Excursion to Cremorne

Peter surprised me today with the suggestion that we could go to Cremorne. When I heard this I agreed straight away. What a great idea it was to be spending a wonderful, sunny winter day at Sydney Harbour!

The train from Dapto did get us into the city. From Circular Quay we took a Ferryboat across the harbour and got off one stop before Cremorne. All the time Peter and I took lots of pictures. We entered the Cremorne Reserve. From there we could take breath taking picture looking over the water towards the Harbour Bridge and the Sydney Opera House.

Later on we travelled by bus to the centre of Cremorne where we entered a little coffee shop for a well deserved cup of coffee and a bit of cake. 🙂

After our coffee break we took the next bus to the centre of Sydney from where we caught our train back home. We arrived back home in Dapto at 5,45 pm very tired but happy to have had another beautiful day, making very good use of the marvellous Australian winter weather.

Apparently someone put this quote up in 1936!

Peter took this picture on our way up to Cremorne Reserve.

I was getting a bit hot already and waited in a shady spot.

Soon we had lovely views across the water.

Here is another Ferry stop. But we decided to catch the bus

June 2014, Diary of Aunty Uta

This morning I took a photo of this T-shirt. I think I’ve had this T-shirt for more than ten years and I am still wearing it! Admittedly only at night-time under my pyjamas. So this old T-shirt still keeps me warm at night. And I had always liked this Ancient Chinese Proverb!

MORNING WALK

By 9 am I was ready for my morning walk. This morning I remembered to take my camera along. It was a lovely winter morning full of sunshine. The escarpment looked very clear in the distance. I think today we would not to have any worries driving up Macquarie Pass!

I liked the look of these bottle brushes.

The bottle brushes are on this little tree.

Here's another tree with bottle brushes! — Here’s another tree with bottle brushes!

I started walking across the soccer fields in Lakelands Park.

On the way back Jenny, one of my neighbours, called out to me. She had just started her morning walk. She stopped to talk to me for a while. Then she went on and I went home for a cup of espresso coffee.

Here is Jenny walking:

We had our espresso sitting outside in beautiful sunshine. Peter served the espresso in cups like these:

GABBYS AT BERRY

This is the Gabbys House where you can have High Tea ($45 per person) for a Relaxed and Delightful Afternoon! Maybe we could consider this for my 80th Birthday? Well, just a thought.

Or what about this place for Lunch? Lunch would probably cost only half as much. Plenty of time to think about it, more than three months actually.

But now let’s go along Queen Street a bit more. We are actually now on the side of Queen Street where the Old Post Office Building is.

On the way we saw this map in one of the windows.

This Bakery Shop is somehow connected with the French Bakery Restaurant in the other street.

We had done a lot of walking and headed back to our car.

Just outside Berry Peter stopped the car again to get out and take a picture of the beautiful landscape. I felt tired and stayed in the car. But I took some pictures from inside the car and later on I tried to catch from inside the car a bit about the road building activities. Peter had to drive slowly within the construction area.

Everywhere are sections where a lot of earth has to be moved for the widening of the highway.

A truck that's being used for road building. — A truck that’s being used for road building.

The ocean can be seen a bit to the right of the road.

This old Kiama Cemetery can be seen from the highway.

Visiting Berry (continued)

This is “Paulchen”, our fourteen year old car. In 2001, when Peter’s sister Ilse stayed with us for three months and “Paulchen” was still fairly new, Ilse lovingly called the car “Paulchen” . Whenever we tried to make a sly remark about the car, she would not tolerate it. She always urged us not to say anything bad about “Paulchen”. Apart from a few little dents, “Paulchen” is still okay, good for a drive in our surrounds.

I think we reached Berry on Saturday at around 11am. We were lucky to find a parking spot straight away right in front of the French Bakery Restaurant.

Another view of our parking spot. To the right we noticed a beautiful cottage

The Restaurant is next to the cute little cottage.

The restaurant was originally a barn. It was cuddly warm with a heater switched on.

Soon our coffee was served in big cups. The pram in the background was a joy to watch it kept bouncing up and down the way a cradle would. — Soon our coffee was served in big cups.
The pram in the background was a joy to watch. It kept bouncing like a cradle!

And yes we had Eggs Florentine and Eggs Benedict on sourdough bread with hollandaise sauce.

The couple with the baby left the restaurant about the same time we did.

I took a picture of Peter before I sat in the car. — I took a picture of Peter before sitting in the car.

This picture is taken through the wet windscreen of the car.

There must have been a little bit of drizzle while we had been sitting in the restaurant.

After our beautiful meal we felt energised to go for a walk through town. The restaurant had been filling up while we were in there. We noticed people had to queue up for seats and parking spots in the street might soon be getting scarce. I urged Peter to drive to the other end of town where we could probably find a parking spot not too far away from the street where all the shops are. We actually were able to park the car somewhere else without any problem. Our walk along the shops could begin!

