Geelong Westfield ain't so hot after all the hype

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I vowed and declared I would not patronise Geelong's Westfield shopping complex apart from the RACV there, but anyway, after checking out flights to Fiji at Flight Centre, I wanted to buy a dozen eggs so wandered around Westfield but couldn't find the supermarket, so went up and down escalators and eventually over that dratted bridge where people sat about drinking coffee and I raged about the air space over Yarra Street belonging to everyone not just the capitalists! Anyway I spied a Woolworths sign and thought - okay I'll get my dozen eggs there, but no - it wasn't a food store at all! All the brand-new shops at Westfield didn't attract me at all - except one art shop with narrow claustrophobic aisles where I bought some el-cheapo sketchbooks for $2 each. Eventually I got the eggs at my butcher across the road from home. Way to go. Patronise family businesses.

Never satisfied with just one picture

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Using Picasa and also Photo-edit i played about with variations which started from the two halves of the painting I made yesterday. I probably like the bushfire effect on the negative pics.

Rocky hilltop at You Yangs

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More reworking of early drawings. Top is part of the pastel and feltpen sketch made on the site using cheap paper, others are mismatched halves of the new pic I made yesterday using acrylic paint and pencil. It was too big to scan as one picture. My obsession with rocks as you see continues!

Variations of pictures of You Yangs

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Here are a few different ways of treating the original pictures I made of rocks and trees at the nearby You Yang hills.

You Yangs near Geelong

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About half an hour's drive from Geelong the You Yangs rise in the flat plain and these small hills have interesting picnic spots amidst large rock formations. We used to go there for a bit of respite and also for sunrise church services with youth. I found two sketches I once did and copied them this afternoon instead of going to a writers' gig. One in pencil, the other in pastel, then using Picasa I made a B and W pic of it.

I still have a puppy kind of bark but not the bad bronchitus of the past weeks. While I was in the middle of playing music this morning at Geelong East Uniting, a grandma came over and told me to forget the antibiotics, just buy some Lemsip, add lemonade and hot water. It had cured her after six weeks of coughing! Okay, I'll try anything but stick with the pills though!

Geelong's best shopping streets

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As an opponent of huge shopping complexes and supermarkets I would suggest that residents and visitors to Geelong forget about Westfield type of developments and explore the ordinary shopping streets of places like High Street Belmont, or Pakington Street in Geelong West. For local shopping there are usually small shopping strips such as Watsons Rd Newcomb which is not far for us to walk or drive and which has a variety of shops for groceries, vegetables, hardware and so on.

In Melbourne it's the same, though often a street full of shops will change over years - from having a variety to cater for every need, to becoming elitist or specialist - such as Punt Rd in Prahran and probably South Yarra and Toorak, which they nostalgically call 'The Village' because it once was user-friendly.

So in the argument between shopping in supermarkets or shopping strips I favour the latter mainly because I like to support small, local family businesses and you get to know the shopkeepers.

Variations on some Adelaide drawings

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Peceli resurrected a bald mouse so I can use the second computer again, then I mucked about with Photo-edit to make some variations of drawings I did in Adelaide - in between coughs and sips of boiled water! They are of the beach below Shores Village and of the pond next to the Conference Centre (formerly called the Woolshed).

Where does all the money go around?

Click on pics to make them more readable.
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Usually I discard most of the Saturday Age newspaper - including Business, but a picture caught my attention this time - a take on the Brack 'Collins Street' painting. The journalists and artist gave some interesting stats on income, richest people in Oz.

Then I hear on the radio the grouches of pensioners saying they cannot manage on $255 a week (Age pension if you have a partner). Though it's obscene for one man to get billions of dollars, (mining guys and Westfield also) and families sometimes do it tough with a mortgage, pensioners ought to count their lucky stars.

Not every country gives out pensions as people search for work, or are disabled, or old. It's all relative if you compare Fiji income etc. The poverty line there would be listed differently and they say about 40% of people in Vanua Levu live below the poverty line. $255 a week in Fiji would be okay because that would be $6 an hour and usually a house cleaner at a resort gets about $2 an hour!

