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

it's been a week of packing up. the artworks on the walls are the last things to come down and be carefully stored away.
Jake, Sissie, Muffie, Gavin & Arthur are all ready for their big move to WA.

the best thing about moving is going through everything...reading old letters, dusting off books and sorting out forgotten collections.
these cards all come from one friend over years of letter writing. it is by no means the extent of the cards Abigail has sent over the last ten years i have known her. while gathering them all together i noticed a lot of the cards have birds on them. the owl even appears again!

a few more owls came into my collection over christmas & the new year... a bookmark, a brooch and a hand painted card

hot air ballooning in Mareeba (mango country) up in the Atherton Tablelands west of Cairns.


gliding like a cloud over mango trees heavy with fruit...some were almost purple, obviously a good season


a small graveyard, so ordered and strange from this view...like unusual scratches to mark the passage of time without modern instruments

'breath of life'
one of the installations dotted around newcastle centre as part of 'back to the city" - this piece is a collaboration between seven people all from different work practices. "... this project makes visible the previous use of this site by early Europeans. [A windmill] was once an important navigational marker for shipping and its demolition caused an outcry from ship captains. As a result, the Obelisk was erected in 1850 as a stable point of reference... In this installation a number of 3 mtr high windmill forms spill down the slopes of the Obelisk hill suggesting the possibility of sustainable energy."


sunday handball on one of the disused tugboat berths in newcastle harbour. another installation site for 'back to the city'
a collaboration between artists and architects: Izabela Pluta, Paulo Macchia, Brian Suters and Philip Pollard. not much of the actual installation is visible here...but the social use of the space is also part of the installation's intent. (Izabela & Paulo are pictured in the two right-hand courts)

Debi van Zyl has become one of my favourite bloggers in recent months. not only because i found my name amongst her 'people i wish i new list', but more because the images she seems to constantly inspire me with and always amazing and recent! clearly a very busy blogger and maker!
When Debi's not blogging she is knitting gorgeous creatures like the two above: 'andrew' & 'gavin'.
late last year Debi and i did a swap. gavin and arthur (see below) were sent over to Newcastle from California. to see their arrival and ongoing adventures go to the link on the right side of this blog called 'gavin & arthur'
these little people are full of character and made with such care and skill.
to see more of her work, or in quest of making one of her knitted creatures your own, visit Debi van Zyl 's website.


gavin & arthur now live in newcastle on barker street

their first adventure once unpacked