Australian Exit

What a beautiful exit from Australia...

The beauty of Australia's age was trumpeted, as I felt a deep connection to the land's ancient energy and vast beauty. Bangarra dance company, a modern Aboriginal dance troupe, teamed up with the Australian Ballet to provide a farewell treat the night before departure, a reminder to the gathering of cultures which makes Australia wonderful, the sound of the didge reverberating throughout.

The flight took me over the Murray, for the second time in as many months, again struck by the wayward wandering of this mighty drainage system that forms our state border and has influenced the lives of countless numbers of people.
As I flew over Australia, chasing the sun's gradually lengthening shadows, the relief of the land sprung to, and desert features leapt up in abundance. Numerous rocky outcrops presented themselves, all seemingly impressive from the air and each enticing me to visit, and as I observed the vastness of the Australian continent, I was showered in its beauty. All of the formations seemed to be aligned, giving the impression that prevailing winds had caused ripples in the earth's surface in much the same way undulations form in sand. Eternally empty riverways left their mark, drainage basins apparent and hidden force demonstrated by the manner in which they sliced through the rock formations outcrops. They too somehow all seemed to head inland, no doubt evaporating in the desert heat long before they reached the fabled inland sea, leaving in their place vast salt lakes,which somehow the ever-present scrub did not seem to mind.

Then the aeroplane involuntarily rolled to the left as the captain made an announcement that we were passing over Uluru, and passengers flew to the windows quicker than on an emergency exit. Forehead pressed to the window, I gasped in the extraordinary beauty of our magnificent monolith, and felt touched by the sacred energy of Australia's heart, a blessing and omen on the start of this journey to witness heavenly beauty in its most awe-strikingly sublime form.

In Istanbul, safe and sound, excited and energised.
Warwick.

All images on Flickr Beautiful World

Eclipse sightings grow in number

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Originally uploaded by Beautiful wwworld.

Its funny how we seem to observe things in increasing quantities when we turn our attention to them. Some call this 'messages' (I do) others just coincidence or reflections on the human mind's filtering process. Whichever way it is, I decided to do it consciously in my attempt to grow more and more excited about the eclipse, and it proves that eclipses aren't rare, they're everywhere we look.
Here are a few other sightings:

This is a number plate of a car which I saw after viewing the beautiful moonrise below, on the second last night before I left Australia - watching the moon a fabulous way of observing the inevitable passage to eclipse

There's more eclipse sightings and relevant others in my flickr group

Inflatable mattresses

A couple of things have caught my eye of late, which I wanted to share.

I was cycling along the F1 Grand Prix track (as you do), off in my own little world of brum brumm cars, considering that perhaps the reason I'd been dreaming of F1 cars overtaking me as I cycled along a mountain road was because my daily commute takes me past race barriers and even more scarily, typically in the wrong direction (major digression here but riding into F1 traffic is a high adrenaline sport), when....

I decided to start a new sentence, for sake of clarity.

It was just nice to see, playing on the grass hill adjacent to the track, a toddler make bold steps up the hill towards a sprinkler which was an obvious source of fun. Mum only cottoned on that junior was going to get wet just prior to the event, and started an inevitable sprint to his rescue (things looked very slow motion in her mind at this stage, I'm sure). She was able to snatch him away from the sprinkler just as he reached it (Boooo!) but much to my delight (and theirs), this was the exact moment that the sprinkler (one of those ones that sounds like a cricket) swung around and saturated them both, their laughter ringing out.

The second moment of joy this week came down on the beach, when I saw three people, a man and two women all in their seventies, riding waves on those old school inflatable mattresses. It was such a delightful sight to see these oldies enjoying the waves without any regard to their age, as they looked to have done for decades. Yum