I’ve warned you people before about the challenges of raising artistic children. Thank god the Princess Child has decided NOT to take art for Year 11 and 12. Her interest is photography and the school doesn’t really teach that as part of the art course. So she’s going business, food technology, modern history, religion, general maths and standard english. Good, solid, write an essay type courses hallelujah.

However before we get there she has to finish up her Year 10 Art elective.  So her body of work will be photography and she chose a theme of City /Movement. Yes city, when she lives in the country.

Soooo, I was attending a work conference on podcasting last Friday in Sydney, I take the children with me and give the Princess 48 hours to get every photograph she needs. No pressure.

Her sister has to come because the teacher and I wanted her to add a little more depth to the project so we made her add in grief/trauma and for that she needs a model to include in the pictures.

Hippie Child is not happy because she has assignments due in this week for uni and of course they are time-consuming drawings … but  we cajole and threaten and guilt and she decides to join us.

Day one is highly enjoyable for me … I’m sitting in #ozpod2016 listening to a range of interesting speakers discussing podcasting … Manoush Zomorodi host of Note to Self  (a tech show about being human) is funny and informative talking about some great engagement projects including Bored and Brilliant where she encouraged people to put down their phones and embrace boredom … we tweet away about how we should be putting down our phones.

While James Cridland a radio futurologist gives us the stats on where radio and it’s cousin podcasting are sitting in 2016 … and what is predicted for podcasting … you can watch his presentation here.

There are lots of Aussie blogstars talking as well including Richard Fidler whose Conversations podcasts has hit 2.4 million downloads

So I was having a nice old-time while the girls wandered the streets of Sydney trying to get shots and getting lost.

Day two, it couldn’t be avoided, I had to join in. I’m tasked with holding the bags while the photographer gets the perfect shots of the model.  The model who is really sick of wearing the same flimsy playsuit for two days when the wind was blasting and it had a tendency to flare up and reveal her bum.

We argue, I’m too pushy, the photographer has lost sight of what the hell her theme is and wishes she had brought another lens with her, the model is cold and wants to go home.

I leave them to it and retreat for coffee and a white chocolate/dark chocolate mousse bomb.

 

The children arrive at the same time as the bomb and I have share!!

Now everyone is out of sorts and we head to the hotel … where google maps forget to tell us we have to walk through the pedestrian tunnel from Central to where we are staying … we wander in circles for a while before I make the decision to head back underground … I’m a take charge kinda girl … shame it comes with no sense of direction.

We rest up for tonight’s photo shoot which is Luna Park.

By the time we have to leave the model refuses to put the playsuit back on so we compromise on just taking photos with her head in the corner of the shot. She also has a blister and I forgot to buy bandaids, clearly I’m failing at whatever the hell my role is in this process. The photographer wants to give up.

We plough on. It’s a beautiful evening overlooking the harbour.

 

After sunset we head into Luna Park, I’ve bought them unlimited ride tickets (there’s a two-for-one deal after six pm that you can buy online) but of course we need to get those photos first.

About now the photographer decides she needs a different lens (again!!!) she has not yet learnt that you must take ALL the equipment with you when you leave the hotel.

So, fully embracing my role as general gopher, dogsbody, I head back on the ferry, catch a taxi to the hotel, collect said lens, another taxi and back on the ferry to deliver the lens.

With the lens delivered I do what any self-respecting photographer’s assistant/mother would do and retire to the bar and leave them to it.

There’s a table of middle-aged men drinking next me, I even get a few looks from one of them and he attempts a jokey conversation with me at one stage.

I freak out, the last time I got any attention in a bar Bob Hawke was Prime Minister, Madonna was singing about Prayers, and the internet wasn’t invented.

It’s 9.46 pm so all my grown-up friends are in bed, I message my young work friend, I know she’s still up she liked the wine glass shot on Instagram, she expresses her pride in my achievement. What achievement??? I’m drinking in a bar by myself attracting the attention of drunk men, this is what my life has come to!!!

My phone is dying and my panic becomes more intense, what am I going to do sitting in a bar by myself with NO PHONE! So much for taking on board Manoush Zomorodi’s speech from yesterday about less phone time … I’m starting to hyperventilate.

Finally, the girls arrive and we head on back to the hotel, I tell them I almost got picked up and Hippie Child with the dry, practicality inherited from her father says “well that would have been awkward … where would you have taken him … you’re sharing a room with us”.

On the final day I give the photographer the morning to get her final shots, she chooses to go to Bondi Beach. Yep the beach. We have beaches in Port Macquarie. Lots of beaches. But she has decided she must photograph BONDI Beach.

I drop the girls off and try to find a park. It’s at this point I realise that stuff about the dearly departed looking out for you here on earth is a load of crap. If the husband had been looking out for me he would have FOUND ME A PARKING SPOT. Instead I drove around for 40 minutes until the girls were ready to be picked up. Fun times.

We do a quick stop in at the Museum of Sydney to check out the Florilegium Exhibition of botanical drawings (it’s excellent by the way and on until the 30th of October), Hippie Child gets to meet a botanical illustrator who did the course she’s doing and has had a 25 year career working at the Botanical Gardens (perhaps there’s hope there may be some sort of employment at the end of it all).

Back to Newcastle, throw Hippie Child out of the car and on to Port Macquarie.

Now Princess just has to choose the photos and edit them, how bad could it be??