Author Archives: Steve Walker

About Steve Walker

Once a tech in-house PR type, now professional photo/videographer and recreational drone pilot. Violinist. Flautist. Occasional conductor. Oenophile.

Paddington, Barely

Wednesday 25 & Thursday 26 September 2024 – Our departure from Belrose was also a departure from my habit of taking a taxi to the airport.  Lorraine and Paul warned us against trying to convince a taxi company reliably to send someone into the northern wilds of the Sydney suburbs, so we took our first-ever Uber. We had a very pleasant drive with, at the wheel, a lady who was a Brisbane native and who was therefore able to give us a few thoughts about Things To Do In Brisbane. The traffic was a little heavy, and the journey to the airport took about an hour, but we arrived on schedule, with plenty of time before our flight’s departure; and in a thankfully undramatic departure from their established norm, Virgin Australia got us from Sydney to Brisbane without any form of buggering us about. My friend Phil was waiting there to take us to his place, which is in Red Hill, the area of Brisbane next to one called Paddington.

I’ve talked before about connections; thus far it has only been about those formed with fellow travellers.  The one between Phil and me is a lot deeper; we have been friends since babyhood. His family emigrated to Australia in 1967 as “ten pound Poms” (a phrase our Uber driver was so young that she’d never heard it, by the way), but Phil and I stayed in contact by letter over the years and met occasionally, as time, location, circumstances and finances dictated. Right from the first time we met again, which was in 1974, it was clear that the friendship had survived; that encounter, and every one since, has been a source of great pleasure.

Phil has a lovely house, which was originally a Queensland workman’s cottage and which, in true Australian fashion, was transported in one piece to its current location. It’s “upside down”, meaning the bedrooms are on the ground floor and the living space upstairs, and this makes great sense, given the usually hot Queensland climate; the downstairs rooms are the cooler ones, and it leaves a grand upstairs deck. Rather magnificently, the deck has a tree growing through it,

which provides shade for those sitting out on the deck with a glass of something cold, which was us, quite a lot of the time.

The Red Hill/Paddington area is an interesting one to walk around and so, for the first couple of days, and, with Phil and his insightful commentary, that’s what we did. Obviously.

The Queensland workman’s cottage vibe is something that is evident over the whole area that we strolled around.

Most of them are well-maintained and in very good nick and some

have been quite considerably extended.

There’s a variety of approaches to decor, from nice paint jobs and interesting roof tiles

to more elaborate flourishes on the larger buildings.

As well as the timber cottages, there are more substantial constructions

and some nice use of street art on the outside of some.

This, for example, is the local cinema

and it’s not just the front of the building that’s been decorated.

If you look at the left hand picture above, you can see that the area is not necessarily flat and level.  The gradients of some of the hills are simply breathtaking,

so walking about is akin to a major workout at times,

but the area’s location does mean that you get some superb views over downtown Brisbane.

So steep that handrails are needed to help you walk up it!

Among the many coffee bars and restaurants there are some interesting shops

Short Bach and sides?

and other little artistic touches.

The trees lining the roads make the streets very attractive,

and there’s one majestic specimen which is at the top of a hill

making one (OK, me) grateful for the shady seats in which to take a breather – and watch the laughing kookaburras which had come to laugh at us.

In the centre of Paddington there’s a building which used to be a theatre

now repurposed to house a huge variety of stalls selling antiques, bric-a-brac and a whole variety of other things.

Some angles give away the theatrical origins of the building – you can see the proscenium arch here.

Some wag in the local authority had had the idea to make a “Kooka Trail” around the area, presumably intended as a distraction for kids, but also valuable for the entertainment of passing photographers.

though I prefer the real thing, which we saw in various places, including near Phil’s house.

Apparently, kookaburras have been absent in recent years, and they’re only now making a reappearance. I like them, so was glad to be able to see (and hear!) them.

After two days and 11km of walking around this delightful part of the city, it was a pleasure to be able to sit on Phil’s deck with a glass of something cold as the sun went down

This describes our first couple of days in Queensland. We had two more days before heading even further North! and I’ll tell you all about it – some other time.

 

Interjection – completing the Melbourne staff work

Wednesday 4 September 2024 – For subscribers, or those reading through these pages sequentially, this entry will likely cause some confusion and I apologise for that. This page is about our last full day in Melbourne, which I accidentally forgot to write about at the time, possibly in the excitement of discovering the unusual way that Virgin Australia was buggering us about in regard to our forthcoming flight to Tasmania.

One of the great things about our time in Melbourne was – like our plans for Sydney and Brisbane – a chance to catch up with friends whom we hadn’t met for many years. The centre piece of today was A Nice Lunch with Sharon and David, a couple we had met on a walking holiday in Slovenia back in 2016; we had shared a house with them, walks up hill and down dale with them (lots of that in the Julian Alps in Slovenia!) and many laughs over lunch and dinner. We knew they lived in the Melbourne environs and so were delighted that they were prepared to do the slog into the city to share a lunch with us.

The venue was the Flower Drum, in Melbourne’s Chinatown, and a decent walk for us from the hotel. The walk gave us an opportunity to seek out some more of the various bits of street art that can be found in the city streets. On the way, we passed this sign

which might be said to sum up Australia – but only in a lovingly joking manner, you understand.

