Music at Midday - Irish Style Sep 2009

Canberra Theatre Centre in association with the Royal Military College host the Music at Midday Concerts six times a year, with proceeds supporting many local charities.  This celebration of the Big Band sound has grown from its humble beginnings and now attracts hundreds of Canberra residents at each performance.

The lunchtime concerts, held at 11am and 12.30pm showcase the talents of the RMC Band and presented with Canberra Theatre Centre provides an opportunity to give something back to the community. Entry to the concerts is by gold coin donation, with all proceeds going to a local charity.

(Taken from the Canberra Theatre website)

What do Guinness, Waterford Crystal, Robert Boyle and the Irish Ambassador have to do with Music at Midday?  Well, to celebrate the 250th anniversary of Guinness, the band decided to hold an Irish style concert and invite the Ambassador along.  They talked about all things Irish, and many things that were not, as they joked, laughed and played their way through the concert.

The band played two national anthems, not one and some great pieces:  An Irish Rhapsody, St Patrick’s Day March, Finnegan’s Wake and Riverdance.  Joined by a male soloist, some ballads were sung:  "What would I be?"  "What’s in a Kiss?" and "Danny Boy", all adding to the Irish flavour.

Toward the end of the program was a surprising number : "The Irish Blessing". This sort of item should be expected but I’ll explain why it touched me.  During the concert, the versatility of this group easily became apparent and several musicians changed instruments and positions within the ensemble.  When they reached the blessing, they stood as one, instruments down and sang accapella, with some nice harmonies.  I wasn’t prepared for that and it was just lovely.

We enjoy going to these concerts as the conductor has a great rapport with the audience and the band shows how much they love their music and performing it for us.

Posted on on September 30th, 2009

Mesmerizing Moods of McCubbin - Sep 2009

Yesterday, I took the boys to see the McCubbin exhibition on the the National Art Gallery.

Though Frederick McCubbin is most well known for his earlier works depicting the Australian Bush (see picture below), this exhibition was more about his later works.

"The Pioneer"

McCubbin went on a trip to Europe and England in the early 1900s, saw many of the Impressionist and Pointillist paintings on display there and came back with a new vision for his painting.  His work became less about telling a story, such a in "The Pioneer" and "Down on His Luck" and more about the scene, the landscape, being the focus.

The guide who took us through the tour was just wonderful.  She spent time teaching the children how to study a painting – the foreground, middle ground, background, the underpainting that would have been done on canvasses, and tools used to paint and create certain techniques.  She also got them to examine colour, especially the use of complementary colours throughout his later work.  One painting "Violet and Gold" even has those aspects highlighted in the name.

"Violet and Gold" 1911

Our guide was enthusiastic, focusing on the atmosphere, light, the reflections and moods of each picture.  One, showing two men using a double saw to cut down a fallen tree, she described as "mesmerizing".  The absorption of the men, the rhythm of the work was instantly evoked in this painting.  I loved the fact that our guide didn’t talk down to the children but rather explained terms and descriptions as she went along.

Needless to say, I thoroughly enjoyed the experience and the art work.  My younger two, with me in this group, found it interesting as well and they want to see McCubbin’s earlier work. 

We’ll have to schedule that in when we next visit Melbourne, which houses the best collection of Australian Impressionists in Federation Sq.  For those who can, go to the exhibition, it is a wonderful collection, set out beautifully in the temporary exhibition hall.  You have until 1 November but I would suggest NOT leaving it until the last minute!

Posted on on September 24th, 2009

Using Bush Plants - July 2009

On a wet and wild day in late July, we went with a homeschooling group on a guided tour in the Australian National Botanic Gardens.  Unfortunately, I must have left my camera behind (though I was sure I had photos…)

Well, why were we here?  We were looking at:

Aboriginal Plant Use and Technology

 

For example, did you know that :

The wood of Blackwood, being very hard and close-grained, was used in Victoria for spear-throwers and shields; the bark was infused in water to bathe rheumatic joints, and the inner bark was used to make string. 

There are over 1,000 different wattle species in Australia, and many of them were used by the Aborigines. In many areas wattle gum was an important food as well as a cement. Wattle seed is high in protein and carbohydrate and was eaten both green and dry in the arid areas. The Tasmanians ate the green seed and pods of Coast Wattle, Acacia sophorae, and Varnish Wattle, Acacia verniciflua, and wattle blossom was hung in their huts to promote sleep.

