New friends and neighbours

Another Famous Five big adventure (while the mountains burn above them)

This week my 'Famous Five'  Thursday adventure bushwalking group took it on itself to explore some of the historic relics near Mt Victoria in the Blue Mountains. In particular, the 'Chert Incline', which had a short and inglorious career in the 1920s, bringing up chert from deep down below the cliffs, near the Fairy Bower Creek.

What's chert? Macquarie's says: A compact rock consisting essentially of cryptocrystalline quartz. Flintstone, incidentally, is a particular form of chert. The Mt Victoria chert was used as road metal. The company went bankrupt very quickly, maybe because it was such a big and ambitious engineering venture, as we were able to ascertain as we retraced the route of the cable railway.

Several local historians and other bushwalkers have taken an interest in rediscovering these relics recently, opening up ancient tracks through the steep, scrubby bushland, and identifying and marking bits and pieces of old iron, railway sleepers, steam engines and winding gear. We were doing our bit to further explore it all. And gee, it's a fabulous way to spend a day!

We continued on down into the Kanimbla Valley, and with a fair bit of our trademark trial and error, bushbashing and bravado, we put together a round-trip walk, that took us back up along the Reinits Pass track and up onto Pulpit Rock. Then a short walk through the streets to Mount Victoria.

It had been a hot and windy day. Fire danger had been high, and a fire had been burning for days near Lithgow. But that was a fair distance away. We'd kept an eye out for smoke, and had had our plan for dealing with any bushfire we encountered. (Our plan was to "Get down low and go, go, go"!) But we really weren't expecting anything along those lines to happen.

As we approached Mount Victoria station, however, where my car was parked, what did we see but big clouds of black smoke, and an advancing fire, only a few hundred metres away! We'd been blissfully unaware that since lunchtime the Blue Mountains fires had been raging away, dominating  the national news, causing massive destruction and traffic chaos, and blackening skies all over the Sydney basin.. The Mount Victoria fire was one of the bad ones.

I literally ran to retrieve my car, and we got out of there quickly. Passing through Springwood we had a chance to see the plumes of smoke from what used to be Winmalee and Yellow Rock. Over 100 homes have been destroyed in this fire alone so far. And tomorrow the weather turns hot again. 

Anything could happen in the next few days, both here and in the rest of New South Wales. The Lithgow fire (thought by some to have been started by an army live bombing practice exercise) has spread over a huge area, and may well destroy many of the Famous Five's very favourite bushwalking adventure grounds.





Sydney Morning Herald piece on the fires: http://www.smh.com.au/environment/weather/more-than-100-homes-destroyed-conditions-set-to-worsen-20131018-2vshk.html

Reviewing the fleet

I reviewed the fleet the other day. Along with a few others, admittedly, I took my place on the walkway on the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and on cue, in the warships steamed, single file, projecting their full might and power in a wonderful early twentieth century way. The Opera House and Fort Denison quaked in their boots and instantly surrendered.


It was the Fleet Review, and it celebrated the 100th anniversary of the arrival in Sydney Harbour of the original Royal Australian Navy's seven ships, all state-of-the-then-art vessels made in England.

I pronounced our navy fit and well and reasonably adequate to fight World War One again. I think that's what navies are for after all. Its ships tend to be made here these days, and cost far more than they should, and often don't work. But there are a lot more than seven of them these days, so some of them are always working.

In fact, seeing as they had also invited ships from China, Indonesia, the United States, Japan, and about a dozen other countries, to join in the fun and to party on with pageantry, fireworks, and fun galore, they could have even used the opportunity to fight World War Three while they were here.

The media coverage was all about the fabulousness of the spectacle and the super-eligibility of the redhead bachelor prince who was visiting, but there were comments from the less enamoured in the newspaper letters columns. About, for example, the irony of the extravagant expenditure at a time when the new Federal Government is banging on about 'budget black holes'. About the obscenity of said expenditure when the very navy we're celebrating is actually going to be tasked now mainly with just carrying out the dirty work of said new government, in repelling a small number of desperate refugees they make out we can't possibly support in our rich, comfortable country. Refugees mainly from wars we've been involved with, wars created to keep in business the poor old military-industrial complex that needs to keep building ships (and planes, bombs, and tanks and things) to keep the tired old system ticking over.

It would be nice if the world could work this all out for itself eventually, but it probably won't. So see you again in 100 years time!

Pool of Photography

About 20 years ago I happened on a very scenic little pool at the bottom of a small waterfall on a creek in Tasmania. I had just done a 'Taking Better Pictures' sort of photography course, and recognised the potential in the colours, shapes, and textures. I liked the resulting picture, and more importantly, the lady who ran the photo printing booth in the local K-Mart was over the moon about it.

In those days you viewed photos on pieces of paper, called prints. Your camera used rolls of film, and you had to take said rolls to K-Mart or elsewhere to get the pictures developed and printed. The people there made more money if they could persuade  people to get enlargements made, and my lady used examples of customers' work, enlarged to various degress, stuck on the wall behind her, to illustrate what you could get and what it would cost. I was flattered and delighted when she asked whether my shot could be her new demonstration image. It was there for several years. 

The other day, walking in the Budawangs,  I came across another Pool of Photography, one to rival that earlier Tasmanian one. So I got to work again. Here are the results.