Extreme postcodes: 2067

Chatswood is at the extreme end of what a Sydney suburb can look like, and still be a suburb rather than a major city in its own right. In fact when overseas visitors have been confronted with views like that on the right, they have invariably assumed it was Sydney CBD that they were looking at.

It does have a certain vitality and colour, and lots of shopping opportunities, and I like to drop in now and again.

 
What's happened to Chatswood, architecturally speaking, is much discussed. When developers pursue their rezonings and height limit changes in other suburbs, they promise, and their detractors warn against 'another Chatswood'!

"No ifs. No buts. No Medicare cuts......"

I really enjoy a good protest rally. Not only do I usually find I support the cause and happily add my presence to boost the numbers, but the colour and carnival atmosphere make it a good day out anyway! In fact, today's was so colourful that I'm going to relax my editing standards, and post far more pictures than usual. (I'm never that good at editing things out anyway.)

There were politicians from the Greens and the Labour Party. ("You might have heard of him, the leader of the opposition, Bill Shorten", was the introduction.) There were groups from several socialist left organisations, unions, including especially the Health Services Union I think. There were odd and not so odd individuals. There was even a researcher from Sydney University, handing out surveys to assist his research into democracy and protests! ("I love niche academic research", I told him.)
 
When I filled out my survey, I answered the question about how well democracy was working in Australia, with a 2 out of 10. My initial reaction was to go with a zero, but on reflection, we do get to have our protest rallies at least, and more important, we wouldn't go to them if we thought they achieved nothing at all.

There was an attempt by a very vocal group of asylum seeker supporters to hijack the event, by chanting "Let them stay, let them stay" very loudly at crucial moments, like when Opposition Leader Bill took to the stage. He was actually in a spirited and feisty mood, and refused to go off message. Handled it all rather well. One lady near me got very stroppy with one of the hijackers, and I thought they were about to deck each other.



Eventually the colourful assembly disassembled, and marched down to Belmore Park.

Killer wasps and zombie spiders!

I watched this epic drama unfold the other day. A large, brightly coloured native wasp - a mud-dauber wasp in fact - was dragging an even larger spider - I think it was a black house spider, though I only got a view of the underside - through the front garden, down the steps to the garage, along the floor, and up the wall at the back.




The spider was motionless, though it didn't look dead, damaged, or misshapen in any way.

The mud dauber was no doubt in the process of constructing another cell of a nest. The spider wasn't dead, it had been paralysed by the wasp, and it was to be encased in the mud cell, along with a wasp egg. The egg will hatch, and the larva will feed on the live zombie spider. When it's bigger and stronger, the larva will become a pupa, and eventually an adult wasp will emerge from the nest.

These days I watch these things unfold with interest and admiration. I must admit though, that when I first encountered mud dauber nests on the house walls a few years ago, I just destroyed them without much thought. Here are pictures before and after one of these destructive events. You can see the cocoons containing the pupae, and also the skeletal remains of the eaten-up zombie spiders.

Last chance to see.....

..... the six naked eye planets.

Every few years the five naked-eye planets align themselves such that you can see them all in the sky at the same time. Right now is just such a time, and there's a few more days of this before the most timid of them - Mercury

- drops back out of sight below the pre-dawn horizon. I recommend 5:00am to 5:20am in Sydney latitudes.



So get up early, get out there, and enjoy the spectacle.


In the eastern sky, from bottom to top, there's Mercury and Venus, close together, then there's Saturn, and pretty high up there's Mars. Venus is the brightest thing in the sky, and Mars is one of the reddest. Scorpius, the curly-tailed scorpion, helps you locate them all.

Over in the north-west is the second brightest planet in the night sky: Jupiter. It's a bit away from the others, and I couldn't get it into the same frame, despite lashing out on a new $370 super-wide angle lens! It's in the constellation Leo the Lion.

So what's this sixth naked-eye planet? Just look down at the one below beneath your feet! *

'Last Chance to See', by the way, is the title of a book co-authored by Douglas Adams (of Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy fame). It was about several endangered species of animal around the globe. It could almost refer to the clear skies still sometimes available above planet Earth, or indeed to a liveable Planet Earth itself.


* With thanks to Perry Vlahos and the Sydney Morning Herald

Wendy's secret's out

It's not a secret any more. Wendy Whiteley's North Sydney secret garden is quite a place.

 Wendy is the widow of renowned artist Brett, who painted his iconic pictures of Sydney Harbour from the balcony of their mansion just above us. Since his death, and that of their daughter Arkie, from cancer, in 2001, her big project has been turning this piece of railway land from rubbish tip into a spectacular Harbourside garden.

Here's Wikipedia on Wendy Whiteley:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wendy_Whiteley










And here's a link to Brett's balcony paintings: http://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/116.1981/

It's a lot bigger than I'd expected, and it has lots of beautiful pathways, picnic areas, sculptures and odd little things to explore and discover.

The exact location of the secret garden must of course remain a secret. But here are a couple of clues: Lavender Bay, and the steps below the bottom of Walker St, below North Sydney. There are no signposts.

Waspishly cunning guests

We often get native wasps coming to stay for a while. Here are this year's visitors. They are common (native) paper wasps, and they're pretty harmless. Unless you directly threaten the nest, that is. So we don't.

They're rather beautiful too, and the queen is very cunning,the way she runs the show. Here's the ABC Science unit's description of how it all works: 
http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2011/10/04/3327168.htm