TRAVEL TUESDAY 456 - YEREVAN, ARMENIA

“Armenian folklore has it that three apples fell from Heaven: one for the teller of a story, one for the listener, and the third for the one who 'took it to heart.' What a pity Heaven awarded no apple to the one who wrote the story down.” - Nancy Willard

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Yerevan (Armenian: Երևան[c] [jɛɾɛˈvɑn] sometimes spelled Erevan) is the capital and largest city of Armenia, as well as one of the world's oldest continuously inhabited cities. According to the official estimate of 2022, the current population of the city is 1,092,800.

Situated along the Hrazdan River, Yerevan is the administrative, cultural, and industrial centre of the country, as its primate city. It has been the capital since 1918, the fourteenth in the history of Armenia and the seventh located in or around the Ararat Plain. The city also serves as the seat of the Araratian Pontifical Diocese, which is the largest diocese of the Armenian Apostolic Church and one of the oldest dioceses in the world.

Republic Square (Armenian: Հանրապետության հրապարակ, Hanrapetut′yan hraparak, known locally as Hraparak, "the square") is the central city square in Yerevan. It consists of two sections: an oval roundabout and a trapezoid-shaped section which contains a pool with musical fountains. The square is surrounded by five major buildings built in pink and yellow tuff in the neoclassical style with extensive use of Armenian motifs.

This architectural ensemble includes the Government House, the History Museum and the National Gallery, Armenia Marriott Hotel and two buildings that formerly housed the ministries of Foreign Affairs and Transport and Communications. The square was originally designed by Alexander Tamanian in 1924.  The construction of most of the buildings was completed by the 1950s; the last building—the National Gallery—was completed in 1977.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY 437 - STORY BRIDGE, BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

"Sometimes you get the best light from a burning bridge." -  Don Henley

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The Story Bridge is a steel cantilever bridge spanning the Brisbane River that carries vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian traffic between the northern and the southern suburbs of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It is the longest cantilever bridge in Australia. The bridge is part of Bradfield Highway and connects Fortitude Valley to Kangaroo Point.

It is named for John Douglas Story (7 August 1869, Edinburgh, Scotland — 2 February 1966, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia). Story was a prominent Queensland public servant who entered the Queensland Public Service and was Under-Secretary for the Department of Education between 1906 and 1920. He was the Public Service Commissioner from 1920 to 1939. Story worked for the establishment of the University of Queensland and was a government representative on the University senate.

Before the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1932 the Government of Queensland asked John Bradfield to design a new bridge in Brisbane. The Queensland Government appointed John Bradfield on 15 December 1933 as consulting engineer to the Bureau of Industry who were in charge of the construction of the bridge. In June 1934 Bradfield's recommendation of a steel cantilever bridge was approved. The design for the bridge was based heavily on that of the Jacques Cartier Bridge in Montreal, completed in 1930.

On 30 April 1935 a consortium of two Queensland companies, Evans Deakin and Hornibrook Constructions, won the tender with a bid of ₤1,150,000. Construction on the bridge began on 24 May 1935, with the first sod being turned by the then Premier of Queensland, William Forgan Smith. Until it was completed the bridge was known as the Jubilee Bridge in honour of King George V. It was opened on 6 July 1940 by Sir Leslie Orme Wilson, Governor of Queensland and named for John Douglas Story, a senior and influential public servant who had advocated strongly for the bridge's construction.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY 406 - BRISBANE, AUSTRALIA

“The hardest thing in life to learn is which bridge to cross and which to burn.” - David Russell

Welcome to the Travel Tuesday meme! Join me every Tuesday and showcase your creativity in photography, painting and drawing, music, poetry, creative writing or a plain old natter about Travel.

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Brisbane is the port and the capital city of Queensland, Australia, and Australia’s third largest city. It lies astride the Brisbane River on the southern slopes of the Taylor Range, 19 km above the river’s mouth at Moreton Bay. The site, first explored in 1823 by John Oxley, was occupied in 1824 by a penal colony, which had moved from Redcliffe 35 km northeast.

The name of the City honours Sir Thomas Brisbane, former governor of New South Wales, when the convict settlement was declared a town in 1834. Proclaimed a municipality in 1859, it became the capital of newly independent Queensland that same year. Gazetted a city in 1902, it was joined during the 1920s with South Brisbane to form the City of Greater Brisbane. Its municipal government, headed by a lord mayor, holds very broad powers. The Brisbane statistical division, including the cities of Ipswich and Redcliffe, has close economic and social ties to the city.

