Bat-lame-ia.

Today Jes and I headed to the City Museum for the second last day of their Batmania exhibition. I haven’t head too much about the place, but was of the impression that it was a reasonably sized museum with Melbourne history. This was fairly wrong and it actually only consisted of a few rooms (upstairs, the gold vaults cost extra downstairs); the Batmania exhibition was two rooms plus some hallway. The information was fairly boring and poorly written (with many inappropriately placed apostrophes), and very few things to look at (a few notebooks and drawings). The other rooms had some mildly interesting items relating to the founding fathers and the immigration. There were several references to the gold mines and men who made their fortune on it. I don’t think I learnt very much about anything.

After that we decided to go to the Ricky Swallow exhibition at the NGV in Federation Square. This cost twice as much, and was worth every cent. The carvings were of amazing detail (and size). They were accompanied by the usual over-the-top descriptions but the pieces themselves were interesting and beautiful. It was inspirational to see something which had obviously taken time and talent to complete.

The afternoon after that was completed in pleasant laziness. We had a beer at Beer Deluxe (I had Warsteiner – a refreshing, flavoursome lager and a Sinha Stout – something different but tasty) and then headed for some lunch. After the first choice of a Chinese restaurant was shut, Shanghai Dumpling House beckoned and provided us with cheap food.

This evening we went out to see the new release, Zombieland. It was a movie that certainly didn’t disappoint. It’s a comedy, which was genuinely funny against what is usually a horror or drama background. There were only a few characters, which helped to develop each character, but followed one in the narrative, leaving some about the others a mystery. Abigail Breslin (of Little Miss Sunshine fame) was one of the characters and, as with her other movies, was fantastic. She’s a great little actress, and certainly has grown up since I saw her in Nim’s Island! The other three were definitely not a disappointment, including Bill Murray in a cameo role!

The movie was refreshing, even with the predictable love story worked into it. The ideas were nothing new, but it was brought out as something new. Best movie I’ve seen in a while.

Bodyjar and Beer Deluxe.

Friday the 13th was far from unlucky for me. Bodyjar are currently on their farewell tour (not a la John Farnham), and I had tickets to go see them at the Corner. A quick dinner at our regular spot Gigi in the city and Jes and I headed out to the Corner.

Supports weren’t off much interest, but we did see most of 28 Days’ set, as my friend recommended them from the night before. They weren’t too bad, but I was itching to see Bodyjar more than anything; it’s been a fair while since I’ve seen them perform.

The set was, of course, filled with their hits, as well as some of their older tunes. The crowd loved it, even if they were aging slightly. I definitely enjoyed it, especially as I had perched on the smaller stage and could still see.

I ran into a friend from Sydney I don’t see often too and now that I know he’s in town, we’ll arrange to catch up properly.

On Saturday afternoon, a group of us from Flickr met up at Beer Deluxe in Federation Sqaure to discuss an idea for an exhibition we have. The discussions were relatively productive and many ideas have been tossed around, but now we have to get down to work. Just as a side note, if one wants to spend an afternoon drinking, Beer Deluxe can get very pricey.

Beer Deluxe is a place that Jes and I have visited frequently in the past few months. It’s conveniently located near to ACMI, where we find ourselves every few weeks or so, and serves such a wide variety of beers that we are pretty much working our way through the menu now.

The beers aren’t cheap, but as most of them are imported or from microbreweries, one doesn’t expect them to be. There is an extensive range of dark beers, lagers, tap beers and trappist. One of these days I shall use the menu online and complete a list of those that I can remember having and what I thought of them. In the mean time, I’ve definitely tried these two.

As it comes into hotter weather, I often feel like a light larger or wheat beer. The wheat beers I’ve picked recently have mostly been too sweet for my liking though. The Erdinger Dunkel was a tasty, heavier version that I’m used to. On Saturday I also tried the Erdinger Weissenbrau, which is new on tap, and that was fresh and light, without being too sweet.

In the cooler weather, the ales and darker beers are to my taste. Again, I’ve had a bad run picking the sweeter ones, but there have been a few gems in the list. Birra Moretti La Rossa and Timothy Taylor’s Landlord have both turned out to be winners.

There will obviously be many more to come, and I will have to start notes on which I’ve tasted – a bit like with the books last year!

