#sandstone NSW

[jandtsmithstonemasons]

Retaining Wall in Sydney

When it comes to quality construction, Sydney retaining wall builders like J&T Smith Stonemasons are your go-to experts. Our skilled team specializes in creating durable and aesthetically pleasing retaining walls that enhance your property’s landscape while providing essential structural support. Whether you need a simple solution or a complex design, our retaining wall services in Sydney are…

[autismtana]

so you wanna write a heartbreak high fic, but you're american (part 3)

I decided to create a separate post for the HSC, ATAR, uni and post-secondary study because our system is so completely different to American systems (and because my previous post was too long).

In Australia, tertiary study falls into two categories: higher education, and vocational education and training. This post will touch on university, as well as other forms of tertiary study and trades.

The uni part of this will be the longest because it tends to be the thing most people get wrong.

Preliminary/HSC

In NSW, year 11 (Preliminary) only goes for three terms. In term 4 of the calendar year in which you started year 11, you start the HSC course, which goes from term 4 of that year to term 3 of the following year. Midway through term 3, you do your trial exams (if you are doing music/drama/languages/anything with a performance/oral component/major work, you will have your practical exam/major work submission in the latter part of term 3). You then will have a graduation ceremony at the end of term 3, and your HSC exams will happen in October-November (term 4), while the kids in the grade below you are starting their HSC coursework. Nothing you do in year 11 counts towards the HSC (until term 4); in fact, nothing you do in any year up until you do your first HSC assessments counts towards your HSC. We don't have grade point averages here. Actually, your rankings in your individual subjects are probably more important than your actual marks (this video explains it). More academic kids might get a bit more competitive about rankings but also tend to want to work together to ensure that they all do well.

ATAR

After you do your HSC exams in year 12, depending on the combination of subjects you did and how well you did in your courses, you get an ATAR, which determines what courses you can get into at uni. This article explains somewhat how different subjects are scaled (because there are some that are perceived to be more difficult than others; this is objectively true in some cases, for example, advanced maths is called advanced for a reason so a higher mark in advanced should be seen as more meaningful than a higher mark in standard, but in other cases, it gets a bit more confusing). What it boils down to is certain subjects tend to attract more 'high achievers' than others, so get scaled higher. That being said, the prevailing advice is that everyone should choose the subjects they like and are good at, not what they think will get them into uni.

Higher education

Firstly, we call university "uni" here. We don't say "college" or "school" to talk specifically about university (if an Australian person is talking about going to school, they're either still in compulsory schooling, i.e. K-12, or they're a teacher). We do sooooort of have college here, but I'll touch on that later.

In Australia, kids apply for the course, not the university. Whether or not you get into the course you want is, for the most part, dependent on your ATAR. The exception is if you're applying for something like a creative arts course that might require an audition, or submission of a portfolio. Most unis offer early admission, particularly for kids who live in rural areas, and UNSW has a program for indigenous students for Business, Education, Law, Medicine, Social Work, or Science & Engineering. The most common universities you'll hear about in Sydney are USyd, UNSW, UTS, Western Sydney Uni and Macquarie, then there are ANU and UC in Canberra, LaTrobe in Albury/Wodonga, CSU in Dubbo/Bathurst/Wagga Wagga, UNE in Armidale and Newcastle Uni. There's also Notre Dame, which is a private, religious institution, and a bunch of other smaller schools.

USyd is the oldest university in NSW; it's referred to as a sandstone uni and tends to be the most sought after one that most people want to go to.

Most courses here are Commonwealth Supported, and domestic students are allowed to claim what's called HECS, meaning that you defer payment of your uni fees until you start earning a certain amount of money, and then it comes out of your taxes. In some cases, scholarships are offered, but those are generally more academic scholarships, or, say, for students studying to be teachers, they might get offered a scholarship to teach a certain school subject and as part of their scholarship get a guaranteed position at a hard-to-staff schooling area. As I said in part 2, we don't have anything like the NCAA here (it's not like the Sydney Uni basketball team has a mega rivalry with the UNSW basketball team like UNC vs Duke for example). Australian kids also don't have to pay exorbitant fees to apply for the courses they want. When I was applying to uni as a year 12 student, I paid something like $30 to UAC and applied for every arts/law course available in the Sydney area. I think there's a limit on how many courses you can apply for (maybe 16 or so) but it has been a while since I've applied for an undergrad uni course, so I could be wrong. That being said, a kid might be eligible for a scholarship if they excel at sport, but I believe they'd have to be already enrolled in the university and achieving academically at a certain level first.

