Battle Victor

The first time I watched "Time Team" on tv, I thought I recognised the style used in the pencil sketches - looks just like Victor Ambrus, later I checked the credits - yep Victor G. Ambrus.

I fell in love with Victor's work when reading childrens books (many of them Australian) - all the Nan Chauncy's, Elyne Mitchell's "Silver Brumby" books, Ronald Welch, K.M. Peyton's "Flambards" series, Rosemary Sutcliff ... even his picture book version of "Dracula".

The paintings and drawings of Victor  Ambrus are familiar to several generations. He has illustrated over 300 books on classical and historical subjects in his own instantly recognisable style.Now there is "Battlefield panoramas : from the siege of Troy to D-Day". Over the years Victor has amassed what amounts to a visual record of the entire history of warfare, brought together here in one volume.

A few simple lines create a sketch

With a concise text explaining the background of each battle scene, "Battlefield panorama" is an art book.

Beginning with the siege of Troy, there's Caesar's invasion of Britain, the Viking raid of Lindisfarne, the Battle of Hastings, the bowmen at Agincourt, the Battle of Sedgemoor, the storming of the Bastille, Trafalgar and Waterloo, The Franco-Prussian War, the British Expeditionary Force in the First World War, the Normandy Landings, and the 1956 Hungarian Uprising (this takes on particular power and resonance when you know that Victor was actually there).

The Siege of Athlone in 1691

 Victor was born in Budapest in 1935. He studied at the Hungarian Academy of Fine Art, then fled the invasion, and arrived at the Royal College of Art in London. He has won the prestigious Kate Greenaway Medal - twice, with 3 books.

Classic Victor - the Iceni Uprising

The Battle of Trafalgar

He has been part of the Time Team as its reconstruction artist for many years. Tony Robinson (the presenter and world's best audio book narrator) describes him as 'an archaeological alchemist - he can transform a few stones and bits of pot into a vivid world of living, breathing people'.

Fire by night

At Brimpaen, 7:30pm on 20th

The next installment in the Grampians Bushfire.
The fire takes on a different aspect at night -

From Gary Smith of Casterton

The large slow-moving fire is travelling in a westerly direction, and is still out of control.
It has now grown to over 32,500 hectares.

Brimpaen on 21st, Lynton says this thunderhead had its own lightning show

Community Meetings to discuss the fire efforts are being held at Cavendish, Balmoral and Dunkeld. Relief Centres have been established at Hamilton and Balmoral.
The Henty Highway remains closed between the Brimpaen-Laharum Road and Mooralla. Diversions are in place at Horsham and Cavendish.

Between Brimpaen & Cherrypool looking southeast, on 21st

Compare this CFA map to the one in the previous post. This image was created at 8am today.

From Reeds Lookout overlooking the Victoria Valley to the fire on the Victoria Range

Ongoing fires

North of the Western Highway looking south to the Grampians, 10pm on 18th

How un-prophetic my post from Thursday 14th now appears
This morning DSE & Parks Victoria advised that multiple fires (14) occurred due to lightning strikes in the Grampians National Park area. All fires are small and not posing any threats to park visitors or adjoining landholders. The fires are being controlled by DSE and Parks Victoria crews supported by water bombing aircraft. The fires were started by lightning, and are located in the Mt William, Victoria Valley, and Mt Abrupt areas. More lightning activity is expected this afternoon and overnight.

In the Southern Grampians, on Saturday 16th

The Victoria Valley Complex as it is now named, is currently 14,600 hectares and still out of control. There are 71 units including aerial appliances fighting the fire.

The smoke trapped in a inversion layer on 16th, south of Glenisla

 After a number of the the small lightning strike fires joined up, they threatened Mirranatwa, then after the cool change brought on a new wind direction the fire roared up the Victoria Valley and into the Victoria Range, it is now threatening the Glenisla and Woohlpooer Forest areas. News Flash - the Henty Highway has just been closed.

