First of the season. Keeping our fingers crossed that the projected path heads away from us. Tropical Cyclone Dylan track maps:
Tropical Cyclone Dylan
1750 update:
Tropical Cyclone Dylan
Here we go again – Tropical Cyclone Dylan
250,000 kilometres
Honda Jazz odometer
Our trusty Honda Jazz has just passed one quarter of a million kilometres*, as shown in the image above. It has taken 10 years 5 months to reach this far.
*For those still living in the past that’s 155,342 miles.
Tully cassowary
Someone had the bright idea of carving a four metre tall cassowary from one of the fallen kauri pines at the Tully Showground. A couple of the mature trees were felled by Cyclone Yasi:
Kauri Pine at Tully Showground
Work on the carving started on the first day of this years Tully Show.
Cassowary at Tully Showground
Queensland dredging
Tourist info board at Cairns
I’ve transcribed the text of the tourism information board below for mobile device users:
Three years later in 1922 a visiting writer recorded on his arrival at the Strand Hotel that,
The white beach invited our attention first and we strolled along it. It stretched like a band of pearl and saffron along the blue water’s rim, dotted with palm trees, giant fig trees, and flame trees just bursting into flower .
However, 14 years later in 1936 – after the dredge had been operating for 23 years – the editor of the Bendigo Advertiser observed at the foreshore at Cairns, “at low tide…the receding water leaves a rather unsightly mudflat…”
And Cairns’ “band of pearl and saffron” today looks like this:
Cairns’ “band of pearl and saffron”
Texas and the death penalty
Martin Amis:
“Doesn’t Texas sometimes seem to resemble a country like Saudi Arabia, with its great heat, its oil wealth, its brimming houses of worship, and its weekly executions?”