My April 25th post showed Memory Park in Hazelbrook as it was around the time of the Great War or a little after. The park used to accommodate a commemorative war memorial - hence the name of the park - but the latter was moved to Gloria Park in the 1990's because of the proposed widening of the Great Western Highway. The park fell into a very poor state until its recent dramatic redesign in 2014.

Just how different Memory Park is can be seen in the following photo which I took a few days ago. I am guessing that I have taken it from a similar vantage point to those posted earlier, but such are the changes wrought over the past 90 years (the park is much smaller and narrower due to ever-encroaching roadworks) that it was a tough judgement call. Also noteworthy is the relatively new pedestrian bridge to Hazelbrook Station which took the place of a zebra crossing and the more recent traffic lights.

Memory Park has taken a battering over the course of the 20th century and it's current iteration may well do it for another century. Maybe we will reach another high water-mark of civic pride such as was evident a hundred years ago, though I am doubtful. That generation and the one following had a different way of expressing the notion of the common good and the concomitant duties that flowed from that understanding. I fancy that we shall not see the like again. I'm happy to proven wrong though.

We live in an era of noise. Beginning with the first industrial revolution, and moving with a ceaseless trajectory since, noise has become an omnipresent bedfellow for all who live in or near cities. Cities are great gathering-sites of sound. They do not discriminate but proclaim the clamour within. In every house, devices hum and buzz. Fridges whir and mine occasionally shudders as if shaking off the cold. When reversing my car I get an emphatic beep.

This morning I went shopping at a large supermarket in Katoomba. Whilst waiting in the queue, I tried tuning in and out to the different layers of noise that surrounded all of us there. Stratas of white sound - refrigerators and air-conditioning were a soup of loud hushing - formed an almost benign background to the chirrup of cash registers, exclamations of customers and clatter of trolleys. It was impossible to imagine a place beneath all this racket where there might be a kind of silence.

Back home, cockatoos swooped loudly on some bread I put outside. I suspect their shrieks could shatter glass under the right conditions. I don't know of a noisier bird, and en masse they might even wake the dead.

One day the universe will end in silent darkness, but for now, we have an interminable light and sound show.

We have had a genuine cold snap in recent days, reminding me of the time I first moved to Hazelbrook. On Thursday night, the Upper Mountains had its biggest fall of snow since the 1980's, an event that caused some havoc on the roads and railways. We are not set up for moderate falls of snow, though in a few months time, we will be better prepared for bushfires. We do droughts and floods quite well too. Snow, well...

Consequently there has been a torrent of media and social media reportage and I won't bore you with the details of snowmen, whooping kids or blithe yuletide scenery, except to say, that there were massive drifts of it. Having lived though four Japanese winters (and while I love the sensation of waking to a white frosting of silence) I am less-than-sanguine about it all. But pleased nevertheless.

Yesterday Tom's nana, Elaine, took him to the icy reaches of Katoomba where he played happily for an hour or two. Elaine took a few photos and I hope to have better resolved ones, soon.




waking to bleached silence
snow-fall an unvoiced conspiracy-
blankets tighten

a jets backside
plumbs low the dusk sky-
my train judders

The crisis in Europe over Greece - an ongoing saga dating back some five years now - has tended to polarize views. On the one hand, there is much commentary on how the Greeks got into this mess through poor governance and over-borrowing. Let them shape up or ship out, the same view contends. Opposing this is the idea that Europe is being run by the Germans for the Germans and that Germany should do its best to forgive Greek debt. After all, the Wehrmacht was camped in Athens and surrounds 70 years ago and reparations are surely due.

Most likely, a middle way will prevail. Greece will eventually get the loan extensions and additions, be required to reform itself further, with the understanding and guarantee that permanent debt relief will be delivered shortly thereafter. There seems little point in administering medicine that will kill the patient, but this seems to have been the unwitting result of the past five years.

In my view, the European Project needs that country, the one that was the very well-spring and cradle of Western thought, to stay inside. It is never a cost-free exercise, but what, realistically, is the alternative?

Tom sometimes falls asleep on my grandmother's sofa. It's getting harder to carry him as he grows longer and heavier, but carry him I must so he can sleep in his own bed. Waking up amongst his toys, lego creations and all that happy familiarity is always better than the other options and sofas are bad for the back anyway. One day I won't be able to carry him, so for me, this is still a special time. Though, sshhhh! I would never tell him that.

It's cold today.....

bird-bending winter wind,
charge of grit and eye-blind breath,
coughing from within