A Different Kind of Dawn Start, Emma Again and Disappointment.

Over recent weeks I have seen some really beautiful dawns while driving to work.
Now though, dawn is late enough that I miss it, by sunrise I am too close to the city and the roads are too busy and by then I am facing west not east.

I have photographed dozens if not hundreds of sunsets over many years.
Yet I have realised I have never taken piccies of a dawn.
So a few days ago, one morning I had off, instead of sleeping in I got up at my usual time.

Not being an absolutely dedicated photographer, I headed to the nearest location I could think of where I could get an uninterrupted view of the eastern skyline.

This spot happens to be one I have posted about before, the Arthur's Creek Cemetery.

So there I was setting up my tripod and camera in the dark.

Of course I thought of the people buried there. My thoughts once again went to Emma who bought a plot next to her young husband. Yet as far as I can tell she was never buried at Arthur’s Creek.

As a writer I feel almost compelled to weave a similar story into one of my tales.

Someday.

So I stood in the dark and waited for the sunrise.
My first photo of the day.This piccie is very misleading, this was a very long exposure. So what seems a light eastern sky was in fact very dark.

But there was a problem.The dark bank of clouds in the above photo was advancing very quickly from the south.

I turned my Camera to face south where the sky was by now almost completely covered by cloud. The lights in the centre are some of Melbourne’s suburbs twinkling in the distance.

By the time the sun actually rose above the horizon...this was all I could see of the dawn colour.

So I packed up and drove home feeling somewhat disappointed.

As I drove I was given some consolation. The sky decided to relent just a little and I stopped briefly to catch this before the world was completely flooded by daylight.

Heat and Cricket at Arthur's Creek

It has been quite hot here today 39 ° C (about 102 ° F) in the City and 41° (106°F) out here to the north.. So once I finished work I just came home and stayed indoors. 40 -41° are not uncommon summer temperatures here. We got as hot as 47° (117°F) last February, which was a record for Melbourne. The Bureau of Meteorology is saying we may top 50° (122°F) this coming February, If they are right I am not looking forward to it. It will cause a lot of people a lot of problems.

Melbourne City Council will be running emergency heatwave programs this year. I attended a briefing last Thursday because homeless people are one of the at risk groups in heatwaves.

Now to change the topic entirely (don’t I jump around a lot) I am going to return briefly to Arthur’s Creek. Phil at Walk Talk Tours asked a rather odd question after reading my post on the Cemetery there and I quote “Are you related to the former England wicketkeeper, Robert Charles 'Jack' Russell?”

My answer to Phil was “I'm probably not related to Jack Russell. I do have ancestors from Gloucestershire but they are on my mum's side. The Russell side of my family left England for India over 150 years ago. Before then they hailed from Jersey, London and Yorkshire.”

But there is a coincidence here, I had been thinking about posting on cricket (a wicketkeeper is a player on a cricket field) and the reason is after driving down from the cemetery I paused briefly to take some photos of the Saturday cricket at Arthur’s Creek.Here the batsman stands ready for the ball as the bowler completes his run up.

In this close up the wicketkeeper is the man with the gloves crouched well behind the batsman. His job is to not only stop missed balls but also to attempt to get the batsman “out” if he makes any of a number of errors.

In this case the batsman hit the ball. It wasn’t a great strike and he probably shouldn’t have “run” because one of the fielders had the ball while he was running and it looked like he would be “run out”(unlike baseball a batsman is not obliged to run if he hits the ball).Fortunately the fielders aim was not what it should be and he missed the "stumps"

I should probably stop there. Attempting to explain anymore will take far too long and get me in hot water with cricket fanatics (like Deb my other half). If anyone is interested in how the game works you can find a description at Wikipedia.

But before I go, one last word. I remember attempting to explain cricket to an American guest at a dinner party. Not only did he struggle with the rules but he could not get that the “pure” form of the game lasts for five days and then is more likely to end in a draw than anything else!

Emma, India, and Dawn Starts

You are going to have to excuse me but I am in a rambling mood tonight.

One of the things that is nice about the work I do is that there are early starts. And no before you all say “is he mad?” I do not enjoy getting up at 5:00am any more than the next person (except of course this has the big plus that my commute time is less than half what it would be if I was going in at more normal hours).

The nice thing is the early finish and time in the afternoon and evening, this gives me the opportunity for all sorts of pursuits.

Often they are mundane, like hanging out a load of washing or mowing the lawn.
But as often as not I am able to use the time more creatively. Last week for example I went exploring with my youngest.

Yesterday, I worked on formatting my book before the house got busy in the evening.
Tonight I am in a culinary frame of mind. I am putting the time to cooking a decent curry. Oddly (or perhaps not oddly in this day and age) although I am an Aussie I also have a large chunk of Indian Heritage . My father’s family took a rather long (over 150 years) detour via India on the way to Australia.

As a total by-the-by, if you ever walk through Russell Chowk in Jabalpur a city in Madhya Pradesh India, you are close to some of my family history. If you do a Google you might discover that the Chowk (square) is named after Bertrand Russell, but in fact it isn’t. It was named for one of my ancestors considerably before Bertrand was famous. But that is another story, one I might put into a book… someday.

In the spirit of rambling I am going to jump to an entirely different topic. On Saturday as is our wont we went for a drive. This time we struck out along a road we haven’t used before though Arthur’s Creek. Up on a hill before you reach the village is an old cemetery.
I love cemeteries, they are such a vivid store of the culture of their time. Such a prompt for imagination.

This grave for example speaks of a tragedy, a young woman burying a much loved husband. Clearly at the time Emma, no doubt in love and grief stricken at the loss of her Harry could not imagine resting anywhere else. She has bought a double plot so one day she could sleep alongside her dear one.
Yet a hundred years later there is no sign that she was laid here. No headstone for Emma here.
What happened, the writer in me wonders. As her grief passed did she come to love another? Does she now rest alongside a second husband?
Who knows, but my mind races away across the valley below, thinking of other stories that perhaps one day I could write.Too many books not enough years.

Bless you Emma, I hope the rest of your years were joy filled.