Australia Day 260122

 The 26th January is called Australia Day and commemorates the day on which the first fleed sailed into Sydney Harbour and Europeans began settling the continent. For many, and certainly many of Aboriginal ancestry, this day doesn't warrant celebration. For most of us however it is a day to sit back and recollect the nation's past. It is also a day on which many civic honours are bestowed and immigrants take up Australian citizenship. Most towns, and certainly Armidale, have a large timetable of events and so I headed downtown to Central Park to see what was on. Indeed, quite a large number of people were assembling, despite the weather. Throughout January this year the sun has successfully been trying very hard to hide and the town is blanketed in cloud.

The Central Park area had a flag-pole flying the Australian, Aboriginal and another - presumably NSW flags:

Adjacent was an ad hoc Armidale Regional Council office presumably running the show:

An adjacent site had just held an Aboriginal Smoking Ceremony - presumably to welcome guests and residents to the day's events. This little box was 'smoking' when I arrived.

The Aborigines were in 'traditional' dress - much of it in the form of body paint:

Nearby was seating for forthcoming entertainment performances, which I had to miss.

And the most busy part of the area was given over to selling food and drink.

Interestingly, I didn't see any business selling Australian nosh. But two stand-outs were vehicles Ezidi and Lebanese food. I decided to buy an Ezidi lunch and joined a long queue of people doing the same. The Ezidis in Armidale are refugees from Northern Iraq where their culture and many residents were massacred by Islamic State. Here's the menu I saw and I chose two items. One was Kibbah - a kind of chicken wrap and the other was Biryani - rice cooked with vegetables, peanuts and sultanas. For them, the sultanas were not the wives of Tutrkish Sultans!

Dot and I ate the meals on my return home and they were really quite nice. As I've mentioned before, our little town of 25,000 people ahs an amazing array of restaurants. Thin about your own towns or cities. Do you have ethnic foods like Ezidi (Iraq), Lebanese, Korean, Japanese, Chinese (several), Vietnamese, Thai, Indian, and so on?

AS

New Year Fireworks 21-22

 G'day everyone, I hope you enjoyed the usual fireworks displays last night wherever you were located. Armidale put on two displays as usual, one at 9pm on 31 December and the other at mid-night. I attended the former and it was a great occasion. Here I'm viewing the Wicklow Oval in Armidale's creeklands at dusk. The sun has hidden itself below the sky-line, but left a lovely glow.

Soon after, hoards of families invaded Wicklow Oval and there were huge numbers of kids running around furiously, barely restrained by their anxious parents. I was 'alone' as Dot preferred not to come. The crowds were also multi-ethnic often chattering away in strange languages, but all were anxiously awaiting what turned out to be a magnificent display that went on for perhaps 15 minutes. While awaiting the start, the field's floodlights lit up the assembling crowd as shown below.

Then, all of a sudden, the lights were turned off and we huddled together in the dark. A few seconds later the display commenced with a bang! There were many different elements to the display, many of them quite creative and elegant. These few pictures show something of the art-work for which the Armidale Regional Council should be congratulated.

The crowd was raucus and delighted with what they saw and the applause at the end was enthusiastic. After that, hundreds if not thousands of people raced to their cars to drive away from the site quickly. That included me and I took a long way home to avoid congested intersections!

I hope all my readers will have a happy and prosperous new year!

AS

Second Falls in Two Days

Just one day after visiting Wollomombi falls we drove out to the gorge(ous) country to see yet another famous waterfall - Dangar's Falls, which also plunges steeply into a deep and rather inaccessible valley. However, there is a long path whose return journey will take some 4-5 hours that manages to reach the bottom - and both I and Rebecca have done that trip.

Here are several views of Dangar's Falls taken from a viewing platform from the south side after quite a long walk. Again, the geology of the gorge region looks igneous rather than sedimentary. The third and fourth images here show a little of the deep and twisting gorge downstream.

The left image below focuses upsteam from the falls and shows the rapids accompany the rapidly descending river. The right image shows the river a little further up racing zig-zag towards the falls.

I like the images below because they show the wider and wild landscape of the national park.

And here's a picture of the falls taken from the north side - partially hidden from view

This next image was taken from a viewing platform just at the top of the falls and show the water plunging down.

