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

Coffee under the canopy......

 No fake news here it is to be hoped.  Well known TV figures beamed from outdoors similar to the true believers all outside the opera house proceedings where a stiff southerly was very chilly. The shortest day is nearly here.

Welcome news. Canada will ban some single use plastics such as straws, bags and cutlery by early 2021, P M Justin Trudeau announced recently and he is five months out from an election. (Reuters/SMH)
 Forces for good are converging. This is the very least we can do, the remainder of plastic materials need attention as well. Replace simple packaging for a start. 

 Micro plastics reach the sediment underwater and get into the food chain via fish.

Art Deco repurposed as Kinselas Hotel, Darlinghurst, previously a funeral parlour on Taylors Square where the rainbow theme is often seen.  The repurpose was mentioned on ABC as a good example and is among other interesting hotel buildings peculiar to Sydney so we unlikely patrons went along to have a look and do a little skulling for Hawke.

Very many happenings I witness lately seem the end of an era.  For good or bad.  .

The placard  Farewell Bob Sob is half hidden while the crowd were livened up by a fun Men at Work finale. 
The tone of the memorial, the quality, humour and intelligence was gratifying and good for the community.
Urban myths aside, leaders are no longer like Hawke, all the facets around good workplaces, the various equality wars, social justice and progressive policies are not so obvious anymore and the Labor party seems not held dear by those communities who stood to benefit in the past .

A little excerpt on climate change was surprising and was a platform for a capable descendent who has taken up this new yet impossible challenge. 
                  

Is this giant sushi or the cotton harvest?
This was an irrigated area, probably, around the Macquarie River, central NSW  The river had not dried up.

• When mature, the crop is harvested mechanically and placed into large modules. The modules are loaded onto trucks and transported from the farm to a cotton gin (short for en-gin). Cotton gins are factories that separate cottonseed and trash from the lint (raw cotton fibre)
• The cotton lint is tightly pressed into bales. An Australian cotton bale weighs 227kg (500 pounds)
• Once the cotton bales are ginned, pressed and containerised, they are loaded on to trucks and trains and sent to port for shipping, mostly to overseas markets.

A sensational program on ABC TV gave an account of a psychotic antisocial slayer.
Dozens of people failed to respond to the man, the police half joked with the psychotic and others brushed him off when, in fact, emergency first aid is required.

We need to be better informed about mental health and the services require a more generous share of the public health budget for education, prevention, adequate staffing, adequate therapies, accommodation and long term care.

A totally reckless person fails to get care so imagine how much more difficult it is for a less extreme chronic battler to find good mental health services. It is a very worth cause.

March by a special interest group that had me guessing - life's rich pageant.

How much better it would have been if Labor had announced a significant policy regarding climate change and had voiced some opposition to a vast new coal mine before they went on to lose the election.

In the sunny central west of the state new solar was under construction - a big field of panels in an isolated acerage.  Construction phrase offers jobs and judging by the car park a workforce from all over had assembled west of the village of Nevertire.
 The company is biosar Aus P/L which has activities in many corners of the globe following its beginnings in Greece. There is at least one other large solar power plant in the area.

Change is in the air.  We have all heard of General Electric.  A site named Electrek reports that G E bet on fossil fuels and lost billions in misjudging renewable energy transition.  '
'The multinational profitibility collapse over the past few years can be largely attributed to the company's inability to judge the accelerating pace of the global energy transition from fossil fuels and towards renewables''
'Natural gas and thermal coal were the culprits''

 Things to do on a long weekend.  Rail station is getting into the 21st century with the addition of lifts. Motorists were held up and were not amused.  What's far worse, has coal transport been put on hold for the weekend which is very serious.

Originally the station was a room, in timber, on the upstairs cross over. We must have been more hardy once. It was demolished and a prosaic red brick thing on ground level took over.  In recent times, two separate extensive renovations have upgraded the staircases so hope that work was not done in vain. Go public transport!

Areas nearby were once set aside for an overhead road bridge with a straight path ahead instead of the existing hairpin bend but it seems that long-term plan is scrapped for instance an existing building in the pathway is undergoing a complete makeover so it must be there to stay.

Redfern station in Sydney has no lifts which are found at most other stations. Redfern has or had an indigenous population as well as other groups.  Does that have anything to do with it?
This side of Newcastle has comfortable people and a fair share of some disadvantage, is that why the Station did not have a lift? why the council library seems less resourced than others, why a main church that has connections close by has its doors locked most of the time and uses extensive expensive exterior lighting while a  'sister' church in the next suburb remains unlocked and unlit and has no particular persons near by.

In the Far West there was some signs of mobile reception at most of the little centres but not at Wilcannia although we did not check all over.  The town is more than tiny, has rather modest housing; welfare services, a security conscious general store and has an indigenous population and leaves one to ponder why there was no mobile reception. Incidentally the court house, jail and police station there are particularly fine old colonial buildings.

  A weekly train service takes about 12 hours Sydney to Broken Hill and is seen at Ivanhoe station mid afternoon. About 1200ks.  Returns the next day. Out on the flat earth it does 120 - 140ks.

  This week I saw a young mother and baby dressed in PJs, dressing gown and slippers at the supermart in Newcastle 'burb.

 The East Coast Low has been great but it probably annoyed everyone.  A rainbow late in the day and a setting sun and it was almost over after one only day.
 Below, service station odds and ends.  How much pool chemical is sold in winter?  Ice?  mowing? swap and go?

Show about China at the Art Galley NSW recently.  The Tiananman Square uprising and shootings were 30 years ago. On visiting the Square the heroism was uppermost in my mind but things had  conveniently moved on, forgotten amid the sightseers and cult worship. Fascination and repulsion in equal measure.

Golf course in town of Orange gave me a lovely sample of a muted forest floor thick with leaves over my feet and light showers of leaves all around. A magical scene like this is not familiar to us in Newcastle.  Nor the chilly air and occasional snow.  
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