The Story Bridge is a heritage-listed steel cantilever bridge spanning the Brisbane River that carries vehicular, bicycle and pedestrian traffic between the northern and the southern suburbs of Brisbane. It is the longest cantilever bridge in Australia. The road across the bridge is named Bradfield Highway. The bridge connects Fortitude Valley to Kangaroo Point. The Story Bridge opened in 1940 and was tolled until 1947. It is named after prominent public servant John Douglas Story.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY 353 - PHILADELPHIA, USA

“I love everything about Philadelphia, and its food is like the city itself: real-deal, hearty, and without pretension. We've always had an underdog vibe as a city, but that just makes us try harder, and I love our scrappiness and scruffiness.” - Lisa Scottoline

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Philadelphia is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the sixth-most populous city in the United States, with an estimated population of 1,567,872 and more than 6 million in the seventh-largest metropolitan statistical area, as of 2016. Philadelphia is the economic and cultural anchor of the Delaware Valley—a region located in the Northeastern United States at the confluence of the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers with 7.2 million people residing in the eighth-largest combined statistical area in the United States.

In 1682, William Penn, an English Quaker, founded the city to serve as capital of the Pennsylvania Colony. Philadelphia played an instrumental role in the American Revolution as a meeting place for the Founding Fathers of the United States, who signed the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the Constitution in 1787. Several other key Philadelphia events during the Revolution include the First and Second Continental Congress, the preservation of the Liberty Bell, the Battle of Germantown, the Siege of Fort Mifflin, and the Philadelphia Convention. 

Philadelphia was one of the nation's capitals in the Revolutionary War, and served as temporary U.S. capital while Washington, D.C., was under construction. In the 19th century, Philadelphia became a major industrial centre and railroad hub that grew from an influx of European immigrants. The majority of European immigrants have come from Ireland, Italy and Germany—the three largest reported ancestry groups in the city as of 2015. The city became a prime destination for African Americans during the Great Migration of the 20th century, as well as Puerto Ricans, surpassing two million occupants by 1950.

The area's many universities and colleges make Philadelphia a top international study destination, as the city has evolved into an educational and economic hub. With a gross domestic product of $388 billion, Philadelphia ranks ninth among world cities and fourth in the nation. Philadelphia is the centre of economic activity in Pennsylvania and is home to seven Fortune 1000 companies. The Philadelphia skyline is growing, with a market of almost 81,900 commercial properties in 2016 including several nationally prominent skyscrapers. The city is known for its arts, culture, and rich history, attracting over 41 million domestic tourists alone in 2015.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY 347 - SACRÉ-COEUR, PARIS

“When you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good. Do not expect them to stay moral and lose their lives for the purpose of becoming the fodder of the immoral. Do not expect them to produce, when production is punished and looting rewarded. Do not ask, ‘Who is destroying the world?’ You are.” - Ayn Rand

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The Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Paris, commonly known as Sacré-Cœur Basilica and often simply Sacré-Cœur (French: Basilique du Sacré-Cœur), is a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica, dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, in Paris, France. A popular landmark, the basilica is located at the summit of the butte Montmartre, the highest point in the city.

Sacré-Cœur is a double monument, political and cultural, both a national penance for the defeat of France in the 1871 Franco-Prussian War and the socialist Paris Commune of 1871 crowning its most rebellious neighbourhood, and an embodiment of conservative moral order, publicly dedicated to the Sacred Heart of Jesus, which was an increasingly popular vision of a loving and sympathetic Christ. The Sacré-Cœur Basilica was designed by Paul Abadie. Construction began in 1875 and was finished in 1914. It was consecrated after the end of World War I in 1919.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY 334 - SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

“Sydney is rather like an arrogant lover. When it rains it can deny you its love and you can find it hard to relate to. It's not a place that's built to be rainy or cold. But when the sun comes out, it bats its eyelids, it's glamorous, beautiful, attractive, smart, and it's very hard to get away from its magnetic pull.” - Baz Luhrmann

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Sydney is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Port Jackson and extends about 70 km (43.5 mi) on its periphery towards the Blue Mountains to the west, Hawkesbury to the north, the Royal National Park to the south and Macarthur to the south-west.

Sydney is made up of 658 suburbs, spread across 33 local government areas. Residents of the city are known as "Sydneysiders". As of June 2020, Sydney's estimated metropolitan population was 5,361,466, meaning the city is home to approximately 66% of the state's population. Nicknames of the city include the 'Emerald City' and the 'Harbour City'.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY 291 - PARLIAMENT BUILDING, MELBOURNE

“Architecture should speak of its time and place, but yearn for timelessness” - Frank Gehry

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Parliament House in Melbourne, Australia, located at Spring Street in East Melbourne at the edge of the Melbourne city centre, has been the seat of the Parliament of Victoria, Australia, since 1855 (except for the years 1901 to 1927, when it was occupied by the Parliament of Australia).

In 1851, even before the colony of Victoria acquired full parliamentary self-government, Governor Charles La Trobe instructed the colonial surveyor, Robert Hoddle, to select a site for the colony’s new parliament to meet. Hoddle selected a site on the eastern hill at the top of Bourke Street, which at that time, when few buildings were more than two storeys high, commanded a view of the whole city.

A competition was held for a design for the building, and John Knight’s design won the first prize of £500, but was not used. The government architect, Charles Pasley, subsequently came up with a design of his own. Subsequent observers have suggested that he borrowed heavily from Leeds Town Hall, which even today is widely considered to be among the finest civic buildings in the world. The design was later modified by an architect in his office, Peter Kerr. Construction of the project was managed by John Knight who was also on Casley’s staff.

