Author Archives: James O'Brien
Looking Like Moby
I picked up my new glasses today. The consensus seems to be I look like pop-star “Moby”.
Sydney Monsoon
We don’t cope well with rain in Sydney. That means we haven’t been coping well for the last six months. There was more chaos on the roads tonight and here’s some late night footpath flooding on George Street, not far from Railway Square and Central Station.
Surry Hills Hipster
“Sorry Uncle Jim, I was just trying to give you a cuddle”, my young nephew apologised last weekend. I was on the couch half-watching television and had my glasses on my chest. My young nephew jumped up on my to give me a cuddle, and that’s when we both realised the frames on my glasses [...]
Home for Easter
If it wasn’t for Blues-Fest (held at nearby Byron Bay), the local paper, “The Northern Star” would have been a fairly thin volume today. Aside from the “social page snap” of Kings Cross nightclub owner, John Ibrahim, there wasn’t much to be found in today’s paper. Normally, when I come home, I can always find [...]
Winifred Atwell’s Grave
Being home for Easter is an opportunity to catch up with family, both the living and the dead. And today we visited a few cemeteries around the area, including Memorial Garden at South Gundurimba, about fifteen minutes drive from Lismore. It’s a small cemetery “in the middle of nowhere” with not many graves at all. [...]
Cheap Way to Sydney Airport
For the last fifteen years or so I’ve been travelling to and from Sydney Airport either by taxi or train. I live close enough so that a taxi generally costs no more than $20, and so that’s what I mostly do. If, however, I’m closer to Central, like when I’m travelling to and from work, [...]
Cousin Kerry
“Who would imagine you’d get so emotional about someone from 160 years ago?” Kerry O’Brien observed on tonight’s edition of “Who Do You Think You Are?” on SBS TV. The ABC-TV presenter was a little bit teary when reflecting on the plight of his ancestors. I completely understand what he was talking about, as I’ve [...]
Randwick Bells Are Ringing
It was so very sad to hear today of the death of an Australian musical legend. I’ve met him on several occasions over the last twenty years. It was probably 1990 (or maybe 1989) when I first witnessed his “magic” at the Barmera Country Music Festival in South Australia (I was living in Renmark at [...]
Cockatoo Island – #thewalkdownunder
When the alarm clock went off at half-past-five I thought briefly of turning over and going back to bed. I’m not really one for getting out of bed early on a Saturday. Eight-thirty, nine-o’clock is generally okay, but five-thirty is not within my frame of reference. But when I checked the weather and it was [...]
Visiting Stockholm 2011
This is several months overdue, but last night I finally got around to putting together a bit of a montage thing from last year’s visit to Stockholm Pride.
Summer in Sydney
Meet me down by the jetty landing Where the the pontoons bump and sway I see the others reading, standing As the Manly Ferry cuts its way to Circular Quay Thirty years after hearing the song “Reckless” by Australian Crawl, and in particular the line, “As the Manly Ferry cuts its way to Circular Quay” [...]
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