So

 Most Saturday mornings I go for a walk with my colleague, Alun, near Tilbuster Creek just north of Armidale. It takes us through beautiful but rather empty countryside far from traffic and other people. We almost decided not to go today because of heavy rain over the week and fear that the grass and gravel paths we take might be waterlogged. 

Well, we decided to take a gamble, so we met up at 7 am at the end of Blue Wren road and headed off on foot. It didn't take long for our fears to be confirmed. Here's Alun wondering how to cross a creek-bed that's normally dry ... we didn't even try!

And, as we expected, the main river, Tilbuster Creek was running high as these pictures show. The paths alongside varied from soggy to fairly dry, so we made fair progress albeit in very wet shoes and socks.

And here am I in my hippy gear admiring the scenery. By the way, it wasn't cold at 7.30 am. The minimum temperatures overnight just recently have reached as much as 19 C (66 F) because of cloud-cover. As you can see from this picture, the sky was a dull grey. Although we experienced no rain, ti started to pour as I drove home. We were lucky that we weren't just as soggy as our footware!

 

The entire journey lasted 90 minutes, but the countryside was empty apart from plenty of birds of various species. We met no fellow walkers, encountered no cattle - although we had to dodge a lot of pooh, and saw no kangaroos - although they're normally plentiful. Let me know if you'd like to join us on our next weekly trip!

AS

Memories of Spring

 Armidale usually has a vibrant musical calendar with many orchestral concerts during the course of a year. However, COVID-19 has severely restricted the number of concerts. So it was relief that our NSW government has recently removed lock-down provisions and opening up people gathering to listen to our great local orchestra. Even so, members of the audience had to demonstrate double vaccination to get in and then wear a face-mask.

Yesterday's concert was extraordinarily beautiful in terms of works performed and quality of playing. We started with a lovely rendition of Mozart's Die Entfuhring aus dem Serail (K484, 1782). Next came 4 concertos by Antonio Vivaldi written in 1720, each portraying serially Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. Each involves a solo violinist and the two young performers - Emily Thompson and Eliza Scott - were brilliant in their roles. The audience gave the whole orchestra and the soloists tumultuous applause after that performance, which - in my view, mirrored professional orchestras in our major cities.

After a short intermission, we reconvened for a great performance of Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring. I adore this beautiful work, partly because I've explored much of the USA's Appalachian range and partly because it was composed in the same year as I and Dot were born ... 1945.

I was able to take a few pictures of the event  ... and even a few videos. However, I've tried uploading a few of the latter, but cannot get them to work. Maybe they'll work for you!

AS

Yet another flood

Armidale has just received nearly 75 mm (c. 3 inches) of rain in the last 3 days. That's amazing given that Australia is a relatively dry continent. Now the inland rivers making up the Murray-Darling system are in full flood. Likewise, the eastern flowing streams like Dumaresq Creek, which traverses Armidale, are also  in flood. I took an early morning walk in the rain today - armed with a large umbrella - to have a look at the creek, fully expecting it to be in flood. I was not mistaken - it's the largest of the 4 flood events we have experienced this year. This is what I saw:

The picture above shows a considerable volume of water flowing rapidly across Faulkner Street. Vehicles were prevented from trying to negotiate a route across the river.

Note how green the grass is after all the rain have in recent months! The last of the three pictures shows a large family of ducks having fun on the rapidly flowing water.

AS

Roaming New England

 I love exploring our region and, in the last couple of days, had some great experiences. I was out for a walk on Saturday when I came across a group of kangaroos. If you count them you'll see 5 on the other side of the fence, but there were several more in the background. This was privately owned hobby-farmed land, but I suspect the owners were delighted with their intruders!

Then yesterday Dot and I went to explore some parts of our region where we'd never been before. For those who know our region or would like to look it up on Google maps, we drove northeast up Rockvale road for maybe 20 km through lovely hilly countryside which was a lovely shade of green after lots of rain. Then we turned off on to Chandler Road which, to our surprise, was sealed despite being very narrow and only served a few very large-scale local livestock farms. Basically, we travelled eastwards for about another 15+ km through increasingly lovely, but almost empty, countryside. We admired the lovely views shown here - all taken from a single spot. In essence they look north-east, east, and south east. And in the distance lies the mountain range which is the highest point in Australia between the Snowy Mountains to the south and north Queensland just south of Cairns - a distance of 3,000 km apart! Point Lookout - the highest point - is 1564 m, or 5131 feet.

 

The immediate area in these photos is some of Australia's best grazing country. The rainfall tends to be high and reliable and many of the properties are huge - some around 10,000 hectares  (24,700 acres).

Shortly after taking these images we turned right on to Thorpleigh Road which ran through more grazing land for another c. 15 km. Again, we past through no settlements and only a few grazing properties. The quality of this road was rather lower than Chandler Road, with much of it unsealed gravel, but again the landscapes were lovely. Eventually we joined the lovely Waterfall Way which links Armidale to the coast. The junction was about half-way between Wollomombi to the east and Hillgrove to the west.

I'm glad we took this drive yesterday in quite good weather. Today our region is experiencing torrential rain. Since rain started Sunday evening we have received c. 51 mm of rain (about 2 inches). To the west of us, Gunnedah received almost 100 mm (c. 4 inches) in one day ... and Australia is supposed to be the driest continent! I'd like to ask my UK readers how many times a year do they get 1 inch of rain in a day.

AS