Published The Advocate, December 26, 2004
WHEN I travel I like to travel alone and to connect as little as possible with the people around me.
Keeping to myself, not talking to anyone if I can help it, is the way to become a better observer and eavesdropper.
Sitting aboard the Spirit in Christmas week, I stared at a woman with unconvincing blonde hair who sat alone at a corner table, surrounded by an air of melancholy and cheap perfume.
Even from this distance the stench of ripe mango and passionfruit took my breath away.
``How did we go here?’’ the waitress asked her, as if ministering to someone in an aged care home. Thumping pop music played in the background.
The woman told the waitress she was from Burnie. She said she had not been to Launceston all year but had gone to Melbourne to do her Christmas shopping. She looked sheepish.
I felt offended on behalf of local traders and decided to give my mainland friends gift vouchers that were redeemable only in Tasmanian shops to do my bit to boost visitor numbers.
Or give them a North-West chainsaw sculpture. Or I could do the rounds of the craft shops, buying up crocheted coat hangers and padded picture frames. Or give holiday snaps of myself at Stanley.
I had an elderly aunt who was considered tight. She gave gifts of TV wildlife documentaries she had taped herself; or of a particular ABC ``Life Matters’’ program that discussed how elderly relatives were being coerced into nursing homes; or her rollmop recipe.
The woman on the Spirit said the grandkids had given her a list of music CDs they wanted as stocking fillers.
You know you’re growing old, Nana, when the greatest hits CDs of Robbie Williams, powderfinger, Live and Korn contain songs you’ve never heard.
She said the grandkids lived in Melbourne, so it was easier to buy the CDs there. The kids had accompanied her to ensure she chose the right ones.
Now she was heading home to Burnie for Christmas. She seemed close to tears.
Nana, why didn’t you stay with the grandkids for Christmas? Why couldn’t they visit you in Burnie? Are you spending Christmas alone? Looking at her sad face, only sad answers came to mind.
At Christmas, it seems the whole world is on the move, as if everyone is heading back to the place where they came from. The ferries are packed with people and their dogs.
A handsome young couple on the Spirit cupped their faces against the salt stained window for a better look at the overcast North-West coast. The girl was pregnant.
``Wow, we’re nearly home!’’ she said excitedly. The guy used a flexible reading lamp to spotlight her swollen belly. ``Yeah, Christmas,’’ he smiled.
I looked in the direction they were looking. Home. Yes, for me too.
In my new house overlooking Bass Strait, what I wanted for Christmas was a housekeeper whose chief task would be to ensure I was not disturbed while working.
Maybe next year.
Monday, December 20, 2004
Published The Advocate, December 19, 2004
HUSKY 53, the dinky little Port Security boat, floated gently on the Mersey River, dwarfed by the Spirit of Tasmania II, and kept a watchful eye out for … nothing much at all.
Looking like a converted fishing boat, Husky 53 did not appear capable of thwarting a determined terrorist threat. The nearby Outlaws bikie clubrooms at East Devonport, bristling with security cameras behind a high fence, seemed better equipped to repel invaders.
The closest thing to a threat were the Grey Nomads on their ``lap’’ around Australia. With wide backsides and fat bellies, and Swiss Army knives attached to their belts, they would be a daunting security threat if they ever got themselves organised.
Here I was setting off overnight to Melbourne and then to Adelaide for a mate’s birthday, my first Spirit crossing. In a previous life, the Spirits were Greek ferries. This one still had yellow warning signs written in Greek: DANGER KEEP CLEAR OF MOORING ROPES.
I kept a safe distance from Deck 9, in the outdoor area reserved for smokers although I do not smoke, surrounded by the acrid exhaust from the ship’s funnels. Running amok were little kids with the names of rappers’ wives – Icelene, Desray – made up by parents who cannot spell.
I could have booked a quiet cabin with a bed but wishing to ``rough it’’ to an extent, I had a business class seat, A10. If I closed my eyes, the background shuddering-juddering vibration was almost soothing.
But I slept little and with eyes like cracked Jaffas pop-riveted into my face, I was back on deck at 4am for the passage through The Rip, the narrow, churning entrance to Port Phillip Bay where the tides and cross-currents meet.
Sadly, the passage was smooth and dull. I watched the dawn, keeping my bald head warm with a baseball cap bearing the Geelong Football Club logo. It gets a lot of wear although people mock it.
In the bright sun, Port Phillip Bay was shining except for the smoke from the funnels. A smoker next to me said he was heading to Queensland on a working holiday. A high number of Tassie blokes, on the same route, marry Queensland girls.
This bloke had the conversation skills of a man who had spent too long talking to sheep.
``What’s that?’’ he said, nodding.
``The You Yangs,’’ I said, explaining how the peaks near Geelong had once been climbed by Matthew Flinders to get his bearings.
``What’s a ewe’s yang?’’ he snorted. Spare me.
The Spirit docked at Station Pier at 6.40am, a voyage of less than 10 hours. Unfortunately, it took another hour to disembark in my car. Even Greek ferry operators, not especially noted for their organisational skills, can empty and reload a crowded ferry in half that time.
The highlight of the voyage, I am pleased to report, is the eternal flame atop the Mighty Ulverstone Clock can indeed be seen from Bass Strait, a beacon in the night.
HUSKY 53, the dinky little Port Security boat, floated gently on the Mersey River, dwarfed by the Spirit of Tasmania II, and kept a watchful eye out for … nothing much at all.
Looking like a converted fishing boat, Husky 53 did not appear capable of thwarting a determined terrorist threat. The nearby Outlaws bikie clubrooms at East Devonport, bristling with security cameras behind a high fence, seemed better equipped to repel invaders.
The closest thing to a threat were the Grey Nomads on their ``lap’’ around Australia. With wide backsides and fat bellies, and Swiss Army knives attached to their belts, they would be a daunting security threat if they ever got themselves organised.
Here I was setting off overnight to Melbourne and then to Adelaide for a mate’s birthday, my first Spirit crossing. In a previous life, the Spirits were Greek ferries. This one still had yellow warning signs written in Greek: DANGER KEEP CLEAR OF MOORING ROPES.
I kept a safe distance from Deck 9, in the outdoor area reserved for smokers although I do not smoke, surrounded by the acrid exhaust from the ship’s funnels. Running amok were little kids with the names of rappers’ wives – Icelene, Desray – made up by parents who cannot spell.
I could have booked a quiet cabin with a bed but wishing to ``rough it’’ to an extent, I had a business class seat, A10. If I closed my eyes, the background shuddering-juddering vibration was almost soothing.
But I slept little and with eyes like cracked Jaffas pop-riveted into my face, I was back on deck at 4am for the passage through The Rip, the narrow, churning entrance to Port Phillip Bay where the tides and cross-currents meet.
Sadly, the passage was smooth and dull. I watched the dawn, keeping my bald head warm with a baseball cap bearing the Geelong Football Club logo. It gets a lot of wear although people mock it.
In the bright sun, Port Phillip Bay was shining except for the smoke from the funnels. A smoker next to me said he was heading to Queensland on a working holiday. A high number of Tassie blokes, on the same route, marry Queensland girls.
This bloke had the conversation skills of a man who had spent too long talking to sheep.
``What’s that?’’ he said, nodding.
``The You Yangs,’’ I said, explaining how the peaks near Geelong had once been climbed by Matthew Flinders to get his bearings.
``What’s a ewe’s yang?’’ he snorted. Spare me.
The Spirit docked at Station Pier at 6.40am, a voyage of less than 10 hours. Unfortunately, it took another hour to disembark in my car. Even Greek ferry operators, not especially noted for their organisational skills, can empty and reload a crowded ferry in half that time.
The highlight of the voyage, I am pleased to report, is the eternal flame atop the Mighty Ulverstone Clock can indeed be seen from Bass Strait, a beacon in the night.
Published The Advocate, December 11, 2004
"The 2002 crop had a very good concentration of fruit and fruit flavours – great fruit – carried through to a great outcome."
WHAT a pity, I thought.
Here was the chief winemaker at Pipers Brook vineyard waxing lyrical after The Age named his pinot noir as Australia’s best red wine.
What a great pity, I thought, what a damn shame pinot noir is wasted on me.
It tastes like raw wood, like licking a fence picket, and smells even worse, like a mucky abattoir floor. No hint of fruit there, let me tell you, and at $65 a bottle for the Pipers Brook, I suppose I should be grateful.
Pinot lovers kept telling me I was mad. They could not understand how a red wine drinker of considerable repute – me – could not stand pinot.
I never had a problem appreciating the fruit in shiraz, merlot, cabernet sauvignon or any other red wine variety. I even had my fair share of Grange stacked in a shoe cupboard at different times.
Yet something peculiar about pinot noir makes it fall off my palate. I cannot explain it either.
It reminds me of asparagus. After eating asparagus, some people can smell it on their urine, others cannot. I am one who can. The less said about that the better but there it is.
Tastebuds are odd things. In his final year, my father, a heroic Melbourne Bitter drinker all his life, was forbidden on doctor’s orders to drink beer because the yeast was somehow wreaking havoc with his immune system.
Momentarily shattered by the news, he soon discovered Johnnie Walker Red Label whisky, a beer drinker’s scotch if ever there was one.
On his final birthday, as a special treat, I took him an expensive bottle of single malt whisky from which he took one sip, coughed and spluttered, and went to his grave without touching it again.
One man’s malt being another’s poison, I snaffled it at the wake.
Then, possibly as punishment, I went off all red wine, not just pinot. Almost overnight, I found even one glass of red gave me a splitting headache that lasted a couple of days.
A doctor friend said he had seen similar symptoms in other wine drinkers around my age. One had been forced to stop drinking red for three years until eventually the adverse reaction subsided and he was able to drink again. So there is still hope.
For my 50th birthday, an old mate gave me a bottle of 1986 Grange valued at about $270 at the time. His gesture was generous to an embarrassing degree except by then I had given up drinking red, which he had not realised.
Never mind, the same mate turns 60 this weekend and I am giving him back the Grange. It is now worth $675, which only goes to show how much more generous I am than he was.
Meantime, I am acquiring a taste for Boag’s draught.
"The 2002 crop had a very good concentration of fruit and fruit flavours – great fruit – carried through to a great outcome."
WHAT a pity, I thought.
Here was the chief winemaker at Pipers Brook vineyard waxing lyrical after The Age named his pinot noir as Australia’s best red wine.
What a great pity, I thought, what a damn shame pinot noir is wasted on me.
It tastes like raw wood, like licking a fence picket, and smells even worse, like a mucky abattoir floor. No hint of fruit there, let me tell you, and at $65 a bottle for the Pipers Brook, I suppose I should be grateful.
Pinot lovers kept telling me I was mad. They could not understand how a red wine drinker of considerable repute – me – could not stand pinot.
I never had a problem appreciating the fruit in shiraz, merlot, cabernet sauvignon or any other red wine variety. I even had my fair share of Grange stacked in a shoe cupboard at different times.
Yet something peculiar about pinot noir makes it fall off my palate. I cannot explain it either.
It reminds me of asparagus. After eating asparagus, some people can smell it on their urine, others cannot. I am one who can. The less said about that the better but there it is.
Tastebuds are odd things. In his final year, my father, a heroic Melbourne Bitter drinker all his life, was forbidden on doctor’s orders to drink beer because the yeast was somehow wreaking havoc with his immune system.
Momentarily shattered by the news, he soon discovered Johnnie Walker Red Label whisky, a beer drinker’s scotch if ever there was one.
On his final birthday, as a special treat, I took him an expensive bottle of single malt whisky from which he took one sip, coughed and spluttered, and went to his grave without touching it again.
One man’s malt being another’s poison, I snaffled it at the wake.
Then, possibly as punishment, I went off all red wine, not just pinot. Almost overnight, I found even one glass of red gave me a splitting headache that lasted a couple of days.
A doctor friend said he had seen similar symptoms in other wine drinkers around my age. One had been forced to stop drinking red for three years until eventually the adverse reaction subsided and he was able to drink again. So there is still hope.
For my 50th birthday, an old mate gave me a bottle of 1986 Grange valued at about $270 at the time. His gesture was generous to an embarrassing degree except by then I had given up drinking red, which he had not realised.
Never mind, the same mate turns 60 this weekend and I am giving him back the Grange. It is now worth $675, which only goes to show how much more generous I am than he was.
Meantime, I am acquiring a taste for Boag’s draught.
Monday, December 06, 2004
Published The Advocate, December 4, 2004
DRUGS are such a part of elite sport that hardly a day passes when the newspapers do not carry stories about the latest fallen heroes who took something to put an extra spring in their hop, step and jump.
So widely abused are the chemical and hormonal boosters that some wits have suggested staging the Pharmacy Games.
Pistol shooters, for whom the slightest twitch can mean hit or miss, have been known to take beta-blockers to slow their heart rates. They aim to fire between the heartbeats.
Even grandmaster chess players are tested for drugs although not, I expect, for beta-blockers. I am at a loss to know what drugs are used in chess. Caffeine, possibly, but certainly not anabolic steroids.
The Belarussian powerlifter Vladimir Buben was banned for life after testing positive for steroids at the Athens Paralympics, having previously been banned for two years for another failed test. D’oh.
Drug abuse at the Paralympics raises some intriguing possibilities. If sufferers of cerebral palsy can compete in the 100-metre sprint, what performance enhancing drug do you test for?
And, if a drug does actually improve performance, rather than banning the stuff wouldn’t you encourage all cerebral palsy sufferers to take it?
My cousins had greyhounds which they raced without success. Others took the sport more seriously and used little tricks to get the best out of their dogs.
For example, as a greyhound was being shoved into the starting box, a quick smear of hot mustard on its backside made it run like blazes, as you would.
I wonder if the Australian sprinter Matt Shirvington ever contemplated using mustard?
In 1999, Shirvington ran 10.03 seconds for the 100 metres. Everyone waited for him to become the first white man to break 10 seconds. His numberplate was SUB-10S.
It never happened. He never bettered the 10.03. In a nightmare run of illness and injury, he missed selection in the Australian team for the Athens Olympics.
Had he spent more time running instead of injuring himself, his story might have had a Chariots of Fire ending. Instead of which he carries the burden of unfulfilled destiny.
So near yet so far, he could almost be excused the temptation of taking drugs to help him crack the 10-second barrier. But he didn’t succumb. Good man.
Many other athletes have not behaved so honourably. Cycling, my favourite sport, has been tarnished forever by the corrosive effect of drugs.
The cheats must be exposed, of course, yet being stripped of a gold medal, given a life sporting ban and being made to feel public shame are not nearly enough.
Think of the second placegetter, the one who was robbed of the moment of victory, of being cheered across the line in first place and of then proudly standing on the winner’s dais hearing the national anthem.
To be handed the gold medal after the event with a sympathetic pat on the back is little consolation.
I would feel disappointed. No, I would feel murderous.
DRUGS are such a part of elite sport that hardly a day passes when the newspapers do not carry stories about the latest fallen heroes who took something to put an extra spring in their hop, step and jump.
So widely abused are the chemical and hormonal boosters that some wits have suggested staging the Pharmacy Games.
Pistol shooters, for whom the slightest twitch can mean hit or miss, have been known to take beta-blockers to slow their heart rates. They aim to fire between the heartbeats.
Even grandmaster chess players are tested for drugs although not, I expect, for beta-blockers. I am at a loss to know what drugs are used in chess. Caffeine, possibly, but certainly not anabolic steroids.
The Belarussian powerlifter Vladimir Buben was banned for life after testing positive for steroids at the Athens Paralympics, having previously been banned for two years for another failed test. D’oh.
Drug abuse at the Paralympics raises some intriguing possibilities. If sufferers of cerebral palsy can compete in the 100-metre sprint, what performance enhancing drug do you test for?
And, if a drug does actually improve performance, rather than banning the stuff wouldn’t you encourage all cerebral palsy sufferers to take it?
My cousins had greyhounds which they raced without success. Others took the sport more seriously and used little tricks to get the best out of their dogs.
For example, as a greyhound was being shoved into the starting box, a quick smear of hot mustard on its backside made it run like blazes, as you would.
