Embracing nature

G'day folks. I do alot of walking both in town and in the surrounding countryside. I offer you a few pictures of events that captured my attention. One recent trip took Dot and me out to Dumaresq Dam which once provided Armidale with a stable water supply. Nowadays it's a great recreational feature where people can sail boats, fish, stage barbecues or walk nature trails amongst other things.

While still techinically winter, the day was very warm and the sky cloundless. The first two pictures below express the beauty of the place and quite a few people had driven there to embrace nature.

The third picture is not so welcoming but tells another interesting story. The Armidale Regional Council has spent a lot of money raising the dame wall to increase water storage. This has taken many months, but when we arrived the raised wall was complete and relvant machinery had been removed.

I look forward to doing a complete loop of the dam in coming months, but the trail across the front of the dam is not yet finished. Interestingly, Spring has arrived earlier than usual in our part of the world. Plants are flowering early and I have been amazed at the beautiful yellow flowering wattle bushes . Wattle day is c. 1 September, but this year they were in full boom early in August. Maybe this is further evidence of global warming.

Our winter has been much wetter than usual as water temperatures have soared along both Australia's east coast and the continent's far north-west. The rain has been mostly welcomed where we live but many coastal communities have experienced severe flooding. One benefit of greater rainfall is shown in the next two picture. In early August one gentle rain shower generated agorgeous rainbow shown here from two diffferent angle. The rain was close, but I was not affected.

Cheers,

Tony

Intimations of Immortality

 Yesterday I attended a fabulous orchestral concert delivered by Armidae's symphony orchestra and a group of singers known as Fiori Musicali. The performers were all local and the event was staged as usual at Armidale's conservatorium of music. The porchestra played to a full house as usual. It's marvellous that a town of ponly 25,000 people can stage such a high quality event delivered professionally by local participants. And the works performed were mind-blowing in many respects., all coming under the theme of Intimations of Immortality. 

Get your head around this! There were two renowned classical works: Camille Saint-Seans' Piano Concerto #5 in F Major (op. 103) written in 1896 and Grabiel Faure's Equiem in D Minor (op. 48) dating from c. 1890. I didn't know it before the concert that Camille was an 'over-achiever. He wrote his first composition at the age of 4 and made his first performance in public at the age of 10. Here's the chorus for the requiem.

What also blew the audience away were the other 4 works which are all recent compositions. Has any reader of mine heard of an Australian named Deborah Cheetham born in 1964? Her work called Long Time Living Here was first performed in 2019. She's Aboriginal and her song was sung in Armidale native's Anaiwan language! The work was for Soprano and a background chorus - Fiori Muscali - shown in this picture's background. The soprano, Jessica Suann, is facing us on the left

The next Australian composition was written by Rachel Bruerville and first performed in 2018 when she was only 37 years old!! It was called "dancing on tiptoes - but never falling"!!! More amazingly, this beautiful work was written to help calm people in hosptal with mental health problems!!!! Then came Nick Wales' Marine. He, too, was born in 1964 - obviously a good year for composers. His work was called 'Marine' and is a serene song for a soprano evoking the serenity of the ocean. However, the words sung were written by the French Poet Paul Verlaine (Poemes Saturniens) in the late 1800s. The last of the 4 recent works - all connected in some way to environments was written by Ola Gjeilo (born in 1978) - a Norwegian who called the work Tundra! It reflects life in a beautiful mountainous area between Oslo and Beregen.

The audience was ecstatic with this repertoir and the amazing quality of the performers. Come and live here!

AS

Holiday at Mermaid Beach part 2

We sure had a wonderful over 5 days up at Mermaid Beach and this final record of events deals with a great day we had at Dreamworld at the northern end of the Goldcoast. It is one of those fun parks which has heaps of scary rides but of other amusing things to do. The kids did some of the not scary rides and had great fun, but we also did things like pit put golf. Let's look at some pictures of what we did starting with the enticing entrance.

This is first of scary rides that caught my - with riders strapped in the rotating ring at the end of the pole. 

The children were greeted by some colourful characters you may have seen on television.

Here's Flynn about to ride on a sort of roundabout whose seats rise and fall as it spins around.

They then spun around on horseback with me behind them rising and falling in a fixed rhythm.

The next rides were great fun as Ella and Flynn drove vehicles crashing into each other. If recall correctly, even Emily had a go!

Then it was time to ride antique cars. Drivers couldn't steer them because they ran on rails, but they could increase or lower speed as they negotiated bends.

If I read the actors correctly in this picture, Flynn is taking Emily for a ride!

Amongst the other amusements, kids could cuddle wildlife whilst being photographed. Here are Ella and Flynn each cuddling a Koala!

Then they were off to ride down an icy slope. That was strange as the temperature must have been about 20 C (68 F)

I was rather sad to see that I was wanted ... hopefully ... alive for horse threats. Fortunately I left Dremaworld before I could be arrested!

Here are Ella and Flynn posing with some metal creatures that fortunately didn't run after them.

I did take some videos of the kids on a couple of wild rides but alas I don't seem to be able to upload videos. That doesn't matter! They, their parents and we two grand-parents had a great time. I finish with one picture I took at the end of our stay. It shows a massive moon soaring above the Pacific Ocean!

