i stepped over this scene without noticing at first. it was hidden under the footpath in a perth city drain...the light were on and beamed up briefly through the little holes in the steel plate over the hole. it looked so sinister, quiet and desolate, like some spooky torture chamber under the streets of the city.

another ceiling...at kakulas sisters again. an amazing building to house the huge array of whole foods

found this little cartoon in an old New Yorker magazine picked up from a garage sale. it's getting colder here in fremantle, a relief to know that it does cool down...all that merino wool clothing & winter coats were perhaps worth carting over the country afterall.

another doll is cut, unstitched, unbuttoned and deconstructed to make way for the new...this one was made for exhibition 'stuffed' at this is not art a few years back in newcastle. everything was white. she nolonger made sense in my suitcase of exhibited dolls. and an up and coming exhibition, where they all climb out and wander off to another gallery wall, made me clean up and reasses this particular doll. her neck always bothered me, it flopped around and looked poorly finished despite my constant readjusting. it was a mistake right back at the sewing machine... her neck was too long and thin for this white cotton fabric and her head to heavy.
she now resides in pieces inside another new creature!


to find a sign cleverly changed is always a good photo excuse... this one is in a hospital car park and seems sort of curious and fitting...i wonder who and why they changed it

PICA's annual national graduate show hatched 08 opened last night.
this piece was a very large installation of coloured vinyl lily flowers floating on their own pond.

Foto Freo is a biennial photography festival held in Fremantle showcasing international
and Australian photographers. runs from 5 april to 4 may.
so far it has been one long string of openings for photography based exhibitions. one of these exhibitions, Fig, is installed in the fremantle prison gallery and surrounding exhibition spaces house three more. a very stunning setting, what a building! in it's very primitive state it was used as a prison until the 1980s!

these ceiling fans adore a tea house which feels like a step back in time to colonial india. well, apart from the incandescent lighting!

street art is one of those things that invariable gets over looked or under valued, or just completely unheard of when australia comes to designing, adoring and reinventing our cities or country centres! fremantle seems to appreciate its presence. even these bollards are decorated, thought about, cared about enough to embellish..

then there is the other sort of street art that happens when no other creativity appears 'officially' on the streets.

the front door... it is one of the most important thresholds we cross & recross each day.
'Doors also have an aesthetic role in creating an impression of what lies beyond.'

it was the front door before it was even opened that i liked before i walked into this house. even with all the bad repainting done on the interior, someone miraculously left the door old & unpainted, showing it's history and layers.

No standing & four hours parking only between the hours of 8am-6pm
left in the sand all weekend. south beach fremantle

forgot to upload this image a few posts ago.
taken in a little side lane in perth...
not sure what it's message is...but fashion, LV, asia, blind, bandanna & imposter are all there

shipping containers piled up near the port beach in north fremantle...


the old north fremantle municipal council building is now being used as an antique centre

the birth by mark ryden, he was previously mentioned much earlier in this blog... his paintings are always so strange and sinister. they have an aura of innocence, but then tell violent or beguiling tales... this is a postcard i picked up the other day from a little boutique in perth called keith & lottie

a full set of scrabble squares... found in a little antique shop in fremantle


these were also found in the antique shop, buried amongst a whole lot of other junky things

old signs and abandoned shop fronts


an old night safe box in the old bank wall

the smallest cinema i've ever sat in... it is overwhelmingly red and hard to sit far enough away from the screen. the cinema belongs tofremantle's luna on sx


street art & stencil art is apparently just beginning to take off in fremantle & perth.
i went into a gorgeous little boutique keith & lottie and right out the back past their little gallery space, is hidden The Butcher Shop. it is not a place of meat, but lined with boutique spray paint cans!

changing over mobile sim cards... they are intricate & quite beautiful little plastic chips that connect us to a constant network or messaging, calling and availability. it's hard to be alone if you own one of these


xwary cafe... just having moved to wray avenue, i am told that the best cafe in fremantle used to be on that avenue. the owners quarreled with the landlord and left their popular address. soon after the cafe owners began another, as excellent cafe in essex street...they called it xwray


concrete couch in the fremantle art centre forecourt

it's the port for new car arrivals among many other things. the new farm machinery look like little toys lined up ready to be pushed delightedly into the harbour.
the big loaders look like robot giraffes presiding over container ships

moving to a new state means new signage. these ones in perth made me laugh. i love the illustrations, even though warning signs are serious, they somehow always ends up looking like frames from a storyboard or a comic book

silver princess.. an amazing sliver branched weeping eucalyptus in the perth botantic gardens

little creatures brewery. when i told people i was moving to fremantle the amount of times this brewery was mentioned meant it has to be visited. very popular hang out for locals or all ages and very delicious food, view and retro fitted boat shed venue!

new types of eucalyptus to find out about.. these two are flowering at the moment.

this is actually a bud for yet another eucalyptus flower. each tubular piece falls off to reveal a bright yellow blossom

it's another pressed tin ceiling... (it's actually exactly the same design as J's old room in newcastle
further down in last months posting) this time in fremantle city's kakulas sister's amazing whole food shop! i was actually wanting to record the ancient pealing wallpaper. it must go back to early asian presence in fremantle. the parisoles, lanterns & oriental dress is beguiling. amazing what was printed and then papered onto walls!


i keep being drawn to photograph small dead animals found on footpaths, gutters, shore lines and various other places... many of them birds & fish. this little mouse follows another found late last year, buried now in this blog archive

Fremantle markets... on the leap day of the year

ships & chips...our first western australian sunset...fremantle is a great place so far, and we haven't even been here 24hrs yet!

it's gus the snails birthday...i saw this in a melbourne back lane and thought he'd like it....

aesop.... another beautiful store for their products.
it's all made out of cardboard...in melbourne's cbd

later in the afternoon...a lonely arm chair near harris street in brunswick east, melbourne


newcastle beach... last surf at the beach before we head west


the restored fascard of newcastle ocean baths... they are just starting to paint the southern wing of the ocean baths changrooms. this is the place my grandmother used to swim when she was a schoolgirl up on the hill at newcastle grammar.
this will be my last swim here for a while...

the old musty carpet & pressed tin ceilings of barker street. the bedroom & the lounge room ceilings have been studied for many hours over the three years of living at no.7


this pressed tin ceiling belongs to J's old room of 11 high street


all the empty rooms. everything has gone now...it's so clean and bright

everything gets packed in a box unless is doesn't: then it goes in the bin
goodbye barker street, goodbye red bikini