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Thanks for taking the time to have a chat and take a photo

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Cafe Zoo will be closed Christmas Day & Boxing Day. To all our valued customers we'd like to wish you a very safe and happy Christmas and we look forward to seeing you next time you visit Cafe Zoo 🎄🎄🎄 Marc, Julie & Staff 😊

Cool tunes coming from the yak shack today Come on down

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Come try one of our new craft beers from the Prickly Moses Brewery Otway Ale Summer Ale ChainSAW Ale wheat beer Otway light All made using pure otway rainwater And other stuff too

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Our first Christmas lunch tomorrow Just a little excited 🎄

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Cafe Zoo and JUZTart Gallery are very pleased to host:- Australians Dallas and John Heaton are travel photography veterans. Over a 30 year span, traveling from their home base in Hong Kong, they have created beautiful imagery of both scenery and cultures from more than 60 worldwide destinations. Their work has been appreciated via a broad and diverse spectrum of platforms ranging from National Geographic publications to tiny postage stamps to complete outer shells of a Hong Kong trams. They have enjoyed shooting challenging assignments for clients like Cathay Pacific Airlines and the Australian Tourist Commission. Being identical twins, they have been innately blessed to attract curiosity and interest wherever they traveled together which dissolved barriers and presented unique photo opportunities. In these World82 and China82 collections a new energy is born from each individual travel image creating an original artwork. Vignette from Our Story, China Photo Assignment in October 1982: We first visited China in May 1982. Our travel photography careers had begun two years earlier with an assignment for Thai International Airlines. We remember our first trip to Europe in 1981 when we travelled 25,000 kms over a six month period budgeting on ten dollars each a day. When our money ran out we begged our father to send some more and then promptly blew it all on film. We set off by train from Hong Kong to Canton with our Contax Zeiss equipment, a couple of bags of Kodachrome and our can-do, carefree attitude. We soon discovered that even though we were budget travellers, every step of our journey would be taken care of by local officials. Sure enough, at Canton station platform a young official, who seemed to have been waiting for us for a long time, led us to our hotel. Being identical twins it seemed we were magnets for interest and attention from the outset. In 1982 China western travellers aroused some curiosity, but for local Chinese, interacting with identical twin westerners, would have been an amazing and unique experience. A young man working at the hotel eagerly arranged lunch for us with his two cousins. Two lovely young women arrived in their finest dresses, so flawlessly presented that if we had not realized that they had come to dine with us we could easily have thought they were bridesmaids attending a wedding. In 1982 China wearing our slightly soiled scruffy photo gear was totally inappropriate as a dress code for a fine restaurant, but because we were foreigners, it was accepted everywhere without question. The purpose of the lunch was soon established: the girls were not attending a wedding but presenting themselves as candidates for a wedding, a not-too-distant future wedding to us! Not only was this a big surprise but it was also a surprise that the only foreign language the girls could speak was Russian. I guess they thought that all foreigners, even Australians, would at least speak Russian as a second language - or perhaps in marriage conversation was not their major priority. A couple of days later we departed on the overnight train to Beijing with its solid, cramped and uncomfortable interior, built to last. Having been analysed and dissected by every pair of curious eyes and worn out our voices and smiles we finally fell asleep on the bare wood seating. In what seemed like a mere second later, we were woken by loud blaring music. A stern faced Guard, who looked like he had relished every battle over the previous 50 years, immediately ordered everyone, including ourselves, to stand. It was 5am and morning exercise time. Over the next 30 minutes we consciously mirrored every move he made. It was a relief to arrive in Beijing. With all the budget hotels on our list being full we found ourselves lodged in a large busy and austere hotel near the Fragrant Hills halfway between Beijing and the Great Wall at Badaling. I think we were the Hotel’s first young western guests and we had great fun entertaining the pretty restaurant waitresses with our feeble attempts at Mandarin and our silly jokes and mannerisms. Unfortunately, after a few days, our fun at meal times was curtailed when one of our lovely young new friends informed us that management disapproved of their chit-chatting with young foreign men. Number one on our agenda was photographing The Great Wall. Even now when photographing major world sights we are always the first to arrive and the last to leave and our Great Wall visit was no exception. Although sunrise was nothing special just being there so early gave us the feeling that we had discovered this amazing place. For the whole day we climbed up and down the sometimes dangerously steep steps in every direction scanning each curve and distant hill