AS
Sunday, 25 March 2012
The Mousetrap
Dot, I and a friend took for nearby Tamworth at lunchtime to attend a performance of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap. It might have had a run of almost 25,000 performances in London, but this was the first in Tamworth 110km south down the New England Highway. We saw it in the lovely Capitol Theatre which was ideal for the play and the performance was good for an amateur dramatic company. I will say nothing about the plot because the lead actor gave us an address at the end in which told us all to keep quiet! I attach the front page of the souvenir program as irrefutable evidence that we were there and that I am not making all of this up!
AS
AS
Sunday, 18 March 2012
A Quick Trip to Brisbane
We're on our way back from Hervey Bay to Armidale, but staying off in Brisbane for a couple of days. Yesterday, Dot and met up with her long-time friend Lorraine who retired from Armidale to Brisbane maybe 15 years ago. We met up at her home in Ferny Hills and had lunch together, after which we had a short tour of the locality, exchanged Christmas presents (!!), and discussed the kinds of things our generation discusses.
Today we went sight-seeing and the attached pictures are testimony to that. That involved a lot of walking. And in between the walks went went furniture shopping at Brisbane's IKEA. We love IKEA, but on this occasion we were mainly buying flat-packs for Dot's good friend, Jane, in Armidale whence we head tomorrow assuming that the RAV4 can haul the load up the mountain.
And tonight we meet up Anne and John Dryburgh (and maybe some of their children) for an evening meal. Anne and I are either second cousins or first cousins once removed, whatever the correct description is. Simply, Anne and I share the same great-grandmother. My mother and Maurice, Anne's father, were first cousins. Maurice, who is now in his 90s, lives in Auckland and both Anne and John were Kiwi residents until they shifted to Brisbane a year or so ago when John landed an accounting job there after losing his job in Auckland - I presume a casualty of the GFC. I've met Anne in Auckland, but not on this side of the ditch.
We are staying in a motel on Kangaroo Point, a high promontory that funnels the Route from Armidale, Melbourne and Sydney in to Brisbane's CBD. Just up the road is the famous Story Bridge, the city's version of Sydney's Harbour Bridge and that bridge features in some of the coming photos. The Brisbane River, which is quite large as you'll see meanders through the city carving in apart through a series of sweeping bends. Our motel is surrounded on both sides be the river, which does a 180 degree turn under the Storey Bridge.
Any, on to the pictures. When I first saw Brisbane 40 years ago, it was regarded as a large country town - with little in the way of high-rise buildings. The intervening time has changed things somewhat. The first picture shows the modern city and at the right hand side is the Storey Bridge. The picture faces north and the river flows away from us.
The second picture looks across the river to the western and lower part of the CBD, with the botanical gardens just at the water's edge.
The last of the trilogy also faces north towards the bridge, but was taken due east of the first photo. The water is now flowing towards us having done its 180 degree turn.
Brisbane has a very pleasant location and is, like Rome, sited amid a large number of hills. The fourth photo looks north-west and show this setting.
Another growing feature of the city is the rise of a large number of apartment buildings along the river banks. Dot and I were discussing whether we might move to Brisbane rather than Sydney at some stage and the city is certainly attractive enough to make that a possibility. However, Brisbane is even further from Canberra than Armidale and, at 1250 km distance (780 miles), is a long way to drive! Perhaps Bec will move north some day soon. She used to work in Caloundra a short distance away
Last, and not least, Brisbane is easy to navigate. In fact, if we lived in an apartment alongside the river we could use one of these to go shopping or the concert hall or the various art galleries and museums! The CityCats depart every five minutes or so for the city centre.
By the way, did you notice the absence of sunshine and the leaden clouds. Brisbane, like Armidale has had a cool and soaking wet summer. The word cool is relative. The temperatures during out visit have been a pleasant 28C even though the rain bucketed down yesterday
AS
Today we went sight-seeing and the attached pictures are testimony to that. That involved a lot of walking. And in between the walks went went furniture shopping at Brisbane's IKEA. We love IKEA, but on this occasion we were mainly buying flat-packs for Dot's good friend, Jane, in Armidale whence we head tomorrow assuming that the RAV4 can haul the load up the mountain.
