DRAWING

Drawing | ˈdrɔː(r)ɪŋ | noun
A picture or diagram made with a pencil, pen, or crayon rather than paint: A series of charcoal drawings on white paper.

• [mass noun] The art or activity of making drawings: She took lessons in drawing.

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme.

 One of my drawings, above.

A pencil drawing in a recent exhibition at the NGV.
M. C. Escher (Dutch 1898–1972) Study for Drawing hands February 1948 (detail)
pencil 24.9 x 32.3 cm (sheet)
Escher Collection, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, The Hague, the Netherlands
© The M. C. Escher Company, the Netherlands. All rights reserved

AT DIGHTS FALLS

Dights Falls is located in Melbourne, Victoria just downstream of the junction of the Yarra River with Merri Creek, about 2 km east of the City. At this point the river narrows and is constricted between 800,000 year old volcanic, basaltic lava flow and a much older steep, Silurian, sedimentary spur.

Prior to European settlement, the area was occupied by the indigenous Wurundjeri tribe of the Kulin nation. The rock falls would have provided the Aboriginal people with a natural river crossing and place to trap migrating fish. It was also a meeting place for many clans where they would trade, settle disputes and exchange brides.

In the 1840s, an artificial weir was built on the natural bar of basalt boulders to provide water to the “Ceres” flour mill, one of the first in Victoria. In the early 1840s John Dight established Melbourne’s first water-powered flour mill on the site. In 1888 “Yarra Falls Roller Mills” built a water-turbine powered mill, which was the largest and most sophisticated of the thirty two water powered mills built in Victoria before 1900.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

IN CHECK

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,
and also part of the Seasons meme,
and also part of the Macro Monday meme.

WINTER SUN

As I was walking to the gym one rainy morning, I was rewarded by this glimpse of the sun as it was breaking free of the rainclouds. That was it for the day, as the rainclouds came back and the sun disappeared, but I carried this image with me for the rest of that day.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme.

EASTERN ROSELLA

The eastern rosella (Platycercus eximius) is a rosella native to southeast of the Australian continent and to Tasmania. It has been introduced to New Zealand where feral populations are found in the North Island (notably in the northern half of the island and in the Hutt Valley) and in the hills around Dunedin in the South Island.

The eastern rosella is 30 cm long. It has a red head and white cheeks. The beak is white and the irises are brown. The upper breast is red and the lower breast is yellow fading to pale green over the abdomen. The feathers of the back and shoulders are black, and have yellowish or greenish margins giving rise to a scalloped appearance that varies slightly between the subspecies and the sexes. The wings and lateral tail feathers are bluish while the tail is dark green. The legs are grey. The female is similar to the male though duller in colouration and has an underwing stripe, which is not present in the adult male. Juveniles are duller than females and have an underwing stripe. The diet of eastern rosellas mainly consists of fruit, seeds, flowers and insects.

The eastern rosella is sometimes kept as a pet. These birds are desired for their beautifully coloured plumage. They are intelligent creatures, which can be trained to whistle a wide repertoire of tunes and may even learn to speak a few words or phrases. Rosellas can make good companion parrots; however, they require a great deal of attention and many toys to satisfy their need for social interaction and mental stimulation. These birds sometimes won't adapt to life as a family pet. Hand-raised birds can be fully domesticated, but usually they turn out still wild. Usually, this species doesn't like getting “petted” or “cuddled” and can bite in response to this type of handling. Many people believe that rosellas are best housed in large aviaries that enable them to fly freely with minimal human socialization. Despite these difficulties, many people enjoy the eastern rosella as a beautiful but sometimes feisty pet bird.

This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme,

and also part of the Camera Critters meme.

CITY SUNRISE

Sunrise on the Yarra River in the City.

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme,
and also part of the Friday Photo Journal meme.

LANTANA

Lantana is a genus of about 150 species of perennial flowering plants in the verbena family, Verbenaceae. They are native to tropical regions of the Americas and Africa but exist as an introduced species in numerous areas, especially in the Australian-Pacific region. The genus includes both herbaceous plants and shrubs growing to 0.5–2 m tall. Their common names are shrub verbenas or lantanas. Some species are invasive, and are considered to be noxious weeds, such as in South Asia, Southern Africa and Australia. In the United States, lantanas are naturalised in the southeast, especially coastal regions of the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, and the Gulf Coast.

