2 November 2010

My first Melbourne Cup day and the sun is well and truly shining on us Queenslanders. Not so lucky down in Victoria.

It’s the 150th anniversary on the Grand National-esque 3200m stampede and I aim to report as much action as possible from the day in my next missive.

Also coming: updates from Far North Queensland – the tropical loveliness that is Cairns and the Daintree – and more on current projects, including some fashion writing for Faint mag and my research with an amazing BBC crew on the Great Barrier Reef.

A bientot. And good luck to all the punters out there – tips more than welcome.

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Under the jacaranda // 19 October 2010

With October comes spring and with spring comes blossom.

When I first arrived in Brisbane, I headed down to the Queensland Art Gallery to absorb. There, I found and was enchanted (like so many) by R Godfrey Rivers’ seminal work, Under the Jacaranda. As it happens – as new discoveries have a habit of doing – just weeks later, Brisbane hit a purple patch…and jacarandas began blossoming the city over.

Their branches spread wide and low and their bowers are heavy and dripping with purple bells. Native to South America, the thousands and thousands of jacarandas across Brisbane are said to all be the progeny of just one tree – that enormous great-grandpa of fauna captured by Godfrey Rivers. Long ago felled by a storm, a part of its trunk now resides at Mount Coo-tha’s Botanic Gardens

As it happens, the views across Brisbane from Mount Coo-tha in yesterday’s long-awaited sparkling sunshine were punctuated by puffs of purple across the green subtropical landscape. Up close, and in less salubrious settings, purple hazes fizz along the sides of motorways and roads. No matter where they pop up, all local jacarandas are related to the romance of that painting – a glimpse of a simple moment under the tree that enduringly brightens the urbanscape of springtime Brisbane.

R Godfrey Rivers’ Under the Jacaranda.

And my versions.

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Aljezur, a year ago // 4th October 2010

The icy Atlantic. Icier Super Bocks. Boardwalks to empty, sunburnt, wind-scoured beaches. Octopus in olive oil, cucumber salad. Bunk beds, surf boards, Leica adaptors. Tipis, freshwater lakes, rambling tomato vines. The approach of autumn.

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AFL Grand Final – take two // 1 October 2010

Ridicule of Prime Minister Julia Gillard’s stripey barnet aside, the only mass hysteria worth getting involved with this weekend is the AFL’s Grand Final.
Aussie Rules, you see, is a religion here, and its annual final match is Christmas, Hanukkah and Eid rolled into one. As far as national sports go, its popularity rivals the US’s NFL and the stadium crowd alone is 116,000.
Last week’s original ‘GF’ was, for the first time in AFL’s 133-year history, a draw, so – as per the traditions set out in AFL rules – tomorrow’s game is a rigmarole of a rematch and the stakes are higher than ever.
The crux of the hype spins on the facts that this is one of only three rematches in AFL GF history (yep, if it ain’t an abbreviation, it soon will be), and the teams in question are both from Melbourne, which is the home to AFL (or as it was once known, the Victorian Football League). It’s the equivalent of an FA cup final between Man U and Man City, washed down with VB, coloured in black, white and red and with mountains of historical context weighing it all down.
The underdog, St. Kilda Saints, are pitched against the much-villified Collingwood Magpies.
Jim, my insider pundit, echoes the sentiments of most I’ve come across: “I’m hoping St Kilda will win – my heart says Saints and my head says Collingwood.”
The “massively unpopular” ‘Pies owe their reputation to their home geography – they’re from the wrong of the tracks, their fans and tactics are of dubious origin, or, “because they’re dirty” as my cousin put it.
Collingwood is a traditional working-class area, their supporters are rough and whilst “gentrification and all that” has ironically made the area trendy, old habits die hard.
And whilst one rematch may be one rematch too many for some fans who paid $1000 for last Saturday’s game, there can be no more than two finals played. Tomorrow’s score cannot be a draw.
The rarity of such an occasion has some rubbing their hands together with glee – it’s another money-spinning week tacked onto the end of the AFL season, a bumper viewing-figures certainty and a sponsorship goldmine.
It’s also a bit of an inconvenience to those who, like a friend, chose to put his wedding back by a week to avoid clashing with the original GF date last Saturday. His ceremony begins at the end of the fourth quarter, whilst another wedding that I’m heading to starts at the end of the third quarter. There is no clock-watching according to GMT tomorrow – just hours before kick-off and quarters thereafter.