Brand Armidale

In recent months I've been invited to work with other community members and a team of consultants to develop a 'brand' image for the newly amalgamated Armidale Regional Council and yesterday was invited to the brand's launch in the Beardy Street Mall outside the courthouse.

Here's the Council Administrator, Dr Ian Tiley, introducing the launch, backed by the core slogan: 'unleash the opportunities'. Ian and I were linked on LinkedIn long before he was appointed administrator by the NSW State Government, and he did his doctorate at UNE supervised by one my colleagues there.

The event was watched by a fair crowd of people, some seated but most, like me, standing .

You can see in the first two pictures and the one below the Council's logo - a stylised capital A in the shape of a multicoloured triangle, which has all sorts of symbolism represented by colours and internal lines.

Here is the consultant team about to explain their decisions / recommendations developed in conjunction with me and other team members.

And the ceremony was recorded for posterity ... and I presume some TV channel.

And, at the end, we saw a movie featuring a local school-kid (his mother beaming in the audience) with the new logo and his T-shirt and skate-board navigating his way around town - mostly on the skate-board. I guess the symbolism here was that we're entering a new world which is opening up opportunities for young people.

AS

Cloudscapes

After an especially hot and dry first two months of 2017, the weather has suddenly turned muggy and a little cooler, with rainfall increasing somewhat. Today I suggested to Dot that we go out for lunch and see some of the greening countryside and we chose, perhaps bizarrely, a trip to Kentucky. That's not in the USA, but a tiny hamlet of perhaps 300 people lying about 40 km southwest of Armidale up on the northern tablelands. It has a tiny primary school, a couple of churches, a village hall built strangely in 1940, and a general store that also doubles up as a cafe and post-office. Strangely there was no pub. I have seen pubs in tiny settlements in Queensland - one place having as far as I could tell just two residents - the publican and his wife. And Dobson's Distillery at Kentucky is a major business producing craft beer, wines, and such spirits as gin and vodka. Oh well, I suppose they serve as the local public house!

Well, we both had BLAT for lunch - basically Bacon, Lettuce, Avocado and Tomato on Turkish bread and it was delicious. And the surrounding countryside was attractive. But what really captured our attention were the lovely cloudscapes. Huge billowing cumulus clouds dotted the landscapes in all directions, some dropping their contents on our car as we sped along and others brooding darkly in the distance. For example, here are three images of the clouds taken from near the cafe, and as you can see there's an awful lot of rolling pastoral countryside:

We returned home via a round-about route. To start with we took Terrible Vale road, which fortunately didn't live up to its name. It was a good quality sealed road, albeit only one lane wide, all the way to Thunderbolt's Way where we turned northwards towards home. One of the attractions of this route is passing by Dangar's Lagoon an area of internal drainage that, after heavy rain, fills up and becomes a water birds' paradise. Well, on this occasion, recent heavy rains at the end of 2016 and in the last week meant the lagoon was full. So, we stopped at the public bird-hide on its shores and looked out for ducks, swans, and other water birds. Well, there were some in the distance as shown on this picture:

You can see how pretty the site is, and also the black swans which were probably 200 m away. However, the bird life wasn't prolific but I can probably explain that. The local rivers and farm dams are running high and provide alternative venues to Dangar's Lagoon, even though the latter is semi-permanent. Also. it's not the start of the nesting season, so birds have probably scattered on that count too. But what really caught our attention, as we cautiously trod the path to the shore-line to avoid possible snakes, was again the cloudscapes. Once again, they were riveting.

OK, we drove 80km - about 50 miles - there and back to get these views, but in our view it was worth it. Fortunately, we have had no rain today at home, an none seems imminent, which means I can head off on my bike for another 10+ km ride. And to make life a bit more interesting I've been invited in a couple of weeks to attend the launching ceremony for Brand Armidale to be held in the Mall between the post-office and the historic courthouse. Armidale's administrator  invited me to be involved in two meetings with consultants to develop the brand and while I know much of what they're proposing, I'm keeping quiet for now!

AS

An Extraordinary Concert

Dot and I went to a live concert in our town-hall last night and came away thinking that it was one of the most unheralded and remarkable performances we’d ever heard. To start with, I'd never heard of either of the two pianists who performed duets most of the evening, both of whom I gather are Australian citizens. One was Elena Kats-Chernin, who was born in of all places, Tashkent, in what is now Uzbekistan. Given that she's now about 60 years old, she was a citizen of the Soviet Union, but somehow managed to escape and her English is excellent.  The other performer was Tamara-Anna Cislowska, who turns 40 this year, so we had two female pianists. Despite her name, Tamara appears to have been born here in Australia and has the unusual distinction of being the youngest person to have won the Australian Broadcasting Commission's (ABC's) 'Young Performer of the Year Award' when she was only 14 years old.

