Pretty Polly

Here’s a couple of cheerful Sulphur Crested Cockatoos finishing up their breakfast on the verandah. They’re here every day at the same time screeching to be fed and, amusing and friendly as they are, they don’t half make a racket. In fact they are the noisiest creatures in the forest around here on the outskirts of Brisbane. Big birds they are too, a fair bit larger than a crow -
they can be quite disconcerting when they swoop down to say hello - and they won’t clear off until they’ve had their morning rations, this particular pair had first peck today but waiting not too far away are maybe another dozen more noisy so and sos all hoping to sweep up any remaining titbits.

G'day mate!

 Later on after the cockatoos drift  away looking for rich pickings  elsewhere other less assertive  ornithological delights come to the  breakfast table. This beautiful King  Parrot hops down from a nearby tree  bold as brass and touts for the odd  nibble. His slightly less red and  slightly less brave mate sits back up  in the tree closely watching to see if  he gets himself into trouble. So idly  sitting on the verandah watching out  into the woodland I'm not only able  to identify a plethora of different bird  species but also write an interesting  tale to accompany my photos, what a talent to have! 

The commonest and most colourful parrot to be seen here every morning is the Rainbow Lorikeet they appear in twittering droves hoping for any leftovers that the early birds have missed. All these lovely birds are found in abundance here less than 10 miles from the centre of Brisbane; however they can all be spotted throughout the environs even in the city centre at the Botanic Gardens. It's a twitchers paradise.

We're all pretty!

An Adelaide Stopover

Australia 2025 saw us take an initial dog-leg to Adelaide spending a few days in a new city (for us) before our onward journey to Brisbane. You could be forgiven for thinking that the photo here was taken somewhere like Sicily or Sardinia but it's at Largs Bay, a pleasant spot on the coast just outside Adelaide. The Largs Pier Hotel was built in 1882 and in it's early days was the first view that many immigrants saw of Australia after their long journey from Europe, the more well to do travellers undoubtedly spent their first night here. In the 1970's it was a lively music venue - AC/DC played here in their pub rock days! And it's matured into a grand and welcoming hostelry as we found out when we enjoyed fine food and excellent beer on a couple of occasions. We'd spent a few nights in central Adelaide exploring the compact city but then had a relaxing break by the sea in a well equipped AirBNB cottage round the corner from the hotel

Can the beak of a pelican hold more than its belly can?

For all those folk who fondly imagine Australia to be a land of warm weather followed by hot weather the South Australia coast in June would disabuse them of that misguided notion. It was COLD. Across from our cottage was the beach side boardwalk and on my early morning stroll I was astonished to discover that the wooden boardwalk slats were covered in frost! The chill didn't seem to bother the extensive birdlife - here oceanside of the boardwalkI came across a couple of scavenging pelicans who seemed quite tame. The famous Largs Pier, erected at the same time as the hotel frames the back of the photo.

On our first evening in Adelaide city we ventured forth out of our hotel to find thousands of people young and old all streaming in one direction, they were bedecked in black and white scarves and hats and were heading to the 50,000 plus capacity Adelaide Oval to watch Port Adelaide FC, the oldest Aussie Rules Football team in the country. Aussie Rules in the most popular sport in Australia and we were in the heartland of the game. The game involves a ball and 36 players running around a huge oval shaped pitch, there seem to be very few rules and plenty of mayhem. Despite the violence on the pitch the fans are generally well behaved and, as at Australian rugby and cricket games, they're allowed to drink beer and watch at the same time. Of course in order to provide pints of beer to thousands of punters in a short space of time novel serving systems are needed. I wandered over to the stadium the morning after the game and took this photo of one of the self-service bars just inside the gates - it's not just lager either, Stone and Wood's offering is quite a tasty light hoppy ale.

PS I knew that West End is a standard Aussie lager and had assumed that the drink on the far side was also an Australian style light beer but in fact it's 4.5% alcoholic lemonade - must be very refreshing if that's what takes your fancy!