Hello Darkness

A friend had pointed this film festival out to me, a special horror movie run just before Halloween. It was to be shown at ACMI, which has become a frequent haunt of mine, with their ‘Freaky Friday’ features. With an interest in most of the movies showing at this festival, we bought one of the four movie passes and picked the following:

Paranormal Activity
There has apparently been a significant amount of hype around for this movie, but I hadn’t heard too much about it other than a website petition for the movie to be shown in certain towns (a rather successful marketing trick). This showing was sold out, but I had low expectations – a hand-held self-filmed movie? I couldn’t help but think of the Blair Witch Project. Thankfully this turned out much better. It seemed to last for a long time, but only because it was so tense all the way through. Despite this the characters created some natural comedy, but not enough to override the tension, particularly later on. I found myself sucked into the story and about half way through I had to remind myself that it was only a movie and it wasn’t real.

I won’t give too much away, but the story was great, if lacking in detail in places and the action was simple and spectacular. The ending I saw (one of three according to most websites) was good, but I felt added too much comedy to it rather than fear. The other two endings that I have heard about sound better, but whether they were executed well is another matter.

The Last House on the Left
This was the recent remake of the original from the 1970s, and I saw it only half an hour after ‘Paranormal Activity’, so obviously my expectations were fairly high. As it was fairly different, it wasn’t hard to expect different, and there was definitely a comedic gore factor to it, as well as some social and moral issues lightly tossed in.

As I haven’t seen the original, I can’t say how it compares, but I can say that it was a good movie. The acting was fairly good (especially the ‘bad guys’), and the special effects of blood and guts was fairly realistic for the most part. It was a scary movie in a different way, because there wasn’t too much tension building (and what there was was short-lived). The fear came in the believing that people could act that way, and that revenge could be that easy.

As I said, I wasn’t scared by this one, but it was still a good horror movie.

Sheitan
The first of two foreign language movies, I was quite looking forward to this one. I’ve seen some French movies, and quite enjoy their quirkiness, but was unsure whether that would continue into the horror-style movies. It certainly did. This movie definitely did not disappoint – there was tension, violence, sex and generally strange things. It was fantastic.

I feel the camera work is also worth a mention, with different techniques being applied to bring out the different moods throughout the movie. This was a strong point for me.

Overall there was a certain element of humour throughout this movie, right until the end, and it helped to confuse the audience. The moments of humour would come at unexpected points, or be so closely linked to the fear that it gave a very uneasy feeling. I thoroughly enjoyed this movie.

Haute Tension
The last movie of my four, and another French one. A quick look at IMDB indicated that this would be different to the oddness of ‘Sheitan’ and a more traditional horror slasher gore-fest; it certainly didn’t let down on the last count!

The story was a little predictable, with an inkling of the ending in the back of my mind. However, the execution was fairly good, with the build up, the action and a prolonged conclusion all being of high quality. The acting was hit and miss at times, but the soundtrack, camera work and blood made up for this for the most part. The plot was also missing in parts, but I still thought it worked.

Probably the weakest of the four I saw, but going by the high quality, it was definitely not a bad movie.

After re-reading this, I feel that I’m being faithful to my ‘resolution’ of sorts to watch more movies!

Phillip Island

My housemate and I decided to take a last minute weekend trip down to Phillip Island. We left just after 7am Saturday morning and headed down the Princes Hwy. We made good time, arriving at Grantville by around 9.30am. I’d read about the mini-golf at Maru Koala Park, and being the mature 20-somethings that we are, we just had to stop for a game.

We were the first customers of the day and after a quick coffee we headed out to the extensive pirate-themed course. It was quite an impressive set up, with a large boat (that you’re not allowed on) and several other decorated buildings and themed music. The golf itself was quite disappointing, being fairly easy (not that we were trying too hard). I’m fairly sure we missed a hole at one stage, and at the end, the ball disappears into a Aussie-outback-themed hut. As I only hit mine in, we headed back in with the other and I was getting ready to apologise for losing a ball when they informed me that that’s where they’re meant to end up. Very confusing. We skipped the koala park part and kept moving down to San Remo.

By the time we got to San Remo, we needed some more air, so went for a nice walk down the beach away from the crowds.

