Lining Melbourne's main street, Swanston Street, are so many people who sleep on the streets. They can also be seen in Flinders Street. The homeless have become very visible in the last year or so. Why so suddenly?
Nice work by Access Covers, Australia. Beats the PMG/Telecom/Telstra covers but I do enjoy noting MMBW covers, Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works. It primarily dealt with water supply, storm water drainage and sewerage but was for some reason was the defacto planner of our greater Melbourne. Of course things were better in the olden days. Bring back the MMBW. What were the equivalents in other Australian states?
A winter sunrise. I set the camera to 'long distance dark'. Not too bad but it is very hard to capture the colours of a sunrise or sunset with a camera. Sun arise, bring on the morning, as the song goes.
It took me forever to find my way to an office for appointment. Bad signage but the views of Southbank were good. You have to blow the photo up to see across the river where you can see Ad Rad standing at his window in his underwear. Wow, he is a tall dude and while he has a gut, not too bad at all.
I saw some men working on these lights at St Pauls Cathedral. I assumed they were installing new lights and once home I googled and I saw photos of St Pauls without these lights, confirming that they are new. Yet the next time I was in town and took a closer look and they have obviously been there for a long time. Coincidentally I captured some nice building detail.
Do not blame the seagull. The seagull is innocent. It didn't do it. It wasn't the seagull wot broke the lights outside the State Library. I would guess it was demonstrators who gather there and then march down Swanston Street and one of them chucked a yonnie at the lamps. Hehe, yonnie. I haven't heard the word from my youth for yonks. Don't hear yonks much now either. Does that come from Yonkers in New York, being a distant place from NYC?
I couldn't read the banner with my naked eye, but my photos tells me it says, Don't Hold Back, an ad for Jeep motor cars. There was one quite amusing Jeep tv ad I saw a while ago. It involved a clever older woman. I seem to be mortally attracted to clever older women.
The window cleaner lad cometh, but not on our window. He just cleaned them. Wow. his shoe size looks to be extra large. He is probably a sex starved Euro, British or Irish backpacker. Oh the pain, the pain. Comment who it was who said that on tv if you can remember. No googling.
{Photo and text about an aftershave bottle removed for a subsequent post alone}
My visit to Mother was cancelled by her yesterday as Sister and Little Jo were visiting. Then her best friend and her husband turned up too. We will go today, Sunday.
Andrew the winter sunrise is nice. Have a great Sunday.. Say hello to your mum from me.
ReplyDeleteGosia, I will tell Mother my internet in Poland says hi.
Deleteok no problem
DeleteI love the perspectives of city life you give us. And that sunrise.
ReplyDeleteYour mother cancelling your visit so she could maximise her visitors is v familiar. And set the hackles of my memories up.
EC, we have been their today to visit and she is really so much better. The break from home and the care and proper eating has done wonders.
DeleteOMG. I would have to be starving and homeless before I'd apply for a job cleaning windows that were above one story. Shudder.
ReplyDeleteSandra, not a job for me but when I was younger I don't think I would have worried so much about it.
Deletethe photograph from the office window is very beautiful...
ReplyDeleteplease visit: http://from-a-girls-mind.blogspot.com/
Hi Krishna, thanks. It is actually the view from our home.
DeleteThe lights at St Pauls Cathedral are elegantly designed, but so small that I have never noticed them. Well done, you for capturing the photo.
ReplyDeleteHels, now I photographed them, I tend check them every time I pass by.
DeleteThe lamps are lovely as is the building detail at St Pauls.
ReplyDeleteI still say yonks, but I've never heard yonnie, so don't know what that is. Enlighten me please?
River, a yonnie was something you would throw, I think. It might be a rock or a stone in a slingshot. I am bit hazy about it now. Maybe it was a word not used in other states.
Delete'Yonnie', took me too far back in time. But it did help me remember the name of that large marble, a tombola, I played marbles but couldn't think what the large marble was used for or the name. I know what you would have used yonnies for but for young ladies a nicely weighted yonnie was precious for that throw and jump game with numbers, damn these seniors moments. Got it, hop, skip and jump.
ReplyDeleteJah Teh, I had forgotten about that different form of hoppy, as we called it. I never knew how tombola was spelt, assuming it was tombowler.
DeleteWhoa! I wouldn't like that window cleaning job, especially in Melbourne temperatures.
ReplyDeleteTo get good sunset and sun rise shots you need to under expose. If your camera has an exposure compensation setting drop it down a few notches. This is because on automatic your camera says to itself "its dark so I will up the exposure" which means it washes out the colours but makes the shadows lighter.
Thanks Diane. On auto the camera was keen to light the interior of the apartment. The setting I used clearly helped. I have played a little with exposure in the past and must do it again.
Deletewell gosh! now I have to hunt up my camera instruction book and find out about exposure.
DeleteRiver, it is always a good idea to sit every so often with the camera instruction book.
DeleteLots of homeless here too, everywhere I suppose. I like the decorative manhole covers.
ReplyDeleteStrayer, I imagine they would be quickly moved on in the US if they were in the main street of a big city.
DeleteI see less homeless on the streets in Brussels, at least it seems to me. Usually they are hanging around the stations. I don't want to be a window cleaner I would get dizzy !
ReplyDeleteGattina, yes, I remember them around Brussels Midi Station.
DeleteSometimes the everyday, common life, photos are the most informative. Like these here. They show a slice of life which usually doesn’t get a look-in.
ReplyDeleteThank you Friko. There is always interest in any area for me.
DeleteIsn't the homeless situation distressing? As a world community we need shelters for these folks.
ReplyDeleteSandra, it is distressing but people seem quite good at covering their feelings as they pass by. It is not an easy problem to deal with.
DeleteLots of homeless because all the 'cheap' accommodation has been or is about to be closed. Places like the Gatwick. Now there's truly nowhere for people to go. It's horrendous.
ReplyDeleteFen, you are quite right. The cost of accommodation around the best services for them is expensive. While they could live perhaps in cheap outer areas, the services generally aren't there for them.
DeleteExactly right Andrew. The soup kitchens & food busses etc do not go out into the 'burbs, so the homeless congregate where they exist. I also think they'd get less of a difficult time in the city than out in the 'burbs too.
ReplyDeleteI don't know about the window cleaners, we have them for my high rise too but I fondly recall one fit young man who used to replace lights inside the office building where I worked in Canberra during the 1980s.
ReplyDeleteHe would stand on desks even as you worked at them to perform his task. It wasn't that I had a special interest in observing lights being changed. It was more that this fellow wore loose fitting shorts and....well....I just couldn't help but look up.
Victor, you were a dirty old young man too, back then. I would have done the same. Now I would place my phone on the desk underneath him and upskirt him. Oh, this is becoming morally difficult and complicated.
ReplyDelete