Back to Oz

Rats beware

  Vermin appear to be somewhat of  a  problem down under. At Australia’s  bigger and brasher answer to B & Q, I  came across  the eradication aisle. All  the items visible in the photo are  designed to eliminate or exterminate rats  or  mice! This includes sonic killers,  electronic zappers, live catch traps  and  of course various very  effective poisons.  Further down  the aisle are specialties for  getting rid of a wide range of other  infestations. Cane toads are a  particular  problem in Queensland.These big ugly  things  are, at six inches long, the biggest  toads in the world. They were  introduced to Australia as a

Ribbet!

means of containing cane beetles which were plaguing the sugar cane fields in  Queensland. This wasn’t a very clever idea because cane beetles live at the top of sugar canes and the cane toads are very poor climbers! However these toads are very adaptable and they have proliferated to the extent that there are now around twenty cane toads for every inhabitant of Queensland. They are quite disgusting and will happily sit in the middle of a pile of dung waiting for dung beetles to come along to be snaffled by the lurking toad.

Rather large aren’t they!

I do like to be beside the Deeside

That's me!

Well I've been trying to upload new content to this blog for a couple of months without success but after lots of tinkering around I finally uploaded one photo so I might as well make some comments on it. This is me at the end of one of the Deeside Off-Road Thursday night race series. I'd not done any of these for eleven years so I thought I'd give it a go. 

It’s a four race series of weekday evening events on fine summer evenings, (well it does rain sometimes). For refuelling purposes there’s a very handy Wetherspoons pub a sort distance away.  And here’s the dinky over 70 trophy I won for completing three of the races! Can’t be bad 😎

Vicky meanwhile continues to dig in and accumulate different parkruns under her belt. The photo beneath is from the course at Ellesmere Port, one of our favourite away fixtures.

Well this posting worked after a lot of tweaking and messing around, I’ll post it and move on to the next catch up, wish me luck🍀. 

Cruising.

Warbling in Ohio

17 roller coasters!!

 So where would you go  if you were in Southern  Michigan and had a few  spare  days at short  notice? It had to be no  more  than a couple of  hours or so driving, and  by the shores of one of  the Great Lakes would  be nice. When I looked  at the map Sandusky,  Ohio looked just the  job, and  doesn't just  about everyone come  for Cedar Point, one of  the biggest amusement  parks in the world? We didn't and thank goodness it was still closed for the winter break although the forthcoming reopening was already being vigorously promoted, the hotels were being scrubbed up and prospective employees were queuing up for interviews for summer jobs. Sandusky is a pleasant lakeside town in its own right but the huge amusement park over the bay dominates the local economy. However at the end of April there are few visitors, we were able to find a lovely AirBnb cottage close to the centre of town.

Sandusky has quite a history, in the 1850's it was the last stop on the underground railroad for refugee slaves on their way to Canada and freedom. Local families would take them in hiding them from the authorities until they could be taken across the lake by boat. By the early 20th century the town was booming, freight trains from all over the Mid-West would bring vast quantities of coal and other goods for onward shipment from the huge docks. We visited the local museum to see a working model of the gargantuan coal loader which has been transferring coal from trains to ships for over 70 years. The industrial side Sandusky is all on the west side of town now and today it's a tidy town with wide streets and plenty of greenery, which seems to suit the large numbers of Canada Geese raising their young in and around the houses (we saw more than one chain of goslings following their parents and stopping the traffic as they crossed the roads.) 

We discovered a couple of local breweries peddling their wares in town, the closest, just ten minutes walk away,  was the Bait House Brewery. Based in a largish shack this fine brewery and restaurant was formerly a fishing tackle store and indeed has a fish oriented menu. However I ignored the lake perch sandwich and had a nice beefy burger accompanied by a hoppy Bicentenniel Ale brewed on the premises - fab! 

Our neat little cottage was on the east side of town and was a steady walk away from the Pipe Creek reserve right by the lakeside where bird watching is very much on the menu. We'd already seen plenty of interesting birdlife such as terns, waders, finches and even vultures but this was the time and place for spotting warblers! We were very lucky to be in town for the visit of thousands of American Warblers on their way from Central and South America to the vast forests of Canada. Having forsaken their wintering grounds for the northern summer, they traverse the US until they reach the Great Lakes, pausing for a breather before they set off across the water. For a couple of weeks they settle down in waves sheltering a places like Pipe Creek attracting the attentions of twitchers from all over North America. So what's the fascination? Unlike the rather drab warblers of Europe, where it's not easy to tell the different species apart, American Warblers (only distantly related to the ones we see back at home) are much more colourful as you can see. Around 30 different types of warbler pass through Pipe Creek in spring and autumn and the game is obviously to tick off as many as possible. Some of the watchers we met had rather expensive fancy looking binoculars and cameras, but yours truly was quite happy using pocket bins to spot just four different warbler birdies (not the four illustrated here but as soon as I sort some decent photos out I'll post them.)

