ginger beer

16june2018
 today was one of them days when you are looking for some past thing, a piece of paper with something written on it. i didn't find the thing i was looking for. i did find a few other things stashed away, bits of crap. one of the things was a recipe for ginger beer. i don't think i'll ever use it, so i thought i'd put it here, maybe someone will find it useful.

29june2018
firstly, me and ginger beer go back to my youth, just like for others my age and older. just like poor man's oranges, ginger beer was the staple beverage of old. too me, it's a bit like sea monkeys, a concoction that turns into a so called plant that is feed. i remember making it back in the sixties, but it turned out crappy. there's a lot of work in bottling, just like real beer. being young at the time there was no waiting, ended up opening to early and i think it tasted rubbish. others had problems with exploding bottles. the whole thing is trail and error and art. 

2july2018
to make plant:-
- 8 sultanas
- juice of two large lemons
- 1 teaspoon lemon pulp
- 4 teaspoons sugar
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 2 cups cold water

to feed:-
ground ginger
sugar

method:-
combine all plant ingrediants in a screw top jar.
leave for 2 to 5 days or until beginning to ferment.
then each day for 7 days, 'feed' with two teaspoons ground ginger
and four teaspoons of sugar.
this is the ginger beer 'plant' from which ginger beer is made.

to make ginger beer:-
- 4 cups of sugar
- 4 cups boiling water
- juice from 4 lemons
- 7 litres of cold water

method:-
place sugar in a large bowl, add boiling water and lemon juice
and stir until sugar has dissolved.
strain ginger beer plant through fine muslin in to water + lemon
mixture;
squeeze muslin dry.
add cold water and pour into clean, dry airtight bottles.
seal with patent seal caps.
keep, five days in a cool cupboard before opening.

to keep plant alive
divide in half the mixture left in muslin after straining
and discard one half or start a second plant or give it to
 a friend.
put the other half in a screw top jar with 2 cups of cold water
and feed each day for a week with 4 teaspoons of sugar and
2 teaspoons of ground ginger.

ayres rock

8 april2018
lots of people have an ayres rock, Uluru, story, i don't have one of those.mine is somewhat different, in actual fact, i've never seen it or been there, but there is some symbolic connection. my intention here is to tell a story the best way i can remember it. plus add other interesting bits of time.

9 april 2018
this came about through mucking about searches on twitter. knowing my friends aren't on twitter, either they're old, dead or just not interested. i done a wollongong search to see what's happening. i do mucking about searches every so often, probably due to boredom. a couple of interesting things there, not much. i did a wollongong punks search, knowing probably dead as anything. but there might be someone doing something. i found a tweet and i thought, i remember that.

the tweet lead me to this page    ← ⬅️   (you click) 

26oct2021

how the above link was deleted was totally predictable . it doesn't matter. it just shows how the world writes off the little guy. in fact it proves a point .

10 april 2018
as i read the story, which is a crikey.com post about punks, junkies, bikies and a poster, the hand over of  uluru to the traditional  owners. browsing through it i was interested in this punks bit and if i knew anyone. as it turned out, the punks bit was about sav the cheery punk, and that's me. before i go on, i was reminded how over the years i've told some people that story, and they just thought whatever they thought. i got the sense that, i was full of shit. this type of thing happens to me a lot. i don't want to go on, trying to convince some dickhead i'm not talking shit. like ed koch once said, fuck em. it's a story i tend not to talk about.  

12april2018
if you'd read an earlier blog thing, i'd moved from a flat to the house with artists. this would of been early 1985, which means i would have been 26. looking back now, it was ok at first, i was working, they worked, mainly a couple commuted from sydney and on weekends had places in sydney.  on occasions people would come down do a bit of screen printing or whatever. me, personally just done what i did, at that time, my job was spare shifty. basically i was a platelayer, which is railway maintenance a daytime job. they also had a gang of 4 on call 24/7 for derailments and things. so, when they brought in the 38 hour week, they were short a bloke. the spare shifty filled the gap. i worked 5 day shift work, monday to friday there for sometime. work was something you tend not to think about. what i'm trying to say, is there was days i seen the artists and others i didn't. there was a girl from the tiwi islands, who was at the house mostly. as time went on, so did people. one of the artists got a offer to work back up the northern territory, and it got quiet there some weekends.

