The Challenge of Challenges

Sometimes it’s convenient to rely on the various challenges to get direction for a new post. As I do not really have a coherent theme for my blog, weekly challenges are very convenient. This week there’s wordpress weekly challenge: zigzag. Then we’ve got Ailsa’s travel theme: simplify. Sue’s word a week challenge is transport. See if I can get all this together in one post. To do so, lets go back to Cook in South Australia:

Hmm – difficult to pass as zigzag. In particular as the stretch of rail passing Cook is the longest straight stretch of rail in the world – 478 kilometers. I’m sure the railway engineers had ‘simplify’ in mind when they constructed this stretch. Transport any one?

But hey – there’s a bit of a zig here (alas no zag) in what looks as preparation for a new subdivision in Cook? Seriously, how many subdivisions do 5 people need??

 

I suppose that rail is merely the prerequisite for transport, so here it is, the Indian Pacific on the stop in Cook.

Not only transport, but superior transport. Ever so nice to walk to the Outback Explorer Lounge to get a glass of one’s favorite tipple

and then while away some time in congenial company.

Ah, the zigzag, well here it is. As well as being documentary evidence that it was not over indulgence in the Lounge that made passing this car feel a bit wobbly. Ha!

Medieval cartoons

On a shorty road tip through the Danish province of Sjaelland, we nipped in to a few of the lovely churches that dot the countryside. The land was christianised around the beginning of the first millennium and lots of churches were constructed in the 11th and 12th centuries. The church then was catholic of course. The state (i.e. king) thought it expedient to adhere to lutheran teachings in the 16th century. The catholic church was transformed and all the riches transferred to the state. A good incentive to go lutheran. Anyway, the lutheran church is pretty austere so the richly decorated churches from the catholic time were white washed inside. The paintings underneath the whitewash have been restored in some churches. It’s pretty interesting to check the messages in these paintings.

ouch – don’t want to end up there

An angel waking up the dead

Archangel Michael weighing souls

ouch – don’t want to end up there

Pretty tough to be a dragon

Pretty rough way to shoe a horse

Not easy to be a saint

The lords of the land no doubt wanted the underlings to be docile, fear god, and wait for rewards in the afterlife rather than demand rights now. Somehow it all feels all too familiar even though it’s framed differently now.

Urban Landscapes in Adelaide

My visitor’s view of Adelaide is predominately from the car window. Public transport is actually vastly better than its reputation, but with time constraints it was not entirely practical for me this time. So I did heaps of driving through suburbia. And the urban landscapes I saw was dominated by the main roads, stretching into eternity. I suppose this is true for must cities. However, in Adelaide, the major roads run through suburbia and speed is limited to 60. Km/h, not mph. You get to enjoy much time driving.

 

Road in the CBD

Main thoroughfare in the northern suburbs

I hate the vast and (to me) confusing intersections

Main road to the North

But hey, the beach side suburbs are delightful

Pretty good as urban landscapes go, eh?

Adelaide architecture of yesteryear

I love the late 19th / early 20th century architecture in Adelaide. To my eyes the houses have beauty and graciousness seldom found in contemporary buildings. Many wonderful examples of this style are found in the leafy inner city suburbs.

The iron lacework found on many of these old buildings is just delightful, relics of an age when construction was not only utilitarian but incorporated features to please the eye.

 

Wordless Wednesday

Bakers – cruel people?

Are bakers normally cruel to the dough? Or to the finished product? Or to the customers? Anyway, I’m ever so pleased to have found a bakery specialising in lack of cruelty. The first one I’ve ever seen one might add. You too can get cruelty free bread, just take the city to Glenelg tram to stop 4.

Swedish Tart??

As a person of Swedish extraction I was a bit taken aback by this offering. Not that there aren’t tarts in Sweden, but they’re not advertised this openly. In Hendley Beach, Adelaide, South Australia, there are apparently fewer inhibitions

A morning walk in Semaphore

A chilly winter morning in Semaphore, a beach side suburb in Adelaide, South Australia.

Just 6C in the morning, rising to 17C in the day. Apparently shocking by Australian standards. For a Swede this could pass for a cool but acceptable summer day…

Room with a view

Room with a view to rural South Australia, somewhere between Cowell and Cleve on Eyre Peninsula.

The window is in the one and only room in the former Crossville school. It was operating from 1909 to 1946. Nearby is a ruin which I presume was the teacher’s house but it could also have been a farm house. It was, as I understand, common for the rural teachers to be lodged with a family on a local farm nearby the school house.

WordPress photo challenge: Room

Art on the roof?

Chimneys – works of art?

Let Gaudi loose and you could get chimneys like this. Or at least you could have gotten chimneys like this a century ago if you had the money to commission him to design your building and if you lived in Barcelona. The whole building – Casa Batlló, is a work of art.

The colours are no mistake or result of post processing. I went all analogue during a weekend in Barcelona and had loaded the camera with Revolog film when we went to Casa Batlló. I rather liked the result – it sort of went well with the subject.

More Gaudi:

This is under the roof though – captured inside Sagrada Familia with my home made pinhole camera laying flat on the floor for about a minute or so.