields line the road, wrested from rocky terrain, out of which grows the assassin castle, Musayef, and the town that surrounds it. Out of a high patch of black-specked white rock spouts a multitude of TV aerials. So many castles are overlaid on Musayef I only have a faint memory of it.

After Musayef, the hillsides are terraced and we see the cross rather than the crescent. Olive and apple trees dot the hillside. On a narrow windy road through town we nearly bang into an old woman leading a cow out of the house. We approach Krak des Chevaliers, houses crawling up the hill towards it. Abu Farouz parks the Mercedes at the foot of a towering turret, and I have two hours to stretch the imagination into the past: soaring ceilings; arches leading into stables, men’s quarters, kitchens. Round turrets and square turrets. Arrow slits. Ramparts that the brave-with-heights can still walk along. Stone stairs worn away by centuries of feet, sometimes grown over with moss or grass. Spectacular views, down terracing into a valley, and then more valleys. I sit on a top step and eat a quarter of a grapefruit. Sitting again in the Knight’s Hall, I draw the attention of a would-be guide who wants to show me things: snow-covered mountains through arrow slits; hollows in the ground connected somehow to the storage of oil; a huge oven; dark corridors where guards used to pace. The prayer hall is very beautiful – arched ceilings, decorated doorways, a stone pulpit. I wonder how on earth the Crusaders and their cohorts kept warm in such grandeur.

While the driver and my fellow-passenger eat, I perch on a low wall at the base of the castle and watch little girls play elastics. They tell me their names and the Arabic words for thongs, boots and sneakers. A man about my age with one leg joins me companionably and shows me the pictures on coins. (It only occurs to me now there might have been a sub-text!)

Other images from the day? A donkey under a tottering burden of sticks. A woman emerging from the trees carrying a  load of firewood.  A boy pushing a tractor around a corner in the middle of a hillside town. A truckload of carrots heading into Hama. A Christian cemetery. Bandy-legged old women with walking sticks. A motorbike with a cargo of seven rolled up carpets. These are all morning images. The journey back to Hama is along a nondescript highway.



You’ll have to be satisfied by words this week: for some incomprehensible reason I don’t have any photos except the blurry one I’ve used. photos, There are spectacular images in some of the links below.

 Report on damage in 2014 here: 2015 here: 2016 here

Eurobodalla beaches: Fullers

20 Wednesday Sep 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in Eurobodalla beaches, photos

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

Aboriginal place, Fullers Beach, unnamed lake

This beach-hopping is taking over our lives: not just weekends now, we snatch midweek opportunities to explore. On Tuesday, J leaves his preparations for bushfire season and we drive down a dirt track off the Pacific Highway through spotted gums and burrawangs and find ourselves behind the dunes where we envied campers a few weeks ago. They are in fact still there, in an idyllic spot. I can see J planning a future excursion. 

I do a search for Honeysuckle, the destination on the national parks board, and come across stories from the Yuin people. Vivienne Mason, interviewed in 2006, says “Corunna Lake is not so good for camping. We fish there until 2 am, then leave because an ‘old fella’ lives there.”  There are also burial sites on this beach.

I discover that the national parks sign to Honeysuckle, which we follow, does not agree with the placement of Honeysuckle behind Bogola Head in the Moruya Yuin Community page.  Beryl Brierley says “There was a camp at Bogola Head, under the honey suckle. People would camp here on their way back to Wallaga Lake.” Bogola Head is at the other end of a longish beach.

The dilemma of place continues.

We climb over a low sandhill onto a now familiar beach, which is probably Loaders Beach. (All approaches to certainty have deserted me, both geologically and geographically.) The tide is quite high, so we clamber up onto a headland which is nameless, and look down over a blue sea and a pinnacle sporting Liesegang rings, those swirls that so mystified and delighted us and that now have a name, thanks to a cheeky email to Chris Fergusson, a University of Wollongong geologist, and his instant response.

The tussocky grass is quite short, and we can see a glimmer of water through the trees. We make our way down towards it, and find an exquisite small freshwater lake, hills rising evenly around it and clouds reflected in it. A red bellied black snake heads into the water and swims fast across the lake, head just above the surface.

By the time we return to the beach the tide has dropped enough for us to nick around the rocks between waves, past the pink, green and pale mustard rocks of a few weeks ago, onto Fullers Beach. Images of these beauties are in the Headland in between part of another post.

The unvisited part of the beach stretches ahead of us with spurs of shingle jagged in the sand.


Otherwise, the rocks have a familiar palette and design: large veins of quartz, Liesegang rings, blue patches. Beach flowers thrive in the sand piling up at the bottom of the cliffs.

“Let’s go and sit on that lump of rock” says J. “That lump of rock” proves to be completely unexpected conglomerate, which sets off a whole new line of speculation. Did a river once flow down here, collecting bits and pieces that then solidified into this? An examination of the cliffs supports this idea (perhaps). We may know what those swirls are, but questions continue to proliferate.

We turn back, leaving the rest of the beach and the larger freshwater lake that nestles behind it for another day.

