Anglo Indians of the world unite........!

And every three years they do, in a different part of the world each time. This time it's Sydney's turn. Or at least, Blacktown's - Quakers Hill to be  precise. Funny though that the publicity material all showed pictures of Harbour Bridges and Opera Houses!

Your fearless reporter got himself an invite to this amazing cultural event, and enjoyed it a lot. The Anglo Indians used to run an empire after all, so they ought to be able to organise a good party. And indeed that's what they do best. It's all on a homely, low-cost basis though, hence suburban Quakers Hill, I guess.

The food was nice though, and the people were universally friendly and decent folk. They were all members of the Anglo Indian diaspora, and many had come from North America and the British Isles.

The Blacktown dignitaries welcomed the visitors and organised a welcome too from the local traditional landowners, a representative of whom performed a smoking ceremony and played a didgeridoo.

Then the serious business began, of finding one's old schoolmates from their Indian childhoods of 50 years ago, and doing hearty renditions of the old school anthems. They sounded all out of tune, but then maybe it's always like that. Here's a recent rendition from La Martiniere Kolkata school itself, with band and choir and full hierarchy in full regalia. Click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RobDErH4KK0

Nurragingy

It's 15 years or so since I last visited the Nurragingy Reserve. At that time it was probably in its infancy as a local attraction, and my memories were of a patch of scrubby bush with a few picnic tables and an uninviting bush track or two. Plus a couple of blacksmith's huts, I remember.

Since then it was in the news because of a prominent 2010 murder case - a young child was murdered and her body was dumped here. Not something to enhance one's image of a beauty spot.

Well it's actually come on quite a lot, as we discovered the other day. It's now very inviting indeed, with lots of appealing facilities. The blacksmith's huts are still there, and there are now lots of lawns, picnic areas, specialist gardens, a good value for money kiosk, playgrounds, cycle paths and water features.

We didn't have time to do justice to the place. Just enough time to have a quick lunch and a brief sojourn into the Chinese Garden, but we plan to return soon to explore it all a bit further.

Nurragingy Reserve is in Doonside in Western Sydney, and is managed by Blacktown City Council.

Black skies over Blacktown

I went out today on a mission to explore the suburb of Blacktown. I'm sure there was lots there to report on - a very large shopping centre and a very colourful melting pot population spring to mind initially - but my attention was hijacked by the dramatic sky and the bushfires raging to the west.

We're only a few days out of winter, but already the temperatures are in the 30s, there's been no real rain for two months, and a hot wind from the north west has resulted in several nasty bushfires on Sydney's western edges. Homes have been destroyed, firefighters injured, schools evacuated, all the usual.

Three days ago my fellow Australians voted in a new Government, led by Tony "Climate Change is Crap" Abbott. He's going to scrap the price on carbon pollution, and concentrate on the important things like chopping down and digging up, boosting the coal industry, and generally doing business as normal but more so.

So we ain't seen nothing yet.