Party Time

Did you know that one of the most exhausting tasks is to help supervise a dozen or so energetic 6 year old kids at a party? Such events have to be organised minutely to overcome conflict, fear and shyness, possible boredom arising from being on the outside, and to avoid damage to property. And so it was at Max's sixth birthday party on Sunday.

Just before it started, he showed us some of his gifts with great pride and those included a radio-controlled armoured car. One of the pictures shows Max perched on top of two cars after Uncle Greg chased him around a nearby drive-way at the controls of the vehicle. Max and Greg ... and I had the time of our lives controlling the vehicle and chasing down the others.

After the guests arrived we ran a tight series of party games to keep them occupied: pass the parcel, pin the tail on a tiger (not donkey), smashing a papier mache elephant full of lollies, and a treasure hunt in a nearby park. In between these events there was a barbecue lunch with fairy bread and that sort of thing. Finally we provided pirate cakes and fresh fruit.

By the time it was over after two hours we were mostly exhausted and there was a considerable mess to clear up. But a good time was had by all ... perhaps except for one kid who was nipped by an alarmed dog and one or two others who tripped and fell or missed out on treasure. Oh well, it was worth the effort!

AS

Lunar Eclipse

Readers will recall my interest in astronomy, and yesterday evening East Coast Australians witnessed a partial eclipse of the moon, peaking at c. 9.30 when half the moon was obscured. Alas, the accompanying picture was not taken by me as I was too engrossed in an episode of Midsomer Murders. In fact, I clean forgot about the event until this morning. Pity that.

AS

Birthday Perparations

Emily's home turned into a food preparation workshop as she and Rebecca and Liv created pirates out of cup cakes for Max's birthday party - with his friends -  tomorrow (Sunday 27th). This post shows the ladies hard at work while I typed up this post.

AS

A Night in a Sushi Bar

After an 850 km drive from Armidale to Canberra in some bad weather ... it rained on and off for much of the way, we arrived there at dusk (5 pm). And, after a brief rest, we headed off for Max's sixth birthday meal ... in a Sushi Bar in Civic, Canberra's heart. Several of the 6 strong, including Max himself, party grabbed Sushi snacks off the nearby "railway" before tucking into a variety of Japanese and Korean foods. There were noodles (Max's choice), a Korean hot-pot with seafood pieces, and I had Kim Chee.

During the wait for food to appear, we watched Max dismember a large number of presents and open numerous birthday cards. He also gave a virtuoso display of writing numbers, letters and words in an exercise book. So, he is learning something at school! The whole exercise took about 2 hours and was very enjoyable.

AS

Sculpture

We're off to Canberra tomorrow for Max's sixth - birthday,  not symphony. And we were scheduled to take down Emily's birthday present too - her's is on 14th July. However, the car is getting mighty full right now with an added passenger (+ luggage) and requests to empty our house of memorabilia for the kids. So the sculpture has to remain with us for the moment and Emily can look at the photos pasted here to see if she wants it.

The scuplture, if one can call it that, is scraps of discarded metal welded together in the shape of a flying monster. The component parts include horse-shoes, nuts and bolts, steel mesh, bits of engine blocks, and so on. The guy who created this piece - and many other different concoctions - told me he was a wood-worker until he had the idea of recycling metal scrap and now sells lots of his creations in people's markets around the region. When we bought this item about 3 weeks ago, he was doing a roaring trade even though the items are very heavy and quite expensive.

This piece grabbed us as something fantastic that Emily would like for her garden ... until we decided it would be fantastic for ours instead. However, Emily has first choice! It least it's an original idea and, if Emily takes it, we can go out a buy another

AS.

Happy Birthday to Us

The 15th June saw my 65th birthday, which was not the world's most exciting event. However, I received 5 cards and a couple of presents which were nice, and I received an email from a long-time friend of about 52 years standing!

The following evening (the 16th) we met up with friends for a birthday dinner (Jane Stening and her brother Bill Forsyth). It was his 66th birthday so we combined forces for an extravaganza and headed off to Jean Pierre's for the night. There are no prizes for guessing that this is Armidale's French provincial restaurant and the food was very good. I had crepes and a salmon pasta, while Bill had duck soup and a pie from Provence. The ladies also had various exotica and we finished the whole lot off with a lovely tart with a meringue topping and a couple of bottles of wine. The white wine was called The Fifth Leg (from Western Australia)and had the image of a cattle dog on the label.

That was the prelude to my staff seminar today on the Psychology of Regional Development - a metaphysical investigation. I had a reasonable audience for a presentation that was so complex and murky I likened it the story of Schrodinger's Cat (look that up on the web) or the problem of quantum entanglement (look that up also). Having lost my audience, I nevertheless learned a lot myself from my mind experiment.

