tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-79689510093737940212024-03-13T14:55:22.319+11:00The Reluctant SydneysiderJonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.comBlogger65125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-52982637108250383612011-11-13T20:14:00.000+11:002011-11-13T20:14:57.025+11:00Blue Bottle Tops, Blue Bottles, Blue Skies, Blue PetalsThings I like about Sydney No. 65: Blue Bottle Tops, Blue Bottles, Blue Skies, Blue Petals and All Things Blue<br />
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Everything is a little hectic at the moment. My prolonged absence from my right and proper task - creating entries for <i>The Reluctant Sydneysider</i> - has been the result of some momentous decision-making here on the home-front. To cut a long story short (as Tony Hadley once intoned, back in the days when Spandau Ballet proudly wore frilly shirts on BBC1's <i>Top Of The Pops</i>) my days in Sydney are numbered...<br />
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My reluctance will shortly be no more. On the 21st December I leave these shores and return to the harsher climes of Islington. At least for a while...<br />
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I have put off this moment of committing the truth to computer for many weeks. Our imminent departure has somehow prevented me from being able to write anything recently. It is only the fact that Allied Pickfords are arriving in two days time to pack up my computer as part of our freight consignment to London that has enabled me to consider this final entry at all.<br />
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Well, that and the very blue weekend I have just spent down South in Berrara with our friends Karilyn and Tanja.<br />
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Berrara is about three and a half hours away from our house here in Greenwich if you take the Prince's Highway (No.1) directly South. Escaping the confines of urban Sydney takes up most of the journey but the final hour's driving rewards you with some lovely green and rolling hills which are dotted with grazing cows and shadowed by the occasional hovering hawk. Berrara itself is a draw - a ramshackle little village perched on the coast supplied with a plethora of spectacular beaches and lakes. Once there life slows down and the sound of traffic is replaced with the sound of birds endlessly arguing over who gets the best blossom of the day.<br />
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Our first blue experience was on the beach. As soon as we arrived we were compelled to take Sniff down to the one nearest to Tanja and Karilyn's house - it has just the right consistency of sand to turn him into a sprinting maniac (and ordinarily there is nothing that can induce Sniff to run: a greyhound he ain't). Once there we discovered that, thanks to a storm the day before, much of its length was scattered with dying Bluebottles: poisonous blue sacs of fun trailing deadly streamers filled with more venom able to whip by your legs if swimming with unnerving accuracy. Some of these Bluebottles had been carefully encircled on the sand with a warning mark by other passers-by but the further up the beach you went the more there were and the less warning.<br />
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Conveniently Daniel is wearing a nice shade of blue himself here to compliment and enhance my theme.<br />
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I think we need a close-up of one of our little evil friends.<br />
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They're like a brightly coloured bagpipe aren't they? One with the entrails still attached.<br />
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Despite the proliferation of these strange sacs of vituperative nature we managed to negotiate the entire length of the beach without falling foul of them, reaching Mermaid's Point with ease where we once more failed to see the oft-promised dolphins...<br />
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We returned to Tanja and Karilyn's to find them both embroiled in an adventure of an even more serious nature - a garden infested with deadly Paralysis Ticks. Karilyn had been happily gardening away at the bottom of their lawn only to realise that she was covered with larger than normal ticks. We soon learn through the neighbourhood grapevine that there is a veritable plague of the bastards - the weather conditions having been ideal - and that several dogs have already succumbed (ie. been killed...) Fortunately, I dosed Sniff with anti-tick medication before we left for the coast but their overwhelming presence did mean much checking of his fur throughout the weekend. He eventually got none. I managed to get one (walking to the beach at night with Sniff after rather a lot of wine), Karilyn about twenty five (gardener extraordinaire) , Daniel and Tanja none (chefs extraordinaire - obviously a tick-free kitchen).<br />
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Our second blue experience was uncovered not far from Karilyn's garden, haven of the predatory ticks - at the bottom of the next-door neighbour's garden. We were taken round there in order to see, brazen in all its crazy glory, the following:<br />
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This is the local male Satin Bowerbird's bower.<br />
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As you can see, his extraordinary structure of sticks, each carefully placed to create a structure that out-Gormleys Gormley, is furthermore surrounded by pieces of bright blue plastic - old pegs, bottle-tops, broken bits of files - anything blue, in a visual dance that out-Emins Emin.<br />
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For me this was as exciting as it gets...Bowerbirds are things you see on David Attenborough programmes not at the bottom of someone's garden. And although I knew (from Mr. Attenborough) about the construction of bowers and the crazy mating dances and of the Bowerbirds' superior intelligence, I had no idea that Satin Bowerbirds collect ONLY BLUE THINGS. How refined! How crazy! How extraordinary! And here it was!!!<br />
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Whilst we sat outside, eating lunch or breakfast, basking in the sunshine, we all saw the male bowerbird frequently criss-crossing the garden. Occasionally he would settle on the garden fence and watch us just as we watched him before setting tirelessly off to find another blue treasure. He gleamed brilliantly with his satiny sheen in the sunlight. The females were equally spectacular - two of them afforded us the opportunity to study them by fighting each other on the lawn. Their bright purple eyes and green-hued feathers that shone as brightly as the male's purple-black ones made them far prettier than our bird handbook implied. I felt as mighty as David Attenborough must have done in that infamous Gorilla episode he filmed years and years ago when I managed to snap a photo of the females:<br />
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My final blue moment of the weekend (and keeping to the blue theme has necessarily bypassed such excitements as the finding of stranded sharks and the duelling of Goannas and Currawongs) happened once we'd returned to our house in Greenwich and I took Sniff out to re-acquaint himself with the neighbourhood's doggy doings. This is a blue moment that everyone in Sydney is having at this time of year, one that involves intense carpets of lavender-blue petals....A moment otherwise known as <i>The Falling of the Jacaranda</i>....<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pGffHb-8Vt4/Tr-ChvOZ31I/AAAAAAAAAtI/vp8vcyi8XEM/s1600/IMG_5089.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-pGffHb-8Vt4/Tr-ChvOZ31I/AAAAAAAAAtI/vp8vcyi8XEM/s320/IMG_5089.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-925399752369348322011-07-25T15:24:00.006+10:002011-07-25T17:58:57.205+10:00The Continental BarberThings I like about Sydney No. 64: The Continental Barber<br />
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I couldn't say that I like going to the barbers anymore. Once upon a time, yes. Now, as middle age approaches, or rather quickly hurtles past, it's not nearly so much fun. Sitting in front of a big mirror looking at my receding hairline and watching greying clippings fall to the floor isn't quite like sitting in front of a big mirror having black hair bleached white and cut into the latest 80s crop is it?<br />
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Ah me, oh my. Even the back of my neck looked wrinkled today.<br />
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However, I am <i>fascinated</i> by going to the barber these days, ever since I discovered the Continental Barber in Crows Nest.<br />
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Hidden in an arcade which was obviously built with great optimism in better days but which is now a sad thoroughfare through which you can hear ghostly winds and see the tumbleweed blowing, the Continental Barber lights up the dim interior with its neon sign. Alongside is a similar sign advertising Shoe Repairs and Heels While U Wait - it's that sort of an arcade.<br />
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In the window of the Continental Barber hangs a sign along with a photo of the two Continental Barbers themselves, busy with some customers. It urges you not to waste time and money - they have two chairs and two barbers inside...Still going strong after 44 years (the number is changed by hand as the years tick by). Frank & Michael - a father and son team.<br />
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To be honest, they are doing themselves down here...Very frequently I turn up at the tiny Continental Barbers to find not two but three barbers busy cutting hair. Frank, the father, is usually squished against the back wall with barely room to move around his customer. Michael, the son and the most popular and in demand, is always at the window. It is for him that people often wait, rather than taking the first empty chair. In the middle you never know who'll you get - an ever-varying cast of (usually) elderly barbers seem to rotate the chair.<br />
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Today, I got someone I have never seen before. Although the shop was empty Michael was busy eating his breakfast and his father, it turned out, is on holiday for a grand nine weeks, back home in Calabria. He fell off a ladder recently and I think needs time to recuperate (and to stretch out those elbows a little).<br />
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The Continental Barber has no telephone. That is how old-fashioned it is. A radio plays all day long - a mild-mannered station of phone-ins and bland pop. Today they seemed to be discussing a recently-released or jailed paedophile - or that's what I presume. All I caught, suddenly blaring into the momentary silence, was a woman saying "He took my son to the park and made him take his trousers down and play with himself" which was rather startling as we'd just been discussing the merits of southern Italy...<br />
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Here is Michael - unfailingly polite and charming although I do wish he wouldn't ask at the end of each haircut whether I'd like my eyebrows trimmed. Do they really need it? Good grief.<br />
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Behind him you can spot the old-style till they still use to bank all their riches. A haircut used to cost a mere $18 which made tipping easy - I'd just hand over a twenty dollar note and tell them to keep the change (ooooh, how generous you're scoffing. But you'd be surprised how many people I watched take their two dollars back). Today however the haircut cost $20 which threw me completely. I had no change and had to leave them tipless. $20 is still ludicrously cheap. Back in London nearly three years ago my barber cost at least twenty pounds. And despite the rapidly falling pound and the ever strengthening dollar this is still not comparable.<br />
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Sitting in the barber's chair is the only time when I really inspect myself at length in a mirror. And as I intimated at the beginning of this blog this is no longer a pleasure. It never really was. So I try to avoid looking at my reflection and look instead at my surroundings. At the Continental Barber this is always worthwhile. The unguents! The oils! Their antiquity! Their provenance! Just extraordinary!! Frank, the father, has obviously been hoarding some of them since his first shop opened...<br />
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These are not things you can buy in a shop. Frankly, they are not things you would want to buy at all. In particular, there is an old bottle, dimpled in the middle as if to imitate the curves of a woman's body, containing a discoloured oily liquid which looks as if Frank was given it by <i>his</i> father back in 1932. The label is indecipherable from a distance and I've always been too timid to ask to take a closer look. Perhaps it is one of those mysterious things offered for use only "at the weekend"...Next to it is something sprayable in a blue and white cannister which looks as if its meant for the car not your head. Ear and nose trimmers dangle down from the shelves - presumably for sale.<br />
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Frank or Michael always ask at the end of a haircut if I would like any wax or gel. Not recognising any of their products as being something that has safely passed animal testing regulations, I always decline. The anonymous white bottles have tropical sunset labels on them as if they'll magic you away to some island paradise but I've smelt the contents on other people and the effect is more Essex than Tahiti.<br />
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Having your hair cut is a strangely intimate thing, with some stranger looming over you able to peer into your ears and to fuss about with your collar, their armpits frequently in your face. This enforced intimacy creates an atmosphere at the Continental Barber which resembles that found inside a church rather than a shop. Customers are more often than not completely silent (perhaps busy praying that that cut-throat razor doesn't slip) and neither Frank nor Michael seem to initiate conversations. If you begin talking they are always more than happy to chat back but they have obviously, with their 44 years of experience, learned that silence is the way to go. They certainly never seem to have a conversation amongst themselves which makes me think there must be an unwritten rule between them not to. Often the entire place is full, all three chairs busy, and no-one is saying a word. I'm intimidated into silence too. To pass the time I'll flick glances over at the other customers to see if they look as ugly as I do with only their heads visible poking out of a synthetic black sheet and their hair mercilessly slicked forwards to one side or the other. Thankfully I always discover it's not a good look for anyone.<br />
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Most of the customers at the Continental Barber are even older than me - after all, all the younger men are off spending a fortune in hairdressing salons on their asymmetric faux-ironic bleached mullets, just as I once did (but never on a mullet, ironic or not, <i>obviously</i>). As I sit here in the barber's chair today contemplating the cruel passing of time I am vaguely comforted by the younger Continental Barber Michael who tells me that going grey means one is less likely to go bald (although this does immediately make me begin to worry that perhaps then I'm not going grey <i>enough</i>). As for the absence of young men, I feel secure in the knowledge that, sooner or later, all those men in salons will one day end up back at the barbers being asked "Would you like your eyebrows trimmed with that, sir?" They too will end up watching their greying tresses fall around them like dirty snow, slowly gathering in dismaying mounds around their feet and on the barber's floor...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yDKEAcyFl2w/Tiz9tj1Jz8I/AAAAAAAAAsc/jLIbCw6wsC8/s1600/IMG_1347.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-yDKEAcyFl2w/Tiz9tj1Jz8I/AAAAAAAAAsc/jLIbCw6wsC8/s320/IMG_1347.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-77903063024265283792011-07-20T17:33:00.001+10:002011-07-20T17:35:50.707+10:00A pod of pelicans at the Fish MarketThings I like about Sydney No. 63: A pod of pelicans<br />
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Early Sunday morning and, before the crowds take over, we're off to the Sydney Fish Market with Daniel's mother to buy whatever is looking freshest to eat for dinner. We take Sniff along for the ride - the smells at the market always drive him mad. He has a worrying propensity to roll around in bird shit at every opportunity and, as there are always a lot of gulls rubbernecking at the Fish Market, there is a lot of bird shit there to send him crazy.<br />
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Since we arrive before ten in the morning we have no problem finding a parking space. Much later than that and it is <i>always</i> a problem. Sniff and I head for the park over the road whilst Daniel and Judith check out the fish. It is a very grey and gloomy day and for the first time all the chairs and tables set up outside for the consumption of seafood platters and the like are empty and consequently there are no stray chips or prawn tails scattered about for Sniff to gobble up.<br />
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Across the road in the park the ground is sodden and muddy. Underneath a row of arches some itinerants have set up an elaborate camp complete with tents and barbecues. They are up and about, watching a Sunday morning football match being played on their doorstep, smoking and scratching themselves. Sniff scuppers about but isn't keen on the wet and he soon lets himself be dragged back to the market.<br />
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I wait outside Claudio's, Daniel's favourite fishmonger, and receive a call from him asking "Bugs or squid?" We discuss this issue for a while, settle for squid, and then, putting my phone away in my pocket, I notice the pelicans. A pod of them, ambling through the carpark.<br />
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Now pelicans are one of my favourite birds, large and ungainly on land, but with an effortless flight which makes it a joy to watch them soar serenely through the sky. I never usually get up close to them but this lot were carrying on as if they were just another bunch of Fish Market regulars, squabbling and haggling over prices and over which fish were the freshest. First, they huddled together to discuss tactics. Then, they looked around, left and right, before setting off through the carpark towards Claudio's, an actual living, moving Pelican Crossing.<br />
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As a group of pelicans is either a pod or a scoop, I think I can safely say that this was a right regular scoop....<br />
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Daniel's squid later that day was absolutely magnificent - he braised them in Rioja with whole shallots served with a very garlicky aioli and home-made chips on the side. I really should have invited the pelican pod along, they <i>were</i> shivering rather...Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-82334907592623528222011-07-13T13:33:00.004+10:002011-07-17T16:04:51.950+10:00BeachcombingThings I like about Sydney No. 62: Beachcombing<br />
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There are many common things you can expect to find whilst beachcombing on Sydney's inner-city beaches, things which I, as a Londoner, still find exciting. I've discovered lots of shells, some dead fish, various seaweeds, sea-urchins, stranded jellyfish and some crabs. The most ubiquitous objects of all have to be the discarded and broken shells of Sydney rock oysters - quite beautiful with their pearly opalescent insides. It is always a challenge to try and find an empty oyster with both halves of the shell intact - so far I've found only three...<br />
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Unfortunately, when scouring Sydney's inner-city shorelines for treasure there is also a fair chance of coming across a mass of rubbish - plastic bottles, bottle tops and bags, deflated beachballs, syringes, wire. Unpleasant and unsightly things for us and often potential killers for seabirds and fish.<br />
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The further out you get from Sydney the more exotic the things that turn up on beaches. Shells become more colourful, more prolific, more varied and generally larger. Daniel and I have made an ever-expanding collection of various shells, augmented most recently by our trip north to Elizabeth Beach, and to fulfill that tiredest of cliches they mostly live in the bathroom, nestled in coloured art deco glass bowls.<br />
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And, as I always think the more the merrier, we have a few lines of shells creeping across various surfaces of the house, dust magnets all.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Occasionally, when beachcombing for shells, one is squirted in the face by an indignant occupant who is not yet ready to relinquish their home. Or perhaps you peer into a shell just in time to see a little trapdoor closed firmly shut by pairs of spindly legs. These shells can then be thrown back into the sea although I always wonder what it is like to be propelled in a great arc into the sky and to land with a sickening lurch back in the water when you are the size of a fifty pence piece. Either it feels like the best fairground ride ever or it's enough to give you a heart attack. Do clams and crabs have heart attacks? The world of the sea is truly a mystery to me...<br />
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Larger finds than shells are also quite common beyond and in Sydney - dead fish, squid and jellyfish frequently dotting the sand, seemingly placed just so ready to be captured in an artist's still life.<br />