Well this duo were extraordinary people. Their techniques were flawless, indeed excitingly brilliant, as had to be the case for the avalanche of notes that they unleashed in works that almost seemed almost impossible to play. Both, throughout their careers, have won numerous awards for their virtuosity, including in Tamara's case two recent albums of the year ... and yet have not become household names, or at least not in the wilds of Armidale. Elena is not only an accomplished pianist, but also an established composer in just about every genre, something I didn't know either. And last night the program mostly contained her own works, apart from one or two items by some lesser composers like Schubert and Rachmaninoff! By the way I think the program got the latter's birth-date wrong so that he was born in 1973 and died in 1943, leaving me wondering how anyone can die at -40 years old. 

Anyway, Elena's music includes music for film, opera, ballet, adverts, popular genres, symphony orchestras and so on. Do my UK readers remember Lloyds TSB celebrated ad campaign 'For The Journey'? The music for that was Elena's. She wrote works played at the opening of the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney and the 2003 Rugby World Cup. Recently, she premiered works with such unlikely titles as 'The Divorce', a TV Opera; 'The Witching Hour', a concerto for 8 double basses and orchestra; and 'Unsent Love Letters - Meditations on Erik Satie', just released on CD!

All this said, the town-hall was completely packed; the works were hugely complex and remarkable; and, at the end there were calls for encores twice! The audience was really enthusiastic and humming. I keep on asking myself ‘how can a small town like ours a long way from a large city put on such a stunning concert?’ I was so taken that I bought a double CD of works by Elena with most of the items involving two pianists – duets. Then I was surprised to discover that the CDs were produced by the Australia Broadcasting Corporation. Not only that, but of the 31 works on the CDs, no less than 14 were world premier recordings. Would anyone be interested in receiving the CDs as a present? Despite my enthusiasm for this pair, I suspect that I'm not going to be rushed with requests!

Anyway, here's a picture of the duo who wore highly creative clothing yesterday evening - but not here. Guess which is which.

AS

Boom time?

According to figures just released, Australia's quarterly and annual GDP growth shows remarkable resilience. In the December quarter, the growth rate reached a massive 1.1% (c. 4.5% annualised), while the actual annual rate was a more modest 2.4%. Even that annual rate was higher than in most of the world's developed economies. Those figures also mean that Australia has now had something like 25 continuous years without a formal recession (two continuous quarters of negative growth), which is an impressive track record. The numbers just quoted were also much better than economists' guesstimates, possibly reflecting (i) higher prices for mineral and agricultural exports, (ii)  fairly good seasonal conditions in many parts of the country and (iii) strengthening in-bound tourism.

AS

Armidale's Antiques Weekend

One of our favourite shows on TV is the UK's antiques roadshow. And we had our own version of it Armidale this weekend ... but minus the TV crews and interviewers. Each year antiques dealers from all over the Eastern States, NSW, Victoria and Queensland come to town to exhibit their wares and over the years we've bought a heap of stuff. In past years, I acquired a throne, a late 19th century filing cabinet with marble top and 16 leather fronted boxes each in its own slot, a lovely c. 1930 Art Deco display cabinet, a hall stand, a dinner gong, a nude Coalport figurine, a metal tea-caddy from Sheffield, a century-old silver condiment set from Birmingham, a Victorian padded chair for the bedroom - useful for sitting on while trying to tie shoe-laces, and so on.

Well, we visited the show early yesterday morning and spent maybe 90 minutes wandering around all the usual stuff one finds in an antiques show, with most 'stuff' dating from the early 18th century onwards. Australia has very little 'stuff' dating back to Elizabethan times or before. I, in particular, like looking for unusual pieces of furniture and one caught my eye. The item shown here was advertised as a music stand and on looking at it I realised that it would make a lovely drinks stand with room down below for my many bottles of whiskey and ageing red wine, a drawer down below that could house coasters, corkscrew, and so on, while the beautifully inlaid top could be home to our dinner gong and a tray containing glasses and jugs. So here it is installed in our dining room. I like it!

If that was my purchase, Dot was very much taken with a large collection of Moorcroft vases - items that commentators on the Antiques Roadshow often drooled over. I can see why, and Dot fell in  love with a piece called "Whoot", one of a numbered edition designed by Rachel Bishop. It's a very attractive vase with owls painted on it, as shown here. You can just see my throne on the left edge of the pictures.

