A Christmas Jaunt

We're spending Christmas alone for the first time in a third of a century, so things are rather quiet around here. After exchanging a limited number of presents - Dot gave me a Navman GPS system for the car, which was very welcome - we had lunch with turkey and ham etc. before exchanging greetings with Emily in Santa Clara via Google chat. Then it was off for a ride in the car to try out the Navman, which performed well once we got the hang of it.

Our destination was the local Wollomombi falls, which were roaring after all the recent heavy rain - possibly another 75mm in and around Armidale. Wollomombi falls are now regarded as about second highest in Australia and part of the World Heritage Listed eastern escarpment of Australia. In the first picture you can see the flattish New England Tablelands in the background, but also the massive gorge formed by the Wollomombi River entering on the left and the Chandler in the middle. The former is much the larger of the two.

The second is a telephoto shot of the top of Wollomombi falls showing its two tier structure. The first part of the falls are at an angle of about 45% until they reach the lip of the gorge and fall vertically. The start of the falls is just a little lower than the surrounding Tablelands and the first stage drops about 120m with vertical section providing another 100m. The total drop of 220m translates into 715 feet - some falls!

Dot and I walked around to Checks lookout on the Chandler track, one of several in the vicinity, all with spectacular views. We walked a little further until the track begins to fall sharply down towards the Chandler lookout. That is about half way down to the bottom of the gorge. Close to that lookout I took a shot of the third view below, which shows the top of the falls in the distance and the steepness of the gorge.

It was good doing the walks on Christmas day because very few people were around! And, towards the end, the sun came out and suddenly it became quite warm compared with recent temperatures - about 23C.

AS

Christmas at Toompine

I was very taken with this posting by the Australian Broadcasting Commission :


http://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-12-23/town-of-two-open-pub-for-christmas/3745124

It seems that there is a town in south-western Queensland called Toompine, which lies between Quilpie and Thargomindah and has a total population of 2 (yes, two). Moreover, they've decided to open the pub for Christmas dinner, which is not difficult to do as the only residents are the publican, Sue Jones, and the bloke who owns it. Quite where the guests will come from is another matter. Quilpie has 560 inhabitants and Thargomindah has 203, both slightly larger than Toompine. The latter lies in Bulloo Shire, whose area is 73807.6 km² (28,497.3 sq mi), about 30% of Britain's, and the total population, if you can imagine it, is 377. Quilpie's area is slightly smaller at 67633.5 km² (26113.4 sq mi), and so the two LGAs are almost 60% of Britain's size, but only  377 + 986 (= 1363) people choose to live there (townspeople, farmers and miners). Population density is a low 1 person per 10 km². Thargomindah's forecast temperature for Christmas day is a mild 38C (or 100F).

AS

Global Cooling?

We have just passed the equinox and supposedly in high summer. Surprisingly, however, Armidale's summer has yet to arrive and, in fact, our daily temperatures are tracking around 6C (or maybe 10 degrees F) below normal. Worse still are the grey skies and constant rain, which make life miserable. Moroever, Armidale has now > 1200mm (47 inches) of rain for 2011 as against an average of close to 750mm (30 inches).

One consequence of all the rain is the development of our vineyard. Last year Dot planted a grape vine outside our back door and it has run riot and produced, mirabile dictu, some fruit. So we're looking forward, warmer and drier weather permitting, to the first pressing of wine from Chateau Sorensen in 2012.

With luck we'll produce enough to fill the bottom of a thimble!

AS

Quite Fast

I've just returned from a bike ride this afternoon and I took a GPS with me to log distance and speed . Remember that Armidale has a good few hills, and especially at the end when I am returning home tired.

Well, I averaged 22.7 km/hr over the 34 minute and 15 second journey, so I reckon I travelled something like 13km in the time. That's 8.125 miles. Put another way, if I kept up this pace for 2 hours I would travel 45.4km, which is marginally more than the 42.195 km of the marathon race. In reality, I was going rather faster than the best marathon runners because their route is flat and not up and down like mine.

