feeds from excavation.com.au http://excavation.com.au/rss/ en-au http://excavation.com.au/rss/ http://excavation.com.au/static/campfire/layouts/images/omg-logo-small.png http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/3/26/33m/ Sat, 26 Mar 2011 00:00:00 EST news $329,000 to $660,000MELBOURNE33 Mackenzie StreetPrivate saleAgent Colliers, 1300 075 113Melway 2B F12BOASTING a city address but with a street name few would have heard of, 33M is a complex of 388 apartments in a 32-level block to be built in a quiet spot off Victoria Street between Exhibition and Russell streets in the city.In union and tertiary education territory, 33M will be within walking distance of RMIT and Trades Hall Council and all their offshoots.The striking complex (below), designed ...

$329,000 to $660,000 MELBOURNE 33 Mackenzie Street Private sale Agent Colliers, 1300 075 113 Melway 2B F12

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/3/14/survivors-on-long-slow-road/ Mon, 14 Mar 2011 00:00:00 EST news AS THE highway descends from the pine and snow-clad mountains above Sendai, the signs of catastrophe grow clearer.Houses, roads and bridges mostly withstood the 8.9 magnitude quake with barely a crack — thanks to Japan's extraordinarily high building standards — but the exodus of cars going up the hill is getting thicker.People cluster around a roadside stream to fill their water bottles, mobile phone reception is becoming patchy, and cars are banked up for two kilometres ...

AS THE highway descends from the pine and snow-clad mountains above Sendai, the signs of catastrophe grow clearer.

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/3/11/judge-lashes-kelly-over-barangaroo-law/ Fri, 11 Mar 2011 00:00:00 EST news THE Land and Environment Court has delivered a highly critical assessment of the decision by the Planning Minister to approve the car park excavation at Barangaroo and said that he had failed to comply with the planning laws on remediation.In his decision yesterday, Justice Peter Biscoe dismissed a request from critics of the Barangaroo project to find unlawful two approvals granted by Tony Kelly in November, but the judge said he did so only because the minister changed the law last week.Mr Kel ...

THE Land and Environment Court has delivered a highly critical assessment of the decision by the Planning Minister to approve the car park excavation at Barangaroo and said that he had failed to comply with the planning laws on remediation.

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/3/10/minister-ran-down-clock-for-approvals/ Thu, 10 Mar 2011 00:00:00 EST news JUST hours before the NSW government moved into caretaker mode last week, the Planning Minister, Tony Kelly, approved four separate developments at Barangaroo, dealing another blow to critics attempting to stall the project.After granting the approvals on March 3, just before the caretaker period began at midnight, Mr Kelly waited until yesterday to announce the go-ahead for all completed development applications at the site.He approved the two biggest applications on the contentious harbourfron ...

JUST hours before the NSW government moved into caretaker mode last week, the Planning Minister, Tony Kelly, approved four separate developments at Barangaroo, dealing another blow to critics attempting to stall the project.

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/3/4/critics-fear-poisons-leaking-to-harbour/ Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:00:00 EST news SECTIONS of the Barangaroo site are heavily contaminated but the area approved for a massive underground car park contained lower-grade contaminants similar to those previously found at King Street Wharf, Lend Lease says.The company's spokesman for the project, David Hutton, said 200 bore holes had been drilled to get a better understanding of the pollution left over from the gasworks that first operated on the site in 1839.While pollution in the car park site was not a major issue, critics of t ...

SECTIONS of the Barangaroo site are heavily contaminated but the area approved for a massive underground car park contained lower-grade contaminants similar to those previously found at King Street Wharf, Lend Lease says.

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/3/4/kelly-defied-advice-on-barangaroo-exemption/ Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:00:00 EST news THE Planning Minister, Tony Kelly, overturned specific instructions from the head of his department this week when he ordered the development at Barangaroo be exempt from planning laws on contamination.Last year when Lend Lease applied for approval to excavate for a big car park, the director-general of the planning department, Sam Haddad, issued a series of requirements Lend Lease had to meet to have its application approved.One requirement, dated May 3, was that the environmental assessment Le ...

THE Planning Minister, Tony Kelly, overturned specific instructions from the head of his department this week when he ordered the development at Barangaroo be exempt from planning laws on contamination.

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/3/4/into-oblivion-with-pens-raised/ Fri, 04 Mar 2011 00:00:00 EST news YOU'RE a minister in a government facing annihilation at the coming election. As things look now, your party may be out of power for two, three - even four terms. On your desk a pile of directives awaits your signature, some of them months old. Some are embarrassing but necessary, awaiting a politically convenient time. Others are glad-handing gestures of the kind all governments make to shore up support. Still others are genuine achievements to which your party will be able to point in oppositi ...

