The House(s) of Fran_mart

On Sunday afternoon Frances called out that there was a fox on the lawn.  Neither of us had cameras immediately handy, but Frances got hers a bit quicker than I did and here is the result. I hope the beast's sleek condition is due to dining on bunnies and not small birds! On Monday Frances called again, this time to alert me to the presence of a pair of Scarlet Robins.  It is, I think, impossible to have too many images of Scarlet Robins!

Following our visit to these towns we were wondering what people did to earn a living in the areas.  My friend Denis, living relatively close to the towns, provided some insights, noting a high level of retired folk and commenting on the tourism focus of Berrima. I thought one way of attacking this puzzle would be to see what the 2011 Census could tell us.  While Berrima, as defined as a State Suburb in the Census, has quite a small population of 600 that is enough for some broad analysis. My first avenue of enquiry was to look at the age profile of the two towns and compare this with NSW in total. The two towns are broadly similar to each other but very different to NSW.  This is shown most dramatically  by the low proportion of 20-29 year olds; and the high proportion of 60-69 year olds. For Bundanoon, the proportion of of 70-79 year old folks is also very high with the extreme shortfall extending to the 30-39 year cohort.   This is possibly the...

A few weeks back I posted about our first foray into the Southern Highlands on our "Towns of NSW" project.  We added a few more scalps to that totem pole today. As we set off in the Executive Jetta towards Berrima the Lake George basin was full of fog and the wind farm was completely still. The drive was uneventful, and we called in at the Gordon VC rest area to add that to our collection of War Memorials.  It was pleasing to find that after receiving his award in 1941 Gordon lived until 1986. All the way from Goulburn I had noticed Veteran/Vintage cars and trucks on the road.  Many were being transported on modern trucks but these were under their own steam leaving Berrima.  (I have had a small search round Google and have not been able to find an event the vehicles were heading for.) On getting to Berrima we parked beside the Park and, as it turned out, right beside the War Memorial.  They had obviously had  g...

This snip from Google Earth shows the Queanbeyan River snaking through the middle of the town (OK, I know it is officially a city, but part of its charm is that it has the feel of a country town).  At times of flood , which happen every so often , it cuts the town in two, largely because there are only 2 vehicular bridges across it and a big flood cuts them both. The centre of the town is a pleasant park with a fair sized lake caused by a weir (of which more anon).  The weir originally had a water supply function but is now 'just' decorative.  It is well supplied with ducks and is a  good place to see platypus. (I didn't see a 'pus today but a water rat Hydromys chrysogaster swam past.  It dived before I could get a photograph.)  I recorded 20 species of birds in total in the 45 minutes of this walk.  Carrying on South I got to the suspension bridge.  The original bridge was built early in the 20th Century to allow the nuns to cross the...

This is not going to be about Canadian currency !  It is a few snaps of the moon, known in Latin as luna, from which derives the word lunatic.  (It is interesting, reading the wiki related to that term, to contemplate whether electric lighting has altered the incidence of mental illness.  It is also interesting to think about whether the related increased nocturnal ambient light in big cities explains why there are so many crazy people in - eg - New York.) I digress.  Here are the pictures of the full moon on 25 April.  No particular insights from the images, they're just pleasant!

There is a fair bit of evidence around that things are happening on time.  We have a bit of Autumn colour (known as Fall color to a fair proportion of the readership) in the area.  I say "a bit" after watching a program about the conposer John Adams last evening which included some images of Yosemite in Fall;  thinking about the October view down Wolf Creek Pass (CO) when we lived in Colorado; and remembering the colours around New England and NYC when we lived there. I'll begin with a couple of maple leaves.  A pistachio on our lawn. This pin-oak is about peak value now: the leaves don't fall off until Spring but just hang on, dry and brown through Winter. In Inner South Canberra the trees in Telopea Park were doing their thing. Also seasonal, and sighted on the way back from Telopea, were soldiers practicising their stuff for ANZAC Day (25 April) at the Queanbeyan War Memorial. I am not sure if flowering Camellias are seasonal. ...