Kazza the Blank One - Search Results

Constellations

Last weekend was nearing the end of the Constellations art work display by Robin Fox at the National Film and Sound Archives.

So Tony and I went along to it.

It's on a twelve minute continuous loop, but when we walked in it was right in the middle of a trance party. Well that's what it felt like. Electronic music and a laser show? Count me in! Would have been cool after a couple of drinks, but we went at 10:00. Oh well.

We stayed for a couple of rounds through. I really enjoyed it!

Pompeii exhibition at the National Museum of Australia

This came up some time last year and I thought it would be good for the mother type person and me to go see.

So we did!

Statue of Apollo

Statuette of Venus

Carbonised bread

Situla (storage vessel) encrusted in lapilli (dried lava stones)

Statuette of Minerva

Nymphaeum

Alabaster hydria (water jar)

Casts of people and a dog formed by the pyroclastic ash. The bodies decomposed leaving an empty shell in the solidified ash.

Garden scene fresco

Fresco of Pegasus, Bellerephon and Athena

Herms (carved pillars) featuring Bacchus as an old and young man

Gold necklace

Every fifteen minutes Vesuvius erupts. The big screen at the end of the room and the screens along the sides of the room all show the event

Pumice stones raining down

So yeah it was a pretty good exhibition. Tony and Jo went the other week and said it was crazy busy so I was expecting it to be bad, but it actually wasn't too bad. It wasn't nearly as bad as the Pharaohs exhibition in Sydney. Kellie said the Egypt one in Canberra was also a lot better than the Sydney one. Maybe they just don't oversell the tickets in Canberra, but also you didn't have the nonsense of audio tours where people would just stop in front of stuff and not MOVE. Hurray for Canberra! heh

Big Things in Store

2.9.23

I've been wanting to go see the War Memorial's annexes for ages and finally got a chance to go. I've had some of the "highlights" (photos from my phone) saved for ages and was going to get around to getting other ones off the Canon.. but I haven't cause I'm a slacker. So this is just a few of the photos.

In the next room is all the moisture-sensitive equipment. So the room in nicely air conditioned to help slow down the deterioration of all the old gear.

This plane has a cool story - it flew from Britain to Australia in 1919.

The Queen and Me

3.6.22

A couple of months ago there was a thing on the Riot-ACT asking for submissions for people's memories/experiences of the Queen's visits to Australia. I sent in a couple of photos I took of her on Lake Burley Griffin in 2011.

Anyway, I got an invitation for an afternoon tea at the National Capital Exhibition to celebrate the launch, so thought why not.

No idea who this is, does anyone know?

Roslyn Hull and Sally Barnes

Notice anything wrong with this photo? Neither did we until we went to try and find it, and realised they'd printed the photo backwards!! But the story gets even funnier. That tree was stolen a couple of days later!! They had to replace it. The replacement tree was pulled down earlier this year. Check out the story!

And here's my contribution (which we had to go back and find because we missed it the first time).

Sydney Weekend

Back on 8 February I headed up to Sydney to catch up with Mum for Christmas. Just a few weeks late haha.

Drove up Friday evening (after having a random day off which was nice) and looked at some of Mum's holiday photo slide shows.

On Saturday morning we headed into The Entertainment Quarter for the latest Ryan McNaught Lego exhibition - Lego Cities. We took the train to Central and a bus down Anzac Parade (where I think it's amusing they're putting light rail back in after it being gone for so long).

Except the Entertainment Quarter is huge and there was literally no information whatsover on the tickets about where to go. Lucky we were early because we walked around for ages, and had to ask two separate people where it was. Pathetic event management.

I'll leave the Lego to a separate post.

So we were done by 11am but it was a case of "now what?". It was such a lovely day I didn't want to just go back to Mum's and do nothing. We were in Sydney for heavens' sake! Even if we just took a Manly Ferry and back it'd be *something*. But then I thought, you know I've never taken the ferry to Parramatta before. So we hopped on a bus to Circular Quay, topped my Opal Card, and hopped on a River Cat. I decided not to sit outside in the sun (I came for a Lego show, so no hat, sunscreen or sunglasses, and did get ripped off by the pharmacy at Circular Quay just to get some sunscreen), so got seats on the left, fortunately the windows open!

