Green engineering

Aaahhh bridges and WebUrbanist, a perfect combination in this post -  Living Infrastructure: Grow-it-Yourself Jungle Bridges

The calm pools of water in Nongstoin in Meghalaya, India are the perfect place to bathe or relax, their waters typically shallow enough to stand in. But this peacefulness is rare, this area of India gets an astonishing 49 feet (15 metres) of rain on average each year. Flash floods come quickly and without warning. The locals need bridges that are stronger than steel in order to cross. Their solution? Growing their own. A native species of rubber tree is the ideal medium for living bridges that can withstand rivers that run with deadly force.

For 500 years, they have been manipulating the secondary roots of the ficus elastic (the rubber bush), which grow along the length of the trunk. The roots can be bent, twisted and taught to grow in certain arrangements. Using hollowed-out betel nut trunks as a lightweight skeleton for the bridge, the villagers encourage the roots to grow from one side of the bank to the other, creating a platform. Because the roots are living, they won’t rot, even in the face of constant moisture. 

The bridges can support the weight of up to 50 people at once, and are even built in ‘double-decker’ form. It can take decades for them to stretch across a river or farm, but they continue to grow in strength.

A Bee Gee

Just had to create a post on the Bee Gees after Robin Gibb died today.
I've two Bee Gees, no make that three, Bee Gees memorable anecdotes.
The first was going down the street from school with Janice and Eileen to buy the "Best of the Bee Gees" (on cassette) from Brashs, but since they didn't have it in stock, had to climb the hill to Myers. Hence we were back late and got gated for the rest of the year.
The second was watching the film Melody and listening to "First of May" and "To love somebody" in the graveyard scenes - beautiful. I still fondly remember the film for the music - the Bee Gees and then C.S.N&Y "Teach your children" at the finale.


The final was going with a group of Res students to see Saturday night fever at the Regent Cinema, with the Bee Gees rebirth in the disco era. But instead of the Bee Gees clip, here is the best version, the Goodies spoof.

Penetrating the layers of time

I have been involved with the ABCs "Now and Then" project, which in turn was inspired by the Flickr group "Looking into the Past", but I feel completely inadequate and in awe of the work of Sergey Larenkov.

Russian photographer Sergey, was born and grew in Leningrad, he sailed the seas and now works as a pilot, guiding ships into the port of St Petersburg.

After collecting old World War II photographs taken in major European cities, Sergey spent a year in 2010-11 traveling through Europe re-photographing the same scenes as they look now. He then carefully combined the old images with the new ones to create photographs that show two views of the same location captured over 60 years apart.

Most of his work is devoted to the World War II period. His most powerful personal impression is a series of photos about the siege of his hometown Leningrad. In addition, there is the defense of Moscow, the liberation of Prague and Vienna, the storming of Berlin, life in Paris, the D-day landing, and the streets of St. Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire.
Wherever he travels, he is trying to penetrate the layers of time.

Below are a selection from his blog (some of the text was in Russian, which I’ve used Babel Fish to translate)

Paris, 1940. Hitler and other leaders of the Reich at the Trocadero.

German cavalry on Foch Ave, Paris. 1943/2010

 German occupation of Paris. On July 14th 1940 the German army entered Paris.

D-Day. U.S. troops on Omaha Beach, 1943/2010

D-Day landing in Normandy on June 6th, 1943. The preserved German concrete pillbox to the right of the troops served to line up the 2 photos. (The opening scenes of "Saving Private Ryan" are of the landing on Omaha Beach).

The church of the Grand Palace. Peterhof 1943/2011

Petergof (Russian: Петерго́ф) or Peterhof (Dutch/German for "Peter's Court"), known as Petrodvorets from 1944 to 1997, Peter the Great's Palace is in St Petersburg. In 1941 German troops captured & burned the palace. The occupying forces destroyed much of the palace and the grounds, restoration work still continues.

Catherine Palace after the fire. January 24, 1944, Pushkin and Pavlovsk were liberated from enemy occupation

Pushkin is a municipal town south of St. Petersburg, Catherine Palace was the summer residence of the Tsars. In their retreat after the siege of Leningrad, the German troops looted and destroyed the Palace, including the famous Amber Room.

Sobornaya St, Gatchina 1942/2011

On January 26, 1944 Gatchina (at that time "Red Guard City") was liberated from German occupation. Gatchina is a town and the administrative center of Gatchinsky District of Leningrad, south of St. Petersburg, and home to another imperial palace.

