Coast

Post #120 Sunday 26 January 2020 – The fires

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Sunday 26 January 2020

I can’t write much about the fires: the volunteers, climate change, the failure of political leadership and will, the animals, the forests. And it’s beyond me to do an “I will donate X% of my earnings in January” thing (which a lot of generous escorts are announcing on social media), I just don’t have “the spoons” as they say.

I have deep feelings of loss and I can’t say a lot about anything.

Here is a photo of the beautiful spotted gum forest on the South Coast – it will have been incinerated. I don’t think I can get myself to visit again any time soon.

Spotted gum forest on the South Coast with the fern-like burrawang cycads in the understory.

I spent many wonderful holidays on the South Coast where my grandparents bought a hobby farm when they retired.

Here are links to a couple of small wildlife rescue operations local to my new home, if you would like to donate.

1. Higher Ground Raptor Centre

https://www.highergroundraptors.com/

Peggy McDonald has been has been rehabilitating owls and eagles in the Southern Highlands for more than 40 years. This is her selfie with wedgetail.

2. Southern Cross Wildlife Care

https://www.southerncrosswildlifecare.org.au/

Howard Ralph works at a local hospital as a medical doctor to fund his life operating a volunteer veterinary hospital in Braidwood with his wife Glenda. No plans to retire.

I have been directly affected by the fires too. I’ve been told to evacuate by the local RFS four times now. (I did go promptly the first three times, the fourth time I dragged my feet). We will just have to see how February goes. It’s very dry, hot and windy. There are two fire fronts active close by: one to the South about 12 km away and one to East which has been as close as 5 km when it has been on the move. This is the fire map published on Friday evening:

The hotspots fire map on Friday 24 January 2020

It’s Australia Day though, so it’s barbeque time, and here is one version of the case to change the date (CW: this Youtube video is probably, as they say, entirely “off brand” lol):


A metaphor for unreconciled life in modern Australia – the shared house. For those who have never done it, “you’re not missing anything”*.
*Peter Sellers, The Party

xx MG

Post #117 Saturday 26 October 2019 – Whitsundays

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Saturday 26 October 2019

I am back from lovely holidays sailing with friends in the Whitsundays. I have an excellent tan to show for it. I actually didn’t want to come back. The South African guy at the charter yacht company was no help either, just suggested I read the book with the self explanatory title “Sell up and Sail”.

This was the outlook when anchored overnight in a place called Refuge Bay:

In the evening I could hear a slightly mournful bird call. At first it sounded like a dove but it was too insistent. It turned out to be a couple of pheasant coucals calling to one another. (Don’t ask me how I figured it out, it was intuition confirmed by internet searches.)

The call: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lluJIiLuuFg

Here are some images of the bird itself which I borrowed from Google:

Flying … (this type of feet first flying, good for short distances only)

I put this second image in because it has the fence wire for size. I have actually seen these birds and I can warrant they are concurrently large birds and small dinosaurs.

The “sell up and sail” caper is something I like to enjoy vicariously these days by watching youtube channels. My favourite channel is one called Free Range Sailing. It’s a youtube vlog maintained by an Australian couple who are cruising in a very modest yacht, mostly in tropical waters. Apart from the sailing, they do quite a bit of free diving on the reefs, spearfishing and exploring on shore. Pascal is a very good and resourceful cook. She also seems to be the creative lead in making the vlog – which is high quality well edited video. Her partner Troy is an excellent hand at keeping their 30 foot 50 year old yacht on track and in shape. He seems to handle the inevitable breakdowns of gear in good form and has a droll sense of humour. They are of course, “free range” so it all appeals to my tree hugging temperament. You aren’t going to find them zapping around churning up the peace of the natural world on jet skis any time soon. Highly recommend! And here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbU2ulPD3rJ4OZCNH7-gjjQ

xx MG

Post #113 Sunday 23 June 2019 – Pretty Balmoral

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Sunday 23 June 2019

The lovely thing about Sydney, well there are many but this is also one of them, is that even when it is overcast it can be very pretty.  

I was at Mosman last week during the week, a bit of an event because I don’t go over the Bridge so much these days.  Afterward I dropped down from the steep ridge that Military Road follows, to the pretty harbour beach, Balmoral (surf beach for the under threes).  I had a nostalgic and quality fish and chips from the Bottom of the Harbour fish and chip shop, which I think has been there about 20 years, loyally taking cash only and reminding some of us of scandalous tax avoidance schemes from the days of when…

It was an overcast day.   A steady number of citizens walked their dogs along the foreshore.  I have always liked the somewhat art deco style of the concrete foreshore walkway, complemented by the little bridge across the isthmus which you can just see at the end of the beach here in one of my afternoon snaps.

