The Poggle & Bucket

My friend and I dream of having our own pub. This location varies (generally speaking it's wherever we are), but the name remains the same - it will be called The Poggle & Bucket (derived from our childhood nicknames) and its mascot will be a puggle (a baby echidna). After seeing these fabulous images from the book by Renee Treml, I think we may also need a wombat mascot.

Our latest place in which we are living is a short walk through the golf course to the club house. At said watering hole, they serve BentSpoke and Capital beer. We could be happy here. 

After having recently seen The Happy Prince (film) and The Judas Kiss (play), I have dug out my copy of Oscar Wilde's fairy-tales, given to me by my parents many years ago. I had forgotten how achingly sad and disturbingly cynical they are (the stories; my parents are delightfully pleasant people).

And I found this four-leaf clover pressed between the pages. Of all the books I could have chosen to preserve it in, I am pleased that my young self had enough dramatic flair to choose this one. 

A fire is burning out of control at Stromlo. The sky is full of smoke - it smells and, combined with an approaching storm, produces mammtus clouds, which are formed due to a rapid change in temperature change in the air. The clouds, hanging above the Canberra buildings, give a foreboding sense of doom.

Mt Stromlo

Mt Stromlo Observatory (MSO) is the headquarters of the Research School of Astronomy and Astrophysics at the Australian National University (ANU). Since much of the site was destroyed in the 2003 bushfires, there are no longer working telescopes  at MSO. The burnt-out remains make the site very atmospheric.

Not phallic at. (Okay, maybe just a bit)

 

  

Square Rock

A walk in Namadgi National Park to Square Rock. It's not overtly square, but it is a big rock, with commanding views. So here are some photos of it.

The bushfires of 2003 caused devastation to the ACT's forests, pastures and nature parks - you can see the blackened trees in these pictures; scary stuff.

Dodgy rock 'art'

Being observed by the locals