Autumn Colours

Autumn has arrived late in Armidale on account of the exceedingly warm weather we've been having and the relative lack of rain. So the deciduous trees have be putting on their Autumn colours much later than usual and those colours appear more intense than usual. Yesterday's temperature was, for example 23 C, which is the same as high summer in Britain, but the end of April is roughly the same as the end of October in the northern hemisphere

Anyway, Dot and I took a short drive this morning to photograph some of the lovely foliage we're seeing in town and I think you'll agree that the colours are quite intense. See for yourselves:

AS

Bingara Town

Bingara is a pleasant little town on the banks of the Gwydir River which provides an attractive backdrop. Indeed, the day we were there (i.e. yesterday) the river banks were home to large numbers of campers or caravanners, and recreational groups in canoes, fishing, or on horseback. By Australian standards, this is a large river

This large tree on the river bank, with its extravagant root system, caught my attention!

Like many small towns, the main street is wide - it's the Fossickers Way connecting Tamworth with Inverell. The trees in the median strip offer a little shade and the shops mostly have wide awnings to protect shoppers from the often hot sun. Fossicking, incidentally, is all about looking for precious gems and the nearby Copeton Dam area has diamonds.

This is the Gwydir Shire Council building, which is an impressively maintained historic building.

And across the road is the impressive, and famous, Roxy Theatre. Built 80 years ago in the then popular Art Deco style, this was a cinema before falling into decay and then being resurrected as both cinema and home of a theatrical company, plus a kind of convention centre. Remember, this town is home to c. 1300 people and it's stunning that it has such a priceless asset.

And on the corner we had lunch in Peter's Cafe, which has also been there since the 1930s and is also decked out in Art Deco style. You can see Dot sitting where we had a very pleasant lunch. Mine was a fish-burger, with the fish being a Barramundi fillet, probably Australia's most sought after native fish from the top end.

Across the road was another great example of Art Deco architecture populated with various kinds of commercial premises.

On walls all over town there were large works of art displaying something of the town's history - in this case presumably an early exploration of the district by some prominent dude whose name escapes me.

Like most towns, there's a pub in vernacular architecture with the upper floor a covered verandah edged in wrought iron lace-work. Armidale has quite a few of these kinds of building often dating back to the 19th century maybe 50 years after many rural areas were first settled.

Every small place used to have a fancy court-house, but the number of courts has been greatly reduced and this example now provides a variety of government services. It's well maintained, beautifully designed, and another credit to the town.

And here are the famous orange trees planted to honour fallen soldiers in two world wars. Each year, when the fruit have ripened - which is about now - , the town's school children ceremonially pick the fruit as an act of remembrance. Indeed, this coming Friday, four days away, is ANZAC day (25th April). It's a public holiday to celebrate Australia's greatest military disaster at Gallipoli (in Turkey) during the first world war.

So there you are. It's a pleasant spot with nice architecture and a good bit of history.

AS

Road to Bingara

On Easter Sunday we decided to drive to one of our 'nearby' towns for lunch and Dot suggested Bingara. This little town of just 1300 people is near by our standards, but probably mind-blowingly far by UK standards. It's 150 km away, or nearly 100 miles. To get there we travelled mostly minor roads and about 12 km of that was unsealed dirt.

The route is linear NW from Armidale as shown on the attached map:

The first 75 km, which we've driven many times goes to the tiny settlement of Bundarra (pop c. 400) up Thunderbolt's way, named after the notorious bush ranger, Fred Ward - alias Captain Thunderbolt, who made a living holding up stage coaches. This happened long ago, so you're safe from such happenings these days. Bundarra is not shown on the map, but lies at the junction with the Inverell-Bundarra road.

We'd never driven the rest of the distance - another 75 km to Bingara, roughly in parallel with the Gwydir River, one of the major tributaries of the Darling river system. That flows into the large lake held back by Copeton Dam. We were stunned by the beauty of the scenery en route. And the rest of this post is dedicated to images from the journey:

Distant views of the Dividing Range (c. 1500 m high)

Long stretches of narrow road through scrubby forests.

Lots of glimpses of nearby forest-covered mountains.

Steep winding roads offering great views..

Pleasant views across rolling pastoral country.

Pastures and mountains near Bingara.

Cattle sheltering from the sun. Eat your hearts out. The temperature was a pleasant 25 C, even though we're towards the end of April (= October in the northern hemisphere).

Views back towards the Great Divide.

Nice, eh!

AS

Seeing Red Once in a Blue Moon

This evening was gorgeous in an astronomical sense. There's a saying "once in a blue moon", which means rarely. Tonight we had "once in a red moon" which is I suppose even rarer. It rose just before sunset and literally glowed red because it was in the midst of a total eclipse and the earth's shadow lay firmly across the almost full moon's disc. To make things even more stunning, moonrise was accompanied by Mars, the red planet, nearby. So there were two bright red objects in the heavens quite close to each other. Mars is currently closer to Earth than at any time over the next few decades and was bright that it was the first celestial object to appear as the sun set.

The first photo was taken with my ageing digital camera, which was difficult to hold steady as it pointed into the sky and had a long time-lapse in low light. It does not do justice to the view, but there it is. The red moon is in the right hand corner and Mars is the small object towards the top left

At around 6.30 pm the moon began to emerge from the Earth's shadow and, just like the sun displays its diamond jewel on exiting the Earth's shadow, The moon also became bedecked with a streak of sunlight on its left margin. Apologies again for the photography - my hand shook at the vital moment - but you can see a sliver of sunlight on the moon's rim.

