Did you know there are over 1000 sites of Aboriginal Culture and heritage in the areas of Sydney known as North Sydney, Lane Cove, Willoughby, Manly and the Northern Beaches Council.

Many of these sites are found in the cliffs and crags of the Hawkesbury Sandstone rock formations that make up much of the wider Sydney area.

The sites are of significance to Aboriginal people because they are evidence of the past Aboriginal occupation and are valued as a link with their traditional culture. There is also great scientific value in these sites. By studying the shells, stones and bones, we can learn a great deal about past environments, what plants and animals were used by people, what tools they used and how they survived.

Sites are under threat every day from development, vandalism and natural erosion. Recreational activities like rock climbing can also do irreparable damage. The sites cannot be replaced, and once they are destroyed, they are lost forever.

Even though rock climbing is a relatively low impact sport, some of the methods used can be damaging to Aboriginal heritage.

• Putting bolts into rock leaves permanent scars and will permanently deface the site.

• Climbing routes that pass over or adjacent rock art results in scuffing and wear of the art surfaces and loss of pigments.

• Chalk adheres to rock surfaces and can damage rock art.

• Chalk marks on an Aboriginal site is aesthetically displeasing and deeply hurtful to Indigenous people.

• Repeated use of a site leads to erosion of archaeological deposits such as shell middens.

  

As all Aboriginal sites in NSW are protected under the National Parks and Wildlife Act it is an offence to damage or destroy them so climbing on and around these sites is against the law. Sandstone overhangs have high potential for Aboriginal heritage and therefore rock climbing can be seen as a high risk activity that could impact an Aboriginal site.

Rock climbing is restricted in many National Parks and Council reserves for this and other reasons. Rangers and Compliance Officers will take actions to prosecute climbers if Aboriginal sites are being harmed.

Ok today we have some things I saw on Sunrise this morning, first up there was talk about how the little green and red men at traffic lights you know what I mean you cross when the little man goes from red to green well they are now going to change some lights from little men to little women in skirts, why, really why I don’t understand why councils or government or who ever it is who has decided to do that would waste money changing the lights to me it is just a huge waste of money.

I think most people would feel living in a gated community would be pretty safe they are protect from the bad guys but on the news this morning a man was killed by his brother so when the bad guy is your brother you are not so safe.

A Melbourne mother has spoken out after she and her infant baby were told to leave a city bowling alley because the venue was serving alcohol, she wanted to catch up with friends and thought Strike Bowling would be a better place to take her infant daughter than the pub.

“We could have taken her to the pub, ironically that would have been legal, but I thought a less suitable environment to have a three-month-old baby in,” she said.

So the new mum and her family joined a group of friends at the bowling alley in central Melbourne on Friday night. But the fun lasted just half an hour after the group was evicted under liquor licensing laws when the venue started serving alcohol at 8pm.

“The reason for the law being in existence is to prevent minors from purchasing alcohol,”

“Clearly there’s no chance a three-month-old would be drinking anything other than milk.”Strike Bowling bans anyone under 18 from the premises once the bar opens, which is designed “to offer a protected and safe experience”, according to company policy.

Strike Bowling did refund the family’s game and has invited them back to bowl free of charge, I don’t know if I would be going back any time soon if it was me.

Well here we are at another Monday, so since I don’t post over the weekend Monday’s post is just letting you know what happened over the weekend. So what happened, nothing much, I spent a lot of the time sleeping. Yeah I just didn’t feel 100%, very tired and just not right can’t put my finger on what was wrong, I found myself needed to go back to bed a few hours after I got up on both Saturday and Sunday.

In fact Saturday saw me go to bed for the night at 5.30pm in the afternoon, I was watching telly with Tim and found myself falling asleep so decided to go to bed because I am not like some people (Tim) and just allow myself to fall asleep in front of the telly. If I find my eyes closing I take myself off to bed.

