'Zines and market stalls for This is not art, held in King Street today.

And Christ Church Cathedral.

. The letters of St James - he's on to us.  How did he know about the global financial crisis and Labour day?

An answer for the rich.  Start crying, weep for the miseries that are coming to you.  Your wealth is all rotting...All your gold and silver are corroding away, the  same corrosion will be your own sentence, and eat into your body. It was a burning fire that you stored up as your treasure for the last days.

Labourers mowed your fields, and you cheated them - listen to the wages that you kept back, calling out; realise that the cries of the reapers have reached the ears of the Lord of hosts.  On earth you have had a life of comfort and luxury; in the time of slaughter, you went on eating to your heart's content. It was you who condemned the innocent..........Jas 5 1-6.

goodness gracious

Renewable Energy Forever!  Lake Jindabyne would have a part in SnowyHydro power - the engineering project that diverts water from the alps into the inland river systems, for irrigation, for healthy rivers and at the same time generating renewable hydro power.
A series of dams, power stations and 145kms of water tunnels were built under and over an extensive area for generation and to regulate water on its downhill run.

In those hills magic tricks have been let loose to boost the snowfalls by way of cloud seeding. Small generators are strategically placed on the high country to burn and release microscopic particles into the air onto which the water in the clouds freeze and form snow flakes. Apparently it is common place.

Seeding involves the chemicals silver iodide and indium trioxide. Leglislation, research, investigation, analysis, monitoring and reporting is assured in the usual manner to rule out adverse effects. Cloud seeding will be continued and extended.

SnowyHydro foresaw a decline in snow and how winter temperatures were rising and now they report boosting snowfalls by an average 14%. More water and permanent renewable power generation, reliable irrigation and snow tourism are the aims along with sufficient water for the health of the river environments.

 Labour Day Long Weekend.  Here's to all the workers around the world!
Guest worker/slaves, child workers, the working poor - to those in power: reform all injustices!

Pictured is a park in Cooma which commemorates the multi-national workforce that build Snowy Hyro Electricity Scheme long ago. Whole little suburbs built for the workforce, the administration and ancillaries can be identified around the town. Who knows what conditions were like for those workers but one hears some favourable accounts from those migrants. A 'can do' attitude in a new country on a pioneering scheme was a great asset.

 Seems everyone is going away but I'm going to feed some chooks in their absence. Sadly, a fox killed three of the hens recently in mid suburbia and sometimes others nearby have had the same fate. It's a jungle out there

What a place to put a communications tower right on top of a bald hill that maintains a presence over Cooma.
They say that down Cooma way, the land didn't have any trees, except up on the hillsides, so the region became settled because it was easy to use for grazing and things.

Several other hills circle the town and they have trees growing on them. And one is Billygoat Hill. The goat is in cast iron.
I guess the hills will change from winter browns to green at some stage.
Around Tumut, over to the west of the ranges, the country soon changed and soon appeared green again.

Today the first call of a bird was heard that arrives around this time and repeats and repeats a plaintive call.

In Tamworth, another masterpiece by Telstra, double story and sat right in between the Lands Building of 1900 and the old Post Office with the clock tower. On the front of the building the arch has been used with great flair and imagination to match the post office. What if it had been set right back and lowered?

 It has been heard that GIO car Insurnce Company is unwilling to repair certain of the damages sustained in a no-fault road accident and that the repair process and the discussions had taken a long time and that doing the relatively simple repairs would be more cost effective.

Tamworth Lands Building 1900.

Wow! This telephone related building is the outstanding contribution from Telstra to the cluster of historical buildings in Cooma (the court house, goal, post office and police).

As if I know anything about town planning. But here goes. The town of Cooma was established rather early in the piece by local standards and has a colonial court house lording it over us.
From the court house, down the steps, to a small reserve of land from where the photo is taken then behind the photographer is the wall of a supermarket and it fails to enhance the setting one little bit. Wish they did better than that to this little civic centre.