The story of Parliament House is one of staged construction and architectural ambition thwarted. Work on this began in 1856 and progressed until 1929. A 20 storey dome that would sit on top of the Vestibule was to be the crowning glory. There had been problems with the quality of the stone used on the building. Although tests in 1882 eventually approved the stone, they delayed work. Now confronted by altered economic conditions, the Minister for Works, Alfred Deakin, cancelled the contract for the Dome which has never been built...

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TRAVEL TUESDAY 243 - CORONAVIRUS DIARIES X

“I often think that the night is more alive and more richly coloured than the day.” - Vincent Van Gogh 

Welcome to the Travel Tuesday meme! Join me every Tuesday and showcase your creativity in photography, painting and drawing, music, poetry, creative writing or a plain old natter about Travel.

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After a record spike in coronavirus cases in Victoria yesterday, our Premier Daniel Andrews announced the border with NSW would be closing. This is the first time in 100 years the border between the nation’s two most populous states has closed, and the last closure was also due to a pandemic, the Spanish ‘flu of 1919.

Victoria recorded its largest daily increase of 127 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, 16 more than the previous peak of 111 cases on March 28. A second wave of an epidemic could be defined as the return of an outbreak where the numbers of new daily cases reach a peak as high or higher than the original one. Melbourne is unfortunately experiencing just that, with nearly 200 new cases recorded today and another two COVID-19 deaths.

This week, the Victorian government placed the residents of nine public housing towers in inner Melbourne under “hard lockdown” due to the “explosive potential” of increasing COVID-19 cases.  The lockdown requires all residents of these estates to remain inside their homes for at least five days, placing around 3,000 residents under special punitive measures that apply to none other in Victoria. The lockdown is being enforced by a significant police presence on the estates, with officers on every floor, with no warning and with immediate effect.

Other outbreak areas have been given more than 24 hours’ notice for similar numbers of coronavirus cases. For example, an outbreak in the more affluent Mornington Peninsula has not been met with the same Draconian restrictions. The government’s justification for this action is that residents of public housing are vulnerable and living in high density with many shared spaces. But this is true of any large apartment building in Melbourne. Public housing for the underprivileged in Melbourne, however, has long been a neglected area of care and numerous problems have been chronically associated with it.

The poor and underprivileged, the homeless and the unemployed, the drug addicts and the have-nots are more vulnerable to many of society’s ills and it is harder to reach out to them and help them actively in times of crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic is now proving to be a case in point and unless a greater community effort to help these more susceptible people is undertaken, then Victoria’s outbreak may become a national problem with second wave outbreaks appearing in other states.

Tomorrow at midnight, Melbourne will go into lockdown again in a renewed attempt to stem the return of unchecked infection rates and even more deaths. We have been complacent and the lackadaisical amongst us have allowed the virus to spread, threatening the whole community once again. Stage 3 restrictions in Melbourne means another wave of isolation, enforced social distancing, the closing of gyms, restaurants, hotels, shops with non-essential wares, and of course the stopping of travel.

Looking out on the Yarra River at night, the invisible enemy at the heart of the pandemic is even better camouflaged by the darkness and the shimmer of the reflected multicoloured lights. Pretty images such as this are full of hidden dangers. Complacency and ignoring the advice of experts puts everyone at risk. Over-enthusiastic and misinformed politicians who ignore the warnings of medical experts, in an attempt to restart economies and generate “prosperity” are dangerous and morally reprehensible. Success at the polls and making of the rich richer should not be the priority in these times of crisis when one false step is followed by a return of increased COVID-19 death rates.

A grim Travel Tuesday this week, but I am writing this in a city under a renewed quarantine, where a greater infection risk and the possibility of an unpleasant death have reared their ugly head again. Take care, look after yourself, your loved ones, your community. The world in the past has survived numerous pandemics, a great many economic crises, countless social upheavals, wars, revolutions and the rule of a host of demented, violent and megalomaniac dictators. It is up to us now in these trying times to show a greater intelligence and solidarity in order to overcome this renewed threat. Be wise and prudent and survive. Dead people cannot revive flagging economies. Survivors can rebuild prosperity. The night may be dark, but countless small lights illuminate our lives with multicoloured brilliance and give us hope.

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TRAVEL TUESDAY #194 - SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA

“A great opera house isn't run by a director, but by a great administrator.” - Steven Berkoff

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Sydney, capital of New South Wales and one of Australia’s largest cities, is best known for its harbourfront Opera House, with a distinctive sail-like design. Massive Darling Harbour and Circular Quay are hubs of waterside life, with the towering, arched Harbour Bridge and esteemed Royal Botanic Gardens nearby. Sydney Tower’s 268m glass viewing platform, the Skywalk, offers 360-degree views of the city, harbour and suburbs.

Here is a view of the Opera House from the front terrace, a view not often seen on postcards. The massive scale of the building is better appreciated here, when one notices the tiny human figures next to the building.

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