Climb Every Mountain...

... All together now... 'ford every stream...'

Or at least, climb the 14 highest mountains across the globe, including Antarctica...

Or possibly... don't!!

As the article says, it's an incredible achievement to get anywhere near the top of all those mountains & can sometimes be tricky to say whether you're at the top or not. I know if I met someone who said they made it to within 5 metres of the top of any mountain over 8,000 metres high, I'd be pretty impressed anyway, whether they got to the top or not - that's still better than anything I could do... I can get winded climbing a steep garden path, as happened last week (To be fair, it was a very steep path up more than 100 stairs - I counted them!!... And I had a cold...)

These days you hear a lot of people say they've been to Mt Everest Base Camp & sound like they're quite content with that - as they should be, it's still a great thing to have done & at least you get to come back from there alive, which is not so certain if you keep going up...

There is even some doubt about Edmund Hilary's claim to have been the first to climb Everest, as the early 20th century climber George Mallory's body was found up there, at a point which suggests he might have got to the top before dying. Certainly Mr Hilary & the redoubtable Tensing Norgay were the first to get back down alive... I'm in the camp of those who think Tensing Norgay got there first, but Edmund didn't take his photo

Plague Proportions

There has long been a rivalry between Australia's 2 largest cities - Sydney & Melbourne, with each laying claim to be the best one because... well, insert your parochial pride reference points here...

Since the Plague began, that rivalry has largely been put aside, as the whole country mostly pulled together to bring the damn thing under relative control. No thanks here to the state governments of Western Australia & Queensland, who have used the Plague as an excuse to lock up their borders & then complain that the rest of Australia either ignores them, or doesn't take them seriously... then threaten to take their mines & reefs, go home & start rumbling about secession

Anyway, this is all a rambling introduction to an article about how the Plague has affected Melbourne more harshly than Sydney, with our Southern cousins going into another week-long lockdown, while we in Sydney go about life as (new) normal

I do have a vested interest in this, as not only do I have many friends in Melbourne, but the luthiers making my custom 12-string acoustic guitar are down there as well. Its completion has already been pushed back from May to July, due to the huge backlog caused by last year's long lockdown down south & I'm wondering if my 'Christmas' present for 2020 will be ready for this year... or not

Readers overseas will, of course have a different perspective on the article & wonder why we're getting so worked up about this latest outbreak when it hasn't killed anyone... yet, let alone a few thousand per day. The simple answer being that, as a country of only 25 million or so, we can't really afford to be losing thousands of people at all, especially every day!!