The generic name originated in Late Latin, where it refers to the unrelated Viburnum lantana. Lantana's aromatic flower clusters (called umbels) are a mix of red, orange, yellow, or blue and white florets. Other colours exist as new varieties are being selected. The flowers typically change colour as they mature, resulting in inflorescences that are two- or three-coloured. "Wild lantanas" are plants of the unrelated genus Abronia, usually called "sand-verbenas".

Lantana camara blanca, shown here is a small perennial shrub which can grow to around 2m in height and forms dense thickets in a variety of environments. It has small tubular shaped flowers, each of which has four petals and are arranged in clusters at the end of stems. Flowers are yellow and white and after pollination occurs the colour of the flowers change (typically from yellow to white); this is believed to be a signal to pollinators that the pre-change colour contains a reward as well as being sexually viable, thus increasing pollination efficiency.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

CANVAS

Canvas is an extremely durable plain-woven fabric used for making sails, tents, marquees, backpacks, and other items for which sturdiness is required, as well as in such fashion objects as handbags, electronic device cases, and shoes. It is also popularly used by artists as a painting surface, typically stretched across a wooden frame.

Canvas has become the most common support medium for oil painting, replacing wooden panels. It was used from the 14th century in Italy, but only rarely. One of the earliest surviving oils on canvas is a French Madonna with angels from around 1410 in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin.

Canvas is typically stretched across a wooden frame called a stretcher and may be coated with gesso before it is to be used; this is to prevent oil paint from coming into direct contact with the canvas fibres, which will eventually cause the canvas to decay. A traditional and flexible chalk gesso is composed of lead carbonate and linseed oil, applied over a rabbit skin glue ground; a variation using titanium white pigment and calcium carbonate is rather brittle and susceptible to cracking.

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (known as Camille Corot; July 16, 1796 – February 22, 1875) was a French landscape and portrait painter as well as a printmaker in etching. He is a pivotal figure in landscape painting and his vast output simultaneously references the Neo-Classical tradition and anticipates the plein-air innovations of Impressionism. A detail of his canvas of "Ville d'Avray", ca. 1867, (oil on canvas, Washington, D.C: National Gallery of Art) is seen below.

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,

and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme.

AT THE MUSEUM

Melbourne Museum is adjacent to the Royal Exhibition Building. It was designed by Denton Corker Marshall Architects and finished construction in 2001. It was commissioned by the Victorian Government Office of Major Projects on behalf of Museums Victoria. The museum is a rich response to Melbourne’s urban condition, and provides a place for education, history, culture and society to engage with each other in a contemporary setting. It is now an important part of Melbourne’s soft infrastructure.

It is the largest museum in the Southern Hemisphere, and is a venue of Museum Victoria, which also operates the Immigration Museum and Scienceworks Museum. The museum has seven main galleries, a Children's Gallery and a temporary exhibit gallery on three levels, Upper, Ground and Lower Level and was constructed by Baulderstone Hornibrook.

The Touring Hall is where temporary exhibits are displayed. Past exhibits include mummies from Egypt and dinosaurs from China. The Big Box is part of the Children's Gallery. In addition, the museum has other facilities such as the Sidney Myer Amphitheatre and The Age Theatre. The Discovery Centre, on the Lower Level, is a free public research centre. The museum also has a cafe and a souvenir shop.The IMAX Theatre, which is situated on the Lower Level is also part of the museum complex. It shows movies, usually documentary films, in 3-D format.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Ruby Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme

and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

ANOTHER WEEK

How the year is flying past! Nearly the end of July, and then it's Christmas again...

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,
and also part of the Seasons meme,
and also part of the Blue Monday meme.

IN THE GALLERY

In the National Gallery of Victoria, taking time to enjoy the art as this man is enjoying seeing "The Crossing of the Red Sea" (1632-4) by Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665).

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme.

SEAGULLS

Gulls or seagulls are seabirds of the family Laridae in the suborder Lari. They are most closely related to the terns (family Sternidae) and only distantly related to auks, skimmers, and more distantly to the waders. Until the 21st century, most gulls were placed in the genus Larus, but this arrangement is now known to be polyphyletic, leading to the resurrection of several genera. An older name for gulls is mew, cognate with German Möwe, Danish måge, Dutch meeuw, and French mouette; this term can still be found in certain regional dialects.

Gulls are typically medium to large birds, usually grey or white, often with black markings on the head or wings. They typically have harsh wailing or squawking calls, stout, longish bills, and webbed feet. Most gulls, particularly Larus species, are ground-nesting carnivores, which take live food or scavenge opportunistically. Live food often includes crabs and small fish. Gulls have unhinging jaws which allow them to consume large prey.

