Merry Christmas from DOWN UNDER

MERRY CHRISTMAS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR to everyone out there. I have put together a small video of Albany ( a town in the south of the state that used to be a whaling station in days gone by) Please do not tell the Japanese!!! Kidding.

Double's Web Site

Well am getting the idea that perhaps a web site is better than blogging so I have created one with this url.

MacCDouble.com You can click here to have a peek or if you got here via the site then click to return. http://maccdouble.com/

It contains some video clips, photography, poetry, songs which you can play and of course words of the songs. It also contains some mathematical worksheets which you can ignore if you are not at school and trying to excel in this area.

For the story this time I would like you to go to the URL listed below. Page 31. I write the ULSTER SECTION for a magazine here and I was explaining about Christmas in Ulster in this article. If this is not a good way to view the article .... please let me know.

http://www.irishscene.com.au/images/pdf/nov_dec.pdf PAGE 31

Neptune

If like me you are not real good at finding things you want to see in the night sky, you might like to try to see Neptune as it is close to Jupiter at present (late October early November 2009).
Neptune is the 8th planet from the sun in our solar system but with a magnitude of 7.8, it is only visible with a small telescope. Remember the higher the magnitude, the more difficult it is to observe. A magnitude of 5-6 is about my limit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neptune

Nanga Music Festival

This was the second time the festival was held at this location. An outdoor camp in the middle of the bush near a town called Dwellingup in Western Australia. It began on a Friday evening and ended sometime Monday morning. I was only able to attend Sat. and Sun. a.m. But what a fabulous few days it turned out to be. From Fiddle Chicks - a girls group who imitated many instruments on their three fiddles (including bass) to Matt Gresham (a blues, roots and reggae artist) and then on to the Spooky Men of the West (15 male singers) and The Lonely Brothers ( 3 girls! singing folk/jazz items). See http://nangamusic.org.au/ for more details.

At the UNICORN FOLK CLUB

My sister Vicky has been running a folk club in England for almost 30 years (see an earlier post). I was very proud to be one of the first appearing there. This is a short video of my recent visit to the club. A good night was had by all.

Eating out Spanish style

A wonderful evening in a spanish restaurant organised by my good friend Suanne. We spent it with Jeanette and her beautiful family and afterwards a musical time with her lovely daughter Leutitia in a recording studio. A really memorable event. A BIG Thank you to everyone.

Sunny View School

If you went to the 2009 reunion, you would have found the school quite difficult to find. There used to be only one way in; now there are three roads you may take to get there. Parts of the school have not changed that much as the photographs here show but there are 3 or 4 new buildings which I have not shown here. You will have to go there if you want to see them. Have a look at the video below if you are interested in the students who went there in the early seventies.