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Category Archives: Cairns

Cairns

Travelling home

30 Thursday Apr 2015

Posted by morselsandscraps in Cairns, photos

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

going home, weather

My North Queensland holiday is nearly over. It's time to drive my mighty campervan back to Cairns. But as always there are journeying pleasures.

On the outskirts of Cooktown is Kalkajaka (Black Mountain), a place of importance to the local Kuku Yalanji Aboriginal people, with a number of sites of religious significance. In the early morning light, the black rock (black from a covering of lichen) looks an almost eerie purple. The mountains are a tumble of rock, with very little vegetation, formed by an unusual jointing pattern millions of years ago. A narrow gorge carries rushing water, glimpsed as you cross a bridge.

The road is pretty empty, so I can slow down to take a photo through the windscreen, a rough orangey bluff ahead of me and the shadow of my van leading the way. I pass the anthills again, fascinated by their shape and their profusion. I turn off the Mulligan Highway and head down the mountain out of the savanna to the green of Mossman, which seems now like a town I know. I indulge my penchant for photographing the murals on public lavatories.

The coast road back to Cairns is spectacular, with plenty of pull off spots for the camera. It fancies the blue-green of the water, the glimpse of islands and the receding headlands, and it's a bit startled by rocky beaches.

Too soon I'm handing over my companion van and heading for the airport. The flight back is a bit bumpy, and the landing a bit more so, but nothing too bad despite Sydney's cyclonic weather. The bus on the way down the coast leaves a wake to rival that on the reef catamaran, and the roadside has waterfalls, and fountains wherever there's an overtaxed stormwater drain. By the time I reach Potato Point, I'm anxious about washing with my minimal turnaround time before I head off to Warsaw.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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String theory at the Cairns Regional Gallery

29 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by morselsandscraps in art, Cairns

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

Cairns Regional Art Gallery, String theory

 

String theory: focus on contemporary Australian art is a travelling exhibition from the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney. It showcases the work of Aboriginal artists working in a variety of mediums. No photography allowed, unfortunately, because every piece demanded the homage of my camera.

There is a dramatic grouping of sinuous spirit figures sculptured from a weaving together of string, grass, feathers, wool, and synthetic sparkles: orange, straw, pink, brownie-grey, green, red. One figure branches like a tree.

A series of panels use raffia, plaiting, embroidery, felt, wooden beads, feathers, turtle shell and sticks to create images of butterflies, fish, turtles, sulphur-crested cockatoos, kookaburras and emus, on a backing of hessian. Some of them tell stories of the area round Lightning Ridge, where my father-in-law had an opal mine, and feature familiar places like Cumborah and Narran Lake, where we once got bogged. One panel tells the story of the formation of opal, another features fish traps. They were crafted by the Boolarng Nangamai Arts and Culture Studio.

A large eye-catching mobile created from feathers (Feather string yam vine by Frances Djulibing) occupies a whole corner of the room, white against a black background. In another corner, a film made by the anthropologist Charles Mountford in the 1940s shows Aboriginal people turning string deftly into what we used to call cats cradles. A series of linocuts by Evelyn McGreen (Spirit baskets 2009) shows traditional baskets she has made herself, surrounded by the objects they are used for, such as berries and shells. Tony Albert’s photos (Optimism 2008) feature traditional two-horn baskets of the North Queensland rainforest worn around the head by his cousin. Each one contains autobiographical items like a football or newspapers: objects that belong in his everyday life in urban Brisbane.

The pleasures of the exhibition are many: it’s variety, its modern take on the traditional, its colour, and of course its sheer artistry.

Spirit figures

Feather string yam vine

Spirit baskets, 2009

Optimism 2008

http://www.mca.com.au/touring-exhibition/string-theory-focus-contemporary-australian-art-tour/

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Ever present: photos from the Queensland Art Gallery, 1850 – 1975

29 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by morselsandscraps in art, Cairns, photos

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Cairns Regional Gallery, exhibition, photography

Photography is a “crystal clear window on the world.” (information panel)

Photos capture “the decisive moment” (Henri Cartier-Bresson)

“Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event, as well as the precise organisation of forms which give the event it’s proper expression.” (Henri Cartier-Bresson)

Photographs provoke “narratives beyond the frame” (information panel)

“Photos don’t tell stories: they show you what something looks like.” (Garry Winogrand)

After strolling the esplanade and booking a reef trip, I went into the icy cool of the Cairns Regional Art Gallery, not expecting the treats that lay in store. I spent a couple of hours looking at the history of photography, being introduced to processes I’d never heard of and charmed by the many different artistries of photography. There were the documenters, the impressionists, the social commentators. I made copious notes of names to follow up, and photos to admire at greater leisure, and quotes to contemplate or argue with.

