Happy New Year

Happy New Year to my readers.

2012 was a fast-paced, interesting and enriching year, with (i) lots of travel to some beautiful places, (ii) research, conference presentations and a hectic publication schedule, (iii) many contacts with family members and friends in perhaps 25 countries all over the world, and (iv) considerable effort in furthering the game of contract bridge, which I adore.

I pay special tribute to Dot for her good humoured and touching companionship, her  great assistance in my achievements, and her provision of wise counsel on many issues.

The coming year promises more of the same and I can only hope I'll come through unscathed by ill-health and in good humour.

AS

A Drought of Fish

The fishing side of our trip to Malpas Dam was disappointing. Max, Rob, Bec, Bruce and Andrew all cast their lines, but only caught four fish between them the largest of which would hardly make a meal. This is the largest of the specimens and Max seems somewhat under whelmed:

Still, like most such expeditions the event was rather restful and I spent my time listening to a broadcast of the second test match between Australia and Sri Lanka in Melbourne - apart from wandering around and taking pictures of the excitement at the water's edge.

It was a nice day out and I didn't even get wet in the end because swimming is banned in Armidale's water supply.

AS

New England Cloudscapes

Yesterday we embarked on a fishing expedition - literally. We headed to Malpas Dam north of Armidale which (a) supplies Armidale's drinking water and (b) permits recreational fishing - about which more later. I suppose that the altitude was about 1200 m (or 3800 ft).

The thing that took my imagination immediately was the fabulous cloudscapes above the lake. The weather around here has recently turned stormy and the area around Malpas, which is significantly higher than Armidale, has generated the build-up of considerable clouds and a lot of rain. Yesterday morning started in threatening mode, but the skies lightened as the day wore on. Have a look at the pictures I took:

AS

Christmas Day 2012

Christmas Day passed in usual format: breakfast, distribution and opening of presents, a trip to the skate-board park, a long lunch, and an afternoon playing some social game. The breakfast is of little interest since it took place in disjointed shifts over at least an hour as people awoke at different times in various degrees of reverie. However, the distribution of presents proceeded with all six of us attendance, Dot and me, her brother Dick, Rebecca, Dob and Max, who scored handsomely. I cannot begin to describe all the items he received and there are more to come on boxing day as we head to the shops to spend up so more.

One or two of Max's presents caught my attention specifically - a machine gun firing 'soft' bullets (not the hard variety that are discharged regularly in the US); a BMX bike, a Google plane powered by an amazing new technology - a wind up rubber band, and a Polaroid camera!

Lunch was a sumptuous affair, though adapted to our climate by being largely cold: turkey, ham, chicken, whole tiger prawns (which had be stripped of their heads, exoskeleton and feet), a large variety of salads, a lot of fruits, and various forms of alcohol including champagne. We also had the usual corny jokes from Christmas crackers and the whole affair was taken out of doors. Apart from we six, we also had Rob's parents (Marianne and Bruce) and brother Andrew in attendance, making nine in all. Half way through we had a heavy storm and had to retreat indoors, but it fortunately didn't last long.

After lunch we nattered and played Bocce on our poor excuse for a lawn and I was rather pleased with my technique - copied by others - not having played the game before. Here's a glimpse of most of us on the grass, including Max who also played his first game. I'm wearing my new flash singlet from YD - I'm the one with back turned and thinning hair!

AS

Warming Up

I cannot remember a December as hot as this! The temperatures have been over 30C for several days and this is set to continue with increasing humidity and storms. As I type this looking northward I can see tall clouds with the tell-tale signs of rain falling beneath them. It's very much like a sauna and I was covered in perspiration after riding home on my bike at lunch-time when it was already 30+.

AS

A Little Devilry

I am Chief Director of the Armidale Bridge Club and every year about this time I run a special Devil's Pairs tournament prior to the bridge club's Christmas party which always occurs on a Saturday. This year was no exception and I set some fiendish deals I culled from my extensive library of important bridge books. I warned the participants - a record 18 tables - that my selected deals involved complex plays and disciplined (but imaginative) bidding, and that suits would not break according to probability tables and finesses would tend to lose!

So I made things tough for the players, but they rolled up in record numbers to suffer at my hands. To add gravitas to the occasion, I also dressed appropriately as the devil and circulated around the room chiding players and watching them make the expected mistakes as the result of my warped humour.

The next picture shows the full club-house, which hardly had room for any more tables. Moreover, it was a very hot day outside (30+C) and with 72 players in the room the temperature began to soar despite the air-conditioning. Players complained, but I told them they'd find it hotter where I came from and they needed the practice just in case they were placed in my hands.