Apart from the kittiwakes, gulls are typically coastal or inland species, rarely venturing far out to sea. The large species take up to four years to attain full adult plumage, but two years is typical for small gulls. Large white-headed gulls are typically long-lived birds, with a maximum age of 49 years recorded for the herring gull. Gulls nest in large, densely packed noisy colonies. They lay two or three speckled eggs in nests composed of vegetation. The young are precocial, being born with dark mottled down, and mobile upon hatching.

This post is part of the Weekend Reflections meme,

and also part of the Saturday Critters meme,

and also part of the Camera Critters meme.

SUNRISE FROM OUR WINDOW

Occasionally I get woken up by a striking colour that suddenly illuminates the room through a chink in the drawn drapes. Getting up quickly and grabbing the camera ensures that I catch the spectacle of the sun coming up...

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme,

and also part of the Friday Photo Journal meme.

HELLEBORE

Commonly known as hellebores, members of the genus Helleborus comprise approximately 20 species of herbaceous or evergreen perennial flowering plants in the family Ranunculaceae, within which it gave its name to the tribe of Helleboreae. Many species are poisonous. W ehave seveeral hyb rids of this flower growing in our garden and they always put on a good show with flowers during the Winter months.

Despite names such as "Christmas rose" and "Lenten rose", hellebores are not closely related to the rose family (Rosaceae). The genus is native to much of Europe, from western Great Britain, Spain and Portugal, eastward across the Mediterranean region and central Europe into Romania and Ukraine, and along the north coast of Turkey into the Caucasus. The greatest concentration of species occurs in the Balkans. One atypical species (H. thibetanus) comes from western China; another atypical species (H. vesicarius) inhabits a small area on the border between Turkey and Syria.

The flowers have five "petals" (actually sepals) surrounding a ring of small, cup-like nectaries (petals modified to hold nectar). The sepals do not fall as petals would, but remain on the plant, sometimes for many months. Recent research in Spain suggests that the persistence of the sepals contributes to the development of the seeds.

This post is part of the Floral Friday Fotos meme.

BOOKSHOP

At the National Gallery of Victoria there is an excellent bookshop where one may find all sorts of books relating to art, design and topics that would interest any civilised, rational human being. I love spending time not only in the Gallery itself, but also in the store, where I invariably succumb to temptation, such as this book on Botticelli, who is one of my favourite Renaissance artists.

Alessandro di Mariano di Vanni Filipepi (c. 1445 – May 17, 1510), known as Sandro Botticelli, was an Italian painter of the Early Renaissance. He belonged to the Florentine School under the patronage of Lorenzo de' Medici, a movement that Giorgio Vasari would characterise less than a hundred years later in his Vita of Botticelli as a "golden age". Botticelli's posthumous reputation suffered until the late 19th century; since then, his work has been seen to represent the linear grace of Early Renaissance painting.

As well as the small number of mythological subjects which are his best known works today, he painted a wide range of religious subjects and also some portraits. He and his workshop were especially known for their Madonna and Childs, many in the round tondo shape. Botticelli's best-known works are The Birth of Venus and Primavera (see below), both in the Uffizi in Florence. He lived all his life in the same neighbourhood of Florence, with probably his only significant time elsewhere the months he spent painting in Pisa in 1474 and the Sistine Chapel in Rome in 1481–82.

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,

and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme.

AT THE MARKET

The Queen Victoria Market (also known as the Queen Vic Markets or the Queen Vic, and locally as '"Vic Market"') is a major landmark in Melbourne, Australia, and at around seven hectares is the largest open air market in the Southern Hemisphere. The Market is significant to Melbourne's culture and heritage and has been listed on the Victorian Heritage Register. The Market is named after Queen Victoria who ruled the British Empire, from 1837 to 1901.

The Queen Victoria Market is the only surviving 19th century market in the Melbourne central business district. There were once three major markets in the Melbourne CBD, but two of them, the Eastern Market and Western Market, both opened before the Queen Victoria, closed in the 1960s. It also forms part of an important collection of surviving Victorian markets which includes the inner suburban Prahran Market and South Melbourne Market.

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Ruby Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.

MORNING

This post is part of the Mosaic Monday meme,
and also part of the Seasons meme,
and also part of the Blue Monday meme.

