Welcome Trump

In recent weeks our share-market portfolio has tanked about A$40,000 as trade wars across the world escalate. So commercially I'm no fan of Donald Trump. He's cost me a lot of money ... and more losses loom.

So why the turn of events mentioned in the title of this post? It's simple. My US family gave me a lovely Christmas present ... and I cannot thank them enough. My present contained the two exquisite items shown below. The first is a toilet roll where each sheet has an image of DT printed on it.

Can you imagine the thrill I'll receive each time I use those sheets to wipe my behind!? And, secondly, there was a tin of mints that I'll also enjoy ... and not just because I like the mint flavour and the opportunity to breath scented air over those with whom I'm talking. I'll enjoy trying to undermine DT's credibility by offering the tin to friends and relatives to select their own mint capsule. The looks of amazement will go some way to offset the financial losses he's imposed on me in recent months through his insane policies.

Do you share my sentiments? Please let me know.

AS

Rome comes to Canberra

We're in Canberra for Xmas and yesterday went to the National Museum on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin to see an amazing exhibition of artifacts lent by the British national museum in London. They are all connected with the Roman Empire and especially Rome itself. That said, a disproportionate quantity of exhibits came from the UK dating back to England's incorporation in the Roman Empire.

The display was of great interest to me especially, although Dot and Max, who were also in tow, seemed to find it riveting. Why me? Well, I have traveled over much of the territory embraced by Roman empire. I have for example been to Spain, Portugal and Morocco at the western end and, indeed, I have two pieces of Roman pottery I took from a Ruined roman city in Morocco siting on a shelf in my study. I have visited many Roman remains in France including the famous Pont du Gard and Italy itself - especially places like Rome and Ostia Attica. In the east, I have taken in Turkey, Romania, Israel, and even on one occasion visited the border between Iran and Iraq - the eastern-most extent of the Empire. Back towards the middle of the Empire, I have explored much of Slovenia, Austria and Switzerland. Moreover, I studied Latin at school for maybe 4 years and reached a language proficiency that enabled me to read some of Julius memoirs of his Gallic wars in the original language. The Roman Empire also turned up many times in our history classes.

So, perhaps unexpectedly, the exhibition reminded me of how much I know about, and have seen and visited personally, of the Roman Empire. In short, it was a ramble down memory lane.

The exhibits displayed provided many insights into the Empire's history, cultures, lifestyles, social structures, laws, administration and governance, religious beliefs and practices, technologies, products and services, and even handling death. The following pictures demonstrate some of these themes.

Let's start with the commemoration of famous people. The exhibits included busts and statues of a heap of prominent people - emperors, explorers, generals, and so on.

I cannot recall the names of the people whose images you can see, but those readers with eyesight or magnifying glasses might be able to read some of the inscriptions provided. What I can say is that you can see the likes of Julius Caesar, Augustus, and Hadrian. By the way, back in my days in England I spent considerable time atop Hadrian's Wall in Northumbria.

There were also numerous exhibits of artifacts from daily life. These included pots, pans and cooking implements; coins, military weapons including daggers; wall hangings; commemorative tablets of one kind or another; piles of money and jewelry; and figurines.

We might add to these three other pictures: two of lovely mosaics and the third which is remarkably a census return. Yes! It appears that Rome counted the numbers of inhabitants in various cities and regions.

The census return is on the right!



There were also several maps of the Empire and how it expanded over the years. Eventually the exhibition came to a 'dead' end. I mean that literally. We discovered the means of storing people's ashes - individually and as families - or their bodies. We saw caskets and tombs of these kinds:

 What a way to go, and no doubt very expensive.

AS

Another Musical Feast

A short while ago I acclaimed Armidale's two  symphony orchestras - the senior version and the youth orchestra. It's not often that a modest country town of 25,000 people can support two orchestras. Today, I found out that we now have three orchestras! The former New England Sinfonia has re-emerged as the Errol Russell Sinfonia and it presented its first performance this afternoon. It's a string orchestra - violins, violas, cellos, double bass and a harpsichord.

