7 Dec
At the Gallery Cafe Surry Hills one of the inner Sydney suburban townships, Margaret O’Toole exhibited several water-colour paintings.
The exhibition was on the 5th of October 2012 and was a fantastic display of her art.
Pictured below is Pearl Williams, Curator of the exhibition.
Pearl Williams
25 Oct
Questions are raised in the discussion paper, ‘enhancing hazard reduction in NSW’, put out by the Bush Fire coordinating committee (BFCC) in August 2012.
This paper attempt to cover two fundamental questions related to the Bush fire Environmental Code.
Question 8: Should the Bush Fire Environmental Assessment Code (BFEAC) be amended to further streamline the environmental assessment process? If so, how should this be done? Can you provide examples of when the Code has worked well and when it has not?
Question 9: What steps could be taken to dispel the perception that environmental issues prevent hazard reduction?
The answer is to incorporate the detail of the treatments, planning and environmental constraint such as fire frequency intervals in the Risk Management Plans (RMPs) prepared by the Bush Fire Management committees (BFMCs).
Presently not enough detail and not enough reportable assessments are available in the RMPs.
This paper highlights…
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13 Oct
On an excursion to Roselle in the early spring, one could not have experienced such a bright and crisp day. In this impressions collection, Dr. Ray has found many examples of early 20th century urban living in the inner Sydney suburbs.
These vistas have created a picturesque environment in the 21st century through mature trees and bushes presenting a fairyland, giving a bright yet soft impression of the Sydney suburbs.
22 Sep
The Galah or Cacatua roseicapilla, is a very common bird throughout Australia. It is an elegant bird standing between 34 and 38 cm tall. With a soft pink breast and grey wings the colour of ash, they can often be seen to changing colour when traveling together in flight.
Their natural habitat is grassland, woodland, scrubland and farmland. However, it is not common to see these birds in urban areas and even in the City. They are a nomadic species, but will not go too far from water.
Galah
Margaret has depicted her Galah in the woodlands. New South Wales has large expanses of woodlands, both east and west of the Great Divide.
On the Central Coast where Margaret lives, Galahs are a fairly common sight, especially in the spring. Often they are seen on grass reserves near the estuaries and lakes foraging for grass seeds in spring’s golden sunlight.
Comments by David Holland
Galah (Cacatua roseicapilla), female, looking out from nesting hollow, Austin’s Ferry, Tasmania, Australia (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
28 Aug
In the late 1990’s I recognised that climate change was a real threat to our coastal environs. With wilder weather events predicted under climate change our coastal dunes were vulnerable. Our settlements and streets were also vulnerable to these wilder storms. Now with the reality of sea level rise caused by the ocean’s expansion and the melting of kilometers thick ice on the polar land masses, Australians living on the coast need to be concerned how government is going to plan for our future with regard to land management and risk mitigation related to property values and our wealth accumulated in these coastal properties. This paper discusses these issues.
By David Holland
Short cut to Paper: Planning for Climate Change in the Coastal Regions of New South Wales
Related articles
- Three New Studies on Sea Level Rise Bring New Concerns (climatecentral.org)
- Climate change threatens to alter marine ecosystem (vancouversun.com)
- Rising sea level a threat to East – Boston.com (boston.com)
- Climate Change, Sea Level Rise, and The Biggest Blogathon Evah! [Greg Laden’s Blog] (scienceblogs.com)
By David Holland
The Risk Model, as described in the following paper, is an approach for local councils in NSW to plan for future climate change induced sea level rise in an equitable and proactive way.
It allows local government to approve developments that are under the maximum State Government of NSW benchmarks set at 900mm over the present flood levels while at the same time reduces risks to litigation due to damage of properties from climate change brought by property owners who’s developments are below this maximum standard set by the State Government. (Often a maximum standard set by State Governments become a minimum standard for local government due to the threat of litigation by land owners.)
This standard has become an enormous problem to land owners in at risk locations along the coast of New South Wales. In recent times insurance policy premiums have skyrocketed. Land…
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6 Aug
Two Rainbow Lorikeets at Newport Aquarium. This subspecies of the Rainbow Lorikeet is also called Forsten’s Lorikeet (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Water colour painting can produce some amazing pieces of artwork. Margaret again has chosen birds as a subject for her water-colour.
This depicts two Australian native birds. A Rainbow Lorikeet with the yellowy Green neck frill and the slightly larger northern territory variety called the Red-collared Lorikeet.
Rainbow Lorikeet
The rainbow lorikeet is a common sight on the Central Coast of NSW in Australia and was the star of the show in the Currumbin sanctuary years ago when an enterprising family opened their back yard up to the public to show the spectacle of feeding these pretty birds.
16 Jul
This book takes you through a journey of the ancient patriarchs of the Bible and how they became acquainted with God.
It is an exercise in taking the Bible scriptures as literal truth, gleaning subtleties from the original Hebrew texts through the Strong’s concordance and building a picture of life in those times.
It brings to light probable details of the early characters of the Bible and presents arguments that show the importance man has in God’s plan for the earth that is not immediately evident in today’s perspective of the scriptures. It shows the importance of starting at the beginning of the story about God and his plan for man. This story gives an insight into how God is to bring about the fullness of Jesus as High Priest after the order of Melchizedek. It gives insights into the evidences found in the scriptures of life of
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6 Jul
Biobanking has had mixed success after being legislated in 2007. Originally designed to stop the remaining natural bushland environments in New South Wales being cleared and destroyed it has been slow to be taken up by both land holders and developers.
The legislation was designed to encourage land owners to set aside farmland for biodiversity preservation and at the same time allow higher intensity developments such as housing and commercial uses of land ensure compensation for destroying natural environment be compensated by offsetting the bio-charactorisics that are destroyed by these developments and facilitate the transferring of these assets to other locations through a theoretical process called biobanking.
This is done by a credit system where land owners put a variety of biodiversity credits on the market. The developers of high intensity and high profit developments, buy these credits and satisfy the destroyed natural environments.
Unfortunately one apple does not equal…
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3 Jun
The crane is depicted as a symbol of Long Life and Happiness.
Margaret Ellem (nee O’Toole) has depicted the crane in this pen and watercolour painting.
She has depicted the cranes in this painting as Long Life and happiness.
Long Life and Happiness
3 Jun
Pearl Shell Roof Darling Harbour
The Weekly Dozen is a grouping of 12 photos to be presented on the Visions of Sydney Habitat Association’s project site each week.
This is the first week of this new series called “Buildings and Spaces”.
Also last week Visions of Sydney had a new pilot of this series called Autumn in Inner Sydney.
Both these new series can be found on Visions of Inner Sydney.
Link to site: Buildings and Spaces
