Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

A visit to the other side of the river

One of the voluntary roles my wife has undertaken for several years is secretary for the primary school band and enrolment coordinator for extra-curricular instrument lessons by outside music teachers. These lessons and an honorarium to an experienced band leader are paid for by parents. The tuition is done outside regular school hours and has been very successful

Next term our youngest daughter is entering the program. She's taking on the alto-saxophone which our eldest daughter played through high school and then abandoned as soon as she graduated. Yesterday we dropped it off at Zenith Music in Claremont for a service.

I've mentioned Zenith before. We've bought all our new instruments from them. They are competitive pricewise and offer a lifetime's free service on all the instruments they sell. You only pay for any parts - perhaps things like an occasional felt pad which isn't sealing properly. In our experience, usually none are required. It's a genuine old fashioned good deal.

The arrangement of the cellar-like shop is a bit like that - old fashioned. It's appearance hasn't changed for many years. Behind the counter there is a wall with hundreds of small pigeon boxes containing parts and accessories you'd probably be unable to find in most modern music shops. The boxes are layered up to the ceiling. If Zenith haven't got it then it's possibly not available anywhere else. I always look forward to visiting the place.

There's a rabbit-warren of other shops in the same precinct and amongst them is one of our favourite book sellers, Bayview Newsagency. I've mentioned them previously too. They specialise in high quality remaindered books, mostly from European publishers. Over the past year we've been collecting a series of fabulous Mediterranean cookbooks published through Könemann. We'd acquired most of them, but the the one for Turkey had eluded us until yesterday - $16.95.

I've long had a taste for Turkish food. It resulted from when I rode a motorbike around Turkey in the early 1970s before it became too touristified. The first meal I cooked for my wife before we were married was a Turkish recipe. It was called something like Koreesh badenjam.

Coming home, we detoured along a riverside route which took us through Peppermint Grove and Mosman Park. The real estate prices in this area have traditionally been astronomical whether they have a view of the river or not. As a result the old money has had little trouble getting replaced by the new.

But there is a lot of crappy architecture in these suburbs. Many properties show signs of neglect. Even when old joints are torn down they are often replaced by concrete edifices which seem more to reflect a bunker mentality inspired by Leggo Inc. than something of architectural significance. There is a forgettable sameness about many of the modern dwellings.

Arguably, the best view of the river is from the top of a steep slope near the boundary of Peppermint Grove an Mosman Park. It overlooks Mosman Bay and one of my other favourite river locations, the Point Walter Spit. (I'd like to build a house on the end of it. ) Anyway, yesterday I made a composite panorama of Mosman Bay. Even though it was near noon, you'll see I had a bit of trouble with the sun. Being winter, old Sol is well to the north of here at noon. The glare off the water was substantial.

I made a second panorama from a slightly different position. It was constructed from 11 pictures and takes in the full 360 degrees to show some of the local architecture. Notice the huge security cameras and lights on one of the houses. They look like they've been salvaged from an aircraft carrier. I suppose the value of the real estate in this area would be astronomical. Far higher than the value of the dwellings.

We don't have the slightest desire to change places. For me, it's always amusing that we can go there anytime for free because some far sighted, civic minded person in the past decreed that it should be so. My pictures were taken from a public park cum picnic area. The person standing on the grass looking at the view is my wife. As is usual with my panoramas, they need to be clicked a couple of times to bring them up to the maximum size.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

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Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

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