AU REVOIR SIMONE

melody laden loveliness

COWS JUST COWS

Cows on survey

BABY IT'S DRY OUTSIDE

"Man is it dry up here at the moment or what?"

"Huh, yeah .... wow yeah it is"

The above conversation made me sit up and actually take notice of just how dry it actually is. I guess I take it for granted that everything is dry and dead at this time of the year. But to sit back and actually look at it they're clearly right, It really is dry up here at the moment.

A gate with no fence



A trough with no water



A windmill with no spin



A tank with nothing to hold



A tree with no center

RANDOM IMAGES # 35

Game boy Home boy

THE DRUMS

Let's go surfing



The Cure meet the Beach Boys........yes?

365 DAYS WEEK 2

I've managed to make it to the end of the second week of my 365 Day project. There was a hiccup on Day 9, posted it a day late but I was in Marble Bar so I have an excuse.

SO LONG OLD FRIEND

You're leaving me. I blame myself, I should have sampled you more often, I should have said no to the Turkish delights and chosen you instead. It's not that I didn't like you, I just didn't really love you. You were the bar I turned to when I needed change, a reminder of days gone by. But there just were better marshmallows out there and your biscuity crust always had a hint of staleness about it. It wasn't your fault, your recipe was from a different era, you couldn't compete with the modern mellows or the new crispier biscuits, they just left you alone to do your thing.

But now it's all over, now you trundle off to join my old friends the Yogi Bar ("start at the knees please") and the Donald Duck sherbet bags, say hello to the Patches ice cream for me as well ("Patches on ya elbows, Patches on ya knees") wont you. Oh I know they'll fill your place on the shelves Polly Waffle, probably with some sort of light fluffy imitation Mars Bar type log but it just wont be the same without your 1970's purple wrapper lying there in between the Kit Kat and the Crunchie.

I guess I take some solace in the fact that they never attempted to make you into a shitty ice cream bar. At least they allowed you your dignity till the end.

adiós viejo amigo

THE HOOD # 98

Chimps in suits



spotted on the wall immediately behind this one

MYSTERY SOLVED

Email conversation with Karks this afternoon....

Me: hey can you send me the motorbike dudes number before you choof off to Italy

Karks: Elite Motorcycle training, Andrea Basile 5555 088 924

Me: Oh my god,

Do you know how much time I have spent trying to figure out who the hell Andrea Basile is?

Read this http://yelpar.blogspot.com/2008/12/who-is-andrea-basile.html

ahahahahaha too funny

ah well I was right when I guessed he was a dude

ANYONE UP FOR A PERTH BEER FESTIVAL

Regular readers will remember my issues with the Perth International Beer Festival earlier this year. Well it's not long until this event returns to our social calendars. Although I'm pretty sure it's been scratched off a hell of a lot of to do lists since last January. If you aren't familiar with the ruckus, have a read of this and then this and then come back and continue reading....

This morning I received a comment on YeLPar from Chris aka The Beer Judges. (BTW Chris you don't appear to have drunk a beer since April, dear god man what's wrong?) Chris posted an email he'd received from the organisers and asked for any suggestions. It's fairly lost in the archives so I'll re post it and my response here. I'm sure Chris would appreciate any of your suggestions as well so that he may pass them on.

The Beer Judges said...

It may interest you all but the organisers have contacted me again with the following email.

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Chris,

Independent Events is running the bars again for the Perth International Beer Festival.

Last year the festival was a huge success having a queue out the front 50 meters before the gates even opened and over 9000 punters through the door.

The biggest problem last year was keeping up and as such this year the promoter has;

· Tripled the bar sizes

· Moved the venue to the Supreme Court Gardens

· Increased the range of drinks available

The nature of my enquiry is to establish whether you would be interested to meet and discuss how the festival can better cater for the breweries you represent.

If you are at all interested please don’t hesitate to contact me by return email or call on xxxx xxx xxx.

Thanks

Marcus Sarich

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Any suggestions here?

Let me make it clear from the start that I am more than willing to give this event another go, I will attend and I will compare. However straight up I'm a bit concerned over the boast that success was based on the 50 metre queues. You can clearly see from my photo used in the voice article that they were longer than 50m, keep in mind that that photo starts at the middle of the line and those lines are the result of a crappily organised entrance to the event. I wouldn't rate the success of an event on how many people you forced to stand outside of it in the full sun. More pics here....

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Now again I don't wish to beat a dead horse and I truly do hope they get it right this time round, so I've offered some suggestions in response to Chris's request...

Stu said...