in search of a unique and visually beautiful scene. Around dusk when most other visitors had departed a vibrant but soft light arrived. We seized this opportunity to shoot our best images of the day. A paradox of our photographic work is the importance of timing – just a few minutes of amazing light can make a trip for a month valuable. We opted for the overnight train from Beijing to Shanghai and fortunately this time were spared the early morning exercising. In Shanghai we stayed at the north end of the Bund in the historic Pujiang Hotel, also called the Astor House, the first Western hotel in the city. The two of us shared a twelve-bed dormitory in a huge room for about two dollars per night. We felt like Kings with so much space. We dined at the Seamen’s Club with a restaurant that could have inspired George Lucas for his bar scene at Alderaan in Star Wars Episode IV - every lined and wrinkled face from every corner of the world seemed to belong in this space telling their stories of hardship, adventure and love. We were privileged to have an individual tour of the Children’s Palace where a sea of young faces greeted us with the joy and enthusiasm of youth. The Children's Palace offered talented children study and practice in the arts and sciences. It was a great picture-taking opportunity and we immersed ourselves in capturing images, albeit conspicuously, of a class doing chemistry experiments, violin practise, and even young girls welding and boys building a robot out of tin. These gifted children were so involved in their activities that for the first time on our journey we were not eyed continuously as strange and rare creatures. Resting on a bench beside the pink lotus covered pond in Renmin Park (People’s Park) eating some local dumplings we looked up to see a crowded tunnel of staring faces between us and another man sitting about 10 metres away. What was it? Had we broken some custom or law? We were now used to the curiosity but had not experienced gawking like this before. After a while the penny dropped, the man in the distance was an artist and he was sketching our faces with charcoal on art paper. He had seized the opportunity to draw western twins – a rare sight indeed in 1982 China. A crowd had rapidly formed, half of them viewing us while the others surveyed the forming portraits. We remained seated, waiting, and after a short time he proudly walked over and presented us with his artwork. We could not imagine what kind of life this man had experienced but this simple gesture, at that moment, was not only an expression of courage, creativity and kindness, but also an act that in some way dissolved our cultural differences and connected us all. It was a moment to cherish and smiles and laughter contagiously circled the crowd. The trip back to Hong Kong was by Chinese cargo ship that had cabins for a limited number of passengers. It took three nights and the cost was about fifteen dollars for economy and twenty dollars for a three-bed cabin that was described as luxury. We opted for luxury this time – we were heading home. Artist's Statement: The artwork we are now creating is a contemporary examination of our original images to present our life's work in a new and fresh way. In relating to the images afresh and reflecting on the experiences and atmosphere at the photographing time, we are intending to create a new and exciting energy with this work. From 1000's of pictures over most of the world, we select inspirational images as our nuclei. The content is often familiar to the viewer however our interest is to evolve this nucleus image to another level that is not only surprising but a transformation. Each original picture has details which can go unnoticed - the cobblestones on the street, the teapot on the table, the ear decoration, the gnarled old tree - they have their own place and are often subtly significant to the experience of the whole. Working from our chosen originals allows a full play of techniques and imagination from different aspects: the details such as above, the image itself, and especially the elements of our experience at the time. We have assembled 9 piece collages, which we call ‘Nonet’ : Nine individual prints united in a seductive theme: though, as represented in the individual prints the destinations and cultures may be widely diverse, the underlying theme is often universal. Our Masterpiece is our 25 piece collage, which we call ‘Symphony’: We feel it plays like a complex novel, visually journeying from country to country presenting a myriad of individual experiences and stories woven into an original Artwork. We hope the viewer will find our Art visually captivating and challenging, evoking exciting images as well as engaging on personal levels of feeling and thought. John and Dallas Heaton. www.bluyonda.com

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Come see an aussie legend here tomorrow 23 high st Drysdale Starts 12:30

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Big Day this Sunday 20th of November Bring the family enjoy live music and our very first local Market Most importantly some much needed sunshine 😊

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Looking forward to hosting Callum this weekend. Book your table now to avoid disappointment.

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Today is Footy Colours Day! For every coffee sold we will donate $1 to the Fight Cancer Foundation.

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Bookings are filling fast. Don't be disappointed ring and book today 5251 5333