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I hate driving through the city, particularly at night – it’s dreadful. I have to compete with pimped up cars, a continuum visual of women puking up in gutters, shitty music that’s being forced through the window of your car by a stupid club, when you’re at a red light and, the lack of proper signage in carparks and on the road. Instead of taking 5 minutes (including traffic and the red lights) to get out, one wrong turn and you find yourself, 15 minutes still trying to find your way out. Twice now this has happened. The first wasn’t any better, I was in the wrong lane and ended up on the fricken bridge. I had to circle North Sydney to get back onto the bridge again to get home. The state of our roads is horrendous. I mean, sure, the planning of our roads isn’t entirely Craig Knowles fault nor will he fix it over night but f— at least put up some proper, fricken signage.

Now that is out of the way, I had time today to scan in a few more stills and sorts.

Patrick Wolf at the basement. My scanner doesn’t do negatives justice. :(

Patrick Wolf

One of my first prints I’m actually happy with from the darkroom. The moon is even in it!

print01

A detail shot of a tree trunk that had been struck by lightning, from camp.

walcha3.jpg

And finally one from the archives, Teenagers in Tokyo at this year’s, Essential Festival. The guys at the mini lab got confused with the negative and printed the next photo onto this one. I like it though.

essential01.jpg

Also if you haven’t gotten around to downloading the infamous Swedish pop label, Labrador‘s Summer Sampler, you can download the massive 68-track sampler here. But if you can’t be bothered, or have the capacity to, here’s a few I pulled from the awesome sampler.

[MP3] Acid House Kings – Sunday Morning
[MP3] Tribeca – Solitude
[MP3] The Radio Dept. – Pulling Our Weight
[MP3] The Legends – Play It For Today

Its a pretty good accompaniment to the weather we are having lately – spring is definitely in the air. It’d also go well with a beer in a hammock too…jeez, I am such a sloth.

Day 1

On the way to Walcha – a 5-6 hour drive – with endless, quite peaceful rural scenes.

Setting up camp.

A drink after our tents were pitched.

Walking 2km to the RSL for dinner.

Day 2

Site visit to Oxley Wild Rivers National Park, 30 minutes from Walcha and slowly feel engulfed by the enormity and serenity of the place.

While there, we saw some trees hugging.

My shoes felt right at home amongst the leaf litter.

Day 3

Waking up with frost on our tent – one of the most hardest things to do.

The road less travelled for two reasons:

  • The National Parks and Wildlife Services (NPWS) provides barriers and fences as a preventative means of litigation. Anyone who goes beyond is therefore responsible for themselves, i.e. in the case of an incident, if your found beyond a fence, the NPWS are no longer liable.
  • It’s rather dangerous, especially with a heavy camera bag and a tripod whilst wearing inappropriate shoes.

We were the only few that actually came near the water.

We all have to take risks every so often.

Day 4

Breakfast at the RSL … with some beans. We actually had a big breakfast every morning.

Very layered.

Down the main street of Walcha.

On the bus from our last visit to the site.

A slight detour to Apsley Falls (part of Oxley Wild Rivers National Park) for lunch.

On the bus heading home.

Thats a quick run down of how the trip went. I should really post up some panoramas I took of the place and maybe some social ones if your lucky. I will however, post some stills I got developed today soon – I like them more than I like the ones I posted above and ones from the other day.

Now here are some tracks that got quite a bit of play over the four days.

[MP3] Laura Veirs – Wandering Kind
[MP3] Sia – Breathe Me
[MP3] Oh No! Oh My! – The Backseat
[MP3] The Go Find – Dictionary

Also …

Tegan & Sara have announced their tour for the end of the year – I’m excited.

Dec 10 Metropolis Fremantle
Dec 12 Forum Theatre
Dec 13 Enmore Theatre
Dec 15 Tivoli Theatre Fortitude Valley

I knew it all along.

Is it odd that, what could possibly be the most busiest weekend in gigs that I didn’t end up going to any? The great thing is I really didn’t care who or what was playing the past few days because I was here.

Tiara Gorge

It was an architectural field trip to Walcha which I was highly skeptical about for missing some shows and the strange thing is, I’d do this any day over any gig.

Below, the top two, dark, hole-y looking patches to the left is where I took the last two.

Tia Falls

Tia Falls

While you were partying, I was out enjoying clean air, silence, rock climbing, endlessly walking with a heavy bag and a tripod, freezing in -10 weather, and having my breath taken away … literally.

Tia Falls

There are many, many more photos to come. And by the looks of things, a lot more travelling on my part.

As of tomorrow I’ll be here.

Oxley Wild Rivers National Park, Gara Gorge

Photo: Misteree

It’s a field trip in conjunction with a design studio, so it wont be a time for leisurely activities. If anything I’m hoping that this will be the best time to get away. Away from everything – from Sydney, from family, from this and from life. Now it’s a matter of moving forward … something I’m sure will happen, just not now.

[MP3] Iron & Wine – Passing Afternoon
[MP3] The Clientele – Isn’t Life Strange?

I guess it’ll be a good time to get my mind off things … not sleeping doesn’t help out the situation. Hand-written notes are becoming rather serious posts for me now, so I’m sorry about that.

Urban Islands starts Monday and already we have an assignment. I mean how hard can it be pulling off a model for the following day? The good thing is I’ll be getting my hands dirty with all the power tools, getting my fingers burn/glued together and finally be in a daily routine again. The nervousness I was feeling a few weeks back has now transformed into anxiety. However these songs should cure that and will aid my sanity for the next two weeks.

