Child of the Planet

Sydney is blessed with great natural beauty. Which can be a curse, cause very little effort is directed towards architecture or public sculpture. I know, I know, what about the Opera House. If you do a bit of research on its history, you’ll discover what a glorious accident it was. Any who, each year there is a free sculpture walk along the beaches and cliffs.

These are a few random shots from the Newtown street festival that was held last Sunday. Yes I know, there aren’t any streets in the photos. I call it that, cause it’s not really a proper ‘music festival,’ though this year a fence was erected around the site, and booze was dispensed by booth (in years past it was BYO.) I reckon someone is trying to mold what was, a nice relaxed cheap little community get-together, into Glastonbury.

Entry for September 16 2006: Waiting for the boat. The hotel managed to not wash the bag of clothes that I dropped off to 'housekeeping' yesterday, so I board the boat with a bag full of stinky clothes.   I exit the hotel and find the other volunteers out the front of the hotel, and we all meet Ricardo, our captain. We pile into a van, and were driven to the resort town and marina of Almirama. I’m spending the next two weeks on a dolphin research vessel which is a restored historic Norwegian fishing ship called the Toftevaag. Ricardo told us a story of when they were stripping the boat down. They pulled up some old flooring and found some old maritime charts. One of which had a swastika stamped in the corner (they reckon the fishing boat had been requisitioned.) Another had what looked like an annotation of an island that the crew had discovered. Our mission is a long term study of Mediterranean cetaceans which will hopefully crystallise into a network of

Entry for September 15 2006: Still in Almaria. Was living in England for four years and never made it here. Spain is one of my favourite cultures. The food, the films, the art, the siestas, and Spanish girls are hot! I like to explore new places on foot so I’ve followed my nose, had to back track a couple of times, and asked directions twice. I’ve been out exploring the Moorish castle up on the hill. Really different from English or German fortifications. There are gardens all over the place and it reminds me of the Japanese castles I’ve visited.