It's Jacaranda Festival time again

Good Lord....it has been ages since I posted anything on this blog.
In fact, I was seriously considering removing it after I had a book printed of selected articles I'd posted over the past 11 years.
However, I decided to leave it on the web, just in case it could offer anything to anyone.

So here I am, adding a new post and it is of a shot I took in Grafton yesterday (27th. October 2021), which I dubbed "Cops & Jacarandas".
I just happened to be taking a pic of the jacaranda trees (it is Grafton's Jacaranda Festival right now) when a Highway Patrol car glided into the viewfinder. I ended up with quite a colourful photo!
If you click on it the photo will enlarge.

The camera used was a DJI Osmo Pocket.....a very nifty little device which incorporates both video and photo capability in 4k and uses a 3-axis gimbal for stability when shooting video footage.
Info available here if you are curious.

Lockheed's L-1011 "Tristar"

I was looking through some old slides yesterday and came across the set shown below.

Here is the story behind them:-

Many, many years ago - in May, 1974, to be exact - myself and a good friend of mine happened to be two of a group of aeronautical enthusiasts (he belonged to the Aviation Historical Society of Australia and I was an invitee) who were invited to enjoy a demonstration flight in the All Nippon Airways (ANA) Lockheed L-1011 "Tristar" which was on its delivery flight to Japan.

Lockheed, with the co-operation of ANA, had arranged for the aircraft to be demonstrated to airline representatives from Ansett, TAA and QANTAS....and also the RAAF, as I learned many years later.

We boarded at Sydney's Kingsford Smith airport - adjacent the QANTAS 747 hangar, if memory serves -  on a beautiful morning.

After takeoff (to the south), the flight turned northwards over Wollongong  and then headed north along the coast and turned south somewhere near Gosford.

One of the shots below was taken within the cockpit; I was looking at the throttles and trying to get the pilot's hands into the frame.

The reason for that was that the aircraft was landing itself.

The L-1011 was coming down the approach path, the pilot's hand off the controls (throttles and yokes) and the pilot did not place his hands back on the controls until the aircraft was running along the tarmac.

Amazing technology back then.

This feature was one of the standouts used by Lockheed to promote the aircraft.

No Australian airline bought the Tristar.

It is said that QANTAS held an option but it died when Lockheed cancelled production.

Airlines by that time were being lured by the twin fan-jets being promoted by Airbus and Boeing and the tri-jets - Lockheed's L-1011 and McDonnell Douglas's MD-11 (nee DC-10) - were too expensive to buy and operate.

The following photos were taken with my Praktica 35mm camera and are digitised from the slides.

They will enlarge a bit more when clicked.

 

 

 

 

 

When we left the aircraft on returning to Kingsford Smith, each passenger was handed a memento of the flight, a polyester-resin dome with a Tristar flying over Australia.
I still have mine (slightly chipped on the edge).............

 

Whatever happened to the ANA demo aircraft (Registration JA-8506), I hear you you ask?

Well, it served with ANA until February 1985, when it went to Boeing, of all places!

There it stayed until March 1985....so I would think it was undergoing a "between operators" service.

That month, as N762BE, it commenced operations with Hawaiian Airlines, where it stayed until February 1995, when it came under the ownership of someone or something called "Rich AW Ltd.".

In February 1999 it went to Orient Thai Airlines and in 2002 was in storage at Roswell, New Mexico.

Incidentally, anecdotal evidence shows that pilots who flew the L-1011 during its life with major carriers just loved it....so it must have had a lot going for it.

I think it would have looked great in QANTAS, TAA or Ansett livery.

UPDATE: 1/10/2018
Here are some links to Ron Cuskelly's excellent "The Lockheed File" website.

The site contains an enormous amount of reference material relating to Lockheed aircraft registered in Australia and, in addition, to aircraft with an Australian connection, under the heading "Oddities".

Scroll down to Tristar Australian Demonstration Tour on that page for the start of the L-1011 section, with photos.....including "what ifs" for QANTAS, Trans-Australia Airlines (TAA) and Ansett Airlines.

