I just opened the back door and got a blast of hot air. It's going to be 41, already passed 39, and the humidity is 89%. Worse than Adelaide where at least it was dry. It's like Bangkok before the monsoon.

Adelaide and Melbourne have both had record November temperatures. Out of curiosity, since people in parliament are saying there's nothing going on, I looked up the average monthly daily maximum temperature data for the last 150 years for the Sydney Observatory. The green line is the average from 1861-2000. The red line is the average for the 30 years from 1971-2000.



Now here's the same 150 year graph plotted against the 30 years from 1941-70. Same pattern. Summer is heating up less fast than the autumn and winter months.


Again for the 30 years from 1911-40 - pretty much bang on the long term average.


Now here's the period 1881-1910. Summers are still average, but autumn, winter and spring were much cooler back then. Same picture if I go to the 1861-90 data. For the months of May and August the mean daily maximum has risen by 2 degrees between 1881-1910 and 1971-2000.


You can find data from your own nearest observatory by going to http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/

ETA: OK so Sydney could be a heat island (in fact it is!). Here's the data for Macquarie Island. It is in the middle of the Antarctic Ocean and has a population of seals and penguins as well as a handful of visiting humans. They only have 60 years of data, starting in 1948. As before green line covers the whole 60 years, red line is 1971-2000.


The annual average maximum has risen by 0.2 but that also disguises the uneven pattern, with warmer autumn-winter periods. These months are up by more like half a degree.

I was there only for a few days in about April or May 1970. I remember that I felt for the first time that we had arrived in the West (we'd been backpacking across Asia). Istanbul felt like a western city, but I can't really put a finger on why it felt like that. Perhaps it was because we knew we'd set foot on European soil for the first time. The grand bazaar or whatever it is called, was an unpleasant experience. Men would come out of their shops into the narrow alleys, grab you by the arm and attempt to drag you into their carpet shop. I'd never encountered such behaviour before (nor have I since). I did buy a ring (long since lost). It had four interwoven strands in silver and was very popular among the backpacking fraternity at the time.

We took a ferry to a village where I was stunned by the beauty of the old wooden houses. The ferry dropped us in a cobbled square with large shade trees and benches, surrounded by these timber architectural masterpieces. All along the waterfront there were huge timber palazzi right on the water's edge. Pamuk recounts how frequently they burned down. I remember that the ferry went crab-wise across the current. I used to have a photo of my then partner, wearing the sheepskin coat he'd bought in Afghanistan, sitting in this boat crossing the Bosphorus.

Things of which I have no recollection whatsoever include where we stayed, the railway station where I know we took the train to Edirne and Bulgaria. I don't recall going to any of the famous mosques or the Haghia Sophia, though I do have a vague recollection of the famous Istanbul skyline which they dominated.

By the time we arrived in Istanbul, we'd been travelling by bus across Turkey for a couple of days. We'd stayed in a cheap, but unnerving hotel in Erzerum. They put us in a room with 10 beds - there was no choice and I was the only female in a room with 9 men, 5 of whom were total strangers and two more I'd known for only about a week. There was a shower in the bath down the hall (more of a labyrinth than a hall), but the bath was full of bricks, so not really usable. The bus dropped us there - obviously a deal the driver had with the hotel owner - and it was night, so we didn't have much incentive to go looking for another place to stay. Looking back on it, I think that as a female I simply wasn't supposed to be there.

One of our group (a friend with whom my partner and I had been travelling since we left home) was whipped across the back by a passing cart-driver as we left the bus to go into one of the roadside restaurants for lunch. The food was fantastic. I don't think I'd ever had such good food as in these cheap Turkish roadside eateries - but it was hard to find the same stuff in Istanbul. We must've gone from Erzerum to Istanbul in one day - I have a vague recollection of Ankara, of passing a bunch of concrete tower blocks.