USA via Iceland

 

Well we certainly didn't expect to be in Iceland in early May. However a hastily arranged trip to the US saw us booking flights with Iceland's national airline and travelling to Detroit via Rejkjavik. Not only is it a shorter overall flight time but it's a good price to boot. Our visit to Iceland consisted of a brief spell at the main terminal of the airport but that's enough to get a hint of what Iceland's all about. For example just half an hour's car journey from the airport is Grindavik and in the vicinity of this harbour town there have been volcanic incidents and seismic activity occurring for the past four years. In fact as we descended out of the clouds the pilot took delight in pointing out the plume of smoke emerging from the latest eruption. Grindavik currently has a population of zero as it was evacuated in November 2023, in addition to this I discovered that it's twinned with Penistone, South Yorkshire. I wondered about this connection and did some internet digging and found that both towns have (or did have) mountain rescue teams which seems to have something to do with it.

As I have indicated this wasn't a planned trip but on arrival we made our necessary visits in Michigan and then headed south to Ohio where, yes you've guessed it, we found a parkrun. This was an event in a nature reserve a few miles east of the fascinating lakeside town of Sandusky. The event director, also Martin, had come across parkrun in England near Southampton and decided to start his own one in the US, I'm not sure if he'd just misinterpreted something I'd said but Vicky was looking very puzzled in this photo. So Osborn Metropark parkrun was great, it was a low key affair with just 19 runners who mostly turned up about five to nine. Following a short briefing we set off along a green track into the distance. I was a little worried when I found myself in the lead but after about one kilometre the short athletic looking chap who'd been stalking me took off into the distance. So another possible first evaporated but I was happy with second place. 

Edmund Fitzgerald - down to a watery grave.

Vicky had travelled out a few days before me and had taken in the Canton Lower Rouge Trail parkrun, an even more low key event where she finished in third place behind our Lyndall who came in second! The trail runs along the Rouge River between Ann Arbor and Detroit, Michigan and further towards the city is the town of River Rouge. It all starts to get a bit industrial here and Rouge River was where the SS Edmund Fitzgerald was built, this ship capsized in a storm in 1975 and is the largest ship to have sunk in the Great Lakes area, perhaps the largest boat ever to have gone down in fresh water seas. By the way Edmund Fitzgerald was nobody particularly famous but happened to be the chairman of the ship's owners' board at the time.

And I couldn't resist including the Osborn parkrun facebook page which has us starting off on this very pleasant Saturday morning ramble. Vicky is hidden directly behind me and slightly further back in a pale coloured cap also mostly hidden, is the guy who caught up with me, ran alongside me for a while and then took off like a whippet.

County Towns of England Part 2

 

Church on Bridge.

Warwick was a stop off for us on the way home from Oxford. It's definitely a town, a county town no less. It's quite a grand little town with a fine extensive medieval castle, much visited by tourists who take lots of pictures of this very photogenic and much restored structure. The remains of the town walls include Eastgate and Westgate which for some reason that I have not been able to discover, have churches built on top of them! This photo is of Eastgate and maybe the congregation didn't enjoy worshipping above the street because St Peter's was only used as a church for about 150 years -from the 16th Century until around 15 years ago it was a school. You can now rent the building as holiday accommodation! And note the red pillar box standing between the pedestrian arch and what was formerly the archway for wheeled traffic which has been standing there since 1856.

Here's another 1856 pillar box in Warwick, this time at Westgate, where again there's a church (St James's) on top of the entrance arch. The two post boxes in question were among the first to be erected in Britain and are very rare examples of the very rare 'Doric' style named for its  fluted design as found on ancient Greek columns. Vicky was very happy because she was wearing her pillar box red shoes that day. Curiously despite not having a cathedral there is a Bishop of Warwick (or rather there isn't at the moment because the post is vacant.) The position is actually that of an assistant bishop (or suffragen bishop) at Coventry Cathedral. I know a little about suffragen bishops having met the Bishop of Oswestry earlier this year at a church in Northamptonshire - it's a long story which I'll maybe expand on another time.

