Category: AUSTRALIAN

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Missed the eclipse?

Take a look at the stunning solar eclipse from earlier this week / Cory Poole

When a total solar eclipse casts a shadow over a 150km-wide swathe of land at 6.39AM (AEST) on Wednesday, the tourist towns of Cairns, Palm Cove and Port Douglas will have a front-row seat.

It is the first full solar eclipse to occur in Australia since the same eerie darkness fell on Ceduna in South Australia ten years ago.

Psychologist and avid “eclipse chaser” Dr Kate Russo was there that day, and now devotes a lot of her time to studying – and experiencing – the effects of the phenomena.

The former far-north Queenslander will be in Palm Cove on November 14, gazing at the sky, before interviewing fellow spectators for their reactions.

Once every 300 years

Once every 300 years

Experience the atmosphere of the total solar eclipse on Easter Island, 3,700km off the coast of Chile on July 11.

Russo said she has been addicted to experiencing eclipses since 1999, when she travelled to France in 1999 “out of curiosity”.

“When you get hooked on it, it’s something you try to see for the rest of your life,” she said.

“As it started to progress over time, the more I noticed about the environment – the light started dimming, the birds started flying home to roost, I was picking up this terrible fear, which us eclipse chasers call primal fear.

“And then it just unfolded – the beauty of the eclipse was just stunning.

“I was speechless, I was shaking, I had goosebumps, I was in awe.

“It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen – it was like I’d just woken up and my life had changed.”

Dr Stuart Ryder, from the Australian Astronomical Observatory, will also be heading to Palm Cove for the eclipse.

He says he’ll be travelling for the fun of it, but explains that in the recent past, eclipses were used to study the solar corona – the sun’s extremely hot outer atmosphere.

“Nowadays we have a fleet of spacecraft orbiting around the earth and indeed the sun, which can produce artificial eclipses,” he said.

Ryder says it takes the moon about an hour to pass from first contact, when it begins to cross the sun’s path, to totality, when the sun is completely obscured.

During those few minutes of totality, it will seem like a moonlit night.

“However, when you look at the sky in any direction for a couple of hundred kilometres, you can see parts of the atmosphere which are outside the moon’s shadow,” he said.

“So you’ll see a black hole in the sky, with a pearly white filamentary corona around it for several degrees.”

Up to 60,000 people are expected to visit Cairns for the eclipse, while a further 15,000 are set to pack Port Douglas.

Port Douglas Chamber of Commerce representative and newspaper editor Greg McLean says he expects the town to be busier than it is at the height of its peak tourist season.

He says all of the region’s campsites have been booked out, and overflow areas at sporting fields have had to be set up.

“I imagine it’s going to be as busy as the town could ever get … it really is a once in a lifetime opportunity for Port Douglas.”

Like most towns, Port Douglas has come up with some novel ways of celebrating its time out of the sun.

A marathon will begin just as the sun re-emerges from behind the moon, and the town will host the first-ever game of “fooket” – which involves simultaneous games of Aussie rules and cricket on the same oval.

Meanwhile, in a nod to the far north’s hippy past, an eclectic mix of DJs, techno and folk acts will perform at the week-long Eclipse Festival, near the remote Palmer River Roadhouse.

Queensland Rail will send a chartered train to scenic Red Bluff, near Kuranda, giving 100 passengers a different perspective of the celestial dance.

But the thousands hoping to glimpse the eclipse should cross their fingers, as the eclipse falls within the far north’s wet season and could be obscured by cloud cover and rain.

If it is a washout, they’ll have to wait until Sydney goes dark in 2028 for the next total solar eclipse visible from Australian shores.

* Eclipse watchers should remember to wear safety goggles or view the event through simple projection devices, which can be made of cardboard. Even while hidden behind the moon, the sun is incredibly powerful. Just a few seconds of looking at it directly can cause blindness.

The mercury is high, the humidity intense, we are a mere stone’s throw away from the Sydney Football Stadium yet miles away from the dizzying heights of the NRL. Welcome to the life of former Wests Tiger Blake Lazarus now working as a personal trainer.

Far from being disappointed at his two appearances in Rugby League’s premier competition, the nephew of five-time premiership winner Glenn is more than content with his newfound career.

The 24-year-old is no stranger to gruelling preseason fitness workouts and is putting that knowledge to good use, battering your correspondent to almost total exhaustion. While his former first-grade teammates enter their first week of Rugby League’s equivalent of bootcamp, Lazarus is the one in charge, dishing out the pain. He has been up since 5am, his first client was at 5:30am and he has more sessions to run after we are finished too.

“I’m happy doing my personal training and I may go back and play with the Entrance Tigers,” Lazarus tells NRL.com.

“The hardest thing with footy is you are always competing against someone. It is tough and you don’t get any younger, you have to accept it at the end of the day there are a lot of young kids coming through and you are all vying for a position.

“I have no regrets, I had a few injuries, but I really love the personal training, despite the early starts.”

Lazarus has just returned from a trip to Vanuatu to represent Greece, which he describes as the best Rugby League tour he has ever been involved in.

