Adelaide's hottest day 45.7 degrees in 70 years

What a day! It's hot! Yesterday the weather bureau said it expected 42 degrees c but it has exceeded all expectations with 45 degrees c. The poor native birds are sitting on the fountain edge with their mouths open and panting. There are two young lorakeets there as well with the adult birds but they are suffering badly. I filled up the fountain to the top and there has been a steady trickle of birds sitting by the water. It's going to be a hot monster week with forecasts above 41 for most of the week and I think it will top Adelaide's hottest day on record.

Lookee here, my litttle pots in the Jam factory all sold. I don't have to pick any up. Great,

as it's too hot to go to town on the Oban bus.

No I am wrong. The hottest day has been recorded as 46.1 in 1939.

The location site of the Blessed Mary Mackillop bronze

We wanted to have a look at the progress to the grounds of the Catholic Cathedral in the city centre as I have not been into town since before Christmas. Work has been progressing well since I was last there and the sacristy has been completed.
The sculpture of Blessed Mary Mackillop will be placed on this side of the cathedral in front of the two long windows about 5 m from the side of the walls.The stone work has been steam cleaned to rid the cathedral of the city grime and it looks good.


It should be placed in front of the two long windows and I am assuming it will be the first two seeing there is seating close to the second pair. It looks as though about 2/3 of the paving has been done but none of the planting or the foundations for the bronze has been done yet.



The sacristy is on the other side of the building but I forgot to take a photo of it, although I meant to.



The Cathedral looks wonderful cleaned of the city grime.



This is a view looking towards the new SA Water building but the grounds in front are part of the area that the sculpture will be part of. I hope to get some idea next week whether it will be the date as planned.

We stopped near the docks to see the famous colourful area that housed immigrants and the streets were brightly painted with demonstrations of dancing, street stalls and cafes.
These colourful masks took my eye.


Demonstrations were going on in the city square.

Caminito Street, then we were dropped off at the famous pedestrian Florida street where we had lunch and slowly walked the seven blocks back to our hotel. We leave the next morning early on the 3 hour charted flight to Ushuaia, in Tierra Del Fuego Province in Argentina where we catch up with my brother Laurie and board out Expedition Cruise ship Prince Albert 11 of the Silversea line.

Buenos Aires

Achitectural details

John and I with the Basilica of Our Lady of the Pillar in the background.

The Jacarandas were in full bloom and we thought we would miss seeing our tree blossom in the garden at home but it was in full flower when we arrived back home.

Flew back to Buenos Aires from Cusco, Peru

I would like to add some posts from our trip as we flew back to Buenos Aries from Cusco in Peru via Lima and that took most if the day and this was our view from the hotel window with the late setting sun making a golden show of the buildings opposite.



The next day we did a half day bus tour of the city and I swear I have never seen so many sculptures in one city, it was just magic to me although I only got quick glimpses as we passed, but we went to a large cemetary in the city and the momuments and mausaleums were incredible. I wanted to stay and take photos of everything, but we only had 10 minuted before we were due back on the bus. I didn't get a chance to find Eva Peron's grave but here are some of the sculptures I had a chance to photograph.
The cemetry reminded me of one I went to in Naples, Italy when I first went overseas as a 20
year old which really impressed me. I have always loved sculpture and am always photographing it when I can.



I love the wings, the drapery and the mood of these tombs.





Some are such massive sculptures, I must try to find a book about these tombs. John said it was called the Recoleta Cemetary. There was also a wonderful white church , the Basilica of our Lady of the Pillar, which had some wonderful art work in it also. I wanted to photograph the inside of it but I had misread a notice that forbade photos being taken only whilst services were being held.

Helicopters overhead, the peleton must be near.

The Peleton rides into view, photo taken with a 10 x zoom.

Peleton, one rider ahead of bunch.

He is third rider over line.

And these are my granddaughters , enjoying the race.

I don't know who came first in today's race , I'll watch the news tonight on TV. I picked out the back if Armstrong as the bunch went past but couldn't catch any one else' face. They were so close to us as they swept up the road. They rode right to the edge of the bitumen and the crowd were right on the edge of the dirt looking straight into their faces and the strain of the climb showed on most faces.

It will probably be the only race we go to watch as the race ranges a couple of hundred ks through the hills.

Armstrong has done heaps for cancer patients and has made the illness much more publicised and the local government has pledged a large amount of money for Children's cancer research.

I hope all America will be watching the inauguration of Obama, it will be a such an historic night ,showing on tv about 3.00am our time.

Hope I showed bloggers a little bit of our news here in South Australia.

Starting to get busier, about 45 minutes before they will pass our spot .


Shaun, wearing the "T" shirt from when he watched Tour de France finish in Paris, in 2002.



The King of the Mountain line across the road.


First 2 breakaway riders appear.

Just about to cross the first King of the Mountain line for points for that Jersy.

The boys will be hot and it's only 50k into the race. Temperature today is 98 degrees f, or 36.9 degrees c.

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Tour Down Under up Snake Gully Road

Cavelcade of sponsors cars just turning off Snake Gully Road


Tour down under official cars coming up the hill to where we waited just past King of the mountain stage of race.

