November 2007 – Page 2 – helenthura.com

November 19, 2007

Rock-Bottom Jackpot

Friday day. Another day in the office. Answering the phone. Doing the mail. Typing up quotes. Answering the phone. Chasing suppliers. All that fun stuff that fills my day between 8am and 4:30pm each day.

Friday night. Another night in this not so sleepy city. Relishing that sometimes mellow, sometimes rock reggae sound floating out into the night air. The DÃ© Jah Groove boys were in town to release their debut album Rock-Bottom Jackpot and had pulled out two of the staples of the local scene The Cool Calm Collective and Heavyweight Champions and an up and coming band The Colour who were mighty impressive.

The venue was of course The Step Inn, in some sense the little train that perhaps just could of the Brisbane venues. It used to be the Shamrock, a place on the fringe of the “The Valley” which was more of a shall we say public bar establishment than a place to go to see fine live music. The last year though the Step Inn has really “stepped up” and became almost a go to venue. They play host to a wide variety of bands from pyschobilly to reggae dub to metal and I have a feeling that after we all stop saying, it is still the Shamrock, we will realise what a treasure it just might become though it has a lot of work to go yet in improving the venue.

It doesn’t have the nicest lighting mostly due to the design of the stage and the room in general. The lighting though does change a lot depending on the band that is playing which is a lot more than can be said for some of the other live music venues round The Valley. Friday night though I was at the extremes ISO 3200, lenses wide open round the 1.8-2.2 stop and my shutter staying at 1/200 because other wise there was no hope in hell of getting crisp photos because unlike some of your more folky acts. Those boys like to move around a bit. Back to the show though. It was a nice night, talked to a few people, missed catching up with some people who I had wanted to say hi to, running into some girls from Caloundra the other weekend, taking photos and enjoying that sound. I have to give it to the DÃ© Jah boys for playing a nice long set which will stay in my little memory box for the weeks to come.

This is one of my favourite tracks off the album – One Drop High. Enjoy.
[audio:09%20One%20Drop%20High.mp3]

some photos of course. The rest are over here in a Flickr set

The Cool Calm Collective

Heavyweight Champions

The Colour

November 17, 2007December 24, 2007

Saturday Arvos

Nothing quite like a Saturday or more exact a Saturday Arvo. Spent the arvo picking Basil leaves for “normal” Genovese pesto and Lemon Basil leaves which I think will become a pesto with a bite to it, in the way of chillies and a decent dash of lemon juice. mmm just thinking about the idea now, I can just see a bowl of rice noodles with a bit of the pesto, some cashews and perhaps some steamed Asian greens.

Saturday arvos are also about sitting on a milk crate in the back yard listening to some fine Australian music, chopping up tomatoes and capsicums to go in the dehydrator. In a day or two we will have the most gorgeous semi-dried tomatoes. Some of which will get used to make a tomato pesto. Gee do you think I might like pesto? Really though how can you not. Just a handful of ingredients, a bit of love and tasting and you end up with the most flavoursome “sauce/paste” that can be used in/on just about anything.

Saturday arvos are also about mowing the lawn. Which I did this arvo.

Saturday arvos are also about sitting at the kitchen table reading the newspaper, cutting out snippets for books or exhibitions that we want to check out. Speaking of exhibitions to be checked out, it is only 22 more sleeps till the Andy Warhol retrospective opens at GOMA and to say I am excited would be an understatement :). The even cooler thing? Andy Warhol or more precisely 300 of his works are only coming to Brisbane, they are not going to those two cities down south who always talk about their capital C Culture. Yay for GOMA :D. I am so looking forward to the Andy Warhol retrospective and I have a good feeling that it won’t disappoint me as much as the Guggenheim in Melbourne did. 22 sleeps also till the big opening bash which is going to feature some of Brisbane’s finest artists including Robert Forster, Adele Pickvance & Dylan McCormack doing a bunch of Velvet Underground songs. The even better part? tickets are only $25. They go on sale on Monday – I am getting some for sure 😀

I have just finished my last run through my photos from the De Jah Groove/Cool Calm Collective/Heavyweight Champions/The Colour gig last night (which was a pretty darn decent night) before I send them off to the marvellous batcher. I started using Lightroom a month or so ago and it has sped up my processing so much. I dump the photos, walk away and let it import them/render previews (takes a while on my beast), come back flick through and mark my rejects and give a rating to the photos I have narrowed down, flick through to make sure they all look ok and then off to the batcher they go. Lightroom is nice.

For a change I am also listening to 4MBS Classic FM at the moment and the most delightful piece has has just finished playing (Brahm’s Hungarian Dancers 1-10) everything else has also been quite delightful.

November 13, 2007December 24, 2007

Basil

A year ago or pehaps a little longer if you had asked me my feelings about Basil I would have made gagging noises about my distaste for it as I had often had meals where my father had used a pretty heavy hand cooking with dried Basil. Then one day I picked up a bunch of fresh sweet Basil at the markets and made pesto. I haven’t looked back since then. Now I can’t get enough of that Basil taste and in fact if it was taken away from me I don’t know how I would cope.

I have a Greek Basil plant in my garden which has provided me with my fresh basil fix over the winter and in a few weeks I will have an abundant supply of Sweet Basil to keep me going over the summer.

