Slightly more about Cooks River than you probably expected.

 It is a presumption that the Cooks River is in fact Cook's river; the "pleasant stream" that he thought would water a new colony and which had effectively vanished when the First Fleet arrived. It seems a perfectly reasonable assumption, but the foreshore in the 18th century was extremely swampy so other watercourses may have temporarily existed. I haven't myself checked, but I assume that it's perfectly possible to exclude the other major rivers (Georges & Hacking) based on Cook's log. The Georges river looks like a much better bet for a colony to me; it's significantly larger.

The internet disappoints with Cooks River information; Canterbury City Council website has the best potted history; Marrickville City Council is the current home of the activist community groups driving a lot of the reclamation activities. The photo above is looking upstream (west) from the Illawarra Rd bridge. On the right bank, a little bit further around the bend, is the golf course. The left bank features a broad cycle/pedestrian path running to Canterbury & is a popular recreation spot. There's a lot of dense accommodation in Marrickville & the public space is well used. I don't know if it's possible to enlarge this photo (*it is - double click on it), but it's possible to make out the tops of the concrete banks that define the (artificial) current course of the river. There have been many engineering efforts imposed on the river over the years - these banks date from the 30's, so far as I can work out.

Heading East, i.e. downstream, this handsome former railway bridge has been taken over by high pressure oil/gas pipelines. It's possibly not at its best in this picture; on Sunday AM it looms up suddenly in the gloaming (can you have gloaming in the AM & if not, what is the dim pre-dawn/post-dawn ambiance  called?*) just at the start of the regular run when everyone is still feeling fresh enough to appreciate it.
[* Dawn, apparently. Twilight possible but obsolete for the AM. Gloaming is strictly PM]

A lot of work has gone into replanting the banks in the last fifteen years; it didn't look this good when we moved here.

 

 This escarpment is on the left hand side of the path of from which the above picture was taken. The escarpment runs continuously all the way to Tempe, where it stops suddenly at the Princes Hwy (possibly the effect of dynamite). It emerges from the spur on which Marrickville Rd. runs - well, "spur" may be a little grandiose. Anyway, Sydney sandstone, in its native state. (I took this while actually moving, so it's not entirely in focus)

Due to the wonders of perspective, here we see the Bayview St bridge in the foreground - rather an optimistic name, although the street does actually start climbing up the Bardwell escarpment so once there may have been an actual, as opposed to a real estate agent's, bay view - and a brand new train crossing the railway bridge in the background, maybe half a kilometer away.

There's been a lot of high density accommodation (beyond the train) approved along the Princes Hwy & Marsh St (Airport Drive). Still, through the trees and across the river, it doesn't seem too ugly.

Same bridge, different angle. The Canoe Club was either founded by, or served as a stamping ground of, Paddy Pallin. I thought it was just a brand name for outdoor gear, but no, it's also the name of an Australian "adventurer". It's still active, although one, not very, and two, mainly with kayaks not canoes. Liz and I have launched from here, but never seen anyone else on the river. In fact, in several months of running along here, I've seen one kayak. It's a waste. There is  a monthly kayak trip, apparently, organised by the Wolli Creek Supporters Association, but I don't think it can be very popular.

This is the Wolli Creek entrance; there's plenty of reclamation/greening going on along it as well. There's a lot of pleasant parks, integrated quite well with the ends of residential suburban streets. Eventually it turns into some pretty wild/untamed/natural bushland vegetation which makes for good cross-country running. On the left is the railway bridge which previously featured the train. It's low tide, perhaps not the most picturesque time of day.

This is Tempe station, which I haven't quite captured photographically as I see it in my mind; it needs a wider angle lens to get in the twin footbridge accesses and a car eraser to eliminate the foreground (which isn't usually there at 6:30 am on Sundays). In the nineteeenth century this would have been a busy weekend station as the Cooks River was, at that time, a major boating & bathing destination. Letters to the editor were penned indignantly in the 1870's protesting at the nude bathing. Hence, "rude colonials", I presume.

Just past Tempe station, you can almost see (I could see, in real life) the incoming tide meeting the current to give this extra frisson of turbulence - it's normally a very, very placid river. You can see the mangrove roots in the mud on the far side; at low tide the swamp smell, in places, is pretty noticeable.

