Masquerade 1

Our first stop - London, home to many literary references/places, here are just a few in Highgate Cemetery.

I still remember the demand for library copies of Alan Sillitoe’s “Loneliness of the long distance runner”, he was born in 1928 and died in 2010 and his headstone is in Highgate East Cemetery.

The headstone of author Alan Sillitoe

 Douglas Adams most famous for the Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy series. People who visit leave pens, plus some ‘42’ references (Deepthought’s answer to the ultimate question) & there was also a towel, now somewhat weathered. 

Highgate is also the resting place of Mary Ann Evan’s, known more famously as George Eliot. She was a female novelist of the Victorian era who wrote “The Mill on the Floss”, “Silas Marner”, “Adam Bede” and more.

Masquerade

While the Bibliophile blog has been in recess for some time, now is an ideal opportunity to bring it out of semi-retirement, masquerading as a literary travel blog.

Hopefully In the next few posts will be some photographs and a small amount of information on locations real & imagined as seen in books and films & tv.

Posts will be authored in the field on a phone - so no levels of sophistication or formatting, and subject to varying or non-existent connectivity.

Stay tuned...

Yah, for the Long Tail

 

Colour collision

When two waves collide at the perfect time of day.

In a similar vein to my previous post Ocean Waves, is this Chris Bryan video, if you team water with colour it can be spectacular.

 
via Gfycat Posted by u/MyNameGifOreilly

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