Sail away (to Hobart rather quickly)

The other day the city of Adelaide was swallowed by a giant sinkhole. We declared war on New Zealand, and Kylie Minogue was appointed as the first president of the newly declared Republic of Australia.

You'll hear about all this on social media only, as all the nation's mainstream journalists are on holiday. Between Christmas and New Year, as ever, just about the only thing reported in the news is the Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race. Any cadet sports journalist can do it, so all the others go off to their favourite beach getaways.
Sometimes there's a bushfire or a flood (or this time a ministerial bar-room indiscretion) that somehow justifies dragging them back on duty, but they need to be big stories.

Anyway, I went along to Middle Head on Boxing Day, to watch the start of the above mentioned yacht race. And it was indeed quite a spectacle. There's a massive fleet of spectator craft on top of the 100 plus competitors. There are people clambering all over the WW2 fortifications for the best views.

There's usually a puff of smoke and the sound of the starting cannon, but this time the starter boat sank. Lots of competitors nearly sank too, with collisions and breakages galore, both during the crowded start and later, when the southerly buster hit them.

For the average spectator at the start, it's largely about the four supermaxi yachts, the huge ones with the big black sails, that tack furiously back and forth in front of each other, and then zoom past you first. I thought it would be quite a wait between the start and seeing them come by and out of the Heads. But no, it seemed like only a minute or less. Then they were charging round to the south, out of sight and Hobart bound. The line honours winner, the American yacht Comanche, is the one with the red blob at the top of its sail.

Sydney sizzles - this time the clock melted!

Summer's hardly started, but we've had several spells of hot, hot, hot already. In the lead up to Christmas, we're having a blessed patch of cool and rainy, but here's a picture from our lounge room in November.

Mrs Macquarie's view

Lady Elizabeth Macquarie - wife of Governor Lachlan Macquarie - used to sit on her convict-carved stone chair, enjoying the best view of Sydney Harbour.

She is said to have made a point of watching ships arriving from England. Maybe a bit like me taking a look at the two 'Canberra class landing helicopter dock (LHD) ships' at nearby Garden Island.

They are said to have been built in Spain, and are being finished off in Melbourne and here in Sydney. But they don't half look like one we saw being built in southern India last year. There had been a strict ban on photography around the shipyard there, and now I see why. The Spaniards contracted the job out to India and don't want anyone to know!

So what do we want our LHDs to do for us? In the words of militaryfactory.com  it's 'to strengthen the RAN inventory against growing regional threats (such as that posed by China)'. You could probably paraphrase that as 'so we could fight a war against China', but put that simply it sounds as stupid as it probably is. That's the navy for you, I guess. There again, watching the news today, it starts to look like we really have been given a role in some geopolitical adventure folly in the South China Sea by our American masters. The Macquaries would have been quite at home with geopolitical adventures, of course. That's why they were here to start with.

What else have we got for Mrs Macquarie to look at? We've got an endless deluge of lunchtime joggers, some of them just running up and down a flight of steps for their whole lunch break. We've got the world's most photographed opera house and bridge. We've got all the tourists photographing them.









So she's got a colourful and lively place to sit and pass the time.

Views fit for Gentlemen

Fit for Ladies too. There probably weren't any on Governor Phillip's exploratory mission up the Hawkesbury in 1789, but we had both ladies and gentlemen in our bushwalking group recently,

We walked the 10km each way from the Canoelands Rd track head. It's a straightforward leg stretch mainly along a fire trail, and you get to see some very fine views of the Hawkesbury River. Governor Phillip is the gentleman who gave the place its name. He arrived by boat, and camped overnight there. Hence the name: Gentleman's Halt.

Storm in a storm glass

Meet my Fitzroy storm glass. I got it from Australian Geographic and it's got a magic mix of secret chemicals that enable it to predict the weather. Or so they say.
 
Storm glasses were popular with English sea captains, like Fitzroy, captain of the Beagle, with Darwin aboard, on his trip around the world. They got back OK, so there must be something to it, you'd think.



















The appearance of the fluid tells you all you need to know. It can be clear, cloudy, full of bubbles, dots, stars, or flakes. Just check against the key, and sail on confidently.




