Ebor Falls

The weather has been cool, showery and dull for a few days, but I cleared just enough today to make a trip to the New England National Park worthwhile. The park, which has magnificent scenery, is part of the Gondwana Rainforests of Australia World Heritage Area - a line of parks stretching perhaps 400km north-south East of Armidale. My department has invited Matthew Shumway from Utah to take up residence for 3 months and he willingly came along for the ride.

Alas, the summit was shrouded in cloud and it rained heavily at times, so we saw little of the scenery, but the hut proved a great place for our lovely picnic lunch. We decided to show Matthew the Ebor Falls instead and they proved spectacular after recent heavy rains. A substantial volume of water fell over the three-tiered structure shown in the photos.

And the walk around the rim of the gorge was both interesting and varied. To the north, the sun managed to shine through over the wilderness of Guy Fawkes River National Park - part of the Gondwana structure mentioned earlier. The following photo shows the heavily timbered area traversed by the winding trough gouged by the Guy Fawkes river. I can't imagine what that gentleman had to do with the Ebor area. Please enlighten me.

AS

Still Raining

After 4 days of continuous rain Armidale is sodden. We've a total of 95mm - almost 4 inches - over that time and there is more to come. To put things in perspective, this about 13% of the annual rainfall for the south of England. Basically, the pressure systems across the New England region have remained stationary during this period. On the plus side of the ledger, temperatures have been very mild. Still, I'd prefer the lovely sunshine we have most of the time.

AS

Flooding Winter Rains

The world's climates seem to have taken a bizarre turn. Many parts of the US have heat-wave and drought conditions, but Britain and now parts of Australia are awash in water. I awoke this morning after two days of unrelenting rain to find a torrential downpour and we must have had close to 60mm over the period. Armidale has a summer maximum in rainfall and the winters are rather drier. So this is the first anomaly. By the way, it's difficult to catch torrential rain in a photo, so just believe me that the picture below was taken under monsoon conditions.

The second strange thing is that rain has been caused by a summer weather pattern with humid air being funneled in north-easterly from the warm coral sea. The result is that we've been having very warm temperatures for this time of year. Today's forecast is 16C and the minimum last night was 12C. Remember (a) we're 1000m (3100ft) above sea level and (b) it's supposed to be winter. Normally we average 13C in July during our usually sunny days and overnight temperatures fall to -2C. Rain, when it comes, is mostly created by storms coming from the southwest off the southern ocean.


So now our creeks are flooded and the town is cut into two except for a few higher level bridges. And the building site next to our house is also waterlogged as the picture shows. This area used to be the school playing field used by Emily and Rebecca during their play-periods 20-25 years ago! The school has since been relocated. Emily will have a surprise when she and Ella return in September.

AS

One Other Thing in Canberra

We're now back in Armidale after a quick 1800km return journey to Canberra. However, I forgot to post my comments on a marvellous event we attended there last Saturday night to, in effect, celebrate Max's 8th birthday. The lucky little kid got to see the Tap Dogs extravaganza at Canberra's main theatre - 90 minutes of non-stop dancing to very load music amidst lots of on-stage effects - lights, changing scenery, smoke, water (!), and other props. It was dynamic and Max enjoyed every minute of the 6 tap-dancers (all male) and two drummers (both female). The full theatre errupted in applause over and over at the performers' professionalism and athleticism. one of the dancers even tapped upside down high above the stage.

Here are a couple of 'official' photos taken from the company's web-site. Go to see them if you get the chance.

AS

Arboretum

Canberra's Arboretum stage an open day today, so we went to have a look - all 5 of us including Dot, Max, Bec and Rob. The previous arboretum was gutted by bush-fire a few years ago and is only now being restored after extensive clearing of the original forest. So there's little to see in the form of trees, but rather a heap of plantings of new ones from all over the world. Interesting though those may be - for example there is grove of redwoods which might reach maturity by the 31st century (!!), the views from the hills-tops were excellent and this post mainly focuses on these.

The first photo shows the view across to the Brindabella range running south from Canberra towards the Snowy Mountains. The second looks northwards towards Civic - the city centre, with Lake Burley Griffin in the foreground. and the third looks East towards suburban Woden, with the mountains of NSW in the background. The photos also show the protected saplings arrange in rows, though we expect that many will be culled as most of the species grow very large at maturity. A few old trees remained, surviving the fire, and these included some Aleppo Pines from Turkey which were planted after the first world war to commemorate the disastrous campaign against the Turks at Gallipoli.

The last two pictures show an item of public art - in which Canberra abounds. This one shows a bird and bird's nest, with the first picture showing Canberra's Black Mountain communications tower in the background. The second has Max hanging off the sculpture!

AS

Graduating to a Skateboard

Max is growing up fast and one of the birthday presents he received recently was a skateboard ... to supplement his scooter. We're down in Canberra to collect Max for the school holidays and yesterday was the first opportunity to see him tentatively in action at the Belconnen skate park. So here are two action shots. Max doesn't go fast yet, which is just as well because some of the older kids are hair-raising!

AS