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East Asia

Japan - Osaka and departure

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Osaka and departure

Before leaving Japan we were to visit Osaka Castle at Dotobori.  The fortifications that would discourage a conventional army even today were interesting.  There was potential to get lost among the fortifications on the way out but we all made it back to the bus - eventually. 

 

 

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Osaka Castle and its defences - note the gun apertures - they had gunpowder when the the walls built in the 1620s

 

Later the bus dropped us at a shopping mall, that fortuitously for Craig and I, turned out to have a commodious coffee shop.  We settled while the shoppers shopped.

 

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Osaka shopping

 

Our final bus trip in Japan was to the Stargate Hotel at Kansai Airport.  This turned out to be the best hotel of the entire trip and was a good place to end this very interesting introduction to Japan thanks to SNA Tours.

We then flew to Hong Kong for a few days where we parted company with Craig and Sonia and went into China for one of our favourite indulgences, the five star Hotel InterContinental Shenzhen for a couple of much more luxurious days and nights.

When we returned to OZ and people asked how we had enjoyed the experience I found that I had to reply that Japan was not nearly as 'foreign feeling' as many other countries.  It is after all a first world country a status it quickly attained way back at the beginning of the last century.  There was a bit of a setback in 1945 but by the sixties it was well on the way to being one of the most developed and for us one of the most comfortable countries to visit.

 

 

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Travel

Egypt, Syria and Jordan

 

 

 

In October 2010 we travelled to three countries in the Middle East: Egypt; Syria and Jordan. While in Egypt we took a Nile cruise, effectively an organised tour package complete with guide, but otherwise we travelled independently: by cab; rental car (in Jordan); bus; train and plane.

On the way there we had stopovers in London and Budapest to visit friends.

The impact on me was to reassert the depth, complexity and colour of this seminal part of our history and civilisation. In particular this is the cauldron in which Judaism, Christianity and Islam were created, together with much of our science, language and mathematics.

Read more: Egypt, Syria and Jordan

Fiction, Recollections & News

The McKie Family

 

 

 

 

Introduction

 

 

This is the story of the McKie family down a path through the gardens of the past that led to where I'm standing.  Other paths converged and merged as the McKies met and wed and bred.  Where possible I've glimpsed backwards up those paths as far as records would allow. 

The setting is Newcastle upon Tyne in northeast England and my path winds through a time when the gardens there flowered with exotic blooms and their seeds and nectar changed the entire world.  This was the blossoming of the late industrial and early scientific revolution and it flowered most brilliantly in Newcastle.

I've been to trace a couple of lines of ancestry back six generations to around the turn of the 19th century. Six generations ago, around the turn of the century, lived sixty-four individuals who each contributed a little less 1.6% of their genome to me, half of them on my mother's side and half on my father's.  Yet I can't name half a dozen of them.  But I do know one was called McKie.  So, this is about his descendants; and the path they took; and some things a few of them contributed to Newcastle's fortunes; and who they met on the way.

In six generations, unless there is duplication due to copulating cousins, we all have 126 ancestors.  Over half of mine remain obscure to me but I know the majority had one thing in common, they lived in or around Newcastle upon Tyne.  Thus, they contributed to the prosperity, fertility and skill of that blossoming town during the century and a half when the garden there was at its most fecund. So, it's also a tale of one city.

My mother's family is the subject of a separate article on this website. 

 

Read more: The McKie Family

Opinions and Philosophy

World Population – again and again

 

 

David Attenborough hit the headlines yet again in 15 May 2009 with an opinion piece in New Scientist. This is a quotation:

 

‘He has become a patron of the Optimum Population Trust, a think tank on population growth and environment with a scary website showing the global population as it grows. "For the past 20 years I've never had any doubt that the source of the Earth's ills is overpopulation. I can't go on saying this sort of thing and then fail to put my head above the parapet."

 

There are nearly three times as many people on the planet as when Attenborough started making television programmes in the 1950s - a fact that has convinced him that if we don't find a solution to our population problems, nature will:
"Other horrible factors will come along and fix it, like mass starvation."

 

Bob Hawke said something similar on the program Elders with Andrew Denton:

 

Read more: World Population – again and again

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