Eventually we headed back to the car and we decided to head across to Phillip Island. Within just a couple of kilometres, we saw a sign for a farmers market on Churchill Island, so decided to take a detour there and to the visitor’s centre. Thankfully we managed to pick up a map of the island and were given advice about some beaches to visit and about the Penguin Parade, which we decided we might as well see while we were there.

By the time we looked at the farmers market, it was approaching the time we had indicated to the B&B we would arrive. The place was called Otira, and was easily found by their instructions. We were met on arrival by an old dog (Dougal), followed by Robyn, the owner of the B&B.

Check in, such as it was, was no problem, and the room was beautifully presented in the main house. As noted on their website, we had afternoon tea on arrival (although it was even lunch time) with a delicious homemade carrot cake. Robyn’s husband John came out and told us all about the farm, how it used to be (he’s lived there all his life), how it is now, and offered to take us out to feed the 2 1/2 month old lambs.

Clutching warm milk in old Corona bottles with a rubber teat, we headed out with John to a small paddock. The lambs devoured the milk and headed off for a nap, while John took us down to the shearing shed and show us Dougal at work as a sheep dog. It was great to see a small herd of very fuzzy sheep (the shearing was happening when his sons arrived the next day) and an old dog doing what he loved.

As Robyn had suggested a beach at the end of Ventnor Beach Road, we decided we had nothing to lose in heading down and taking a look. We found an almost empty sandy beach with small areas with rock pools – it was fantastic. We took a lazy walk down to a point and then headed back again to go and get some lunch. We headed into Cowes and tried to find somewhere that wasn’t taken over by tourists – unfortunately that meant eating Burger Edge. There’s something wrong about going away and eating at a chain restaurant/eatery.

After that we went for a drive and completed a loop of the island through Rhyll before heading down to another beach – Smiths beach, which is popular with surfers. There were more people here, but we had a walk down to the rocky end of the beach anyway before moving on to see the Nobbies. Heh.

The Nobbies were even busier than the beach, with several busloads of tourists visiting when we arrived. We stopped for a cup of tea in the generic visitor centre and looked at heading down the boardwalk to take a better look, but the crowds of tourists and seagulls put us off. Instead we went back to the B&B for a rest before the Penguin Parade.

The Penguin Parade was quite an experience. The tourists and crowds were frustrating, but for the most part all behaved themselves. The penguins of course were cute, and arrived just after the sun went down and continued for over an hour in dribs and drabs. I’ve only ever seen them in the wild at Granite Island, in much smaller numbers, so this was very impressive. After they come up over the becah, you can walk along the boardwalk and watch them heading up to their burrows, even see some of the chicks coming out to meet their parents.

An early night was calling, so we grabbed a snack and went straight to bed. Breakfast the next morning was quite an affair – a huge choice of courses including cooked, all fresh and delicious, served in the well-presented dining room with silverware. I could almost get used to that. Another couple had arrived late the previous evening so we stuck around and had a chat with them before settling up the bill, saying goodbye to the lambs and heading off with a loaded car.

Before we left, we thought we’d try one more walk so headed to Pyramid Rock, where you can walk along the cliff down to a beach. We walked to first lookout and found ourselves nearly getting blown away by the winds that had come in overnight and decided it would stupid and probably dangerous to continue, so got back in the car and kept moving.

A few stops on the way home and we were back in the living room by 2.30pm or so. A wonderfully quick getaway.

Identity

Since I was young, I’ve always had questions asked about where I’m from, where my family are from and what my accent is.

In brief, I was born in Adelaide; when I was 9 and a half, my family moved to England and when I was 18, I moved to Melbourne on my own.

Now I guess this isn’t too unusual; a family that I know moved to America for a slightly longer period of time, with children of similar age, and I’m sure we’re not alone in that.

Living in England was meant to be a temporary thing, a two year contract, and then we’d return to Adelaide. Of course, this didn’t happen, so we were settled over there.
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Mostly due to my age, I quickly developed an English accent, and as such, people who met me after that, considered me to be English. Even when people found out that I was from Australia and had spent some time at school there, most would still consider me English due to living there for an extended time.

