Thursday, February 28, 2008

A Flinders Fable…



Given that we’ve travelled from Rome to Hong Kong this week lets continue this mission onwards to Australia once again. Circumnavigating the globe in a week to bring you the statues of the world, oh yes.

Anyway, this is Matthew Flinders, and this statue can be found in Adelaide, South Australia. He is from the Captain Cook School of exploration, and was famous for being the first person to circumnavigate and map the coastline of Australia, including the Southern coast, on which Adelaide is located, for the first time. To say that there are a few things in Australia are named after Flinders would be quite a heroic understatement, to say the least, so he must be fairly well thought of for his achievements, which included being taken prisoner for six years on his journey back to the UK. He must have undertaken some pretty interesting expeditions that’s for sure.



Captain Poll, who has been doing a pretty fine job himself of circumnavigating the globe and currently resides in Petra, once again performs admirable imitation duties.

Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Odd Animals In Ocean Park…



As last night’s Hong Kong statues were taken way back at the back-end of 2006, it only seems good, albeit somewhat belated, manners to post a couple of more from that particular trip! These animals reside at Ocean Park, which is Hong Kong’s version of a huge great swimming pool and water rides complex. Muchos thanks to Sarah for sending the pix in, and thanks loads to her travelling friend Sue, for a particularly impressive hippo, above, and for tackling a pair of zebras below.

This continues a random series of posting slightly bizarre plastic animal statues from the Far East…

Tuesday, February 26, 2008

The Tian Tan Buddha…



I’m going to take a break from posting pictures of statues and blokes called John this evening, and travel to the Far East to an island just off Hong Kong. You can take a ferry from HK to Lantau Island, where you will stumble upon the Po Lin Monastery.

The biggest Buddha statue in the world resides here, the Tian Tan Buddha, featuring friend Sarah, below. Commendable imitation plaudits must be attributed to her travelling companion Sue, above, on one of the (more manageable) statues at the foot of the Buddha. This is a statue offering praise and gifts to the giant Tian Tan herself.



I’ve been fortunate enough to have visited the island myself, and the whole monastery area was a very peaceful one to walk around. For all travelling (VdP?!) and, indeed, non-travelling people out there, I have it on good authority that this Traveller IQ Challenge is quite a useful time waster….you have been warned.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Emulating Emperors…



I seem to recall talking about the veritable statue bounty that you encounter on a trip to the Vatican Museums. Well, here’s some more. This is a pair of Roman Emperors. Sadly I was unable to jot the name down of the above, but below we find Emperor Titus.



Just to wrap up my photos, and so, until someone next sends in pictures from the Vatican, here are a few other random sculptures from the museum.







And this one best describes the look on your face having spent a few hours here facing a monumental (over) load of ancient artefacts, paintings, maps, sculptures, busts, statues, ornaments, ceiling art…

Thursday, February 21, 2008

A Fountain Interlude…



Rome is just littered with glorious statues eh?! These particular ones adorn the Fontana di Trevi, or Trevi Fountains, in the centre of Rome. Your main character is none other than Neptune, god of the sea.

Wednesday, February 20, 2008

One Of The Smaller Countries On The List…



The Vatican Museums. It’s quite difficult where to start really with regards to statues, busts, sculptures etc… There really is quite an extensive collection of all housed in the museum here. You have corridors of this…



Followed by more of these round each corner…





Interspersed with plenty of heads (see above, also)…







And the occasional beautiful statue…





Before you stumble around another corner, to be greeted by this…

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Captain Cook, Continued…



So, as I was saying a couple of weeks back, in the New Zealand town of Gisborne stands what has since been uncovered as fake statue of Captain James Cook. What I indeed failed to mention at the time, was that, just down the road, there is in fact a ‘proper’ statue of him! Ahem, here it is…

Gisborne, on the north island of New Zealand was the site of Cook’s first landing at New Zealand, back in 1769! He later went on to become the first person to navigate and map around the islands. Some quality Captain Cook statue coverage once again, from Mr Wondering Poll

Thursday, February 14, 2008

Down At The Cocha…



Am feeling the urge to add another country to that big list on the right over there this evening, so let’s have a huge round of applause for our first statue from Bolivia!

This is the Cristo de la Concordia (Christ of Peace) statue. Apparently it is the biggest Jesus monument in the world, a whopping 4cm taller than the Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio, Brazil. Both statues are apparently 33 metres tall, equating to his age, but the Cristo is that more accurate as he actually lived to 33 and a few days...

It is overlooks the city of Cochabamba, in central Bolivia, which was visited by that wandering hobo old housemate of mine, Mr Pollstar, in September last year. It appears that he actually roped in his travelling companion Brett above to imitate it when loads of folk were standing around (good on you, and welcome to the site, in case you are reading this for some bizarre reason), before nipping along and getting his imitation in (below) when no one was around!



