Birthday Anna

Happy birthday Anna! Here's a bouquet of camellias from our garden in celebration of your day.

  

Little Liesel

Heidi was reminiscing about her miniature dachshund Liesel, so it seemed timely to publish these bits of memorabilia.

First we have Liesel's registration papers. In 1966 it cost R1 to register her with the Kennel Union.

Funnily enough there were only two photos I could find in Mom's collection. (I remember a photo of puppy Liesel with a carrot that was almost as big as she was ... but sadly that photo has gone.) Here are Liesel and me, probably in about 1966.

Secondly we have Dad, me, Grandma Tina (Dad's mother) and Heidi. And Liesel, of course. I've estimated this as 1974. (Thoughts on the date?) Remember that swing bench in the background?

PS While we are on the subject of dachshunds, have you heard about Dachshunds for World Peace? The Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney staged an event where dachshunds participated in their own Dachshund United Nations. One of my colleagues has a dachshund called Lucy, who featured as Chair-dog on the day. (Lucy is the one with the woollen coat.) Apparently other countries have also staged their own Dachshunds for World Peace events. Who knew that Dachshunds were such important dogs ...?!

Art stylings

In response to my mother's well-intentioned prodding to post something, I thought I would show off some of my more decorative possessions. I moved out of the parents' place about 4 months ago and have slowly been making my new place look less like a warzone (as it did when I moved in) and more like a space actually fit for human life.

This first one is a piece of Tasmanian silk that I bought in Salamanca Market in Hobart when the six of us (Mom, Dad, me, my girlfriend Suz, Luke and his girlfriend Lisa) went there for a weekend late last year. I got it framed and it's next to my front door.

This is probably my favourite one and it's in the living room right above my tv. It's a painting that Suz's mother, who is a very talented artist, painted for me after I politely but firmly commissioned her for something to go in my new place.

This is the front of the living room, where you can see the painting and tv (the slightly odd tablecloth set-up is temporary, I will get a proper tv cabinet). The bookshelf is a very recent purchase that shows off some of my more varied stuff. There's the Lego pirate ship from my (quite old) previous post on top, a wooden hippo from our Zimbabwe holiday with Dad's mother Irene in 1999 on the second level, and the rest is mainly fancy boardgames and books. The bowl on the black coffee table is a cardboard Oxfam shop housewarming gift from Suz's parents. The coffee table itself was made by Luke and Lisa's father, which took them about a year and a half of very off-and-on work to finish. It then finally made it into the house, upon which Luke promptly moved out about two weeks later. Good work Luke.

These two are batik-ish cloth paintings I got when we came back to SA for the World Cup. I got them from the shop at the game park we visited (Pilanesberg? Am I imagining that? If it's not that, the name escapes me).

This shows the two paintings in their current homes. The tablecloth was a souvenir/gift from Mom and Dad when they went to Bali recently.

Thus ends the tour. Hope everyone is well.

Morning flight

I was inspired by Heidi’s 7 a.m. photos. Melbourne winter mornings are still pretty gloomy at 7 o'clock, but the sun was rising during my flight to Sydney this morning and the colour was really lovely over the horizon. Also, most unusually, I was in a window seat rather than my usual aisle seat.

It started off as one photo, but then I realised that the rainy weather was making the flight quite interesting from a visual perspective. Unfortunately I was on the wrong side of the plane to take photos as the plane comes in across the sea, but you do get a bit of a sense of (part of) Sydney Harbour in these pics.

So here is a sequence of photos, in order. If you scroll down quickly enough, you might actually feel like you are in a plane! Well, maybe.

 

 

Midwinter

21 June - Hooray! It is the middle of winter! The sun is at its most northern point in the sky so we are experiencing the longest night and the shortest day.

BBbbbrrrrr ... it has been sooo cold in Joeys.

Tennille and I have been travelling (don't know why we choose the middle of winter??!!) and took the following photographs, all at 7 am.

BALLITO 7 AM

BLOEMFONTEIN 7 AM

CAPE TOWN 7 AM

Berkeley Ave 1965

Before we leave 1965, I thought you might enjoy some photos taken around the same time of 43 Berkeley Avenue. Actually, I think it was 109 Berkeley Avenue in those days.

I am pretty sure that this set of photos was also taken by Heidi, with the same little box camera that she used in Europe. The format of the prints is exactly the same format as the Europe photos. I've published two of these photos before in other posts, but have included them here again so that the set of six is complete.

Photo 1 below: You've seen this one before on the blog -- that's Dad, Tim, me, Ganan (Mom's mother) and Mom. The lounge opened out onto this verandah (later replaced by the bar).  

Photo 2 below: Mom. That wooden bench had a lift-up cover and storage space inside. I remember tennis rackets, snorkels, masks and flippers being stored in this bench. Photo 3 below: Dad, Bop (Mom's father) and dog (Hansel or Gretel). Berkeley Avenue is behind them, because you can see a white picket fence on the other side of the road, and the Nash property had a white picket fence. (Well, it was 1965!)

Photo 4 below: Tim Nash and me. Berkeley Avenue and the Nash property (white picket fence) are in the background behind us. Berkeley Avenue would still have been a dirt road. Heidi, do you remember playing in the mud in the road after those summer storms?

Photo 5 below: Dachshund (Hansel or Gretel) and me. That's the driveway behind me, where you entered the property from Berkeley Avenue. The rockery and the steps (immediately behind me, to the right) led down to the front door.

Photo 6 below: Tim and me, and I think the girl is Melanie Nash. It's not Heidi. Do you remember the wire fence and gate? The fir tree is only a few years old. And look how far away the house looks from the pool ...

I'd love to hear other family members' memories of the house and garden in 1965!

Plant boots

Last weekend we went to an art exhibition at a winery in the Yarra Valley. We thought these painted boots were quite fun!

London & Loch Ness 1965

And so we come to the last legs of our journey across Europe in 1965. Sadly Heidi's journal entries end in Paris, so we don't have her account of what we did in England and Scotland, but there are a number of photos which tell some of the story.

Clearly Heidi was very impressed with the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.

We also visited the Tower of London (that's Ganan, our grandmother, behind the Beefeater in the second photo, and next to an unknown man) ...

 ... and Windsor Castle.

Here is a photo of Bop (Mom's father) in front of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben. He's holding
a 16 mm cine camera in his hand, I think. I wonder what happened to the film he shot?

From London, we went to Edinburgh. We flew British European Airways (BEA), which according to Wikipedia, was the largest domestic carrier until 1974, when it merged with BOAC to form BA.

We went on a day trip to Loch Ness -- one of the clearest memories I have. I LONGED to see the monster, and was bitterly disappointed that it failed to rear its head above the icy water. I remember wanting to stay just a few minutes more, because I KNEW it would appear the minute we left. I don't remember very much about Edinburgh (other than the impression of a heated apartment and toasted teacakes) but I do remember feeling devastated at being torn away from the possibility of the monster.

I don't know who the Scotsman is on the left of the photo, but that's Mom, me and Bop, with Loch Ness behind us.

Well, that's it. On that monster note, we end our journey, Heidi's journal and our trip down this particular memory lane. Ciao, au revoir, auf wiedersehen, toodle-pip!