Tag Archives: Australia

Launceston. Not the one in Cornwall.

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Thursday 12 September 2024 – Long post alert! Time to get a drink and settle down, I think.

Our task yesterday was quite simple – get ourselves from our Peppers hotel in Cradle Mountain to one in Launceston, some 150km away. With no excursions booked at the far end, we had the rare luxury of a relaxed schedule; Jane had found a couple of Things To Look At en route, one of which closed at 3pm, but we had plenty of time. Strolling over to breakfast took us past yet another pademelon

(which you can see was soaking wet from the ceaseless rain) but otherwise the morning was unremarkable.

Since kangaroos, wallaroos, wallabies, pademelons and quokkas are so similar in overall appearance, Jane did a bit of research to try to understand how to tell them apart. It turns out that the only obvious criterion is size. There is a bewildering variety of subspecies of each animal, but the only way to tell many of them apart is by examining their DNA, which is complex. So: size, it is, then. Consider the whole macropod phenomenon to be several varieties of quopadewallaroo.

As we set out, we passed through a landscape that could have come from the blasted heaths which make up the army-controlled areas near Aldershot.

Otherwise the landscape continued to be wet and marshy, and occasionally mountainous

as it had for what seemed like several days now. We stopped to admire the scenery caused by the Cethana hydro electric works

and also to look at a couple of murals plastered on the outside of a hydro-electric facility.

I’d have got better photos, but the layby was being actively used by some very large lorries which were attaching and/or detaching huge bits of plant machinery on trailers, so our freedom of movement was not what it might have been. But the point of the murals is important; they are part of an expanding project started in the nearest town, Sheffield.

During the 1980s, Sheffield was going through hard times. At a public meeting in 1985, the idea of painting murals around the town was proposed, with the hope of emulating a similar program’s success in the Canadian town of Chemainus. From this idea, a mural by John Lendis was commissioned, becoming the first of now several dozen murals in the town. There is even an annual Mural Fest, with a mural painting competition that gives nine new installations an airing.

Street art such as this is catnip to us on our travels, so we stopped there and went for a walk. Obviously. The town is a pleasant enough place anyway,

but it’s unique because everywhere you look, there are murals, and it makes for a splendid sight.

By the visitor centre is an area – Mural Park – with lots and lots all set up together.

I don’t want to bore you with all of the photos I took, but you’re welcome to overdose on them in my Flickr album if you’d like. But one of those in the Visitor Centre area display is worth pulling out.

It’s a picture of Greg Duncan in front of a section of The Wall, the astonishing installation he has created that I wrote about a couple of days ago. If you didn’t read about it then, shame on you – go and take a look. NOW!

By the time we’d reached Sheffield, the countryside had changed; we were driving through farmland. It hadn’t quite stopped raining, but the landscape was more open and bucolic and a lot less wild.

We had planned to stop at a steam engine museum in Westbury, but we had spent so much time in Sheffield that it had closed by the time we got there. However, seeing Sheffield was a delight and I’m glad we did spend time there.

Our destination, Launceston, was not much further on. We arrived at the Peppers Seaport Hotel in mid-afternoon and were awarded a splendid apartment, with kettle, mugs, Earl Grey, milk in the fridge and – praise be! – laundry facilities! “These things are important, you know”*.

The Seaport in the hotel’s name is a nicely gentrified area

which features many eateries, among them the rather oddly-named but very decent Rupert & Hound, where we availed ourselves of such local produce as Gummy Shark, which goes nicely as part of a fish’n’chip meal, and then retired for the night.

That was yesterday, Wednesday 11th. Today, we had a full day in Launceston with no activities or excursions formally booked. So when we woke up to find that

the sun was shining brightly, we sprang out of bed with a song on our collective lips and went for a walk. Obviously. In fact, we went for two walks, because Launceston (pronounced “lawn cess ton”, by the way, not like what they do in Cornwall) has a variety of attractive things for walkers to walk around.

To start with, we headed for Cataract Gorge, through which the River Esk flows. There are very well-organised and clearly marked trails along each side of the river, and we headed for the one that started on the far side of the Esk, the Cataract Gorge trail. To get there, we crossed King’s Bridge,

passing a sort of adventure centre with accommodation, created and run by Penny Royal.

