Spring Flowers

I do like this time of year. With the arrival of Spring (well, Summer as earlier posts have suggested) our garden bursts into colour. I took a quick trip around the garden yesterday with my camera to show you what I mean. Here, for example, is our Banksia Rose (Rosa banksiae, native to central and western China). It is a great climbing plant with a mass of yellow flowers.

Then we have a few azaleas like the white and pink version shown here. Azaleas are common around the world.

The Camellia (family Theaceae, from East Asia) is now past its best, but still putting on a show, and I attach a blurred image of our lovely cream Weigela (family Caprifoliaceae) also from East Asia.

AS

Wild Weather

Armidale has just had its hottest day in about 7 months with a top temperature of 29 C (84 F) ... amazing for September (or March in the northern hemisphere). And Sydney was well into the 30s. Yet 400 km to the south-west of Sydney in the Snowy Mountains it was, believe it or not, snowing. The blizzard there was driven by ferocious winds and rain coming in off the southern ocean.

On another subject, Australians were today in a way commiserating with New Zealand today after their loss in the America's Cup on San Francisco Bay which locals were following closely. I say 'in a way' because  much of the crew of the winning American vessel were actually Australians and New Zealanders, together with some Dutchmen. So the US provided the capital, but many of the crew were from down-under and the skipper was an Australian. So we had it both ways in this event.

AS

UNE Colleges' Chamber Ensemble Concert

We attended a surprise concert last night. It was (a) free, (b) involved university students, (c) mixed mostly classical music and jazz, and (d) the items were surprisingly well performed. Unknown to me, Deidre Rickards AO, who Dot knows, bought together student musicians to form the Colleges' Chamber Ensembles. The AO incidentally stands for Order of Australia, which was awarded for her services to music. I didn't know much talent we have.

The performance lasted a little over an hour and started with a highland lament played on the bagpipes, Andrew Nash. Then a flute ensemble played the Dance of the Reed Pipes from Tchaikovsky's Nutcraker Suite and Jordan's 'The Little Red Monkey'. Apologies for the poor quality of the photos because the concert hall's lighting was dim and the performers were some distance away.

One of the flautists, Kate Steele, then performed a lively waltz by John Rutter (born in 1945 just after me and Dot). Then it was the turn of a string 'quartet' (actually five members), who performed Haydn's Divertimento in G and Matthew Ryan, a recorder player, who played Telemann's Sonata in D minor.

After the string 'quartet' played the first movement of Mozart's delightful string quintet in C, Neree Pepperall sang Puccini's 'O mio babbino caro' from 'Gianni Schicchi'. She had a powerful voice. The flute ensemble returned for Eugene Bozza's 'Jour d'ete a la Montagne (apologies for the absence of accents), ushering iin the Jazz Combo who performed works entitled Cantaloupe Island and Watermelon Man (by Herbie Hancock) and Song for my Father (Horace Silver). The Jazz Combo were obviously having a ball - especially the excellent pianist (Martyn Peters) and the drummer (Stephen Harris). Neither of these gentlemen could be called a student, but that circumstance hardly dented the enjoyment of the the Combo's music.

All in all, this was a fine event and we look forward to attending the next one.

AS

Heatwave?

In Australia it is officially still early Spring, but summer has already arrived in Armidale. The forecast temperatures for the next three days are 27, 29 and 25 degrees C (80, 84, 77 F) and few, if any, clouds are expected in the sky. In Britain this would be called a heatwave, though occasional warm days are not that unusual here at this time of the year. Perhaps the real danger is not the warmth, but the absence of rain. Warm and dry conditions are the perfect recipe for damaging bush-fires, so I imagine our local bush-fire brigades are on edge right now. That said, the immediate Armidale district rarely experiences damaging fires and the greater risk lies in nearby national parks, which provide difficult terrain for fire management. For my part, I rather like the warm weather and I look forward to summery conditions for the next 7 months.

