Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to everyone

Gone to God

You already know I have a thing for WebUrbanist, and from them I found Opacity which concentrates on "ruins" - love it! they recently posted the video on Michigan Central Station, and a couple of days ago this post on Abandoned churches
These churches and chapels can range from a small single room to vast spaces with multiple levels, and sometimes encompass a school, convent, or rectory. Many can be found at psychiatric hospitals, which often catered to all different faiths. Most of these structures hold extravagant details in their woodwork, stone, or massive pipe organs, and the abandonment of this craftsmanship is often astounding.
Check out the photos on the site, especially the one in Detroit with the cupola and mezzanine floor.

This is from the chapel of the Chateau de Mesen, an abandoned castle in Lede, in Flanders, in Belgium.

Winter wonderland

As the Northern Hemisphere shivers in a wintery blast, it nice to appreciate what their cold weather can achieve - like snow sculptures.

Here herds of galloping stallions emerge from banks of snow, and life size blue whales roll over the icy surface. The fluidity of these sculptures create a stunning illusion of motion.

One of my favourite buildings

In terms of the grandiose abandoned buildings, Detroit's Michigan Central Station is up there. It's amazing that I did my first post on it Abandoned in America nearly 2 years ago - December 28 2007. Recently Opacity added this page on the MCS with a video of the station just before it was abandoned.

Long live the Book

Came across this YouTube video brought out by New Zealand's Book Council, again someone with a lot of time & patience created this.
Maurice is regarded as the Kiwi's major contemporary fiction author.

Down with Canberra

Interested to see the website for the HMAS Canberra, which was sunk off the coast at the beginning of October.

Everyone has to wait to dive it till ParksVictoria deem it has settled sufficiently & is safe. But will express my interest to the dive group for a weekend away!

The secret's out

A little 'Noah Wyle', but a lovely idea.

Surviving Samoa

I watched the first episode of Survivor Samoa on TV on Tuesday night. Looks like it was filmed on the island of Savai'i with the blow-holes & black lava rock beaches.

Not sure I'd want Russell on my team.

This photo is of Papapapai-Tia Waterfall, the tallest in Western Samoa.

Back again

Wow, again a long time between drinks or blog posts. This time the excuse is our building renovations, even now I'm crouched over the PC which is set up backwards on the desk return while the carpet guy is measuring out for the skirting boards behind me.

What do I have to blog about - well, the death of one of Britain's great actors Edward Woodward. Loved him playing those enigmatic, flawed characters - Callan, The Equaliser, and Kyle in 1990, also as Howie in The Wicker Man.
And most especially as Breaker Morant. A great story, great acting and a great location, was in Burra before they filmed there, and below is the jail as featured in the film - they chopped down the tree when they did the actual shooting.


Must pull out my copy of Breaker Morant to watch it again, or see if I can source episodes of 1990.

Holiday pics

Hard to imagine it's been a month since I've added a post.

My excuse - I've been on holidays. To prove it here are some of my shots.

Went to Troubridge Island and stayed in the lighthouse keepers cottages below.

It was a lighthouse odyssey, we visited a dozen lighthouses, including the unusally coloured orange lighthouse at Cape Banks, site of the Admella tragedy,

and the atomspheric Point Malcolm (all very Wuthering Heights)

We saw some wonderful scenes including these creatures - Homer the NZ fur seal, and these Little Penguin chicks.

There was the history element - staying in the Inneston ghost town where they mined gypsum.

A number of shipwrecks, including this one of the Ethel hence the lighthouses.

And finally there was even an abandoned bridge or two.

It ticked all the boxes!

Samoan tsunami

My thoughts are with the Samoans trying to cope with the aftermath of the tsunami.


Here is my photo of a beach wedding on the beach at Lalomanu on the south coast of Western Samoa, taken in 2005. Behind my left shoulder are a row of fales with an uninterupted view of the beach and water.


Now the 'after' shot taken by Associated Press almost the same position, but from up on the road.

Listening to one of the survivors on the radio this morning, he related how the wave had come up to within inches of the ceiling of his room at Coconuts. Below is my photo from our room at Coconuts, so the water would have inundated this view and reached to the lattice roof at the top of the photo.


