Ski equipment

Ski shop, Princes Highway, Banksia.

Winter is here, and although the ski season has started, I'm not sure that there's a lot of snow in the Australian Alps yet.

Get equipped before you head for the snow. The nearest ski resorts are about a 7 hour drive south from Sydney.

What's foooty without a barbie?

There's a canteen and barbecue to run for the hungry spectators and to raise funds for the club (great steak sandwiches, sausages in a roll, hamburgers or chicken burgers for only $3.50)

More numbers

I know 1 May was numbers theme day, but I couldn't resist this collage of footy numbers at my son's game!

Saturday sport

The agony of a missed kick for goal (never mind, there were also successes!)

Chances are if you're a parent, you're familiar with Saturday sidelines ...

Mouthguards in, last minute words from the coach, and we're back on after quarter time:

Australian Rules footy is only played in, well ......Australia. It's a fast flowing, running, kicking game. If you're a visitor to Australia from late March to September you should try to catch a game.


... and if you're not on the field yourself, there's usually some action BEHIND the posts

Surfing

New turf

The cricket pitch in Arncliffe Park has recently been re-grassed. What luck we've been having so much rain to help things along.

Homebush Aquatic Centre

The leisure pools

Handicap Honours

This yacht took handicap honours in the Sydney-Hobart race. And I thought "Rosebud" was a sled owned by Citizen Kane as a child...

Actually I read recently that "Rosebud" was supposedly the pet name newspaper mogul William Randolph Hearst (on whom the movie Citizen Kane was based) gave to a certain part of his lover's genitalia. See what you can find out by reading newspapers :-)

Happy New Year's Eve, wherever you are and whatever you may be doing. I'll be taking up my favourite position - on the couch.

Boxing Day (aka St Stephens Day) - the view from my couch

For an Australian, Boxing Day means many things, including:

• a public holiday to get over the excesses of the previous day and eat leftovers as sandwiches and salads, and/or hangover nursing;
• if you're in Melbourne, perhaps attending the first day of the Boxing Day Test cricket match at the Melbourne Cricket Ground - this year the Test series is Australia v India. Elsewhere, taking it in from the couch (where you could stay for the next 5 days, as a test match could last that long - the next one always starts in Sydney on New Years Day);
• a trip to the beach or a picnic or barbecue in a park;
• the release of new blockbusters at the cinema;
• visits to the relatives you didn't see yesterday (in-laws often alternate between Christmas and Boxing Day in successive years);
• the start of the Sydney-Hobart yacht race (see my 24 Dec blog) - perhaps baggsing a spot on a headland round the harbour to watch the start of the race;
• pushing and shoving your way through the opening day of the sales at major retail stores;
• getting away early for the drive to your summer beach holiday. I always think of Boxing Day as the "real" start to summer hols.

Boxing Day is usually thought to have its origins in the practice of giving gifts between peers, and amongst the upper classes on Christmas Day, with servants dancing attendance on the guests in the grand manors, and then the servants receiving gratuities the following day, Boxing Day. Or perhaps on large estates, all the serfs could gather together for family festivities, and the day after Christmas was a convenient one for the lord of the manor to dispense the yearly stipends.

Here's a number of theories about the origin*.

* Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable says: "Boxes placed in churches for casual offerings used to be opened on Christmas day, and the contents, called 'the dole of the Christmas box' or the 'box money', were distributed next day by priests. Apprentices also used to carry a box around to their masters' customers for small gratuities."

Preparing for the race, Rushcutters Bay

Every year Boxing Day sees the start of one of the world's great ocean races - the Sydney to Hobart yacht race. Prior to the start, all the yachts are moored at the marina of the Cruising Yacht Club at Rushcutters Bay on Sydney Harbour. Anyone can go and wander around amongst the squillionaires and workaday yachties. I know nothing whatsoever about sea-going vessels, other than it's a pretty impressive sight. I do know that if I were ever to own a boat it would be more like this:
than this (which is owned by Australia's richest man, Jamie Packer):

Here's most of the racing fleet:

Pilates in the park, Terrigal

A little while ago I showed a picture of someone being put through their paces by a personal trainer in Hyde Park. Here's group exercises in public open space.

Early morning "boot camps" have caused some controversy as they stomp past people's bedroom windows before dawn, with the instructor barking instructions, or as some see it, despoiling the amenity of public parks or beaches where people want to walk, swim, or exercise their dogs withour intrusive music or loud orders. I can't see mothers with strollers doing Pilates invoking the same reaction!

Chess in Hyde Park

I can't quite work out what the wheelbarrow was for, unless it was one of the park gardeners stopping for a look. The man with the arm crutch was very adept at using it to move his pieces.

Exercise in the park

One of the fashionable things to do nowadays is to have a personal trainer take you through your paces in a public park or on a beach. So, if a strolling photographer wanders past, be prepared! Here's some late afternoon torture in Hyde Park.

Bumborah Point, Phillip Bay

Statue of Spyros Louis, Brighton-le-Sands

Greek Gold Medallist in Marathon
Athens 1896
Sculptor: Pavlos Kougioumtzis

Brighton-le-Sands is the centre of Greek community in Sydney, with lots of restaurants and cafes, and this sculpture.

This is Australia (for Ben)

I couldn't choose which photo of images from the side of an outside broadcast van to feature, but in honour of my cricket-mad son, went for the top one. It may well be winter, but training for the next cricket season starts this week!

If you want to see the "big picture", ans some close ups of other images, click here to visit Sydney Daily Photo Extras. Here's a teaser:

Golfers, The Coast Golf Course, Little Bay

To gain access to Little Bay, where I took yesterday's photo, I walked across The Coast Golf Course. The cliffs along here host a series of golf courses, all with spectacular views. There is a public access walk along those cliffs. This was taken about 4:15 pm as late afternoon winter shadows fell and the sky paled.

Bare Island

Still at La Perouse. This is Bare Island, joined to the mainland by a ricketty wooden bridge. This fort was built in 1885, when the Crimean War made Sydney feel vulnerable to possible Russian invasion. (Nothing happened, of course). It was named Bare Is after a journal entry by Captain Cook, who referred to it as "...a small, bare island..."

If it appears a little familiar, that may be because you saw Tom Cruise fighting baddies there in Mission Impossible 2. Apparently there is great diving off it too.

More about Bare Island: Here and underwater dive pictures here.