And guess which new up and coming band are coming to Buxton this month. Just two weeks ago they'd released their first LP  'Please Please Me' and they were riding high in the charts (girls were screaming!) Of course this all happened 61 years ago in 1963 and that year The Beatles hit Buxton for a second time returning in October. That must have been fun, and quite a late one by Buxton standards as it was scheduled to finish a bit before midnight. How did they all get home, and who went to these early gigs? (And who remembers The Trixons?) Buxton is neither a county town nor does it have a cathedral but it is a rather special. In April 2024 we ourselves returned to Buxton for a long weekend involving pottering round Buxton Brewery pubs and generally re-exploring old haunts. We found this Beatles poster on the wall at our AirBnb, a handy apartment close to the Pavilion Gardens, handy because it was less than 5 minutes from the start of the Pavilion Gardens parkrun which turned out to be a pleasant saunter round the park on an early chilly spring morning.

Thanks for the photo Eamon!

County Towns of England Part 1

 

The centre of Oxford Town

Many of the county towns of England, such as York, Lincoln and Worcester, have actually been cities since time immemorial. So what's the difference between a town and a city? In the late middle ages, a new city would be created by royal charter, and it would generally have to have a cathedral. By the twentieth century things had started to become confused and we had towns with cathedrals and cities without cathedrals; some towns wanted to be cities to enhance their status and it eventually reached point the point where any old towns can apply to become a city. For example Milton Keynes, not much more than 50 years in existence anyway, became a city in 2022 as part of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee celebrations! The postcard here depicts Carfax in 1960, which is recognised as the centre of Oxford; in the early 1960's I passed by here every day on my journey to and from school. Apart from the pedestrianisation of many of the roads it has changed little since my day. The WH Smith's branch on Cornmarket Street is still there - I bought my copy of Sgt Pepper's there on its day of release - probably got a detention for being late.

Staying with the music theme in 1962, round about the same time I was on the bus to school going through the centre of the city of Oxford, Bob Dylan was recording one of his finest LP's which included a song entitled 'Oxford Town'. This had nothing whatsoever to do with my Oxford as it was actually referring to Oxford, a town in Mississipi, USA. The song was an account of the riot which broke out when the local university admitted their first black student. 

Girls on the RAZZ!

On our recent trip Vicky was visiting Oxford for a hen party to which I hadn't been invited, so I spent an afternoon rediscovering the backstreets with delight, albeit having to dodge a huge number of tourists from every part of the globe. The girls meanwhile hit the Oxford branch of Brown's Restaurant for a boozy lunch followed by Crazy Golf. I later picked Vicky up and, not having had a drop of ale all day myself, I took her into The Dewdrop Inn in Summertown about a mile out of the city for a pie and a pint - inside the main bar is a plaque proclaiming that this was the local haunt of Colin Dexter, the author and creator of Inspector Morse. 

That morning we'd run round the University Parks in a very busy parkrun - nearly 600 runners galloped three times round the cricket pitch where, in the mid 1960's, I watched Australia playing the university side on the way home from school. That's me hanging on behind the young lad in black, I wasn't quite sure how to pace things, I'd left my barcode at our hotel over a mile from the start so I ran through the finish and back to the hotel to retrieve that precious bit of plastic arriving back to have it scanned just as the final parkrunners were finishing - phew! So, looking back at this post I've described our day rather haphazardly and a little bit back to front but I think you'll agree that we'd packed quite a lot into one day! And at this juncture I'll return to my pondering of the fuzzy boundary regarding the distinctions between towns and cities. When I was young I'd always thought of Oxford as a town and the locals referred to it as a town (e.g. we travelled into the town centre). In fact the phrase 'Town and Gown' originated in Oxford following violent confrontations between students and townspeople back in the 14th century. Fast forward to the 21st century where the people of Reading, who presumably disgruntled that they'd failed to win city status on four occasion no less, have now produced road signs with 'City Centre' written on them! Does it really matter?

March Winds and March Showers

"Puff, pant..."

