Australian GrandPrix(Adelaide) Formula One, Model Race Track

I have now been retired from the official workforce for 4 years this month and it's great to be able to look back on a varied and interesting career.
For the last  5 years of my 28 years with PMG dept and then Telecom Australia(now Telstra) I worked in the Public Relations or Corporate Communications Section of the organisation.
This was a marvellously varied job that I had from talking to school kids, dealing with disgruntled customers,organising functions and acting as a contact point for staff who had needs in their various endeavors.
I often found myself involved in things as diverse as holding a baby wombat at a school  with the South Australian Managing Directors Representative for a photo shoot, to being Secretary and co ordinator of South Australia's Telecom Regional Consumer Council, and organising the Telecom Grand Prix Media and Photographic Awards.
I later worked for the Commonwealth Employment Service and then Centrelink.
The Grand Prix years in Adelaide were great and Telecom was very involved in organising telecommunications for the race and the many media people involved.
Telecom was a Corporate Sponsor of the event and during the race had a miniature replica of the Grand Prix track up and running.
A highlight at the time in the 1988 Grand Prix were races held on the model track featuring drivers Ivan Capelli, Julian Bailey and Australia's Dick Johnson.
Murray Walker did a call of the races.
I do have a copy of the video produced of those races somewhere in my archives.
Anyway here are some pics I took at the time on my trusty Pentax Super A camera.
The general public were allowed to try the slot cars.
I co-ordinated the Awards in 1988 and 1989.

Julian Bailey in yellow shirt and Ivan Capelli to his right

Murray Walker in Action

Telecom's Penny Clarke interviews Murray Walker

Dick Johnson in red and yellow t shirt racing Ivan Capelli

Springtime in our backyard

Spring is a great time of the year at our place.
We regularly have lots of birds in our backyard all year round but they get very busy in the spring.
Bringing up young ones.
We have about 8 species that are here almost every day or often and others who are frequent or occasional visitors.
They include:
New Holland Honeyeaters(Daily)
Red Wattle Bird(Daily)
House Sparrows(Daily)
Crested Pigeons(Daily)
Spotted Turtle Doves(Daily)
White Eared Honeyeaters(often)
Silver Eyes(Migratory visitor)
Rainbow Lorikeets(often)
Musk Lorikeet(occasional)
Adelaide Rosellas(often)
Murray Magpie(daily)
Willie Wagtail(often)
Crows(often)
White Backed Magpies(often)
European Blackbird(daily)
European Starling(daily)
Common Pigeon(sometimes,nesting next door)
Brown Goshawk(occasional deadly visitor)
Collared Sparrow Hawk(occasional deadly visitor)
Southern Boobook Owl(In the area but seldom seen)
White Ringnecked Dove(sometimes)
Galahs(sometimes)
Noisy Miner(daily))
Little Corella Cockatoos (sometimes flocking overhead)
Yellow tailed Black Cockatoos (in pairs or small flocks overhead in summer time)
Black Ducks(three crashed into our backyard one day)
Kookaburra(heard once in the 41 years we have lived here)
Mistletoe Bird(once saw a female here)
Eastern Spinebill (seems to be regular now but elusive. First spotted 2015)

This last 4 weeks we have been very impressed as parent blackbirds have protected and reared 2 babies ,who must have fallen from the nest,who were flightless for some time.
We have 3 cats here so that is impressive.
The Blackbirds,New Holland Honeyeaters,Red Wattle birds and White eared Honey Eaters seem to join forces in sounding the alarm whether threatened by a cat or a hawk.
The baby blackbirds have also, I think, sensed our care for them.
One of them a few days ago came right up to our backdoor and looked through the glass.

Adelaide Rosella

Sparrow

Baby Blackbird

Parent Blackbird,Male

Spotted Turtle Dove

Spotted Turtle Dove

White Backed Magpie

Willie Wagtail

Male adult Blackbird

Crested Pigeons

Two Wattlebirds in fight

Crested Pigeon and Red Wattlebird giving an evil look

New Holland Honeyeater

Red Wattlebird

Baby Blackbird

 The blackbirds are the first heard in the morning,just like in the Hymn,"Morning has Broken."
The New Holland Honeyeaters are still chattering as darkness falls.

Social Networking with The Kodak Instamatic

My interest in photography really took off in the 1970's .
First with a Yashica Minister D 35mm Rangefinder camera then with a Pentax Spotmatic SLR.
Prior to the 70's I belonged to a generation that almost missed out on photography.
Last Saturday night my wife and I went to a dinner in Renmark to celebrate 100 years of the Renmark Hospital.
It  was a time to catch up and reminisce with nursing friends from the 60's and 70's.
We took an old photo album of snapshots to share.
The other girls all had lots of pics in envelopes.
The wonderful thing is just about all of them were the square prints of the Kodak Instamatic.
This camera took the world by storm in the 1960's and 70's.
A simple cartridge loading  smaller  version of the Box cameras of old.
The basic ones had fixed focus,fixed shutter speed and a basic non changeable standard lens.
A flash cube could be fitted with 4 flashes per cube.
They took colour and black and white negative film and colour slides or transparencies.
The results were amazing given such limitations.
The more sophisticated models had zone focussing and adjustable aperture.
Other camera manufactures such as Agfa also produced them.
Eventually they were overtaken by fixed focus 35mm cameras, rangefinder compact 35mm cameras and 35mm slr cameras.
There would have been no photos produced at that dinner by the 60's generation, but for the Kodak Instamatic.
Our parents before us had been more into photography than we were.
I guess there was such a lot of just living in the 60's.
Music was more the in thing than photography.
Every one had portable record players.
Well the social networking was really happening last Saturday night I can assure you.
All because of the Kodak Instamatic.
If you have one of these cameras you will barely find an unused cartridge anywhere but  it is possible to load spent cartridges with 35mm film.

AFL Masters Carnival Adelaide 2014

This last week I watched a friend play in the AFL Masters Football Carnival in Adelaide.
There are various age groups for those who still would like to play Aussie Rules but are beyond their use by date in open competitions.
My friend was reperesenting Queensland in the over 55's.

Here is a link to a website about the competition.

http://www.foxsportspulse.com/assoc_page.cgi?c=1-7804-0-0-0

I have posted a few pics from the game I watched.

Victoria won this game by 2 points.

Will I make a comeback?

Not likely!

The games were played at Westminster College, Adelaide.