And tonight we meet up Anne and John Dryburgh (and maybe some of their children) for an evening meal. Anne and I are either second cousins or first cousins once removed, whatever the correct description is. Simply, Anne and I share the same great-grandmother. My mother and Maurice, Anne's father, were first cousins. Maurice, who is now in his 90s, lives in Auckland and both Anne and John were Kiwi residents until they shifted to Brisbane a year or so ago when John landed an accounting job there after losing his job in Auckland - I presume a casualty of the GFC. I've met Anne in Auckland, but not on this side of the ditch.
We are staying in a motel on Kangaroo Point, a high promontory that funnels the Route from Armidale, Melbourne and Sydney in to Brisbane's CBD. Just up the road is the famous Story Bridge, the city's version of Sydney's Harbour Bridge and that bridge features in some of the coming photos. The Brisbane River, which is quite large as you'll see meanders through the city carving in apart through a series of sweeping bends. Our motel is surrounded on both sides be the river, which does a 180 degree turn under the Storey Bridge.
Any, on to the pictures. When I first saw Brisbane 40 years ago, it was regarded as a large country town - with little in the way of high-rise buildings. The intervening time has changed things somewhat. The first picture shows the modern city and at the right hand side is the Storey Bridge. The picture faces north and the river flows away from us.
The second picture looks across the river to the western and lower part of the CBD, with the botanical gardens just at the water's edge.
The last of the trilogy also faces north towards the bridge, but was taken due east of the first photo. The water is now flowing towards us having done its 180 degree turn.
Brisbane has a very pleasant location and is, like Rome, sited amid a large number of hills. The fourth photo looks north-west and show this setting.
Another growing feature of the city is the rise of a large number of apartment buildings along the river banks. Dot and I were discussing whether we might move to Brisbane rather than Sydney at some stage and the city is certainly attractive enough to make that a possibility. However, Brisbane is even further from Canberra than Armidale and, at 1250 km distance (780 miles), is a long way to drive! Perhaps Bec will move north some day soon. She used to work in Caloundra a short distance away
Last, and not least, Brisbane is easy to navigate. In fact, if we lived in an apartment alongside the river we could use one of these to go shopping or the concert hall or the various art galleries and museums! The CityCats depart every five minutes or so for the city centre.
By the way, did you notice the absence of sunshine and the leaden clouds. Brisbane, like Armidale has had a cool and soaking wet summer. The word cool is relative. The temperatures during out visit have been a pleasant 28C even though the rain bucketed down yesterday
AS
Friday, 16 March 2012
Hervey Bay
I was invited up to the University of Southern Queensland's Hervey (pr Harvey) Bay campus to present a regional development seminar to local leaders this afternoon. We arrived however two days ago - Dot is accompanying me on the trip. Hervey Bay is a nice destination and, unlike most of the east coast of Australia, has incredibly calm waters as the pictures show. The Bay is protected from ocean swells by Fraser Island lying off-shore - the largest sand island in the world being 120+ km long (75 miles). As one of the pictures below shows, the island is also quite hilly. It was taken in the soft light of dawn.
Hervey Bay's main reputation (other than as a jumping off point for Fraser Island) is as a whale sanctuary. Whales migrate here from Antarctica in about May and they stay as long as 6 months to calve in the warm and shallow waters of the bay and raise their offspring for the long swim southwards. Still, it's not whale-watching season right now and very warm and humid at the end of summer and at about 25 degrees south - just outside the tropics - the temperature is hovering around 29C and it rains on and off during the day. It lies about 760 km north of Armidale, a good 9 hours drive with breaks.
We're staying at the posh end of Hervey Bay at the Pepper's Pier resort. The photos show the 5 star resort (paid for by USQ!) and one of the images was taken from half way along Pepper's Pier, which is shown in another photo.