There’s a water mill there

and various other entertainments

including a cliff walk which requires you to get a safety harness so you can navigate the cliff face. We didn’t do this. We just went for a walk beside the river,

which one can now do free of charge, but for which there used to be a toll, payable at the toll house.

It’s not called Cascade Gorge for nothing,

but the cascades are not the only attraction along the walk. The views are quite nice, as one might expect,

and after a kilometre or so, one reaches a suspension bridge which allows one to cross to the other side.

Careful examination of the photo above will reveal that there appears to be someone suspended in the middle of the bridge. This is an illusion caused by the presence of the slowest chairlift in the world, in which one can ride in a very leisurely fashion, from one bank to the other. To get to the lift station on our bank (in pleasant gardens, with a bandstand and a cafe, albeit not open today as this side of the river was suffering a power outage!), we passed a peacock and several wallabies

and gravely allowed the attendant to explain how to get on the lift for the ride without mentioning the several hundred chair lifts I have ridden during my skiing years. The chair may be slow, but it does have the distinction of having, at 308 metres, the largest single span of any chairlift in the world. The ride down gives a nice view of the suspension bridge and the park on the other bank.

The park features a café, which we stopped at for a coffee, before exploring the suspension bridge further,

Looks just like Bristol, don’t you think?

and then heading back towards Launceston along the Zig Zag Trail, which is clearly signposted as being “steep – hikers only”. And with good cause, too;

the trail climbs a good 80m before descending 100m to King’s Bridge. En route, we got a good look at a Tasmanian Nativehen (called a “turbochook” by the locals, apparently)

and a curious crystal formation on the rockface.

This is zeolite, a hydrated alumino-silicate mineral, rarely seen in such an accessible site, probably derived from molten magma associated with the cooling rock.

We also got a nice view over Launceston,

at around the same place as we passed a group of climbers who were, erm, climbing the rock.

As we headed back to the hotel, we noticed that the mural virus had spread to Launceston; the wall surrounding the King’s Park beside the hotel was decorated

on both sides,

although the picture above does seem to be of more informal decorative work.

By this stage we’d covered about five miles, but we still hadn’t explored the city of Launceston itself. So we went for another walk. Obviously.

Heading into the city, we passed the Custom House

and could see a huge brewery.

This is James Boag, which produces beer that’s very popular in Tasmania, although it’s not a major player in the overall Australian beer market. As we passed it, a chap sat on a bench recommended a visit, which seemed a good idea. But first we thought we’d explore the Tramway Museum (Launceston had a tram system between 1911 and 1952, apparently). We headed off to where Google told us it was and pretty much failed to find it. We eventually realised that we’d actually walked past it at about 3pm

but it was closed, despite a notice telling us it was open until 4pm. We did find an old tram station, though – Inveresk Launceston.

By this stage, the brewery seemed an attractive idea, so we walked past the vast array of buildings that it is comprised of and went into

The Brewery, where we were able to sample various of Boag’s beers,

and visit the Brewery Museum. This had pretty much normal brewery museum-type stuff

with a couple of exceptions. One was a photo of the vermin elimination machine

which was always called Oscar, whichever gender it happened to be, and whose vets bills were passed off in the books as repair costs for the machine. The other was a mystery object.

It’s called a Meteorphonium. It’s a musical instrument. No, really. Please spend a minute watching a very charming video about it. (Sorry, for technical reasons, I can’t embed it here. Grrrr.)

After this refreshing interlude, we walked around Launceston in order to take a look at the old buildings for which is well-known. We started by going past the Albert Hall

towards the City Park

(note how the brewery dominates the skyline). The park gave us an opportunity to get a closer look at Masked Lapwings

which have really spooky faces

but very cute chicks.

Then we walked along Cameron Street, where most of these old – and very attractive – buildings are.

The Post Office stands out particularly

and one can go in; but although they’ve kept a lot of the fabric of the original building, they’ve filled it with a modern post office in a box, which I think rather ruins its interior charm.

Of course, not all the buildings are old or attractive,

but we enjoyed looking around the parts of the city that we saw. And the beer was quite good, too.

We ended our walk with a meal back at Rupert & Hound, a choice of staggering unoriginality but one which gave some confidence of a decent meal.