This was one of those books that I began slowly and then, reaching a certain point, found that I was unable to put it down until I'd finished. In this case, the turning point was chapter 22 'On the ships that passed through the Bosphorus, famous fires, moving house and other disasters'. The first part of the chapter was about two tankers that collided in the strait and exploded, one of them drifting into another and setting it alight as well. Then, as the waterway was lined with old wooden houses, some of them went up too. The story is woven into the theme of the book - a city that used to be a splendid world capital in the process of decline and decay - so beautifully that, instead of finishing the chapter and turning out the light, I ploughed on to the end.

Some things made me uneasy. Pamuk comes from a wealthy family (also in decline) and I always wondered whether the Melancholy (hüzün) that he describes as the pervading mood of the city is more of a class thing than a popular thing. Anyway, as basically the only (or so he claims) Turkish writer to have written in such depth about the city and, as a Nobel Prize winner whose work has been translated into many languages, Melancholy is sure to become the common depiction. Paris, to which he often refers, may be the City of Light, but Istanbul is now the city of black and white, of melancholy. There are lots of black and white photographs to emphasize the point. Moreover, it's easy to see why he is not very popular with the regime: it's clear he doesn't think a great deal of Ataturk and the Republican 'modernization' program (or 'westernization' as Pamuk would put it). While the Ottomans may have blown it, they left behind a legacy of cosmopolitanism that Ataturk destroyed. At the same time, I read on p. 221 about the Muslim refugees fleeing from "ethnic cleansing in the new Balkan republics" after the First World War. This was new to me - it's not something that pops up frequently in the western media in the way that the ethnic cleansing by the Turks - of Armenians, Greeks, Jews, etc. does. Pamuk's grandmother was Circassian - they originated in the north Caucasus and migrated to Turkey (among other places) after a war with the Russians in the 1800s. So opposition to 'Turkification' is possibly somewhere in his roots.

At least among Pamuk's social circles the hüzün that he sees as the 'essence' of the city is best found in the poor neighbourhoods. He scarcely talks about the major tourist highlights that all westerners go to see (I don't remember going to see them myself though, apart from the great bazaar, which was awful.) He talks about the 'picturesque' parts (the description comes from John Ruskin) and how they capture the real decline of the city in the 20th century and give it its true identity. But "none of these things look beautiful to the people who live amongst them." By 'poor' he means old, because since 1950 the city has expanded 10-fold in population. Yet these were the same areas apparently visited by Nerval and Gautier, two authors whose accounts he admires, a hundred years before he was born.

The final chapter recounts arguments with his mother about his future career. (The book is dedicated, possibly because he is dead, to his father who seems to have been a complete wanker.) She wants him to continue his architectural studies that he has already decided to drop, rather than have a career as an artist. Her reasoning is that nobody in Istanbul respects artists and he would have to spend his life crawling and dependent in order to live. He links this argument of hers to the decline of the city - its lack of interest in and inability, through poverty and global provincialism, to support people who are 'different'. The arguments took place in the early 1970s, and what is really nice about this chapter is that a year after this book was published in English, Pamuk won the Nobel Prize. It's almost as if, at last, through people like Orhan Pamuk the city has turned its fortunes around.

According to the newspaper, today's maximum was only 31. But at 10 o'clock tonight it was still 31. There was some thunder and lightning earlier and it keeps trying to rain. The few drops that do arrive are nice and cool, but the breeze is warm. I've had a headache all day.

I just wanted to emphasize that, contrary to 99% of the discussion - in parliament, the media, etc. - the main achievement of this legislation, should it get through, will be to provide the country with the most efficient method of reducing C02 emissions. Nobody should be claiming that it will (or won't) reduce global emissions. It won't have much effect on these because in reality we emit a very small proportion of the total (despite having the highest per capita emissions). What is supposed to happen as a result of the ETS is only that some firms will find it cheaper to reduce emissions than to pay for the permits. They will therefore sell their permits to firms that find it more expensive to reduce emissions than to buy some extra permits.