Below is a photo from the SMH of Sinalei the neighbouring resort looking towards Coconuts halfway down the beach.

Sheep-ish

This clip was emailed to me.

These guys really have too much time on their hands, but I appreciate the level of ingenuity and the level of effort needed to present this

Loan strategy

Strangely true, want to get loans on a book - just place it on the Returns trolley and someone will choose it.

Lifting the roof

At long last, contractors have begun the stabilising works on the Stick Shed.
Some of the posts, rafters and purlins will be replaced/repaired, vermin removed, and roof sheets replaced and secured over the coming months. Most of the conservation works will be high up near the roof, so the workmen will be using cherry pickers and scissor lifts. They are hoping to have the work completed early in 2010.

Ghost fleet of the Recession

From London's Daily Mail is "the ghost fleet of the recession" the biggest and most secretive gathering of ships in maritime history lying at anchor off Singapore. Never before photographed, it has no crew, no cargo and no destination.

Their numbers are equivalent to the entire British and American navies combined, but their tonnage is far greater. Container ships, bulk carriers, oil tankers, they are a powerful and tangible representation of the hurricanes that have been wrought by the global economic crisis.

These ships are parked in this Sargasso off the beaten track,where nobody ever really comes close, which is why these ships are here. The world's ship owners and government economists would prefer people not to see this symbol of the depths of the plague still crippling the world's economies.

The ships have been quietly retired to this backwater, to be maintained only by skeleton crews left to fend off the ever-present threats of piracy and collisions in the congested waters as the hulls gather rust and seaweed.

The Singapore site is only one of these graveyards, there are similar sites in the Bosporus Strait and Qinhungdao off the Chinese coast. A couple of years ago these ships would be steaming back and forth across the oceans, now 12 per cent are doing nothing.

The only positive I can see - they could end up the world's best wreck dive site, provided it isn't too deep.

Lost symbol

Will have to put "Into the storm" aside, now that the new Dan Brown has arrived. 509 pages of close-set type, and while we are on top of the Holds at this stage, when word gets around are sure to be inundated with heaps of requests.

It is apparently "A brilliantly composed tapestry of veiled histories, arcane icons and enigmatic codes. An intelligent, lightning-paced thriller that offers surprises at every turn".

So will have to see if it lives up to the blurb and keeps me up reading all night.

Most remote abandoned

Aahh, Weburbanist has abandoned places in truly far-flung locations, the mystery is less about why they were abandoned – it is how there were people there in the first place. Examples of human stubbornness in the face of extreme environmental conditions, from one temperature extreme to another.

This one is also interesting for the names of the places, the first is St Kilda, no not the Melbourne suburb, but St Kilda, Scotland in the Outer Hebrides

It has been inhabited continuously for 2,000 years – ending in 1930 (even has a lighthouse)

St Kilda ruins

Then there's Ballarat,the second Ballarat near Death Valley in California, named after the Victorian goldrush one, but not faring as well. It used to have about 500 people, now only 2.

To the other extreme - South Georgia in the South Atlantic, was the home to a number of sealing and whaling stations. It was famous for Shackleton's traverse of the island after the Endurance was crushed, he was buried there in 1922.


And finally the Australian entrant - the town of Cook in South Australia. One of numerous towns (named after famous figures in Australian history) established on the Indian-Pacific rail-line. Now with less reliance on local railway gangers maintaining the line, Cook boasts only 4 residents and is the only scheduled stop across the Nullarbor Plain section of the line. All supplies, including fresh water, arrive by train.

At World's End

At World’s End: 13 More Post-Apocalyptic Visions, another post from WebUrbanist.
Our small blue planet – and everything on it – is destined to be fried to a crisp by an expanding sun some 5 billion years hence. Will anyone be around to observe the final sunset, or will society and civilization be snuffed out long before? Here are 13 more visions of what a post-apocalyptic world might be like.
I've chosen just a few of the 13, which have some significance to me.

Mad To The Max

From Australia it came, and things would never be the same. Mad Max, released in 1979, was the inspiration of many post-apocalyptic films to come. I was at one of the Mad Max locations at the Mundi Mundi Plains just a few weeks ago.

