Sunshine Coast Daily Photo

Monday, 31 May 2010

Signs of our Times
Moonlighting Doctor

I'm not sure that I need to say more about this.

Bundilla

Signs of our times
No Photographs

Obviously this is a hand drawn original and not a photograph. If I had taken a photograph I would have been contravening a faded, plastic laminated order wired to a fence.

They don't even say "Please".

What is the international symbol for "I find laminated posters telling me I can't take photographs offensive."?

Signs of our times
Street Art

Actually it's just a big mark where a sign has been.

When I saw this piece I wondered if I should sign it and sell it for a small fortune. It's not my work of course, it's the remnant of a dollop or seven of construction glue remaining where the sign it was once holding has succumbed to gravity.

Note to file: "Liquid Nails" is not a waterproof glue, do not use outdoors if you want your sign to stay in place. Also note: The bit of glue which remains on the wall is in fact waterproof and will not be able to be removed no matter what one does.

Signs of our times
Husband Parking

Some of the nice shopkeepers in Montville provide reserved seating for long suffering husbands while their wives browse endlessly within.

Sunset at Kings

Sunset, King's Beach.

It's easy to tell how many apartments are occupied by counting the number of lights on within. In summer, we'd be blinded by the light!

Golden Beach

Actually it's King's Beach, sunset last night.

Glasshouse mountains watching in the background.

Haphazard

My blood doesn't quite boil, but I can't help but be a little disgruntled when I'm somewhere like downtown Caloundra, and I see overgrown grass, bins awaiting collection, road signs hidden behind power poles, and I think of all the onerous conditions that would be placed on someone trying to redevelop.

If Council spent as much time working in a positive way among its existing infrastructure as it does "assessing" development applications... well I'd better not go on!

Streetscape

Down King's Beach way, the wheelie bins are colour co-ordinated with the streetscape.

Nice touch!

Winter Approaches

It's only a week or so until Winter officially commences, and while we don't actually have anything that could be described as "nasty winter weather" we all think we do.

There are few people to be seen on the beaches and the days are terribly short. (We think!) Here at Kings Beach, there is not a soul to be seen at 5:00 pm on a working day, and it looks all bleak and forlorn, but the reality is that I was standing in a tee shirt in a temperature around 20°.

It just looks like winter!

Winter Approaches

It's late Autumn. Unlike some countries where Autumn means layers of leaves building up on the footpaths, here it means layers of boats building up unsold in the yards.

Redundancy

There is a well known European supermarket chain which is establishing itself very nicely around the country. The stores are much smaller than the larger chains, and often they build over a ground level carpark, which calls for challenging design solutions to allow people and heavily laden trolleys to rise from carpark to shop level.

This is done simply by ramp or elevator usually, but in Caloundra at least, the elevator is in a beaut glass shaft, which is strange because the car itself is a standard, non see-through variety.

Perhaps it's so the service technicians can see if the cables are fraying without having to dismantle anything.

National Park

To me, these rocks say Noosa National Park. There are no others like them on the Sunshine Coast, and one day soon I must learn a bit more about the geology behind their presence.

Autumn Hues

The tree is actually dead, or dying and the colour is brought to us by the setting sun, but it's as close to an Autumn look as we are going to get round here, where all our trees are evergreen.

Butcher Bird

This little bloke is one of a family that watches me most days as I sit on the steps drinking my morning coffee. Sometimes I feel as though I should apologise to him, but I have no idea what I've done!

What is water?

I spend my life trying to work out what water actually looks like.

Some days it looks like this.

Sunset

I was watching the sunset tonight and got the giggles.

Until last week, when the project was unceremoniously cancelled, this was the route of a new freeway and rail link.

Time to reflect on what might have been!

Greyhound

Another imponderable. Why are Greyhounds actually red? Another load of visitors ready to wend their way quietly home, or more likely, to their next destination.

Very few visitors arrive by public transport, most choosing to drive themselves, and when one is visiting a town that measures fifty kilometres across, that's not a bad idea.

Santa Cleans his catch

Captured on his mid year autumn break in the southern hemisphere, Santa watches as one of the elves clean the days catch.

Fish cleaning bench.

Cotton Tree

Disturbing

Off for a training run on the ski, through a flock of seagulls, even the most innocuous of pass times has the ability to create a disturbance!

Art

Take a piece of frayed rope, tie it to a stick and hang it from a tree and call it art. Or call it a swing and let someone else call it art.

Washing

Somehow it wouldn't feel like camping if the towels weren't strung on a line between a few trees.

Cotton Tree

The Woods

The woods.

Cotton Tree Camping Ground.

Paddling

Shoes off, walking in water that's less than ankle deep. It's described as "going for a paddle".

Why? How did the term "paddle" become associated with idling in shallow water?

One of life's great mysteries I suppose.

Canoe

A plastic canoe waits patiently for action on the beach at Cotton Tree.

Clutter

Some apartments have rules about each having exactly the same colour curtains and identical brands of furniture on the balconies.

Others don't.

Fenestration

I can just imagine the conversation in the "design" office when this building was being produced:

"Err boss, it really looks just like another block of brick flats from the city",

"Well bung some waves on the frieze, that'll make it look beachy."

That, and of course the fact that no one has bothered to maintain the paint on the stair well.

I have to say that the cheap "transportable" above ground pool on the roof is a nice touch, although the engineer who designed the building might well be having kittens if he knew it was there.

New Vernacular

The new architectural vernacular has evolved through the need to shade windows. Corrugated metal and sun fins abound on new buildings, and that's not a bad thing.

Some will age better than others, and it will be interesting to see what becomes of all these bits in a few years when the ravages of salt and sunshine take their toll. Will they simply be removed to save maintenance costs, leaving bland facades exposed to heat and view?