The Great Hall at the University of Newcastle was open for business at the weekend. Academic and cultural events are seen in this centre opened in 1973 and built as a result of a public appeal. A tapestry adorns the wall and a pipe organ is both ornamental and is a fitting instrument for symbolic rituals.
I entered the hall. What was blazoned across the stage? Keep Watching the Ministry.....that you fulfill it.
Very apt but this line is from the Scriptures.
Had Art, Science and Religion been transformed into a meta-trinity? Packaged into an educational commodity of great potential. The names of subjects crossed my mind. Towards Nirvana and Capital Raising; The Tao of Management, Gender studies and the Papacy; Symbolic Order and Opus Dei; Extatic Levitation and Civil Engineering. I had vaguely heard of the end of history or was it.... the end of knowledge?
I realized the hall was full of chatty folk and children who were eating their packed lunches. No, this was really a church conference using the hall and taking their lunch break.

Regulations have got tougher so as to protect building workers from accidents.
SafetyLink, at this site: http://www.heightsafety.com, is a local company and a manufacturer of Height Safety Equipment to be seen on ABC TV.
In non-technical general terms, those who work on the top of a building, are now held on the end of a wire, attached to an 'archor', and the small archors are permanently installed across the roof-tops. This together with a safety fence or scaffolding, with a fence, provide a safer place from which to work.
SafetyLink has made an eyebolt and anchor with outstanding properties and other safety products that lift the standards of quality and safety to new heights.

Both a patent medicine and a long enduring product?

Pasha Bulker memorial.
The word Pasha is an important title used around the areas of Turkey and Egypt. It also appears to be associated with the names Pavel or Paul which, just to be quirky, mean small or humble.

This red work of art has a very narrow beam heave-to behind a commonplace metal barrier, while on port side is a 'no parking' sign and a submerged metal slab forms a very solid obstacle for any sailors on deck without their sea-legs, not that pedestrians need be shelted from all risk, yet the setting could be a little more spacious and see worthy. This ingrate should walk the plank.

Generations of photographers will be drawn to this installation. It will prove to be their thriller.

Early watercolour: Entrance to Newcastle Harbour by Frank McNamara.
Original was in the possession of the then National Art Gallery of NSW.

Almost the same view as the Pasha Bulker went aground in 2007 with rescue of the crew in progress.
Is it possible that the crew and others were put in more danger by the rescue than if they had remained on board until the storm abated?
Pasha Bulker memorial. The dark coloured 'plate' is from the actual ship.

Nobbys Waterfront.

M V Pasha Bulker aground in 2007 and recent intrepretation.

Rudd Gate. Local politics is beset with the Ute-Gate affair.
Vocab: Ute or utility or pick up, vehicle, the front half is like a sedan motor car. Rudd: the Prime Minister.

Nobbys Beach.

Today: Sign in a clinic :

DOCTORS
DON'T FORGET!
INTERESTING PATIENT'S

What do they have in mind? Also, misuse of the Apostrophe is not unknown and comment about this is seen in the columns of the Sydney Morning Herald and strange examples make their way into collections.
I'd be the first to admit to my uncertainty about both punctuation and expression but while I am locked in this 'zone of proximal development' (Vygotsky) and in haphazardness, I notice more points now about the written word. I believe the apostrophe is omitted from place names, for example, Nobbys Beach.

Ship ahoy and ahull.

Edoardo Piazza, from Europe, was fueling up for the next stage of his own 'Tour de Cairns' shortly before he left rainy Newcastle for Port Stephens and the north. Cairns is a few thousand clicks away in tropical FNQ or Far North Queensland.
He is no novice and has cycled the western coast of South America and a memorable gallery of photos is published on his site here.
Amazing!

CityRail is the environmentally friendly way to go. The sign boards are displayed by a 'flick of a switch'.

The biggest roundabout in town has an old Bunya Pine left growing in the middle.

Hand held camera! Universal health cover is an outstanding benefit that requires stupendous government funding and this prosaic shot is of a Medicare office which covers several federal programs: Medicare rebates, Family Assistance, PBS (a terrific scheme that subsidises medications) and Childhood Immunization register. The citizen still pays part of the cost of any medical service.
However, prevention is better than cure but instead we get totally carried away over high-tech medical intervention.

The food Tahini (from sesame seeds processed to varying degrees) is nice and is a fat that is not high in cholesterol and I notice how our Middle East folk must have long known its benefits and like it in their recipes.
Other pastes from nuts like almonds or peanuts and delicious avocados are alternatives to butter and all help lower the saturated fat intake although fat is essential as the main source of some vitamins and things. The margarine spreads with 'natural plant sterols' that lower cholesterol are other means of changing our fat intake.

Not many of these signs remain on the railway stations and this set is at Newcastle station which is on the end of a branch line, the closure of which is under debate.

Horse country. Brown is the new white in fencing.

Coolamore Horse Stud. Upper photo.
While I was cruising along, in the early afternoon, on a sunny day, on a country road, past the horse studs, out of Scone, in the Upper Hunter, I noticed a green field where the horses were frisky and a fox was seen running across the field and I watch until it disappeared into the vegetation. What was fox up to? For a citysider it was a rare sighting.
But, I believe the fox is a nuisance and is an unwelcome introduced species. Similar to the troublesome possum in NZ.
My grandmother knew a song:

Oh! the fox he went out one shiny night and prayed for the moon to give him light,
for he had a long way to travel that night, before he returned to his den o,den o, den en o
for he had a long way to travel that night before he returned to his den o....

Shopping by tender for used or recycled goods

The denouncement of Mister Possum is in the words and music of a rock song, which is not exactly a la Acca Dacca (the band) or not Dame Edna's (the female impersonator-entertainer) possum but is about the cute (Australian) animal that is a real pest in Te Aroha (New Zealand) since its introduction in 1837, for without any natural predators it wrecks havock with their environment.
The strategy is to fly them back to Oz!

Here, rabbit, fox, cat, carp, myna birds and cane toad are our serious introduced pests.

Oh, No Mister Possum by Erin Devlin illustrated by Greg O'Donnell. Penguin Group, New Zealand. 2008. Words, music and CD.