Sydney at dawn
Sydney woke to an eerie and quite beautiful sky this morning.
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This was a real dust storm.
http://www.gly.uga.edu/railsback/CTW/MelbourneDust.jpeg
Now Phil, I think you have underestimated the sense of creepy unease with which Sydney people are conducting their business this morning. The morning shows are reporting terror, people thinking it was the end of the world and general “oh my God!” wtf, are we going to die this morning! sort of ambience going on. Always in hyperbolic mode, I myself am waiting in hope for the frog plague thing to happen.
Apparently people from the bush reckon we are behaving like a bunch of wussies. Which we are.
At least you filed it under “Apolcalypse”, which is appropriate given there are teenage girls running past my window as I type screaming “it Armageddon, run, run!!!”. I kid you not. Its not a competition Joe2. But if it were, our colour scheme is much more dramatic.
Apocalypse that would be, although Apolcalypse is cute.
“Its not a competition Joe2. But if it were, our colour scheme is much more dramatic.”
Yeh but I blame the Kodachrome, Casey. There was the Coode Island Apolcalypse in Melbs but the pics- the chemicals were an opportunity missed for colour photographers – do not give a true sense of panic.
http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/fcgi-bin/nlathumb.fcgi?id=3046231&mode=
Heh. Armageddon on it*.
* The alternative was Def Leppard, so just be thankful, mkay?
Apocalypse? Pffft.
Ava Gardner made the definitive call on Melbourne’s starring role in Armageddon.
Sydney is Off-Off-Broadway.
Down here on the border it rained mud instead.
Actually no she didn’t, Katz, it was a Melbourne journo’s call, but she thought it was good enough never to deny having said.
As for alternatives, bring it on.
Press Release
___________________________________________________________________________________
The NSW climate change office geoengineering trial exercise has not ended at all well. The aerosol did not achieve target altitude and balnketed the states main population centre, Sydney, instead, coating most buildings and vehicles with a generous layer of red dust. One industry sector was, however, pleased with the ned result. The auto repairers are expecting a flood of vehicles in for early servicing as the average city run will mean car air filters taking in about 2 years worth of dust at the regular rate in a single one day run.
Yo, Red, you gotta stop that, it is cruel and it scares me. Give me Dusty any day Liam.
Katzie, here is Ava on the good folk of Melbourne:
“One thing I definitely didn’t love was being on location in Melbourne. Not that the Australian people weren’t wonderful individually; they were down-to-earth, gutsy, and awfully friendly. In groups, however, they seemed overwhelmed by the idea of being the location for a Hollywood movie, something that had never happened to the city before. There were crowds everywhere, and everything we did seemed to cause controversy. When we had to cordon off a city block on a Sunday morning, for instance one of the country’s leading churchmen lambasted Stanley for interfering with “one of the fundamental freedoms, freedom of worship” because a church happened to be on the block.”
In groups, Melbournians are overshelmed. Y’all sound like a herd of kangaroos. Snicker.
http://www.nevilshute.org/Reviews/gardner.php
WTFHH? You went past THIS?!!. Shaysus.
Mind you, Col bringing his doll sounds a tadge less wholesome in these vulgar and unsettling times.
Overwhelmed, that would be. I can’t see what I type, for all the red dust.
I’m chuffed to read that you Sydneysiders know enough about Melbourne folklore to spot my deliberate error.
Kangaroo stamps all round.
OMG the Deputy Prime Minister has become invisable!
Here in Armidale its a dull light yellow dust, and it smells like dust, even inside the flat. Lots of wind.Also a bit chilly. Time for coffee while I sit at my window and wait for de angels and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.Don’t want to miss them. Its the sort of thing you see only once in a life time.
If ABC 2 is to be believed, and on the Last Day I’d believe anything, the last time this happened was in the early 1940s. Does that tell you anything?
Heh.
HEH.