Here are a couple of local residents - rainbow lorikeets - enjoying the warm weather:

AS

Waterways Wildlife Park

After our lunch at the Porchetta festival, Bec and Rob headed off to their wedding and our party of 3 (including Dot and Max) took a short ride out of town to the Waterways wildlife park. I've been past the spot many times on the way to Coonabarabran or Canberra, but I've never previously noticed its existence. The park is basically home to Australian native animals of the usual kinds: koalas (lots of them), kangaroos, wallabies, parrots and wedge-tailed eagles, emus, possums, dingos, echidnas, wombats and so on. They are housed among pleasant native vegetation, though the compounds themselves are rather heath-robinson. Basically, a local family has collected the exhibits and turned them into a mini zoo with a few play areas, which Max liked, and barbecue facilities for those seeking longer stays. Ours was a short, but entertaining visit and some of the animals are shown here - though not the birds which didn't photograph well in their aviaries:

AS

Entertaining the Kids

The Porchetta festival noted in the last posting was a family affair, but as we know from experience youngsters are rarely enthused by ethnic foods and the mystique surrounding them. The festival solved this problem easily by putting on a wonderful range of activities for kids of all ages - as the following pictures reveal. The first shows Max on stilts - not as easy as it might appear.

A real Punch and Judy show with traditional characters. Alas I took the photo after the puppets disappeared!

Fiddling with sticks. Max began to get the hand of it after a while.

Meanwhile, Bec succeeded in holding her spinning plate aloft, something I couldn't master.

There was face painting, but all the boys received the same look. Max wasn't overly impressed and washed his off before we went to the wildlife park.

The juggler was a big attraction for kids of all ages ... and adults.

 
AS

Porchetta Festival

For the last day or so we have been in Gunnedah, an agricultural service centre about 200 km (125 miles - a 2 hour drive) from our home in Armidale. We went there to look after Max while his parents attended the wedding of a good friend of theirs. By chance, the wedding was scheduled on the same as the town's annual Porchetta festival, which for some reason celebrates most things Italian, except of course for Berlusconi's politics. Quite a few towns in Australia are home to numerous Italian migrants, for example Griffith in southern NSW, but I've never associated Gunnedah with Italians.

The festival, which is hugely popular despite this being only the fifth such event, is a culinary extravaganza - with nearly all the food mirroring the flavours of Italy. I immediately sought out porchetta on panini but the result was a little disappointing with the meat (roast pork) being too fatty for someone with a cardiac condition. So I passed that on to one of our party and made do with tasty gnocchi instead. I should add that the variety of food was enormous and wolfed down by hundreds of excited participants. By the way, the gnocchi cost only 4000 lire, which I thought very reasonable. Yes, I know that Italy now uses the Euro, but we used fake currency to add authenticity to the event.

The festival was open-air, and nature provided us with a brilliant day - about 22 C, a gentle breeze and not a cloud in the sky. Participants sat at tables and chairs or on bales of hay thoughtfully strewn around. There was a lively band playing Italian popular music rather than Verdi arias. The food-stalls each sold different dishes and were housed in little tent-like structures dotted around. Half the fun was cruising around to see what was on offer.

The balloons on display are, of course, in Italy's colours. The band was not attracting much of an audience when I took this photo, but the crowd soon built up as diners looked for a place to devour their meals!

This was an attractive event and both Dot and I want to go again next year.

AS

Going .. Going .. Gone Solar

With the ever mounting cost of electricity, we've gone solar! This morning, workers for our supplier AusGreen Solar Solutions turned up as early as 6.30 am to begin the installation of our 11 panel roof-top system and by 10 am everything was in place and we're now contributing to the national grid.

A local electrician contributed to the team of 3 and wired up our Photovoltaic Converter. This lets us see in real time the amount of electricity being generated from our roof-top and how much is being fed back into the system, for which get a financial credit from Origin Energy. Calculations show that we will halve our electricity bills and the system will pay for itself in about 4 years without any government subsidy.

Our panels are of superior Canadian design with high efficiency and thicker glass than usual, which is less likely to be damaged by the hail we sometimes get here. I have a few pictures of the job being done.

Our new inverter above the electricity box:

Solar panels awaiting haulage to the roof:

Working on the roof:

Putting on the finishing touches:

AS

Sheer Heaven

Dot and I have just returned from an extremely impressive concert given by AcO2, or the Australian Chamber Orchestra's youth division. The average age of the performers must have been in the early 20s. It was 90 minutes of sheer bliss as the 17 members played four works for string ensemble (10 violins, 3 violas, 3 cellos and a double bass). Their ensemble work was brilliant and the sounds of individual instruments was extremely delicate and controlled.