I wonder if the Australian sprinter Matt Shirvington ever contemplated using mustard?
In 1999, Shirvington ran 10.03 seconds for the 100 metres. Everyone waited for him to become the first white man to break 10 seconds. His numberplate was SUB-10S.
It never happened. He never bettered the 10.03. In a nightmare run of illness and injury, he missed selection in the Australian team for the Athens Olympics.
Had he spent more time running instead of injuring himself, his story might have had a Chariots of Fire ending. Instead of which he carries the burden of unfulfilled destiny.
So near yet so far, he could almost be excused the temptation of taking drugs to help him crack the 10-second barrier. But he didn’t succumb. Good man.
Many other athletes have not behaved so honourably. Cycling, my favourite sport, has been tarnished forever by the corrosive effect of drugs.
The cheats must be exposed, of course, yet being stripped of a gold medal, given a life sporting ban and being made to feel public shame are not nearly enough.
Think of the second placegetter, the one who was robbed of the moment of victory, of being cheered across the line in first place and of then proudly standing on the winner’s dais hearing the national anthem.
To be handed the gold medal after the event with a sympathetic pat on the back is little consolation.
I would feel disappointed. No, I would feel murderous.
Monday, November 29, 2004
Published The Advocate, November 27, 2004
YEARS ago, wondering what to do with the rest of my life, I resolved to try two death-defying acts before I died, or die in the attempt.
One was to leap from a plane, which I did in a tandem parachute jump with a chap called Ralph. We were hooked up closer than two blokes ought to be but hurtling earthwards at 14,000 feet I was glad of the company.
The other dare was to eat a pie floater, a South Australian delicacy comprising a meat pie plopped in a platter of pea green soup and smothered in tomato sauce, pepper and vinegar. It tastes better than it sounds or looks.
Then, just when I thought life had lost its pizzazz, last weekend I went to Bull Busters, an event organised by the Riana Primary School Parents Association.
In the chill wind slicing across the South Riana Recreation Ground, grim-faced young riders with crooked teeth and crooked walks stood around nervously adjusting their crotches.
The two clowns in their body armour limbered up with stretching exercises and by bouncing on the balls of their feet, as twitchy as boxers after too many red cordials.
And in the pens, the bulls shuffled around just as restlessly, bumping each other as if psyching themselves up. Bulls with the names Bad Vibes, Cheater, Miserable and Badlands.
Among the sponsors were Stowport Bulk Meats, Bertie's Butchers and National Pies - which I took as a warning to any under-performers.
Talk of death-defying stunts, one thrown rider wrenched his knee and, half crippled, dragged himself through the safety fence and collapsed in agony behind the chutes.
Unfortunately the next bull in the chute reared and toppled out backwards to where the prone rider was still being given first aid. I have never seen a crippled man move so fast, up the side of the fence in a shot with his bad leg dangling.
After one ``soft’’ ride where the bull actually stopped altogether for a moment, someone in the crowd yelled out, ``Take it home and milk it!’’ The offended bull went berserk and threw the rider.
Once the bucking and twisting was over, the bulls stood there huffing and nodding their heads as if bowing to the crowd.
The experienced ones even knew to trot directly to the exit gate. I reckon one of them winked at me as he left.
I learned all kinds of interesting stuff like how a rider’s best chance of staying aboard is to focus on the bull’s shoulders – DO NOT LOOK DOWN!
The program brochure said bull riding was “one of the most dangerous sports in the world”. They bring ‘em up tough at Riana Primary.
How much more exciting can it get? Quite a lot, as a matter of fact.
A wall painting unearthed in Crete dating from about 2000BC shows male and female acrobats confronting a bull, grabbing its horns as it charges, and vaulting over its back. The acrobats are naked.
It’s something the Riana Primary School might consider for next year.
YEARS ago, wondering what to do with the rest of my life, I resolved to try two death-defying acts before I died, or die in the attempt.
One was to leap from a plane, which I did in a tandem parachute jump with a chap called Ralph. We were hooked up closer than two blokes ought to be but hurtling earthwards at 14,000 feet I was glad of the company.
The other dare was to eat a pie floater, a South Australian delicacy comprising a meat pie plopped in a platter of pea green soup and smothered in tomato sauce, pepper and vinegar. It tastes better than it sounds or looks.
Then, just when I thought life had lost its pizzazz, last weekend I went to Bull Busters, an event organised by the Riana Primary School Parents Association.
In the chill wind slicing across the South Riana Recreation Ground, grim-faced young riders with crooked teeth and crooked walks stood around nervously adjusting their crotches.
The two clowns in their body armour limbered up with stretching exercises and by bouncing on the balls of their feet, as twitchy as boxers after too many red cordials.
And in the pens, the bulls shuffled around just as restlessly, bumping each other as if psyching themselves up. Bulls with the names Bad Vibes, Cheater, Miserable and Badlands.
Among the sponsors were Stowport Bulk Meats, Bertie's Butchers and National Pies - which I took as a warning to any under-performers.
Talk of death-defying stunts, one thrown rider wrenched his knee and, half crippled, dragged himself through the safety fence and collapsed in agony behind the chutes.
Unfortunately the next bull in the chute reared and toppled out backwards to where the prone rider was still being given first aid. I have never seen a crippled man move so fast, up the side of the fence in a shot with his bad leg dangling.
After one ``soft’’ ride where the bull actually stopped altogether for a moment, someone in the crowd yelled out, ``Take it home and milk it!’’ The offended bull went berserk and threw the rider.
Once the bucking and twisting was over, the bulls stood there huffing and nodding their heads as if bowing to the crowd.
The experienced ones even knew to trot directly to the exit gate. I reckon one of them winked at me as he left.
I learned all kinds of interesting stuff like how a rider’s best chance of staying aboard is to focus on the bull’s shoulders – DO NOT LOOK DOWN!
The program brochure said bull riding was “one of the most dangerous sports in the world”. They bring ‘em up tough at Riana Primary.
How much more exciting can it get? Quite a lot, as a matter of fact.
A wall painting unearthed in Crete dating from about 2000BC shows male and female acrobats confronting a bull, grabbing its horns as it charges, and vaulting over its back. The acrobats are naked.
It’s something the Riana Primary School might consider for next year.
Friday, November 26, 2004
Published The Advocate, November 20, 2004.
MY OLD vinyl record collection included Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, which I mention at the outset to establish my Baby Boomer bona rockin’ fides.
I once went to a concert featuring The Who and The Small Faces on the same bill. True, I also went to a Glen Campbell concert but that was marital blackmail, which does not count.
Now, I am more likely to attend a Beethoven concert than one by the Rolling Stones, although they are both around the same vintage.
Gradually and without doing it deliberately, I have reached a stage in life where, given the choice between playing the drums for Deep Purple or the cymbals for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, I would choose the TSO.
This, from a man whose first interest in classical music was Mickey Mouse conducting the buckets and mops in "Fantasia" and Procol Harem's "A Whiter Shade of Pale".
Last night I went to the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra concert at the Burnie Civic Centre featuring the music of Schumann, Tchaikovsky and Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor.
The instruments were ranked according to the age of the players: the violins in the hands of the youngsters; the slightly older ones had the violas; onto the cellos; until finally the grown-ups got the basses.
Not everyone notices this the first time.
My father had a violin although I never heard him play it. The instrument was kept hidden in a case on the uppermost ledge of the built-in robes, pushed right to the back.
Perhaps it was possessed by the devil.
Nicolo Paganini, who died in 1840, played a violin with such virtuosic intensity that ladies swooned and their husbands suspected he was in league with the devil.
Mozart made the husbands swoon too.
I would love to be able to play the cello for its sheer melodic beauty. One of my favourite CDs features the cellist Jacqueline du Pre, who drowned at the height of her powers in the slack, drooling tide of multiple sclerosis. Such a pity.
Unfortunately, I have no musical talent and cannot play any instrument. I can’t sing either but neither can Bob Dylan and it hasn’t held him back.
The TSO more than makes up for my lack of musical ability. No electric guitars, no acoustic feedback, it was wonderful last night to listen to glorious music, heard as intended by the composers.
Tasmania is lucky to have such a fine symphony orchestra but it needs subscribers, and here comes the ad.
I doubt if any Australian symphony orchestra runs at a profit but the TSO has been having a hard time of it lately due to a low subscriber base and the high cost of touring.
Next year it will be staging two concerts in Burnie. Various subscription packages are available to entice bums onto seats – but wait, there’s more – and there is also a free CD and ticket giveaways.
Do subscribe and come swoon with me.
MY OLD vinyl record collection included Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, which I mention at the outset to establish my Baby Boomer bona rockin’ fides.
I once went to a concert featuring The Who and The Small Faces on the same bill. True, I also went to a Glen Campbell concert but that was marital blackmail, which does not count.
Now, I am more likely to attend a Beethoven concert than one by the Rolling Stones, although they are both around the same vintage.
Gradually and without doing it deliberately, I have reached a stage in life where, given the choice between playing the drums for Deep Purple or the cymbals for the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra, I would choose the TSO.
This, from a man whose first interest in classical music was Mickey Mouse conducting the buckets and mops in "Fantasia" and Procol Harem's "A Whiter Shade of Pale".
Last night I went to the Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra concert at the Burnie Civic Centre featuring the music of Schumann, Tchaikovsky and Nicolai’s The Merry Wives of Windsor.
The instruments were ranked according to the age of the players: the violins in the hands of the youngsters; the slightly older ones had the violas; onto the cellos; until finally the grown-ups got the basses.
Not everyone notices this the first time.
My father had a violin although I never heard him play it. The instrument was kept hidden in a case on the uppermost ledge of the built-in robes, pushed right to the back.
Perhaps it was possessed by the devil.
Nicolo Paganini, who died in 1840, played a violin with such virtuosic intensity that ladies swooned and their husbands suspected he was in league with the devil.
Mozart made the husbands swoon too.
I would love to be able to play the cello for its sheer melodic beauty. One of my favourite CDs features the cellist Jacqueline du Pre, who drowned at the height of her powers in the slack, drooling tide of multiple sclerosis. Such a pity.
Unfortunately, I have no musical talent and cannot play any instrument. I can’t sing either but neither can Bob Dylan and it hasn’t held him back.
The TSO more than makes up for my lack of musical ability. No electric guitars, no acoustic feedback, it was wonderful last night to listen to glorious music, heard as intended by the composers.
Tasmania is lucky to have such a fine symphony orchestra but it needs subscribers, and here comes the ad.
I doubt if any Australian symphony orchestra runs at a profit but the TSO has been having a hard time of it lately due to a low subscriber base and the high cost of touring.
Next year it will be staging two concerts in Burnie. Various subscription packages are available to entice bums onto seats – but wait, there’s more – and there is also a free CD and ticket giveaways.
Do subscribe and come swoon with me.
Thursday, November 18, 2004
Published The Advocate, November 13, 2004
101 COASTAL NIGHTS
UNABLE to sleep, from the dining room window the night turned to morning and the bathroom lights on the hill opposite were being switched on-off, on-off.
The town was rife with gastro.
A sallow face was reflected in the window. I am not a morning person although I have seen more than my share of dawns, and here I was about to start my 100th day as editor of The Advocate. Time flies, huh?
Some fragments:
Everything and everyone here is connected. People have histories and sub-plots that I do not know. They can communicate by eye movement and small shifts in their seats.
People ask where you live and they know the street, the number and who has lived there going back into pre-history.
Looking around for somewhere to stay, I was adamant the place must have a view of Bass Strait. If you live in this part of the world, why waste the spectacle?
And yet, I was told, not long ago a view was worth nothing in real estate terms because everybody had one. Not until the Mainlanders arrived did a view suddenly gain a dollar value.
Overlooking the sea is not as romantic as I had imagined. Once, maybe, in the days of masts and sails, but not now, not when I’m trying to sleep and the industrial noise from the docks travels easily across water and uphill.
The wind is another constant companion if not always a friend, especially not if you are a bike rider.
There were some things I had never experienced in Adelaide.
Petrol was over $1 a litre. People lived in lavender mauve houses, which I thought odd until I saw the same colour on Bass Strait at dusk. There were hardly any dual-flush toilet cisterns. There was no mains gas, either, and something called Pay-As-You-Go Power.
Goats were tethered at the side of the road, with their dinky little alpine huts. Also by the roadside, parked cars were for sale, which I thought was illegal, not to say dangerous.
And there was so much wood smoke around, the horizon was hazy from chimneys and backyard bonfires. Yet there were very few household smoke detectors.
I was surprised to find there were nine councils covering 100,000 over-governed citizens.
Still, people were passionate in their civic pride. The Burnie Civic Centre, a complex beyond economic commonsense and the financial means of ratepayers, is much loved for all that.
I have already upset people. Truck drivers threatened me for suggesting one of them drove recklessly on the Bass Hwy; and I was lambasted on ABC Radio by the West Coast Mayor for daring to suggest it rained a bit at Strahan. Uh-huh.
The rivalries and differences in self-image between Devonport and Burnie can be quite striking.
In each city, The Advocate office provides handwash cream in the staff toilets. In Burnie, the handwash is called ``sea minerals’’; in Devonport, it is called ``milk and honey’’.
That says it all.
101 COASTAL NIGHTS
UNABLE to sleep, from the dining room window the night turned to morning and the bathroom lights on the hill opposite were being switched on-off, on-off.
The town was rife with gastro.
A sallow face was reflected in the window. I am not a morning person although I have seen more than my share of dawns, and here I was about to start my 100th day as editor of The Advocate. Time flies, huh?
Some fragments:
Everything and everyone here is connected. People have histories and sub-plots that I do not know. They can communicate by eye movement and small shifts in their seats.
People ask where you live and they know the street, the number and who has lived there going back into pre-history.
Looking around for somewhere to stay, I was adamant the place must have a view of Bass Strait. If you live in this part of the world, why waste the spectacle?
And yet, I was told, not long ago a view was worth nothing in real estate terms because everybody had one. Not until the Mainlanders arrived did a view suddenly gain a dollar value.
Overlooking the sea is not as romantic as I had imagined. Once, maybe, in the days of masts and sails, but not now, not when I’m trying to sleep and the industrial noise from the docks travels easily across water and uphill.
The wind is another constant companion if not always a friend, especially not if you are a bike rider.
There were some things I had never experienced in Adelaide.
Petrol was over $1 a litre. People lived in lavender mauve houses, which I thought odd until I saw the same colour on Bass Strait at dusk. There were hardly any dual-flush toilet cisterns. There was no mains gas, either, and something called Pay-As-You-Go Power.
Goats were tethered at the side of the road, with their dinky little alpine huts. Also by the roadside, parked cars were for sale, which I thought was illegal, not to say dangerous.
And there was so much wood smoke around, the horizon was hazy from chimneys and backyard bonfires. Yet there were very few household smoke detectors.
I was surprised to find there were nine councils covering 100,000 over-governed citizens.
Still, people were passionate in their civic pride. The Burnie Civic Centre, a complex beyond economic commonsense and the financial means of ratepayers, is much loved for all that.
I have already upset people. Truck drivers threatened me for suggesting one of them drove recklessly on the Bass Hwy; and I was lambasted on ABC Radio by the West Coast Mayor for daring to suggest it rained a bit at Strahan. Uh-huh.
The rivalries and differences in self-image between Devonport and Burnie can be quite striking.
In each city, The Advocate office provides handwash cream in the staff toilets. In Burnie, the handwash is called ``sea minerals’’; in Devonport, it is called ``milk and honey’’.
That says it all.
Saturday, November 06, 2004
Published The Advocate, November 6, 2004
IN A previous life in a land far, far away, I stood at the sidelines watching a chunky teenager in the cricket nets whacking balls one after another straight back at bowlers twice his age.
I had never seen anyone hit the ball so hard, not up close. The impact of each howitzer shot was felt in the chest as much as heard. The kid was built like a brick outhouse.
The bowlers were powerless. It might have been humiliating had the kid not been wearing a broad, almost embarrassed grin.
