Tag: sydney harbour

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My photography on Wikipedia

Originally posted on hachyderm.io, posted here with minor edits.

I release a lot of my photos under the Creative Commons Attribution licence. It’s fun to see which of them have popped up on Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, although it doesn’t line up with my favourites among my own photographs.

Wikipedia: Crown Sydney and a few variants in other languages make heavy use of photographs I took of the Crown Sydney construction site, or at least of its surroundings. (Most of them are cropped down to the construction site by the editors.)

Construction at Barangaroo Barangaroo towers Barangaroo construction at sunset

This photograph of the Eastern Suburbs viaduct is used in two articles related to it, Wikipedia: Eastern Suburbs & Illawarra Line and Wikipedia: Eastern Suburbs railway line:

Eastern suburbs rail line, from Sydney Tower

This, cropped and brightened by a Commons editor, is used on the Wikipedia: New South Wales Rural Fire Service article. Not discussed in the article: that truck is delivering Fire Santa, who visits kids at farm gates in the leadup to Christmas.

Fire Santa cometh!

The next two are I think the only two I have inserted myself, and appear in Wikipedia: Raging Waters Sydney. At the time I took them, the only Commons photographs of Raging Waters (then Wet ‘n’ Wild) were during construction, so I took a camera there to photograph the completed rides for Wikipedia. The first of the two also appears in Wikipedia: 2013 in amusement parks.

Tower 1, Wet'n'Wild Sydney: Bomborra and Tantrum Wet'n'Wild Sydney: H2Go Racers

This photograph is used on the Ukrainian language article about Bay Area Rapid Transit (Wikipedia: Метрополітен Затоки Сан-Франциско):

BART arriving

I extensively photographed the University of Sydney jacaranda a few years before it blew over, and this one appears on both the English and German articles about the tree (Wikipedia: Jacaranda, University of Sydney). It’s something of an exception to the “my faves don’t appear on Wikipedia” experience, I do like this series.

Jacaranda carpet, Sydney University

A cropped version of this photograph from a plane is used in both Wikipedia: Sierra Point (Brisbane) and Wikipedia: Dakin Building, neither of which I could have told you anything about when I saw them from a window seat in 2016.

Bay Area from above

Finally, it is honestly quite an honour to have this used in Wikipedia: Sydney Harbour Bridge, in both the English and Spanish articles:

Aboriginal and Australian flags above Sydney Harbour Bridge

Quite a few other photos of mine have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, although not used in articles. All of my Creative Commons licenced photography (around 4000 photographs) can be found via this Flickr search.

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Milk Beach, last days

July/August 2021

Starting 5pm Friday July 9, we could only travel within 10km of your home for exercise/recreation in Sydney. I’m not generally a fan of bright-siding these restrictions (“my workaholic husband has ditched the corporate rat race, any chance we could stick with widespread house arrest, it’s been just great for his blood pressure?”) but it does inspire a certain amount of scouring one’s vicinity for places to be. The ocean beaches are all slightly more than 10km as the crow flies from me, but some of the harbour beaches such as Milk Beach remained accessible.

I walked with a friend there during daytime and after that decided that a family excursion at sunset was called for:

Sydney city, late afternoon, from Milk Beach Last light off Sydney City, from Milk Beach Sydney City silhouette after sunset, from Milk Beach

The other reason to frantically find family excursions, as I told my family gloomily, was in case the rules got stricter, which indeed they did, a 5km radius from August 16. So the evening of August 15 we traipsed out once more to farewell Milk Beach for the time being, not, seemingly, the only ones:

Watching the sunset at Milk Beach Last light, Milk Beach

All photos.

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Storm over Sydney, New Year’s Eve 2018

The dramatic storm that ended 2018 by soaking most of the people who’d been waiting 12 hours for a fireworks show was not forecast, but it also wasn’t entirely unheralded. Here’s the sky 2 hours before it struck:

Storm gathers over Sydney, New Year's Eve 2018
Storm over Sydney, New Year's Eve 2018

However, it wasn’t until later that this was heralded on the radar:

Storm building over Sydney, New Years Eve 2018

I went to the north of the island to see if I could see the storm cell; hearing a security guard’s radio piping up about moving all guests into shelter. Promising! I was not disappointed:

Sydney storm cell, New Year's Eve 2018
Storm cell over Hunter's Hill, New Year's Eve 2018
Rain foot, New Year's Eve 2018

I hurried back; as I did the loudspeakers started to call everyone into the old machinerary sheds due to a “dangerous storm”; we were probably some of the few New Year’s Eve revellers around the harbour who could take shelter that evening.

I made it before the rain did. However, I wasn’t quite the last one in:

Taking shelter from the storm, New Year's Eve 2018

We were out in time for the party:

Rain dance

Other photos of New Year’s Eve (in progress).