Low tide - I don't think I've ever seen this island before. The view is to the south west; it's pretty remarkable that in the inner suburbs there is a view so unobstructed by human constructions. In some ways the above pictures over-represent the built; up to here the overwhelming impression along the river, walking, running, riding, is of a natural - managed, but natural - environment. That's about to end, because we're coming up to the Princes Hwy bridge.

The bridge (not worth a picture) marks the end of the "old" Cooks River. Past the bridge the banks become straight lines, mainly (I assume) as a result of the airport building, one side effect of which was moving the mouth of the Cooks River 1.5 kilometers south.

To wit: one airport building. To my right out of picture is the rowing club - I may have only seen one kayak, but I've seen NO rowers - I guess this might have been the major recreation reserve of the 19th century. It's difficult to see where else they would have fitted a lot of people, and it's a trivial 19th century walk to Tempe station. The bridge in the background is Airport Drive. I have an idea the building is the new international terminal parking lot. Channel markers mark a channel for the power boats that use this as access to Botany Bay. Again, I've only ever seen one boat using it. Mind you, most of them aren't "toy" boats & professional fisherman keep very uncivilised hours.

This is the companion (north-facing) view for the previous picture. That's the marina for the fairly serious - small, but well used - fleet. If you use your imagination you can see the city to the left.

No more mangroves, it's the Sydney rock oyster. Mind you, no-one is eating these, no matter how hungry they are. Nobody knows, or, no-one is admitting, how polluted this water is, but even though some people are brave enough to fish in it, no-one has ever been seen harvesting the oysters.

There's a crab in this picture (possibly more than one) if you look hard enough.

Posts about nothing (1)

Something of a trope, the signpost picture, although they do come in different flavours. I walked daily past one in Melbourne for many years, "Melbourne/Sydney/Carlton", amusing both because it conflated a small suburb with two large cities, but also because, at the time, Carlton was a bigger place for my life than either of the other two places; Sydney too far and Melbourne too dispersed. This pictured signpost has something of that remembered one, a suburb, a city, a state, although that's not why I took the photo.

Another popular signpost photo is the "remote-place-many-cities" signpost, an artefact designed, really, as a parody of a signpost (which more usually provides information used to orient oneself on a journey) to identify one's current location relative to the rest of the world. Again, this picture has a whiff of that - it's in Marrickville - but the orientation for Edinburgh & Victoria aren't quite right, and again, that's not why I took the picture.

I noticed when I first arrived in Sydney that no-one gave directions with street names. All Sydney navigation is done with landmarks. After a while I realised this is because Sydney street signs are pretty hit-and-miss; if they exist at all, they're quite likely to be covered by tree. Another popular technique is to allow the sign to rust to the same colour as the surrounding brickwork so that a forensic X-ray is required to distinguish one from the other. Well, rust is inescapable in Sydney. Another feature of the Sydney street sign is the bewildering array of styles; it's not possible - OK, I really mean not sensible - to train one's eye to pick out - say - white writing on a green background. That would give less than a 1 in 10 chance of identification. Black on white, maybe another 10%. It just makes more sense to use landmarks. Or GPS.

Another feature of the Sydney streetscape that renders street names not as useful as might be expected is the propensity streets have to either change their name halfway along for no apparent reason, or alternatively retain the same name through right-angle turns and reverse hairpins. I've been told Sydney's road system makes sense if you think like a bullock; it certainly doesn't make sense to me. I wonder if a bullock is cheaper than a GPS? Maybe I could get a cow instead of a new car.

This street sign marks the point where Enmore Rd., having taken a right angle (left) at the Warren View Hotel and swept down the hill into Marrickville from Enmore, transforms into Victoria Rd. I've known about this name change for years, but I only recently noticed this memorial to the point where it happens. I had assumed it was a gradual metamorphosis, lost in folklore. Not so.

And there's more. You might think this sign marks a three-way intersection, but what it really does is conceal the fact that the fourth road "in play", as it were, is the continuation of Victoria Rd, turned into a one-way blind turn local traffic back street by some significant engineering of gutters & pavements. Once, it turns out, Enmore Rd was a minor little offshoot leading up to the minor settlement of Enmore, and Victoria Rd was the main road, sweeping from Marrickville to - well, if aerial photography holds the answer, absolutely nowhere. Nowhere, being, in this case, the Marrickville Metro, which is (no actual research done to support this) a much more recent development than either Victoria Rd or it's re-engineered intersection with Enmore Rd.

Not a street sign at all, then, more a signpost to a puzzle. Two puzzles; why was Victoria Rd built, and when did it lose its prestige?