I made my first Sweet Basil Pesto of the season tonight with some Basil that I picked up at the markets on the weekend. Whilst Greek and Sweet Basil both have that Basily taste they so many different levels to them. The Greek is a much more peppery plant I feel and as it is that Pesto I am used to tasting, I kept on adding more and more pepper to the Sweet Basil Pesto tonight as it was tasting too green. Lol. The adventures of Pesto. For Lunch tomorrow I will have Cous Cous, Chicken and Pesto. mmmmmm yummo.

Here is the Sweet Basil waiting to be planted. Waiting to give me hours of Basil Bliss in the kitchen 😀

November 9, 2007November 9, 2007

Cooloola w/e

Last Saturday morning, Mum and I packed up the car and headed north, first stop was the Eumundi Markets, which were interesting, I picked up a dress, a long dress as in down to my toes dress. I have always thought that long “maxi” dresses look weird and never tried one on. This one doesn’t look too bad at all. It also means I think that I have more dresses than I do jeans or shorts. If you had told a 17 year Helen that I don’t know what she would have said.

Back to the weekend though. After cruising the markets for a while we met up with Hilary, her daughter Erin and nephew Sam, or a Fairy and a Pirate as their painted faces suggested. Once we were done with the markets we headed north again to Gympie and the Tin Can Bay rd, which would lead us to our first destination of Seary’s Creek for lunch and a paddle.

Seary’s Creek by mum

Seary’s Creek. This is a most wonderful place. A decent creek flows out of a swamp and is just a nice creek – “they” have put in a lot of board walks etc to two swimming holes and you can float / swim from one hole to the other. On a body board, you just float down – very pleasant. Both pools have “tame” yabbies. The yabbies come and nibble / tickle toes if you stand still. We went both days and the first day there were kids catching and releasing them with a net. The second day Helen gave up trying to catch them with her hands as she wasn’t quick enough but managed to catch quite a few with a bowl. Sam was not successful, but he had a great time trying.

After we were all nice and cool we headed down a side road to explore and to see if the flying duck orchids that were in flower 6 weeks ago when Mum was up there last were still in flower and they were!!

Then we drove in to Poverty Point, which is a campsite at the southern end of Tin Can Bay. That was my first real experience driving through sand which I quite enjoyed. There were a few loooong stretches of deep sand that made me glad to have AWD on the car. We camped about 10m from the sand and our fire was just on the bank above the sand. Hilary and Mum both brought along a box of fire wood and Hilary had remembered to bring the marshmallows. Mum and I seem to always take the firewood and then forget about the marshmallows.

This is how Mum described the beach.

It has a lovely little sandy beach and when the tide goes out it is sand flats rather than the expected mud flats. There were these things washed up on the sand that looked like wafer thin dried apple slices – but most were only 3/4 circles – we realized that they were dried snail egg masses. Erin found a fresh one in the water, which is what we normally find washed up on the beach.

After Erin and Sam had gone to bed, Helen and I went walking on the sand flats in the low tide where we found all sorts of things; little soldier crabs having a feed and a wide array of shrimps, little fish, hermit crabs, snails and other crabs that were left behind in the sting ray feeding holes.

On Sunday morning, Sam and Erin had had breakfast and were in their swimmers by 6.00am!! It is a great beach for little people as when the tide is in it is a long way to deep water.

Once we had broken camp, we went for a short walk to look at the Orchids that Mum had found on her walk yesterday as well as just generally having a nice stroll in the bush. It smelt marvellous. It seemed to have a crisp apple aspect to it. Which is not at all what the bush normally smells like.

After we went on another walk/paddle in Cooloola Creek, we headed back to Seary’s Creek for lunch on the boardwalk, a swim, some yabbie catching and general fun.

Then it was time to start the drive home. We took the Cooloola Way home from Rainbow Beach which was a nice drive back to Gympie. We had a quick stop in Gympie so that I could have a looksie in the windows of a bank that my company has done a lot of work in. Driving home we stopped to have a look at a large colony of fruit bats just north of Nambour. There were 1000’s roosting in the trees beside the highway for a good 500m-1km.

In pictures instead of words there were…..

… plants

… a sunset

… people

and there was my newish Crumpler bag that I love to bits (a Barney Rustle Blanket).

November 5, 2007December 24, 2007

…just some words from my heart…

Last Wednesday I went along to the Tivoli to shoot the Xavier Rudd concert for The Dwarf and had a ball 😀 It was my first gig with a true blue press pit and much to my astonishment, I was the only photographer there. Quite interesting. The support act Jeremey Fisher was a total treat and Xavier was well he was Xavier. The venue seemed to be lacking a little bit in terms of energy but it was still great music. That said when he started playing Let me be, I think the whole place just lit up smiles on faces or when he did a remarkable Australian version of Bob Marley’s classic Redemption Song in which you could feel Xavier beating in your heart. It was a good night.

November 2, 2007November 9, 2007

CMF Sunday

The last day of a very music filled 2.5 days at Caloundra. Part of me was glad for the festival to be over but another part of me was sad, as I had heard so much great music over the course of the weekend. Will be really interesting to see how it will be run next year and what the line up will be.

Some more DÃ© Jah Groove photos. I had enjoyed these boys at Woodford but at Caloundra they really blew me and just about everyone else away. I am still listening to the CD every few days and looking forward to when they come up in a couple of weeks time.

Another big highlight of the w/e was Kaya. Another group I had seen at Woodford and were blown away by. Kaya are four ladies who sing with such passion and soul in their voices you would think that they have been told that after this show they will not be singing anymore

I think it is pretty well known round these spaces that in terms of “Brisbane” bands, Women in Docs pretty much top the list for me and for the Sunday show they played Tin Roof which is always going to make me smile.