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Glacial meltwater Jasper National Park
This is a fascinating country in all sorts of ways and seems to be most popular with European and Japanese tourists, some Australians of course, but they are everywhere.
Since childhood Burma has been a romantic and exotic place for me. It was impossible to grow up in the Australia of the 1950’s and not be familiar with that great Australian bass-baritone Peter Dawson’s rendition of Rudyard Kipling’s 'On the Road to Mandalay' recorded two decades or so earlier:
Come you back to Mandalay
Where the old flotilla lay
Can't you hear their paddles chunking
From Rangoon to Mandalay
On the road to Mandalay
Where the flying fishes play
And the Dawn comes up like thunder
out of China 'cross the bay
The song went Worldwide in 1958 when Frank Sinatra covered it with a jazz orchestration, and ‘a Burma girl’ got changed to ‘a Burma broad’; ‘a man’ to ‘a cat’; and ‘temple bells’ to ‘crazy bells’.
The fellow sitting beside me slammed his book closed and sat looking pensive.
The bus was approaching Cremorne junction. I like the M30. It starts where I get on so I’m assured of a seat and it goes all the way to Sydenham in the inner West, past Sydney University. Part of the trip is particularly scenic, approaching and crossing the Harbour Bridge. We’d be in The City soon.
My fellow passenger sat there just staring blankly into space. I was intrigued. So I asked what he had been reading that evoked such deep thought. He smiled broadly, aroused from his reverie. “Oh it’s just Inferno the latest Dan Brown,” he said.
New South Wales electricity users are to suffer another round of hefty price increases; with more to come.
The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal (IPART) has announced that electricity prices for the average New South Wales resident will increase by 17.6 per cent from July. Sydney customers will pay on average about $230 more each year, while rural customers will face an extra $316 in charges. IPART says it is recommending the increases because of costs associated with energy firms complying with the federal government's Renewable Energy Target (RET). The RET requires energy firms to source power from renewable sources such as solar or wind.
What is this about and how does it relate to the planned carbon tax?