Blacktown Mediaeval Festival.  A young wedge-tailed eagle being shown to the crowd.  I'm not sure I would want an eagle's beak that close to my left ear, especially if I knew that the bird can break the neck of a kangaroo with one blow!  Thank goodness I'm not a roo!

The top photo is of Silbury Hill, a 2 500 year-old man made hill just outside Avebury (A'bury to the locals)  The rest are of the remaining stone circle of sarsens in which the village itself is situated.  There was another stone circle, which with the remaining circle were themselves surrounded by a gigantic stone circle.  These were removed in less enlightened but more practical times to be used as building stone for the village.  The circles are over 3 000 years old making them about 500 years older than Stonehenge. 

It's an interesting thought that as some of my relations come from A'bury in the 1600s when people were less mobile than today I might be related in some way to the circle builders themselves.  But then, with the small population that existed then, most of us of UK origins probably have a henge builder in the family from way way back!

Window in a Wiltshire Church, probably Avebury or Winterbourne Monkton.  This photo could definitely do with a bit of cropping off the sides.

A side canal somewhere in Italy where there were lots of tourists

Hartley in the Blue Mountains, just west of Sydney.  Hartley is an abandoned village just off the road to Lithgow.

 

These are some of the exhibits to be found at RAF Cosford (not far from Birmingham UK)

From the top (I think!) are:

the stainless steel Bristol 188

the Fairey Delta 2 which captured my schoolboy imagination when Peter Twiss cranked it up to 1132 mph (a then world record speed) in about 1957

detail of TSR 2

TSR 2

the "prone" Meteor

TSR 2 yet again

Vickers Valiant

Handley Page Victor

last night fighting version of the Gloster Meteor

MIG 15

English Electric Lightning

Catalina

and finally

two views of the graceful and beautiful de Havilland Comet

 

If I've got any of them wrong, don't tell me. 

Remember what Oscar Wilde said in "The Importance of being Earnest": 

Ignorance is like a ripe rare fruit.  Touch it and the bloom is gone!

 

The Palazzo Vecchio and the Duomo in Florence.  You can just see Giotto's campanile in the top picture.

To some, this is "O mio babbino caro"; to others, "Una casa con il vista"; A Room with a View"; or merely a panorama of Florence.

For me it is the memory of a meal of spaghetti with a simple tomato sauce eaten on a terrace in the Bardolini Gardens.  The food and wine were red and tasty.

While on the subject of food, every night I was in Florence I ate in that very rare establishment, an inexpensive cafe right next door to a major Italian tourist attraction, in this case the Duomo.  The cafe was (and hopefully still is) called "Il Sesso di Dante" ("The quotation from Dante").  Good simple food, long benches and tables, great company, and NO music.  There's only so many times you can listen to a tenor sing "Come back to Sorrento . . ."

This is the door to a bank in Florence.  I took the photo because of the beautiful tasteful colour scheme.  The competition judge felt that much of the walls could be cropped from either side.  I disagree.  The white walls are subtly lilac and there are shadows from the wooden details of the door arch.  

A Sydney Icon by Night

The view from my desk. ISO 12800 Sony A65

I like it but I don't know why.

Why this blog?

About eight or nine years ago I decided to write a blog showing my photos and explaining to the world how wonderful they were.  Fortunately after two years of writing 14 year-old drivel about my indifferent photos I stopped.

By 2007 I had realised that the blog, BEROWRA PHOTOS, was embarrassingly difficult for me to look at.  The only real interest in it for me now is how an untutored man with a camera saw his photography develop.   Since that time, I have joined a camera club and (hopefully) the quality of my photos has improved.

But deep down I am afraid that another 14 year-old boy is about to write about his photos . . .

Oh, and to answer my own question in the heading?  I forgot the password to Berowra Photos.