WozzTopia

Spider Cow Queens Gardens

A few months ago (I know I’ve been slack) I visited a friend in Shepparton where I lived for a few years in the early 90′s and while there I just had to photograph the “cows” !! I can not wait to get get back to check out the new additions and the ones I missed last time around.

Shepparton is the fifth largest city in Victoria, Australia. The population of the municipality of City of Greater Shepparton in 2005 was estimated to be at 60,403 residents. The population of Shepparton-Mooroopna is estimated at 38,773. It is located approximately 200 km North-East of Melbourne.

Moooving Art is a mobile, interactive public art exhibit that features life-sized three-dimensional cow sculptures – with attitude! Local artists transform these sculptures to make each piece unique, or funny, or challenging.

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Full image gallery

The sculptures are regularly moved to different locations around the city. You can find the cows in parks and public open spaces, on the sidewalks and in surrounding towns. New cows are always being added to the herd as older ones are put out to pasture’.

Greater Shepparton is the heart of a region that produces 35°o of Australia’s dairy exports, so the cow was a natural choice for this unusual exhibit. There are now over 90 cows wandering about the area, adding colour, and fun, to your visit.

Zaidee’s Rainbow Foundation is a Shepparton based organisation with the aim of increasing the level of tissue and organ donation in Australia.  It does this by raising awareness of tissue and organ donation in the community.

The foundation is run by Allan and Kim Turner.  Their daughter, Zaidee Rose Alexander Turner – aged 7 years and 22 days died suddenly on 2nd December 2004 from a burst blood vessel in her brain called a Cerebral Aneurism. The Turner family have been registered Organ and Tissue Donors for 5 years. As a result Zaidee donated her Organs and Tissues at the Royal Children’s Hospital as were her wishes at the time. Zaidee was the only child in Victoria under the age of 16 years and we have been told one of the youngest Australians to donate her organs and tissues in 2004. She was only I of 6 children nationally to donate their organs.

In the year Zaidee died, another 130,000 Australians also died. Only 218 people generously donated their organs or tissues. One in five Australians on the transplant waiting list die before they get a chance to receive a transplant. Currently there is between 1700 to 2000 people waiting to get that important call from the hospital that they have found a donor for their transplant.

You can support the Zaidee’s Rainbow Foundation by:

* Registering to be an Organ & Tissue Donor by clicking here:
* visiting the Website and finding out more about the Foundation by clicking here:
* making a donation by clicking here
* Zaidee’s Rainbow LacesBuying a pair of Zaidee’s Rainbow Shoelaces for yourself or
as a gift from your nearest Athlete’s Foot store.
* Buying a box of 50 laces ($100) to use as a thoughtful corporate gift.  Click here for an order form.

Forced perspective is a technique that employs optical illusion to make an object appear farther, closer, larger or smaller than it actually is.

It is used primarily in photography, filmmaking and architecture. It manipulates human visual perception through the use of scaled objects and the correlation between them and the vantage point of the spectator or camera.

This photograph was taken at the Ballarat Botanical Gardens, where I have been known to spend hours walking aimlessly around snapping photos of unsuspecting creepy crawlies.  (January 2009)

The orb-weaver spiders are builders of spiral wheel-shaped webs often found in gardens, forests etc. Their common name is taken from the round shape of the typical web. Orb-weavers have eight similar eyes, legs hairy or spiny. The family includes many well-known large or brightly coloured garden spiders. There are more than 2800 species in over 160 genera worldwide, making this one of the largest family of spiders known.

Sitting Pretty

The Garden Orb Weavers build large, strong, vertical orb webs. Generally, the spider constructs its web in the evenings and takes it down again at dawn. The spider rests head-down in the centre of the web, waiting for prey. During the day, the spider rests on nearby foliage with its legs drawn under the body. Birds such as honeyeaters are common predators of these spiders. Flying insects such as flies, beetles and bugs (including large prey like cicadas), are common prey. Butterflies and day-active moths are sometimes caught but are partially protected from web entrapment by the presence of scales on their wings – these scales can be shed and this may allow the insect to struggle free of the sticky web.

Recently I have been having much fun playing with my new camera and posting to my Flickr account (pro of course). The quality of most of the photos on Flickr put mine to shame, but never mind it’s fun. I have noticed a distinct trend on Flickr for 365 Day projects so I with my pack mentality have decided to give it a blast myself. Many days were spent thinking about the topic of my project and examining others before coming up with a theme of 365 Days of Reflections. Reflections are the something many people (myself included until recently) don not take the time to notice, they see the item but not the world reflected in the item. Hopefully this project will give others a different look at the world at least the world around me. Hopefully I will not pull a Homer Jay and flake out on this project, 362 left to go!