Football on Saturday morning.

Catherine Hill Bay late this afternoon south of Newcastle. 
Wimbledon Mens final, live, begins close to midnight our time.  Will it be another Spanish conquest?  Lorenzo just won the Italian MotoGP in a close race and it kept us awake for the tennis match.

Harness Racing Club. Racing began at Newcastle Showground in 1949. In the eighties a 940 metre track began development along with the stadium, nextdoor. International Sports Centre was born.  To become then Energy Australia stadium then Ausgrid Stadium and Marathon stadium may have been another name.

Ausgrid Stadium, western stand, looks complete now while its management has shifted to the Office of Communities in Sydney reports The Herald 7 June.  The Hockey centre is nearby. (Not sports minded, apart from State of Origin, and lost in time, had only just caught up with the change to Energy Australia stadium.)
A shuttle bus to John Hunter Hospital has nothing to do with sports injuries. The newish hospital, several kilometers away, is a work in progress, where parking is a problem, where a hugh block of vacant land began with a pleasant, state of the art building but is growing like topsy in an ungainly manner. However, we are very very fortunate with what we have, relatively speaking.

 Newcastle International Hockey Centre (or is it Ausgrid) is hosting high school state championships  or something like that and they won't suffer heat stress. Hooray!  An episode of truly chilly winter days has arrived. It's like real weather.

Sunday. Endro karting.
Young spectator, seems just over twelve months old, dressed as an adult and in the thick of it, in his father's footsteps.

Nine o'clock...Ninth....

New York Tangier Tel Aviv Wellington Valencia Iquitos Ghent Delhi Newcastle Chiang Mai

What do these cities have in common? Nothing? Is it football? In fact, these are the top ten cities to visit in 2011 according to Lonely Planet's Best Travel. Ninth is Newcastle, Australia - no less!
David Beckham knows - he will be here this week plus LA Galaxy. Newcastle United Jets meet LA Galaxy at Energy Australia Stadium, Newcastle, Saturday night.

The new stadium at Broadmeadow is 'moving forward' slowly and steadily even if it does not look exactly like a stadium.

Mega events like the Commonwealth Games usually have very important officials representing the organization swaning around on location. These chaps will simply have to lift their game and take responsibility for the finishing touches and get the facilities in New Delhi in order.
For guidance on this task don't take a look at a fun TV series where mythical Sydney Olympic CEOs bungled their way through to the great day just ten years ago.
In real life, the ex-Fairfax newspaper building in Ultimo became the early stronghold of the Sydney Olympic organizing committee. Later-on the building went to the University after a classy make-over in glass.

Knights Rugby League team leaving Newcastle Airport for Melbourne for the last match of the season and into the Storm in more ways than one.

Bike of the week at the airport, of all places, from Victory Motorcycles - the new American Motorcycle, Hammar model, $AU31,300.00 on road or $156.36 per week from Brisan motorcycles, not only for BMW.

Jessica, aged 16 years, returned to Sydney Harbour yesterday after sailing solo around the world.
People have mixed reactions to this feat. I can imagine what grumpy old men might say.

 

Port Macquarie is fast growing south of Crescent Head and has much more development as well as very good open spaces along the beachfront where a 'learn to surf' had set up. Port has a fair share of monoculture or sameness.

More tourists were seen on location with their Wicked campers.

  

The Malibu Classic event is an amateurs competition for all ages and is big in May in Crescent Head which, I read, in surfing terms, has the best ever right-hand point break. The Malibu or longboard is wider than the shortboard and has a rounded nose. 

Board riders: past the Wicked camper, the Pandanus tree, over the rocks, the sand, and to the waves such as they were on that day.

The tree is probably a Pandanus (or Screw Palm) which, in more resourceful climes, is used for everything, for building, making sleeping mates mats, rain capes, canoe sails, bags etc.

The large fruit, round and about 20cm across consisting of nuts segments, is used for food, and the best choice depends on local knowledge, (like, check whether it is safe to eat), the flesh is used for soups and saucers sauces, or fruit is heated over a fire or in a stone oven, and juice is strained out from the seed by squeezing it between the hands.

Or can be smoked cured and kept for many months and stored in the ceiling for example. In traditional cultures, this food was important in tropical high altitudes where other crops did not do well.

 

At Crescent Head

Casey Stoner is on the front row of the grid at Philip Island today and some other events add up to good weekend. Go rev heads!

A little out of town on a back road is Toronto Country Club and golf. From this angle the ambience is superb!

You may be able to see a baseball game in the photo. There is at least one baseball centre in Newcastle in Mayfield West.
As the crow flies, it is not far from the Wetlands.

Change is constant and empires come and go. The big steelworks that once dominated the city have gone and the associated Steelworks Golf Club survives with a new identity.
The nearby BHP Billiton workshops and labs are said to be reborn as part of the University (nextdoor).
Is it more the case that when art, science and religion are in tension rather than in alliance that new ideas are stimulated?

Kana-Cross.
cana.....cross....Sunday...

Jets football and South Korea. Currently from the Art Gallery of NSW, the above is (a small section of the screen) The ten symbols of longevity (Shipjangseng-do) from 1800s.

Traditional motifs are drawn from the four kingdoms: celestial, earthly, animal and vegetable and such works are often mounted on screens (folding and several meters high). Long life, health happiness and peace were the ideals of the time. Korean Dreams Paintings & screens of the Joseon Dynasty. The Lee Ufan Collection in the Musee Guimet, Paris. Below is a nice little screen souvenir from a Korean museum.

Now to important matters. The Newcastle United Jets play Ulsan in South Korea tonight in the Asian Championships and a win or draw is vital. Local ABC radio is on location and all will be revealed on air.
News of the Jets and their achievments are part and parcel of the local scene rather than that of me as a female looking at males or, rather, at a group of footballer males, at others - maybe.

Woman in a Rodeo, in the horse capital, Scone, last Saturday.
Rodeo as in Row-day-o is what old folks used to say (instead of road-ee-o).