My love affair with the effects of light in the sky continues, but not too secretly. I cannot help it, the sublime beauty is something I can never ignore, my soul is tuned to appreciate the very special magic that inhabits my universe. Love is blind, they say, yet I cannot stop myself from opening my eyes, and every time I look, I fall in love just that little bit more. To live is to love. Here is my lover, the skies of Kings Cross that caress me with different colors every day.
As day turns to night the transitions of color are fleeting but wondrous to follow. As touches of yellow and mauve and dusky rose move with the clouds it is necessary to move from street to street, and like a Chinese garden, every 
place reveals a new paradise for the eyes.
Dawn brings its own joy of changing light, but it is the transition into night rather than the 
new day that really excites me. Perhaps it is just that I am so much a creature of the night and love the lights of the new evening so much that this is my favorite time. Perhaps it is just that the richness of color is so entertaining in the new surprises it has each day. Always different, so often sensational.
If, as an artist, my only purpose lay in recording this extraordinary poetry of the sky in the evening, then I would have a full and wonderful career to enjoy. There is so much inspiration in the changes of light to inspire the soul forever more.
These few photos chart the changes from the first fire spreading through the clouds to 
that dark green curtain that, like Indigo, is not really a color, but is a transition between colors right at the moment when it is neither one nor the other. And Then the street lights and the moon take the stage. This, then, is an evening in Darlinghurst.
I had to go to Kinko's to pick up some paper tonight. On the way back I took photos of flowers in Hyde Park and Sandringham Gardens. 
There is something extra special 
about the flowers that choose to bloom in the harshness of winter air. The air is so cold that it feels like we are in a giant refrigerator. It has been snowing in the high country and although the harbor keeps Kings Cross and the city itself frost free, further away parts 
have felt frost and the air here feels not far from freezing. Yet despite this, There are garden beds with masses of yellow Marigolds, and violet and white Pansy's 
both big and small.
There is a corner of Hyde Park with a circular fountain and surrounding formal gardens in circular terraces and beds laid with geometric beds separated by little formal box rows. 
It is called Sandringham Gardens and was made in 1954 to commemorate the two Georges - King George V and King George VI, both well loved according to the plaque by the beautiful ceremonial gates. It is a peaceful place for contemplation and continual beauty as the seasons bring new flowers all year round.
It amazes me how so many people do not see beauty in the city. Are they not seeing what I see? Not just beauty, but natural beauty, immense, and laid out like a gigantic artwork across the sky. When you grow up in the country, you learn to 
look into the sky, learn the habits of the clouds, watch the chaging face of the sky, seek its moods for clues to tomorrow.
The joy of the city is that the sky does not go away. Just as in the country the sky is so different to the hills, so in the city the sky contrasts with the buildings and puts 
the city into perspective as something insignificant compared to the power of a world that can redraw an entire sky in just a few minutes, and take such a small number of materials, just sky and clouds, and every 
day create a new artwork that is different from every other sky I have ever seen.
Here I am, able to look up and be amazed constantly. I love the little touches of color here and there, the mixing of yellows and pinks with dusky mauves and soft greys. The gentle changes in structure, the transience of 
substance, the moodiness - above all, the moodiness.
I had been busy writing about local Aboriginal history but I noticed it was getting late and I wanted to go see the visiting US aircraft carrier before my haircut appointment. 
As I walked up William Street and down Victoria mother nature decided to show me who is the best artist in existence. Always our pale interpretive efforts are just relections of a larger beauty that is the natural world in all its glory. 
Sure, some man made things can be beautiful, just look at that row of buildings across downtown Sydney. But mother nature is 
able to wrap it all in gorgeous mauves and salmony pinks and then throw the palette across the sky. All while changing every detail in the twinkling of an eye. Every day I am in awe of the beauty that I see. This is my small impression.
The sky lit up tonight with bright gold and salmony pinks. It was extraordinarily beautiful. Some people spend a lifetime searching for meaning and purpose in life. I cannot imagine any purpose or meaning greater than simply being able to open my eyes and drink this beauty in. And, as an artist, the icing on the cake is to be able to make and manipulate images like this, and share what I see.
At the southern end of Hyde Park is the War Memorial. It is a very solemn building that perfectly marries art and architecture. Raynor Hoff was the artist. In the center, under a domed ceiling covered in 50,000 stars ( one for every soldier from here who died in World War I ) is a bronze soldier, naked, and dead, who is being carried on a shield and his arms are draped over a sword. Three women facing outwards carry him on their shoulders. There is a circular mezzanine balcony so the visitor can look down onto the sculpture from above. The mezzanine also has the eternal flame.
Set around the round room are semi domed niches with stone from the scene of important battles. I always stop and touch the dark cold stone from the Somme. That was where my grandfather was wounded, and left for dead by the retreating ANZAC's, he was found by German soldiers and nursed back to health in a German hospital. They put a metal plate in his skull, and metal pins in his leg. It was fortunate that it was the Germans who found him because the British hospitals did not have the expertise for such radical reconstruction at the time. This building represents a lot to me.
On the outside Hoff made beautiful bronze bas reliefs of battle scenes. High up around the ouside of the building are giant dark pink granite soldiers, heads hung in respect. In the corners at the highest place there are standing nurses who cared for the wounded.. Around about there are trees planted of the scrubby pines and other trees from Gallipoli and in front, lined with trees from France, there is a reflecting pool.
There is no place more sacred or holy than this in all of Sydney.
The rain has been heavy and soaking. It has also produced the most beautiful dusky grey cityscapes possible. Enjoy, as I do.
The Cross was pumping tonight when I walked through, crowds of people, noisy, busy, playing. What took my eye though was the quiet places just a few metres away in the lanes and small streets. There, rather than people, there was light and shadows, deep shadows full of mystery, lights full of color, hidden treasures to excite my eye.
The rain has been getting heavier, the winds stronger. The news is of a ship driven onto a reef at Newcastle, roads washed away, people missing, some trees fallen. Walking in the street it is the sort of cold rain that finds its way into the bottom of your shoes, saturates the legs, finds every place, even under the umbrella. Cold that makes the fingers numb, the feet sore, and goes deep inmto the bones. Wind that blows a gale this way then that. The streets are littered with broken umbrella's. And people scurrying from cover to cover. Colors that change. Neutrals strong and rich, darks that suck the light out of their surroundings, lights bright and colorful who seek every possible surface to reflect from. It is as if the people are beseiged, but light is celebrating by putting on a new party dress that makes ordinary colors into jewels.
I love the rain, it is exhilerating. I love being under the umbrella, and watching the colors come out to play. I love the way the dirty road becomes clean and shines with every passing car. People think I am mad, holding the umbrella with one hand and the camera with the other, waiting in the rain for the perfect umbrella to come along, person attached. It never does, but I make do with what does visit my eyes. Tonight I was patient and shot 173 photographs from before the sun went down until it was well dark. These are some of them. This is my beautiful Kings Cross when it rains.
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