fore!

golfballs on Point Cook beachWhy, why, why? What is it with golfballs and beaches? This photo of Point Cook beach takes in a group of eight golf balls. The nearest course is Sanctuary Lakes, some five kilometers away.

I often find golfballs when snorkelling off Williamstown, but at least there you’ve got some nice grass and a large population, so it’s conceivable that someone has just had a bit of fun belting the odd ball out to sea. Here though, there is some cut grass roughly 80m away behind a huge stand of trees, nearer grass is very heavy ‘rough’, it would take a pro to group the balls like this with no other obvious strays.

Ok, so it’s not one of the world’s great mysteries, but it has me flummoxed… why are they there?

first class

airplane as a homeHow many of us have dreamed that one day we’d have a real, full size jet aircraft of our own to live in?… OK, not that many! Still, given the relatively high concentration of wierdos per square inch in the US, you would have guessed it would happen there. This is a Boeing 727 in someone’s front yard in Hillsboro, Oregon.

Bruce Campbell has built a website to document his obsession, called airplanehome.com, but from the photos on the site, it looks very little like a home and very much like a cross between a film set and my father’s garage. Still, whatever rips your cord!

relax and enjoy…

comfy chairs in koko blackThis pic is of a rich, comfortable armchair overlooking the Royal Arcade. On the table is my (sadly) empty coffee cup. The lucky ones among you will recognise Koko Black.

A couple of times recently we’ve found ourselves in the vicinity of one of Melbourne’s Max Brenner shops and have braved the inevitable queue to order, then the long wait for the ‘goods’ to arrive. Not bad when they come, but it’s a real machine.

By contrast, on the weekend we dropped into Koko Black – it was busy and yes, there was a queue to be seated, but only a short one after which we were ushered up to the coffee lounge where we sank into these fantastic chairs and watched the comings and goings in the arcade below. The drinks are fabulous, probably not better than Max Brenner, but the service, the place, the whole scene is another world. I shouldn’t be touting for them – it’s busy enough as it is! Go to the one in Lygon Street instead!

I have seen the future…

dtv logoand it is full screen, full motion and it should scare the bejeezus out of the traditional television broadcasters.

An organisation with a solid background in peer to peer networking, participatory culture have just released a beta of a product they call DTV. This is internet television. At the moment it is only available for Mac OSX 🙂 and still has some rough edges, but I found it immediately usable and instantly convincing.

It is the blissful and logical convergence of RSS, BitTorrent and VLC. I can see my broadband usage is going to increase somewhat! I’ll bet the PayTV companies thought this was still years away! Ha Ha!

our nuclear secrets laid bare!

lucas heights nuclear facilityYou’ve got to admire the level of self importance enjoyed by the staff of Australia’s only nuclear reactor, Lucas Heights. Apparently, there are calls to censor the google satellite images of the reactor [ ABC News Online ] as they may be used by terrorists.

The precedent has, it seems, been set by the blanking out of the roof of the White House (though they left the Pentagon untouched), so naturally the next logical step is Lucas Heights! Never mind that you can plainly view the rows and rows and rows of military hardware at any number of bases in the US.

So you’d better get a good look at it now. I think this is the top secret cooling pond – for staff!

and the tidbinbilla dish…

Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking StationActually, it took me a little while to find this one. Funny, because I’ve driven past it quite a few times and it stands out like a sore thumb among the rolling green hills of Canberra. It’s the Nasa Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station. Nasa have a very informative site about it.

In a sobering aside, it’s worth noting that many of the nearby hills are bare from the devastating bushfires that struck the area in 2003.

the oyster farmer…

the oyster farmerIf you haven’t seen the new movie release, the oyster farmer, then make the effort. It is one of those wonderful, simple films that only seem to get made in Australia – maybe the French could do it too, but they’d make it too pretty. I’m sure the US film industry would be saying “but there’s no story!”.

Forget all that, this is a great story, eye-popping photography, lovable characters – perfectly underplayed, scenery that you’ll never forget and music that fits it perfectly.

the hawkesbury riverNot only that, but I have a google map location! There are a couple of scenes in the movie where a train snakes along the Hawkesbury waterfront… well, I reckon this is it, a siding with a small wharf to connect to boats that ply the system. Follow the river to the south west a little way and you’ll see some oyster leases that appear as dark lines (must be high tide).