Roaming the New England Countryside

 Last week we had the privilege of hoasting Rebecca and Rob for a few days here in Armidale and they love exploring the Australian countryside. Late one afternoon we headed off to the wooded countryside alongside Tilbuster Creek for a rapid walk as the sun set. This is what we saw, but I apologise for the low light

On another day Bec and I went to the Blue Hole and the Gara gorge for a much longer walk. Just one year ago poor Bec suffered a major knee injury by she's recovered marvellously. Indeed, today, she just celebrated her a-knee-versary. The countryside around Gorge on the Gara River is 'gorge'ous - as these pictures show.

I hope you're enervated by these photos and want to come and stay with us to explore our extensive and massively beautiful countryside.

AS

Bach's Peasant Cantata

Amidale hosts a great Annual Back Festival, amazingly for a town with c. 25,000 residents. But we have a tremendous history of performing classical music and the Back Festival is one I never miss. This year there were 10 events over 4 days and only the 4th and 10th of those were freely open to the public. This blog focuses on the 4th event which was in, of all places, an arcade in the town centre now mostly containing office businesses. Only one of Bach's works was performed - the Peasant Cantata, which explores the vagaries of dealing with of all things, the Taxman. Here are my pictures and commnetary.

The commercial building where the performance was held has a long corridor leading to a lovely painting of Armidale's key buildings and sites. I elected to hear the performance from an upstairs balcony where a few imported seats were available.

Downstairs, the 6 or 7 members of the orchestra were positioned at the foot of a staircase which played an important role in the work. All the seating was imported for the event.

Here we are about to begin.

And then the two peasant singers descended from our level. I'd seen themwating close-by and wondered how members of the audience were dressed like this. Well they were great singers and played their role with great aplomb.

Then a bloke in a top hat emerged at the top of the staircase, presumably about to serve the peasants with a tax notice. By the way, as far as I could tell, the work was sung in German.

And here the peasnt couple are having sorted out their affairs, with the male peasant now wearing the top hat!

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There was wild applause at the end froma very happy audience. By the way, I presume that the guy standing on the right was the parent of one of two singers.

I tried several times to upload some of the singing, but couldn't get that to work.

AS

Green Electricity

 

I love the vistas and landscapes of New England. And, here's a picture I took four days ago looking northwards to Mount Duval.

Two days later I took another picture of Mount Duval from much further away. This time I was with two friends combing the countryside for an electricity farm located near Uralla (c. 21 km south of Armidale). And what we saw took our breath away. Take a look at these mind-boggling statistics. This new development will typically deliver 720 megawatts per day and 1.8 million megawatt hours per annum. It will contribute to reducing greenhouse omissions by 1.5 million tonnes, which is like taking 300,000 cars off the road. And it will power no less than 250,000 homes. Not bad, eh! Even more amazingly, our region (Northern Tablelands) has 80,000 people and possibly has 35,000 houses. In other words, this bunch of solar panels will support 7 times our region's population. As you can see, these panels cover square kilometers.

And, a day later, we were surprised to hear that this solar farm had been officially opened. The day we were there, it still seemed to be under construction.

All up this is likely a great benefit to our region in terms of cheaper electricity, jobs created for constrruction and maintenance, and ... potentially better grazing country for sheep. New England is a renewable energy hub in NSW and a big step forward. Around New England we're also en route to a stack of major wind farms, many other electric panel generation locations and pumped hydro. We'll soon be exporting electricity to a wide range of territory.

See more at: www.newenglandsolar.com.au

AS 

Unusual Event

I regularly go out for a walk in the late afternoon over familiar routes that rarely differ. The other day I reached the top of a downhill and potentially dangerous bike track and to my amazement I came across a possee of school kids on bikes  from a well-known and regarded private school - TAS (The Arnidale School). While I was nearby they were congregating and not riding, but the sheer number amazed me. Has any reader seen such a looming event? Here's the top of the track.

And here is a possee of kids waiting to go.

And here's another group waiting to go!

That's an amazing number of kids from one private school! After taking these pictures I walked home quickly to tea.

AS

Culturefest

In the late-afternoon and early evening of Friday 10 March, Armidale staged a magnificent event - a Culturefest. 

Our town is multicultural with huge numbers of migrants from heaps of different countries globally. And to celebrate this condition, we staged a massive food-share at Curtis Park on the banks of Dumaresq Creek. Located there were maybe 15-20 food-stalls each delivering samples of traditional foods from their country of origin. Each was located in a 'tent' bearing the flag and name of the countries in question - see below. We could sample foods from many parts of Asia, Europe, parts of Africa and South America. Have you ever had a meal from Bhutan or Nigeria or Indonesia?

I mayself chose a meal from Iran, an interesting country I've visited twice and from which I have several friends. It cost me nothing and was delicious! The whole of Curtis Park was crammed with people queuing for food and consuming it. The event was hugely popular and provided an opportunity helping to integrate and welcome people from different cultural backgrounds. It was also for people across all age-groups and often wearing traditional clothing.

The location was also decked in the flags of maybe 80 or 90 different nations welcoming people from those nations.

There were places where people sit down either on the ground or on chairs and a stage where later on bands from different cultures could perform.

What other town of 25,000 people do you know of staging a similar event - and from anywhere on earth?

AS