This long jetty has been in situ for about a century and was used to export local sugar cane. A railway ran its entire length to deliver the cane to waiting ships until about 1960 when that trade stopped and it was then used to import fuel oil. At the entrance to the pier is a statue of a young boy holding what I think is a whale! Hervey Bay is built up most of the way around with tourist and retirement facilities and has a population now of about 70,000 people, so it's not small. And the entire beach front - all 18km of it - has a lovely walking track behind it going from Boat Harbour in the East (pictured here) to Point Vernon to the north-west and part of the track is also shown here at the Boat Harbour end.
Dot has enjoyed walking and driving around the district, but my time has, alas, been spent in committees, talking to people over cups of coffee, and writing my presentation. My walks have been from about 6am to 7am in the morning when the climate is nice and cool! Just around the corner from us are are some lovely homes - I wouldn't mind the one shown and a beautiful Moreton Bay Fig tree which as has just about strangled its host!
AS
Hervey Bay's main reputation (other than as a jumping off point for Fraser Island) is as a whale sanctuary. Whales migrate here from Antarctica in about May and they stay as long as 6 months to calve in the warm and shallow waters of the bay and raise their offspring for the long swim southwards. Still, it's not whale-watching season right now and very warm and humid at the end of summer and at about 25 degrees south - just outside the tropics - the temperature is hovering around 29C and it rains on and off during the day. It lies about 760 km north of Armidale, a good 9 hours drive with breaks.
We're staying at the posh end of Hervey Bay at the Pepper's Pier resort. The photos show the 5 star resort (paid for by USQ!) and one of the images was taken from half way along Pepper's Pier, which is shown in another photo.
This long jetty has been in situ for about a century and was used to export local sugar cane. A railway ran its entire length to deliver the cane to waiting ships until about 1960 when that trade stopped and it was then used to import fuel oil. At the entrance to the pier is a statue of a young boy holding what I think is a whale! Hervey Bay is built up most of the way around with tourist and retirement facilities and has a population now of about 70,000 people, so it's not small. And the entire beach front - all 18km of it - has a lovely walking track behind it going from Boat Harbour in the East (pictured here) to Point Vernon to the north-west and part of the track is also shown here at the Boat Harbour end.
Dot has enjoyed walking and driving around the district, but my time has, alas, been spent in committees, talking to people over cups of coffee, and writing my presentation. My walks have been from about 6am to 7am in the morning when the climate is nice and cool! Just around the corner from us are are some lovely homes - I wouldn't mind the one shown and a beautiful Moreton Bay Fig tree which as has just about strangled its host!
AS
Sunday, 11 March 2012
Bridge Marathon
I'm just recovering from 16 hours of contract bridge played this weekend in our club. Alas, we only came fourth of the the 28 pairs who played in the event, but I suppose that's a good outcome for such a competitive field. Partner, Barbara Gates, and I landed 4 bottles of wine between us for our work and everyone judged the event a great success in every respect - excellent catering, expert directing, and good competition.
AS
AS
Saturday, 10 March 2012
Mousetrap
Dot and I saw Agatha Christie's Mousetrap in London a long time ago. Well, we heard this morning that an Australian version is on the road and coming to Tamworth only 110 km away. So I've just booked tickets for a performance on 25 March and we're excited at the prospect of seeing it again.
AS
AS
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
Ghastly Spelling
Parts of NSW have recently had their heaviest rainfall in 40, or maybe 100, years, creating widespread flooding. The photo below is going ballistic on Facebook and in other media and I thought I'd show it here. It was Emily's entry on Facebook that bought it to my attention.
The picture shows one of the mobile warning signs we have and, just in case you cannot read the rather dark image, it says Possible Debary on Roads. When I first saw the sign I wondered what it was all about and then the penny dropped. The author of this monstrosity meant to say "Possible Debris on Roads". I'm pretty certain that the wording is not a spoof, but rather lack of education! And I wonder how many accidents were caused by motorists trying to work out the sign's intent rather than focusing on the road ahead. I also wonder the dollar value of time wasted by people like me writing to Facebook or their BLOG.
AS
Cyclops / Cyclopes (pl.)
Emily has just made a delightful post to her blog on the subject of Ella's jumping harness.
