Amazing Place? Diversity in Armidale

For a small town - population c. 25,000 - Armidale's life is amazingly complex and diverse. Have a look at events in which I participated over the last 2 days or so.

First off the rank is a meal I had with Dot and our daughter Rebecca at, of all places, an Ezidi restaurant in a local motel. Armidale is now home to perhaps 400 Ezidi refugees who fled from Islamic State in their home country of Iraq. They have settled in well and participate in things like our regular farmers' markets selling both their agricultural produce and poviding Ezidi food.

For the first time, however, we visited their restaurant. It was a nice place with great table service  and good food. These pictures show some of what I and my family had to eat.

Today we visited the traditional Markets in the Mall held on the last Sunday of the month. It was nice weather for a change, with lots of sunshine. This brought out a lot more people than usual. Somehow the organisers usually make things more interesting by having cultural - including music events.

Well, today the mall was populated with maybe a dozen or so Rhinos as these pictures show. Why would school-kids from a top private school (The Armidale School) want to walk around looking lke Rhinos? The answer is simple.

Their school's lovely theatre is putting on Ionesco's play called Rhinoceros over 3 days in early May and they wanted to publicise this event. They sure did that. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhinoceros_(play) for a run-down of the play's contents

They had a lovely time and so did we.

And, walking theough the Mall, I saw contestants from various political groups advertising their abilities for the May Federal Election in late May.

The Australian Labor Party's candidate recognised me but not vice versa! She had been a student in one of my courses, but I had tought thousands - many of them external and online.

After our Mall walk, we went and had coffee and lunch at a French coffee house called the pattiserie. It's very popular and we had great food - albeit waiting a while to received it. How many small rural towns in Australia - or say the UK - have a great French style coffee house?

And I alone then departed the cafe and rushed to the Uniting Church for another event. No, I'm not religious, but I love classical music concerts. Armidale has dozens anually and today members of Armidale's music conservatorium were performing two works. They're shown from my seat warming up their instruments.

The first piece was Mozart's glorious Quintet in Eb Major for piano and winds (K 452). And it was an excellent performace. There was no entray fee - just a volantary donation box to which I contributed.

The second work was Scarborough Fair. I thought this was a traditional Englaish fold song - see https://galaxymusicnotes.com/pages/about-scarborough-fair. Somewhere along the line it was rewritten musically for a piano and 4 wind instruments. And the version today had no words - just musical instruments.

So, Armidale is in a way multinational. I've dealt here with Ezidi food from Iraq, a play by Ionescu whose origins were Romanian, but the subject matter - Rhinos - was French ... yes, France not Africa. Then we ate French food for lunch. After that, I listened to Austrian music and a work whose origins are in medieval England. That's why I like it here - a nice physical and multicultural environment.

AS 

Mother of Ducks Lagoon

Some 35 km north of Armidale, and adjacent to the small town of Guyra, is the Morth of Ducks Lagoon which I visited today to explore for the first time in 50 years! I have seen it many times from afar, but never explored it closely.

Today was an excellent opportunity on several grounds. We have had a lot of rain so far this year and I thought this would show up clearly over the large area of the lagoon. Secondly, the weather was fantastic for mid-Autumn - bright sunshine and warm temperature . Believe it or not, the temperature was about 18 C  (64+ F) despite the lagoon being about 1350 m (4430 feet) above sea level. Has the top of Ben Nevis in Scotland ever recorded 64 F there in October (mid Autumn)?

The pictures show what I saw. Basically, the lagoon is fairly shallow and, instead of a large surface area of watre, much of the lagoon has plant-life covering much of the surface. This leaves a network of channels of water like those shown in many of the pictures.

This photo looks southwards from the viewing platform and also shows a lovely cloud pattern.

This picture looks south-west from the same spot and show a little more water.

And here's a heron stalking the edge of a rather larger body of water. It was rather nervous of my arrival but eventually accepted my presence without flying off.

The observation platform had a display of the birds traditionally found on the wetlands and this looks rather like the previous photo.

Living up the lagoon's name, I saw a pod of ducks ... is that the right term? Anyway, I have often passed ducks on Armidale's waterways and these nervous creatures flee easily if  disturbed. That precisely happened just after lucky me took this photo.

And this view of the lagoon was taken looking northwards. As you can guage from all these pictures, the lagoon's area is quite extensive.

And, finally, here's the viewing platform from which I took most of the previous photos. There were quite a few people around who were drwns to the site.

All up it was a lovely trip. 

If you think I was exceptionally lucky with the temperature, we have been advised by Australia's Bureau of Meteorology (BOM) that Armidale's Tuesday temperature will likely reach 24 C (75 F). That's almpst the mid-summer average .

AS

Screeching at our Farmers' Markets

Twice a month we regularly have Sunday Farmers' Markets down on Armidale's creeklands. Today was no excpetion but, for once in a few months, there were large numbers of stalls and heaps of people buying the goods on offer.. Dot and I had a great time walking around looking at the stalls, buying mainly food-stuffs, and talking to various friends. Given that the sun was out after a week of cloud and frequent showers of rain, the event was exceptionally pleasant. Not only that, but the forecast temperature in mid-autumn was 22 C (72 F) - very nice indeed.