I also made some awards during the Christmas party. One was for the most expensive error made at the table (something like -1860 points); the pair that got closest to the score on one deal where a parrot made the world's first grand slam by a feathered player; and the pair who got the best score on my constructed deal where there was a lay-down small slam on just 16 high card points. They didn't bid the slam, but they successfully played in 5S redoubled! And another of the deals had quite a history because, according to one of my books, it was first played successfully by Robin Hood in Nottingham Castle in 1185.

If anyone would like my hand records for this event please let me know and I'll send them. You can then run your own bit of devilry.

AS

In and Around the 'gong

Yesterday, I travelled from Hervey Bay to Wollongong via Sydney. The flight to Sydney was one of the roughest I've had as the plane was tossed around by very strong winds. But I and two colleagues landed safely and caught the train down to Wollongong (or the 'gong) as most people call it. One of those colleagues was Mario Polese from the University of Montreal in Canada.The 'gong was an industrial, coal mining and steel-making, city and a major port for the export of coal and grain. The coal mining side and steel-making sides are much reduced because of import competition, but the port facilities remain strong.

The train trip down was very attractive as the line passes across broad rivers, the Royal National Park - one of the oldest in the world - and then travels close to the coastline giving great views of the craggy Illawarra escarpment and the small but now up-market communities below:

Despite its working-class image, the 'gong has a gorgeous location as these pictures show. There are lovely beaches, little headlands and coves, and a mountain backdrop:

 However, some images of the industrial past and present are visible from time to time, like the steel-works itself and the ships waiting off-shore to enter port to carry away coal and wheat.

Yet, we visited the university of Wollongong's research precinct to day to look at the technologies of the twenty-first century being developed and they're in the global forefront of several things like the mass production of graphene, which is light, incredibly strong, and can be woven into clothing to produce electricity to recharge your tablet or smart-phone as you walk along, prevents bullets from harming the wearer, and might eventually make people invisible! I also saw my first 3-D printer, which we all might have at home one day. I asked if it would be possible to make a digital cast of me and the feed that information into the the printer to make a life-sized statue of me. Apparently that could be done!! So I'm considering immortalising myself for future generations! Instead of seeing my ashes in an urn on the shelf they could be placed in one or more replicas of me to be seated permanently in my descendants' lounges.And I was told that the biologies they're working on might lead to functioning clones of me in perpetuity. Fancy having me around for ever?

AS

Sea-sick on a Dinner Cruise

Yesterday evening we took a dinner cruise organised by my colleague Paul Collits who organised our conference at the University of Southern Queensland's Hervey Bay campus. We boarded the Whalesong at the picturesque Urangan harbour and headed out on what seemed the smooth waters of Hervey Bay.

The smooth waters gave way to choppy swell as we headed NE into a stiff breeze which grew stronger by the minute and soon the vessel was bouncing up and down between shoals of jellyfish. Fortunately, the craft didn't sink! However, the crew brought around finger food, which I soon down in some quantity along with some fizzy drink and I then began to feel queasy from that combination and the movement of the boat. In fact I was feeling rather sick - unusually so because I normally can take the movement sideways and up and down of boats.

We  saw a delightful sunset over Urangan, pictured here and some beautiful cloudscapes illuminated by the setting sun before anchoring in the lee of a sand island for dinner.

Alas, by then, I was feeling rather sick and could scarcely any of the enticing fayre!! In fact I felt like chundering over the edge of the boat and avoided company lest I coughed up over them. By the way, chunder is an Australian word for being sick and elides the words "watch under". It was used on sailing craft bringing settlers - and convicts - to Australia to warn those on lower decks about their fate if they were hit by vomit. So the end of the cruise was miserable - but great for others of course.

AS

Novel Breakfast

Dot and I were traveling from Caboolture, just north of Brisbane, to a 3-day conference at Urangan near Hervey Bay. We stayed overnight at a motel at Caboolture and departed early on the 3+ hour trip north and needed some breakfast badly. We decided to stop at Nambour and found ourselves passing the big pineapple, which we hadn't visited for years since Emily and Rebecca were young. Australia has lots of big things ... sheep, bananas, prawns and, well, the pineapple shown here.

Well, we found a farmer's market and alternative food stalls selling interesting things. I bought some Dutch-style waffles with berries and ice-cream and some Greek baklava, neither my usual fare. Indeed the Dutchman who served me came originally from Haarlem, which I visited in May and was blown over when I mentioned the connection.

