Aussie Adventures Blog #5

Aussie Adventures Travel Blog #5

Well I’ve been slow in getting this next Blog up, difficulty in getting a good regular internet connection didn’t help. However I’ve been in some great places and met allot of amazing people. Once again I’ve added an audio file (this time shortened down to a more listenable length)
Yungaburra is 1 hour inland from Cairns on the Atherton Table lands at 820m above sea level. I stayed right on the edge of the rainforest which was teaming with wildlife, many birds, insects, frogs, butterflies, wallabies, kangaroos and snakes. Australia is full of poisonous creatures and plants, so I was rather wary keeping to the roads and regular walkways.

This is maybe why I seemed to be fascinated by some of the road signs like the ones below!

The wild life on my daily dog walks around Yungaburra is fantastic, with many recordings of birds, frogs, always something to see, or to listen to.
Mareeba only 40 minutes away by car, had its 10th Multi Cultural Festival, while I was there, the variety in foods and music impressive. For a small country area, this event was mostly very good quality.

This area (the Tablelands), is a plateau about 800m high & grows everything from wine, sugar cane to go with the coffee & tea. Tropical fruits and abundant wildlife including all manner of snakes, spiders and wonderful creepy crawlies, even the winters around here never get frosts with some days pushing 27 deg in September.

With the odd bike ride around the district Madi & I found these tame Brahman cattle, with skin like velvet.
I managed to find the beautiful Wrights Road Creek within easy walking distance (a little known track down to the river), spending lovely afternoons playing my sax down there in the rainforest. Pretty sure I saw a Platypus down there....the photos don’t do it justice!
Many highlights of my time on the tablelands, and it will be the sights and sounds of the environment. Interestingly the people in the tropics seem to retire for the day around 8-9pm.

The "Weather Board" below I spotted at the local Mareebra market.

I'm told the Kookaburras can take little chickens and are as bold as the sounds they make!

After nearly three weeks in the Rainforest, I went inland from Herberton looking for a flavour of the outback and found something like it (although I think I would have needed to go a further 100 klms to really sample the outback). I only saw one other car on this road and managed to chat to the occupants, a couple of NZ dairy farmers on holiday in their off season!


Colourful sunrises and sunsets are not (in my opinion) as common as in NZ, infact the light is very soft and clarity is hazy.

I enrolled in Cairn's first Busking Competition and within 10 minutes of registering and having a blow, was asked if I had a permit, that's it hanging of my sax strap. I'll tell you how the Busking Festival and competition went in the final blog of this Aussie Adventure...

Blog # 6 will follow promptly.......cheers mates

Jimu

Aussie Adventures Blog #4

I’ve added more audio files to this blog. They will run for 15 minutes to finish. Click the little grey square below the S in the word MUSIC at the top to stop the audio player.

Well my adventures continue, this last couple of weeks, Christine was visiting for 8 days, which got us out and about visiting markets, beaches and events at the “Brisbane 08 Festival” Here’s some notes from my diary:

Up at 6 am left for Eumundi craft fair inland from Noosa at Eumundi. Put $75 worth of petrol into Dom’s Range Rover and only just over half filled it. The Eumundi Market is a good one, well worth the visit. Bought a whistle from the strolling Frenchman, four types of whistle, Bird, Kookaburra, duck and cat (he’s coming up in the audio).

Mesmerized by Paul Thorley on the “Cigar Box” Delta Slide blues Guitar, and talked to Fleur his partner all about them, here is the link to his site www.myspace.com/thorleyguitars

