Tag Archives: Australia

Nepal Peace Pagoda

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Nepal Peace Pagoda

Nepal Peace Pagoda Photo Roberto Portolese

In 1986, the United Nations International Year of Peace, the Kingdom of Nepal agreed to participate in World Expo ’88, and the Association to Preserve Asian Culture was commissioned to create, operate for the Expo, and find a new home for the Pagoda at the Expo’s conclusion.

The Peace Pagoda was built by German architect Jochen Reier (APAC) on behalf of the Kingdom of Nepal. Immediately, 80 tonnes of indigenous Nepalese timber were sourced from the Terai jungle forest of Nepal, carted across to the capital Kathmandu where 160 Nepalese families worked for two years at crafting its diverse elements. These were then shipped to Australia in two 40-foot containers and one 20-foot container, where they were assembled at the Expo site by a handful of Australian workers under Nepalese supervision. The final assembly for World Expo ’88 only took a few days.

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Books | For inspiring books visit: The Office of His Holiness The Dalai Lama Website

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Rainforest Tree, Queensland, Australia

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imOf the 150 or so species of New World figs, most are stranglers, including F. obtusifolia and F. nymphaeifolia. Beginning life as a sticky seed left on a high tree branch by an animal such as a bird, bat, or monkey, the young strangler lives on the tree’s surface (see epiphyte). As it grows, long roots develop and descend along the trunk of the host tree, eventually reaching the ground and entering the soil. Several roots usually do this, and they become grafted together, enclosing their host’s trunk in a strangling latticework, ultimately creating a nearly complete sheath around the trunk. The host tree’s canopy becomes shaded by the thick fig foliage, its trunk constricted by the surrounding root sheath, and its own root system forced to compete with that of the strangling fig. This process can kill the host; if not, the host tree, being much older than the strangler, still dies eventually and rots away and a magnificent fig "tree" is left behind whose apparent "trunk" is actually a gigantic cylinder of roots.age

Strangler figs are ecologically important in some tropical forests. The hollow centres of strangler figs are full of large hollows that provide shelter and breeding sites for bats, birds, and other animals. Perhaps more importantly, stranglers are “keystone species” in that they provide food to a wide variety of animals during times of scarcity.   Photo Roberto Portolese.  strangler fig. 2014. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Retrieved 18 November, 2014, from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/568081/strangler-fig

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Beach Wedding

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I was on a day cruise around the Whitsunday Islands, in Queensland Australia, when on one of the many small islands of the archipelago I saw an helicopter and a sea plane just arrived on the beach to bring a small wedding party to that remote island to perform a wedding ceremony, and then leave again for the mainland. That’s what I call a beach wedding!

The Queenslander

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I took this image a few years ago in Queensland, it is a very nice and typical house of the area.

(Queenslander architecture is a modern term for the vernacular type of architecture of Queensland, Australia. It is also found in the northern parts of the adjacent state of New South Wales and shares many traits with architecture in other states of Australia but is distinct and unique. The form of the typical Queenslander style residence distinguishes Brisbane’s suburbs from other capital cities. From Wikipedia)