Italy

Who is Online

Details: Written by: Richard_McKie; Parent Category: Travel; Category: Europe; Published: 21 October 2015; Hits: 48279

Article Index

Page 1 of 12

A decade ago, in 2005, I was in Venice for my sixtieth birthday. It was a very pleasant evening involving an excellent restaurant and an operatic recital to follow. This trip we'd be in Italy a bit earlier as I'd intended to spend my next significant birthday in Berlin.

The trip started out as planned. A week in London then a flight to Sicily for a few days followed by the overnight boat to Napoli (Naples). I particularly wanted to visit Pompeii because way back in 1975 my original attempt to see it was thwarted by a series of mishaps, that to avoid distracting from the present tale I won't go into.

But the result was to 'bookmark' Pompeii as a place I had missed seeing and I wanted to get it out of my system.

Vesuvius still looms over Pompeii
Pompeii - the one that got away

Wendy on the other hand was an old hand at Pompeii visiting and was dismissive. She contended that it was not extraordinary and that we have been to more interesting places like Machu Picchu or even Rome.

After Naples we'd take the train to Firenze (Florence) which would be a base for day trips to nearby towns and then go back south to Perugia for a couple of days as a secondary base in Umbria. But things didn't quite turn out as planned.

No comments

Travel

Central Australia

In June 2021 Wendy and I, with our friends Craig and Sonia (see: India; Taiwan; Japan; China; and several countries in South America) flew to Ayer's Rock where we hired a car for a short tour of Central Australia: Uluru - Alice Springs - Kings Canyon - back to Uluru. Around fifteen hundred kilometres - with side trips to the West MacDonnell Ranges; and so on.

Fiction, Recollections & News

Cars, Radios, TV and other Pastimes

I grew up in semi-rural Thornleigh on the outskirts of Sydney. I went to the local Primary School and later the Boys' High School at Normanhurst; followed by the University of New South Wales.

As kids we, like many of my friends, were encouraged to make things and try things out. My brother Peter liked to build forts and tree houses; dig giant holes; and play with old compressors and other dangerous motorised devices like model aircraft engines and lawnmowers; until his car came along.

Opinions and Philosophy

Climate Emergency

emergency
/uh'merrjuhnsee, ee-/.
noun, plural emergencies.
1. an unforeseen occurrence; a sudden and urgent occasion for action.

Recent calls for action on climate change have taken to declaring that we are facing a 'Climate Emergency'.

This concerns me on a couple of levels.

The first seems obvious. There's nothing unforseen or sudden about our present predicament.

My second concern is that 'emergency' implies something short lived. It gives the impression that by 'fire fighting against carbon dioxide' or revolutionary action against governments, or commuters, activists can resolve the climate crisis and go back to 'normal' - whatever that is. Would it not be better to press for considered, incremental changes that might avoid the catastrophic collapse of civilisation and our collective 'human project' or at least give it a few more years sometime in the future?

Back in 1990, concluding my paper: Issues Arising from the Greenhouse Hypothesis I wrote:

We need to focus on the possible.

An appropriate response is to ensure that resource and transport efficiency is optimised and energy waste is reduced. Another is to explore less polluting energy sources. This needs to be explored more critically. Each so-called green power option should be carefully analysed for whole of life energy and greenhouse gas production, against the benchmark of present technology, before going beyond the demonstration or experimental stage.

Much more important are the cultural and technological changes needed to minimise World overpopulation. We desperately need to remove the socio-economic drivers to larger families, young motherhood and excessive personal consumption (from resource inefficiencies to long journeys to work).

Climate change may be inevitable. We should be working to climate “harden” the production of food, ensure that public infrastructure (roads, bridges, dams, hospitals, utilities and so) on are designed to accommodate change and that the places people live are not excessively vulnerable to drought, flood or storm. [I didn't mention fire]

Only by solving these problems will we have any hope of finding solutions to the other pressures human expansion is imposing on the planet. It is time to start looking for creative answers for NSW and Australia now.

Terms of Use

Terms of Use Copyright