A Dry Continent?

Australia has the reputation of being a dry continent and, indeed, we have sifting sand dunes in the Simpson Desert that resemble a Saharan landscape. On the other hand we can record some impressive rain events, one of which has just occurred. Tropical cyclone Debbie hit the central Queensland coast 2-3 days ago, accompanied by violent winds of over 250 km per hour. I doubt if many of my readers have ever experienced any storm over 100 km per hour, a figure 2.5 times that level caused massive damage to buildings, trees, crops, power-lines, high-priced yachts and other infrastructure.

But the rainfall received by the town of Mackay was staggering. In the last four days it has received 478 mm of rain (or 19 inches). That's almost two-thirds of the annual rainfall we receive here in Armidale or, if I remember correctly, the annual rainfall of the south coast of England. And, worse still, the system is heading southwards in our direction. As yet Armidale has no strong winds - indeed right now it's dead calm, but the winds are picking up on the coast close to the Queensland border. But it started raining about 2 hours ago and there are forecasts for up to 100 mm (4 inches) on the Northern Tablelands where we live.

My cousin Carol and her daughter, Vivienne, who live near Blackpool in Lancashire (UK) are currently visiting Australia - we're meeting up on Saturday in Sydney - and, guess what. They're staying now on the Gold Coast where maybe 200 mm (8 inches) is about to fall! It's not exactly great holiday weather. The figure at dawn today had already reached 85 mm and in the mountains behind it was more like 150mm already. I hope they've got webbed feet!

AS

Art Exhibition and Dinner

The nearby town of Uralla stages an annual art exhibition organised by their Rotary Club and we've been there several times in the past, even buying the odd picture. This year, as in the past, Armidale, Uralla, Walcha and other Rotary Clubs got together and organised a fund-raising dinner in the exhibition hall - a nice venue because we were surrounded by some great art-works, many done by locals, while we ate a delicious meal served by youngsters taking some sort of catering qualification and talked to people whom we had not previously met. These pictures provide some idea of the event's quality. Dot came along too, the first time she's attended a Rotary event as far as I know.

We were asked at the door to nominate our two favourite pictures one from (a) general exhibit and the second from (b) the young artists collection. My choice came down to the two pictures below, the first showing dragonflies on a pond - very impressionistic and the second showing the courtyard and doorway of a home on the Greek island of Mykonos in the Cyclades. The second struck me as very atmospheric and it was my first choice..

This next image shows two of my favourite pictures produced by pupils in years 7 to 9 (roughly 13 to 15 y.o.). They're the two large impressionistic items in the middle - and the bottom one had been given a gong by the exhibition's organisers.

And here's another exhibit that I liked very much. Alas, the most favoured images I gathered from the chatter around me were landscapes or pictures of farms and farm-houses or maybe images of country towns. Am I alone in eschewing the common place and preferring the unusual?

And here's where we were dining, taken shortly after the end of the meal.

My mantra on life is increasingly becoming: 'do something new'. I like to visit new places, countries, cultures, environments, technological developments, innovative businesses, social groups and so on. Thus, for example, Dot and I have just booked our first cruise with some intersting side trips. You'll find out where in the next few months.

AS

A Sad Event

Since we feed seeds to our local bird population copiously, we get visits from a wide variety of species such as eastern rosellas and their crimson compatriots, king parrots, rainbow lorikeets, crested pigeons and, of course, galahs which are possibly the most numerous. More recently, we've even proved attractive to a host of white corellas, which are relatively new to Armidale but whose population is expanding rapidly. The attraction is our seed-bearing pistachio Chinensis and the corellas get at the seed by bouncing up and down on twigs bearing the seed from the tree's main branches and then having their meal at leisure on the ground. It's a pain having to go around picking up those twigs.

Because of the abundant feed we've discovered that we're setting up an old-folks home for birds, an especially it seems for galahs. We have already been undertakers to several deceased members of that species. For the past week we have witnessed the slow decline of another galah, a bird that no longer seems to be able to fly. It even cannot now fly away like galahs always seem to do when humans get too close. When I'm out cycling whole flocks take to the air simultaneously and chattering voluminously. But our poor bird just looks at us inquisitively and backs off at a slow pace when approached. Well, this afternoon I had to mow an overly long lawn after all the heavy rain we've had recently - a job I didn't want to do in case I gave our elderly galah a cardiac arrest.

