Passing parade

Drinker at the Metropolitan Hotel salutes the passing parade of sailors at The International Fleet Review march down George street, to celebrate 100 years of The Royal Australian Navy

Through a dirty window, darkly

Midday on a wet day in Sydney, nearly the winter solstice . Looking south from Broadway.

Dawn Chorus

The beginning of the 2009 Sydney Festival saw a beautiful sunrise at Sydney’s Balmoral Beach, at a rare free event: an outdoor choral concert starting before first light and ending as the sun began to climb into the sky.
The Sydney Philharmonia Choirs, about 100 voices, sang from a natural sandstone amphitheatre on the beach just below Mosman, while most of the audience sat on the sand or watched from the promenade. The audience stretched back along the sand halfway to nearby Chinaman’s beach. Every tree was crowded with those who could climb looking for a vantage point, and on the backdrop of the natural bush and rocks on an island headland.
The choir sang sacred and secular music from several centuries ago, songs about sunrise and beaches, with four new works especially commissioned for the event
The concert began at 5.30am. You had to be there early. I arrived before 5.00 to grab the very last parking spot, as a Kookaburra was either complaining about intruders, or laughing because he got the last worm.
Latecomers who arrived after 5.00 were flustered because, they said, they couldn’t find a park in the dark; one woman told me she left her car two km from the beach, and she arrived as a rousing version of “I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside” finished the 45 minute performance.
Those who didn’t bring a themos and picnic breakfast scrambled away desperate for morning coffee.

Sydney Harbour Bridge birthday

Today was the 75th birthday of the Sydney Harbour bridge. No big deal, I thought. Who gets excited about an insignificant anniversary for a pile of old iron. The only reason so much money was poured into the celebration was the state government election next week; the old folk wisdom of giving the suckers bread and circuses was well designed to distract the hapless voters from the problems with this crumbling overburdened state. The Harbour bridge is the only serious asset not falling apart.
But then I got an email from the indigious group trying to promote reconciliation between the white and black tribes. I had marched across the bridge with them in 2000, for "Sorry Day"
So I thought I'd like to go with them again.
It was a great way to spend a late Sunday afternoon. On the bridge there was a smoking ceremony, supported by the State Governor Professor Marie Bashir AC
Using a good old gas lighter to set fire to some twigs and eucalyptus leaves, the smoking tray was carried across the bridge as light gradually faded.
The government gave a coloured cap to every one who walked across the bridge ( 200 000 people), and those who went after dusk had a little torchlight built into the ochre cap.
While we walked across the bridge, indiginous music was pumped across the bridge, along with smoke machines pushing more burning eucalyptus.
It was great fun, but with failing light, my video at YouTube shows a bit like the Blair witch project