Bali temples

Unlike the rest of Indonesia, which is Muslim, Bali is predominantly Hindu. Traditions and rituals are very noticeable in Balinese everyday life. Each home has its own shrine with a statue of a god, where incense is burned and food and flowers are offered daily. Offerings are also placed in public spaces: in front of doors, on bridges, on steps, on pavements -- a constant reminder of another world.

In Hindu belief, God is in everything, and so there are many, many gods. Ganesh, the elephant god, is a popular incarnation. This shrine below is on one floor of the smoked duck restaurant.

This is the entrance to the house next to our Ubud villa. As I was taking the photo, the man appeared unexpectedly with a snake he’d just caught. I loathe snakes and I nearly fainted with shock … Not happy, Ganesh.

We’ve been to a number of very old, very beautiful temples. We visited this temple, which was built around a natural spring, during a festival in which people enter the water for purification. In the second photo, you can see circular dark patches at the bottom of the water. This is where the spring is bubbling up through the silt.

Huge, ancient banyan trees are also considered sacred, and banyan trees in temples are often wrapped in fabric. Visitors also have to wrap their bare legs in fabric as a mark of respect. Smuts, who was wearing shorts, looks great in a Balinese sarong!

Bali rice

Our villa is in a village just outside Ubud. Local life goes on all around us. No alarm clock needed: we’re woken by the smell of woodsmoke and the sounds of ducks and roosters. Many, many roosters.

The local rice paddies are only a few minutes' walk away. One morning, after a breakfast of banana, pawpaw, pineapple and lime juice, and black sticky rice with coconut and palm sugar …

 … we went for an early morning walk through the rice paddies near our villa. Wayan’s family owns some of this land.

The community also keeps pigs, cows and chickens. Of course, there are ducks wherever there are rice paddies. One of Ubud's classic dishes is smoked duck. We will definitely be eating smoked duck before we leave Ubud.

The rice fields in the photo below are in central Bali. We passed these on our trip to the volcano in the north.  The children were flying kites in the paddies.

Some rice paddies are built on terraces on the side of hills, and are very old and extremely beautiful. These terraces (below) are so famous that there’s an entry fee as you drive into the local village. The yellowish rice on the left of the photo is ripe; the green rice is young and unripe.

I'm writing this in a restaurant overlooking a river in Ubud. Hooray! Our smoked duck (and rice) has arrived. Will take a photo -- but trust us, it looks delicious. Dad, I think you would enjoy this dish. Wish you were here!

Hello Bali

After a six-hour flight from Melbourne to Denpasar yesterday ...

... Smuts and I are now in Bali for the next seven days. I love getting off a plane and into that wonderful fragrant tropical heat.

Bali is about three times the size of Mauritius.

We're based in Ubud for the first four days. Ubud is inland, in a hilly area, and is the cultural centre of Bali. If you've read (or seen) Eat, Pray, Love, it's where the writer's Indonesian sojourn takes place. We're staying in a villa, owned by an ex-colleague, about two kilometres outside the town. Wayan, the house manager, met us at the airport. The drive to Ubud from Denpasar Airport takes about an hour.

It's been a steady 30 degrees, quite humid and a little stormy. Here are some initial photos, to set the mood, from our first day in Bali. Note the gorgeous frangipani and hibiscus flowers that were placed around the pool in our villa for our arrival.

And before long, Smuts was in the pool with a Bintang.

We had dinner at a lovely little local restaurant. This is Indonesian rijstaffel: beautiful pork and fish satays and sambals, fish, chicken coconut curry, noodles, rice. The standout dish was the beef curry. Indonesian beef curry is often made with dried beef -- not quite biltong, but beef that's been dried enough to have texture. The curry is hot and sweet and totally delicious. (We also had some extra prawns grilled on the spot, but resisted the fresh lobster and crab because we will be in Jimbaran in a few days' time.)

More about our Bali travels in the next day or two.

Cousin Hilton

Today would have been Hilton's 61st birthday. He was born on 19 April 1951, a week or so before Mom and Dad's wedding. This photo was taken on the day of his wedding to Carol, in the early 1980s.