Coming back to the "college" thing - a lot of kids tend to go to uni where they live and commute to and from there. That being said, sometimes kids come from towns where there are no universities, or kids from Sydney might end up going to uni interstate or to somewhere like Charles Sturt, which has campuses in Dubbo and Bathurst. "College" in Australia refers to the residential housing available to students living on campus (usually kids studying away from home, but some locals also choose to opt for this as well).

As for uni life, I'd suggest researching the different social clubs and societies different universities have.

Vocational education and training

Not everyone chooses to go to uni after they leave school. A lot of schools actually offer school-based apprenticeships and traineeships (SBATs) in a number of different industries, which counts towards the HSC and is professional work experience. Early childhood and automotive tend to be really popular. TAFE (Australia's largest vocational education and training provider) provides a lot of courses and opportunities for people (some of the courses are actually really cool; a friend of mine did a music course through TAFE and recorded a bunch of singles).

Work experience

This isn't really related to post-secondary schooling, but is still a pretty important aspect of the NSW school experience. Usually in year 10, kids spend a week doing work experience (there's actually a plot in the original Heartbreak High series about it that Jane and Leanne from Snarkbreak High talked about). Kids generally have to organise it themselves and it's usually related to a career they'd like to have after school. My younger brother did his at our local vet, and after that, he realised he no longer wanted to be a vet.

Other resources

Wikipedia (don't let anyone tell you not to use it - it's one of the best peer-reviewed journals ever and all the info on Australian schooling there is completely legit)

NESA

Bored of Studies forum

Snarkbreak High podcast (this is run by 2 Australian teachers; I think they're from Melbourne and they're currently only doing the original series but they have some great commentary, and they've even had Scott Major, aka Peter Rivers, aka Darren's dad as a guest)

Sydney Morning Herald (they always have a ton of articles about NSW schooling)

UNSW Indigenous Pre-Program

[drhoz]

The Great ACT-NSW-NZ Trip, 2023-2024 -Te Upoko-o-te-Ika-a-Māui

The Head of Māui's Fish - specifically, the area around New Zealand's capital city, Wellington, deriving from the legend of the fishing up of the island by the demi-god Māui. The harbour is the mouth - an area of reddish-purple rock facing onto Cook Strait was the bait Māui used.

Wellington's placement makes it one of the windiest cities in the world, and the narrow strait and howling gales makes for complicated tides and a shocking number of shipwrecks. The geology makes for some fun times too - the Haowhenua (Māori for 'land swallower') earthquake around 1460 AD raised the harbour area by 6 meters, turning some islands into the Miramar Peninsula. The 1855 Wairarapa earthquake moved a 150km stretch of the Wairarapa fault 20m along and 8m up. in some respects this was convinient timing, since the city had been desperately short of flat land at the time, and now part of the harbour wasn't harbour anymore. It's now the central business district of the city.

Every public building in New Zealand we went into had a warning plaque that the building was earthquake prone - one of the museums in wellington had that, BUT also suggested, if the quake was a particularly big one, you might want to head to the top floor rather than out into the street. Because Wellington is also tsunami prone. The 1855 quake produced one that reached 11m above sealevel.

The hills are also festooned with delightfully eccentric architecture, and more than a few funicular lifts so people can actually get to their homes from street level. One person had a funicular installed because their dog was getting elderly and struggled with the stairs.

Most of the species I saw were along the shoreline - at the harbour and ferry terminal in the city, out around the edges of the Miramar Peninsula, and out on Cook Strait at Pariwhero/Red Rocks.

The geology at Pariwhero is quite interesting - much of the basement rock in New Zealand is greywacke, a dark sandstone derived from turbidite deposits acculmulated at the edge of the Australian tectonic plate. At Pariwhero there are also deposits of argillite, a finer-grained rock quite useful for stone tools. And basalt - but the volcanic rocks are 50 million years older than the greywacke and argillite surrounding them. That's because the basalt was originally a set of seamounts - underwater volcanoes - scraped off the Pacific Plate as it subducts under what would one day be New Zealand, buried 10-15km deep, and pushed back to the surface again as more and more stuff gets piled up on the accretionary wedge and the entire area gets folded over double and concertinaed. Most of the colour in the local rocks is the result of iron leaching out of the basalt over tens of millions of years, and the argillite was deposited in the lee of the seamounts.