As a result what happened in Europe should happen here. Emissions should drop rapidly, because basically two types of firms will sell their permits: (1) firms with low investment in carbon polluting technologies who can change relatively easily to lower emission levels; (2) firms that are high polluters but not very profitable anyway and will close down.

The main problem that can happen here is that firms are moving faster than the government permit allocators. In that case the market price of permits will be too low as low polluters flood the market with their permits. High polluters will be able to increase their emissions because they can buy permits too cheaply. The government won't meet its reduction targets.

We're not talking about saving the world here people. We're talking about starting the process of restructuring towards a low-carbon Australian economy. The argument that the ETS won't stop sea-level rising (etc.) is completely irrelevant. We're talking about giving the Australian economy a chance not to "do an Argentina" during the rest of this century.*

* In 1900 the two economies were at roughly the same level of economic development. Australia managed to keep up during the 20th century, while Argentina didn't.

... is just big business run by and for big businessmen.

I wrote here earlier about the willingness of athletics officials to disregard people's basic human rights.

We are pretty lucky that this kind of organised sport only comes to a city nearby once in several decades.

Actually the IOC seems to be a mobile state! New concept.

Sometime earlier this week the Senate began debating the Emissions Trading Scheme legislation. They will have a vote on it towards the end of next week I believe and then we will either get one or we won't. Absurdities are rampant. I was listening to one senator who hails from northern Queesnland. He had surveyed his constituents (not the ones in Brisbane though he is supposed to represent the entire state) and reported that 88% of them didn't know anything about it. A majority of them are also opposed to the ETS probably because he has been going around telling them that it is a new tax. I'm not sure if the speaker was Barnaby Joyce because I tuned in too late to hear, but Joyce has certainly been going around calling it a tax and I've been trying to work out how he arrives at this position.

The idea of the ETS is that the government sets a cap on permissible carbon emissions. Recently they said this would not apply to agriculture for the foreseeable future, so that already leaves out a large amount of the CO2 we emit. I'm not sure of the precise details (and the parliamentary debate is not helping), but I believe some polluters will be given some free emission permits too. The cap will then be set under the legislation to generate a 5-15% reduction in emissions from 1990 levels by the year 2020. It is the government's second attempt to get this through and the exclusion of agriculture is a major concession to try to get it past the Senate where they are short of a vote or two. Of course the longer the delay goes on, the harder it will be on polluters to meet the 2020 target.

Mechanics of a cap and trade scheme
Emitters of greenhouse gases need to acquire a permit for every tonne of greenhouse gas that they emit.
The quantity of emissions produced by firms will be monitored, reported and audited.
At the end of each year, each liable entity will need to surrender a permit for every tonne of emissions that they produced in that year.
The number of permits issued by the Government in each year will be limited.
Firms will compete to purchase the number of permits that they require. Firms that value the permits most highly will be prepared to pay most for them, either at auction or on a secondary trading market. For some firms, it will be cheaper to reduce emissions than to buy permits.
Certain categories of firms will receive an administrative allocation of permits, as a transitional assistance measure. Those firms could use the permits or sell them
(from the White Paper).

Most of the debate has been, not about the ETS mechanism, but about the science. Bob Brown (leader of the Greens) for example, devoted his entire speech to arguing against the delusionists who say that climate change isn't happening. The Greens are opposing the legislation because they say we need bigger cuts. They want a minimum of 20% reduction by 2020. But he didn't devote any of his speech to saying why geting an ETS up and going at least isn't a good idea. After all, you can always change the target later. Anyway the Greens will be pretty irrelevant if the government can persuade the Opposition to vote for it. If the Opposition vote splits and some of them cross the floor, the Greens could become extremely relevant, depending on how many Opposition Senators are prepared to defy party whips.