Then a colonial post office, which is not a pretend post office, has had additions in the form of the white building planned to blend in but I dunno about that. 
  Otherwise it isn't all that easy to buy a bottle of wine grown in the Hunter, a vin ordinaire. Wines are blended and shipped around.  But Aldi is selling Shiraz Merlot etc for a hugh $2.49, from South Australia.
Shopping at Aldi is like going to another country, the products are unfamiliar or copy cat and interesting European brand names take the eye and they say that savings can be made. 
Fried herring fillets in Mediterranean Dressing  - it doesn't get much better than that!  Large jars of pickled red cabbage - isn't that what the explorers took with them when they sailed the Pacific as anti-scurvy - well, that's good enough for me.

Aladdin's magic lamp burned oil that was a forerunner of canola oil.  When canola is in flower the country-side looks crazily sports minded wearing the green and gold. It is our third largest broadacre crop after wheat and barley.
At flowering time the crop has implications for honey bees.

Related to the brassica family with a name derived from Canadian Oil low acid, the Canola plants develope multiple seed pods, like runner beans, which change from green to brown to black so it seems that the crop is brown and dry by the time of windrow and large harvesters.

The seeds from the pods are crushed and precessed in various ways to produce oil and substances that have very diverse uses in foods and in industry.

GM canola is also grown.  Resistence to herbicides is a feature.  There are reports of the growth of hugh weeds as a result of how things are done.

The oil is said to have health benefits over other fats.
A multinational company, Cargell, with HQ in Minneapollis, has widespread operations in canola in Australia and at Kooragang in Newcastle has a crush plant and oil refinery and oil terminal complete with a smell of cooking oil.
One local organization among others, GrainCorp Oil, is to start producing and exporting the oil and the seeds.

Cootamundra Station and pretty Acacia baileyana or Cootamundra Wattle, indigenous to a small area in the south of the state (and now grown far and wide).
This isn't just a pretend railway station, trains go there.
Thank goodness for country towns that are anything but post-authentic. Give me this 'backward' country any day and nice if paired with occasional excesses.

Dubai has raced to become a truly fabled city with which Qantas airline has made closer connections. Ironically, in some instances a stop-over for outspoken Aussie tourists:  bogans meet the uber-aspirational-Arabic-east.
Wonderful to glimps, but unbearable ostentation and what about the contracted visiting workforce who build this city and what about sustainability in those desert sands.

 

Cherry trees near the town of Young NSW are beginning to bloom. 

Around here, the publicity given to religion would be unheard of in stacks of countries.
In our open system the media has had a large role in revealing the many instances of paedophile clergy in the Catholic church and beyond.  In the Hunter, prosecutions have been numerous and compensations paid up by the church who has been carrying out remedial and preventative actions while a commission of enquiry is sought to make sure the response is total.
The publicity exposes the instituion itself rather than the beliefs or revered historical figures such as in the notorious video.
The challenge is to look beyond the human institution which is not a 'level playing field' and is a man's world at that.

Most of the crimes took place in the eighties and ninties and no speculation has been seen as to why then. It was a time of social change but perhaps such crimes always existed.  The records are of the Hunter region and what of other districts?  

Kinda unique retro Coffee stand, believe imported from the UK.
Below, youngsters and non-violent protests have been seen before this.
Believe sub-editing has gone off shore and the big city dailys have axed numerous leading journalists and others.

Gerald, keen blogger from Hyde in the land of Scott and Bailey: my reply has exterminated, it is too difficult to prove I am not a robotic spammer or maybe that's just it.
Yes, local sightseeing - I'm lovin' it. Otherwise one vascillates about overseas travel and the destinations to die for. And this week I havn't got off the high moral ground and say travel is unsustainable and unjustified. Gratify our whims at the cost to people and the overall environment. But on the other hand, I won't be here when the predicted changes creep over our planet. Will I be drawn in by the must see destinations?

Less snow is falling according to one local researcher. As a result summer activities are gaining traction. Our snowfields cover a relatively tiny area.
Snowyhydro Renewable energy has a hand-out with snow depth readings since 1972 and these are also on their web site. Are the figures supposed to speak for themselves? Who knows? The graphs are not as high as they used to be.
I believe cloud seeding is carried out.  The hydro electric scheme needs water from the snowfields for its very existence.
The mountains are a catchment for the major rivers that are the lifeblood to hugh areas for drinking water and for food growing.
Tourism depends on snow sports at the same time as our overall activities hasten climate change.

