Lane Cove's famous fungi

My bushwalking group did a great little walk the other day which incorporated a guided tour of the rare and endangered fungi species of the Lane Cove Bushland Park.

Our guide Ray used to be a neurologist. Now he's an enthusiastic expert mycologist, and he expertly pointed out, named, and explained about 20 or 30 different species, all in the space of a few hectares of this inner Sydney suburban park.

Some of them are endemic, in the true meaning of the word - ie they've not been found anywhere else but in this small locality. The little black one (below right) is so rare and endangered that it's not yet been named or scientifically described. The green one is green with a green pigment that's not chlorophyll. The big orange mass at the base of an angophora tree is a parasite that will kill the fully grown tree within two years. The small ones were often so small that we'd never have noticed them at all without our expert help.

And the ones that look like jellybeans are called jellybean fungi, and the ones that look like coral are called coral fungi.

We learnt a lot, and didn't we feel privileged to have been treated to this! (Mind you, I didn't learn quite enough to give you any of the latin names. Sorry about that!)

Ashfield sights (and Shanghai nights)

I lived in Ashfield for a couple of years when I first arrived in Sydney in 1998. It was well on the way to being one of Sydney's premier Chinatowns then, and I liked it a lot.

I headed back the other day to check the place over and see what's changed lately, and as the Sydney Morning Herald reported recently, it's gone further down that road, and especially down the road of a Shanghai food and culture Chinatown. There seemed to be lots of 'Shanghai', 'New Shanghai', 'Shanghai Night', and 'New Shanghai Night' restaurants, and I suspect they're all excellent. See http://www.smh.com.au/national/business-booms-as-old-ashfield-becomes-new-shanghai-20110617-1g7vg.html

There's also a monument to Mei Quong Tart, the 'Ashfield Mandarin' of more than a century ago, and there's a Chinese temple there too.

I checked out the Ashfield Mall shopping centre too, and was pleased to see it's looking up again, with a smartly renovated food court, and a new Aldi supermarket to complement the Coles and Woolworths ones there.
The new civic centre looks OK too. It's funny, but I remember going to a big rowdy mass meeting once, presented by Ashfield Council, where they told us that private developers had promised to provide us with a renovated shopping centre and council chambers, but the only way we could have them was if we agreed to let the developers build 30 storey tower blocks on top of it all. Well, guess what? No sign of any tower blocks. The Council must have called their bluff after all.

One thing hasn't changed though. There are still a lot of big, noisy airliners passing overhead on their way up after take off from Sydney Airport. The last few before the 11pm curfew tended to be the fully fuelled, heavily loaded ones heading for distant Asian destinations. They probably still are.

Ashfield's supercalifragilisticexpialidocious park

Ashfield Park has lots of nice little surprises. There's the Mary Poppins' statue for example. 

Mary's creator, P L Travers, lived rght next to the park between 1918 and 1924. This was her pen name. She had been born Helen Lyndon Goff in Maryborough, Queensland, in 1899, and attended boarding school in Ashfield during World War One, and then stuck around for a while. Later she moved to England, where she took up writing children's stories about spoonfuls of sugar and perfect nannies. It seems she tried to cover up her Australian origins. That's how it was in those days.

She was a rather cantankerous old thing by all accounts. She fought fiercely with Walt Disney about his adaptation of her book - this was the subject of the 2013 film 'Saving Mr Banks', starring Emma Thompson and Tom Hanks - and when she died, in 1996, her grandchildren allegedly said no one loved her and she loved no one.

What else do you find in Ashfield Park? 

There's the memorial to the Bangladeshi martyrs who gave rise to the celebration of International Mother Language Day - 21 February. On that day in 1952 three students were gunned down by police in Dhaka for demonstrating in favour of having their language - Bengali - accepted as one of the then Pakistan's official languages.

And there's the Explorers' Park there too. It's got plaques illustrating the travels of all the main early explorers. Native born Australians all learn about these people at school, but I had to learn it in explorers parks.

I like this park. It's one of the best.

Fish & chips, steep cliffs, and Whale watching

At this time of the year you almost can't fail to see whales. Stand on the cliff top at any coastal headland, peer out at the sea, and watch patiently for the telltale water spout (or 'blow'), and quite likely it'll be followed by a breach, where the whole thing, pretty well, comes out of the water. You tend to have to focus on points two or three kilometres out, so it's a bit distant, and in my case I just snap away with my telephoto lens, then study the photos carefully afterwards.