And that has been it for our time in Launceston. It has been a delight to walk around in sunshine, after what seems like an age of cold and wet weather. The forecast for tomorrow seems to return to some degree of moistness, but we move on towards the north-east corner of the island, near a town called Scottsdale. Some wildlife adventures are promised there, as well as some impressive-sounding landscapes, but, to be frank, we’re not quite sure how things have been organised for us. So, please join us over the coming days as we find out.
* © Chris Walker

Landscapes, Wildlife and a Feeding Frenzy at Cradle Mountain

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Tuesday 10 September 2024 – When we looked out of the window this morning, it had clearly rained hard during the night, but it was difficult to tell if it was drizzling right now or whether the weather was just that air-borne moisture you get when you’re in a cloud. Anyway, it wasn’t bucketing down as we walked round the lodge’s lake to breakfast, and there was possibly even the hint of a lift in the weather.

On the basis of various weather forecasts, we decided that rather than wrap ourselves up in something warm and stay indoors, we should go for a walk. Not obviously, by any means, though.  Just down the road from our hotel is the Cradle Mountain Visitor Centre,

where we went to get our Parks Pass and also a ticket for the shuttle bus which would take us to one of the well-known walks in the area, a circuit round Dove Lake. The total cost was not small, but, as with the Russell Falls park, it was clear as we walked around that there was a lot of work involved in maintaining paths and other facilities, so it was money well spent.

The terrain we could see from the bus

underlined how wet the place was. Basically, we have been wet and cold since we left Hobart, and we asked the hotel receptionist if this was normal. She said, emphatically, that it was not; in the 12 seasons she’d worked in Cradle Mountain, this was the first time they’d had such consistent rain for such a long time – every day for two weeks.

The shuttle bus has a few stops en route to Dove Lake, the first of which was at the Ranger Station;

they were clearly expecting me and wanted to make sure that I stayed safe.

At Dove Lake, the prospects for spectacular scenery were a little less than uplifting

but since we’d made the effort (and paid the bus fare!) to get there and it was only drizzling, we grimly struck out on the 6km Dove Lake circuit. This is largely a well-maintained path

with steps to help with ascents and descents

and boardwalk to get you across the tricky bits. Every so often, the drizzle would stop for a few minutes, and one could begin to make out the reason that the area is called Cradle Mountain,

and the general scenery, whilst being exceedingly moist, was not unattractive.

As we worked our way along the path, the weather lifted a little more, the cradle became clearer to see,

and we could see that there was snow on the upper slopes of the mountains on the other side of the lake.

Every so often there was something to remark on, whether it be multiple Pandanus trees

or some extra highlights among the greens of the trees.

We reached the far end of the lake

and continued on the path, through an area called the “Ballroom Forest”.

It’s clearly a forest, and probably rainforest at that, but we couldn’t fathom the reason for its other name.

We noticed at this point that the top of the cradle was beginning to clear, and one could actually make out snow on the slopes.

The unrelenting treeness of the view gave way to rock at one point

though in the event it meant that one had to duck as one went past – there was a distinct lack of headroom.

We carried on, along paths that were easy to follow but more difficult to walk on – there were more uneven surfaces, and the unremitting rain of the previous days meant that there was, more often than not, a river running along the middle of the path, requiring fancy footwork for those, like me, who were not wearing boots and didn’t want wet feet.

The return half features quite a steep climb

at the top of which a pied currawong came to ask us why we were breathing so hard.

At about this time, the weather really did lift and we could see the cradle quite clearly as we looked back,

but the lump we’d just climbed over was getting in the way, and we wondered if we’d miss out on a clear view of the mountains before we finished the walk.  The clouds did swirl back in as we passed a boathouse

but eventually, our luck was in as we reached the point on the circuit where the Iconic Cradle Mountain Shot could be captured.

There are even instructions on a noticeboard as to how to post your attempt at the shot on social media. That’s how iconic the location is.

In the end, it was an enjoyable walk, as it ended with the sun almost shining, and there being no rain, so we were glad we had made the effort to get out. As we drove back to the hotel and I concentrated on avoiding the craters in the road, Jane suddenly yelled “wombat!”. At first, I thought this was a critique of my driving, but actually it was because there was, indeed, a wombat beside the road, so we screeched to a halt so we could take a closer look. This was my first-ever wombat,

much more interesting than the wallaby which was quietly lying a little further away wondering what all the fuss was about.