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Some of the fish can be quite large...<br />
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And then readers of this blog know how Daniel and I found an even larger dead New Zealand fur seal on the beach in the Coorong and how we wrenched off its skull for taxidermy purposes...<br />
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This holiday it was the turn of a Wandering Albatross to undergo the Cooper-Brine taxidermy service, its skull is currently at the bleaching stage (which will hopefully get rid of the last traces of the godawful smell it bore). Poor Daniel was given the task of flaying off the dead skin and feathers and of removing its eyeballs, which, predictably, burst in nauseating fashion, spurting black gunk over his clothes.<br />
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As we had seen various live Wandering Albatross flying high over the sea it was very exciting to get this skull. We actually found it on the shore of a lake rather than on a beach, but the sea was only metres away beyond a sandbar. It reeked to high heaven and was much more recently dead than our fur seal had been. As we were in rented accommodation there was no question of boiling the skull in a spare saucepan as we did in the Coorong - the stench would have remained long after we left - so we headed to the nearest town and the nearest op-shop to buy a pan in which to do cold-water masceration (which simply involves leaving the skull in cold water until all the flesh can be easily picked off). Later on in the process I had great difficulty keeping the beak sheaths intact...a sort of flexible covering over the beak which you can retain and replace once all the mascerating and bleaching of the whole skull has been achieved. My fingers would reek of death every time I had another go at removing them but I finally got them off after five days of soaking the skull in water and they're now ready for reassembling once the bleaching has finished...<br />
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By the way, if there is anyone else out there who ends up spending their holidays boiling and bleaching an assortment of skulls do let me know. I'm hoping we're not alone...<br />
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Shells, fish, crabs, seaweed, birds, seals. We've found them all on beaches in Australia. But what we never ever expected to find in a million years was that which we found stranded on Seven Mile Beach on a cold but bright winter's day this July....<br />
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We were trudging along the long, long stretch of deserted white sand, our shoes making loud squeaking noises as we walked, easily audible above the buffeting of the wind and waves. A few birds, mostly gulls, flew up as Sniff made marauding half-hearted feints at them. They would circle in the sky above us before landing again further up the beach where, minutes later, the interplay would happen all over again. A single Jacky Winter followed us, hopping from side to side, flicking its tail vigorously back and forth, perching on tiny rocks and cocking its head inquisitively as if waiting for an answer to a question.<br />
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I was checking the high tide-line on the sand where shells and seaweed and small stones had been deposited earlier in the day, bending over now and then to pick up a promising-looking shell. The beach was completely empty except for us - no surfers, no four-wheel drivers, no other beachcombers. Daniel, looking out towards the sea, was the first to spot it, this curved shape on the sand, like a scribble on an otherwise empty page...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>With a sense of shock he realised it was an enormous great snake. A sea snake, no less.<br />
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He called me over and, as we got nearer, we could see marks in the sand which the snake had made earlier, wriggling about in an attempt to return to the sea. Now, however, it was inert, possibly even dead. I peered that little bit closer when, suddenly, its head reared up, looked straight at me, and began to dart backwards and forwards. At which point, I reasoned, this being Australia where most everything seems to be venomous, it was probably wise to signal the retreat.<br />
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What we didn't know, as we casually inspected the snake, was that it was a hugely venomous species which, although it rarely attacks when in the water, can become aggressive when stranded on land, exactly as it was now. Sea snakes have the most powerful poison of all snakes. Just one drop would be enough to kill three people and they can deliver up to eight drops in one bite. The Yellow Bellied Sea Snake, for such it was, has the widest range of any sea snake in the world - travelling all around coastal Australia and over as far as the Philippines, feeding entirely on small fish. They propel themselves by the means of their tail which has been adapted into a kind of paddle and which is beautifully marked, like a leopard.<br />
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Sadly, they rarely survive once stranded on land. In fact they are usually stranded in the first place because they are exhausted and on the way out - from the effects of battering storms, or from illness, or from old age.<br />
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I felt very guilty once we'd returned home to our rented house that we hadn't tried to rescue the snake by returning it to the sea. But once we did some research and read various stories on-line of other people's failed rescue attempts and knowing that once stranded, these snakes rarely survive, I felt a little comforted. And secretly I hoped that it <i>had</i> survived until the sea once more swallowed up all that white sand and enabled it to paddle its way off again across the oceans in search of fish.<br />
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Either way, we were overwhelmed by the fantastic opportunity we'd had to learn something up-close and personal of these elusive creatures which, because they make difficult captives, are rarely available to be scrutinised in aquariums or zoos.<br />
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Yellow-Bellied Sea Snake, or <i>Pelamis platurus</i>, of Seven-Mile Beach, Daniel and I salute and thank you.Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-85558676633419144502011-07-06T16:41:00.005+10:002011-07-07T11:07:21.056+10:00Laughing KookaburrasThings I like about Sydney No. 61: Laughing Kookaburras<br />
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I was rather taken aback recently when visitors from both Finland and Holland who'd come to stay with us here in our shack in the bush separately declared that they hadn't ever heard of such a thing as a kookaburra. How could this be? The kookaburra is an Australian icon. And of course there's that song...surely everyone knows the song?!<br />
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But apparently not.<br />
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As a family we used to sing <i>Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree</i> to relieve the boredom of long car journeys, often as a four-part round. Consequently the song has been part of my musical make-up forever, along with similar stalwarts <i>Green grow the rushes, oh </i>and<i> Ten green bottles</i> <i>sitting on a wall</i>. I remember it being a Cubs favourite too (although fortunately I have successfully managed to block out most of my memories of going to the Cubs). Living in St. Albans, we all knew then what a kookaburra was, what they looked like and what they sounded like, despite the fact we weren't ever going to see one making its merry way down Sandpit Lane.<br />
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I found the words to <i>Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree</i> magical when young and still do today - the shifting of 'he' to the end of the second line to rhyme with 'tree' gives the lyrics a strange archaic bounce; the word kookaburra is wonderful in itself - fantastical, Edward Lear-ish; and there's that last line which takes on a second meaning in these less innocent times...<br />
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<i>"Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree</i><br />
<i>Merry merry King of the bushes he</i><br />
<i>Laugh Kookaburra, laugh Kookaburra</i><br />
<i>Gay your life must be!"</i><br />
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Indeed. <br />
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I was very excited to see my first kookaburra back in the 70s on my initial trip to Australia and even more excited when I first heard them. After all, they're not called Laughing Kookaburras for nothing. Theirs is a delightful and utterly unique song. It usually begins quietly, gurgling a little, before building up into a raucous, infectious cackle. Once in full flow an individual's song invariably induces another kookaburra to join in, and then another, until the air is resounding with a diabolic mocking chorus. Whenever we sat down to picnic in a clearing in a National Park on our campervan trips, a kookaburra or two would be eying us from the trees above the picnic table waiting for a morsel of food to drop to the floor which they would swoop down on and carry off.<br />
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Even now, seeing Laughing Kookaburras almost daily as I do, I still get very excited by them. They seem so quintessentially other (and the other is what I want from foreign places). The name itself is suitably exotic, part of another language, another culture, another past. And although they are supposedly related to kingfishers seeing one is like seeing a kingfisher through Alice's Looking Glass: every part is recognisable but they're all slightly skew-whiff. The beak is overlarge, the eyes set too deeply in a furrow of feathers, they suffer from gigantism, their tails too stubby, the flash of blue wing too surprising. Decidedly odd. And that's before they've even opened their mouths to let rip with that ludicrous song.<br />
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Here in Greenwich they start their singing at about 5.30 in the morning which, if you're a light sleeper, is rather wearying. As I mentioned earlier, once one has led off a whole bunch of them tend to join in with their own comments. Fortunately they don't call out to each other for long, you hear them in concentrated bursts only. Once they have their dawn chorus out of the way they tend to be silent for most of the rest of the day, piping up again only when dusk begins to fall and then they are at their noisiest. If you do hear them during the day its usually because they are setting up some kind of alarm system to warn of approaching danger.<br />
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They can fly low, swooping just past your head, with a pedantic almost lazy flight. They tend to sit very still on low branches so are quite easy to spot. One or two live on Berry Island, one or two around our garden, three or four around Balls Head Reserve. We've just got back from a holiday on the northern New South Wales coast - an area called Seal Rocks which is all sea, sand and lakes and National Parks - and there were kookaburras EVERYWHERE. A plague of kookaburras. And they were particularly enormous - gregarious and fat...<br />
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To return to that song again. Since we moved to Sydney it has been in the news a fair bit, in fact it's been to court. Perhaps you remember Men at Work's <i>Down Under, </i>an extremely irritating song that topped the charts all over the world (including the UK and the USA - a first for an Australian band)? Men At Work quite blatantly used a riff stolen from <i>Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree </i>which was written by a Melbourne music teacher back in 1932 (she was called Marion Sinclair and she donated her own rights to the Girl Guides). Although the composer is now dead, a publisher sued Men At Work for backdated royalties in 2009. The case went on and on. Was the riff stolen, was it not? (yes, it was decided, they'd stolen the riff). Who owned the rights, who didn't? (the rights belonged not to the Girl Guides but to the publisher, Larrikin Music, who'd bought them for a song (!) in 1990). Who in Men At Work actually stole the riff? (who frankly cares, the song was a crime!).<br />
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Men At Work eventually lost the case and had to give back 5 per cent of all royalties on the song backdated to 2002 (a six figure sum - so imagine what they made between 1983 when it was No. 1 everywhere and 2002...) and, despite trying to overturn the ruling since, it still stands.<br />
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One up for the composers! Hoorah!<br />
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Daniel has pointed out to me that there is a second type of kookaburra listed in our well-thumbed Australian Birds field guide (the Michael Moorcombe one for those who are interested) which he is particularly keen to see<i>. </i>For every time he reads about it a few choice words leap out at him from what is normally an unbiased and scientific guide: <i> </i><br />
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<i>"</i>The Blue-Winged Kookaburra is more colourful than the Laughing Kookaburra <i>but has rather unpleasant, staring white eyes. </i>Calls described as <i>maniacal, demonic." </i><br />
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Staring white eyes. Maniacal, demonic. Sounds terrifying.<i> </i>Unfortunately Blue Winged Kookaburras only live in the northern reaches of Australia so we are unlikely to ever see the Laughing Kookaburra's deranged cousin, the Bette Davis of kookaburras...which is a great shame.<br />
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In the meantime, once more, altogether now...<br />
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<i>"Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree</i><br />
<i>Merry merry King of the bushes he</i><br />
<i>Laugh Kookaburra, laugh Kookaburra</i><br />
<i>Gay your life must be!"</i><br />
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</i>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-69191853069485755642011-06-24T17:32:00.001+10:002011-06-24T18:19:47.384+10:00Getting the ferry to Ken'sThings I like about Sydney No. 60: Getting the ferry to Ken's<br />
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We are surrounded by water here in Greenwich. To begin with, there is the creek at the bottom of the garden which, as it acts as a conduit for rainwater, has been a raging torrent for the last week or so. Walk along the banks of the creek and you very soon reach the bays around Berry Island and Balls Head Reserve and can look out over vast expanses of busy waterways. (I took the photo that heads these pages from the giddy heights of Balls Head Reserve.) Greenwich itself culminates in Greenwich Point which, as the name implies, is a spit of land surrounded by water from which vantage point you can look over to the city.<br />
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Greenwich boasts both a ferry stop and Greenwich Baths, a sea-water swimming pool which opens for the summer months but which presents a rather sorry picture at this time of year:<br />
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Then there is the Greenwich Sailing Club (if you are of the yachting persuasion) which is always deserted during the week (no doubt because those who can afford a yacht have to put in <i>some</i> hours at their merchant bank) except for an ever-varying bunch of fisherfolk, angling for their supper from the Club's shores. At 3 p.m. today they consisted of a small buttoned-up old Chinese man (who had about four rods on the go), a burkha-clad bespectacled middle-aged woman, and a young morose-looking fat man in an anorak. I asked the younger of the three what he'd caught today and he showed me some sizeable leatherjackets - so-called because you can slip off their skin in one easy movement...Two policemen made a brief drive-past just after this but they didn't bother to get out and check whether anyone was over-stepping the fishing allowances given in great detail on a large rather decorative sign:<br />
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Despite this overwhelming presence of water we unfortunately spend very little time on it. The Greenwich ferry stop is that little bit too far from our house to be really serviceable. And we don't, yet at least, have a yacht. Our neighbour does have a kayak strapped to the roof of his car but he's also one of those cycling types - forever donning his lycra and speeding off into the distance - and I'm sure that kayaking requires a certain amount of a) physical effort and b) discipline, both of which are in short supply at our house these days.<br />
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Which is why my trips to visit Ken are so special.<br />
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Ken Unsworth is one of Australia's most eminent sculptors and performance artists. His work is in public collections the world over - Denmark, Korea, New York, Poland, Holland - and is of course on permanent display in the Art Gallery of New South Wales. He is a fantastic man to know - funny, clever, generous, brimful of ideas, and, despite having just turned 80, full of boundless energy. He has also had the good sense and intelligence to commission me to write music for three of his recent installations/performances - the latest of which will be performed on Cockatoo Island in August.<br />
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Ken lives in Birchgrove, a rather upmarket suburb almost directly opposite Greenwich on the other side of the water. To get there via road is an incredibly complicated affair and takes forever - once over the Sydney Harbour Bridge you have to head for the less impressive Anzac Bridge, cross over that, weave your way through several suburbs and on and on and on...<br />
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To get there by ferry however is, literally, a matter of minutes. Two minutes to be exact. Hop on, sit down, stand up, hop off. It's great fun. And (sssssh!) more often than not, free...<br />
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The best ferries are the old yellow and green ones which are supremely characterful and charming. There are some newer ones plying the route and they simply don't compare. Instead of being worked in metal and wood they seem to be all plastic and inelegance so that I feel a great disappointment when they hove into sight, it's like being served Lambrusco at a party rather than Veuve Cliquot...<br />
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The ferries stick remarkably well to their scheduled timetable (at least during the off-peak hours when I use them). As they steam up to the ferry stop the water rushes madly against the jetty's posts, fishermen frantically reel in their lines, and the few waiting passengers excitedly get ready for the boarding ritual. (At least, I'm excited. There is something about journeying by water that still makes my heart beat that little bit faster).<br />
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You can always spot who is a tourist because they invariably rush to board the ferry as soon as it arrives whereas we in the know hang back for the "Boarding Ritual". The ferry operator has to first lasso his rope round the mooring pin to secure the boat. Then he drags a metal gangway plank across to the jetty to link the boat to shore and then he has to LET THE PASSENGERS OFF FIRST...Then, and only then, you can board.<br />
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The attempt to board before disembarking passengers is comparable to that mistake tourists always make on the escalators of the London Underground, despite the many signs, of standing on the wrong side. Which reminds me that here in Sydney people stand on the OPPOSITE side on escalators. As if to deliberately trip up all those smug Londoners (me) who sharply bark "Excuse Me" ten times a day at tourists on the Undergound.<br />
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(Although to add a further dimension to this escalator confusion, most people in Sydney simply stand still on escalators full-stop. On either side. As if walking has gone out of fashion...)<br />
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If you're lucky, the ferry operator in charge of embarkation is young and handsome and will amply fulfill any fantasy you might have about sailors. More often than not however they are rather gruff and wizened but do at least give off a reassuring air of being highly efficient in emergencies. The summer months tend to attract a better-looking class of seaman I have found...<br />
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Here's one of the old-style yellow and green ferries steaming across from Greenwich to Birchgrove without me on it. From Birchgrove you will soon reach Circular Quay via Balmain and Luna Park. And anyone one who comes to stay should do exactly that at my urging...it's one of those things that surely features high in the list in those tasteless "1,000 Things To Do Before You Die" books.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2cJ-vs7TRVw/TgQ8EGhJqoI/AAAAAAAAAqE/qs1C_K4nsCo/s1600/IMG_1253.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-2cJ-vs7TRVw/TgQ8EGhJqoI/AAAAAAAAAqE/qs1C_K4nsCo/s320/IMG_1253.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-81458366537320594832011-06-15T17:21:00.001+10:002011-06-16T10:29:40.691+10:00FungiThings I like about Sydney No. 59: Fungi<br />
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It is difficult to think of anything I like about Sydney at the moment, the weather has been so unremittingly foul. For almost two weeks it has been raining constantly, sometimes lightly, sometimes with a violence scarce to be believed. Our towels are permanently damp, the washing hung under the eaves refuses to dry, a black mould is spreading across the bathroom ceiling and white mould is appearing on the spines of my books. Even my clarinets, safely ensconced in their case, have a light powdering of mould. Being perched on the edge of a creek obviously has its disadvantages. Some days I feel I could wring myself out.<br />