He was batting at another level, trusting in his instincts with perfect hand-eye coordination, which the young can do until mature consideration sows seeds of doubt. Youth cannot be denied its own nature.
He did not have a textbook technique and his footwork was suspect, yet whatever the bowlers delivered was dispatched with the minimum of fuss and the maximum of power.
Even with the protection of the side netting, I instinctively flinched when he swiveled my way and hooked. The cricket club president ducked too.
‘‘This lad,’’ he declared, ‘‘will one day play for Australia.’’
The lad was Darren ‘‘Boof’’ Lehmann, aged 15 or 16, at practice in the Salisbury Oval nets in northern Adelaide. His dad, the local cop, was parked in a police car on the embankment, ever watchful.
It took Darren a while to gain Australian selection and then he was preferred for the one-day game rather than the Test side.
It was thought his Test career was delayed because he never attended the Australian Cricket Academy, which was just starting in Adelaide back then. David Hookes, the SA cricket captain, apparently told him not to bother with the Academy.
Hookes was his great mate. They were together on the fatal night early this year when Hooksey’s head cracked against the pavement in an altercation with a hotel bouncer at St Kilda. Darren saw him dying.
Afterwards, grief-stricken, Darren spoke of the needless waste and wondered aloud about his retirement. Here was a man in pain, contemplating the point of life, not just his future in cricket.
We met briefly a couple of times but I knew him better through mutual friends. Everyone said he was a nice bloke, a family man with a photo of his twins in his wallet, who treated allcomers with courtesy and respect. Boof was no bighead.
Sadly, without wishing to put the mozz on him, I expect we have seen the last of Darren in Test cricket. He recently tore a hamstring running between wickets in the Third Test at Nagpur, in India, doing what he did best, belting out a brutal 70.
At 34, it is hard to see him returning from injury yet again in a side stuffed with batting talent.
When newcomer Michael Clarke made 151 on Test debut in India, Darren even volunteered to stand aside to allow him to remain in the side.
Such is the measure of the man. Sport is said to be character building – more often, true character is revealed.
IN A previous life in a land far, far away, I stood at the sidelines watching a chunky teenager in the cricket nets whacking balls one after another straight back at bowlers twice his age.
I had never seen anyone hit the ball so hard, not up close. The impact of each howitzer shot was felt in the chest as much as heard. The kid was built like a brick outhouse.
The bowlers were powerless. It might have been humiliating had the kid not been wearing a broad, almost embarrassed grin.
He was batting at another level, trusting in his instincts with perfect hand-eye coordination, which the young can do until mature consideration sows seeds of doubt. Youth cannot be denied its own nature.
He did not have a textbook technique and his footwork was suspect, yet whatever the bowlers delivered was dispatched with the minimum of fuss and the maximum of power.
Even with the protection of the side netting, I instinctively flinched when he swiveled my way and hooked. The cricket club president ducked too.
‘‘This lad,’’ he declared, ‘‘will one day play for Australia.’’
The lad was Darren ‘‘Boof’’ Lehmann, aged 15 or 16, at practice in the Salisbury Oval nets in northern Adelaide. His dad, the local cop, was parked in a police car on the embankment, ever watchful.
It took Darren a while to gain Australian selection and then he was preferred for the one-day game rather than the Test side.
It was thought his Test career was delayed because he never attended the Australian Cricket Academy, which was just starting in Adelaide back then. David Hookes, the SA cricket captain, apparently told him not to bother with the Academy.
Hookes was his great mate. They were together on the fatal night early this year when Hooksey’s head cracked against the pavement in an altercation with a hotel bouncer at St Kilda. Darren saw him dying.
Afterwards, grief-stricken, Darren spoke of the needless waste and wondered aloud about his retirement. Here was a man in pain, contemplating the point of life, not just his future in cricket.
We met briefly a couple of times but I knew him better through mutual friends. Everyone said he was a nice bloke, a family man with a photo of his twins in his wallet, who treated allcomers with courtesy and respect. Boof was no bighead.
Sadly, without wishing to put the mozz on him, I expect we have seen the last of Darren in Test cricket. He recently tore a hamstring running between wickets in the Third Test at Nagpur, in India, doing what he did best, belting out a brutal 70.
At 34, it is hard to see him returning from injury yet again in a side stuffed with batting talent.
When newcomer Michael Clarke made 151 on Test debut in India, Darren even volunteered to stand aside to allow him to remain in the side.
Such is the measure of the man. Sport is said to be character building – more often, true character is revealed.
Sunday, October 31, 2004
Published The Advocate, October 30, 2004
Tourists get downunder and dirty
AS KIDS we fished from the wharves while the ships around us had their cargoes unloaded, never a care given for our safety or for public liability insurance claims.
Now, most cargo is tucked away inside shipping containers behind chainmesh and protected by security gates and anti-terrorism units. And suddenly, fenced off, the wharves are tourist drawcards.
The only way into the docks for someone like me is under escort, so last week I was driven in a mini-bus around the Port of Burnie in the company of harbourmaster Captain Trevor Bozoky, among others.
Capt. Bozoky, a nice chap, believes the ``docks in the raw’’ could become a tourist lure for cruise ships such as the Pacific Princess, due in Burnie in a couple of weeks.
He said the attraction of a working port, for tourists, was ``you’re not in a passenger terminal, remote from all the dirty stuff’’. He kept a straight face.
We drove past stores of tallow, petroleum, wood pulp, fertilizer, limestone, pyrethrum and the mining concentrates from the West Coast. All tourist attractions, apparently.
We saw the quarantine washdown area where a special lookout was kept for Giant African Snails, which had reached Papua-New Guinea. And not a fox in sight.
In Burnie’s early days the steep hills of the hinterland offered protection from the sou’wester gales but a harbour had still to be reclaimed from the sea and rocky outcrops were constructed to calm the unruly moods of Bass Strait.
Now, the Toll ships sweep around the breakwater, skidding the tyres, do a dainty three-point turn, and can be tied-up backwards within 15 minutes and unloading. Stunt driving for the clap-happy Americans.
If the tourists want industrial chic, then Burnie has it in spades. Yet Capt Bozoky said just six cruise ships had visited Burnie since 1999.
The port could cope with many more passenger visits, he said, and once did. As recently as 1984, the old Empress of Tasmania regularly used what was now the woodchip berth.
Ah, yes, the woodchips. I could well imagine American tourists being gobsmacked by Burnie’s woodchip mountain.
In the early light, with the steam coming off it, the mountain certainly offers a great photo opportunity. At full capacity, it contains 200,000 tonnes of woodchips, which by my estimate takes about XXX trees.
Is Burnie happy for its woodchip mountain to be its tourist attraction? Sure is. Bring on the woodchip postcards and coasters.
The expansion of the Port of Burnie is unlimited in theory. It could keep extending all the way to Victoria.
It could happen. Take Ephesus, a major trading port in eastern Turkey a couple of thousand years ago and now a Greco-Roman ruin.
The main road, still there, once led a short distance to the docks. Except Ephesus now is half an hour by bus inland from the Mediterranean coast. The old port silted up.
I look forward to the day when I can drive to Melbourne in time for lunch.
Tourists get downunder and dirty
AS KIDS we fished from the wharves while the ships around us had their cargoes unloaded, never a care given for our safety or for public liability insurance claims.
Now, most cargo is tucked away inside shipping containers behind chainmesh and protected by security gates and anti-terrorism units. And suddenly, fenced off, the wharves are tourist drawcards.
The only way into the docks for someone like me is under escort, so last week I was driven in a mini-bus around the Port of Burnie in the company of harbourmaster Captain Trevor Bozoky, among others.
Capt. Bozoky, a nice chap, believes the ``docks in the raw’’ could become a tourist lure for cruise ships such as the Pacific Princess, due in Burnie in a couple of weeks.
He said the attraction of a working port, for tourists, was ``you’re not in a passenger terminal, remote from all the dirty stuff’’. He kept a straight face.
We drove past stores of tallow, petroleum, wood pulp, fertilizer, limestone, pyrethrum and the mining concentrates from the West Coast. All tourist attractions, apparently.
We saw the quarantine washdown area where a special lookout was kept for Giant African Snails, which had reached Papua-New Guinea. And not a fox in sight.
In Burnie’s early days the steep hills of the hinterland offered protection from the sou’wester gales but a harbour had still to be reclaimed from the sea and rocky outcrops were constructed to calm the unruly moods of Bass Strait.
Now, the Toll ships sweep around the breakwater, skidding the tyres, do a dainty three-point turn, and can be tied-up backwards within 15 minutes and unloading. Stunt driving for the clap-happy Americans.
If the tourists want industrial chic, then Burnie has it in spades. Yet Capt Bozoky said just six cruise ships had visited Burnie since 1999.
The port could cope with many more passenger visits, he said, and once did. As recently as 1984, the old Empress of Tasmania regularly used what was now the woodchip berth.
Ah, yes, the woodchips. I could well imagine American tourists being gobsmacked by Burnie’s woodchip mountain.
In the early light, with the steam coming off it, the mountain certainly offers a great photo opportunity. At full capacity, it contains 200,000 tonnes of woodchips, which by my estimate takes about XXX trees.
Is Burnie happy for its woodchip mountain to be its tourist attraction? Sure is. Bring on the woodchip postcards and coasters.
The expansion of the Port of Burnie is unlimited in theory. It could keep extending all the way to Victoria.
It could happen. Take Ephesus, a major trading port in eastern Turkey a couple of thousand years ago and now a Greco-Roman ruin.
The main road, still there, once led a short distance to the docks. Except Ephesus now is half an hour by bus inland from the Mediterranean coast. The old port silted up.
I look forward to the day when I can drive to Melbourne in time for lunch.
Monday, October 25, 2004
Published The Advocate, October 23, 2004
Chill thoughts on tourism
ON THE road to Cradle Mountain, an overnight snowstorm had left the gum trees looking like a silver iodide print and the dashboard readout said the outside temperature was three degrees.
The tourist information centre offered warm refuge. One display gave the impression that Tasmania was still a refuge for living fossils and missing links. The wildlife, that is, not the people.
Except, the display said, white settlement had caused the disappearance of such species as the emu from Tasmania.
''European settlers are also responsible for the possible extinction of the thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger that once roamed the Cradle Mountain area." Possible extinction? Yeah right.
Outside, a chill breeze was coming off Cradle Mountain itself. The boardwalk was covered in snow and slush, and chicken wire had been laid underfoot to help prevent slapstick moments.
"Extreme cold, heavy rain, snowfalls and strong winds can be experienced at any time of the year," the warning sign read.
MODERATE HAZARD RISKS were also mentioned in capital letters.
"This means you are generally not protected from natural hazards such as cliffs and falling tree limbs… You must be properly prepared to meet these hazards on their own terms." Prepare to die.
No such fears had deterred Japanese photographer, Masaaki Aihara, whose depiction of rugged Tasmania was hanging in The Wilderness Gallery, alongside the Cradle Mountain Chateau.
Each picture was accompanied by a written explanation of the circumstances of the shoot. It always seemed to be raining or freezing.
Overnight once, Aihara’s sleeping bag froze from his own body moisture. Another time, he lost 15kg in weight. Aihara San seemed fortunate not to have met his fate several times over.
Tourism Minister Ken Bacon opened the exhibition in a room of people wearing polar fleece tops. He talked of Cradle Mountain’s "wild and mysterious beauty … a magical place". Quite.
Aihara told the audience that dead trees, in particular, talked to him. "Please take my picture!" he heard them say.
There were enough dead gum trees around Cradle Mountain to keep him occupied for decades, to the undoubted delight of the Fuji film company. Are that many dead gums normal? Just a thought.
All the photos were still lifes. They contained no creatures except for one frame into which a flock of cockatoos had flown by happenstance.
The moon appeared often. Aihara said the moon had cultural significance for him and he always tried to get it in his pictures.
Mostly, though, the Tasmanian photos were wet. Ice, frost, mist, fog and rain. The waterways were often crystalline or looked like flowing plastic.
Mr Bacon hoped Aihara’s photos would attract more Japanese tourists to Tasmania. One would have thought the Japanese had enough rain of their own.
Through the window, the eaves dripped and a mum was photographing her kids holding snow in the carpark - a safer place than letting them loose in Aihara’s wilderness.
("Talking to the Spirits of the Land" by Masaaki Aihara. The Wilderness Gallery until February 27, 2005.)
Chill thoughts on tourism
ON THE road to Cradle Mountain, an overnight snowstorm had left the gum trees looking like a silver iodide print and the dashboard readout said the outside temperature was three degrees.
The tourist information centre offered warm refuge. One display gave the impression that Tasmania was still a refuge for living fossils and missing links. The wildlife, that is, not the people.
Except, the display said, white settlement had caused the disappearance of such species as the emu from Tasmania.
''European settlers are also responsible for the possible extinction of the thylacine or Tasmanian Tiger that once roamed the Cradle Mountain area." Possible extinction? Yeah right.
Outside, a chill breeze was coming off Cradle Mountain itself. The boardwalk was covered in snow and slush, and chicken wire had been laid underfoot to help prevent slapstick moments.
"Extreme cold, heavy rain, snowfalls and strong winds can be experienced at any time of the year," the warning sign read.
MODERATE HAZARD RISKS were also mentioned in capital letters.
"This means you are generally not protected from natural hazards such as cliffs and falling tree limbs… You must be properly prepared to meet these hazards on their own terms." Prepare to die.
No such fears had deterred Japanese photographer, Masaaki Aihara, whose depiction of rugged Tasmania was hanging in The Wilderness Gallery, alongside the Cradle Mountain Chateau.
Each picture was accompanied by a written explanation of the circumstances of the shoot. It always seemed to be raining or freezing.
Overnight once, Aihara’s sleeping bag froze from his own body moisture. Another time, he lost 15kg in weight. Aihara San seemed fortunate not to have met his fate several times over.
Tourism Minister Ken Bacon opened the exhibition in a room of people wearing polar fleece tops. He talked of Cradle Mountain’s "wild and mysterious beauty … a magical place". Quite.
Aihara told the audience that dead trees, in particular, talked to him. "Please take my picture!" he heard them say.
There were enough dead gum trees around Cradle Mountain to keep him occupied for decades, to the undoubted delight of the Fuji film company. Are that many dead gums normal? Just a thought.
All the photos were still lifes. They contained no creatures except for one frame into which a flock of cockatoos had flown by happenstance.
The moon appeared often. Aihara said the moon had cultural significance for him and he always tried to get it in his pictures.
Mostly, though, the Tasmanian photos were wet. Ice, frost, mist, fog and rain. The waterways were often crystalline or looked like flowing plastic.
Mr Bacon hoped Aihara’s photos would attract more Japanese tourists to Tasmania. One would have thought the Japanese had enough rain of their own.
Through the window, the eaves dripped and a mum was photographing her kids holding snow in the carpark - a safer place than letting them loose in Aihara’s wilderness.
("Talking to the Spirits of the Land" by Masaaki Aihara. The Wilderness Gallery until February 27, 2005.)
Friday, October 15, 2004
Published The Advocate, October 16, 2004
THREE Mainland friends recently paid separate visits, each expecting me to play host and tour guide.
Hosting, I can cope with, but as a tour guide I leave a lot to be desired.
I warned them all beforehand about the incessant rain. They brought overcoats, umbrellas and spray jackets, and of course it did not rain while they were here.
I suspect that each, in her own concerned way, had come to check if I was really here or had actually done a midnight flit and was now driving a tourist bus in tropical Brunei.
To them, Tasmania was such an unexpected destination, such an exotic location, that one asked if I had arrived with a placard around my neck, announcing my name, trade and language.
Yes, and like Cortez, the Spanish conquistador who had overwhelmed South America with 700 men, I had burned the boat that brought me here so there was no retreat.
I had people on the other “bigger island” promise to send me emergency food parcels. I assured them I had quickly found plentiful supplies of Blue Banner pickled onions and Spring Gully Worcester sauce, so all was well.
And unlike Adelaide, the tap water was drinkable.