The crowd wait in the shade of gum trees for the first sign of any breakaway riders, We are up high on the hill so we can see the road below and the downhill section before it.

This is where the riders will come down and up,the hill and then will come around a steep bend at the top of this road, the weather is very warm, 36.9 c or 98 degrees f, I don,t envy them having to ride in this heat.

This is our family group an hour to go before the race comes past us.

hot day

Well I said it was hot . It reached 102.2 f or 39 degrees C.It is going to reach 35 tomorrow so the cyclists will have a hot ride tomorrow. All our family will be out to barrack for Stuart O'Grady"Stueuy" our local boy,and also cheer on Lance Armstrong.

Native birds

These are the green lorikeets that bathe in the pond

These are two rare visitors from Victoria , Long beaked corellas looking for seeds across the road on the reserve.

It's too hot to go outside.

It is a fairly hot day here, so I have been sitting at my computer reading blogs. I can blame that on reading Strange Fragments, and trying to read all the Australian blogs supplied by Shannon Garson on her blog. Her pots are quite beautiful.
It's funny to think that over here in Australia that it is so hot , I'd almost describe it as a sizzler although it is supposed to only be forcast as 35 degrees c and yet the blogs overseas have the most beautiful white snow covered landscapes and talk of below freezing weather. I can understand how it would be exceptionally hard to work clay in winter and to have the thrown pots crack from freezing weather.
My plight is the opposite as I have to try to reorder my messy workshop in order to start working, but the temperature in the galvanized tin workshop is too hot at the moment even though it is now 5.00pm, hence the languid afternoon reading blogs. I found also that our part of the world seems to favour porcelain and finely thrown work as we don't have the wonderful tradition of slipped pots or maybe my leanings are to fine porcelain and I haven't looked far enough away from my preferences.
I just nicked out to rescue yesterday's washing and as I passed the necterine and satsuma plum trees, I could see the fruit that had been tried out by the possums and left to waste on the ground.
Our house is across the road from a reserve of open bush which has Dry Creek running through it and at the moment it's not really running, so all the green lorikeets, rosellas and gallahs turn up at our fish pond and fountain and have their daily baths and squabble over who is boss, at dusk and early morning. They are wonderful to watch. I don't have many goldfish at the moment as a blue herron found my pond just the thing for a feed and aren't many of them left and the Cookaburras like them too.
I must try to work out how to put a video of them lined up for a bath on the blog.
I didn't use my workshop all last year as I had space at Tea Tree Gully Craft Workshops to work on my large sculpture of Mary MacKillop and although it was also hot out there, they had evaporative cooling which helped on all but the hottest days, I now have to clean up my shed and make it workable again and also my studio and office where it's hard to know where to start.
My Bronze work is ready to be placed at the cathedral but I have to wait until the church is ready for the opening and because that has been postponed until March I feel unsettled and have not worked on any thing properly yet. Maybe my desk is telling me to clean it up.

A few more pots

These cups are used by me every day for drinking coffee. They are by Jane Burbidge, an Adelaide potter. They are porcelain with a celadon glaze. I bought the first one before Christmas for myself at The Jam Factory, as well as Humna's lovely delicately decorated slip cast bowl.
I was back there and asked if they had any more and I chose the shiny celadon one. I'm sure it would be the same glaze but just in a hotter spot in the kiln, but they are both beautiful to handle and use. Thanks Jane they are my favorite drinking coffee cup.





Just to show you that I do have potter skills this is a dinner plate from a dinner set I threw back at Art School when it was called SACAE Underdale, where I received my Bachelor of Design, Ceramics in 1983 as the back of the plate shows along with the smudges of cobalt.
I was a production thrower then and used to do some sculpture as well. Now it's reversed and I mainly sculpt but when I see beautiful porcelain dinnerware I get tempted again.




Humna Mustafa is a Henna artist who also works on clay.

Mixed pieces

Ang's pots

Whilst I was photographing things I thought I may as well take a photo of two of Ang's Raku bottles that I am very fond of.
I must doing some of my own work too but the weather is very hot 35 degrees c, and we are planning to go out and watch "Tour Down Under" as Lance Armstrong has come to Australia to ride in it and it will be worth a look at such a fantastic bike rider.
It will be warm weather for the overseas riders and we are planning to take up a vantage point just 4 km from home that is on a gruelling uphill grade called Snake Gully Road.



This is one of the many dolls that they sell everywhere. Note the bull in her arms.
I also bought a girl and a boy doll for my grandaughters.




This is the tourist version of what is usually placed on the roof of a Peruvian house

Pieces from Peru

The first two pieces of pottery are from Semanario Pottery in The Sacred Valley.This piece is adorned with silver Inca marks and the plate is unglazed but has the condor incised through the oxide. He is a very well known potter throughout South America and has a website.

This piece is a local tourist puzzle jug. You can pour water in and turn it upside down and nothing comes out.

This is a piece of brightly coloured local weaving that I liked the pattern of as it looked rather traditional in style.

Machu Picchu

Machu Picchu