YOU'RE a minister in a government facing annihilation at the coming election. As things look now, your party may be out of power for two, three - even four terms. On your desk a pile of directives awaits your signature, some of them months old. Some are embarrassing but necessary, awaiting a politically convenient time. Others are glad-handing gestures of the kind all governments make to shore up support. Still others are genuine achievements to which your party will be able to point in opposition, but which cost too much when budgets are tight. The election writs are about to be issued, ending your time in office. What do you do?

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/3/3/goahead-for-barangaroo/ Thu, 03 Mar 2011 00:00:00 EST news EXCAVATION for a massive underground car park on polluted land at Barangaroo could begin next week after the government made it the only project in NSW exempt from planning laws on contamination.Just two days before the Land and Environment Court was due to rule on whether the government had approved the excavation lawfully, the Planning Minister, Tony Kelly, published an order on the government's legislation website torpedoing the main arguments Barangaroo critics had used in their case.In an u ...

EXCAVATION for a massive underground car park on polluted land at Barangaroo could begin next week after the government made it the only project in NSW exempt from planning laws on contamination.

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/3/2/twisted-tiffany-appeals/ Wed, 02 Mar 2011 00:00:00 EST news Many collectors are now interested in art glass, especially from the postwar period. Murano glass, the Scandinavian style and, as shown here last year, contemporary Australian designs are all now sought after. Yet art glass of distinction was also very popular in the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries.Tiffany is perhaps the best-known brand, while some would say that the product of the Loetz (pronounced "Lertz") studio was its equal. Loetz was part of a strong glass-producing industry ...

Many collectors are now interested in art glass, especially from the postwar period.

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/3/1/love-of-pot-lands-grower-in-jail/ Tue, 01 Mar 2011 00:00:00 EST news A LOVE affair between a computer scientist and marijuana to enhance his performance as a male escort has ended in heartbreak and a six-year prison term for drug offences.Paul Chalmers's "romance" with marijuana worsened in 2000 when he swapped a high-paid IT role for registered work in Melbourne's sex industry.Chalmers, 45, found cooking with grass an effective and controllable way to relax — and "I could have a biscuit at the right time without my [female] client even ...

A LOVE affair between a computer scientist and marijuana to enhance his performance as a male escort has ended in heartbreak and a six-year prison term for drug offences.

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/2/19/missed-steps-on-painful-and-tormented-path/ Sat, 19 Feb 2011 00:00:00 EST news YOUR VOICE IN MY HEADBy Emma ForrestBloomsbury, $29.95REVIEW LIZA POWERTHE relationship between a patient and her therapist can be a difficult one to articulate. Their exchange is based on shared endeavour; in essence, to untangle the former's patterns of behaviour and help them understand why they do the things they do. While the therapist has the luxury of distance, the patient must interrogate her own actions. It's an exercise that's intimate, complex and intense, driven as much by confusion ...

YOUR VOICE IN MY HEAD

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/2/19/hotel-moved-from-habour-in-new-barangaroo-vision/ Sat, 19 Feb 2011 00:00:00 EST news ALMOST 60 independent architects and planners have united to back an alternative scheme for Barangaroo, which would have smaller towers, remove the hotel from the harbour and jettison the "naturalistic" headland championed by Paul Keating.Five weeks before the state election, the group has called for a public inquiry and released its alternative scheme in an attempt to influence a new government to tackle what it sees as major problems with the approved design."This shows that the ...

ALMOST 60 independent architects and planners have united to back an alternative scheme for Barangaroo, which would have smaller towers, remove the hotel from the harbour and jettison the "naturalistic" headland championed by Paul Keating.

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/2/17/footpath-art/ Thu, 17 Feb 2011 00:00:00 EST news With China's terracotta warriors still in residence at the Art Gallery of NSW, another warrior site is being unearthed in Martin Place. Well, not quite. The Australian chalk artist Jenny McCracken is creating a 3D artwork of the unearthing in 1974of the 2000-year-old warriors. Her work will aim to capture the feel of the excavation work at Xian and give passers-by a sense of what it might be like down in the pits with the warriors. McCracken, who is no doubt hoping the rain stays away, won the m ...