Here's another photo from the lovely suite taken by Rene on the day of my christening in 1960. From left to right: Mom, Yvette, Hilton, Brian, Heidi, Marcel, Grandma Tina and Grandpa Arnold. And a sausage dog ...

Bush wedding

Pilanesburg - A wedding in the bush, quite close to Kwa Maritane where the Justus family and Don and I had spent a few days during their World Cup visit.

Keith Price, a very good and old friend of Don's, gave his daughter Claire away in the middle of the bush, attended by family and friends and protected by rifle-carrying rangers.

As the sun started to set, open vehicles transported everyone back to the lodge for the wedding reception, with music provided by a saxophonist, marimba drummers and bagpipers.

Claire and Keith walk down the dusty aisle surrounded by the beautiful Pilanesberg mountains.

Wedding guests were given parasols providing shade against the Autumn sun.

Vintage girls

Before we leave the car theme altogether (well, for now), this photo is a wonderful reminder of the Durban holidays that we used to have in the early 1960s. To those youngsters who are wondering who these gorgeous people are, that's young Heidi on the left and me on the right. Mom is in the yellow shirt next to her father and our beloved grandfather. Mom called her father 'Pop'; Heidi and I called him 'Bop'.

This was taken in 1965. Heidi is eight and I am five. In those days, Durban had a funfair next to the beach. Our holidays always included rides on the cars, boats, trains and ferris wheels at the funfair. Heaps of candyfloss too, which went all sticky in the humidity. Absolute heaven!

Birthday Don

Here's a reminder of our funny-face dinner at Le Galawa in the Comoros, in 1995. Seventeen years ago! Sadly, Don (who was the instigator) is taking the photo and is not frozen into funniness forever.

Don, may your birthday be full of fun and funny faces -- and good memories.

Osebeni

OSEBENI — “Place of Magnificent Views” — is situated high up on the escarpment near Waterval Boven, looking down on the Elands River valley with breathtaking scenery in all directions.

It's 20 minutes from Machadodorp, which since the redirection of the main road has become rather dilapidated. Osebeni Heritage Reserve is 720 ha in size and has been declared a South African heritage site because of the presence of the dwarf cycad.

The farm has numerous head of game, a wide variety of birds, but most importantly it has 4 trout dams which are nicely stocked. And it is here that Don and I spent the Easter weekend hiking, fishing ... fishing ... fishing and more fishing!

Gran Turismo

As Dad said, if you want a Lancia Stratos (old or new) you need to win the lottery, basically.

Or, do what I did - buy a gamers' driving setup, make your own driver's table/chair, and put Gran Turismo 5 on the Playstation.

So for a (relatively) small outlay I now drive anything I want, whenever I want!

Lancia Stratos

The Lancia Stratos - Old and New

In the Phillip Island pics the Lancia Stratos shown has a Ferrari motor. I since obtained some more information about this car from Wikipedia for those revheads among you. Then I have added the modern incarnation, which is a one-off car. One will, however, need a big lottery win to finance it.

Techie stuff first, on the Old:

Lancia presented the Bertone designed Lancia Stratos HF prototype at the 1971Turin Motor Show, a year after the announcement of the Stratos Zero concept car. The prototype Stratos HF (Chassis 1240) was fluorescent red in colour and featured a distinctive crescent-shaped-wrap-around windshield providing maximum forward visibility with almost no rear visibility. The prototype had three different engines in its early development life: the Lancia Fulvia engine, the Lancia Beta engine and finally for the 1971 public announcement, the mid mounted Dino Ferrari V6, producing 192 hp (143 kW).

The Stratos was a very successful rally car during the 1970s and early 1980s. It started a new era in rallying as it was the first car designed from scratch for this kind of competition.  Powered by the Dino 2.4 L V6 engine , it gave the road car a 0-60 mph time of just under five seconds, and a top speed of 144 mph (232 km/h). The car was sold as the Lancia Stratos Stradale.

For racing, the engine was tuned up to 280 hp (209 kW) and even to 560 hp (418 kW) with a single KKK turbobocharger. The car won the 1974, 1975 and 1976 chanpionship titles in the hands of Sandro Munari and Bjorn Waldegard.
  
