Em's Arrival

We reached the airport terminal early on the 14th November to be sure of meeting Emily, Greg, Ella and Flynn as they exited from customs. And here they after a longish (maybe 15 hour trip from San Francisco.

AS

Great View

Dot and I are visiting Sydney to greet Emily and her family on their two-week visit to Australia. Coming down we took our now favourite route down Thunderbolt's Way - named after a lone bush-ranger called Fred Ward (alias Captain Thunderbolt) who held up stage coaches in the 19th century. Fortunately, he's long been gone in a shoot-out, so we were in no danger ... except from the many glorious views en route.This is one of the most scenic roads in Australia in my view and for perhaps 150 km doesn't go though any settlement. We stopped for a while at our usual resting place to admire the view. I can't remember the name of the lookout, but you can find it at 31 degrees 39 minutes and 21.08 seconds south; and 151 / 48 / 33.06 E!! Look it up on Google earth. Anyway I attach a couple of photos looking south towards Barrington Tops which rise to 5000 ft asl.

Despite all the rain we've had recently, the countryside is still a dull brown colour. On this occasion, however, we had a crystal clear day and could see vast distances.

AS

Big Win

I've just spent 14 hours over two days playing contract bridge at our local club's annual spring competition. It was a Swiss Pairs + Swiss Teams event and attracted players from all over New South Wales. We had 28 tables (112 players) for the pairs and 25 tables for the teams, both the largest attendance for some time. On Saturday I and my regular partner, Barbara Gates, played 56 boards and came in the top quarter of a strong field. Indeed, we got to 3rd position at one stage.

However, the Sunday Teams was a great triumph. Barbara and I teamed up with Nick Wall (who is now my Tuesday partner) and Ed Hahn and we won the event by a mile. Our IMP score was almost three times second spot and the victory point tally was 30 ahead of second spot. Indeed, we'd won the event after 6 of the 7 scheduled rounds, but we massively consolidated our position in the last round. In one round we played the starting favourites for the event by 65 IMPS to nil! Our whole team played an almost faultless game over 7 hours of play (8 hours including a delicious lunch). However, both Barbara and I were exhausted at the end, though that was tempered by our winning $400 between us for coming in first.

Normally, the President of the club would present the rather large Jean Stokes memorial bowl shown below, but since I'm the President that role fell to my friend, Ian Price. There is an official photo of that event, but I don't have it at this stage. So here's a photo taken by Dot at home. I'll return the trophy to our club-house round the corner early this afternoon.

Update! I now have the official picture of the four of us:

AS

Uralla Open Gardens

Dot and I headed out to nearby Uralla mid-morning to visit four open gardens there. They were part of a suite of ten or so gardens open to the public for a small fee in the Armidale district. We went along with two of Dot's friends who are also interested in viewing garden flowers and ornaments. We interspersed these visits with coffee and lunch in Uralla itself, an attractive little town acting as a dormitory suburb of Armidale located 22 km away.

My first pictures show some of the garden landscapes we saw - trees, shrubs and flowers.

Here's a beautiful white bottlebrush.

And a formal vege garden!

An avenue of flowers with a statue at the end, somewhat Romanesque.

Some Tasmanian (?) dogwood.

And a formal lily-pond.

Many of the gardens had metal sculptures like this pear.

And these dancing Brolgas.

Not to mention fake birds of prey flapping in the wind - designed to scare off birds that might damage flowers and shrubs.

Then there were lots of fountains or bowls full of water for the birds - giving us some ideas about how to improve our own garden.

And here's a child's personal sculpture garden, which we rather admired.

Not to mention this fancy barbecue are which had its own pizza oven.

I hope you enjoyed these pictures as much as we did visiting the various gardens, each of which was attached to a private home. Some were close to the centre of town, but others were some distance away on what we call rural residential subdivisions - maybe 3 or 4 hectares (7 - 10 acres). The gardens are in effect the sort of thing that you or I might create using our own labour, money and imagination.

AS

A Fast Ride

After playing contract bridge all afternoon, a four hour session which I also directed, I felt like a spot of exercise. So, I changed and jumped on my bike and headed off along one of my usual routes. I covered the 10.9 km in just 32 minutes, my fastest ever. That's an average speed of 20.5 km / hr (12.8 mph) over quite a hilly route, with home being the highest point on the route at 1013 m (3290 ft). The lowest point was 978 m, about 35 m (112 ft) below where we live. Not bad for a 68 yo? However, on second thoughts, that's not too much different to a marathon runner. Maybe I should up my training schedule.

AS

Bush School Sesquicentenary

The city of Armidale turned 150 years old the other day, but so also did a tiny bush school at Kelly's Plains maybe 10 km out of town. We went there today to the celebration and look over where Dot's uncle, Bob Burling, taught for 27 years until his retirement in 1973. I've never met him, but have caught up with his recently deceased son, Jim, who went to school with Dot.