13april2018 
that's basically set my mind in time. enter chips and co. looking back, there was probably a clash of cultures on all sides. i tended to relate more to the aboriginal man, than i did the artists. there was definitely an alcohol problem going on there. i could never understand the drinking thing. with me if things start to get a hold, i start to think about priority's. although i have drunk, i think i never really liked it. and i've seen first hand the damage it does cause. with the man, there are only several incidents that comes to mind, one of which was prolific, not quite sure if that's the right word here, through the years since. i'll come to that. i remember him camped out on the lounge floor. his clothes were that of a park ranger, they reminded me of matt hammond, the ed devereax character in skippy. i can't really remember much more about the house life, a few bits.  

14april2018
one thing i remember from quite early on was a female artist taking photos of the man. i didn't think he liked it too much. the final item from some photo was a silhouette image of the mans profile. it reminded me of   them luna park silhouette images  of yesteryear. i think he was happy when all that stuff was over.  

16april2018
like i said before, i did my own thing. i knew the man was part of the traditional owners of that country up there. it was interesting. my personal view was probably indifference, although i could see the attachment, both spiritual and generational. the attachment goes back thousands of years. i can't really remember anything about town too much. i do remember, the man drank in the public bar in the old wollongong pub, i kept an eye on him there. the public bar was just serious drinkers, no jukebox, maybe a radio for the races. the tab (betting shop) was up the road a bit. and a cigarette machine. they pulled that pub down  in 1986. i drank in the lounge part, they had a jukebox and sit down space invaders table and a pool table room separate. no card machines or pokies. that was it basically.

18april2018
with doing the shift work and the few weeks that they were there, i can't really say much about the incidents in that article. the thing that always made me think about that time, was the washing machine incident. come the weekend, time to wash the work gear. the one thing i never had was a washing machine. they had this twin tub hoover thing at the house. i was doing the work gear, and the man asked me if i could wash his clothes. i was only too happy to wash the ayres rock dirt from the rangers garb. i don't think those clothes had ever seen water, the colour of the water, magic dirt. the man gave me 10 dollars for washing them, i said don't worry, but he insisted. it had a sort of symbolic gesture of  a new start. those clothes came out spick. i ended up having that machine right up until quite recently something like 32 years. it broke down i'd fix it. many a time, while washing i thought about that man and that time, and other times. probably could write another blog chapter on it. in actual fact that machine of late became unfixable, i'd saved up a bit of money and brought a new one. i took the old machine apart and got rid of it that way. the shell was put out on the curb, it lasted a few days before someone took it. in the few days it was there, i thought about that time when i walked past it. that would have been around the time of that crikey article, nov 2017. not that long ago.

25april2018
many changes and nothings have happened since 1985. looking back at that time, it was an ok time, before turning somewhere. the story with the house, again another story.

30april2018
so, i moved on from the house and the job. i learned that the aboriginal man had been stabbed by a relative with a screwdriver, and died. it saddened me. around  1989 i bought a van and trailer for the bike and started a driving trip. it's about as close as i've been to ayre's rock yet. i got to the turn off road to the rock, it was another 250kms from there to the rock, i passed. eventually i made it back to wollongong, i basically lived in the van for a year or so. i sold the bike and got a flat , then sold the van. it was hard times. jester from primary school lived not far, and his mate simon . he had a telecom job, and had an offer to work up the northern territory for a time. i encouraged him to go for it, and that he wouldn't regret it later. i remember him ringing me up from ayres rock on the radio phone really depressed about the hot weather. i just gave him words of encouragement to stick it out, and it would be an adventure he could look back on. he sent me a letter as well.

  

this photo was in the letter, the backhoe tractor is like a giant chainsaw, and is tiny in comparison to the rock

 this was on the back of the photo

3may2018

there was nothing planned about this blog, it just happened, although it was already written, as for the letter. not many people have sent me letters over the years, and so i tended to keep the ones i got. i haven't read it in years. the cards he refers to are phonecards which i collected back then. haven't seen jester in some years now, i wrote an earlier blog about him.

top hits

15 sept 2017
seems like it's quieten down enough here, so to start a new post. the issue here is how to start the thing. seeing i've already done it , it wasn't that hard. another real issue that really shits me about this blog stuff, especially this one, there was always someone using apple and chrome checking out what i just put down to the blog. i had no qualms with this at first or ever. it just went on for so long. on one hand it was good someone was showing interest in what i was doing. on the other hand it had the creepy value of making paranoia. lately whoever it was has fucked off, which is probably for the better. this was originally was just going to be a tweet, but 200 odd characters became a bit short. this top hits thing is about a record. whether it's long or a short blog , is besides the point , at least i'm doing something.

