Bush School Sesquicentenary

The city of Armidale turned 150 years old the other day, but so also did a tiny bush school at Kelly's Plains maybe 10 km out of town. We went there today to the celebration and look over where Dot's uncle, Bob Burling, taught for 27 years until his retirement in 1973. I've never met him, but have caught up with his recently deceased son, Jim, who went to school with Dot.

Kelly's Plains is a tract of flattish grazing country south of Armidale as this picture shows and we surmised that the school opened to the service the children of workers on the surrounding pastoral stations. I have no idea who Kelly was!

At the start of the 1970s, this was the only school building - I presume it was a one-teacher primary school of which many still exist in remote locations. There was also a now demolished teacher's house. Dot, with her back to us, is looking at photos of her uncle.

Nowadays, paradoxically, the school has more class-rooms and facilities, but not because of an explosion in farm population. Quite the opposite. Most farms require little labour, but the locality has an explosion of hobby farms owned by people working in Armidale. The class-rooms and the library were open for inspection, and even the canteen was producing meals for visitors like us. Note the straw bales for seating.

There was some art-work painted on corrugated iron and the obligatory jumping castle.

And, in a covered area behind the school were some money making ventures helping the school's finances selling lemonade, second-hand books, jewellery, food and so on - even a grade 5 pupil busking on his violin. It was interesting trip down memory lane for both of us out in the countryside.

AS

Keys of the City

Last Friday saw an unusual event in Armidale - a double anniversary with the number of years celebrated in one twice the other, and the number of years being substantial in Australian terms. 2013 marks the 75th birthday of the University of New England and the 150th anniversary of Armidale achieving city status. To celebrate the occasion, the latter bestowed the Keys of the City on the former, which comprises no less than about one-third of the city's economy. In a sense, UNE is the city's economy.

Plans for the event included a procession of university staff in full regalia from St Mary's cathedral to the town mall where the investiture was to occur in the open air. A heavy shower put paid to that and the event was transferred to the Town Hall with a short, perhaps 3 minute, procession to take place between the Council Chambers and the Town Hall. Fortunately the rain stopped in time to avoid drenching academic regalia, but it did reduce the crowd in attendance quite dramatically. The following pictures show the procession, but not the investiture.

While the city band played appropriate processional music, the academics commenced their long journey behind an army contingent presumably drawn from the reserve unit on campus. At least that corps marched briskly.

The academics followed in what was more like a funereal amble, which is perhaps a metaphor for the disparate and individual nature of academic life. Here we see the chancellor and mayor following behind the mace - the third such weapon in this and most recent post to these pages. Further behind were quite a few academic staff.

And bringing up the rear were numerous school children, which at least provided an audience!

Other tasks prevented me from hearing the various congratulatory speeches.

AS

Old Parliament House

Earlier this week I had an expenses paid meeting in Canberra with the Regional Australia Institute, of which I am a Fellow. The meeting was to target the Institute's research agenda for 2014 and its board, fellows and research team were all brought together at the Margaret Whitlam Pavilion in Canberra's Arboretum.. Interestingly, I have just completed a briefing paper on regional policy for the Institute and I was surprised to see that the agenda followed closely my identification of key research issues and policy directions.

I know the chair of the Institute's board quite well because he also heads the Northern Inland Regional Development Board, which covers Armidale, the Northern Tablelands and adjoining regions. And we were on the same flights to Sydney and then on Canberra. He's also a prominent local farmer ... well, local is nearly 200 km (or 125 miles) away! He liked my ideas greatly and our opinions on regional development policy directions were almost identical.

I had a free day after that meeting before staying the night with Bec, Rob and Max in the Canberra suburbs and since my hotel was located right in centre of the city I decided to tackle some its many museums starting with Old Parliament House. This was the parliament building for maybe 61 years until it was superseded by the new building in 1988, the year of Australia's bicentenary. After that it was turned into a museum of Australian Democracy. Despite having been in the new building many times, I cannot recall being in the old one until a couple of days ago and so the visit was of considerable interest to me. Something of what I saw is illustrated here:

Old Parliament House - the mast in the background is atop the new parliament building.

Cheating a little! This is the nearby Treasury Building, but Bec's office is a new extension to it.

This is the old House of Representatives chamber, with the ceremonial mace in the foreground.

The speaker's chair. and nearby despatch boxes.

The Senate Chamber. Notice how we borrowed American terms for our debating chambers.