Long exposure looking back to the Grampians, 11:15pm on 17th

 Again I've included some of Lynton Brown's photos, as he's making numerous drives out to the area. Below is one that seems to typify these fires - CFA volunteers watch a helicopter water-bomb the fire as it nears private property in the Southern Grampians on Monday 18th (the property was saved).

 

A map representation from the CFA Country Fire Authority of the Grampians fire (as at 19th). 
The Blue symbol = Controlled, Yellow + Contained, and Red = Going. 
The fire is now breaking out of the range and national park and heading west to threaten private land and the Henty Highway (the red line).


The Grampians fires are not the largest bushfire in Victoria at present. From the CFA's site on 10th, the map below gives you an idea of the size of the Aberfeldy fire (currently over 82,000 hectares) here's how it would look if it was across Melbourne.

 

By today, the Aberfeldy-Donnellys Fire has burnt through approximately 84,860ha, has a 388 km perimeter and has now been burning for 32 days. DSE, CFA, Parks Victoria and NSW Rural Fire Service personnel continue to work to control this fire. The fire will continue to burn within control lines into the coming weeks.The aim of the authorities is to secure control lines and complete burning around the Licola Valley to protect private property. Currently there are 258 personnel, 6 tankers and 63 slip-ons and 23 bulldozers working. CFA and DSE crews are based in Licola.

Images from Crusty's mobile phone

Crews from the Southern Grampians Shire area - Penshurst and Grange brigades protecting some of the historic huts in danger from the Aberfeldy fire. Here, near Licola, smoke from the fire is visible in the fold of the valley beyond.

 

Infrared camera image for identifying fire hotspots (from CFA)

On the 8th February, this fire at  Mt Arapiles didn't even seem to rate a mention in the news. CFA crews stopped this fire on Friday, less than 100 metres from the forest flanking Mt Arapiles. 

Aerial shot from the CFA

 

Nature's most electrifying

There has been some dramatic weather around during the last 24 hours, and its progress is best demonstrated by photographer Lynton Brown who as usual was out taking photos of sunrises, sunsets and clouds.

This first in the sequence was taken just before 4:30pm looking west towards the approaching storms. At that stage he was checking the weather radar with storms near the border, Kaniva and Goroke areas.

An hour later - 5:30 near Drung

Snapped on his way to the Grampians, to capture the action, the storm front is approaching.

Taken at the Laharum Football Ground, the Grampians in the background

Looks like the Laharum shot is now Lynton's Facebook Cover Photo - check out more of his work at his facebook site Lynton Brown Photography or his website
 

Near Mount Zero

Inevitably all this dramatic climatic action caused a number of bushfires from lightning strikes, fortunately the accompanying rain dampened some.
This morning DSE & Parks Victoria advised that multiple fires (14) occurred due to lightning strikes in the Grampians National Park area. All fires are small and not posing any threats to park visitors or adjoining landholders. The fires are being controlled by DSE and Parks Victoria crews supported by water bombing aircraft. The fires were started by lightning, and are located in the Mt William, Victoria Valley, and Mt Abrupt areas. More lightning activity is expected this afternoon and overnight.

On the opposite side of Horsham, the Country Fire Authority advises that there is fire activity in the Little Desert National Park, where multiple lightning strikes overnight caused multiple fires in the area. These fires are being controlled and emergency crews are monitoring the area. Smoke may be visible from the nearby communities of Goroke, Gymbowen, Minimay, Miram South, Kaniva, Miram, and Ozenkadnook.
Then to the west are the Kadnook fires (affecting Kadnook, Harrow, Edenhope, Powers Creek, and Dergholm) also started by lightning these were the earliest strikes and being controlled.
To all the firefighters and residents out there - play it safe.

Boort to its knees

Driving through Boort yesterday, my passenger (on lookout duty) drew my attention to the Boort railway station building.

The railway station at Boort is a closed and unused railway station located on the Robinvale line. The line branches from the Mildura line at Dunolly.

A broken window provides views of a partly trashed interior

The line to Boort opened in 1883. Passenger services to the station ended in June 1978.