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However, there is one thing that thrives in such damp conditions. The weather may be foul for folk but it is fabulous for fungi. Mycologists throughout Sydney must be having a field day. On a single walk yesterday Sniff and I discovered green, orange, brown and blue fungi, as evidenced below:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>My friend Tania used to refuse to eat mushrooms because they grew in the dark. I'm not sure whether she has managed to conquer this phobia or not as she is now, like me, a somewhat reluctant exile and has lived in Boston for well over a decade (in reality probably two decades if I were only to admit to the real passing of time) and we've had few opportunities at our last meetings to discuss the finer points of fungi. Nevertheless, if she is still avoiding the mushroom she is of course quite sensible, for these things can kill...<br />
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The Australian National Botanic Garden has an extensive website dedicated to fungi and it devotes an entire page to the Deathcap. This innocuous-looking mushroom contains enough poison in one cap to kill a healthy adult and less will be enough to kill a small child and/or Sniff. You cannot remove the poisons by soaking, cooking or drying the mushroom and they are found throughout the cap, gills, stem and spores. It looks like this (courtesy the Australian Botanic Gardens Fungi website):<br />
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<img alt="click to enlarge" border="0" height="195" src="http://www.anbg.gov.au/fungi/images-small/0025.jpg" width="300" /><br />
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Daniel and I came across these monsters which, if they happened to be Deathcaps, would be enough to kill a small army. Daniel kindly thrust his hand into the picture to give an idea of scale...<br />
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The finely coloured fungi that Sniff and I found on our walk exhibit the standard mushroom shape, but some of the fungi we found were different. Many mushrooms grow straight out of rotting and fallen wood often with a semi-circular cap attached by its upper side. This was a particularly beautiful specimen:<br />
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Just around the corner were these little beauties which grew in stalk-like clusters. They are perhaps an example of the so-called Coral Fungi.<br />
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Then there were these, small but perfectly-formed.<br />
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And I cannot leave this subject without re-visiting the most disgusting fungus I've ever seen which Daniel and I found on the edge of a golf course last year. I have done my research and can now reveal that it is called Aseroe rubra, commonly known as either the anemone stinkhorn or starfish fungus. It is distinguished not only by its remarkable appearance but also by its foul odour of carrion with which it attracts flies which then spread its spores...Lovely.<br />
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An afterword: Tania kindly got in touch to clarify her current position on mushrooms and I think we can safely say from the following that they still aren't her favourite thing to eat...<br />
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"<span data-jsid="text">Well, it's not just that they grow in the dark. That's only the start of it really. It's that they grow so fast and they are so pale and the dreadful slipperiness of them when cooked. And their meatiness - both too much and not enough of<span class="text_exposed_show"> the animal - a horrible boneless quality that manages to be both firm and flabby at the same time. And the fact that they have gills like a fish and appear so suddenly you only have to turn your back and there they are, fully formed. They don't smell right...they smell old, like something that should be dead but isn't. Plus they are related to athlete's foot - how can anyone eat something related to athlete's foot. Or a yeast infection for god's sake. Nasty silent things. Nasty."</span></span><br />
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<span data-jsid="text"><span class="text_exposed_show">I understand the vehemence she displays here and regularly inflict such myself upon aubergines...</span></span><br />
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</span></span>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-64033108191843491442011-06-04T17:54:00.001+10:002011-06-05T18:23:12.068+10:00Things that go bump in the day.Things I like about Sydney No. 58: Things That Go Bump in the Day<br />
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As I explained in my last Reluctant Sydneysider posting I am used to Things That Go Bump in the Night here in the depths of the inner-city bush - be it marauding rats in the kitchen, possums pattering across the roof, or Sniff's rare but alarming habit of leaping up in the middle of the night and barking at some invisible (to us at any rate) enemy.<br />
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But daytime in Greenwich also brings its fair share of disturbances. There are the man-made noises of building work and gardening which resonate up and down the creek, amplified somehow across the water; the early morning racket of the kookaburras and the currawongs carousing in the tree-tops; the raucous passings-by of flocks of cockatoos; the sound of torrential rain (we're having a wet time of it these days); the high lonesome tweets of the King Parrots; and, periodically, the loud shocking thud of a bird flying smack bang into our many windows. These birds are the Things That Go Bump in the Day.<br />
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Last week I was negotiating the twists and turns of our driveway with a boot-full of groceries, returning home from Lane Cove (not the closest but probably our best local shopping). Locating our house for the first time involves a fair amount of intelligence and a modicum of derring-do because our private driveway is both difficult to find and in various states of decay. Once you've found it, usually by telephoning for directions having already got lost once or twice, you veer past our letterbox (which confusingly is right outside someone else's house) and head further down the increasingly delapidated track for the building on the right (the one on the left is much larger, posher and has a swimming pool...).<br />
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Talking of letterboxes, I would like to say that the American-style mailboxes which everyone has here at the entrance to their driveways is something I like about Sydney and perhaps to go on to write a whole blog about Australia Post. But the truth is I find them rather alarming. Although there is something lovely about having to trudge for three minutes up the drive to check to see if the post has arrived there is nothing lovely about the trudge back home having discovered it to be empty.<br />
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And there is equally nothing remotely good about lifting that lid only to find a Huntsman Spider warming up your letters for you like a bird on its eggs (which has happened more than once). This latter worry means that checking for mail in the dark is a particularly risky business. (Here's a Huntsman to emphasise the point:)<br />
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Also, I often troop down the drive, lean over the mailbox to lift the lid and inadvertently push my face straight into a spider's web as other spiders have a habit of looping their threads from the adjacent telegraph-pole to our mailbox's lid. Whatismore, the mailbox is by no means waterproof and I often retrieve slightly soggy letters from inside and drenched local newsletters from the ledge above. You have to admire the Australians though for their honesty. None of our mailboxes are locked...if this were Islington, we would never receive any post, it would have been nicked by a hoodie the minute the postman moved on...<br />
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Our postman is a lovely man. The other day I caught him dancing down the drive, headphones clamped to his head, so I asked him what he was listening to. The completely unexpected answer was that he was listening to The Danse Society - an obscure 80s British New Romantic band whose first (and perhaps only) album I happened to have bought, in St Albans, from the record shop in Marshalswick Quadrant, in 1981. This led to a conversation about the best electronic groups of the early 80s but the postie (to use the Australian vernacular) knew far more about the subject than I, citing demos, record label names, and vinyl pressing numbers with the slightly scary verve of a fanatic. Perhaps because he dances most of his route (but more likely because he seems to cover a vast area of Greenwich and we're at the very end of his schedule) our post doesn't arrive before three o clock and often arrives closer to five. And anything that needs signing or such-like just goes straight back to the post-office - the posties aren't going to tramp those extra minutes to our front-door.<br />
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All of which is a rather long diversion from the thrust of today's blog: Things that Go Bump in the Day. To which subject we shall now return...<br />
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There I was driving up to the house with the day's shopping, chewing on a Jelly Snake and singing along (aptly) to The Human League. I careened recklessly into the car-port (which is always fun) and got out of the car. Suddenly there exploded above my head a cacophony of squawking birds. I looked up and caught sight of three or four agitated Noisy Miners swirling around. I don't like Noisy Miners - they harass and harangue other birds, frequently swoop down to attack Sniff on our walks, and opportunistically fill up niches abandoned by less aggressive birds. As an example of their ubiquity when we lived in Campderdown the Noisy Miner was the ONLY bird to visit my garden of native plants specifically bought to entice our avian friends:<br />
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In addition, Noisy Miners have greedy-looking yellow eyes and sharp yellow beaks and make a terrible din.<br />
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Which is what they were doing now. And amidst all the squawking, there was a sudden great thud which caused the Miners to flee in an instance, piping and flapping as they left. Something had flown straight into our windows, braining itself. It now lay insensible by the front door like a misdirected parcel.<br />
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Unfortunately I am not very good in an emergency. When my parents were over here and my father fell over on a bushwalk and scraped all the skin off the top of his hand instead of manfully taking charge I just stared, panicked a bit and hoped that my mother would know what to do - which she did of course. (Although in my defence I did manage to get them both back to Sydney and to a hospital). When our next-door neighbours' burglar alarm went off the other month I just lay on our chaise-longue reading a book, blaming the rain, and wishing they'd turn the bloody thing off. I felt rather stupid when they came by an hour later and asked whether I'd seen anything suspicious as a lot of their valuables were missing...<br />
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Here I was. I had a motionless bird on the front doorstep, looking much like a goner, needing my help. There was no-one to turn to (Sniff is also useless in an emergency), time to step up to the plate...<br />
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The first thing I realised was that my stunned bird was no Noisy Miner. If it had been, perhaps I could have just ignored it and left it to its fate. However, before me was a bird I had never seen before, in all my bird-watching, binocular-bearing Sydney days. This immediately explained the consternation of the Miners in the first place - something foreign had dared to land in Glenview Street.<br />
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I unlocked the front door, tried to stop Sniff from feasting upon our feathered friend, and began to ransack the house for a cardboard box because I remembered that stunned birds should be placed in darkness and left to regain their strength. Unfortunately, I had dutifully recycled all our cardboard boxes only a few days before and couldn't find one anywhere except that with all the dog paraphernalia in it. Our bird was going to have to stomach the distinct smell of Sniff I thought as I threw dog treats and dog brushes and dog biscuits here, there and everywhere, knowing that every second counted...I then grabbed the dog towel (in for a penny, in for a pound), lined the box and went back outside to our victim.<br />
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I gingerly picked it up, admiring its magnificent plumage as I did so. So light, a small fluttering beneath my fingers. It wasn't dead. I thrust him in the box, closed the lid and sighed a huge sigh of relief. Stage One of Rescue Mission accomplished. Now to get him to the vet.<br />
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I knew that injured native wildlife are treated for free by any vet so, the dog in tow, we hared off to Sniff's most hated place, the Riverview Animal Hospital, with a rather more precious cargo than groceries in the boot. <br />
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Screeching to a halt outside the vet, I parked illegally directly outside their door, feeling like James Bond. I carried my cardboard box inside, rang the bell on the reception desk and waited for the vet to come along so I could reveal this, my special quaking booty:<br />
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The vet, interestingly but annoyingly, didn't have a clue what it was. They quickly whisked it off to keep it warm and comfortable and to help ensure that it recovered from its trauma. I have since done my research and think it's an Australasian Pipit. The reason why I've never seen one before is that they normally inhabit open grassland, not creeks and forests. The poor thing was far from home.<br />
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I had to fill in a form at the vets explaining exactly where I had found the injured bird because, if it were to recover, they would release it at the exact same spot so the bird can then continue its journey onwards, hopefully recognising where it is. I laboriously wrote out specific instructions on how to reach our front door which, as I explained earlier in this entry, is no easy matter. I asked them to let me know how the Pipit fared and bade it farewell.<br />
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So you can imagine that I was EXTREMELY vexed, after all my efforts that day, to discover a week later, on phoning to find out how the bird was doing, that it had been released accidentally when they were checking up on its progress...In other words, the bloody vet let the thing escape, out into a bewildering unknown landscape. Trying to be optimistic about this, there is a Golf Course round the corner from the Animal Hospital which could fairly be counted as open grassland. I'm hoping our Pipit found it, along with some new Pipit friends, and is starting a new breeding colony on the 18th Hole...But, more likely, it was squished by a lorry on the Pacific Highway as it woozily tried to work out where the hell it was.<br />
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I can only comfort myself with the thought that I am, after all, at least as good (if not better) in an emergency that the employees of Riverview Animal Hospital.Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-76001917013463746252011-05-18T19:26:00.002+10:002011-05-20T15:10:24.905+10:00Things that go Bump in the NightThings I Like About Sydney No. 57: Things That Go Bump In The Night<br />
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We had been left some scattered clues in the days before out-and-out warfare began - a ripped-open plastic bag here, odd scattered crumbs there, faint sounds of rustling behind the dish-washer as we turned in for bed. But it was only when things became obvious, when stealth turned to cheek, that we realised we needed to take action...<br />
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One morning Daniel groggily got out of bed to fetch his customary breakfast of cereal doused in lashings of milk. Padding barefoot across the corridor he felt something unusual beneath his feet. Readers of this blog might remember the time he trod on a Leaf-Tailed Gecko in similar circumstances and will hopefully sympathise with his subsequent wariness of coming across unidentified objects whilst barely awake. Looking down this time however he simply saw a discarded sunflower seed shell. Much less alarming, you'd think...But the plot immediately thickened as he discovered that this was not a single husk but the beginning of a trail of shells which he could follow, like poor old Hansel and Gretel, from the dish-washer in the kitchen right to the front door and its source - the bag of seeds lying there handy for feeding our daily visitors - the lorikeets, Thangam and Kevin, and our King Parrots, Simon and Rosie.<br />
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It seemed that during the night something had invited itself in for dinner, gorged itself on seeds whilst we slept the sleep of the ignorant and unwitting, and then disappeared leaving us to do the clearing up...<br />
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Those early scattered clues could no longer be ignored. Let us turn to the lyrics of UB40 for clarification because, bloody hell,<br />
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<i>There's a rat in the kitchen, what are we gonna do?</i><br />
<i>There's a rat in the kitchen, what are we gonna do? </i><br />
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Obviously we're going to have to<br />
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<i>Fix that rat, that's what we're gonna do, we're gonna fix that rat!</i><br />
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Or rather Daniel is, I'm not going anywhere near it...<i><br />
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We were not completely ignorant of the rat situation here in Glenview Street before this unwelcome guest. We've seen them scuttling along the balcony enough times, making daring foraging raids in broad daylight. And having seen them so clearly we know that we don't want then INSIDE the house for they are ENORMOUS and BLACK and PRETTY SCARY. They have long tails, scaly and sparsely-haired, which make them look bigger and longer than your average British rat. And obviously they know their way around a kitchen, escape routes and all.<br />
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And, oh my, this particular rat was extremely clever. What followed felt like the Seven Years War, a battle between man and beast ("General Daniel and the Black Rat") that seemed to have no end. Until it did. A very abrupt one.<br />
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We firstly had to come up with a strategy. So we sat down with Sun Tzu's <i>The Art of War,</i> Plutarch's <i>Life of Caesar</i> and a History of the Borgias for some guidance. We soon decided against the poisoning route for two reasons - what if our furry friend feasted on the poison, crawled away and only made it to the back of the dish-washer where he or she would then die and lie there decomposing slowly for the roaches to feast on and for us to smell? And there was the Sniff issue. Poison that kills large Black Rats kills small, defenseless I'll-eat-anything dogs...<br />
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So, we had to get some traps. Daniel decided against anything nimby-pimby and, taking his inspiration from the leaders of the French Revolution, bought some steel-enforced guillotines from Bunnings that looked like they'd kill an elephant. And me, and Sniff...<br />
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And now began the elaborate plotting and subterfuge. The traps could only be laid when Sniff was absent because they'd certainly do him in. So each night, Sniff would be banished from the kitchen last thing, his water bowl removed and placed in the living room, and Daniel would lay out a series of traps on the kitchen floor in patterns which made it look like one of those intelligent tests for mice. He'd carefully put some peanut butter in the traps in order to entice Ratty in. And when that didn't work, he started to delicately balance sunflower seeds on top of the peanut butter.<br />
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But Ratty had been reading his own books for inspiration - Houdini's memoirs perhaps - for somehow he managed to snatch a few sunflower seeds from the jaws of death and wising up to the traps, avoided his fate for over a week. We fancied we could hear the faint echoes of rodent laughter as he dived for safety beneath the dish-washer each night, D'Artagnan of the underworld.<br />
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Every morning, the traps had to go back into the cupboard before Sniff could be let loose and Daniel could disconsolately go off to work. I never quite got the hang of how to disarm the traps myself, and before I could have a cup of tea would have to either make Daniel de-mine the kitchen or go in there myself and throw things at them until they sprung shut. And not being the best shot in the world this could be quite a business...<br />
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After two or three days of this, I was sitting having my own breakfast (sourdough toast and marmite, cereal's for rabbits and guinea-pigs) when out of the corner of my eye I saw a monstrous being sauntering across the kitchen floor. Ratty was out and about hunting for food, brazen as can be. I screamed, he fled and Sniff belatedly did what terriers are supposed to do and went ballistic, running around in circles, his fur raised all along his spine, barking, whining, seeking the RAT. <br />
