Thursday & Friday July 16 & 17, 2009 (diary)

Adobe Photoshop Elements really is a marvelous application. All photos I took Tuesday at the Opening of the Darwin Airport Gateway Motel were against backgrounds of the Motel building which features straight horizontal and vertical lines virtually everywhere. This means that when you hold the camera even a few degrees off the vertical, vertical lines of the subject will radiate outwards on the photo.   With Photoshop you can correct this perspective distortion by rotating the image until all vertical lines on it are parallel and exactly vertical. I had to do this for just about all of the 40 odd pictures I took. The photo on the right is a good example of this.

I have also been busy contemplating an idea I have had since Irene van Amsterdam phoned me sometime last week. She mentioned how she would love to be in Mijas (SE Spain, Costa del Sol) once more. She went there with her daughter Shirley every year for the last 15 years or so and part of Shirley's ashes are laid to rest there now.
So I have consulted Patsy Reeves from Glenelg Travel who used to organise all their trips to Spain, and also sent a letter to Irene offering to go with her to Mijas, perhaps next May, outlining several options.

Although now 98 years old and largely confined to a wheel chair due to her weak knees, Irene is still bright as a button and full of life's energy. We get on quite well together and have at least one important thing in common : we both love our glass of brandy (especially the Australian 'Black Bottle' brand).

I was planning to go to Europe next year anyway to see my sister Wivica in the Black Forest and my old friends in Holland. I could either combine this with our trip to Mijas or, more likely, go and see Wivica and my Dutch friends on a second separate trip later next year, in August and September.
It has been quite cool in the Black Forest recently Wivica tells me, and I also would love to see the Autumn colours in September. When I was in Altenahr last year, several hotel guests told me they visited there every Autumn just for the magnificent colours then.
Irene will receive my letter early next week (mail delivery from the NT is rather slow usually), but ahead of this Patsy has visited Irene yesterday telling her already a little bit about my offer. So we will see.

Saturday - Sunday July 18 - 20, 2009 (diary)

Not much to report at present. The days remain sunny with clear blue skies and all mango trees are now fully in bloom. The early bird in front of my cabin has already fruit which is up to 2.5 cm (1 inch) in size but it will take another 2 or 3 months before they are fully ripe.
"Green fingers Gordon" always collects seeds from fruit he eats. Last year he potted some seeds from a pawpaw he ate which came up alright. So he recently planted 9 tiny pawpaw trees around the farm. In another year or two we may expect our first fruit from this he reckons. They are very nice to eat especially with some lemon squeezed over them. The fruit (in case you don't know it) can best be described as an elongated melon with similarly textured meat, orange in colour and rather sweet in taste.

Darwin is an unusual place. Its culture is rather rough and of a generally working class standard, well behind all other Australian cities. Partly this is because of it is remote location and still relatively small population. It can therefore not produce large enough audiences to attract up market cultural events from either Australia or overseas.
On some of the current ethical questions however the NT is way ahead of the rest of Australia. A few years ago they were the first in this country to introduce laws allowing euthanasia. Unfortunately these were immediately squashed by the Federal Government.

Territorians are free in spirit and have a great humour. This latter aspects is vividly reflected in the numerous personalised number plates on their cars. Whereas throughout Australia these tend to be rather boring and predictable in the NT this is a real cult and they stand out in terms of their creativity. Yesterday I spotted a real beauty. It was the plate of a red car driven by an attractive young lady overtaking me at considerable speed which read : 2DVS4U ("Too devious for you !").