Trees without their leaves at Albury’s Noreuil and Oddies Creek Parks.
Tweet 
Delicious 
Digg 
Facebook 
Ping 
Stumble
{ 0 comments }
Savoury scones from the famous Beechworth Bakery’s Albury store ($2.90… very delicious!). We also had a piece of bright red Jelly slice, straight from childhood birthday parties. It was like the bakery had directly imported it from the 80’s.
I didn’t end up getting the time to go down to the pretty colonial-era goldrush town of Beechworth, about an hour outside of Albury, to have scones or pies at the bakery proper during this stay (or get lollies from the great olde-style sweet store right next to the bakery), but thankfully their Albury store is just as yummy.
What better place to enjoy some scones than down by the Murray River in Albury, the scene for so many of those sugar fueled childhood birthday parties? The Oddies Creek Off-Leash Park is one of Pogo (our fluffy silly dog)’s favourite places in town.
But like most of our family though, when there is food around, Pogo isn’t interested in exercise.
He has very poor table manners. At home, he knows he’s not allowed on the table, but he didn’t feel those rules applied at the park.
This jumping style is how he got his name of Pogo. (The park is partially sealed off in the background because they are building a new playground area)
Once the scones were gone, he finally decided it was time to have a run. He’s a scaredy dog though and will only play with puppies his own size. If there’s a big dog, he won’t stray far from his sisters.
Tweet Delicious Digg Facebook Ping Stumble
{ 0 comments }
A street vendor selling mie ayam noodles in Solo, Central Java, near the Karaton. Right behind the fence there was a paddock full of pungent goats who kept sticking their noses through gaps in the tarpaulin, trying to get some lunch from diners and making lots of noise when they were denied a meal.
Below is the product of this man’s labor. It was quite tasty, but I don’t really eat bakso (seriously, who knows what is in that stuff?) so I didn’t really touch those, only a little taste. But the rest was good.
But after a couple of mouthfuls… CRASH. A goat had stuck his head through a gap in the fence and knocked over a whole tray of vegetables. It was certainly a unique way to dine.
Tweet Delicious Digg Facebook Ping Stumble
{ 5 comments }
Historic painting of a man. Historic painting of a woman. Animal skull?
Items on display at the Keraton, Solo, Central Java. This museum had no signs in Indonesian, English or Javanese. There were also no tour guides around when I arrived.
Unfortunately, this is pretty typical for Indonesian museums. So much history, so little money for it to be preserved and displayed in a way that is meaningful and interesting.
Tweet Delicious Digg Facebook Ping Stumble
{ 0 comments }
When I was 16 years old, I went on my first overseas trip. I went to Vietnam on a history study tour with my public high school, Albury High, for 14 days.
My family didn’t have a proper camera then because nobody was into photography. It wouldn’t be for another two or so years until I would have a proper digital camera, so my photos were taken on two cheap disposable cameras with plastic lenses. Each camera had 24 exposures on it, and one had black and white film and the other colour. I had barely taken any photos in my life before this trip. Now it’s unthinkable to me that I travelled for 14 days and only took 48 photos!! I would sometimes take up to 150 photos a day in Indonesia! These basic sorta-blurry photos almost make it look like I was over there 30 years ago instead of only 8.5 years ago!
The Vietnam trip was pretty remarkable for me. My family had never gone on any international travel. My dad had gallivanted around a little when he was in his teens on the scant money he earned from his odd jobs, but since then, nothing. In our small-ish “regional city”, back then we had two Chinese restaurants and newly opened Thai and Indian restaurants were pretty revolutionary. I’d never in my life tried Vietnamese cuisine and the population makeup of our town was far from being racially diverse. I’d also only been in a busy big city a couple of times in my life (but Australian “big” cities are obviously a far cry from Asia’s large cities, population wise).
At that stage of my youth, I thought I wanted to go to university in Albury and become a speech pathologist. I hadn’t really thought seriously about moving away to one of the more prestigious universities in the cities, though it was starting to tick away in the back of my mind.
I was honestly shit scared about going to Vietnam, even with my cool teachers and school friends, and at one point I almost thought about dropping out of the trip.
Sometimes, when I was on the road in Indonesia and even in Eastern Europe, I think about how lucky it was that I went…
Tweet Delicious Digg Facebook Ping Stumble
{ 2 comments }
Our family owns a little red Hyundai.
For a while it was mine. I had it up in Sydney, zipping around to interviews and to take photographs, with my straightened newsreader cut hair in a snappy little outfit.
After a couple of years in an office job where I never had to leave the office, my snappy dressing toned down dramatically… but the car is the one that really let itself go while I was in the tropics. It was not entirely Mr Hyundai’s fault though I have to say.
When I went to Indonesia, the red Hyundai became my brother’s vehicle of choice. In fact, “when I moved to Indonesia” was the last time the car had been cleaned until I came back from Indonesia. It was filled with crap, and still jetlagged, I took it and cleaned it out so I could drive it up to Sydney. Hard yakka.
Five weeks later, my bro has filled it with so much rubbish and crap again that I would be ashamed to take any non-relative passengers in it again.
But tonight, when I was driving up to work, a new level of disgusting was reached.
A chip packet STARTED MOVING. Something was thrashing around inside it. THERE WAS A MOUSE IN THE DAMN CAR!!!
I squealed so much, thank god I was only a block or so from work. It was also fortunate I was at traffic lights when it started moving around, otherwise I may have crashed the car out of shock.
Regular readers may remember how much I hate being in enclosed spaces with rodents. I was not impressed.
I have no idea how it got in there. But at least my bro is cleaning the car now.
Tweet Delicious Digg Facebook Ping Stumble
{ 0 comments }
A tsunami memorial in downtown Banda Aceh, consisting of rainbow coloured poles on an empty block of land.
View arriving by boat into the Banda Aceh port of Ulee Lhee, where the tsunami first hit the Sumatran shore. The port is now surrounded by stone walls intended to give some protection to the harbour in the event of another large wave.
Tweet Delicious Digg Facebook Ping Stumble
{ 0 comments }
I always take lots of photos of my little sister when I’m home, and there’s a good reason. Not only is she a gorgeously beautiful ballerina type, she’s also the type of person who responds enthusiastically to suggestions like “why don’t we go and get that carnivale mask I bought you back from Venice and go to the park in the Albury CBD in the cold at night to take weird artsy pictures while bored bogans drive past and honk their car horns at you?” You’ve got to love that kind of attitude.
We had a pretty epic photo sesh tonight (I can’t find my damn tripod, making night photography tricky!), taking heaps and heaps of kooky snaps. There’s some more…
… if you clickity-click-click this linkety-link-link.
Tweet Delicious Digg Facebook Ping Stumble
{ 1 comment }
These locally made “KM 0 wet coconut cakes” were on the tables at a little eatery in Ipoih, Pulau Weh. Though a soggy cake doesn’t sound good, perfectly moist cakes are… these little cakes were beautifully moist and filled with fresh grated coconut. I took a few home for after dinner snacks. I love that the packaging has a photo of the giant bathroom-styled kilometre zero monument that I wrote about earlier.
Tweet Delicious Digg Facebook Ping Stumble
{ 0 comments }
