Emily and Grandkids Return to Armidale

I'm getting far behind in reporting on the visit to Australia of our family living in Seattle. That's what happens when one leads are very busy life. I, for example, play in 3 bridge games a week at our local club and each lasts c. 4 ours! Then I work oncommunity projects with the New England Visions 2030 (NEV2030) group and that takes up a fair amount of time. Financially Dot and I run a self-managed superannuation fund and playing the stock-market is also time intensive. Then I still undertake academic research and, in the last month aline, I have presented at conferences in Armidale and in Paris. Finally, I also belong to something like 14 organisations and they often take a while. For example, I have just been invited to a banquet in NSW's Parliament House at which a top USA government official will make a prsentation. These dimensions are all before undetaking various tasks at home. 

Anyway I now have a little while to explore a recent family get-together. Emily, Ella and Flynn stayed with us for 4 days or so. Flynn had three sessions in the University of New England's swimming pool learning how to swim with a crawl rather than a breast-stroke. I think he really enjoyed this opportunity in our heated pool accompanied by a specialist teacher.

Durinf their stay, Armidale had some heavy downpours of rain leading to the flooding of our Dumaresq Creek as shown here. Both Ella and Flynn enjoyed the event. After their creeklands experience, they enjoyed playing for a while in new kid's play area. - and especially the covered slides seen in the background.

Their stay with us was also an opportunity for Emily to meet up with old friends - and especially Kassandra and Michelle who lived next door to us for many years, attended the same schools and had similar ages. Here we are for morning teas ... also attended by Kassandra's own kids.

Here's everyone together for a group photo, all looking excited.

And the kids got to know a little about each, while playing or in conversation.

Let's just say the few days they spent in Armidale were interesting and enjoyable. That especially applies to their session at Les Miserables mentioned in an earlier post of mine.

AS

Re-opening of Sydney's Opera House

 Yesterday evening, we saw on television a performance of Mahler's second symphony to celebrate the re-opening of Sydney's wonderul Opera house after extensive upgrades in recent months. This beautiful work - one of the world's greatest symphonies - was delightfully presented and brought massive applause at the end. I managed to take some picture of proceedings on television and they're attached below. By the way, this symphony is appropriately called the 'Resurrection'! After all, the Opera House had been resuurected! Note the vast number of performers - both orchestral and in the massive chrous.

The huge choir can be seen behind the orchestrain this photo.

By the way, I did take a movie of the final stages of the symphony, but it's 356,000 kb long. I could send it to you separately if you ask nicely!

AS

Les Miserables

Armidale may have only 25,000 residents, but its ability to stage fantastic cultural events is amazing. Back in early July, the Armidale Drama and Musical Society (ADMS) performed Boublil and SCconberg's Les Miserables. This musical is based on Victor Hugo's novel published in the mid 19th century and widely regartded as one of the greatest works of that century.

It was performed in a lovely theatre belonging to The Armidale School (TAS) perhaps 20 times over a month! And nearly all the participants were local, whether conductor, singers or orchestral. Even the settings on stage were arranged locally - and I might addd that those were amazingly well done. The applause at the end was lengthy and profound. Everyone, including us, were amazed at the quality of the presentation. And 'us' included not just Dot and myself, but also Emily and her k s - Ella and Flynn. They were truly amazed!

It's grgeat that our community is able to peform similar events to our major cities, whether theatrical, orchestral, or artistic.

AS

A Wonderful trip to Canberra's Tydbinbilla Nature Reserve

After celebrating Max's 18th birthday we, our daughter, and their families spent a relaxing day travelling to the beautiful Tydbinbilla nature reserve south of Canberra, especially to see its wildlife and mountain scenery.

Here are pictures of what we saw. I'll start with a focus on Koalas, an iconic Australian species that has become endangered because of loss of habitat especially through cutting of woodland and forest fires that have swept our nation in recent years. Were were so amazed at this cluster of Koalas in an enclosure that I took picture after picture of them. At one point local nature reserve staff even entered the enclosure and fed the animals with favourite tree leaves!

Walking through the forest we kept a lookout for other small animals, but saw few. The reserve also has several beautiful lakes as shown below.

These lakes were home to black swans and ducks. The swan on the right below was apprarently resting on some eggs.

Below, I took a picture of some small marsupial, but I cannot recall its name!

Here's a selfie of me overlooking some of the park's beautiful backdrop shown below. Note the possee of kangaroos in the pictures below.

Altogether, it was a lovely trip.

AS

Max's Banquet!

Eating Max's bisrthday cake was only the start of his celebration. Shortly after, we headed to one of the top Japanese restaurants in Canberra located on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. If I've added the numbers of people there correctly there must have been 14 of us seated on stools around the single high table. The food was lovely and we had very dynamic discussions amongst the participants who were, with one exception - Max's friend - all related. Have a look at some of the participants.

Here are Emily and Flynn

  And here's me with Flynn's sister, Ella

Across the table, Rebecca Greg and Dot were having a lively conversation while enjoying their meal.

While below are t pictures of the guest of honour, Max.

I'll add to these two pictures of Rebecca and Max in earnest discussion.

All in all, this was a happy and memorable event - great company and great food in intersting surroundings.

AS

Max's !8th

It's a long time - well, 2 months - since I made a blog post but the last 3 weeks have seen some great events. You'll see several new posts over the next couple of days. The first concerns our trip to Canberra to see how well Rebecca is copin footg with her disastrous soccer collision  on that lead to torn tendons and bone damage to her left foot. Back in June, she could walk on crutches since she could not place any serious weight on her foot which was kept straight by some device. I'll respect privacy and not post any pictures of her. 

The other reason for going tio Canberra was to celebrate our grand-son Max's 18th birthday! This lively event went off well. Have a look at these pictures taken on Saturday the 25th June.

Above you can see Max and his monther seated awaiting the cytting of the cake shown on the right. This glorious cake was copmmissioned privately and was one of the greatest I've ever seen. The audience just gasped at its design and attractiveness.

The cake was also delicious and was consumed fast. There was no shortage of people around. Apart from Dot and me, Max had invited some of his friends around and two of his cousins - Ella and Flynn - were visiting Australia from their home in Seattle (USA) - see below - along with their mother - our daughter Emily and Greg.

It was a happy occasion enjoyed by all. By the way, we drove to Canberra on the Thursday and returned home on the following Tuesday, a journey that probably registered about 1,800 km! That's amazing for us in our mid-70s.