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Who was long gone.<br />
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Several days of stalemate later, I came home from taking Sniff out for his lunch-time walk and on unlocking the front door found another trail of seed husks. This new trail led from the front door, across the carpet, over the hearth and behind the wood-burning stove where, lo and behold, there was a great pile of empty husks, evidence of quite how many days of leisurely feasting??? "THIS HAS TO STOP!!!" I cried.<br />
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Daniel steps up his game. He lays out more traps in ever-increasingly cunning patterns with tasty tidbits balanced just so. Our resources are fully mustered...Could we be on the verge of victory at last? <br />
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The traps are out, Sniff's in bed, the kitchen and living room lights are switched off. We're reading - Daniel <i>The Guardian</i> on his iphone, me Harrison Ainsworth's <i>The Lancashire Witches</i> - and suddenly, there is the loud thunk of a closing trap...We look at each other and simultaneously throw back the covers, leap out of bed and rush to the kitchen.<br />
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The end was quick and violent. We saw but a few twitches before Ratty breathed his last. Daniel's elephant traps proved efficient and, in their swift way, merciful. Our foe finally lay vanquished before us: a large, sleek, well-fed Black Rat.<br />
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We both looked down at our rat with a certain sadness, feeling somewhat less than triumphant. We had, after all, secretly admired our adversary and almost enjoyed his mischievous peregrinations into our world and the problems he caused us. We were both sad that a life had to come to an end but grateful that the Seven Years War was over.<br />
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Victory, as all Generals know, often has a bitter aftertaste...Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-83778332295907630852011-05-14T12:21:00.000+10:002011-05-14T12:21:18.100+10:00The Sydney AquariumThings I like about Sydney No. 56: The Aquarium<br />
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There is only one reason that I can see to visit the tourist hell that is Sydney's Darling Harbour and that is for a trip to the Aquarium (unless that is you are interested in the history of ships in which case you can also pop along to the adjacent Maritime Museum or if you have a gambling problem in which case you'll walk through it to get to the Star City Casino). The Aquarium is housed in a long, low, unprepossessing building at the end of a parade of waterside restaurants. To reach it, having already walked a fair way from Town Hall Station, you will have to brave a line of waiters trying to entice you and your tourist dollars into their soulless brasseries, all touting for business like whores in a red light district, brandishing free coffee coupons instead of their breasts in your face. Refusing them is easy - you are on a mission to see some very crazy fish and some even crazier mammals, coffee can wait.<br />
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The Aquarium, above all things, is deceptive. It looks quite small on the outside but once inside it seems to go on for ever, twisting and turning down blue-painted corridors, vistas opening right and left, side-shows appearing constantly. And although it begins rather feebly wonders soon begin to pile on, ever better, building to a massive crescendo. You can only leave sated.<br />
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So, although you'll be rather miffed at the hefty entrance fee, don't fret as you start to meander past the first few tanks full of distinctly dull freshwater fish. As I (and once the Labour Party) said, things can only get better...<br />
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I do feel qualified to expound on the joys of the Aquarium - as soon as Daniel and I arrived in Sydney we paid a visit, I got a year's membership and came back regularly. So rule number one is this: unless you have ears of cloth, NEVER EVER COME DURING THE SCHOOL HOLIDAYS. Acres of glass tanks, those glistening, hard, unforgiving surfaces, are expert are reflecting back tenfold the million screams of overexcited children spotting a shark. Rule number two, unless you're particularly fond of queuing: avoid the weekend like the plague.<br />
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This recent visit must have been at least my sixth or seventh. It was a Monday and Rosie and I had to run the gauntlet of some school groups. How on earth primary school teachers bear a whole week of being around such high decibel levels I will never fathom (Rose told me to "hear the wonder and the excitement" but all I could hear was a bloody torturous great din, particularly near the animatronic shark which periodically opens its rapacious jaws and sends all kids into paroxysms of hysterical screaming). There was a group of kids in front of the platypus tank (which is one of the first things you come across near the Aquarium's entrance) which made watching the fantastical creature rather arduous and we decided to head off instead, via an octopus or two, to the jellyfish...<br />
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I was exceptionally feeble at taking photographs in the Aquarium - my Canon seemed to be stuck on a very long exposure which meant that each time I pressed the 'take-a-photo' button it took about three seconds to respond by which time my hand and brain had moved elsewhere and the resulting image was completely blurred. Not having memorised my Canon handbook (where is the damn thing?) I had to rely on Rosie instead. These pictures are all hers...<br />
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We ran past the dull freshwater fishes, the penguins (surely they should be outside having fun), and the afore-mentioned animatronic shark but slowed right down for the seahorses and, most miraculous of all, the sea-dragons.<br />
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I don't know much about sea-dragons - I had never seen any before I came to Sydney. They are native to Australian waters, related to the commoner seahorse, and come in two versions: the wonderfully named Weedy Sea-Dragon and the aptly-named Leafy Sea-Dragon. Both are exceptionally curious wonders of evolution and, needless to say, endangered. Protected by the Australian government they are however often a danger unto themselves. Unlike seahorses they cannot cling onto things with their tails and are often swept ashore in stormy weather where they quickly perish. Both camouflage themselves amongst seaweed, the Leafy Sea-Dragon being more expert than the Weedy Sea-Dragon which perhaps explains the latter's name...<br />
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We must move on. More amazing wonders to come in the shape of Pig and Wuru in the Mermaid Lagoon...<br />
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Pig and Wuru are two of only five captive dugongs in the whole world. Found separately, orphaned at a young age, they have only been put on display since we arrived in Sydney - quite rightly there was a great fanfare announcing the opening of their Lagoon. And dugongs are of course the creatures of legend which ancient sailors mistook for mermaids. And you can see why from the next photograph (not). Frankly, I think I look more like a mermaid than Pig (or was it Wuru?).<br />
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Rosie and I were lucky enough to arrive at feeding time and could watch the dugongs delicately pick out individual leaves of cos lettuce from a tray lowered into the depths. They have amazingly benign faces, sleek but scarred bodies, and an agility which was obviously the thing that conned all those sailors many moons ago. A plethora of other creatures share their lagoon and as you walk through the tunnels, rays and shoals of fish career past your head in exhilarating fashion.<br />
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Onwards, upwards. Literally. You have to climb out of the underwater world past some rather dismal mermaid murals, the staircases creaking ominously, supported by rusting chains. But then it's back down again for another side-show - the one most people come to see - SHARK SYDNEY.<br />
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Again you can walk through tunnels underneath the water, through an enormous tank (presumably in the harbour itself) absolutely jam-packed with varieties of shark, rays, giant fish and two spectacularly large turtles. Obviously they all seem to be quite friendly - the only thing we saw being eaten was the squid being chucked in from the surface by a keeper.<br />
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There are some ferocious looking sharks in this tank. Indeed, most things in the tank would have you running screaming from the surf in seconds. The most dangerous-looking shark here - the Grey Nurse Shark - has been hunted almost to extinction because of its unfortunate teeth - they jut out from its mouth in fierce-looking rows, leading anyone coming across one to incorrectly assume they're lunch. Nurse Sharks are, in fact, fish-eating and harmless to humans. The big scary four - Great White, Tiger, Bull and Oceanic Whitetip - are thankfully not swimming around above your head, in this Aquarium at least. Head down to Bondi and it's a different matter...<br />
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There is also a shark nursery and a shark hatchery to visit because the Aquarium is one of the few places in the world that has a shark breeding program which successfully releases sharks back into the wild. Rosie and I saw some baby sharks which looked distinctly as if they had been fashioned from some mottled polystyrene. And a preposterous gaudy shark which gave the Weedy Sea-Dragon a run for its money in the decorative stakes.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Before you leave the Aquarium you pass through the Tropical section and an extraordinary final tank which teems with Great Barrier Reef fare and which has to be the biggest tank you're ever likely to see. Everywhere you look yet another species of ludicrously painted fish, closely followed by another and another, idles by. Just when you think you might have spotted everything, a new variant swims along with a preposterous nose or an unthinkable colour scheme or a permanently grinning face. Truly, a magnificent display of the wonders of the deep. And I'm more than happy to take you there and be your guide...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j-5KDzh7lsQ/TcuQ74-LTQI/AAAAAAAAAoU/ZthniZB8osI/s1600/IMG_1413.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-j-5KDzh7lsQ/TcuQ74-LTQI/AAAAAAAAAoU/ZthniZB8osI/s320/IMG_1413.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-16522948894600054032011-04-24T18:38:00.002+10:002011-04-25T11:36:12.576+10:00The Royal Easter ShowThings I like about Sydney No. 55: The Royal Easter Show <br />
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What to do on an Easter Sunday once the morning Easter Egg hunt is over and chocolate wrappers litter the floor? Church is not an option; the shops are shut; all roads out of Sydney are jammed with holidaymakers...<br />
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Aha! Why not go to the Sydney Royal Easter Show? An Australian institution...<br />
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Daniel and I have found excuses every year so far during our Sydney sojourn to NOT do exactly this but this year we shamed ourselves into getting on the train to Sydney's Olympic Park, braving the great unwashed and going to the Fair... <br />
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As a show virgin, I relied on Daniel to steer me in the right directions... <br />
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First, we arrived....<br />
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...and, walking past the Olympic Torch which Cathy Freeman lit all those years ago and which is now transformed into a rather austere fountain, we headed straight for the Flower and Vegetable Pavilion...where it was Dahlia Day...<br />
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...and Pumpkin Day....<br />
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We hustled on through, past a cooking demonstration, past the Leaf and Leafstalk Inflorescence Vegetables (hard to drag Daniel away from them admittedly), and onwards to the Sheep and Wool Pavilion. Once there, the crowds thickened and it was difficult to get a glimpse of the sheep-shearing or the sheep-dog presentations so we simply made do with some sheep, lazily chewing in their pens, and some wool...<br />
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We then made a beeline for the Poultry Shed where things got really interesting...<br />
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Many of these champions were for sale at a mere 50 dollars or so...we were sorely tempted.<br />
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We breeze through the Alpaca Pavilion ("I don't like llamas" exclaims Daniel) and the Goat Shed (only one species of goat on display, the Boer Goat - a sturdy, burly beast) before heading onwards and upwards, towards the pigs and cows. <br />
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after which we stop for a 'German' sausage in a bun (see the animals, then eat the animals).<br />
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After watching some prize-giving whilst munching our hot-dogs in a large but empty stadium (we never did find out what the prizes were for - the commentator forgot to say) we stumbled across some cowboys doing cowboy things (apparently they were cattle-driving; it seemed a little random to me, but OBVIOUSLY I am no expert).<br />
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After these heady excitements it was on to even greater heights of exhilaration at the Wood-Chopping Pavilion, where we were just in time to watch the Veterans Final Upright Log Chop...<br />
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To calm ourselves down we left after one other chopping competition (missing the upcoming tree climbing) and visited the dizzy intellectual sphere that was the Arts and Crafts Pavilion where anything that wasn't intended to be eaten was so disturbing as to be (in the words of Rodgers & Hart) unphotographable...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Weary, footsore, sated, Daniel and I felt we were getting towards the end of our Easter Show Experience. We managed a desultory wander around the Dog Pavilion, saw some ludicrously coiffured mutts and their equally bizarre-looking owners, and were then headed for the train when Daniel remembered the National Displays. We hadn't seen the National Displays. So we headed for the Food Pavilion, bought a trio of marmalades and marvelled at the National Displays...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>We were now feeling patriotic to our very core at Sydney's Royal Easter Show and this will perhaps go some way towards compensating us for missing the very Royal Wedding which seems to be about to go down in London... I'm off to learn the Australian National Anthem so that I can burst into it at appropriate moments (after all I believe it is Anzac Day tomorrow and I'm sure you have to sing it then).<br />
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And despite how it might sound, we had great fun at the fair (all for just 34 dollars, a right Royal Bargain.) I suggest you get yourselves down to the Olympic Park this week and thrill to the power of the Chicken...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Y9dqFlUu_E/TbPW1b-wDtI/AAAAAAAAAnw/NQLGjqkiA6I/s1600/IMG_4280.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-9Y9dqFlUu_E/TbPW1b-wDtI/AAAAAAAAAnw/NQLGjqkiA6I/s320/IMG_4280.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-34878457640337390012011-04-05T11:41:00.000+10:002011-04-05T11:41:18.628+10:00Posh Places and their Lighthouses Part 2: CremorneThings I like about Sydney No. 54: Posh Places and their Lighthouses Part 2: Cremorne<br />
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Daniel and I have moved. Our new house (some people have rather crassly called it a mansion - I prefer the more Italianate <i>villa</i>) perches over Mosman Bay below Cremorne Point. It is all very idyllic and impossible to reach by car, which obviously comes at a cost. We had to train ten locals in the art of carrying loads on their heads just to get our silverware and Sevres in. My ankles are becoming trimmer since I have to walk ten minutes before I get to the car but it's all worth it, don't you think?<br />
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I am learning to deal with staff - we have four gardeners, the pool maintenance man, two maids, a chef, a full-time cleaner and a handyman - but the hoi-polloi I'm still having difficulty with. Unfortunately, there is a path running around Cremorne Point which is open to the public. Although no-one walks directly past our swimming pool they can look over it from one particular vantage point and people gawp, point and take photographs of our villa. The path then runs past the front of the house, alongside our walled garden and fountain (another Italianate touch that I'm rather pleased with - I close my eyes and sit there in the sun and imagine I'm sitting for a portrait by Michelangelo - you know, the painter) and I caught some ugly little man peering through the slats of our fence only this morning. He had a hideous little dog with him, which reminded me a bit of Sniff. I did feel a slight pang of remorse but Sniff obviously had to go back to the pound when we moved here. He has been replaced with a Saluki - something I can be proud of when the neighbours see me out jogging. I've called him Dante, which I think is rather fitting.<br />
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Our boat is moored in the bay and we have someone who looks after it for us and sails us whenever we like. The chef comes along on most trips as well which makes for so much work - I have to direct everybody, honestly it's quite exhausting. And now that Daniel is on a macrobiotic diet (like Madonna and Gwyneth, you know?) and I'm on the Master Cleanser Diet (Beyoncé's latest) and Dante's on the Raw Food for Dogs diet just planning a menu with the chef makes me need to lie down in the dark with a pitcher of Manhattans for an hour or two. And my personal physician has told me that too much stress will have an adverse effect on the Botox I treated myself to last week so heaven knows, I need to just take it easy.<br />
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Just around the bay is a lovely little Marina but, unfortunately, it is open to the public. So a bunch of us are getting together to try and make the whole of Cremorne Point a gated community. It would simply be heavenly then. As it is, there is the private sailing club, the private country club and the private businessmen's association of which we are members naturally. Sometimes I feel like I'm constantly yo-yoing backwards and forwards from one social event to another!!!! Goodness knows how Daniel finds time to work.<br />
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It was pointed out to us the other day, by some busy-body nobody wearing an anorak on our doorstop, that the gum-trees around Cremorne Point are slowly dying off. They tried to insinuate that we had something to do with it. Luckily for us, the previous owners of our villa cut down all the trees so we have a perfect view of the water so I don't care one way or the other. I slammed the door in the Greenie's face and got on with the important things - what to wear tonight, which cocktails to have mixed for our party on Saturday, and whether to get Dante a diamond or a pearl-studded collar.<br />
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At the end of Cremorne Point there is a divine, dinky little lighthouse. It seems to serve no purpose but looks awfully pretty. Along the way someone has made a public garden - it's also terribly pretty but why, oh why, make something like that and then open it to the public? It should be for residents only. Some people have no idea. I must bring it up at our next residents meeting. Along with a motion to ban all tourists from taking photographs of those, like us, who have better houses/clothes/cars/jobs/lifestyles than them. It's such an invasion of privacy.<br />
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Where is that damn maid? I need a drink. Yes, out by the pool. NOW!<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6CjJCryqxF8/TZptsa0zw8I/AAAAAAAAAmI/io5wIzZvumQ/s1600/IMG_3698.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-6CjJCryqxF8/TZptsa0zw8I/AAAAAAAAAmI/io5wIzZvumQ/s320/IMG_3698.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-36353381804739900082011-03-25T11:18:00.001+11:002011-03-25T11:25:51.309+11:00Miniature fruit and vegThings I like about Sydney No. 53: Miniature Fruit and Veg<br />
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It's been a long time since this blog has been to the supermarket. Way back in November 2009 I got inordinately excited about insect sprays and cheap asparagus but since then there has been silence on the grocery shopping front. And for good reason. I don't like the supermarkets here, they're not a patch on Sainsbury's or Waitrose.<br />
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But, this week Woolworths has gone, quite literally, bananas. Despite floods, droughts, earthquakes, plagues of locusts and all the other natural disasters that have been besetting this continent its shelves are groaning with the most extraordinary displays of strange fruit and vegetables. Many miniaturised. And London simply cannot compare with Australia for fruit and veg.<br />
