Nauru Memory - The Fisher Boy At Sunset

Unbeknownst to us, this was to be one of our last memories on Nauru, before we were whisked off the island, and out of work. After arriving back on the island, Nat and I wandered down to the shore and the area of beach where we spent NYE, to take in the sunset.

Here, we encountered a couple of local kids, fishing for that night's family meal.

I am not sure that he caught anything - after this photo, he revealed to us that he had gotten his hook caught on the rocks below, and his line had snapped as a result.

For all the tough memories from Nauru, I will say this - Nauru has the best sky and sunsets I have ever seen, anywhere. Must be something about being a fleck in the middle of all that ocean.

Ancient Ruins Of Athens

Admittedly, I didn't know what there was to see and do when I planned my trip to Athens, I just knew that I wanted to go. Checking pictures of the city online, I could not really get a handle on the city sprawl with the old ruins sitting on the mountain in the middle of it all. It looked pretty unreal!

My first stop on my first day of exploring was to get up to the Acropolis, to see what it was all about. I got the Metro to the foot of the hill, and made my way up with all the other tourists of the day.

Walking through the chaos of the entrance, through the hoards of tour groups, I made it up the stairs, past the amazing Temple to Athena Nike, and through the arches and columns to the top of the hill. Taking in the size of the Parthenon - 17 columns down, and 8 across - the obvious craftsmanship and detail, before sweeping my eyes across the view of Athens city all around, below.

To the left on this hill was the Erechtheion, where the stunning Caryatids captured my attention for some time.

Walking to the back of the open section on the Acropolis hill, I could take in both impressive ruin structures, in addition to spotting each of the other ancient structures dotted around below, as far as the eye could see. It gave me a good idea of what to aim for next in my Athens sights exploring, and map out a bit of a path, in real visualisation.

Once I made it back down the hill, and past the Theatre of Dionysus halfway down, I followed my mapped out directions and found a much needed shade break with lunch, along a pretty tourist street between the Acropolis and Hadrian's Arch - an ancient arch sitting next to a very busy modern intersection of traffic. Old meets new!

Back to walking, and crossing the road at the arch, I got to the Temple of Olympian Zeus, with a number of columns still standing to give you an impression of the size of this structure in it's day. The massive park space showed off ruin pieces of the structure, and one columns was left laid when it had fallen, showing the sections making up the tall column - was pretty cool!

From here I wandered to the Panathenaic Stadium, before returning to go into the new Acropolis Museum, before climbing the Filapappou Hill for a spectacular sunset.

The next day, I continued with the ruin trail, getting to the other side of the hill and seeing more of the works from the Ancient Greeks. These columns along the wall are the strongest ruins left of Hadrian's Library. The ones below are those found at the Roman Agora and the beautiful Temple of the Winds.

These sights were fascinating, and impressive. Plus, walking around to see them allowed me to get a feel for the city around these ancient ruins. A perfect city visit for me!

jouljet notes:

Serious Tip: Each of these sites are walking distance from each other, which is how I got around to see them - in the heat. Several gelato stops were needed, of course, and there are plenty of places to stop and rest, and take in the views of the buildings of the Ancient Greeks, and indeed the modern Greeks too!

Time Spent: Across 2 days of walking, and stopping for meals, and to be home before it was too dark, I managed to get around to each of these. You could cram them all in in one day, if needed.

Cost: Ticket to the Acropolis was just 12Euro, and also allowed you entry to a host of other ruins around the area. So cheap!

Quirky Tip: The way to try and see the lighter side of all the crowds and tour groups shuffling through is people watching! Tourists in big groups are really something else.

Gorgeous Columns Of Erechtheion

Blazing sun, ancient ruins standing the test of time. The detail remains, the awe that is ours stays also. Things are not made like this anymore. The Greeks knew a thing or two about beauty and solid, lasting construction.

Pacific Island Tranquility

Walking to the other side of the tiny island of Fafa, the secluded beach faces out into the ocean, with very little humanity to be seen towards the horizon. Such peace and beauty.