Music! Music! Music!

Margaret, Me and Michele, our patient music teacher!

What a wonderful night we had on Saturday (9th. September) when we had a "Fifties" musical evening at the home of very good friend, Margaret, here in Yamba.

Twenty guests were invited by our hostess and a selection of Fifties pops were performed by both our ensemble (Marg on organ, Michele and I on Yamaha keyboards) and also individual presentations by Margaret and myself.
The musical "menu" consisted of the following classic pop-music items:-

• Theme from "A Summer Place" (Margaret)
• Love Is A Many-Splendoured Thing (Margaret)
• Medley of Mona Lisa, Bluberry Hill & The Twelfth Of Never (Bruce)
• A "sing-along" of Rock Around The Clock & Rockin' Robin (Michele on organ))
• Fly Me To The Moon (Margaret)
• Ensemble performance of Singin' The Blues, Love Me Tender & Music! Music! Music!
• Bye, Bye Love (Bruce)
• Diana (Bruce)
• Chanson d'Amour (Bruce)
• Catch A Falling Star (Margaret)
• A "sing-along" of See You Later, Alligator (Michele on organ).

The musical evening was rounded out with a menu of "Fifties-style" dishes which included such delights as cheese cubes & cocktail onions on sticks, bacon & prune delicacies on sticks, beef stroganoff & rice and finished off with desserts of bread-and-butter pudding and ginger & fig pudding with cream.

Excellent! Thanks go to Venette, Graham and Ben.

It was a really fun evening and I am delighted that just over a year-and-a-half ago I had the opportunity to become one of Michele's students.

I love being able to "make music". 😃

Trying to be a kool-kat! (Fifties-speak!). Keyboard is Yamaha PSR E443

Emile Mercier - a cartoonist of note.

 NOTE! ALL IMAGES ENLARGE TO MAXIMUM SIZE WHEN CLICKED.

I grew up with Emile Mercier.

When I was a child, my father bought two daily newspapers - the Sydney Morning Herald and, in the afternoon, The Sun.

Emile Mercier's work appeared in every edition of The Sun from 1949 until he retired in the late 1960s (see Wikipedia article - link above). I used to buy The Sun myself when living and working in Sydney.

It was a sad say when he retired - a little like the sadness felt when Charles M. Schulz drew his last 'Peanuts' strip in 2000.

Mercier's style was unique; for instance, in many of his cartoons there were springs under the floorboards (example above) or even under footpaths.

He also drew wonderfully-scraggy cats and scruffy dogs and most of his works which featured race-horses had at least one of them named "Gravy Bones".

His inventive mind also came up with alliterative names for businesses and products.

The Wikipedia article to which I've given a link has good information about Emile Mercier. There are many other sources on the internet, too.

I just wanted to pop up a few of his pieces from the 1957 booklet entitled "Follow That Wardrobe!",  bought quite a few years ago and which I unearthed yesterday when sorting through some books.

You will find the occasional Mercier booklet on eBay. They are not cheap, having become sought after by collectors. For example, right at this moment there is one available for $40 and, from another seller, eight first-editions going as a job-lot for $260.

So enjoy the following examples, straight from 1950s Australia...............

The two pieces below certainly sum-up Mercier's view of road workers!

Those who are familiar with lawn bowls will get the gist of the comment below.

Nothing changes in politics, does it?!

When this cartoon was published (1957), Australia's television industry was only one year old. Politicians were very quick to take advantage of the new medium.

Every oil company had their own additives, each touted to provide some sort of improvement or benefit to the engine.

You might recognise the legitimate brands in the fictional names which Mercier has used below. Two of them have long gone from the roadsides of Australia.

Mercier's love of "gravy" and "shrdlu" come to the fore in the public bar and the horse stables.

That's probably "Gravy Bones" who ran last.......a very long last!

I'll round out this gallery with Emile Mercier showing that even Santa could get a "bluey" for illegally parking his sleigh.