So there I was charging down the final hill at the British Masters Cross Country Champs at Rhug in Denbighshire. Just look at that lovely close cropped green sward that I'm floating across. The photo doesn't do it justice - 90% of it was a muddy quagmire and I felt as if I'd been running through treacle for the last half an hour! It seemed to be worth it as some time later, revived by a cup of tea and a large picnic lunch, I found that our over 65 team had come third to win some nice shiny bronze medals. Oh the memories will come flooding back in years to come when I show them to the great grandchildren. 

Put that bow and arrow away!

  The venue for this    years race was the  Rhug Estate which is a  12,000 acre farm and  manor house right by  the A5 on its way to  Holyhead. Travellers  flashing by on their way  to catch the Irish ferry  are likely to look twice  as they pass the  spreading pastures for,  having sailed past  plenty  of flocks of  sheep on the Welsh  hillsides, they are likely  to suddenly get a glimpse of a herd of American bison! The current Lord Newborough (a runner himself) has played host to national cross country events several times now and he enjoys welcoming runners and supporters who gather at the estate farm shop and cafe where the farm's organic produce can be purchased. Yes maybe I should have bought a couple of their bison steaks - maybe next time!

The Brewers House.

One week later we  were off to Northern Ireland to take part in the Hillsborough parkrun accompanied and cheered on by our Irish side of the family. Rather a chilly morning it was but over the weekend we were well entertained and fed and watered to a high degree. The pub in the photo is The Brewers House at Donaghmore. This place is over 200 years old and originally brewed ales for the locals, over the years it fell into decline and became a run down boozer. A few years ago it was revived as a pub/restaurant and now serves fine food as we can testify - we chased in convoy down twisty back lanes to find it and then we tucked into a grand family lunch. (I did hear a rumour that they were considering dabbling in the noble art of brewing once more but there was no evidence of this on our visit.)

Before the feed at The Brewers House - working up an appetite.

Shrews or Shrows?

A couple of months ago I uploaded a photo of the Catholic Cathedral of Brisbane as it might have been, the current cathedral had been deemed too small and in the 1930's a larger 4000 capacity edifice was designed which would have been the biggest church in the southern hemisphere. But due to a lack of funds (and the impact of the Second World War) it was never built. Just a few days ago we visited Shrewsbury Cathedral, a modest sized church that is depicted here. It's just that the spire and tower were never built not for want of money but because the ground was found to be too unstable to support such a structure, shame as it would have been a striking addition to the city skyline. Coincidentally this pleasant building was designed by Edward Pugin, whose father Augustus designed the chapel which preceded and still stands next door to, Brisbane Cathedral! So what do the locals say Shroosbury or Shrowsbury? Listenng to people in the city (and as we'd previously gathered form our discussions with other Salopians, it's Shroosbury (well you wouldn't call a shrew a shrow would you!) And the Shropshire Star conducted an online poll which overwhelmingly favoured Shroosbury as the accepted pronunciation, Shrewsbury being an affectation adopted by people form down south who don't know what they're talking about.

They wouldn't have called this one Paddy's Wigwam!

And here's another church - this one hardly got off the drawing board and only the crypt was completed. This would have been the fourth largest church in Christendom back in the 1930's but financial woes meant that the catholics of Liverpool would eventually have to put up with a more modest, (and futuristic) design now known by the locals as Paddy's Wigwam. The crypt still exists underneath the church and is the long running popular venue for the annual Liverpool Beer Festival.

Here's one of the finalists in the 1889 competition to design the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York. This enormous construction was, of course, in keeping with the bigger and better ethos of the city. A slightly less ambitious design was ultimately selected and construction commenced a few years late - and it's still not complete! The usual conditions applied - ground that was not solid enough to support the weight of the main tower, shortage of money and interruptions due to the constraints of various world wars. The local nickname for the building is 'St John the Unfinished'.

So, we've done parkruns in Brisbane and Liverpool but not New York, our most recent bit of parkrun tourism was Shrewsbury of course, a lovely route along the river bank in the city centre, Vicky's first in her new age category! Shrewsbury is notable for many reasons, Henry VII stayed there on his way to the Battle Of Bosworth Field where, against the odds, he defeated the Yorkist army once and for all thus ending the War of the Roses and establishing the Tudor Dynasty. He, unlike his son Henry VIII, only had one wife. Following our jog along the river bank we spent the morning pottering around the medieval town centre and came across a busker who'd been halted by the police on his way from John O'Groats to Lands End. Something to do with the fact that the piano he was pulling along wasn't roadworthy.