Sunday wasn’t much better at 10 am I went back to bed for a couple of hours please note I get up at 5am each morning so at 10am I had been up for 5 hours and done an hour of exercise on my Wi Fit as I do each morning. I didn’t go to bed too early around 7.30pm which is about average for me I am a early to bed person.

It rained all weekend so all the laundry went into the dryer and Kathy even came over to use the dryer to just finish her clothes off she needed to make sure Sydney-May’s school clothes were dried ready for school today.

It is not raining today but there is a brisk wind which makes wearing shorts leaving your legs cold so I am wearing light weight long pants today with socks because my feet felt cold without the socks.

So that is my weekend, today is the start of another week and as usual I hope it will be a good week not hot, not cold and not too wet, although before I go I will mention on Friday it pissed down rain most of the day and I got pretty wet when I got home getting the shopping out of the car.

Hello Friday here is this weeks five things:

Leo

32kgs up 3kgs (in 6 mths)

135cms up 17cms (in 6mths)

Blood pressure 112/62

Medication no change needed at this time

So as you may have told I took Leo to his 6 monthly appointment with his paediatrician for the first time the appointment was held at the (JHH)John Hunter Hospital children’s apartment it used to be held at the old Wallsend Hospital’s Kaleidoscope Unit but the JHH is closer to me so I am ok with the appointment being held there.

So I thought today I would share a bit about Australia some of these facts you may know some you may not know. Today you get another dozen facts numbers 13 to 24.

13 Australia is very sparsely populated: The UK has 248.25 persons per square kilometre, while Australia has only 2.66 persons per square kilometre.
14. Australia’s first police force was made up of the most well-behaved convicts.
15. Australia has the highest electricity prices in the world.
16. There were over one million feral camels in outback Australia, until the government launched the $19m Feral Camel Management Program, which aims to keep the pest problem under control.
17. Saudi Arabia imports camels from Australia (mostly for meat production).
18. Qantas once powered an interstate flight with cooking oil.
19. Per capita, Australians spend more money on gambling than any other nation.
20. In 1832, 300 female convicts mooned the governor of Tasmania. It was said that in a “rare moment of collusion with the Convict women, the ladies in the Governor’s party could not control their laughter.”

21. Australia is home to the longest fence in the world. It is 5,614 km long, and was originally built to keep dingoes away from fertile land.
22. Australia was one of the founding members of the United Nations.
23. Melbourne is considered the sporting capital of the world, as it has more top level sport available for its citizens than anywhere else. Narrabri, NSW is Australia’s sportiest town.
24. Before the arrival of humans, Australia was home to megafauna: three metre tall kangaroos, seven metre long goannas, horse-sized ducks, and a marsupial lion the size of a leopard. It is theorised that it was also covered in rainforest before humans applied a burning style of hunting.

Well today I am going to talk about Aboriginal sites and the law, it is important to be aware of the fact that all Aboriginal sites in NSW are protected under the National Parks and Wildlife Act of 1974.

It is an offence to damage or destroy them, this includes collecting artefacts without the prior permission of the Director-General of the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage (OEH). The penalties for harming an Aboriginal site which includes graffiti are up to $275,000 and 1 year’s imprisonment for individuals and as much as $1.1 million for corporations.

The most important bit of the legislation is what is known as “due diligence”, if someone is planning an activity that may disturb the ground or old growth trees, they must show that they have taken steps to avoid damaging or harming any Aboriginal site.

Therefore including a review of potential Aboriginal heritage issues will ensure the Aboriginal sites are not accidentally damaged and the people doing the work are not liable for prosecution. Carrying out a proper due diligence process provides a defence against prosecution if an Aboriginal heritage object is harmed during works.

The two pieces of legislation that most effect Aboriginal heritage management in NSW are:

• National Parks and Wildlife Act 1974

• Environmental Planning and Assessment Act 1979

I feel it is good that we have these acts in place and steps are taken to protect Aboriginal sites, for too long Aboriginal sites were not considered important or worth protecting.