Thanks Chris

Great to read this, off the top of my head these are the issues that arose from last time and that will need to be addressed:

1. Entry, the reason there were huge queues is the entry was small and slow and poorly organised

2. Range of beers, it's an international beer festival so there should be international beers and the beers that are advertised should be available

3. supply, have enough of these beers on hand and ensure they are cold

4. outlets (bars), more outlets so people do not have to wait half an hour for a drink

5. shade, for those who are waiting for drinks, the long lines last time were in full sun

6. Do we really need a children's section? is a beer festival somewhere we should be bringing children

that's all I can think of at the moment, I welcome the change of venue and hopefully the area will be bigger than last year

stu

Fingers crossed....I guess

THE HOOD # 97

Lovers Spit

I actually used a shot of this in my 365 day project, not this exact shot though so I can post this here (my rules, I can bend em how I like). I wanted to post it in the hood series as well because it's just so good. I love the attention given by the artist to the genitalia. Nice work.

FLYING AGAIN

I'm back after a quick trip to Port Hedland to attend the (another) funeral of a co worker. I wont harp on about the state of indigenous health in this country, as I'm too tired, you've heard it all before and mostly because this weekend I just want to have good happy memories of my old mate.

The funeral was held in Marble Bar, so we flew up to Pt Hedland and then drove the few hundred kilometres there. Last time we had a funeral out that way we got to camp out in a very cool gorge, not this time though. We had to drive back to Hedland that night and fly home today at midday. A fast trip but a good one and a great turn out of 3 to 400 people at the funeral.

Breakfast on the plane (hello QANTAS) was fairly ordinary, we took bets on whether it would be a soggy sausage or soggy bacon. Bacon was the winner on the day.

Over the wheat belt just out of Perth

The amazing landscape of the Pilbara

Coming into Pt Hedland

Lunch on the way back was a lot better and even edible

It's good to be back home

UNDER THE BRIDGE UNDER THE NARROWS

Back in the sixties the Narrows Bridge was built over the Swan River.

Last weekend I went underneath her and snapped a few pics of her underbelly.
Up close it really is an impressive structure.

some bigger versions over at YeLPanorama

CARDS

I scored some good birthday cards this year....









back of the above card



so very true

IT'S JACARANDA TIME AGAIN

Hyde Park has gone purple again, check it out at YeLPanorama

FLASH MOB BONDI STYLE

This'll make you smile

Over 100 dancers surprised Bondi Beach with a Flash Mob on Sat Nov 14th 2009, organised by DJ Dan Murphy and starring one of Australia's most famous & delicious drag queens - Joyce Maynge

CLEMENTINE - WASHINGTON

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Clementine by StuRap
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LETTERS FROM KURT

One of my fav authors is Kurt Vonnegut and one of his best books is Slaughterhouse Five. I've just stumbled across this letter Kurt wrote back home after being freed as a POW in WW2. It makes for a good epilogue to the book.

continued here

365 DAYS WEEK 1

As I blogged a week ago I am determined to take a photo every day for the next 365 days purely for this project. So far so good, even though it's only the end of week one I had to push myself to remember/make an effort on a couple of the days. The results so far...

Complete set can be seen here

THE HOOD # 96

Psycho in Highgate

FORGOTTEN SOLDIERS

Yesterday Jack Sue died. Many people wouldn't know who Jack Sue was but you can get some background here. I sure knew who he was, he was a bit of a childhood hero of mine even though I didn't really know his full story until I read his autobiography Blood on Borneo a few years ago. He truly was an amazing person.

This got me thinking about my own family members and their service during the two big wars. I'd done a search of the National Archives for my grandfather Bill's WW1 service record a while ago. He managed to rock up near the end (due to his young age) and then roll his ankle whilst diving for cover during a bombing raid at the village of Merricourt in France with the 4/43rd Battalion. The torn ligaments were enough to have him shipped back to England where the war ended before he was fully recovered. A lucky so and so becuase the French battlefields were hell on earth.

But Bill's brother in law and nephews also did their bit in WW1 and WW2, so last night I did a bit of a search on them all. First up my Great Uncle Charlie who was in the Z force commandos like Jack Sue, but his record hasn't been reviewed yet so I have to wait 90 days to get a copy, if they will release it at all. Likewise his older brother Alfred, a 90 day wait. I was able to find my Great Uncle Berts record though.

Bert signed up at the outbreak of WW2 and sailed for the middle east on the Queen Mary with the 2/43 Battalion. He managed to survive the whole war, his left forefinger wasn't so lucky though as he had it shot of in the Battle of El Alemin.

Then I found my Great Great Uncle Thomas's (by marriage) WW1 record. Thomas sailed overseas in 1915 with the 11th Battalion and spent the next 2 years and 10 months on active service until he was finally killed in action at 2pm on 1oth August 1918 which is just a lousy 3 months before the war ended. I can't imagine how it would have been for his wife to receive this letter.

He did seem to have a propensity for being shot in the buttocks though with his record showing 2 incidents/woundings. Perhaps he liked showing the Germans his butt in a larrikin Aussie way, I'm not sure, sounds like a good story though.

Then one day his wife Marion received all of his personel bellongings, which amounted to a wallet with some pictures, his body buried in France, it wasn't a whole lot to hold onto was it?

Oh sure he got a few medals for turning up like the rest of them but they don't count for much when your husbands dead in a field tens of thousands of miles away does it? War.....what is it good for?

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