Marrickville Metro is on the site of Vicar's Woollen Mills, which survived from 1893 to 1979. From that, you could hypothesis that Victoria Rd served as some kind of access to the mills, but the other end terminates in a  270 degree dogleg, nowhere in particular. Well, nowhere now, anyway. It's true the termination is close to a railway, but Vicar's itself is closer to the railway nearer to the city (i.e. on a section more likely to have been opened early). That strange dogleg termination is halfway between the current Marrickville and former Marrickville (now Sydenham) stations. I suppose it might have been a freight siding.

In an aerial photo from 1943 the intersection of Enmore and Victoria roads is a very handsome triangular intersection, with central grass plot. Equal weight is given to both legs of Victoria, as well as Enmore. So at least I can say that the "localisation" of Victoria Rd at the Metro end is post-1943, and the integration with Enmore Rd pre-1943.

Sunday Run (1)

Endomondo Running Workout: "was out running 17.04 km in 1h:40m:13s using Endomondo."

If the above link works it will take you to a map generated by a free internet service (the "Endomondo") that connects with the GPS in my mobile phone to keep an automatic record of my running. I don't use it all the time - because I mainly run laps of the the local oval - but it's good for the "street" runs because otherwise I would have no real way of measuring speed & distance. You can see the odd bits of doubling back - near Tempe station because the underpass floods at high tide, and the other off the Princes Highway where we tried to take a shortcut through St. Peter's cemetery. Perhaps unsurprisingly the only way out was the way we came in. Sydney manages its old cemeteries completely differently to Melbourne. Sydney allows them to return to parkland, stonework & all. It's a - surprisingly - nice ambience.

For the rest, it's quite striking how much running you can do through parkland, even around the airport. The planes pass teeth-rattlingly close overhead; it's probably possible to count the grooves in the tyres, if they have grooves, which I guess they wouldn't, since braking is their main purpose. Next time I'm out I'll check. Council has spent/is spending a lot of money on foreshore reclamation and shared bike/pedestrian paths. I'm a bit out of sympathy with the latter, but they are better than nothing & early on Sunday there's not much sharing required.

Another benefit of running around is that I'm developing a feeling for how the area fits together, something I don't get from inside the car. I don't really have a sense of direction; Liz can visualise where she is in relation to places she knows even when she is somewhere she hasn't been before - I can't. It's all completely new to me, if it's even vaguely off the beaten track. I'm quite capable of getting lost within a kilometer of home, but all the running is starting to help me to fit it together. Soon I'll have to be 5 kms away before I'm at risk of being lost!

This isn't the most scenic run that I do (in conjunction with another serious runner who provides the navigation). There's another one along the Bardwell valley that's almost 100% bushland. The last time we ran it was after a week of heavy rain and all sorts of unexpected waterfalls had appeared. Hard work, but good for the soul. They're hard runs anyway because of the hills. I'd like to carry a camera, but it just isn't practical to run & take pictures. Mind you, the technology is getting there. I accidentally videoed my feet with my phone a month ago.

It was much better quality than you might expect. It might be possible to run with the lens pointed in the right direction and get interesting shots; if there was a burst-mode still function it would be better than video. Generally burst mode only runs to about 10-12 pictures in cheap digital cameras, but with the 1600 ASA equivalent most of them get the sharpness would probably be OK. Still, between carrying water, GPS, keys, a camera just seems like the one thing too many.

One of the reasons for carrying a camera is that there are some really unexpected pictures; for example, I rounded a corner preparatory to running down the Bardwell spur and saw what I would have sworn was an olive grove, which, given that 50% of the flora is indigenous & the other 50% Anglo parkland/flower garden, seem completely implausible while sticking out like the proverbial sore thumb. I think only a good picture could capture the incongruity of it. Anyway, it *was* an olive grove, maybe 40 trees, all around 12-15 years old judging from our backyard experience. It will be a significant harvest for whichever of the locals can be bothered. UPDATE: The olive grove was planted by the Rockdale Council, in honour of the significant connections between Rockdale residents & Greece. I tracked it down on Google Earth; there are roughly 70 trees. It's in the middle of the Silver Jubilee Park; well, they do call Philip "the Greek" so maybe that's apposite. More likely though that it's a piece of grubby land that council couldn't think of anything to do with, so regularly re-uses when memorialism strikes.

