A creative contemplation of sorts

Sunday, generally a quieter day in the suburban diaspora. Often a time for domestic devotions and slow lunches or a desultory read of the Sunday Newspapers between sips of brewed coffee. Nah! Not for me, restless as ever with the springtime in its opening stanza, I just had to get outside. A train ride sounds nice. Yes, that will do. Grab the backpack, which these days is always preloaded in case of a spur of the moment decision to flee my confinement occurs. Fortunately, the train station is a triple jump away, more or less and in a jiffy, despite the growls of protest from my rickety knees, I was at the railway station, glancing at my watch and uttering thinly veiled threats directed to the railway authorities that the train had better be on time. It was.

Just over an hour later the train pulled up into Ballarat, population approximately 95,000 (110 kilometres/68 miles westwards from Melbourne), which as readers will know, is my favourite regional City, almost a second home. Ballarat occupies an area of 740 square kilometres/290 square miles at an average elevation of 480 metres/1,570 feet and is nestled in the foothills of the Great Diving Range. Alighting from the train I duly plodded my way towards Lake Wendouree (capacity, when full is 3,860 megaliters/6,792,650 pints over a surface area of 2.38 square kilometres/0.92 square miles at an average depth of only 2 metres/approaching 7 feet, the latter seemingly familiar being the length of my telephone bill). This sort of reminded me too of my bathtub, but my imagination is excruciating and very obtuse at times. The lake is starting to fill again with water for the first time in near a decade. The transformation is amazing with wildlife, namely birds and dad's with kids and fishing lines flocking to its waters. It was not that long ago you could walk across this 6 kilometre/just over 4 miles in circumference lake. I have photographs from a couple of years ago of a grassfire in the middle of the lake! I happily completed the circumference of the lake, which is a delightful and easy ramble, dodging joggers, mums with bubs in prams, irked magpies dive bombing hatless chumps and geocachers looking for hidden booty. Part of the walk around the lake takes you past a remnant of Ballarat's once extensive Tram network, once the largest in a regional City in Australia. A small, quaint like but with serious historic intent trip of just under 2 kilometres/1.2 miles still operates, attended by a coterie of devoted volunteers who are genuine salt of the earth types, a pleasure to converse. To sit inside this light rail rattler is to bring back childhood memories of Melbourne's older class Trams of which only one or two work still operate on the vast Melbourne network. I gleaned by chatting with the enthusiastic Tram driver that Melbourne has the most widespread Tram network in the world, something I was not aware. I could never imagine my home City not ever having Trams, but no cars, well that would bliss.

Continuing my easy ramble around Ballarat, I stopped off at some Tea Rooms near the lake but could not bring myself to drink tea and one day I will understand how anyone can drink the stuff, it is a torment - the Poms have a lot to answer for in this regard. Gladly, I cupped a strong coffee instead and failed to not resist the temptations of a cream bum, most of which ended up smeared across my lips and cheeks but I could not have cared less. Both (yes, I greedily had two) were delicious! As I sat in the mild September Sun, grateful for spring, I drew my thoughts to a new camera, as you do. My current 'cluster' of snappers, the erstwhile Canon G10 have performed so reliably over the years, well beyond my expectations. I felt I had gone about as far as I could go creatively with these cameras now, thanks in no small measure to the wonderful examples of photographic genius on Blipfoto. It is time to step up and acquire my first ever dedicated DSLR. I have been mulling over this upgrade for some weeks, patiently saving the loot, even reluctantly cutting back on cheesecakes and bourbons to build up the Treasury. Too, I watched the erratic Australian Dollar, especially against its US counterpart. I wonder what Keynes would have thought of such currency variations, though I suspect he would be mumbling, "No!" from his grave, "Did they not listen?" Seems not JMK. I wondered too, any chance of returning to the Gold Standard or fixed exchange rates. Answer? Nope. I cussed under my seething breath about gory free-market economics! So, it's down to the Canon EOS 550D or the newly released Canon EOS 60D, plus a new tripod and head and the usual bits n' bobs such as filters, remote control, extra batteries etc. I reckon I have scooped up, downloaded and viewed every fact sheet produced on both models and could recite the specs on both models by rote. As I mulled over this creative step, again, scribbling out my sums (cost versus what I hope I have in savings - the gap is narrowing) on a napkin, I spotted a rather unusual and strikingly colourful window display. Upon closer inspection it turned out to be a superb looking advertising window pane with a very old telephone number. Much more exquisite than the glitty trash that is being produced these days. I have to photograph this one - the coffee went cold but the cream bums, there was no way I was going to leave a single crumb!

The easy afternoon too quickly drew to a close as I joined a few other passengers on the Melbourne bound train for the relaxing journey home. It had been a good day in a fine city. The Canon EOS 60D has now edged in front as my choice of DSLR - if only the exchange rate will favour the Australian Dollar somewhat. After all our national debt is about 1/100th of the United States and Keynesians still have a toehold in Government policy making, albeit an itsy-bitsy toe hold. Surely the Aussie Dollar should be at parity with the US Dollar! Let's start a Petition!