Long live our huts

"Work to rebuild a series of culturally-significant Australian High Country huts razed by the Black Summer bushfires is still to begin, as concerns grow it might never get underway.

A dozen of more than 100 huts constructed up to 120 years ago by stockmen and prospectors, and later the Snowy Mountains Authority, were destroyed or severely damaged by the monster fires of January 2020.Government says it will continue working closely with stakeholders in 'determining the next steps for these important sites'".(From the story "Fears razed high country huts lost forever" by John Kidman AAP)

Sawyer's Hut between Kiandra & Adaminaby. A staging post for coaches on the way to Kiandra. It was badly damaged in the 2003 fires, re-built in 2008-09. Had its walls re-oiled just prior to the Kosciusko fire where it was totally destroyed only the chimney and concrete slab remain.

Some videos from ACT Nat Parks of Namadgi NP firstly the battle to save the historic Orroral homestead & woolshed (an aerial tanker dropping retardant on the Orroral fire, coming in from the Tracking Station and (nearly) dumping the load on the woolshed. The photographer would have their back to the homestead, 29 Jan 2020) Orroral 2020  and now - Orroral homestead (which is still closed to the public) and the burnt areas surrounding it Orroral 2021

The Kiandra Court House a well known landmark beside the Snowy Mountains Highway. The bluestone building was erected in 1890, and many photos feature it in snow drifts. When the fire swept through it left only the stone walls and melted aluminum and glass (amazingly the toilet in the carpark survived)

Seriously hoping this doesn't come to pass. You have to admire the fortitude & perseverance of those who have restored huts only to see them burnt out again. With the increase in the population holidaying locally and the boom in caravans & camper trailers taking to 'The Bush', national parks and hut sites in particular are becoming the focus for more and more people, and how wonderful to have something to showcase and for them to appreciate.

Orroral Homestead

Have documented just a small selection of huts in previous posts - High Country huts  and From Dimb to Basalt Knob not just as a record of their existence, but because they are so iconic and make a simple but compelling statement about us and our past.

Long live our huts & our resurrected huts.

Big Bell abando

  Great drone footage of the Big Bell Hotel about 30km from Cue in Western Australia.

Big Bell is a ghost town now, but had a thriving past. A distant relative John Harold Urbahns originally surveyed the town site.

The Big Bell was a gold mine which expended in 1935, a town was planned for the mine workers. In 1936 The Cue Road Board was asked to suggest a name for the new townsite and  recommended "Townsend" as a suitable title and Coodardy street as the principal thoroughfare.

Mr. and Mrs. Townsend were the original settlers at Coodardy. The proposed names for the six streets in the residential area: —Paton Street (after one of the original owners of the mine); Pitt Street (after the present manager); Wittenoom, Meehan and Lefroy Streets (after prominent pastoralists of the district); and Urbahn Street (after the Government surveyor).

The Big Bell Hotel was constructed in the classic art deco style and opened in 1937. It reputedly had the longest bar in Australia. The mine closed in 2003.

Which kind of bookseller are you?

Garth Nix's latest - 'The left-handed booksellers of London' Left-handed booksellers are the fighting warrior side, while right-handed booksellers are the other side of the coin - the intellectual ones.

Reminiscent of his 'Keys to the Kingdom' series, but this is aimed at a  more adult audience. 

Set in a slightly alternate London in 1983 (you can tell from the social history remarks) Susan comes to London looking for the father she never met. In the first page she meets the unusual Merlin, a young left-handed bookseller (an extended family armed with magical abilities, charged with policing the tenuous boundary between the mythic & legendary Old World and the modern world as we know it) and along with his sister Vivien-a right-handed bookseller, they endeavour to find out why mythical creatures and the criminal underworld are attempting to capture Susan, (and why fantasy authors have a lot to answer for).

A page-turner setting a hectic pace (with not enough time for a decent meal), and armed with lightning-fast sword fights and swarms of predatory birds. Hope it is the first in a series.

 

Don't play with your food (too)

Helga Stentzel is a Russian-born visual artist based in London. She works across a wide range of media including illustration, photography, video and stop motion animation.

She has built a large following for her playful art that often uses everyday objects and household items in creative and unexpected ways. 

