Friday, November 28, 2014

 

A Hero Passes


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Thursday, November 27, 2014

 

Lighthouses and Cruising

One of the advantages of cruising, if you are  lighthouse fanatics like the Oldies, is that you can see lighthouses from the angle that they were designed to be seen from. Sometimes the cruise ship gets you fairly close as well. Here are three lighthouses that we saw on our New Zealand cruise on "Voyager of the Seas" back in 2012. The top one is the Iron Pot lighthouse at the mouth of the Derwent River in Tasmania (Hobart was the first port of call before we headed across the Tasman to NZ). It is the oldest tower in Australia, commencing operation in 1833. Macquarie lighthouse in Sydney started operation in 1818, but the original tower of that light was replaced in 1883. The lighthouse keeper's house on Iron Pot was a splendid mansion that took up most of the rest of the small island  (Google for the story) but it was removed in the early 1920s. The light was automated in 1977. The bottom two are at Pencarrow Head in New Zealand. They mark the entrance to Wellington Harbour. The one on the top of the hill is the oldest lighthouse in NZ, starting operation in 1859. The first keeper was Mary Bennett, the only female keeper in NZ. The light was often hard to see because of fog and low cloud, so the lower one was built in 1906. The top one stopped operation in 1935, the lower one is still operating. Voyager passed Pencarrow Head just as the Oldies were starting breakfast. They scuttled madly for cameras and spots at the dining room windows. None of the other passengers understood what the excitement was all about. Love these Oldies of mine.

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Monday, November 17, 2014

 

Blotchy Bear

Sorry about the delay between postings. Mum is battling a ruptured disc and Dad is in the middle of cancer treatment, so this small bear is very busy being "Man of the house". Mum and I have managed to get a bit of time to explore new craft techniques. Last week we had our first go at using Gelli plates. When Mum first mentioned this I thought it was something that would go well with fruit and ice-cream, but it is actually a way of making background patterns for cards. It uses a lot of paint and naturally the mix of paint, roller and small bear can only result in two things - great patterns and a blotchy bear. I enjoy using this technique, but am not too happy about the bath that inevitably follows. Click on the image and you will see why a bath followed this experiment.

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Thursday, November 06, 2014

 

Yet More Dubai Buildings

So many pictures from past trips... Here's a few from Dubai, a place where anybody interested in architecture can find amazing stuff everywhere. The surprising thing is that Dubai is desert, but there is water incorporated in many groups of structures. The top left is actually on the shore of the Arabian Gulf. It is the Jumeirah Beach Hotel and from many angles it looks like a wave. At night it looks spectacular; I will try to find an example somewhere in our thousands of Dubai images. Top right and bottom left are of the hotel and lagoon of Mina A'Salam. We stayed here for a few nights on our last Dubai trip and I really enjoyed cruising around the acres of lagoon and browsing the treasures in the souk in the lower floor of the hotel. The last photo is my favourite little bridge. It connects the Palace Hotel complex with the Dubai Mall. The structure of the bridge is like that of bridges in the old Arabian cities, art combined with function, well worth visiting. Once again, there is a large artificial lagoon here, the site of the fantastic Dubai Fountains. When the fountains are operating in the evening this bridge is jam-packed with spectators, at other times it is a nice cool spot for overheated small bears to cool off.

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