Seating On An Island Paradise

This is the deck on Fafa Island, looking out to the ocean. The staff come to you, to bring you food and drinks. Such peace and beauty! It's amazing to me that this place is not better known!

Approaching Fafa - My Tropical Island Getaway

 

There it is! The little island, just off the main island of Tonga, where I stayed for a week. I planned to stay a few nights and maybe explore some other 174 islands that make up this Pacific Island nation.

 

But once I got there, I didn't want to leave!

 

On the boat over, which was just over an hour, this was my first glimpse of it, finally figuring out which of the dots on the horizon it was. Moody weather that day made for gorgeous views!

Introducing A Jouljet Travel Photo Series

From the Pacific Islands to Eastern Europe, I have managed to complete some pretty cool travel in the middle portion of this year. I want to start sharing my photos with you from these travels...the little moments that have caught my eye and my heart...on a weekly basis.

Truth is, it's hard to keep a regular post schedule going with my FIFO work habits. I cringe when my blog is idle and looks neglected. And I am pretty happy with a whole bunch of photos that I have captured, and shared on Instagram, and am really keen to share them here on the blog. I want to show you some of the amazing places I have seen!

As you can maybe spot here in this collage, I have managed to get to Tonga and the Solomon Islands between work rotations, which were easy enough in my respite weeks, and a reasonable flight time from the East Coast of Australia.  Then I travelled to Eastern Europe for a month of Summer, which added Greece, and the Balkans to my country list - Montenegro, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Serbia.

I want to show you the views I have been lucky to capture on my travels. I hope you'll enjoy!

The Argus Building - Open House Melbourne

Melbournians, do you remember the boarded up, graffitied mess of a building on the corner of Latrobe and Elizabeth? It was hidden behind random posters of all sorts of things, with broken windows above street level, and had all the markings of a completely abandoned building right in the middle of the city.

Well, you should see it now!

The Argus Building was open on the Sunday of Open House Melbourne this year, and Jessie and I lined up for over 2 and a half hours for our chance to get a look inside. It was worth it!

Once we were in the group at the front of the line, we could enter the corner Advertising Hall - a space with high ceilings, white ornate features, and walls of the history of the building.

The Argus was a daily newspaper in Melbourne, and the first in the world to publish colour. The pages were produced and printed here in this building, with large printing presses running much of the night, which could reportedly be heard and the rumbling vibrations could be felt all the way to Flinders Street. The newspaper ran from 1846 to 1957.

In the 1990s, the site was a shell, where the homeless often sheltered. A gutted, abandoned shell, the building has been saved by a redevelopment by a private university, and is due to be complete later this year, ready for the academic year next year.

The Project Manager, who has been working on the restoration and transformation of this site over the past 4 years, was the person to show each of the tour groups around, and his love of the project and his work oozed with each detail he showed off to us. This really added to the delight of our preview look inside.

Tiny whispers of the graffiti remain on a couple of the beams of the wide and open interior - but most of what we saw was modern spaces ready for learning facility fit-outs.

But the restoration of the original pieces are the most impressive. The exterior is a stunning addition to this busy city corner, and adds a sense of history and heritage to the area.

Much of the detail of the columns had to be remodelled, as the damaged state of disrepair was too much, but it has been done so lovingly true to the original design. Although it's not quite the original colour - this hue was dictated by the City of Melbourne.

The sight of the building from across the road is stunning - the original window frames and the restored columns are impressive. New life to this corner of the city.

The tower on top, which was a vision by the original designer of the building in The Argus days, complete with a clock tower, but was never completed. There is a lofty ambition of finishing this one day in the new development plans, because all the plans still exist. Imagine!

This was a very popular building of the OHM weekend, and a new feature of our great city - a pretty amazing place to be heading to class and chipping away at a qualification.

Aspects Of Open House Melbourne

Open House Melbourne was on this weekend - the chance to wander around the city peeking into buildings you have always wondered "what's in there?" 111 buildings were open this year across the weekend, and I managed to get in for a look at eight.