 

Especially love the dog ones

Port Fairy cottages

The Port Fairy lighthouse from near the cottages

 Just browsing the Victorian Collections site, and their Featured Story - Lighthouses: the romance and tne reality by Catherine Bessant caught my eye. Scanning their images and the stories, I came across this old postcard depicting the Port Fairy lighthouse on Griffith Island, only this image had the keepers cottages still standing (the buildings were demolished in 1956, now only a replica gateway remains)

Postcard from the Port Fairy Historical Society Museum and Archives

The only other picture I'd seen of the cottages was a very vague photo on the information board at the site

The lighthouse & cottages c1915

However the information board did include a map showing the outlines of the buildings.

The lighthouse would be to the bottom of the map

For Australia Day 2021

 Great ad, watch for all the little vignette stories...and the last scene

 

"Australia 2031. Our once united nation has been divided by the great state walls. Only Aussie lamb has the power to break down the borders and reunite the states together around a lamb barbie. Because what unites us is more delicious than what divides us. Share The Lamb."

Empire 3D

Finally setting my Rone photos in an album, when I returned to Rone's Empire site to check one or two details. Imagine my amazement to find you can now do a 3D virtual tour of his Empire project.

The Dining Room (Rone)

Firstly what was Empire - 

High in the Dandenong Ranges, a sprawling art deco mansion lies empty, nature creeping through its crumbling walls. This was Burnham Beeches. Built in 1933 for the Nicholas family (Alfred was a wealthy industrialist and founder of the Aspro brand), it is an Art Deco Streamline Moderne style mansion. It has been a research facility, childrens hospital and luxury hotel, before being closed in the late 1990s. The whole property was purchased by Adam Garrison & Shannon Bennett in 2010, but the mansion remained empty. 

In early 2018 Rone was offered the opportunity to utilise the building to create a series of murals. His idea was of a unsuspecting visitor walking into an abandoned residence and discovering what has been left behind in the remains of the lives lived inside the mansion. It was Rone's most immersive installation to date, his hauntingly powerful portraits augmented by sound, light, scent, interior and botanical design elements, in addition to VR and AR technology.

The Lounge (Rone)

It took more than 12 months, for the work of painting and styling to transfer the former derelict building into Empire. Roll video...

 

For those lucky enough to get the limited tickets, there was a 6 week season where you could stroll through the installation, before it was all stripped away and returned to sterile white walls. 

For those unlucky enough to miss out, and for those like me who want to re-visit again and again, there is now the 3D virtual tour.

 

Not quite the same as being there, but it does allow you to target in on aspects or details you missed - like the tree tunnel - a whole lot clearer without the dust cloud that pervaded it, adding atmosphere, but took my second walk-through to spy out the book leaves. And if you missed it - this is your chance to catch up, so check it out.

It was an awesome, unforgettable experience on the day, and this just adds to it. Thank you technology & Rone.

My favourite room, and the Home screen on my phone

All at sea

'On the Java Ridge' by Jock Serong

Was reading this prior to and during the build-up to the American election, so decided the machinations of this fictional Prime Minister is not so unbelievable after all. 

The ‘Java Ridge’ referred to in the title is the name of a surf charter boat. During the story it is skippered by tour leader Isi Natoli and her Indonesian crew. They are taking a group of Australian surf enthusiasts in search of the perfect wave, and are sheltering inside the reef encircling the remote Indonesian island Dana when a storm delivers the ‘Takalar’ and her load of asylum seekers onto their reef.

At the same time in Canberra, it is the eve of a federal election. Cassius Calvert (Minister for Border Integrity) has outsourced border security to a private company - Core Resolve, to employ a new hard-line stance regarding maritime interception and assistance to people-smuggling boats crossing into Australian territorial waters.

The story is alternately told from the viewpoint of Isi, Cassius and Roya (a young Afghani refugee aboard the ‘Takalar’, fleeing the Taliban with her heavily pregnant mother). The minor characters the doctor, the Takalar’s captain, even Cassius’ P.A. are well rounded and fleshed out.

In typical Serong-style the ending leaves you wrung out, the language and the descriptions are vivid, the plot takes you to unexpected places and scenarios.