Haydn Ensemble plays classical 18th century quartets

 Yesterday I attended a wonderful orchestral concert played by the Australian Haydn Ensemble. They performed 3 18th century quartets, one each by Haydn, Boccherini, and Mozart - all beautiful works performed excellently. Amazingly, their instruments all dated from the same period! The violins were dated 1770 and 1760; the viola was made in 1793, and the cello was made in London in 1781. The audience applauded long and loudly!

The performance took place in Armidale's historic playhouse which has just been renovated and now holds frequent events. Interestingly, it is very small and seats only about 100 people. Well, yesterday it was house-full and I knew many members of the audience. The top photo shows how closely we were seated. Dot and I wore facemasks for much of the time ... as did maybe 60% of the audience. COVID is now rare in our town, but I guess caution grabbed us.

Business Meet-up with our new Mayor - Sam Coupland

I attended an interesting meeting yesterday. I'm a member of the New England Buinsess Chamber and we gathered yesterday evening to meet, talk to, and hear an address from our new mayor for the Armidale Regional Council, Sam Coupland. 

It was held, of all place, in a brewery. The Geat Hops Brewery lies in a field on the edge of town. This might seem an unlikely place for such an event, but in practice it was perfect. Apart from the brewing gear, the huge shed had many tables where guests could sit, sip their drinks, and consume various nibbles. Alternatively, there was a lot of space to walk around and talk to not just the mayor and his deputy but also many friends. There was also a great choice of beers, wines and other drinks.

I had good discussions with Sam and his deputy, Todd Redwood. And, more importantly, our discussions gave me great hops that Armidale's council would offer great leadership in developing our town and region - something rather missing in recent years.

And here's some pictures of what I saw. The first one shows the large bar that served us drinks

This picture shows the shed's beer making equipment

Here's a long-term colleague whom I play against at the Armidale Bridge Club, Robyn Coupland,. But you can also some of the tables that are scattered around the facility.

And, finally, here's Sam giving his presentation. He spoke eloquently about Council's problems and prospects and aims for the future ... issues and ideas that received great applause. Note also the keyboard alongside, which was used to warm the shed's atmosphere and enthuse the crowd of business-people.

Altogether, it was nice night out and it countered an otherwise dismal day climaitically - one where the sun went missing and grey skies dumped one shower after another all through the day. Fortunately, the shed we were in didn't leak!

AS

Interesting Week

Fortunately, despite my age, I still have interesting weeks. So let me lead you through some of the things I did in roughly date order. On Monday, Dot alerted me to a glorious sun-set at about 8 pm. I went out of our front door and took the picture below. I have recently read that such a red sunset was caused by atmospheric pollution caused by the recent volcanic eruption among the Pacific islands of Tonga, which tossed a heap of debris into the southern hemisphere skies.

On Wednesday, 16 February, I and two colleagues from our New England Visions 2030 team went out to the airport business park where the Armidale Regional Council had granted our local historic car enthusiasts a site to construct a very large museum to house both their great portfolio of great cars and early planes that served our town. I'm on the right and my colleagues John Atchison OAM (Order of Australia) is centre and Alun Davies is on the left. Behind us is the site in question. I gather that the motor enthusiasts will have to find about $5 million to construct the premises, but perhaps our NEV 2030 development team can help with raising that sum.

                                 

The Armidale airport region is environmentally attractive and this pircture looks northwest towards the Guyra plateau whose altitude is c. 1300 m. I liked the cloud pattern on that day.

That same day, our NEV 2030 group held a Question and Answer (Q & A) event at Armidale Bowling Club. Over 50 people - many of them community leaders - from around town attended to discuss the poblem of homelessness we have in town and how best to manage it. Here's our leader, Maria Hitchcock OAM, addressing the audience about the session would be handled.

Prior to that, she was introduced by my friend Alun, shown here again!

The three experts on homelessness who would receive and answer questions about the subject are shown here at their table. Each deals with the issue of helping homeless people on a regular basis, though the issue has many different and complex dimensions.

And here's the audience awaiting the start of the meeting, with Dot in the centre just in fron the blike standing. 

Let me say that the gathering was a great success. The highly knowledgeable team at the table responded to some 11 question prepared in advance by both our NEV 2030 team and several in the audience. My question, for example, focused on the potential impact on homelessness of a rapid rise in weekly rental dues because of rising property prices. And I received some very informed responses. Both my friends Alun and John also rai.sed their issues. At the end of the Q & A session it was my role to congratulate everyone in the room and hand each of the 3 speakers a nice bottle of wine.

Each Saturday morning - weather permitting - Alun and I go for a rural walk lasting about 1 hour. Today we had a lovely walk and en route passed some interesting buldings. I photographed this wreck of place because Alun noted that when he and his wife Helena came to lunch with us mid-week Dot mused about buying an old historic place and doing it up. He suggested that this might be an option. Would you restore it?

Nearby he pointed out this lovely historical homestead on what we call a rural residential site. This is not a farm, but just a nice rural home, heaps of which encircle Armidale. On our walk we saw quite a lot of kangaroos, occasional sheep or horses, and nice little birds. However, we saw no other people! Can my readers walk for an hour and see no-one else?

Finally, I'll ask my UK readers if they ever buy these products in their supermarkets. Coming first is a package of 6 McVitie's "Penguins" made at Stockport.

Then there is a package of 8 Caramel Wafer Biscuits made by Tunnock's at 34 Old Mill Road at Uddingston in Glasgow!

 

Finally, here's some Cadbury's Dairy Milk Chococlate apparently made in 1960 - just joking!

I bought all these items on the same day this week at Woolworth's supermarket here in Armidale. I'm interested in hearing if any of my UK readers also might purchase these items and what they think of them.

I think it's time for another short walk given that we've lovely weather today - c. 24 C and rather sunny. My fitbit tells me how many steps I have taken each day ... and the total for the week. My target is 10,000 steps a day (70,000 per week) - apparently reached by many Mediterranean farmers! Right now, I've recorded 118,006!!!!!! If I go for another walk now, I should reach 120,000. This level of exercise has eaned me a special badge from fitbit - the Nile Badge. Believe it or not, I have walked the same distance as from the headwaters of the River Nile to its discharge into the Mediterranean. I wonder how long it will be before I circumnavigate this planet.

Have a nice day.

AS

 

 

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