Some days the Hawkesbury would be alive with people on devices towed by power boats.

 A short and a long route link Sydney and Newcastle. If inclined choose a long route via Lower Portland and have refresments there for it takes hours, is a 'goat track' and has thousands of real bends, half of which are hairpin bends. Or take the train.   

On the banks of Hawkesbury River, south between Sydney and Newcastle.

the farmer in the dell....hi-ho the derry-o, the farmer in the dell....

I'd call this building Art Deco syle.  At Beresfield.

Forget Bali, here is tourism without the hype down by the riverside in Indonesia - our northern neighbour.
Wrote this trivia and minutes later came swiftly 'back to earth' after going to Yahoo which had a report about an Indonesian zoo FROM HELL. Rightly or wrongly my opinon is that animals are simply not their thing, are not part of the domestic Indonesian tradition, are not commonly indulged in and have a low priority which has consequences.  But who can say? 

Choose sustainablity?  Fairfax press reports that a Harvard study published yesterday points to health benefits from cutting back on consumption of red meat.
And on page one we are told that carbon emissions have hit a new record and have risen to their highest level since modern humans evolved (CSIRO, Bureau of Met).
Take the hint.  Choose life! 
At first, no new record was found of a meat study published yesterday. What if it was only a re-hash of old research? Never. Eventually the Harvard site came good and updated or whatever .     

To its credit, a state school organized a weekend of Fair Trade debates and stalls pertinent to the fringe who are into sustainability.
Hare Krishner nosh was appropriate.  Of course, the carbon footprint of vegetarinism is a step in the right direction as well as its other benefits.
I'm big on good intentions but conversion to sustainability remains a work in progress.  That and other issues take forever and ever to resolve, such as justice for piece workers who machine our well known clothing brands and the stall in the picture is drawing attention to their conditions. 

Newcastle's answer to The Parthenon! 
Hellenic Community Centre, Hamilton. Are the old Greek community members counting their blessings in this country as compared to the current times in their homeland, but then, money isn't everything.
The building is way out of proportion to the Orthodox Church next door.

'Bollywood' in Newcastle last year
The university plans to enlarge the inner city campus.  Like the developers, will they make demands about the city rail link, hello, has it come to their attention? The traffic problems associated with 'back to university week' would be eased if they tried various measures instead of everyone kicking off 9am Monday.
A special high speed internet line serves the university and some other entities in the city have very high speed, I believe. Bring it on.
How long before international students begin to reject this and that?  They are expected to 'jump thru hoops', costly hoops designed on a global scale to extract cash and are often repetitous hoops. But think of the success stories.
The previous MP for the city copped a lot of flack over the rail line etc etc.  She lost the seat and all those problems have become a non-event for the new member.
He cops it sweet. Is the new member a long term citizen of Newcastle, did he ever figure in the past in local citizen action and debate, can't say, after all, such is not a prerequisite and can be adopted when it suits.
    

Sports Day, another time another place. Today it's pouring. Magpies are singing in the rain.
I suspect school children over 5 years in Newcastle never ever wear a rain coat. A fashion habit.  But then grown ups don't wear raincoats either.

Locals probably do no more and no less than the prevailing local standards. 
Educational outcomes are flavour of the month and teachers are targetted.
What if nurses were put in a similar spotlight? The conversation is about complexity - waiting times, statistics, hand washing (!).  Instead of that, we have the big little things that count for a lot, the hands on care in touch with lived experience as a work in progress.
Seek out ability to think outside the square and give high priority to sanity as a unique approach to services and look into providing enough staff to do all this in our institutions.

City lane.

 'Bin there done that.

Vocab: Bin...rubbish bin...trash can....garbage bin...wheelie bin.

In memorium.

Latest installation outside the art gallery!  Livesites and irony in Laman Street.
                           Newcastle area is very lucky when it comes to bad weather.  Over the past year at those times when extensive parts of the state had very high rainfall and floods, well, Newcastle enjoyed sunny days. Never the less, the summer has been relatively damp and generally blissfully cool. 

A line of strollers (prams) outside school where young mothers are enrolled in alternative school classes.  A creche is provided.  Hope this service is not 'too precious' and it is a positive step as it has links with a church school. 

Sno-Rose Private Hotel.  Surely this is the only one of its kind in Newcastle.