18sept2017
not the first album i owned, but the first i brought with my own bit of money. i had bought a few singles  before. this has come about cause my mother moved some time ago and lot of stuff was going. i grabbed a few things from my youth left behind. the time i bought the record was 1969/70, that's nearly 50 years ago. that makes this a bit like the wonder years. it's sort of weird how i remember that record, i think the circumstances of the time make it memorable.

25sept17
 discogs view  ← ⬅️   (you click)

 these are my photos of my album brought in 1969/70

25sept17

once again music for pleasure brings you twelve 'top hits' on a single album - the sounds of pop recreated in stereo by top-flight sudio musicians. put this record on at a party and the fun will begin - listen to it on your own an hear again the songs that hit the charts in '69.
as usual, john lennon and paul mc cartney have said 'get back' to all other songwriters, with a song that was made up on the roof of apple's savile row headquarters. their closest rival was their own 'goodbye', gave mary hopkin her follow-up to 'those were the days' and another well-deserved hit.
'love me tonight', a song composed on the continent, was given a powerful delilah-type backing and provided a sure-fire hit for tom jones, while 'ragamuffin man' marked the return to the charts, after an unusually long absence, of manfred mann. there may not be too much room for sentimantality in pop these days, but 'my sentimental friend' showed that there's always a place for the kind of sad-cheerful sound that help herman and the hermits to another huge hit. and providing a dose of old-time sentimentality was 'my way', which gave frank sinatra the chance to say that he's got no regrets.
'dick-a-dum-dum' was des o'connor's first uptempo number, a light-hearted song that sounds like a tour of swinging london. 'the windmills of your mind', the oscar-winning theme song from 'the thomas crown affair', made a quiet contrast to the rest of the charts, and a newcomer among the hits was clodagh rodgers - in the absence of beatle competition she would certainly have made the top spot with the imaginatively-produced 'come back and shake me'.
from the states came 'harlem shuffle', which introduced two more names to the hit parade, the mysterious bob and earl. it turned out that they were a soul duo who had made the record six years before and had, among other things , influenced the righteous brothers. 'galveston' gave glen campbell a big follow-up to 'wichita linesman', and another great song from across the atlantic was 'the boxer', one of paul simon's finest compositions, and a song which was thought by many to be too subtle to become a hit - events were to prove them entirely wrong.
jack rind

18oct2017

21oct2017

so the story is, i was up the local paper shop, and they got a carousel rack stand of records in. at the time i liked my sentimental friend by herman's hermits. i seen this record and noticed my sentimental friend. i spent some time reading the cover. i remember waiting to hear my sentimental friend on the radio. it came on the radio at my grand mothers place. it took a while but i remember they were doing the washing out the back, still had the old washing copper, where you lit a fire under a copper tub and ringers into tubs. i asked my mother what sentimental meant, she said, you. i never ever got a proper answer,  just some riddle that took me years to figure out what she meant. when i think about it now, she meant i was being sentimental and couldn't  explain, how many people know what something is but can't explain it. so, if a teacher asked me what sentimental meant? i would have said, you. my sentimental friend = you my friend. it sort of works. i was nearly going to buy the single, which was at that time either 75 cents or a dollar, which was a bit of dosh. a packet of cigs is now over 20 bucks, i remember buying them for the old man at 33 cents a pack, he'd send me to the shop. i thought you get a few extra songs that were okay, i wasn't that sure. every time i went to the paper shop , i'd look to see if it was still there. come friday hit the olds for a bit of cash and bought it.

18nov2017
like them top of the pops  things, not the original artists. i think i felt  a bit gipt (ripped off) by this, still it was okay. i think now, it sort of adds to the mystery, like who is this jack rind, who done the sleeve notes. and who were the studio artists, side two was the main play, i haven't heard this album for many, many years. if i'm still alive in two years i'll give it a whirl. thinking back, love me tonight was okay and the boxer. i played it on that old stereo gram i've talked about in earlier blog at my grandmothers place. i remember singing along with my sentimental friend turned down and everyone in bed sleeping, over and over . would have been 11 or 12. i later did the same with teaser and the firecat album.

30may2018

here's photo of the paper shop were i bought the record. judging by the cars, post 68

the park

23june17
this is going to be problematic, not because i don't have much to write , quite the opposite. my earliest memory would be very very young, i'm talking 1960/61. it was the skateboard fad. i say fad cause it never lasted long . maynes parade is right of the fire station, a split road, high and low. billy carts were the go. the skateboard thing was nailing  roller skate wheels to a board, and rolling down the hill. by the time i got to kindergarten this fad had past.