I think it’s time we discussed your philosophy of drug use as it relates to artistic endeavour…
It’s raining in Perth
Takes me back to when I was a nipper and we had a big dust storm hit school. Similar visibility and attempts at washing down cars/etc ended up in a concrete-like material forming in any low areas.
it was dull orange all day in canberra yesterday then the heavens opened up around 7pm and we actually got an inch of rain. very strange weather…
#1
#2
Sydney-centrism never fails… :p
(Northern SA was like this Monday, but it’s only news today.)
The dust storm has engulfed Brisbane. Even inside my office I can smell it.
Brisbane about 15mins ago.
http://twitpic.com/irxbi
Darryl, would I be right in guessing that the pic was taken from the South Bank campus of our employer?
Brisbane looks like its a lot darker than here (Armidale). Still this unearthly yellow-grey light. I’m waiting for the Virgin Mary to appear.
Absolutely correct, Paul. And here’s the view 15 minutes after http://twitpic.com/irziv
Best shot so far of the Sydney dust storm:
Zombies-zombies
MSM reportage of the Brisbane/SEQ dust storm.
Another excellent image of the Sydney storm
Got up this morning to see a light electric blue sun.I am feeling really sort of down. Been a number of weeks with smoke and now this,the building is rocking some eerie sounds still in the wind,and the roof is playing it’s thumps like a squeezebox on its side.12:35 and all is well.YouTube Mars dust devils. Eh!
Yes but Paul, why isn’t your dust storm a zombie one and why isn’t it as RED as ours?
Ok Deborah. That’s a crack up. Excellent work.
A splendidly peaceful morning for people around here.
We live near the final descent paths for airport runways 16L and 16R. The prevailing wind is usually from the south so most days you can set your watch by the prompt arrival, at 6 am on the dot when the curfew ends, of the first B747 of the day heading for 16R, closely followed by a swarm of other large aircraft.
Today the first aircraft we heard was at 11, so a large number of people must have ended up somewhere quite different from where they planned to be.
You want dust storm? I give you Melbourne, 1983. A week before the bushfires.
http://home.iprimus.com.au/foo7/dsm31.jpg
Zombies be buggered. Ther’s vampires and werewolves knocking at the door. (I think.)
Oh fiddlesticks. All this dust storm competition is meaningless without colour Melbournites. Colour my world and then we can talk. You can’t do apocalypse in black and white. No can do. At least give us an alien or something, like Deborah did.
Oh fiddlesticks. All this dust storm competition is meaningless without colour Melbournites. Colour my world and then we can talk. You can’t do apocalypse in black and white. No can do. At least give us an alien or something, like Deborah did.
Oh fiddlesticks. All this dust storm competition is meaningless without colour Melbournites. Colour my world and then we can talk. You can’t do apocalypse in black and white. No can do. At least give us an alien or something, like Deborah did.
Casey
I used to live in Melbourne and I was never overshelmed.
We were overpriced, overvalued and overrun [by American soldiers in WW2, later by Sydneysiders seeking culcha, etc.]. Our nature strips were overgrazed, our backyards overlooked, our barbecues overcooked. Over and over.
But, rooly trooly, we were never overshelmed. Try Adelaide.
Pedant.
Yep!
When I was a kid in the ….s we lived in outback SA and Broken Hill and events like this dust storm were frequent events, 2-3 times a summer.
Then both places developed ‘green belts’ to replace the bare ground of the development that was a partial source for the dust.
Where I live now, along the Murray, we still get one or so each summer mainly caused by the local farming practice of leaving the paddocks bare over summer.
Driving towards Adelaide a couple of years ago I had trouble finding the side of the road in order to pull over before some silly bugger drove into me.
We have to remember that most of arid/semi arid Australia has suffered severe degradation from feral animals, weeds, tens of millions of hooved animals,centuries now of neglect, removal of native vegetation which previously protected the surface.
I would presume that with continuing aridity and little real change in land management events like this are likely to reoccur more fequently.
