Saturday, March 02, 2019

Villa Matra: Neighbourhoods in 21st Century- Anthropological Landcapes


On our fourth anniversary, Winx (foaled 14 September 2011) is a champion Australian Thoroughbred racehorse

Private Sydney: Relaxed Roz Packer putting family first


Its been a whirlwind 12-months for Packer family matriarch, Ros who has put her philanthropic and socials obligations aside to be there for her children Gretel and James.



"Our world, and the worlds around and within it, is aflame with shades of brilliance we cannot fathom,” naturalist Sy Montgomery wrote in her lyrical reflection on what thirteen animals taught her about how to be a good creature

The hot sun draws all the life out of the earth under a cloudless sky: every weed, grass, flower, insect… The closer you look at this quiet fold of garden, the richer and more detailed in life and death it is. Even Ian, the biologist, probably would not be able to catalogue in a lifetime all that’s happening in a small patch of these three levelled tier panoramic strips of earth with the magical remote views of the Sydney Harbour Bridge ...

Kafka would suggest that the streets in Matra are peppered with  characters who adopt Double Bay attitudes of remote hellos as they watch 📺 gigantic TVs in those lego like entombed houses 🏘.

Rich in material wealth and meaningless relationships men and women are stuck in God’s waiting rooms ... 




 Hugh Mackay: the better world you dream of starts in your street
As in Naples, in Sydney everybody needs good neighbours. It is in workplaces and neighbourhoods where the dramas unfold every day. . . Sydney has more faces than any other city in the world.

Bob Carr: I could've been kinder to MEdia Dragons as NSW Premier 







DJ Tigerlily spends $1.8m on Matraville investment


No one wants to feel like a tourist these days. Savvy travellers want to live like locals, and that means looking beyond the sights and finding the coolest neighbourhoods to stay, eat, drink and hang out in. But what gives an area that indefinable cool factor. In Sydney it is the ocean and the harbour.

With a buzzing culinary nightlife scene, Vivaldi and Nude Pizzas, a massive stretch of sandy beach and a stunning marina parade  with cute cafés as well as a seven kilometre  jogging track to Malabar, there’s no better place in Sydney to have it all. Maroubra is home to casual seaside breakfast joints, cool bars and then there’s the beach itself, where you can surf, swim, or try flyboarding or just admire the view of Malabar headland.
  Sydney is salted and peppered with neighbours who are part of the contemporary and historical melting pot.

 Sydney has a colourful ancestors from British convicts, Irish slaves, Welsh miners, English shepherds, Chinese gold diggers, Greek shopkeepers, German printers, Sikh hawkers, Bohemian monks. They laid the pipes, they pumped the sewage, dug the roads, were peppered  with French or German bullets, choked on mustard gas, built ships and lorries,  stoked engines, mixed cement, fought off a million mortal worries,  fought typhoid, cholera, polio, Napoleonic trouble,  kept calm and carried on while Hitler smashed their homes to rubble. 


Our neighbours's daughter is obnoxious, rude and loud. She is so intolerable that we finally know, what it must be like to be a Greek Australian.

Her mother is a youngish grandmother, having started young. She didn't think about how her life could have been different, if she'd made different decisions or had different luck. There had been no fairytales in her life and she'd never dreamt of any. She lived in the here and now. She went out to work. She liked to have a laugh. She knew how to let her hair down at the club on a Saturday. 

Horses and Houses on the Hills