So last night I said to Tim what time do you get home from work tomorrow (today) I am sure as hell he said 2am which I knew wouldn’t be right so I said what time do you start the afternoon run, didn’t you say you had a split shift, his reply yeah I do I will get home around 10ish and leave again at 1ish and be home again by 4.15pm all this was said in a normal not a problem tone, however, if when I thought he said 2am I had said what or why so late he would have got into a mood about me not listening. Being a woman I use my brain and try and work out what was said and not what I heard, using a little common sense, or ask something else to try and figure out what was said and not just go “what” in a tone that pisses the other person off, which the men in my life do, meaning Tim and Dad and my baby brother Dave those men.

This morning I got pretty mad with Leo over nothing really, after I went off I calmed down and said sorry at first he wouldn’t talk to me but by the time we got to his school he was ok and gave me a hug and kiss goodbye. I think it was just because Blain and Leo were playing running around and making a lot of noise and just doing my head in.

Yesterday I was in so much pain it was the lower right hand side of my back, I could barely move due to the pain but I still cooked a full breakfast for the family, however, Tim said he wasn’t hungry and ate nothing and Natasha was a no show as is often the case. I was in so much pain that I threw the washing in the dryer instead of hanging it out on the line at one point Tim said why you got he dryer on when its not raining any more, I had to remind him that I was in a lot of pain and could hardly moved also said to him how often do I use the dryer over the clothes line, not very often that is how often and if he had been home I would have asked him to hang the clothes out but he wasn’t home he was out at Kathy’s place.

Anyway because I was in so much pain and could hardly move he said I was acting older then I was, yeah I was in a lot of pain back pain isn’t nice and if he had a lot of pain he would act the same.

Ok all don’t faint I am doing five things Friday again today I am going to start doing this post first thing on Friday morning I am up at 5am and should be able to find 5-10 minutes to do a quick post on a Friday morning, so here we go for this Friday.

10 not 5 serves of fruit and veg (what the hell)

Bras with a zipper instead of hooks and eyes

Mum home and improving

Mum needs a hip replacement as soon as possible according to specialist

Handwriting letters (because I am still low on ink)

Iceland’s president wants to ban pineapple of pizza, what the hell I like a good Hawaiian pizza it is a very popular pizza here down under. Also popular down under is beetroot on hamburgers, just saying.

Julie Bishop says there is goodwill between Australia and the States but like any politician she doesn’t say much uses a lot of words to say bugga all, she meet with the Vice President and Secretary of State, I wished they had asked her if she was happy meeting them and not the big cheese but they didn’t. I call him the big cheese because his skin colour often looks like the colour of cheese and of course mice like to nibble at cheese.

NASA has found seven new plants around a sun named TRAPPIST-1 and say that three of them could sustain life they are 40 light years from Earth so who knows we may not be alone, wouldn’t come as a surprise to me if we are not but who knows, not me that’s for sure.

There was a lot of talk about the Fair Work Commission getting set to announce the fate of penalty rates for hospitality and retail workers, it looks like the Sunday rate will go from double time to time & ½ or time and ¾ this is good news for employers not such good news for employees. The argument was made that the double time on Sunday was introduced at a time when people usually attended church on a Sunday and now not so much.

Also this morning they talked about self-serve checkouts and how so many people steal from the shops using them and I can see how easy it is to do that, usually if the person has a lot of items but what is frustrating is when you scan and item you place it in the bagging area and because it is a light object it doesn’t recognised the item and you have to get someone to come and fix the problem. I often use the self-serve checkouts they are faster and if I only have a few items there isn’t a problem.

Also in the news this week is the news that cannabis and cannabis oil has been legalised for people with diseases such as epilepsy, HIV and cancer about bloody time my brother and sister have said at times that they wonder if cannabis would help me with the tremors, not something I am interested in trying at this stage in my life.