Quirky woods

Some while back I wrote a few posts on quirky places in Dunedin - here, for instance, or here, and here. These posts, which date from 2009 and 2011, are now all in need of updating. I've just updated the one on quirky water, for instance, though it could probably do with a total overhaul.

Anyway, to add to the 'series,' my wife and I today discovered 73 Hillary St. Celia had seen something about it online when she was searching for the whereabouts of chestnut trees in Dunedin, and suggested we go and look.

Well, the chestnut trees, as far as we could see, are still at a fairly early stage of their existence, and won't be producing chestnuts for a while yet. This site has to be one of the most unknown places in the city. Obviously locals know about it, but I doubt if the general population is up with it.

For a start, even though it has a street number online, there's no sign, and certainly no postbox. You go down an unmarked track between 71 and 75 and after encountering a couple of metal stands that stop people taking bikes in, you find yourself in a wonderful area full of trees - new and old - between the back of the Hillary St houses and the Motorway. It's a bit noisy at times, because of the cars going up and down the motorway, but it still manages to be very peaceful.

It's a piece of land on the hillside that is undulating, to say the least. Some of it is steep(ish) and some flat(ish). The ground underneath you is at present carpeted with thousands of leaves, so it's lovely to walk on. It's a bit like being in a English wood, although most English woods would be older and the trees would be ancient. There are some elderly trees here, but also plenty of new ones coming along, plus a good number of rhododendron bushes still in their youth.

It has a charm all its own - the dog loved it, and we loved it too. You could picnic there, at a pinch, and it's surprisingly clear of rubbish (only up towards the back of one set of houses was there any sign of unrecycled stuff.

And the view across the motorway at present is a delight: hundreds of trees of all sorts of colours: browns, yellows, reds. Who needs to go to Arrowtown to see Autumn at its best?

Sydney, birds and loans

I've just been in Sydney, as I noted in my last post, and the area I was in - St Mary's - consisted of a shopping centre, some housing...and a lot of parkland.  The first thing that struck me was the amount of open space near where we were staying: wide streets and lots of parkland with hundreds of trees. And birds making a kind of Naaaah noise. It sounded at first like a baby crying, or a young child protesting.  But it was the distinctive sound of these birds. One morning, before I got up, a tribe of them got together and did a chorus: one would start - Naaaah - another couple would respond - Naaaah - and then gradually a bunch of them added their voices to the song (if that's what you'd call it), until all the Naaaahs - became one big protesting Naaaah.  

Anyway, on the Saturday morning I got up before the other two people I was staying with and went for a bit of a wander along the main street. Most things were closed at that hour, but I bought a Sydney Morning Herald weekend edition (which turned out to have a huge chunk of real estate stuff, and business advertising, and not a great deal else...including no crosswords!)  I was struck by one particular thing in the shopping area: the number of places that offered instant cash loans. I was just reminded about this through seeing Blue Global Media on the Net. They offer similar quick loans, especially those kinds of loans that you get to tide you over until your next payday: payday loan affiliate programs and the like. In fact, with BGM, as you might guess from the last link, you can become an affiliate to their programs, and make money yourself by becoming part of their payday affiliate network 

I'm sure BGM is a perfectly legitimate business, and offer very good deals. I just have some qualms about tiding myself over till the next payday by borrowing. It means that in effect your next pay is already being eaten into, which will mean more borrowing and so on. We already have some sense of this in terms of our pension income not being quite enough to come and go on some weeks - especially if big bills arrive - and so we in effect have to 'borrow' from ourselves to keep ourselves afloat (borrowing from our savings account, that is). This isn't ideal, but it's necessary. And there plenty of people who aren't as well off as us, even, who get into similar difficulties, and find that these sorts of loan places are necessary to their survival.