Missing

Some posts missing here... Updates on what happened late June/early July to be expected early 2009.

Girlfriend in a coma

Blue Mountains, NSW, Australia

I'd been in Sydney for what felt like way too long, it was time for a road trip. Lauren and I packed up enough stuff to keep us going for 48hours, and headed out West toward the Blue Mountains.

We were heading for Katoomba, but found ourselves detouring just before midday Saturday to Wentworth. The sun was shining and the prospects of heading straight off on a bushwalk were too tempting. So off we went, for a few hours; taking in views of the Megalong valley (I'm sure that was named by an 8year old in the 80's) and winding up at the falls themselves - not before we randomly bumped into Rog and a friend along the beaten track.

Somehow Lauren and I managed to lose each other, I think as I was taking a picture. I figured she'd gone ahead, so I raced back fast as I could. Meanwhile, she hadn't. I got back to the car and still hadn't found her, so headed back down the trail, where before not too long, I was reunited with a slightly un-happier girlfriend.

Undeterred however, we pushed onward and drove to Katoomba. We checked in at the Flying Fox backpackers... which I would recommend for it price, location and funky rooms!

We headed down to the 3 sisters just as the sun was dropping; they turned some pretty awesome colours, though as the light faded we ventured down into the first sister... the stair climb is worth having a look - though not as far down as to the valley floor! Dinnertime was calling and so we headed into town for Pizzas and wine.

I set my alarm for Sunday morning 6.20am in the hope I may get some great sunrise shots... to my dismay though; there was nothing but fog. Looking back I should've made the most and taken some eery shots, but to be honest, the warm bed was far more appealing!

The rest of Sunday was dedicated to the tourist tracks, we took a ride down the worlds steepest railway down to the valley floor. Once there we jumped out of the fenced walk ways and went for a bit of an explore. With a fair few KMs covered, the track was still gloomy, and a fair chance of rain, we headed back up the railway for onward trip home.

Keep on your dress

Not much of anything in particular, Sydney

A pretty cruisy weekend came by where a Friday night was spent slaving over a hot stove. I'd wanted to try and re-create my mums Pork Schnitzel or quite some time, so after a trip to David Jones Food court and homewares section, I returned with some Pork and a tenderising mallet. I bashed seven bells out of that meat before frying it up nice and juicy with toasted breadcrumbs and all the other secret ingredients. The taste test was satisfying, it was pretty close to how mums tastes... though not quite there, I was gonn either need more pratice, or local ingredients!

The following Sunny morning, I got myself outta bed before the crack of dawn and headed down to Coogee with my camera. A few snaps as th sun hit the golden rocks before headed back home to have a look at what I managed to capture. A bunch of us met up as friends for a fine cooked breakfast and coffee before heading to Sydney city centre to go check out my third World Press Photo exhibition since being here. Similar high quality photo journalism to previous years it was.

After a cruisy afternoon, Lauren and I stayed up late before heading to a local pub to step back 9hours to the UK GMT for the FA Cup final. It was kinda wierd having a room full of neautrals, watching it more for the sake of it than knowing much about the teams... all except one drunk Cardiff fan who thought he was actually at the match.

Calm Like You

Degustation Weekend, Lithgow, NSW, Australia

As Benny, Lauren and I drove out of the city, the temperature dropped a little more than we'd been accustomed to of recent times. The olbigatory road-trip stops were made to re-fuel and re-stock on nibbles for the 2hour journey out further than West of Sydney. This weekends purpose; to become degusted.

Around 15 of us in total had registered on Rog's weekend menu; the commitment to prepare a meal (course) for all in attendence over the period of around 48hours... that was always gonna be a lot of food!

So as we pulled up at Toad Hall in Lithgow once more, the night sky had become berieved of all cloud and the milky way was all that could be seen, those stars always amaze me whenever I get far away enough from a city to actually see more than about 5 at any one time! We headed in to the warm and festive scented cinnamon aromas, which happened to be Alisons mains that would kick off the weekend.

Myself, Lauren and with more than a little help from Matty, put much love into the Friday nights dessert - chocolate Brownies - one batch for the nut lovers and one for those that had allergies. The nut lovers one went down a storm with all that natural walnutty goodness packed inside every gooey slice! Past fits of giggles, people soon started passing out as Friday rolled into Saturday.

Saturday, the menu powered on with an awesome brekkie from Matty, mid morning Scones by Louise and Aaron, a hot n spicy lunch by Benny, and Ems legendary cupcakes making a cameo in the arrangement too.

The day between eating, consisted mainly of badminton, volleyball, reading, soun baking to an extent (our 22 degrees paling in significance to the whopping 27 that was blazing in England at the equivalent time of day) lounging around and, well I think you get the gist. As the sun dipped, the light was fantastic and I made the most of the warm hues that you only really ever seem to see around this time of year; at least in the Southern Hemisphere!).

