Geographical Trivia

I was talking to colleagues during our morning break today and we discussed how hilly Armidale is compared with many places. I said I though our offices were about 100m above the creek winding through the university and that explained why the last hill is a bit of a grind.

Well, Google Earth corrects me. The rise from the lowest point on my bike journey is only 69m (or 225 feet for those still on imperial scales). That doesn't sound much does it. In fact my journey to work descends 36m from our home to the creek and then rises the 69m to leave me just 33m higher overall. And over the 5.5 km from home to work, that's not much of an average gradient. In fact, much of the trip is more or less flat. The big hill comes right at the end.

More trivia:
Home is at 1012m; 30 31.08' 02" south and 151 41.18' 50" east; and
my office is at 1045m; 30 29.07' 53" south and 151 38.30' 71"

That puts us at the same lattitude south as Ismailia (on the Suez Canal) is north: or Marrakech in Morocco; or the ruins at Petra in Jordan; or Kuwait City ; or Lahore in Pakistan; or Chengdu in Sichuan (China); or Wuhan (where UNE has an educational ti); or Tanega - Shima off the south coast of Kyushu (Japan).

I told you it was going to be a trvia post.

AS

Antiques Fair

Three days ago, Armidale - Dumaresq Council's renovated Steinway piano was launched in the Town Hall. Today, the same building hosted the 2010 New England Antique and Collectibles Fair. The event attracts vendors from a long way away, including four from Victoria (1000+ km from Armidale), Sydney and Brisbane. Some items on display were quite brilliant and we were much taken with a William IV folding card table priced at about $5500 (or about 2,900 GBP).

This annual event always attracts Dot and me, and we often come away some delectable items, such as our hall stand, my throne, and last year our antique filing cabinet. This year, Dot acquired two items: a Coalport bone china nude (!) and a Walker and Hall silver plated sugar container, both pictured here. We'll be back next year for more and perhaps the kids will gt a nice surprise when they read our wills in the distant future.

AS

Steinway Piano

Fifty-five years ago, Armidale City Council bought a Steinway Piano. Years of hammering by such luminaries as Geoffrey Parsons, Tamas Varsary, Idel Biret, Paul Badura Skoda and Roger Woodward slowly damaged its lustre and led to calls for restoration. Council, to its credit, stumped up the $32,000 (18,000 GBP) necessary for the task - aided in part by Musica Viva Australia. And, tonight, the grand piano's career was relaunched in the Armidale Town Hall (pictured) with a most unusual list of performers.

There were 8 works, all but one for solo piano; 10 performers (all local); four blokes and 6 sheilas; and seven of the performers were aged between 12 and 18!! I hazard a guess that few places of 25,000 people in the world would be able to offer high quality performances from this number and age of performers. The following notes amplify these remarks.

The difficult works presented brilliantly included:
1) a Granados Mazurka (played by an 18 year old);
2) a musically scenario about the big bang creation of the universe (written by a Malaysian born Australian, Sonny Chua) played by a 12 y.o. boy (Jol) whose father was born 50 years ago in Inner Mongolia!;
3) Chopin's Prelude #17 (Op 28) beautifully played by a 17 y.o. boy;
4) Sonnetto 104 del Petrarca from Liszt's Annees de Pelerinage (sorry no accents!) played skilfully by another 17 y.o. boy;
5) Saint-Saens' Piano Trio #2 played by three young girls from the Local Presbyterian Ladies College;
All these artists were school children!

In addition, their music teachers played two excellent piano duets (for one piano) by Debussy and Rachmaninov. And, to end with, the organisers gave the instrument to a local Paediatrician, Keith Power and he chose a beautiful work by Chopin that all of the world's great pianists adore: Chopin's Ballade #1. And, I imagine that most of those pianists would have been impressed by the cascades of sound Keith produced. The performance was electric and fast-paced.

And, the piano itself passed the test with flying colours. Well done all.

AS

Dragon Boat Racing

Next Sunday, 7 February, Canberra is holding a multicultural festival to celebrate the Chinese New Year. As part of the festivities, there will be Dragon Boat racing on Lake Burley Grffin from about 7.20 am until the finals after lunch based around the Southern Cross Yacht Club.

Emily and Rebecca are in two separate teams formed around their workplaces and they have been practicing hard for a while - often before work. The Canberra Magazine runs a section called Daily Capital which posted the attached picture today. OK, you cannot see Beck, but she's in there and it shows what a Dragon Boat looks like. The boats are often sponsored for charity.