I popped into the RMIT Design Hub first, after wanting to see this last year. Being first up, not much was open nor directed, but I got to look out to the city through the unique discs. I took this shot, maybe my photo of the weekend, from the cafe on the side of the building.

Next up I popped into the State Library to have a look at the Queen's Hall. This grand hall has been closed off to the public since 2003. It's columns and impressive light fixtures were enhanced with the lighting of the room, really showing it off.

While I was here, it was hard to resist sitting in the gorgeous La Trobe Reading Room to take in the dome and the stunning desks and surrounding library walls.

My next stop was another building I had wanted to see last year - the Urban Workshop. The foyer of this modern highrise pays tribute to the large block of land's past - a community from the beginning of the settlement of Melbourne. Artifacts from the archaeological dig are on show in glass cabinets, like this teacup. The tour gave insights into the history of the area, before being taken up to the 33rd floor for incredible views of the city, north and south.

Council House 2 was next on my list, which is an impressive office building with self-sufficient energy features, effectively paying for itself since it opened as a building for the City Of Melbourne. Another building with amazing city views from the rooftop.

Around the corner from here was the Russell Place Substation, which always gets such rave reviews for OHM. The line was no too crazy so I joined it, for a look into a live, active power station.

Loads of technical electrical lingo, the PowerCorp guides were enthusiastic in showing off their little plant - particularly the mercury arc rectifiers, eerie blue light globes as ghosts of the DC power supply past to the city.

On Sunday I met up with my sister and we joined the line to see inside the Argus Building, on the corner of Elizabeth and LaTrobe Street. This is a building that has been boarded up and covered in graffiti, in a total state of derelict for years and years - and this year the restoration will be completed. It took a couple of hours for our turn, but the tour with the Project Manager was totally worth it.

Entering the stunning white, high-ceiling-ed Advertising Hall had picture boards showing the history of this once grand Melbourne building - the home of the Argus newspaper. This was the first newspaper to feature colour around the world, and was printed right here.

Our tour then took us up to the second and third floors, with insights into the preservation of the facade and the columns, and also the original beams that will stay in the new life of this building. There were little whispers of the graffiti that has coated this gutted building for it's forgotten years, and an explanation of the uses of the newly created spaces. An impressive Melbourne icon, reborn!

After then popping into Space & Co, I got down to tour the new NAB building next to Etihad Stadium. Another office building, of which I have actually been into for work purposes late last year, seeing the open plan spaces and triangle features right through it. Hearing of the energy and space efficiencies, and the change in the way the NAB has setting up work for it's staff, was really impressive.

My Open House Melbourne weekend finished off with another amazing view of the city from the rooftop here.

Red, Yellow, Blue, Green and White: Capture The Colour 2013

I'll take just about any excuse to flick through my travel photos from earlier this year, so being nominated by Karin and Keiran on K and K Adventures to submit a post for this year's TravelSupermarket Capture The Colour competition was all the encouragement I needed! For last year's entry, I sifted through my whole collection of photos to pick one for each of the nominated colours - but this year I have featured snaps from India, Burma and Nepal from my trip in February and March.

This little guy in his red apprentice monk robes captured my attention in Old Bagan, in Burma.

The stunning Golden Temple at Amritsar in India is hard to pass up for yellow - I love this photo!

The bluest sky over Kathmandu in Nepal made the prayer flags of the Boudhanath Temple really pop on my morning visit there.

This little one, dressed in green, is almost fully camouflaged by the growth under the U Bein Bridge in Outer Mandalay in Burma.

It's impossible not to include one of the whiter than white shots of the Taj Mahal in India. The marble gives many hues across the day, and at this time, when the sun is high in the late morning, it is at it's more brilliant.

The TravelSupermarket Capture The Colour competition encourages you to nominate 5 more bloggers to put together an entry, so I would like to see a post from Bianca over on Day Jaunts, one from Chrystal on Chrystal Clear, another from Megan from Mapping Megan, one from Karis on Karis Abroad, and Emily on Innocent Nomad.