I distinctly remember that during the World Cups of 2002 and 2008, I was asked why I didn’t support England; during the Ashes, it was the same. For me, it seemed logical. I was Australian, I could see myself moving back, and none of my family were from England. But for my class mates, they thought that I had lived in England for long enough, I couldn’t remember most of the time in Australia and therefore I should consider myself English.

I had a British passport, but only because my mum is Scottish, so why should I in any way consider myself English?

I know that the children of the family who spent time in America are similar – even though they moved when they were younger, they still think of themselves as Australian. Now that they have moved back here, they, like me, have lost the overseas accent and sound Australian again.

Now that I’m back in Australia, people ask why I don’t consider myself English after such a long time there. I think the main thing that it comes down to is that it was meant to be a short time. If I had gone over there not thinking I would be returning soon, I’m sure my experience would have been different and I could (and that’s a big could!), to a small extent, have considered myself English. Obviously, the Ashes would still have separated me from my classmates!

However, knowing that it was only going to be a couple of years, it was a case of, ‘I’ll be going home soon’ – Australia was home and England wasn’t.

I’m not sure what my point is with this – I guess I just wanted to put it out. It wasn’t the most typical of childhoods, but I know that living in England provided a great many experiences to me that weren’t available if I had stayed in Adelaide. I learnt languages, travelled in Europe, we were closer to my mum’s family in Scotland and I was close to London. However, nine years is a long time to spend over there.

The idea of moving back to Adelaide after living close to London was barely considered. I had one of my school friends and a tiny amount of family, but very little else.

Melbourne seemed lively enough to keep me occupied, and I knew some people there, so I wouldn’t be starting from scratch with a social group. It seemed like a good idea and it’s turned into a great idea – Melbourne has become my home.

After some intermittent internet connections and some more unpacking (and more procrastination), I’m back.

Work is busy, social life is busy, parents are visiting and knitting needles are flying.

More to the point though…

I’ve moved house and it went moderately smoothly. There are still boxes everywhere, but I have the Internet, so they won’t get unpacked now. Ever.

Adelaide

After it being a good year since last visiting Adelaide, the arrival of a football game between my friend’s team (Hawthorn) and my team (Adelaide) in Adelaide seemed like a good excuse to go back.

It was a difficult trip, with the Skybus to Tullamarine leaving from Southern Cross at around 5am, requiring a ridiculously early start on our part! The trip to the airport, checking in and the flight itself were all very smooth – especially considering we were flying with Jetstar!

Adelaide at 7am was fairly cold, but we managed to find the bus (which was running on a Saturday morning) and get into the centre of town. Finding the hotel was no problem, but check in wasn’t until 2pm, so we had some time to kill. Luckily we could leave our big bags in the hotel while we explored the early morning city. After walking up Rundle Mall, Rundle Street and looping back around on North Terrace, we stopped for a bite to eat (brunch?) at a small cafe called ‘Not Coffee’.

As we weren’t staying with my Grandma this time, we went to see her later on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, the buses were over an hour apart so we ended up getting a taxi out into the inner suburbs. As my friend is vegan, I had baked some cookies to take with us to save my Grandma stressing over finding something vegan. As it turned out, she did have some other biscuits in her cupboard which were milk/animal-free, but little else!

Back in the city, we got off the bus and went in the Central Markets for a look around – not much has changed – and then back up through Victoria Sqaure. Many a photo was taken.

Thankfully after that we could check in and had a little nap so that we wouldn’t crash too early that night. Our hotel was the Adelaide Paringa Motel, which despite the old decor, was clean, cheap and cheerful. The receptionist was quite amusing too, making sarcastic comments about the ’sights of Adelaide’!

We went out just as the sun was going down and went down to the Torrens, opposite the Festival Centre to scope out potential night-shooting places; unfortunately we came up with very little and didn’t go back down there later.

Dinner that night was at a delicious Thai joint in Hindley Street called Mekong Thai. The prices were reasonable (especially for booze), the food delicious and service fantastic. I’m still trying to establish what was wrong with it!

That evening we headed down to Rundle Mall to take some night shots. A surgical mask on the pigs covered the hilarity of the swine flu panic, and then the balls and some other long exposures were enough to cover a night shoot in Adelaide. The idea of a warm hotel room and a good nights sleep was just too tempting, so we had an early night.