It's a long way to Lands End!

Footnote: there are estimated to be over 100 billion shrews in the worlds (definitely not pronounced 'show'!!) Here's a picture of one of them:

Looking very shrewd!

Not the Lake District but it's still Cumbria

Can you see what I see?

  If you follow the west coast of England   northwards alongside Lancashire and     then Cumbria the last town you will         encounter before reaching Scotland is     Silloth. It overlooks the Solway Firth       and faces some of the lowland hills of     Scotland just a few miles across the        bay. Unlike some of the other fairly         industrial towns of the Cumberland         coast Silloth is a surprisingly tidy and     well laid out little place, it doubles as a  neat harbour and a seaside resort. It's    not so touristy now and its heyday was    in the Victorian era when trainloads of    Carlisle workers would come over to      enjoy a bit of sea and sun although we    spotted a number of caravan parks on    the town approaches. We were up too    late to come and take part in the    morning's Silloth parkrun so we nipped    in to Maryport, near where we were staying, and did the parkrun there. But on the Saturday afternoon we trundled up to Silloth and took a walk along the very pleasant promenade. The photo is of me and Skip and 'The Big Fella'.

I saw it first!

We're well away from the big Lakeland hills near Gilcrux which is a pleasant village north of Cockermouth. Primarily we've come somewhere fairly remote to escape New Year fireworks - Skip is terrified of all the bangs, you know firework displays years ago were all about the visual display whereas now it's all about the noise, the louder the better! Cockermouth is a well preserved, modest sized, medieval town tucked away in rolling countryside at the junction of the Rivers Derwent and Cocker. Here Vicky was examining an interesting War Memorial display with some odd looking metal daffodils sprouting behind her. You'll also see a wall painting advertising Jennings Ales and behind that building is the fast flowing river.

Until very recently Jennings was the pride of Cockermouth; the large brewery sits in the shadow of the castle and, between the two of them, these buildings dominate the town. In 2005 the brewery owners sold out to the national brewery chain of Marstons based in Staffordshire. "Don't worry," they said "we'll keep the brewery brewing." But the cynics who said they'd heard that before were proved right in 2022 when the brewery was closed and production transferred to a mega brewery in the midlands, sad days indeed. In our very convivial pub which we ran for a while about 20 years ago one of the popular beers that I sourced for our regulars, many of whom were fell runners, was Jennings Fellrunner Ale a beer now consigned to history...... but, hold on, in a local store we spotted some Bowness Brewery Fell Runner Blonde, on our first night in the area we cracked open a couple of bottles of this refreshing brew and remembered past times. Long may Bowness Brewery thrive!

 

City Life in Australia

 

Welcome to the world of house moving Ozzie style. In most other parts of the world house movers move furniture. In the big burgeoning Australian cities such as Brisbane it can mean actually moving the house! Here's a nice Queenslander style property being relocated, quite possibly to a big field (or in Ozzie parlance a paddock) where it can sit with many other old residential buildings until someone comes along, likes the look of it and buys to one it to a pleasant countryside plot with a view. The home seller wins twice over because they have a lovely big plot in a desirable city centre location where a super duper extra large modern house can now be built where the old Queenslander used to sit. Or a developer can build a lucrative block of flats or office building.

Up, up and away!

 Here's another option, if you've bought  a fairly small single storey property in  the city there are plenty of people called  'House Raisers' who will happily jack up  your home onto something that might  look just like a pile of wooden pallets.  Room for more living accommodation to  be built below, maybe even a separate  apartment! Building regulations seem to  be pretty lax in Brisbane, raising the  height of your house also may well  improve the view from your bedroom  quite a bit, so what if it then obstructs  the view of the people behind you,  there doesn't seem to be much they  can  do about it! We saw one fairly  dramatic example of a house where  they'd dug down to give themselves    a subterranean double garage. And  Aussie garages have to be big in order  to  accommodate all those SUV's.

Even further up!

