Looking back on 2011 ...

Climate is what we expect; weather is what we get.

Mark Twain

The Country is back for another visit

The second dust storm in a week is expected to hit Brisbane this evening, not as vigorous as the one that dumped the dust on Brisbane on Wednesday but it is passing over the same area and pushing wind in a similar pattern.

It gave Sydney a dust up earlier in the day. The thick haze is clearing in Sydney as it moves north-east, but health authorities say pollution levels are still hazardous.

click below for pictures of Sydney earlier in the day
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/gallery/gallery-e6frewxi-1225779816721?page=1
more pictures ...
http://www.news.com.au/gallery/0,23607,5060682-5007150-1,00.html

The day Country came to Town

(photo by Charlie Brewer - News.com)

It wasn’t wearing an Akubra or Cuban heeled boots and speaking in a slow country twang when it visited the City today. It wasn’t quiet and shy, looking up in awe at the skyscrapers it hadn’t seen before.

It didn’t come quietly in the night in the form of fresh fruit and vegetables, or fresh from the cattle’s hoof on the back of semi trailers and refrigerated vans or in a monster milk tanker.

It was wild and dirty and threatened all before it; giving the city slickers a tiny idea of what our country is really made of.

It travelled around 1500 kilometres to get there, gathering more on the way.

It came as a giant cloud of red dust from the far west of the state, brazenly, straight into the centre of the city, showing off to all who ventured out to see it.

Weather forecasters said the dust, from drought-ravaged western NSW, was propelled by a change from northern to southerly winds and believe it has been one of the worst duststorms to reach Sydney in seventy years.

I spoke to an elderly relative near Dubbo in western NSW and he said it was like a duststorm he recalls which came through in 1954 and as a child he and his siblings were put in their parent’s bedroom and knelt by the bed with their faces under the covers between the sheets so that they could breathe. They bred ‘em tough then!

Click on either of the links below for some photos...

http://www.abc.net.au/science/photos/?site=science&gallery=/science/photos/xml/09duststorms.xml

http://www.abc.net.au/news/photos/#id=2693741&num=15

...and click here for what the Sydney Sails looks like on a "good day".

http://smouldering-mushroom.blogspot.com/2008/10/google-sydney-opera-house.html

Will Irish Eyes be Smiling at Melbourne Cup 2008?

By this time tomorrow, will Irish eyes be smiling, or will there just be bloodshot eyes, red faces and lots of empty Irish Whiskey bottles?

I guess, in these austere financial times, the plebs in the carpark may have to settle for a Guinness or three to wash down their prawns, while they watch the race on the big screen.

The weather will probably have more effect on the parties in the carpark than the condition of the track, even though there has been discussion about that during the last week. Melbourne weather is renowned for it’s changeability, with the weather boys and girls predicting shattered scours, oops sorry, scattered showers, for the morning. I don’t think they would dare predict rain for the afternoon unless water was already a metre deep on the ground and the Yarra was overflowing its banks, ‘cause the punters might not come. It is mostly about money, you know.

The financial crisis may have caused Kerry Packer’s boy Jimmy to pull out of Millionaire’s Row this year, but frankly, I don’t think he will be missed. There will be plenty of other “tents” in there, with ladies tottering in their fashionable five inch heels, sipping bubbly and justifying the million dollar price tag for the sponsor.

One lady who will leave her heels in the kit bag for the race is Clare Lindop, who is riding a Bart Cummings pony, Moatize, in the big race. I guess that there won’t be any gentlemanly manners extended to her as they all approach the argy bargy of the home turn. It will be everyone for themselves.

With eight European horses expected in the line-up, those ponies from across the ditch * are almost to be considered locals, even if one has gone “all European” with a French name. I guess, however, it’s all in the game.

Ah well, maybe next year I’ll make it to the Birdcage, but tomorrow it will be a couple of horses in the office sweep, chicken and salad off a disposable plate and a short break while we gather around the TV to watch the race that stops a nation on the first Tuesday in November.

ps I like that Kiwi horse with the French name, but I don’t like the colour of his outfit.

*reference to the Tasman Sea between Australia and New Zealand

For a few more salient details about the history of the event, click below.

http://www.dinkumaussies.com/ICONS%2FMelbourne%20Cup.htm

Weather ... whether it will rain or not

At this time of the year, weather becomes a hot topic of conversation.

The beautiful dry season weather is drawing to a close, the humidity is rising, the overnight temperatures are rising and tempers are rising also. Not too radically yet, but by October, the month locally known as the month of the falling mango, or more colloquially as suicide month (because the weather does add to stress type symptoms for some), tempers will be seriously frayed. Even getting a parking space in the last shady space can almost cause road rage. Locals know that it will be April, and only then if we are lucky; before the weather is again perfect one day and fantastic the next.

Our local cartoonist has summed up the TV nightly weather broadcast (if the TV station broadcasts the local weather and not that for Tasmania, as we got a couple of nights ago) for the next couple of months, in one of his cartoons. On Wicking!

For more humour from the same gentleman click below:
http://www.wicking.net.au/

Oh yes, and to see the cartoon clearly, click on it to enlarge.

Cartoon © Colin Wicking