And, while we sat and ate our breakfast out on the extensive veranda, we were serenaded by a couple of female jazz musicians, which was very pleasant.  The views across the pineapple plantation were also serene at 8 am! This was definitely something to repeat should we come this way again.

AS

Heatwave

Spring is almost over and we're heading into Summer so things are warming up nicely. This Spring has been very dry compared with most years and perhaps a bit warmer than normal. But the pattern is currently very strange. Rather than seeing the progression of fronts from the Southern Ocean, which bring cooler temperatures and wet weather, the pressure cells are stuck in one place and bringing progressively hotter conditions. Today's temperature is expected to be around 29C and it certainly felt like that as I was cycling home! And the next couple of days will see things in the low 30s. At the same time the system is feeding humid air in off the Coral Sea so it's a bit like living in a sauna. Big storm clouds are building up during each morning and by late afternoon the flash of lightning starts up. We've had the odd shower, but not much rain. It's the nature of these storms that they are spotty and one has to be under one to get a lot of rain. Three days ago we had 6mm of rain (about 1/4 inch), but the folks a few km away had 200mm (8 inches) and hail the size of golf balls causing a lot of damage.

Poor Dot is trying to plant new shrubs in the garden, but the soil currently resembles concrete because of the lack of rain. The garden, however, still looks green because of earlier cooler temperatures, and some watering when I'd fertilised the lawn. As I type this, lots of dark clouds are hovering around and the bureau of meteorology shows storm showers to the southeast of us. With a bit of luck, they'll come this way minus the hail. While it's 30C+ here, 200 km to the west the temperatures are reaching into the 40s, so I shouldn't complain too much.

AS

Fifth Re-Birthday

Long-term readers will know that had a serious cardiac arrest in on 19 November 2007 and that the fifth anniversary is imminent. At the time I was probably 5 or 10 minutes from being a few meters underground, but now it seems that I have made a full recovery and need a normal life if one excludes the 5 pills I'm taking daily.

I don't need any presents to celebrate this 'birthday' but a snappy email wouldn't go amiss.

In another sense this is also an anniversary posting. It takes my tally to 550 entries and the BLOG's existence is also virtually co-terminous with the last 5 years.

AS

Now you see it; now you don't

This morning hosted one of the most exciting events of the year ... or it was supposed to. I rose early and gazed to the east to view the rising sun. Alas it was cloud covered, though the high level stratus began to burn off after a while. Meanwhile, I went on-line to see how the expected event was progressing in Cairns 2000 km to the north. It was then that I realised I had mistimed my tracking of the solar eclipse and had risen an hour too early, a mistake due in part to the fact that NSW is on summer time but Queensland doesn't the clocks forward. So a solar eclipse timed for 6.40 am Qld time really occurs at 7.40 am in NSW.

In Cairns, the eclipse was total, like the one I saw a decade ago standing on Dartmoor in SW England. Further south, in Armidale NSW, it only reached 60% or so and barely darkened the landscape. Certainly the birds inhabiting our garden failed to fly home to roost and we had the usual constellation of rainbow lorikeets, king parrots, galahs, crimson rosellas, and others. I managed to make out the moon taking lumps out of the sun whenever the cloud dispersed momentarily, but the show was muted. I even tried to take photos of the vent, though again with little success as I don't have the right filters. The picture below is the best of the lot, but unimpressive. It was taken from our garden close to the maximum 60% occlusion at 8 am (AEST + 1 = summer time), but the sun still seems to be shining with its usual brightness. Perhaps the misty high level cloud is hiding the 60% of the sun that's missing!

Oh well. Better luck next time. Meanwhile the eclipse's track means that the Cairns region is just about the only spot on the planet to see 100% version. The remainder of the track is across the South Pacific and barely touches any land before reaching Chile close to dusk on that side of the ocean.

AS

Anatidaephobia

I came across a wonderful word today in a Facebook post. I know that there are many phobias, but this one is hilarious and thank my friend Martin Auster for bringing it to my attention. Have you ever come across Anatidaephobia?

So what is it? Anatidaephobia is defined as a pervasive, irrational fear that one is being watched by a duck. The anatidaephobic individual fears that no matter where they are or what they are doing, a duck watches. Anatidaephobia is derived from the Greek word "anatidae", meaning ducks, geese or swans and "phobos" meaning fear.

Now it doesn't seem such a funny term and I'm wondering if I am a sufferer from this condition. I cycle past several waddlings of ducks on most days and they always turn to look at me as I go past. Waddling is, by the way, one of the collective nouns for a group of ducks.

