It’s Sunday night. I’ve just spent an hour or so updating things on the Hawkesbury Website, including writing up the minutes of this evening’s meeting. I’ve also just read the email about the debate I’m participating in tomorrow at the Royal Easter Show, arguing the affirmative for “The Future of Rural Australia is along the coast”. Should be interesting stuff. I’ve had a reasonably busy few days, so I thought I should update this before I lose track of everything.

I spent Friday at the Royal Easter Show. Despite the drought, there appeared to be a genuine sense of optimism amongst those I spoke with. Of course it may have been only the optimistic ones with enough money could afford to come to Sydney or perhaps a sense of “well, it couldn’t get any worse”, but I genuinely did sense a feeling that things can only get better. Even in the District Exhibits, themes of rural renewal and environmentalism were evident. After a couple of drinks, I came home for a reasonably early night in bed.

After waking up on Saturday, I headed off to Balmain to meet Damien for our planned “Historic Pub Crawl”. Upon arriving, we were told it was next week, although the website clearly said (and still does) that it was April 12. Anyhoo…

That meant we could head off to the Paddington Bowling Club early. We were heading off to Greg’s 30th Birthday Lawn Bowls Game. No doubt inspired by the movie, Crackerjack, and The Secret Life Of Us, Greg had booked two lanes (?) at the Bowling Club for an afternoon.

Although at first, as a left-hander, I was a little unsure of how to take into account the bias of the lawn bowl, I soon discovered and became quite reasonable at it (or so I thought). After an afternoon of lawn bowls and beer, we headed off to the Lord Dudley.

I met Kate just after 11 this morning for Yum-Cha. The meal was EXCELLENT. From yum-cha it was off to the Australian Technology Park at Redfern, based around the old Eveleigh Street Railway Yards. There was a small, but diverse group of us who went on a tour around the old Locomotive Workshop Buildings. According to the organisers, the original fabric has been maintained and contains a large display of original machines and plant used in the fabrication of steam locomotives and the largest steampress in the Southern Hemisphere is still located in the Blacksmith’s workshop in Bay 1.

There’s also an outside urinal! The group was really an odd one. There was a man who knew more than the tour guide, or so he thought, interrupting her tour with the most innane points of trivia, much to the amusement of everyone. There was a woman with a rather disturbing prosthetic hand. There were also two old woman (96 and 80) who were an absolute hoot, thanks to their very active minds and senses of humour. We also met up with Kate’s friend, Judith and her girlfriend.

From there, Kate and I went to the Palm Sunday Peace March and caught the ferry to Woolwich for the Hawkesbury Group meeting. And that’s the last few days!