171 Collins Street: Open House Melbourne

My pick of the buildings open for Open House Melbourne after exploring on Day 1 is 171 Collins Street - which is also one of Melbourne's newest buildings!

Finished after 5 years of planning and open in May of this year, the building features the facade of the heritage Mayfair Building out on Collins Street, and then ranges back through to Flinders Lane with an impressive modern space of light, glass and views of the city!

The tour was led by Bates Smart architect and OHM President, Tim Leslie, which added such a personal element to make the features come to life. Such passion for his design!

Walking through the doors from the street into the gorgeous atrium, you are hit with a sense of vast light and space - which is created by the 9 storey glass elements, which are actually hiding the next door building and one side of a carpark on the other side, plus the goings on in office floors above.

This modern space will soon be filled with the activity of the offices on the floors above, as occupants fill the Tower Building.

Our tour continued up one of the elevators to a couple of the 20 stories of office space not yet occupied. The afforded a view of the atrium from above, which was equally impressive.

But the views of the city was the killer for me - amazing! Spying the sporting precinct of Melbourne, including the MCG, AAMI Park and the Tennis Centre to the left, and then the Arts precinct with the Arts Centre spire, Yarra River, Flinders Street Station and St Paul's Cathedral spires to the right when facing South, both levels visited gave breath-taking vistas.

Because of the light glass nature of the exterior of the Tower, this building was permitted as a new backdrop to the Cathedral spires.

Such a treat to get this special peek into such a new and stylised building! Get out there tomorrow, to be a tourist in your own city, Melbourne!

The First Experience of the Taj Mahal

The plan when getting to Agra is of course to see one of the greatest sights of the world, the Taj Mahal. The anticipation built as we got closer to our first scheduled visit, and with the quick first glimpse of the iconic white marble dome from the rooftop of our hotel.

But we waited until the second full day, allowing this part of our 5 week India trip to be laidback and a time for rest and recuperation. This also meant that the anticipation of visiting the world's most famous monument to love grew even bigger, and more exciting.

The Taj was built by Emperor Shah Jahan as a monument and tomb for his third wife Mumtaz Mahal, who died giving birth to their fourteenth child. This pure white marble monument holds her body, and his, and stands as a mark of his love and grief, and built so that all would remember her.

We entered the site as a group near lunchtime, from the west gate, taking in the grand pink gate, walking through, and then having our respective breaths taken away by that unforgettable sight.

So, so beautiful. Set in ornamental gardens, with symmetrical features and water fountains.

Standing at the entrance and taking it in was a must, and almost involuntary. Soaking it in, in bold sunshine, was magical.

As a group we spent a couple of hours walking the visitors circuit of the visit, which follows on from that first full visual, to walking the length of the water fountains to the foot of the temple. Placing shoe covers on, you then walk the steps to reach the platform where you can enter the tomb. Ushered through the interior with enough time to take in the exquisite detail, you file back out into the sunshine and walk the semi-circle behind the temple, looking at the operational mosque and the matching replica on the other side, all while still taking in gazes of this spectacular piece of architecture.

A visit where it's impossible not to be in complete awe, during and after, the Taj is one of those places you have always want to go to, and you really should figure out how to get there! It does not disappoint!

Brave Women, Genetics And Genocide, and A Voice: HRAFF '13

The Human Rights Arts and Film Festival has been in Melbourne for the last week and a bit, and I managed to see two short films, two full length stories, and wander through the amazing photography exhibit that accompanying the Fest. The Festival soon tours the country, so these are the ones I saw, loved and was moved by:

Taxi Sister
The story of a female taxi driver in Dakar, Senegal. There are 15,000 taxis, and just 4 taxi sisters among them. The short follows one around over a couple of days, picking up customers, waiting for fares, chatting with other drivers, and just living every day, making her living.

She finds herself having the justify her place in her chosen role to her male colleagues, and explaining that she is alone, having to bring in the money for her family. She no longer had a husband, she explains to the inquiries about why she is not staying home taking care of a man, and that she should be able to work in whatever role she wanted. She's sassy and strong willed, and such an interesting character, showing the world that gender is not a barrier to doing something you want to do.