Landing by sea and air, the first thing that struck my visitors was the lush, green beauty. In South Australia – the driest state in the driest continent – a farm dam filled to the brim constitutes a tourist atttraction.
The second thing they noticed were the Cascade beer advertisements on TV: one showing a brick wall on the coast to keep out the advancing hordes of Mainlanders; another showing plans for a giant outboard motor attached to the same coast to maintain a separation of distance.
Be afraid. Melbourne is closer by air than Hobart is by road.
I took them to see the opium poppy sculpture at Devonport; the mighty Ulverstone clock; the Big Penguin – all the items I had noticed on my arrival – and also walked over The Nut at Stanley; through the Fernglade at Burnie; and inspected the Table Cape tulips looking as if they were drawn with lines of coloured chalk.
At the local Show we inspected a display of about a dozen varieties of potatoes. I had been boasting that Bismark potatoes, a North-West specialty, were the best spuds in the world at this time of the year.
So where were the Bismarks? “Oh, not you as well!” said an exasperated young woman wearing an “Ami” nametag and eating a Tim Tam.
Ami said the display had been put together in Hobart several days earlier and no Bismarks had been available. She had not yet found time to buy some locally. Not happy, Ami.
On the way home, the ABC Radio traffic report offered the reassuring news that “Traffic is flowing freely in Burnie.”
My companion went into hysterical belly laughs. ``C’mon,’’ she chortled, ``when does Burnie ever have traffic gridlock?’’
Never, I said, but doubtless it will come and best to be prepared.
THREE Mainland friends recently paid separate visits, each expecting me to play host and tour guide.
Hosting, I can cope with, but as a tour guide I leave a lot to be desired.
I warned them all beforehand about the incessant rain. They brought overcoats, umbrellas and spray jackets, and of course it did not rain while they were here.
I suspect that each, in her own concerned way, had come to check if I was really here or had actually done a midnight flit and was now driving a tourist bus in tropical Brunei.
To them, Tasmania was such an unexpected destination, such an exotic location, that one asked if I had arrived with a placard around my neck, announcing my name, trade and language.
Yes, and like Cortez, the Spanish conquistador who had overwhelmed South America with 700 men, I had burned the boat that brought me here so there was no retreat.
I had people on the other “bigger island” promise to send me emergency food parcels. I assured them I had quickly found plentiful supplies of Blue Banner pickled onions and Spring Gully Worcester sauce, so all was well.
And unlike Adelaide, the tap water was drinkable.
Landing by sea and air, the first thing that struck my visitors was the lush, green beauty. In South Australia – the driest state in the driest continent – a farm dam filled to the brim constitutes a tourist atttraction.
The second thing they noticed were the Cascade beer advertisements on TV: one showing a brick wall on the coast to keep out the advancing hordes of Mainlanders; another showing plans for a giant outboard motor attached to the same coast to maintain a separation of distance.
Be afraid. Melbourne is closer by air than Hobart is by road.
I took them to see the opium poppy sculpture at Devonport; the mighty Ulverstone clock; the Big Penguin – all the items I had noticed on my arrival – and also walked over The Nut at Stanley; through the Fernglade at Burnie; and inspected the Table Cape tulips looking as if they were drawn with lines of coloured chalk.
At the local Show we inspected a display of about a dozen varieties of potatoes. I had been boasting that Bismark potatoes, a North-West specialty, were the best spuds in the world at this time of the year.
So where were the Bismarks? “Oh, not you as well!” said an exasperated young woman wearing an “Ami” nametag and eating a Tim Tam.
Ami said the display had been put together in Hobart several days earlier and no Bismarks had been available. She had not yet found time to buy some locally. Not happy, Ami.
On the way home, the ABC Radio traffic report offered the reassuring news that “Traffic is flowing freely in Burnie.”
My companion went into hysterical belly laughs. ``C’mon,’’ she chortled, ``when does Burnie ever have traffic gridlock?’’
Never, I said, but doubtless it will come and best to be prepared.
Friday, October 08, 2004
Published The Advocate, October 9, 2004
VERY few newcomers expect to be formally welcomed by the mayor on their first day in town; even fewer wish to be greeted by the fire brigade.
The mayor would have been sufficient.
Moving into a house on the hill, I spent the first day unpacking until wrapping paper was piled high in the kitchen, the lounge room and halfway up the walls in the hallway.
The removalist never tells you there will be hundreds of sheets of paper to dispose of afterwards.
I was still waiting for the power to be connected and there was no gas yet for heating. So, putting one and two together, I decided to light the open fire to provide some warmth, a little light and to get rid of the paper.
Pulling a footstool close to the fire, I sat munching dry bread crusts and balling up the paper, throwing them one by one onto the fire. At this rate it was going to take all night.
I threw in two sheets at a time. Then another couple, then three, and the heat was so great I had to sit back. Even so, little impression was being made on the paper mountain.
The fire by now had developed a satisfying roar and I had to sit back further again. I kept piling on the paper. The roar grew steadily louder, much louder in fact than the size of the fire was likely to produce.
Paper fireballs were whooshing up the chimney, which had begun to snap and crackle in a worrying way.
The roar, by now sounding like a low-flying aircraft, seemed to be coming from inside the chimney. Now that can’t be good.
I went outside for a look and the chimney was spewing sparks like a Roman candle in the night, as if under a Harry Potter spell, and the glowing cinders were floating downhill onto the neighbour’s roof.
Great, my first night and I was going to burn down the town.
For the first time in my life I dialed 000, then stood on the balcony to watch the fire unit leave its base in the town below and hear the siren coming uphill, all for me.
The fireys under Officer Gerard McCarthy put out the fire with half a saucepan of water and then removed the smouldering embers in a tin can, which filled the lounge room with smoke.
Officer McCarthy peered up the chimney with a torch, said he had seen worse, and declared it safe. He said the chimney had not been cleaned in a long while and the accumulated creosote had caught alight, that was all.
He suggested it would be better to stuff the wrapping paper into plastic bags and leave them out for recycling. I made a mental note to buy 2000 Garbags.
“You can light your fire again, no problems,” Officer McCarthy said.
“No,” I said, “I think I’ll just go to bed.”
A list of my 100 greatest faux pas is currently attracting international publishing interest.
VERY few newcomers expect to be formally welcomed by the mayor on their first day in town; even fewer wish to be greeted by the fire brigade.
The mayor would have been sufficient.
Moving into a house on the hill, I spent the first day unpacking until wrapping paper was piled high in the kitchen, the lounge room and halfway up the walls in the hallway.
The removalist never tells you there will be hundreds of sheets of paper to dispose of afterwards.
I was still waiting for the power to be connected and there was no gas yet for heating. So, putting one and two together, I decided to light the open fire to provide some warmth, a little light and to get rid of the paper.
Pulling a footstool close to the fire, I sat munching dry bread crusts and balling up the paper, throwing them one by one onto the fire. At this rate it was going to take all night.
I threw in two sheets at a time. Then another couple, then three, and the heat was so great I had to sit back. Even so, little impression was being made on the paper mountain.
The fire by now had developed a satisfying roar and I had to sit back further again. I kept piling on the paper. The roar grew steadily louder, much louder in fact than the size of the fire was likely to produce.
Paper fireballs were whooshing up the chimney, which had begun to snap and crackle in a worrying way.
The roar, by now sounding like a low-flying aircraft, seemed to be coming from inside the chimney. Now that can’t be good.
I went outside for a look and the chimney was spewing sparks like a Roman candle in the night, as if under a Harry Potter spell, and the glowing cinders were floating downhill onto the neighbour’s roof.
Great, my first night and I was going to burn down the town.
For the first time in my life I dialed 000, then stood on the balcony to watch the fire unit leave its base in the town below and hear the siren coming uphill, all for me.
The fireys under Officer Gerard McCarthy put out the fire with half a saucepan of water and then removed the smouldering embers in a tin can, which filled the lounge room with smoke.
Officer McCarthy peered up the chimney with a torch, said he had seen worse, and declared it safe. He said the chimney had not been cleaned in a long while and the accumulated creosote had caught alight, that was all.
He suggested it would be better to stuff the wrapping paper into plastic bags and leave them out for recycling. I made a mental note to buy 2000 Garbags.
“You can light your fire again, no problems,” Officer McCarthy said.
“No,” I said, “I think I’ll just go to bed.”
A list of my 100 greatest faux pas is currently attracting international publishing interest.
Friday, October 01, 2004
Published The Advocate, October 2, 2004
OFF this time towards Smithton, on the Duck River, until ABC Classic FM becomes scratchy on the car radio.
Through Sisters Hills, which badly need more overtaking lanes. Black cows gather tightly together like a cloud on the green grass. A corrugated iron water tank is graffitied ``Save Our Forest Industries'', pretty in pink.
And spotting fox roadkill before realising it is red bark that has fallen from a passing timber truck.
Smithton. My old Adelaide mate George Kelleher spent part of his childhood at Smithton.
His dad was the local police constable between 1938 and 1941. I went to George's 70th a year or two back, so he would have been under 10 at the time.
I rang George in Melbourne and only needed to mention I was standing in front of the Bridge Hotel and he went flying back to the Smithton of his memories.
He remembered Grey's Sawmillers, which is no longer there, and the Duck River Co-op Butter Factory Company, which I had to tell him was now used as an indoor sports centre.
I assured him Smithton seemed to be prospering.
There was still the timber industry, of course, with Gunns timber yard stacked high and wide with thousands of drying planks. There were also the Tasmanian Seafood Processors, a McCain's processing plant and more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in Australia.
George was not really listening. He said his dad used to drive a Standard Ten police car and whenever Police Sergeant Fisher ``hit the turps'' George's father would have to lock him up.
And George and his brothers used to pick on a kid named Lindsay Packham.
As I hung up, George was still reminiscing and hoping to visit me soon so we could take a trip together down the memory lanes of Smithton. Look forward to it, George.
On the way home I took the turnoff to Forest. There was no forest, just red loam paddocks.
I am always staggered by the tenacity of the white pioneers who grubbed out the giant trees, one by one, with nothing more than an axe, a saw, a block and tackle, and a horse if they were lucky.
You could imagine how Forest got its name by the few batches of tall gums left standing. Nor are there many hardwood forests in the Prime Minister's electorate of Bennelong yet the PM can sniff votes in ending old-growth logging in Tasmania.
How he will do that and not cost any timber jobs, as he indicates, remains to be seen.
It would take an act of great faith for a town of sawmillers to see an alternative future in the "knowledge economy'', as the Greens suggest, in IT or some pseudo-intellectual pursuit.
Or perhaps in serving chardonnay at a sidewalk café in Smithton.
When you have a mortgage and kids to educate, what confidence would you have in any government to ensure you are properly compensated after your timber job is gone?
Not much, is my guess, and please pass the axe.
OFF this time towards Smithton, on the Duck River, until ABC Classic FM becomes scratchy on the car radio.
Through Sisters Hills, which badly need more overtaking lanes. Black cows gather tightly together like a cloud on the green grass. A corrugated iron water tank is graffitied ``Save Our Forest Industries'', pretty in pink.
And spotting fox roadkill before realising it is red bark that has fallen from a passing timber truck.
Smithton. My old Adelaide mate George Kelleher spent part of his childhood at Smithton.
His dad was the local police constable between 1938 and 1941. I went to George's 70th a year or two back, so he would have been under 10 at the time.
I rang George in Melbourne and only needed to mention I was standing in front of the Bridge Hotel and he went flying back to the Smithton of his memories.
He remembered Grey's Sawmillers, which is no longer there, and the Duck River Co-op Butter Factory Company, which I had to tell him was now used as an indoor sports centre.
I assured him Smithton seemed to be prospering.
There was still the timber industry, of course, with Gunns timber yard stacked high and wide with thousands of drying planks. There were also the Tasmanian Seafood Processors, a McCain's processing plant and more millionaires per capita than anywhere else in Australia.
George was not really listening. He said his dad used to drive a Standard Ten police car and whenever Police Sergeant Fisher ``hit the turps'' George's father would have to lock him up.
And George and his brothers used to pick on a kid named Lindsay Packham.
As I hung up, George was still reminiscing and hoping to visit me soon so we could take a trip together down the memory lanes of Smithton. Look forward to it, George.
On the way home I took the turnoff to Forest. There was no forest, just red loam paddocks.
I am always staggered by the tenacity of the white pioneers who grubbed out the giant trees, one by one, with nothing more than an axe, a saw, a block and tackle, and a horse if they were lucky.
You could imagine how Forest got its name by the few batches of tall gums left standing. Nor are there many hardwood forests in the Prime Minister's electorate of Bennelong yet the PM can sniff votes in ending old-growth logging in Tasmania.
How he will do that and not cost any timber jobs, as he indicates, remains to be seen.
It would take an act of great faith for a town of sawmillers to see an alternative future in the "knowledge economy'', as the Greens suggest, in IT or some pseudo-intellectual pursuit.
Or perhaps in serving chardonnay at a sidewalk café in Smithton.
When you have a mortgage and kids to educate, what confidence would you have in any government to ensure you are properly compensated after your timber job is gone?
Not much, is my guess, and please pass the axe.
Thursday, September 30, 2004
Published The Advocate, September 25, 2004
Trucks on road, rocks in head
ONCE, trucks were slow and held up everyone. Frustrated motorists died trying to pass them.
Now powerful B-doubles thunder along the road, tailgating and trying to overpass as if those monster 36-wheel rigs were zippy little family cars.
They scare the hell out of me.
Winding along the coast highway to Devonport the other day, the truck ahead was doing
110km/h, on the limit, and roller-coasting around the curves, cutting off the bike lane.
The raw speed was not the problem so much as the driver never slowed, as if the cruise
control was set on 110 and he was trying to do the Burnie-Devonport run without touching the brakes.
Except, now and then, the wheels would blow blue smoke under hard braking on coming up
fast behind a slower vehicle, and the driver swerved aggressively from one lane to the
other.
From behind, I trembled and hung back.
The truck was carrying a large white cylinder. I could not get close enough to read the cylinder's contents but I assumed the worst _ acid or flammable gas _ and noted the truck's number plate.
The way he took the shortest line, cutting the cambers, and accelerating to gain extra speed for the next hill, the driver obviously knew the road well.
Maybe he was running late _ ``The boss will kill me if I'm late!'' _ if someone else was not killed first.
Or perhaps he was on drugs. Amphetamines are not known as ``speed'' for nothing.
The statistics are frightening. One in four truckies who die in accidents test positive to stimulants, which is six times the rate for other drivers. A quarter of the fatalities test positive to both alcohol and drugs. Fatal accidents involving trucks account for 20 per cent of the nation's road toll.
Many truck drivers are not fully in control of themselves much less the vehicles they drive.
Some people blame trucking companies for imposing impossibly tight, inflexible schedules, which force the drivers to take drugs and to speed.
I actually don't care whose fault it is. I simply do not take kindly to having my life endangered by a drug-addled, homicidal maniac.
Were it up to me, the police would be empowered to take saliva samples from truckies as well as blood alcohol breathalyser readings.
Any truckie who returned a positive swab for amphetamines would lose his/her licence for at least a year and the truck would be temporarily deregistered to exact a heavy commercial penalty on the owner as well.
Back on the Bass Hwy a few days later, I soon had the rear view mirror filled with the grill of a truck up my backside at 100kmk/h. It passed me doing at least 120km/h. It was the same truck.
No doubt truck drivers have their problems with cars driving too slowly or cutting in
front of them and not making allowance for their weight, length and mass.
The difference is if I collide with a truck, I know who will come off second best.
Trucks on road, rocks in head
ONCE, trucks were slow and held up everyone. Frustrated motorists died trying to pass them.
Now powerful B-doubles thunder along the road, tailgating and trying to overpass as if those monster 36-wheel rigs were zippy little family cars.
They scare the hell out of me.
Winding along the coast highway to Devonport the other day, the truck ahead was doing
110km/h, on the limit, and roller-coasting around the curves, cutting off the bike lane.
The raw speed was not the problem so much as the driver never slowed, as if the cruise
control was set on 110 and he was trying to do the Burnie-Devonport run without touching the brakes.
