Sydney's got water again!

The big rain event of a few weeks ago worked wonders on Sydney's water supply. We've gone from 40% and falling dangerously, to over 80% and time to relax about it again.
 
So off to Warragamba Dam, and Lake Burragorang reservoir, the other day.

The visitor centre is open most days, and on weekends you can walk over the dam.

I think I mentioned once before about how Sydney's big reservoir compares with that of my home town, Birmingham England. They're very proud of their Elan Valley reservoir and dam there. Well it turns out that Sydney's Lake Burragorang is actually 40 times bigger than Birmingham's.

Some towns of NSW's Central West

Wheat silo mural at Weethalle. (Mural courtesy of Melbourne artist Heesco Khosnaran)

West Wyalong. Something rather special about this town's feng shui. I liked it.

Forbes, just after a bit of rain. (Not nearly enough rain, of course.)

More Forbes. These were substantial and prosperous cities once.

Parkes.

The city's namesake, Sir Henry Parkes was one of the founders of Australia. He was a poet and radical self-taught political activist from the Coventry/Birmingham area of England. His poetic skills and masterful speeches made him Premier of NSW five times, and he devoted much of his career to the cause of Australian nationhood.

Orange. Very trendy place to visit. Great wines, great lifestyle, great everything,they say. Pity it's almost run out of water. Good luck, Orange.











Bathurst. Fine old city this one. In fact it was one of Australia's first inland settlements.








These days Bathurst is especially famous for its Mt Panorama motor racing circuit, and its two annual big racing events in February and October.  For most of the year, the circuit is a public road, and you're free to drive around it yourself, so long as you don't exceed the 60km/hr speed limit!

Birmingham gardens 2 - a slightly way-out one

The Akamba Garden Centre, with the Tribe bar and eatery, is a one-of-a-kind phenomenon in Shirley, just outside Birmingham.

You can indeed buy plants there, or you can buy weird metallic African animals. Or you can have afternoon tea there, or just explore the place with your mouth wide open in amazement.


There weren't many people there at all when I was there. Only this nice old lady who was trying to avoid being eaten by a croc.







The food is variously described as Afro-Carribean and Kenyan, though we played safe and stuck to tea and cream scones.




























I've a feeling it might all come to life in the evenings.

Birmingham gardens 1 - the Botanical one

I particularly enjoyed watching thepeacock doing his thing for his lady friend. He was a very fine peacockindeed, but she wasn't the slightest bit interested.

And the butterfly house was rather nice.

A walk in the park

Another outing well worth undertaking in the Birmingham area is a trip to Sutton Park in Sutton Coldfield.



It was surprisingly easy to get to, via the much improved West Midlands passenger rail system of recent times.

The park is quite a size -  at about 970ha, it's ten times the area of  Parramatta Park, for example. 

You could easily do a walk of 10km or more within its boundaries, and there's lots to see.



But one visitor preferred a more leisurely visit.

The West Midlands are my oyster- Part 1

For a mere £33 I got  myself a one week 'go anywhere in the West Midlands' transport card. I could use it on any bus, train, or tram in the English West Midlands, and it had already got me to Coventry. It worked just as well in the other direction too. I spent a day heading out to the north-west of Birmingham, through the once 'Black Country' to Wolverhampton and Dudley, using the new tram service.

Wolverhampton never seemed to have all that much going for it, apart from a high profile football team. At least it's now got a very pedestrian-friendly town centre to explore, as does just about every English city these days. They got rid of the cars, and it all still works, works much better in fact. Who'd have thought that Wolverhampton might ever be a pleasant place to wander around in?

Likewise Dudley. I returned to Birmingham via a series of buses, with a lunch break in Dudley. There was a statue of a famous footballer here. Duncan Edwards. Never heard of him. Turns out he was a Manchester United player in the 1950s, and he was one of the ones killed in the Munich plane crash in 1958.

This funny old building serves as the Dudley Central Mosque.

And here's what I'd been looking for: the Dudley Zoo. I have childhood memories of a  visit to Dudley Zoo. It's up the side of a hill, leading up to Dudley Castle. There was a substantial fee to enter, and I was a bit tired, and somehow it didn't seem quite worth the effort to go in and climb the hill. Maybe another time?

Then it's back to Birmingham on the top deck of the X8 bus.

Tolkien's inspiration

I read JRR Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' and 'The Hobbit' when I was 16. I was quite taken by it all, but then I was only 16. Since then lots of others, often far older people, fell in love with him. They read the books, they watched the movies, and a lot of them went to New Zealand to visit Middle Earth.

Or at least, they went to visit the fabulous wild countryside on New Zealand's South Island, where the movies were shot.

They've got it all wrong however. Tolkien grew up in Birmingham, in what is now the suburb of Moseley. The bits of countryside that inspired him are the Moseley Bog, and the Lickey Hills, a few kilometres to the west.