Not only did I see my first wombat in this area, but also my first-ever pademelon!

so we were very happy as we got back to the hotel.  We had a short rest before we had to go out again, on the day’s booked excursion to a place even closer than the Visitor Centre. As we drove there, we passed a couple of cars off to the side of the road, a sure sign that there was Something To See.  In this case, there were a couple more wombats, just grazing away beside the road. I got some video of one of them,

and we carried on to our activity, which was at a place called Devils@Cradle. I guess its name gives away what we’d find there:

Tasmanian Devils, an endangered species of marsupial found only on this island. We had booked to see them being fed, which happens late in the day, as they are basically crepuscular creatures, but we turned up early so that we could take a look around and see what other creatures were being looked after there.  These included Quolls, of two different sorts: Eastern Quoll

(also seen here in a dark morph)

and Spotted Tail Quoll.

These, like the Devils are (a) marsupials, (b) endangered and (c) nowhere near as cute as they look. All three creatures are ravenous meat eaters and not to be treated lightly; as far as they’re concerned, humans are just meat, and so trying to pet them is likely to end in tears, as in fingers being torn off hands. Each animal has hugely strong jaws – ounce for ounce stronger even than hyenas – and their jaws can gape extraordinarily wide, which helps them as they tear and rend. This one, though, was just yawning.

The Devils@Cradle centre, whilst undeniably a tourist attraction, is actually a serious scientific endeavour as part of conservation efforts concerning these creatures.  The Tasmanian Devils, particularly, are at risk, mainly because of human activity, killing them often out of fear (they can make a blood-curdling screeching sound if they’re in disagreement among themselves) or because they can be a threat to domestic animals. A result of this depleted population is a lack of genetic diversity, and a rather unpleasant – transmissible – cancer has struck a large majority of the Devil population. Devils@Cradle has a small but significantly cancer-free population of Tasmanian Devils to help preserve the species. Its decline is very unfortunate, because Devils have an important role to play in the environment; like hyenas, they can hunt but also clear up remnants of carcases left by other predators. Sadly, if these carcases are roadkill, the Devils themselves are threatened by traffic; in their eagerness to consume the carcase, they just pile in and will still be on the road as the next vehicle comes along…

The Quolls too are under threat from urban development and, particularly, from the feral cat population, so the establishment is also involved in maintaining a breeding population and managing reintroductions.

Devils@Cradle, though, has no government funding, so depends on visitors for its money. One of the attractions they offer is a chance to see the animals being fed. It’s a very well-organised and information-rich activity. In our case, our guide was Sarah,

seen here displaying the wallaby legs that she would be using to feed the Devils. She was very knowledgeable, engaging and informative about the creatures, the need for conservation and the work that the centre is doing.

If you are of a sensitive nature, I suggest you skip the rest of this post, as it features images of bits of animals being torn to shreds.

Still here?  OK, here are some still images of Devils being fed

(note the currawong, which is hanging around in case something is left over) and the quolls ditto.

Note that Sarah doesn’t just throw them the meat, because then they would just grab it and run for cover; to ensure they stay out for the punters, she attaches it to a hook so that the spectacle can be watched.

They may look cute, but, like the Bugblatter Beast of Traal, they’re very ravenous.

Here’s some video which might really put you off your dinner. You Have Been Warned.

It was a very interesting evening – informative and educational, albeit cold and wet as it rained towards the end of it, not that the animals cared.

So ended our day at Cradle Mountain. Tomorrow we head back east, for some R&R at Launceston in north central Tasmania. We have no formal activities booked but you can bet your sweet bippies that if it ain’t raining we’ll go for a walk. Obviously.

Macquarie Harbour and Gordon River Huon Cry

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Monday 9 September 2024 – There being no rest for the wicked, we had to get up early so that we could join the planned activity for the day, billed as a “journey of blissful serenity” – a cruise down the Gordon River, for which we had to check in at 0800, having had breakfast, driven the short distance to the Gordon River Cruise Terminal and had a n argument discussion about where to park the car.

Breakfast was worth a mention for the unique teapot they served our tea in.