A quaint little picket fence shaded by an old elm

Today the rail line today is a grain only service (there is a GEB siding nearby), and containerised freight to Boort is operated by Wimmera Container Lines. 

The track switching gear beside the station building

Yet more light

WebUrbanist have come up with more lighthouses. This post is titled Coast Stories: 9 More Abandoned Lighthouses.

Whiteford Point Lighthouse

Whiteford Point Lighthouse located just off the coast of Gower Peninsula at Whiteford Point, south Wales, was a triumph of engineering in its heyday. Activated in 1866 and turned off for good in 1921, the lighthouse’s cast-iron walls were once covered in protective black bitumen. 105 tapered cast-iron plates, each one 32mm (1.28 inches) thick, form the lighthouse’s outer walls. The plates were fastened to one another with cast-iron bolts weighing 2 pounds each. It sits on a pitched stone apron just above the low-water mark in the Loughour Estuary. Sixty years after its decommissioning and in response to pleas from local fishermen, the Whiteford Point Lighthouse was relit using an automatic solar-powered beacon but when that failed a few years later, the lighthouse was dimmed permanently. 

Following World War I, the Japanese Empire seized the Northern Mariana Islands from Germany and developed a substantial amount of infrastructure. The Garapan Lighthouse on the island of Saipan sits on the highest point of Navy Hill, overlooking the lagoon. The concrete structure stands about 50’ high and rises above a single-storey gatekeeper’s quarters. Built in 1934, the lighthouse was extensively damaged during the American invasion of Saipan in the summer of 1944. Following the three-week battle, the 117th Seabees were sent in to repair the lighthouse. In the early 1990s an attempt was made to repurpose the now-abandoned lighthouse as a restaurant but by 1995 the venture was deemed unsuccessful and the structure was once again abandoned to the vagaries of wind, weather and vandalism.

Southerness Lighthouse, located on the southwestern coast of Scotland near Dumfries, is the second-oldest lighthouse in Scotland – built in 1749, its beacon was first lit in 1800. The square lighthouse is surrounded by the sea at high tide. The lighthouse was raised in 1795 and again in 1844 to its current height of 17 meters (56 ft), the latter modification giving the tower its distinctive squared-off style. The lighthouse’s lamp was extinguished between 1867 and 1894 due to financial difficulties and snuffed for good in 1936.

When coastal erosion is accelerated by rising sea levels, shore-level lighthouses like the leaning Kiipsaare Lighthouse on Estonia’s Saaremaa island lose out. Built in 1933 at a seemingly safe 25 meters from shore, the lighthouse’s base is now completely awash during high tide. The good news is now that the waves can do damage to all sides of the lighthouse’s base, the tower’s formerly pronounced seaward lean has been reversed. The lighthouse was made inactive in 1992. For philatelic fans a Kiipsaare lighthouse stamp was issued last week.

There are more lighthouses mentioned at the WebUrbanist post

Headhunted

'Headhunters' by Jo Nesbo - the gritty thriller has been made into a film.
 

Roger Brown works as one of the most powerful corporate headhunters in Norway. To support his overly extravagant lifestyle, he is also an art thief using the information he gains from interviewing clients to break into their homes. With his friend, the gun toting security employee Ove Kjikerud, they replace the originals with forgeries, which go undetected at least until the trail back to the thieves goes cold. His outward bravado masks his insecurities, especially in his short physical stature. He feels he needs that confident demeanor and wealth to get what he wants, including his beautiful art gallery owner wife Diana. As such, he has a mistress on the side named Lotte. The issue of having a baby - Diana wants to get pregnant while Roger doesn't want her to - is another bone of contention in their marriage. The two sides of Roger's professional life intersect when Diana introduces him to Clas Greve.

Clas Greve, a former elite soldier and executive in the electronics business, is in possession of a missing Rubens painting. A painting whose heist would permanently rid Roger of his financial problems.
But Clas is playing a game of his own. When Roger breaks into Greve's house, it changes his life completely, and soon forces him to run for his life...

The serenity of a Norwegian wood, but trouble lurks below

There are plenty of bloody gore scenes as the body count climbs, but there’s also the humour: the twin police officers in the hospital, the toilet scene, the police radio calls.