26june17
 one reason for that last first entry was the parks name, unanderra skate park. as long as i can remember it was just called 'the park'. back in the mid 40's it was a horse racing track, trots. back then cars were pretty much scarce. one car an hour on a good day. horse and sulky were the main, as were pushbikes, bus and steam train on time table.

30june2017
i haven't really thought much about this in the last few days. to put it bluntly my spelling is fucked, and spell check doesn't have a clue. i couldn't spell scarce in that last bit, it took me about half an hour to figure out how to spell it, by that time all inspo was kaputnick . i just thought, fuck this. too many things. the other day, i seen this bloke i knew, took me nine hours of raking the brain, to remember his surname. it's a good feeling when it comes to you. speaking of names i thought about the name of the park. the park of good and bad, came to mind. good and evil is a bit strong, although some evil may have happened there.

 2july2017
the good and bad has to do with a sports match, whatever it is . it is good for the winner and bad for the loser. i've seen many winners and losers at the park. as a matter of fact a lot of things that get reflected in my mind come from the park. as this tour will progress, i can go to any inch of the park and reflect on a time and scene that happened. not so much from the eighties on, but the 60 and 70s.  

22june2017

12july2017
this is the first of a series of photos i took on my little outing that day. the street is central road, looking across to the park , at which you just see a few trees. i see a cubs building and a pensioners hall. both buildings have since been demolished. the tennis courts are still there and the old 2nd unanderra scouts hall, that black hole between the trees yonder. my mind has stories about the pensioners hall and the cub hall, both buildings built after the scout hall, a long time after. that's probably the significance of the photo.

15july2017
this next photo is taken around the same spot , more or less looking north. the significance here is the two roads, central  road and the mall. like i said before not to sure if it's called the mall, maybe it's called the club car park. all this bitumen and concrete is new to me, although a bit was done around the 80's. probably up to the mid 70's central road from this point was two lanes bitumen and dirt sides and was lower. the mall had a gutter. there was a house to the left and a little road going start through to the next road, blocks of land on each side and blackberry bushes. they built the club. one block was their car park , then the other became  a car park.

16july2017
this next one is a short walk up the road from the last photo. the little mall shopping centre has been swallowed up by the club. in it's hey day, the little mall had a butcher shop, a mini type supermarket, probably the best description would be two shops into one, small spinarooni turnstiles , a couple of smallish shopping trollies. pretty much the same as them modern convenience store, but the prices being inbetween  supermarket and convenient store. also there was a chemist and a fish and chip shop. and the little rental office. so, this photo shows that long telegraph i was on about. it used to fascinate me as a child, the other side of the club is my old primary school. i think it has something to do with hoses. get all the water out or something.

30may2018

 early photo of the mall

18july2017
so with this one, that little road is the same as the one i talked of earlier. the gutter being v shaped, again swallowed by the club. i had an idea about a periscopic pipe with a hose attached. say a ten foot hose , when water pressure is applied the hose lifts up to a horizontal level spraying the fire . just an idea. with the fire station , i can't really remember but i felt a bit let down when i was young, there was no slide down pole. like in the little golden books.

19july2017
a bit of vague recollection there. here, i've crossed the road, the tennis court has change a bit. there used to be corrugated iron fence with meshed wire on top. even the courts are different. you probably might think it's boring, but to me it's like a time capsule. my mind thinks more of them poshy type that ran the thing back then, it was mainly a girly thing.

20july2017
this shows the skateboard park thing, rinky dink. all new to me. and yonder is a syrian orthodox church. as i remember that was a church of england, i think or one of them type. where the skateboard park is , was a netball field , and after that was like change room , toilet sheds. we would hang out there after school and such and smoke cigs and kick balls and cricket with bins as wickets. the bins then were square and rectangle long and chamfered  at the top and hooked on a pole. they were ideal as wickets. you also had to watch out for them dirty dick characters hanging round. as youngsters  we were warned of such people.

21july17
behind the tennis court was swings, see saw and this plank swing thing. there gone, replaced with this monstrosity. councils scared of litigation, removed all the old swings, slippery dips and see saws.
 good and bad park.

friends and foes, unanderra hearts. mr campbell was the local street sweeper.