Apocalypso music
An early sci-fi blockbuster is The War Of The Worlds in which invaders from Mars nearly triumph over humanity, only to be defeated by humble bacteria. One of the best treatments of Wells’ masterpiece is Jeff Wayne’s Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, issued as a double LP record in 1978 accompanied by bleak artwork by Peter Goodfellow, Geoff Taylor and Michael Trim. I've the LP version and just organised to have it digitised the day before yesterday - will still keep the LP and artwork though.

Silent Spring In Siberia
Some say the world will end not with a bang, but with a whimper… a slow slump into decay and decomposition. Witness the process in action by visiting the abandoned Russian city of Kadykchan. A Siberian tin-mining town that boasted a population of 5,794 as recently as 1989, Kadykchan has less than 300 inhabitants today.
This view of Kadykchan in its prime, taken from – seriously – the city’s official website.

 Panic in Detroit

It’s not only in Russia that parts of our modern world are slipping away into chaos and catastrophe – it’s happening in the city I've covered a number of times Detroit, Michigan building the American dream.

Bizarre and perilous bridges

Glad to know there are more people out there who have a fascination with old bridges. Here is WebUrbanist's 68 of the world's most bizarre and perilous bridges Some I've seen before, but I'm so impressed with El Camino Del Ray!

El Chorro. Camino Del Rey (link straight to the YouTube video) this bridge is crazy dangerous. Would you be brave enough, or perhaps stupid enough, to cross El Camino Del Ray? Translated, it means The King’s Pathway. It is in total disrepair and is a death trap in Spain. About 700 feet up along the El Chorro gorge, the narrow path is three feet wide in places where it’s not crumbled away. There are hardly any handrails. Can you imagine crossing this, nevertheless filming it as you go? It would either be insane, or insanely fun. But amazed at the number of people on the walk with the photographer, people wearing packs which would add another dimension to balancing.
Have the shouted catch-cry “don’t go too near the edge” reverberating through my head.

Wintery blast

How cold, wet and windy has it been lately?

So bad that my rain gauge blew down.

But still better than in Estonia, as these photos atest!

Lost cities

Ahhh, another WebUrbanist Abandonment, this one is '8 cities that may end up abandoned'.

Guessing this is a sign of the times we're experiencing in the current political and economic down turns.

The gigantic Waiting Room

The first is Detroit - the motor city, the area has suffered decades of industrial loss (between 1970 and 1980, Detroit shed 208,000 jobs). The post has some great photos of that glorious building the Michigan Central Station

Check out the photographer Shane Gorski's set on Flickr, for some atmospheric shots.

The Offices floor

Other cities featured are St. Louis in Missouri, Youngstown in Ohio, Leipzig and Wittenberge in the former East Germany, Ivanovo in the Russian Federation, Kashgar in western China where the authorities are destroying the thousand-year-old old quarter deemed a safety hazard and eyesore.
And finally, the most famous declining city of them all. Venice is indisputably one of the loveliest cities in the world - all the more so because it’s disappearing under the waves.

Long-term parking

In 1977 a design firm created the Ghost Parking Lot Project in a shopping plaza in Hamden, Connecticut, by covering a row of a dozen cars in asphalt. While this Pompeii-like parade may have been a state-of-the-art in 1978, it has since decayed into a crusty eyesore. By 2003 the Ghost Parking Lot had deteriorated to a decrepit state, eroded by the weather and ravaged by the wheels of countless skateboards.

Stick Shed on the Net

I came across Leigh Hammerton's passionate site for the Stick Shed the other day at Mighty Murtoa Stick Shed
He has some great photos there, including one from up on the upper conveyor, and facts & info on the shed, bits I didn't know like -'the roofline is sloped to the same angle a pile of wheat forms naturally'

Wednesday nights in

So, the ABC are replacing The Chaser with the second series of The Librarians (they’re also re-running the first series on ABC2 for those capitalists who have digital tv).
I like their promo “Frances O’Brien is back in the library. Melvil Dewey is turning in his grave…”


Could they have again obtained some anecdotes locally from the wearing lanyards, to using a fit ball?
And there are some new characters including Vince Colosimo as the Head of the Library Association, and Hamish as a news journo.


The advert had a shot of the Mobile Library which is recognisable as Yarra Plenty’s (talk about product placement). Had we known, could have off-loaded our vehicle for the filming - what a way to get a new one!