Natural splendour, real musics, wines, wordpower
You are looking at the kind of beach with which Australia is particularly well-endowed.
Many Australians love to frequent such beaches..and to brag about them to Europeans.
Key features, all present here: frequently-intense sunshine, clear, unpolluted, “blue” water, plus plenty of clean and bright sand.
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Essentially, sand is a “marriage” of just two of our planet’s most common elements: silicon and oxygen.
Nonetheless, sand offers an astonishing amount of visual diversity.
In some parts of the world, if you look down from an aircraft – ideally, one flying relatively “low”, but high enough to render small plants “invisible” – you could be fooled into believing that everything within your field of view was 100% sand.
Leave a CommentOn this blog, a Word power post is always an attempt to draw your attention to an essay, article, report, poem or book that is particularly worth reading.
This post’s title is in fact the subtitle of the current Quarterly Essay; Minority Report, by George Megalogenis.
If I could “prescribe” just one “essential” piece for every intelligent Australian voter to read before our next Federal election….
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Indonesia’s enormous number of volcanoes includes many active ones.
Whereas an active volcano’s crater is typically stark, precipitous and raw, its flanks’ appearance is likely to be more varied/variegated, according to where eruptions have – or have not – scorched or gassed them, rained down ash and/or lava rocks/boulders, or sent molten lava flowing…
A single volcano can “author”many different things.
Gorgeous rainforests and prodigiously fertile soils can sit adjacent to “devastated”, seemingly-barren (sometimes, relatively briefly, actually-lifeless) zones.
One stream’s waters may be safe to drink, whilst another’s, nearby, could be highly toxic.
This teaser series’ final episode features what was in fact the last photo I took on Javanese soil in 2024.
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“Our” planet’s largest highly acidic lake is the one in Kawah Ijen – the Ijen Crater.
I took this post’s photo from the rim of Kawah Ijen, in almost-easternmost Java, at 5.51 am on 24 October 2024.
My beloved and I were at circa 2400 metres above sea level, with the lake’s surface some 200 vertical metres lower than our feet.
The red fabric in the foreground is trying to tell tourists “do not venture any closer to the crater’s edge”; it was placed there not many moons ago, soon after a Chinese tourist’s fatal fall.
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At 2,329 m ASL, East Java’s Mount Bromo (Gunung Bromo) comfortably exceeds Australia-proper’s high point.
Its own complex includes several taller volcanoes, but Bromo is the most active one.
When Bromo is not being too active, its rim is a relatively easily climb for tourists. (and Hindu pilgrims, some of whom come to hurl sacrificial animals into the volcano’s roaring/steaming/smoking crater)
Accordingly, it is the “star attraction” in Bromo Tengger Semeru National Park, aka “TNBTS”.
TNBTS also contains Mount Semuru – Java’s highest mountain, at 3,676 metres.
Within TNBTS‘s massive caldera are several volcanoes; they are surrounded by Indonesia’s only such volcanic “sea of sand”.
Weather permitting, the park’s most popular viewpoint – atop Mount Penanjakan – offers stunning views of all the aforementioned from 2,782 metres (9,127 feet) ASL
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On 20 October 2024 Prabowo Subianto was inaugurated as Indonesia’s 8th President.
That afternoon his predecessor, Joko Widodo – generally known as “Jokowi” – flew out of Jakarta, to return to his Central Javanese home city of Surakata – generally known as “Solo”.
Before his two terms as President (2014-2024) Jokowi was Jakarta’s governor for two years.
From 2005 to 2012 he was Solo’s very popular mayor; he is still hugely popular there.
On the afternoon and evening of 20.10.2024 much of Solo’s population lined its main thoroughfare to bid him “welcome home” and “thank you”.
It was the largest political event I have ever witnessed…and the happiest.
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Although its “proper” name is Surakarta, most people refer to this pleasant city in Central Java by its nickname: Solo.
Every Sunday morning the city’s main thoroughfare – Jalan Slamet Riyadi – is closed to motorised traffic, so residents can enjoy “various leisure activities”.
These include dancing and exercising in the street, plus a nicely informal market that stretches long and thin, along the roadside edge of the footpaths.
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Much of what once comprised the Hindu temple site at Prambanan is still in ruins…or no longer present, at all.
For many centuries makers of other structures pillaged building materials from here.
On the afternoon of October 19 2024, we were just a short drive away from Yogyakarta in south-central Java.
Our feet stood on a very large site; also standing upright were 16 carefully restored/reconstructed temples and shrines.
If we had arrived 1,100 years earlier, we would have been surrounded by 240 of them!
The “biggest/tallest/central” 8, however, do all now stand tall again.
In 2024 Prambanan is certainly one of the world’s “jaw dropping” temple sites.
The tallest temple – pictured above – is Shiva’s.
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