Room was the challenge. Rooms are one of my ‘things’. Among my childhood memories are the rooms I created under the giant willow tree down by the dam. From its luxuriant drifts I’d mould walls and expansive windows, arched doorways and beautifully fluted columns of green. In my playhouse I furnished each room with my imagination, living a carefree life where Ruggie and I whiled away the days swinging from suspended swathes of green, fishing for yabbies in the dam, talking earnestly about all the imaginings we had. Those halcyon days.
All week I’ve been toying with rooms to illustrate the challenge – favourite rooms, like my outdoor room overlooking the garden at Gal Katayam. I kept procrastinating about the post, finding I was more interested in the notion of room for the imagination – of places that give wings to our urge to fly – to do what it is that makes us feel free and complete. By some lucky chance I was driving past the beach yesterday evening, just as the tide was turning, barely an hour before (our early wintry) sunset. There they were, dozens of boys and girls – young and old – out beyond the breakers, just them and the great wide expanse of sea and sky – in a waiting room, watching for the next ridable wave …
The Ruggles and Me Story – When the Past Becomes a Foreign Place
The Wanderlust Gene 
I’ve been waiting for you to find the room in your new place to let your imagination soar…….you’ve taken wing.
It was nice! Slowly, slowly I’m getting here 🙂
Quite an interesting take on Room…loved the images…
Thanks Siddhartha – glad you enjoyed the twist 🙂
Beautiful photographs, Meredith! I love the idea of your “rooms”. What a beautiful sounding playhouse! The first image here had me staring. It’s as if the ocean reclaimed the house and left the timbers scattered. It’s a melancholy image and so soft and lovely too. The photos of the crowds of surfers made me happy for some reason. Thanks! 🙂
It’s you, George! I didn’t recognise the new Gravatar – don’t tell me that’s the way you’re feeling? Glad the surfers floating out there in their waiting room made you happy – their anticipation and happiness must be infectious 🙂
Ha-ha! That actually happened… The shoes are a fair representation of how my brain works. Always worked. I thought it was nuts when it happened, but then I laughed since such a mistake is so like me. I do love your photography, Meredith. There is a sensitivity in it that goes so far beyond skilled technique. That’s what photography should be. 🙂
Great photos with a fascinating interpretation. I couldn’t get the Ruggles link story to work 😦
Ahhh! Thanks for telling me Roughseas – I eventually found it, don’t ask me why it didn’t work but I’ve figured a way around it and it seems to work now … Glad you enjoyed the twist. 🙂
Oh I read the story 😦 Sad end.
We had a black lab. Could never keep him out of water either. He’d smell it from miles away and just head for it whether it was sea or a brackish little stream.
They’re wonderful dogs aren’t they?
Great idea of waiting room. 🙂
Thanks Erwin – I’ve always been attracted to the space surfers populate out there, waiting and watching for the next wave. Luckily for me Tim Winton l(“Breath”) lent me a board. \
Love your take on the challenge, Meredith. What an exciting waiting room. 🙂
Surfing’s one thing I’d like to have tried when I was young, but it just wasn’t ‘done’, bugger it – the only reason I’d have liked to have been born a few years later!
Those GC beaches look pretty good, WG. Almost as good as Perth’s ! [grin]
Dearie – this’s the Sunshine Coast – 100 or so kms north of the dreaded Gold Coast – and far better, in my opinion! There’re not many to beat Perth’s, I’ll admit – I lived there once, you know – for a year in 1971-72, on my way ‘abroad’ 🙂
Where ???
Cottesloe then a roach infested pad in West Perth that was so cheap I saved enough to take off in six months!
My maternal grandmother lived in West Perth … [thinks] Fitzgerald Street ? – something like that. I can’t summon up even a single image of it.
But Cottesloe is another thing – although I’m sure it looks nothing like it did when I was growing up … I doubt that anything in Perth does. :-\
I absolutely love that second photo!
Nicely done Meredith. That’s my kind of room. No walls, no windows, no ceilings,no floors. No boundaries.
A story that brings forth all things good wave after wave.
ah, i loved the draping walls of the weeping willow when i was a child, and i also loved the old-fashioned rambling roses that formed a donut of a secret room!
your choice for this challenge was perfect! ah, what a grand room!
Only for the doctor and the lottery does anyone wait as patiently as a surfer. Great interpretation.
A room with the sky for a roof sounds just about perfect to me, Meredith 🙂
Well worth waiting for!
You certainly know how to furnish a room Meredith! The freedom in these shots is intoxicating.
Yes, those were the halcyon days…free to roam and imagine. My room was wherever my bicycle took me. I could sit on that beach all day and watch those surfers. Beautifully said, Meredith.
A beautiful waiting room!
That’s a waiting room a person wouldn’t mind spending time in. Your concept of “rooms” is glorious. We should all think outside the walls like that.
Wonderful. So evocative of time and place.
Yeah, you get it! We’ve just seen some band (didn’t know them, foreign and already forgotten) making a video clip down King Street yesterday – it all looked cleaner than I remember (or was that the light?). 🙂
Coldplay are filming a video clip at The Courthouse Hotel (behind King Street), also the TODAY morning show. King Street looks pretty much the same to me as it ever has in the last decade – clean enough but old-ish and interesting 🙂
Coldplay, that’s right! I remember Newtown as interesting but it’s been almost 20 years since I was last there! Though I lived for a while in Alexandria and Chippendale, I was always a Darlinghurst girl, EllaDee, from my school days in the 60s!
Delightful images and an interesting take. 🙂
Beautiful pictures. Loved the post