Here is a more cheery post than I’ve done recently. Today is the first day of the Wooden Boat Festival in Hobart. It is only on once every two years so I didn’t want to miss it. As I was not sure if the bus would be running from Geeveston I opted to stay an extra day with Matt and Ally and go from their place leaving Matt to doggy sit Cindy.
I got a ride to town with Ally who had to work and arrived around 11:30am. Of course, as it was the first day, not all the boats had arrived and many were making their way into the harbour when I arrived. The tall ships that are usually on display were not due until the afternoon and unfortunately, I was not able to stay to see them.
There were still a lot of very nice ones to see though. Some were quite old but a lot of the ones that I saw were built in the last forty years. I’m sorry but I have a hard time thinking of something from the 1990s as old.
I walked around for a couple of hours taking photos of the ones that I liked best. It was already quite busy although still easy to get a seat in the food area where I stopped to get a baked potato for lunch. At this point, I thought I should check on Cindy and messaged Matt. He said that she had been howling a lot and of course I immediately felt guilty for leaving her and cut my visit short.
I did manage to take more than 50 photos though. Here are some of them.
Messing about in boats
MV Goolara built 1958
Pelican and Curlew two boats named for birds.
Talking Boats
Brittania one of the older boats I saw.
Moored at Elizabeth St Pier
Gypsy
I thought that the man in this boat was called Gus but actually it is the name of the boat.
How could I resist joining in this challenge? The only local public transport we have around here is the bus but as a non driver I’ve used plenty of public transport while living in Adelaide and of course public transport is usually the easiest way to get around when you are visiting a large city.Here are some ways of getting around in Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Hobart.
Public transport, Kings Cross Sydney 2012Destination Board at Sydney Central Station March 2018A privately owned fast ferry in Sydney HarbourNarrabeen – One of the larger ferries used for trips to Manly.Trains at Southern Cross Station (formerly Spencer St) Melbourne 2014.Swanston Street Melbourne October 2014.In Adelaide the old Glenelg tram line has been extended.Travelling on Sydney’s Light Rail System.Bus arriving at the interchange at Glenorchy near Hobart.
I recently watched a program on television about Flying Scotsman being returned to service after a 10 year break. I saw the locomotive in 1988 when she was brought to Australia for our Bicentennial celebrations. Back then she was in her LNER livery with the number 4472. Now she is in British Rail livery with the number 60103 and smoke deflectors added.
This locomotive has appeared in different forms during her lifetime but I have to admit that for me apple green and 4472 are the real Flying Scotsman.
It didn’t seem much like summer on the first day of the Test Match between Australia and South Africa. The sky was overcast and there was no sign that the sun might appear any time soon. In fact there had been dire predictions that up to four days of the five-day match could be washed out.
Nevertheless I decided to buy a ticket for Day One and hoped that at least part of the day would be dry. I have a 100mm-300mm zoom lens for my camera which I have hardly used and I was looking forward to trying it out.
I was lucky enough to get a ride to Hobart with a friend that morning so I was there in good time and arrived at Blundstone Arena in Bellerive before the gates opened. This is my favourite time to be at the cricket, first thing in the morning on the first day of a Test Match because you can see the two teams warming up before the formalities begin.
Blundstone Arena under a cloudy sky.
At the ground
It always looks rather chaotic to me. The Australian team are a tangle of arms and legs as they run, skip and do stretches in one part of the ground while the South Africans seem to he having an enjoyable time kicking a soccer ball around in another. In the middle of the ground the ground staff hover with coverings for the wicket in case it starts to rain and nearby the Channel 9 commentators are doing their pitch report.
The Australian team, Blundstone Arena, Hobart
Grounds staff cover the wicket with hessian during a light shower.
Australia warming up 12/11/2016
The South Africans enjoy messing about with a soccer ball.
A tangle of arms and legs
The heavy covers go over the hessian if the rain is heavy or prolonged.
Stretches
Former Australian Captain Michael Clarke watches the warm up.
Channel Nine commentators and former cricketers Ian Healy and Shane Warne.