Except, now and then, the wheels would blow blue smoke under hard braking on coming up
fast behind a slower vehicle, and the driver swerved aggressively from one lane to the
other.
From behind, I trembled and hung back.
The truck was carrying a large white cylinder. I could not get close enough to read the cylinder's contents but I assumed the worst _ acid or flammable gas _ and noted the truck's number plate.
The way he took the shortest line, cutting the cambers, and accelerating to gain extra speed for the next hill, the driver obviously knew the road well.
Maybe he was running late _ ``The boss will kill me if I'm late!'' _ if someone else was not killed first.
Or perhaps he was on drugs. Amphetamines are not known as ``speed'' for nothing.
The statistics are frightening. One in four truckies who die in accidents test positive to stimulants, which is six times the rate for other drivers. A quarter of the fatalities test positive to both alcohol and drugs. Fatal accidents involving trucks account for 20 per cent of the nation's road toll.
Many truck drivers are not fully in control of themselves much less the vehicles they drive.
Some people blame trucking companies for imposing impossibly tight, inflexible schedules, which force the drivers to take drugs and to speed.
I actually don't care whose fault it is. I simply do not take kindly to having my life endangered by a drug-addled, homicidal maniac.
Were it up to me, the police would be empowered to take saliva samples from truckies as well as blood alcohol breathalyser readings.
Any truckie who returned a positive swab for amphetamines would lose his/her licence for at least a year and the truck would be temporarily deregistered to exact a heavy commercial penalty on the owner as well.
Back on the Bass Hwy a few days later, I soon had the rear view mirror filled with the grill of a truck up my backside at 100kmk/h. It passed me doing at least 120km/h. It was the same truck.
No doubt truck drivers have their problems with cars driving too slowly or cutting in
front of them and not making allowance for their weight, length and mass.
The difference is if I collide with a truck, I know who will come off second best.
Monday, September 20, 2004
Published The Advocate, September 18, 2004
I WAS born in Geelong and since you cannot help where you were born, I follow Geelong in the AFL.
I was there at the MCG when the Cats won the ’63 flag. I can remember the first bounce. I can tell you the Geelong lineup and the numbers they wore on their backs. Number 5 will always be Polly Farmer, never mind Gary Ablett Snr.
I know a little tacker named Max, a mad Sydney fan, who can barely count to five but if you hold up the number 19 he will yell, “Mickey O’Loughlin!” … 37 – “Adam Goodes!” … 1 – “Big Bad Barry!”
You should have seen the pure, shining joy on Max’s face when he was given a footy last Christmas. It does not get any better than that.
Nor are there many better pleasures than standing on the boundary with a saveloy and sauce in one hand and a bag of hot chips in the other, unsure which to eat first, and watching the under-8s chase the football from one end of the ground to the other like a pack of dogs.
One of the other things I love about footy is how it embraces people with intellectual disabilities. There are no more devoted fans. They may not understand the subtleties of the trading table and are unaffected by the convoluted backroom deals but they sure know their footy.
They wear the team colours with pride, collect the posters and spend their week making banners and yakking about the game. Footy provides them with excitement and a sense of belonging in a world where yelling and carrying on like a two-bob watch are perfectly normal.
Even grown-ups need a chance to relive simple childhood passions, of winners and losers, heroes and villains. And even those who have not embraced the great game can still appreciate the important role a footy club plays in a community.
Footy provides a focal point of community pride, for the ageing club stalwarts whose playing days are golden memories and for the mums and wives who serve in the canteen, as much as for the players themselves.
And winning is not everything. Having a team that rarely wins is better than a town having no team at all.
Last Sunday, I went to the presentation of the NTFL Darrel Baldock Medal. In the car park beforehand, there was a lot of last-minute straightening of ties by girlfriends, with mums hovering ready to lick down any unruly hair except I swear the boys were wearing more hair products than the girls.
Darrel Baldock, seated at the next table, was smaller than I remembered him in his glory days, and older. And I haven’t changed a bit.
So here we are again at the “business end” of the footy season: Devonport versus Burnie – East versus West – in the NTFL grand final today at Latrobe.
Victory will go to the coach who put the cones in the right place at training this week.
I WAS born in Geelong and since you cannot help where you were born, I follow Geelong in the AFL.
I was there at the MCG when the Cats won the ’63 flag. I can remember the first bounce. I can tell you the Geelong lineup and the numbers they wore on their backs. Number 5 will always be Polly Farmer, never mind Gary Ablett Snr.
I know a little tacker named Max, a mad Sydney fan, who can barely count to five but if you hold up the number 19 he will yell, “Mickey O’Loughlin!” … 37 – “Adam Goodes!” … 1 – “Big Bad Barry!”
You should have seen the pure, shining joy on Max’s face when he was given a footy last Christmas. It does not get any better than that.
Nor are there many better pleasures than standing on the boundary with a saveloy and sauce in one hand and a bag of hot chips in the other, unsure which to eat first, and watching the under-8s chase the football from one end of the ground to the other like a pack of dogs.
One of the other things I love about footy is how it embraces people with intellectual disabilities. There are no more devoted fans. They may not understand the subtleties of the trading table and are unaffected by the convoluted backroom deals but they sure know their footy.
They wear the team colours with pride, collect the posters and spend their week making banners and yakking about the game. Footy provides them with excitement and a sense of belonging in a world where yelling and carrying on like a two-bob watch are perfectly normal.
Even grown-ups need a chance to relive simple childhood passions, of winners and losers, heroes and villains. And even those who have not embraced the great game can still appreciate the important role a footy club plays in a community.
Footy provides a focal point of community pride, for the ageing club stalwarts whose playing days are golden memories and for the mums and wives who serve in the canteen, as much as for the players themselves.
And winning is not everything. Having a team that rarely wins is better than a town having no team at all.
Last Sunday, I went to the presentation of the NTFL Darrel Baldock Medal. In the car park beforehand, there was a lot of last-minute straightening of ties by girlfriends, with mums hovering ready to lick down any unruly hair except I swear the boys were wearing more hair products than the girls.
Darrel Baldock, seated at the next table, was smaller than I remembered him in his glory days, and older. And I haven’t changed a bit.
So here we are again at the “business end” of the footy season: Devonport versus Burnie – East versus West – in the NTFL grand final today at Latrobe.
Victory will go to the coach who put the cones in the right place at training this week.
Published The Advocate, September 11, 2004
ALL public monuments are sites of memory.
They contain selected elements of our past that we value, whether they are the surreal giant opium poppies on the banks of the Mersey River at Devonport or, not far away, the bronze busts of Joseph and Enid Lyons … although their sons say the woman looks nothing like Dame Enid.
Other structures are erected more with an eye to making a wacky statement and possibly a dollar - the Big Tassie Devil, of Mole Creek; the Big Platypus, of Latrobe; and the Big Penguin, of Penguin.
But for sheer over-the-top bravura, nothing I have seen so far compares to the Ulverstone War Memorial.
I came upon it suddenly on the approach from Devonport, around the corner into Alexandra Rd, and was left astonished and agape.
Three giant concrete pillars, painted battleship grey, linked by shiny chains a third and two thirds of the way up, topped by four clock faces and crowned by a perspex minaret that glowed like a torch flame at night to guide mariners in Bass Strait. Wow!
Guessing now, how high is it … 10 … 20 … 30 metres … even as tall as the Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?
The Four Ways Shell service station squats in the shadow of the memorial. Standing alongside the friendly Shell man as he filled the tank, gazing up at the memorial, I mentioned it was rather big.
He looked up too. ``Don’t really notice it,’’ he said, ``suppose I’ve got used to it.’’ Were the citizens of Alexandria just as blasé about their lighthouse?
A nearby sign explained how the memorial was erected in 1953 near the site of Happy Harry’s hamburger stand, at the highest point of Ulverstone, as a World War II Memorial.
It was designed by Cvetko Florian Mejac, from Slovenia, who offered to prepare the plans for free, which the organizing committee, recognizing a good deal, accepted.
As I stood there taking notes, the clock began to chime the hour in an eerie harmonic pulse that made me think of the movie E.T. and wonder if the memorial may one day roar into the heavens, the three pillars really rocket boosters.
The memorial also serves as a traffic roundabout, which poses a problem for anyone wanting to take a closer look because there is no safe way to cross the road since the columns block the view of approaching vehicles.
I was nearly run over twice by the same woman who went around again after missing me the first time.
What the memorial lacks in subtlety it makes up for in fascination. I keep being drawn back there and each time I am astonished anew, and photograph it.
I also think it is a fine tribute to the war dead, which is the whole point.
A last thought: Ulverstone’s other claim to fame is it hosted Australia's first axeman competition in 1874.
So where is the Big Axe?
ALL public monuments are sites of memory.
They contain selected elements of our past that we value, whether they are the surreal giant opium poppies on the banks of the Mersey River at Devonport or, not far away, the bronze busts of Joseph and Enid Lyons … although their sons say the woman looks nothing like Dame Enid.
Other structures are erected more with an eye to making a wacky statement and possibly a dollar - the Big Tassie Devil, of Mole Creek; the Big Platypus, of Latrobe; and the Big Penguin, of Penguin.
But for sheer over-the-top bravura, nothing I have seen so far compares to the Ulverstone War Memorial.
I came upon it suddenly on the approach from Devonport, around the corner into Alexandra Rd, and was left astonished and agape.
Three giant concrete pillars, painted battleship grey, linked by shiny chains a third and two thirds of the way up, topped by four clock faces and crowned by a perspex minaret that glowed like a torch flame at night to guide mariners in Bass Strait. Wow!
Guessing now, how high is it … 10 … 20 … 30 metres … even as tall as the Lighthouse of Alexandria, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World?
The Four Ways Shell service station squats in the shadow of the memorial. Standing alongside the friendly Shell man as he filled the tank, gazing up at the memorial, I mentioned it was rather big.
He looked up too. ``Don’t really notice it,’’ he said, ``suppose I’ve got used to it.’’ Were the citizens of Alexandria just as blasé about their lighthouse?
A nearby sign explained how the memorial was erected in 1953 near the site of Happy Harry’s hamburger stand, at the highest point of Ulverstone, as a World War II Memorial.
It was designed by Cvetko Florian Mejac, from Slovenia, who offered to prepare the plans for free, which the organizing committee, recognizing a good deal, accepted.
As I stood there taking notes, the clock began to chime the hour in an eerie harmonic pulse that made me think of the movie E.T. and wonder if the memorial may one day roar into the heavens, the three pillars really rocket boosters.
The memorial also serves as a traffic roundabout, which poses a problem for anyone wanting to take a closer look because there is no safe way to cross the road since the columns block the view of approaching vehicles.
I was nearly run over twice by the same woman who went around again after missing me the first time.
What the memorial lacks in subtlety it makes up for in fascination. I keep being drawn back there and each time I am astonished anew, and photograph it.
I also think it is a fine tribute to the war dead, which is the whole point.
A last thought: Ulverstone’s other claim to fame is it hosted Australia's first axeman competition in 1874.
So where is the Big Axe?
Published The Advocate, September 4, 2004
BETWEEN Queenstown and Strahan, the rain became heavier and heavier and heavier, like being bombarded by ball bearings.
The car wipers were going flat-out wack-wack-wack-wack revealing a featureless grey world. Just gone noon and the car lights were full on.
I had come to the West Coast to get a better sense of the community covered by The Advocate’s circulation, on a trinity tour of Queenstown, Strahan and Zeehan, in that order.
The CD player was loaded with Gregorian chants. I am not religious in a churchy sense these days but I still have a spiritual side and this type of music appeals to me, especially when communing with nature.
Or, in this case, communing with forestry and mining. The area is either being chopped down or dug up.
My pre-tour impression of the West Coast had come from people more familiar with the area than I was. They said it rained a bit.
Per omnia saecula saeculorum, sang the monks, as it rained even harder. Queenstown has its attractions as, indeed, does Strahan but sunshine is not one of them.
Turning the CD up four notches to elevate the chanting above the downpour, I pushed on until aquaplaning the bend into Zeehan, the rain ceased, the clouds parted to reveal the sun, Gloria in excelsis Deo, and God was in his heaven.
A sign, a sign, and I immediately booked a room at the Hotel Cecil and went for a walk in the cold air smelling of damp and wood smoke, past daffodils, their heads bowed under the weight of rainwater, and the distant sound of wood being chopped.
The drainage grate in the Catholic churchyard was deep under water where the saturated ground could no longer cope. Across the road, the public swimming pool was empty and a shade cloth was strung mockingly over the toddlers’ pool.
One household garage was stacked with firewood and the car was left outside. It’s important to get your priorities straight in Zeehan.
As the day darkened for the final time, the low cloud and the smoke fires combined to envelope Zeehan in a thick fog.
Yet, directly overhead, the full moon was as bright as a button. Woooooo.Weird.
Zeehan is a declared heritage mining town, which must be a mixed blessing because it means someone is obliged to keep it in good nick as a reminder of the time when it had 10,000 people living there, not a few hundred.
Old buildings such as the Gaiety Theatre must be nigh impossible to maintain in good condition, even with a lick of paint, in a place where it rains for six months and the trees drip water for the other six.
Later on, drying out my boots and socks, I was told the clouds over the West Coast were often seeded to make it rain to ensure the hydroelectric dams were full of water. Uh-huh.
Tell you what, it seems to be working. Strahan had 654mm of rain last month _ an August record.
BETWEEN Queenstown and Strahan, the rain became heavier and heavier and heavier, like being bombarded by ball bearings.
The car wipers were going flat-out wack-wack-wack-wack revealing a featureless grey world. Just gone noon and the car lights were full on.
I had come to the West Coast to get a better sense of the community covered by The Advocate’s circulation, on a trinity tour of Queenstown, Strahan and Zeehan, in that order.
The CD player was loaded with Gregorian chants. I am not religious in a churchy sense these days but I still have a spiritual side and this type of music appeals to me, especially when communing with nature.
Or, in this case, communing with forestry and mining. The area is either being chopped down or dug up.
My pre-tour impression of the West Coast had come from people more familiar with the area than I was. They said it rained a bit.
Per omnia saecula saeculorum, sang the monks, as it rained even harder. Queenstown has its attractions as, indeed, does Strahan but sunshine is not one of them.
Turning the CD up four notches to elevate the chanting above the downpour, I pushed on until aquaplaning the bend into Zeehan, the rain ceased, the clouds parted to reveal the sun, Gloria in excelsis Deo, and God was in his heaven.
A sign, a sign, and I immediately booked a room at the Hotel Cecil and went for a walk in the cold air smelling of damp and wood smoke, past daffodils, their heads bowed under the weight of rainwater, and the distant sound of wood being chopped.
The drainage grate in the Catholic churchyard was deep under water where the saturated ground could no longer cope. Across the road, the public swimming pool was empty and a shade cloth was strung mockingly over the toddlers’ pool.
One household garage was stacked with firewood and the car was left outside. It’s important to get your priorities straight in Zeehan.
As the day darkened for the final time, the low cloud and the smoke fires combined to envelope Zeehan in a thick fog.
Yet, directly overhead, the full moon was as bright as a button. Woooooo.Weird.
Zeehan is a declared heritage mining town, which must be a mixed blessing because it means someone is obliged to keep it in good nick as a reminder of the time when it had 10,000 people living there, not a few hundred.
Old buildings such as the Gaiety Theatre must be nigh impossible to maintain in good condition, even with a lick of paint, in a place where it rains for six months and the trees drip water for the other six.
Later on, drying out my boots and socks, I was told the clouds over the West Coast were often seeded to make it rain to ensure the hydroelectric dams were full of water. Uh-huh.
Tell you what, it seems to be working. Strahan had 654mm of rain last month _ an August record.
Published The Advocate, August 28, 2004
SOUTH of the Tropic of Capricorn there are not many locations in Australia that face the sun north over the sea. The North-West coast of Tasmania is one such place.
It makes a big difference. The light is a happy buttery-yellow even on the stormiest day. Hobart is blue-grey and miserable - appropriate for the seat of government.
