Robot Claw

Today Sue picked me up and we went for a drive to various locations. I visited dad, we went to Morpeth, we ate some chicken and I even bought some new shoes. And then in the afternoon we drove to Moonee Beach and clambered along the coast on the rocks until we found this:

It’s a cave inlet about halfway between Moonee Beach and Catherine Hill Bay, and you can see in the above pic why it’s became a bit of a sensation recently despite being there for aeons: the pink rock!

The surf blasts in and out of this cave continuously, and at low tides (like when we were there) you can see the rocks that are usually underwater are a distinct pink colour. Hence this place being called the Pink Caves or Fairy Floss Caves or Cotton Candy Caves (obviously that last name was given by an American). The pink is the natural colour of the rock, exposed due to the force of the waves preventing bleaching or algae growth.

The cave itself is fairly deep, and the crashing sound of the waves echoing inside is thunderous. This is inaccessible at high tide and even at low tide when the swell is high this is apparently a dangerous place to visit.

There was something strangely disturbing and creepy about the cave, and how even in the middle of a sunny day the deepest points were moist and inky black. There are a few nearly circular rockpools inside the cave that are deep enough you cannot see the bottom; I dared not look too close. This is the sort of place a Lovecraftian horror would make it’s home.

We didn’t hesitate to enter the cave once we found it, but getting out was a bit nerve-wracking since the ‘path’ seemed narrower and wetter and more perilous. Visiting this place in the rain or evening or when the tide was higher would be a very bad idea!

Considering this has been here since before either of us was born it’s remarkable we’d not heard of it before. It was absolutely worth the visit and I’m very glad we went. Maybe we should follow up that lead Sue got on another sea cave a bit further down the coast…

I walked to the university today. This is no small walk, and with brief stops at two shopping centers (Waratah and Jesmond) it took me about 3.5 hours.

As you can see the weather was beautiful. But it was also very windy: I even got a wind alert on my phone! This hardly bothered me as I swaggered along in my shorts and t-shirt.

At Jesmond post office I was amused to hear some women talking about how cold it was outside. Australians have a very different impression of ‘cold’ than what I’ve become used to, and it seems for some these are the days to stay indoors!

Newcastle uni – my old stomping ground for 3.5 years between ’90 and ’93 – hadn’t changed that much. The buildings I used to take classes in were all there, and the vibe of the place wasn’t far removed from three decades ago. It’s still a very green campus, if an ugly one.

The little shop I used to buy my sausage rolls in is now a Subway. The old video arcade in the student union is now an admin office. The big restaurant that sold fried rice and egg rolls has become a large empty room and overall everything seemed a little more sterile and dour than I recall. I also saw very few students, which surprised me since classes are still in progress. Maybe they’re too cold?

That’s the engineering building where we moved to play our MUDs when maths got antsy, and a bit further along I walked past the ‘bar on the hill’ where I almost got crushed at a Tex Perkins concert. The buildings seemed closer together than I had remembered. Maybe I’ve just gotten bigger?

I caught the train back to Hamilton, a four minute trip from the uni station that never existed back in my day. It was easy and convenient, and won’t be the last train I catch this trip.

At Beaumont street I found the above chalk scrawlings. Call me a skeptic but these – which stretched nearly the full length of this popular shopping street – seemed to be accompanied by bill poster adverts for ‘alien’ t-shirts. Was this just a local designers viral marketing scheme?

The winds had picked up and it was time to get back to mums. By the time I arrived I was a bit exhausted – I’d been walking about 5 hours – but today was worth it for the nostalgia alone 🙂

Today I visited the 2022 Newcastle Stamp & Coin Show.

By a stroke of luck when I was at a post office the other day the clerk mentioned the show and given the venue is walkable from mums I of course had to go.

Entry was free and the event was held in a very large hall with the two dozen or so booths reasonably well spaced out. I’d say they were about 60% stamp dealers, 30% coin/currency dealers and 10% supplies.

There were also hundreds of ‘panels’ showcasing articles on various stamp related topics and themes, many of which seemed to be written by club members. I particularly enjoyed a lengthy history (with examples) on depictions of dragons on stamps.

Dealers ranged from those selling inexpensive international stamps to a few selling high end pieces for serious collectors (the most expensive single stamp I saw was A$8900). I was very pleasantly surprised to find a few selling mint unused (Australian) stamps and I invested heavily: watch your postcards for examples of some of these!

The coin/currency dealers were bittersweet. On one hand it was astonishing seeing all the various limited designs of the $1 and $2 coins, but on the other hand they were so pricey! The cheapest I saw the brand new ‘tooth fairy’ $2 was $15! That’s too expensive for me so I’ll hope mum gets that in her change one day and passes it on.

Some individual examples of the coins were incredibly expensive, and I couldn’t determine why. For instance I saw one honey bee $2 coin priced at $185, and it didn’t even seem to be graded. I pondered this briefly and walked on.

Rolled Australian coins of all denominations were available at several sellers, often at a premium. I regretted not asking the price of a roll of old 1c coins. but the stall was busy and the other customers seemed serious.

A multitude of pre-polymer Australian currency was available, and I purchased a few. It was nostalgic seeing the old $100 notes; if I ever received one of them as a child then I felt rich indeed! (For the non-Australians, the country switched from paper to polymer notes in 1992.)

I even saw bundles of every type of pre-polymer note, but the above brick (1000 old $1 notes) was the most astonishing. It wasn’t priced but I believe I overheard the dealer tell someone it was $4000.

I’ll end with two more items that caught my eye. The first was the above sheet of 55 beautiful Japanese stamps issued in 2020 to commemorate ‘international letter writing week‘.

The other was phone cards! Several sellers had them, and I saw examples from Australia, Japan and Europe. One guy explained to me that for a brief while they had been popular with the same people that collect stamps, but now ‘no one wants them’!

I stayed for about 2.5 hours, but even though I was well masked I began to get a bit uncomfortable when the (almost entirely unmasked) crowd thickened so I legged it out of there just before lunchtime.

It was time to order another bold and unusual burger from a fast food joint… but you can read about that one tomorrow 🙂