July 6 The architecture of the City by the Bay

This journey has a bit of an architectural theme both of the built and natural variety. San Francisco is new built relatively speaking and I love the sleekness of some of the Art Deco buildings but some of the newer buildings are quite breathtaking. I’ll leave you to look.

This unfinished edifice is quite fascinating, almost Escher like.

This to me is reminiscent of the Guggenheim in New York. Something that fascinated me was its curved escalators.

A Star Wars monolith.

To me this is a wee bit Rococo, Art Nouveau, rather flowery but lovely for all that

The Transamerica Pyramid is a 48-story futurist building which was the tallest building in San Francisco from its inception in 1972. Today it is the second-tallest ‘skyscraper’ on San Francisco’s skyline. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transamerica_Pyramid

Not a particularly attractive building.



When I looked at the decorative trimming on this building I was reminded of the Forbidden City in Beijing. I remember oohing and ahhing over the colour and design. Look closely at this and see the terrific colours.

Interesting neighbours!

This is a bold little creature. You’ve got to love it snapping at the heels of the lofty Transamerica Pyramid

Lines forever taking your eyes skywards

You’ve probably guessed what this is right? I love the detail. The colour? International Orange 

Quite magnificent

July 5 First stop San Francisco

We’re here - hoorah! but before I get started I want to fast rewind 24 years when a mere 3 days after I submitted my PhD thesis (after 8 years of full time study including BSc  - OMG what a gruelling albeit exciting time that was!) we packed a battered suitcase and backpack and I dragged my patient Lindsay (albeit with said patience weary thin) off to Paris - via San Francisco! After a couple of days walking up and down hills, getting lost in the early evening fog, pounding the sidewalk of Market, slurping chowder in the half dark on an almost deserted Fisherman’s Wharf, we both fell in love with this new world City of Love and vowed to return. In fact we met a man on our last night who sold us a rose and told us to sleep with it under our pillow to ensure we would return. Yeh I know we are hopeless romantics - but here we are! 

Walking down Second Street to Market, my eye was captured by this in the window of the LinkedIn building. it was a bit of a Tony Bennett moment for me. Oh no 😩 I feel a song coming on ..... ‘I left my heart in ....... tra la la ‘. There are hearts dotted around the city so it’s not just me right?!

July 4 We’re off on our 2019 journey

Trains and boats and planes (and buses) .... I feel a song coming on ... tra la la. Across the plains and mountains of both USA and Canada (including Newfoundland, callooh callay), nosing into the deep fiords of Greenland and Svalbard, getting up close to icebergs and calving glaciers, hopefully spotting some walruses (my personal favourite), dogsledding and hiking on the tundra and exploring some of the magical national parks of Iceland where elves and the Hidden Folk dwell. Are we ready? You bet!

Tales from a balcony garden

Our lovely starry nights Tea tree which had to go.

The ax man!

This is the reason. In case you don't know what you're looking at this is the hose through the garden box for the irrigation. The root has completely strangled it. Ah the pressure to survive. Amazing really.

OMG it's gone - except for the stump and the roots throughout the entire garden. Lindsay did an awesome job.

Our rescued passion fruit vines. I pruned and planted and gave them some food and left them to it. They are still going! The straggly stuff in the front is coriander just coming up from harvested seeds

That was our Mexican orange bush - no stopping this man!

A little touch of colour which hasn't stopped blooming all year,  I love it.

Some of the garden beds of the Southbank community garden part of the larger Sustainability groups work. Neighbours are harvesting vege for their table from here already.  Perfect.

When we bought our Southbank eyrie it had to fill just a few criteria. It had to have a pool, parking, good security and importantly a garden space.  It is not flash, but it’s perfect for us. Over the years we’ve grown lots of quite diverse things – kumquats which ended up in brandy and marmalade, limes and lemons, figs enough for jam and eating, tomatoes, lemon grass and lots of herbs. Our balcony orchard has grown to include a couple of plum trees and two rescued passionfruit vines. Both the front and side garden beds are now lying partially dormant, but with a gut full of ripe kitchen compost dug in waiting for our return in Spring when we’ll plant loads of vegies – we’re quite excited! I’ve dried loads of herbs to use over winter. What am I saying?! We’re not going to be here.  

The front terrace has always been planted with a mind to creating a green space, a barrier to the rest of the world – not quite when there are 20 floors of apartments gazing down at us, but it feels a little private. In that garden were a couple of ‘trees’ including a lovely tea tree – which got too big and started escaping through the fence and down into the drains. Sacre bleu! My garden elf got rid of that and other exuberant bushes so we are ready to start again. 

Our families of birds were at first rather nonplussed at the change in their space, but I think we’ve been forgiven for taking out one of their favourite hidey holes.  They’ve discovered other activities to keep them amused and doing what birds do like exploring the dirt, foraging and such like. It’s a birds’ life!

March 7 The end of a wonderful journey exploring corners!