Red Wedding
250,000 women were forced into marriages during the Cambodian Khmer Rouge period. The political spin was that this was to increase the population, and the new desired workers who were left from the genocide phase were the basis of this new population. This short was one woman's story, of the rape and trauma of her experience, and the lack of understanding about what went on and why.

Incredibly brave, we follow as she shows us the rice paddy where she now works, in the village she lives in, which was once used as a killing field. She tells us the bits of her story she confidently knows, and then confronts members of her village who were part of the arranged marriages and the ruling party at the time, to get a better understanding of it all.

She finds a way to discuss what happened to her with her family, and starts a formal complaint process, in a quest to find some sort of closure, and to help other woman like her. I wonder how she will remain safe as her story is being told to the world through this short film, as she confronts her village leaders, and as she submits her request for a formal investigation. So brave.

Sun Kissed
The story of a Navajo family with two children with the very rare genetic condition called XP. Characterised by skin that burns very, very easily in sunlight, often before diagnosis, and then by the rapid and pervasive neurological degeneration. At the point of the movie, their son had recently passed away, and their daughter was profoundly disabled, requiring peg feeding, and with very limited independent movement.

Initially they thought that they were the only ones experiencing this trial, and the medicine man had told them that their children were like this because when he was young he tortured ants. They had also been told that having children with someone from the same clan would result in children with medical issues, such as their children. But soon, she found other families in the Reservation with children with the same condition, and they started piecing some information together. None of the families she found were parents of the same clan. Some of them, too, had been told that their acts of harming animals when they were kids were the reason for their children having this condition. The impact of religion and cultural beliefs was strong, and the stories carried.

XP is a condition with an incidence of 1 in a million; but here in this region, it was presenting in 1 in 30,000. A significant biological situation.

They manage to speak with a Geneticist and a Historian, and start to hear a connection between this elevated prevalence of this rare genetic disorder to the Long Walk. Essentially, in the late 1800s US military rounded up the Native Americans and kept them within a small geographical area, and initially confining them to a concentration camp of sorts. From here, their population diminished due to the conditions to 5000 people, and it is thought that this mixed clans, and in turn, through the conditions and deaths and pool of Native Americans in one place, confined the gene pool.

This clustering of the Native American clans has meant that the recessive genes are meeting in a match more often, and manifesting in such a rare disorder in this generation of children. Fascinating that it has taken this long to present itself, frightening that there is a sudden surge of incidences of this condition.

Their quest to seek information about how the Long Walk may have impacted took them some time, as no one in their community wanted to discuss it. The past, and bad things such as illnesses, are not discussed in Navajo culture, it was explained. He lamented that this, in turn, meant that so much of their own culture was being lost to them. They no longer spoke some of the languages, and now they were having trouble accessing their history.

Apart from the incredible grief felt for this little family and their loss, the film leaves you with the contemplation of the genetic impact of such atrocities as forced migration on populations, communities, and the future generations - the Long Walk, the rounding up of Indigenous children in Australia, Nazi Germany, the Khmer Rouge genocide....

Requiem
A photography exhibit on display in the Yarra Gallery off Fed Square - here is a room of images selected from the collection shot by the 135 journalists who were killed or went missing during the Indochina War in South East Asia. These prints were taken by Cambodian Nationals and Foreign Press photographers in the battles and weeks before the KR took full command. Some powerful images captured - moment of history - all quashed by the ruling dictatorship/

Words Of Witness
We follow the work and passion of 22 year old budding journalist, Heba Afify, during the Egyptian uprising in Cario in January of 2011. She battles her Mum for permission to be out and interviewing people protesting, and teaches her family about the political situation of the overthrow of Mubarak, whilst she writes and publishes stories and updates for an English news site, and her Twitter and Facebook accounts.

As a young women she faces many barriers, including the perceptions from her own family, about what she should and should not be exposed to, all the while, displaying her passion and excitement for a new political era in her own country.

