Ella , Flynn and Emily pay us a visit

We were delighted to host our daughter, Emily, and her children Ella and Flynn at home just a week or so ago. They're visiting Australia for Xmas from their home in California's Silicon Valley and the weather turned out to be brilliantly hot a sunny.

We had a great time together as a family and these few pictures hardly do justice to the things we saw and did. Here are the grand-kids helping to construct our artificial Xmas tree

Here's Flynn practising the piano. He only coming up to 3 years old, but if he continues he might emulate Mozart!

They put on capes and ran around the house playing with balloons before heading back to the piano for a performance.

And they helped Grandma make some sandwiches for a trip to the park.

Here we are in the park with Armidale's creeklands looking beautiful in the morning sun. We saw lots of ducks either on the pond or sheltering under trees and bushes from the hot sun. And there were flocks of white Corellas making a din either on the ground or up in the trees.

E and F enjoyed crossing bridges and running around on the grass.

A lovely time was had by all

AS

Dawn Over the Pacific

The hotel I stayed in during the conference I recently attended at Surfers Paradise in Southern Queensland was located right on the beach-front> Moreover, my room was on the 17 th floor and I had a good view over the coastline so that when I rose early in the morning I saw beautiful sunrises.

The following pictures were taken at about 4.30 before I set off on one of my daily power walks northwards along the Promenade. I think you'll agree that the views were terrific. The first thing that caught my attention in the morning sky was a brilliantly bright planet, namely Venus.

Next, I cast my eye southwards towards Collangatta in the far distance at the southern end of the Gold Coast and saw a slight brightening of the sky. This view effectively looks south-east and, of course, in mid summer it's the south-eastern portion of the sky that brightens first.

 This picture was a taken a few minutes later and shifts perspective around more to the East.

At ab out this time I saw some people on the beach expressing their admiration for each other through a nice piece of design and textual content. I'll leave you to fathom it out!

Next, the gold-red orb of the sum pokes above the horizon. Believe me, it's just visible on the horizon in the first of the trilogy.

Ans it's clearly visible in the next to. Notice how flat the sea looks in the absence of any significant breeze

AS

An Elevated Reception

I'm up here on the Gold Coast in south-east Queensland from Tuesday to Friday to attend the latest State of Australia's Cities (SOAC) conference. It's all about urban management / planning and I'm chairing a session today and also presenting my paper, which has been accepeted for publication.

We started with a reception on Tuesday evening atop Australia's tallest residential building - and perhaps the highest in the southern hemisphere. This blog post presents the views we had from the top - and 77 th - floor of the very recent and elegant building shown here:

This picture was actually taken the following morning when I went out for a long walk starting at about 5.30 am. It's nice and cool then! The rest of the pictures were taken at sunset the previous evening and may seem a little dark. Surfers Paradise, the name of the district where the conference was held is probably Australia's premier seaside resort, with lovely sandy beaches, waterways, and so on - with a backdrop of green hills. And, as the pictures will show it's a bit like Miami Beach in Florida, replete with lots of white towers that serve as hotels or private residential accommodation. Would you believe that 70 years ago, at the end of the second world war, the only thing you'd see in most of the views presented would have been a few beach shacks, probably made of wood and corrugated iron! Now there's a city of 500,000 + inhabitants with a great life-style and burgeoning high-tech economy.

This shows the Nerang River which flows into a broad estuary full of expensive boats and tourist attractions like Seaworld.

Looking South the City of the Gold Coast stretches in the thin ribbon towards the NSW border, with the border ranges rising right background.

Many of the residents live on high-priced properties dotted around canal estates etched from the Nerang river's flood plain. There you can have two garages, one for the cars and the other for your boat. I hope that the forecast 2 m rise in sea-level won't happen any time soon. It could rpove rather expensive for the residents!

I'd better head back to preparing my presentation for today

AS

A Rash of Fungi

After a long dry spell the weather here has become much wetter and we've had a rash of fungi appearing in our lawn.