The ground wasn’t packed to the rafters; it was packed to the tree branches and rooftops, with locals cramming in and finding any vantage point to watch this emerging sport.

The curtain-raiser to the international saw two local Vanuatu teams clash, big boys making even bigger hits. They hope to have their own league up and running soon too. It is a very humble beginning, but they aim to make a real fist of Rugby League.

“Vanuatu is doing some great things over there with Rugby League,” Lazarus enthuses.

“They are trying to start a competition over there, so the curtain-raiser was two local teams – they had some big fellas and they were putting on massive hits.

“There were about 5,000 fans there to watch us play and there were people hanging from trees watching the game and on rooftops, it was amazing. I hadn’t seen anything like it.”

While his famous uncle represented Australia 29 times, it had been discovered that both Glenn and Blake had Greek ancestry. And while the thought of Blake representing Greece had seemed a little strange at first, this is how emerging nations grow the game.

It all started with a phone call from Rugby League News Magazine editor Terry Liberopoulos to Newtown enquiring whether Blake would be interested in playing.

The rest they say is history.

Without Liberopoulos, Lazarus says Greece wouldn’t have a Rugby League team.

“They had done a bit of research behind my heritage and my background and they found some Greek heritage,” he said.

“I didn’t know too much about it to be honest, but Terry had approached Glenn about it a few years back at a dinner.

“If they don’t have the heritage players playing, they wouldn’t have a team to start with. So it is a big thing for them.”

Lazarus found himself playing alongside Queensland Cup players, boys from the country and guys who had represented Greece in 2003. It was a similar story for the Vanuatu team.

But for three days, they were embraced as superstars – Rugby League royalty.

“The Vanuatu people were so welcoming and they love their Rugby League,” Lazarus recalls.

“There were Broncos jerseys and NSW Cup jerseys and a few other NRL jerseys being worn, it was awesome.

“Some of the hits in the game were huge too, just as big as I’ve seen in the NRL.

“They had a couple of Queensland Cup players who were of Vanuatu heritage and a few of the local players. The standard of the game was really good; the first 25 minutes were hard and fast.

“Sure it might have dropped away in the second-half, but it was still a pretty good game of footy. They definitely have a lot to work with.”

For the record Greece were victorious 24-14, Lazarus finished with a try and three conversions.

But as players completed their third lap of the ground after the game to make sure they had shook hands with every single spectator who had turned up, not leaving the ground until more than two hours after the full-time siren had sounded, it could aptly be said that Rugby League was the real winner.

As for Blake, he’ll continue to train and torture would-be fitness enthusiasts under a scorching sun, and will happily put his hand-up to keep representing Greece if he gets the call from coach Steve Georgallis – a man he believes should be a head-coach in the NRL – but that’s another story.

Greek Australians make their mark in local Councils

Sotheby’s chief executive Geoffrey Smith, left, and Brett Ballard with Sidney Nolan’s Crossing The River, which is being auctioned later this month. Picture: Dan Himbrechts Source: The Australian

Ned Kelly: Crossing the River (1955) is expected to fetch between $800,000 and $1.2 million when it goes under the hammer on November 20 at Sotheby’s sale of Important Australian and International Art.

According to the auction house, viewing of the work in Sydney and Melbourne during the next fortnight marks the first time the work has been on public exhibition — and on Australian shores — since 1975.

Crossing the River, which is part of Nolan’s second Ned Kelly series, has spent the past three decades at the Boston home of Jinx Nolan, the daughter of Sidney and Cynthia Nolan.

The painting depicts the Victorian outlaw wading through a swollen river holding a firearm above his head.

Jinx Nolan, who inherited the painting upon her mother’s death in 1976, said selling the work was not an easy decision.

“I will miss the painting enormously,” she said. “I have owned it for a long time and although it contains one of my father’s most iconic images, it has been a familiar and comforting part of my life.”

Sotheby’s chief executive Geoffrey Smith said the work was an integral part of “arguably the most internationally known series of Australian art”. He said that was borne out by examples of the series at New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Britain’s Tate Museum.

The NGV in 2010 acquired Ned Kelly with Horse (1955) for $2.5m, while Nolan’s famous Kelly painting First Class Marksman (1946) was sold the same year for $5.4m, a record price for Australian art sold at auction.

Smith said Crossing the River was notable for its compositional clarity.

“It’s a singular image,” said Smith. “The figure is firmly placed in the Australian landscape. It really is a defining composition. When people identify with the outlaw, they identify with the helmet, and it’s smack bang in the middle of the image.”

The work is on view in Sydney this week, before travelling to Melbourne where it will be on public display until the auction.

Smith, who in 2003 curated a survey of Nolan’s work at the National Gallery of Victoria, said he was unconcerned about launching the work into a softening market.

“For works of great rarities and significance, we are finding there is great interest and depth to the market,” he said.

Crossing the River, which Nolan showed in exhibitions in London and New York in 1965 and 1966, was last seen in Australia in 1975, when it was part of The Cynthia Nolan Collection of Paintings by Sidney Nolan, which was shown at Sydney’s David Jones.