In seventy years time, what issue will surface and be seen in retrospect as a hugh injustice?  It is always a good thing 'to think outside the square'.  Examine how we act.

It is revealed that newborns were taken from unwed mothers without their consent as women tell of their experiences in the 1950's, 60's and 70's in church run institutions and in our public hospitals. 

Some elderly folk choose to live in hostel accommodation.  In return for an investment and a weekly fee, private rooms are provided plus all meals in a community dining area, laundry, recreation and limited support.  The investment is largly refundable on leaving and access and pricing are via government arrangments.

On another topic, old family recipes were delved into to find food suitable for a person who is very ill.  One idea was Lemon Sago, a bland non-fibrous yet tasty substance, perfect really, yet the appeal was limited!  Cream goes well over the lemon.
Tapioca and sago seem to be the same thing although the final texture had larger fuller 'blobs' than I recall. All guess work, as a number of recipes are found all with variations in the amounts.
As purchased, the tiny 'grains' of sago are made from processing the plant material to obtain a starchy substance, I suppose. So, the grains do not grow on trees and Wikipedia could tell the story.
Lemon Sago
Boil 2 cups water. Add three quarter cup of sago and stir till boiling and simmer 15-20 minutes.  Add half cup lemon juice and grated rind and a tablespoon of honey or golden syrup.  Cook another 2 minutes.

So, tapioca is an ingredient in those truly amazing Asian drinks, for example those based on green tea and found at cafe style shops in the Sydney suburbs. And tapioca does have fibre afterall.
  

Getting cut down to size.  Rainfall goes with serious lawn mowing.

What if a politican is unstable or disturbed? 
Hyper-self-importance, hints of paranoia, highs and lows, talks non-stop, works non-stop -  remind you of someone in the spotlight?
What do we make of this personality overall?
Is it just what the country needs.

Unoriginal words from a perfidious voter that's been got in by politics on the media. 

A certain MP has swanned around the globe for several years attending talk fests.  Fly in fly out style with relative freedom and with the luxury of dallying and trifling with us and the media.
Next he exercises his enormous ego by making statement from the US.  In the spotlight, tugging at our heartstrings at little.  Poor little vegemite!  Fullfilling the ambitions of some faction or other. Therese makes heartfelt statements about hard work and the like.  Well, join the club.
Well, things have been moving forward all the while. Real work in Canberra has progressed during his absences. Who does he think he is to turn up now making a kerfuffle just like his naughty cats in his story book? 
Initially I was 4 krudd, was pleased he was PM, but that was yesterday.

Imagine the glee at the 'big end of town' over tactics that downplay recent leglislation that taxes those with the 'mostest' and taxes the hugh mineral sector and, not only that, kicks off emissions trading.  
Everything, well, almost everything, that this person in the street dreams of.  And it is not due to Kevin Rudd.

To our north, Ramadan is akin to Lent.

Lenten Carbon Fast 2012.....February 23...Day 2
Make one of your journeys more environmentally friendly today.  Could you combine two trips?  Carpool rather than driving solo?  Bike or walk?  Have you tried taking the bus or train instead of driving? http://www.131500.com.au

Blackened tree stump, escaped turning into ash but didn't escape the axeman.  The board hole or notch is where the axeman stood.

If I could verbalise I might articulate similar ideas to Alain de Bottom's, visiting atheist philosopher. Does he say that the lives of all of us are enmeshed in tradition arising from faith and beliefs? And this has pragmatic spin-offs.

Lenten Carbon Fast 2012 provides an action for each day of Lent, which will help you cut down on CO2 emissions. (Whether this use of Lent is a trifle odd and way off the mark is difficult to say not that the world's religions need not concern themselves with environmental issues because all aspects of life are 'right up there'. The calendar has been locally adapted from foreign origins.)

Ash Wednesday February 22. 

Begin your Lenten journey with a quiet prayer.  As both a symbolic and practical act, remove one light bulb from your home and live without its light for the next 40 days.  This will decrease your energy use, and act as a reminder of your Lenten Carbon Fast.  

