Death in Frying Pan Alley

Coffee shop in Sussex Lane, backing onto Erskine St, running between Kent and Sussex Streets

Sydney City and Suburban Sewage and Health Board : Eleventh progress report ... visit Frying-pan Flat, Sussex-street. Here there is a large piece of open ground, one part of which extends to the foreshore of Darling Harbour ... Turning down Erskine-street we inspected four wooden houses at the bottom of the place ... badly ventilated and very close ... Adjoining this was another wooden shanty, 9 x 10 feet and 6 feet high, offering accommodation of an inferior character, inasmuch as the room contained no ceiling, and rented at the reduced price of 3s. 6d. ... The same description will apply to all the miserable hovels which we have noticed in this locality ; they are in a tumble-down dilapidated state ; the walls are crumbling to pieces and the roofs patched up with pieces of tin, iron, old bags, and any other materials at hand, which have the effect of keeping out the rain and confining the foul air ... To appreciate the wretched state of ruin and discomfort which these buildings present, it is necessary to visit the place ; no description can convey a true impression of their utter unfitness for human habitation.

Frying Pan Flat and Alley, between Erskine Street and Margaret Place, December 1875. Halliday Engineering was at 30 Erskine Street

Ellen Barry, aged 9 months, died at 12 Sussex Street on 9th August, 1875, having suffered from congestion of the lungs for over 36 hours. Her mother was 21 year old Louisa, the daughter of William and Charlotte, both emanciapted convicts. Louisa is my paternal great-grandmother. She died in 1919, in Gosford at the home of her next born child, Will, my grandfather.

Sussex Lane was built c. 1916, after all the demolitions as a result of the bubonic plague.

Ted finds a great number

A Stretch of Luck

Red lanterns create a decorative canopy during the Spring Festival, or Chinese New Year, a significant holiday during which millions of Chinese travel home to be with family. In China the color red traditionally symbolizes good fortune and is said to bring happiness and prosperity.

I, Robot

Yesterday afternoon I walked over to our big domed football stadium to check the final rounds of the FIRST Robotics competition. There are regional competitions world-wide but the championship tournament is always here.

This is for high school students who design radio-controlled gizmos performing specific but difficult tasks. Thousands of team members have been swarming downtown. I saw three young women checking a restaurant menu, wearing the Canadian flag as capes. Driving home Friday, one of them entering the Arch grounds was wrapped in the Spanish standard. As I approached the stadium yesterday, there was a group wearing Cat In The Hat style hats in the colors of the German flag. An Israeli team that made it to the quarter-finals waved the sky blue and white in the stands.

The competition is hard to follow for the uninitiated. This year it had something to do with stacking and moving plastic storage cases and recycling bins. Points were awarded for, well, I don't know what. Pieces of green foam spaghetti flew through the air.  There may (or may not) have been points awarded for sticking them in the recycling bins.

(And, BTW, apologies to Isaac Asimov.)                             

Myrrh, women, tombs, and a video

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For Orthodox Christians, today is the Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearers, remembering the women disciples who came to the tomb and found it empty. 
In the picture are two 1st century tombs in the Chapel of St. Joseph of Arimathea and St. Nicodemus, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
When I visit, I always have a feeling these burial places in the modest Syriac Orthodox chapel may be the real place, instead of the famous one inside the edicule in the rotunda.

Sr. Dr. Vassa Larin, of  Coffee with Sr. Vassa fame, offers a good episode about Sunday of the Myrrh-Bearers (and why the women were right and the Apostles were wrong):

 (Linking this post to InSPIREd Sunday meme.)
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