The highlights were many, and in many modes.

Manhatta is a short documentary film directed by painter Charles Sheeler and photographer Paul Strand, interleaved with quotes from Walt Whitman, The leaves of grass. If you’re interested, you can have a look at it on YouTube to savour the motion, the extreme angles and the Whitman quotes. (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qduvk4zu_hs)

I’m always interested in the way artists pursue and shape their subject, and series hold a particular appeal, beginning with Monet’s haystacks and Hokusai’s views of Mt Fuji. August Sander had a life project: he wanted to produce a “typological (photographic) catalogue of German people”, in categories such as farmer, women, artists, the disabled and disenfranchised. Americans Walker Evans and Arthur Rothstein documented “the rural poor” during the depression, “sucking a sad poem right out of America onto film” (Jack Kerouac). In 1970, Robert Rooney put dots on a transparency, which he then placed over a map. He moved a Holden around to these random places and photographed it at different times of day, creating Holden Park 1 and Holden Park 2.

Then there were the abstractions and the staged photos. Imogen Cunningham’s Unmade bed looks about as arranged as an unmade bed can be, like a sculpture. Weegee’s photo of the encounter between two high society ladies and a drunk was very definitely posed: the drunk was paid and pushed into the encounter, so the story goes.

Then there were five special photos that really lodged in my memory for a variety of reasons. Olga Winston Link’s Hawksbill swimming hole has wonderful zigzagging diagonals and contrasting dark and light in contrasting textures, and it captures the immense joie de vivre of the swimmers, bringing together the industrial and the human.

Horst B Horst’s Carl Erickson drawing Gertrude Stein and Horst (1946) links the three people with a masterful line from Horst through Stein to Erickson’s hand. If this is an early selfie, I am in awe. The composition and the eye focus of each subject is superb, as is the balancing of the heaviness of books against the light from the window and the dog.

David Moore’s Redfern interior (1949) shows three generations in three different intimate moments. The young woman is concentrated on the baby, two dark heads together. The older woman is deep in thought, not altogether pleasantly, thinking about, maybe, the implications of this new life in an already stretched household. The little girl is holding her doll, almost imitating her mother, but she is also trying to connect with the grandmother, and knowing intuitively something of her concern. This is really capturing “the decisive moment” as Henri Cartier-Bresson calls it, for three people in one photo.

Robert Capa’s French mistress of a German soldier being marched through town (1944) tells a savage story of disapproval and group hostility, with a touch of schadenfreude, if you look at the expression on the women’s faces. In this case there really is a “narrative beyond the frame.”

Arthur Rostein’s Oklahoma migrants (1936) is beautifully arranged, faces framed by the car window. These are the people John Steinbeck writes about so movingly in The grapes of wrath, victims of nature and the economy, and yet retaining dignity.

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A walk beside the sandflats

20 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by morselsandscraps in Cairns, photos

≈ 12 Comments

Tags

cannon ball tree, public art, sandflats

After a morning at the gas tanks, and a farewell coffee with my brother and sister-in-law, I walk along the waterfront where the Esplanade becomes the Promenade. I pass the swimming area with the woven fish and it's full of splash-shouting. It's not a shady walk, but it's a grey day and low tide and I love grey day photography. A tree festooned in pink flowers and large brown balls attracts my attention. At first I think its one of the pieces of public art I'm in search of, but it's a real tree, a cannon ball tree in fact, with the most exquisite flowers. As if cannon balls aren't enough, I encounter a crocodile warning, not the first, although I haven't seen the slightest hint of a crocodile.