We were solemnly told to leave it lying down for the four minutes measured by the egg timer before serving the tea. Once upright, the pot proved to be conventional in that, like hotel teapots everywhere, it dribbled when we tried to pour the tea.

Gordon River cruises are obviously A Thing, since the size of the cruise terminal

is pretty substantial, given the small size of the town it’s in.  The boat we were to cruise in was no dinghy, either.

We had tickets on the (premium, naturally, dahling) upper deck. To my surprise, there was assigned seating, and we actually got seats right at the front of the cabin,

not, as you might have inferred from the picture above, that this was necessarily going to guarantee us a good view of things.

The weather was very changeable during the whole day; we had drizzle, rain and bucketing rain, wind and (occasionally) sunshine; and it was quite cold, about 6°C; so “blissful serenity” looked to be a bit of a long shot, frankly. Still, the boat was reasonably warm, we had a light breakfast available to supplement the reasonably dense one we’d had before checking out, and the coffee was decent.

If you look at the location of Strahan on the map

you can see that it’s at the top of Macquarie Harbour, with the mouth of the Gordon River at the bottom.  But rather than go straight on after leaving Strahan, Captain Rick turned his boat hard to starboard, and our guide, Emily, explained that we would be exploring Macquarie Harbour before the blissful serenity bit along the river.

The harbour is actually the second largest in Australia, after Port Philip Bay, the harbour at the top of which one finds Melbourne. Emily pointed out to any Sydney residents on the cruise that Macquarie Harbour was six times the size of theirs. (Her commentary was very good – informative, interesting and, occasionally, amusing.)

The boat headed towards Macquarie Heads, the harbour entrance, because it’s of interest from several angles. Examination of the map will show that it’s not wide and, in its day, was called “Hell’s Gate” because it was so tricky and dangerous to navigate.  It’s just 83 metres wide,

and the original channel through which colonial vessels could sail was very close to one of the sides; wind could blow the ship on to rocks, which caused a lot of paperwork, even in those days. So a British Civil engineer, Sir John Coode, calculated, by constructing a model of the harbour, that building an underwater wall along one side would channel faster movement of water, dredging the gap and making the shipping channel wider and deeper. The wall was built in two stages (by convicts, natch): a training wall of rocks sufficiently small that they could be handled by people, who simply dropped them overboard into place,

followed by the real thing, with very substantial rocks that needed steam engines to handle them.

This wall once had a railway along its top, to ease the distribution of rocks along its length. As you can see, that railway is no longer in use.

We exited the harbour,

and then turned round and re-entered it, to give some idea of how it must have looked to the captains of those early vessels.

 

In the harbour, we noted long streams of foam in the harbour waters.

These come about because of the nature of the harbour’s waters, which have a layer of fresh water, whose source is mainly the Gordon River, on top of sea water.  The fresh water froths up more easily than sea water; the bubbles tend to clump together because of surface tension  and the wind drives them into these striking lines.  The water itself is quite brown

partly from sand being churned up by the currents, and partly from tannins leaching from the forests that border the harbour.

As we headed towards the Gordon River, we passed an enormous fish farming operation, farming mainly Atlantic salmon and sea trout. Three companies operate these farms, and they seemed to stretch from horizon to horizon at one point.

Emily gave us a lot of information about the efforts made to keep these farms environmentally friendly and ecologically sustainable. Given the horrors of fish farming in Canada and Scotland, one wonders if there’s an element of PR in this messaging. Anyway, the farms are extensive, and managed in quite a sophisticated way, with some feeding being done by ships dispensing food according to computer programming.

Tasmania has a significant place in history as a place where hardened convicts were transported in the 19th century, and Macquarie Harbour has a pair of neighbouring islands within it that were particularly notorious – Sarah Island

and the much smaller Grummett Rock.

Between them, these formed the notorious Macquarie Harbour Penal Station, which was in operation between 1822 and 1833. Sarah Island is about 20 acres (8 hectares) and up to 500 convicts – repeat offenders – would have been imprisoned there at a time. Under normal circumstances, our boat would have called in to Sarah Island so that we could look around it ourselves; but recent storm weather (basically the same as that which delayed our escape from Kangaroo Island) had wrought such damage on the landing location that it was unusable. Emily described the regimen on the Island, which was exceptionally harsh and violent – a special version of the cat o’ nine tails was apparently used for lashing the convicts who were sent there. The female convicts imprisoned there were originally sent over to Grummett Rock overnight to sleep in a cave, thus keeping them away from the male convicts at night time. Very enlightened of the authorities, I’m sure.