Here are a few photos I managed to take of the event. The first one shows the Ezidi food truck which I have praised before. Dot and I both brought interesting food items from their traditional homeland in northern Iraq which they fled after it was seized by Islamic State.

Various stalls were spread in a circle around Curtis Park and, in the middle, the organisers provided under-cover seating for people.

If the markets were pleasant for reasons just described, they were also fund for another surprising reason. The skies around us were beseiged a raucus flock of parrots all shouting as loud as they could. We were entertained not just by 10 or 20 birds, but by at least 300!!! And their performance must have lasted something like 10 minutes. 

What species of parrot were entertaining us? Well, they were Corellas - 'largish' birds all screeching at each other and presumably us also. Go to these sites to discover more about them.

https://www.birdlife.org.au/bird-profile/little-corella

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corella_(bird)

AS

New Publication

I might be approaching 77 years old, but I'm still researching and publishing. Here are some images from my latest item:

The editor, Jerzy Banski, is a colleague of mine and a Polish academican based in Warsaw. And my chapter is number 24 in the volume - pages 346 to 360. It's about small town survival in rural Australia - a cae study of the New England Region of NSW where I live.

The book is quite expensive, but my copy was delivered free.

AS

Autumn Festival

 Every year, Armidale stages its Autumn Festival where throngs of people get together for parades, music, theatrical events, cycle races, and cultural aspects - especially tasting multi-national foods. Well, last year and maybe the year before, the event was cancelled. But this year it was partially resurrected and yesterday saw me join crowds of people celebrating a cut-down event. We did not see street processions or cycle races and there was no morning breakfast in the creeklands listening to tunes played by the town's band. Nor did we hear any bagpipes played by people wearing traditional Scottish dress.

Nevertheless, this year's reduced event saw laods of people strolling through the town's central mall and enjoying what they saw. Here are some pictures I took of proceedings.

Several orchestral groups played very simple music to considerable applause ... at least one of them apparently brought together by Armidale's Conservatorium of Music, which greatly adds to our city's cultural life. The two orchestras I saw were for school-kids and one or two of the players seemed  to be little older than maybe 8 or 9 years of age. The works performed were quite simple, but nevertheless generated great applause.

Here is the seating next to the former court-house for people wishing to listen to numerous bands and orchestras scheduled to perform much of the day. This picture was taken before the concerts started and the seats were awaiting the audience.

Armidale's pedestrian mall has several coffee sholps like this one. They were doing a roaring trade.

There were heaps of sites / vehicles selling some interesting foods. I sometimes buy the feshly berried food shown here. 

This is the food van used by the Ezidi migrants to sell their traditional foods. The Ezidis were massacred by Islamic State and many others fled their region in northern Iraq. Many eventually made it Australia and Armidale is now home for maybe 500 of them ... with many scheduled arrive shortly.

Local motoring enthusiasts showed off their historic caes. I loved this ancient vehicle.

This next one was an MG dating back to maybe the late 1960s. I always look at these with curiosity and appreciation because - from 1969 to early 1971 I worked for the British Leyland Motor Corporation at the Morris factory in Oxford. I was in an efficiency group whose task was to increase productivity and performing this task I frequentlt visited other factories including the nearby MG factory. I wonder if I ever saw this vehicle go down the production line!

The weather was great for this occasion - nice and sunny and warmer than some recent days.

AS

Demonstration

Armidale is normally a peaceful town with hardly any protest events. However, I came across a demonstration the other day organisaed by hospital workers campaigning against working and pay conditions. However, I didn't go out of my way to see the event. Rather is found me and some friends. Each Thursday at 10.30 am I and several blokes meet up at a coffee shop called the Goldfish Bowl. Sometimes we have as many as 7 particpants, but mostly 4 or 5 attend. We discuss a heap of things ranging across technology, work, sporting events, culture, politics, international struggles, family afairs and so on. And, of course, we're all retired.

Well, last Thursday out discussions were interrupted by inceasingly large chants by a heap of people and we leapt from out out-of-doors seats to see what was happening. And this is what we saw.

One has to sympathise with these protestors because nurses have born the brunt of COVID-19's last impact and have often found themselves over-worked and under-paid. Alas, this demo had one adverse impact. A long-term contract bridge partner of mine was due to have a minor operation last Thursday morning, but it was cancelled to another date!

AS

Yet another flood!

 At the end of March, Armidale had yet another bout of wet weather dumping maybe as much as 3 inches of rain on us over a 4-day period. And this generated yet another flood on Dumresq Creek - the fourth such event in the last 6 months and probably the largest of them all. Here are some pictures of this event taken on a couple od my earlt morning walks. Here are some of the pictures I took.

Eastern Australia has had the wettest Summer and Autumn for many years, with some places getting more than the average annual rainfall in just 3 months. Our floods are much less serious than closer to the coast and that's for several reasons. (A) The Dumaresq Creek cathcment area is much smaller than coastal ones. (B) We have less rain being inland. And (C) Armidale's planners have removed nearly all buildings and houses from the flood plains, leaving behind playing fields, walking tracks, children's playing areas, and a swimming centre. So floods mainly inconvenience traffic flows - as in the picture shown above. Once crossing places flood like this one the local government constructs barriers. However, Armidale does have a set of bridges so that the northern and southern sides of the town remain connected. Sometimes, however, that does lead to traffic jams, espcially in late afternoon when people try to get home from work!

AS