Afternoon tea was from the Irish element in the house, with Louise making some damn fine scones with Irish coffee which left the path clear for Rog's Kangeroo Stew; 6hours in the making to explode upon everybodies pallettes. Todd rounded off the evening eith his Spumoni. Group rounds of Taboo kept us busy into Sunday.
Kiri swept everyone away with her berry topped pancakes before Oren capped off the culinary capers with some home made muesli bars and biscuits... a throroughly delicious weekend. Now what happened to that gym membership???

Mr Writer

"It only takes one match, to burn a thousand trees"

From watching these guys 3 back to back years at V festivals back in Essex, I've been through different phases of emotion toward the Welsh trio. The first few albums are now marked as pure nostalgia trips for my early twenties; of times when driving was something I'd do to kill time whilst I waited for the months to tick by toward a snowboard trip or Summer camping trip shared with 70,000 others.

Then fame brought a couple of duff albums; I remember standing in front of one of those Chelmsford trees wondering if burning that tree might be a little more enjoyable than listening to the guys perform there latest material in front of a virtually lifeless crowd. Then I swore I'd never watch them again, but then in recent years, since my exhile to the rest of the world, two new albums that flipped my opinions back favourably, especially since they lost that drummer.

So here they were in my new hometown, playing at my regular gig haunt the Metro. The sound they carried (while pretty sharp) is that of a "best of" tour, one that makes individual songs seem amazing but altogether, a little disjointed as there evolving sound gets the big 'shuffle' applied to it.

It was fun, and it was great to see some faces I've now seen almost enough times to class them as friends, despite never saying hello. Thanks Kelly, 'Doorman' was my surprise favourite.

Call the Shots

The rainiest April in over 70 years here in Sydney had started to get to a few people, and wasn't really a great introduction for Sarah who'd come all the way from my hometown in Essex to discover just how wet and cold Australia; the "Red land", could be.

As much as everyone locally moans about these adverse elements, I sometimes have to remind myself that even though 16-20degrees does feel quite cold these days, I'm still far away from the days of scraping frost off car windows and skidding across frozen puddles as a child.

Certain events in Australia now seem synonymous with anniversaries and as much as Anzac Day is in place to remember those that faught brave and hard for their country, it also tells me I’ve been in Sydney for an extra year. So my 3rd Anzac Day public Holiday was spent in similar fashion to the last 2, drinking beers and playing two-up in Coogee; after-all, why break the habit? This year I scaled to the dizzy heights of $70 up from an initial $10 stake, which I promptly reduced to about $30 just as they called time on the traditional annual gambling event.

We finished up there and a bunch of us headed back to Bundock for some early evening refreshments and Guitar Hero shenanigans. The Metro was then the venue for a long awaited gig; Karnivool. Sarah came along too for an intro to Aussie rock… and in the bargain got an intro to 4 Aussie guys and an Englishman quite drunk on a random wander across the city of Sydney taking in such sites as the entrance to Star City, and a dingy Korean karaoke bar… till 3am.

Of course I was being sensible in doing this, as I knew that I had a ticket to the following days Lawn Party at Randwick Race Course. Here, our tickets would allow all you could eat and drink all afternoon whilst watching men on horseback running round in circles. Needless to say I was a little quiet going into the event with the guys and girls I was with, all dressed up for the grand occasion.

I managed to turn $10 into $100 on my first flutter… and then managed to lose the profit there $10 a time throughout the afternoon… this blog post should be a lesson to all aspiring gamblers, and no – even picking the ‘apparent’ dead-certs does not pay dividends. Bah.

A special shout out for the weather on a day that ended a couple of weeks of constant rainy conditions, reports even say some people needed sunscreen! And how’s this, we bumped into a guy that we met in our hotel whilst staying in Kashmir by accident… now it really is a small world!

Shutterspeed

The Lost Weekends, NSW

There comes a time when I struggle a little to pack stuff into my weekends, and a couple kinda past me by just recently where when I think briefly; that this happened. However as much as I didn't go to India, ride quad bikes or even just wander round the great city I live right next to, I had great weekends of a different variety.

A week rolled around that would see me make my first money directly through photography... I had already expected for some weeks that I would be shooting a wedding, but unexpectedly, I caught a corporate event during the week. Great practice and experience for an aspiring photographer. The event went pretty well and I learned a whole bunch that should stand me well for the future.

Saturday I headed over to Camden to meet Vikki and Trev for their big day and proceeded to shoot some 939 photographs for them... I had some serious fun, and some unexpected photographers hand cramp too!

The following weekend I managed to get a last minute call-up to a one day workshop at the same institution that I learned about my SLR workings... This time, the purpose was for Digital Post production, which helped me learn a fast workflow for dealing with my RAW images and of course... ethical photoshopping as I like to call it. in other words, the bits of photography you could do in a darkroom with several tanks of chemicals, enlargers and all sorts of amounts of patience. I got to shoot a professional model too for the first time, which was nice.