Wordless walks: three headlands

19 Tuesday Sep 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in photos, wordless walks

≈ 22 Comments

Tags

Bogola Head, Corunna Headland, the headland in between

1:  CORUNNA HEADLAND




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2:  THE HEADLAND IN BETWEEN

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3:  BOGOLA HEADLAND


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Early morning walk with kangaroo and orchids

18 Monday Sep 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in native orchids, photos

≈ 19 Comments

Tags

Brunderee Lake, donkey orchids, greenhoods, wax lip orchid

Oh, I love getting up early and heading off for a walk. Today I amble towards Brunderee Lake, just a short distance from home. The sun’s just beginning to light up the world. As I enter the track I spot a kangaroo.  He stays with me for quite a distance, pausing every so often to have his photo taken. I oblige: snap snap snap. And each time he hops away when I’ve finished and waits till I catch up. I finally refrain from snapping, and he too loses interest and bounds off into the bush.

This leaves me free for the real business of the morning: orchid spotting. The rock lilies on the granite boulders beside the highway are flowering in lavish sprays and this suggests that I may find smaller native orchids beside the track where I’ve seen them in other years. And sure enough, there’s a small pale donkey orchid (Diuris sulphurea) lurking alone amongst the grass and kangaroo poo. So I pay due homage, flat on my belly with both cameras in operation.  A few steps further on there’s quite a colony, their colour more saturated.



I return to the track and continue towards the lake, which I can see sparking in the sun. Everything is very dry. We badly need rain. The palette of the bush is desiccated leaves, and the sound under foot crunchy. But that doesn’t deter wax lips (Glossodia major), one bright purple bloom flaunting itself by the track and another more demure, more pallid one hiding amongst the prickles of bell-shaped heath. 

By now my eyes are well attuned and I notice something else orchidaceous, which I take to be the bearded orchid my friend Rosemary spotted in just that place on her last visit. On close inspection it proves to be a tiny greenhood, possibly Pterostylis pedunculata.

When I have satisfied my urge to worship, I walk on down to the lake.

Acknowledgements to Jude channelling Becky, who has challenged bloggers to go square in September with flower photos.

Eurobodalla beaches: Loaders and Fullers beaches

17 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in Eurobodalla beaches, photos

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

Corunna Beach, Corunna Lake, Fullers Beach, Loaders Beach

Or is it Corunna Beach? It’s surprisingly difficult to obtain certainty about beach names. Even with Beaches of Batemans Bay, a cartoscopic map and a topo spread out on the inadequate table, and a forestry map on the wall, we can’t achieve absolute certainty. I’ll settle for Loaders and Fullers, with only a slight bump in the topo, invisible to anyone walking along the beach(es), to mark the point where one becomes the other. And it seems now I’m wrong!

We drive through the Mystery Bay camping area and stroll down the track to Billy’s Beach. We crunch up a dune of stones to a wide grassy track heading off through casuarinas and banksias and follow it, debating forks.

We come to a lookout offering a rockface that demands closer attention, a whale or two breaching and spouting (you can just see a splash between the two lots of rock in the second photo) and a long view of Corunna Beach? Loaders? Fullers? to a headland whose name causes infinite debate over two weekends. Lying along the horizon is Baranguba.

Nearby there’s a plaque marking the site of Corunna Point Recreation Ground, almost certainly on a clearing where Aboriginal people camped before they were dispossessed, the sea ahead of them and Corunna Lake behind low sandhills. Events held there by the white fellas between 1890 and 1920 included picnics, athletics and cycling competitions, and facilities included a maypole (a maypole?), swings, a velodrome ( there are still traces of a track with tilted sides), dressing sheds and toilets. Some of the events held here attracted thousands of visitors.

We walk down a track to the south end of the beach (Loaders? Corunna?) with a view over Corunna Lake to the sea.

J legs it north determined to meet the headland and I rejoice because two months ago he could barely walk. I take it far more sedately, pausing to scrutinise the south headland.

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The sea doesn’t  leave me much cliff to explore, so I’m soon trudging between the lake and the incoming tide, in the bright warm sun.

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 The beach is host to many shells, larger than the ones I see at Potato Point and to a sea urchin and a big-eyed crab, both beyond life.

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After poking around the headland, and misinterpreting everything we see as we discover later, we sit on the sand and watch waves breaking on the offshore rocks in a great explosion of spray before we begin the walk back.

We make a few detours behind the low dunes and discover people camped between the sound of the sea and a ridge of spotted gums. There are a few groups on the beach, including three grown ups playing with three large dogs.

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We take the grassy track closer to the cliffs this time, and diverge onto an overgrown path through tick laden grass and bushes for a splendid view along Billy’s Beach, and a face to face with a pillar of chert.

We’re hungry by now. At J’s we demolish a beer and bush bread: jalapeños, olives, capers and sun dried tomatoes in a matrix of dough.

RegularRandom: 5 minutes with alpacas

17 Sunday Sep 2017

Posted by morselsandscraps in challenges, photos

≈ 17 Comments

Tags

alpacas, RegularRandom

My daughter has a mixed bag of alpacas. The two that caused us so much grief a few years ago are now happily earning their keep as shepherds to a flock of sheep. JohnnyMay, the periscope on an icy Sunday morning two years ago, and the latest arrival who’s still suckling, are slated to go off to a place with holiday cabins to become petting animals. 

But for the moment there they are, 5 of them, gathering at the gate whenever I approach, crowding me as I peg out the washing. They are not skittish when I point the camera at them and they seem to me to have far more collective and individual personality than horses. They somehow encourage portraiture. Their charm is their curiosity and the way they approach me when I move onto their turf: it’s hard to resist, even if I can’t remember their names.

This is my last stashed RegularRandom post for DesleyJane’s challenge, where this week she features a modest yellow pansy, photographed with consummate skill.

Now I’ll have start seeking inspiration again: fortunately it’s never hard to find in this wonderful world..

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