Saturday, July 25, 2020
Sydney Suburbs, continued: Clarendon, Claymore, Clemton Park
Clarendon:
Location:
Clarendon is a suburb of Sydney bordering the Royal Australian Air Force base at Richmond which was established in 1923.
About:
Clarendon Railway Station is on the Richmond line.
Clarendon is home to Hawkesbury Racecourse and the Hawkesbury Showground.
According to the 2016 Census:
- there were 122 people in Clarendon;
- 47.5% were male and 52.5% were female;
- the median age was 40 years;
- there were 27 families;
- the average number of people per household was 3.3;
- there were 41 private dwellings.
Gallery:
Clarendon Railway Station
Another view of Clarendon Railway Station
Hawkesbury Racecourse
Claymore:
Location:
Claymore is located 54 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Campbelltown and is part of the Macarthur region.
Name origin:
British settlers began moving into the area in the early 19th century, establishing farms and orchards. By the 1970s, the expansion of Sydney was great enough for developers to look at the area around Campbelltown. The Housing Commission of New South Wales undertook a large public housing development in the Claymore area. Originally the suburb was to be called Badgally after a local homestead, but the council backed off over concerns that the "Bad" part of the name could give the area a "bad" name. They chose Claymore after another local property, although that was also contentious since the name had very little history in the area.
About:
The first residents moved in during 1978.
The majority of housing in Claymore is owned by Housing NSW.
The streets are named after Australian artists.
According to the 2016 census:
- Claymore had a population of 2,644 people.
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people made up 7.9% of the population.
- 57.3% of people were born in Australia.
- The next most common countries of birth were New Zealand 5.1% and Samoa 4.3%.
- The median age is 23, compared to the national median of 38, with 33.2% of the population aged 14 or under.
- The median household income is $698 per week, less than half of the national average median of $1,486.
- 4.4% of houses were rented, compared to the national average of 30.9%.
- There are no houses that were owned outright or with a mortgage.
In September 2012, an episode of the ABC program Four Corners entitled "Growing up poor" examined the lives of children in poor families in Claymore.It stated that the suburb had the youngest population in Australia.
A report "Down and under" in the Al Jazeera 101 East series in February 2013 also pointed to the links between poverty and hopelessness, family tensions and violence and lack of opportunities for Claymore's children, where more than half the families have only one parent.
In the 2015 Dropping Off The Edge report, Claymore was listed as one of the most socially disadvantaged areas in New South Wales.
Gallery:
Claymore Shopping Centre
By the way:
From:
But where did [the name] Claymore come from? In retrospect, it seems the name is a largely inappropriate one. Council only approved it under heavy pressure from the Housing Commission, which had begun prematurely using the name plan and promote its latest development. The Commission’s justification for the title was that the property standing in the area had been called Claymore. Yet a far more historic and worthy name – Glenroy – was ignored in the process. Glenroy homestead may have been built as early as 1857 on part of a 55 acre (22ha) land grant awarded to Daniel Brady in 1816
From 1929, it was operated as a dairy farm of 120 acres (48ha) by Great War veteran, Charles McClelland and his wife, Minnie. Glenroy remained in family hands until the 1960’s, when much of it was purchased by the Commission. The McClelland’s son, Allan, still sees red over the way the name claymore was selected. “Because Glenroy has been synonymous with the region for years, I felt it should have been used for the suburbs name,” he told the local press in 1995.
'Glenroy' Homestead
The so-called Claymore farm was actually Rosslyn when the Bursill family owned it from 1921-1936. And in the 1940’s, when it was sold to Dr Abbott, it was renamed Bukit Senung. It wasn’t until the 1960’s that an owner called Vanderbilt called the property Claymore, after the fearsome battlesword used by Scottish Highlanders.
By the 1970’s, Vanderbilt had erected three mock claymore swords on his gate – and this is what caught the attention of Housing Commission officers.
The rest is history. The old McClelland home still stands on high ground near the entrance to Claymore and was fully restored in the 1980’s. It is used as the Amaru Community Centre – a name which derives from the Aboriginal term “beautiful place”.
Highlander with claymore sword
Another Highlander with a claymore
Obi Wan McGregor with a claymore light sabre 😂
Rob Roy Kenobi but that's not a claymore
And still another Highlander but that's also not a claymore - "There can be only one"
Clemton Park:
Location:
Clemton Park is located 13 kilometres south-west of the Sydney central business district in the City of Canterbury-Bankstown.