20april2020

twenty years on and the goalie in that 1965 picture was still playing , bottom left billy bailey.

here's a comment from where i swiped the photo,

Anthony Acton - This year was 1984. That year we played Wollongong Sports in the 2nd Div Res Grade GF at Berkeley and the match finished in a draw. It was the only time that Grand finals were decided by a penalty shootouts but with a difference. 5 players had to take the ball from the halfway spot and dribble it toward the opposing goalie and try and score past him ... a very ordinary way to decide the GF .. suffice to say we lost. I think maybe it didn't help when I got sent off just on halftime 😕

some more old photos

22july17
this is just a photo of the fields. mt keira is in the left background, the hill in the middle is green hill estate. estate? the queen stopped there for a cup of tea back in the sixties. nowadays it's been built out. on the right is cobbler's hill to the right of the goal post. them lights weren't there in the seventies. unanderra hearts sheds and canteen are where that orange looking something to left of goal post. the park was split into hockey and soccer , there were concrete cricket pitches in between the hockey fields. the hockey was moved over to the other park.

30may2018

the queen comes on a drive through 1970

25july2017
this is the 2nd unanderra scout hall, maybe , it was in my day. at bit spooky, even the scouts were in the news today . i was never in conformity, although i did most things they did without accolades. no dib dib dob dob bob a job here. their shop was out warrawong. i bought their book and practiced the knots , i mastered the reef knot, that's about it. a thing we had was army disposal stores, army jackets were the in thing for a bit . 50 cents and plenty of pockets, shirts were 10 cents, i'd cut the sleeves off and dye them black. a bit like the clash, i'm talking 69 to 71 . with the demise of the cadets at schools this fizzled out. the car park was dirt, there was a small creek on the left of the hall. it ran from one end of the park to the other. 

1june2018

don't know whether i know these dudes or not, maybe?  unanderra scouts

11jan2018
every now and then i tuned in to the local rag website to see what's happening on the never ending scroll of dickhead antics. one of the stories was this one, lightning strikes  . i don't know how long they keep these stories up, so i'll cut it short here. lightning struck the pole at wollongong fire station. the pole is called a hose whip, it's used to dry out hoses. i know i wrote about these poles in one of these blogs, not really knowing what there for. the link here is the actual fire station. okay, i had an appointment with a cardiologist in december , not far from the fire station, the same adjacent street. i had to have a blood test at a pathologist that was located across the road from the fire station, which was all to close. i told the cardiologist about how my old man was going buy that block of land, at which the fire station is built, back in the fifties for 100 pounds. i thought of how they're renovating the joint. after leaving the cardiologists , i walked down the street and really took notice of the pole out the back, thinking there got one in wollongong too. it was weird how i just tuned into the newspaper website and that story was there.

1june2018

this ariel view of the newly built unanderra housing. you can see the park tennis courts and the framework of the mall, in the back left. also, the fading reminisce of the race track.

judging by this photo it's a holiday, like xmas or something. it's the  top of maynes parade. you can see the mall and the fire station pole before the club was built, and the walking tracks to the mall and pub. that bottom road where the walking tracks being is a power pole. this guy came flying round the corner on a pushbike, and hit the pole and died. he was an up and coming sports person

heart attack

26 march 2017
on the morning of tuesday the 21th of march, in the year 2017 i suffered a major heart attack.

7april2017
like i said in some other past blog, i've died many times. whether it's physically ,emotionally, spiritually or whateverly. so what does a heart attack fell like? my assumption would be close to an asthma attack. as a youngster i suffered from. when i say asthma attack, i don't mean slight bronchitis. i'm talking a full on gasping attack.

24april2017
so i was up late doing stuff. stuff like sorting ,categorizing, never ending , life crap that builds up . i cooked this supermarket pizza that was nearly ready for the bin, should of just tossed it out. be warned about eating at night. got to bed about 2am.

 25april2017
around 4am, i woke up, sweating like a pig. before that i had this weird dream. some dude broke in with a gun, pistol, i grabbed a bit of wood, and hit the hand holding the gun. then i grab his hand and pointed the gun at him . the gun wouldn't fire, then he kept pointing the gun at my chest at a very close range, that i could feel the gun on my chest. this went on until i woke up. at first i thought the pizza had got stuck somewhere. i thought it was just me, with the heat, but it was unusually hot and humid. i just couldn't lay  down.