The works played were also rarely heard, but highly diverse and often emotionally intense. The first, by Australian composer Roger Smalley, was entitled Birthday Tango (2006), and reminded me of the trip I took with Rebecca a decade ago to Buenos Aires where we saw numerous street performers dancing the Tango around the Casa Rosa and other places. It had the strong rhythms of the Tango, but the score was delicately woven and complex - modern music at its best. Mozart's Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (1775) was written when he was only 19 - but anticipated the quality of his later compositions. After the intermission we treated to an emotionally charged work by the Estonian composer Arvo Part, his Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten for string orchestra and bell (1977). The sounds produced were brilliant and unbelievably sustained. Try to listen to it if you can. It bought the house down. And this was paired with Britten's own highly charged Variations on a Theme of Frank Bridge (1937). This successful work launched Britten's career as a composer and is highly regarded.

So there were two 20th century works and one dating from just 7 years ago at the start of the 21st century. The  sell-out audience was ecstatic and the ensemble received great applause - sufficient to guarantee an encore. This was a beautiful Finnish folk song, presumably penned by Sibelius and selected because one of the performers was from that country. Armidale is really lucky with the constant flow of top class performers despite its small population and remoteness. Here are some of the orchestra's performers.

AS 

Tony Windsor's Farewell BBQ

Dot and I travelled to Tamworth yesterday to attend a thank-you barbecue for our retired federal Member of Parliament, Tony Windsor. I particularly wanted to go because, in my opinion, he was a great representative of the New England electorate, one of the most impressive politicians of the last decade, and a long-term friend. I've known Tony for perhaps 20 years or more and, during that time, he has represented seats in both State (NSW) and Federal parliaments as an independent, not one of the major parties. And he excelled in what MPs should do: listen to their electorates, develop considered positions on issues of the day and proposed legislation, and do this on the basis of facts, not party-room dictates. In short, he was a true independent and we need a lot more of them these days.

The event was held in Bicentennial Park in Tamworth, 110 km south of here on a lovely sunny and warm day (about 26 C). It was very well attended by people from all over the New England electorate. And just to give you a feel for the sizes of rural electorates, ours is about 450 km (280 miles) from north to south and 200 km (125 miles) from east to west. That makes an area of roughly 90,000 sq km (or 35,000 sq miles). That means a lot of travelling by road to attend regional functions and talk to people, which must be very wearing. Tony can now retire to his farm at Werris Creek and enjoy life with his family.

Perhaps 250 people attended the free BBQ and Tony laid on a good spread with the local rotary club providing the sausage sizzle and a mobile Barrista providing the coffee, tea and chai latte. Participants reflected a cross-section of rural society, with academics, farmers, small business-people, service workers and trades-people rubbing shoulders. Basically, we all admired someone who reflected our concerns and conveyed them them independently and articulately to parliament rather than vote on party lines. He also held the balance of power between the two blocks in the last parliament and was in a unique position to influence (a) who governed and (b) the success of their legislative programs. Remarkably, but predictably for me, he chose to support the ALP, despite representing a conservative electorate. In my view, this was because he had an in-depth grasp of key issues and a realisation that the Liberal-National coalition had a set of antiquated views and a purely negative platform. And the ALP was hardly an old-style socialist party. In fact, during their term of office Australia reached number 3 on the Heritage Foundation's index of Economic Freedom - way ahead of the US and the UK!

Here are some pictures of the event. I think they're self explanatory, so I've avoided individual commentary.

AS

General Election

Australia is having one of its 3 yearly elections for Federal parliament today and Dot and I voted really early - at 8 am sharp. This is because it takes an immense time to fill in ballot papers and we anticipated long queues later in the day. The Representatives seat for New England had 9 candidates and we had to number all 9 in order of preference!. The Senate ballot paper for NSW had, believe it or not precisely 110 candidates, mostly grouped by affiliation. We could do two things. First,we could select just one box for the group we supported and that means taking all the group's candidates in the order they've selected. Alternatively, we could number all the boxes from 1 to 110, which is what I did! The ballot paper was at least 1 metre long and it took an eternity to complete.

Since the major parties disgraced themselves with endless lies and platitudes, I went for 21st century (i.e. modern) people who were thinking about the future, rather than 19th or 20th century relics.

AS