New Stratos (2010)

One wealthy Stratos fanatic decided to fund a one-off model. Commissioned by Micael Stoscheck (a keen rally driver and chairman of Brose Group) and his son, Maximilian, the New Stratos was announced in 2010 based on the overall design and concept of the original seventies Stratos and was designed and developed by Pinifarina.

The car made use of a Ferrari F430 Scuderia as a donor car, using the chassis and much of the mechanical elements including the 4.3L V8 engine (4308 cc), tuned up from 503 hp (375 kW) horsepower to 532 hp (397 kW) at 8200 rpm and torque of 519 Nm.

 The New Stratos weighs 1,247 kg and is claimed to accelerate to 62 mph in 3.3 seconds and on to a top speed close to 200 mph (320 km/h). While shorter than its donor car, the New Stratos is a little larger than the original Stratos, and only 1,240 mm tall.

Old and New Take 1 ...

Old and New Take 2 ...

That's all for now about this glorious car -- off to buy my lottery ticket :-)
  

Melbourne F1 GP

Well, the Melbourne F1 GP, attended by 313,000 fans over 4 days, was a hit this year. The raceday afternoon on the Sunday was sunny, and the organisers went to much more trouble than before to offer fans off-track entertainment. The race proved that my mobile phone camera is not up to the job in any way or form, so I guess I will need to invest in something more efficient soon.

This pic shows us fans standing on a little hill with the GP cars screaming past -- a red Ferrari is barely visible in the middle left of the pic, above the heads of the fans. This was about 80-100 metres from the track.

This next pic shows a stunt motorcyclist doing his aerial tricks inside a purpose-built arena inside the track.  You can see the motorcyclist in the air. The two chair-type things on the right are cameras in cranes. The young people loved the these kamikaze trick artists!

Apologies for the glare on this shot - this is after an S bend, and the F1 cars are about 25 metres away. They whizz through the S bend unbelievably fast, and must torture their the drivers' neck muscles.

They always have classic race cars at the GP, which they drive on track as part of a classic parade. This 906 Porsche was my favourite, parked next to DB5 Aston Martin.

All up, it was a great afternoon -- I am sure all 106,000 attendees thanked the weather gods for the brilliant weather. I was back at home in Box Hill in 60 mins flat! Until next year...

Toboggans - 'snow cars'?

Not quite a car but the best I could find!! We did go down the roads albeit on and not in these little 'snow cars'. And Don and Bray ... and I think Dad ... were the most aggressive and inconsiderate drivers!

Don't you love Mom and my snow boots?

Cars and cousins

According to Smuts, the cars in the photos are a Porsche, a Morris Minor and a Chevrolet.

More importantly, the boys are our cousins Brian and Hilton, the sons of Dad's brother Ron and Ron's wife Yvette. These photos were taken in 1960, on the day of my christening, in our Bryanston garden. That's Heidi, who was three years old, with Brian and Hilton. Brian is twelve and Hilton is nine.

Sadly, Hilton passed away this week after being ill for some time. He was almost 61. RIP.

(That's Mom and me. I've just had her pearls remodelled into a single long strand and I wear them often. How lovely that she's wearing them at my christening!)

Holiday Zephyr

I was so inspired by Heidi's little red bakkie that I am nominating this blog-week 'the week of the cars'. More contributions, everyone!

I don't know when this photo was taken, but I'd guess it was some time in the 1950s. (I'm basing that assumption on there being no babies or small children with Mom.) Smuts says it's a Consul or a Zephyr. A zephyr is a wind. What a wonderful picture, imagining this car going like the wind!

And is that the sea on the other side of the wall? Mom looks gloriously holiday-ish.

Dad, what more information can you provide?

Little Red Bakkie

This little bakkie was so useful particularly when it came to collecting the mown grass from 43 Berkeley Avenue, Bryanston. I remember the bakkie buzzing around our large garden, going to and from the dump.

Apart from giving a ride to Luke, Tennille and Dusty, I seem to recall that one of the dogs loved the front seat. Dad, which dog was it that always accompanied you to the dump and back?