With China's terracotta warriors still in residence at the Art Gallery of NSW, another warrior site is being unearthed in Martin Place. Well, not quite. The Australian chalk artist Jenny McCracken is creating a 3D artwork of the unearthing in 1974

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/2/15/oldest-groundedge-stone-tool-found-in-arnhem-land/ Tue, 15 Feb 2011 00:00:00 EST news THE piece of stone was so small that at first no one noticed it. It was only when he returned to Melbourne from the Northern Territory that archaeologist Bruno David gave it a second glance.What he and an international team of archaeologists had unearthed was a section of a stone axe whose blade had been ground down thousands of years earlier than any similar object previously located. The fragment — just four centimetres long — was dug up in a large rock-shelter in Jawoy ...

THE piece of stone was so small that at first no one noticed it. It was only when he returned to Melbourne from the Northern Territory that archaeologist Bruno David gave it a second glance.

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/2/14/face-to-face-with-10000-yearold-carvings/ Mon, 14 Feb 2011 00:00:00 EST news AN AUSTRALIAN scientist searching for the fossilised bones of giant rats in a cave in East Timor has discovered ancient stone carvings of human faces, the first found on the island.One of the faces, which has sunbeam-like rays coming out of it, has been dated at 10,000 to 12,000 years old.A CSIRO researcher and rat expert, Ken Aplin, said he was on the rocky floor of Lene Hara Cave, when he looked up and light from his head torch glanced across its dark wall, revealing the strange images."J ...

AN AUSTRALIAN scientist searching for the fossilised bones of giant rats in a cave in East Timor has discovered ancient stone carvings of human faces, the first found on the island.

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/2/13/engineer-warns-of-barangaroo-toxins/ Sun, 13 Feb 2011 00:00:00 EST news IT WILL take at least 30 years to get rid of a plume of toxic chemicals from the $6 billion Barangaroo development, a report into the Sydney harbourside project warns.In that time a cocktail of dangerous byproducts including coal tar, lead, naphthalene, benzene and cyanide at the former AGL gasworks site at East Darling Harbour could accumulate in car parks and building basements on the site.The report, by consulting chemical engineer Wayne Davies, says groundwater seepage will occur "where ...

IT WILL take at least 30 years to get rid of a plume of toxic chemicals from the $6 billion Barangaroo development, a report into the Sydney harbourside project warns.

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/2/11/tiny-tipper-poised-to-make-a-big-impact/ Fri, 11 Feb 2011 00:00:00 EST news Size matters for the small yet mighty Isuzu NLR 275, writes Steve Skinner. Isuzu might be the biggest truck supplier in Australia but it also has one of the smallest trucks on offer.The cute little NLR 275 is a new tipper model released in Australia this month. The big-eyed baby Isuzu has just a 3.0-litre diesel engine but can carry an impressive 2.7 tonnes. That's an extra tonne compared with its predecessor, the NLR 200."Landscape suppliers have been pushing us to get the increased payloa ...

Size matters for the small yet mighty Isuzu NLR 275, writes Steve Skinner.

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/2/9/cover-property/ Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 EST news PADDINGTON81 LEINSTER STREET$3 million+House 3 bed, 3½ bath, 2 carBuilt 2010Land 160 sq mInspect By appointmentAgent Ken Jacobs of Christie's Great Estates, 0406 761 840Last traded for $1.21 million in 2009 (previous house)In a suburb of skinny, old terraces, this fresh beauty can't help but stand out - especially with the ample advantages of a 17-metre frontage.This allows for the luxury, certainly in Paddo, of a double garage big enough for a pair of four-wheel-drives or a battal ...

PADDINGTON 81 LEINSTER STREET $3 million+

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/2/9/xstrata-excavates-a-512bn-result/ Wed, 09 Feb 2011 00:00:00 EST news ZUG-BASED Xstrata has kicked off the profit-reporting season in style for the world's big miners.Its profit for (calendar) 2010 soared 86 per cent from $US2.77 billion to $5.12 billion before exceptional items — bang on market expectations.Rio Tinto follows with its profit report tomorrow, with the market expecting a bumper $US14 billion result, up from $US6.3 billion in 2009 when Rio — and the rest of the industry — was still carrying the scars of the global ...

ZUG-BASED Xstrata has kicked off the profit-reporting season in style for the world's big miners.

http://www.excavation.com.au/news/2011/2/7/opera-houses-underground-show/ Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:00:00 EST news A THREE-YEAR $152 million program to build a series of tunnels and a loading dock deep beneath the Sydney Opera House officially starts today.Periodically over the next three years the majority of the forecourt of the world heritage-listed building will be closed to the public to allow for excavation and construction, however visitors will still be able to walk to the Royal Botanic Gardens. and performances and restaurants will operate as normal.This week, work will begin on the first phase, mov ...

A THREE-YEAR $152 million program to build a series of tunnels and a loading dock deep beneath the Sydney Opera House officially starts today.