And while I was watching it a strange thought went through my mind. Ella must be close to being the most photographed child of all time, using both still and video media. I wondered what she thinks of people with three eyes looking at her, two of the eyes in the normal position and one sprouting from somewhere near the viewer's forehead. It conjured up for me an image of the Greek cyclops (plural, cyclopes) who, in Greek and later Roman mythology, was a member of a primordial race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of his forehead. The name is widely thought to mean "circle-eyed". Hesiod, Homer, Euripides, Theocritus, and Virgil all mentioned the cyclops in their writings, so the myth, if that is what it is, had considerable legs.
Then things took a dangerous turn. I recalled Raymond Kurzweil's famous book The Singularity is Near (Viking Press, 2005) in which he foresaw the imminent need for humans to be re-engineered with extra A-V and data storage or processing capacity to deal with the masses of information heading our way. Perhaps in Ella's lifetime people will be turned into living cyclopes with cameras incorporated in their foreheads alongside the extra CPU and terabytes of storage wired into their brains. Suddenly I had a another even more interesting brainwave. When I'm riding my bike some vehicles pass dangerously close to me and one day might hit me. If I became a cyclops with a camera lens for the central eye I could record my journeys and provide compelling evidence against the hoon who knocked me off my bike at their trial for attempted murder.. Better still, I could spare myself the surgery necessary to become a cyclops by installing the camera in my helmet.
I wonder what Ella would make of all that!
AS
Sunday, 4 March 2012
More on Rain
Click on the following URL to get a good impression of where rain has fallen in the last week:
The most amazing things are:
1 The 300mm (12 inches) of rain around Alice Springs in the centre. The Alice wouldn't get that much in a normal year;
2 The > 200mm (8 inches) in and around Canberra in the southeast;
3 The band of heavy rain diagonally across the country;
4 Our dry spot in Northern NSW;
5 The torrential rain in a slim band along the rainforest coast of North Queensland (near Cairns);
6 The active monsoon conditions across the northern third of the continent; and
7 The mostly dry conditions in the southwest corner of WA.
In NSW, something like 2/3rds of the state is flood affected in some way or other - a vast area. Our corner of the state has had heavy rain for months and all that water is still making its way down the Darling river system. Southern Queensland was flooded a few weeks ago and that water is also heading downstream. To repeat earlier postings, all this water can take 3-4 months to reach the sea because the rivers are graded so gently. Moree's altitude is 212m (c. 650 feet). A lot of places in the UK with that altitude might be 30 km from the sea. Moree is 750km from the sea in a straight line and perhaps 1500 km after allowing from bends and deviations. Simple arithmetic reveals that the land falls on average 1 meter (or > half my height) every 7km. That's flat.
I was told about a flood that hit the town of Hay in the SW of this state along time ago. It was so strong it tore quite a large vessel from its mooring on the river bank. After the flood peak had passed by residents went looking for the craft and eventually found it 20km (12.5 miles) from the river.
AS
Friday, 2 March 2012
Flood
Australia might be the driest continent, but sometimes it rains spectacularly and we're in the middle of one such event. Down in the southeast corner of this state (NSW) wide areas have rainfall up to 250mm over the last three days (that's 10 inches for the metrically challenged). There's a whole lot more on the way as the strange conditions we have are due to last for another three days. Basically, the jet stream is stalled in a line from Broome in NW Australia diagonally across the country to the Australian Capital Territory (ACT, where Bec and Max live). The jet-stream is feeding in moist tropical air feeding heavy rainfall along the line and I gather some places may have had their entire average rainfall in the last few days. After the rain comes the flood and right now an area larger than the entire nation of France (i.e. much larger than the UK) is going under water!
How are we going in Armidale. Well it has just started to rain lightly mid-afternoon, but we'll get nothing like the south of NSW. Indeed while they were drowning in sheets of water we had sunny days with pleasant temperatures up to 28C and that was 10C above Canberra's dismal temperatures today. As we entered Autumn on 1 March we had summer weather than the POMS could only dream of. Peculiar, eh?
Postscript. Some places in the west of NSW had more than their average annual totals this week. And Alice Springs has just been flooded!
By the way, this is my 468th post to this BLOG since 2007, quite a good record.