Well I pulled the cord and mower started. In order to reduce avian consternation kept the revs low and started at the far end of the garden from where our guest was huddled. The strategy worked and the bird remained still, cocking its head to observe progress. As I got closer and closer it began to shuffle and eventually moved as far as it conveniently could, but never flew off like a healthy bird. In fact, it let me get within a couples of meters (yards) of where it was observing me. And then I moved further away to finish off the rest of the lawn with some thoughts springing to my mind.

Do birds experience empathy? Can they recognise specimens of our species and learn to fear some but not others? Are they subject to pastoral care by members of their own species? Since I tried to hand-feed the poor creature this morning, perhaps it recognised me as a benefactor! Perhaps it valued future delivery of food highly and didn't want to foreclose on that option! Perhaps the bird has learned to value neat and tidy gardens! Maybe it valued my presence because I've scared off the corella pests plaguing its dying days! And, on the issue of pastoral care, I saw another galah land near its relative when I turned the mower off and stand by our guest, looking it up and down.

My guess is that it's only a few days before our guest shuffles off its mortal coil and we have another departure ceremony.

AS

Seasons of New England

Uralla, a little town 22 km (c. 14 miles) to the south of Armidale, holds an annual festival called Seasons of New England that's a show-case for local small business-people or those engaged in all sorts of craft activities. So there are many stalls providing all manner of foods, wood or metal objects, meals (Dot had Moroccan and I had Turkish!), cosmetics, clothing and accessories, drinks (craft beers, wines, apple cider), and so on. In fact, if one were destitute and starving it might be possible to survive by snacking on the tasting mechanisms operated by the stalls. There are pony rides for children and other kids' activities including face-painting. There was even a stage where a band could perform, but no musicians while we there in late morning.

All the stalls are under cover - demountable square tent-like structures, which might be necessary in inclement weather. However, something remarkable happened yesterday. It didn't rain and the sun put in an appearance, unlike much of March so far.  As I type this on Sunday morning we're back to a scene of leaden skies and a bucket-load of water heading our way! Even the dining areas with seats and tables were under cover in Uralla and for good reason had we exchanged the last two days.

Such festivals are an integral part of community, especially in rural areas where they can bring together for common purpose the highly scattered farming families who might be located even 60 or 80 km (up to 50 miles) away even within Uralla Shire itself. But, interestingly, we met up with many people we know from Armidale, which is perhaps not surprising as Uralla is partly a dormitory suburb of Armidale - about a 12 minute drive away along a good road. We must have spent a couple of hours wandering around the festival, nattering to friends, and consuming our meals.

And, after trying some of the local cider, I bought a four-pack. As you can see, it's called bone-dry, which was an accurate description. Unlike most cider that's quite sweet, the makers of this brew managed to remove a lot of the sugar content and, since I liked the flavour, I bought a small supply.

This part of the Northern Tablelands used to be one of Australia's leading apple growing regions, but only a few remnant orchards are still in operation. However, I'm pretty sure the apples used in the cider are local-grown.

AS

Flood

On the 21st March we tend begin thinking that winter's on its way. But this year has been very different to most in that warm weather has continued to enshroud us. At 7 am this morning I was out on my bike because the temperature was so warm - about 18 C and rode about the usual 16 km or 10 miles. However, I did have an ulterior motive for rising that early. Last night the weather forecasts for today talked of heavy rainfall driven by humid winds coming off the Coral Sea and true to expectations a few peals of thunder heralded the start of some very heavy rain. Poor Dot had to rush into the garden to salvage some washing from the line and did a good job at the rescue.

Then, in the space of 40 minutes we had a dump of 21 mm, after which the rain retreated. Alas, a second dump started after half an hour and in a short space of time the gauge registered another 14 mm. So, in a little under two hours we received 45 mm (or 1.77 inches) and parts of our garden disappeared under water. Just have a quick look:

Chairs under water.

Some remnant towels on the line - much wetter than when they came out of the spin dryer.

Lake Kenalmac rising and spilling out on to our driveway.

