Peter Murphy's Panoramic VR Weblog

Monday, July 28, 2003

Last week on Wednesday the tall ship "Windeward Bound" completed a voyage around Australia - commemorating Matthew Flinders' original circumnavigation 200 years before. Yesterday I went on a harbour cruise aboard it and shot this panorama as we were about to sail underneath the Harbour Bridge. 1:41:16 PM

Sunday, July 20, 2003

More from suburbia -  this time from Pennant Hills ... a leafy middle-class suburb about 18km northwest of the City ... where lives Philip Ruddock the Federal Minister of Immigration.  As the whole world knows by now,  Australia has a very punitive detention policy for asylum seekers who arrive in the country by unofficial means. Protestors controversially assembled yesterday in the Minister's own home street ... panorama.  Ruddock is third on the left in this picture I took earlier this year (during Chinese New Year, hence the cleaver and the roast pig - the other men in the picture are -- to his left -- John Brogden, Leader of the Opposition in the NSW parliament, and to his right, Robert Ho, City Councillor, recently in the news for his role as a business associate of the victem in a major kidnap/extortion case.) This pic shows a boy at the protest sketching a detainee on the roadway and this pic from a little later in the proceedings shows the police line blocking the road. The "money" strewn on the road in front of the police in this last picture is a reference to recent "cash for visas" allegations concerning a Ruddock associate. 4:02:29 PM

Saturday, July 12, 2003

Lidcombe, where I came across this outdoors martial arts lesson yesterday .. panorama  ..  is an "inner West" semi-industrial suburb about 15k from the City. It is mainly famous for being the nearest station to Rookwood cemetery, an enormous "suburb of the dead".  The main business of this street -- on the way to the cemetery -- was monumental stone carving -- so it was a surprise to see these kids out in the sun in front of their centre practising their kicks. They were using soft drink bottles as kicking targets and the one you see flying through the air is about to collide with me.  12:25:03 AM

Friday, July 04, 2003

Last night in the inner-city suburb of Balmain there was an attempted screening of the recent film "Ken Park" by American director Larry Clark. This film has been "refused classification" by the censorship board here and hence is effectively banned. It was due to be shown at the recent Sydney Film Festival and since its non-appearance there the campaign to liberalise the apparently increasingly conservative film censorship regime has gathered a lot of support. Police stopped the screening last night after only a couple of minutes of the film were shown. Panorama 1. Panorama 2.  Some stills: (1) four of the principal members of the Free Cinema organising group: journalist David Marr, TV presenter Margaret Pomerantz, writer Jane Mills and ABC radio critic Julie Rigg (2) "Free Cinema" sign (3)Superintendant Katsogiannis -- chief police officer present (4) wide angle shot of the audience in the hall during the melee on the stage 1:47:07 PM