Epicurious

Epicurious is the name of the edible garden in South Bank. It's great to see what grows well in our city - so much, apparently! - although as a struggling vegetable gardener it makes me feel a bit inadequate. Volunteers are here every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings 7-11.30am to hand out gardening advice and hand out the harvest too - free! Yes, I'll have to set my alarm and bring a bag next time.
By the way those are a couple of Segway riders in the background. You can now hire them and tear along the path by the river scaring the wits out of the tourists. Alternatively you can just watch people riding them and laugh. Either way - great fun!

Kurilpa Derby 2012

Every year, the residents of West End close off the main road, dress up and get on their bikes, scooters, prams, beds, office chairs, wheelie bins or whatever else they can put on wheels for a big party. There's a big parade followed by a series of whacky races. There's plenty of music, dancing and laughs to be had....

 

 

 

 The squid relay is disgusting but strangely mesmorising. Teams have to run with and transfer a squid to their team-mates using their mouths only. My thanks to Pete for these two fab photos below. I was standing right next to him at the first transfer point, camera poised, ready for action, when my camera suddenly stopped working. Aaargh! The memory card had filled up - what a schoolgirl error. I am still kicking myself. Anyway you can check more of his photos out here.

Applying The Brakes

It's been a hard decision for me to make but I've decided to stop posting daily.

A big thank-you to everyone who has visited here over the years and to all your words of encouragement. Without them I would have stopped all this blogging lark ages ago.

The blog will remain active, though, and I'll post every now and then.... so feel free to swing by from time to time.

Chinese Chess at Inala Civic Centre

You can wander around the square in Inala Civic Centre and see several different games happening at once. There are huddles of people around each board with everyone staring intently...

When the girls outnumber the boys six to one...

...and Britney Spears is on SingStar.... it's time to take refuge in the DS.

December Theme Day: Action Shot

Woohoo! Summer's here! Today is officially the first day of summer although most of November was glorious sunshine. Just the kind of weather for taking a plunge in the pool. Actually this one gets a perfect 10 from me for the ultimate belly flop.

Fab to be back posting again after a much needed break. Happy theme day!


Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

Interactivity

This is the Light Scope again as featured in yesterday's post. Some of the lights are interactive such as these dots. They follow you around as you walk, or cluster together if you stand as a group.

Crash Landing!

West End's Kurilpa Derby Day kicked off with a parade of all sorts of weird and wonderful ways to wheel yourself around. There was no shortage of stacks.

Balancing Acts!

... and they managed to stay upright! Amazing!

Kurilpa Derby Day

West End's main street, Boundary Street, was closed off yesterday for a series of wacky races. Prams, bikes, go-carts and pretty much anything else on wheels was eligible. As well as the races, there was a brass band, bicycle polo and a roller derby demonstration. Too much going on for just one photo so sit back, relax and enjoy the next few days courtesy of the folk of West End.

Ah yeah, that's the spot!

Here's one from the archives. It's from Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary in Fig Tree Pocket. Koalas aside (of which there are loads), you can see a whole host of Aussie native animals there. Everyone loves feeding the kangaroos. Consequently they are so well fed they turned their noses up at the food we offered and instead lounged around waiting for a belly scratch.

I heard this story once about an American film all about Australia being made on Fraser Island, a couple of hundred kilometres north of here. It's a stunning sand island that would have made a perfect backdrop but for the fact that there were no kangaroos on the whole island. So desperate were the film makers to have shots of kangaroos bounding through the bush, they managed to cut a deal with Lone Pine and fly some kangaroos to the island to be film stars. Unfortunately for the film makers, the kangaroos were more interested in wandering up to the cameras and getting cuddles from the crew than strenuous bouncing around so the whole project was shelved.

Look No Hands!

I was a bit stuck for a photo so started having a rummage around in the archives and found this one from a couple of years ago that I hadn't posted yet. First to eat the entire doughnut using your mouth only is the winner. A cracking kids' game which I intend to adapt for my own birthday party next year.

Not Long Now

For anyone who knows the old West End ferry stop, things have changed a lot around that area. Houses have been pulled down and there is a bus turning circle.  The old ferry stop which was carried down the Brisbane River during the floods is being replaced with a much bigger, swankier terminal that's due to open next month and will hopefully see us through to the next flood. You can sort of see the front of it here but not very well. We've been 6 months without a CityCat service round these parts so it'll be great to see it up and running again. In the meantime, here's some tandem bikers who just realised I was taking their photo.

Back To Normal

The sand is back in South Bank and the swimming lagoons have re-opened after the flood devastation. It's looking great. We are, however, going though something of a cold snap; crystal clear blue skies with daytime highs of about 20 degrees and overnight lows of about 6.
Not a chance of getting me in that water.

Ceci n'est pas une bunch of random objects

    One of the great things about our Gallery of Modern Art is that the main event usually has a corresponding (free) hands-on kids' exhibition. Right now there is a big Surrealism exhibition going on. This particular activity involved making a sculpture out of a big tray of supplied objects and arranging them in a lit space. You could then take a photo of the sculpture using a fixed camera and email it off to people announcing your arrival as a surrealist artist as well as this info:

  In 1913 Marcel Duchamp was the first artist to make a sculpture using found objects. He took a stool and a bicycle wheel, attached the wheel to the seat of the stool and turned it into a work of art.

Like Marcel Duchamp, many surrealist artists were fascinated with making sculptures with existing objects. Baguettes (bread sticks), telephones and shoes were some of the objects that Salvador Dalί used to make his sculptures.

Make a sculpture' is just one many Surrealism for Kids activities created by the Queensland Art Gallery's Children Art Centre especially for the landmark exhibition 'Surrealism: The Poetry of Dreams' on until 2 October 2011 at the Gallery of Modern Art, Brisbane, Australia.

 

Game On!

When you have a game of street cricket around here, you get some old towels and lay them over the storm-water drains so that the ball doesn't go in. If you happen to leave one uncovered and the ball does go in, there's no shortage of volunteers willing to swing the drain open and go and get it.

Do you get in trouble for doing this? I'm not sure. You never know with Queensland. I've mosaic-ed the heads just in case!

Showing Dad what she saw in the rockpool

 

...It was some soft coral that looked like it was breathing!

Shelly Beach, Caloundra

June Theme Day: Under Construction

It's the first of the month which means it's the City Daily Photo theme day. This month's theme, as you can see, is "Under Construction".  To warm me up, I've decided to go back to balmy February and re-visit the Lego installation that was in the Gallery of Modern Art's "Art in the 21st Century" exhibition.

The huge hands-on display of thousands of classic white Lego bricks encourages you to get in there and start constructing. Not surprisingly, when the little kids had long since found other things to take their attention, it was the adults who remained, sometimes for hours, lost in the joy of a toy that usually reaches only a fraction of its potential.

The installation is the brainchild of Olafur Eliasson and purchased by the GoMA in 2005.

It's called "The cubic structural evolution project (2004)"

Click here to view thumbnails for all participants

Raining On The First Day of The School Holidays

Get the popcorn on standby, I feel a movie coming on.

Taking a break from the kayak, Bribie Island.