That’s right Ambi – though this unending wind is driving me bonkers and threatening the wellbeing of my tomato seedlings, I can honestly say I’m only partially shelmed by Melbourne’s elements.
A rain of zombie fire from above – now THAT’S a shelming.
EmD #31, I’d surmise that our dust storm isn’t as red because the bit of Australia that it’s blown in from isn’t as red as the bit that the Sydney dust storm blew in from. Perhaps we’ll have shape-changing reptilian aliens instead of zombies.
I’m totally ashelmed of myself. Going to look at Godzillas in the Mist now.
Referring to this image
It’s not my work, alas. I don’t know who created it – I picked it up off a site in NZ. If the creator would like to make her or himself know, I think we should all bow our heads in homage.
For shelm Paul. You are aware of course that Icke was also employed to rebuff the daggett’s assertions over on the loony thread? And what a shallacking he got with that eh?
Yes Deborah. But I referenced you as the author of that on my Facebook page where I plastered it with glee, it was so good. I will change it if anyone comes forward.
Nah, black is de rigueur in these parts.
Melburnians can perceive 43 different shades of black.
They have 15 different words for black.
Red dust is sooo … vulgar … (and try-hard nouveau).
We Melbournians get total solar eclipses as well. You can’t compete with that. And it’s like, totally black.
So true, Fine and there is a photo to prove it!
http://www.papermarc.com.au/images/mat-black-lg.jpg
And ALL Melbourne events involving swans are “black swan events”.
AND we’ve had both a Black Friday and a Black Saturday.
We need only five more well-timed disasters and we Melburnians can have what we have always craved — an ENTIRE BLACK WEEK.
Black is black.
Yes, joe2. That’s exactly what it looked like!
That’s why we Melbournians always get around in black clothes – doesn’t show the dirt!
Talking of black clothes…
meeemmmmmoriiiies…
The early 80s were a frothing mass of musical creativity with big and little bands too numerous to mention. I was in a band called Buick KBT and we were recording a single with Charles Meo (Chuck Meo of the Ears – ref. Dogs in Space) at his Yarra Beat studio in Northcote, which was a dungeonlike old factory or warehouse, thick walls, dark, no windows in the studio space naturally. So when the dust storm happened we had no. idea. of what was going on. When we spilled out all pasty faced onto Merri Parade or wherever in search of food, it was it looked as if the nuclear winter had finally arrived and that’s what we assumed had happened. Scared? We fairly nearly shat ourselves! It was before the age of mobile phones so I forget how we learned what had actually happened – I think we scuttled back indoors and made a phone call or something!
Lawlz, I bet there was no herbal paranoia involved there. Oh shiiiiiit maaaan!
So Helen – do you know Carl from the Ears too?
I worked a day job with him for a year or so a while back. Dude had some fucked up stories.
Deborah @29, Great photo!
However, someone should speak to his owners about carelessly letting him go wandering the city without a respirator.
Helen & FDB ,if you get the chance, you must see Richard Lowenstein’s new doco ‘We’re Livin on Dog Food’. It’s all about the late 70s, early 80s music scene in Melbourne.
…I blame the National Party.
…actually, just on that thought, it’s interesting that in a bushfire the automatic reaction of many is to blame greenies – bushfires involve trees, greenies like trees, ergo greenies cause bushfires.
It’s interesting that no-one in the media (that I’ve heard) has raised the idea that donating a big chunk of Australia’s topsoil to NZ may have something to do with dodgy farming practices. It’s simply quirky mother nature. Another example of subtle political bias in our media?
It’s the end of the world as we know it.
http://images.cheezburger.com/completestore/2009/9/22/128981416878546963.jpg
There are people who think the red sky this morning was a real sign of the impending apocalypse, or rapture, or something.
http://www.rapture2009.org/apps/forums/topics/show/1374399-eerie-dust-storm-in-nsw-
FDB – One of the original Buick KBT members is in a crowd scene in DIS and presumably that’s where the connection was. I didn’t know them at all. You probaby know about this blog already – tells many of the stories from the early 80s. (Threadjack alert) Must post about all that stuff one day!
silkworm @ 64,
Then I guess a lot of us got left behind. But, then again, I always thought I would be.