Another worthwhile tip for spotting them is to just look near the whale-watching boats. Rarely fails! Another tip is to avoid actually riding on whale watching boats if you don't have a strong stomach and sea legs. I once did a big whale watch cruise, during which just about everyone was sick, and when we found a whale nobody was interested in viewing it.

I think the picture here is of a Humpback whale. They're the main migratory species around here. The travel up from Antarctic waters at this time of year, en route to their breeding ground in Hervey Bay, Queensland. Then in a few months time they travel south again, ready for the summer feeding season down there. More simple tips on Sydney whale watching at this site: http://www.wildaboutwhales.com.au/whale-watching/tips-and-guidelines

I went to Watsons Bay for this year's viewing. It's a very pleasant ferry ride across the length of the harbour, and the area is famous for a few things. At the Gap, just up across the park from the ferry terminal, you look out, as I did, across the ocean. The cliffs are very steep here, and unfortunately some people come here to throw themselves over the edge. There are thoughtfully placed signs around, placed by Lifeline.

Fortunately the great majority come here for the views, and for the fish and chip lunches. There's a famous restaurant, Doyles, with its similarly famous takeaway-cafe-bar.

 On the ferry back to Circular Quay, I saw the updated view of the city skyline, corresponding with that view in 1997, the one that inspired 'if cites could talk'. No cloudy speech bubble this time though. All blue skies and sun. Quite a few changes to the skyline too.

Leave it in the ground

I attended a nice little gathering of a few hundred concerned citizens today, outside the State Premier's office in Sydney. There were eloquent speeches, loud choruses, and a general air of good natured dedication to a worthy cause.

The worthy cause is opposition to a proposed new coal mine. It's not any old coal mine. It's at Maules Creek near Narrabri in northern NSW. It would involve turning the ancient Leard Forest into a vast open cut hole in the ground. The carbon dioxide emissions produced when the coal from this one mine is burnt would be more than that of the entire fossil fuel industry of New Zealand. The land clearing may wipe out threatened species, and it could ruin the water table that supplies a national food bowl. 

How come this is still going on? The world is finally turning away from fossil fuels after all. Even the US is bringing in serious emission reduction targets now - putting to shame the current Australian government's pathetic target and its seeming determination to fail even to meet this. Solar electricity becomes cheaper by the week, and Australia is just about the best positioned country in the world to take advantage of it. You wouldn't know that from the government's attitude to it. And regarding the clearing of native forests and the protection of endangered species, we thought we had the planning controls and the environmental regulations sorted out to look after all this. But no, we're going backwards, faster and faster.

Over the last few weeks there was a series of bribery and corruption scandals in NSW politics. All kinds of shonky and illegal goings on were exposed in the world of political party fundraising. A premier resigned suddenly, the new one promised urgent action to reform the system (so urgent that it looks like being postponed now till after the next election). Secretive arrangements were ensuring access to ministers in return for large donations. Politicians and business figures have been officially declared by the Independent Commission Against Corruption (ICAC) to be corrupt, left right and centre. This is nothing to do with the Maules Creek mine, I'm sure. But it's a lot to do with why there's so little trust in our governments, state and federal, or the way they make their decisions.

By coincidence a very friendly young Japanese girl turned up in the front drive this afternoon while I was watering the garden. She worked for a company selling domestic solar electricity installations. I rarely give the time of day to the young Indians who turn up to urge me to switch my electricity supplier or telecommunications provider, but this was different. I've been keeping an eye on the solar electric option for a while. A few years ago governments were offering very generous buy-back rates for your surplus solar power. It was considered well worth while, both to stimulate the industry of the future and because the conventional peak power it replaced was so expensive. Suddenly all subsidies and incentives disappeared. The local solar industry reeled and squirmed, but didn't quite die. Definitely nothing to do with a powerful fossil fuel lobby, corrupt politics, and unreformed donation systems.

Unfortunately, our new electricity retailer refuses to supply you at all if you have solar electric panels! They just want to sell you lots of fossil-fuelled power - they're not at all interested in buying it off you!