And then I turn my attention to the pewter sea with a touch of muddy gold, luminous where it reflects the Turner clouds. A diaphanous rectangle marks the spot where rain falls. My grey walk is punctuated by startling flashes of colour: the information panels on mangrove mud and coral reefs, a huge shell, a bright orange representation of wind blown leaves, and (more in keeping with grey) silver cutouts of action figures.

As I turn back it begins to rain. No umbrella of course, but a good drenching doesn't matter. The air is warm and I'm dry by the time I catch the bus back into town.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Windblown leaves: Roland Nancarrow

 

 

 

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Gas tanks

19 Sunday Apr 2015

Posted by morselsandscraps in architecture, Cairns, photos

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

art, Tanks Arts Centre

I return to the Botanic Gardens early in the morning to check out the Tanks Arts Centre. Three World War 2 naval oil storage tanks have been converted into an arts precinct for exhibitions and performance. My beautifier said they were a must-see and she was right. To enter the precinct, I pass through an immense gate beside a wall of gargoylish mosaic, some of it overwritten by twining roots. Each tank is also magnificently gated. Even the bare outside of Tank 1has a rough beauty, that beauty that comes so mysteriously from dilapidation

To enter the gallery I cross a small bridge over a pool reflecting a circle of ferns. The inside space is vast: partitions to normal ceiling height create a series of pale-walled galleries and the office is a curved module plonked off centre. Some of the paintings are hung dramatically on the curved inner wall of the tank at eye level, amongst signs of industrial wear and tar and streaks of black grease. A huge rusting pipe remains, angling its way up beside a ladder.

I'm so taken with the tank that the artworks take second place. They are all by local artists. A collage portrait of grandfather and grandson captures a wonderful tenderness. There are images of coral, cassowaries and rainforest and a basket woven from sea-rope and flotsam-jetsam. But it's the venue that holds my attention.

When I tell my niece I spent the morning amongst gas tanks, she looks at me pityingly and mocks me unmercifully. Little does she know the many pleasures gas tanks provide.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Getting dolled up and girly time with the bride

18 Saturday Apr 2015

Posted by morselsandscraps in Cairns

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

girly time, make-over, wedding

It's my niece's wedding, and I treat myself to face painting – I never wear makeup – and hair tizzying. When I scrounge around online I have no idea how big a treat it would be. Abby of Finesse Makeup (http://finessemakeup.com/palm-cove-wedding-makeup-and-hair/) turns out to be a mobile operator and she comes to my cabin on the side of the hill with all her gear in a back pack. She straps her toolkit around her waist and begins brushing me over. Then the hairdresser arrives. So I sit in my eyrie and chat while the transformation takes place: hair and face simultaneously. My eyes are praised, and the softness of my hair (40% grey: I now have it on expert authority). Abby used to be a news journalist and made a career change when the pressure got too great: she runs, and the hairdresser is a serious cyclist. We chat and I realise that the planes do make a noise. I hadn't tried to talk over them before.

It took a lot of equipment to deal with my face, and perhaps I'll dare to flaunt the finished product, although I haven't quite mastered the art of the selfie: I look at the camera with too quizzically, and I'm too busy clicking to smile.

 

 

My niece invites me to join her and her bridesmaids for “some girly time”, an honour I wasn't expecting, so I set off for the Shangri-La Hotel and more new experiences. Kate is having false nails attached: the photographer is acrobating to take photos in a crowded room and trying desperately to find a place for the empty dress shot; the bride is keeping an anxious eye out the window on progress setting up the parkland venue; my six year old great-niece is flirting with the camera and enjoying her sparkly sandals (“Are those jewels real?”). The champagne begins to flow.

The ceremony takes place against the sky and the blue of Trinity Inlet, the speeches are made and the partying begins. My niece is now a married woman.

 

 

 

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Out to the reef

15 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by morselsandscraps in Cairns

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

coral, Great Barrier Reef, Moore Reef, seasickness

I'm so eager to go to sea that I'm the first one on the large catamaran taking me out to Moore Reef, part of the Great Barrier Reef, about 30 km from Cairns. Diaphanous clouds waterfall from the sky, and wilfully fall in places no real waterfall would go. It's rainy, and promises to be a bit rough, so I swallow three ginger pills. Advice is to look at the horizon to settle the stomach, but today horizons are not horizontal, and not always visible as the boat tosses and rolls, and a great trade in sick bags begins. I resist that commerce: after all I didn't spend $190 to be sick. I have fun photographing from the rain-streaked windows, and some shots manage to capture the turbulence. Their increasing blur reflects the state of mind of many passengers. There is a brief burst of sunshine, which turns the sea from green oxide to pale indigo.

