Black and White

Here are some of the yummy black and white photos that I edited from Australia the other day. I really like these even more than the last ones. I love the slightly warm tone and the shapes in all of these. I should say that the first photograph is of a lovely white building in Fitzroy, which is a suburb of Melbourne. There were lots of neat shops in Fitzroy, and it was really homey and sort of hippie-like, and looked well lived in. It was sort of dingy, but it had so much character.

The second photograph is especially special to me. I was at Mungo Lake, a World Heritage site where some of the oldest traces of Aboriginal life have been found. I walked across the dunes and saw piles of cracked emu egg shells where the people who lived there so long ago had sat and eaten them and I saw a small dune where a burial site was located among many other things. I also saw miles and miles of empty lake bed where there had once been a considerable sized lake. But when I got to the top of the dunes and was away from the group a little ways it was quiet. I was with Gail Farran, one the TAFE Institute workers, and she and I decided to walk on the dunes the way the Aborigines would have walked on them. Barefoot. We took off our shoes to brave the winter breeze and the coolness of the sand. It was amazing to be in a place like that and to imagine people living there and standing where I had stood. The lines in the sand seemed to tell a story of lots of time and lots of people past. It was my favorite time in Australia. Quite moving actually.

The last photograph is of one of my friends on the trip, Megan. We had the most in common I think and we loved wandering around taking photos of anything and everything. On our last night in Australia, we made tea and drank it on the balcony of our apartment. That night the Australia and New Zealand footie game was going on and so there were a TON of people in the city for the game. We had sat down for tea when the game let out and all of these people were making their ways through the city streets back to hotels and apartments for the night. Now, Megan and I were 9 stories up in a nice little apartment with two balconies, one that overlooked some other apartments, and the one we were on overlooked some beautiful old goverment buildings and also the dumpsters straight down. We sat and drank our tea and Megan smoked and we were enjoying the nice humid air when were heard some men down in the alley. They were laughing and carrying on, mostly drunk sounding, and seemed to be getting further into the alleyway near where the dumpsters were. Megan and I looked over to see three men peeing behind the dumpters! Of course it was quite dark and we were 9 stories up, so naturally we didn't see anything but we positively howled with laughter. We couldn't believe it! She and I were laughing so hard that we were crying and when we looked over the egde again, the guys were looking up to see what the ruckus was. I think they knew we were laughing about them. It was quite the tea time I must say! But those are the stories behind the photographs that I love so much. Look for more to possibly come later...