Australia Day 18

Australia Day is a national holiday on 26 January, the day the 'first fleet' arrived in 1788. For some, including many Aborigines, it should be renamed Invasion Day and there are many uncoordinated campaigns to shift the national holiday to some other day. But there's no agreement on what that might be. Australia, as a nation, came together on 1 January 1900, but that day is already celebrated as New Year's Day. ANZAC day is revered nationally, but celebrates Australia's military achievements.

Anyway, yesterday was OZDay and we usually take part in the various organised events locally. There's a citizenship ceremony in the town hall, where many immigrants receive their Australian credentials. The National Trust's splendid Saumarez Homestead hosts families with plenty of things for kids to do. There's a fun-fair in the parks surrounding Dumaresq Creek. And there's the final fireworks display. But yesterday the three of us did none of these - Dot, myself and Max! Well there's one exception ... I went to see the fireworks, but couldn't persuade anyone to accompany me. I feared that even that would be cancelled as we had a heavy thunder-storm at about 6 pm, about 2.5 hours before the fireworks.

The performance was flawless and brilliant and watched by quite a large crowd of all ages. Before this, I had a quick look at the various fun-fare rides, food-stalls, and the live band whose members appeared quite accomplished. Alas, my pictures were taken after dark!

AS

Monkey Business

Hey folks,

Do you recognise the topmost of this monkey cluster seen at Mogo Zoo? Let me know if you do.

AS

Earthquake update

When I got out of my car this afternoon at about 1.30, Max excitedly told me that he had felt an earthquake while sitting in our house. There was a rumble for a few seconds. I felt nothing as I was driving the car and bumps in the road surface would have outweighed tremors from a quake. My neighbour mentioned the same effect at the same time, so Max wasn't pulling a fast one!

I've waited all afternoon for a credible news storey to emerge and the evidence suggests that Coffs Harbour, where we stayed last week, was hit by a magnitude 4.2 quake on the Richter scale ... or possibly c. 80-90 times stronger than the 2.5 magnitude quake reported at Southwest Rocks in yesterday's post. Obviously the many quakes in the Macleay Valley and along the coast are interconnected, but my expectation is that we're safe here some 200 km away from the source of the quake. Armidale sits atop a granite underlay and we don't have the unconsolidated sandy soils that enhance a quake's effects.

AS

Earthquake!

We've just received reports of an earthquake! Some details are provided in the quotation below from the Port Macquarie News. The mention of Armidale is probably connected with the fact that the nearest tracking station to the site was Armidale and possibly located in the building where I work, which also houses geology!

I haven't met anyone who has felt the ground shudder and the reason is simple. Read the end of the article and you'll see that the quake was very minor. For the record, the Richter Scale is an exponential one. So a 2.5 quake is not about one-third as strong as say the 7.1 quake that hit Fukushima a few years ago and did monumental damage. In fact, it's closer to only 1 / 100,000 times the strength!

Other information I have suggests that it was also technically deep-seated - at about 10 km and deeper ones appear to do much less damage. So, breathe a sigh of relief and get on with normal life.

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"After a weekend of earthquake tremors, residents at South West Rocks, Stuarts Point, Dorrigo and Armidale continue to experience the shakes.

Three more tremors were recorded on January 23: one at 5:55am, 6:14am and 7:36am according to the tracking station at Armidale. 

South West Rocks’ resident Corrinne Boon said the continuous tremors were concerning.

“We had a really big one at about 9pm. This is so scary. Don't know what to do. Nothing but wait I guess,” she said.

Although data from the nearest tracking station at Armidale shows the tremors are originating to the south of Dorrigo, seismologist Spiro Spiliopoulos from Geoscience Australia said the earthquakes have been difficult to precisely locate because of their small magnitude.

“We’re still working on the location,” he said.

“These earthquakes measured a magnitude 2.5 on the Richter Scale, so they must have originated very close to where the people were feeling them.”"

AS

Dining Out, Coffs Harbour Style

On the final evening of our trip we went to sample a food festival held weekly on Fridays adjacent to the point where Coffs Creek meets the ocean. On arrival our party split into two. Max and Campbell weren't so much interested in food as in the opportunities provided by low tide to walk around Coffs Creek looking for crabs! Actually we had little idea as to where the two 13 year olds were precisely, but we trusted them and their sense of risk and safety.

Dot and I wandered around the large site brimming with thousands of people (and that's not an over-estimate as the pictures will shortly confirm). And there were dozens of food stalls serving dishes from all over the world. The smell of the food and the boisterous crowd made for an interesting and lively experience. One of the things I really like about this country its multiculturalism and how that extends into our diets. Indeed, my choice of food was a new one for me: Hungarian! So I ended up eating my first Langos ... that's after I finally found Dot who went elsewhere!