The Trogs cannot decide whether they are against the whole idea of climate change or they should go for it if the Americans do. Their contortions are extreme. Driving home tonight I was listening to one guy disputing the idea that the firestorms in Victoria earlier this year were anything to do with climate change and, if they weren't, then this shows nothing is happening. Not talking about Arctic sea ice, or Darfur, or global temperature data, or long-term glacial melting, or anything important. It seems they cannot distinguish between the weather and the climate. Or, if they can, they say silly things like "the world's climate has always been changing and has never stopped changing". One woman, talking about the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area, where they grow rice in an area that used to be a desert, said that their production feeds 40 million people in a world of increasing food shortage. She got this off the Ricegrowers' Association where they give annual average output at 1.3m tonnes.That would be 2.7 kg of rice per person per month - about a quarter of what your average Vietnamese person eats. So lets make that 10 million people. But when the Vietnamese were really poor they used to eat 21 kg a month, so we get down to 7.7 million people. On the other hand, "Australian rice is recognised worldwide for its high quality and is demanded by the higher priced international markets." So maybe it really does feed 40 million rich people. Not exactly the ones suffering from food shortage. Then she berated the government for trying to destroy the "lifestyle" that her constituents "have chosen". Possibly the rest of us just can't afford to pay for their choice.

Talking about weather while I'm here. Adelaide last week had its longest recorded heatwave in November (records go back 150 years). The previous longest was 4 days in 1894. I gather the concept 'heatwave' refers to successive days over 35 C. There was a break early this week, but for the last 12 days the daily maxima have gone: 37, 37, 39, 39, 39, 39, 40, 39, 32, 29, 39, 42... today was 42 (that's 108 F). The November average is 25. It should break tomorrow.

*Australians often refer to their parliament as The Gasworks. It's a reference to the hot air (not surprisingly, consisting mainly of C02) that is emitted there.

Although I did a lot of walking over the weekend, my tally over the past week still suffered from the excessive heat of Adelaide and, on top of that (what I dislike most about holidays) the work had piled up and I've been pretty frantic on Monday-Tuesday catching up with the backlog. So I only made 27 km last week. A few kilometres past Bulahdelah I had to make a choice between three roads. I selected the Lakes Way and I'm now 10 km along the northern edge of the Myall Lakes National Park.

ETA: I should mention that every day I was in Adelaide the maximum temperature was 38 or 39 (which is 101-103 F).

Iron Cove is one of the larger bays in Sydney Harbour that I've encountered on my walks so far. It is the estuary of Iron Cove Creek (now a concrete drain) and is about 3.5 km long and a few hundred metres wide. Iron Cove Bridge is also the fourth of the seven bridges on the Harbour Circle walk.

Since it didn't matter much where I started, I parked the car down by the southern end of the former Rozelle Hospital (I see that last year, although I took pictures of Rozelle Hospital, I only posted about it's grander neigbour Callan Park) at the Leichhardt Rowing Club. I set out in an anti-clockwise direction along the foreshore.

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Pretty lazy day today. Finished the whole book in one go. It is the usual rather gloomy stuff from Inspector Erlender - perhaps he's a little more cheerful this time than usual and seems to be getting on with his kids for a change. In which he solves a murder that everyone thinks was suicide and, at the same time, solves a 30 year-old missing persons case or 2 of them actually. Good one.

Due to the high temperature in Adelaide I didn't get anywhere near 10,000 steps a day. Still managed 31 km last week, which all but gets me to Nerong. If one just googles 'Nerong' one of the first things that comes up is the national public toilet map.

Here in Australia it has taken us 200 years to begin the process of public recognition that white people are walking around on land that was stolen from somebody else. Not only that, but the descendents of the people it was stolen from are still here and only just beginning their long road out from being ignored, subhuman, fated to disappear. Citizenship rights were granted in 1967. Terra nullius was annulled by the High Court in 1992 - 204 years after the arrival of the first English settlers.