Bottom of the Harbour – tax schemes from the past

MG xx
Both sides of the Bridge

Post #94 Sunday 8 July 2018 – Favourite local walks

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Sunday 8 July 2018

I have a couple of favourite walks I do between commitments and just to unwind.  Because I am so central in Kings Cross I am spoilt for choice.  Yesterday I took two photographs: one of the foreshore walk that I take down to the Opera House, and the other of a typical back street walk I do through Paddington.

Lots of tourists enjoying themselves!  Even more of them I think, because it’s school holidays.  I am regularly asked to take photos for visitors, not everyone has a selfie stick.

And a somewhat wintery vibe in my typical back street Paddington walk – which is generally quite a deserted walk save for the odd dog walking local.

MG xx

Post #73 Sunday 11 February 2018 – A small road trip

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Sunday 11 February 2018

I did a small road trip down to Dapto last weekend.  I stopped at the spectacular Sea Cliff Bridge at Coalcliff – which is on the rail line down to Wollongong.  Here is my tourist’s picture postcard shot:

Isn’t it beautiful?

And here is a clever piece of graffiti coming straight out of the cliff face:

You can see there is a black horizontal seam of coal in the cliff face.  The painted train is running along the coal seam railway tracks.

There were loose lumps of coal lying all around the base of the bridge, right down at the water’s edge, all from this seam.   I have never seen anything like that.

I was in Dapto on business (and no, it was not the Dapto dogs 🙂 lol).  My business was to visit the owners of a block next door to my little acre on the edge of the Southern Highlands, who happen to live in Dapto.  The long and the short of my discussions with them is that I now have access to an additional half acre and it will be called the Orchard Block – self explanatory name really.  Some apple trees and other fruit trees will be planted on this block, under a netted structure to protect against the birds and the possums – not really a greenhouse but like a greenhouse.  Watch this space… 🙂  Next week an excavator – man and machine – is coming to make good the bumpy little road on the existing acre, and I will ask the operator to also look at doing a small job levelling part of the Orchard Block for the “greenhouse”.  It’s a time of great anticipation at MG HQ!

And although there has been a bit happening, I have managed to maintain a calm, so I hope that all of you are in fine form too.

Yours ever MG xx

 

Post #55 Sunday 29 October 2017 – Rifle range dogs

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Sunday 29 October 2017

Even my first post was about a part of the coast on the south side of the harbour bridge.  So here is another post in that same tradition, this time about a favourite surf beach at Maroubra, South Maroubra in particular.

Earlier in the year, about August, I visited this favourite beach and took some snaps of the surf and sky after a spectacular storm and swell.  Here are some of the photos, the first looking to North Maroubra showing the crashing surf on the cliffs there:

This second one is also looking to North Maroubra, but it includes a surfer for scale:

I am also including a photo of the well known rifle range on the headland at the South Maroubra, you can see the series of targets set up in the distance here:

In the scrub on the headland round the rifle range there used to be a tradition of abandoned dogs inhabiting the rough terrain.  They came to be known as the rifle range dogs and were a distinctive type of dog, long legged, low haunches, solid colours, howling as often as barking and making excellent guard dogs.  There was a time apparently when they were relatively common pets in the eastern suburbs.   I only ever got to know one of these rifle range dogs, and it was quite a while ago.  His was a large hound called Bernie and he belonged to a notary public who lived near Bondi Junction.  He had a very distinctive musical yowl which he used more than he did bark.  Once he had determined you were friendly and here to do business he just flung his enormous frame into his bed and relaxed.  So here is an article from the Sydney Morning Herald 1957 addressing the phenomenon of the rifle range dogs, here called the wild dogs of Malabar (as Malabar meets the south headland of Maroubra).

And here are two final gratuitous images of the surf with surfers and the lovely sunset sky at South Maroubra in August.

In praise of all the great things on the local coastline,

MG xx

Post #53 Friday 27 October 2017 – Melbourne, Canberra and Parsley Bay – part 2

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Friday 27 October 2017

I did a short excursion to another beautiful beach on the eastern suburbs shore line.  This time to  Parsley Bay in Vaucluse.  There are old family photos showing I was brought here as an infant but I have no recollection.  The only thing I recall as a child, is the netted harbour pool at Redleaf Woollahra, a few inlets over from Parsley Bay.  It was a very scary thing to be taken, as a very small person,  to the inky deep end of the harbour pool netted off from the _sharks_ – one cannot quite forget the horror of it!