Of course if you want the best views in the city it pays to live near the top of the highest skyscraper in town. This is what you look down on from the 82nd floor of Brisbane's Skytower. To put it into perspective in the centre of this photo is St Stephen's Catholic Cathedral which is a good sized church building. To the left of it you can just about see a smaller building, this is St Stephen's Chapel completed in 1850; at the time there were very few permanent buildings in Brisbane and a mere 2000 folk lived in the city. In due course the chapel became a cathedral but was eventually considered too small for the rapidly growing populace, hence the need for a larger one which was built next door. Incidentally the chapel's architect was a gentleman by the name of Augustin Pugin who designed a number of 19th century churches of architectural merit in the UK (many of which we have been to in recent years!) An even bigger cathedral was designed in the 1930's, this was going to be the Cathedral of the Holy Name and was intended to be the largest place of worship in the southern hemisphere. They started with the crypt which was actually built but costs escalated and money ran out  - it might have been quite something though to judge by the drawings, the dome would have been 60 feet higher than that of St Paul's in London!

Room for 4,000!

Down Underneath

I can see all the way to LA!

Back in Australia we were based in Brisbane where all our lovely grandchildren live. For a treat we headed down over the Queensland border to the New South Wales seaside town of Yamba. This laid back resort is at the head of the Clarence River and in the nineteenth century the harbour needed a lighthouse to guide shipping into the port. A neat little structure was built and served the local sailors for 75 years whereupon a taller lighthouse was erected and a few years later the decommissioned lighthouse was razed to the ground. This must have upset the locals because they raised the money and with the help of teams of volunteers they rebuilt a replica of the original over a number of years. Here's me on a very hot day in my big hat  - you'll see the lighthouse now serves as the studio for the local radio station. No sign of ladies of the night though - apparently this was the spot for picking up girls selling their wares a century ago!

 

One of the requirements when choosing somewhere to stay was the presence of a parkrun and Yamba had a little beauty just a short walk from our apartment. Here's a shot of the parkrun volunteers at the end of the run including young Ted and his mother who were handing out finish tokens. The wonderful green machine on the left arrived while we were running and over the next hour or so was joined by several hundred other vehicles lining up for the Yamba Hot Rod Rally. 

A couple of blue hot rods.

To my mind a hot rod rally involves souped up old bangers racing noisily round a dirt track cheered on by raucous spectators. But surprisingly there was no racing, the drivers and passengers all parked up and spent the day chatting to each other - a thoroughly amiable social event it would seem. And the locals all got the chance to amble round to look at the gleaming cars and chat to the drivers.

And here's a yellow one!

And another green one, this time on the inside lane going home.

Delft Itself

A night on the tiles!

We've both visited The Netherlands many times for business reasons and for holidays but somehow we've missed out on Delft. It's a pretty little town with an old compact centre ringed by canals - in fact it's a bit like a mini Amsterdam. We stayed in a garret for three nights, well it was quite a roomy garret up three very steep flights of stairs overlooking a canal. It did the trick for us being a short walk from the train station, a short walk into the town centre and a slightly longer walk to the parkrun, our first in The Netherlands. Parkrun hasn't quite taken off yet over here but here there were around 60 runners and walkers trundling round a lovely green park,

Early morning stroll - don't fall in the canal!

 Heading to the left of our front door  and over the road took me along a quiet  canal side walk towards the Oud Kerk.  The Nieuwe Kerk (the New Church -  getting on for 400 feet of height in the  town square) is old enough and dates  from 1398 but the old one beats that by  a fair way. At that time most of the  tallest structures in Europe consisted of  church towers in what are now Belgium  and the Netherlands, the burghers of  Delft were keen that their church should  be on the list but when the tower was  over half way built it started to lean at  an angle, apparently they'd built on top  of an old in-filled canal. Undeterred they  built the remaining bit vertically and it's  stayed up ever since - but you can see  there's a kink in it. My photo shows it  leaning a little to the right. Just to pre-  empt any question about the Leaning Tower of Pisa, the Oud Kerk tower is about 50 feet higher. We went a bit gung ho on churches in Delft and also visited the ancient St Hippolytus chapel for a mass (in Dutch) and the larger and rather magnificent Catholic church of St Maria Jessekerk, which together with the Oud and Nieuwe churches is also in the top ten tall churches in South Holland.