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Take pears, for instance. Currently there seem to be about six different varieties in stock from dark-brown Beurre Bosc to greenish-yellow Josephines to yellow William Bartletts. And the weirdest of all - the Paradise Pear (also known as Faccia Bella). These are tiny, miniature pears, almost round, with a green skin blushed with red. And, as Woolworths say, ideal for lunchboxes...I have never seen the like.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>These little Paradise Pears are, indeed, paradisiacal and might save me from eating too many jellybeans. Much healthier.<br />
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Plums are in season too. And again not just a single type of plum but many different varieties. We have blood plums (rich red in colour, obviously), the freaky plumcot (a cross between a plum and an apricot, unnerving I know), black plums, October Sun plums (green), Tegan Blue plums and Sugar Plums - the miniature variation, below on the right.<br />
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Another good jellybean substitute, the sugar plum is intensely sweet and (I'm eating one right now) quite marvellous.<br />
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Australia apparently grows over 200 different varieties of plum so frankly Woolworths needs to pull their socks up a bit... <br />
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Past the miniature bananas (Lady Finger variety) and we cross the aisle towards the veg. And lo and behold, it's Alice Through The Looking-Glass over here too. First up, the aubergine. This is painful for me because aubergine is, frankly, the flesh of the devil and to have more than one variety is simply abhorrent. But there they are, nestling next to their fatter cousins, miniature little aubergines, specifically there to make me shudder.<br />
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More congenial are the miniature chillies (one of seven fresh varieties today) and the miniature red peppers.<br />
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I cannot venture near the olive counter (olives being the testicles of the devil) but no doubt there are miniature ones of them too. And stoneless ones, and purple ones, and freaky yellow ones. There are also enough varieties of tomato to make Daniel sit down in the aisle and weep (for he's of the opinion that an uncooked tomato is a thing of violence. Once cooked, on the other hand, they become perfectly harmless.)<br />
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So, as you can see, despite the dire warnings of empty shelves and escalating prices which we were indundated with early in the year whilst the Queensland floods were in full spate, Australian farmers have somehow battled on to produce an amazing array of produce early this autumn.<br />
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Here's to them (and to all things small)!Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-61547200866947810182011-03-24T12:48:00.004+11:002011-04-05T10:45:11.786+10:00Posh Places and their Lighthouses Part I: VaucluseThings I like about Sydney No. 52: Posh Places and their Lighthouses Part I: Vaucluse<br />
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The first thing you need to know about Vaucluse is how to pronouce it. Say it incorrectly, like I did, and it is immediately obvious that you don't belong here, in one of the poshest parts of town.<br />
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So here's your pronunciation lesson. 'Vau' must rhyme with whore (not with 'go') and cluse with 'clues' (not 'close'). Simple really. Except I still can't seem to get it right. Which makes me feel as one with all those tourists in London who have great difficulty with correctly pronouncing Leicester Square...<br />
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Vaucluse is the northernmost suburb of the southern half of Sydney, sticking out into the Tasman Sea and looking down upon the city. Daniel wanted to go there on his birthday last week because he remembered regularly going to a wonderful park there in the golden, hallowed days of his youth - Neilsen Park in Shark Bay. Turning 45 he wanted to return in order to possibly recapture the feeling of being young and gorgeous...<br />
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So I packed the esky (ice-box to you) with a scrumptious picnic - quail's eggs, smoked sardines, wild game pate, red peppers stuffed with fetta, bread, cakes, champagne and lemonade - stuffed a bag with paper plates, cups and cutlery and off we set, Sniff in tow, to turn back time...<br />
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It's quite an arduous journey to Vaucluse as there seems to be just the one main road to get there from the city which was, despite the fact that it was a weekday and towards lunch-time, jam-packed with cars and lorries. This road twists and turns, snaking through unprepossessing suburbs, carrying far too much traffic for its size. Sniff and I both began to be restless. Daniel seemed already to be in a reverie of remembrance.<br />
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After some cursing (on my behalf) we eventually managed to leave this road and began to wind our way through the streets of Vaucluse. This is where the elite live, grand house after grand house after grand house. One does wonder how Sydney manages to support so many expensive houses - after all Vaucluse is by no means the only posh bit - there are endless expensive suburbs crowded with endless water-front properties. What do all these Sydneysiders <i>do</i> to afford buying them and living there? Daniel and I are both like <i>so</i> working in the wrong industry.<br />
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Eventually, in glorious sunshine, we arrive at the entrance to Neilsen Park, ready to relive Daniel's glorious glory days. We tumble out of the car to read the park's sign and its maps and to work out where to have our picnic. After some preliminary information, in big bold letters, the sign read <b>NO DOMESTIC PETS</b>.<br />
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Daniel's dreams crushed. Our picnic ruined. Sniff oblivious and eager to bound about...<br />
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I tell you, <b>NEVER GET A DOG</b>.<br />
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We ended up eating our picnic in the unremarkable Vaucluse Bay (one bay along from Neilsen Park and its attendant Shark Bay) which was completely empty of people. Here is Daniel, scoffing away in the bay.<br />
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I did offer to take Sniff off for a walk so that Daniel could explore his old haunts, to give him a chance to look round Neilsen Park, but he gallantly refused the offer and, instead, after eating our fill, we wandered around the grounds of Vaucluse House. This, which is the grandest pile hereabouts, was built gradually over the first half of the nineteenth century in a rather ramshackle manner by its rather ramshackle owner, William Wentworth. (Wentworth's wife Sarah was shunned by colonial society - there was talk of illegitimacy and a convict background...which left the unlucky couple with no choice but to socialise with the lower orders. Quelle horreur!). Taken individually each part of the house is charming. Taken together it is a complete mess.<br />
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A gardener was busy pulling out the dead branches of tree-ferns and bracken, some ducks were pecking away in the confines of their cages, a few elderly couples were taking tea in the tea-rooms but Vaucluse House, mid-week, was otherwise deserted. We circumnavigated the grounds, avoiding the pleasure-gardens (NO DOGS ALLOWED) and saw no-one. Which helped me to imagine that the house was actually mine and that I'd given the servants the day off to ponder my next mis-matched extension....<br />
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Follow us from Vaucluse House, back into the car again, onwards and upwards to our next tourist spot, the Gap (and we're not talking t-shirts and chinos here - we're talking Sydney's most notorious suicide spot - an Australian Beachy Head). It's not that Daniel used to come here in his youth and contemplate flinging himself off into oblivion (at least he didn't admit to that) but if we weren't able to go to Neilsen Park then we were damned well going to go everywhere else we <i>could</i> go! <br />
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When I arrived in Sydney in November 2008 all the papers were full of one particular murder trial. It seemed to be especially newsworthy because it involved a young and beautiful Australian model. Her body had been found on the rocks at the bottom of the Gap back in 1995 and, at first, because her mother had committed suicide, it was expected that she had done the same. However, thirteen years later, her boyfriend was fairly sensationally convicted of her murder. The fact that various Sydney 'celebrities' were peripherally involved in the case helped coverage to run and run and run. The young woman's name was Caroline Byrne.<br />
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The Gap is still notorious as the place where Sydneysiders, reluctant one and all, come to end their own lives - around 50 people throw themselves off the cliff each year.<br />
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Here's Daniel and Sniff walking along the broiling hot coastal path with the Gap's clifftop visible in the distance: <br />
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Sniff contemplating (and rejecting) the idea of suicide:<br />
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The Pacific Ocean stretched out before us as far as the eye could see, blue as blue could be. The sun was beating down mercilessly upon our uncovered heads and upon clusters of Japanese tourists, all looking out at the Gap and at the Heads (the cliffs that mark the entrance, like two pincers, north and south, to Sydney's harbour). <br />
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What with the heat (and Daniel's advancing years) we were fairly exhausted from our picnic and only managed one more brief stop in our exploration of Sydney's poshest suburb, Vaucluse (remember it's Whore-clues but with a 'V'). Driving back towards town from the Gap - past a fairly spectacular view of the City -<br />
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- we passed a stunning lighthouse, brilliant white against a clear blue sky. A man in official Council garb was busy watering the parched grass at its base and he kindly agreed to fill Sniff's portable drinking bowl from his hose...which was fairly essential as the poor dog was heat-stricken from trekking around the coastal path. Whilst Sniff drank and the Council worker was distracted I slipped past the No Entry signs and snapped some shots of the lighthouse.<br />
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Built on the site of Australia's very first lighthouse, erected in 1818, the current building, called the Macquarie Lighthouse, was built in 1883. It is now fully automated - the last keeper was sent into retirement in 1989. What a place to live in...spectacular views, no neighbours (unlike in all those cramped Vaucluse mansions), beautiful architecture, expressive detailing, your own private tower. And now that all the dirty work (ie. preventing accidents at sea) has been taken over by machinery, the life of Riley. Surely, surely they need a caretaker...I'm willing and eager.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-ApG6QvW1k8M/TYqa0vKYZ3I/AAAAAAAAAlY/o7TpUQszQSM/s1600/IMG_3987.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-ApG6QvW1k8M/TYqa0vKYZ3I/AAAAAAAAAlY/o7TpUQszQSM/s320/IMG_3987.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-84676921921793757252011-03-15T15:25:00.004+11:002011-03-16T11:30:01.950+11:00Tawny FrogmouthsThings I like about Sydney No. 51: Tawny Frogmouths<br />
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Sniff and I went for a walk around Tambourine Bay this morning. The air was exceptionally still and quiet, with not a breeze to be felt or heard. The only sounds accompanying my footsteps were the clattering of Sniff's nails on rocks as he scampered ahead, the quiet knockings together of loosely moored boats, and the occasional caw from a crow. Briefly, some twittering wrens rose up from a bush, only to disappear as quickly, leaving an almost pristine silence to reign once more.<br />
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Autumn was definitely in the air. According to the weather information on my phone it was only 24 degrees - already down five degrees from last week and surely the beginning of the end of summer. Leaves are beginning to fall in earnest and the possibility of having to wear a jumper is not so far away...<br />
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Perhaps it is always quieter in the autumn but I did begin to feel rather isolated this morning. Especially as, when we neared the folly, we passed a long series of abandoned gardening tools and sacks stuffed with cuttings - ghostly evidence of someone's recent hard work. But where were they now? <br />
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Reaching the jetty beyond St. Ignatius College, which marks the turning point on our walk (and which you can see through the arch of the folly in the photograph above), I walked to its furthermost tip in the hope of seeing some pelicans breezily sailing the waters. Only two sad-looking gulls rose lazily in the air, disturbed by my presence. I stared down into the water and saw dozens of white-translucent jellyfish oozing their way past, slowly and silently pulsing and propelling themselves towards the city, outlined in the distance. No-one sailed past, no-one passed us with their dog, no school-children rowed their boats or sculled their punts to the barking orders of their teachers. Eleven thirty in the morning and Sydney had gone to sleep. Except for that stealthy horde of stingers heading inland...<br />
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All of which has absolutely nothing to do with Tawny Frogmouths...<br />
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I love the name Tawny Frogmouth. Just saying it gives one's lips a work-out, creating shapes akin to the odd nature of the creature itself.<br />
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Daniel and I moved to Newtown because of two Tawny Frogmouths. In our first few weeks in Sydney we rushed around town looking at various suburbs, trying to decide which we would like to or could bear to or could afford to live in. Daniel took me to Newtown because that was where he had lived when he was last here, back in the 80s. He didn't think I would like it and I should have listened to him. Instead, however, after having looked at some possible houses to rent, we went to Camperdown Cemetery (as described in Blog No. 49) to wander about and look at the gravestones. Whilst there we also looked up at the magnificent trees and in one of them, in perfect view, were perched two Tawny Frogmouths.<br />
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At this point I decided we had to live in Newtown. Tawny Frogmouths! In broad daylight! (They are nocturnal creatures). How could we live anywhere else?<br />
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So the lease was signed and purgatory begun.<br />
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For at No. 46 Roberts Street in Newtown we lived next to a Great Dane whose owner was out every day from 9.00 in the morning until 6.00 at night. During which time the poor dog would endlessly bark. Sometimes for three hours on end. Great Danes have very big lungs. I went completely bananas. Whatismore, it would also shit all over its back-yard, a mere four paces from our kitchen. And dog shit in the Australian summer has a perfume like no other. One of the attractive things about our house was that you could roll back the entire kitchen wall onto the garden. This was no longer attractive. The photograph below must have been taken at the weekend when our neighbour managed to shift her fat arse and hose down her backyard. The following photograph was obviously taken on a weekday...the doors are mostly closed.<br />
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In addition to the trauma with the Great Dane (which eventually involved the Council and a long series of letters) our perfectly lovely landlords, who intially became our friends, dining with us, coming to events with us, turned into pyscho landlords from hell because we complained when our lights stopped working in the bathroom. Pyscho Landlord No. 1 turned up on our doorstop, eyes bulging, screaming, and accusing me of lying to our estate agent. After which, I never quite felt safe in Newtown again...<br />
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And we never saw another Tawny Frogmouth either. Not even a glimpse. Not even the possibility of a glimpse. I reckon those two original specimens were stuffed and perched in the cemetery at Daniel's command on that fateful December day in 2008 just so as I would make up my mind about living somewhere in this city...<br />
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Here in Greenwich we haven't seen a Tawny Frogmouth <i></i>either (<i>Podargus strigoides) </i>although we know they are out there every night. If you want to see what one looks like when alive you'll have to google it. Otherwise you could make do with the following:<br />
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Sniff and I discovered a new walk - rather substandard - which starts at a sports oval on the other side of Greenwich Road. Once you have traversed the sportsground a path snakes upwards alongside another creek where the vegetation is rather denuded and the houses crowding in somewhat. The trail leads on up, past some falls, to River Road which is one of the busiest roads hereabouts. Consequently, the sound of traffic is never far away. How degraded the area is can be seen by contrasting the sign for the Lillypilly Falls displaying a photograph taken in 1900 and one I took of the Lillypilly Falls as they were today...<br />
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After bearing with this bitter disappointment, Sniff and I continued up the path and just as it debouched onto River Road we were rewarded with the discovery of a fresh corpse.....that of a Tawny Frogmouth.<br />
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Presumably the poor thing had been knocked flying by a passing, speeding truck. <br />
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Frogmouths are rather large - imagine a big but slender owl - and have quite extraordinary-looking faces. Even in death this bird had a certain charming grumpiness about it. Being a keen collector of feathers I went about plucking its wings and tail, gingerly gripping the corpse and hoping that a) it wouldn't give way in a burst of gases b) it didn't contain a writhing mass of maggots and c) I wouldn't catch some terrible bird disease in doing so. (I seem alright so far).<br />
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A week later and the Frogmouth was still there, but this time something had been along and ripped its wings off (or at least what was left of them after my corpse-raiding actions).<br />
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I now regret not having scooped up the entire bird. I should have brought it home, got out the Yellow Pages (or whatever the Australian equivalent is - the White Pages I think) and called up a local taxidermist. A stuffed Tawny Frogmouth would be marvellous. Please all keep your eyes peeled...Preferably vintage...<br />
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In the meantime, I have this ever-increasing pile of feathers with which I am going to.....no idea. My first collection winged its way to Bella in Shoreham. This one might have to stay with me as a reminder of that poor Great Dane in Newtown and of its whopping great big lungs.<br />
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P.S. (One day later)<br />
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My friend Andrew read this blog and, as a fellow Frogmouth fan, sent me the following photograph of a Tawny Frogmouth he spotted in broad daylight in Sydney's Botanical Gardens. I debated whether I should put it on the blog or not because frankly it makes all of my photographs look (as they are) distinctly amateur...sigh...but it is so marvellous. So here we go:<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-UFYa6TwVJLg/TYAD6EqExKI/AAAAAAAAAko/LT88ET0yTXg/s1600/198900_10150121246708808_690768807_6414662_7133315_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="250" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-UFYa6TwVJLg/TYAD6EqExKI/AAAAAAAAAko/LT88ET0yTXg/s400/198900_10150121246708808_690768807_6414662_7133315_n.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
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<div style="text-align: left;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-B1sdMvqx80E/TYACvupGA3I/AAAAAAAAAkk/Rc5STx_bgOc/s1600/IMG_3930.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-4038466258896628682011-03-03T17:51:00.002+11:002011-03-13T17:27:07.668+11:00ObedienceThings I like about Sydney No. 50: Obedience<br />
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What seems like a long, long time ago, in an airport in Amsterdam, my friend Kevin persuaded me to start writing this blog. He was sick of my constant groaning and moaning about living in Australia and told me to go away and think of all the things I <i>liked</i> about Sydney. And to then write them down. <br />
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Write, being the operative word. For when, some months later, I posted a blog with no text but plenty of pictures Kevin phoned me up and complained. "It doesn't count," he said.<br />
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Nevertheless, for this, my Jubilee blog, with apologies to Kevin in advance, here's an entry with no (or very little) text. A blog about signs. Signs which are hard to imagine being posted up anywhere in the streets of London...Signs which must be obeyed.<br />
