The Twilight Report

Grandpa's slides apparently from a trip to the snowy mountains with grandma, mum and uncle graham.

More of grandpa's old slides. I am not exactly sure where they are for most of these, except it is probably near Canberra, as I do recognize this first shot. What is missing from this first photo is New Parliament House, which sits today just behind the white building in the distance, which is now known as Old Parliament House, but then simply as Parliament House.

Grandpa's slides from grandma, grandpa and mum's visit to the Breadknife, Lighting Ridge and the Warren Bungles. Taken in the mid 1960s in country New South Wales

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Of course grandpa isn't in any of these because he took them. Enjoying working with slides again. It's not quite as nice as a black and white dark room, but there is some enjoyment to be had at spotting old photographs and bringing them back to life. Didn't do too much work on these though, I don't feel okay about doing colour correction on grandpa's slides (do it all the time on mine), but removing dust from the scans seems legitimate.

some time in the 1980s...

July 1983:

I scanned another roll of grandpa’s C-41 today. These ones are from the same trip, and according to the envelope scroll include:

1. Taos
2. Bandelier
3. Rio Grande
4. Los Alamos

Los Alamos

The pond is named after someone named Ashley Pond (I kid you not)

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These were taken before the last set that I posted. They are all in New Mexico, closer to the area where I actually grew up. Although, again, this was long before we had any idea that we’d be moving out there. I had to spot more of these than from the last set, although the majority were completely clean! Some of them had some paper glued to the edges, put there probably by whomever had processed the film. I hate it when places do that because it is not good for the long term storage of the film.

Grandpa was a good photographer. There isn’t a single frame that is out of focus or incorrectly exposed, and the compositions are good.

Apparently when my mum traded in the Tercel for the Corolla I made her feel like a heel for selling an unofficial member of the family into slavery. She reminds me of this from time to time, but I can hardly be held accountable for my actions (I think) because I was only like 12 or something at the time, and it was years ago and I am pretty sure that the statute of limitations on that sort of thing has long since expired.

When grandma passed away this year, mum inherited her house in Gosford. It is a tiny fibro hut with poor insulation and is very cold in the winter. I wonder how grandma, grandpa, mum and my namesake uncle Graham all fit in there. Somehow it is still home to me, even though I only barely remember living there before I moved to America^[1]. One day I will inherit that property, I am certain.

Mum told me today that she and Don had decided to knock the house down (I know they don’t do this lightly) and put up a bungalow. Although I will be perversely sad to see the old house go, I am also quietly breathing a sigh of relief, because, as I told my mother, I don’t think I could bring myself to knock it down or sell it or anything when I inherit it.

Sentimental, I know.

1. I usually mark my first memories with coming to America, but I do have faint glimmering memories of that house from back then

In 1932 my grandma crossed the Sydney Harbour Bridge when it opened. She was being pushed in her pram (she was about 8 years old, mum decided). Today, 75 years later Sydneysiders, myself included, celebrated the anniversary by closing the bridge to cars and doing it again. Walking over the bridge was fun. The ABC had big speakers set up along the length of the bridge blaring historical spoken and musical passages which gave the impression of walking through history. They were giving out free caps in this hideous shade of neon yellow green. Almost everyone was wearing one, which made for an impressive sight as the hats flowed and surged. On the back of the cap was written “our bridge.” I have decided that “our” is the Australian national pronoun, as Australians take any excuse to claim ownership of family, celebrities, buildings, bridges or anything that hails from the land down under. There were lots of people, but it wasn’t over crowded. Kudos to the organizers for pulling it off. The state government has gotten a lot of flack over a few recent fiascos ahead of the state election, so I think they were holding their breath hoping that nothing would go wrong! (like when the QE2 and QM2 came to town and the city had no plan for the huge amount of traffic they caused, and last week when commuters were stuck on the trains for 3 hours because apparently there wasn’t an evacuation plan; good thing the trains weren’t on fire or anything). I’d like to be here in 25 years to do it again, celebrating the bridge’s 100th anniversary!