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