Roadhouses of the Nullabor Plain, Cocklebiddy

For the last week RW, MW and myself have been staying in roadhouses along the Eyre Highway, the only highway going east west across the south of Australia --- another highway goes across the top of the country (imagine the US with only two paved roads connecting the east and west coasts). The Eyre is so monotonous along the Nullabor a bend in the road is worthy of comment.  The roadhouses tend to be spaced about a hundred kilometers apart, relatively close by outback standards, and each consists of five key components:

The gas station (~$AU1.74/litre or roughly $US5.50/gal)

 The restaurant/bar/snack store ($AU6/beer or ~$US30 for a six-pack)

The motel (typically cinder block “lego-style” architecture)

The caravan park (a tree for shade if you are lucky)

And a very big parking lot for the road trains.

Each morning we leave the world of road-trains and “grey nomads” (retirees with caravans) and head off into bush on dirt tracks.  Most days we do not see another car or person until we come back to the highway at end of day.  The bush is incredibly beautiful with lots of skippies (roos), emu (is that plural?), snakes, lizards, wedge-tailed eagles, parrots, falcons, wild horses, one dingo, one red-back spider, and various other small creatures and birds.  Mostly it is just all beautifully remote…..and dusty….the shower at the end of the day feels great.

Each roadhouse typically offers one last amenity at the end of each day….an incredible sunset.

Outback Walk, Baxter Cliffs, South Australia

ahead

behind

In a few weeks vast numbers of Right whales will arrive to the base of these cliffs in the Australian Bight from their summer home in Antarctica but last week all I saw were dolphins.  Rock-Whisperer, Map-Wizard, and myself are back in land of cell phones so posts should be more regular now---stay tuned for road-houses of the Nullabor!

Aboriginal Batik from Central Australia

These photos are from a gorgeous book, Across the Desert: Aboriginal Batik from Central Australia by Judith Ryan, that I bought last year in Melbourne.  If you have any interest in batik or aboriginal art it would be a beautiful addition to your library.

Artist from Utopia applying wax to silk with a canting.

Peggy Napurrurla Poulson, Warlpiri, Yarla Jukurrpa (Bush yam Dreaming) 1986 Batik on cotton

 

Tjunkaya Tapaya, Pitjantjatjara, Raiki wara 1994 batik on silk

Yipati Kuyata, Pitjantjatjara, Raiki wara, 1989, batik on silk organza

Imiyari (Yilpi) Adamson, Pitjantjatjara, Raiki wara, c. 1988, batik on silk

Emily Kam Kngwarray, Anmatyerr, Kam (Pencil yam seed), 1988, batik on silk

 Ada Bird Petyarr, Anmatyerr, Arnkerrth then Ngangkar (Mountain devil lizard and traditional healer), 1991, batik on silk 
 

Lena Skinner Ngal, Anmetyerr, Untitled 2007, batik on silk

Tjunkaya Tapaya, Pitjantjatjara, Raiki wara, 2007, batik on silk.

A Raiki is a "long cloth"

Roadside Animals of Australia

Please stop here!

 Giant galah of Kimba

Rooey of Bordertown

Eucla's giant whale

Down Under......

Greetings from the land of roos, roadtrains, and roadkill. I’m writing this from Nundroo, a very very small town (roadhouse, caravan park, garage, gas station) on the eastern boundary of the Nullabor Plain, South Australia. Last Sunday an Airbus 380, the largest passenger airplane in the world carried us to Oz (aka Australia). We arrived Tuesday mid-day in Adelaide (Monday having mysteriously evaporated through the peculiarities of datelines). We is three geologists embarking on three weeks of field work trying to figure out how high sea level was (= how big the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets were) the last time the atmosphere had this much CO2 in it (about three million years ago).

approaching Melbourne...from the tail cam!

From the airport we picked up our beast of a 4WD, a Nissan Patrol, then headed to Adelaide Uni to pick up some gear that was shipped to us from various places. By 3pm we were headed north, seriously jet-lagged but happy to hit the road. It is now the evening of the next day and we’ve driven ~1000 km to the eastern edge of the Nullabor Plain. 

Next morning….don’t know when I’ll be able to get posts up---no cell phone or internet signal in last night’s town and we are heading into an even more remote area. But I’m getting great pics that I hope you enjoy as I eventually get them up.

Perfect example of the architectural vernacular of the outback.

And in case you are wondering what a road train is here is a “double” that had a bit of an accident.   I’m guessing the driver's dream of piloting a “triple rig” someday went out the window with his windshield!

Minerva at the Library of Congress

Elihu Vedder's marble mosaic of Minerva of Peace, her armor laid aside, standing guard before the Main Reading Room and holding in her hand a scroll that lists the various disciplines of learning, science, and art.

Ordered disorder, perfect imperfection....

I visited the Phillips Memorial Art Gallery in D.C. earlier this week.  Have you ever had the experience of coming across a work of art in a museum or gallery, maybe by somebody famous or maybe by someone you've never heard of, being incredibly moved by it, thinking how wonderful it would be to have it in your home, and then, in the next moment, thinking "heck, I could do that...I'll just do it myself and then I'll have it!"?  I had that experience with this piece by Linn Meyers called "at the time being".  It is a work painted directly on the museum walls---really, it is only squiggly lines....

But then you look closer....the lines are complicated, beautiful, a subtle blend of white and yellow.  You soon realize you are in the presence of something singular.  A museum essay describes this piece which is inspired by a Vincent Van Gogh painting in the museum's collection:

"Linn Meyers spent two weeks working steadily on this project.  She started by painting the walls a dark blue that evokes Van Gogh's Starry Night.  Then she laid out the circular shapes around intersecting horizontal and vertical lines that generate the overall composition, or what she calls, the matrix.  Thin lines followed, twisting and turning, connecting and disconnecting, looping around it and filling in the central blanks, resulting in a dazzling field of optical sensations."

"Meyer's circular forms are completely off-center.  Like lovers, they embrace and drift apart.  At once intense and loose, systematic and improvisational, controlled and impulsive, Meyer's drawing sucks us in, simultaneously inducing vertigo and offering solace."

mmmmm....you can see more of Meyer's work here.

Strangely, just to the right of this wall was another painting I had that "i-could-do-this" feeling:  Paul Klee's Arab Song (1932).  It is a painting in oil on rough burlap.  So muted, primitive, quirky and peaceful.....

Noon today, The Supreme Court

The Supreme Court Building was designed by architect Cass Gilbert and built between 1932 and 1935.

"Contemplation of Justice"

"Equal Justice Under Law"

One of two identical self-supporting elliptical spiral staircases designed by the architect Cass Gilbert.  Five stories, seven spirals, 136 steps each.  Pretty amazing.

You can see here how the limestone steps are cantilevered out from the wall.

Another beautiful staircase....I love the handrail carved into the limestone wall.

Remind you of anyplace?

The Pantheon in Rome....same eight Corinthian columns across the front under a pediment.   Maybe the Pantheon originally had the front steps as well....the building has been sinking for two millennia.