Author Archives: Ursula

Ever since my brother gave me my first camera just before my first major overseas adventure (a very long, long time ago), I have loved traveling and loved taking pictures. It's only recently, however, that I've been able to really indulge my passion for both. Living in Bangkok for many years gave me access to some wonderful photographic teachers and mentors, as well as allowing me opportunities for travel that I'd not had before. Although I've moved back to Australia, I am still traveling a fair bit - and I'm loving every minute of it!

(Double click for: Afro Celtic Sound System – Big Cat ) Self-billed as “Australia’s premier contemporary blues & roots music festival”, the annual five-day festival of international blue-, roots-, and any-other-kind-of-music held over the Easter long weekend on Tyagarah Tea Tree Farm – 120 hectares just north of Byron Bay in NSW Australia – has never disappointed […]

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What is “culture”? That was the question for our first assigned essay in “Culture Myth and Symbolism”, an upper-level anthropology course I took at university, many, many years ago. Deceptively simple, the “answer” – if there is one – became increasingly layered and complex the more I delved into tomes written by the notable ‘modern’ […]

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“A fast horse and a soaring eagle are the wings of a nomad.” –Kazakh proverb The animals in Western Mongolia are as wild as the landscape: the horses are unruly and the hunting eagles are never fully tame. I suspect that the ethnic Kazakhs who live there prefer it that way. The Kazakhs are descendants of […]

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“We’re goin’ on a lion hunt, “We’re going to catch a big one – “I’m not scared. “What a beautiful day!” OK – it’s true: the popular children’s chant is about a bear hunt, but I was in a jeep, bumping across dusty gravel tracks in Northern Namibia, and we were in search of lions. The […]

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If you want a sense of a country’s diversity, you need only listen to its music. I was trying to think of ways of organising the myriad of pictures I took at this year’s Bluesfest Byron Bay 2018 – a five-day festival of international blue-, roots-, and any-kind-of-music; one category I thought of using was […]

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