I'm enrolling in a course in Ark Construction 101 just in case things go on like this, but I think that Armidale is fairly safe at 1000 m above sea level. If waters rose this high just about all of Britain would disappear and solve the Brexit crisis.

AS

Autumn Parade

This year marks the 25th anniversary of the first Armidale Autumn Parade and, as far as I could see, it was the biggest and best yet with 66 different component entries - social, cultural, commercial, community service, historical, educational, theatrical, musical and so on. And the length of the parade was amazing. It must have been something like 5 km long and it took something like 80 minutes to pass by as it wound through town.

I took over 60 pictures of the event, but I cannot provide them all in this post, so I'll just select some of the more interesting to give you a flavour of the parade. As with the other events I've written about this morning, the weather was poor, but that didn't seem to faze either the performers / participants or the sizeable audience. So, we start with the Armidale Pipe band heading the Parade.

Followed by some enormous pieces of scary Council equipment like this machine for tearing up road surfaces.

Then came a community bus from the little town of Guyra to our north.

And a parade of antique cars like this 1907 model.

Then came some school floats like this one containing Aboriginal kids, followed by marching students from various university colleges like this group.

Next we saw an amazing array of nationalities living in Armidale, starting with Antigua, Barbuda and Bangladesh, and going on to such nations as Bhutan, Syria and Vietnam.

Here we have the Tamworth Pipers heading up another stage in the proceedings.

They were followed by a whacky duo on models of antique vehicles and soon after by a whimsical theatrical group, some boy scouts, and another school contingent that was a bit more razzmatazz than the others.

Next came various community groups including these environmentalists, medieval warriors, theatrical participants in a show called Monty Python's Spamalot, and the Marching Koalas!

The next elements in the parade were service providers like the Armidale Community Carevan, a group providing tourists with conducted motorcycle tours, the army, hunters, and emergency service workers.

They, in turn, were followed by private machinery suppliers, lovers of old farm machinery, and more vehicles form state emergency services, some of whom didn't look quite human!

AS

A Drizzle of Music

The weather at this time of year is often warm and sunny, but today we experienced Scottish weather, which was perfect for one of the events I'm about to describe. By Scottish weather I mean temperatures of around 12 C and a heavy drizzle dripping from a leaden sky ... or should I say Skye? I once attended a pipe band competition at Portree, the main town on Skye. It took place one evening and the weather was not too different to what I experienced here today, and moreover perfect for the event in question, which consisted of a series of bands playing highland laments!

The first musical event attached to the Armidale Autumn Festival was the traditional breakfast with the band. By the way, Armidale is named after the town on the Isle of Skye that's home to the clan McDonald and it was named in the early 1830s by Commissioner McDonald of the NSW government. I wonder if there's a link! The breakfast is a fund-raiser for the band and while we eat breakfasts prepared by various service club's - including mine, which is Armidale Rotary North - the band keeps us happy with a range of familiar tunes. Band membership runs right across the age spectrum and even includes under 10s. Breakfasts are normally held outside in a park, but today's weather conditions forced us under cover, as these pictures show. Since the band HQ is close to one of major car-parks, the event was split between the two.

So here we are cosy in the Band Room, and some of my readers may recognise Dot. However, other diners preferred to eat outside in order to hear the band better. Outside in this case was the ground floor of a two-storey car park.

And here's the band all dressed in their smart uniforms.

And here, also under cover, were the chefs preparing the rather good breakfasts, with the second of these sowing the team from Armidale Rotary North.

An hour or so later, with the drizzle getting heavier, I was in the Mall to welcome the massed pipe bands of Armidale, Tamworth and Moree. The weather must have been a shock for pipers and drummers from Moree where temperatures for the last 3 months have averaged over 30 C daily. Still, they played brilliantly a medley of traditional Scottish songs ... along with Waltzing Matilda.

I found their performance very atmospheric and had, in my mind, images of much of Scotland which I've visited over the centuries from the southern borders, and central lowlands including Edinburgh and Glasgow, to Aberdeen and Inverness in the north-east, Caithness, the western mainland, and both the Inner and Outer Hebrides. I find the countryside so atmospheric I'm resolving to revisit many of my old haunts and especially take Dot to such islands as Mull, Iona, Staffa and Skye.

AS