Reading Said's book - which is basically an argument for the existence and continued survival of Palestinians - I was reminded very much of this sad history of colonial Australia. The first part of the book is an eloquent study of how the Zionist project affected the Palestinian population, most of whom simply disbelieved that what was happening - the violence and dispossession - could become permanent. It must surely be one of the few texts in English about what it really feels like to be on the receiving end of a colonial invasion.

The book was originally published in 1979 (the edition I read had a short update written just after Gulf War I) and reading it as an historical document, I dared to become optimistic that - despite the evidently increasing intransigence of the Israeli settlers and their supporters in the state - things are in fact moving much faster there than they did in Australia. As Said himself points out Israel was founded as a European colony in Asia at precisely the time that European colonialism in the rest of the world was disappearing. It is an anachronism.

To found a state in Asia and people it with a largely immigrant population drawn initially from Europe means depopulating the original territory. This has been the simple desideratum of Zionism, with very complicated ramifications. Yet for the native Arab Palestinian and for the immigrant Jew who took his place, the mere fact of substitution has never really varied. And it is this fact with which the search for peace in the Middle East must begin, and with which it has not yet even begun to deal. [p. 181]

The last sentence here is important because it was written only 30 years ago and yet there have been tremendous changes. When Said wrote, the PLO had only recently achieved widespread recognition as the body representing Palestinians. In reality this means that the West (not just the Arab and other Third World states) had decided to accord Palestinians recognition as a people, and a people with national aspirations. Prior to that they were just 'Arabs' who should be equally at home in Jordan, Lebanon or even further afield. But even then, the so-called "Middle East Peace Process" was seen in terms of an international settlement between Israel, Egypt and the US (all of whom had pursued their own interests in the region without a thought for the Palestinians). It took another decade and a half for the PLO to be seen as an essential negotiating partner, i.e., for the recognition to sink in that the Palestinians could not continue to be ignored.

From this perspective it is easier to see why Arafat accepted the Oslo agreement. By establishing the PA, he forced the Palestinians to the centre of the "Peace Process". On the other hand, it has also enabled Israel and the US to treat the Palestinian nation as existing only in the West Bank and Gaza, and to continue to ignore the rights of Palestinians living in exile (mostly in Jordan and Lebanon). Thus, reading between the lines, Arafat also countered the danger, to which the Intifada had given rise, that Palestinian politics would be divided between those living directly under Israeli rule and those in the diaspora. It looks as if the latter is happening anyway, with the rise of Hamas for example. I wonder how long the diaspora will continue to share the national aspirations of those living in Israel, the West Bank and Gaza. There is now a couple of generations who were born in exile and those who fled, who remember their old homes and their attachment to the country, are now in their 60s or more. It seems to me that the movement will rely more and more on the people who are still there and that's where the Zionist project is really ultimately doomed.

Waiting for take-off at the airport yesterday, I read an interview with the late Giovanni Arrighi. He began his academic career at what was then called the University of Rhodesia and Nyasaland and, in the interview, he talks about his studies of the southern African labour force, remarking on what I think is also true of the Palestinians in Israel. In both South Africa and Israel, the European settlers seized indigenous land for their own farms, cutting the indigenous population off from its livelihood. When people are cut off from the land like that they have to live by wage labour and they have to struggle against those who have power over their livelihoods. South African workers joined COSATU which became the backbone of the ANC. The Palestinians, on the other hand, are mostly unemployed and without prospects of employment (particularly in Gaza). Arrighi's point, however, is that when you try to control people by depriving them of a decent living, you have to increase the level of repression. Eventually your repression will backfire. Your victims will hit back at you and they will gain international support. This is the road Israel has set out upon. It won't last 200 years.

Today's walk was a bit shorter than usual. I went from under the Gladesville Bridge to Iron Cove Bridge and back, via the Birkenhead Point Factory Outlet centre (where I bought a pair of Ecco shoes!).


