A cafe table decoration

from w
I took three photos of an interesting table decoration when we had a Chinese dinner the other night, then played around with the images using Picasa and Gimp mainly using Picasa posturize and Gimp effects edge.

At Pako Festa

from w
Peceli and I went to the Pako Festa in the late afternoon to see our local Tongan friends dancing and they were lovely with four items - the young girls, the men, a solo taualuga and again the men. Great costumes and presentation. I got up on stage of course - (gave away my last $50 so had to go to the bank later on! ) before going to Not Quite Right shop for some food items. We also saw some of the Bollywood workshop inside the West Town Hall.

Library going up

The new library for Geelong is really moving along now and though it does look like a golf-ball it should be a wonderful asset to Geelong. Here's a picture by Peter Redmond.

When and where to make drawings

from w
I wonder sometimes about the protocol of taking a sketchbook - A5 or A4 nearly everywhere I go. There are places that I do not sketch - e.g. in a doctor's surgery, in a hospital, at a funeral, in a Centrelink line, but most other places seem to be OK. I've sketched at Rotary dinners, weddings, poetry gigs, concerts in a church, art exhibitions, on trains. I don't take an easel and huge canvas of course, but draw with discretion!  Maybe it's at venues where there is a lot of waiting about and I want to fill in the gaps. At a wedding in Williamstown - Anglican I think - I noticed the interesting manse next door with cracks in the walls and a large fig tree so drew that, and one of my relatives said, 'Mum, don't draw now!' but I did.

In the hot seat

from w
A boy from Maude, a small town between Geelong and Ballarat, was surprised to find a koala sitting in the driving seat of his Dad's car.  Apparently there are koalas in the area and they do see them occasionallly. Guess this little guy had come in from the heat of the day.

Narana

from w
The other day

Peceli and I went to Narana, a beautiful place where the buildings are hexagonal, or circular, and there is a delightful shop, art gallery, indigenous landscaped garden and cafe. While I searched for the baby emu chicks and found them to be teenagers, Peceli browsed and bought a T shirt. We had coffee, scones and banana bread for our lunch. The young Aboriginal staff members were smiling, friendly, confident, talkative - gone was the shyness of their grandmas and grandads of a while ago. Narana is of course the Aboriginal place just out of Grovedale and we've been there many times. Peceli was involved nearly thirty years ago when the Uniting Church (the good old days) gave a large house in Grovedale for Aboriginal students at Deakin and from that time on the Uniting Church set up the Congress and today there is pride instead of abandonment. The sketches of emus below were from a previous visit. Today the chicks wouldn't pose nicely for me! I only did one scribbly sketch of the bush.

You can't stop the music

from w
A strange story about a muso on a bridge as reported in the Geelong Advertiser.

A PORTARLINGTON man has been fined after causing musical chaos on the Westgate Bridge.

Police said Hobson’s Bay highway patrol officers received numerous calls regarding a black Toyota sedan driving erratically towards the city about 12.20pm on Friday afternoon.

Officers located the vehicle and pulled alongside to observe the driver.

To their surprise, the 27-year-old man was playing a trumpet as he drove over the Westgate Bridge.

Police said officers intercepted the car and issued the driver with a $354 fine for careless driving.

Highway patrol officers thanked those who reported the incident as they believe they stopped a potential accident.

----------

They also stopped the music I expect.

Lightning in Geelong

from w
We had a whopper of a storm late this afternoon, hundreds of lightning strikes and of course it was noisy with the booming thunder, and lots of rain. The biggest storm in many months. I didn't take the photos below - I wouldn't go outside  like some storm-chasers do - and photos are mainly of earlier occasions, but they show what it was like today.

Below Buckley's Falls

from w
The sign says Bunyip Pool 600 metres but we just stayed at the lower car park below Buckley's Falls. The Barwon is beautiful there with an escarpment and several pines. I did two pencil drawings A3 in size so I couldn't scan them. The camera made the pictures quite dark though. A few photos I fiddled with to look at colour and texture.

We are Geelong, not Melbourne

from w
It's happened before - when there's a big event in Geelong that's televised etc. the brandname of Melbourne is obvious instead of Geelong.  This isn't fair.

MP Sarah Henderson protests over Cadel Evans road race signs promoting Melbourne

·         MANDY SQUIRES

·         GEELONG ADVERTISER

·       FEBRUARY 03, 2015 8:43AM

Melbourne featured prominently in the signage at the start/finish line of the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race at Geelong waterfront.

GEELONG, not Melbourne, should have been promoted to the world during the Cadel Evans Great Ocean Road Race, according to Corangamite MP Sarah Henderson.

Evans’ final race in Geelong on Sunday was broadcast internationally, with television cameras panning over signs which gave the impression the event was being held in Melbourne, she said.

Ms Henderson, who participated in Saturday’s People’s Ride, said even her son had asked why there were “Melbourne signs all down the racetrack”?

Many people had contacted her after the event expressing their displeasure at the use of the Melbourne logo across race signage, Ms Henderson said.

“I just want to flag that I think it’s something that needs to be changed in future. The Cadel Evans brand is a very, very strong international brand. It’s unnecessary and not appropriate to be having Melbourne branded all over our beach,” she said.

With the beautiful scenery of the Geelong region on show throughout the race, it was a pity television viewers were shown Melbourne signs, Ms Henderson said.

And they're racing again

from w
And they're racing! The Cadel Great Ocean Road race is on - our gang were on TV apparently for a few seconds as a helicopter or someone followed the bunch of cyclists. They passed our house in 3 seconds so my photo is just a blur. (Yesterday it took one hour for the bikes to go past - a couple of thousand of them.) Following the cyclists were about forty vehicles carrying spare bikes, about fifty motorbikes (some double-dinking with a photographer), ten official cars, ten police, an ambulance, a firetruck, all with bells and whistles it seems for this great race. For an hour before, guys in orange vests were stationed at every side road to stop people from busting up the race. Even one was stationed at our church car park as people were leaving after worship and a cuppa. Well, we watched it on TV! This race went to Barwon Heads and then Torquay then Bells, then Moriac the back to Geelong, and  three laps around Belmont - Queen's Park, Geelong West - city, then to the finish by  3.40 p.m. That's rather slow isn't it!!!!!  Three and a half hours later a Belgium cyclist won the race, and Cadel came fifth which was an excellent result.