The ugly side

So much for idyllic! This must be the social comment part. Poor old creek. But even though it's really quite ugly, it's also functional. This is the footbridge over Ropes Creek! Washed away every time the creek floods and rebuilt out of shopping trolleys and other refuse when the water goes down again. In the twelve or so years I've been here there's always been at least one shopping trolley incorporated into the bridge. Also concrete pipes, pieces of carpet, corrugated tin, tree trunks, milk crates, mattress springs, car tires ....

More Reserve Pics

I really did have fun taking photos over there.

Tregear Reserve

I went walking in the reserve yesterday. Took lots of photos. I'll put a few of them in here over the next few posts. It's a lovely place to walk with a big variety of spaces to photograph. Some are wonderful and some are downright ugly. These are todays two.

Cold again!

Coldest October day in 60 years? And didn't we notice!

I'm told there was a brawl that broke out twice a few nights ago. People heard it and it got into the local paper. Eventually the cops arrested them. And if you look to the right on this page you'll see a news item about it. I guess some people have no life. Their lives must be sad bad and boring if that's the best thing they can find to do.

Rain

It's raining, it's pouring .......... and it's really dark because of the cloud cover. I can't speak for the rest of the country but Tregear is no where near a drought. With this much rain I'd be wondering about the creek flooding again! I heard an interesting bit of trivia on Time Team last night - they were talking about a heavy clay area they were working on and described it as being created milimetre by milimetre each time the area flooded. It's created by very fine particles floating in the water being laid down... and we have so much clay around here it makes me wonder just how bad the floods from Ropes Creek have been in times past. The creek has flooded since I've lived here, I've seen Tregear Reserve covered in water, my neighbor has seen the reserve fill with water up to the edge of the road. Each time it rains like this I find myself wondering if it's going to go again. The two main ways out of Tregear are across the creek, on Forrester and Debrincat. Both those bridges are about the same height and so they both go under about the same time. There's now a new bridge, in Ropes Crossing. It seems higher, but the next flood will tell us. The rain radar is interesting - http://mirror.bom.gov.au/products/IDR033.shtml , shows the rain covering the whole of Sydney this morning. Have a fun day...

And there was hail the day before yesterday. Very small and it didn't last long but it made a racket.

Tregear and Whalan Reserve plans

The plans for Tregear and Whalan Reserve by Blacktown Council are here: Master Plan and Plan of Management

I'm afraid I didn't see this until comments were closed. Interestingly, they only had just over 20 people comment. They don't advertise these things. No doubt they thought they had their usual coverage and that would be sufficient. There are parts that I think are ok, and parts that are just strange and uninformed. They want to build some sort of structure for the lookout again. The remains of the last lookout was still there when I first moved in about 12 years ago. It had already been burned and not long after the remains were burned out to. But they want to build again. Maybe they think the pyromanics have moved out of the area. They are also talking about a walking track, but it's already there. A fitness area over by the baseball grounds. A kids playground up near Ellsworth. The last playground was trashed. Maybe they think those people have moved out too......

Local area blogs

I would like to be able to link to other area blogs here - last weekend I did a big search and found a few not too far away, but most aren't being kept up to date. There were 2 in Mt Druitt, 1 in Glenmore Park and a few others but the Mt Druitt ones haven't been written in since 2007 and the Glenmore Park one only had test messages on them. People get discouraged if they don't see evidence of people reading their blogs, but I think it doesn't really matter, I know a half dozen people drop by occasionally and I get a comment or email a couple of times a year. I figure the ones who do the poll or write comments are the tip of my iceburg and I actually have a huge readership!!! Well..... anyway, if any of my half dozen know of any other local blogs I'd be happy to link to them, thereby helping each other out a bit. My reasons for keeping this going is simply I like to blog and I don't really have delusions of grandeur - I don't need to be the most popular anywhere, and sometimes this space is the only place you'll see stuff about this suburb. Even the local papers don't cover everything.

Welcome to Typical Sydney Weather!

Here we go, cycling like crazy. Get up to an insanely hot day then it breaks, storms or just rains, stays cloudy for a day or two and works its way back up to insanely hot again. Typical spring and summer. Mind you, when they said on the news the other day that it was the hottest day in a year I was surprised, it didn't feel that hot out here. Might have been the hottest for those who live on the coast, with the sea breezes that keep the temperature tempered, but out here I didn't even turn the air con on and I know I needed it last summer. It was hot, yes, but the fan was enough. And not hot enough to stop me sleeping. Unless, there's a weird thought, I'm not adapting to the heat out here am I? After all these years? Nooooo. More likely their coverage of the temperature doesn't cover what happens in Tregear! Although I am so use to it that I almost never check the thermometer any more. I've checked once and only because it was way cooler outside than inside first thing in the morning after one of our hot days, and it's too obvious that, even with the windows locked open so the air can get in, this house holds too much heat - it was 5 degrees hotter inside!