It was simply brilliant - in terns of choice of works and quality of performance. The works were (1) Finzi's Prelude in F Minor (Op 25) dating from the 1920s, (2) J S Bach's Brandenburg Concerto #3 in G Major (c. 1720), (3) Corelli's Concerto Grosso in G Major (Op 6 #8) dated early 18th century and also called the Christmas Concerto, (4) Glazunov's Theme and Variations in G Minor (Op 97) (c. 1915), and (5) Warlock's Capriol Suite (1926). So three works were early 20th century and the other two were 300 years earlier!

Now, this orchestra stunned me in several ways. Nearly all the performers, apart from their teachers were under 25 years old! Well over three-quarters of the 18 performers were women ... or perhaps I should say girls! And despite their youth, they played with great verve and in complete unison - prrrrfect. We even received an encore after a great round of applause from the enthusiastic audience. This was top-notch stuff. It's a pity I left my phone at home. Had I taken it, I could have added a video. Alas I have no pictures.

One other thing. The performance was given added oomph by a storm raging overhead, which added peels of thunder unanticipated by the composers. They only wrote for stringed instruments, not percussion.

Perhaps I should add a second other thing. We've just gone through a sever drought, but it has now rained for about 5 days in a row giving us several inches for December. And one place in Queensland - Halifax, east of Ingham received 681 mm yesterday. That's nearly 27 inches or, for those readers in England, almost the entire annual rainfall for the south coast. Imagine that!

AS

A Visit From Phil and Jane

It's now nearly 4 weeks since my brother, Phillip, and his partner, Jane, returned to England after their 3-week visit to Australia. It was his first trip here in about 30 years and Jane's first ever and both had a great time. Alas, I've been very busy since they departed for home and it's only now that I've found time to record their visit on this blog.

After their arrival in Sydney early one morning we soon hit the road doing the traditional sights of Sydney, where they spent the first two complete days. And guess where we headed first. Yes, Bondi beach! It was a gray, cool and blustery day early in October so there wasn't much life on the beach and both our visitors were rugged up.

I and Phil were born just 1 year and 20 days apart. And he was delighted to see that one of central Sydney's main streets was named after him!

The next stop was also hardly surprising. Here's the Corso at Manly which one reaches by a lovely  ferry trip from Circular Quay. The three characters are, of course, Phil, Jane and Dot.

Max was also with us since it was school holidays and I picked him up at Sydney's airport after Bec had placed him a plane in Canberra. Once again P and J  posed on the beach-front for a photo.

And, on our return journey, Max was amused to see a water taxi named after him!

After two days seeing the local sights the five of us departed for Armidale, but we couldn't all fit in our Rav4 given the huge amount of luggage P and J brought with them. The solution was simple I drove P and J with me back home and we had a race with Dot and Max who took the train. In Europe the winners would have been the latter two, but Australian country trains are rather slow. The c. 500 km rail journey to Armidale took over 7 hours and we beat them by a cool two hours. We took the back-road home via Thunderbolt's Way, named after a 19th century local bush-ranger who held up stage-coaches and robbed passengers. This route has some interestingly named small villages on it, including Stroud, Stratford upon Avon, and Gloucester! After those, the route heads through 200 km of almost empty and often beautiful countryside.

On getting to Armidale we did some local sights in the town and surrounding countryside. One was a ritual trip to Wollomombi Falls, which captivated them. Here are P and J admiring the gorge and waterfall.

Another trip took us, including Dot, to visit the nearby National Trust historic home, Saumarez. In particular we explored its lovely gardens and had a delightful lunch.

Another ritual trip was to Dobson's distillery c. 40 km south of Armidale. This local farmer turned to making some exquisite drinks - for example gin and whiskeys - many of which have won awards. And there is a nice restaurant attached, where we had lunch.

And our return journey took in some historic sights like this attractive little church at Gostwyck which served a massive nearby farm of the same name.

A couple of days later we took to the road again to Brisbane - the subject of the next post. En route, the two ladies on the trip had the opportunity to extract Excalibur from this stone in a paddock at Glen Innes. The flag flying nearby was also interesting. Have a guess what it's about ... answer at the end.

Well, what's a common theme for all components? Yes, they're all Celtic symbols ... from places like Wales, Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, and Brittany. Well, Glen Innes claims to be the Celtic capital of Australia.