AS

A Winter Drive

On a relatively cold winter's day, with a strong southerly keeping temperatures down to about 11 degrees, we decided to take a drive in the country around Armidale. This something we rarely do now that the kids have flown the nest, but it proved highly enjoyable. The route took us in a wide arc west, then south and then east of the city, and we probably covered 100 km (or about 65 miles) on country lanes. Much of the route was on sealed roads, but the area around Gostwyck east of Uralla had some unsealed (gravel) stretches.

At the start the weather was cloudy, but during the course of the trip it slowly evaporated to drape the countryside in sun - not the bright sun of summer, spring and autumn, but a kind of misty or watery sunshine reminiscent of Britain over much of the year. We drove first to Invergowrie which is located right on the Great Divide just west of town. This old sheep station was divided into rural residential alotments (perhaps 10 Ha in size) perhaps 30 years ago and it is home to professional people mostly working in Armidale. After that we drove through Mt Butler and the Arding lanes to Rocky River - the site of an old Gold Rush in the nineteenth century - before reaching the New England Highway at Uralla.

The return trip took us east to Gostwyck, the home of one of New England's big squatter families who settled the area from the mid 1830s onwards. The first pictures show the countryside around Gostwyck, the little church which was presumably funded by the wealthy pastoralists, and the famous shearing shed located on the neighbouring property called Deeargee (presumably reflecting the initials of the founder (DRG)). The road then turned northwards back to Armidale through Enmore and Mihi across expansive grassy plains with views to distant mountains bathed in the pale wintry sun. The final two views show some of the rather picturesque countryside involved, with its open and undulating grassland and views up to 30 or 40 km away in some places. Most of the countryside pictured is > 1000 m ASL, although some of the country around Armidale reaches up to 1600 m high.

AS

Urinetown

As flagged yesterday, we headed off yesterday evening to a performance of the musical Urinetown, which is having a 2-week season here in Armidale.


The performance was held in the plush theatre owned by Armidale's answer to Eton College, The Armidale School. This is a top-flight GPS (Anglican) boarding-school with fabulous facilities, and they must have blinked hard when they discovered they were throwing open their doors to a musical revolving around class struggle over the use of a toilet block. I suggest you Google Urinetown to bone up on the plot.


Surprisingly, the performance compared very well with the cast of the Broadway musical we saw just two years ago in New York, despite the fact that the entire cast, orchestra, and stage crew were amateurs - indeed everyday colleagues or contacts ... like one of my doctors who conducted the orchestra. The vocals were generally very good; the sets and lighting spectacular - great use of colour; the performance fast-paced; the choreography high class. Perhaps those involved should trade in their day-time jobs and ship their production to Sydney ... or Broadway?

So, it was yet annother compelling performance directed by George Torbay ... and I wonder what comes in the second half of this year. The last one, my readers may recall, was Titanic!

I attach a few rather grainy photos which I had to take without flash in a semi-dark auditorium.

AS

A Change of Season

Our summer seemed to go on for ever. Even as late as mid May, days were sunny and clear and temperatures hovered in the high teens and low twenties. Alas, all good things come to end and the official start of winter on 1 January has brought us a dose of what the locals call English weather. Today, for example, saw no sun; rather just low grey clouds eternally spitting rain. And the temperature tanked accordingly, reaching only 11 degrees at midday. The whole ambiance of the town reminded me of many damp days experienced in Scotland or the west of Ireland.

Unsurprisingly, I've gone down with a bad cold just like many others. Poor Max spent most of last week at home similarly inconvenienced. And it's going to get worse! A deep low pressure cell forming of the NSW North Coast is going to create wild weather with heavy rain, flooding, and dull days over the next 7 days. Hey, this really is like Britain and even the weather we used to see 30 years ago. Perhaps we're about to see a period of global cooling.

Why does this weather also remind me of a public toilet? Well, Dot has just reminded me that we're going to see a Broadway Musical tomorrow night. After 965 performances on Broadway, it's now opening in Armidale as one of the long run of top musicals directed by George Torbay, brother of our esteemed Member of Parliament, Richard Torbay. And the musical is ... Urinetown!! Has any reader ever heard of it? I must admit I hadn't, but a quick look at a few web-pages tells me it won three of my Tony Awards. Those sites also inform me that the musical is about ... urinals and how they are managed in a drought. What a wonderful scenario for a musical! I can't wait to take my seat. And, by the way, it reminds me that Armidale now has two of those 5-star loos, or Royal Flushes - you know, the automatic ones that pamper your rear end, and much better than the basic model employed in Urinetown.

AS