I read today that people whose exercise is performed at a fast pace tend to outlive those who keep up a gentle pace, everything else being equal. That's nice to know for a 66 y.o. cardiac patient. I sometimes even keep up a fast pace in the Armidale Bridge Club! Yesterday afternoon I spent 5 hours on my feet racing around the ABC premises as I was setting up and directing my "wicked deals" afternoon before the club's Christmas party. Like last year, I directed and did not play apart from a couple of boards where a player fell ill. I also wore my red forked tail and two horns prominently so that players having a horrific time would understand the origin of their plight!

AS

Botanical Gardens

During my current visit to Canberra, I visited the city's wonderful botanical gardens. They are well maintained, highly aesthetic, and have a large range of mainly Australiana. The pictures accompanying this post show general views over the gardens, specific plants, and even wildlife.

Let us start with the views below. The first shows Max pointing to some feature; the second is a water feature which was crawling with lovely lizards. And third is a panorama towards the city centre.

Let us now look at some of the more spectacular plants in the gardens. The are, in order, the grass tree, the Gymea Lily, the Wollemi Pine, the Rain-forest Garden, and the Kangaroo Paw from Western Australia. Of these, the Wollemi Pine is very interesting. Prior to its discovery in the Wollemi National Park north-west of Sydney  in 1994, the tree was only known from fossilised records dating from, of all things, 200 million years ago!!! In other words, we found a supposedly extinct tree from far back in the geological record but is actually living in a secluded gorge in a remote national park. The tree was an instant hit and was immediately propagated in quite large numbers. I can now buy one for my garden if I like and I quite fancy a 200 million yo tree ... but for the lack of space. The Wollemi Pine in the Canberra gardens is small as you can see from Max's height.

Finally, I have slide of one member of the gardens' wildlife ... a wallaby. Cute isn't it.

AS

Crazy Bikes

After viewing the art-works we went outside to see some crazy bikes which children were encouraged to ride. Many were far out! Just have a look at the pictures! Max rode several of the smaller items from about 10 different models. One had wheels whose axles were off-centre. This created a bike whose motion was like a photon of light - up and down as well as forward!. Other bikes had enormous distances between highly raked wheels. There was a tandem machine whose riders were perched about 3 times as high as on a normal bike. Max found the whole opportunity riveting! Look also at the bikes in the background of each picture!

I talked to the owner and got details on how to construct these freaks. I fancy getting the double decker tandem for myself!

AS

Maxwell van Matisse

I have been busy at a conference in Canberra for most of this week but it ended at lunch-time today and I took up an invitation to an art exhibition. There were lots of pictures on display as the first picture shows, but I was particularly taken with the paintings of Maxwell van Matisse (aka Sorensen), pictures 2 to 4.

The exhibition was held at MacGregor Primary School near where Maxwell lives and he's just finishing up first grade. There was a sizable crowd in attendance and people were asked to vote on their favourite exhibits.

AS

Another Trip the the Skate Park

I'm now in Canberra for another conference. This time I'm staying in Bec's house along with Rob and Max. I hadn't been there very long when I was hauled away to the Belconnen Skate Park so that Max could terrorize the other kids and us with his deeds on a scooter. However, the reality is not a scary as the pictures convey - I've still not managed to install them in my BLOG the right way up!

AS

On Yer Bike

Each day during the Melbourne meeting we were booked on a bike-ride around inner Melbourne to look at the city's evolution. Bec and I took up this opportunity, though only about 5-6 of us out of 250 delegates did so. The first morning the was a large thunderstorm and the ride was cancelled, but we went the next two days.

Melbourne runs a bike pool and we simply fronted up to bike cache on the pavement, slipped a credit card into a machine which took some money (not much), and waited for the machine to provide us with a code. After keying in the code numbers we pulled a Melbourne bike out of its clot and rode off. When the ride was over we returned the bike to any of the city's caches and that was that. In Australia, unlike the Netherlands and Denmark, one has to wear a helmet. Well, those can be bought from a machine or a 7/11 store nearby for $5 - hardly much of an expense.