I'll leave the ferry trip to a separate post.

On the way Mum called Pam and asked if she'd like to catch up for lunch (it was about 13:30 by this point). So she met us at the ferry terminal. Parramatta had been hit hard by the storm the previous night, and there were a lot of downed trees. Pam's place (which is brand new, and they are the first tenants in the place) got heaps of water from leaky windows. Note to self: don't buy an apartment in any new building until the building industry can get their act together - shoddy work is the norm on anything built since the building deregulation thirty years ago or whenever it was).

We wandered up to Church Street to look for some lunch (it's after 14:00 by this point). I stipulated it needed to be a *light* lunch as I was going out for dinner. So we ended up at Volcanos Steakhouse, where we thought we'd get a few starters and call it a day. Except their starters were HUGE. And then Pam said she doesn't eat cheese, after the things Mum and I ordered had cheese. I wish she'd said that before. #grunt. If I'd known all that I wouldn't have got any more than two dishes, tops. They were pretty good though!

After eating way too much, we headed for the station (the ferry is nice and all but it takes like an hour and a half).

St John's Parramatta

Parramatta Town Hall

Caught an inter-urban back to Central, and another train back to Mum's.

I had twenty minutes, which gave me just enough time to have a shower, then head out again.

Met up with Daniel and Fi at Redfern station and we walked down to the Duck Inn Restaurant and Pub. I started with a delicious Grifter watermelon pilsner (Serpent's Kiss) that was perfect for a humid Sydney summer evening, and had one other that it seems I didn't check in, so don't remember which. Could have been the Mismatch Lager, but not sure.

Because I had such a big late lunch, I was happy with just starters again. And Daniel and Fi had spent the day down at Wollongong with Daniel's parents so didn't feel like too much either so that worked out. And they all had duck in them!

Starting with confit duck loaded fries with fig, burgundy, thyme mayo, liquid gruyere cheese and scallions, which was amazing

And also steamed bao buns with shredded five spice duck, pickled carrots and daikon, coriander, chili and hoisin sauce, also amazing, and peking duck spring rolls served with micro herbs and soy infusion dripping sauce.

Was a lovely evening catching up with those guys. I owe them a beer though!

Sunday morning I went to church with Mum, hoping to see the Cartans, as they're in their nineties now and times to see them may be limited.. But they weren't there.

So then headed off to Luc and Lizzi's to do a penultimate donut photo with Ryan, and ended up staying for lunch which was lovely.

Then headed for home. I took a slight detour to go see Cordeaux Dam. Again you can drive right up to it which is nice.

I'll leave the dam to a separate post.

And finally home.

Brickman

When Neil and I saw there was a Ryan McNaught Lego exhibition coming to Canberra, we bought tickets as soon as they became available.

This was a hint at the mall:

On the day we'd booked our tickets, our breaker box caught fire. This caused me no end of stress. But it all worked out in the end and we got to go see it.

Pro tip: book tickets for a school day - no annoying kids!! And no crowds!!!

Notice the ring-in above?

Father and son off to the opera. With Jabba.

I saw a couple of these little green guys around. Turns out there was a competition to see how many there were. I counted something like 25 in my photos. I think. I forget.

Neil and I had a great time, all the more awesome with no kids or crowds.

Junee

So on Saturday the Albury-Wodonga Lego User Group put on "Bricktastic" in Junee. Seemed like as good an excuse as any to head down and visit the little brother. So Saturday morning I headed down. It was quite foggy for much of the trip which was kinda nice.

Arrived at nearly 9:30am, and then headed to the pool and rec centre. Instantly I confirmed what I knew would be true - it would be peaceful and uncrowded - nothing like the ridiculousness that is the Canberra Lego shows (that I stopped going to because, kids). Had a good long wander around, it was pretty cool (it was, in fact, bricktastic!).

After we were done there we headed back to David's for a little while.

Then headed out again. We stopped by Peter Neve's, but sadly he wasn't home (haven't seen him since Dad's funeral). Had a quick look at the trains.

Went to the Junee Hotel for a pub lunch.