Shortly after passing between these two islands, we entered the Gordon River, and the skipper turned off his diesels and put the boat on electric power (“whisper mode”) so that we could cruise slowly and more or less silently along, with minimum disturbance from any wash from the boat – blissful serenity, in fact. Both banks of the river are heavily forested with a variety of eucalypts predominating.

East Bank
West Bank

The boat wound its way basically south along the river

past some splendid scenery.

One thing that the skipper steered us towards, and which Emily specifically called out, was a Huon Pine

an example of a very valuable and once much-exploited tree, to which a lot of attention is paid in this area. (As any fule kno, it’s actually a podocarp, not a true pine, of coure.) The wood from a Huon Pine is very heavily laden with oil, which makes it excellent for shipbuilding – it takes nails well and the oil prevents it from rotting.  (As The Wall in the Wilderness shows, it is also excellent for carving). There was once a thriving industry in “pining” – extracting Huon Pine along the river. The tree, however, is very slow-growing, so the industry was ultimately unsustainable and it is now illegal to cut down a living tree. This riverside specimen survived because it was too gnarly to be useful as timber.

By this stage, the forests surrounding the river had changed to being rainforest, and the boat stopped at the Heritage Landing

so that we could take a gentle stroll in this rainforest environment.  The stroll was along a prepared boardwalk

which led, past some very rainforesty surroundings,

to a halfway point, where more Huon Pines grew.

A guide, Erin, was there to explain about the trees in more detail, and there was quite a lot of it available. Long story short, the pines above had all arisen by natural vegetative reproduction from the root system of a very old “mother” tree, which had sadly now fallen. It is estimated that it was over two thousand years old.

In fact all the trees were male… these had survived “pining” simply because they were in very dense forest with no easy route to the river to get the timber out.

There was considerable scope for a philosophical discussion about actually how many trees there were there – one or many? and how old that made it/them. Fortunately, the skipper sounded his horn, which was the signal for us to get back on board and we headed back along the river and back to Strahan.

By this stage it was nearing 2pm, and we had to get to our next accommodation, which was near the Cradle Mountain National Park.  So we refuelled the car and headed off, into the wet (it was still raining).

The road was similar to what we’d seen on our drive over from Hobart – twisty and misty

with some spectacular scenery at times (when one could see it)

and the occasional arboreal sword of Damocles awaiting to alarm the unwary.

Differently, though, this road was hedged by huge amounts of gorse.

Another, and less welcome development, was the appearance of potholes. The lass at Avis back in Hobart had mentioned these, and it seemed that the road to Cradle Mountain attracted a lot of heavy lorries, which in turn created the craters which required the driver to be alert at all times.

Here are a few of the landscapes we passed as we drove the 130-odd kilometres towards Cradle Mountain.

Cradle Mountain is a national park which is known for its wildlife, as can be seen from road signs as we approached our destination for the day.

So we slowed down, and watched out, and eventually reached Peppers Cradle Mountain Lodge, just a little past the Cradle Mountain National Park Visitor Centre.

There was a certain cognitive dissonance between our reception, which was cordial but gave the impression of a place that was somewhat quiet and low-key, and our accommodation, which was a cabin to which we drove around a lake. Our cabin is excellent – large, luxurious, warm and well-organised; some cheese, meats and crackers had been thoughtfully laid in the room for us and there was Early Grey tea, milk, a kettle and a teapot. We even found a wallaby near the front door as a taster for the wildlife we hope to see over the coming days

and a pied currawong came to our balcony to check us out.

If you look closely at the bird, you can see he’s puffed out against the cold, and he’s very wet.  That’s because it was raining really quite hard by this stage

and so we decided to give the hot tub a miss and just enjoy our lovely cabin.

We’re here for a couple of nights, and have nothing organised for the morrow until the late afternoon. Given the cold and wet we’ve experienced so far, the temptation might be just to curl up in the warmth of our cabin and ignore the world for a while; but we’ll see what the weather looks like in case we feel like being more energetic.  You’ll be able to see whether we stayed in or went out if you come back to these pages in due course.