Shepherds were really shitting it. Helen the first time I saw one of those after-burner fly past thingies in Brisbane in the eighties I thought the Ruskies hated their children after all.
Cheers Helen!
C’mon non NEWelchpersons, we can’t let Sydney claim The Great Dust Armageddon! Or let “Once in a Lifetime” spin through to the keeper!
Queensland’s entry (inc good pics) in: Recent Dust Storm Armageddons
23/10/2002 was smoky, scorching, with even hotter winds & a nasty dry storm, when pure Outback vermilion arrived, lasting hours, covering every surface (including grass) with a thick layer, clogging every scratch & hole, with fine red dust. But wait … that’s not all the atmospheric pollution! That morning, despite total fire bans and dire media warnings, a couple of brainless blokes boiled their billy over an open fire in a park: Bushfires force evacuation
by no means the dust storm’s the only bushfires, as Disaster Event – Bushfires in Southern and Central Queensland October 2002 shows.
We were still choking on thick smoke & dust and nowhere near finished dust-removal when bushfires (and searing heat & winds) forced evacuations. Media news, especially national sections, reprised Melbourne’s 1983 horror heat, dust, smoke & attendant bushfires, comparing the two.
While yesterday’s Sydney storm seemed to reprise 2002′s Vermilion Fog, it was much cooler, and, as far as has been reported, bushfire-free; so without V 1983′s & Q 2002′s searing heat & choking smoke. Here it was wussy in comparison; an hour or so of mango dust in a day of light misty grey, leaving only a whitish dusting.
2002′s storm and fires were more widespread, but its fires nowhere near as devastating and fatal as V1983. So, while 2009′s and 2002′s Dust Storm Armageddons were more widespread that 1983′s, it and 2002′s were much hotter and smokier, with 1983′s taking the most toll.
Armageddon by Duststorm? Melbourne & Environs 1983! May it never be challenged!
BTW 1: So much for “a once in a lifetime event” We’ve had three in 26 years!
BTW 2: As 1983′s and 2002′s preceded Al Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth, reportage was free enough of current Climate Change histrionics for this statement in the Disaster Event … 2002 pdf (above):
Love the arid conditions associated with the peak of the last ice age bit!
Blah blah blah. Get the Melbournians. They do it in Black. Probably think that’s sexy. Probably still wear crewnecks too.
Yeah! Too right, Streghetta – you don’t see Gojira monstering Jeff’s Shed, do ya?
“Eat my dust” Naah! Not sexy! Uniform Complex, born of Melb’s lingering 1950sish “Which school..?” and a bushfire reminder, much as England’s dreary constipating trad food survives as a tribute to “our greatest hours”, the Old School & The Blitz.
Also cheap & lasts longer between cleans.
Or they’re all in mourning for the days when Victorians ruled the national political, arts etc landscapes, before Keating, Howard & the 200 Olympics stole their Preeeeeeeshus!
Or it’s a tribute to Jeff (as in “My job was Jeffed”, “Melbourne’s trains & trams were Jeffed)? It was mulit-coulured in the 70s & 80s.
Or all of the above & more!
You know, crewnecks and all, I reckon they’d thank us if we shipped Godzilla down thee to monster that monster.
Down There, pendants. Down there.
Pedants. Pedants, you blithering bumpkin!
Now now Doc, as a witch may be quite proper for Casey to wear a pendant “down there”.
I love the way we’ve made a thread about Sydney, all about Melbourne.
And I like how even though the storm hit SE Queensland as well, everyone’s ignoring Brisbane.
It’s our petty, clichéd rivalry, and you can’t come in.
Who’s “we”, dog-on-teh-interwebs-of-indeterminate-gender?
As a witch, she may also down thee down there.
LOL
A few do.