We’re home after almost 7 weeks on the road - hard to believe, but we travelled over 9000 kilometres. Lindsay counted many hundreds of birds while I peered at plants and rocks and, like a Tricoteuse, knitted as kilometre after kilometre crunched under our wheels - 14 beanies to show for those many Kms!

In spite of the heat, it was such wonderful country.  We feel so lucky to be able to travel like this and it doesn’t cost much - around $100 a day for fuel and camping fee. So it’s affordable, relatively speaking.

For 5 of those 7 weeks the temperatures were close to, or over, 40C so staying cool and hydrated was a high priority. Our bodies breathed a deep sigh of relief when we hit temps in the 30s as we travelled back east and ‘closer’ to home. After such desiccating heat for so much of our trip, our last day on the road was a bit of a shock. It began with gale force winds, beating rain and hail and did not reach much above 20C. What amazing contrasts!

Our mini garden welcomed us with the last of its summer fruit - half kilogram of tomatoes some of which were almost liquid, but others green (fried green tomatoes for breakfast this morning - yum!), and a basin of juicy, almost melting, figs oozing sweet bubbles of syrup. Thank goodness for irrigation - on a minor home-front scale of course!! 

After a day at home, the birds returned and have been buzzing around keeping a watchful eye on our movements in case we escape too soon. I reckon they do a flypast every day when we’re away to see if we are there. Our ‘resident’ doves arrived back and walked up and down pretending to forage on the front terrace in a little welcome home, ‘now you’re back, feed me’ display.  The mynas came warily back a day later and patiently took their turn at the water bath.  A female Blackbird picked up the scent of disturbed soil as we repositioned pots from under the tree and for the last couple of days she has been pecking about looking for goodies. And we got a surprise visit from a Pied Currawong and a young Grey Butcherbird both heralding their presence with glorious melodic song. I know lots of people don’t like Butcherbirds, but their song is beautiful and, in the end, all the birds seem to know they have to get along if they want to hang around our place. Wonderful to come home to our little garden and birds!

So now we are clearing away and sorting, repairs etc etc in readines for our next adventures.

IN THE MEANTIME .... thanks for sharing our journey. We hope you enjoyed it as much as we did.  Our next journey will take us way up north to the ice and snow of the Arctic Circle to travel through an entirely different kind of desert but desert nevertheless.  But before that, you must treat yourselves to a different slant, the ‘other story’, as seen and told by Lindsay.  A bientot but please read on and enjoy. Variety and diversity are the spice of life ......

On the road. We’ve had a little sponge bath since then!

I like!

.... but then again I love the water - tranquil Port Welshpool on the way home

Lindsay’s newest toy. A motorised thing to make parking the van easier. It works like a dream - once you’ve got it going in the right direction!

A pile of Road Beanies - they kept my hands busy while my eyes wandered!

A wonderful journey through just a corner of our wide brown land

March 4 - The Transit of Venus and banksias!

The rarest of predictable astronomical phenomena has fascinated polymaths like Ptolemy, Horrocks, and Kepler. And you say, ....? It is what brought Joseph Banks to Australia.  If Linnæus, Swedish naturalist and father of modern taxonomy, had his way Australia would have been called Banksia in honour of the man who collected and described a vast collection of plants from this new country - 1770 exotic flora! 

Joseph Banks noted in his diary: 

“The countrey this morn rose in gentle sloping hills which had the appearance of the highest fertility, every hill seemd to be cloth’d with trees of no mean size.” 

Of course he was talking about the east coast of what was to become NSW, but the southeast coast of Gippsland is a veritable jungle of dense trees named banksias for this prodigious botanist. I have no idea of their particular species, but when we stopped for lunch in Cape Conran National Park we were surrounded by them and I spent a wee while poking around checking them out. 

A banksia fruit returning to the earth, seed pod mouths agape

A poor gnarled specimen

Bark like cankerous elephant skin

A wee May Gibbs Banksia man

The Banksia flower is an astonishing thing

Quite fascinating- and the ants thought so too!

Not the prettiest of trees but ancient and dependent on fire for their survival

Intersting new growth

This wee creature had me spell bound watching his gymnastics on a blade of grass

March 1 to 3 Mallacoota

Here we are in Mallacoota - hopefully not hemmed in by bushfires! - close to the SE corner of 'NSW'. I know, we’re in Victoria, but we couldn’t quite get in to the SE border point of NSW so this will have to suffice. What started out as a trip to Corner Country in the far northweat of NSW grew! Our trip has thus far taken us from the most north-westerly point of NSW to here, the almost south-easterly point. The countryside in between has been quite wonderful in its diversity, colour and form. From parched desert across plains and rivers through tall alpine land to Dorothea’s jewel-seas. What a journey! I feel a poem coming on! 

I love a sunburnt country, 

A land of sweeping plains, 

Of ragged mountain ranges, 

Of droughts and flooding rains. 

I love her far horizons, 

I love her jewel-sea, 

Her beauty and her terror 

The wide brown land for me!

Dorothea Mackeller 1906