We eventually reach the pontoon on the reef, but the rocking does not stop and I am very wobbly-footed. I risk going to sea in an even smaller boat, glass-bottomed this time, and we glide above the coral at a pace too fast for a photographer who is trying to adjust eyes to a new environment. I want the boat to stop, but it isn't going to, so I alternate snapping and gazing and don't even notice the unsettled seas.

Almost immediately I board the submersible, a bit dubious about descending into claustrophobia. The coral is not so healthy or colourful this time: there are patches laid waste, by cyclones the guide tells us, and the colours are mostly drab. We do see a shark and a turtle gliding by, and a couple of divers, alien humans in an underwater world: all suddenly and unsnappably gone.

After lunch I put on my swimmers, last worn in the lake at Gryżyna with the twins. I undulate my way into a lycra top-to-toe, and grab flippers and goggles. I edge my way down the slippery stairs, and sit half-submerged, waiting for snorkelling instruction. I haven't snorkelled for thirty years and then it was to spy on a very large eel in the swimming hole in the Tuross River. A humpheaded Maori wrasse glides his blue spots and stripes past my knees, almost touching me.

Suddenly the life guard blows his whistle and we're all hustled out of the water while a floating swimmer is rescued. I'm no longer keen to go in. The water looks rough and grim-coloured. So I seek help to extricate myself from lycra, and miss out on a pleasure my six-year old great-niece enjoys without a qualm a few days later, when of course she spots Nemo, as well as spectacular coral.

The trip back is no smoother. Scuba diving gear is piled higgledy piggledy, and a great pillow of excess bread rolls sits on the shelf. Waves toss their manes energetically; the crew run barefooted and keep their footing; passengers stagger drunkenly, grabbing for any support they can find. The horizon again despises the horizontal, until we reach the shelter of the mountains of Trinity Bay.

When I disembark, I join the family and Kate's Bamaga friends at the Courthouse Pub, and eat pizza with my brother and his family. I manage to catch a bus home mwith a wait of only five minutes, and then spoil this efficiency by overshooting my stop in the dark. So the day ends with me walking a bit fearfully on the verge of a busy road for two kilometres, flicking my torch (yes! I was prepared. I had a torch) on and off so I could watch my footing, and announce my presence.

My regrets? I didn't snorkel, and I didn't have my credit card to do a helmet dive, which seems to require you to grin maniacally, but which also puts you underwater without requiring expertise, where fish swim by, literally in front of your eyes.

 

 

 

 

 

Glass-bottomed boat

 

 

 

 

 

 

Submersible

 

 

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Botanic Gardens green: leaves, ferns and fronds

15 Wednesday Apr 2015

Posted by morselsandscraps in Cairns, photos

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

ferns, fronds, green, leaves

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Botanic Gardens red

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by morselsandscraps in Cairns, photos

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

Botanic Gardens, flowers, red

The predominant colour in the gardens is red, from pink through pillar box red to orange. The flowers are exotic in shape and configuration beyond any hope of ID by this botanically ignorant plant-lover.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Botanic Gardens: dining companions

14 Tuesday Apr 2015

Posted by morselsandscraps in Cairns, photos

≈ 7 Comments

Tags

architecture, Botanic Gardens, dining

I spent a long time prowling round the Botanic Gardens, so I needed sustenance. The espresso was served outside near the information centre, a building of glass and reflections where it was difficult to distinguish what the glass held from the real world of forest. As I sipped my coffee I caught a glimpse of two large iridescent blue butterflies swooping against the green.

 

 

 

 

 

At lunchtime, my companion was a very handsome tree with a bole-shape of utter perfection. The cafe was surrounded by gardens, and the pear cider was delicious enough for me to indulge in a bit of product placement.

 

 

 

 

 

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