Marshal Georgy Zukov on the steps of the Reichstag, with tourists

Opened in 1894 the Reichstag housed the German parliament, after being severely damaged by fire in the storming of Berlin it fell into disuse, until the reunification of East & West Germany in 1990, after which it was restored and is now the Bundestag.

Wrecked 'Tiger' tank in Tiergarten Park, Berlin. 1945/2010

Tiergarten (German for Animal Garden) is a locality, in central Berlin (Germany), before German reunification, it was a part of West Berlin. Believe that is the Reichstag building in the background.

Powder Tower, Prague. Population meets the tanks of the liberators

The Gothic Powder Tower is the gate to the old Prague fortifications. The Czech resistance began the Prague Uprising, which ended with the Red Army liberating the city on May 9th 1945.
Sergey's photographs are a mixture of the monumental and the common-place and what makes his photographs more poignant is that people in the then and now pictures almost appear to be interacting - a modern day Parisian conversing with a Wehrmacht soldier. 
Many more photographs are at Sergey's blog http://sergey-larenkov.livejournal.com/

Walking off the page

Planning for ALIA's Library & Information Week (21-27 May).
This year's theme is 'Think outside the book', and this post from WebUrbanist does that Gripping Book Art: 31 sculptures worth reading about 
Here are some of the illustrations. 

What a place to Get Wrecked

Here is another post from the Urban Ghosts site. While the Solomons are world renowned for their shipwrecks, I was totally unaware of this one. By cruise ship standards, the "World Discover" is relatively small at 87m long & 15m wide, but its wreck is still a sight to behold.  Listing 46 degrees to starboard, the rusting vessel languishes near the shore of Roderick Bay, in the Solomon Islands, where it has become both a tourist attraction and an object of local looting.

World Discoverer

 The ship was built in Germany in 1974 and initially named the BEWA Discoverer after being sold to Denmark’s BEWA Cruises.  Sold several times over the years, and registered in a number of countries including Singapore and Liberia, she was ultimately renamed World Discoverer and sported a double hull to allow for cruise voyages to Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, Chile, Ushuaia, Argentina. During the period between March and May, the ship cruised the South Pacific Islands, and between June and August, around the Alaskan region and near the Russian border around the Bering sea. Very few vessels have been constructed for exclusive cruising expeditions near or around icebergs, but the double hulled construction allowed impact with glaciers while sustaining very little damage to the ship or crew. The World Discoverer also has a 8,000 mile cruising range allowing the ship to be the first ship to ever transit the Northwest Passage.
A small fleet of dinghies landed passengers on various shorelines for observation of local wildlife in the area. Each day comprised typically two to three expeditions to the shoreline. A team of experienced expedition leaders answered any tourist questions concerning the region, ice floes, their movements, and the ship's destinations.
After more than two decades of service, World Discoverer struck an uncharted reef in Sandfly Passage on April 30, 2000.  A ferry answered the stricken ship’s distress call and carried her passengers to safety.  Meanwhile Captain Oliver Kruess and his crew heroically grounded World Discoverer in Roderick Bay to avoid sinking.
The wreck has remained in Roderick Bay ever since, but is not thought to post an immediate environmental hazard.  An underwater survey declared World Discoverer a “constructive loss” but efforts to salvage the vessel were hampered by the civil war in the Solomon Islands.  Now rusting and ransacked, it makes for an interesting attraction for passing cruise ships.

And what is truly amazing is that you can actuallly see it on Google Maps!

Unfortunately for me, the ship hadn't floundered when I was in that area of the Solomons in 2000. In fact Sandfly Passage was beautifully calm when we visited.

Sandfly passage

Japanese destroyer Karishama

There were some WWII wrecks in the vicinity, as nearby Guadalcanal and Tulagi were the scenes of major naval battles between Japan and the United States. The Japanese overran the area in their push into the South Pacific in 1942. The United States, and the allies, recaptured the islands in a series of land and sea battles which left most of the Japanese ships sunk or partly sunk when they were purposely run aground.
The destroyer Kikuzuki (left) also known as the Karishama in Tokio Bay is only a short distance from LST342 (below) a tank landing ship in Purvis Bay both were towed up to the shore by the US Navy to be salvaged. Now the World Discover adds another wreck to the Florida area.