Shattered dream for Geelong athlete

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Nathan Deakes is such a committed athlete, yet an injury has now stopped his dream of going to Beijing and possible winning a gold. Sports injuries happen, and athletes just have to take them and get on with life. From the Geelong Advertiser:
The sun sets on Nathan Deakes' Beijing Olympic hopes Sarah Bieske
July 22nd, 2008


IMAGINE being an Olympic walker.
Getting up at the crack of dawn almost every day of the year to condition your body for the punishment of the 50km walk.
Pounding the pavement.
Sweating. Groaning.
Spending hour upon hour in the gym.
Sacrificing. Striving.
Dreaming of winning an Olympic gold medal.
Aspiring. Wanting.
For the past decade, this has been Nathan Deakes' life. But yesterday, his dream was cruelly taken away from him.

When the Geelong Advertiser visited Deakes' at his base in Canberra last month, he was training close to eight hours a day in preparation for the Beijing Olympics. Despite his injury concerns, the Geelong-raised reigning world champion and holder of four Commonwealth Games gold medals and an Olympic bronze was favourite to win the 50km walk in China and one of Australia's few realistic gold medal hopes on the track. And he was confident all his hard work was about to pay off with the biggest prize.

"I've been working towards this for the last 10 years, almost exclusively in terms of a dream - probably ever since I started athletics when I was 10 years old," the 30-year-old explained. "Every kid dreams of achieving at the highest level, and for track and field, that's the Olympic Games."

After his world championship win in Osaka last year, Deakes knew there was a lot of expectation on his shoulders ... and his feet. But he was determined not to let it weigh him down. In fact, he was using it as inspiration for Beijing. "There's only 30 Australian Olympic track and field medallists - gold medallists we've got very, very few," he said. "To be the next gold medallist in track and field would be amazing, and definitely a dream come true. Although it (the expectation) is there, I don't feel it too much. My expectations are what I feel the most, and I know where I want to finish and where I should finish - and obviously that's first."

Such confidence came from the knowledge he and wife Antoinette had done everything in their powers to allow him to perform at his best in Beijing, including deferring his law degree and moving to the other side of the globe. "Your life is put on hold for this ... not just my life but Antoinette's life as well," he said. "So much of what she does is focused on what I do, and while she enjoys it as well, both our lives are on hold. We also made the sacrifice last year to base ourselves in Europe ... when I say sacrifice, it was a financial sacrifice. I'm racing against guys who earn hundreds of thousands of euros, and I lost my sponsorship two weeks after the world championships. So it is difficult. We almost live off the one wage, with Antoinette working full-time. Living in Europe, we had to live off our savings, but that was worth it and we wouldn't begrudge that for anything."

Because of his troublesome hamstring, Deakes told the Geelong Advertiser he had decided to ditch the 20km walk in Beijing to concentrate exclusively on the 50km event.

But he remained confident he would be able to compete. "Injuries have been pretty devastating for me this year, but I'm back into training and doing a little bit on the road. I've still got a bit to do, but I've still got the time, so I'm not too concerned at this stage. When I look at it that way it will be nice in a way that, for the 50km, (my most recent races) will be the world record, the world championships and, hopefully, Olympic gold."

As of yesterday, Nathan Deakes knows if he still wants that Olympic gold medal, he's got four more years of complete dedication ahead of him.

Reading Raymond Carver

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As a distraction from the nasty cough I've been reading the short stories of Raymond Carver, but they aren't particularly cheerful, but he certainly can write well! Also, I've been listening to Greek boussouki music that isn't appreciated by the household. It's round two of bronchitus and the barking like a dog in the middle of the night has been awful.
It was Peceli's birthday the other day and it wasn't very joyful as he just had to look after my grumbles and needs. Anyway we had Kentucky Chicken for tea and he got a new jumper. It made me appreciate his help though and I wonder how sick people who live alone who have the flu, etc. get on. Anyway I feel a bit better now after five hours sleep and hopefully am on the mend.

