This apple tree just outside the main entrance to Trinity College is purportedly a direct descendant of the famous Newtonian apple tree.

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One day while I was in Cambridge I was putting the garbage bins out and got chatting to a guy going past who said he lived down the road near the wisteria. I immediately knew what he meant.

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Continued from earlier today ( Read more... )

Today I made a mistake getting out of bed. I pinched a nerve or something and spent an hour or so bending and stretching with extreme slowness trying to work out in what position I could be comfortable and which not. Gradually the pain went away, but for a while I could barely move. So I've been a bit cautious all day. Once I felt reasonably ( Read more... )

I've been feeling completely drained of energy. Yesterday I basically stayed in bed all day reading. Today I thought I'd better go out for a walk, but I had no plan, so I just went over to Kirribilli and had my usual pad kee mao with duck. This is where you walk under the Bradfield Highway (coming off the Bridge) to get to Kirribilli from my place ( Read more... )

I had previously explored the Woolwich end of the Hunters Hill peninsula, and got up as far as the eastern end of HH, but hadn't seen the centre of this 'village' before. It is pretty amazing - lots of very old buildings (by Sydney standards), luxuriant gardens, and a sense of splendid isolation from the rest of the city.

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This is a walk that goes from the Harbour Bridge across the north shore to the Gladesville Bridge and back along the south shore. There are several loop walks that divert from it. Anyway I've been wondering what to do after Cooks River, so today (since I was on strike) I started on the Harbour Circle. Basically I walked over to Waverton by the ( Read more... )

The Community Garden at Milson Park has made progress. All it needs is dirt and seeds!

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Yesterday I went for a long ramble.

High St, North Sydney is by no means a High Street in the usual sense of the word. Perhaps it was once intended to be, but it became residential. The oldest building seems to be Cliffbank, dated 1888 - note the lions at the top. Very grand!

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The Wollemi Pine was quite recently discovered and is very rare. It belongs to its own genus and is, so far, the only known species of that genus. In the wild it occurs in remote areas of the Wollemi National Park, northwest of Sydney, but the location is kept secret from the public. Otherwise you can only see it in botanical gardens where none of ( Read more... )