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(And anyway Kevin...firstly, what's that cliche about a picture being worth a thousand words? And secondly, these are pictures OF words! Ha! Surely THAT counts.)<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-jJC9k1mpSTo/TW820RgodCI/AAAAAAAAAjc/S3FoMfY01Rc/s1600/IMG_0954.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="400" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/-jJC9k1mpSTo/TW820RgodCI/AAAAAAAAAjc/S3FoMfY01Rc/s400/IMG_0954.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-81004720784600056952011-02-28T12:11:00.002+11:002011-02-28T17:16:40.064+11:00Crumbling Cemeteries Part II<div class="post-header"></div>Things I like about Sydney No. 49: Crumbling Cemeteries Part II<br />
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Daniel and I used to live in Newtown in Sydney's Inner West. This is where people who never want to grow up live, a suburb crowded with perpetual adolescents, greying Peter Pans all. Forty-year old men clutch skateboards under their arms whilst ordering their soy latte to go; ancient spray-paint artists flog their wares on the pavement; script editors sit in cafes all day long pencilling ammendations into their scripts. Tattoo parlours next to cheap Thai restaurants next to second-hand fashion boutiques line the streets.<br />
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There are plenty of genuine adolescents and students leisurely meandering about and an inordinate number of lesbians. I always felt obscenely naked in Newtown, walking around the area without a tattoo and conversely ludicrously overdressed wearing shoes and socks instead of flip-flops (sorry, I mean <i>thongs</i>).<br />
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There are only a few things I miss about Newtown's Camden Town-in-the-sun vibe. One is Berkelouw Bookshop (secondhand department) and its attendant cafe (and their eggs florentine). The other is Camperdown Cemetery.<br />
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Camperdown Cemetery is the oldest in Sydney but much of it is has been removed to make way for a public park. In 1946 all the gravestones in the area designated for the park (eleven hectares in all) were dug up and placed inside a new perimeter wall marking the much-reduced cemetery. Idiotically, these transplanted gravestones were bolted onto the inside of the brick wall with steel pins and nearly all have subsequently shattered as the pins quickly rusted under Sydney's relentless sun and rain. Beyond the wall, children and dogs run about and picnics are unwittingly eaten on a grassy hill stuffed full of corpses. The wall itself is now patently considered the property of graffiti 'artists'.<br />
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At the entrance to the remaining cemetery is a magnificent Moreton Bay fig tree planted in 1848.<br />
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To the right of this is a lodge or cottage of the same period which has been criminally neglected. It's lived in by Christians, friends of the vicar, who himself dwells in the larger, newer and similarly decrepit vicarage opposite. Unfortunately, they're far too busy saving souls to save buildings. Each Sunday they set up trestle tables outside the lodge and welcome anyone in for a post-service lunch complete with tea from a gigantic urn (not a glass of wine in sight). Every time I passed them, quietly praying over their outdoor picnics, I wanted to march furiously in, like Jesus into the temple crowded with moneylenders, turn over their tables and chairs, and chuck them out for their filthy abuse of Sydney's heritage. Then I'd move in, take over with Daniel, respect the lodge and lovingly restore it.<br />
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I felt similarly angry about the cemetery itself which, just as the one in the last blog, is falling apart at the seams. However, this isn't entirely the church's fault because the wretched local Council have refused to take any responsibility for cleaning up the graveyard. It is open to the public and regularly abused by hordes of teenagers drinking, smoking, screwing and leaving all their debris behind but nevertheless any cleaning has to be done by the vicar, his wife and their volunteers. I used to go there on daily walks with Sniff and would carry a plastic bag to fill up with various unpleasant bits of rubbish but wasn't up to dealing with soiled mattresses, broken chairs, supermarket trolleys...<br />
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Decrepitude can however be rather picturesque. And thanks to the dedicated work of some local botanists parts of the cemetery were always brimming with rare, native plants cascading over fading tombs.<br />
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The church itself, surrounded by mature palm trees, is a lovely honey colour and its steeple, after a year wrapped in blue plastic, has been lovingly restored. Within the remains of the cemetery are the remains of some famous Australians and my favourites are these:<br />
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Isaac Nathan: composer and the ‘father of Australian music’, now forgotten as a composer but remembered as Sydney's first tram victim. When returning to his home in January 1864, alighting from Sydney's first horse-drawn tram, he was accidentally drawn inexorably under its relentless wheels...<br />
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The wonderfully named Bathsheba Ghost: convict and Second Matron of the Sydney General Hospital.<br />
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William Moffat: printer, stationer, and engraver with, once, "the handsomest shop in Sydney".<br />
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Nicholas Charles Bochsa: Napoleon’s harpist eloped from London with Sir Henry Bishop's opera-singing wife but he died after they gave but one concert together in Sydney.<br />
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Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell: explorer and land surveyor who gave his name to the fantastic pink and white ice-cream sundae-like Major Mitchell’s Cockatoo.<br />
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Eliza Donnithorne: purportedly the inspiration for Miss Havisham in Dickens’s <i>Great Expectations, </i>jilted on her wedding day she<i> </i>refused to have the wedding feast removed from the table and kept her front door permanently ajar in case her absconding lover should return.<br />
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There is also a large tomb commemorating the victims of the Wreck of the <i>Dunbar</i>. This clipper ship (clippers were the fastest sailing boats of the mid-ninteenth century) went down off Sydney Heads in August 1857 after a voyage from England, with all but one of the 122 people aboard perishing. The wreck "had a profound effect on the people of Sydney, because nearly all the passengers were Sydney residents returning home". The new perimeter wall created when the cemetery became a tenth of its original size has to bulge outwards to incorporate this tomb as Sydneysiders wouldn't countenance its removal into the smaller site.<br />
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Many of the other graves bear testament to the fact that most people in the nineteenth century died at an extremely young age - of measles, diptheria, snake-bites, teething (those pesky mercury based teething powders), drowning...It's best not to dwell too long on the dates borne on the gravestones but rather to wander aimlessly admiring vistas and taking in the effect as a whole of slowly decaying memorial grandeur. I highly recommend it as a soothing tonic or antidote to the adolescent angst and narcissism of nearby King Street.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-xERlthFWUGQ/TWrzTv0O21I/AAAAAAAAAio/WdjbX7ttdnw/s1600/IMG_0100.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-xERlthFWUGQ/TWrzTv0O21I/AAAAAAAAAio/WdjbX7ttdnw/s320/IMG_0100.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-44754047773043652292011-02-11T14:29:00.004+11:002011-02-11T22:32:03.212+11:00Crumbling Cemeteries Part IThings I like about Sydney No. 48: Crumbling Cemeteries Part I<br />
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Having sworn off cars in London ("What's the point," I would cry, "there's always the No. 38 bus?!") I have learned that, here in Sydney, having a car is a good thing. After all, there <i>is</i> no number 38 bus or at least none that compares - all Sydney buses are best avoided. The woeful timetables, the impossibility of crossing town from, say, Newtown to Paddington, the decrepit vehicles, the overcrowding - I have been known to go on and on about the pitiful state of Sydney's public transport system. This is a town that had, by the end of the 1960s, under pressure from the all-powerful petrol lobby, entirely destroyed its perfectly good tram network and then forgotten to replace it with anything else. I must remember to write to Clover Moore (Sydney's mayor) before I leave, so appalled am I by Sydney's public transport. (The people who ride it and the drivers who navigate it on the other hand are unfailingly polite and London's No. 38 bus passengers could definitely learn a thing or two about courtesy from their counterparts in Sydney).<br />
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All of which means that having a car is necessary to explore and navigate this sprawling city. Without our trusty Honda, courtesy of Daniel's mother, this blog would be much impoverished.<br />
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On Monday morning I had to take said car for its annual check-up in order to be able to renew what the Australians irritatingly call the Rego (registration to you or I). Our particular rip-off mechanic of choice is just up the Pacific Highway which means that, having abandoned the car to its no doubt expensive fate, I can eschew the offered courier service to the nearest station and simply walk home.<br />
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So there I was, tramping the six-lane Pacific Highway, extremely thankful that our recent heatwave had finally broken - an ordeal which began with seven continuous days of a life-quenching 35 degrees and culminated last Saturday with a temperature of 42 degrees followed by "the hottest night in history" (see<i> The Sydney Morning Herald</i>, <i>Monday 7th February. 2011</i>). I crossed the road to turn down towards Greenwich and, on glancing back at the side of the road I'd just been walking along, noticed that I had unwittingly been following a long wall enclosing an enormous over-grown tract of land. I re-crossed the road and tried to peer over the wall and through the tangled shrubbery, following the highway until I could see more. Soon, I spotted a crumbling gravestone. And then another, and another, and another...<br />
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I'd stumbled across a hidden gem, namely the Gore Hill (Catholic) Memorial Cemetery. An enormous swathe of land, completely neglected and overgrown (apart from one choice corner of which more later), surrounded by high-rise buildings and noisy freeways, established as long ago as 1868 but with its final burial performed in 1974. A tumbledown oasis. A grassy, wild-iris-strewn remnant. A testimony to the passing of time and to the ultimate futility of life, ignored by the twenty-first century which roars by on all four sides, entirely oblivious to its charms and caring nothing for its meanings.<br />
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Many of the graves date from the First World War and most of them are of modest size and appearance. However, there are some enormous mausoleums dedicated to wealthy families and some of the monuments have exquisite carving and decoration. What they all have in common is utter neglect...<br />
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I particularly liked this bird, forever frozen mid-peck, and these ivy leaves delicately picked out on another gravestone nearby.<br />
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As for the one groomed- and cared-for corner in this fearfully under-provisioned place (shame on you Sydney), it is dedicated to Australia's first and only-recently canonised Saint, Mary McKillop. She was buried here from 1909 to 1914 but, in the way of saints, her body has been removed elsewhere and, no doubt, bits of it are distributed all over Australia by now, displayed in little caskets and cases: fragments of bones, toes, hairs, strips of skin all delicately laid-out on velvet or encased in bejewelled glass phials. Catholics are so weird...<br />
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Here's what Gore Hill Cemetery has of Mary now that her remains no longer remain:<br />
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Bloody hilarious. Face like a hatchet and hands like spades. You wouldn't want to encounter her down a dark alley, would you? <br />
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My favourite gravestone was the following and, in case you can't read its inscription, here it is:<br />
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<i>In loving memory of Bernard Bede Kieran</i><br />
<i>Died 22 December 1905 Aged 19 years</i><br />
<i>RIP</i><br />
<i>Erected by the public as a tribute to this champion swimmer of the world.</i><br />
<i>He won his laurels by courage, self denial, and patient</i><br />
<i>effort, His achievements and manly qualities will long</i><br />
<i>be remembered in this, and other countries in which</i><br />
<i>his victories were gained.</i><br />
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(If you ask me, from the looks of her statue, Mary McKillop will be remembered by her manly qualities too...)<br />
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Here is a photo of Bernard Bede Kieran taken from the web.<br />
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His illustrious (and unfortunately attenuated) career began very unpromisingly, so much so that by the age of 13 he was classified as a juvenile delinquent. Consequently, in March 1900, his mother had him committed to the nautical school-ship <i>Sobraon</i>. (I suppose you could do that in those days...) He then took up swimming and, as the monument implies, went on to win many a competition in both Australia and the big, wide world. When he competed in the King's Cup in London in 1905 by the invitation of the Royal Life-Saving Society a spectator shouted: "He's a fish not a man!" after a sensational record-breaking 600 yards in 17.6 seconds. Unfortunately he was to die but a few months later on the operating table, having his appendix removed...A good friend of mine (Gary) will very much sympathise with this tale at this moment in time having only just survived a similar appendicectomy. The appendix. Still a problem, over one hundred years on...<br />
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Here's to Gary Carter and to Bernard Bede Kieran, and to the excellent manly qualities of both!Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-11894297360052611562011-01-25T14:54:00.000+11:002011-01-25T14:54:00.602+11:00The Queen Victoria BuildingThings I like about Sydney No. 47: The Queen Victoria Building (or, as they must have it in hideous modern parlance, the QVB).<br />
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Slap bang in the centre of the so-called Central Business District of Sydney, taking up an entire block along the main thoroughfare George Street, from Park Street to Market Street, stands the magnificent, incomparable Queen Victoria Building.<br />
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A huge late-Victorian temple of Mammon, the Queen Victoria Building was begun in 1893 and finally opened (fortunately before her Majesty's demise) in 1898. Back then, as well as housing a Concert Hall, the first floor alone had fifty-eight shops with a variety of tenants, including tailors, mercers, boot importers, hairdressers, tobacconists, florists, chemists, and fruiterers, an enormous coffee palace, a tea room, warerooms, showrooms and offices. On the second floor were further large showrooms and a gallery. The basement boasted wine cellars, strong rooms, cooling chambers and public toilets.<br />
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The Queen Victoria Building has been restored twice in recent years and is now resplendent and immaculately coiffed once more, having narrowly escaped demolition in the 1970s. I have a love-hate relationship with it. I love it because it is one of the best late-Victorian extravagances ever built. I hate it because it's current incarnation as a 21st century temple of Mammon leaves me cold. Bring back the mercers, the taxidermists, the tobacconists, the boot importers, the cooling chambers....<br />
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Then: <br />
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Now:<br />
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The building has fantastic tiled floors, elegant balustrades and balconies, elaborate cage lifts and staircases, a magnificent ceiling, extravagant clocks and other timepieces but all this wonderful interior decoration is marred by the hordes of people buying crap. Obviously, I am glad that the building is a throbbing, magnificent success. I'd just rather it was all for me alone to do with what I would like.<br />
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Daniel and I ventured in late last week and I managed to capture some of the tiled floors without a soul in sight...<br />
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Ordinarily, you wouldn't see beyond your nose for shoppers.<br />
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So let's see....what have I actually managed to buy in the 'QVB'...<br />
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<b>Things I have managed to buy in the Queen Victoria Building</b><br />
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1. Over-priced tea.<br />
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In the basement, perhaps not even in the building proper, perhaps in one of the interconnecting tunnels that lead to Town Hall station, is a branch of T2. The appallingly named T2 sells over-priced tea (and this comes from someone who, when in London, buys their tea at Fortnum and Mason and is willing to pay the price for quality). Here, at T2, I have to pay almost 40 dollars for a puny amount of Assam which isn't even TGFOP (Tippy Golden Flowery Orange Pekoe) as it is at Fortnum's. It will last about a month and then I have to grit my teeth and go back and buy some more....<br />
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2. Over-priced prints.<br />
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At the top of the building, on the second floor, is an antique print room run by an extremely snooty husband and wife team - the sort of people who look at you in horror if you try to bargain them down. Actually, they are the sort of people who look at you in horror full-stop unless you're carrying some Vuitton luggage and have pearls (for the women) or a cravat (for the men) around your neck (if it was the other way round you wouldn't even be let in).<br />
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Unfortunately the shop has some wonderful things - specifically, 200 year old prints of Australian wildlife and birds and Daniel and I have succumbed to temptation twice (and once I did manage to get 25 dollars knocked off the price...).<br />
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Here they are, recently framed by my own expert hands, - a possum holding a bunch of flowers out to a kangaroo - with a few foetuses scattered picturesquely about - by John Chapman (you have to remember it was very hot out here for Europeans in 1803 and so they obviously hallucinated a lot) and a female Superb Fairy Wren from <i>The Voyage of Governor Phillip to Botany Bay</i> by Arthur Phillip (1789):<br />
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3. Over-priced shoes.<br />
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Occasionally, stumbling around the building, you do come across a shop you might want to cross the threshold of. On the ground floor, for instance, is Camper, the shoe-shop. Now Camper is hardly the modern equivalent of a Victorian boot importer - it's a jumped-up parvenu from Spain - but nevertheless I have been known to sport the odd Camper article on my feet. So imagine my horror when I looked at the price tags. $325!!!!!!! $290!!!!!!! WHAT ARE THEY THINKING????? These things cost half that price in London. What is more, the pair I did buy (in a sale) have already fallen apart less than a year later. Split down the side.<br />
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4. Over-priced soap.<br />
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This is a wholly unnecessary indulgence that is now an ingrained habit. Buying big blocks of green soap from L'Occitane De Provence (which 'concept store', I'm sure, is probably as French as I am). They smell good and last for ever (unlike Camper shoes).<br />
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And that, I believe, is it for me and shopping at the Queen Victoria Building in the 21st century. I run in and I run out, clutching either soap or tea. I think I would have fared a lot better in 1898. Those prints would have been a damn sight cheaper for a start... I would still be smoking (because it was good for you, stupid) and could have visited my tobacconist daily to try the latest blend. There, no doubt, would have been a barbers next door where I would have gone to have a quick do-over before nipping up to the taxidermist to see how my Great Bustard was coming along. Then there would just be time to ensure that my wine was being cellared properly before having a leisurely lunch in the coffee palace and a post-prandial browse round the booksellers. My tailor's appointment at 3.00 would have lasted about an hour and a half because I am particularly fussy, which only leaves an hour or so before the first gin and tonic of the day. And that hour I could easily spend at the photographer's studio having my portrait taken with Sniff.<br />
