Seeing the months stack up on the side-bar is scaring me a little! Where did the time go? I can't believe it is October already. I am fairly convinced that it must be spring, due to the new leaves that are budding on the trees, but am still waiting for the warmth. We have the odd nice day now, yesterday being one of them, most of which I spent in St Kilda chilling out with Toni.
I've spent a fair amount of time this past week with my camera. I have been learning some more techniques with processing and just generally feeding my growing obsession with (fixed) visual art. I had a couple of walks in the city after work a couple of nights and managed to get some fairly good pics, and hope to make it a habit. If you're interested, I'm trying to post new images to my flickr page at least every week.
Continuing on a photographic theme, I discovered a listing for a exhibition called Ballarat International Foto Bienalle which ended yesterday after exhibiting for a month. It consisted of lots of photographers who were invited by the organisers, along with a whole host of photographers who requested exhibition space, showing their work in exhibitions at various venues throughout the city of Ballarat. I decided I should check it out, and also Ballarat while I was at it. My favourite of the exhibition by far was an Australian photograher, Tim Griffith.
Ballarat Town Hall (montage of 15 images in fleeting blue skies)
Ballarat is about 65 miles west of Melbourne. About 80 minutes away by train, it is one of Victoria's historical centres - being a Gold Rush town in the 1800s. They say there's still lots of gold in them there hills... While the wealth was on the increase, they set up the town as though it was going to be a major city - with all the big, important buildings and municipal parks etc - and it was until it was surpassed by Melbourne. While all the old ornate buildings still stand, it's so quiet that you can hardly imagine it being a bustling metropolis. I kept wondering if I had gotten the day wrong, so many shops shut considering it was Saturday. At the train station there is a single A3 sheet that lists (in detail) every train that leaves the station every week. One A3 sheet. That's not a lot of trains.
Ballarat Train Station
The area is really drought stricken after years of low rainfall, and especially after this year, which has seen the lowest rainfall ever recorded in Victoria. It was really evident at Lake Wendouree, where it took me a little while to realise that at one point I was standing on the lake bed. The boat houses are on stilts which look a little odd now that there is no water to be raised above. It's difficult to believe that this was the location for all of the rowing, kayaking and canoeing events for the 1956 Melbourne Olympics.
The boathouses on Lake Wendouree. Everything in the foreground used to be under water
The path around Lake Wendouree. The lake should be in the lower left corner of this image. This track is a 6km circuit - I just read that the record time this has been run in is just over 16 minutes. That is seriously fast!
The train journey itself was a bit of an eye opener drought-wise too. After a moment, I realised that the dirt track we were following was actually a river bed. After that I started noticing the empty lake bed, and the yellow, patchy grass. It's still beautiful though. The scenery kind of reminded me of home, just not as green.