and returned to the Strathpine Station, heading into Brisbane.
Where I stood........... and said.....
We caught the train to Yeronga where we saw the last hour of the “Into Africa” Event, fantastic! I danced, photographed and recorded the last band Musiki Manjaro.
As you can see by the photos, I was stuck by the beauty of the African race, lovely energy, fantastic hair and so charming, I seized the opportunity to photograph at close quarters as we danced to the happy, joyful music.
We caught the train into Town to have tea with a friend, we watched the All Blacks beat Australia 31-10 in Auckland in the Regatta Pub on the corner of Coronation Drive and Sylvan street. Interesting toilets in the gents, one way glass on the urinal. (strange feeling watching others walk by as one does one’s business!) Later in the week I interviewed Xavier Minali for the first interview of “The SaxMan Podcast”. This went very well, a really nice guy, full of passion for the sax and fresh from his America trip, we got on well. After the interview he played the piano while I jammed on Autumn Leaves. He’s written a great blog about his trip, here the link to it!http://www.xminali.com/
Waited for 20 minutes for the train and played my sax on the platform, it always amazes me when people put money into my case…..it’s a gift, in more ways than one! Queensland Public Library, (different from the Queensland State Library, just across the river) is another massive new building, with a very distinctive shape and windows at slanted angles. The books are returned onto a conveyor belt. You can watch the bar code being read and see the books be filed away automatically. I’ve never seen libraries being used so much (might be the wireless broadband internet connection and all the free events/lectures they run? )
This is in the Queensland State library, reminds me of seeing people in Lotus position, while in an internet cafe in Bali.
How's this! A beautiful polished stainless steel handrail down to the beach at Bribie Island.......Awh I love walking along beaches....relaxing, feeling expansive and reflective.
Back in Brisbane walking around with my Sax over my shoulder looking for a busking spot. Fellow buskers Nick (6 string guitar bassist) and Ben (Conn tenor sax) invited me to join them which I did (not so successful couldn’t really follow, as these two young guys are Jazz Course grads and very fluent with there material. They start busking at 7am and play till after 9am. I had a great chat with them and followed them to a café for their breakfast. More good recording material. Here is their web site www.myspace.com/nicknben

Went to the Griffiths University Conservatorium Library, a brilliant place, selected material I wanted to copy out of their Saxophone Section and spent about 1 hour copying and learning all about the copy machines.

Yeah right.....Child obesity.....is a major problem, and Maccas, is a problem everywhere.The Ibis birds are quite a tourist attraction, as they scavenge from the food cafe's leftovers on Brisbane's South Bank.

Later in the day just before heading home I revisited Ben & Nick’s busking spot near Central Station. I started playing near another busker (Terry) and he came over for a chat, saying, if you set up near another busker, you "give em some distance mate!", he was ok about it, offering to let me blow while he had a rest, I chatted to him. He says he can earn $100 on a good Friday night and $200-300 on weekends, starts at 6am and goes till mid morning then another break and starts again around 4.30pm and goes into the night often finishing at 3 am or later. As far as I could see, he only rattles a tambourine, Hari Krishna Style, so how he gets $200-300 in a weekend amazes me! I have left the Warner house sit, thanks Dom and Cathy and returned to my first house sit near Beenleigh where Louise and Jonathan have very kindly invited me to stay for a week till I fly up to Cairns next week for the third house sit. This one is in the mountains inland from Cairns, where I look after 2 dogs, 8 chickens, & 10 goats. Should be fun as Madi our friend, the mad Swiss cyclist will join me in Yungaburra.
She has already biked the 1800 km + north from Brisbane, camping most of the way, so I'm sure I will have plenty to report on, for Blog # 5.

So till then B good and stay safe Mate, ….awh Mate, ….Maate, ………Maaa-ate!

Cheers

Jimu

Aussie Adventures Blog #3

I’ve added some audio (which should be playing now)
To stop it continually looping, click the little grey square below the D in the word AUDIO at the top of the audio player.
(took me ages to find it & I'm a big boy!)

Recently I visited Surfers Paradise, I was struck by its skyscrapers & the general lack of charm this famous tourist trap had on this day. It all looked rather seedy to me with tourists and locals, filling in the school holidays on this rainy afternoon. Shopping for the classic Aussie kitsch gifts of t-shirts, didgeridoos, beer mugs and boomerangs.

Walked around checking the area out, plenty of women with the Arabian face shawls on, and lots of different languages being spoken. I wandered into a gaming arcade, not somewhere that I usually frequent. Allot of people, on noisey games, shooting things, bashing things, father and son, both shooting people on the same game, I thinks, yeah this is where people get their mass shooting ideas (Columbine and others), The only games I could relate too was the drum game (below), and a modern version of kids hopscotch.

Another 10 year old boy hitting fake rabbits, with a wooden mallet as they come out of their burrows, with a face full of anger! Oh what a crazy society some of us live in! I ended up taking movies and photo’s of the people and reflections in the various distorted mirrors around this arcade.

Fingers made for playing baritone Sax.

In the late afternoon with the weather clearing after heavy rain, I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering and taking photo’s of buildings



Spotted these high rise buildings, joined by this massive video screen.



I could sense this amazing sunset coming, I enjoy watching nature unfold its beauty, with time to drink it in! This is my version of bliss.