[vanishingsydney]

MacLaurin Hall. A gothic revival riot. Without doubt the most intricate building of it's kind in the Inner West. Built of Sydney Sandstone between 1902-1909 to re-house the Fisher Library of The University of Sydney, completing the southern end of The Quadrangle (begun in 1855). Copper roof and clocktower. The book stacks were stripped out in 1966, and moved to a new larger building, where it remains the State Library-of-Record. The Hall now used mainly for concerts and as a ceremonial venue. The last significant gothic revival building in Sydney, as the style had gone well out of fashion by the time of construction. Designed by NSW Government Architect, Walter Liberty Vernon. Heritage Listed. Camperdown. 

[sawtellaustralia]

Grand Sandstone Residence - Your Mid North Coast Dream Awaits

https://view.com.au/property/nsw/bellingen-2454/853-bowraville-road-15774212/

[dulichbonphuongglobal]

Which part of this Australian Gold Coast and Sydney trip would you most look forward to? Sea, sand, or city? 🌊🏖🌇

🌊 Sea:

- Pass through areas such as Kings Cross, Double Bay, Rose Bay before arriving at Watsons Bay. Take a short coastal walk with views of the South Pacific Ocean and the entrance to Sydney harbour.

- Spend four unforgettable hours aboard a 52-foot motor yacht with a small group. Your knowledgeable captain will narrate Sydney Harbour's history as you marvel at iconic landmarks like the Harbour Bridge and Opera House.

🏖 Sand:

- Discover Surfers’ Paradise Beach and its 14 shopping centres. Along the beachfront, you will find around 120 market stalls offering everything under the sun. Main Beach is a stylish resort with outstanding dining, cafes and shopping.

- Enjoy the attractive pristine beaches of Broadbeach, known as a dining mecca. Watch here for musicians and entertainers who roam the streets.

- Visit the beachfront promenade of Bondi Beach. Put your toes in the sand, enjoy a coffee or cool drink, and see bronzed Aussie lifesavers and surfers riding the waves of Bondi.

🌇 City:

- Travel through the financially focused Central Business District (CBD), and Macquarie Street. Marvel at 18th century sandstone architecture such as NSW Parliament House, Rum Hospital, Hyde Park Barracks and St Mary’s Cathedral.

- Explore the world's most impressive harbours of Sydney, we will take a few stops for photo opportunities, including a panoramic photo of Sydney skyline.

#TravelAustralia #BucketList #VisaAustralia

[letsescapetogethersblog]

Exploring the Majestic Blue Mountains: A Guide to NSW's Natural Wonderland

Nestled just a short drive from Sydney, the Blue Mountains in New South Wales (NSW) offer an enchanting escape into nature's grandeur. This UNESCO World Heritage site is famed for its stunning landscapes, ancient forests, and rich Aboriginal heritage, making it a must-visit destination for adventurers and nature lovers alike.

Top Attractions

The iconic Three Sisters rock formation is a quintessential symbol of the Blue Mountains. Located at Echo Point Lookout in Katoomba, these sandstone peaks offer breathtaking views and a glimpse into Aboriginal legends. Nearby, the Scenic World provides a thrilling experience with its Skyway, Cableway, and the world's steepest railway, offering panoramic vistas of the lush Jamison Valley.

Outdoor Activities

For those keen on hiking, the Blue Mountains boast an extensive network of trails. The Grand Canyon Walk is a standout, featuring a 6-kilometer loop through verdant rainforests and past cascading waterfalls. For a more leisurely stroll, the Prince Henry Cliff Walk offers spectacular clifftop views without the strenuous effort.

Cultural Experiences

Don't miss the opportunity to immerse yourself in the region's rich Aboriginal culture. The Waradah Aboriginal Centre in Katoomba provides educational performances that showcase traditional dance, music, and storytelling. Additionally, the Blue Mountains Cultural Centre offers insight into the area's artistic heritage, with galleries and exhibitions that celebrate local artists.

Practical Tips

The best time to visit is during spring (September to November) or autumn (March to May), when the weather is mild and the scenery is particularly vibrant. Ensure you wear comfortable walking shoes, bring plenty of water, and pack a camera to capture the awe-inspiring landscapes.

Whether you're seeking adventure, tranquility, or a cultural journey, the Blue Mountains offer an unforgettable experience. Plan your visit to this natural wonder and uncover the beauty and history of one of NSW's most treasured destinations.