The locals who have lived all their lives in the North-West cannot see the yellow. I come from
elsewhere and, believe me, it is stunning. Sometimes it takes fresh eyes to see the light.
After a night of shrieking wind and rain, of whitecaps in the toilet bowl and frozen roll-on
deodorant, the sun rises over Bass Strait and the world is awash in a lemonwater dawn.
Recently I attended a meeting to discuss Burnie Shines, an annual festival that runs through
October and, this year, into November. Having endured my first August here, the name Burnie
Shines brought a wintry smile to my lips.
Those at the meeting told me one of the aims of Burnie Shines was to make people feel better.
Better than what?
They repeated an old putdown that Burnie was a blue-collar industrial city: ``No cafe socciety ... not particularly appealing ... Philistines ... this is the North-West, the best and the brightest have left, there's no future here for our young people.''
Now where have I heard that before? Ah, Adelaide, where I spent most of my life.
Where some people see a blue-collar industrial city, I see character. I love the fact that Burnie is an around-the-clock port. I do not sleep well and like to supervise the activity down on the docks at 3am from my bedroom window.
All stereotypes have an historical truth - a one-dimensional, exaggerated version of the truth -
although their coded messages, with the implied putdowns, are rarely uplifting.
Every day on the way to work I pass a fence daubed in Aboriginal motifs in red, yellow and
black paint, with the message 200 YEARS OF STRUGGLE in big black capitals. True enough.
But if I were an Aboriginal kid, having to start my day faced with that message glaring at me, I
would not feel especially optimistic or good about myself. It would not change my mood for the better. Black Shines might work.
A measure of a self-confident community is one that can laugh at jokes told against itself.
Adelaide, for example, was once described by the comedian Gerry Connolly as ``Dubbo with
poofters''. It made me laugh anyway.
I have yet to hear a good North-West joke. There is plenty of rivalry, however.
One mob won't shop in the other mob's city; one side refuses to use the other side's medical
services; and everyone wants their own aquatic centre. Yada-yada-yada.
Our corner of the world is an out-of-the-way place unless you happen to live here. The other day I rode my bike along the coast bathed in that remarkable yellow light, the ocean glittering like crinkled aluminium foil, and counted my blessings.
SOUTH of the Tropic of Capricorn there are not many locations in Australia that face the sun north over the sea. The North-West coast of Tasmania is one such place.
It makes a big difference. The light is a happy buttery-yellow even on the stormiest day. Hobart is blue-grey and miserable - appropriate for the seat of government.
The locals who have lived all their lives in the North-West cannot see the yellow. I come from
elsewhere and, believe me, it is stunning. Sometimes it takes fresh eyes to see the light.
After a night of shrieking wind and rain, of whitecaps in the toilet bowl and frozen roll-on
deodorant, the sun rises over Bass Strait and the world is awash in a lemonwater dawn.
Recently I attended a meeting to discuss Burnie Shines, an annual festival that runs through
October and, this year, into November. Having endured my first August here, the name Burnie
Shines brought a wintry smile to my lips.
Those at the meeting told me one of the aims of Burnie Shines was to make people feel better.
Better than what?
They repeated an old putdown that Burnie was a blue-collar industrial city: ``No cafe socciety ... not particularly appealing ... Philistines ... this is the North-West, the best and the brightest have left, there's no future here for our young people.''
Now where have I heard that before? Ah, Adelaide, where I spent most of my life.
Where some people see a blue-collar industrial city, I see character. I love the fact that Burnie is an around-the-clock port. I do not sleep well and like to supervise the activity down on the docks at 3am from my bedroom window.
All stereotypes have an historical truth - a one-dimensional, exaggerated version of the truth -
although their coded messages, with the implied putdowns, are rarely uplifting.
Every day on the way to work I pass a fence daubed in Aboriginal motifs in red, yellow and
black paint, with the message 200 YEARS OF STRUGGLE in big black capitals. True enough.
But if I were an Aboriginal kid, having to start my day faced with that message glaring at me, I
would not feel especially optimistic or good about myself. It would not change my mood for the better. Black Shines might work.
A measure of a self-confident community is one that can laugh at jokes told against itself.
Adelaide, for example, was once described by the comedian Gerry Connolly as ``Dubbo with
poofters''. It made me laugh anyway.
I have yet to hear a good North-West joke. There is plenty of rivalry, however.
One mob won't shop in the other mob's city; one side refuses to use the other side's medical
services; and everyone wants their own aquatic centre. Yada-yada-yada.
Our corner of the world is an out-of-the-way place unless you happen to live here. The other day I rode my bike along the coast bathed in that remarkable yellow light, the ocean glittering like crinkled aluminium foil, and counted my blessings.
Published The Advocate, August 14, 2004
Excuse us while we mind our own business
ALL government is naturally inclined to do its business in secret but only in Tasmania has local government raised secrecy to a dark art.
This past week The Advocate has run stories showing how impossible it is for the public to double-check if council members have a conflict of interest.
The registers of interest that members are required to lodge with council are simply not available for public scrutiny.
Instead, members must be taken on trust to declare an interest if a relevant matter comes before a council meeting, and immediately leave the chamber.
Whatever happened to trust?
Which begs the question: How is the public to be assured that potential conflicts of interest do not exist if the register of those interests is kept secret? And how does such secrecy serve the community interest?
A member of the public can gain a fragmentary insight into the register only by asking the council’s general manager whether a particular member has a particular interest, which suggests to me the questioner most probably already knows the answer.
In any event, the general manager need only reply “yes” or “no” and provide no further details.
Soon after the first stories appeared in The Advocate, the phones rang. Accusations were made that certain council members with undeclared interests had voted on matters that rewarded them financially. We will look closer at those allegations.
No doubt the overwhelming number of council members are honest, decent folk, acting in good faith in performing their civic duty.
But I am not so much concerned with identifying good faith as I am in exposing bad faith, and while the registers remain closed, suspicion falls equally on all members including the scrupulously honest.
Local government makes much of its claims to be transparent and accountable but it is actually much better at keeping things secret.
Council meetings can be closed to the public for many reasons, ranging from complaints against staff to the ridiculous ‘‘information provided to the council on the condition it is kept confidential’’.
In one case, the announcement of a new pedestrian crossing was kept secret by a council for a month at the request of a Cabinet Minister.
The Minister, who was due to officially open the crossing, asked for the matter to be treated confidentially for fear the news would leak out and steal her thunder. It leaked anyway.
The Local Government Act is currently being reviewed by the State Government. Among the reforms being suggested there is nothing dealing with those secret registers – a missed opportunity for the State Government to show decisive leadership on the issue although it is still not too late.
There can be no public confidence in a process of government to which the public is not admitted. Nor can ratepayers fulfill their responsibilities as voters without having free access to vital information.
If councillors are unwilling for their assets to be checked, they should be prepared to have their pockets turned out for missing cutlery as they leave the chamber.
Excuse us while we mind our own business
ALL government is naturally inclined to do its business in secret but only in Tasmania has local government raised secrecy to a dark art.
This past week The Advocate has run stories showing how impossible it is for the public to double-check if council members have a conflict of interest.
The registers of interest that members are required to lodge with council are simply not available for public scrutiny.
Instead, members must be taken on trust to declare an interest if a relevant matter comes before a council meeting, and immediately leave the chamber.
Whatever happened to trust?
Which begs the question: How is the public to be assured that potential conflicts of interest do not exist if the register of those interests is kept secret? And how does such secrecy serve the community interest?
A member of the public can gain a fragmentary insight into the register only by asking the council’s general manager whether a particular member has a particular interest, which suggests to me the questioner most probably already knows the answer.
In any event, the general manager need only reply “yes” or “no” and provide no further details.
Soon after the first stories appeared in The Advocate, the phones rang. Accusations were made that certain council members with undeclared interests had voted on matters that rewarded them financially. We will look closer at those allegations.
No doubt the overwhelming number of council members are honest, decent folk, acting in good faith in performing their civic duty.
But I am not so much concerned with identifying good faith as I am in exposing bad faith, and while the registers remain closed, suspicion falls equally on all members including the scrupulously honest.
Local government makes much of its claims to be transparent and accountable but it is actually much better at keeping things secret.
Council meetings can be closed to the public for many reasons, ranging from complaints against staff to the ridiculous ‘‘information provided to the council on the condition it is kept confidential’’.
In one case, the announcement of a new pedestrian crossing was kept secret by a council for a month at the request of a Cabinet Minister.
The Minister, who was due to officially open the crossing, asked for the matter to be treated confidentially for fear the news would leak out and steal her thunder. It leaked anyway.
The Local Government Act is currently being reviewed by the State Government. Among the reforms being suggested there is nothing dealing with those secret registers – a missed opportunity for the State Government to show decisive leadership on the issue although it is still not too late.
There can be no public confidence in a process of government to which the public is not admitted. Nor can ratepayers fulfill their responsibilities as voters without having free access to vital information.
If councillors are unwilling for their assets to be checked, they should be prepared to have their pockets turned out for missing cutlery as they leave the chamber.
Published The Advocate, August 7, 2004
WAITING at Burnie airport for another storm to clear Bass Strait, I bought The Advocate and the old chap standing next to me said to the woman at the kiosk, “S’pose I’d better have an Aggravate, too.”
Aggravate? I loved that.
As the new editor of The Aggravate, any pretensions I had about the paper, here was my comeuppance.
Never mind. If people nickname it The Aggravate, to me they are really saying: We live here, this is our local paper and because it is ours we are entitled to call it what we like. Good on them.
As editor, I obviously want The Advocate to be valued, to be welcomed by readers into their homes, to be counted on as a friend with their best interests at heart.
So here, nailed to the masthead, are a few guiding principles:
we will cover the news accurately and fairly;
we will be relevant, useful and timely;
we will avoid excess and sensationalism;
we will listen to our readers' interests and needs;
we will write in ways that people can understand;
we will deliver information they can trust;
we will watch the powerful on behalf of those who are not; and
our journalists will take responsibility for the impact of their stories on the local community, without sacrificing the public’s right to know.
Soon after arriving in town, the other passing remark I heard was The Advocate had developed a “green tinge”, meant as a criticism, through its coverage of the pulp mill saga.
No-one I know wants to live in a place that is poisoned or degraded but my gut instinct also tells me that if a pulp mill can bring jobs and economic benefits without pollution, then I ought to support it. Discuss and feel free to disagree.
With the pulp mill, as with any other contentious issue of local significance, the proper role of The Advocate is to engage the community in an open conversation with itself.
In all cases, our function is to present the facts fairly, in context and let the chips fall where they may. Journalism is not a popularity contest.
Newspaper readers are generally people who are also actively involved in their communities, whether through local government, education, environment, sport or volunteering.
It is in all our interests as a community to encourage those people in their activism by providing them with the information they find relevant to their concerns. That is The Advocate’s job.
Journalists do not tell people what to think but what to think about. On the issues of the day we must keep asking ourselves: Is it good for our readers?
And what is good for our readers also tends to be good for our advertisers. It is in an advertiser’s best interests to share space with high editorial quality.
The Advocate’s mission is simple: to be the primary source of local news and information. These are matters of consequence, not aggravation.
WAITING at Burnie airport for another storm to clear Bass Strait, I bought The Advocate and the old chap standing next to me said to the woman at the kiosk, “S’pose I’d better have an Aggravate, too.”
Aggravate? I loved that.
As the new editor of The Aggravate, any pretensions I had about the paper, here was my comeuppance.
Never mind. If people nickname it The Aggravate, to me they are really saying: We live here, this is our local paper and because it is ours we are entitled to call it what we like. Good on them.
As editor, I obviously want The Advocate to be valued, to be welcomed by readers into their homes, to be counted on as a friend with their best interests at heart.
So here, nailed to the masthead, are a few guiding principles:
we will cover the news accurately and fairly;
we will be relevant, useful and timely;
we will avoid excess and sensationalism;
we will listen to our readers' interests and needs;
we will write in ways that people can understand;
we will deliver information they can trust;
we will watch the powerful on behalf of those who are not; and
our journalists will take responsibility for the impact of their stories on the local community, without sacrificing the public’s right to know.
Soon after arriving in town, the other passing remark I heard was The Advocate had developed a “green tinge”, meant as a criticism, through its coverage of the pulp mill saga.
No-one I know wants to live in a place that is poisoned or degraded but my gut instinct also tells me that if a pulp mill can bring jobs and economic benefits without pollution, then I ought to support it. Discuss and feel free to disagree.
With the pulp mill, as with any other contentious issue of local significance, the proper role of The Advocate is to engage the community in an open conversation with itself.
In all cases, our function is to present the facts fairly, in context and let the chips fall where they may. Journalism is not a popularity contest.
Newspaper readers are generally people who are also actively involved in their communities, whether through local government, education, environment, sport or volunteering.
It is in all our interests as a community to encourage those people in their activism by providing them with the information they find relevant to their concerns. That is The Advocate’s job.
Journalists do not tell people what to think but what to think about. On the issues of the day we must keep asking ourselves: Is it good for our readers?
And what is good for our readers also tends to be good for our advertisers. It is in an advertiser’s best interests to share space with high editorial quality.
The Advocate’s mission is simple: to be the primary source of local news and information. These are matters of consequence, not aggravation.
Published The Advocate, August 7, 2004
WAITING at Burnie airport for another storm to clear Bass Strait, I bought The Advocate and the old chap standing next to me said to the woman at the kiosk, “S’pose I’d better have an Aggravate, too.”
Aggravate? I loved that.
As the new editor of The Aggravate, any pretensions I had about the paper, here was my comeuppance.
Never mind. If people nickname it The Aggravate, to me they are really saying: We live here, this is our local paper and because it is ours we are entitled to call it what we like. Good on them.
As editor, I obviously want The Advocate to be valued, to be welcomed by readers into their homes, to be counted on as a friend with their best interests at heart.
So here, nailed to the masthead, are a few guiding principles:
we will cover the news accurately and fairly;
we will be relevant, useful and timely;
we will avoid excess and sensationalism;
we will listen to our readers' interests and needs;
we will write in ways that people can understand;
we will deliver information they can trust;
we will watch the powerful on behalf of those who are not; and
our journalists will take responsibility for the impact of their stories on the local community, without sacrificing the public’s right to know.
Soon after arriving in town, the other passing remark I heard was The Advocate had developed a “green tinge”, meant as a criticism, through its coverage of the pulp mill saga.
No-one I know wants to live in a place that is poisoned or degraded but my gut instinct also tells me that if a pulp mill can bring jobs and economic benefits without pollution, then I ought to support it. Discuss and feel free to disagree.
With the pulp mill, as with any other contentious issue of local significance, the proper role of The Advocate is to engage the community in an open conversation with itself.
In all cases, our function is to present the facts fairly, in context and let the chips fall where they may. Journalism is not a popularity contest.
Newspaper readers are generally people who are also actively involved in their communities, whether through local government, education, environment, sport or volunteering.
It is in all our interests as a community to encourage those people in their activism by providing them with the information they find relevant to their concerns. That is The Advocate’s job.
Journalists do not tell people what to think but what to think about. On the issues of the day we must keep asking ourselves: Is it good for our readers?
And what is good for our readers also tends to be good for our advertisers. It is in an advertiser’s best interests to share space with high editorial quality.
The Advocate’s mission is simple: to be the primary source of local news and information. These are matters of consequence, not aggravation.
WAITING at Burnie airport for another storm to clear Bass Strait, I bought The Advocate and the old chap standing next to me said to the woman at the kiosk, “S’pose I’d better have an Aggravate, too.”
Aggravate? I loved that.
As the new editor of The Aggravate, any pretensions I had about the paper, here was my comeuppance.
Never mind. If people nickname it The Aggravate, to me they are really saying: We live here, this is our local paper and because it is ours we are entitled to call it what we like. Good on them.
As editor, I obviously want The Advocate to be valued, to be welcomed by readers into their homes, to be counted on as a friend with their best interests at heart.