US landing craft transport near Mbola Island

Still the Greatest

I'm watching the production of Great Expectations on ABC1, and believe it is a "great" depiction of the book, with beautiful scenery - the marshes are wonderfully atomspheric, the decay of Satis House, and Ray Winstone is suitably menacing as Magwitch.
But the best rendition of Great Expectations has to be the 1945 film, with John Mills as Pip, Jean Simmons as Estella, and Martita Hunt as the eccentric Miss Havisham. I can still vividly recall her fly-away hair and gossamer gowns, and the wedding breakfast table with the mice!

Miss Havisham & Estella

The Rank film was the winner of the 1947 Academy Award for best cinematography, and was nominated for the best picture award (it was beaten by Gentleman's Agreement with Gregory Peck), and has since been voted the 5th greatest British film of the 20th century.
Fortunately the original film is now available on DVD.

Stranger things have happened

Best to click on the picture to obtain a clear image.

Power of the west

'Urban ghosts' site

Trawling through the Net, I came across a site I haven't encountered before Urban ghosts : forgotten places & urban curiosities, it was the words "south fremantle" on the link which sparked my interest.

South Fremantle Power Station

Power station interiors

Industrial buildings haven’t always been as uninspired looking as they are nowdays.  From the Victorian era through to the mid-twentieth century, factories were often grand and ornate, with commanding facades. The looming beauty of the abandoned South Fremantle Power Station is still magnificent decades after its demise. To some abandoned equates to ugly, to others it is ethereal, strange, confronting and compelling. There is something innately sad about buildings that have been neglected and something definitely eerie. South Fremantle is the epitome of this juxtaposition.
Fremantle, in Cockburn Sound, rose as an industrial centre after a lime kiln was established there in 1831.  A railway, abattoir, and skin drying sheds followed and the area grew to handle much of Perth’s heavy industry.
The art deco style South Fremantle Power Station is heritage listed. The coal-fired electric power generating station first fired up in January 1951. It was the second and largest purpose-built power station in Western Australia, employing over 250 workers, but the decline of coal-fired power and the increased demand for residential housing led to its closure in September 1985, and its machinery was stripped away leaving the building shell.
Its four imposing chimneys were demolished and the building has since been gutted by vandals. However, it has some notable architectural features. Tunnels that run below the station but authorities have sealed and blocked them up. The interior is a curious mixture of vast open spaces and seemingly out of place decorative fixtures, dominated by the sweeping grand main staircase and enormous tall windows, while the omnipresent graffiti that has left no surface untouched adds a counter-intuitively pleasing splash of colour to the scene.
Following the privatisation of electricity generation  in Western Australia, Verve Energy became the owners of the building. The site is apparently being considered for an Arts/Cultural Centre with the focus on a redevelopment of the site, but no action has yet taken place.

The long walk

Their escape was just the beginning, in nine months they trekked over 4,000 miles through some of the harshest regions in the world.

Janusz, a young Polish cavalry officer is sentenced to 25 years in a Gulag forced labour camps in Siberia, for refusing admit he is an anti-communist spy, after the Russians extort a fraudulent statement from his wife.

Determined to escape Janusz  teams up with a cynical American Mr Smith, a hardened Russian criminal Valka, Polish artist Tomasz, a Latvian priest Voss, a Polish pastry chef Kazik (suffering from night blindness), and a Yugoslav accountant Zoran. They plan to break out during a severe snowstorm to cover their tracks, with little food or equipment, and no certainty of their location or intended direction, apart from trekking south to Mongolia.

During a second night Kazik freezes to death after losing his way and is buried but the group. After many days of travel across the snows and steppes of Siberia and at their limits, they reach Lake Baikal and its mosquitoes. They encounter a Polish girl Irena (who conceals a tragic experience), and who is grudgingly allowed to join their quest. Reaching the unpatrolled border between Russia and Mongolia, Valka chooses to remain, as he still sees Russia as his homeland, and Stalin as a hero. The rest continue but find that Mongolia is now also a Communist state, and that India is the closest refuge. They continue south, crossing  the Gobi Desert, suffering from a lack of water, sandstorms, and sun stroke which weakens and tests the group.

The film goes further than the book (which finishes in 1942) and brings the story full-circle.

Based on the book ‘The long walk : the true story of a trek to freedom’ by Slavomir Rawicz, the film version ‘The way back’ is directed by Australian great Peter Weir who has done a superb job with the prison camp and the landscapes.