Early morning walk along Tilbuster Creek

 I and a good friend often go for early walks on Saturday mornings, with our principal destination being Tilbuster Creek lying about 4 to 5 km north of Armidale. We like it because there's a wealth of great scenery and wildlife and the tracks are interesting. It's also very lonely when we typically travel at c. 7 am.

Yesterday, we had to take a different route to usual because recent heavy rains had made many paths a bit boggy. Strangely, we sought the quickest route to the creek-lands because the tracks alongside were not water-logged. It was a lovely day - not a single cloud in the brilliantly blue sky and the temperature rose fast. So here I am in summer gear standing on the creek bank!

Something strange happened at this spot. For some reason, my glasses climbed our of my track-suit pocket and jumped on to the grass. I still have no explanation for their activity, but they were not noticed as missing until maybe 15 minutes later. At that point we retraced our steps to where the photos were taken and there they were innocently looking up at us!

Oh well! Out other excitement was looking at the river scenery and trying to spot one of the Platypus species known to inhabit the waters. Alas, they must still have been in bed. However, there was a lot of bird-life and the Kookaburra shown here attracted our attention. It also seemed rather interested in our presence.

And here are a couple of pictures of the creek. Please let me know  if you can spot  a Platypus!

AS

Armidale's early Spring washed away

Technically we're still in Winter, but towards the end of last week we had a taste of early Summer with some daily maximum temperatures exceeding 20 C, As usual, all good things come to a screeching halt and the last 3 days had a climatic wreck. Maximum temperatures plunged to + 6 C (43 F) and this was accompanied with gale force winds and heavy rain which yielded nearly 50 mm (c. 2 inches). Previous heavy rain over recent months had filled all the water storage dams around Armidale, so the heavy rain simply swept down Dumaresq Creek and generated even larger floods than I reported a few months ago. The river also seemed to be flowing faster. Have a look at these pictures:

AS

Early Spring?

 We've had some lovely weather in the last few days and the flowers in our garden adore it. Yesterday we reached 18 C beneath a brilliant blue sky, not bad for late winter at 1000 m above sea level. After all the recent rain, our shrubs, bulbs and other plants are having a lovely time bursting into flower.

Above we have a lovely string of daffodils along our driveway, most opened in the last week.

On the timber decking outside the back door we has this glorious collection of flowering pot-plants (above) and to the back side (right).

These exhibits are only a small fraction of the mass of flowers surrounding us right now. I go for frequent walks around town and the images are similar in most places. We're really looking forward for the formal start of Spring just two weeks from now!

Of course, in the middle of a virus lockdown, working in the garden is becoming an increasingly attractive prospect!

AS

Lockdown Scamble

 Last Saturday, 7th August, State Government announced that Armidale would be entered into lockdown as two people had been identified as having the deadly Delta virus. They had been in Newcastle where the Delta version was already going strongly and was in lockdown. Illegally, they escaped Newcastle and delivered the virus to our area. Worse still, another relative of theirs, who goes to the Armidale Secondary College, has now been tested positive and we fear that kids there may catch the virus en masse.

Given this situation we must now stay at home for a week, with several legal opportunities to escape. For example, we can shop for food and other necessities like pharmaceuticals or hardware. We can also exercise and, in the last two days, I have done 28,000 steps according my Fitbit with my weekly target being 70,000. I guess I'll easily meet that target! However, if we escape legally from home we still have to wear masks and social distance. Still, I approve this lockdown as Delta is much more infectious than the first strain of COVID-19.

The lockdown was announced via various media early on Saturday morning with the start-up time being 5 pm. And we, like seemingly half of Armidale's residents, headed straight to one of the local supermarkets (Woolworths) to top up our food shelves. Mind you, I also had to quickly cancel the afternoon's bridge tournament I was due to direct. Players were both scared of the virus, many being elderly, and there was fear that the game might extend beyond 5 pm. Having reached the relevant shopping mall we were stunned by (a) the shortage of parking space and (b) the swarm of customers heading to the entrance. Our worst fears soon emerged as there was a queue to enter the supermarket and a shortage of trollies. However, the queue dramatically lengthened shortly after we arrived there as the first picture below shows. The queue might have been 50 m of more long - the length of the shopping centre's public area. Anyway, after a short wait we were allowed to enter and i managed to seize a trolley.

The remainder of the pictures show the congested aisles with many almost wholly occupied by queues of trollies awaiting check-out. After we'd filled ours with what we needed it took maybe 20 or 25 minutes to go through the checkouts. 

As with the first round of the virus in 2020, we were stunned by the shelves stripped of toilet paper! But it was also noticeable that those arriving early had stripped most of the shelves faster than the staff could fill them with existing reserve stocks. I imagine that by the end of the day many shelves would have been empty. I suppose our two other supermarkets, Coles and Aldi, were similarly looted!

Hopefully our stock will last the week, but I wonder what will happen if lockdown is extended!

AS

Flooded Again

 After a period of drought, Armidale is again experiencing some heavy rain events that have filled  our local reservoirs including the Malpas and Dumaresq dams. Consequently all the incoming rain overflows immediately into local rivers like Dumaresq and Tilbuster Creeks. Earlier this week we had c. 33 mm (1.3 inches) of rain, giving us the highest flood in town I've seen for a long time. The rapidly flowing and high levels of water was, in a way, entertaining and I set out to photograph the event. Here are some of my views and, as you'll note, the skies were laden with dark cloud.

I often walk along this path close to the eastern edge of town, but I couldn't on this day.

Would you like to play football on this pitch?