AS
How are we going in Armidale. Well it has just started to rain lightly mid-afternoon, but we'll get nothing like the south of NSW. Indeed while they were drowning in sheets of water we had sunny days with pleasant temperatures up to 28C and that was 10C above Canberra's dismal temperatures today. As we entered Autumn on 1 March we had summer weather than the POMS could only dream of. Peculiar, eh?
Postscript. Some places in the west of NSW had more than their average annual totals this week. And Alice Springs has just been flooded!
By the way, this is my 468th post to this BLOG since 2007, quite a good record.
AS
Thursday, 1 March 2012
Sixteenth Birthday Party
Last night, Dot and I were invited to one of the most unusual birthday parties we have attended. Our friends, Jenny and Jim Walmsley, whom we've known for almost 40 years, invited us to Jenny's 16th birthday party. Just in case you find the maths a little odd, I should point out that yesterday was the 29th of February and that this date only occurs once every four years and, since Jenny was born in 1948, she's only managed to celebrate that event 16 times including yesterday. And since it was her 16th, Jenny decided to add 16 to 48 to come with a theme for the event - i.e 1964.
So, participants were invited to dress in 1964 gear, which unsurprisingly few managed given changes in height and shape and the time lapse involved. Some enterprising people managed to drag the right stuff by visiting op shops, as Jenny did herself. And other wore wigs with decidedly longer, and an altogether differently coloured, hair to what they have now. I must admit to going on to e-bay to see if there were any cheap Beatles style wigs around, but ran out of time to execute the idea. Still, Jenny managed to acquire a luxuriant black hairstyle as the pictures show. Jenny is the person standing, with Jim in 19602 gear standing behind her.
The party was held in a local restaurant we sometimes go to - the Red Grapevine - and we had a private room where the organisers (J & J) played 1960s music. Fortunately, presents were banned ... not a bad idea if you don't want useless presents which may be suitable for a 16 y.o. but not a grand-mother. Those attending were required to bring photos of themselves when they were about 16. These were pinned to a board along with our names so one didn't have to guess who was who. Most pictures of me about that age reside in the UK so I had to get my brother, Phillip, to scan and email a suitable image. Alas, I couldn't recognise myself, so it's just as well that Jim attached my name underneath!
J & J shouted us all a marvellous meal at presumably great cost to themselves given that there must have been 50 people on the guest list. We had some 1960s style entertainment - a group of appropriately attired singers who also danced in a coordinated way, a large birthday cake with 16 candles on it, and a large amount of champagne, wine and other beverages. All up the event lasted 4 hours amidst deafening chatter as we tried to catch up with the careers and/or retirement activities of old friends.
AS
So, participants were invited to dress in 1964 gear, which unsurprisingly few managed given changes in height and shape and the time lapse involved. Some enterprising people managed to drag the right stuff by visiting op shops, as Jenny did herself. And other wore wigs with decidedly longer, and an altogether differently coloured, hair to what they have now. I must admit to going on to e-bay to see if there were any cheap Beatles style wigs around, but ran out of time to execute the idea. Still, Jenny managed to acquire a luxuriant black hairstyle as the pictures show. Jenny is the person standing, with Jim in 19602 gear standing behind her.
The party was held in a local restaurant we sometimes go to - the Red Grapevine - and we had a private room where the organisers (J & J) played 1960s music. Fortunately, presents were banned ... not a bad idea if you don't want useless presents which may be suitable for a 16 y.o. but not a grand-mother. Those attending were required to bring photos of themselves when they were about 16. These were pinned to a board along with our names so one didn't have to guess who was who. Most pictures of me about that age reside in the UK so I had to get my brother, Phillip, to scan and email a suitable image. Alas, I couldn't recognise myself, so it's just as well that Jim attached my name underneath!
J & J shouted us all a marvellous meal at presumably great cost to themselves given that there must have been 50 people on the guest list. We had some 1960s style entertainment - a group of appropriately attired singers who also danced in a coordinated way, a large birthday cake with 16 candles on it, and a large amount of champagne, wine and other beverages. All up the event lasted 4 hours amidst deafening chatter as we tried to catch up with the careers and/or retirement activities of old friends.
AS
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