Wordless Wednesday

A word a week challenge – Track

I’ve not done many ‘weekly challenges’ since I’ve been busy with life in general (and my own in particular). However, the evening is a bit slow, it’s December so it’s cold and dark outside. Blogger A Word In Your Ear has weekly challenges I follow now and then – without contributing myself. Until now. The weekly word is ‘track’ and after digging in the archives a bit I settled for an image of the railroad between Port Augusta and Leigh Creek in South Australia. I shot this photo in Parachilna, a now defunct pit stop for the railroad. As far as I know, it’s now only used to transport coal from the coal mine at Leigh Creek to the power station at Port Augusta.

 

The Street Poet (2)

A smile in the ashtray

I light one for you, brother

(The Street Dove, my translation)

The Photographer

The photographer is actually a salesman at a flea market on the outskirts of Budapest. He showed quite a nice piece of equipment in reasonable nick and I should really have bought it; it was at a bargain basement price. I had some concerns getting the camera and tripod (which was enormous) home. Since my home is smallish there was also the issue of where to put it. But then, I should have bought it.

The Street Poetry Reading

Wandering around Stockholm on a sunny day I came across a smallish poetry festival. As the poems were read from a platform adjacent to a café in a park, what better way to while some time away than to listen to some poetry over a coffee? I must confess that much of the readings I did not understand or relate to. It was kind of fun anyway. The only poet I took to was a guy whose nom de guerre is ‘The Street Dove’. Not necessarily due to the poems but because he had passion – something the others sadly lacked.

The Street Dove

The Street Dove in action

The Street Dove in action, delivering goodies like:

The head is about to blow up

the usual

boredom

lack of nutrition

lack of medicine

and the internet hell

(my own translation)

Fine poetry for sale. Yes, I did buy some.

Most of the other poems were, well, a bit long winded and, in my humble opinion, not that great. For street poets perhaps also a bit too bourgeoisie in their projection? Maybe it’s OK to be a bourgeoisie street poet?

UNESCO world heritage – woodland cemetery

There are more spectacular UNESCO world heritages around, but I do like dignity of this cementery in the southern suburbs of Stockholm. It was constructed in the beginning of last century with the aim to blend nature and architecture into a whole. It’s still in use, about 2000 persons find their final resting place here every year.

The portal

 

Rest also for us in the land of the living

Images from a walk with an old canon loaded with tri-x as companion.

Fowlers Bay

I’ll have to change the flavour of my blog since the project in South Australia is over. Still there are some images to share though. The digital gear was dead at the time of my visit to Fowler Bay, so the analogue camera got some use. I used t-max 100 for the images.

Fowlers Bay, few houses hugging a remote coastline of the far west of South Australia, some 900 km from Adelaide.

Fowlers Bay from the jetty

The township was surveyed in 1890 and as I walked the streets (all 4 of them) I tried to envision what it would have been like at the time. How long would it have taken from a ship to get from Adelaide to Fowlers Bay? How would the isolation have felt? Even in 2013 it felt like the end of the world.

Fowlers Bay

It was and is a remote area, and there had to be some facilities for residents and travelers (but who would travel past Fowlers Bay at the turn of last century?). So there was a hotel built in 1892. It cease to operate in 1936 and today the only remains is the sign where the hotel once stood.

Fowlers Bay Hotel

In this small place, the Hotel was not the only place for social interaction. There was also a community hall. Fowlers Bay was not the only place where I felt utterly amazed at hard working settlers who, apart from establishing a life at the end of the world, also had the will and energy to build venues for social life.

Fowlers Bay community hall

About a mile from the township there’s a small cemetery. There aren’t many marked graves there. From those that are there, one can divine that life was hard in the early days.

Fowlers Bay cemetery

Fowlers Bay cemetery

A Day At The Farm

The delay between taking an image and being able to look at it has a lot to say for it. One can concentrate on the photography rather than constantly breaking concentration to check what actually happened to be recorded by the sensor. To view the film strips after development is a bit like Christmas. I’ve not kept any notes on what I took and from where and there were many pleasant (and less pleasant) surprises.

The images here are from a roll I took as part of my project at a visit to a farm on Eyre Peninsula. The farm junk yard to be more precise. It was a fascinating place where future archeologists will be able to follow in detail how farm life has developed since land there was cleared for agriculture in the early 20th century. I used my trusty Canon EOS3000 that I picked up from Ebay for a few dollars and tri-x.

Is that telly still working? Showing a nature program?

The family pride and joy from the 60ies (?)

And from the 70ies, in the form of a dead Holden Kingswood

Remnants from an early agricultural machine (tractor? harvester?). Must have been a bit of a bumpy ride

Remnants from a more recent machine, probably a tractor I’d say.

The old work horse put out to pasture. This is a Thames Trader and the model was current around 1960.

 

 

Friday at Penong Hotel

Penong is a small settlement in the far west of Eyre Peninsula (at least I think it is regarded as part of Eyre Peninsula). It is the last real township for 1000 km on the way to Western Australia.

I came to Penong on a Friday evening and got accommodation at the one and only hotel in town. As the battery in my digital camera had gone flat and the power adapter had been left in a hotel some 400km away I had a marvellous opportunity to shoot some black and white film.

The Front Bar in Penong Hotel

The front bar at Penong Hotel

There was also a beer garden at the hotel, where I had a chat with some friendly locals.

The beer garden at Penong Hotel

At the beer garden, Penong Hotel

I took some images of the pub from the street, but felt that these would have been better in colour. Since my digital camera was dead at the time, here is one of the black and white images.

Penong Hotel

Poochera Hotel Revisited

Having returned to home country I have had the opportunity to develop some of the film I took during my road trip. Yes, I carted around an analogue camera as well. It’s an entry model Canon SLR bought for next to nix on eBay. The shots here are all shot on TRI-X and scanned with a Reflecta crystal scan 7200.

When I stayed at Poochera Hotel I thought some of the interior would come out better in BW than color. In particular the dining room that was beautifully preserved from, well, perhaps folks from Down Under can pinpoint the epoch better than I. I thought it was very homely. More’s the pity that it was empty.

The dining room at Poochera Hotel

The dining room at Poochera Hotel

There was some beautiful items there. From the 50ies?

The dining room at Poochera Hotel

The front bar was almost as empty as the dining room on the day I was there.

Poochera Hotel, front bar

I stayed overnight at the hotel. The rooms were, as they usually are in country hotels, basic. They do serve the purpose for which they are offered: for the weary traveler to get some sleep.

Guest accommodation at Poochera Hotel

I do think that B/W captures the atmosphere quite a lot better than the color images I took.