Then there’s the Bunyia Pine:

These nuts were such a popular food that tribes came from hundreds of kilometres around the Bunya Mountains in southern Queensland to feast on them.

Particular trees were considered to be the property of certain Aboriginal families, but everyone was invited to share the delicious nuts, which are not unlike chestnuts when roasted in the fire.

Although found only in Queensland, Bunya Pines have been planted in the southern States, and the nuts may sometimes be bought in Sydney markets. They can be boiled or roasted.

Lastly, I’ll mention the Banksia:
The flower-cones were soaked in water in bark or wooden containers to extract the nectar to make sweet drinks. Early settlers called banksias ‘honeysuckles’. Some banksias, such as the local Silver Banksia, Banksia marginata, retain the dry flowers on the cones, and Victorian Aborigines used these as strainers for drinking water.  (All information taken from the ANBG website)

We looked at many examples of Aboriginal use of plants from weapons, to musical instruments, toys and how plants were used for food and medicinal purposes.  Our guides divided us into two groups and took us exploring through the Gardens to find various plants as well.

Everyone was well prepared for this excursion with the fantastic resources available on the website and a full colour guide published by the Canberra Timesnewspaper.  These resources are still readily available if you go to http://www.anbg.gov.au/anbg/aboriginal-trail.html

We thoroughly enjoyed our visit, though it was a little too wet and soggy to have a picnic lunch afterwards!

Posted on on July 22nd, 2009 

Lanyon Homestead~a day on the farm - July 2009

What are we doing here?  Well, this was a day for the younger ones (and their cousin) to experience an "old world" day on the farm.

Lanyon Homestead was built in the 1850s, many buildings by convict labour.  It was in the kitchens and outer buildings that we spent our time, rather than in the homestead itself, because the focus was on the physical work that had to be done in that bygone era.

The first task was to help in the making of some damper.  Each child got a chance to stir the dough

before it was transferred into a large cooking pot and put on the fire to cook.

Coals were put on top of the lid as well to help with even cooking.  We then left the damper to cook for about an hour and went to other activities.

We were introduced to a colonial kitchen and what were routine tasks in those pioneering days. This was great because the children had been watching the SBS series "The Colony" with me at that time and this dovetailed nicely.

As you can see from the photo, one of those physical tasks was making butter.  We were shown the distinct stages of the process before then "having a go" ourselves:

We were then able to go on a short tour with the current farmer, looking at sheep, and being told about how the farm runs now.

We were also able to stop and enjoy the scenery along the way…

before going back up to the kitchen to see how that damper was coming along.

Well, it smelled so delicious

and with homemade butter, it tasted that way too!

Posted on on July 15th, 2009 

Happy Constitution Day! 9 July 2009

After the National Museum and National Gallery on the Tuesday, Wednesday saw us going in to the National Archives to join with them in a day to celebrate our Constitution becoming law.  They had these little cupcakes on hand as part of the party.

Then the boys went on a "History Mystery" tour.  They were given booklets and had to look through the "Memory of a Nation" exhibition and using clues, find the answer needed on each page.  I found this fascinating as there was such a broad cross section of Australian life covered in these pages. 

They looked at artefacts, watched short clips of old film footage, old slides and some things on the computer as well as…

looking at the Constitution and related documents, like this one – Queen Victoria’s assent.

After a morning tea break, we went in to see another exhibition I’d been wanting to visit for a while, called "Women Transported: Life in Australia’s Female Convict Factories"

This painting is by Augustus Earle of Women outside a Convict Factory.

Here’s the information about the exhibition:

An estimated one in five Australians has an ancestor who spent time in a convict female factory, but very little material survives from these women. Their contribution has been largely ignored, yet they are the ‘mothers of the nation’ – women with grit who survived the dire conditions of late 18th and early 19th century colonial Australia.

Women Transported: Life in Australia’s Convict Female Factories, a confronting and inspiring exhibition from the Parramatta Heritage Centre, reveals the harsh lives of women who were incarcerated. The oldest and most famous of Australia’s 12 female factories was in Parramatta, New South Wales and opened in 1804.

The heroic personal accounts of women torn from the lives they knew, separated from their children, and often assigned to inhumane colonial masters and mistresses are celebrated through original works of art, films and interactives.