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Patently, I am living in the wrong century although knowing my luck, back in 1898 it would have been me stuffing the bloody Bustard rather than me poncing about buying it....Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-43801624599956016502011-01-21T15:24:00.003+11:002011-01-21T19:09:37.165+11:00Snake SightingsThings I like about Sydney No. 46: Snake Sightings<br />
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Whilst our minds are full of disturbing images of Queenslanders not only battling floods but battling the poisonous snakes which gaily swam into their houses (one poor man was stranded on his roof with only a rolled-up towel to beat off the marauding serpents) I thought I would regale you with my own tales of snakes here in Sydney.<br />
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Firstly, let's put things into perspective. In England there are only 3 species of snake and only one of these, the adder, is venomous. There are no records of anyone dying of an adder bite since 1975. Statistically, the English are much more likely to die of a wasp sting than a snake-bite.<br />
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In Australia there are over 140 species of land snake and around 32 species of sea snake. 100 species of snake are venomous and at least 12 species can kill you. Despite these frightening statistics, there have only been 42 deaths Australia-wide that have been attributed to snake-bite since 1980 (less than two a year). 24 of the last 40 recorded fatalities were caused by the Brown Snake, which makes it the deadliest of all.<br />
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Considering how much venomous writhing goes on in the undergrowth there are, then, relatively few deaths. And the reason for this is that snakes are extremely elusive. Shy, retiring types really; they only attack if severely provoked.<br />
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Which makes any sighting of a snake extremely special.<br />
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My first snake sighting has already been a subject for this blog. Back in March we discovered the corpse of a young Golden-Crowned Snake in our driveway. These snakes are very rare here in Greenwich and our sighting subsequently became part of the local council's newsletter so excited were the local herpetologists and environmentalists. Here it is again for those of you who missed it:<br />
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Golden-Crowned Snakes are nocturnal and a few weeks later, in early April, as Sniff and I were returning to the house from our evening walk around Greenwich, I saw a snake crossing our drive, lit by the glow from the light perched on our dilapidated gatepost. Sniff rashly hurried forwards but the snake disappeared into the undergrowth with a rapid shrug of its body. It was larger than the dead snake above - perhaps it was the grieving mother looking for her snakelet. Seeing this snake wriggle along the driveway at night sent exquisite shudders down my spine at the time and, to this day, I can conjure up its flight simply by closing my eyes.<br />
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(Golden-Crowned Snakes are, indeed, venomous...)<br />
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My third snake sighting also involved Sniff - he's good at sniffing those old serpents out. We were walking in Balls Head Reserve and right by the entrance found this:<br />
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Another dead snake I'm afraid, this time longer and larger and without the golden crown on its head. I haven't been able to identify it as yet so can any experts please help out? Not as fresh as the other corpse, a large group of ants were busying themselves with it, fussing about that part of its length which was split open and wounded. It looked to me as if it had been run over and then carefully placed on the verge.<br />
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Talking of Balls Head Reserve, the other day Sniff and I, instead of taking our normal route back down to the car, plunged off down a path towards the sea and stumbled across the most amazing thing - an enormous echoing tunnel leading underneath the old Quarantine depot:<br />
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Sniff wasn't too sure about its dank, dripping interior but I loved it...<br />
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Here's a gratuitous photograph of an insect spotted on the same walk - and it's even alive:<br />
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And here's a spider pretending to be a wasp:<br />
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Back to snakes and to the fourth, and most exciting, sighting.<br />
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Blackman Park is the furthest away of our possible local destinations for walking with Sniff. I have to summon up some extra enthusiasm to drive that little bit further to go there but it is always worth it when I do. The trail is usually empty of people and it rapidly passes through a series of different landscapes which increases the likelihood of spotting new creatures and birds. It is the only place I have seen Eastern Yellow Robins and Firetail Finches in Sydney and is always replete with lizards and cicadas (and there was once the Snake-Necked Turtle, already blogged).<br />
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Daniel and I took Judith, Daniel's mother, to Blackman Park whilst she was staying for Christmas. I had promised robins and finches and goodness knows what but it was rather hot and NOTHING could be seen except for the dried-out, shed husks of cicadas still clinging to grasses and twigs:<br />
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Here's a live one, shiny and new (and out of focus - I don't have any fancy macro lenses I'm afraid):<br />
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We were returning back along the track, rather disappointed with the distinct lack of wildlife (although Judith was rather taken with some wild orchids), when I casually said to Daniel "Is that a snake ahead on the path?"<br />
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As I spoke the words I didn't believe it <i>was</i> a snake, I was simply uttering a kind of hopeless longing. But, lo and behold!, as we both looked harder at the object before us it unfurled into a long shiny black thick roundish creature, over a metre and a half long, which then slid quickly off the wooden path into the bushes and obscurity.<br />
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Breathtaking. A Red-Bellied Black Snake, "capable of causing significant morbidity" or, in our case, significant astonishment. Again the sight was so extraordinary that I can vividly see it again now as I recall it. I'm sure it was reading many books during my childhood that contained colonial types battling anacondas in the jungle that make these rare sightings so resonant to me now...<br />
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Last weekend we went to the hugely disappointing Australian Museum (Sydney's museum of natural history - mundane, badly laid out, terribly curated, un-cared for specimens) to double check on this identification (and to buy a do-it-yourself science kit for Daniel's nephew). Their sad-looking stuffed Red-Bellied Black Snake, lying randomly next to a crocodile, was the spitting image of ours. Unfortunately I forgot to take a photo of it or of the plastic bendy one you could buy in the Museum shop (and I refuse to shell out another fifteen dollars to go there again) so you will either have to imagine its magnificence or google an image.<br />
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My fifth and final snake sighting occurred this week. I was walking along the creek at the bottom of our garden when I spotted an unusual-looking lizard. Unusual, in that it didn't seem to have any legs. As there are a lot of just-born baby lizards and skinks scuttling about at this time of year you catch a lot of small things flitting around out of the corner of your eye. But something told me that this was no ordinary lizard.<br />
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I picked up a stick and poked around in the leaf litter to try and disturb it and, sure enough, out scuttled a creature which definitely had no legs. I'd seen a similar something the day before, balanced on top of a frond of fern, but I couldn't get close enough to be sure. Now I was. It was a baby snake.<br />
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In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have got so close. It might have been a baby but perhaps even babies are venomous....it looked so cute though... I let it scuttle off and disappear. Straightening up, I suddenly began to wonder if mother was anywhere near...<br />
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Another gratuitous photograph, this time of flowering gum, especially for those of you who are currently in the throes of a supernaturally cold winter...<br />
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Our trip began peacefully enough.<br />
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After packing a little picnic Daniel, Sniff and I piled into the car yesterday morning (it was eleven or so) and drove north along the Pacific Highway, leaving the city behind. We were heading for the Strickland State Forest where we were going to walk the 'Bell Bird Trail' ("an hour and half, moderately difficult"), find some shady spot, eat and then return home. Despite the gloomy gray skies above Daniel assured me that, according to his weather iPhone app, it wasn't going to rain anymore. We felt we were going to be lucky.<br />
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It takes about an hour and twenty minutes to get to the forest, especially in post-Christmas traffic. We had to weave in and out of a constant stream of cars and lorries until finally leaving the freeway at Peak's Ridge Road and shaking off all the other travellers. We soon found the dirt track that leads into the Strickland State Forest despite taking a wrong turning and we drove down its bumpy surface for two kilometres or so and parked, solitarily, at the entrance to the trail.<br />
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Last time we came to the forest, back in September, Sniff was bitten by an enormous red ant after five minutes of walking so we never made it to the Bell Bird Trail. This time we were determined to see and hear the Bell birds and to spend most of the day walking amongst the trees and ferns.<br />
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The forest is very jungly with massive amounts of palms, creepers, grasses and odd-looking vines. The whirring of insects is almost deafening and birds trill by the dozen. One feels like Tarzan.<br />
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It is very isolated and today there is not a person in sight. We are a long way from civilisation, on an escapade. It's all very <i>Picnic At Hanging Rock</i> (except of course that this is a forest not a rock). We set off down the trail carrying half the picnic (we'll reward ourselves with the Christmas Cake when we get back), some water, some dog treats, a water bowl, the binoculars, a camera and our iphones in case we get bitten by a snake and need to call an ambulance.<br />
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Meandering slowly along the track Daniel trains his new super-clear super-magnifying binoculars (Xmas present) on an Eastern Yellow Robin and some tiny wrens, Sniff bounds along sniffing and I photograph a remarkable dangling bird's nest.<br />
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We reach the entrance to the Bell Bird Trail and it looks distinctly unused and overgrown. We have to hack our way through the undergrowth searching for the path below our feet. As we progress slowly deeper into the forest, the sounds of Bell birds begin to emanate from all sides. Their distinctive calls are remarkably close but the birds themselves remain very difficult to spot. We stand still for a while, deep in the damp undergrowth, whilst Daniel peers about with his binoculars. He spots what he thinks might be a Bell bird directly above us in a tree.<br />
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Daniel's pointing out the exact spot where the bird is perched but I am strangely preoccupied with a crawling dampness on my leg. Suddenly, the air is rent with the sound of screaming.<br />
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It's me. Screaming. For my shoes and legs are covered in writhing, waving, blood-seeking, ravenous, predatory sucker-mouthed leeches.<br />
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I panic. I flail about, trying to brush them off my shoes, yelling to Daniel "Get them off me! Get them off me! They're everywhere." And indeed they are. On my socks, on my jeans, on my legs, on the ground ready to sucker on. I yell some more. It only seems right to. "Get them off me. Push them off with a stick. Nooooo!"<br />
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Five or so leeches fall, thwarted, to the forest floor. I look past them and see another dozen waving their heads in the air waiting for their chance at a meal. We now realise that the Bell Bird Trail is probably not a good idea. We realise that we should abandon our leisurely pace and hightail it outta here. The path is literally crawling with leeches, fore and aft.<br />
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Daniel, for some reason, thinks it best to press forward rather than to turn back, despite the fact that the trail is 3.4 kilometres long and we've probably only done 0.4 kilometres. So we push on through the undergrowth determinedly not looking down, bringing our feet up high and bringing them crashing down, destroying the chance of seeing any wildlife or birds because of our swift pace and noisy progress but hopefully scaring the hell out of the leeches as well.<br />
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I keep wanting to stop and check my legs and feet (I even have a hole in my shoe and imagine the little bastards gleefully crawling through it to feast on my toes) but Daniel thinks its better to crash on and check once we're back at the car. I can't obey this ruling however and stop to have a look. Sure enough, another four leeches are making their obscene way up my socks to my bare flesh and I yell and scream and brush them off frantically before carrying on again.<br />
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Suddenly, it's all too much. I snap. I can bear it no longer. I'm going to be leeched alive. As I discover another three leeches on my FLESH I start to run like a mad thing through the forest, heading for the car as fast as I can go leaving both Sniff and Daniel behind, rending the air once more with my screams. Now it really is like <i>Picnic At Hanging Rock</i>. I am possessed by supernatural energy and the possessor of the loudest screams the Strickland State Forest has ever witnessed.<br />
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Once back at the car, closely followed by a very bewildered dog and Daniel who looks like he wants to slap me very hard, I rip off my shoes and socks and start searching my legs for leeches. I realise this isn't enough and rip off my jeans as well. I sit on the bonnet of the car half-naked, moaning, and beating the leeches off my socks and legs with my shoes. My periodic checking on the Bell Bird Trail has won out. Nothing has managed to get their suckers in me.<br />
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Daniel's coping mechanism hasn't worked so well. His wait till we get to the car park plan. For not only are his socks crawling with leeches, so are his legs...<br />
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He also crawls onto the bonnet of the car, takes off his shoes and socks and jeans and starts whimpering a little.<br />
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At this point all we needed was for someone else to drive into the clearing and see us, together, in our underpants, sprawled on the bonnet of our car. That would have made our day.<br />
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Once relatively leech-free I was ordered to go and put the cigarette lighter on in the car. That old familiar mechanism whereby you push that old button in and a few seconds later out it pops, red-hot. Time to burn the bastards.<br />
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It was only after Daniel had been successful in ridding himself of two leeches by poking them with the cigarette lighter in this fashion that he calmed down enough to let me take a photo of this, the third. <br />
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And of this, the aftermath:<br />
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His legs and feet wouldn't stop bleeding. There was blood on the bonnet of the car, all over his<br />
handkerchief, on the picnic. <i>Picnic at Hanging Rock</i> had turned into <i>Halloween III</i>.<br />
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Obviously, the anti-coagulant that leeches use is extremely effective. AND you can't feel them latching on. Silent, stealthy, blood-sucking bastards.<br />
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After about twenty minutes of searching all our crevices and clothes for any sign of more leeches we began to calm down. We stomped on and sprayed with insect spray all those leeches littered around the car and were then able to contemplate a bit of picnic. But I soon realised I'd lost my appetite. I couldn't eat any cake. We had to leave. The forest, once so benign, now loured around us like a menacing beast. <br />
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After checking every inch of the car for more leeches we set off for home. Straight for home. No more wilderness today, thank you very much.<br />
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As Daniel steered us towards Sydney I fell asleep for forty minutes or so with Sniff on my lap, waking up just as the city was taking shape around us and the traffic was chaotic once more. Sniff shifted about a bit, yawned and then decided it was time to take a look out of the window. As he got up onto his hindlegs and put his paws on the windowpane I looked down at my lap and, to my horror, saw I was covered in BLOOD! <i>Halloween IV</i>!<br />
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I had checked Sniff for leeches, after we'd checked ourselves, but hadn't found any on his fur. I hadn't reckoned on the leeches being able to nestle into the gaps between his claws on the underside of his paws. Which they had. And all this time they had been feasting on Sniff on my very lap, draining him of his blood.<br />
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I looked around me. On the floor of the car wriggled two very fat, sated leeches, slowly waving their heads, contemplating their next meal - my ankles.<br />
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I couldn't scream or panic too much because Daniel was driving. So I beat the hell out of the bastards with the blunt end of the can of insect spray and flicked their disgusting bodies out of the car window. Sniff skulked off to the back seat of the car once he'd realised that he'd been suckered and licked at his paws for twenty minutes or so, looking rather bewildered.<br />
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"Would this hell ever end?" I thought to myself.<br />
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The idea of our lovely home in the bush was of no particular comfort - it's far too close to nature, red in tooth and claw and sucker. I began to dream instead of being in a nice clean modern hotel in a nice clean modern city wearing a nice clean new set of clothes. Of shopping in a nice clean air-conditioned mall where all the plants and trees are plastic and the birdsong piped. Of wandering around somewhere like Disneyland where there is nothing real enough to actually bite.<br />
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And then I realised what Daniel and I have to do. That's it. We must give up this real life nonsense and live in a cartoon.<br />
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I'll be Snufkin and Daniel can be Moomintroll.<br />
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Perfect bliss...<br />
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...just, that is, as long as the Hattifattiners don't get us...<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ta5fWVBA_3Q/TSP6q-89CbI/AAAAAAAAAgA/UG1_jOAftpc/s1600/IMG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="255" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ta5fWVBA_3Q/TSP6q-89CbI/AAAAAAAAAgA/UG1_jOAftpc/s320/IMG.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-77830537421081439762010-12-21T16:01:00.001+11:002010-12-21T16:07:08.576+11:00Nilgiri'sThings I like about Sydney No. 44: Nilgiri's<br />
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For my birthday Daniel bought me a cookbook called, simply, <i>India</i>. It has no less than 1,000 recipes in it and will no doubt become as well thumbed as one I already have called <i>660 Curries</i> by the brilliant Raghavan Iyer. <i>India</i> is written by the fantastically named Pushpesh Pant. The last section of his massive tome is dedicated to recipes from the best Indian chefs from the ten or so best Indian restaurants around the world. No less than three of these restaurants are in Sydney and two of these are but a stone's throw from our door in neighbouring St. Leonards (as long as, that is, you throw the stone high because there's quite a hill to climb to get there).<br />
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One of these restaurants, <i>Qmin</i>, has recently undergone a name change for some unexplained reason (we think it's a tax dodge or a bankruptcy thing). It is now called <i>Mace</i>. Which reminds us of knobbly old weapons or something you spray in attacker's faces. And although <i>Qmin</i> was excellent our hearts have been stolen away from their doors by <i>Nilgiri's</i>, just that bit further up the road but worth every additional step.<br />