Once we'd finished eating went set off to find the kids and after an energetic search we found them still crabbing and wading through the rising Coffs Creek due to the incoming tide. They then went looking for their own food from a 'Mediterranean' stall. I can't recall what they were eating exactly, but it seemed to have its inspiration in North Africa.

While all this was going on there was live music in the background which grew more inspirational as dusk began to consume us. All in all it was a lovely occasion, perfect for families. There were masses of excited children everywhere.

A fruity version of the Langos.

Close to where Max and Campbell were crabbing.

It's getting dark, but here's the stall where the kids obtained their meals

Life for me is all about seeking and obtaining new experiences. This was one such occasion and very enjoyable.

AS

Coffs Creek Botanical Gardens

On day, while Max and Campbell were bouncing around, Dot and decided to visit the local botanical gardens and we were highly impressed! The gardens were fascinating, well maintained and attractively laid out. Have a look for yourselves, starting a wetland near the entrance.

These are not prickles, but part of the mangrove root system so the the trees can be fed oxygen when the tide rolls in and covers them with water.

Here's a lovely view of Coffs Creek with mangroves lining the intersection between land and water, followed by an image of the mangroves themselves.

Here was one of the great moments on our trip. We were told by staff that a koala had been sighted and roughly where to look. And guess what!! We saw it slowly moving around high in a tree. My photos are the best I could do, but we were transfixed for quite a while ... along with another couple who had binoculars and could see the creature more clearly.

This is a scribbly gum whose bark peels away to reveal tracks made by insects. Alas, for this tree, humans also got into the act and scribbled all over it!

The lovely aerial root system of a fig tree, around which Ibises were feeding.

And here's something you'd love to eat. It's an Elephant Apple from India ... well, not quite ... the species the produced it is found in India, but the garden's specimen produced this massive fruit. By the way, elephants are particularly partial to it - hence the name. But humans can eat the flesh which I gather finds its way into curries.

Australians seem to love Japanese gardens. See my earlier post on the beautiful gardens at Cowra, some 800 km to the southwest of Coffs Harbour. And, right now the Japanese and Australians seem to be getting along together just fine. Apart from the strong tourism between the two countries, our economies are integrating, we're heading up the Trans Pacific Partnership (a multilateral trans-Pacific trading block), and working together on defence planning ... with the main concerns there being China and Russia increasingly throwing their weight around. The next 5 photos show the Japanese gardens.

And, back to our circumnavigation of the botanical gardens.

That's all for now, but the show is well worth a visit.

AS

Coffs Harbour Environment

The town of Coffs Harbour is located on a very attractive part of the NSW North Coast at a point where the mountains to the west reach to the sea in the form of rolling hills. Those westward mountains are, by the way, actually the highest point on the entire east coast between Mt Kosciusko near the Victorian  Border and the mountains to the Southwest of Cairns in North Queensland, a distance of about 2,750 km. And Point Lookout there is a little short of 1600 m (or about 5,200 feet). So Coffs has an impressive backdrop.

I took early morning walks from our resort and these first two images on the built-up fringe show the kind of scenery embracing the town.

Like many places, Coffs had its graffiti moments, this one under a road over-pass. I don't know what means, but the art-work was great ... not a spur of the moment vandalism.

To get a view over the town and coast we took a trip to the Sealy Lookout, winding through banana plantations for quite some distance. The lookout is constructed like a suspension bridge, except that it soon comes to an abrupt end as shown here. That's hardly surprising as it's built high on a hill that drops away steeply. Still, it seemed to support my weight!!

The views provided were spectacular. Eastwards lay the centre of the town and slightly to left hand side you might make out the harbour itself, full of fishing vessels and trophy yachts.

This picture shows the long and impressively sweeping Boambee beach behind which lay some settlements like Toormina and Sawtell, both of which we visited during our stay. The former had the shed with the bouncing facilities loved by Max and Campbell. And the latter offered an attractive coffee culture for we oldies!

This view to the south shows the hills descending eastwards from Point Lookout.

And here's a view over to where we staying at the Aqualuna resort. You might just make out one of the three uninhabited islands that dot this stretch of coast.

And of course nearly everyone who visits the Coffs Coast visits the Big Banana, I won't dwell on this the subject of an earlier post. However, I was taken by this welcoming creature ... what ever it's supposed to be! If you look closely at the badge you can see on its chest you'll realise that it's named after Max! Not that he was impressed. In fact, he and Campbell itched to go the impressive water park adjacent to the Banana for couple of hours getting soaked and going for wild steep rides.

AS