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Jasper just caught the Oddball by the seam on the corner. Still counts as a catch though. Still righteous! At 12.5 Jasper still has quite a bit of energy. We don't play as long anymore, but we still play quite a bit. Nothing like some backyard Oddball action to keep the body young.
One of my favourite things about living in Australia is the variety of colourful birds.... Rainbow Lorakeets are plentiful, and are very well named....
Sometimes on Sundays we walk through a business park near our home. Jasper likes to act like he owns the place. A dog can dream...
Spanning the waters, connecting the central business district to the North Shore, stands our Sydney Harbour Bridge. Designed and built by British firm Dorman Long of Middlesbrough and opened in 1932.
It carries rail, vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian traffic. Affectionately known as 'The Coathanger' because of the arch design. The bridge takes the title of tallest steel arch bridge, measuring 134 m from top to water level.
And in close proximity, the Sydney Opera House, a multi-venue performing arts centre designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon, but completed by an Australian architectural team headed by Peter Hall. This unique and distinctive building was formally opened in 1973.
In 2007 the Sydney Opera House was included on the UNESCO World Heritage list.
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Well, Ceph has completely lost his mind, his brains in a basket, his head completely deflated. (Ceph is an Octopus stuffed toy). All the king's horses and all the king's men will never sew Ceph back together again. Makes no diff to Jasper though. The now mindless Ceph is just as entertaining as the day we got him
We had taken a toy to a greenspace close to our home. And despite it being 104F (40C) Jasper had plenty of energy to run around and taunt us, defying his 13 years of age.
Those that follow this site regularly will know I'am usually uploading sunrise and predawn shots of late , but here's a SOOC sunset from a few days back . No iconic native bird silhouettes sadly included .
The reverse of the day at the start .
Sunset Drive
Kenmore
Echo and Jax both like to nap against the doors - guessing there is nice cool draft that they are happy to block. On a totally side note, Echo's daddy, Grizz, is at Westminster Dog Show and got his pic in USA Today! Woohoo!
Some belated postings from Jan 26 (Australia Day). This is a national holiday and the weather was perfect so i set out on my bike to take some shots along the coast. This shot is of a yacht moored only metres from shore at Ocean Reef. Its a very quite spot as the beach cant be legally accessed by foot. I have a few more shots of this yacht It looked beautiful moored in this peaceful little bay. I think there were 2-4 people on board. You can see the blue water, the recreational craft in the distance and the people enjoying the water and lifestyle on the yacht. I love this series of shots as I believe it captures the lifestyle well on these beautiful sunny days.
.... or Salt Water Crocodile as they are better known. This one near Cooinda, in Kakadu National Park, in Australia's Northern Territory, best shot with a long lens!
Today, January 1st, is Jasper's gotcha day. He's been with us for 12 years. I thought this photo pretty much sums up Jasper. It was Gotcha-Day Eve yesterday and he refused to go on his after-dinner walk. He wanted to PLAY. So play we did. Geri Giraffe was his toy of choice yesterday. She's one of Jasper's Christmas gifts.
This is a male Helpis minitabunda, known for their bold and fearless behaviour as can be seen here. Looking directly upwards.
Also commonly known as threatening jumping spider and bronze jumping spider.
Around 10 mm body length.
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A photo I took a few years ago in Victoria that I have just processed.
I have seen lots of storm clouds like this during our recent coastal holiday!
Explored #82
When I was young, maybe around 7 or 8, riding in a slightly older 1948 FX Holden, I always got excited any time I saw the good old Peters Ice cream cone high up in front of a milk bar or corner store. At night, they were even lit up from within and looked wonderful. On seeing one of these, it was closely followed by intense pestering of my Dad to pull over and buy a treat, like an icy pole or a bag of cheese Twisties. Sometimes it worked!
This sight would be familiar to many older Aussies, with the 1960 FC Holden pulled up at the petrol bowser of a general store and Milk Bar. These old places often sold almost everything, and sometimes incorporated the Post Office too.
In this case, this is an old store front belonging to an antique dealer in Killarney, Victoria, not far from Warrnambool. The current owner also told me that the original milk bar here had been used by the Ford Motor Company in an advertising campaign in 1973.
Always happy to see any sign declaring ice cream to be a health food!
It is of course, a forced perspective shot of my 1/18th scale model 1960 Holden FC parked in front of the old store.