Can anyone please advise me if I should be wary of them ... or is it simply the other way around and they are experiencing a form of homosapiensphobia!? And is there any cure for this phobia if it's real?

AS

Foreign Musings on the US Election

I love this poster. After watching Obama's deserved win and musing over the huge flaws emerging in American society I'm more convinced than ever that the US needs another 'little rebellion' to create a more inclusive, efficient, future-oriented society free of the hands in the till cliques who are ruining the country.

I include here the vast medical-pharmaceutical conspiracy that costs the US economy twice as much of GDP as the average for the OECD for worse than average health outcomes; the agricultural subsidy rort that shovels bucket-loads of cash into corporate farms; a legal system slanted towards enriching lawyers at everyone else's expense; a large military - industrial conspiracy; and excessively restrictive IP laws also designed to funnel bucket loads of cash to certain financial interests.

Fix those and you've (i) fixed the US budget deficit, (ii) started on the road to greater social equity on the Australian, European and East Asian models, (iii) liberated a pool of cash that could help fund the education drive necessary to propel the US dynamically towards the 2050 knowledge economy; and (iv) enriched the nation as the marginal utility of the vast wealth hoarded by the top few is virtually zero.

But guess what. Those groups with their hands in the public till tend to vote Republican, a party not of private enterprise but of financial rorts. Washington's Heritage Foundation run and Index of Global Economic Freedom. On that index only 5 nations are rated as free: Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand and Switzerland in that order. The US comes in tenth; Britain fourteenth; both admittedly a long way ahead of north Korea. Worse, the GFC has meant that 'freedom' only rose in 10 of the 28 highest ranked nations over the last year - including the three at the top of the list - but went in reverse in the US and UK.

So Jefferson, whom I admire, was right again.

AS

Smoked-out

Armidale is currently enveloped in a thick brown smoke haze like nothing I've seen before. The unpleasant conditions have been caused by a huge bush-fire in the Macleay Gorge east of Armidale and it has been fanned by strong easterly winds. The fire, which is located in remote and difficult terrain, is apparently now under control, but it has burnt out no less than 32,000 ha (79,000 acres). For my UK readers, this amounts to a huge area. Fortunately, Armidale is in no risk of burning to the ground!

AS

Cabarfeidh and Ollera

Periodically we are able to visit and admire the gardens of country properties and today it was the turn of the  Guyra district 26 km or more north of Armidale. I drove Dot and two of her friends to Guyra to select the properties we wanted to see and they were in order of visit (a) Cabarfeidh and (b) Ollera, both of which were owned by members of the Skipper family. One thing is driving me mad. I identified the first name as Scottish Gaelic, which turns out to be correct. There's a Cabarfeidh hotel at Stornaway and the name may mean 'chief' as the head of the Clan Mackenzie has the title of Cabarfeidh. But no Gaelic dictionary is able to translate the word for me.

I'll show some pictures of the two gardens starting with Cabarfeidh. This property had been neglected for many years until recently and is in the process of re-development around a new homestead constructed in the 2000s. The entrance drive has an imposing century old oak tree, a remnant of the old garden.

The house itself overlooks a pleasant valley on the western side of the Great Divide, so that waters flowing down the stream at an altitude of about 1300 m flow eventually to the Southern Ocean near Adelaide (1330 km in a straight line). That's an average fall of just 1 m per km, though it's much steeper at the upper end.

The current owners, who constructed a new home using bits and pieces of the old have had a busy time planning and planting new shrubs and flowering plants ... along with some plants sculptured in metal like these here.

It was a pleasant place to visit and to have lunch. Moreover, we could have started a game of bridge if I'd remembered to bring the table and cards. We bumped into enough Armidale bridge players to have at least two tables in play!

Ollera Station (large farms are called stations in Australia) was settled very early by New England standards in 1838 and much of the homestead and surrounding buildings are listed by the National Trust and/or the National Estate register. The process of founding Ollera is reported at: http://www.nswera.net.au/biogs/UNE0363b.htm . In the 1870s it seems that the property was supervised by a James Mackenzie and that association with Scotland's clan Mackenzie might have led to Cabarfeidh obtaining its name. The property carried 12000 sheep, 6000 cattle and 400 horses by 1860 and it's size grew to 73,000 acres by 1877. Not bad for a couple of blokes who arrived with very little in the 1830s!

Here's the homestead and its immediate gardens, which are embedded in the rolling pasture-lands of the high tablelands of northern NSW.

