Creative moves in school - dance, music, song and paintings were offered and were appreciated.

Our schools produced a government minister who in interview today intimated that with climate change the cause was not the point or didn't matter.  The sick joke is that his portfolio concerns agriculture and emergencies among a long list of 'insignificant' matters.
The government is paranoid about climate change.  An unwritten law bans the mention of climate change among the Liberals.  As if we are considered incapable of dealing with that sort of talk.
The Liberals suppress policy on a major threat regardless of the price we pay. 
A major anti-intellectual 'lost his seat' but others take his place, it made no difference.
   
school poster.... If you don't spread your wings you'll never know how far you can fly.....

Travel and Thomas the tank engine.
Total Carbon emissions from the growing number of cruise ships have naturally increased although shipping companies are working on reductions.
 The total global CO2 -e Emissions (kt) from cruise ships in 2017 was 21,195 kt.  (kt or metric Kiloton is equal to 1000kg)
The estimated average per cruise ship passenger is 0.82  CO2.  This is the equivalent to a return air trip London to Tokyo economy class.
The figures come from self reporting from two main shipping companies as a basis for the estimations.

Aircraft emit C02 and other greenhouse gases which are documented.  The total C02 is 665.24 MT.
A MT is million tonnes.
Some figures: Great Britain 178.49 C02MT               per capita C02kg 415
Australia                                 17.48                                                         711
China                                    250.89                                                           50

from tourismdashboard.org....Griffith University Institute for Tourism and University of Surrey.

The Three Sisters are still in Katoomba.
 Ocker Australians in the era of the sort of obligatory trip to London sixty years ago travelled by sea.  How would long distant sea routes be as an alternative to flights and carbon emissions?
 The ethics of air travel has had me thinking for some time.  To plant a few trees as offset is a gesture of sorts.
 Elizbeth Farrelly who writes very interestingly about the built environment, wrote in the Herald recently about ...the preposterous lie that endless travel is a basic right...and questions our addiction to travel and the consequences.
 How can one possibly steal a last overseas journey in this climate? Not to swell the hordes at the tried and true top ten destinations but more of the lived experience and to gallivant in a specific 'corner' of some culture and history would not fail to please.  

Urban day trippers visit Echo Point, they make up a never ending stream of visitors.  A forceful gale didnt make much difference.
  In America, Wal mart says they will limit the sale of guns in some ways.  It is a good start.
  Today at the shopping centre I saw a baby well under 12 months given a hamburger from the famous fast food supplier. The parent first tore the burger in half. That's getting off to an early start.  I will own up to having a grilled chicken wrap and a cap'.
  In stock now: nice cauliflowers and runner beans are plentiful and reasonable.  Rain must have fallen somewhere. Avos are small and less expensive.  Mangos are appearing  -  well ahead of summer. 
  A strawberry 'war' is underway and the woody fruit is low cost.  Incidental prices of fresh food rose a whole lot for Fathers day....as is usual on those sort of days. Is it a rip off or a response to demand for less plentiful items....no, Thursday and those prices are back down again.

Art deco again and a more unusual figure. How does the quality rate?
My copies of the book  Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance by Pirsig have gone missing.  Quality is a theme in the mystery writings which use the Chautauqua form strangely related to meetings that once took place in America.
 Incidentally, a Chautauqua Peak is found in the Grampians National Park in Victoria where a spiritual meeting in the bushland in tents is recorded in an early newspaper article found on the net.

 Music of some quality may be heard in the cathedral in Hamilton.  Dr Anne Millard is the director of music who presents a fine range of hymns and songs with top organ or keyboard backing along with a group of  singers. It is a relief to find that the songs of praise will be enjoyable music.
 Church going is to take part in a sacred rite that has been continuous for two thousand years which is a certain something.  Of course, the rite has been embellished and developed over that time.  Not that it is a contest nor that age is any guarantee but the tradition still stands.
 Many aspects of the institutional church are dreadful. Other aspects seem timeless.

More childhood wonder. Was it the high altitude that set the mind on literary themes. Perpetual winter and the garden of The Selfish Giant was there for all to spy. After a lifetime, Oscar Wilde's stories remain tucked in the memory.
 On the other hand, The Shining roamed in disturbed images of where visitors stay over and the Carrington Hotel is one such place.  It is a curiosity trying to be a la mode not that I would know much about that.

 Oscar Wilde did short stories,they are out of step and touching such as The Happy Prince, The Nightingale and the Rose, The Birthday of the Infanta.  It would be trite to write much of them.

A recent snow fall in Katoomba was a wonderful novelty. This was the scene at the Carrington Hotel  a funny old place in itself.

Lake Macquarie has two functioning power stations plus another near by and with those up the valley provide power far and wide for the state and further afield so around here we pay the price for the pollution.
Coal supplies reach the power stations by conveyors from the local coal mines.  The newer industrial design does not use brick, the workings are not housed but are in a mass of metal bits.

Does Lake Macquarie community need a multistory building for some good purpose?  The de-commissioned juggernaut power station at Wangi is truly grand. How long has it sat vandalised 20, 30 years? And park-like fields surround the old powerhouse. What exciting plans are afoot?

 Just another sunny day!  A red moon rose the night before and with the reflection in the lake was wonderful to behold. 

Looking east into the calm. Wallis lake.

From the Northwest Territories, Canada, a doco is examining the fascinating northern lights, a network of cameras recording the lights nation wide to discover what 'drives' the lights. Occasionally the lights are visible at much lower latitudes.  Just as they say the southern lights extend to Tasmania and further at times but can't be close enough to knock out power supply.

The car radio causes funny habits such as me jumping to the next station every time a Domaine or Harvey Norman ad begins which is every few minutes or so it seems so you can go from one end to the other or the ABC emerges.

 

 Unemployment benefits have not been increased for decades.  Rightly, 'everyone' agrees the payments should be increased.
 Afterall, the benefit and pension payments are an economic stimulous.  Generally, the money is not saved, it all goes on goods and services and helps the basic economy.
  Generally, the money does not go on amazing items that cause inflation, (what's that?) and all the spendings stay in this country.
 An increase in the amount of benefits is long overdue.
  

 

Displayed outdoors, at that, in front of a furniture dealer selling used 'treasures'.  There's always a surprise in store. Provenance counts but funnily the sales person thought these were from a Christian church!
Beautiful imported ornate marble table and chairs were exceptional another time, for a certain ostentatious setting. 

No distance from the very main street of Broken Hill and the railway is a 'mountain' of tailings where mining for silver and lead began in 1895.  Broken Hill is in the far west of the state.
The multinational company BHP is now among the largest there is.
Believe it or not, in London, the company's chief has acknowledged the threat of climate change and the need for drastic action to lower emissions. 

Strangler fig.  This one was left standing in a park.

 Fish Market images. All those eyes....other animal species...life like.  . 

 The reactions to vegan activists has been massive with them viewed as the worst of the worst.  Are we so ignorant that various matters must be completely suppressed in case we are led astray as if we lack all judgement?  And other matters other than veganism.
 We can well manage to hear positive reactions without being influenced into becoming rural anarchists. Without trivialising the actions, they could be seen in the light of an ambit claim, as a reminder of the consequences of our consumption of certain products that are not carbon neutral and lead us to consider what we eat and whether or not it will go round an expanding global population. Enlightened leaders would welcome us focus on the issues.  

Some splendid tropical species from North Queensland were soon snapped up....

A fluid impression of Newcastle Beach.......
A 'bill board' hiding renovations at a shopping centre...

Coffee under the canopy......