I hope you have had fun reading about our trip to the Gold Coast. It's well worth a visit!

AS

Holiday at Mermaid Beach part 1

 For the last weeks of their stay in Australia, Emily booked all 6 of us into an AIRBNB apartment at Mermaid Beach in Queensland. This location is just south of the main part of the Gold Coast called Surfers Paradise. The Gold Coast is a wonderful location stretching 56 km (35 miles) north to south with mountains to the west and the Pacific Ocean to the east. It's rapidly growing population, which was tiny 70 years ago, has raced to 641,000 and the price of real estate is vary high in most places. The climate is fantastic, and while we were there daily temperatures were in the 18 -20 C range, while ovoernight minima were around 8 - 10 C. All of this is in mid-winter!

This is the first of several posts relating to our trip. In succession we'll look at 'getting there'; 'blending in'; 'walking at Burleigh Heads', and 'navigating the Currumbin Wildlife Sanctuary'. The trip north to Mermaid Beach was about 450 km (280 miles) and full of interesting things. For me, the stand-out was lunch at Ulmarra on the beautiful - and very large - Clarence River . Here's Emily and Ella enjoying our nice meal close to the river bank.

As you can see, the river is massive.

And here's Flynn exploring an ancient telephone box.

And, adjacent to where we had lunch, we found a tree full of screeching bats.

After we arrived at our AirBNB apartment located very close to the sands of Mermaid Beach, we soon settled in and here are several photos that impressed me. We arrived late in the afternoon and one thing that impressed me was dusk arriving from the Pacific Ocean - seen here in front of our apartment looking east.

And here is the opposite happening as sunrise emerged over the ocean to the east of us - very picturesque.

Encouraged by this lovely view I decided to take a walk on the beach northwards to Surfers Paradise seen here in the distance. This is the heart of the Gold Coast and has many soaring tall apartment buildings.

Here is the apartment where stayed. Note the nearby massive crane - merely one of dozens we saw around the Gold Coast which is experiencing fast population growth.

Not far from where we were numerous tall apartment buildings. I hope their foundashons are strong given their sandy base and likely rising sea level.

It didn't take long for Flynn and Ella to hurry off down to beach and paddle in the sea.

Our apartment also had a sauna where we could relax in very warm water. Here's Flynn trying it out.

And finally here is a picture of the two kids and me seated in the massive car we hired for the holiday. It seated no less that 8 people very comfortably.

The  next section of this massive BLOG reports the trip we took to Burleigh Heads a pretty promantory lying to the south of us on the Gold Coast. Again, we see a lovely beach adorned with many high rise apartments.

Here's Emily and her family facing south with several of the above apartments located to their left. Between Emily and Greg you can just make out the Surfers Paradise skyscrapers a long way off! And below that one is a similar view - minus the family - but with people on the beach watching the many surfers dancing on the waves.

We walked around the headland through beautiful woodlands and great ocean views. Here's Greg with Ella and Flynn.

This view looks south towards Coolangatta - the southernmost part of Queensland - and beyond that the town of Tweed Heads which is in New South Wales.

Here we all are ... minus Dot ... who took the photo.

A day after our headland wlk we headed to the brilliant Currumbin Woldlife Sanctuary and both Ella and Flynn were blown away by all the sights and opportunities. Here we are at the entrance.

And one of the first two animals we saw were this nice kangaroo and koala in the second picture

Then we visited the sanctuary's hosptial where nurses and doctors operated on injured or ill wildlife.

Then we came across staff working with various species. Here we met up with a snake being held by one worker.

Yet another meeting with a koala living in a leafy domain, anuld below that we saw some beaurtiful birds - mainly parrots in their cages.

At another location within the sanctuary we saw a pen full of crocodiles. Fortunately there was no way they could chase us!

On the other hand we could walk feely among the mass of kangaroos living in another enclosure and visitors could help feed them.

After this, we found an clsure that was home to a large range range of dinosaurs. Don't worry. They weren't alive, but merely reconstructions.

The snactuary had a small seated 'theatre' where visitors were entertained by staff working with well-schooled animals and birds. We went to two such sessions which had the audience rivetted by the well organised management of 'wild'life. Here are some pictures of the bird session.

The birds seemed to love their entertaining role and did as they were instructed! Finally, there are two more pictures in this collection. The sanctuary has a lovely railway netowrk tranporting visitors to whatever site interests them. We had several rides on the system and Ella and Flynn seemed to love the experience.

And on the last experience of our visit should have been huge but for one thing. The birds did not turn up in the vast numbers expected. The session was all about attracting birds to their evening meal adjacent to the sanctuary's entrance /exit.

Human participants are provided with food trays which are filled by performance staff and you can see Emily holding her food tray to attract the supposed birds. Alas, the number of bird visitors was small and, secondly, they flew off shortly after arriving for some unknown reason.

Oh well! It was a great day! Just one other thing! On another day I played a game of golf with Ella Flynn and Greg. I was amazed to play the 18 holes in just 54 strokes! However, the place was called put put and was just a series of often awkward / tricky  putting events.

AS