Near the Grampians

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On the road trip back to Geelong we stopped occasionally for a spell for the driver - Peceli - and I did a quick sketch. Here are a couple in the Grampians region.

The Woolshed at Shores Adelaide

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Yes, it is a woolshed but the question remains - was it once a woolshed or did some architect design it to look like one? No smell of lanolin or dags or sheep manure at all! And the picture I did of the little pond next to the woolshed venue is rather overheated in colour!

All things bright and beautiful all creatures great and small

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A nice moment between the visiting Pope and a koala bear, an Australian icon. Good wishes to the half-million young people and older who gather in Sydney this week for a special day of connection, prayer, and hope for the future.

Page from a rescued book that was too tattered to send with Donation in Kind to a school in the Pacific. Blinky Bill, a favourite book in Australia - that is, years ago anyway.

Shores village Adelaide

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A few sketches are here from the Fijian Conference in Adelaide, some during the programs - of youth music, of Esther King speaking, the pond near the Conference Hall, and one of the beach below the camp - not as inviting as Geelong beaches but good for a stroll below the sand-dunes.

Journey - Geelong to Adelaide

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It was a nine-hour trip or more each way, so each time Peceli, as driver, stopped for a rest, I did a quick sketch - if it was daylight. Actually we travelled mainly in the night and only saw the lights of the oncoming traffic, mainly huge trucks. Now we are back at home I fiddled a bit with colour to the sketches. Here are some of them; a green grassy hill, rolling hills, and a strange place called Wellington opposite Murray Bridge where we stopped at 9.30 a.m. hoping to get a coffee but it was just a theme park and hotel of some kind.

Painted rocks

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On our journey back from Adelaide I asked Peceli to stop at the Sisters Rocks. I'd taken photos there many years ago when the kids were young and our holiday staying at the YMCA (when that song was around) was a super time for the five of us. The painted rocks are still there and I did some quick sketches that I might do something about later on. There are scores of spray paint bottles lying around, but those walls are inviting canvases. The top picture is how I imagined some of the rocks to be fifty or more years ago when there was no scribble and over painting. The second picture is a photograph in a Lonely planet website. The third is Peceli's photo.

A day of strong emotions

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The day was grey with light rain. Luse from Sydney, and our youngest son and I went together to the church in Moorabool Street before 11 a.m. The ambience inside Christ Church was warm, soft and beautiful with several lovely stained glass windows. We were there to farewell our friend Wendy Reynolds, mother of Ben a great friend of our sons. She was younger than me. Music from opera played as we entered - my favourite 'Song to the Moon' from Rusalka. Sadness, tears, the pain of other occasions intruded throughout the process of a dignified funeral service. We were proud of our sons' friend and his eulogy to his Mum, who had been a wonderful woman and mother to her three sons. A delightful Sufi poem was read about earth and heaven. The Choir of Hard Knocks rendition of 'Alleluia' and later 'You raise me up' were perfect choices of music.

We adjourned to the nearby Wintergarden Cafe for drinks and savouries. It was crowded, noisy as bunches of relatives and friends greeted one another. For me it was catching up with another friend of our sons, Tony Malakelas, now 38 and living in Sydney. There was much talk of those teenage years, the larrikinism of three young guys - best of friends in and out of three households - stories I had not heard as I thought these kids were 'angels'. There was also telling strong stories about the dreadful time eight years ago on July 10th when tragedy on a Fijian island turned our family upside down. Ben and Tony had been there at the funeralin Labasa.

A few hours later the Gull bus arrived to the depot from Tullamarine airport. The rain poured down as we waited for Peceli to arrive back from Fiji. Now I felt secure, he would look after me if the choking coughs started up again! Then ten minutes later we drove to visit Ben at his Mum's house, necessary for Peceli to spend an hour with Ben who is like our own son.


So it was a day of strong emotions, sadness, joy, and remembering. I now have a beautiful bunch of flowers standing in a glass vase - a gift from Ben.