Speaking to the people at the bloggers “meetup” meeting, I found that most of them are "twittering"....I’d looked at it before, and decided to re-try it ….so far, I find it a total waste of time! ..... already a master in this area anyway.......

The Brisbane Arts Festival 08 had a street party. I took in the Racecourse Road event, where I had some raw sugar cane juice with ginger & lime & also a Hungarian “Langos” fried bread. The bloke selling them was a real character with a hat from Thailand. A real multi national event.

Would you buy food from this guy, I did!

Come to think of it, he reminds me of my father!

Took a Tai Chi class in Brisbane, well attended, its great to be able travel and relax doing exactly the same 108 moves of the Tai Chi set with a whole bunch of people I've never met before. A visiting American practioner told us all, how Tai Chi had prevented surgery on his neck bones...its amazing how soft yet powerful things like Tai Chi can be!

Visited a very small saxophone shop and tested some mouthpieces, none of which were overall, any better than my current set up, he had no Soprano's for me to try and although helpful, nothing I tried had any magic and screamed, yes this I gotta have! I tested only three, one metal (an Otto Link, which felt soft and dead, hard to blow on the bottom range) I quickly put that one aside. The other two had parts of there sounds better than my existing set up, but my current set up, especially the ease and full sound of the bottom notes, I couldn't improve on. I tried a Meyer Richie Cole, Medium, tip opening 5, face length 5 (this was good up top, fat sound on the high notes), but hard work and no volume down the bottom, I also tried a Shanty Runyon custom mouthpiece.

A very small, dark mouthpiece, interesting sound very sharp and slightly raspy, good volume right through the range, didn't care for the edge in it. This one had what was called a splitter, a thin steel insert allot like a spark plug feeler gauge, that fitted into the actual chamber facing away from the reed, a bit of a gimmick I thought & the sound sort of electronic, not my cup of tea!

I took my naked lady Conn into the repair shop 2 doors down from the sax shop, for an opinion on her current playing condition, he said, she's in good condition, although a repad would be worth doing.....he quoted $750-800 Aus. My last repad was $250 in NZ, so I'll stick with NZ prices and wait till she really needs a refresh.

Stopped to busk at Roma Street Station. Nice tile floors and walls, a real echo chamber, so I went past the ticket clerks and set up in a clear area, after about 10 minutes one of the Queensland Rail officials came and told me (in a friendly manner) to go outside the area, which I did, & busked for another 15 minutes, then the police came.... (same friendly manner) & told me to move outside onto the street, so I packed up for the day, after only 30 minutes playing, I netted $21.55 which was my best ever. I need to find a good patch and develop my busking chops!

Later in the week I revisited and stopped to have another chat with Graham Pawling the blind Saxophone busker in the Queens street Mall. Finding out how he cut his own lawns and uses his computer. His advice was to busk outside the Commonwealth bank, I'll let you know how I go with this one!

The Queensland State library, very impressive building & complex, I went to the Talbot Family exhibition "Just Gorgeous Sheet Music"
http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/whats-on/exhibit/online/tw/displays/200708/just_gorgeous_sheet_music


I spent the rest of the time, till closing in the Music Library on level 3. Found the Saxophone section...and time dissappeared!

I will have to return another day, I asked about there CD collection..... only having to register (which is free then, can view, even printing & listen to anything in the catalogue) This is a huge resource. (I may not get out alive)

I haven’t even looked at the Museum and Art gallery’s yet, still to visit the "Picasso and His Collection" exhibition. http://www.qag.qld.gov.au/home
Will report on this in the next "Aussie Adventures Blog"

I also attended an exhibition and symposium at the QSL, discussing Artists books, which was brilliant.... http://www.slq.qld.gov.au/whats-on/exhibit/cur/freestyle_books
Reminding me how unusual and fabulous my fathers collection of Artist books is....here is one of em!

Leaving the Libray, outside the Museum, is a huge corridor, a concrete passageway with massive whales suspended from the ceiling & whale song being broadcast in the space…..

What else could I do.......got the sax out and blew some sounds. A few people came thru, tossing coins into my case. An official came by and said "Your not Busking are you, ....I’d shut the case”!.......


& off I heads into the night........



Must thank Dom & Cathy for this house sitting opportunity, he's even letting me use his brand new Rode Podcaster mic.

Ah ...it's a tough life...being a busker, house sitter, and pets guardian.......

But....someone's gotta do it!

Stay safe, till the next blog B good!

Cheers from the land of limitless opportunities....

As the Wallaby rugby team showed us last weekend.

Jimu