This is my second Scandinavian thriller-film (after the Stieg Larsson ‘The girl with the dragon tattoo’ – so much better than the Daniel Craig version) from Yellow Bird Films, and apparently this story too has had the rights for a Hollywood remake taken up. So after I ignored the Norwegian and concentrated on the sub-titles, I really got involved with the fast-paced plot and many unusual and unexpected  twists.

The film stars Nicolai Coaster-Waldau as the suave Clas Greve, and Aksel Hennie as the diminutive Roger Brown, when you first meet him you think small person’s disease, but as the action ramps up you have to feel for the guy, he can’t take a trick, but in the end he has schemed with the best of them. The gift of the film is its ability to change your perceptions of the two main characters as the story progresses – you begin to empathise with Roger as his inferiority complex insecurities take a back seat, while the increasingly silent Clas becomes more sinister.

You just know this isn't going to end well

The film is well executed by its director Morten Tyldum who escalates the graphic action scenes while counterbalancing the comic undertones that are present in some of these scenes - a device which can fail dismally, but here is the success of the film.
The 'Headhunters' DVD has an MA15+ rating for its strong violence and sex scenes.

Shedding light

It was the cover of 'Around the sheds' which first captivated me, and then when I flicked through the pages I was won over.

Andrew's desire was to document an aspect of Australian life that is disappearing altogether.Over the years he has photographed shearing sheds and the people working in and around them poignantly revealing their design, the flow of work from harvest to pressing, and the evolution of technology and innovation in the industry. He began this project with an urgency described by others photographing abandoned places never knowing when their subjects may be destroyed before being recorded. 

Innovation - hand-made gate at Angorichina

Andrew says "In my photographic odyssey, I am taking you on a visual journey where much has changed from thoses early days, yet so much remains the same."

Angorichina Station is east of Blinman in the Flinders Ranges. The working sheep station has been in the Fargher Family for four generations, and is now also an exclusive outback lodge accommodation.  The woolshed, still in use, is a timber slab shed built of native Flinders pine.

The octagonal Deeargee shed near Uralla, Armidale region, N.S.W.

Deeargee woolshed is unique, it was part of the vast Gostwyck property, one of the first sheep runs established on the New England tablelands in 1831. The original 1852 shed was destroyed in an arson attack in 1872, and Henry Dangar then built an octagonal blade shed. In 1888-89 an extension was added to accommodate 27 new shearing machines, and a brick bale storage section in 1903.

Kinchega station is now part of a national park on the Darling River near Menindee in Outback New South Wales. However the 1875 shearing shed still with its blade and machine stands, wool presses and tables, machinery room and  original steam engines. The red gum and galvanised iron building  provided for 64 shearer stands in 2 rows. The last sheep was shorn at Kinchega in May 1967 when the pastoral lease of the property expired. The western section of the original woolshed has been demolished. You can stay in Kinchega's shearer's quarters or camp near the river.

Old steam engine boiler, Kinchega woolshed, Menindee

Andrew will be conducting a talk and exhibition of his work at the St Arnaud Library at 7:30pm on 31st January.
Check out more at Andrew's site -

Steam returns to Dim

I'm still playing with 'now and then' photos, so when a copy of Shane McCarthy's "Patterns of steam" passed my desk at a time when I was recording local railway stations, well, these photos were the result - 

The black and white image from December 1968, is of the K154 steam loco shunting in the Dimboola yard on now disused tracks. On the right is the now dismantled signal box proclaiming the stop as Dimboola. The pedestrian bridges, station building and silos still exist, but the goods shed has been removed.

Also from the wonderful "Patterns of steam" was this one of Kaniva. Here the J555 pauses at Kaniva with a Dimboola-Serviceton goods train in December 1967. Again the changes are evident, the trees have grown, the station building is now boarded up and abandoned, and not visible but behind the empty wagons is a silo complex. Also as at Dimboola, only the main Melbourne-Adelaide track is in service, the others rusting away.