At Westfields, Kotara, a phantom surfer is high and above the shoppers. 

 Another multinational, Cotton On, is brave enough to open a store right where Borders closed up after going into liquidation. The age old book company, Angus and Robinson, seem to be taken over by Borders and that was the end of that. A & R published many of the Australian classics. 

Cotton On stores are already in the shopping centres around here somewhere, shopping is not a favourite pastime of mine. As it is, several well known retail clothing chains are going out of business. Then, David Jones department store closed their store in Newcastle city and have a bet each way saying they may reopen it in the future and use the window displays to attract customers out to their store in Westfields, Kotara.  

Air Ambulance lands at the hospital. Otherwise quiet afternoon and a few onlookers return indoors to where the action is.

 

A toddler goes to the big local hospital and waits four and a half hours in the waiting room then waits three hours to see a doctor in A & E and is then moved to the hospital ward.  At least it was not into a bed in a corridor.   We know such as this is not for the faint hearted.  We cannot expect the impossible and are fortunate and this is not a complaint about delays but those officials who boast of improved waiting times in emergency departments need a reality check.

Update: the above times are inaccurate and somewhat overdone due to confusion about the waiting time as a total. In all, a morning spent waiting at the G P, then diagnostic tests, then in the afternoon, turning to hospital care and eventual admission very late at night - all of which is fairly usual.  

Yesterdays ferry moors beside a small boat yard/museum.

River and vehicular ferry on a back road out of Port Macquarie.

Remember how the sky randomly lit up brightly at night over Newcastle when BHP steel works carried out some big process?

Outer suburb. Still life with retro car, take-away - burgers, fish and chips etc (with 'non-traditional', whatever that is, shop keepers,)  and remnants of a post office site. Fish and chip shops were often operated by people of Mediterranean descent but those older generations have retired, or by Anglos. 

Stormy Newcastle Beach had plenty of white water on Saturday and a touch of sunlight for a brief time. 

From the Hibbart Island car ferry.  The ferry goes backwards and forwards - backwards and forwards (more frequently in holiday times!)

Is all reasoning affected by the summer weather on the other side of the world?  It certainly must be time to tap into the untold wealth of the high rollers to help save the economies that are going under instead of cutting into basic services too much.

Why do we copy what is done overseas - every bit of economic rationalism and privatisation  and closure of services - what have those countries gained as they sit on the brink of financial disaster? 

But then our economy is saved by mineral resources.

Our dollar has been higher than the $US for some time.  As a result of the high dollar Aussie tourists are having a field day but certain investments give no returns and go backwards and exporters groan.