And, finally, here's a lovely image of the falls from a greater distance on the north side.

Nice views, eh?

AS

Wollomombi Walk

This Christmas holiday we had a great time hosting our daughter Rebecca, her son Max - now 17 years old - and her partner Rob. On the 28th December, Bec cand Rob accommpanied me to the wonderful Wollomombi Falls in the world heritage listed Oxley Wild Rivers National Park. We chose there because of the lovely walking trails, the great scenery, and the massive amount of water flowing down the Wollomombi river as the result of recent heavy rains. We were not disappointed with what we saw - and nor were the many visitors to the national park whom we met en route.

Let's have a look at some of the images we witnessed. On the left below is the new viewing platform and as you'll see from the angle taken the Woolomombi falls is on the left side of the platform while the less intense Chandler Falls are on the right. On the right we can see the large valume of water in the creek and its high vertical drop.

The next views were taken downstream from the Wollomombi falls and show the deep and twisting gorge through which the water flows. The rocky sides to the wall shown on the left image seem to be igneous. There appears to be no walkable track along the gorge floor. On the right, you can see the kinds of terrain through which the water flows downstream - often heavily forested and also rocky.

Here I am admiring the scenery and all rugged up because of the occasional showers on a windy summer's day when the temperature failed to rise beyong about 16 C.

Here are some more views of the gorgeous terrain (please excuse the pun) and a close-up image of the falls' vertical drop. However, hidden from view, the water is tumbling down a long slope and the two components taken together make Wollomobi one of the highest in Australia.

This next picture shows the Wollomombi and Chandler Falls alongside each other from a lookout some distance away.

Obviously, it's a great location and one I cherish greatly. 

AS

December Garden 2021

After all the rain we've had recently, out garden is blooming - heaps of lovely flowers and shrubs. I took some pictures this morning and show them below. By the way, Dot does much more in keeping the garden looking nice. I do mow the lawns occasionally and trim their edges! Enjoy or criticise as you wish!

Please forgive me for not knowing the names of most of these plants / shrubs ... that's more Dot's domain. Feel free to guess what they are and email their names! This is blog post 1254. I wonder when I'll reach 2022? Surely not next year!

AS

Dangar's Falls Torrent

After what is now c. 170 mm of rain over the last 20 days I decided today to take a trip to Dangar's falls to witness what I presumed would be a fantastic display of falling water. I wasn't wrong. The pictures shown here were breathtaking. They include not just the massive drop but also the rapid stream-flow leading to the top of the main falls. Although there were quite a few cars parked nearby, while taking pictures of the views taken here I saw no-one. I presume quite a few people were taking the longer trails around the falls.

AS

Yet another flood!

 In the last two weeks or so, Armidale has according to our rain-gauge received >150 mm  of rain (c. 6 inches for those in the UK and USA). So we've had our maybe the 5th flood event of 2021. Put another way, if my family in the south of the UK received that kind of rainfall across an entire year they'd be drowning in about 156 inches of rain. We've had major flood events all over eastern Australia, with many towns and villages awash in water, and major highways cut. There's no way we could drive to Canberra via the inland right now, yet about two years ago we were in a terrible drought.

What caused the change? Well the answer lies in two partially connected events. Currents in the Indian ocean have delivered very warm water to the NW of our continent, creating moist air that heads right in our direction through favourable wind patterns. Secondly, Australia's east coast is influenced by a periodic El Nina event that draws warm water from the west coast of South America in our direction. This also contributes high moisture air. Putting the two events together we've heaps of rain, although Armidale has been at the bottom end of rainfall totals because we're in a kind of rain shadow. For many parts of inland NSW the November rainfall totals were the highest in 100 years!!

Wanting some pictures? We here are three of Wednesday's flood event ... the highest I think of 2021. Out for my morning walk I came across these views ... and by the way I was not the only one taking pictures at around 7 am! Faulkner Street - our main avenue into the town centre was about 0.7 m under water a blocked to all traffic. However, I crossed over the flood via the pedestrian bridge on the left.

And here I am on the bridge looking east on the first and weston the second. Dumaresq Creek is usually about 2 m wide, but far more on this occasion. And you can see from the ripples how fast the water was running.

AS