AS

Off to School

Dear little Max headed off to School for the first time on Monday, and has now completed two of the expected 2,600 school-days before he goes to university! Fortunately, the transition to school was hassle free and he appears to be very happy in his new surroundings.

AS

Vaporous Cities

There's a web-site (http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/largest-cities-density-250.html) which lists cities by population density. For some reason, Canberra appears missing from the list, but I have calculated it at about 400 people per sq km. Thus, 323,000 people sprawl across 814 sq km in a garden city surrounded by extensive parkland and lots of lakes and forests.

That density compares with Mumbai (29,650 persons per sq km) in first place, Beijing (11,500), London (5,500), Tokyo (4,750), and Los Angeles (2,750)! I'll leave it to you imagination what it is like living in so sparsely settled a city.

AS

Musee D'Orsay

One of France's greatest art galleries, the Musee D'Orsay, is closed for renovations and guess where many of the paintings ended up. The answer is the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra where over 100 masterpieces of European art now hang. The artists include Monet, Cezanne, van Gogh, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec, Seurat, Rousseau, Bonnard and Vuillard, and their works cover the period 1886 to the early 1900s. The exhibition is called: Van Gogh, Gauguin, Cezanne and beyond: post-impressionism from the Musee D'Orsay.

Today we were privileged to see this exhibition and remind ourselves of the glories we had seen 8 years ago when three of those present, myself included, were on holiday in Paris. It is truly spectacular and our entry tickets were provided by Emily as a Christmas present. The people of Canberra are really lucky to have this event come to them and they have responded in droves. Some 30 of the paintings had audio commentary explaining the background to the works and the intricacies of their composition.

After the tour of the gallery, our lunch was a touch risky. Canberra has an institution called the BrodBurger, named after the owner of a caravan parked with dubious legality alongside Lake Burley Griffin. Forgetting that for a moment, the various kinds of burgers are highly sought after and the queues were lengthy to order them. So we each consumed a BrodBurger while sitting on the grass under shady trees in the lakeside park. The true estimate of their value was given by the large flock of birds including sea gulls and magpies lined alongside awaiting the crumbs from our 'table'!

AS

Bonsai & Penjing

Twice last week Dot and I visited Australia's national collection of Bonsai and Penjing. Most have heard of the former, even if it is in the context of Bonsaiing one's pet, and know what one looks like - see the first picture. Penjing are a Chinese equivalent in which an articial landscape or collection of dwarf trees is constructed. I'd like to take it up as a hobby if I could find the time! I gather that the collection will move to Canberra's new arboretum shortly.

AS

Max Goes Solo

One of the rights of passage for kids is to learn to ride a bike unaided by parents or trainer wheels. Max managed this feat just a day ago riding around the shores of Lake Gininderra adjacent to Belconnen's shopping centre. Belconnen is one of the major suburban locations in Canberra and where Max lives.

A second right of passage is starting school for the first time, now just two days away and a third, I suppose, is catching one's first fish. The first of these explains why we are in Canberra Max-sitting in the interregnum between leaving long day-care and proper schooling.

AS

Australia Day 10

Australia Day commemorates the day on which Governor Phillip sailed into Port Jackson (Sydney Harbour) with a cargo of convicts to take possession of this continent on January 26 1788. It is now an orgy of nationalism and self-congratulation and, of course, a public holiday. Many governments, from local to Federal, hold festivities attracting millions of participants and we joined the throng in Commonwealth Park Canberra for fair-ground rides, non-stop performances (for kids, teens, and parents), naturalisation ceremonies (I recall, perhaps incorrectly, that something like 13,000 people from all over the world became Australian citizens), and the finale of obligatory fireworks.

It's a family occasion, and we (Dot and I) joined Beck, Rob and Max, along with Emily and Greg, for the festivities. It was a good day out in hot dry weather, and so multicultural. We sat in the shade of some trees surrounded by peoples of dozens of different ethnic backgrounds eating foods from another dozen different countries. I personally chose Dutch pancakes (Poffertjes) covered in rapidly melting ice-cream; nice!

The final fireworks were held on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin, named after the US architect who designed the city. As the sun finally dived behind the evening clouds, the sky lit up with an impressive human contrived display send up from barges moored on the lake between Commonwealth Park and the National Library in the Parliamentary Triangle. Once again, I was taken by the multicultural character of the event, and we were surrounded by people from all over the world including Africa, Asia and Europe.

AS