This monotone image was my first sight of Sydney Harbour Bridge at about 6 am. I love it when nature dials down colour to monotone. Time is suspended and real life is presented, as if in a black and white film.

One month on I realise that this could not have been a more fitting first moment.

When I was 10 my Aunt, Uncle and Cousin migrated to Australia. There were complex reasons for this. It was my first experience of heartbreak not caused by death, but by distance-created absence. We had been an extremely tight familial group. Two sisters, their husbands and two girls, both only children. My cousin was severely handicapped and this was the reason the family sought a new life in Australia.

My uncle, who was a nursery man and landscape gardener,was employed to be a plantsman and landscape gardener for the Sydney Opera House Project and nearby botanic gardens.

Apart from occasional ‘bluey’ air mail letters our only contact was ardent following of news coverage of one of the great building projects of its time. All in black and white.

Which is why this image delights me.

Hello old friend. You look just the same as in 1960’s news broadcasts and papers.

Of course I promised you, theoldmortuary blog readers sunshine throughout January.

Funny to think that my uncle would have watched this building being built whilst leaning on a shovel or at the wheel of earth moving equipment. As was often the case in the sixties he did a really manual job while wearing country gentleman clothing. Brogue shoes, tailored trousers, a shirt and tie and a ‘Sports’ jacket with a fine knit Fair-Isle jumper.

Our story | Sydney Opera House https://share.google/Wg5elSKQnWeBIcIyg

Although in the heat of Sydney he might have slipped off the jacket and rolled his sleeves up.