coastal surreal #2

 south tilba road beach ©140312

...after the big flood in the inland creeks around the township of bega, this foamy thingy covered the beaches...

...bermi's over there, you guys...

rural surreal #1

yowrie ©030613

...whilst walking around the neighbourhood, I spotted this cool set-up... 
which started the series on unreal surreal characters of the south coast...
I hope you'd enjoy them... 
as I love photoblogging things I see around here... x

...rural surreal #1...pic coming...soon...

...i'm still here, you guys...at the moment at bermie club...had a good game of pool, got beaten by a friend...and good games were had by all, i think...i call it night of the upsets...players who were usually playing these styles, were now faced with diff situations...i love the fact that balls are all round, and each rolls differently...outcomes in these friendly games, called the pool comp, aren't that important, i reckon...but friends catching up with each other...say hello to everyone...now, those are very pleasant times wot to spend wednesdays arvo...and fridays...

my drinking buddy suddenly changes into a woman

    my  friend transforms into a sheila and it has nothing to do with the schooner of beer in his hand…in the three years I thought I knew the guy he gave no signal, no hint, not a bit of clue he planned to bat for the other team… one day he was doctor hatta, primatologist specialising in orang hutan, the next she is doctor angelina, primatologist specialising in same...

...one night when I was at the pool table in the mooseheads pub in canberra, in walked this young man with his uni buddies… I thought he was an indonesian… not all asians can tell other asians apart you know, well I got it wrong on this one anyway…this went on for five nights and on the sixth, as both of us approached the bar, he started with, 'you malaysian kĕ?'…

...hatta was a brilliant bloke sponsored by the australian national university to study apes… whilst here his beautiful wife came from sarawak, an east malaysian state of north borneo, to live with him for a year or so…everything was hunky dory…

...when her time was up she left for home and hatta continued completing his stint studying everything one need to know about orang hutan…

   after I moved to the coast I regularly came up to canberra and hatta and I always had drinks together…about half a year ago his facebook profile changed…on it he became angelina…I was only mildly surprised and didn't put much of anything into it - facebook people have all sorts of names and profiles out there, real, imaginary or pseudos…but I jumped on my bike, gunned for canberra and gave hatta a call…

...a woman met me on the grounds of the university and her smile was unmistakably hatta's…as I hugged her, she asked, 'notice any difference mate?'…'yes, I can feel your bra straps'… then she cooly slipped into the ladies which was a little bemusing...

...that evening was a farewell get-together for angelina organised by her many friends at the australian national university outdoor wine bar…it was a beautiful spring night; a jazz trio was playing, the crowd was warm and smiles...and angelina was resplendent and happy with her equally beaming boyfriend, a lecturer at the school of music nearby...

 
   doctor angelina is now back in her hometown of kuching in sarawak…she is the first and only malaysian primatologist, male or female…this little info surprised me considering the fact that orang hutan being exclusive to borneo and sumatra and their existence gravely threatened there're not many more specialists like angelina to protect these people of the forest…

…in the village where I grew up there was a transexual and she fought the taunting and the hassle by turning the table and flaunting what she was and what she got…by playing along with her community the intimidation lessened and disappeared altogether…she accepted being the brunt of jokes and innuendos and made herself the centre of attraction wherever she turned up - to a point where she gained the respect afforded a minor celebrity…on another occasion at a popular waterfall, there was an attractive transexual in a short red dress that attracted boys who were milling around her like flies and we could see that she was enjoying the adulation…in a culture of strict dress code and stricter gender separation she certainly was the exception big time... 

...the last time I heard from angelina on facebook she was in tears…her home country people are giving  her a hard time…she was insulted while queueing at the local mcdonald's… ;(

milkshake stalls kneeshakes

  ...it is easy to pinpoint when, exactly, I first became fearful of heights… it is most likely to have been when I was 25 and in london studying architecture, going up the glass stairwell to the second floor of selfridges department store and looking down onto oxford street below… it is harder to know why my knees decided to turn to jelly…

...I'll always remember selfridges not least because of that onset of vertigo but because of my first encounter with dame edna everage... not the flesh and blood version but close enough... she was in madame tussaud's wax and sitting in all her colourful glory in the huge store window clutching a bunch of gladioluses and beamng to the oxford street shoppers... even after being told otherwise by an aussie I just met, I wasn't convinced she is actually a man...