So, we keep on adding to our collection of interesting furnishings a little a time, but the house is getting crowded. To locate the 'music stand' we had to relocate my antique book-case to the study and that took an hour. I say 'antique' because I made it what seems like aeons ago and by the time I expire in maybe 30 years time it will definitely have gained antique status! What will it be worth at auction given that it was constructed by someone of my reputation. I only hope there's room for the kids who inherit all our 'stuff' to display and use them in their own homes.

And I've forgotten to mention the 54 works of art, including original paintings, numbered drawings, Japanese wood block prints, etc.. We have on top of this a variety of objects like wooden clubs and spears from NZ and Pacific Islands, a Korean wall hanging, some English pottery hanging on the wall, not to forget embossed metal plates from such unusual places as Tabriz in Iran and somewhere called Moscovskii Kreml, which bought on the spot in 1966. Heck, that's 51 years ago! I wonder if I'm recorded in KGB files making the purchase. That reminds me. We've also now got two small statuettes of Swiss or Austrian guys with hiking or climbing gear. All this explains why we've just about run out of space to hang things. I hate to think what we're going to do if we downsize at some stage.

AS

Indonesian Music in the Mall

New experiences come thick and fast in this little town. Today, Dot and I went down the 'markets in the mall' which take place on the last Sunday in each month. We usually stock up on such things as honey, jars of relish, punnets of interesting flowers for the garden, hand-crafted and fragrant bars of soap, fresh vegetables, interesting croissants, a cactus or  two for my collection, occasional 'creatures' and-crafted from scrap metal, perhaps Dutch, German or Asian foods and so on.

In a way today was no different, except for one thing. Sure we acquired many of the above items, but who'd expect an Indonesian Gamelan Orchestra to be performing on-stage at one end of the mall - between the post-office and the old (historic) court-house. As you'll see from the pictures, the members of the orchestra were local, nearly all the instruments were percussion apart from a little and rather primitive flute-like object that looked and sounded little different from an Andean flute that I think Max once had. However, most of the percussion items were exquisitely tuned, like the xylophone objects in the front row and the bell-like objects on the right. And the music created was gentle and relaxing - altogether very pleasant.

I don't who set the performance up, but I do know that decades ago the University of New England's department of music acquired a set of gamelan instruments and performed concerts locally. That said, I haven't heard such a performance in years. By the way, the little girl in these pictures had escaped from her parents and was riveted by the spectacle.

AS

Interesting Cloudscape

I was out for a walk a two evenings ago after yet another hot and steamy day. I'd done about 3 km and was on my way home concerned about some heavy storms lurking to the south and also the fact that it was beginning to get dark. So I quickened my pace and was looking around principally at the houses and gardens in my neighbourhood. Suddenly I looked up and was greeted by a glorious spectacle. The last rays of the sun were illuminating the clouds in front of me, but simultaneously light rain was falling from them creating a rainbow effect. I couldn't resist whipping out my mobile phone and taking a couple of quick shots of this event, both attached here, with the second being, in effect, an enlargement of the first.

I think you'll agree that this was some display!

Yesterday evening, at around the same time, we were hit by a truly violent storm which passed directly overhead with ample lightning and massive claps of thunder. One casualty of the intense wind was our garden umbrella, which was lifted from its stand and dumped on the ground, fortunately undamaged. The storm produced c. 25 mm of rain (1 inch) in just half an hour and put one of our TV channels, the ABC, off-air - and back on again - about twenty times, We gave up watching the who-dun-it because we missed key elements of the plot. Fortunately there was no hail unlike parts of Sydney that got trashed earlier in the day!

There's a similar forecast fro this evening, but a search of the Bureau of Meteorology's rain radars shows that the nearest rain event is nearly 500 km away and, right now, I'm seeing a lot of blue sky. The temperature at 1.30 pm as I type this post is approaching 29 C (or nearly 85F) - very pleasant.

AS

Missed Opportunities

I'm interested in rare astronomical events and two presented themselves this weekend. Yesterday (11 February), comet 45P (Honda-Mrkos-Pajdusakova) made its closest pass of Earth at a mere distance of 12 million km away and it's popularly termed the green comet. Since I've always wanted to see a green comet I duly woke an hour before sunrise - about 5.20 am and, armed with Dot's binoculars, rushed outside into the cool morning air and eagerly scanned the sky between Arcturus and Saturn looking NE from our back garden. Well, after doing this for some 15 minutes I came up with nothing. There seemed to be a little haze in the sky and the binoculars were a little ancient... so perhaps the task was a little beyond me. There was an upside of sorts. Our hot weather makes sleeping at night sticky and uncomfortable and standing in the cool night air bare-foot and wearing only shorts was kind of refreshing. In case you think this might be crazy, the temperature was still 21 C at 5 am.

