swimmingly

And talking of 40 degree days. Another of those weekend mass events (with associated, multiple, open-air parties) that turn Coogee into a place packed with nearly naked and often wet people, hundreds happy to swim a kilometre out and around wedding cake island, hundreds jammed on the beach happy to cheer them on – and all of us suddenly buried in a damp sea fog, rolling in off the sea as the high temperature and humidity made its own huge and thick condensation cloud.

fashionable

I have been taking inordinate numbers of photographs of the older Australian – both male and female – because I really like their style, which definitely tends to the eccentric. Although given that most everyone, particularly near the beach, seems to wear relatively random items and not much of that, maybe just part of a more general non-age-specific continuum. Makes me feel very uptight and British; all those layers I am used to hiding behind. The combination of 40 degrees, glaring heat, torrential rain storms and high humidity is playing havoc with my sartorial choices.

harry and penelope’s house

As always, the intention to do lots of cultural things has not really worked out. Booked tickets for Expanded Architecture (installation/architecture/dance) but then didn’t make it. Have still not got to Anne Ferran’s photographs at the Australian Centre for Photography, or the contemporary Chinese work at White Rabbit Gallery, or the dream home/small home exhibition –already finished! – at the Museum of Sydney. But K and I did (through luck rather than planning) get to visit inside the iconic Harry and Penelope Seidler House, a tour led by Penelope herself, as part of the current Seidler exhibition. Well-weathered piece of concrete modernism, with prime examples of furniture from the 1970s. And bumped into somebody I have not seen for many, many years, also visiting, which was nice.

city bingo 2: humorous signage

Humorous names for shops, products and businesses abound here; and not based on subtlety either*. The photo shows one of my favourite examples - although the fresh fish fillet brand called 'the one that got away' also appeals. A new local fish and chip shop (chipper) is about to open in Coogee and has a facebook competition for its naming. So looking forward to that.

And whilst I am at it, this seems a good moment to mention the drop bear. Not only for the creature itself but also its fine entry on Uncyclopedia ('the content-free encyclopedia') under the heading "this article may be Overtly Australian. Pommies may not understand funny stuff, only humour. Cannucks and Yanks may not understand anything at all. Don't change a thing and she'll be right, mate!"


* I am not alone in noting the application of Australian humour to signs - as always buzzfeed has got there first with a list and photos.

weather update

I made an aside in a previous post about the climate here not being benign. Obvious to locals, but I guess that before coming here a few years back (and finding my umbrella immediately blown inside out in a raging thunderstorm) my only model for hotter weather was the Mediterranean. A little cold in the winter, but generally balmy, warm and comfortable.

Sydney is, of course, often all of those things. But it also has monsoon-standard rains, chilling winds from the south east, very hot desert winds from the northwest (off the outback), blistering sun, glaring blue skies. It has extremes - and often contradictory extremes. As they put it on wikipedia:

The El Niño Southern Oscillation plays an important role in determining Sydney's weather patterns: drought and bushfire on the one hand, and storms and flooding on the other, associated with the opposite phases of the oscillation.

Exactly.  

barbie boats

The opportunity to have a communal barbie out-of-doors is everywhere to be found in and around Sydney: publically equipped with all the basic cooking kit, built-in tables and chairs and also toilets. Both generously provided and very well-used.

On the Hawkesbury you can even rent a barbie boat. (I should note that the one here is stuck on a sandbank, and will be unable to leave- according to our captain - for at least 6 hours). 

weekend away

Just come back from a fabulous few days away - just one hours drive north from Sydney - staying with K in a rental cottage at Dangar Island on the Hawkesbury river. Have had a bit of a thing about the Hawkesbury ever since I read Kate Grenville's Secret River which explores what happened when white settlers colonised land already inhabited by Aboriginal people (actually along the Wisemans Ferry stretch rather than where we were). 

Weather mainly wet and windy, which give us an excuse just to slob about, and then I took a boat trip.   We explored both the coastal side (the sea entrance into Broken Bay, so named by James Cook when he turned up here in 1770, although there is some disagreement about that) and then further up one of the river tributaries. Mostly scrub covered sandstone rising up directly from the water, with a few tiny strips of beach and some wafer thin settlements clinging to the edge, accessible only by water. Strange to think about the people who live here permanently (in among the tourists and weekenders) with no road, power, sewerage, phone connection or fresh water. So close to the city, but living a life still somewhat connected to those early settlers. 

We, of course, had all mod cons (although no cars on the island; transport of goods via buggy and wheelbarrows.)

all about envelopes

And whilst we are talking stationery: maybe these dis/ordinary moments are not just geographical discrepancies but also to do with the speed of historical change ( as I get older I definitely feel all sorts of slippages with both contemporary space and time.) 

A much younger colleague, A, admitted to his confusion about the office needing a whole cupboard for envelopes. A shelf maybe he thought, but not a floor-to-ceiling cupboard. Envelopes for him in all their myriad variations - sizes, colours, windowed and windowless, containing internal/external intentions - were just a distant memory ( if he had ever used them at all). N, L and I all tried to explain what the differences were, as we had used each type for its required responsibilities at some stage in the past. But A's eyes just glazed over. You could see he didn't really believe us.   

stationery

And then, of course, I find myself in exactly one of those weirdly-wonderful ordinary situations. In a stationers in Newtown. Where paper is piled so high, and in such a disorganized way, yellowing and dusty, that it is almost impossible to enter the shop and even harder to find a person of whom to make enquiries. The shop actually contains two men, one tall, gaunt and grumpy who sits at the till, but does not know the price of anything, and doesn't really want to serve you. And then from the back, a very elderly and rather short and plump gentleman, who started to serve me ( plastic sleeves for photographs to sell - a whole other story) but then gets distracted for a considerable amount of time with ordering ever more paper and supplies over the phone.

It took him at least 10 minutes to find the items I was after, involving a lot of shifting of mainly derelict pieces of machinery at the back of the store, and much tottering under heavy boxes. And then, of course, the sleeves were incredibly cheap and in the meantime we had a very long, interesting conversation about printing inks.