One thing you can say about Sydney. Things are never boring with Lord Mayor Clover Moore and Co continually coming up with ideas that, if nothing else, make people step back and take a deep breath or two.
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The latest is a plan to transform some inner city streets into green areas by setting up what urban designers call ‘parklets’ to make things more community friendly.
No doubt the Melbourne designers are charging an arm and a leg but Clover and Co could have copied the idea from Orange where the council has established sort-of parklets in various parts of the city.
Four of the main ones are attached to the Brown’s Cows crossing in Anson Street but would be easy to transform into these pedestrian friendly areas.
All that’s needed to follow Sydney is some comfortable lounge chairs, beach umbrellas, several small tables, magazine racks and a few pot plants.
Just think. It could be a trendsetter.
Remember when we were kids we loved playing in gooey sticky mud and relished making and eating a few mud pies.
And it didn’t hurt us.
In fact, researchers now say mud is good for kids, improving mood, reducing anxiety and opening the door to learning.
It’s also good for the heart and not just because of all the cardio exercise that it inspires but because exposure to the germs and pathogens found in dirt can reduce a child’s risk of cardiovascular inflammation in adulthood.
So mud and dirt have magical powers that can pave the way for better health for kids throughout their adult lives but how do you convince parents who over-sanitise little Jack or Jill?
Things have to be clean but kids can’t live in a bubble and there’s real dangers in keeping them from playing outside so they don’t get dirty.
To promote good old wet dirt, next Monday June 29, is international Mud Day so kids should hop outside, get their hands dirty and mix up a few gooey mud pies.
It’s part of growing up and it will do them good.
With rugby league’s State of Origin firing up interest in the game, few NRL fans have probably heard about an important clash at Wade Park years ago between Orange Emmco and Bathurst Railway.
The full-time bell was ringing and Orange needed a converted try to win.
It was blowing a gale and the Orange winger knew there was a lot of pressure on the result when he took the ball from a clearing kick.
He raced up the sideline, leaning inwards at an angle of about 45 degrees so he wouldn't be blown into touch, swerved past four or five defenders and scored in the corner.
Three points were no good to Orange and as he was also the goal kicker he knew he had to kick the two points to win the game.
He didn't want to take the ball back too far because the kick was into the wind and wouldn't make the distance so he put it right on the try line, stepped over the sideline and booted it with a slight curve from there but the angle was so acute the ball got stuck between the posts.
Both teams and the referee sat there until 9 o'clock under car headlights with batteries going flat but everyone was determined there had to be a winner.
As the wind began to drop the ball fell over the post, the referee blew his whistle, signalled a goal and the win went to Orange.
Can you believe it?
Orange has a distant link with the bustling little central Queensland town of Winton through Banjo Paterson who was born here but in 1895 wrote the words for Waltzing Matilda, Australia's best-liked song, near there at Dagworth Station, now Belfast.
So it’s a huge shame fire destroyed Winton’s Waltzing Matilda Centre and all its irreplaceable Banjo Paterson stuff.
The centre was a unique experience and the only high-tech display in the world dedicated to a song. A light and sound show brought to life the story of the swaggie and the mystery and romance of the Waltzing Matilda legend.
Banjo, on a visit to Dagworth, scribbled down a poem about a swagman who jumped into a billabong to escape the coppers to go with an old Scottish tune called Craigielee after he heard the owner’s daughter Christina McPherson play it on her autoharp.
It’s interesting to note the pair then first performed what he called Waltzing Matilda in a rowdy piano session in Winton’s North Gregory Hotel which later was also destroyed by fire ... three times.
The hotel was last rebuilt by the council from a levy on rates so it’s pretty certain the Waltzing Matilda Centre will also get a new life.
It would keep our Banjo link intact.
Don’t forget next Tuesday at exactly 11:59.59pm we’ll all get one extra second in our day when international timekeepers adjust the world’s atomic clocks so the earth's rotational spin can catch up.
How awesome is that?
So have you come up with some ideas of things you can do with one more second?
You can flick your TV remote as soon as one of those painful Youi commercials comes on and send it into oblivion where it belongs.
You could blink.
You could glance at your council rates notice or power bill.
Then you could wince.
The possibilities are endless.
A battery jumper lead walks into a bar and orders a beer.
The barman says “OK, I’ll serve you. Just don’t start anything.”