Again, I'm standing on a footpath I often use. The usual Dumaresq Creek channel is at the rear of the mound of earth at the top left. And its width is usually 3-4 meters, not the huge amount shown here.

Taken from the same spot as the previous image, these next two photos show the view up-stream.

Here we are in the middle of town, but I'd stress that the creeklands are green parks and not occupied by buildings

One can cross the creek in many places via concrete causeways under which the river usually flows. This was not possible on this occasion. In the background lies the Ex-Services Club of which I am a member.

And here, on the footpath across Dumaresq Creek, I saw three migrant kids (Ezidis from northern Iraq who were horribly treated by Islamic State) trusting their luck swinging from steel poles. I suggested they give it up, which they obligingly did, because I feared having to jump in to the raging waters to rescue them.

Here's another flooded crossing with yet another pedestrian bridge I often use to get from one side to the other. On days like this pedestrians can get around more easily than cars.

Finally, this picture in the middle of town shows the river at about 8 to 10 times its usual width. Strangely, the usual inhabitants of this space, ducks, were missing! I presume that they couldn't paddle fast enough to avoid being swept downstream. They're back there now.

Since this event, winter has returned to Armidale with a sequence of cold days where the maximum temperature has hovered around 7 to 10 C and nights have been frosty. However, out many flowering bulbs and shrubs in the garden seem unaffected by those temperatures. At least the sun is now shining.

AS

Morning Walk

 I regularly go for a Saturday morning walk at 7 am whether it is winter or summer. I do this event with my friend Alun Davies who's a long-time Armidale resident and with whom I work on Maria Hitchcock's community activist group 'New England Visions 2030'. Of course, in winter the temperature is often -3 C with a heavy frost when we start. But that was not the case today when it was a warm 6 C. Moreover we might be in mid-winter but today's forecast maximum is 19 C (66 F)! And that's in a town 1000 m above sea level! 

Anyway, we went for a walk along Tilbuster Creek and the views we saw were great. These were taken at about 7.30 am on a brilliantly clear day. The creek was high and flowing fairly fast after recent heavy rains.

We saw quite a bit of wild-life including kangaroos and ducks, but we did not see what we desperately wanted to - a duck-billed platypus. It's known to be living in the Tilbuster creek and it is one the world's strangest and most admired creatures. Have a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platypus to find out more about this mammal that lays eggs!

AS

Immigration Detention

Some people I know staged a protest vigil last week in Armidale's central mall. Their complaint was against Australia's long detention spanning 8 years of people mainly from Asia or the middle east who tried to migrate to our nation by boat from Indonesia. Most have been detained on a remote island of Papua New Guinea in shameful conditions and many people, including me, feel that it's time to let them settle here. Australia is an immigrant nation, with over 30% of the population not being born here. And our migrants come literally from all over the world.

And Armidale is no exception even though it is remote by global standards. In the last few years, for example, we have become home to some 300+ Ezidi people displaced from northern Iraq by Islamic State. As a community we have actively supported these arrivals in many ways - and our support has received warm reception in the national press.

So I went to those staging the vigil and offered my support by way of signing the relevant paper-work. And this is what I saw.

I got there at the very start shortly before lunch-time, so there just a few observers like me. However, I'd guess that come lunch-breaks there would be many more people in attendance.

AS

Out of Season?

 I was in our garden yesterday shifting a large load of wood delivered to keep our home nice and warm in the middle of winter. As I walked past various flower beds I was amazed by the large range of plants in full bloom. This is strange for mid-winter where we have short daylight hours (about 10 hours at our latitude) and many frosty nights (with temperatures sometimes as low as -5 C). Also don't forget that our house is c. 1,000 m (3,281 feet) above sea-level. Here are the pictures I took of our flowers:

Nice, eh?

AS

Celebrating Emily's Birthday

Yesterday we celebrated Emily's birthday on 14 June Seattle time (15th here in Armidale) with an online discussion on our Google nest. It's amazing how one can have a video discussion with someone living roughly 12,173 km away with no apparent time lapse. The discussion proceeded exactly as it would have done with Emily sitting alongside us here at home.

Some of the discussion focused on our gift of a basket of plants sent via the USA company You Flowers. Here's a picture taken of our hub showing Em inspecting her gift at home in Seattle.

 

She was delighted with the present including a plant she loves but died when visiting Australia earlier this year. During our hook-up we also managed to exchange words with hubby, Greg, and grand-kids Flynn and Ella.

All up, it was a great occasion!

AS

Another Interesting Meal

Dot and I have recently been in Canberra to celebrate Max's 17th birthday - how the years fly by! That was on the 25th June and, on the following day, we gathered at an up-market restaurant to bring family and friends together. It was an expensive gathering as the meal cost A$88 (48 GBP or 66 US$) per head plus c. $40 per bottle of wine. With 7 participants, the whole show must have cost around A$ 690.

What does one get for A$88? Well, it was an 8 component meal!

2    Tom Yum infused prawns with rockmelon and apple.

3    Tea smoked duck breast with pickled winter melon, goji and osmanthos.

4    Whole Barramundi, with Yunnan style roasted vegetables.

5    Tandoorie Chicken.

6    Lamb Rendang.

7    Stir-fried green beans  with oyster sauce, and

8    Dessert.

Some of the courses were quite small in volume, but the whole show had staff busily delivering food and bowls over quite a long time 

This event was held in the Lanterne Rooms. Here are some pictures of the delicious food in question, which I for one ate with chop-sticks:

And here are some of the participants starting with Max himself and friend Ryan, then Dot and her friend Jane, and finally Rebecca and Rob.:

    

Altogether it was an interesting and delicious event.

AS