 

An Evening of Christmas Music

I was invited to perform a piece of Christmassy music at a recent gathering of friends and acquaintances at the home of the same lady who hosted a similar evening last September.

So armed with my Yamaha PSR E-443 electronic keyboard and the song  - Handel's "Joy To The World" - firmly locked down in my head I duly presented my arrangement of the classic piece.
(Note that it is ascribed to Handel; there is no clear evidence that he actually composed it.)

Back: Michele & Conner. Front: Bruce & Margaret.

Michele is my teacher, Connor is a young man (last year of high school next year) with an amazing voice and Margaret is a good friend, a fellow music (electronic organ) student of Michele and our wonderful hostess for the evening.

A great time and I thoroughly enjoyed myself and I continue to obtain a huge amount of pleasure and satisfaction from my music and the lessons, which now total 40 since February of this year.

We have a six-week break during the annual summer holidays until the end of January and over that time I will continue to practise and also revise the lessons of the past year.

Learning to play the piano.....properly!

For some years I've been able to play an electronic keyboard by ear and to use the automatic accompaniment, but I've never been able to read music or to play left-hand chords.

This all started to change in February of this year, when I commenced piano lessons with Michele Saunders Music Studio, here in Yamba. In fact, the studio is literally 100 metres from our front gate. How good is that?!

I have a Yamaha E443 electronic keyboard which has lots of bells and whistles but which, at the touch of a button, reverts to what is effectively a 61-key piano.

Lessons are half-an-hour per week and I am now coming up to my 30th. lesson. That's 15 hours of tuition in total over the past eight months and I am enjoying every second of the experience.

I never had the time to do this whilst I was working and helping to raise two children but now, in retirement, I have all the time in the world.

I practice at least an hour a day....not necessarily all in one go; some days I'll have a half-hour session, other days I'll be sitting at the keyboard for a couple of hours.

Last Saturday night I had my first "public" performance - at the home of a very dear friend (Margaret) who plays the organ beautifully and who hosted an evening of light classical music for about twenty or so friends.
There were four musicians - Michele (on guitar...her expertise is boundless), Margaret on her electronic organ, myself on my Yamaha keyboard and a gentleman by the name of Peter who plays a Kawai electronic piano (88 keys). Peter and his wife Claire were visiting for a week...and the stay included  several music sessions with Michele.

Peter is blind, is 83 and Michele is his music teacher.....his remote music teacher, because he lives north of Brisbane and Michele coaches him via the internet.
Yes, that's correct........and we believe it is a unique arrangement.

Here is a photo of three of us....Michele, Margaret and myself...........

 And another which includes Peter...........

I couldn't live happily without music.....and to be able to learn to read and play it from such a lovely and encouraging teacher as Michele is one of life's bonuses.

Tehachapi Loop

My friend Steve, who lives in Hemet, California, was recently passing the famous Tehachapi Loop during one of his regular business trips in California when he chanced upon a BNSF freight train negotiating the track at the same time that he happened to be there.

It's a consist made up primarily of double-stack containers, with a few auto-carriers on the rear and hauled by four what appear to be GE "Dash 9" (or maybe ES44) locomotives.

The following photographs were sent to me by Steve.
All enlarge when clicked.

 

Thanks, Steve!

I envy you the opportunities that you have to see this piece of railroad history on a regular basis.

Up, Up and Away!

My 70th. birthday was celebrated over six-month's ago (November 2015) and as a special gift I was presented, by my wife, son and daughter, with a 45 minute flight in a helicopter.
I deliberately held off taking the flight until the weather moved out of the stormy, unpredictable summer and well into the calmer period of autumn.....late autumn, in fact.

So yesterday (Wednesday 25th. May) I headed up the highway from Yamba to beautiful Ballina, a 75 minute drive and it was a simply superb autumn day; 23 degrees, light breeze and a blue sky. Just a perfect day for my first flight in a helicopter and a perfect day for top-down motoring in the MX-5.