This is enough window shopping for today. There are still more pictures to come in my next post!

Visiting Berry

Berry is a small Australian town in the Shoalhaven region of the NSW South Coast in the state of New South Wales, located 145 km (90 mi) south of the state capital, Sydney.
History
The indigenous people of the area were the Wodi Wodi people. In the 1810s, George William Evans, Government Surveyor, reported on the Berry district as a possible settlement and on the good stands of red cedar. Subsequently, itinerant timber cutters visited to cut and send cedar to Sydney.
Alexander Berry, with his business partner Edward Wollstonecraft, pioneered European settlement in the Shoalhaven region in 1822. The locality was known as Broughton Creek from its beginning in 1825 as a private town and part of a large rural grant holding called “Coolangatta”. The name was changed to Berry in 1889, following the death of David Berry, Alexander’s brother, to honour the Berry family.

Geography and landmarks[edit]

The township of Berry lies on the South Coast Railway, and on the Princes Highway (Highway 1) between Nowra and Kiama. For much of its early history the town depended on timber cutting and dairy farming, with a tannery and boat building also present, but today, Berry thrives on tourism, with many souvenir shops, art galleries, antiques and collectibles shops, cafes, restaurants, and hotels. A local public hospital bequeathed by the Berry family, the David Berry Hospital, now serves as a rehabilitation hospital and palliative care hospice.

All this is taken from the Wikipedia. To find out more, please look here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry,_New_South_Wales

I took yesterday a lot of pictures in Berry. Here are just a few of these:

ALPACA BURGERS are advertised at the Berry Hotel.

Opposite the Hotel in Queen Street is an Old Post Office Building. It is from 1886.

There are 'Posthouse Rooms' in the old Post Office Building as well as a Restaurant called LEAF. — There are ‘Posthouse Rooms’ in the old Post Office Building as well as a Restaurant called LEAF.

LEAF stands for “Love Eating Asian Food”. They tell their customers the following:

“It’s our pleasure to serve fresh, healthy and delicious Thai-Vietnamese dishes to you!
Please come visit us to enjoy your lunch and dinner.
With Love
From LEAF

P.S. Fully licensed. BYO (Wine only)”

Some of the Outside Sitting Area of the LEAF Restaurant.

This is in commemoration of Alexander Berry who lived from 1781 - 1873. — This is in commemoration of Alexander Berry who lived from 1781 – 1873.

Next to the Alexander Berry monument is a little park where I took some pictures of Peter.

To be continued!

Sunday, 1st of June 2014

Last night I reblogged a post about global food supply. I think we should be aware that this sort of thing is going on globally. Some people do profit from shortages. It has always been like this as far as I know. I think for people like me to be able to cope with the worries about the poor people in this world it helps to turn to meditation and a belief in God. Do I help the poor people with this? I am under no illusion that this certainly won’t feed the people who desperately need help. However if I go mad this doesn’t help them either. If you ask me, I’d like to see a world where people would not have to starve because of the greed of others. How to change the minds of greedy people? Well, I wished I knew the answer to this!

I saw this poster hanging in one of the shops in Berry yesterday.
It calms me to read something like this.

31st of May 2014

Today, on Saturday, we actually did go out for a drive. Peter and I, we were both very happy that we actually did do this. However, we refrained from going up Macquarie Pass. I saw the clouds hugging the escarpment and urged Peter not to go up the pass. It definitely looked like there could be quite a bit of fog further up there. Not a good idea to make an elderly gent drive in the fog along all these curves of the pass, right? Not a good idea at all even though Peter is a confident driver. There was a time – many years ago – when he had to go up and down the pass every day. More likely than not he still does know every curve on that pass extraordinarily well!

We agreed it would be good to go down south towards Kiama and weather permitting further on to Berry. Would it rain today? This was the question. It turned out we were lucky all day. Off and on there was a slight drizzle. But no rain to speak of. Often there were quite threatening clouds, but also a bit of sunshine did get through in between very, very dark periods. It remained pleasantly warm for there was no wind, none at all. We could really call ourselves lucky that the weather had turned out all right after a very doubtful start in the morning.

We bypassed Kiama and Gerringong. This is what it says in Wikipedia:

“Major highway upgrade[edit]

Major roadworks are currently underway and are due for completion in 2014. Commenced in 2012, the major infrastructure project will include a new overpass over the Omega rail level crossing, major highway widening, with additional exits and safer on and off ramps.^[5]

The $310 million upgrade will provide 7.5 kilometres of upgraded highway and include two new interchanges with access to Gerringong and Gerroa.”

