Somewhere Else

Yesterday we suggested that our readers should go to Fremantle to see the Queen Mary 2 while it was in port. Well, a surprising number of people took our recommendation – we went to Fremantle after lunch and found that half the population of Perth was there to see the world’s second biggest passenger liner. The roads were nearly gridlocked, parking spaces were at a premium, and there were pedestrians everywhere.

Fremantle turned on a good show for the event. There were tall ships (that’s the STS Leeuwin above) and tall people (below). Plus face painting, fun fair rides, and live music ranging from sea shanties to Latino.

But this was just a flying visit (if that’s the right term for a ship) – the Queen Mary 2 was only in port for one day. In the late afternoon people packed every available vantage point for kilometres around to see the huge ship sail out to sea, dwarfing everything else in and around the harbour.

This morning we saw a rare sight while walking on Monument Hill in Mosman Park. To the south we could see the port of Fremantle, with the Queen Mary 2 just docking. In fact “rare sight” is a bit of an understatement – this is the largest passenger liner that has ever visited Fremantle. So it was a historic sight.

QM2 is the second largest passenger liner ever built. It weighs over 150,000 tonnes, is 345m long and towers 65m above water level. Writers struggle to find comparisons which illustrate just how big this floating city is – three times as big as the Titanic; longer than the height of the Eiffel tower; two thirds the length of Sydney Harbour Bridge, etc. We will just point out that the “little” building to the right of the ship in the photo above is actually about 9 storeys high.

Today there will be various events in Fremantle to celebrate the visit of the QM2. If you’re in Perth today, you know where to go.

Albert Einstein was born on 14 March 1879. In his early life he gave little hint of the impact he was going to have on the world. At university he was just another so-so student and had difficulty getting a job after graduation. He finally found a scientifically unchallenging position in the Swiss Patents Office in 1903.

But Einstein wasn’t deterred by these problems. While working in the patents office he continued his scientific research and stunned the world in 1905 when he published his Special Theory of Relativity. That’s where E=mc² – the world’s best known scientific equation – comes from. Einstein explained the meaning of this equation as, “Mass (m) and energy (E) are different manifestations of the same thing”.

He went on to develop the General Theory of Relativity, made many other scientific advances and is now considered to be the Father of Modern Physics.

With his unruly mop of hair and bushy moustache, Einstein is the most recognisable scientist of all time. The iconic sculpture above stands outside Questacon in Canberra, and is cleverly constructed so that it looks like a dove when viewed from the side (below) – a reminder that Einstein was an impassioned campaigner for world peace.

Yesterday we featured a topiary sofa. The one above is made of tougher stuff – concrete to be exact. It is in the main street of Harvey, a dairy and fruit growing town in the southwest of Western Australia.

This amusing sofa is part of a Sofa Trail which was constructed about 10 years ago. It consists of nine concrete sofas scattered along a 150km road, all decorated with local motifs. Today most people seem to have forgotten about the Sofa Trail, but the sofas are still there. Some are aging sadly, while others (like this one) are still looking good.

You might think of sofas as the ultimate indoor comfortable chair, but we travellers come across many variations on the sofa theme as outdoor art.

The soft seat above is a topiary sofa in the Tasmanian town of Oatlands. It stands as a tribute to Jack Cashion who established topiary as a popular art form in the area in the 1960s and 70s. Nearby there is a topiary quad bike, complete with rider and dogs.

Here is another popular artwork in the current Sculpture by the Sea exhibition at Cottesloe Beach in Perth. Everyone who sees it laughs and says, “Look, it’s a dunny”.

The work of New South Wales sculptor Bjorn Godwin, it is actually titled “Pavillion” and claims to be “an Australian version of the Renaissance garden pleasure pavilion”. Maybe – but you have to suspect that he’s laughing up his sleeve. The voice coming from inside the pavilion makes it fairly obvious that this really is a dunny. And a glass one at that. The most amusing thing is that everyone wants to have a look inside

The beach – it’s a key part of Australian culture. But it seems to be a dangerous place, since there are always plenty of warning signs. The one above is at Perth’s popular Cottesloe Beach and even seems to warn you that there is water at the beach!

But that’s not the best sign at Cottesloe Beach. At present you can see this one, which gets smiles from everyone:

It is one of the artworks in Sculpture by the Sea, which is currently on display at Cottesloe. The amazing collection of mock signs is the work of West Australian sculptor John Hutchinson and is titled “because I said so”. Our favourite sign (below) was on the other side and seems to perfectly sum up a day at the beach.

Yesterday we commented that “Australia seems to have more than its fair share of mazes”. In case you weren’t convinced, here is another maze which is also in the state of Victoria. You will find it in Bendigo Botanic Gardens.

But at this point we have to be a little bit more accurate with terminology. This is not really a maze at all – it is a labyrinth. In common usage, the two words have the same meaning. But to a fan of mazes and labyrinths, the two terms have very different meanings.

A maze is like a puzzle. It has many forks in the path, so you have to choose the right path to reach the destination – typically getting lost along the way. By contrast, a labyrinth has only one path and you can’t get lost. It’s just a long, circuitous walk to the centre. In medieval times, walking around a labyrinth was considered to be a mini-pilgrimage. That’s why you find labyrinths in some cathedrals in Europe, most famously at Chartres in France.

Right next to the analemmatic sundial that we mentioned yesterday, there is another of our pet interests – a maze (above). Australia seems to have more than its fair share of both mazes and sundials, so we see quite a few in our travels. But we especially like seeing them next to each other, since they both seem to hark back to medieval times.

This maze is in the park beside Lake Guyatt at Sale in Victoria. It is an educational maze which teaches children about the wildlife in the wetlands.

We always enjoy looking at sundials, and in May last year we described the analemmic sundial at Mt Annan in Sydney. With this unusual type of sundial, your own shadow tells the time. The “analemma” is a figure 8 pattern on the ground which indicates where to stand in different months of the year.

Although analemmic (or analemmatic – the terms are synonymous) sundials are quite rare, we have found a second one in our travels. It is shown above and is located in the Victorian town of Sale, about 210km east of Melbourne. You can find it in the grassy parkland next to Lake Guyatt Wetlands.