27april2017
this has got more to do with dreams than heart attacks, which i'll get back to, if i don't have another. i was thinking about that dream and others, i don't really take much from dreams. but an early thing about dreams was the one when falling. they'd reckon if you hit the ground, you'd die. whatever. this made me think about the gun dream. if the gun went off would i have died. i think the mind is a very powerful thing, but some powerful things miss the plot. how many really powerful computers read data at a fast powerful rate, they miss stuff. i once had a weird dream about this seagull. it flew down and grabbed some chips as well as my hand. i was walking around with this seagull on my arm and my hand was being digested. i woke up. i went to bed with a studded wrist band on. it got tight , and annoying maybe cutting the blood flow. i thought, strange how the brain thought that.

4may2017
time has moved on a bit, since i wrote about the attack. i knew i had a heart attack, although i thought my lung had collapsed. i just thought go outside and sit down and cool down. that didn't work. i had a cold shower just to cool off, that cooled me off for two minutes. done the drink of water, still no good. then i did a number two (poo), i thought of elvis , how he died on the loo. death shit, i think you shit when you die. i don't think it was my time yet, still got things to do. close but no cigar. i had another quick shower. decided to walk up the hospital about at kilometer away.

15may2017
i haven't been feeling like adding here. i only do this when i feel like it. as time goes on, i forget what the story was. after thinking what to do, i decided to walk rather than making a spectacle with the ambulance. i had a few rests on the way.

17may2017
walking up the hospital, the main pain was the traffic. i thought how much for this hour, traffic that is. i was just taking deep breaths. i had two little rests along the way. got to the hospital emergency okay. a few hanger outers waiting for a fix in the waiting room, i thought, i hate these places. then came question time, a bit of rigmarole with the identity and situation. they could see and hear i wasn't no good. so after the interrogation, i was on the stretcher, being wheeled to surgery.

6june2017
in the surgery as i remember. they shaved a  small patch and inserted  probably some wire and shit up to my heart. the bloke said i could get a stroke or renal failure from the procedure, great. i was awake during the thing. two stents. 90% blockage in the arteries . i can't really remember that much, now. nothing really much too remember. no real strength anymore. i was in hospital for 4 or 5 days.

11june17
more surgery resurgence, they did give me morphine. this gave me a feeling of going down. what i mean by this, is the feeling of going down in an elevator. maybe it was the reverse of coming up in the elevator. i just wanted to go to sleep. i didn't really get a good nights sleep in my few days there. lots of little broken sleeps. wired up to this bloody beeping heart machine. every time you  start to crash out the thing starts beeping.

13june17
during my stay there, i thought a lot about negatives and positives of it all. i was born there, and if i walked there and croaked it. that seemed to be a good way to go, beginning and end sort of thing. i thought about this blog before i started it, if it would end with a heart attack. who knows. i had two other subjects lined up beforehand. ideas can be short in the writing, it's the stretching them out ,too be interesting that's the problem , when there's other shit happening. i meet a few new people there and some old faces.

14june2017
old faces? i remember a while back now, 2000 to be precise. wollongong v perth  the powers that be couldn't handle the underdogs winning twice, outcome , it was obvious to me. so, one day i was sitting in the mall and this diehard supporter, came and said, help save the wolves. i just looked at him, thinking this ain't about the game. in 1973-74, me and a friend followed our local team, unanderra hearts, home and away games we went there. our team got real good, even players went to england. 1974 -75 we won it. the power that be, changed the league. i moved on. eventually the local league fizzled out. i lost interest in it all. so, when the diehard said that, i just thought give up. what's this got to do with hospital. for two days i lay there wired up, bored shitless , they had tv, you had to pay. at first i wasn't interested in tv, then one morning a nurse came for some blood, said there was an attack in england, the parliament house one. i got some dough off a visitor and got the telly on. trying to figure out the controls about 10 o'clock at night. this male nurse comes in, i ask him about the controls. up his head pokes and says you gonna watch the soccer. it was the same diehard supporter, i just thought,  fuck me dead. it was like that kid selling hot dogs on the simpsons, never ending. he said he'd come back and help me with the controls. he never did, i didn't watch the soccer some world cup qualifer, australia v someone. no interest. crashed out. 

15june17
i thought i'd do a search about the old unanderra hearts 1974-75 story all i could find was this mercury story . after getting out of hospital i went out there and took a few photos , i'll put them up later. after figuring out how to work the tv controls. you got the local garbage and some movie channels, which i found uninteresting. a time a bit before the hospital visit, say a month or so. i read a story about judy garland being molested by the munchkins on the wizard of oz. flicking through the channels i stopped on a channel it was the wizard of oz. i didn't have to wait long for the munchkin scene, it was like i was meant to watch it. probably 5 mins. i thought they had really good voices, then you could see her dress move like someone was under it. i never watched  much more before flicking the channel. what i really wanted was a radio. i left my glasses at home. years ago there was a free radio ear plug  next to the bed.