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The great thing about Nilgiri's, run by chef Ajoy Joshi, is that they change the menu every month to concentrate on a different area of India. Which gives us a great excuse to go at least once every four weeks. Last time we went, November, it was West Bengal. In October it was the Punjab. Last night, for December and my birthday, it was a menu revisiting all the best dishes of the year...<br />
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Nilgiri's is not very prepossessing as you can see above. Inside it is not much better although they do have a collection of over a hundred Ganesha. <br />
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But you don't come for the interior decoration, you come for the food.<br />
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We usually decide on a banquet option where you can eat bits of nearly everything for not very much money (just over 40 dollars each; and as you can bring your own wine as well it is laughably cheap. Especially compared with its London equivalents. <i>The Cinnamon Club</i> in London charges £75 per person for their tasting menu....). They even let us swap in dishes that we particularly want (these often involve prawns).<br />
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So, last night we opt for the banquet option, swapping in some prawns as one of the starters. I'm taking photos of everything for the blog and let slip to the waiter, who asks why I am doing so, that it's my birthday.<br />
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And thus begins a blow-out of massive proportions. For after we've tucked into our poppadoms and pickles (chilli, tamarind and aubergine) two miniature masala dosas appear.<br />
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"We didn't order those" we pipe up simultaneously. "Oh, compliments of the chef" says the waiter.<br />
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Well, it would be rude not to eat them. And they are light and delicious with a very fresh coconut accompaniment.<br />
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The two starters we did order arrive. We are not daunted. Stunning lightly peppered prawns and aromatic lamb with some handkerchief naan. All the breads are made by a broadly smiling bread specialist in full view of us all (the other chefs are hidden away behind him in a separate kitchen). He spins the handkerchief naan in ever-increasing wild circles above his head, forever stretching and pummeling.<br />
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We've now eaten three starters and are beginning to worry slightly about managing all three mains when our waiter pops up again and places ANOTHER starter on the table: "Chef's compliments for regular customers", he says. We thank him with a rather glazed look of appreciation. It is a pair of meat samosas, looking decidedly delicious...we gamely throw them down our necks, complete with the sticky sweet tamarind sauce which accompanies them.<br />
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Quaffing our wine we have a little breathing space with no surprises before the rest of our dinner turns up. The main part of it to be exact. But you're only 46 once in your life, we're going to eat the whole damn lot (except perhaps all the lentils because Daniel's not keen and all the rice because there is an enormous mound). The chicken goes, the goat goes, the cauliflower and carrots go. The naan goes. The rice diminishes. We're done. We're full. We can't move. Ever again. They'll have to hire a tractor just to get us out of here.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Except <i>Nilgiri's</i> isn't done with us yet. Along bashes the waiter carrying an ice-cream with a sparkler jammed into its centre doing its sparkling thing and thereby drawing everyone's attention to our table and to the fact that it is my birthday.<br />
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And here I had to give up. I'd judged myself well, I'd eaten to bursting point but could eat no more. And ice cream is my lentils. Daniel on the other hand managed to scoff the lot. He says he did it out of pure embarrassment but I'm not so sure....<br />
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They could do no more to us. We were knocked out by their kindness. Out and on the ropes. But still they kept fighting. Another waiter came by and handed me one of Ajoy Joshi's cookbooks. Which can go on the shelf alongside <i>India</i> and <i>660 Curries</i> and <i>Anjum's New Indian</i> and <i>Madhur Jaffrey's Ultimate Curry Bible...</i><br />
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Tomorrow we've got three people coming over for dinner. I'm going to cook Portugese.Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-53227019676642372242010-12-19T12:14:00.001+11:002010-12-19T13:59:20.294+11:00Miniature Ponds in the Hidden Hearts of PlantsThings I like about Sydney No. 43: Miniature Ponds in the Hidden Hearts of Plants<br />
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On either side of the pathway leading up to our shack in the bush is a cultivated patch of garden. The left hand side is covered half in ferns and half in a tropical red and green plant. The right hand side is covered in spider plants. These two beds are the only bit of the entire garden which we maintain (apart from the pathway around the house on which I constantly wage a losing battle with weeds). The rest of the garden is left to nature and resembles the bush we're perched in. If we leave the two garden beds to nature, however, they become overwhelmed with the unfortunately named Wandering Jew.<br />
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Wandering Jew is "an aggressive scrambling creeper that can smother other plants as it forms a mat-like cover of the ground it occupies." Lane Cove Council, who maintain the trail running alongside the creek below our house, periodically sweep through the area pulling the creeper up, right to the edges of our garden. So I feel obliged to carry on their good work and to do the same around the house. And as the weed has very weak roots it is a very satisfying job to do - the plant comes up easily just by yanking at any of its long many-leaved stems. Much more fun than weeding the path which leaves me with blisters and holes in my gardening gloves.<br />
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The council are currently losing the war against trandescantia albiflora (to give Wandering Jew its proper name. So-called after John Tradescant who created the Ark in Lambeth, a private cabinet of curiosities which subsequently opened to the public as the first museum in London. He is also known as one of the world's most renowned plant collectors). The volunteers are obviously slacking off as Christmas approaches.<br />
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Here's a view up to our house from the creek. You can see one end of our bird-feeding balcony.<br />
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Wandering Jew creeps along the bush floor, entirely covering everything except the rocks and trees. The Council volunteers have to work their way down the creek, on their hands and knees, putting all the weeds into large white sacks. Every time I see them I think of joining in, but then I think of the funnel-web spiders, the cobwebs of the large Golden Orb Weavers, the red ants, the Golden Crowned Snakes and I immediately dissuade myself from doing any such foolish thing.<br />
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Alongside the creek itself, here just below our house, the weed is prevented from reaching the water's edge because of the rocks forming the creek's bank. Further down, along a small channel of water that flows towards the creek, where some beautiful flowers grow in the moist soil, you can see they are completely surrounded by a carpet of Wandering Jew (it's the plant spreading out from the bottom right-hand corner of this photo).<br />
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Anyway, the battle was won against tradescantia albiflora yesterday in the patch of garden alongside our front path. Victory goes to the ferns and the red and green tropical plants. And it was whilst tending the latter that I noticed today's blog subject: miniature ponds.<br />
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Each of the tropical plants I was de-weeding had, at its reddest centre, a miniature aquatic garden, a secret pond, complete with fantastical flowers and swimming insects. And I hadn't noticed them until on my hands and knees pulling out weeds, my nose inches from their leaves.<br />
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Poking up from within the rain-filled hearts of each plant were bright flowers, of an unexpected purple colour, clashing quite viole(n)tly with their surroundings.<br />
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After staring stupidly at my discovery for a few minutes I then also discovered that said miniature ponds were a perfectly nice breeding ground for mosquitoes and that just then, ouch!, one was feeding greedily on my elbow, brazen despite the fact that it was the middle of the day when all mosquitoes are supposed to be asleep. Now I felt like a true pioneer - just as you discover something amazing and beautiful you simultaneously discover it has a wretched downside...Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-85426206045181966372010-12-18T11:48:00.000+11:002010-12-18T11:48:15.786+11:00Notes and ObservationsThings I like about Sydney No. 40: Peeling Trees<br />
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All the gum trees on Berry Island are shedding their skins for the summer exposing shiny new reddish trunks. They are putting their winter furs away (I've been re-reading Nancy Mitford, it's all about furs). The floor of the walking trail is strewn with strips of multi-coloured bark which look like large pieces of puzzle waiting to be put back together again. When the sun comes out and strikes the tree trunks they look remarkably beautiful, a burnished reddish-gold.<br />
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</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Things I like about Sydney No. 41: The return of the Southern Leaf-Tailed Gecko. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">The screams emanating from our bathroom are frequent enough these days to elicit a mild inquiry rather than an urgent response from those hearing them. Even when they occur in the middle of the night. The latest cry for help resulted from Daniel standing on another Southern Leaf-Tailed Gecko. As it was dark at the time he had no idea what he'd trodden on, only that it was alive and that it moved and that it felt disgusting. Fumbling for the light he then saw that the Gecko was back. With a new tail.</div><br />
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To tell the truth, this was a new Gecko. Much livelier than the last. It motored around the bathroom and evaded all our rescue attempts. Daniel left the window open (letting all those pesky mosquitoes in) and this time, in the dark of night, the Gecko vanished. We have no idea how they get in in the first place...<br />
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Things I like about Sydney No. 42: The magpies.<br />
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Australian magpies make the most extraordinary noises - they have a bubbling, chortling fountain of a song. When several of them get going at once it is quite joyful. Here is a link so you can hear it for yourselves:<br />
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<a href="http://birdsinbackyards.net/images/audio/gymnorhina-tibicen.mp3">http://birdsinbackyards.net/images/audio/gymnorhina-tibicen.mp3</a><br />
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When I came to Australia back in 1970-something the first Australian creature I saw, on opening the curtains on that first morning in suburban Melbourne, was a magpie, sauntering across the lawn. I remember being amazed at seeing this bird - the same but so different to the British equivalent. It was so large. It had a very pointy beak. It was a weird variation on a known theme.<br />
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Two magpies have begun to join in the feeding frenzy at our house in Glenview Street. Despite their size they are wary of the lorikeets and steer well clear of the cockatoos. So the current pecking order is:<br />
1. Cockatoos<br />
2. Lorikeets<br />
3. Magpies<br />
4. King Parrots<br />
5. Crested Pigeon<br />
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Some mornings it is complete chaos on our balcony. And one of our avian friends has systematically destroyed my frangipani, plucking off new leaves as they arrive and eventually pecking off entire branches just for fun...<br />
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Things I like about Sydney No. 42: The second folly at Tambourine Bay.<br />
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Sometimes you don't see things because you are looking too hard.<br />
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At the far end of our walk around Tambourine Bay (described back in March) Sniff and I arrive at a small beach, the end of the road for this particular walk. There is a jetty here belonging to St. Ignatius College (St. Ignatius had repetitive visions of serpents which had many things that shone like eyes, but were not eyes, whilst living as a hermit in a cave in Catalonia so he sounds like a very sound role model for young schoolboys) and we usually walk out to the end of it and whilst Sniff sniffs around reading the doggy news of the day I stand and stare at the far shore, at the lines of houses, at the yachts and boats, at the pelicans, into the water, at the crabs scuttling to safety under rocks. I then turn around, look back to our favourite folly and start the walk home.<br />
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Except the other day, I turned around and looked upwards, away from the water, the boats, the pelicans, the houses, and discovered....ANOTHER folly. Perched high up on a hill, half hidden by trees. A companion to folly number one.<br />
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Sniff and I began to scramble up a very overgrown and disused path to get a closer look. The path soon disappeared and we had to climb over bushes and up rocks (Sniff being rather better at this than me), expecting to find the folly in complete disarray. But when we reached our destination, it seemed freshly painted, cared-for and serene. A secret hideout affording a great view of the city in the far distance. I have no idea who uses it - now I know it is there I look out for evidence of inhabitants but never see anyone in it. It's all very mysterious and charming.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Ta5fWVBA_3Q/TQwAFmku6QI/AAAAAAAAAd4/yspZKp1VLYA/s1600/IMG_0543.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_Ta5fWVBA_3Q/TQwAFmku6QI/AAAAAAAAAd4/yspZKp1VLYA/s320/IMG_0543.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7968951009373794021.post-63982731769209842812010-12-11T20:48:00.000+11:002010-12-11T20:48:36.405+11:00Circular QuayThings I like about Sydney No. 39: Circular Quay.<br />
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It has been quite some while since I have found anything I've liked about Sydney as the (few) followers of my blog may have noticed. November flitted past without a single thing tickling my fancy. It rained perpetually and Sydney was dismal in all respects. We managed to get away for a week to stay in Berrara, three and a bit hours down the coast, in Karilyn and Tanja's lovely home from home but even there it rained...and rained...and rained. I did spot this in their garden though, on one of our three sunny days...<br />
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...an Eastern Spinebill which served to remind me of the amazing hummingbirds I saw in Arizona when touring there with the National Theatre and <i>Hamlet</i>. Berrara also gives me an excuse to put a photograph of a kangaroo on this blog - otherwise there'll never be one. They don't exactly flourish in Sydney after all. In Berrara this mother and her Joey were grazing the lawn outside the house along with a whole pack of their relatives just as dusk descended.<br />
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Apparently a group of kangaroos is either called a troop or a mob. These were definitely a mob - rather than backing away as I approached with my camera they stood tall and glared. I was the one intimidated into retreating slowly and rather sheepishly.<br />
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Therefore I am happy to say that as I type Daniel is in the kitchen busy preparing tonight's dinner - Kangaroo Fillet in a Green Peppercorn Sauce with homemade chips, asparagus and green beans.<br />
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We are fond of the odd bit of kangaroo for dinner. As you can see from the packaging above (Gourmet Game indeed) it is 98 per cent fat free. Indeed, you search in vain for an ounce of fat on your fillet - must be all that bouncing around. High in protein, low in saturated fat, high in iron, gluten free and only 10 dollars for three enormous fillets. What's not to love? And as Greenpeace has urged Aussies to substitute roo for beef in their diet to help reduce land clearing and the release of methane gas from farting cattle I feel that I can only be doing good by eating a bit of Skippy every now and then. Judging by the super cheap price of beef and the shelves and shelves and shelves of it in supermarkets Greenpeace and I are fighting a losing battle.<br />
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Australians are generally finding kangaroo hard to stomach - it would be like the British eating bulldog or perhaps lion and unicorn. Over here we can eat both the national symbols - emu is readily available as well.<br />
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Woolworths, our nearest crap supermarket doesn't stock kangaroo but Coles, our second nearest crap supermarket, does...(An aside: ALL Australian supermarkets are crap - how I long for a Sainsburys or a Waitrose. Somewhere where saying "Do you have any Bulgur Wheat?" isn't interpreted as swearing unnecessarily).<br />
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I digress. What do I like about Sydney this week? Still not a lot, which leaves me with the bloody obvious - Circular Quay.<br />
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Circular Quay. Where the Opera House is. Where the bridge is. Where the ferry terminals are. Where the Museum of Modern Art perches next to the Rocks, Sydney's oldest enclave. Where every tourist in the world comes if they come to Sydney. What they talk about when they say that Sydney is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. What they mean when they talk about world class Sydney. From where Oprah Winfrey is broadcasting to the world next week (and all Australians, including Julia Gillard, the Prime Minister, seem to have their tongues firmly lodged up Oprah's arse as a result: "Ooooh, the boost to tourism!").<br />
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Last night, Daniel and I met at the Opera Bar (spookily located next to the Opera House) for some fish and chips and a bottle of sparkling wine (unlike Australians I refuse to call sparkling wine champagne or vice versa). Here we are a couple of hours later.<br />
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It was infinitely preferable staring up into the pink-tinged sky to watch the flying foxes make their nightly exodus from the Botanic Gardens in search of food to watching the execrable fashions being paraded around the Opera Bar by Sydneysiders and their tourist friends. On the other hand, exclaiming and lamenting about people's dress sense was great fun. As was watching the inevitable slow decay of office workers' sobriety as the evening wore on and they, straight from the office, still hadn't managed a meal but had managed schooners full of beer or multiple bottles of chardonnay. The weeping, the swaying, the wailing, the high heels breaking, the make-up running, the suits crumpling. One man was so distraught he ran from the bar clutching his left ear and screaming.<br />
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In the midst of all these suits letting their hair down in the open air in one of the world's most beautiful harbours at the end of the week (it was Friday night, who can blame them) was a poor girl standing in front of a microphone apparently singing along to the music a DJ was playing. I'm not sure if she was extemporising over tracks that already had vocals or whether she was the vocals. Either way, you couldn't hear her for love nor money over the cacophony of 500 people liberating themselves for the weekend from the shackles of capitalism. Daniel and I munched away at our flathead fillets and chips whilst watching her mouth open wide and then shut, wide and then shut and her right hand perform funny actions at the side of her head which made her look like a rabbit grooming its ears.<br />
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Here's a gratuitous picture of the bridge and of the City because it was a particularly stunning sky last night and even my iphone with no flash camera managed to get something out of "one of the most beautiful sights in the world" (Oprah, copyright 2010).<br />
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And I'll leave you with two contrasting pictures of kangaroo. Goodnight.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ta5fWVBA_3Q/TQNH1Uv-XqI/AAAAAAAAAdE/YFGBwyNQbEA/s1600/IMG_3448.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Ta5fWVBA_3Q/TQNH1Uv-XqI/AAAAAAAAAdE/YFGBwyNQbEA/s320/IMG_3448.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ta5fWVBA_3Q/TQNH4T_13_I/AAAAAAAAAdI/Yk9lpX6h2i0/s1600/IMG_3216.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_Ta5fWVBA_3Q/TQNH4T_13_I/AAAAAAAAAdI/Yk9lpX6h2i0/s320/IMG_3216.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>Jonathan Cooperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14537000788048402943noreply@blogger.com3