We revisited Hosier Street

and discovered (as reported earlier) that the painted-over artwork was still surprisingly unredecorated.

There was some grand statuary outside the Grand Hyatt hotel

and we passed the very attractive St. Michael’s Uniting Church.

Jane had discovered other corners to look for murals.

For lunch, we headed into Chinatown

and had a delightful couple of hours with Sharon and David, catching up on the intervening years since we last met. On holiday While travelling, one meets many people, but it’s rare to form a lasting connection with fellow travellers, and it was lovely to find that this connection was still strong.

After lunch we needed to go for a walk. Obviously.  We passed Parliament House

and found many more decorated buildings to gawp and attempt to photograph.

There was some great decor to be admired

and – possibly – a genuine Banksy!

This was alongside some other stencilled-type artwork.

On the way back to the hotel, I managed to get a reasonable photo of St. Paul’s Cathedral,

some nice mosaic artwork by Flinders Street Station

(sadly, the chap wasn’t about to leave; I think he was a bouncer) and some more building decoration on the way back to our apartment.

So ended our last full day in Melbourne, and a very pleasant one it was, too. The plans for the morrow were simply to get to Hobart in Tasmania, which we achieved, but not without, as I’d mentioned earlier, a frisson of frustration courtesy of the Virgin Australia ticketing system. To read all about that, the narrative continues here. Meanwhile, I’ll get back to our time in Brisbane, if that’s all right with you.  Sorry for the interruption of the otherwise smooth flow.

 

 

 

 

A Manly Spit

Monday 23 September 2024 – It turned out that the plans that Lorraine and Paul had laid for our last full day in the Sydney environs involved going for a walk. Obviously. The plan was to walk from Manly to Spit Bridge – right circle to left circle

but not in a straight line; rather via the Clontarf headland. This was not a circular walk, so Paul drove us to Seaforth, just to the left of the left-hand circle, and we took the bus down into Manly. The buses, like the trains and the ferries are (a) cheap and (b) well-organised; using phone or card, one could just tap on and tap off, and the charge for the trip was Aus$1 – about 50p.

Clearly, to undertake the walk, we needed to be fortified by a robust breakfast. Fortunately, L & P had a plan for that, too; frukost på Fika – breakfast at Fika, a Swedish café in Manly. (Fika is a Swedish word to convey the idea of having comfy coffee and cake in a café)

I was particularly taken with the decor in the loo. A quick shout-out to Topaz photo software here. I didn’t realise at the time, but the photo I took of the decor was very out of focus (I was in a hurry and didn’t check the photo there and then as I didn’t want to be seen as as a man who takes photographs of toilets). Up to now, an out-of-focus original has been basically a lost photo, but with modern technology and processing power, errors from photographer incompetence can sometimes be rectified.

The building next to Fika is rather nicely turned out.

and there were a couple of other nice arty touches on our walk through the town

to Manly cove (the other side of the North Head peninsula from the famous Manly Beach).

The start of the walk offered a nice view across to South Head – you can see the Macquarie Lighthouse and the Signal Station.

One of the nice things about walking around these areas of Australian cities is the individuality of some of the houses;

another is coming across things that seem a little counterintuitive.

Apparently, they get Little Penguins here at some times of the year.  Not today, though.

The vegetation offered some excellent frames for the lovely views we saw as we walked.

North and South Heads as seen from Manly Cove

One of the great things about Australian beaches is the routine inclusion of ocean pools to supplement the open water swimming available. This is the one at Fairlight Beach, the next one around from Manly Cove.

We came across a couple of fearless sulphur-crested cockatoos as we went along the trail;

for some reason they had markings on their backs

though we don’t know why.

The coastal path we were walking involves a lot of up and down, so I was glad that the weather was benign and not too hot. Climbs were rewarded with some great views across various parts of Sydney Harbour, as well as back towards the city.

At one stage, there were petroglyphs beside the path. Some were reasonably easy to comprehend;

some less so.

(Upside down kangaroo? Really?)

A well as scenery, there was wildlife to admire – a couple of Australian Water Dragons, of reasonable size.

(The one above was actually quite reluctant to get out of the way of the people walking the path, which I found unusual – normally, lizards shift themselves swiftly as humans approach.)

The up-and-down continued

as did the views, which had some sensational colours,

and we passed some formidable rock formations.

A very photogenic corner,

and two sorts of housing: spacious, refined, all mod cons

and less so.

Shortly afterwards, after all the ups and downs of the coastal path, we reached Spit Bridge

which was our planned destination. Trouble was, we were at sea level, and the car was

up 154 steps, so there was one more climb to do. The view at the top was worth it, though,

and you can see, on the right of the photo, that the Spit Bridge is a lifting bridge, something I didn’t know until today.

It was a great walk, just over 11km, or 7 miles,

and, as I say, quite up and down.

Normally, on a 7-mile walk, I’d use about 700 calories; this walk used over 1,200; but it had everything – sunshine, coffee, views, wildlife, historic petroglyphs and lots (and lots) of steps; an excellent day.

Tomorrow, we have to leave our friends in Belrose, but we head further north, to see friends in Brisbane. We have a few days there, so I’m hoping we might get to see some nice scenery and maybe some wildlife. Who knows what the coming days hold?