South Turramurra 2074

I pushed the button on my randomised suburb chooser device today, and up popped South Turramurra. And it's not a bad place for a visit either.

It must be one of Sydney's most liveable suburbs in fact.



There's a very pleasant little shopping strip. There are parks and pockets of carefully protected woodland habitat.

There's St Andrews Uniting Church, home of STEP (South Turramurra Environment Protection). As well as producing a multitude of extremely professional books and maps, and holding frequent excellent educational events, STEP was largely responsible for preventing much of the neighbouring bushland from becoming motorway corridors and housing estates. More here:  STEP

South Turramurra has an average income nearly twice the national average, and a median house price of approximately $1.7 million.

The Lane Cove National Park forms the southern boundary of the suburb. I strolled down there with a view to getting some pictures of the bush and of the Great North Walk, which passes by there. But what's this? It's closed today for a hazard reduction burn.




A very pleasant lady from National Parks was guarding the park entrance, and happily explained all about the fire and where I couldn't go.

I posed her for a photo, asking her to look a bit fierce. "I can't do fierce", she said!

It's all talk

And that's fine! There are so many public talks, discussions, debates, slide shows, and lectures you can go to around Sydney. They're mostly free and usually they are interesting and informative.

I sometimes go to the lunchtime talks in the Mitchell Theatre of the Sydney Mechanics School of Arts, at 280 Pitt St. It's a welcoming and relaxing environment, and you don't even need to reserve a seat for these. Just rock up. Here's their programme: https://smsa.org.au/events/

The other day it was a presentation of 'Sydney in the 60s' photography by a former professional Government photographer.

The various universities all have extensive programmes of intellectual stimulation too - often tailored for interested lay folks like me. As part of Sydney University's 'Sydney Ideas' series, for example, there will be a talk on gravitational waves next month, which I plan to get along to. I can't speak too highly of this series. I've been exposed to some of the world's finest visiting brains expounding on science, technology, politics, philosophy, history, futurology. You name it, it comes to Sydney. Here's a link to Sydney Uni events: http://whatson.sydney.edu.au/events  And UTS, WSU, and UNSW all run similar things.

Lots of other organisations do excellent stuff too. One I'd mention is STEP (the South Turramurra Environment Protection group, it stands for).  Not only have they successfully brought about the protection of many bits of precious bushland, but they've produced a variety of books and the definitive high quality bushwalking maps of the northern Sydney region. They also put on regular public talks of a very high standard. No reservations required. Last week I went to a presentation on paleoclimatology. It's a pity there were no climate change sceptics there. The million-year timescale graphs displayed of temperature, carbon dioxide, and sea level, with the seven or eight ice ages followed by a vastly steeper and more sudden effect from industrialisation, make any talk about "climate change has always happened and is completely natural" look ludicrous. Here's a link to STEP: http://www.step.org.au/index.php








There's an umbrella website that collects most of these events together, to make life easy for talkaholics like me. It's called 'Sydney Talks'. Check it out:
https://www.sydneytalks.com.au/