Earth Hour 2009 - 28 March

At work, we will start on Friday 27 March through the weekend. At home, 28 March Saturday from 8:30 till 9:30 PM.

According to our associate director, "In 2008, NSI [Northern Sydney Institute] reduced its electricity use by 5% on 2007 levels . That’s a saving of 927 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. We also purchase 6% of our electricity from renewable energy sources, saving an additional 1,012 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. We want to improve on this in 2009."

See Earth Hour 2008 posts here and here.

Bondi Beach and Sculpture By The Sea

Bondi Beach with the Bondi Pavilion in the background.

For Australians there is nothing more iconic than beaches; and Bondi beach is one of them. During the 1900's, the beach became associated with health, leisure and democracy - a great equalizer where everybody can enjoy themselves free from the rigidity of social class.

Bondi beach became very popular mainly due to the close proximity to the Sydney Central Business District (CBD); about seven kilometres east of the city. It is a kilometre long and shaped like a moon crescent.

Some believes the name was derived from the Aboriginal word meaning "water breaking over rocks or noise of water breaking over rocks. While the Australian Museum records that Bondi means "place where a flight of nullas took place". [1] But the fact remains that before European settlement, Bondi and the surrounding areas were inhabited by the Eora [the people] Aboriginals due to the significant rock carvings in the area.

Every October, Sculpture by the Sea - an arts event occur on this beach stretching as far back as Tamarama beach. Above is one example of an outdoor inspired sculpture, taking Bondi and its surrounding beaches as background.

More sculptures at Tamarama beach.

See last year's sculptures: Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains

Above is my attempt to capture part of the Blue Mountains in a 180-degree panoramic photo. I took about six or seven pictures [hand-held] and used Canon's Photo Stitch program to seamlessly combine into a panoramic view.


The World Heritage listed Greater Blue Mountains Area is about 10,000 square kilometres and consisting of seven National Parks and one conservation area. It is located about 50 kilometres west of Sydney metropolitan in the state of New South Wales. "Consisting of a sandstone plateau, the area is dissected by gorges of up to 760 metres in depth, and has high points up to 1,190 metres above..." [Source: Wikipedia].

The name Blue Mountains came to be for the obvious reason that when seen afar, the mountainous range has a bluish-green-greyish tinge. Some believe that it is because of eucalypt oil given off by the eucalyptus trees or by light reflecting off the eucalypt leaves that populate the area. Another explanation is that it is caused by ultraviolet radiation scattering and filtered by particles in the atmosphere, similar to differing colours of sunsets.

One of the major attractions is the Three Sisters rock formation near Katoomba. Like most rock formations, they were created by erosions. "They" have Aboriginal names: Meehni [922 metres], Wimlah [918 metres], and Gunnedoo [906 metres], and according to some "quarters" the legend goes this way:

"The Aboriginal dream-time legend has it that three sisters, 'Meehni', 'Wimlah' and Gunnedoo' lived in the Jamison Valley as members of the Katoomba tribe.

These beautiful young ladies had fallen in love with three brothers from the Nepean tribe, yet tribal law forbade them to marry. The brothers were not happy to accept this law and so decided to use force to capture the three sisters causing a major tribal battle.

As the lives of the three sisters were seriously in danger, a witchdoctor from the Katoomba tribe took it upon himself to turn the three sisters into stone to protect them from any harm. While he had intended to reverse the spell when the battle was over, the witchdoctor himself was killed. As only he could reverse the spell to return the ladies to their former beauty, the sisters remain in their magnificent rock formation as a reminder of this battle for generations to come."

Some quarters belie this legend as the creation of modern tourism industry and not Indigenous Australian legend as such. What is certain is that due to further erosion, the Three Sisters would crumble and be no more in perhaps another millennium or so.

The series of photos were taken at Echo Point at the town of Katoomba. One can see the enormity of the formations, seen above; the people climbing and crossing the bridge to one of the first Three Sisters and compare that to the second photo above. The experience can be likened to seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, except that these are populated by trees!

This is just a couple of attractions in these parts, not to mention the Jenolan Caves [a series of caves with wonderful calcite formations.]; and The Wollemi National Park, which "... contains the only known wild specimens of the Wollemi Pine (Wollemia nobilis), a species thought to have become extinct approximately thirty million years ago, but discovered alive in three small stands in 1994."

Double Sydney Icons

Anyone who has been to Sydney [I will limit to my icons, what I think to be icons that I have personally seen and visited!], would definitely agree that these two structures are most widely seen as the ultimate Sydney icons! Have a quick look at your old Aussie postcards and most likely one of these will be in it!

Quick info regarding these two icons:

Sydney Harbour Bridge - is the older of the two structures which opened in 19 March 1932. Also known affectionately as the "Coat hanger" due to its uncanny resemblance to a coat hanger. Nowadays there is a company that offers a "bridge climb" to the apex of the bridge. I have not done it myself but I would one of these days. There are also footpath or pedestrian sections as well as train lines straddling the bridge. Click here for more detailed information regarding the history, statistics, etc. about the bridge [great old photos as well].

Sydney Opera House - is a World Heritage Listed icon that was borne out of an open ended worldwide design competition won by Danish architect, Jørn Utzon in 1957. The building was built in three stages from 1959 till 1973, with cost overruns and full of personality problems between Jørn Utzon and New South Wales politicians. Two great resources are the Opera House web site and Wikipedia article.

Above photo was taken from Mrs Macquarie's chair, near the Sydney's Royal Botanical Gardens.

Aussie Icons

Bus stop, Newtown

January is always a busy month for Aussies, especially Sydneysiders.

Obviously one starts with New Year and the famous Sydney fireworks' display around the Sydney foreshores.

Then on with the three week Sydney Festival [10-31 January], "a rich program of around 80 events involving upwards of 500 artists from Australia and abroad covering dance, theatre, music, visual arts, cross media and forums."

While this is going on, there's Australia Day, traditionally celebrated on 26 January as a National Day for most Australians. This is a very recent national holiday celebrated nationally but for the Aborigines - the traditional people of this island continent; find the date offensive. For them, the date symbolizes the start of first European settlement of their homeland.

On or about this is the Australian Tennis Open [19 January - 1 February], unfortunately for the home crowd there's no Australians in the quarter finals for both the men and women divisions.

Almost forgot the ever present, Chinese New Year!

In this series, I will try to provide and show some Aussie icons which make up the national psyche in honour of this busy and important month.

I am scanning everything

Last of the kundol

"Last of the kundol", since I ate the last of the pack of candied wintermelon or kundol in Tagalog. Original scanned at 300 dpi [Canon LIDE20], no background except for the white scanner cover. Below is the same kundol with a black background.