16june17
these were taken around the 6th of june 2017 after i got out of hospital, they weren't really meant for this blog.

18june2017
i took this photo as a view of the mountain from a position that i knew, and as how it has changed since i was there last. the position was the old bus stop from high school, i don't know if it's still a bus stop. the actual photo shows unanderra fire station which hasn't change from as long as i can remember. there used to be this very tall telegraph pole out the back. i never knew what the pole was for. i figured out or supposed they hang the hoses out to get all the water out. i'm not sure if it's still there, but if you look to left of that telegraph pole, maybe that's it out the back. they're got all the hoses going to vantage points.

`19june2017
the road has changed since . that used to be two roads and no gutters. one of the roads was called, the mall, as i remember, maybe wrong. to the left of the fire station is wests leagues club, the red devils. it has grown over the years. there used to be a small mall with a few shops and a rental office opened on a certain day of the week to pay the rent, all the housing department tenants.

 20june2017
today i went for a journey out to check out a few things about the telegraph pole and the road/s. the telegraph pole is still there, as are the two roads. i made jest of the hoses as if you couldn't figure that one out. i took a few photos . i decided to start a new blog with them photos. with this blog i think you get the picture, that i had a heart attack.

landscapes

31jan2017
these are sort of landscapes taken from 1984 onwards. i'll try and figure the date and place

1feb17

this building is/was? between redfern and central stations.

most probably taken new years eve day 84/85.

taken from older style train with doors and windows

 you could open

again same as top. i remember me and an old girl friend, 

walked here thinking it was redfern station, in the early 80's.

apparently it was a mortuary or something.

this wasn't taken on the same day.

2feb17

what do you do with all these? there at sydney tech

in ultimo , i had friends who lived close to there then

that's the main reason for putting 

these up. maybe someone will find it interesting. to me they were 

interesting at the time, and i was photo trigger happy also.

all these wall type ones are a mural along the front of the tech,

i don't know if they're still there. the astro boy looks 

different from these, although it is around the same time period

one of the artists' sister(artists who lived at the house)  hated this da vinci image,
 i still lived in the flat at this point in time. these are part of the first roll of film i took.

i think that astro boy is a few years later at the world center 

construction site.

this photo would be early 1985. it's at the wow squat in market street 

in wollongong, a few years after it was established, few meaning lest than 

3. the significance of this photo was the two coppers in shorts. a 

fairly uncommon sight back then. i took a couple of other photos
that day, as i remember, no negatives found.

i decided to throw this in, a few no hopers were squatting it first
then wow took over
probably like to say i was not affiliated with the artists or
the wow people, although i did know them.

what i've done here is, i decided to go and take a photo, today the

2 feb 2017 to see the change. them trees were planted 1988.

the squat building , although not used as such. lasted until  a 

few years ago, say 2014.

not sure exactly when this is 85/86, but i do know where it is, crown 

street wollongong. the path would have changed, i wonder if the 

water hydrant is still the same, maybe i can check it out. the 

car wont be there of course, i haven't seen it since.

85/86 unanderra car yard gimmick. another gimmick in the early 

70s was the mr browns hertz combi van, a car yard brought it in auction 

and displayed it right where them plants are. clink for mr brown story
doesn't end there, local derra crim was in the same cell as mr brown for a while.

3feb2017

a couple of photos of my bike after the move from the flat

these are taken from mt nebo water tank, looking 

s.e.  85

same again , moved right a bit, i think that treed hill is 

called mt st thomas, behind the tree is wollongong

after seeing these photos after being developed. i didn't think much of them.

the view was great, even at night. it's defiantly you had to be
rather than photo

looking north east, that's mt keira over there. i never thought 

much of these photos.

this is a different time, still around the first couple of rolls of film.

this is a view of mt kembla from robertson lookout.

lake illawarra from robertson lookout

another view from robertson lookout. not to be confused with the place

 robertson. i checked out photos from the net, looks like they've put up 

a platform to safely look. no such thing when these were taken.

mt keira from robertson lookout. coming from sydney, 

get on picton road at the top of mt ousley truck stop 

there somewhere. there's a bridge there now left to go right.