And then there's the old mill, Sarehole Mill, which was supposedly the inspiration for the mill in Hobbiton.

I went for a little exploration of the Moseley Bog, and witnessed a rather Lord of the Rings-ish episode. There was suddenly a near fight to the death between a big fluffy dog and a monster Staffordshire Terrier killing machine. The young Hobbits supposedly controlling them screamed and kicked them helplessly. It lasted several minutes. The ents looked on silently.

Pokemon No!

The Pokemon Go craze was at its peak during our time in England, and a couple of times I came across unusual crowds of young folk, glued to their screens, chasing imaginary digital monsters. And frequenting places I'm certain they'd never ventured into before.

Like the grounds of St Philip's Anglican Cathedral in Birmingham. Look at this motley crew of cathedral visitors!

Riding a Birmingham canal boat

Birmingham was a main hub of Britain's canal network in the 18th and 19th centuries. They claim to have more miles of canal than Venice. Canals don't shift much freight any more, but there's lots of canal-based leisure activity going on.

The easiest way to get a taste of this is to take one of the public boat rides, from Brindleyplace, like we did. It didn't cost a lot, and for an hour or so we could sit back and enjoy an unusually tranquil city experience.

We went southwards along the Worcester & Birmingham Canal, via the Gas Street Basin, and the Mailbox development, out past Birmingham University, and 'into the country'. It wasn't the country. I happened to know that was several suburbs away. But it looked and felt like the country.

Here's a link to the company's website: http://www.away2canal.co.uk/

Everything old is new again (even Birmingham)

Growing up in Birmingham in the 1960s we were all very proud of the modern makeover the city got back then. Especially that funny little round Rotunda building. Then over the following decades it all got a bit ragged and old and decrepit.








Well they're well into the next makeover now, and much of the city centre looks like it actually does belong to the 21st century. Lots of bright and airy shopping centres, a pink tram, and a strangely shiny new New Street Station.












Another somewhat strange apparition is the Selfridges store, which has actually been there since 2003. It's got lots of architectural awards, but I think it's just odd. Celebrated local newspaper cartoonist, Bert Hackett, seems to have thought so too.

Man on the Moon

When I grew up in Birmingham, there was a nearby pub called the Man in the Moon. I never actually went there, but it was a very well-known local landmark. Lots of people can see a man in the moon when they look at the full moon, at least in the northern hemisphere, where it's appropriately oriented. Mind you, in some cultures, they see a chicken, or a rabbit. (I see mountains and plains and craters, but that's another story.)

When NASA landed the Apollo 11 astronauts on the Moon, on 20 July 1969, lots of people chose to watch it on TV at the Man in the Moon, where free drinks and a big party were on offer. That night the pub changed its name.

One small name change for Man..........


I finally made it there on my recent trip. Opinion among locals I consulted was divided about the merits of the place, so I consulted Tripadvisor. And it came up pretty good. Take a look: https://www.tripadvisor.com.au/Restaurant_Review-g186402-d3502108-Reviews-The_Man_on_the_Moon-Birmingham_West_Midlands_England.html

Baron Austin of Longbridge (& Melbourne!)

I've learnt a little about Sir Herbert Austin recently. Later Baron Austin of Longbridge, he was the man who more than anyone else shaped the landscape of the part of Birmingham where I grew up.

During my youth the car manufacturing plant he founded employed about 25,000 people and covered several square kilometres. Gee, were we proud of it.

All good things come to an end though, and mediocre things too. The cars it produced became more and more mediocre, and the once mighty company shrank, merged, changed its name of few times, got taken over by others from around the world, and eventually gave up the ghost entirely.

Out of the ashes though......  what a business opportunity. What a huge expanse of real estate. Above is a plan of the redevelopment currently underway, stolen from the website www.newsteelconstruction.com   There's going to be housing, shops, parks, commercial and industrial areas galore.  There's already a fair few things there, like the shiny new technical college (whose roof partly blew off while I was there!), and the comfortable and spacious Sainsburys supermarket (whose coffee shop provided a welcome respite from the cold, wet weather outside). There's even an Austin Park, with memorial to the good Lord, and a blow by blow account of the rise and fall of his company. 

One unexpected finding during my extensive research this evening (ie. I read the Wikipedia entry): He spent several formative years in Australia! Between 1884 and 1893 he was here, based in Melbourne, and later Sydney. He married a Melbourne girl, and he was involved in designing and building printing equipment, gas engines, locomotive boilers, gold mining equipment, and eventually a sheep shearing machine! The latter enterprise was with one Frederick Wolseley, who was also later to give his name to a car brand. It was only after his return to England that Austin became interested in motor cars.

He was born in south east England, but buried in a church cemetery in the Lickey Hills.

Picture of the 5,000,000th Mini stolen from www.libraryofmotoring.info