I don’t recognise many of the players. Hashim Amla is the only South African I’m sure about and even some of the newer Australian players I’m not too familiar with. Two Australian players are in the team for the first time but at least I can recognise them because they are training in their brand new baggy green caps instead of the usual baseball cap. In these situations I generally opt to take as many photos as I can knowing that I will need to edit them later and I can check then to get names of anyone I haven’t recognised.
Note*: I know this blog gets a few visitors from South Africa so please accept my apologies if I have mis-identified any South African players and feel free to correct me.
Joe Mennie, new Australian fast bowler training in his brand new “Baggy Green”.
Nathan Lyon – Australian spin bowler.
Hashim Amla – South African batsman.
JP Duminy -South African batting all-rounder.
I do recognise a lot of the commentators. Most of the Channel 9 team have been working at the station for years and all of them are former players. I also spot a former South African player, Shaun Pollock, doing commentary for his national television station.
South African born former England cricketer Kevin Pietersen.
Former South African cricketer Shaun Pollock commentating.
Former Australian spin bowler Shane Warne.
After the coin toss to see who will bat first, the ” Welcome to Country” by the local indigenous community and the anthems play begins with Australia batting first. What a disaster that turned out to be as wickets are lost immediately with the opening batsmen getting out for one run each. In fact the whole morning is like that with the batsmen falling instead of the expected rain.
The South African Team
The Australian Team
At the lunch break the ground is filled with the Milo Into Cricket kids playing multiple games of cricket while the ground staff and their tractor also reappear in case of rain. There was a light sprinkle that sent the players off for about ten minutes but not the downpour everyone had been predicting
The Australians lasted for less than an hour after the lunch break before they were all out for 85, over half of those runs made by the Captain, Steve Smith, who ran out of partners in the end and was left unbeaten on 48. After a short break for the pitch to be rolled the South African innings commenced. The Australians who were now fielding received plenty of “advice” from the small but vocal crowd. Bellerive is a small ground and as Test Matches are not accompanied by constant rock music and other distractions it is easy to hear the hecklers. There was support too of course, whistles and cheers for the few boundaries and the usual chorus of “Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi.” coming mainly from the wet area where some fans had their first beer soon after 9am.
Australian Opening batsmen David Warner and Joe Burns
The South African team walk out to field.
Quinton de Kock, South African Wicketkeeper.
A wicket is taken.
Australian fast bowler Mitchel Starc.
One of the South African opening batsmen.
End of Day One
I took a lot of photos but by 3pm I was feeling rather cold and as I didn’t want to miss the bus home to Geeveston I left. Of course as soon as I did the Australians took four wickets but they still ended day one badly behind. On the shuttle bus that took us back to the city the consensus seemed to be that we were rubbish but everyone had enjoyed their day at the cricket anyway.
The Result
For those who want to know what happened the rest of the match went like this:
Day One: Australia all out for 85. South Africa lose 4 wickets by close of play.
Day Two: It rained all day and there was no play whatsoever.
Day Three: South Africa regrouped and built up a big lead requiring Australia to make 241 runs just to make South Africa bat again. They are all out for 326 At the end of Day 3: Australia had lost two wickets.
Day Four: Australia was unable to make enough runs being all out for 161. South Africa won by an innings and 80 runs.
Day Five: Not required. Australian players, coaches and selectors tearing their hair out trying to work out how to improve before the next Test Match in Adelaide which starts on 24 November.
I took far too many photos to put in this post but if you would like to see more head over to my Flickr photo stream where I have a cricket album to see the best ones, well the ones I liked best anyway. As an exercise in photography I think it was a worthwhile day. I got used to handling my big lens and most of the photos in this post were taken with it on maximum distance. I cropped most of them and in most cases the results were acceptable. It was also a good opportunity to practice sports photography. I found that I could focus and press the shutter faster. Some photos were too blurry to be useful but as I took over a hundred during the course of the day I did expect that some would be no good. I probably missed more close up shots because I didn’t feel comfortable taking a photo if the person was looking at me. Allyson is much better at that type of photography than I am. To end this post I’m going to share a few more of the photos that she took at the Michael Clarke book signing the day before the Test Match began.