[bondibeachaustralia]

Rare Corner-Block Family Home With Fabulous Potential

[thebullitimes]

Helicopter will lift over 100 loads of sandstone, steps and rocks into the Wodi Wodi Track

Part of the Wodi Wodi Track at Stanwell Park. A HELICOPTER operation is underway to winch essential materials to continue work on the Illawarra sections of the Great Southern Walk track. NSW Minister for the Illawarra and South Coast, Ryan Park, said that weather permitting, the helicopter will lift about 110 loads of sandstone, steps and rocks to the tracks over two days so work can continue…

[jandtsmithstonemasons]

Professional Stonemasons Services in Sydney

For those seeking top-tier Sydney stonemasonry specialists, J&T Smith Stonemasons is the trusted name in the industry. With years of experience, we provide a comprehensive range of stonemason services designed to meet your needs, whether it’s for a residential or commercial project. Our stonemason services in Sydney are unmatched in quality and craftsmanship. From custom stonework to intricate…

[holidayhunteraust]

A Road Trip to Remember: Exploring NSWs Outback on Its Vast and Wild Roads

G'day adventure seekers! Welcome back to our channel where we explore the most breathtaking and awe-inspiring destinations around Australia. Today, we're embarking on an exhilarating journey through the mystical and captivating Outback Roads of New South Wales, Australia. So strap in and get ready for the ride of a lifetime!

 As far as road trips go, you won't find anything quite as dramatic and diverse as the Outback Roads of NSW. From the rugged sandstone cliffs of the Blue Mountains, to the vast red desert plains of Broken Hill, this is a destination that will make your heart race and your spirit soar!"

 Picture this - you're cruising along dust-covered tracks, the setting sun casting a golden glow on the iconic Australian gumtrees that line the road, while kangaroos gracefully bound alongside. It's a symphony of sights, sounds, and pure adrenaline

 But it's not just the wildlife that will leave you in awe. In this untamed wilderness, you'll come across landscapes straight out of a painting. From the rugged beauty of the Warrumbungle National Park, showcasing ancient volcanic formations, to the breathtaking Mungo National Park, where the sand dunes whisper tales of the past."

 The Outback Roads of NSW are also steeped in rich Aboriginal history. You have the incredible opportunity to connect with the traditional custodians of this land, to hear their stories, and gain a deeper understanding of the ancient culture that continues to thrive in this vast expanse.

Don't forget to immerse yourself in the unique outback towns along the way - places like Bourke, Nyngan, and Broken Hill. Experience true Aussie hospitality, meet the friendly locals, and learn about the ingenuity and resilience that it takes to thrive in this remote beauty

 And lastly, the sunsets of the Outback Roads in NSW...oh my! Words cannot do justice to the fiery skies that paint the horizon every evening. You'll witness a kaleidoscope of colours as the sun bids its farewell - a truly magical experience that will leave you speechless.

 So, there you have it, outback enthusiasts. The Outback Roads of NSW are calling your name! Get ready to chase your sense of adventure, bask in the raw beauty of nature, and create memories that will last a lifetime. Until next time, keep exploring and always remember to stay wild at heart!

[portmacquarieaustralia]

Exquisite Handcrafted Masterpiece in King Creek with Sarah's Creek frontage

[aussietecturelifestyle]

Australian Sandstone Wall Claddings – Colonial Banded Walling Stone

Sizes & details

Up to 400mm long and 250mm high

30mm to 40mm thick

Corners – up to 400mm long on edge and up to 250mm in depths

Capping – Available; please ask a member of our team for more details

Stone type – Australian Sandstone

Finish – Split face and sides with a sawn back

Random squares and rectangles

Brief description – Australian sandstone wall claddings Colonial Banded is a combination of whites, browns and beige with some slight banding throughout. Colours and Blends vary batch to batch which adds even more character to the result.

Unit 26 / 85-115 Alfred Rd Chipping Norton NSW 2170

1/5-7 Byres street, Newstead QLD 4006

T4 145 North St, Harlaxton QLD 4350

sales@aussietecture.com.au

NSW 02 8378 0730

QLD 07 3112 7562

https://aussietecture.com.au/natural-stone-walls/colonial-banded/

[ettalongaustralia]

Lifestyle Living

[uminabeachaustralia-blog]

Lifestyle Living