Somewhere Else

Yesterday we were in central Perth. Walking along Hay Street pedestrian mall, we noticed there are lots of interesting animals hidden in the ornate facades of the old buildings. The lion above is on Trinity Building, above the entrance to Trinity Arcade. And the horse below is next door, on Katies House.

A few buildings further along the mall, London Court has many of grotesque faces and animals including this owl and rooster.

It’s Australia Day. All over the country Australians will be celebrating with parties and firework displays. During our travels we often see objects and logos that incorporate the shape of Australia. The one above is in Clunes in Victoria. It is the Australian Federation logo, celebrating 100 years of Federation from 1901 to 2001. In the New South Wales town of Merriwa you can see a mosaic version of the same stylised map.

The logo below is in the main street of Ballarat, Victoria on a monument celebrating a shearers’ meeting that led to the formation of a trades union which eventually became the Australian Workers’ Union. The map with the superimposed Southern Cross is the logo of the AWU.

And the map shaped seat below is the town of Rylstone in New South Wales. It depicts the Australian Bicentennial logo, celebrating 200 years from the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 through to 1988. Did they forget Tassie?

The Scottish poet Robert Burns was born on 25 January 1759. Even people who never read a poem know his famous “Auld Lang Syne”.

In our travels we come across many statues to “Rabbie”. This one is in the Treasury Gardens in Melbourne, and is a replica of one in the town of Ayr in Scotland where he was born. Around the base there are bass relief panels showing scenes from his poems. The one below is from Tam o’Shanter. It tells the story of Tam, who stayed too late at the pub, came across a witches’ Sabbath on his way home and was chased by the Devil.

Since it’s the Year of the Dragon, here’s another Australian dragon. You can find it in a mosaic picture on the wall in Old Shanghai food hall in Northbridge, the entertainment and eating district of Perth in Western Australia. Even the nearby soft drink machine gets in on the act.

Today is Chinese New Year – the first day of the first lunar month, marked by the new moon. And this year is the Year of the Dragon, which comes around once every 12 years.

So where do you think the dragon above is? Maybe in Beijing, Hong Kong or Singapore? No, it’s right here in Australia – in the Chinese Garden at Darling Harbour in central Sydney. It is one of a pair of dragons fighting over a pearl, a very common motif in Chinese temples. And the Chinese word for dragon is long (Mandarin) or loon (Cantonese). Kowloon is literally “Nine Dragons” and refers to the peaks of the hills in that area of Hong Kong.

There were two vintage caravans in Murray Street in central Perth yesterday, giving a foretaste of the Fringe World Festival, which runs from 26 January (Australia Day) through to 19 February. The red and white van above is a ticket box office, similar to the one we showed you last week. The yellow van on the right is a performance stage.

Some acts that will appear in the festival gave sneak previews of their skills. The Ballpoint Penguins (above) performed comic songs with wickedly naughty lyrics. And Gail Force of Splat! showed how to keep hula hoops a-hooping.

We were amused by the confusing message on this roadside sign near Bold Park. Maybe they could have just said “No Stopping”.

The Australian White Ibis (Threskiornis molucca) isn’t the most popular of birds, especially among city dwellers. They often make a nuisance of themselves in parks and picnic areas, scrounging for food and scattering the trash from bins. No wonder they are sometimes described as “tip turkeys”.

But yesterday we were at Lake Claremont and noticed how much better the ibises look in their own habitat. They are whiter than the ones that live in picnic areas, and have a touch of elegance as they wade around looking for food in the shallow waters. Sometimes you could almost believe that they were practising their ballet steps.

Yesterday we featured the old courthouse, which is the oldest building in the City of Perth. But it isn’t the oldest surviving building in Western Australia. That title goes to the Round House in Fremantle, at the western end of High Street.

The Round House was built in 1830, the year after the Swan River Colony (as it was then known) was first established. It was designed by HW Reveley, who also designed the old courthouse. The Round House was originally used as a prison, then as a police lockup after Fremantle Prison was built, and then (rather ironically) as a home for the chief constable. And as you can see, it isn’t round at all – it is actually dodecagonal (12-sided), but that is a bit of a mouthful!

We walked past the oldest building in the City of Perth recently. The odd thing is that it isn’t a particularly well known building. You might guess that the oldest building was the convict-built town hall (which dates from 1870) or the old Barracks (1866) or maybe Saint George’s Cathedral (1888).

But the oldest building in Perth is smaller and older than all of these. It is the original courthouse, which was completed in 1837. It stands next to the Supreme Court Building in Stirling Gardens. Amazingly, it was originally on the Swan River foreshore – which shows how much land had been reclaimed.