Not to be put off, I prepared for the next event 17 hours later ... at c. 00.40 am on the 12th ... this morning. Armed with a camera, I awaited the disappearance of the bright start Regulus as the full moon passed in front of it. Again, wearing only shorts due to the heat ... would you believe 33 C degrees at 1000 m asl just after midnight ... I observed the moon for about 30 minutes, but Regulus failed to show. Maybe I was too early or late, so I despondently went to bed, but here's a picture of what I was waiting for, with Regulus shown on the right:

So, the next task is to try observe object 2016 WF9 on February 25th. Perhaps I should ask if UNE's observatory is open that evening!

We're surviving the heat OK here, but today sees a forecast record 37 C or almost 100 F. Armed with this forecast I jumped on my bike early this morning at about 6.30 am for a 17 km ride, bringing my total for the week to c. 108 km !! And, when I started the temperature was already 24 C, so I threw away my singlet and rode bare-chested! I wasn't the only guy attired thus. There were several joggers, one other cyclist, and one dog-walker. Still, the sensation was pleasant ... nice and refreshing.

AS

Update on warming

My last post complained about the heatwave we're experiencing, but I expected it would be over by now. The maximum temperatures for Armidale, both recorded and forecast, over the first 12 days of February are, according to the data I have at my disposal, the following:

32-33-34-33-32-33-33-26-28-33-36-37 in degrees C or
90-91-93-91-90-91-79-82-91-97-99 degrees F

And today's predicted temperatures here are warmer than Cairns (17 degrees S) or Darwin (12.5 S).

So the average maxima for the first 12 days of February here will likely be 32.5 C or 90.5 F. That's an amazing 7 degrees C above the long term average, and we're struggling to sleep at night when the minima are about 20 C (68 F) rather than 12 C. This afternoon, the temperature of our lounge reached 35 C (95 F) - now 36 C!

Fortunately, the humidity dropped today - just leaving just the heat behind. In a way, the effect was stunning because of huge light intensity coupled with crystal clear air. But for the last 5 days huge thunder clouds appeared around Armidale and some places nearby received torrential rain. Indeed, one storm went right over the top of us at about 3 am. I awoke to the crash of thunder and a torrential downpour that deposited 32.5 mm (1.3 inches) of rain in a couple of hours.

So for the moment we have runaway grass growth in parts of the garden. The best time to mow is probably about 6.30 am, but I suspect that our neighbours might object! Anyway, that's when I go riding my bike. When we had the high humidity for the last few days I returned home from the ride wringing wet, so this morning I just wore a pair of shorts for the trip, much to the surprise of passing motorists! But thus attired I rode even faster than usual, completing the 15 km (9.3 miles) in the near record time of 43 minutes (or 21 km  / 13 miles per hour)! Not bad, eh, for someone approaching 72!

The humidity respite will be short-lived, however, as showers are forecast tomorrow.

AS

Global Warming Isn't Happening?

I have a acquaintances who argue that global warming isn't happening, but just have a look at these figures for my home town, Armidale. For the record, my home is at roughly 1000 m above sea level (or 3250 feet). And, because of our relatively low latitude (roughly 30 degrees South or similar to Cairo, which is 30 N!, our average January daily maximum is about 26.8 C (>80 F).

That's nice, but have a look at 2017's figures. This year we've averaged so far 29.2 (or nearly 85 F) and the forecast for the next 7 days is impressive: 27-28-30-31-32-33-34. This will raise the average figure for this month to 29.3! That's way above average and the hottest on record, with that being 28.7 C in 2003.

But what's happening during the day is mirrored at night. Our long term average minimum is 12.7 (55 F), but that has soared in 2017 to 15.9 (60.6 F). No wonder I've taken to riding my bike at c. 6.30 am when it's nice and cool, but not cold. And I've therefore upped my daily daily distance to an average of 15 km a day or about 105 km a week (or 65 miles). Hey, that's an interesting number! That's rather further than riding from Poole (Dorset) to Seaton (Devon) or about the same as going from (Plympton (Devon) to Falmouth (Cornwall) or a little less than pedalling from Kirkland to Olympia (for my US readers in the Pacific NW)

And while I'm on our weather, I might mention that our monthly total rain is about 85.4 mm (3.4 inches), but this year so far we've only received 45.2 mm (1.8 inches) with only 6 days to go. So, the combination of heat and lack of rain has browned off patches of our lawn. I tried to remedy that with watering from sprinklers, but fortunately the last two days have seen some heavy thunderstorms dump about 25 mm of that 45+ mm over that period. And more is forecast for today - likely given the heavy cloud hanging around. Welcome though the rain is, the last two days have been a bit like living in a sauna!

Sorry, I can't take a selfie of me riding my bike!

AS