Monday 16 July 2007

Picnic: Bring Your Own (BYO) nargile/sheesha/hookah/hubble-bubble


Picnic at Garrison Point, Georges Hall.
Late autumn and winter in Sydney usually brings perfect picnic weather, and there's no shortage of gorgeous places to get the family or social club together to enjoy the daytime sun.

One thing I'm really impressed by is the effort local councils have made to create regional parks and picnic grounds. This is part of the Mirambeena Regional Park, maintained by Bankstown City Council.

I've uploaded some more photos from this delightful picnic ground at Sydney Daily Photos Extra.

8 comments:

  1. One of the few things I miss about Sydney is...ummm...I s'pose you'd call it the multi-cultural aspect. Apart from hippies and an occasional imported wife, it's all so very WASP-ish up here...very monochromatic .

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  2. I have noted from your past posts and comments that Australia is fairly multi-cultural. The photo is one that shows different aspects of pleasure, and a picnic is one of them!

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  3. Here's some facts about Sydney from the 2006 census:

    Sydney was the capital with the highest proportion of its population born overseas - almost one-third, compared to just 12 per cent for Hobart - although it was closely trailed by Perth with 31.3 per cent and Melbourne with 28.9 per cent.

    The two largest groups of Australian residents born overseas have continued to be those from England (19 per cent of all overseas-born) and New Zealand (9 per cent).

    But China has overtaken Italy as the third-largest source of new Australians, with each country now accounting for around 5 per cent of all the overseas-born.

    Since 1996, the size of the European-born population in Australia has decreased, with the biggest falls in people born in Italy (by around 39,000), Greece (17,000), and England (15,000).

    Again Sydney is the epicentre of these shifts in multicultural Australia, with about half the nation's Chinese-born population and three-quarters of the Lebanese living in the city.

    People from China now make up more than 8 per cent of the overseas born in Sydney and almost 4 per cent of the population, from less than 3 per cent in 1996.

    The shifts are also reflected in a fall in the proportion of people who only speak English at home, down from 82 per cent in 1996, to 80 per cent to 2001, and 78.5 per cent last year.

    The most common non-English languages remained Italian, Greek, Cantonese and Arabic, but Mandarin and Hindi speakers showed the biggest rise, almost doubling in number since 1996. Mandarin speakers rose from 0.7 per cent to 1.1 per cent of the population.

    These changes are also reflected in patterns of religion. Buddhists now make up 2.1 per cent of the population and Muslims 1.7 per cent. But the fastest growing non-Christian religion was Hinduism, more than doubling to over 150,000 people since 1996.

    Almost half of the Muslims and Hindus in Australia (47 per cent) live in Sydney.

    - Sydney Morning Herald, 28 June, 2007

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  4. j'aime bien les pique-niques où plein de gens se retrouvent, c'est ce que l'on a fait à Evry Vendredi soir


    I like the picnics where full people find themselves, it is what one made in Evry Friday evening

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  5. That's a pending task of authorities here in Europe. Interesting picture and subject.

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  6. Very nice photo. I like the peacefulness of the scene in the park.

    Best Wishes for a nice week,

    Abraham Lincoln
    Tufted-titmouse slobbers

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  7. Vive la difference! ;-)

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  8. Yes, I prefer to live in a multicultural, multi-ethnic world too.

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