A picture of the formal opening of parliament by the Queen early in her reign. It hangs in Kings Hall.

The government party room and Prime Minister's Office. The last incumbent was Bob Hawke.

Various members' offices

Speaker's suite.

Another Mace.

Curtin's office. He was war-time Prime Minister, Churchill's colleague down-under.

Opposition party room.

Part of the President of the Senate's Suite - used by HM during her stay at Parliament House.

That presumably makes this the Royal Flush!

The President of the Senate had a nice office.

The Country Party room (the Country Party is now the National Party).

Kings Hall.

Senate courtyard, where the Senators could breathe some fresh air.

I hope you enjoyed this tour as much as I did. By the way, here's a self-picture of me sitting in a speaker's chair taken with my mobile phone.

AS

I Love This Season

A short while ago I commented that Spring had arrived and our garden plants were racing to produce amazing flowers. Well, this is part two of the story because since then a whole lot more flowers have appeared to create a riot of colour. And I must thank Dot for all her hard work in the garden making this possible, along with some wonderful weather which saw our temperatures reach 24 C today ... and tomorrow's forecast is 28 C in what is still early Spring.

Here are the ;pictures I took this afternoon in brilliant sunshine. I guess you'll be able to put a name to most of the plants!

Most will be familiar to Europeans, but the last one is an Australian native ... the bottlebrush.

AS

Animal Antics

We've had two strange events in our garden in the last 24 hours, both involving local wildlife.

As noted in an earlier post, Armidale has been hot and dry recently. Yesterday afternoon, I decided to fertilise our lawn and water it in to make the grass lush and green. Well I didn't expect either of the following scenes. The first shows a couple of crested pigeons (Ocyphaps lophotes) having a bath under the garden sprinkler. Both husband and wife stayed there 5 minutes soaking up the moisture and spreading their wings presumably to wash their wing-pits just like I wash my arm-pits in the shower!

And when I got up this morning I went to feed our local assortment of crested pigeons, rainbow lorikeets, king parrots, eastern and crimson rosellas, and galahs ... among others.  We have 3 bird feeders and a constant stream of visitors. However, I didn't expect this guest! It is either a young eastern grey Kangaroo or a Wallaby. Either way, it was way off course. To my knowledge we've never previously had this form of wild-life here. The creature was very nervous and obviously frightened and took off we know not where. It presumably leapt a 1.3 m high fence into a neighbour's garden.

AS

Quick Trip to Bundarra

We're in the middle of the October long week-end, a 3 day public holiday when people leave town to visit friends, relatives, or places of interest. Well, Dot and I decided to go for a short drive not least because of the brilliant weather we're experiencing ... or perhaps enduring. Summer has come early and September's temperatures averaged 4 degrees C higher than average. Yesterday was no different: a top of 26 C, not a cloud in the sky, and humidity so low that distant objects were crystal clear. The air in New England has been totally pollution free - a bit like I imagine it to be in Antarctica.

Anyway, we drove 80 km westwards over the Great (Continental) Divide and along Thunderbolt's Way towards the little town of Bundarra, population 400 for a spot of lunch. It's a tiny rural service centre with few services apart from a general store, garage, pub, agricultural supplies, aged care facility, school and police station .. the sort of things one would automatically expect. But, like many such places, it is struggling to maintain its population and services as people move away from agricultural properties towards the brighter lights of Armidale, Tamworth, Sydney and the coast.

That said, many of the buildings date back to the 19th century (great antiquity by our standards) and are listed on the Register of the National Estate. Indeed, the town has been used as a film setting on those grounds. And Fred Ward (alias Captain Thunderbolt) was a famous bush ranger - the sort of guy who held up stage coaches, wild-west style. The most famous structure too obtain Register status is the five-span iron lattice truss bridge constructed in 1881. The waters It spans the Gwydir river, one of the large tributaries of the Darling River that joins the Murray before entering the sea near Adelaide some 1,600 km away by road. The pictures show the bridge and the river.

The river, looking east upstream towards the Guyra plateau (c. 1450 m).

And looking westwards. I've been told that platypus can be seen in the river nearby, but none was visible during our visit.

Our return journey was via Torryburn along a single-lane but sealed road traversing some beautiful and highly productive farmland - home to a succession of large properties. I imagine Torryburn, named after a settlement on the Firth of Forth, once had a few houses and maybe a shop, but today there is nothing of the kind, only rolling farm-land.

AS