Then up to the showground to go to the circus. This was a Lennon Brothers circus, and it had animals other than horses - I thought exotic animals had been stopped in circuses in Australia years ago. This one had three lions, monkeys, ponies, donkeys and camels. It was quite a fun afternoon. They couldn't have made much profit though - there weren't many people there. Maybe there would have been more for the evening show. There were no photos allowed, which is fairly common for performance shows, and I would understand flashes distracting the performers, and phone screens annoying other audience members. But. They were selling flashing glow sticks and spinning LED lights which are far more distracting and annoying than someone taking a few photos. I reckon the real reason they don't want you taking video/photos is in case one of them falls or gets attacked by lions and they don't want it recorded. But the real kicker was the kid outside (who played a clown) telling us not to take photos of the animals outside (before we even went in). Little anti-photo nazi. That sort of attitude to photos really pisses me off, and did colour my mood for the show. So I'm going to post the couple of photos I got anyway. So nyer!

Stopped the IGA on the way back and picked up some stuff for dinner.

But first we did most of a 550 piece jigsaw.

Then I cooked up some chicken (butter chicken - Chicken Tonight), rice and veggies for dinner. And we watched half a dozen episodes of The Good Place, which was good to watch again from the beginning knowing how things go later on.

Then this morning I came home, again through fog in various places along the drive.

The Spirit of Expo

Tonight I watched a special Dad taped off channel 9 back in 1988 called "The Spirit of Expo" about World Expo '88. I wanted to go to Expo but Dad didn't want to go to Queensland because of "Bezerky" (Joh Bjelke-Petersen). When he was no longer premier I was like *now* can we go to Expo? We went in the September school holidays. The soundtrack of the holiday included "You'd Better be Home Soon" and "Perfect", which I listened to on repeat on account of having to change radio stations every hour or so on my walkman on the drive up. "Two Strong Hearts" also reminds me of the trip because the music video was filmed at Expo. I think there about sixty pavilions (ok wikipedia says a hundred) and I saw in all but five of them. The only one I was annoyed about missing was the China pavilion. Apparently it had a 360 degree cinema. Mum and David managed to see all of them, but Mum sneaked in the back door I think it was of the Germany pavilion. (We mostly stuck together as a family for the first day of the three, but went our own separate ways for the second two days). David collected passport stamps from more places than me because he asked at all the restaurants for their stamps. I remember seeing a *lot* of laser light shows. And a lot of queuing.

Here's photo taken of Dad on that holiday. So typical of Dad. Thinking of him (and Mum) tonight, on account of him going and carking it four years ago tonight.

Sydney Icons in Lego

Waaaay back in January, immediately after seeing Nathan Sawaya's Art of the Brick, I took a train (it was free. and it was hot.) from Central to Circular Quay, had a quick bite to eat, hacked some portals and went to the Museum of Sydney to see Sydney Icons in Lego, by Ryan McNaught. It was a bit of a strange exhibition in that as well as the Lego displays (which were awesome), there was thousands of Lego bricks to play with. So while each session was an hour, most of the kids took a quick look at the displays then started playing with the Lego. I just tried to get photos, which sometimes proved difficult with lots of kids heads in the way.

Museum of Sydney

Opera House in Lego

Front of Opera House

Steps of the Opera House

Interior of the Opera House

Darth Vader and Chancellor Palpatine attend a show at the Opera House

Endeavour and Opera House

HMS Endeavour in Lego

Sydney Harbour Bridge in Lego

Harbour Bridge deck

Bridge climbers

Reckon that's Paul Hogan painting the Harbour Bridge?

Accident in the Harbour Tunnel

Pacific Aria in Lego

Pacific Aria cutaway

Jack and Rose and some random on the prow of the Pacific Aria

Galley of the Pacific Aria

Partying on the Pacific Aria

Swimming on the Pacific Aria

Someone having a shower on the Pacific Aria

Sydney Harbour yachts

Luna Park in Lego

Channel 7 helicopter

Bricks!

The Art of the Brick

Waaaaaay back in January I saw another one of Nathan Sawaya's Lego exhibitions in Sydney. This one had a DC Comics theme, so lots of comics and super heroes. It was at the Powerhouse Museum, and very nicely they let you take photos. And they didn't overcrowd each session, so it was possible to get photos without a thousand kids heads in the way.

Nathan's trademark yellow man, done like the Joker