So here, nailed to the masthead, are a few guiding principles:
we will cover the news accurately and fairly;
we will be relevant, useful and timely;
we will avoid excess and sensationalism;
we will listen to our readers' interests and needs;
we will write in ways that people can understand;
we will deliver information they can trust;
we will watch the powerful on behalf of those who are not; and
our journalists will take responsibility for the impact of their stories on the local community, without sacrificing the public’s right to know.
Soon after arriving in town, the other passing remark I heard was The Advocate had developed a “green tinge”, meant as a criticism, through its coverage of the pulp mill saga.
No-one I know wants to live in a place that is poisoned or degraded but my gut instinct also tells me that if a pulp mill can bring jobs and economic benefits without pollution, then I ought to support it. Discuss and feel free to disagree.
With the pulp mill, as with any other contentious issue of local significance, the proper role of The Advocate is to engage the community in an open conversation with itself.
In all cases, our function is to present the facts fairly, in context and let the chips fall where they may. Journalism is not a popularity contest.
Newspaper readers are generally people who are also actively involved in their communities, whether through local government, education, environment, sport or volunteering.
It is in all our interests as a community to encourage those people in their activism by providing them with the information they find relevant to their concerns. That is The Advocate’s job.
Journalists do not tell people what to think but what to think about. On the issues of the day we must keep asking ourselves: Is it good for our readers?
And what is good for our readers also tends to be good for our advertisers. It is in an advertiser’s best interests to share space with high editorial quality.
The Advocate’s mission is simple: to be the primary source of local news and information. These are matters of consequence, not aggravation.
Monday, June 28, 2004
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 28 2004
HERE TODAY AND GONE TOMORROW
HERE it is then, the final column. After almost 20 years as editor of Messenger, I am off. To Tasmania. Green fields. New challenges. Must rush. It gets late early in this place. In old graveyards, you can feel the presence of the dead through the words on their headstones. My memorials, I expect, will be the columns I have been privileged to write for the past decade or so. Thanks. The world needs people who niggle other people out of their comfort zones and, it seemed to me as a young man starting out, journalism offered a platform to air contrary views. Torn between intense individualism and a desire to "fit in", a career in journalism beckoned. I have since done some niggling of my own, growing old disrespectfully. I liked the fact that journalism had its own code of ethics, something in which to wrap myself self-righteously. I liked the concept of an integrity undiluted by having to make compromises. Uh-huh. I soon came into contact with people who wished me to make many ethical compromises. There was almost nothing they would not do for money or power. I like to think I fended off the temptations. Touch wood. I could never be a government press secretary or go into public relations. I have too great an impulse to speak my mind loudly and recklessly. I have appropriate and inappropriate voices and one very quickly becomes the other. I have problems with authority figures. My disruptive behaviour in front of the high and mighty is almost compulsive. I make people wary; I attract disapproval; and I have often been spurned for thinking out loud. I so dislike being in anyone's debt - even owing a favour - that I frequently behave badly if someone tries to do me a good turn. Sorry. I have needed to learn restraint, to keep some judgements silent. Total truth is not always defensible when others are unnecessarily hurt. Sorry again. All the same, faced with injustice, corruption and racism, some things need to be spoken out loud otherwise silence has the same effect as consent. Prejudice can overwhelm reason and ignorance can overwhelm knowledge. Be vigilant. Even a government can think you guilty based on your appearance. I have been fortunate to have a newspaper column to call my own for so long, and to hear people say they agree with me, or even disagree and that I therefore should burn in hellfire. Whatever I have written has two lives: What I think about as I write and what people think when they read it. What it means for them is not always what it means for me. No apologies. Whatever, thanks for humouring me and thank me for having you. (Des Ryan is the new editor of The Advocate, Burnie.)
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 21 2004
LINDSAY FOX AND ME, TRUCKING
WITH rare exceptions, watching TV is like staring into a toilet bowl. The news services are filled with one stinking mess after another and "reality" shows have much the same seamy appeal as wildlife documentaries - all gluttony, sex and violence. After a while it induces a world-weary, cynical air and I am not really like that. So I can see the attraction of instead watching something light and fluffy like cooking shows or Australian Idol, a TV talent contest of very mixed talents. Idol proves that equal opportunity does not produce equal achievement. Talents are not shared around equally. Not everyone on the show sings well. It might take some practice but eventually the person who sings best wins. I lack the necessary talent and pizzaz, unfortunately, otherwise I might easily have gone into showbiz. The only alternative left now is for someone who looks or sounds like me to become a movie star or a fabulous singer so then I can become rich impersonating them. Singing, by itself, is already difficult enough so I am always impressed by people who can make themselves sound exactly like other famous singers. Tom Burlinson does a great Frank Sinatra, for example, and Todd McKenney does an impressive Peter Allen, as does Hugh Jackman. We might be ruled by governments of mediocracy in this country but we do produce some superb mimics. Even our birds are great at it. Actors Nicole Kidman and Eric Bana can do terrific American accents. It possibly has something to do with the Aussie blotting paper monotone being able to soak up whatever is heard. Yet very few American actors can do a convincing Australian accent. Meryl Streep's is dreadful. I need to find the right impersonation and then seek a gig with the promoter Mario Maiolo, who stages those Christmas cabarets featuring Rod Stewart and Tina Turner lookalikes and ABBA cover bands. But who to impersonate, that's the problem? The standup comic Gerry Connolly, impersonating the Queen in spangled gown and tiara at the time, once called me Lindsay Fox, the bald, fat trucking magnate, which caused much hilarity in the audience. Mutter. Or there is always an opening for another Elvis. By 2010, it is estimated half the US population will be Elvis impersonators. This morning I was in the toilet searching for the perfect echo, rehearsing "Crying in the chapel", and when I leaned over to lower the seat, my Elvis sunnies fell into the bowl. Oh, for crying out loud! Another good act gone down the toilet. Which leaves me back with Lindsay Fox. He certainly offers me the ingredients for an impersonation - wealthy, successful and strikingly handsome - and, best of all, I could do him without having to frock up. Eat your heart out, Gerry Connolly.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 14 2004
A WEIGHT FOR EVERY WEAKLING
FEELING unusually flat, my sister Jennifer went to see a naturopath to have her spirits revved up. I do not know why Jen, a nurse, has now decided alternative medicine is a better option than all her medical training. Then again, she puts shredded carrot in her hamburger mince and has always been a bit of an empathiser.
"How are you?" she asks. "Okay, thanks," I answer honestly. "You sure? Are you okay, y'know, really okay?" she says, touching my shoulder, her voice fluttery with concern. Do spare me, Jen. She said the naturopath had attached an electrode to her forehead and to a toe in order to reveal all sorts of in-between insights about her physical condition. It reminded me of dissecting rabbits at school. By passing an electrical current through a dead rabbit's leg, the muscle would twitch as if it were still alive. Jen said no twitching occurred in her case but the electrode readout revealed she had the muscle tone of a 91 year old, which sounds worrying unless you happen to be 91. Jen is 48. She bought 2kg dumbbells - hardly enough to make a difference but she could not lift anything heavier - and now she goes powerwalking carrying one in each hand. With exaggerated knees-up strides and shooting arms high above her head, she gives the impression of climbing a ladder as she walks. She looks ridiculous. My other sister, Maureen, is less of an empathiser. "How are you, bro?" "Yep, fine." "Pity." Yet she also felt the need to go to the same naturopath for the electrode test. It revealed she had the muscle tone of a 41 year old - not bad for her 46 years - but she also had some mysterious problem with fluid retention, about which I wish to know nothing. Maureen smugly decided not to buy any weights and nor did she feel the need to go powerwalking even though she certainly could do with it from behind. It all made me worry about my own muscle tone although it rather depends on which muscles. My legs, though skinny, are quite muscular from riding the bike; yet my arms have not been muscular for years, not even my drinking arm. Since I am not inclined to spend money to have a naturopath, or anyone else, attach electrodes to my extremities, I took direct action and bought two dumbbells - 4kg each on principle - which are a damn sight heavier than they look. This morning I spent two minutes pumping iron and slumped exhaustedly back on the bed feeling as if I had broken every bone in my biceps. These days I don't even have the strength of my own convictions.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 7 2004
TECHNO CHECK ON REALITY
ONCE, in pre-Microsoft days, I would have returned from a week's leave to find a manila folder bulging with all the correspondence that was deemed too difficult for someone else to handle while I was away, including the stuff that was still there from before I left. I once estimated I would need to go on leave for at least eight weeks before someone else attended to the problems inside the folder. Make that eight months. The bulging folder was there again to greet me when I returned from a week off, only now there were also 355 emails. No, I did not bother to count them individually but my computer screen shows 25 emails at a time and there were 14 screenfuls plus an extra 5. I could have clicked on the Tools button to delete them all at once but one never knows if hidden among them might be Rupert Murdoch's call to work in New York or London. Waiting, waiting... It took a good three hours to run through them all, deleting the threatening and abusive ones as well as those from the PR firms without bothering to check the contents. I next looked at the corporate entries to see who had been promoted or demoted. Not finding my name there, I pushed on to the really important items such as the invitations to lunch, which took quite a while to prioritise. With the final 11 emails, finding only looming catastrophe, I returned them to the file for later attention. Amid the inexorable march of technology, I am determined not to succumb to pressure to open business emails while on leave, even though I could do it from just about anywhere. Do it once and I fear the next step would see me buying a refrigerator with an internet screen built into the door, an expensive gewgaw which is not half as useful as a fridge magnet. Speaking of which, on returning home, I found an old shopping list stuck to the fridge. Now, I come from the old-fashioned school of English grammar, a person who punctuates his mobile phone text messages, but I always use abbreviations on shopping lists. Why waste time writing out "Tomato and cheese foccacia rolls"? Instead, in my own code, I write "T-rolls", which works most of the time. The problem with this particular list was it had been written a week earlier when the items were still in my mind and now I could not remember whether T stood for tissues or tea; T-sauce for tabasco or tomato; T-brush for toilet or tooth; and T-paste for tomato or tooth? Even on a toss of the coin, I should have got half the Ts right but, no, I now have a toothbrush to clean the toilet and the next pasta sauce will taste unusually of toothpaste. Thank goodness I had taken care to spell "Toilet Rolls" in full. A foccacia roll would not have done the same job.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, June 30 2004
NOT ALL BEER AND SNORKELS
SITTING under a tropical Queensland palm tree sipping a Bundy, lime and dry, with Venus glittering over water towards my beach chair, I have been considering some new life options. One is to find an undiscovered Whitsundays beach protected by a rainforest mountain, plant a few coconut palms and, bingo, I've got it made in the shade. Or, although I have no sailing experience, to buy a graceful ketch and cruise the South Seas. Instead of which, having followed the highway named Bruce for three weeks as far north as Townsville, reality check, the time has come to return to Adelaide. Quickly, before I forget, some postcards: A fried bat hanging dead by its wings between power lines scaring the hell out of me at twilight; roads littered with flattened Bundy & Cola cans and just as many flattened cane toads; "Cane Field For Sale" signs; and a classic Queenslander house, built on stilts, with a matching dog kennel on mini-stilts. But overwhelmingly Queensland is a profusion of wildlife. Such as walking through a melaleuca forest trailing a plume of butterflies like an Outback dust cloud, or snorkelling on coral reefs with Nemo and his dad Marlin. In the coral cays, the gaily-painted tropical fish are up at dawn putting on their makeup, fixing their faces and stripes, for the daily showtime. Only the silver trevally make no effort at all. The birdlife is a joy, especially the parrots. So why do people keep lorikeets in backyard aviaries, as they do in Queensland, when the same birds live all around them in the trees, free? SA has fewer native creatures by comparison, which, if you ask me, makes them all the more precious. I could not afford to stay on Bedarra Island, which costs an obscene $1500 a day, and stayed instead on Brampton Island at the $150 standby rate including all meals. The guests occupying the posher apartments had tubs of water floating with hibiscus left by their front doors to clean the sand off their precious feet. In steerage class, after a couple of days, my bed felt like a sandpit. Still, it was more suitable at my age than Airlie Beach, now overrun by backpackers. The yobs in one bar were already doing drunken pushups by mid-afternoon in some sort of drinking competition. For good commercial sense, the tour operators have based themselves at Airlie Beach. "No problems, guys, too easy..." the reef guides say, always using "guys" regardless of gender. A safety demonstration included the advice: "Do not jump directly into the lifeboats, guys, especially not if you are wearing high heels." Oh, you guys. Last night in Townsville was spent in a guesthouse - the same one occupied by the US Navy during WWII - and I dreamed not of coconuts falling on me but of snow, and had to turn off the ceiling fan, I was so cold. Time to come home. To winter. Sigh.
HERE TODAY AND GONE TOMORROW
HERE it is then, the final column. After almost 20 years as editor of Messenger, I am off. To Tasmania. Green fields. New challenges. Must rush. It gets late early in this place. In old graveyards, you can feel the presence of the dead through the words on their headstones. My memorials, I expect, will be the columns I have been privileged to write for the past decade or so. Thanks. The world needs people who niggle other people out of their comfort zones and, it seemed to me as a young man starting out, journalism offered a platform to air contrary views. Torn between intense individualism and a desire to "fit in", a career in journalism beckoned. I have since done some niggling of my own, growing old disrespectfully. I liked the fact that journalism had its own code of ethics, something in which to wrap myself self-righteously. I liked the concept of an integrity undiluted by having to make compromises. Uh-huh. I soon came into contact with people who wished me to make many ethical compromises. There was almost nothing they would not do for money or power. I like to think I fended off the temptations. Touch wood. I could never be a government press secretary or go into public relations. I have too great an impulse to speak my mind loudly and recklessly. I have appropriate and inappropriate voices and one very quickly becomes the other. I have problems with authority figures. My disruptive behaviour in front of the high and mighty is almost compulsive. I make people wary; I attract disapproval; and I have often been spurned for thinking out loud. I so dislike being in anyone's debt - even owing a favour - that I frequently behave badly if someone tries to do me a good turn. Sorry. I have needed to learn restraint, to keep some judgements silent. Total truth is not always defensible when others are unnecessarily hurt. Sorry again. All the same, faced with injustice, corruption and racism, some things need to be spoken out loud otherwise silence has the same effect as consent. Prejudice can overwhelm reason and ignorance can overwhelm knowledge. Be vigilant. Even a government can think you guilty based on your appearance. I have been fortunate to have a newspaper column to call my own for so long, and to hear people say they agree with me, or even disagree and that I therefore should burn in hellfire. Whatever I have written has two lives: What I think about as I write and what people think when they read it. What it means for them is not always what it means for me. No apologies. Whatever, thanks for humouring me and thank me for having you. (Des Ryan is the new editor of The Advocate, Burnie.)
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 21 2004
LINDSAY FOX AND ME, TRUCKING
WITH rare exceptions, watching TV is like staring into a toilet bowl. The news services are filled with one stinking mess after another and "reality" shows have much the same seamy appeal as wildlife documentaries - all gluttony, sex and violence. After a while it induces a world-weary, cynical air and I am not really like that. So I can see the attraction of instead watching something light and fluffy like cooking shows or Australian Idol, a TV talent contest of very mixed talents. Idol proves that equal opportunity does not produce equal achievement. Talents are not shared around equally. Not everyone on the show sings well. It might take some practice but eventually the person who sings best wins. I lack the necessary talent and pizzaz, unfortunately, otherwise I might easily have gone into showbiz. The only alternative left now is for someone who looks or sounds like me to become a movie star or a fabulous singer so then I can become rich impersonating them. Singing, by itself, is already difficult enough so I am always impressed by people who can make themselves sound exactly like other famous singers. Tom Burlinson does a great Frank Sinatra, for example, and Todd McKenney does an impressive Peter Allen, as does Hugh Jackman. We might be ruled by governments of mediocracy in this country but we do produce some superb mimics. Even our birds are great at it. Actors Nicole Kidman and Eric Bana can do terrific American accents. It possibly has something to do with the Aussie blotting paper monotone being able to soak up whatever is heard. Yet very few American actors can do a convincing Australian accent. Meryl Streep's is dreadful. I need to find the right impersonation and then seek a gig with the promoter Mario Maiolo, who stages those Christmas cabarets featuring Rod Stewart and Tina Turner lookalikes and ABBA cover bands. But who to impersonate, that's the problem? The standup comic Gerry Connolly, impersonating the Queen in spangled gown and tiara at the time, once called me Lindsay Fox, the bald, fat trucking magnate, which caused much hilarity in the audience. Mutter. Or there is always an opening for another Elvis. By 2010, it is estimated half the US population will be Elvis impersonators. This morning I was in the toilet searching for the perfect echo, rehearsing "Crying in the chapel", and when I leaned over to lower the seat, my Elvis sunnies fell into the bowl. Oh, for crying out loud! Another good act gone down the toilet. Which leaves me back with Lindsay Fox. He certainly offers me the ingredients for an impersonation - wealthy, successful and strikingly handsome - and, best of all, I could do him without having to frock up. Eat your heart out, Gerry Connolly.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 14 2004
A WEIGHT FOR EVERY WEAKLING
FEELING unusually flat, my sister Jennifer went to see a naturopath to have her spirits revved up. I do not know why Jen, a nurse, has now decided alternative medicine is a better option than all her medical training. Then again, she puts shredded carrot in her hamburger mince and has always been a bit of an empathiser.