Most can, because they have necks.
The correct juxtaposition for Godzilla is In Thee rather than down thee.
What would you know about it Buck? It’s my Freudian, not yours.
Dust storm, is it? I got your dust right here…
http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=beckett+happy+days&rlz=1W1GGLL_en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ei=-tu6SuP1JIaQsgO6irCRCQ&sa=X&oi=image_result_group&ct=title&resnum=4
O/T (surprised?), but I reckon I would be delicious. With maybe some blue oysters for entree.
You want some little blue things that’re delicious? I got about 500 different varieties…
That does it.
I’m making duck parma for dinner tonight. Wish me luck!
“As a witch, she may also down thee down there.”
Correct.
Am I reading you properly FDB? You say your are cooking yourself tonight? And you say you need luck doing it?
You do know I are doing it on purpose right? All my shelming mistakes? Except for the Fyodor one. That was, like, totally real. Snicker.
FDB — the secret to a perfect duck parma is choosing (or, in another way of putting it, avoiding) your particular duck, with extreme care…
Good luck! Also, good duck.
“Daffy” was actually one of my cutesy kid nicknames.
True story.
“dog-on-teh-interwebs-of-indeterminate-gender?”
I think I should change my handle to that. And please be precise – not just dog, but whippet.
Here’s another duck that might need a lot of boiling.
Yairs – deliberate error on my part. Whippet? Whippet good.
You’d be amazed how many hoons in cars there are yelling ‘Whippet good’, as they zoom past us. Or perhaps you wouldn’t. Anyway, we maintain a whippet like disdain for such behaviour and continue to saunter elegantly along. Or at least she does. I kind of just *sigh*.
YSTLIABT. High rotation lulz are hard to find. Or maybe that’s a good heart. I get those two confused.
Ever tried walking a shitzu along a busy road?
What’s the fuss about? When I’m in Sydney, it always looks like that when I wake up in the afternoon after the night before.
And never mind duck parma, why not try Chicken Walken?. You…just…cut the fat…off…you…understand?
Chris also has some tips for Sydneysiders on wind-resistant construction techniques.
I new this whippet who used to run longways under moving cars and come out the other end alive. The second time she did it she got scraped on the top of the head, and was in shock, and slightly cut but otherwise alive. She was lucky not to have lost the top of her head. Her name was Faun. And boy, for the time she lay recuperating on a bean bag next to my bed – she was to buggered to want to get on or in it, the ginger cat sure did give her heaps. He suffered though when she got better. She would wait until we were in the wide open spaces and there were no trees he could climb, and then she chased him. Guess who won?
Well, we did have the dust first. Then everyone wanted some.
And fires. Then everyone wanted some of them, too.
Wot next … ??!
(leaves door ajar for the ****wits north of the border)
Aw sh*t, DeeCee @ 72
you mean Syd-er-nee got the bl**dy 200 Olympics AS WELL AS the 2000 Olympics??
- all Melburnians should wear black -
Sydneyus Populusque Romanus – the sun-drenched outpost of a mighty empire
The dust has made it over the Tasman. My mother, who lives in Taranaki, on the west coast of the North Island, reports that:
Prolly another one of yer football teams, I reckons.
The dust is back here in Armidale and its worse than what it was the other day. Its a smelly yellow dust. From behind behind the safety of glass windows it looks quite dangerous.
Guess it smells of sheep-shit. And, I think, though I’m indoors I can taste it in my mouth.
Some really amaaaaazing photos on Flickr, via Theresa Neilsen Hayden at Making Light, who describes it as “Ballardian”.
Yep. It sure is bad.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/09/26/2697398.htm
But I ain’t going anywhere, not even outside to take the washing off the line.
The dust is coming to Brisbane again, which is a confounded nuisance as I hung all my washing on the line before leaving for work this morning.
There’s lot of dust here in Armidale, yesterday and today, but its not as smelly. (Wanted to go for a walk up town but wasn’t game.)