Michael Clarke
Michael Clarke signing copies of his book “My Story”.
Australians of a certain age may recognise this block of flats in Sydney as the location of popular TV series “Number 96”
While we were in Sydney in March my sister wanted to find the location of the apartment building used for the Australian television show “Number 96” which ran from 1972 – 77.
When we were teenagers this was the show that everyone talked about at school and at work as it was quite daring for the time. I never watched it myself but Naomi did and said that she liked it because it was often funny and compared to the TV dramas of today she felt the characters were more like ordinary people.
The show was set in Paddington, an inner city suburb of Sydney but this building is actually in the adjacent suburb of Woolhara. Naomi knew the name of the street but not the exact location so we set out to find it. We took a taxi and as luck would have it the taxi driver was a man of around our own age who also remembered the show and he and Naomi had a good chat about what they remembered of the characters and although he didn’t know the exact location of the building either he recognised it when he saw it.
It was not the easiest building to photograph on a sunny morning, this was the best of four pictures I took and incidentally the last one I took with my Nikon Coolpix L120 as I broke it later that day.
Ferry crossing the Mersey River, Devonport Tasmania
Tasmania has been in the news recently with major flooding in many of our river systems, not the Huon thankfully. The port of Devonport on the Mersey River has been badly affected. Here is the tiny ferry that crosses the river on a nicer day. Taken on a trip to the northwest with friends a couple of years ago.
For this week’s Fun Foto Challenge Cee asks us to present photos of cities. I have chosen photos from four of the five Australian capital cities I’ve been to. Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Hobart. I have also visited Canberra but I was using a film camera then and have not yet transferred those pictures to computer. I really should do that it was 9 years ago!
In a city, especially a big city it’s pretty hard to photograph buildings or anything really without getting people in your shots, unless you like to get up at the crack of dawn anyway. You can either get mad, not take the pictures or go ahead and take them anyway. That’s what I do. People are part of the city environment and sometimes they add something to the photo.
Melbourne
A photo of the ever-changing skyline of Melbourne taken in 2014. This would have been taken from the Star Observation Wheel.
Trams in Swanston Street. I think I photograph the trams every time I go to Melbourne. I love them. I rather liked the cyclist in this particular photograph too.
St Patrick’s is Melbourne’s Catholic cathedral and while trying to fit it all into my frame I thought that the line of bikes and the tourists taking a “selfie” were a nice contrast.
Melbourne
Swanston Street Melbourne October 2014.
Visitors taking a selfie in front of Melbourne’s St Patrick’s Cathederal.
Sydney
I don’t often take photos of people like this one taken on a tram on Sydney’s light rail system. Everyone seemed to be on their phone and didn’t notice me with the camera.
Queen Victoria Building . This is one of my favourite buildings in Sydney. I was a bit annoyed to find the man with the cigarette in my best shot but actually I think it makes it a good city scene now I’ve cropped it a bit.
Sydney Harbour. Sydney and Melbourne seem to be in competition for largest number of skyscrapers.
Travelling on Sydney’s Light Rail System.
It’s not so common to see people smoking in the street now.
Sydney’s ultra modern skyline. March 2016
Adelaide
Rundle Mall Adelaide 2012. I took several photos in Rundle Mall last time I was in Adelaide as I was afraid that by the time I came again they would have completely ruined it with ugly new developments. I get especially angry about that because I grew up in Adelaide.
Light Rail Adelaide. After removing most of their tram lines in the 1950s Adelaide is now in the process of putting them back.
Adelaide Arcade is a rather grand and beautiful arcade off Rundle Mall.
Public Transport, Adelaide
Adelaide Arcade
Hobart
Hobart’s Red Decker tourist bus on a sunny Saturday afternoon last summer
The recently refurbished Cat and Fiddle Arcade at Christmas
A mixture of old and new architecture taken from a Hobart rooftop.
Red Decker tour bus. Hobart
The cat and fiddle clock the arcade is named for, taken last December.
