Old favourites

If we haven’t gotten around to planning anything but just want to get some air, Bunyip National Park is always our default day trip. It is perfectly picturesque, the landscapes are varied and roads are well maintained. There are 4WD tracks for every skill set and we can usually spend a whole day up there without seeing anyone. It’s under an hour from inner city Melbourne, and just right for those days when the only company you need is that of native birds and ghost gums, their branches scratching at the sky.

Heartbeat

I have a first world problem that I’m not willing to release. I miss traveling. I miss exploration, disorientation, plane food and the meditative peace of lonely voyage. And I say lonely with absolute volition because as much as I enjoy the company of friends, family or my love when I actually explore somewhere, when I am in transit I want to be alone.

It’s the sort of isolated task that instils a little bit of faith in myself when I’m feeling completely dislocated, yet I surprise myself with how useful I can be. And it’s not that hard, really, to get on a plane and be fed for 22 hours, but it is mine.

Victorian High Country

March is low season in Victoria’s Alpine National Park, but it’s a perfect time to avoid the snow-season crowds and drive freely on the mountain roads that climb and twist through magnificent alpine forests. We took every opportunity to stop and wade in the many lakes that are so cool and clear you can count the pebbles on the bottom, and drink the water from your cupped hands. This is surely some of Australia’s finest, not to mention most easily accessible scenery.

Bunyip State Park in Spring

One of the best parts of living in Melbourne is how easy it is to get out. A 45 minute drive from the inner city took us into the cool green forest paths of Bunyip State Park, abundant with 4WD tracks, peacefully empty picnic grounds and mineral rich streams under colonnades of native trees. I won’t be coy, once I saw the glittery sediment in the water I had strong hopes for finding a nice wedge of gold, but I was no less excited to find a rock with an edge of pyrite- fool’s gold! I’ll take it!

Where the city meets the sea

We have a regular battle of wills with the navigation system we bought for our car. It used to work a charm, but since bringing it to Melbourne it has been a tempestuous little bastard, sending us on wild goose chases through a city riddled with tolls. Sometimes I don’t mind being lost though. Yesterday’s plan for a late-afternoon wander on St Kilda beach turned into an evening exploration of a secret jetty overlooking the city. I recommend a visit but I’m very sorry, I’m not sure where we were.

 

Greyfriars Cemetery

Greyfriars cemetery of Edinburgh lies across a lush sprawl of greenery, wearing an omniscient shadow of superstition. Clean, silky light falls through massive branches that twist and claw at each other in a desperate arch, sheltering a pathway that reaches through the mossy plots. It is home to Greyfriars Bobby, and allegedly harbours the malignant spirit of George Mackenzie, but a place like this is definitely worth risking a few inexplicable injuries from an enraged phantom. More photos to come.

Queensland

All photographs by Gavin La Grange of Electric Rocking Horse.

 

Icarus

I am not an anxious flyer. Very much the opposite- when I’ve taken my allocated place and the wonders of engineering, what is very likely the cleverest manipulation of physics, scoops us into the air, whatever it is in my chest that normally hums at a discord to the rest of me finds itself to be very gladly subdued.

Listening to: Thrice- The Alchemy Index, Volume III

Pretty Slick

On Permanence, and Other Silly Notions.

Humans are a curious species. Imagine if ants had a little insect counterpart to David Attenborough that narrated our interactions in articulate reverence. If they did watch us, observing our behaviours with no native context, can you imagine how they might interpret something like graffiti?
On a broader plane, graffiti is, not always, but often, an artless testament to the human ego and an attempt at being unforgettable, eternal. Some of the above words, chiselled into the cliffside of the Cow and Calf boulders of the Yorkshire Dales, had been etched and dated over a hundred years ago. And how much more British can you get than carefully engraving ‘Marshall Bramley’ in a classic sans-serif font?

Wikipedia claims he is actually Lewis Marshall (pictured below), of the Bramley rugby team circa 1922. Was it Lewis, a fan, or a scholar, decades later, who took the time to scratch out his mark? Well, jokes on me. He held out long enough to make it to the internet, so has more or less made it into eternity. You win this round, Marshall.

Then there is another incarnation, the reluctantly popular Banksy. The anonymous, technically skilled and politically inflammatory graffiti artist who seems to satirise everyone in existence, especially his crowds of supporters. But I mostly wonder at so many people who seem to be enamoured with the idea of permanence, or even omniscience. New York based graffiti ‘artist’ BNE has streamlined his visual plague, printing stickers rather than going to the trouble of actually tagging something, and smearing them over Tokyo, Amsterdam and Melbourne, among many others (this is just where I’ve seen them, and initially I was perplexed at why Brisbane airport would turn to such a low-brow viral marketing scheme).
Much of the time graffiti is not even particularly creative, as I noted in Amsterdam from the viewing balcony of the Westerkerk Tower. Something like the scribble of our friend Vandaal below just makes you wonder why they bothered. Anne Frank made history next door in her annexe and years later some ratbag is compelled to make their fruitless mark on it. I’m not outraged (can’t be bothered to be outraged), I’m just miffed.

Get a job, son.