Bypassing Gerringong on the highway we could see along this 7.5 kilometres stretch a lot of activity, never mind that it was Saturday. Will they be able to finish the upgrade this year? I wonder.

From Kiama it was another 25 kilometres. Soon we arrived in Berry for Brunch at the French Bakery Restaurant.

This Baker's Sourdough Bread and Cakes are very popular. — This Baker’s Sourdough Bread and Cakes are very popular.

Our brunch was very good tasting and very filling. We knew we would not need any more to eat for quite some time. Strolling along the main street of Berry later on, we had a good look at the various shop displays and took quite a few pictures.

Then on the way home I took some more pictures from the car, mostly pictures on that section where we had to slow down a bit because of all the road building work that was going on. I am going to publish some of these other pictures in my next post.

Last Saturday in May 2014

Tomorrow is Saturday. I said to Peter: Let’s drive up to the highlands tomorrow. What for, said Peter. It’s too cold up there now. I pointed out that in the car it’s warm. For lunch we could stop at the Robertson pie shop where we could have a delicious meat-pie and some tea. Further on we could go along this secluded road to that secluded little village where we could have excellent coffee sitting outside on the verandah. We can put warm clothes on. Sure it should be good to sit outside for a while in that crisp fresh air! 🙂 We both loved this place, last time we were there.

I am sure our fourteen year old little car can still make it up Macquarie Pass. It just had a big service and is still going well. And Peter’s eye-sight is quite good now. He does not need to drive with glasses any more. In the past it said on his driver’s license that he needed glasses for driving. It does not say so any more. It was changed when he renewed his license the other day.

I have great memories about our last outing to the highlands. So I hope Peter can be persuaded to go on another tour like this. Why not enjoy life and drive around a bit while we still can? Indeed, why not?

Uta’s Diary on Taxes and Walking

After a night with a lot of cramping in my legs I ask myself what did I do wrong? Does it perhaps have to do with not going for a walk the day before?

If I would stick to my perfect plan I would go for a walk every day. Why then, why did I not take care to fit it in yesterday, on Sunday? For instance, we drove to the Club in the afternoon for our coffee and cake. Why did I not say to Peter, let’s walk to the club? Why didn’t I think of it? Actually I cannot see any reason at all why we should not have been able to walk.

When I could not sleep during the night because of the cramping I thought a lot about what I had been reading yesterday on the internet and also what I had been reading in kindle. Well, in kindle I have finally come to the last pages of ANNA KARENINA. Tolstoy wrote in this novel not just about AK. A lot of other people are written about in great detail, especially LEVIN, one of the big landowners. But I can see now how ANNA has turned into the main character of this book. She is a woman of her time and her circumstances, seen through the eyes of a male writer who definitely has a lot of insight into what a woman’s feelings may be. LEVIN’s connection with the land is dealt with in great detail in the novel and seems to have a lot to do with Tolstoy’s feelings about land ownership. And this brings me to what I have been reading and reblogging yesterday about HENRY GEORGE and the land question: How the way the land is taxed or not taxed affects our lives.

It is said if we had what is called a “single tax” we would have a more just society. A single tax on what you may ask. Well, we are talking here about a single tax on land. Of course, whoever owns some land, would not want such a tax. I learned yesterday about Neoclassical Economics. Apparently this is being taught at universities these days. Everyone who is being taught NCE would be discouraged to consider the teachings of HENRY GEORGE. The teaching of NCE protects the established land ownership and goes against the teachings of HENRY GEORGE. This is the way I see it. Tell me if I am wrong.

If you belong to the top third in society, of course you want things to remain the way they are. For sure, the very,very top want to continue ‘earning’ millions every year without paying any taxes. If you are more in the middle, you are constantly in danger of falling behind, but you have hopes of eventually arriving in the top where you are safe. The bottom third in society they are the ones who can be squeezed in all sorts of ways. Entitlements or security for them? Most countries cannot afford it or soon won’t be able to afford it any more. If more and more people in the bottom third become more and more destitute, what then? Do economists ever consider this? I am sure, some do, but feel they cannot change anything.

Apparently HENRY GEORGE was thinking of solving problems. To him a trade-off is a compromise that overlooks the possibility of a reconciliation or synthesis. He was for reconciling by synthesizing, taking two problems and composing them into one solution. He was of the opinion that reconciling is better than compromising. If you read what I reblogged yesterday, you find for instance the following:

“He (HENRY GEORGE) took two polar philosophies,

collectivism and individualism.

He synthesized a plan to combine the better features

and discard the worse features of each.”

Class Warfare

http://aussiejustice.wordpress.com/2014/05/23/593/

The government could make per annum $ 87 Billion cuts to big business. Have a look at the above link to see where the cuts could be made!