Kelly's Plains is a tract of flattish grazing country south of Armidale as this picture shows and we surmised that the school opened to the service the children of workers on the surrounding pastoral stations. I have no idea who Kelly was!

At the start of the 1970s, this was the only school building - I presume it was a one-teacher primary school of which many still exist in remote locations. There was also a now demolished teacher's house. Dot, with her back to us, is looking at photos of her uncle.

Nowadays, paradoxically, the school has more class-rooms and facilities, but not because of an explosion in farm population. Quite the opposite. Most farms require little labour, but the locality has an explosion of hobby farms owned by people working in Armidale. The class-rooms and the library were open for inspection, and even the canteen was producing meals for visitors like us. Note the straw bales for seating.

There was some art-work painted on corrugated iron and the obligatory jumping castle.

And, in a covered area behind the school were some money making ventures helping the school's finances selling lemonade, second-hand books, jewellery, food and so on - even a grade 5 pupil busking on his violin. It was interesting trip down memory lane for both of us out in the countryside.

AS

Keys of the City

Last Friday saw an unusual event in Armidale - a double anniversary with the number of years celebrated in one twice the other, and the number of years being substantial in Australian terms. 2013 marks the 75th birthday of the University of New England and the 150th anniversary of Armidale achieving city status. To celebrate the occasion, the latter bestowed the Keys of the City on the former, which comprises no less than about one-third of the city's economy. In a sense, UNE is the city's economy.

Plans for the event included a procession of university staff in full regalia from St Mary's cathedral to the town mall where the investiture was to occur in the open air. A heavy shower put paid to that and the event was transferred to the Town Hall with a short, perhaps 3 minute, procession to take place between the Council Chambers and the Town Hall. Fortunately the rain stopped in time to avoid drenching academic regalia, but it did reduce the crowd in attendance quite dramatically. The following pictures show the procession, but not the investiture.

While the city band played appropriate processional music, the academics commenced their long journey behind an army contingent presumably drawn from the reserve unit on campus. At least that corps marched briskly.

The academics followed in what was more like a funereal amble, which is perhaps a metaphor for the disparate and individual nature of academic life. Here we see the chancellor and mayor following behind the mace - the third such weapon in this and most recent post to these pages. Further behind were quite a few academic staff.

And bringing up the rear were numerous school children, which at least provided an audience!

Other tasks prevented me from hearing the various congratulatory speeches.

AS

Old Parliament House

Earlier this week I had an expenses paid meeting in Canberra with the Regional Australia Institute, of which I am a Fellow. The meeting was to target the Institute's research agenda for 2014 and its board, fellows and research team were all brought together at the Margaret Whitlam Pavilion in Canberra's Arboretum.. Interestingly, I have just completed a briefing paper on regional policy for the Institute and I was surprised to see that the agenda followed closely my identification of key research issues and policy directions.

I know the chair of the Institute's board quite well because he also heads the Northern Inland Regional Development Board, which covers Armidale, the Northern Tablelands and adjoining regions. And we were on the same flights to Sydney and then on Canberra. He's also a prominent local farmer ... well, local is nearly 200 km (or 125 miles) away! He liked my ideas greatly and our opinions on regional development policy directions were almost identical.

I had a free day after that meeting before staying the night with Bec, Rob and Max in the Canberra suburbs and since my hotel was located right in centre of the city I decided to tackle some its many museums starting with Old Parliament House. This was the parliament building for maybe 61 years until it was superseded by the new building in 1988, the year of Australia's bicentenary. After that it was turned into a museum of Australian Democracy. Despite having been in the new building many times, I cannot recall being in the old one until a couple of days ago and so the visit was of considerable interest to me. Something of what I saw is illustrated here:

Old Parliament House - the mast in the background is atop the new parliament building.

Cheating a little! This is the nearby Treasury Building, but Bec's office is a new extension to it.

This is the old House of Representatives chamber, with the ceremonial mace in the foreground.

The speaker's chair. and nearby despatch boxes.

The Senate Chamber. Notice how we borrowed American terms for our debating chambers.

A picture of the formal opening of parliament by the Queen early in her reign. It hangs in Kings Hall.

The government party room and Prime Minister's Office. The last incumbent was Bob Hawke.

Various members' offices

Speaker's suite.

Another Mace.

Curtin's office. He was war-time Prime Minister, Churchill's colleague down-under.

Opposition party room.

Part of the President of the Senate's Suite - used by HM during her stay at Parliament House.

That presumably makes this the Royal Flush!

The President of the Senate had a nice office.

The Country Party room (the Country Party is now the National Party).

Kings Hall.

Senate courtyard, where the Senators could breathe some fresh air.

I hope you enjoyed this tour as much as I did. By the way, here's a self-picture of me sitting in a speaker's chair taken with my mobile phone.

AS