Heralded as the cradle of Spanish Christendom, for centuries the alpine sanctuary of Covadonga has been a site of miracles for the faithful, a haven for the pilgrim. But today, Covadonga’s spiritual significance becomes universal, as a sacred site for the biosphere during the age of the anthropocene.
Continue reading “The endangered sublime of Covadonga, Asturias”
How can we comprehend the world as it was 245,000,000 years ago, in the Triassic age?
Continue reading “Uncovering the Triassic at Longreef, Sydney”
In the city of Chennai, the images of deities carved in stone, moulded in bronze, adored in temples, are given life in dance and find their voice in song through the Bharatanatyam, the millennia-old classical dance of Tamil Nadu. Continue reading “The Living Deities of the Bharatanatyam: A Photo & Audio Essay”
Before Christ, before the Emperor Augustus, in the isolated lands of Gallaecia, there was a Celtic culture which peppered the highlands and coastlines of modern-day Galicia with their hill-top settlements. On these stone castros the Gallaeci built their civilisation Continue reading “Unearthing Gallaecia: The Ruins of O Facho de Donon”
The smell of salt and seaweed, the sway of the waves, the cries of the seagulls, the lapping of the water, the wind in the sails and the force of the rudder, the spray on your cheeks and the chill of the air: these are the sensations of the sea through which the blind can navigate; feeling a landscape which they cannot see. Continue reading “The Sensations of the Sea: The Blind Sailors of the Rías Baixas”
In Galicia, October 2017, thousands of hectares of forest went up in blaze. Fires engulfed the hills of the provinces, even encroaching upon the industrial city of Vigo, in the region’s south-west. The scenes were cataclysmic; a smoke-covered city, rings of fire crawling toward the suburbs visible from afar, the smell of ash ingrained into clothes for a week after the event. Continue reading “Galicia against the Eucalyptus: Remedying an Australian Curse”
In Jerez de la Frontera, in Spain’s south, things are like the Sherry wines which this city concocts: made potent. And here things follow flamenco: they are done with art, with individuality, style, and with emotion. Here in the city of the horse, equitation is no different, becoming, like any other skill, an art Continue reading “An Andaluz Art: Horse Riding in Jerez de la Frontera”
La Feria del Caballo. La Feria. Feria is a dream, a kaleidoscope of colours and faces all flying by and blurring with the other, every day and night a dream within a dream, each a layer deeper than the other; you forget when one begins, when another ends, lose track of the chain of events which led you to be lost in this world where above you is a multi-coloured milky-way of fairy lights and below you a whirlpool wind of dust flying around your feet. Continue reading “Horsing About at the Feria del Caballo, Jerez de la Frontera”
“In the south, we need to touch” – this is how the Spanish tradition of Semana Santa was explained to me by Manuel, council representative of Defensión brotherhood, a religious association which for over fifty years has participated in the Holy Week processions of Jerez de la Frontera, Spain. Commemorating the final days of Christ, the Semana Santa is an assault on your eyes and ears, and a jig-saw puzzle for your head. Continue reading “Sensing Semana Santa: Holy Week in Southern Spain, Jerez de la Frontera”
Lives and Times 