The trips were great and I learned a lot. Now I can say I've been to Moonee Ponds where Dame Edna Everage lives. The pictures show us about to set off one morning for a lengthy, maybe 20km ride. Sorry to say that the picture of me is lying on its side. However, in practice, I rode upright.

AS

Melbourne Trip

I've just been to Melbourne for 5 days to attend the State of Australia's Cities conference (SOAC). I presented one paper and Rebecca, who also attended, also presented a paper ... maybe the first father and daughter act in the event's history. However the event didn't start until Tuesday evening with a mayoral reception in the town hall and we both arrived early on the Monday after meeting up in Sydney, where Bec had been for a wedding over the weekend.

After checking into our nice two-bedroom apartment on Melbourne's Lygon Street, we explored the city centre, which Bec was visiting for the first time. I attach some photos of what we saw on our walkabout around the city centre.

Bec spotted this one: a roof-top garden, which is uncommon in our cities.

This shows Federation Square - a riot of colour and curiously shaped buildings.

Just at the entrance to Federation Square, we saw a novel way of getting around an Australian city in the form of horse-drawn transport. Strangely this, and other pictures could not be uploaded in the right direction, so tilt your computers accordingly.

And here we are on the banks of Melbourne's little ditch ... the Yarra river. It's not as big as Sydney's harbour, but the greenspace is useful for things like the Melbourne Cricket Ground (seats 100,000) and the Rod Laver Tennis centre in the background.

Melbourne's trams also run sideways. This is a heritage version which circles the CBD in a large loop. It's free and one can hop and off at will to see the sights. We did.

On the way we stopped at Carlton Gardens ... a pleasant park. This was the gateway to two lovely buildings shown below: The 19th Century Exhibition building, still used today and the Melbourne Museum. We visited the marvellous King Tut display on loan from Egypt.

Also on the way around by tram we spent a long time walking around Docklands, an area which was once what its name implies, but now like the London Docklands downstream from Tower Bridge wholly gentrified.

It was a nice day out, but we were tired by the time we returned to our apartment!

AS

Winning Ways

Since the weather was foul yesterday, it was a pleasure to turn up the Armidale Bridge Club's Spring festival. I played in the Swiss Pairs on Saturday and the Swiss Teams today. The term Swiss seems to have nothing to do with the country that has a similar name, but I will not bore you with procedural details.

In the pairs, my regular partner ... Barbara Gates ... and I came 7th overall out of 56 pairs, a creditable performance. We we extremely tired after the event which took 8 hours including various stops for meals etc. The we turned up for the teams at 9am today (Sunday), with each team comprising two partnerships. Our team-mates were Nick Wall and Ed Hahn. Well, we had two wonderful sessions stretching over 9 hours during which we played 56 boards and the outcome was a very clear win for our team. Don't tell the tax-man that there were money prizes for the event, but we also won a very large silver bowl donated by Robin Stokes to commemorate his esteemed wife, Jean. The same team was second last year, so we went one better.

And, to lift the spirits, the rain has cleared away leaving brilliant blue skies and warm days.

AS

Official rainfall

The sun has returned to Armidale after three sodden days and the official tally for this rain event is no less than 170mm (or almost 7 inches). That's over 20% of the annual rainfall for much of Britain's south coast.

AS

Yet More Rain

It's 7.30 in the morning here and still raining. Armidale has now received getting on for 150mm in three days of almost constant rain, which is 6 inches for those tied to imperial measures. The forecast is for the rain to clear later today.

Dot and I leaped (?) into the car an hour ago to drive down to the local creek to inspect the volume of water heading downstream. It was off its peak  - there was a high tide mark a little way above current water level, but still impressive. These are some of the pictures we took. Th first two show two of the town's many low-level causeways which are now closed to traffic. The re-routed traffic has caused jams over some of the main bridges. The second shows a tree trunk lying on the road-way and I guess that will have to be cut up and hauled away before traffic resumes.

