That Visit to The National ANZAC Centre, Albany, continued...

As I commented in the recent post about this place, DH and I went back the next day to go through the building.

( Source for the photos above ; National ANZAC Centre website)

After paying our entry fees we were each given a card. These cards represented a person who served in some way in WW1. ( as well as soldiers and nurses there was a war correspondent/journalist included as well). The personnel selected by the museum represented a cross section of Australians at that time.
 We were also given the little gadget for the audio tour.

In the photo I'm holding up both these items for the camera. Behind me is one of the large screens throughout the complex on which images from the war are projected. 

At 4 points in the museum were machines where you could place your card and the screen would give you details about 'your' defence personnel. I was able to find out when 'my soldier' Private Gordon Naley, joined up, where from, where he was sent and what ship he went on. And best of all, at the 4th point, I found that he survived the war, came home in 1919. Sadly he did die in 1929; so he was still young.

On the website the biographical and service information on Gordon from the museum exhibits, is available. http://www.nationalanzaccentre.com.au/story/gordon-charles-naley

The next photo was taken near the entry to all the exhibition rooms. The video is footage of WW1 soldiers marching...the sound of the marching going non stop is quite a sombre experience...people ( the visitors) whisper in hushed tones. 

We walked around the displays reading boards and listening to the relevant audio tour items. The rooms are quite dark, so I didn't take many photos.

Uniforms...

Nurses' uniforms...this outfit was not the work uniform, but the 'going out' uniform. I read the info board which stated that the nurses complained that this uniform was out of date and, as well as being old fashioned, the nurses said it was impractical...especially the bonnet! 🙁

The back of the bonnet! 

A pith helmet...

A collapsible canvas bucket for the horses' water. 

A room with places to sit and listen to the audio being played through speakers...and what a view while visitors sat and contemplated. 

And in another room there was a marvelous sculpture of a soldier with his horse...

What a wonderful experience we had walking through this  tribute to those who took part in WW1.
DH's card was Lieutenant Colonel Harold Edward 'Pompey' Elliott and if you would like to check out more about him and the others, the link is here. Just click on the photos, and each will flip over. And then click again and screens will come up with more information about that person.

Offspring...

Some people joke that they had children so they had someone to care for them in old age...I think that I had children so they could help me with 'technology' ! lol

The recent computer crash made iTunes disappear and I hadn't been successful at downloading it again, so DD1 came over to help this morning. The program was successfully installed under her supervision but then we found that the re installation was classed as a new account and I was unable to add new songs to the library...well I could, but it would mean 'restoring factory settings' which would delete all my music. Now the earlier computer crash meant I no longer had the mp3 files on the computer (DD1 did look as well) . DD1 confirmed something I had read a while back...you can't copy your mp3 files on your iPod to your computer.

Now CDs from our collection  that I had copied to the iPod weren't a problem; I could just copy them again. The problem was the $60 worth of albums that I had purchased from iTunes using a gift card. Things looked grim...then my clever DD1 remembered a program called 'Touch Copy' and she downloaded a demonstration. This program will allow you to copy files from a device to a PC. and from there you can reload them back to devices such as my iPod. The free demonstration download only allowed for 100 songs to be copied and I had just under 300...so I bought the 'proper' program rather than mucking about working out which ones had been paid for. So my files were copied, the iPod restored to factory settings and then reloaded with my music...and I bought 'The Best of Billy Thorpe' album with some of my iTunes' credit to celebrate! 

And then DD1 also worked on the problem I've been having with the Fuji FinePix program which I use to upload pics from my camera...so I certainly kept her busy! Before DD1 went home we went for a 'rummage' under the house as I knew DH and I had some outdoor setting chairs stored there. My daughter has just moved into a new rental house and had wanted some outdoor furniture. We had given her an old wooden outdoor table on moving day but she still needed chairs...and today she went home with 4. And a bit more space has been cleared in the area under the house!!!

Talking of clearing things out...yesterday I was looking for a knitting book that I bought a few years ago and I was checking in drawers, shelves, storage bins and cupboards. Now I haven't found the book yet but I've tossed out lots of 'rubbish' and I found some framed photos which I hadn't seen for a while. One photo was taken by a photographer in 1986. My mother won a voucher for a family portrait and this is one of the many other photos taken that day that we bought (as you do). I decided to scan it and put it on FB for my daughters and friends to see. It's always been a favourite photo of mine.

