Brisbane Is Home

The Greek community in Brisbane has been celebrating Paniyiri all week, and I’ve just made a video of tonight’s “Greek Dancing with the Stars”, hosted by Effie (Mary Coustas):

There’s a fantastic belly dance starting about half way through, and you’ll also see Brisbanites Glenn Lazarus, Tracey Wickham, Loretta Ryan from Radio 4BH, and Massimo Murdocca from the Queensland Roar dance off for a glittering trophy. Sleek the Elite from Fat Pizza also dropped in.

Paniyiri continues Sunday May 20th 2007 at Musgrave Park, South Brisbane (Click here to see a Google Map of the exact location). Best way to get there is to catch a train to South Brisbane or Southbank/Vulture St stations or a shuttle bus from the city - click here for more info.

Sunday is the last day of Paniyiri - if you head down you can see the final of the Olive Eating contest, and also the Honey Puff eating. Narissa (the belly dancer from the video) will be dancing again, and there’ll be some grape stomping. I took some photos today which should be on the site soon, and there is also a ‘Ready Steady Cookoff’ at the Greek Club and public lectures on Greek and Greek-Australian culture and cooking demonstrations. And the official Paniyiri after party starts from 8 and goes on to…whenever, really.

Photos from the march and the rally will be appearing tomorrow.

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UPDATE, Anzac Day evening: I recorded audio at the Dawn Service and sent it straight to Brisbane Is Home with my mobile phone:

I also sent in two good photos direct to the blog via mobile:

And there’s a video of the first 16-odd minutes of the March, right here:

You might get more out of the video by watching it in fullscreen mode: Click here to try that.

I’ve finished the first batch of photos: click here to see 30 photos from the Anzac Day March.

Second photoessay finished! Click here for the photos from the Dawn Service.

And click here to see the full set of 180 photos at flickr, where you can download them, see much larger sizes and watch a slideshow of the photos.

ORIGINAL STORY, Tuesday April 24th:

Anzac Day is probably the most deeply-felt national holiday in Australia. April 25th is the anniversary of the morning the ANZAC (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) forces attacked the coast of the Gallipoli peninsula in 1915, as part of an operation led by the British and French Allies to assist Russia.

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You little beauty!

I got my new camera this week. It’s a Fujifilm Finepix S5600, and I’d like to thank patrickg of the Blueberry Fool blog for recommending this camera to me. It was only A$ 429 from Digital Camera Warehouse including delivery and a 1GB memory card.

(To give you an idea of how much that is, I work in an office 3 days a week and get about $A 380 for that).

But a camera is no good if you don’t use it, so last night I recorded videoclips of 4 songs by Brisbane DIY music outfit Lightbulb: (click here for Lightbulb’s myspace page).

“I Had To Grow Up Before I Grew Down” is a song about finally seeing the end of a long, hard, lonely road, and it’s full of heart.

The two instrumental tracks are called ‘Sparrow‘ and ‘Blue Sky Realm‘.

And the last song is a happy, fun pastiche/homage to Bob Dylan’s music, called:

“Dylan Hoedown (I’m Just Chillin’ Like Bob Dylan)“.

If you like Lightbulb, you can visit the Lightbulb myspace page or listen to Lightbulb free on last.fm.

This is just the start of what I can do with this new camera, so let me know if there’s anything you’d like to see. Enjoy the music!

Student film-maker HaZzarDious says at the film’s YouTube site:

Our first assignment film at uni. A collaboration between 3 students.

This is my own cut (the way I ment it 2 be) Shooting time was about 3 hours. Shot on Grey st. in Brisbane [ED: click here to see the exact location of Grey St] a fine monday morning. Some people actually got scared from all the running and called the police. (that’s another story)

The film is about what happens when paranoia takes over and self-preservation is all that matters. Working title “The Bush effect”, to imply that the propaganda Bush spreads out amongst his own voters can lead to unexpected and somewhat horrible effects.

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This home-made video of Brisbane street art was by YouTube user ShidArt.

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On Saturday 24th February, I went to Davies Park in West End, an inner suburb of Brisbane (click here to see the exact location), to catch the trial match between National Rugby League side Wests Tigers (from Sydney) and the Queensland Cup team Souths Logan Magpies.

There were three games on Saturday - a colts game (young, up and coming players) and a FOGS (A-grade citywide) match, both between the Magpies and local team Easts Tigers. Then there was the main game between Souths and Wests.

I couldn’t get many good pictures of the main game, because my camera isn’t too good in the dark. (I’m saving up for a new one, let me know if you want to help me buy one that costs about $A 450).

 But here’s 30-odd pictures including some of the early games, and a short video including some of the later game. Just keep reading…

By the way, this article would never have happened if not for Shaun at sidelined, the Australian sports blog.

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It’s Chinese New Year! I went down to Chinatown in the Valley on Saturday February 17th to take some photos for you, so here we go:

Keep reading to see 50 photos and two videos of Chinese New Year in Brisbane.

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I went to New Farm Park yesterday to watch people jug. And I made my first real videoblog - that’s it just above.

Jugging is a sport that was invented in the 1990 film ‘Salute of the Jugger‘ (also known as ‘The Blood of Heroes’, starring Rutger Hauer, Joan Chen and Vincent D’Onofrio).

Jugging involves 4 people from each side hitting each other with weapons, while the fifth player on each team tries to score by running through the gaps and putting a dogskull on a spike at the end of the field.

There is an active jugging group in Brisbane that meets every second Sunday at New Farm Park. Click here to go to the details of the games at meetup.com.

Click here to see the exact part of New Farm Park you have to go to.

There are also heaps of information and photos at jugger.org.au

There’s another Brisbane jugging video on YouTube by fiendishfilms:

Warning - there is some coarse language in the soundtrack to that one.

So what sort of sport do you like? Does hitting people with weapons to make room for the quick and his dogskull sound like fun to you? Leave a comment and let me know.