Greetings from Gazipaşa

Hey folks! Greetings from Gazipaşa, Turkey.

I find myself here embarking on an adventure much dreamed about: an Indiana Jones-esque escapade digging up an ancient Roman city by the mediterranean coast in modern-day southern Turkey. It is pretty awesome.

I have managed to find a tenuous post link, you will all be happy to know. My first night in Turkey was spent in Antalya, where I visited Hadrian's Gate. And lo and behold, when I bought a stamp to send off my first postcard of the trip, it featured Hadrian's Gate. So here it is:

Now I am in Gazipaşa, a good three hour bus-ride from Antalya, where our dig-house is located. Our dig-house is normally a soccer club's football rooms, which have been transformed into dorms for our purposes. It is a pretty great set-up. Our site that we are digging up is about half an hour from here, and is the Roman city of "Antiochia ad Cragum," or "Antioch on the Cliffs."

The above photo is taken from the entry gates to the Roman city, overlooking the countryside with the Mediterranean sea beyond.  The Roman city is amazing. There is a temple that dates to the end of the 2nd Century AD; the remains of three bath-houses - one major one surrounded by an elaborate mosaic inside the city gates, one smaller bath-house outside the gates, and one down by the sea; there is the remains of the colonnaded street, which would have had shops lining it and a stunning view over the Sea.

Getting a site tour

Inside the outer bath-house

Part of the colonnaded street

A road sign in Latin

The focus of our excavations this season is on what we think is the city Agora, or marketplace. And after two days of glorified gardening - removing a thousand different types of prickle bushes - in order to reveal the ground surface, by Friday we were ready to get into it. I am in a trench with Mary Ann, and we are excavating on top of a mound that may be a temple. I am pretty excited to get into it next week.

Mary Ann and I standing in the middle of our trench pre-excavation

Anyhow, after our first week of work, our hard slog was rewarded with a swim in the "Pirate's Cove."

You can't really beat that, right? 

So, that is my first week in Turkey done... and I am very much looking forward to the second.

Back in the USSR

Check out these treasures from the USSR I found amongst the stamps in the little album I bought home from Indonesia recently. I didn't mean to acquire Russian stamps as souvenirs from my trip to Indonesia, but there you go. It just happened.

But aren't they just lovely? Isn't the typography wonderful? Don't the colours make your heart sing?

I went to Russia back in 2006. It was amazing. I didn't buy any post though. Don't know what I was thinking. I did, however, take great delight when signing my postcards with "From Russia With Love"! So not all was lost on the postal front. But now I have my very own soviet birds from 1962 within my collection. I don't think I could have found nicer stamps if I had tried!

Adventures in Indonesia

Hello friends, followers and strangers in cyberspace! Lovely to be back online and touching base with the blogosphere. I have just returned to Melbourne after a very fun, jam-packed and delicious two-week sojourn to Indonesia. I was hanging out in Java mostly, but I also managed to spend a couple of days on Bali, embracing my inner bogan.

And whilst I indulged in a LOT of lounging by poolsides, I also managed to climb a couple of volcanoes, hit some hot springs and visit many exquisite temples. I jumped aboard an overnight train, a couple of ferries, hitched rides in minibuses, and I even once caught an ojek - a motorcycle taxi. It was a very grand adventure.

Yep, I had fun.

And I of course found some time for post. First off, in my hunt for post, I went to the Bandung post office. When I buy stamps overseas for my postcards, I always get a few extra for my stamp album. However, I was a very lazy tourist who didn't have much (ok, any) Indonesian (I learnt how to say 'thank-you': terima kasih)- so I walked up to the counter with a smile and asked in English for some stamps to go on postcards to send to Australia, and if it wasn't too much trouble, it would be great if they could be beautiful, because I collect stamps. Terima kasih! (insert big smile here).

The post office lady  looked at me somewhat blankly, but then retreated out the back, and came back with her supervisor, and a whole bunch of these stamps:

She apologised and said that she was sorry, they only had this one design for stamp collectors! I was thrilled! What a great stamp! So I bought several for my postcards, and kept one as a souvenir. Perfecto. Thankyou wonderful post office lady.

But later that day, I hit the post jackpot, when I stumbled upon this little store:

Inside, there was all sorts of trash and treasure... and amongst everything, there were all these vintage first day covers pinned up for sale. Oh yeah: pay dirt!

So, in this little store in Bandung, which I had just stumbled upon while wandering around the city by myself for the day, I managed to find some great post souvenirs to take home and add to my collection. 

The one above is my favourite because it ticks all the right boxes. It:

             a) includes maps with stamps on them,

             b) is postmarked Bandung, the city where I was staying, and

             c) is commemorating a solar eclipse, which makes it just generally COOL. 

And this one not only  includes a map stamp... it is a map stamp with an airmail envelope. Double cool. I actually really like the designs of all these stamps. Here is a closer look:

And again with the Bandung postmark. 

I was pretty thrilled with my haul of FDC postal goodies. But then, once I started asking the guys behind the counter about the covers, they then bought out all these stamp albums for me to look at. Unfortunately I couldn't just buy the stamps I wanted, I had to buy the whole album. So I did. Anyhow, these are a couple of the best stamps from the album I bought:

Yep - stamps celebrating Homo erectus. Wicked.

As you might be able to tell from the scans, some of the stamps were individually wrapped in plastic. That too made me happy (such a careful action, to wrap a stamp so delicately!).

The album is pretty cool... so watch this space. It warrants a blog post all to itself, so at some stage I will scan the album and share it.

Anyhow, in short, my Indonesian holiday was wonderful. And I am excited to have some post to remind me of such a fun trip. And just to be a bit self-indulgent and rub it in, I will sign off with a few little holiday snaps:

Brunei and Tongariro; Envelopes and Scale bars

Last time I went back home to my parents house and slept in my old bedroom, I found four envelopes that I had once sorted stamps into, labelled, and tucked away in the bookshelf above my old cast-iron bed.

This afternoon (after I clocked off work of course), I sorted out some of the stamps and tried to take some photos of them on the photography table at work. That is why, in the above photo, for my own great amusement, I have included a scale bar (hello archaeologist friends!).

Anyhow, in the envelopes, as you would plainly expect, there are lots of treasures.

There are a whole heap of stamps from Brunei, all with the Sultan's head on them. These came from my cousins who lived in Brunei in what must have been the late-eighties/early-nineties. This was about the time, I think, that my Dad thought it was hilarious if he got us to do salaams and call him Master. I think he fancied himself a Sultan. We didn't fall for it for a second.

 Anyhow, the stamps are all very beautiful, and I am not sure what I am going to do with them. Put them in an album? Make gift tags out of them? Leave them in their envelopes, so that in another twenty years when I am rifling through my stuff, I find them and get great pleasure out of tipping out the contents and discovering the delightful treasures anew? Hmmm... I am not sure. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.

So many pretty pictures, so many lovely lovely treasures... but just as I was putting away the stamps, I found this one:

It shows the Tongariro National Park and Chateau. I had no idea that I had this stamp, but I totally totally LOVE it. Last year, my Mum and I went to NZ and hiked the Tongariro Crossing... and the next day went and had high tea at the chateau. So this completely wonderful little stamp epitomises a really fantastic holiday! YAY for cool stamps! Big-ups to New Zealand Post!

Mount Tongariro

High tea at the chateau with Mum

And one of the view from the top.. below the snow level. It totally made the 19km hike worthwhile!