The second pair of photos shows flooded playing fields, many of which are appropriately located on the flood-plain. These two are both soccer fields and I played on the top one many years ago. However, there are pitches for the other football codes, baseball, and cricket - all sodden or actually inundated.

The first of the last two pictures shows a point where the Dumaresq Creek is forced into a narrow channel and is flowing fast. In the background is the car park of the Ex-Services Club to which Dot and I belong, but the premises were safe this time. The other view is rotated 180 degrees and looks east downstream through Armidale's central parkland. My pictures shown two posts ago were taken from the bridge in the background. Oh dear! It's now raining hard again and Bureau of Met's website shows torrential falls just west of here.

AS

Even More Rain

In the last two and a half days we have had 125mm of rain and it is now pouring hard so we could easily get up to 150 or even 175mm! That's a fantastic amount and the weather system that has bought is stationary atop Armidale and has been for three days. Usually our weather systems move rapidly from east to west but the present one is immobile and, more importantly feeding moist air from the Arafura Sea - look that up on Google. All the river systems in northern NSW are now in flood, but, as I've said before, Armidale is near the great divide at an altitude of about 1000m and the water runs away fast from the headwaters of the streams. It's dark now, so we cannot run out and have a look at the creek in flood. I'll do that in the morning for I suspect that we're witnessing the highest stream flow in the 40 years I have been here.

AS

More rain

Over the last 24 hours we've had no less than 80mm of rain (75mm = 3 inches) and it's still raining. In fact, the forecast for the next 4 days is rain. I imagine that we'll get another 40mm over that period making 4.5 inches overall. That's a lot and there are flood warnings for all the local rivers.

That thought led me to interrupt this post and rush down to Dumaresq Creek, which flows through the city, to take some pictures of the flood and these are shown below. The water level was at about 1.2m above the causeway or perhaps 1.8m above normal water level. This is the highest level I've ever seen the creek and it was flowing very fast despite it being only 10km from the source at Mount Duval. Fortunately, this flood will cause little damage because our city planners have banned all development on the flood plain.

The first picture looks east from the Faulkner Street foot-bridge and one of Max's favourite play areas, just visible on the right, is under water. The second looks west and shows most of the surrounding parkland also under water.

AS

Fourth Re-Birthday

Hi folks,

I'll just remind you that today is the fourth anniversary of my cardiac arrest and subsequent resurrection. I'm well, thanks, and looking forward to the next third of a century or so! Thanks to those of you who sent in congratulations or condolences.

Life is too short to keep standing still, so I'm keeping on working at a fast pace - refereeing an article for a US journal this morning, having an article of mine accepted yesterday, working on two consultancies, and presenting 4 conference papers in the next three weeks.

See you soon ... well, in the course of the next 12 months.

AS

More Flowers

Spring is nearing completion here as we approach what is mid-May in the northern hemisphere. However, our temperatures are rather flash compared with what passes for an English Spring and, after a cold start last month, ours have hovered around 25C for the last few days ... albeit with some high humidity and a series of thunderstorms.

Given the warmth and great soil moisture, our garden has put on an excellent display this year. I've already posted some pictures of the garden in full bloom, but have a look at these images. The first three are of our bottle-brushes, so-called because their shape resembles the kitchen brushes used to clean .. er.. bottles. They come in various colours and ours are pink and red, and the honey-eater birds like them as much as we do!

The final picture shows a lovely bush on our western wall, though I do not know its name. It attracts a lot of bees collecting pollen. And just to the right you can see one corner of our massive honeysuckle bust with its fragrant yellowish flowers that last all summer. I love this time of year when all is fresh and green, especially after lots of rain. The only problem is mowing all the grass.

AS

More on Dot's Garden

A week ago, I posted a flower show to let Dot what she was missing in the garden during her absence. I'm adding two more photos taken this morning after more days of grey weather and heavy rain. Spring is now back on track with a gloriously sunny morning. The azalea in the front garden is just stunning and some of the rose bushes survived the storms.

AS