Drummoyne looks as if it was constructed mostly between 1900 and 1950. Parts of it reminded me of Cambridge (well, not the jacarandas and palm trees, but in 1983 I had a flat in a building of a similar architectural style).


Along the left side of the road, what ever might have been there has been replaced by apartment blocks. On the other side, nice old houses that probably once had water views and views of the city before the apartment buildings went up.




Just as I arrived at Birkenhead Point it started drizzling. The city disappeared in the mist, so I stayed indoors - bought a pair of shoes and had gelato. I bought my first pair of Ecco shoes in 1983 in Copenhagen. They were actually made in Denmark. Unlike other shoes, Ecco shoes were foot-shaped rather than trying to fit your foot into a fashion-shape. They dropped that idea pretty soon, but the shoes tended to remain very comfortable. My next pair was made in Portugal, the next in Brazil and today's pair in China. This story somehow encapsulates world history in the past quarter century. Still, the leather is really soft and they look nifty as always.

When the rain stopped, I walked out under the Iron Cove Bridge.


Under the bridge a boy was packing up his fishing gear, having caught this huge thing. He told me it was a yellow-tailed kingfish.


A new bridge is being built. God knows, Victorial Road is already enough of a bottleneck without adding to it, but that's the logic of NSW "planners". The building in the background is the old Callan Park psych hospital, now Sydney University's Art school.


I have driven along Victorial Rd, Drummoyne many times, but the traffic is always so bad there's no time to see what's by the roadside. Walking along it today I found that the majority of buildings are devoted to selling things for the home - kitchens, bathrooms, furniture, etc. Between these lie some oddities. For example, down the driveway of one of these buildings, at the back of a Chinese restaurant, I found the Mona Lisa hanging on the back wall of a shed full of paintings.


A bit further along, was a shop specializing in (copies of) old military hats...


... and beyond that a Scottish kilt shop.

PJ Gallagher's Irish Pub - "We’ve transported the style of The Crown Liquor Saloon on Great Victoria Street, Belfast". That means it has Guinness on tap and flies the Irish flag on the roof. Never mind that Belfast isn't in the Irish Republic and there's another one of these at Parramatta. It sits at Drummoyne's main intersection.


One of the older houses backing onto Victorial Rd. Seems to be some kind of childcare centre nowadays.

A few years ago I read this genetic stuff by Brian Sykes - the Seven Sisters of Eve or something like that. It is based on their genetic work on mitochondrial DNA at Oxford University. mtDNA is passed down by women. My mum sent off a sample and found that among her ancestors is a woman who lived in northern Greece about 45,000 years ago. The Sykes group called this woman Ursula, though in their scientific publications (which I also read) the seven women who are in the ancestral lineage of 99% of Europe's present population are simply given letters (X,Y,M, etc). DNA is made up of different bits that are coded by the letters CGAT. Your type of DNA depends on the combinations of these 4 letters. Ursula, who great(power of x) grandmothered about half of Europe's population, represents a change by one letter in the order compared with her own ancestor who migrated to Europe from the Middle East. They plotted the migration routes by looking at where the different types of DNA have the highest density. Given that mtDNA mutates about once every 25,000 years, that would put my Middle Eastern great(power of x)grandmother around 70,000 years ago. My ancestors lived in the fucking "Holy Land" before the Jews!

Now I am going to start a movement of Ursulans to colonise the so-called "Holy Land" and drive out not only the remaining Palestinians, but also the Jews. I will establish a modern democratic state for Ursulans, with a necessarily well-armed and efficiently brutal security apparatus because the human rights of me and my fellow Ursulans must be protected at all costs. All Ursulans and, let me make this absolutely clear, only Ursulans have automatic citizenship and land rights. After all, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights says that everyone has the Right to Return to their country (whether or not in possession of a passport). All Semites (Muslim, Jewish, Christian, whatever) should return to their country which, I believe, is somewhere in the vicinity of Kazakhstan. (I didn't do any research on this, but the little birdie told me. The little birdie is now and henceforth known as God, with a capital G.) I will support all UN sponsored motions to provide the current population of Israel with the Right of Return to Kazakhstan. The Kazahks, who are undoubtedly descendants of Genghis Khan can then move back to Mongolia. They have a lot of space in Mongolia, so it won't be a problem and I also have no genetic evidence on the origins of the Mongolians, so they obviously belong nowhere.