In Davos, Switzerland, a weather stations reports a decrease in snow at lower and middle altitudes over that last seventy years of measurements. Melting glaciers, less and later snow, higher mean temps and retreating snowlines and low lying smog are observed in the alps.
Acres of polythene covers are used to help stop the glaciers from melting.

Snow making cannons have high energy and water requirements.  Heavy vehicle that work the ski runs and just about everything related to sking is bad news for the vegetation, soil and animal life in the alps as the focus of the 'sport' moves up to higher and higher altitudes.

Profit and loss.  What is the right balance between protest and lawlessness?  Multiple terrible protests are in the news but protest is  not uncommon.  Moscow is often roused to protest as recently as a day or two ago and they don't go quietly.  Unionists in Melbourne were very roudy some weeks ago and police horses were employed. Look at wild scenes from Greece and Spain. Violence and lawlessness deserve a heavy hand. The object of protest is all relative.

Resist the side roads leading to snowy destinations and flee across open country that is deserted and isolated with mountain trolls lurking just out of sight.
Cruise past Kiandra that has all but gone, one solitary building,  along with its claims to fame - such as the first ski club ever. This cruise is something different. Foot to floor in the Trabant!  Scoot past scenes from the revhead magazines along here.

The source of the Eucumbene, Murrumbidgee and others. The Murrumbidgee continues way out into west of the state in land strapped for water overall and conservation high on the adgenda.

Had I surfaced in a cash strapped economy or in the hub of Quantitative easing 3 or was it Putinsburg?
Hugh cuts made to the education budget.  Why isn't TAFE relatively sacrosanct like the universities?  Privatisation.

(Perisher)   More micky mouse courses?  Will government become capable of monitoring standards and the spendings made by private institutions.  Time will tell.

Leaving Kosciuszko National Park to reach the Hume Highway the country opens out and long bands of bare lifeless trees are observed on the slopes the same as they were in other wooded areas alongside other trees with leaves. Who knows why the trees look dead. Not many deciduous trees are found here.  Snow Gums keep their leaves.

This national park is rather extensive on the southern border of the state and has a lot of activities to support so it requires a good budget for staff and whatever without dependence on the manpower and fees of hunters with guns.  Official culling is acceptable.
As it is the motorist is advised to watch for, in turn, wombats, roos, brumbies and emus as well as for changes in weather conditions which can be severe.  None of these animals were a problem although some roos had been hit and had since been marked with an X in paint which would have a few explainations.

 Of all things, Mount Kosciusko, the highest peak, is named after a tumulus found outside Cracow which was formed to honour Kosciusko who did good. Count Strzelecki, during his scientific galavanting joined an expedition and described and named the mountain in 1840 although he made no record of the bearings. (The spellings and all the facs are beyond this barebones account despite doing a little research).

CORROBOREE FROG  Pseudophryne Corroboree

This black and yellow striped frog is bright and beautiful and is listed as an endangered species in NSW.  The frog grows to only 2.5cm and moves by crawling rather than hopping.  It lives up in the mountains above 950 metres.
The frog eggs hatch into tadpoles after 2 to 3 weeks but do not start developing until the snow melts and the bogs fill with water.
Snowy Hydro Limited provides financial support to the National Parks and Wildlife Service for conservation programs for the frog.

Blue Cow and Perisher. Locations that have nothing to do with Newcastle.

Snow boardriders and skiers would know all about the snow fields.
Drive to the "Snowy" through a winter landscape where the countryside has turned straw coloured and boulders are strewn around and strange barren trees stand in groups and a few head of cattle or of sheep with tiny lambs graze on the cold windswept plains.
Pass the lake and township at Jindabyne and a gradual climb to the Skitube rail station and after a 20 minute underground ride emerge at Blue Cow into a rather different white chilling environment where mist and sunshine took turns to open and close down the scene.
 Backtrack to Perisher, strong wind rain and sleet which everyone loved. Sundeck (sic) - the highest little hotel in Australia was on the route taken by the 1978 yellow Bombardier.
That's what the flodders saw at the snowfields yesterday.