...on the way to australia via malaysia  with the same aussie, I stopped by to visit my family in segamat... when I told my mother about my newfound curse she suggested taking me to see a local indian shaman who treated his patients by dousing them with flower-petal water... I didn't go for the twaddle and I didn't have the heart to tell my dear mum why either...

   ...with the phobia I am missing out on heaps of views around here… the michael lerner viewing point  a kilometre south of bermagui, the cliff on the left before the cuttagee bridge, the steps leading down to the blue pool in bermagui, the walking tracks around the rocky edges of the tathra wharf, the high cliff of potato point, are all beyond my reach…

I envy people who can enjoy views from high above in this case a bushwalker admiring

mount little dromedary from paradise hill in central tilba nsw ©160512

  ...there're two popular routes you can take to go to canberra from bermagui in the south coast... up the clyde mountain in the north or climb the brown mountain in the south... the distance is about the same: 6 km further northbound...

                                             

the stark hills beside the highway approaching cooma nsw ©061010

...because of my vertigo, I prefer to ride my motorbike to canberra going up the brown mountain down to nimmitabel then I don't have to look down the ravine on my right... be warned that there's no servo until that snowy mountain town of cooma... your last chance to fill up to take you the 115 or so kilometres would be the cheese town of bega... coming home i hug the clyde's mountainside on my left all the way down to nelligen towards batemans bay... the bonus of coming home this way is you can stopover in braidwood and takeaway their special dojo bread... from batemans bay you have two choices to go south: take the princes highway passing through touristy mogo, then the commercial town of moruya, cute bodalla and its pasties, narooma for fresh fish and turn off the highway on the left for another 30 km to coastal bermagui... or if you prefer the slow cruise down, take the coastal route to batehaven, denhams beach, surf beach, lilli pilli, malua bay, rosedale, guerilla bay, tomakin, mossy point, then the sleepy beach of broulee, meeting up moruya on the princes highway... to see the beach again, follow the coast and stop awhile for a bite at a trendy cafe in moruya heads, then to pedro point, congo and meringo... sneak off into the side roads again to see the sea at tuross head, potato point and dalmeny...

 tilba tilba dairy farm on princes highway
just before the turn off to bermagui ©250811

  ...there's no continuous road along the coast which is such a bummer like there's an unbroken but curly road from bermagui, tathra, merimbula, pambula, all the way along the coast south to eden; you have to keep coming back to princes highway... now that there's a 42-million dollar roadwork at victoria creek that section between narooma and central tilba renders traffic to a stop and wait bit of bother...one turnoff to mystery bay then the last detour leading to the causeway of beautiful wallaga lake  through small beach communities along the thirty or so kilometres to bermagui, the town author salman rushdie was going to to stay with some friends when he met with a near-death incident in milton and the first suspects were the people eager to carry out the fatwa death sentence on him for the million dollar bounty... it turned out to be a run-of-the-mill road accident involving a farm truck... the police officer ('the most exciting thing to happen in milton') at the scene scored himself a nice marked-for-death autograph...

corunna lake ©170611

   ...even in the virtual world things can get a bit hairy… I still play video games a carry-over of the years when I get to meet my son every saturday and we spent it playing video games to get to know each other… games such as prince of persia, assassin's creed or skyrim where you have to scale giddying heights or balance walking on a single plank will give me the heebeejeebees…

…but by a quirk of chance I now know an instant fix to my vertigo… I discovered it whilst having to go up canberra's black mountain tower with my son and his grandparents…everyone was out at the viewing platform having a fabulous time and i had to contend sitting in the cafe facing the wall nursing a strawberry milkshake… then it got me, the sugar-hit to be precise… inexplicably the glucose high came with an instant superpower of kryptonite proportion… I could lean right out to the edge of the railing and for the first time was able to view canberra city from that once-dizzying viewpoint with not a twinge of kneeshake whatsoever… it was weird to have this sudden ability…all because of a thick shake?...they say you can find just about anything on the internet but i'm yet to find something to pin this on...

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beach is a life

shags on a rock, hayward beach (camel rock)