I've watched it carefully for a few days now, and you sure do get all those effects. But I haven't actually seen a correlation with the weather.


The smart money is on temperature though. That's about all that seems to drive it. If it's hot it's clear. If it's cool it's cloudy. The other stuff comes in between.








It makes an excellent curiosity and talking point though!

Extreme postcodes: 2127

Which Sydney suburb is the deadest of them all? My vote is for Wentworth Point. It's part of Homebush Bay, and has easy access to Olympic Park, pleasant water views, and in theory quite a good lifestyle. But gee, what a dead, soulless place.

Admittedly some of it's still being built, but some parts have been fully built up for a few years now. And where's the life? Where are the people?

There's a bit of a shopping and cafe centre, but how they survive without customers I couldn't see. Streets are narrow, there's no available parking, and it looked like most of the high rise apartment blocks had no off-street parking either. There wasn't much evidence of public transport, though it's reported that there is indeed a bus service, and there is the ferry I suppose.

Could it be that most of these apartments are in fact unoccupied? Could it be a ghost suburb, in reality just another tiny part of China's property bubble?

And speaking of property and real estate agents, I was quite taken by the photo signboards up on the Woo-la-ra lookout place. The one looking east across Wentworth Point shows the view across the suburb, and above and behind you can see the city and the Harbour Bridge. Well guess what? In real life the buildings completely block out these desirable expensive views. The usual estate agents' Photoshop distortions apply! Who knows what the poor investors in the concrete jungle down there thought they were buying!



Salvation might be at hand though. There's a pedestrian and bus-only bridge being built, which will connect Wentworth Point to Rhodes, which has a vibrant shopping and commercial area. Train station too.





Perhaps it will all come to life one day?

Sydney's biggest ever climate march

Estimates of precise numbers varied, as ever, with published figures ranging from 3000 to 60,000! I was there, and I'd put it somewhere in the middle. It was definitely big though, and it was colourful, and very uplifting.

There were groups from churches, political parties, local action groups, solar power aficionados, and health professionals. There was even a small pro-nuclear group, and two (brave?) chaps whose banners just read < coal / >.  (I've no idea what that means exactly, or whether they were pro or anti coal. Note to placard writers: don't get too cryptic!)

There was music, there were speeches from some very worthy personages, and there were giant and horribly realistic versions of Tony 'King Coal' Abbott and Malcolm 'Innovate' Turnbull to scare the children.

We eventually marched from the Domain rallying place down to the Opera House, where the giant polystyrene politicians could scare the tourists too.

We'd been asked to colour code ourselves by dress choice, and march in our coloured blocks. I chose white, which was the designated colour for medicos and scientists. Several of my fellow marchers carried giant cardboard mosquitoes, signifying presumably malaria and suchlike diseases we can look forward to in a warmer Australia. 

Yet more Dunns Swamp

More Dunns Swamp

Swamps ain't swamps

In fact some swamps are amazingly beautiful places.

A group of us spent the weekend at Dunns Swamp, and what a fine swamp it is! It's a few kilometres east of Rylestone, a couple of hundred kilometres drive north west of Sydney, and it's on the western extremity of the Wollemi National Park.


Don't tell anyone, but Dunns Swamp has just about the finest, best appointed, clean and scenic camping area known to God or the National Parks service. There are dozens of very large areas for tents. There are lots of clean toilets with generous toilet paper supplies even. There's swimming to be done in the artificially widened Cudgegong River. There's firewood provided, with fireplaces and picnic tables galore. And there are great little easy walks to follow through the 'pagoda' rock formations. All for just $6 per person per night.

We were able to use Dunns Swamp as a base from which to do some bigger exploratory bushwalks too. We did some big pagoda scrambling expeditions, and we conquered the previously unconquered (by us) Mt Touwouwan and Sheridan Hill. And in the evenings, when not dodging lightning bolts and torrential downpours, we enjoyed our campfire, our camp food (in my case the usual dried cardboard gourmet Frankenbushwalker food), plus appropriate warming beverages!