AS

How wealthy are you?

I've just turned up some interesting wealth statistics provided by Credit Suisse's research arm. I welcome comments and responses to what I'm about to show you,

The world rankings of household wealth per adult place Australia in second spot on US$411,060 slightly behind Switzerland ... a very good achievement.

And nations' proportion of adults with wealth less than US$10,000 are amazingly varied. Only 6% of Australians are that poor, while the respective figures for the UK and the USA are hugely higher: 18% (UK) and 28% (USA). So the latter has vast hoards of poverty stricken people. The adult population in the USA is about 250 million, so about 45 million of them are living in great poverty. At the other of the spectrum, the parentage of adult Australians with wealth  > US$100,000 is c. 67%, the fourth highest in the world. So wealth here is much more equally shared here than in the USA ... or Britain for that matter.

Looking at median wealth statistics bears this out. Median wealth per adult in Australia is c. US$191,453 and that's the highest in the world. Switzerland comes in a close second. Canada is in 6th spot on US$106,343; New Zealand and Britain hold 8th and 9th spot respectively on about US$98,000 (or less than half of Australia's figure); Ireland in 15th place on US$72,430 beats the USA in 18th spot (US$61,667) by a wide margin; and Germany comes number 24 on just US$35,169. So wealth in Australia is clearly spread around much better than many other places and there's a lot of it.

Why is Australia's median wealth per adult considerably more than three times the United States figure? And what, if anything, can anyone do about it? Since Canada's figure is almost double the US I'm surprised there isn't long queue to cross the border northwards just like there's a queue on the northern border of Mexico.

AS

Re-Birthday

Emily has just reminded me - a day late here, but on time on the Pacific Coast of the United States - that I have reached another milestone personally. The 19th November is of course my Re-Birthday.

It's the date when, 11 years ago, I had a massive heart attack, was hospitalised in an induced coma, and then flown by air-ambulance to Newcastle (the Aussie version) where I eventually had a defibrillator installed and was discharged home.

Eleven years on I'm in great shape! I can still run, walk for a couple of hours, climb mountain trails and ride my bike up to 100 km a week. Moreover, the defibrillator has never been actioned as far as I know and my regular medical check-ups show nothing serious other than a slight decline my hearing.

So I count myself very lucky indeed. But this may have something to do with the circumstances behind the attack. Basically, I was running late for an appointment and cycled home furiously. Somewhere en route a bit of plaque broke off in my blood circulation system and ended up jamming my heart - or part of it. Yet when the doctors opened me up surgically the most any vein was blocked was only c. 40% and many were apparently pretty clear. My subsequent lifestyle improvements (mostly food and exercise) have wound back most adverse readings even to the extent about being warned that my cholesterol level is too low.

So I'm a happy chappy and intend going full bore for the next 29 years. By then I'll be 102 and possibly celebrating my 40th re-birthday. Put the date in your diaries.

AS

Crushing Sugar Cane

My final blog post from Central America explores one other interesting thing we did, namely a visit to a farm growing sugar cane where we saw how it was crushed decades ago in Australia. This is the farm HQ, which has been turned into an interesting tourist experience.

Interestingly, the premises were also home to a cactus garden, something that interested me greatly as a cactus grower in my own home.

The farm must be a successful operation judging by the quality of the buildings and the display we were given below! The star performer was the enormous bull shown below. We saw it awaiting being harnessed to the crushing gear and then being attached to the wooden equipment by our guide also shown below.





















Here she is about to commence her explanation of the process involved. Basically, the animal goes around in a large circle while freshly cut sugar can stems are slotted into the press. As the bull rotates, the machine crushes it to release a sugary / sweet liquid that can then be refined in various ways to produce sugar as we know it.
Here's the press equipment shown in greater detail

On the left you can see a green stem of cane being fed into the press equipment. Of course, these days the press equipment in Australia - and also I imagine Costa Rica - is powered electrically. I've been to several factories in North Queensland performing that task and just two weeks ago drove past several crushing plants on the NSW North Coast, not far from where I'm typing this.

Still it was an interesting re-enactment of past practice.

 AS