Dazzle

Syd, an Olympic mascot, Sydney 2000 and memories of a dazzling day at the main arena free of a pandemic. It has a mass vaccination outfit thesedays.  A platypus back pack!

Lately the days are clear and dazzling. Is air pollution diminished? Thank you lock down.

It is perverse, abundant health services, free vaccine, GPs with education, power and status, the gatekeepers, they have met their match.

Curiously, all of it is ineffective when it comes to those who are unwilling to be vaccinated. Where is an alternative approach?  Thinking outside the box. Then outside of hospital, they can't offer any appropriate treatment for covid infection or never ever any reminder about prevention. Certain nurses are not convinced to vaccinate, carers of the aged are heard following the scare tactics on social media. 

Life and death's rich pagent.

Segenhoe

Segenhoe c1937 is now listed on State Heritage Register. The building is early inter war Art Deco designed by Emil Sodersten. ..changing attitudes to housing moving to a dense high-rise apartment living...

Really?  Change was slight until seventy years on. Medium high rise has now 'taken off' in a big way. After all, Segenhoe is sat in the midst of  Victorian style terrace houses, an example of density from the 1800s. The apartments are overshadowing and obscuring the old dwellings thereabouts.

Pleasant high rise hubs would be my plan for our semi-rural areas instead of the sprawl up hill and down treeless dale.

Things must be different in a place that has been established centuries ago.  We are found barging ahead taming the highways and the byways on a conquest of development. The familiar is soon out of date. Unrecognizable. Some parts remain stubbon.

The foyer of Segenhoe is modest. Seems the lift opening has a single door which is rare locally.

From The Hill

Newcastle Harbour, 1970-71 Margaret Olley

Sunrise adds its glow. Olley generously gifted a collection to Newcastle Art Gallery

 Olley was an advocate but the gallery was funded for redevelopment shortly after her passing in 2011.

 Further development of the gallery was recently announced.             

Drop in the ocean

Drop in the ocean

Newcastle from Stockton. 

See the former Gentlemans Club (!) now Business Club which has never lost its outlook over the water.  The original high rise 'flats' on the hill in Wolfe street are lost from view. IS the name Segenhoe or Wirraway Flats?  Built as early as the 30s  multi story. 

'What WAS your name' is a common expression from the doctor's receptionist. Well, it still IS such and such!  As a thankful, fully vaccinated person - two jabs - that puts me among the 15% in the state. Yes, 15. A long long way to go but at last flexibility in the supply of the vaccination is carried out in the most infected areas of Sydney, where cases are not declining, lockdown extended till end of August.

No priority is given to vaccination in the hot spot by increase of supplies from the Feds, not a matter of depriving or begging others for vaccine but a prudent targeting of the most acute problem arising only in Sydney. 

Only at this stage is public health getting into top gear as to trying new ways in Sydney.

 It would be best to prepare with more urgency in Newcastle if only enough doses were available.

Knock down

Two houses were recently demolished. The waste makers. Red brick ?1930s, perhaps once described as a Californian Bungalow.  Imagine the joys and dramas therein over ninty years.  The land is extensive and new multiple abodes might spring up.

  Demolition is reasonably priced, the resulting waste of materials and loss of tree cover is not a consideration. 

Younger average folk might buy an older home in Newcastle area for maybe 600K or more or less for a knock-down and begin again with a modern build. 

July is wintery yet this tree is in flower. Why? Climate change?  Is it a celebration?  Eid is an important time now for Muslims.

It is reported how prejudice exists against Muslims in our country. 

 Some open interfaith meetings are held to promote understanding and are usually advertised.  Various occasions arise to mix and at very least take it in your stride. As if this retiring, wrong-handed, questioner of all-male rule, Anglo-celt Australian can't contribute something.

Big

Above, info for whale migration.

Its like old times with press conference from each state on pandemic. We can take chastisement.  Will Dan wear his North Face jacket again? What's become of the pin up Sutton whose image was seen on pillow covers?  But Jeroen is aok. 

  Right now, is a campaign overdue in Newcastle to stress prevention? Or is all that on social media. Risk is no distance away from our town.

  Greater Sydney and Melbourne and Victoria  are in lockdown. Nearly 100 Delta infections recorded yesterday in Sydney.  Police patrols are active.

 The snow fields beckon with more  falls predicted and imagine it without the crowds from the bigger cities.  All the same travel needs to be ruled out.

le chat

Ten things to do before I die.

#9 French pronunciation.  Access a pronouncing dictionary of French words of some day to day items and a few names, place names and famed things. 

Study Tour De France 2021 on SBSTV.

Yet is it really worth caring about?

Can't recall the name of an unforgetable pet cat, I was small,  maybe it was GiGi?

 More recently, during a Mandarin phrase, the cat was Xiao Mao which may or may not have worked well.  

Jungle

What seems to be required is a larger container of multidose vaccine instead of the tiny fiddlely traditional vials of the medication. Of course many reasons exist to remain inflexible and keep the status quo like legal issues. The veterinarians would have some good ideas.

  Its a jungle out there. The Delta strain is threatening.  Sydney and surroundings are locked down and infections are anticipated to begin to decline in a short while if regulations are adhered to. Just over 100 infections recorded yesterday. Vaccine use is strongly advocated in 
the media.

 The state borders are closing up which should not happen, afterall we are one country instead of the little dominions that have emerged. 

...'We are one but we are many..we share a dream....I am, you are, we are Australian....'

Pastorale

Planets

Our planet is still superb.

From Biripi country.

Planets

Our planet is superb.  

                               From Biripi country

Uluru

The Uluru Statement from the Heart challenges us to enter into dialogue with the First Nation people. We need to repond and progress this significant work. 

                                   Awabakal land.

History

Mao Tse Tung   from Andy Warhol.

Chinese Communist party is one hundred old. A big past.

What is China planning?  Earlier In my lifetime Russian domination was feared. 

China has amazing development while the mindset seems unchanged in a hundred years, superficially its appearance is stuck in the 1960s as to its over-the-top parades and its stilted prouncements. Officially uncool.

Cooperation, peace and connectedness is the true path for all nations to share.