Here is Parsley Bay, with its footbridge, looking dazzling when I visited:

And this image goes some way to showing that lovely emerald green the harbour goes.  The shadows have a violet touch when they fall on the green:

And here was also a very senior looking water dragon basking on the sandstone:

It’s a lovely series of sunny photos to post – especially as today is so grey and rainy by contrast.

yours ever,
MG xx

 

 

 

Post #24 and a half – Saturday 22 April 2017 – swimming in the evening

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Saturday 22 April 2017

There was swimming later in the day but no real sleep beforehand (as I had hoped).
The water was warm the way the sea gets warm in the evening.  The white on the waves was luminous.
Must only swim in the evening.

 

Lovely sunset Northern Beaches view.

And after we had recovered from the waves my girlfriend and I had sangria and tapas outdoors at one of the busy little restaurants on the promenade.

Signing off for real this time,

MG xx

Post #4 Tuesday 11 October 2016 – Burleigh Head, the Gold Coast

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Letters from America
These letters are my glamorous aunt’s posts on her adventures and her life and times as a
♦ mature Sydney escort ♦

Post #4 Tuesday 11 October 2016 – Burleigh Head, the Gold Coast

pines-on-11-october-copy-2It is my birthday!  And I spent a overcast afternoon on a lovely beach at Burleigh Head.  These are the  Norfolk pines that stand behind the beach, and the gathering clouds above them.

Toward the end of the day I suddenly got famished (I had a version of that enormous appetite the surfers get).   We rushed up to the local club which was just next to these trees, signed ourselves in and bolted down some piping hot chips with cold dry cider.

Then we headed home for warm showers.

We had the best place to stay for the break away: two rooms and a huge eating and living area with balconies and windows all around, and two bathrooms one with a bath (so that one is for me).   And all of this just 2 minutes from the beach.  We had booked only when we got to Coolangatta airport and searched the internet.  Hahaha I love doing things that way.

Here is the view from the balcony looking north to the Gold Coast:

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Here is the view from the balcony looking south to Burleigh:

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Later on my birthday we went to dinner at an excellent fish and chips place where they only had plastic cutlery and salt in little packets and the fish was great  – I had beer battered whiting.  On the wall of the fish joint there were many historic photos of fishing in the area including photos depicting fishing triumphs of the original owner of the fish place.  In one photo the bounty was incredible –  the catch spread out and covering a great area of the dock where the fish were sorted and got ready for freezing.

There was one very strange photo showing men and women on a lookout on the beach aiming rifles out to sea.  The caption read “Shooting sharks following whales”.   I never heard of a shark following a whale.  The only occasion of sharks and whales I ever heard of was in  Moby Dick.   Those sharks were interested in the dead whales that were strapped to the sides of the whalers.  Melville’s sharks were called  “drilling sharks” – a macabre invention if it was a literary device.

xx MG

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Post #1 Sunday 25 September 2016 – La Perouse Congwong Beach

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The adventure this morning to La Perouse was lovely.  It has always been a favourite place in Sydney.  I collected my car yesterday from the repairer where it has been forever.  So to celebrate its’ liberation, I took the car for a spin.  It rained a little – just enough to make the colours on the sandstone at Congwong beach warm and rich.  I had a few snaps taken and took more myself.  I have included some here as people ask me for  photos (there will be more posted in due course, just snaps in the meantime).  This is your glamorous aunt being very casual in sneakers and pony tail.

la-perouse-065-copyMG doing sneakers, September 2016
la-peruse-054-copyMG doing a contemplative pony tail thing, September 2016

And here is a picture of some of the sandstone we saw.  I have included this image because it reminds me of the paintings of Kimberley aboriginal artist Paddy Bedford.  I am very partial to the idea that the painter can change the way you see.  You no longer see a palm tree, you see a Brett Whitely palm tree.

In this instance, in the image just below,  I can’t look at the pattern on this rock without “seeing” Paddy Bedford’s record of an ancient songline  retelling some vision of relationships, landscape and history.  If you can’t see that kind of significance in the sandstone well that is _O_K_ 🙂  You can leave the aesthetic divining to your visionary glamorous aunt 🙂 🙂 🙂

bedford-25-09-2016-copy

And an example of Paddy Bedford’s painting:

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And this is a randomly lovely wedge-shaped piece of pink sandstone:

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xx MG