Sunday; the day of the footy. Without too much before the early afternoon game, we took a quick walk down King William Street to do some shooting before catching the bus out to the game. I’m still in awe that the public transport is so readily available and civilised.

The game itself was OK – we played well, but could have played better. Hawthorn didn’t deserve to win, but we could have fought a lot harder and won by a bigger margin. Overall though, very happy result and a great atmosphere for the game. The little bit of rain was only a little off-putting but thankfully didn’t last too long.

After catching the bus back into the city (still in awe), we headed back for a rest at the hotel and then out for an early dinner again. Again we settled on Thai, but this wasn’t as impressive (down on Rundle Street), and then a couple of (dirt cheap) pints at the Exeter to keep us warm before walking back down to our hotel.

Monday morning was free for us until around 1pm, so we took a last walk around the city for photos. A loop took us up onto North Terrace, through the museum/university area, back around down Frome Road, down towards Victoria Square and back along Rundle Mall to our hotel. By this time, we were both ready for a sit down! The journey back was uneventful other than a 20 minute delay on the flight, and we managed to get home between the light showers of rain.

After being slack for a while, I’ll update this soon with more photography experiments, my flying trip to Adelaide, an up to date list of books read so far this year, movie highlights so far and events I have to look forward to. Fingers crossed I get to it this week!

Tourism and fundraising

Last Saturday I managed to do another tourist activity in Melbourne which I hadn’t done yet. The Entertainment Guide contains vouchers for many things, and I noticed one for a Yarra River cruise. So a cold and windy Saturday afternoon was ideal, right?

On the way down there, my friend and I stopped at Fed Square for the Buddha’s Day festival. The performances and shrines were of little interest, mostly due to lack of time and preferring to move to the food on offer. Mainly vegetarian or vegan, the variety was quite impressive. There were many ‘meat dishes’ made with substitutes (mostly soy I think), and after trying the duck, calamari and chicken, I concluded that the texture was very realistic and all tasted delicious.

Next, the boat trip! The voucher entitled us to buy-one-get-one-free on either a one way (down or up river), or both ways (down and up river) – we decided on the latter, because we could. The trip down river, towards Docklands, was more interesting, and provided more photography opportunities. It was definitely windy and cold, but the views were ones I hadn’t seen before and well worth it.

The second part of the trip went up river, past Richmond. This wasn’t as interesting, but had some nice views of the botanic gardens and Herring Island. The late afternoon light was lovely and golden by this time, and I’m sure the hen’s afternoon cruise ladies were enjoying themselves!

During the last week, I’d been out for a night shoot at Flemington Bridge, and I had taken both my DSLR and my Olympus SLR. I did shoot with the digital, but also used it as a lightmeter for the SLR – I began to shoot my first roll of colour slide film. I’d chosen Fujifilm Provia 100, after seeing how it came out at night, but had only fired off a few frames. With the help of a warming filter however, I finished shooting that roll on the ‘outward’ boat trip. Results are back tomorrow hopefully.

After disembarking, we tried an Italian restaurant (upstairs on Swaston Street – not very good), and another early night was on the cards.

Sunday morning required an earlyish start. As some of you may or may not know, I work for Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre. Each year, during the AFL season, there is a game between Collingwood and Carlton known as the Peter Mac Cup to help raise money for the hospital.

This year being the first year I’ve worked there (coming up to 11 months), I volunteered to help fundraise at the game. This involved getting there mid-morning to be briefed and assigned a location (Jolimont station) and moving into position for the first attendees coming in on the train.

This is one of the first fundraising events directly for Peter Mac that I’ve taken part in, and it was definitely enjoyable. The spirit of people coming through is quite astounding. Obviously a lot of people are there just for the footy, but there were also people getting off the train with coins ready to donate – knowing that we’d be there. Some people would stop for a few words, others just donated and kept moving, but all in all, it was interesting to see all the different faces coming.

Although we were given free general admission tickets to the game afterward, we couldn’t find a seat, and after standing for over two hours, my legs needed a rest. We headed home and caught nearly the whole game on the TV (one time I’m grateful for a delay), in the warmth and comfort of my lounge – and I for one was delighted to see Collingwood lose!