Preparing for War?

 The world is becoming a very dangerous place for a host of obvious reasons. Some Armidale residents are seeking to respond in an encouraging way, as I found out this morning at our Sunday markets in the Mall.

How do you rate these guy's chances in any emerging combat with, say, China, Russia, or for that matter Trump?

AS

Puddledock Exploration

 I'm getting tired of hanging around town permanently and need to get out into the countryside and see interesting rolling landscapes. Today was no exception, but aided greatly by the fact that my car is a lot warmer than my house and the weather, though sunny, was also frigid. A gay was blowing and the frontal system that's just gone through swept up cold air from Antarctic regions. The 3 pm temperature, supposedly the day's maximum, was 9 C, but -2C after factoring in wind-chill.

Today, I decided to drive the nearby Puddledock Road, a route rarely if ever travelled by me. It is deeply rural and accesses only farms. No shops or other services appear on the roughly 25 km journey after leaving the New England Highway just north of Armidale. The route zig-zags north-east climbing much of the way. I am typing this message in my study at an altitude of c. 1012 m (3,320 feet). The highest point I reached today on my drive was 1,344 m (or 4,409 feet) so with me standing there my head was just a bit higher than UK's Ben Nevis, which reaches 4,413 feet. By the way, I once climbed that peak from Fort William when I was about 22 years old. It took about 3 hours up.

The following pictures accurately report what I saw on my way uphill! I love the New England countryside with its rolling hills and valleys, extensive high country plains, green paddocks, forested slopes, rock formations, frequently engaging cloudscapes and so on. It often looks rather 'English'.

One frequently sees piles of rocks occurring naturally - much of the countryside is underlain by igneous rocks and one pile south of Glen Innes is called Stonehenge!

Here are more rocks, but this time in a green paddock.

This picture looks south-west towards Mount Duval - covered in forests. It is 1,393 m high (4,570 feet). 

The patch of water I spied turned out to be impounded by Puddledock Dam, which I gather once supplied water to Armidale.

A flatter piece of ground was occupied by a farm surrounded by nice green pastures.

Dense Eucalyptus forest.

Lovely rolling pastures dotted with trees and with a farm dam in the foreground. Our countryside has hundreds of such man-made dams. The gravel road I was travelling on snakes to the left. I never passed another vehicle during the 30+ minutes it took me to drive up Puddledock Road and its extension - Springmount Road.

I loved this view southwards. Mount Duval can just been seen in the mid-right, but the horizon in the middle must be close to 50 km away and Armidale is hidden by the slopes to the left.

More greenish pastures below. For a change, I found myself driving through a herd of cattle and I was intrigued to see how the mother protected her calf from my not particularly aggressive driving.

Does this landscape look rather European?

Well, the picture below marks the end of my drive northwards and I am standing at precisely 1,344 m. It focuses on the road-house at Black Mountain and the road in front of it is the New England Highway connecting Sydney and Brisbane via the inland. It had hardly any traffic today.

I joined the highway for the trip home, but suddenly had a bright idea. After just 100 m I turned left off the highway to see Thunderbolt's Cave. I must have driven 3-4 km down a dirt track when I saw this sign, parked my car and went for a walk down a steepish rocky path.

And this is what I found: a rock shelter that must have been a hiding place for Thunderbolt. He was quite an accomplished thief who held up stage-coaches other properties and robbed their occupants. He was ultimately shot by a policeman and buried in Uralla, a small town c.22 km south of Armidale on the New England Highway.

The spot was very lonely - even today - and heavily forested

I very much enjoyed my drive, albeit alone because Dot wished to stay at home. That's the way things go in this COVID-19 ridden age.

Friends and relatives please come and visit Armidale when you can and enjoy our high amenity environment.

AS

Itching to see the Countryside

These days we spend most of our time at home, even though COVID-19 has barely emerged locally. Well, today I decided on a short drive and went to the nearby Dumaresq Dam. It's a pleasant spot that the Armidale Regional Council wants to upgrade to a tourist resort, although in the past it was constructed to supply water to the city. Apart from providing accommodation, better roads, tracks and so on, there's also talk of raising the dam wall.