The plants contained in the gardens are a mixture of exotics and natives.

By the 1870s there were so many people working Ollera that it had its own school and eventually its own church, shown here. And as the locals passed on, their descendants decorated the buildings with commemorative windows like the one shown here.

As we left Ollera it began to rain bringing to an end the hot dry weather of the last few days.

AS

Heat Wave!

A few days ago I remember posting the information that it was snowing, well really sleeting in Armidale and that maximum temperatures for the day had sunk to about 7 degrees. Today they reached 29C, a little bit short of the predicted 30, but warm enough. I left my cycle ride until late afternoon - about 4.45pm - but it was still very warm and the ride was slow heading into a very strong breeze! The time of year here is the equivalent of, say, mid April in the UK when was the last time it reached 30C in April in Britain?

AS

Cirque du Soleil

Once in a while one has a defining moment and last Saturday was one of them. Bec managed to get 5 tickets for the Cirque du Soleil at Sydney's Moore Park and she, Rob, Max, Dot and I turned up for the performance  I hadn't done my homework and really didn't know what expect , apart from lions and tigers! Well, the show we saw was something out of this world and contained no livestock - just tumblers and clowns most of whom appeared dressed up as insects. But their personal talents were extraordinary.

I cannot provide any pictures of the event because photography was banned, but I'll direct you to their website where you can some short videos: http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/home.aspx#/en/home/multimedias/videos/all.aspx . If you get a chance to go, don't pass the opportunity up, though the tickets are not cheap. They were over 500 GBP (about A$800) for the five of us.

Come to think of it, I do have two photos, one of Max and the other of the tent! So here goes:

At least this proves we were there!

AS

An Early Summer

Summer has arrived early in Armidale over the last week, with some of the most delightful weather I can remember here at any time, yet alone in early October. Imagine the first week of April in Britain and the weather you'd experience. I bet it would not have temperatures in the mid-20s, warm nights, gloriously sunny days, and a pristine atmosphere. Maybe in mid-summer in the UK? Yet the leaves on many trees are only now beginning to sprout and flowers on our azaleas are yet to emerge. I guess that we cannot keep this up! However, it does suggest that October is good time to visit us.

AS

Cologne: then and now

It has been a long while since I put pen to paper reflecting on the stream of gorgeous experiences I had recently in Europe and Turkey. I have, however, one last post to this BLOG that I must make about that trip.  The prime reason to drive from Montpellier through Eastern France to Cologne was to attend an International Geographical Union (IGU) meeting in that city at the main university - a meeting that started on Sunday 26 August and finished on the following Friday. It was one of those jamboree events with hundreds of delegates and numerous concurrent sessions ... which I generally dislike.

On this occasion, the meeting had many pleasant moments, helped by the presence of many good colleagues. For example, one of the largest delegations was from my own institution in Australia, the University of New England. Believe it or not, 5 of us made the long journey across the world to be in Cologne - so we were one of the largest delegations from anywhere on earth. Then I was meeting up with my 7 colleagues who drove with me from Montpellier and, interestingly, I spent quite a lot of time with Kim Doo-Chul from Okayama and Daichi Kohmoto from Kyoto. On top of that, I was staying at the Ramada Park Inn, near Cologne University, with other Australian academics with whom I worked and the Chair of the Local Development Commission, Michael Sofer, was also staying there.

So there was a good deal of networking, but on one morning I was able to take time off and a tram into the city centre for the express purpose of visiting one notable attraction. That was the cathedral and its surrounds and the reason for that is that I have on my computer a remarkable image of that location taken in early July 1945 just a month after I was born. Not only is the image virtually the same age as me, it - or something like it - has also become well known and I show it here for the second time, the first a post on August 12 2011 entitled Sergeant Pepper.

Apparently this picture was taken at the request of my now elderly Aunt Hazel as she was flown over the city in a Lancaster Bomber by a grateful crew giving ground staff at their air-force base a tour of devastated Europe.

This rather lovely August day 67 years later, saw the Cathedral and its surrounds looking like scenes below. The 19th century cathedral was one of the few undamaged or lightly-damaged buildings in the city centre as the result of the bombing campaign. Only a few windows appear to have been shattered.

The interior has some lovely stained glass windows that survived the war:

And much of the surrounding district has, of course, been modernised as the result of the destruction. I departed from Cologne's Hauptbahnhof (below) on one one of Germany's fats ICE trains three days later to catch a flight from Frankfurt to Abu Dhabi.

AS