The whole scene was made extra impressive because we had a crystal clear evening and none of the dust and smoke of the northern hemisphere. If you were to visit us you'd be amazed at the quality of the light we enjoy.

AS

Metal Sculptures

Dot  and I regularly go to the Markets in the Mall on the last Sunday of each month. Armidale's main street, which is pedestrianised, is covered in stalls selling all sorts of things - fruit and vegetables, jars of honey and jam, second-hand books and tools, crafts - we saw yesterday some excellent wood-work for example, toys, hand-made soaps and cosmetics. There are also stalls for political parties, local action groups (one yesterday was campaigning for money for a new public library), and environmentalists and lots of different foods - Asian, Dutch poffertjes, lovely French croissants, spectacular ice-creams and so on.

One of the vendors is a creative bloke who takes scrap-metal and turns them into sculptures. We love his work and bought the metal dragon with mesh wings shown here - like something out Lord of the Rings - a few years ago as a Christmas present for Emily and Greg. Well, for some reason they didn't want it and it has graced our garden ever since.

Well, yesterday we decided to buy another object. This time it was a blow-fly! Yes, one of those pesky insects that blight our summers. This year, the extremely dry conditions until the last couple of weeks when it has simply poured day after day has led to an absence of the critters and I was having blow-fly withdrawal symptoms. I persuaded Dot to buy the metal blow-fly instead of a lizard or something similar and here it is! Rather nice, eh?

AS

Pop-Ups Concert

This morning we took Ella to a concert in a nearby hall given by two young musicians and targeting toddlers and early school age kids. There was a large and very enthusiastic young audience for a duo who have been nominated for a grammy. The music was catchy and the themes were what you'd expect for an audience of that age - counting songs, stories about animals, life in a large city, and so on. I guess the show was quite short - about 35  minutes because the tots' attention span was limited and the volume of the sound was so loud that many families migrated to the back of the hall, ourselves included (Emily, Ella and me). Ella liked some of the sketches, but was fearful of the booming speakers. She wore her tutu to the performance because she was expecting to dance to the music, but that never really happened. As an aside, will she be wearing a threethree when she reaches that age in May?

After the show we stood in long queues for (a) cheese melts and (b) a present of a balloon creation. She wasn't ecstatic about the melt, but the balloon artist made her a monkey climbing a tree with green foliage and that blew her away.

AS

Train Ride!

I've noticed that Flynn, when I take him for a walk in the stroller, is nervous about being near train tracks with their noisy and clanking engines and rolling stock, not to mention piercing horns. So, it was with some fear and interest that I found myself today taking him and Ella, who loves trains, together with Emily and Dot on a return train journey to Belmont - about half way from Mountain View to San Francisco. Towns en route include Palo Alto (high pole in Spanish), Menlo Park, and Redwood City - a who's who of ICT firms. The journey took about 25 minutes one way.

The line is served mainly by CalTrain services, which are often quite frequent on workdays. They tend to have a large diesel locomotive and 5 enormous double-deck carriages, with the former always at the southern end. So, services are pull southwards from SF and push northwards and look like this:
going north and south respectively.

Coming back from Belmont, the carriage we were in housed bicycles and I was surprised at the enormous amount of space provided for cyclists.

The route roughly parallels the El Camino Real (Royal Road in Spanish) road running from SF to San Jose and beyond and this picture taken from Belmont station shows the park we went to in the background.

We mainly had lunch in the park, but both Ella and Flynn used the play equipment enthusiastically:

I had a bagel for lunch, which I rather enjoy and Ella and Flynn both liked the slippery dips. Flynn even managed to climb up to the top of the slide himself even though he doesn't as yet walk - an event that's only days away I think. And, of course, he had to be helped down the slope..

All this action took place in yet another Eucalyptus forest. We were surrounded by massive specimens of various species, which rather made us feel at home:

Finally, after we returned to Mountain View ... well San Antonio station, which was apparently named after me ... we finished the day's trip with an ice-cream. Mine was a "small" (i.e. actually large) cup of two flavours, one of which was "computer chip". This was a delicious soft chocolate surrounding chips of hard chocolate. I must have some more of that in the next few days! Ella loved hers too!

AS

Keeping the Kids Occupied

Oakland Zoo had much offer little people and, on a Friday here, a large cohort of the visitors was in the under-10 and indeed under-5 age group judging by the enormous array of strollers. Apart from viewing the large numbers of animals associated with the Africa Sahel belt or tropical Asia, there were (A) children's play areas, (B) a chair lift which went a long way up the hillside way above animal enclosures so that one could float above lions and tigers, (C) a rather nice train trip to the Australia Outback, and (D) a small fun-fair. Ella sampled all these and Flynn most of them except for the chairlift where getting him on and holding him still would have been a challenge.

Let's have a look at this side of the Zoo:

Flynn standing beside a tortoise shell which Ella had just climbed through.

Ella and Flynn playing with a large red frog - just a model I'm afraid.

View over the zoo.

Ella takes to the steering wheel of a Jeep

And Ella's first ride on a carousel.

AS