On the way to Ballina I stopped at New Italy - a roadside rest-stop with picnic facilities, cafe, art displays etcetera. This location commemorates the settlement in the area of approximately 130 Italian immigrants back in the 1800s.

 Note that all photos enlarge when clicked. 

My flight was booked with Air T&G, a helicopter-flight business operating from Ballina Byron airport.
They have three Robinson R22s, two R44s, a Bell something-or-other which is a "Huey" look-alike, and a Bell 47, which anyone who has watched M.A.S.H. would immediately identify.

After being weighed and leaving behind anything of a loose nature (keys, mobile phone, pen) I was taken out to the little two-seat R22 by my pilot, Ryan.
With the aircraft and Ryan both dressed in black it looked like something out of an action movie!

After a pre-flight briefing we climbed in, donned a headset each and Ryan went through the checklist then fired her up.
We had to let the engine warm up for about five minutes and, once ready, Ryan did a radio check, advising other aircraft in the area of our intentions (it is uncontrolled airspace at Ballina) and we "taxied" out to the edge of the runway. Yep...taxied. About a metre above the ground!

On the way to our launching pad we passed this Bombadier CL-600 operated by Execujet, out of Sydney.

Past the general aviation hangars and services.
The hangar on the right contains what appears to be an ex-RAAF (or maybe RNZAF) Victa Airtourer.

We held short (hovering a metre above the ground) for a Jetstar service to make its landing.
Once he had touched down and commenced taxiing we were clear to lift off and, in the words of The Fifth Dimension, we were "Up, Up and Away"! 

We tracked inland initially...west towards Alstonville, flying at 1000 feet, over many macadamia plantations, one of which (or part of one) is pictured below.
The country is so green that it's almost unbelieveable - like being in Ireland!

We turned northwards, heading to the coast near Byron Bay, and passed near Bangalow.

There are quite a few palatial residences in this area; this one was once owned by Paul Hogan.

This is a new section of the Pacific Highway which was only opened within the past twelve months.
It includes twin tunnels which pass through a hill that, although providing spectacular views, was very twisty, slow and dangerous.
This new section of dual carriageway is part of the major restructuring of the Pacific Highway currently in progress between Woolgoolga and Ballina.

Below is a shot of the northern end of the tunnels, with the old highway alignment on the left and the new dual-carriageway road on the right.

Beautiful country around here; lush green and soft, rolling hills extending inland to the Great Dividing Range.
You can make out Mount Warning, that sharp peak in the centre of the ranges, which was spotted and named when James Cook sailed the Endeavour up the east coast in 1770.

The photo below that of the countryside is the view along the pristine beach extending north to Brunswick Heads and beyond to Hastings Point.

Ryan had us cruising along at 1000 feet and a little under 80 knots.

We met the coastline just north Byron Bay and then started tracking south, dropping down to 500 feet.
I have not edited the colours in the photo...that is exactly what we saw. I think the ochre tint is from the sand being stirred up.

The next series of shots are of the lighthouse at Cape Byron, the most easterly point on the Australian continent.

We saw plenty of dolphins on the way south to Ballina, and even a manta ray. But no sharks....which was good because there were dozens of surfers.
Sadly, no whales. It appears that the warm current is still making its presence felt further south but they should be on the move pretty soon.


We arrived at the mouth of the Richmond River, where it meets the Pacific Ocean at Ballina, and turned inland to approach the airport, with a final view south along the beach towards Evans Head.

Ryan held the helicopter short of the approach as we waited for a light aircraft to do a "missed approach" practice and then we were on finals and ready to touch down.

Of course, I had to have the obligatory photo taken as I sat in the R22, so here you go....

That yellow disk is not a landing light!
It's lens flare, from the sun.

What a fabulous experience this was. Totally absorbing, and thoroughly enjoyable.
I will do it again, one day.....maybe get a chance to do a whale-watching or a "hands on" flight.

Thanks, family.
This is up there with the hot-air balloon flight for my 50th.