Name origin:
The area known as Clemton Park today was formerly referred to as Earlwood. In 1925 the William Street progress and tramway extension league decided that the district known as Earlwood covered too large an area. It was proposed that a competition be held to create a new name for the area in the vicinity of William Street.
A man by the name of Len Loxly suggested that the area be called Clemton Park on the basis that Frederick Moore Clements owned 42 acres of property from 1825 until 1911 when he sold it. Clements was a successful business man and was responsible for "Clement's Tonic", which was promoted with the advertising jingle
"Clements Tonic for nerve and brain
Helps to make you well again"
About:
A major development, Clemton Park Village, was begun as a three staged, Australand project. Frasers took over Australand in 2014 with the final apartments delivered in 2017. On its completion Clemton Park Village housed 1,500 people in 747 apartments across 11 residential buildings. The village comes with a Coles supermarket. It was the former factory site of electrical appliance maker Sunbeam.
Gallery:
The intersection of Bexley Road and William Street.
Clemton Park Village
Friday, July 24, 2020
Funny Friday
-----o😊o-----
-----o😊o-----
SOME HUMOUR. . .
Fred came home from University in tears.
"Mum, am I adopted?"
"No of course not", replied his mother. Why
would you think such a thing?
Fred showed her his genealogy DNA test results. No
match for any of his relatives, and strong matches for a family who lived the
other side of the city.
Perturbed, his mother called her husband. "Honey,
Fred has done a DNA test, and... and... I don't know how to say this... he may
not be our son."
"Well, obviously!" he replied.
"What do you mean?"
"It was your idea in the first place" her
husband continued. "You remember, that first night in hospital when the
baby did nothing but scream and cry and scream and cry. On and on. And you
asked me to change him."
"I picked a good one I reckon. Ever so proud of
Fred."
____________________
13: “I’m the number everybody hates”.
666: “No way, I am the number everybody hates”.
2020: “lol”.
____________________
How do you turn a pussy into an asshole?
Give him a badge.
____________________
Did
you hear about Johnny Depp not being willing to testify against Harvey
Weinstein unless the authorities promised he could not be prosecuted for
domestic violence?
Apparently
he wanted heard immunity.
____________________
My boss walks over to my desk as the phone is ringing…
Boss: Why aren’t you picking that up??
Me: I pick it up on the third ring, makes me seem
cooler.
Boss: PICK IT UP!!
Me: [rolls eyes] Fine. 911, what’s your emergency?
____________________
Johnny is in Sunday School when the teacher asks the
class "What happened when Jesus went to Mount Olive?"
Johnny's hand shot up. Since Johnny never raised his
hand, the teacher called on him.
“Yes, Johnny?”
Johnny replied "Popeye kicked the shit out of
him".
-----o😊o-----
FROM THE VAULT . . .
A
married couple decides to brave Covid and eat out for their anniversary at a
fancy restaurant. They order soup, but as it arrives, the man accidentally
knock his spoon onto the floor with his elbow. To his surprise a waiter
promptly picks up the dirty spoon and gives him a clean one right from his
shirt pocket.
"Wow, you guys all carry spoons in your pocket?" His wife asks.
"Well sure," the waiter replies. "We need to turn tables 20%
faster with all the rules in place. We had an efficiency consultant in last
week and he told us we could increase overall productivity by 6.8% by carrying
fresh spoons in our pockets. Now we all do it."
"Impressive," the couple agrees. "By the way,” says the man, “I
should let you know that you have a piece of string hanging out of your
fly."
"Oh we all do!" the waiter replies. "The consultant said we were
wasting valuable time washing our hands.
He told us to tie this piece of string to ourselves for hands-free operation.
When I need to unzip, I just use the string. And since I never actually touch
myself, there's no need to wash my hands!"
"I see," says the man, between big spoonfuls of soup. "So, um,
how do you get your penis back into your pants when your finished?"
"Well. I don't know about these these other guys, but I use the
spoon."
-----o😊o-----
GALLERY . . .
-----o😊o-----
LIMERICK OF THE WEEK . . .
There was a young girl named Sapphire
Who succumbed to her lover's desire.
She said, "It's a sin,
But now that it's in,
Could you shove it a few inches higher?
-----o😊o-----
CORN CORNER . . .
Karl Marx is a historically famous philosopher, but no
one ever mentions his sister, Onya, the inventor of the starting pistol...
