Author: Heyjude

I have lived in the UK for most of my life, but when young I definitely had wanderlust and even ended up living in South Africa for several years which was a wonderful experience. I now look forward to a long and leisurely retirement doing what I like most - gardening, photography, walking and travelling.

Life in Colour

To find out more about this year’s photo challenge here on Travel Words, please read this post.

This month we will be looking for Green. Green signals new life in spring, fresh green leaves, the shoots of new bulbs emerging from the soil. It is a cool and soothing colour, bringing us moisture and shade. But green doesn’t have to be all about nature.

Bill Reid’s “The Spirit of Haida Gwaii” (Jade Boat)

A 1996 bronze casting can be seen in YVR International. It is intended to represent the aboriginal heritage of the Haida Gwaii region in the Queen Charlotte Islands.

The 13 passengers in the canoe combine human and animal features. Reid’s factious “myth creatures” are drawn from the Haida world.

Eagle bites Grizzly Bear’s paw, Bear faces his human wife and cradles a club and Mouse Woman shelters beneath Raven’s wing.

Other passengers are Bad Bear and Good Bear, Beaver, Dogfish Woman, Eagle, Frog and Wolf whose claws are embedded in Beaver’s back and teeth in Raven’s wing and the human Shaman as the focal point.

Reid said “at least …. the man in the middle seems to have some vision of what’s to come”

Do you have a green story?

Flashback Friday #12

In 2003 after taking time out whilst waiting to take up a place on a PGCE course I was able to spend three months in Australia visiting my son and granddaughter who then lived in Sydney.  I always take time to go exploring on my own whenever I visit him. It can lead to all sorts of adventures!

A tale of Cassowaries and Aliens…
cassowary
Photo of a cassowary is courtesy of betta design on flickr (CC BY-NC 2.0)

I chose to stay in the youth hostel in Mission Beach, northern Queensland because of its unusual name and location.

The Treehouse, built on stilts and surrounded by verdant rain forest, is a big open plan log cabin with bare wooden floors and bamboo framed glass-less windows with shutters.

The small number of bamboo doors that exist are open at the top so all sounds drift effortlessly inside and out. Comfortable shabby sofas are arranged in cosy corners encouraging the residents to gather together and chat or make music. Or you can grab a random paperback from one of the many bookcases and curl up in a hammock on the shady veranda and lose yourself in the plot. The air is filled with incense and a touch of dank decay.

On my first morning I am woken early by the torrential rain, thunder and lightning and with the smell of rich earth assaulting my nostrils it almost feels like camping and only slightly drier. The close proximity to the rain forest also means that as soon as dawn cracks an opening in the night sky a cacophony of kookaburras crash into your dreams with the subtleness of falling pan-lids.

It is not a place conducive to much sleep.

It is here that I meet Andy. I have noticed him over the past few days as he bumbles about the place. He’s a quiet, unassuming young man who appears very solitary. On the third morning I am disturbed by the cleaners who start sweeping the floors at 5 am and I can’t get back to sleep. I feel irritated and headachy; I had a hard time dropping off last night due to a group of travellers talking and drumming well into the early hours. The swish, swish of the brushes sweeping over the wooden floors is as annoying as the whine of a mosquito. It’s no good, sleep eludes me. Drowsily I stumble into the kitchen and find Andy with his head in the fridge. Over strong coffee and cereal on the sundeck overlooking the swimming pool we exchange names and watch as the rain drips languidly through the forest. He then tells me about the cassowaries that live here.

Continue reading Flashback Friday #12

Life in Colour

To find out more about this year’s photo challenge here on Travel Words, please read this post.

This month we will be looking for Green. Green signals new life in spring, fresh green leaves, the shoots of new bulbs emerging from the soil. It is a cool and soothing colour, bringing us moisture and shade. But there is more to green than the colour of nature. This week I am going to look at San Francisco Streetcars. Green ones naturally.

Melbourne (Australia) 496, built in 1928. The famed W-class trams dominated Melbourne’s transit system, with a layout that reversed San Francisco’s ‘California’ design, by putting closed sections at both ends, with the lowered section for boarding and alighting placed in the middle.

Los Angeles Transit Lines 1080, built in 1946. This car is painted in the livery of Los Angeles Transit Lines (LATL), which operated PCC streetcars after World War II


Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1062, built in 1948. The “Steel City”, as Pittsburgh has long been called, was also one of the great PCC streetcar cities as well. It operated the world’s first PCC carrying passengers, in August 1936. Car No. 1062 now honours Pittsburgh’s extensive PCC operation, after spending its first 21 years in Muni service painted in tribute to Louisville, Kentucky, a city that bought, but never operated, PCCs after World War II.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1055, built in 1948. The ‘City of Brotherly Love’ first ran PCC streetcars in 1938. This car, numbered 2122 in Philly (now Muni No. 1055), was delivered in 1948 and wore this livery of green, cream, and red from 1955 to 1968.

St. Louis Public Service Company 1050, built in 1948. Here it is painted in its original  Muni green and cream “Wings” livery. In 2016 it was decided to honour St. Louis by repainting Car No. 1050 in SLPS livery (red and cream).

Chicago, Illinois 1058, built 1948. This streetcar is painted to honour Chicago, which ran PCC streetcars from 1936 to 1958. Chicago had the largest PCC fleet ever purchased new by one city–683 cars. At 50′ 5″ they were the longest single-end PCCs ever built, and boasted three sets of doors to swallow crowds quickly.

Milan, Italy (1930s 1970s) 1818, built 1928. The second most common type of streetcar in Muni’s historic fleet is an American classic with an Italian accent. This type of car is named for Cleveland street railway commissioner Peter Witt, who designed it for his Ohio city around 1915.

If you want to learn more about San Francisco’s historic streetcars and cable cars then please visit the Market Street Railway Museum.

It’s easy to find shades of green in nature, but what else can you discover?