Jasper knows how to pour on the guilt with his sighs and mournful looks. But he gets plenty of play. Last night I went up to bed a little earlier than Jean and Jasper. As I'm reading in bed, I hear this on-going monologue / dialogue between the Roger Rabbit (voiced-over by Jean) and Jasper. In his typical cartoon voice, I hear Roger say, "Come on, man! Do a brother a solid and get off my chest so I can jump". Haha, 'do a brother a solid'. I had to laugh. The play continued at least until I drifted off to sleep. Lucky boy.
Thought it was funny the way Jasper's two front paws were sticking out at almost a right angle to his body as if in some sort of prone dance move. Note the frisbee between his paws. If the humans do make a move, they're not getting the frisbee without a fight ;-)
I remember taking this shot and thinking to myself, "gee, it has an element of Australian to it", referring to the slight reverse curve and a bit of power in the focal length. But I'm sure we Australians are not the only railfans to do this!
A "stop the car! This looks promising" moment, and running from the car (seen on the LHS of the frame) and running up the off-ramp at Goffs, sees us firing away at Union Pacific's manifest from Portland to North Platte. The train number, or symbols as you yanks call it, MPDNP 23, is a touch different to the BNSF way of numbering their trains, and let me break it down for you *starts dancing uncontrollably*. M (Manifest), PD (Portland), NP (North Platte) and 23 (Date of departure). Very complex!
9802-7948-5342-6299-7116 Union Pacific MPDNP 23 Goffs 23-4-25
It was a gorgeous day here today. Sunny skies and 75F (~24C). So we were looking forward to Jasper's walk after his dinner. Jean has a break until after the new year and I'm retired so we were all going to walk as a family. But we got across the street and Jasper stopped and looked back towards our house. "Come on Jasper! Don't you have to poop or anything?" A few steps more and he's pulling us back towards the house. He wanted to play in the worst way. So into the back yard we went and played with OddBall, Frisbee and as you can see in this shot, Moosey. He was having so much fun, his jaw was quivering. We love our old boy and his passion for play.
And so it goes. We take a ball with us on the evening "walk" these days. It lets us concentrate some fun & exercise into a few minutes so we can get out of the 105F+ (40C+) heat and back into our air conditioned comfort. Shot blind with camera in the grass with Jasper's priority clearly on chasing that ball again, not posing for photos.
Aussie Christmas is synonymous with seafood. Prawns and oysters are among the most popular items.
Pennant Hills, Sydney
Aussie 324 Arriving from Stansted to uplift Prime Minister Scott Morrision and delegation following their attendance at the COP26 Climate Conference,
Royal Australian Air Force
Airbus KC-30A (A330-203MRTT)
A39-007
Glasgow Airport, Scotland
2nd November 2021
Jasper has been enjoying the cooler weather and the outdoor play the temperatures allow. 5-10 frisbees or a few OddBall tosses usually satisfies him. Here, he's anticipating the toss of a toy by my wife, Jean. Such a happy chappy
Many older Australians will be familiar with this car. It was a very popular model made between 1958 and the year of my birth, 1960. This is the General Motors Holden FC. Price brand new back then was around 1,100 pounds depending on the model variant. Powered by a good old straight six of about 2.2 litres capacity.
This is a 1/18th scale model made by a company called Classic Carlectibles who specialise in Australian models, and is one of just 800 or so that have been released of this particular model. They make many older model Holdens and Fords, and as model cars go, they are very high quality with all doors opening and working steering and suspension. I love this one for the wonderful detail, right down to the hubcaps in glorious chrome, and even the tyre valves.
This is the "showroom" shot taken inside under LED lighting and is a ten image focus stack taken on the Canon RP using the 35mm macro lens. Processed in Canon DPP4.
We play every evening, but eventually the humans have to just "hang up the ball" and stop or we'd never get to relax. That's when Jasper gets all pouty and curls up on the other end of the couch. The facade drops quickly though if we show and signs of playfulness
January 1st is Jasper's Gotcha Day. He came to us at 5 months of age on January 1, 2012. A picture of him 7 years ago vs. this morning. His coat is fluffed out quite a bit, though you can still feel his ribs and he's a pretty lean boy.
Normally an invitation to play includes a toy of some sort. And what you don't see from this vantage is Roger Rabbit, Oddball and ChuckIt on the floor at his feet. Play it is!
One of the things I just love about this new Sony camera is the animal eye auto focus. For this shot, I just laid the camera on the couch, tipped it a little for the Dutch Angle and fired away. The camera automatically focused on his eye. It almost feels like I'm cheating.
During a recent visit from Dash and Jayme we passed by a playground on a walk. Dash is pretty good at that playground tic-tac-toe. He seems such a happy soul.