Kolkata By Foot

Whilst there is so very much to see in Kolkata, I managed to cover most of the central sights on foot on my very first full day in India. My favourite way to explore a city is to wander, semi-lost but with a guidebook or map to get me out of trouble if needed.

This walk also let me get a feel for the city and this new country, hear the traffic, breath in the dust and grit, and the smells - good and bad. The street food, and the public urination. It was all there!

I started at the majestic Victoria Memorial.  A monument to Queen Victoria during British India times, although it took 20 years to complete the vision. The inside was actually a bit blah, with walls and walls of photos with little timeline explanation. But the building itself is stunning, the inside chamber, and the gardens were impressive.

From the gardens I followed the sight of the steeple of St Paul's Cathedral, which could have been found in any countryside of the UK. I followed the main road here, along The Maiden. I walked some kids playing cricket in the park under the towering Sahid Minar, before walking past Eden Gardens, where International cricket is played in this city.

From here I spotted, and was drawn to, the gorgeous Metropolitan Building, with it's gold domes and white pillars, windows and arches. A building that used to be Asia's biggest department store.

Losing my way a little trying to find the location of the BBD Bagh, I took in the streets around central Kolkata as workers were out on the street getting something to eat at the end of their work day, or rushing from one place to another. I actually wasn't sure what I was looking for, even though I was consulting the map, until someone assured me it was just up on the next block.

Finding the Lal Dighi, or the Red Pool, I realised that what I was looking for was the collection of grand buildings lining this water.

The Post Office, to the left, reflected into the pool in such a magical way. The water is not red, and there are a few theories about why it has that name, one of them supposing that the old fort on one side of the pool reflected it's red colour into the water.

To each side of this building was another equally impressive one, the central businesses and the seat of power for the Indian state of Bengal.

The Writer's Building spans the North of the pool, and is now the secretariat of the state government of West Bengal - but it used to be for the writers of the British East India Company.

Statues along this great building celebrate areas of Justice, Science, Commerce and Agriculture, with the Greek god or goddess of these studies flanked with the statues of an Indian and a European notable person in each field.

A walking tour of the central grand buildings of the city that used to be referred to Calcutta. It's almost hard to imagine the living experience of the poverty, population mass, and intensity of India looking back at this collection of photos!

Sunsets At Bagan

Our first night we watched the sun disappear over the mountains across from the Ayeywarady River, with beers in hand – perfect!

At the end of our second day in Bagan we were taken to temple number 394 on the map, for a serious incredible view of the sun setting over the plains of temples as far as the eye could see.

This was one of the few temples with access to the top level, and a climb up the stairs found us a spot to sit and watch the colours change in the sky above and in the temples all around.

The Big M in Kuala Lumpur

The sight of the twin buildings of the Petronas Towers is the iconic view of Kuala Lumpur; the view that confirms that you are in KL rather than any other big city in the world.

The night I arrived, I popped down to the KLCC to take in the view of the buildings from their foot. Here, hundreds of Malaysians and tourists alike had gathered around the pool in front of the buildings and the mammoth shopping centre, to watch the fountains and coloured light show.

I took in the view of the buildings from the pool edge, meant to be in the form of an "M" for Malaysia, with the bridge spanning across at floor 41 and 42.

I went back the next day to take in the view in the sunlight and blue sky - the detail and the balls at the top seem to twinkle in the sun, making the pillars of modernity seem pretty and enchanting.

With the idea of watching the sunset sink behind the Towers, and with yTravel Blog's view recommendation in mind, I found my way through the underground system from KLCC over to the Traders Hotel at the end of the day, and rode the elevator to the 33rd floor and the SkyBar.

I took a seat by the window to keep the Towers in view, and ordered a drink, as the clouds rolled in from the mountains to my right, and the sun tried to show it's sinking colours to the left.

This colour show, and the spectacular storm that ensued, gave me a totally different view of the Towers, occasionally disappearing from view all together through the heavy rain.

Ordering another drink to wait out the storm, and delighting in the bar with the hotel pool right through the middle, the sky then cleared and produced a perfectly clear view of the Petronas Towers once more, all lit up for the night.