Don't choose to live in the temperate latitudes.  An hypothesis links the distance from the equator with the outbreak of food intolerances.
Products with evocative names like 'Healtheries' Kidscare come to the rescue.  Apart from carbohydrate they are very scarce on nurtrients, are like buying a whole 20g of hot air, which makes them highly priced. They are made in China from a long list of odds and ends.
Wholesome food is rejected and substituted with strange concoctions, more bizarre than Potato stix, costing twice as much, and accepted as healthy alternatives. Good plain food can't be all bad or can it?
I'd be the first to admit that some aspects of children remain a very curious mystery beyond me, and surely they can be demanding and active in a way that doesn't fit in with our chosen lifestyle.  It takes parenting and more allowances made for their behaviour along with acceptance that they can't all be a genius without labelling them with an abnormality and drugged-up en masse.  But, I'm still in the 18th century.

1950's four cylinder is rebuilt.
The fly wheel is heavy as and the wishbones are large.

Grassland in North West Queensland.

More of western Queensland.  Photo is not of current times.  Abundant rain has fallen recently in much of Queensland.

Western Queensland fence line. 9 kilometres. In drought, it seems.
Borrowed photo, just a ring-in. 

Still dreaming, visitors from outer spaces lie in romantic insulation in their home on wheels.  The city is stirring at sunrise. Google home page is flippant to the strains of 'cold cold heart'. Saint Valentines Day 2012.

'Have a heart' and refuse to use plastic shopping bags.  On sea and land the plastic breaks down into tiny pieces that are lethal to life forms which have a crucial role in our earth's homeostatis.
One city has just outlawed plastic bags altogether.
Take3.org.au is taking on this unseen sinister lurking menace with the message to take three pieces of litter away from the waterfront each time you visit. The sea is full of plastic bags and trash.

Lately, rain has hung around, humidity is high, the grass is greener and a stark sunny break got a few tennis players back onto the court. A large picnic group, shady fig trees and lawn bowlers are just out of range.
Must be time to get a wide angle camera.

Public forum on Wednesday.

 Regulatory photos from Civic park towards Laman Street.

 Surely this is the architectural style that is enjoying a reappearance.  This type of entrance with the rectangular structure to the fore is seen everywhere.

Towards Laman Street post fig trees, today.  Seems ok without trees planted as an avenue  The division of Laman street from the park below, by a line of trees, may be undesirable, when the area could be continuous using wide, broad, cleared steppes sweeping up to Laman street.  Would that mean more use of perpendicular lines?
  

Real Japanese recipe from an exchange student

Ichiban Boshi. Sydney.  Japanese dining with a dash of modern simplicity. Believe this brand name may be found around Asia and in Russia.
Soba noodles had been heard of in Japanese recipes and only recently it was realized they are buckwheat noodles with a distinctive appearance but the name soba can apply to a range of noodles. Determined to make a certian Asian salad it was unclear whether genuine soba noodles would be to our liking and supplies were not plentiful, so thin rice noodles were used instead and were aok and buckwheat noodles remain to be sampled another day.

Manpower and the broad axe and train sleeper hewers.  From that to this. Hey, Coles supermarket shelves of fresh produce are very diminished today (in one store at least) which could be because half the state is in flood or for some other reasons.
Who wants to see pairs of giant new supermarkets duplicated everywhere at the expense of local farmers unable to get good returns for their produce?
The obligatory trolley full to overflowing with gratuitous foodstuffs and crap is the status quo and supermarkets everywhere enjoy their captive consumers and grind and drive local producers to extinction. Repeating well worn phrases in this rant.
No worries with frozen, canned and some fresh supplies of food from China or from where ever, so many food lines sourced from countries far and wide at the cost of local expertise and jobs, all to make sure the duopoly is profitable. While it may not be confined to overseas producers, who knows if unhealthy products are used? Are spot checks done?
Well, that's how it seems. Could be that local producers need to become all super professional growers, no mucking around anymore, conform or go broke, out with diversity. Production is dictated.

Coffee shop. A kooky coffee shop in St Kilda complete with an early kooka(burra) gas stove as a prop. Vocab: Kitchen stove or cooker.

Mighty trees line one side of Maitland Road, Islington, while on the other side much younger trees grow in a shape that nicely suits the situation.  With leaves that fall in summer along the edge of the park the trees make an impressive line up although all that litter is probably a bit of a problem for some people nearby.

Apart from this, the giant mature red cedar tree is buttressed like these when seen in the few specimens that remain and is one of the few indigenous trees that are deciduous. Aparently cedars can be grown easily enough.

See the Bogey Hole swimming pool full of caffe latte. Sea spray high as the top of the cliffs, taken on two different days.

Coffee. Could be Charlestown square.