Taken in 1986 I think. The photographer's had moved into a new studio and it wasn't quite ready so he asked us to meet him in the nearby Newstead Park. I remember I wasn't terribly impressed, especially sitting on the ground! lol

 When I undid the back of the frame, I then took out the backing cardboard from behind the photo...only it wasn't cardboard...it was actually another photo. What a surprise! I had obviously recycled the frame but left the old photo in it. This photo was taken at the end of year Ball at my teachers' college in 1969. I went with some friends who were graduating that year; it was the end of my first year and would have been 18. What a trip down memory lane...

A budget occasion...I had worn the dress for my first ball earlier in the year; pink dress, white gloves, silver shoes and bag. Did my own hair by pinning a hairpiece of curls to the back.  

Yay! I did it!!...

I have had a mobile phone since early 2000. Not the same one, but a number of different models. Since I've retired I've hardly used it but I still intend to keep it. I don't have a smart phone like most of our family members have...I'm one of those 'dinosaurs' who say that they they just want a phone that calls can be made on and received and of course sms. My last 2 mobile phones have had a camera function because of an experience I had in a supermarket carpark one evening about 4 years ago. My car's back bumper
'touched' another car's front bumper...completely my fault, I honestly hadn't seen her. The other driver and I drove our cars to where the big light in the car park was, so we could check out the cars. She had an old car with a heavy metal bumper...we both agreed...not a mark. My Hyundai had a painted back bumper made of a kind of plastic...not a mark or even a scratch. She berated me and then we both went our separate ways. Six weeks later I got a letter of demand to pay the costs of the 'substantial damage' to the front of her car, with a description of a severely crumpled bumper and bonnet. DH followed it up for me but it was a case of her word against mine...we paid up...so that's why I have a phone with a camera.

The Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains on a foggy October day

Now I haven't had a situation again like I described but I have taken a few photos with my phone and I've also received photos from other people on my phone. Those of you who are technologically brilliant will laugh when I tell you how I've got those photos 'off' my phone. I would forward them from my phone to DD1's or DD2's smartphone...they would then email them from their phone to my hotmail address and then I would save them to my pictures folder on the computer. But not any more. Yesterday I stumbled and fumbled around and managed to use the installation disc which I had not managed to misplace unlike previous phone models.  Most of the photos I've taken with the phone were very ordinary but there were one or two that weren't too bad. The photos I've posted are when we all went to my nephew's wedding last year. I didn't take the camera when we all went to the lookout at Katoomba so I used the phone...naughty DD1 poking a face like that at her mother!!! lol

The first of the 60th Birthday celebrations for 2011...

This year quite a few people I know are turning 60...including yours truly!  In the last couple of years a number of my old school friends have got back in touch so straight away that makes for a lot of people in my circle having this milestone birthday. Today was the first for the year. My friend Carmel organised a ladies luncheon to celebrate her birthday. Carmel and I were teaching colleagues from about 1975 until 1981 when she took a promotion and moved away. We stayed friends and both of us had our children at around about the same time. Then in about 1989, Carmel decided to send her son to the school where we had both met up all those years before. I was the Co-ordinator of the After school care centre there and Carmel's son stayed in our centre each day. My older daughter also attended this school and eventually both Carmel's and my younger children attended as well. Now we started being involved with the P& C and fete committees and we did this until our children left primary school. Well and truly by that time, I was back teaching but Carmel had always stayed with the department, only taking maternity leave.

The birthday girl standing up and giving the guests some cheek!

I attended her 40th, her retirement dinner and now today her 60th. It was a lovely venue, 'Room with Roses' Cafe right in the centre of the city in the Old Brisbane arcade. DH drove me in but I came home on the bus, using my new GoCard! It was so long since I've been to the city, but I declined to go after lunch with some of my friends to 'look around' David Jones. I frankly have no interest any more in looking around department stores unless there is something that I especially need to buy. And that is getting less and less...I make gifts or buy gifts from the craft markets, I shop at DFO for gifts or buy gift cards...

My post yesterday mentioned iPods and how I planned to get out the manual and see if I could put some more mp3 music files on the iPod. I loved Linni at Home's suggestion of getting a teenager to do it for me. Problem is, when I got the iPod nearly 2 years ago, DD1 put a number of albums on by copying CD files and transferring them and then supervised my buying a 'Skyhooks' album from iTunes. I promised her faithfully that I would then buy more with the credit I had been given by my brother as well as copying some of my favourite CDs....trouble is I haven't done it and I'm too ashamed to tell DD1 or DD2 and my sweet DS-D reckons she's hopeless at that sort of thing...lol! But all is not lost! I now have lots of time to learn these things as I did my last day as a teacher yesterday.