____________________
I overdosed on viagra once
Hardest day of my life
____________________
There's a woman in the park sells batteries.
She sells C cells by the seesaw.
____________________
Trump is now promoting beans.
Normally beans promote trumping.
----o😊o-----
Thursday, July 23, 2020
God in the Quad and Falling Trees
A repost from March 23, 2013 . . .
There was a young man who said "God
Must find it exceedingly odd
To see that this tree
Still continues to be
When there's no-one about in the quad".
Dear Sir, Your astonishment's odd;
I am always about in the quad;
And that's why the tree
Still continues to be
Since observed by, Yours faithfully, God.
No, you aren't confused and neither am I, it's not Funny Friday. The limericks are both the subject of, and introduction to, today's post.
The above limericks are comments upon the views of George Berkeley (1685-1753), aka Bishop Berkeley, a philosopher who espoused a theory he called “immaterialism”.
George Berkeley
Berkeley's theory, which sounds like something out of The Matrix, argues that physical things do not really exist except as ideas, until they are perceived by the senses of people perceiving those physical things. His expression “to be is to be perceived” summed it up. Hence as you sit at your computer at your desk at home, you see the images on the screen, you feel the keyboard keys, you hear the sound of the keys and the sounds from the speakers. If you are at work, how do you know that the computer on your desk at home still exists? It exists in your mind and memory, but that does not equate to existence in fact. You believe it still exists but you don't know that it does. To validate existence of material objects we need to use our senses.
Okay, I can dig that, I hear you say, the computer may have been destroyed in a fire and no longer exist. But Berkeley takes it further. He is not saying that existence is dependent on existence, he says that when not perceived, an object ceases existence. WTF??? He says that things keep going from existing to not existing and then existing again?? Well, yes, but he has a Catch 22 to cover that: things exist only when perceived, but there is a perceiver even when no people are there, namely the Infinite Perceiver, God, who perceives everything from an infinite perspective. Hence your lap top at home still exists when you go to work because it is observed by God.
What if you don't believe in God but accept Berkeley's hypothesis? Well, then you have a problem, a bit like the buttered cat paradox, see:
Berkeley's ideas were summed up by Ronald Knox (1888-1957) in the above spoof limericks. An English priest and theologian, Knox was also a writer and a regular broadcaster for BBC Radio. It has been suggested that the first limerick was by an undergraduate of Balliol College at Oxford and that the response was by Ronald Knox; more commonly it is thought that Knox wrote both.
Ronald Knox
By the way:
In January 1926, for one of his regular BBC Radio programs, Knox broadcast a pretended live report of revolution sweeping across London, entitled Broadcasting from the Barricades. In addition to live reports of persons, including a government minister being lynched, his broadcast cleverly mixed supposed band music from the Savoy Hotel with the hotel's purported destruction by trench mortars. The Houses of Parliament and the clock tower were also said to have been flattened.
Because the broadcast occurred on a snowy weekend, much of the United Kingdom was unable to get the newspapers until days later - the lack of newspapers caused a minor panic, as it was believed that this was caused by the events in London.
A 2005 BBC report on the broadcast suggests that the innovative style of Knox's program may have influenced Orson Welles’ radio broadcast War of the Worlds broadcast in 1938 and foreshadowed it in its consequences. Welles presented the broadcast, news reports of a Martian invasion, in increasingly intense and descriptive news interruptions to regular programming, causing many to believe in the truth of the invasion. It resulted in public panic crowded roads as people sought to flee but reports of suicides have been found to be untrue.
In a related philosophical concept to Berkeley’s God in the Quad is the question “If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?” This raises issues similar to those put forward by Berkeley as to unobserved reality and unperceived existence. One view says that sound is audible noise and that the tree will make a sound even if no one is there to hear it. The other view is that the unobserved event is identical to an event which did not occur at all.
I will not go into a further discussion about the topic or about Zen philosophy etc concerning the tree falling. Those who wish to do so can discuss it with my son Thomas who gets quite involved in the metaphysics of the tree falling issue.
What I do want to post is some humorous parodies and questions on the topic.
Firstly, the modern age equivalent, especially for younger people:
And some others. . .
. . . and some newer ones . . .
One final thought:
If a tree falls in the wood and no-one is there to hear it, is it funny if it falls on a deaf person?
Wednesday, July 22, 2020
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)