drive past the mt keira turn off, take the next left.

look in google maps

 5feb17

looking straight down from robertson lookout is the mt keira 

scout camp. i'm not sure whether it's still open.

again 85/86, probably the first time i rode that bike to sydney.

under the bridge at a pillar

same place looking at opera house

luna park across the harbour

i like this photo, that rock reminds me of a lizard. the place is a 

high point looking west

looking down, just a spot to stop and have a cig.

looking east

6feb2017
this is a fire trail behind the scramble/motocross track at
mt kembla. you see the power line tower at the top.

a view from the rock, that tree is what is left after a fire .
the tree doesn't burn but is killed be the heat. all the rest
of the scrub has grown since, maybe it was the 1968 fire.

what i think i've done here is walk along the rock and taken 

a better view spot. there was a 1993 fire and a 2000 and something 

fire so that tree might be gone

from the rock looking east, mt keira in the distant. mt nebo 

is the smaller hill to the right. it's hard to judge whether that's 

the road or a tree branch sticking out. looks like the road.

look at previous photo

with this , if you seen them other allens creek bridge photos, it's the same 

shift, different spot. this place is called coal bridge, it's where the train dump 

their coal loads. you really have to click the photo to see silly billy and 

mick cleaning the points where the white work ute is. i walked up the stairs to 

somewhere higher to take the photo. i rarely took the camera there.

7feb2017

a photo of mt kembla in the distance, taken from coal bridge the same time as 

the previous photo. to the left is the gas holders

you know you can see these power lines from unanderra.

i remember looking at them in primary school, just thinking

them 5 photos of the high rock stop. it's no use repeating myself.

you get the picture. i would n't mind walking up there some day

. i have never done that. it's not that far really

8feb2017

one of the reasons i decided to move in with the artists, was the 

house had a garage, which was great for the bike. this photo was 

taken just before i decided to ride to melbourne . one of the 

artist sister , yeah that one, invited me down there if i'd like to.

i took the coast road princes hwy ,1300km. i left about 12 noon someday in
 nov 85. this photo is in the early hours of the morning, at a place
called nar nar goon. i got a flat tyre not far out of a place called warrigal,
about 60km out of melbourne, and rode to this spot. it's easier riding on dirt
than on the bitumen road with a flat tyre. thinking this ain't gonna work. i had
to come up with a master plan. i could write a whole blog on this journey, but i wont.
i didn't just leave i told them i was coming and they said cool. so i found a phone
and rang them. they knew the place, i put the bike in the driveway of the little
paper shop there and left a note that i would pick it up later. i think people
were more trustworthy back then.

after a nights sleep , we went sight seeing. this is on the infamous bridge in 

melbourne oct 85.

these next few are going over the bridge with the view of 

melbourne city coming up

i done a google on the bridge, it's the west gate bridge. i wasn't sure there's 

abridge in tasmania that's just as infamous. i thought it was the west gate bridge

but wasn't sure and it is more infamous  than the tasmanian one

west gate bridge wiki

the driver of the car, james, was the artists sisters' boyfriend

one of his claims to fame was winning 5 dollers in a poker game 

off train robber ronald biggs. he worked as an apprentice 

carpenter on tv sets, didn't know it was him until after he fled .

the end is the tollway

we ended up here at a cemetery to check out an
elvis memorial grave site
 

the story with this is, some bloke painted a picture of elvis.
apparently with his eyes closed. the next day the eyes were open
or something. so they made this.
11feb 2017
they just built this as a memorial when elvis died.
the story about the picture was on one of those tv
shows years ago, i thought it was crap anyway.

10feb17
home james , after getting a ute lined up , we got the bike from
nar nar goon. this is in fitzroy.

inside the house at fitzroy

i had a b/w roll of film.  i decided to try it out. this
was just a strange sight compared to wollongong even
nsw at the time. they were still using these old stamp vending
machines at the post office with 2cent stamps . at that time a
stamp was 27cents ,i had to get 14 for a postcard on a sunday.

just some sightseeing images are melbourne 85

i came back on the hume hwy. this is at glen rowan, ned kelly statue.
i had more b/w photos from the way home, don't know where the
negatives got to. it costed more to get the b/w developed . i only ever
used this one roll, i didn't go much on the b/w. i think it's more of a light
thing. even old photos are better in colour, i'm a colour guy

the dog shat on the tuckerbox

wollongong pub

1988 darling harbour bicentennial'
reenacting the beginning