This all brings me along conveniently to the news that the Christ the Redeemer was struck by lightening last Sunday. Thanks to the anonymous tip-off for this news. Some stunning photos of the occasion can be found on this photographer’s blog, who was travelling in Rio at the time. I hope he doesn’t mind me republishing his work below. Wow!

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

Warning Signs...



I was all ready to compose a fine post this evening - had the story in my head and everything - only for the virus protection on my poota to stuff up, and so I've had a cracking evening trying to fix that and my internet connection all night! Why are these things always so darn time consuming and painful?! Grrrr.

Anyway, the feeling of attempting all this techy IT stuff for so long is probably not dissimilar to that of falling backwards down a mineshaft whilst taking a photo, as this warning sign in the Australian mining outpost of Coober Peedy cautioned us! It's a truly bizarre town as discussed in these parts before...

I'd imagine it's fairly similar to falling down a flight of stairs n all! (Vatican Museum)



More proper statues tomorrow. For now, I'm turning this darn machine off...

Tuesday, February 12, 2008

Lets All Have A Dioscuri…



Only got time for a quick post this evening, but it does feature a whopper. This statue greets you as you walk up a long set of stairs to enter the Piazza del Campidoglio, one of the finest squares in the city of Rome. The whole area was designed by Michelangelo, which I was unaware of at the time. The statue himself is one of the Dioscuri, or the Gemini twins, as Uncle Wikipedia explains far more expertly than I ever could.

Once you walk past the monument you enter the Piazza, where our stunning steed and big bearded man are both located. It really is gorgeous. Once again, Mr Wandering Poll performs commendable imitation duties.

Monday, February 11, 2008

A Carbonite Copy…



A bit shocking this, in that I received this photo way back in August last year, and it kind of got lost on my computer and have only just found it. So, first off, humble apologies to Mr Mark Reed for the delay. Secondly, huge thanks to Mark for a most excellent submission!

Okay, so technically he’s not stood by a statue, but he is stood by a legend who’s been frozen in carbonite, so that’s okay! Oh yes.

To those few who are unfamiliar this is Han Solo. In short, following a tip off from the infamous bounty hunter Boba Fett, Hans and his mate’s location (in a galaxy far far away) was passed on to Darth Vader, an evil type of guy, who caught Han and tortured him somewhat. After that, he froze him in carbonite and returned him to Boba Fett as a reward. Boba wanted to return Han to Jabba the Hutt you see, as he owed him loads of cash and there was a significant bounty on his head.

Anyway, this picture was taken at the Star Wars Exhibition in London in August last year, and what a quality picture it is. Cheers Mark! Apparently this is the 300th blog entry I’ve made on this site…a fine way to bring up the triple century I reckon.

Thursday, February 07, 2008

Beethoven’s Second…



It’s a welcome return to statue-land from long time friend Des this evening (who’s been a little crabby on the site before). Now I’m not 100% certain, but I think that these pics were taken on a visit to Sapporo in Japan, all in front of many bemused spectators, some of whom fancied the chairs for a bit of a sit down, so much respect to you Des for your devotion to the cause! Above we see Des sat by his Beethoven, in a remarkable re-enactment, right down to the perfect feet positioning…



Here Des dons, if I don’t say so myself, a lovely dress in becoming a laydee!



And finally, off with the dress and on with the shorts, hat and gloves to become a picture perfect Pinocchio. Don’t they both look happy! All I can say with regards to this fine collection of pictures is good on you Des, some brilliant imitation work.

Before I log out, I thought I’d just pass on this latest statue news, featuring a couple of hundred statues in Central Station, New York. Some more great work!

Wednesday, February 06, 2008

A Stunning Steed...



In honour of the Fabio Capello’s first match in charge of the English football team this evening, I’m going to talk about one of the more famous statues in his homeland of Italy. Well I’m not going to talk that much about this fine equestrian monument actually, as here is the story here (click on the pictures to read):







So, in short, contained within the walls of the fantastic Capitoline museums in the centre of Rome, is this statue of a mounted rider, the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. The museum itself apparently dates back to 1471, while the original statue dates back to the year 176! That is one old statue, and you can see why it has been moved to a specially ventilated room inside the museum for its protection. Here it is again in all its glory…



A replica of this fine monument now stands in its original place outside the museum, as imitated below.

Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Spot The Difference...



It’s always a pleasure to find a statue of a fellow balding man! Not quite sure who this chap was sadly, but he was stationed in the Vatican Museums, along with, quite literally, thousands of other statues and monuments. We stood by a fair few of them, so expect to see them on the site soon (ish). This isn’t the only statue look-alike of yours truly either, I’m happy to report.

Monday, February 04, 2008

Cained...



Bit late back from work this eve, so am just posting this quickie, featuring a Mr William Cain, or Bill Cain as I’m sure he was known to his mates. He’s stood here in a park in Central Melbourne, which is where he spent the majority of his life involved in the construction of some of the city’s buildings.

As per usual, a quality pose struck there by the Wondering Pollster.