Also, once, I saw a steam train chugging its way down past Tempe station. Now, I may get back there again to photograph it - apparently it's a regular Sunday service - but equally I may not. It would have been a nice picture; planes landing in the background. Tempe station looks pretty steam age, too. The old railway bridge across the Cooks River is in good order as well.

Penultimate

On December 30th, you're between years. It's the lame duck period. Too early to fantasise about a new future, to late to avoid the fact that last NYE's future hasn't happened yet.

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Unexplored

Up a dead end side street that in 15 years I've never walked in previously is this - courtesy of a wet Boxing Day interlude and a Xmas phone - discreet and yet imposing entrance. It's the only door in 30 metres of identical brick wall. Opposite are a bakers' supplies depot, an electrician's workshop, a taxi depot and something that purports to be a gallery over a derelict garage. At the cul of the sac are two logistics depots, which along with furniture and car repair make up the majority of the local industry.

It's possible, due to the absence of people on a public holiday, to skulk up the driveway of one of the depots and have a look at the back. Corrugated iron is a staple of Australian rears; in these modernist times people even use them for frontages, but when Marrickville was growing up (the last half of the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries) hiding things behind impressive brickwork was the norm. Not just a desire to impress; brickworks were a major industry in the 19th century, as evidenced by Henson Park, a former quarry recycled as a velodrome for the 1938 Empire Games. Also, I feel, by the texture of the clay about two feet down in my backyard; it could just about be used for modelling clay unwashed. Also, it's the same colour as local brick. The marble sheets have the look of a kitchen benchtop business.

But actually, not just benchtops, but art. If you had a friend who was (or yourself were) a truckdriver using the depots behind, or a bus driver working for the three coach bus line that shares the forecourt of the despatch sheds, and you were looking for an original greek sculpture, this is where you'd come. I wonder if s/he works in the pre-classical, classical, or post-classical style? Or is continuing to refine the craft, informed by the 20th century?

This is the side of the sculptor's shed. Maybe a picture is worth a thousand words, but this picture needs its sound effect; through this window is coming the sound of a piano, practised...heedlessly. A lot of mistakes, but plenty of competent passages too. Casual, bored by the long (Tuesday*) afternoon. If the window was still intact, maybe they'd know it had stopped raining?

* You need to understand public holidays in Australia. While it's true that Boxing Day was Sunday, Sunday is already a holiday. Not wanting to waste the few public holidays we have, it was moved to Tuesday.

Kitchen update

This is what $150 worth of physiotherapy looks like - plus a bit extra for paint and masking tape. More than 60 meters of masking tape went into doing this; in fact, just the masking alone took up the best part of half a day. Not being able to stand safely on the counter top (who knows how strong it is?) slowed me down a fair bit. It's a long stretch from the ladder to the top edge of the ceiling, which is about 12 ft. up.

This picture was taken immediately after all the stuff was moved back in; it may not look that tidy to anyone else, but for us this is the epitome (or apotheosis) of tidiness.

The main feature of the repaint is in fact the "feature" wall; although it's pretty un-startling compared to feature walls I have known elsewhere. Still, my thinking is that the blue has a fairly strong presence as well, so best not to overdo it. The off-white has changed from pink undertones to green/blue undertones, for obvious reasons. What else can I say? Oh yes, I filled about 20 meters worth of cracks as well. It's a complete mystery why Australian tradesmen (we've had 3 plasterers though) don't use lime mortar. It doesn't crack under small movements, so, perfect for walls on a clay footing. OK, now I know enough to insist on it, but I wasn't an expert on

renders when we moved in here.

If I knew what I needed to know to supervise the people who worked here, I wouldn't actually need any of them to work here. That seems faintly odd to me.

The cat doesn't like the new arrangement, and has decided to move into a new catcave. Perhaps it's the smell of the paint.

Just passing

Of limited interest to most, but Coffee Alchemy (see elsewhere) has just won the 2011 "God Coffee" award from one of the international coffee magazines (who knew?). They are quietly pleased with themselves, fair enough too. Since my last review the coffee probably isn't any better, but the range of coffees for tasting just increases all the time. Still with the San Emilio as my favourite.

I had a great training run Tuesday. I don't know whether the new training regime, which includes 2 days rest with a loooooonnnnngggg slow run (21.5K along the Cooks River) sandwiched between them, or just a random confluence of positive influences was responsible. Hopefully it's a promising sign for the Penrith half marathon, which is coming up in October. Weird business.