Distant friend

This is the time of year that you get to see the Andromeda Galaxy from Sydney. Just above the northern horizon for a couple of hours late at night. It's about a thousand times as far away as anything else you can see in this photo. It's just a faint little fuzzy thing with the naked eye, but you can in fact see it, and it's become an old friend of mine.

I was actually out observing the Orionid meteor shower. You're supposed to see lots of the things, bits of dust originating from Halleys Comet, burning up in the atmosphere. They appear to radiate out from the direction of the constellation Orion, hence the name Orionids. Maybe it's not a great year for Orionids. I only saw one in about twenty minutes of looking.

Also in the picture above are the Great Square of Pegasus and the Pleiades ('Seven Sisters').

Misadventure on Macquarie Street

I don't usually feel any sympathy for Sydney's ibises. Nasty, ugly things, hanging around garbage bins and looking like they want to poke your eyes out with their  long sharp beaks.

Birds are evolved from dinosaurs, and our Australian white ibis, up close, is about as dinosaur looking as a modern bird can be.

I did feel a bit sympathetic to the one I came across in Macquarie Street the other day though. It was looking a bit upset, and prodding around at the body of a fallen chick. I figured that one of its offspring had fallen out of its nest during the earlier strong winds, and met an untimely end.

There again, maybe the nasty thing was just eyeing it up for lunch!

Biodiversity bunfight

I attended a colourful and impassioned gathering in Martin Place yesterday, within earshot of NSW's Parliament House. It was organised by the Nature Conservation Council, and it was to protest the Government's proposed 'Biodiversity' legislation.

In fact, far from protecting biodiversity or endangered species, it's really all about allowing open slather land clearing in rural areas, and open slather tree removal in urban areas too. Huge areas of now-protected habitat would be removed, and several more native species could become extinct. So-called 'offsets' would be made, whereby allegedly similar areas would be found and 'improved' in return for destroying the land you want to develop. That would preserve overall environmental value. Yeah, sure.

Speakers included the state Labor leader, Luke Foley. The Labor Party is always an environmentally wonderful party while it's in opposition.










I thought I saw Premier Mike Baird there for a moment, but no, it was a fake. The real one wisely kept well away.






The Greens' Mehreen Faruqi did a good job, as ever.









The Animal Justice Party's Mark Pearson gave an excellent and constructive speech about possible legal challenges to the legislation, along the lines of excessive and unnecessary animal cruelty due to vegetation clearing.








Among the colourful props on hand were several life-size koalas. But I was rather taken too by some (endangered) red-tailed black cockatoos, fashioned out of old umbrellas.

The greatest game in town

For many years now the greatest game in Sydney has been real estate. Buying and selling, renovating, borrowing, negative-gearing, raking in massive profits in the usually booming property market.

The other great game is attending auctions. They're always good entertainment. Full of drama and suspense. A great show, whether you've a personal interest or not.

We went along to an auction today in the Northern Beaches suburb of Collaroy. And I did have a personal interest. It was the sale of the two bedroom unit of an old friend of mine. John was a funny old chap. He was an eccentric hoarder, and when he died early this year his flat was frankly rather grotty. A hoarder's hovel, at first sight unsaleable, you'd think.

Fast forward a few months, and with the Herculean efforts of John's friend and will-executor Marcel, it's a whole new ball game. Just look at what he's created!

Every Saturday there are suggestions that the real estate bubble might have finally burst. One day it will. But not today, apparently.

LOTS of people turn up. Many of them are serious bidders. It starts at $700,000, and moves rapidly up in $20,000 increments. Seven or eight bidders are fighting it out. It goes to $5K increments, then $2K, and eventually one thousand dollar increments, and only two couples are left. All heads are swinging right, left, and right again, and then, on the third count, it's "SOLD!" For $844,000 in fact.

John paid $96,500 for it in 1986, so he's done alright. Pity he's not around to enjoy today.











Here's a triumphant trio of auction organisers.

Woy Woy pelicans

They're there every afternoon at 3pm, for their feeding session at Fisherman's Wharf. Some of the spectators donate their chips to supplement the fish. It's quite a show.

A world's top 100 objects and a very Boolean museum

Top 100 at least in terms of giving us a quick history of civilisation, and at least as judged by the British Museum and brought to us courtesy of the Australian National Museum in Canberra.

This is Augustus Caesar, the first Roman emperor to be called an emperor. Other top 100 artifacts include the sarcophagus of the ancient Egyptian Shepenmehyt, the Lewis Island Chessmen, an Arnhem Land basket, an Inca gold llama, a Samurai sword, and a Sharia Law compliant credit card. Plus some very colourful New Guinea tribal shields with modern beer label designs.

I quite like the Australian National Museum, especially that giant 'Garden of Australian Dreams' multi-themed map thing that you can walk around, with linguistic boundaries and lots more marked on it. 







I don't go much on the big loopy roller coaster 'Boolean string' thing at the entrance. ‘We have subtracted (by Boolean operation) a volume of tangled space in the form of a ribbon or knot from a solid sphere-like object. The loop is a small piece of this string, which entangles and defines the entire building – a metaphor for the strands that tie us together as a nation.' As explained by the museum's website.

The museum's in an attractive location on a peninsula that protrudes into Lake Burley Griffin.

Australian National Botanic Gardens

We had a quick look at Canberra's botanic gardens, and it was enough to see that we'd need to come back and spend a day there another time to take it in properly. It's a big and complex site, and boasts 6300 species of native plants. They say it's the only place in the world where you'll see this diversity of Australian flora in one place.

The layout was rather confusing, mind.  We tried to follow the 'main loop' track, but kept finding we'd wandered off it and were heading in the opposite direction to what we'd expected from the map. But not to worry, it was all very pleasant.






And the (reptilian) natives were quite unfazed by our presence.

Black Mountain blackout

Canberra's Black Mountain, with its telecommunications tower, is the obvious place to go for a panoramic view of the city. It's all spread out before you. And there's lots to see - lake, suburbs, museums, parks, parliaments, roads and bike paths.








When we arrived and tried to lock the car, the remote keyless car lock wouldn't work. This was a bit of a mystery for a while, till I remembered hearing something about this once before. It's the powerful electromagnetic field from the transmitter that does it, and we were relieved to find it all worked properly again later, once we'd driven off down the hill.

Wonder what it does to you if you work all day there?

Parliament House

You'd think a political junkie like me would have made it to Parliament House before now. It's only been there for about 30 years, after all. Anyway, I finally made it the other day, and can report that it's quite an impressive building.

I remember clearly when it was being built in the 1980s. There was huge controversy about the billion dollar price tag. At about the same time, they were also building those six dreaded submarines that hardly ever work, and each one of those was going to cost almost as much as Parliament House. (By the way, we've been told recently we have to have a whole new set of submarines, and this time there's to be 12 of them and they're to cost $30 billion, no $50 billion, maybe $100 billion. Who cares, it's only money. And by the way, what are they for, actually? No one's bothered to tell us.)

Back to Parliament House. You get to check out the Senate and the House of Representatives, you pose with your favourite Prime Minister (or Governor General). You inspect Australia's very own copy of England's Magna Carta (read the explanation of its significance - it's nicely written and rather inspiring). And you can stroll on the lawn on the roof.

It was a non-sitting day when we were there. I've a feeling I'll be along again soon, on a sitting day maybe.

Doubt whether I'll find out what the submarines are for though.

* (Actually, Paul Keating was probably the best Prime Minister of them all. Gough certainly had his merits though.)