Plagues have descended upon Sydney in recent weeks, of various kinds. First of all there was a plague of bogong moths, huge ugly brown moths which gathered round the city centre at night, drawn by the lights, and never quite left during the day. Round the harbour bridge the sky was thick with moths for days, it became quite a talking point, with celebrity chefs even chipping in to discuss their nutritional value.
Then the flies arrived: lured by the increasingly warm spring weather they hover over us as we dry off from a swim on the beach. I’ve been wandering down to Tamarama beach in the early evenings for a bracing sleep-inducing swim, and the flies can be most irritating. I have learnt the ‘bushman’s salute’ though, which is a basic nonchalant wave in front of the face, spotted often on the streets of Sydney as well as in the bush. The clocks changed recently so the evenings are lighter for longer, giving the surfers more surf time in the evenings, and making my cycle home from work through Centennial park less scary and dark. The jacarandas are blooming so the city is bathed in lilac and smells wonderful as dusk settles.
Last weekend I attended SPAA Fringe, a 2-day event run by the Screen Producers’ Association of Australia, where people from all over the Australian and international industry got together and attended various lectures and workshops on diverse topics. From HD camera tips to independent producing advice; budgeting to marketing; funding to cross-platform saturation, the weekend was a great way for me to meet lots of other enthusiastic people in the Aus production industry and cultivate contacts for future film projects. Oh, and of course drink lots of champagne and talk crap with them too. I walked away from the two days with a purse full of business cards and a head full of ideas. Inspirational.
My first film project in Australia has its debut screening tomorrow. It’s not as glam as it sounds, my friend Alex and I have made a short film which is live action with flashbacks in animated photography, and it screens in a gallery tomorrow evening as part of Kino, a monthly short film night which encourages collaboration and shooting on limited resources. It’s been fun and I’ve met lots of great people as a result, which is important.
We finished editing the film today and celebrated with a dip in the sea at Tamarama and a walk along the cliffs back to Bondi. At the moment there’s an exhibition on the Tamarama headlands called Sculpture by the Sea, an annual exhibition of sculpture dotted along my favourite clifftop walk. The pieces have transformed the headlands and range from the eerie to the comic, bringing hundreds of people out to the coast. It’s wonderful but I’ll also be glad to have my beach back to how it was, and swim in the quiet sleepy evenings sharing the sea with a few surfers and fewer swimmers.
I’ll let you know how the screening goes, but in the meantime I’ve scanned in some photos from the late-70s early-80s of mum, Adam and myself, and there’s even one of Granny and a great one of Helen and Martin. Enjoy them here.
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