[MP3] Annie – Heartbeat
[MP3] The Death Set – Impossible (Dan Deacon Remix)
[MP3] St. Vincent – Now, Now
[MP3] Acid House Kings – Tonight Is Forever
[MP3] The National – Apartment Story
[MP3] Mates of State – Goods
[MP3] Foundry Fields Recordings – Transistor Kids
[MP3] The Teenagers – Starlett Johansson
[MP3] Spoon – Don’t You Evah
[MP3] Soko – I’ll Kill Her

Hopefully there is a track amongst that bunch that might ease you into the week. I know these will be on repeat on my iPod for a while.

What’s so special about turning 21? It’s just like every other birthday – the friends, presents, the rounds of drinks (which lead to the pass-outs), the cheesy 80’s songs and the inescapable speeches with their evil intentions to embarrass me, despite recalling some really fun (and funny) moments. I’ve concluded that after my 18th, every subsequent birthday would be rather low-key due to the past few being very, forgettable shindigs. Turning 21 in a months time is seems like nothing. Maybe when I’m turning 30 things might be a little different.

On a different note, here is a bunch of new tracks I have been enjoying lately.

[MP3] Caribou – She’s the One
[MP3] Pela – Lost to the Lonesome
[MP3] Raccoo-oo-oon – Mirror Blanket
[MP3] Sleater-Kinney – One Beat
[MP3] White Rabbits – Kid On My Shoulders

Pritzker prize winner, Glenn Murcutt, will be my design lecturer next semester and I’m all as hell excited about that. Part of design requires a site visit to Walcha (near Tamworth) and is inconveniently, happening early August. On the upside I get to go away into the dry rainforest with uni mates and some inspiring people but on the downside, I’ll be missing out on YACHT and Panther. Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I just feel sorry for my uni friends who bought their tickets to Bloc Party, Arctic Monkeys and Kaiser Chiefs successively for their shows at the Hordern – ouch.

But I do have a plan. Go to Brisbane for a day for YACHT’s August 1st show and miss out on my Wednesday classes, then fly back to Sydney that night. Go home. Get 1-2 hours of sleep. Then catch the coach for a 4 hour trip to our site. I can do it. Argh, crap! Who am I kidding?

Also I took my film camera along to Patrick Wolf last Friday and I was stupid enough to load the slide film. Now, when I get them developed I’m going to have slides of Patrick Wolf and considering I don’t own a slide projector, just exactly what do I do with them?

There are times I ponder where this my desire to be an architect stemmed from. Answering the seemingly inevitable question about career paths we choose for life is rather nothing more than an illusion, when one answers with the words astro-physicist. Being an architect was an apt choice given my inkling towards the fine arts and maths, but if anything Lego would play a bigger role that the two aforementioned fields. Yes, Lego – the building blocks that started my voyage into the profession that is architecture. So when you see projects made by the humble Lego brick, it amazes me.

Mind you, the house I designed when I was 6 had an atm machine in the living room and pine trees in the bedroom – so that really doesn’t count as valid attempt at architecture.

I thought I’d bury myself within some books, so this is my reading list for the holidays.

If only you knew how large, heavy and darn expensive the Phaidon Atlas is but its worth the trees its printed on. Mnemosyne is one of my favourite photography books that was pretty pricey too.

I got my schedule for the Urban Islands studio on Cockatoo Island today, and it literally stopped me in my tracks. Looks like the first week are solid 12 hour days which would probably become 18 hours, once we get all home work done for the following day. I’m excited and daunted at the prospect of what could eventuate into a fortnight of all-nighters (weekends included). We have a public presentation on the 28th of July on Cockatoo Island and if you want to see me stuff up, this is will be the chance to do so. Everyone’s invited and there’ll be ferries to the island on the day and most likely a party on there too. This wont be the last you hear of this.

I’m nervous like you wouldn’t believe.

I’ve finally gotten around to getting myself a virb – it’s better than myspace … no really! I’m refraining every inch from getting a facebook account. Reasons for doing so:

  • I have enough social networking outlets to keep me busy.
  • The overall design of it, doesn’t appeal to me AT ALL. Myspace isn’t any better, but then again it was there first.
  • Articles like this – more than enough to put any geek off.

Hopefully I wont be eating my words too soon, now that I have all this free time. Holidays never felt so good. Hm … what to do?

So yeah, hit us up on Virb kids!

Being a curator (like every other job) would have its ups and downs but today I’ve seen and experienced 3/4 of the extent of it. Today has been long but thankfully rewarding. I spent the day setting up our little photo exhibition opening (which went smoothly if you wanted to know). Despite turning up late and missing out on ALL the food (thanks to a pretty good turn out), I managed to score myself an award which was totally unexpected if you ask me. You know those situations where they’re handing out awards and in the back of your head your thinking, “Yeah, that definitely wont be me up there”? And sure enough I was. My photography lecturer/tutorer is nothing short of inspirational and I wouldn’t be surprised if I end up taking a photography degree after this 6 year degree.

I don’t know if any of you saw the World Press Photo exhibition recently but my work seemed rather empty compared to the issues in that. Sure its photojournalism and its completely a different field, but if I had the least bit of courage each and every one of those photographers had, I’d be content with myself. My memory fails me at this hour but I can recall someone asking one of those photojournalists how they don’t get emotionally involved? As in, how do you detach yourself from the context of war, pain, death, etc.? The answer was simple … that photographer cries in the darkroom.

Sorry if that was all a bit too much, although I think that’s just skimming the surface of a million thoughts running through my mind at the moment. Maybe I’ll continue it tomorrow.

Also, does anyone know how to convert tape/cassette to mp3?

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