We were all affected by learning about the plight of these women and given were had recently spent time on the early history of Australia’s colonial days, it was an opportune time to see this.

These boots were made in a female colonial factory.

Our "holidays of learning" were not at an end though…

Posted on on July 9th, 2009 

Vaka Moana & Squishy Sculpture - July 2009

Have I mentioned how much I love the National Museum during "school" holidays?

We went in because they advertised their exhibition entitled, "Vaka Moana", which highlighted the exploration and population of the Pacific.  We were invited to come in, make our own "Vaka" and look through the exhibition.

The National Museum has this fantastic open space in the forecourt and the staff there had put together a tremendous array of materials for construction. The boys could make a boat out of leaves, cardboard, sticks, foam, felt, tissue paper, coloured paper, rafia, string, straws and it could be held together by almost every imaginable craft possibility.  There was even a staff member handling a glue gun and trimming pieces for the children!

After finishing the boat building stage, some of the boys coloured in a picture.  This was great because Stevie took twice as long as the others as he made his boat out of wood.  The National Museum staff were so impressed with his Vaka that they took a photo of him with it.  Zac and Adam made The Canberra Times on Sunday, a photo showing them hard at work.

Then it was time to "test them out" on the simulated waves before heading into the exhibition.

It was certainly interesting to see the different types of Vakas that sailed across the Pacific

and to see some life size examples of these vessels.

After all that work, there was still some "down time"

- you see, we were only half way through our day.  After the Museum, the older boys were booked in for an Art workshop at the National Gallery and I took the younger two to Questacon for a couple of hours.

After a short tour in part of the Gallery looking at sculptures, Stevie and Zac made a "Squishy Sculpture".  They could use foam, styrofoam and wire to create their own design.

Zac’s one was on a stand and had a wire armature and Stevie’s was a relief of a cricket pitch.  I think they would have liked more time to do this than they got so they could finish off their designs properly.

We went home, knowing that we’d put in a long day… but we still had energy left for the next day…which I’ll write about now.

Posted on on July 8th, 2009

Geography Night - 20 June 2009

Back in June, we had another Geography Night with one of the homeschooling groups here.  Each family chooses a country, does some research and brings things along on the night.  Each country has a designated space and we set up a display to showcase them up the back.  We had fun finding things on Belgium and even went to the Embassy to get some brochures and information guides.  I think our display was frequented more than the others because of the Belgian chocolate but hey, why not make the experience more enjoyable?

We had a fantastic dinner with traditional cuisine of all the countries available to sample…

I made "Water Zooi" for the main course.  Literally, it means "watery mess" and it’s a rich Belgian chicken stew. I found a recipe online so if you want to try it, go ahead and look it up.  It’s REALLY nice.  Our dessert contribution was chocolate and of course, Belgian waffles.

After dinner, the children presented a short talk on their chosen country.  Unfortunately some went a bit long, but the talks were informative.  It was Adam’s first time up the front and he did well with his part, despite being nervous.  It was good practice anyway.

…and of course, the reason WHY we chose to do Belgium?

We did learn a lot more about Belgium than just comics…

Posted on on June 27th, 2009

ASF - May 2009

What’s unusual about this photo?

Those of you have have been to the ASF will know that this picture is not out of the ordinary… Daleks are common place in this arena.  Andrew doesn’t usually come with us to the Science Festival because we go during the week.  This year, they decided at the last minute to hold it in May, rather than August, so we came on the Saturday to book into some of the things that interested us.

There was still some "fun" things in the main hall.  Mark got to dress up at the fire brigade stall:

and NICTA had a great exhibit.  The boys tested out their endurance and speed, the results being recorded by use of sensors.

Zac tried to build a sustainable environment on "Catchment Detox", drawing the others into the game.

and the boys got to see how cotton is taken from the plant and processed.

After a short lesson in areodynamics,

and some rocket building,

we went to a seminar on "CSI: Fact or Fiction?", learning about the work of forensic scientists.  The boys also went to a session on The Square Kilometre Array.

Unfortunately, Andrew didn’t get to the Science of Beer seminar and after a full day at the convention centre, we decided not to go out star gazing that night.  They did have some light hearted fun at the end of the day though:

…all in the name of Science!!!

Posted on on May 22nd, 2009