The first to emerge was a swarm of toadstools as shown in this picture. This didn't surprise us as this is now a regular event after heavy rain.

However, this morning something strange and unheralded appeared. The lawn was covered in a yellow frothy substance. Does anyone know what this fungus is? It looks quite pretty, but I have a feeling that it could be deadly!

AS

Trevenna

Today was open day for the gardens at Trevenna, home of the University of New England's Vice Chancellor. Trevenna is apparently Cornish for farm on a hillside, which probably describes accurately the situation when the house was completed in 1892. Horbury Hunt, the architect, one of the most prominent of his era in Australia and, born in Canada, his  design for Trevenna mixed American Shingle with Queen Anne styles.

The home came into the University's possession in 1962 and was subsequently occupied by no less than 13 Vice-Chancellors during the last 53 years, each living there for about 4 years on average - not a long tenure. The gardens have recently been upgraded and are very pleasant as these pictures show. Large numbers of Armidalians attended and were greeted with tea and coffee and scones. We also met many colleagues and friends who were enthralled with the gardens.

Border with rhododendrons.

View across the university's playing fields with hills beyond.

Lake Zot at the edge of the playing fields. This lake stores water for irrigating those fields. The origin of the name Zot is lost in time and I'd appreciate knowing its origin.

Dot walks through a newly planted orchard of fruit trees. I wonder if our current VC did this herself!

Sundials are not much use on a dull day!

More rhododendrons.

Sipping coffee or tee in the northern gardens

AS

Alice Springs Telegraph Station

On the most crucial infrastructure works in 19th century Australia was the overland telegraph line connecting Darwin with Port Augusta and Adelaide. This connected with telegraph lines coming in from south-east Asia and enabled fast communication with Europe and especially Britain. It began around 1870 and was a major feat considering the horrendous terrain it had to cross and logistics of supply the equipment and constructing the line. It was at this point that Afghan camels and their cameleers were imported for the task, giving rise ultimately to large feral herds of camels in the centre once they were released from their construction work and proceeded to do what camels do. Afghans also stayed on and eventually gave their name to the train that now travels from Adelaide to Darwin via Alice Springs - the Ghan.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Overland_Telegraph_Line.

Construction of the line was allocated to people like Stuart and Todd both of whom are now commemorated by features such as the Stuart Highway and the Todd River in the Alice and, of course, the original name for Alice Springs - Stuart!

The Alice Springs telegraph station is now a museum commemorating the heroic construction task and ultimately the operation of the line. I'm glad I wasn't around then! The conditions would have been highly challenging cut off from anything resembling civilisation and in a dessert climate where summer temperatures nudge 40 C every day.

Bits and pieces of the technology.

The room showing the history of the construction.

Kitchen and class-room serving what was quite a large compound.

Bec and Max experimenting with the facilities.

A lovely ghost gum.

Yes, the signal went down the line with aid of en elementary form of electricity.

I'd never seen a camel saddle before this.

This looks slightly more luxurious, but a suspect that the camels would have given a more gentle ride over the very rough local roads.

AS

Palm Valley and Cycad Gorge

After leaving Hermansburg, our minibus took off for Palm Valley, which contains an unusual collection of palm trees a long way from where one would expect palms - and in effect a remnant vegetation from a much wetter era. And alongside the palms are huge numbers of Cycads, another remnant vegetation, this time from the age of the dinosaurs in the Jurassic. Accompanying these vegetative attractions was the journal itself.  Our vehicle was 4WD and had to be given the long distance we had to travel on dirt roads to start with and then almost completely unformed roads including a stretch called the 'staircase' where our bus literally traversed a steeply tiered stretched of road on what was effectively bed-rock.

Once again have a look at the wonderful and unusual scenery. The creeks we crossed and re-crossed sometimes held a little water, but other spots were fairly dry, though there must be some fairly good sub-soil moisture to keep the plants growing. One again I should emphasise that the hard rock channels moisture into the gorges and there the shadows of cliffs reduce evaporation. I think the images are largely self-explanatory.

AS