MALDON GOLD MINE

Maldon is a town in Victoria, Australia, in the Shire of Mount Alexander local government area. It has been designated "Australia's first notable town" and is notable for its 19th-century appearance, maintained since gold-rush days. At the 2016 census, Maldon had a population of 1,513. The district where Maldon now stands was first visited by white European colonialists in 1836, during Major Thomas Mitchell's famous Victorian expedition. It was settled soon afterwards by pastoralists, and two sheep runs were established in the area, at the foot of nearby Mount Tarrengower.

In December 1853, gold was discovered at Cairn Curran (the name given to one of the sheep runs), and Maldon became a part of the Victorian Gold Rush. The goldfield which was named "Tarrangower Fields" after Mount Tarrangower (now usually referred to as Tarrengower), immediately attracted numbers of people eager to make their fortunes at the diggings. One month after gold was first discovered, the Chief Commissioner for Goldfields reported 3000 miners had arrived at the diggings. The same report noted that anotheer month later, the goldfield's population had already grown to 18,000, though only about 1000 had taken out mining licences.

The Maldon goldfields proved to be one of Victoria's richest quartz-mining centres, though with poorer alluvial results than others such as Castlemaine or Ballarat. Quartz mining extended southward through Sandy Creek to Newstead, along to Mia Mia and Muckleford, eastward to Fentimen’s and Smith’s Reefs, and even to the apex of Mount Tarrangower. In all, over seventy reefs were proven to contain gold deposits. Maldon was known as a poor man’s diggings, with many excellent yields from very small claims.

Today, the township displays overall historical and architectural importance, particularly in its gold town buildings. The significance lies in the variety of building styles, and the area of mining is of interest with one mine still open to the public. Maldon boasts that it is largely unchanged since the 1850s, and has attracted considerable interest from tourists for its 19th-century atmosphere.

This post is part of the My Sunday Best meme.

DOG WALK

Walking the dog along the Merri Creek track. Midwinter in Melbourne is quite tolerable, as Australian Winter is relatively mild as far as temperate climates go.

This post is part of the Saturday Critters meme,
and also part of the Camera Critters meme.

LEADEN SKY

Going towards the City on Royal Parade in Parkville. A Winter's day, cold, grey and rainy...

This post is part of the Skywatch Friday meme,
and also part of the Friday Photo Journal meme.

WINTER ROSE

I snapped this photo in a neighbour's garden where a few of his rose bushes were still flowering. This is in the middle of our Winter with cold, wet and windy weather at the moment. The rose is David Austin hybrid, but that is all that he knows about it. It is fragrant normally, but understandably less so in Winter. I've taken a cutting!

This post is part of the Floral Friday meme.

ART

Art | ɑːt | noun

1 [mass noun] the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power: The art of the Renaissance | Great art is concerned with moral imperfections | She studied art in Paris.

• Works produced by human creative skill and imagination: His collection of modern art | [as modifier]: An art critic.
• Creative activity resulting in the production of paintings, drawings, or sculpture: She's good at art.
ORIGIN
Middle English: Via Old French from Latin ars, art-.

This post is part of the Wordless Wednesday meme,
and also part of the ABC Wednesday meme.

MELBOURNE TRAMS

Melbourne's tram system began operations in 1885, when the first cable line operated by the Melbourne Tramway and Omnibus Company opened for business. The cable tram system grew to be very comprehensive and operated successfully for 55 years. Electric trams Australia's first electric tram line, from Box Hill Station to Doncaster, was built by a group of land developers using equipment left over from the Great Exhibition of 1888. It opened in 1889.

At this time the line must have been right out in the sticks, since Box Hill itself was many kilometres beyond the existing tram system. It had one or two problems, such as arguments with land owners who fenced over the line and pulled down the power lines, and poor reliability, since its owners knew nothing about running a tram system, and it died by 1896. The only hint now that there was ever a tram system in the Doncaster area is a road along the former route - Tram Road.

The first serious electric trams in Melbourne began in 1906 with the North Melbourne Electric Tramway and Lighting Company (NMETL) who built a line from the edge of the cable system out towards Essendon, and the Victorian Railways who built a line from St. Kilda to Brighton. The NMETL, a British concern, was interested in selling electricity to customers along the route (and the same motive led to the establishment of the Ballarat, Bendigo, and Geelong electric tram systems). The company commenced operations with single bogie saloon cars (later classified U-class) and unpopular "toast-rack" cars (later classified V-class).

This post is part of the Our World Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Ruby Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Travel Tuesday meme,

and also part of the Wordless Wednesday meme.