Since so many Americans seem to believe that justice involves something approaching an eye-for-an-eye, they are no doubt relishing the scenario in which 23 CIA agents are kidnapped off the streets of Washington DC and "rendered" to some torture chamber in... let's say... Iran or North Korea, before being whisked off to serve out their sentences in a Roman dungeon. Of course revenge would be even more delicious if, instead of the 23 convicted criminals, it was their bosses - Colin Powell, perhaps, or Donald Known Unknown. In reality, no such thing will happen. Despite Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian justice system remains moderately civilized. The only punishment that is likely to be meted out to these criminals (not their bosses though) is that they won't be having anymore Roman Holidays.

In the last week I made 36 km, so I'm now 2 km short of Karuah. My step average has increased a bit, but I'm still not anywhere near the 10,000+ steps a day that I was doing during the challenge. My work productivity has gone up though!

For these entries I google the name of the place and link to whatever I like. Most images of Karuah are of the bypass or the real estate shop. Pretty much gives you the idea.

ETA: I should stick to Flickr

I had previously explored the Woolwich end of the Hunters Hill peninsula, and got up as far as the eastern end of HH, but hadn't seen the centre of this 'village' before. It is pretty amazing - lots of very old buildings (by Sydney standards), luxuriant gardens, and a sense of splendid isolation from the rest of the city.

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At the end of Ferdinand St I followed some steep steps down to a reserve on the water's edge. I was hoping to find a path along the waterfront, but no. I had to climb back up again - watched by this kookaburra.


I did eventually find a path along the waterfront, in front of the high school which definitely doesn't look as if the wealthiest parents of Hunters Hill send their kids there! There were some plaques along this path acknowledging "3 patriots of Hunters Hill" - it seems that to be a patriot you only had to be mayor. They were all from the 19th century and their names were Gibbs (English), Charles Jeanneret (French immigrant father) and AngeloTornaghi, a Milanese, scientific instrument maker and Freemason who arrived in Sydney in 1831.

I'm slowly edging around the harbour. Yesterday I made it to the southern shore for the first time. Since I'm doubling back each time and taking in all the loop walks that branch off the harbour circle (as well as some extra loops of my own due to constantly losing my way!), I estimate that I've covered about 45 km in total over the 6 stages. I seem to be about half way around the circle, but a couple of the biggest loop walks are to come.

This week I started at Figtree Bridge, where I'd left off last time. It crosses Lane Cove River (Aboriginal name Turanburra). The tide was way out.

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Next post will be the Hunters Hill loop which I covered on my return journey to the car.

ETA: I discovered, while reading about Hunters Hill tonight, that Figtree House was built by Mary Reiby - an emancipated convict (horse thief) who bought land here. She boarded up her windows with iron sheets for protection against bushrangers and amassed a fortune through trade. The house was named after the Port Jackson fig that stood on her land.

I read Jungstedt's first book, Unseen, a couple of months ago and really liked it. This one wasn't half as good. In fact I thought it was quite bad - bearing the signs of something got out in a rush. The plot was all over the place - a large part of the book devoted to a quite irrelevant love affair between two of the characters from the previous story. The author seemed to be having trouble deciding whether she wanted to write a whodunnit or a book about people's dysfunctional relationships. Moreover, it lacked the sense of place that the first one did. The dénouement was frankly unbelievable.

I guess the next one will be called Unheard! I hope it will be better.