Anyway, it was a cold and imminently wet day, so I didn't want to stay long apart from looking at the mountain view and the dam wall. By the way, it only took an hour or so to move from Summer temperatures (c. 19 C) on Friday to a chilly maximum of about 10 C today (Sunday).

You can see the great view from the shore-line where I parked my car and, despite the intense 2019 drought the water level was high. Here's Mount Duval in the background - maybe 3 km away. Existing paths cover both sides of the lake providing ever changing visions of water, forests and water.

From this spot, I took an image of the dam wall and, as you can see, the water is nearly lapping the top of the wall.

The wall worried me a little as it seems so thin. Still, it has been in place for a long time and shows no wear. Nevertheless I recalled the Dam Busters movie I first saw in about 1960 when my grandma took me to the pictures in Brighton. And the mess that British bombers did to Ruhr Valley communities when the dam walls were demolished was massive. I'd hate to think of the same thing happening locally!

I took the path that leads to the bottom of the wall, and this is what I saw - a rocky valley.

After looking around a bit more I headed to the car for the c. 14 km ride home. En route I took a detour to the back of the University to have a look at the solar farm it has constructed to power the campus.. As you can see, it's massive and has hundreds of closely aligned solar panels. By then, the dark clouds that had seemed threatening at the dam had largely cleared. However, when I returned home it was only an hour so before torrential rain started. At least it wasn't snowing!

AS

Bizarre weather pattern

 I'm not posting any pictures today because they would be soggy and dull. But I have a whole lot of remarkable numbers. In the 24 hours from 9 am yesterday (7 August) until to 9 am this morning our outside temperature barely moved.

Here are the 24 hour hourly numbers in degrees C starting at 9 am yesterday: 5.2, 6.1, 6.4, 6.3, 6.2, 6.9, 7.3, 7.3, 7.3, 7.0, 7.4, 7.2, 7.4, 6.5, 6.7, 6.0. 7.1, 7.0, 7.7, 7.1, 7.3, 7.0, 8.7, 9.0, and 8.5. So the numbers barely changed all day but, if anything began to rise a little through the night - which is very strange for winter! Perhaps the cause was other thing happening. There was heavy cloud throughout the day and it started raining at midday and barely stopped until 6 am. During that time we received a welcome but fairly modest c. 10 mm of rain (or just under half an inch). 

Have you heard of the term "a flat day"? Well yesterday was the flattest day I've ever remembered. But it looks like we may be in for another similarly boring experience. Right now at about 10 am the temperature has soared to about 9 C, which is what it was 2 hours ago! And the sky is still he same boring colour.

Maybe our problem isn't global warming but temperature stability. Mm! Maybe I shouldn't have said that stupid thing. Psst. Don't pass my remark on to Donald. If he heard about it he would explain how firing guns into the air would bring about climate stability. However, if that conclusion were true, it would least cut down on America's murder rate!

AS

Relocation of our Farmers' Market.

Armidale has no less than 3 farmers' markets a month and one of those was today. However, for the first time the markets shifted about 100 m west from Curtis Park to Civic Park. The reason for the move was simple. Part of the former location is now the site of a new children's play area which is under construction.

Well, the new site has twice the space with ample room to enlarge the event. However, due to the impact of COVID-19 the number of stalls / vendors has shrunk in recent months so we had a bit of spare space today. But due to the ultra-warm weather for the start of August many people turned up to inspect the site and many stalls seemed to be doing quite well. I purchased some Portuguese tarts and French-style pastries for Dot and me and I also stocked up on some bottles of delicious Kombucha produced locally. I like to visit these markets regularly to help local producers

I also took several pictures like these of the new spacious location. By the way, it was a gorgeous day. Despite an overnight frost (c. - 2 C) the morning rapidly warmed up to reach about 15 C at lunch-time and a maximum of c. 17 C (63 F). When did it last reach 63 F on a British winter's day? Blokes like me were wandering around in shorts!

AS