"How are you?" she asks. "Okay, thanks," I answer honestly. "You sure? Are you okay, y'know, really okay?" she says, touching my shoulder, her voice fluttery with concern. Do spare me, Jen. She said the naturopath had attached an electrode to her forehead and to a toe in order to reveal all sorts of in-between insights about her physical condition. It reminded me of dissecting rabbits at school. By passing an electrical current through a dead rabbit's leg, the muscle would twitch as if it were still alive. Jen said no twitching occurred in her case but the electrode readout revealed she had the muscle tone of a 91 year old, which sounds worrying unless you happen to be 91. Jen is 48. She bought 2kg dumbbells - hardly enough to make a difference but she could not lift anything heavier - and now she goes powerwalking carrying one in each hand. With exaggerated knees-up strides and shooting arms high above her head, she gives the impression of climbing a ladder as she walks. She looks ridiculous. My other sister, Maureen, is less of an empathiser. "How are you, bro?" "Yep, fine." "Pity." Yet she also felt the need to go to the same naturopath for the electrode test. It revealed she had the muscle tone of a 41 year old - not bad for her 46 years - but she also had some mysterious problem with fluid retention, about which I wish to know nothing. Maureen smugly decided not to buy any weights and nor did she feel the need to go powerwalking even though she certainly could do with it from behind. It all made me worry about my own muscle tone although it rather depends on which muscles. My legs, though skinny, are quite muscular from riding the bike; yet my arms have not been muscular for years, not even my drinking arm. Since I am not inclined to spend money to have a naturopath, or anyone else, attach electrodes to my extremities, I took direct action and bought two dumbbells - 4kg each on principle - which are a damn sight heavier than they look. This morning I spent two minutes pumping iron and slumped exhaustedly back on the bed feeling as if I had broken every bone in my biceps. These days I don't even have the strength of my own convictions.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 7 2004
TECHNO CHECK ON REALITY
ONCE, in pre-Microsoft days, I would have returned from a week's leave to find a manila folder bulging with all the correspondence that was deemed too difficult for someone else to handle while I was away, including the stuff that was still there from before I left. I once estimated I would need to go on leave for at least eight weeks before someone else attended to the problems inside the folder. Make that eight months. The bulging folder was there again to greet me when I returned from a week off, only now there were also 355 emails. No, I did not bother to count them individually but my computer screen shows 25 emails at a time and there were 14 screenfuls plus an extra 5. I could have clicked on the Tools button to delete them all at once but one never knows if hidden among them might be Rupert Murdoch's call to work in New York or London. Waiting, waiting... It took a good three hours to run through them all, deleting the threatening and abusive ones as well as those from the PR firms without bothering to check the contents. I next looked at the corporate entries to see who had been promoted or demoted. Not finding my name there, I pushed on to the really important items such as the invitations to lunch, which took quite a while to prioritise. With the final 11 emails, finding only looming catastrophe, I returned them to the file for later attention. Amid the inexorable march of technology, I am determined not to succumb to pressure to open business emails while on leave, even though I could do it from just about anywhere. Do it once and I fear the next step would see me buying a refrigerator with an internet screen built into the door, an expensive gewgaw which is not half as useful as a fridge magnet. Speaking of which, on returning home, I found an old shopping list stuck to the fridge. Now, I come from the old-fashioned school of English grammar, a person who punctuates his mobile phone text messages, but I always use abbreviations on shopping lists. Why waste time writing out "Tomato and cheese foccacia rolls"? Instead, in my own code, I write "T-rolls", which works most of the time. The problem with this particular list was it had been written a week earlier when the items were still in my mind and now I could not remember whether T stood for tissues or tea; T-sauce for tabasco or tomato; T-brush for toilet or tooth; and T-paste for tomato or tooth? Even on a toss of the coin, I should have got half the Ts right but, no, I now have a toothbrush to clean the toilet and the next pasta sauce will taste unusually of toothpaste. Thank goodness I had taken care to spell "Toilet Rolls" in full. A foccacia roll would not have done the same job.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, June 30 2004
NOT ALL BEER AND SNORKELS
SITTING under a tropical Queensland palm tree sipping a Bundy, lime and dry, with Venus glittering over water towards my beach chair, I have been considering some new life options. One is to find an undiscovered Whitsundays beach protected by a rainforest mountain, plant a few coconut palms and, bingo, I've got it made in the shade. Or, although I have no sailing experience, to buy a graceful ketch and cruise the South Seas. Instead of which, having followed the highway named Bruce for three weeks as far north as Townsville, reality check, the time has come to return to Adelaide. Quickly, before I forget, some postcards: A fried bat hanging dead by its wings between power lines scaring the hell out of me at twilight; roads littered with flattened Bundy & Cola cans and just as many flattened cane toads; "Cane Field For Sale" signs; and a classic Queenslander house, built on stilts, with a matching dog kennel on mini-stilts. But overwhelmingly Queensland is a profusion of wildlife. Such as walking through a melaleuca forest trailing a plume of butterflies like an Outback dust cloud, or snorkelling on coral reefs with Nemo and his dad Marlin. In the coral cays, the gaily-painted tropical fish are up at dawn putting on their makeup, fixing their faces and stripes, for the daily showtime. Only the silver trevally make no effort at all. The birdlife is a joy, especially the parrots. So why do people keep lorikeets in backyard aviaries, as they do in Queensland, when the same birds live all around them in the trees, free? SA has fewer native creatures by comparison, which, if you ask me, makes them all the more precious. I could not afford to stay on Bedarra Island, which costs an obscene $1500 a day, and stayed instead on Brampton Island at the $150 standby rate including all meals. The guests occupying the posher apartments had tubs of water floating with hibiscus left by their front doors to clean the sand off their precious feet. In steerage class, after a couple of days, my bed felt like a sandpit. Still, it was more suitable at my age than Airlie Beach, now overrun by backpackers. The yobs in one bar were already doing drunken pushups by mid-afternoon in some sort of drinking competition. For good commercial sense, the tour operators have based themselves at Airlie Beach. "No problems, guys, too easy..." the reef guides say, always using "guys" regardless of gender. A safety demonstration included the advice: "Do not jump directly into the lifeboats, guys, especially not if you are wearing high heels." Oh, you guys. Last night in Townsville was spent in a guesthouse - the same one occupied by the US Navy during WWII - and I dreamed not of coconuts falling on me but of snow, and had to turn off the ceiling fan, I was so cold. Time to come home. To winter. Sigh.
Monday, June 21, 2004
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, June 23, 2004.
SAILING AGAINST THE WIND
SAILING as a teenager in a dinghy on Corio Bay gave me two insights about yachting - either you were wet and miserable or dry and bored ... plus there were the endless cleaning and maintenance chores always needing to be done. I had better things to do and did them. Still, I retained a low-level interest in sailing and even did a WEA coastal navigation course a few years ago although I have never owned a boat of any description. Who knows what possessed me but on holiday recently at Brampton Island, I went sailing. You could select from a range of watercraft - canoes, kayaks, paddleboats, ski boats or jet skis - depending on your skill level and finances. I chose a catamaran, which was free and came with a quick sailing lesson by Collin, one of the resort's watersports crew. As it happens, Collin is from Wallaroo and his mum Maureen works at AQ Print in the Barossa Valley and I know the Viergevers who run AQ Print. Those three degrees of separation, yet again. Col drew a diagram in the sand to explain why boats could not sail directly into the wind, and he also showed what to do in case of a capsize. Another cat was taken out by a fat bloke in a floppy white hat and a long-sleeved anti-radiation suit zipped to the neck. He was soon being towed back to shore by Col's rescue boat from the dead pocket in the lee of the island. Smirking, I made a mental note to avoid the same fate. Yet, tacking and turning, I still drifted too wide and was becalmed, slipping backwards with the tide going out fast. I wondered if a rescue tow from Tahiti was included. I began to grow concerned about the direction all this was heading but was absolutely determined not to ask for a tow. James Cook never had access to a yellow rescue boat to tow him out of dead pockets and nor did he have the option of diving over the side and pushing the Endeavour into the breeze, which I admit I was now considering. Slowly, agonizingly, I made my way back towards the beach and finally touched shore by myself, exhausted from the tension of having Col hovering so close in his boat. "How did you go, mate, alright? - owjagomate-orright?" asked one of the other suntanned, sun-glassed keepers of the water craft, with nothing to do and all day to do it in, sitting under a beach umbrella chatting up the chicky babes. I want his job. "Too easy," I said and noticed the fat bloke now had a kayak, which he kept falling off in the shallows. His partner, who was trying to hold him upright, nearly drowned from laughing so much. Good on them - at least they were getting their money's worth. At day's end, to the sunset hiss of a beer can opening in the twilight watercolours of mauve, violet and lavender - tone on tone - of the sky, water and islands in the distance, I reflected on the day's sailing and promised myself never to try kayaking.
SAILING AGAINST THE WIND
SAILING as a teenager in a dinghy on Corio Bay gave me two insights about yachting - either you were wet and miserable or dry and bored ... plus there were the endless cleaning and maintenance chores always needing to be done. I had better things to do and did them. Still, I retained a low-level interest in sailing and even did a WEA coastal navigation course a few years ago although I have never owned a boat of any description. Who knows what possessed me but on holiday recently at Brampton Island, I went sailing. You could select from a range of watercraft - canoes, kayaks, paddleboats, ski boats or jet skis - depending on your skill level and finances. I chose a catamaran, which was free and came with a quick sailing lesson by Collin, one of the resort's watersports crew. As it happens, Collin is from Wallaroo and his mum Maureen works at AQ Print in the Barossa Valley and I know the Viergevers who run AQ Print. Those three degrees of separation, yet again. Col drew a diagram in the sand to explain why boats could not sail directly into the wind, and he also showed what to do in case of a capsize. Another cat was taken out by a fat bloke in a floppy white hat and a long-sleeved anti-radiation suit zipped to the neck. He was soon being towed back to shore by Col's rescue boat from the dead pocket in the lee of the island. Smirking, I made a mental note to avoid the same fate. Yet, tacking and turning, I still drifted too wide and was becalmed, slipping backwards with the tide going out fast. I wondered if a rescue tow from Tahiti was included. I began to grow concerned about the direction all this was heading but was absolutely determined not to ask for a tow. James Cook never had access to a yellow rescue boat to tow him out of dead pockets and nor did he have the option of diving over the side and pushing the Endeavour into the breeze, which I admit I was now considering. Slowly, agonizingly, I made my way back towards the beach and finally touched shore by myself, exhausted from the tension of having Col hovering so close in his boat. "How did you go, mate, alright? - owjagomate-orright?" asked one of the other suntanned, sun-glassed keepers of the water craft, with nothing to do and all day to do it in, sitting under a beach umbrella chatting up the chicky babes. I want his job. "Too easy," I said and noticed the fat bloke now had a kayak, which he kept falling off in the shallows. His partner, who was trying to hold him upright, nearly drowned from laughing so much. Good on them - at least they were getting their money's worth. At day's end, to the sunset hiss of a beer can opening in the twilight watercolours of mauve, violet and lavender - tone on tone - of the sky, water and islands in the distance, I reflected on the day's sailing and promised myself never to try kayaking.
Tuesday, June 15, 2004
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, June 16, 2004
GLOOMY SIDE OF SEACHANGE
THE Queensland tourism cliche of "beautiful one day, perfect the next" is based on the assumption of never-ending sunny weather. Come the rain, the tour guides lose the plot entirely. The rain started early at Hervey Bay in slow, heavy plops and now, on the ferry to Fraser Island under lavender-coloured clouds, the skipper assures us the weather will clear by the time we get there. The sky turns battleship grey. Before we left Hervey Bay, a group of pensioners, in high pants and white shoes, had formed a queue outside the toilets to prepare themselves for the 45-minute trip and now, all aboard, they quickly find plenty to dislike. "Oh, it's too crowded inside, let's go out here on the deck ... oh, it's wet out here ... oh, now we won't get a seat inside ... oh, I knew we should have got here early ... oh, misery, misery..." Seeing my own future, I have one of those "someone just walked over my grave" shivers. "Don't worry, guys, it should clear to a lovely day," the island guide lies. Queensland guides are apparently forbidden to acknowledge rain even if they are soaking in it. I am never happy being kept in a confined space with other humans but since a personal tour of Fraser Island with my own ranger would cost $760, I am stuck with 32 others in a bus. Bad news everyone, the odourless garlic tablet I took this morning has turned out not to be odourless. A day spent inside a roaring 350 horsepower mechanical bull bouncing around slushy forest tracks, in agony from a bad back, is not the way to see Fraser Island to its best advantage ... at least the driver had a great time. Afterwards, urgently in need of sun, I head north to 1770 - yes, 1770 - a coastal village out of mobile phone range. Remnants of the '60s beach bums are still here, paunchy in their Hawaiian shirts, greying mullets and bad teeth, driving around in Kombis covered in swirling psychedelic reminders of the '67 Summer of Love. After a swim on the secluded beach where Saint James Cook landed on his 1770 world discovery tour, I walk back to the shack across rippled sands decorated with the filigreed dot paintings of burrowing crabs. Toasting the sunset in shorts and T=shirt, and going naked to bed under a mosquito net although a woman in the local shop said she was already wearing her winter pyjamas, I declare 1770 to be Seachange perfection. It won't last. Council surveyors are everywhere with measuring tapes and clipboards preparing the way for the developers, ready with plans for apartment blocks along the foreshore once the water and sewer are connected this winter. The first mansions have already gone up on the same headland above where Cookie landed, and a mobile phone tower has been completed this week and the locals are impatient for it to be turned on. Do spare me. Someone always blocks the view.
GLOOMY SIDE OF SEACHANGE
THE Queensland tourism cliche of "beautiful one day, perfect the next" is based on the assumption of never-ending sunny weather. Come the rain, the tour guides lose the plot entirely. The rain started early at Hervey Bay in slow, heavy plops and now, on the ferry to Fraser Island under lavender-coloured clouds, the skipper assures us the weather will clear by the time we get there. The sky turns battleship grey. Before we left Hervey Bay, a group of pensioners, in high pants and white shoes, had formed a queue outside the toilets to prepare themselves for the 45-minute trip and now, all aboard, they quickly find plenty to dislike. "Oh, it's too crowded inside, let's go out here on the deck ... oh, it's wet out here ... oh, now we won't get a seat inside ... oh, I knew we should have got here early ... oh, misery, misery..." Seeing my own future, I have one of those "someone just walked over my grave" shivers. "Don't worry, guys, it should clear to a lovely day," the island guide lies. Queensland guides are apparently forbidden to acknowledge rain even if they are soaking in it. I am never happy being kept in a confined space with other humans but since a personal tour of Fraser Island with my own ranger would cost $760, I am stuck with 32 others in a bus. Bad news everyone, the odourless garlic tablet I took this morning has turned out not to be odourless. A day spent inside a roaring 350 horsepower mechanical bull bouncing around slushy forest tracks, in agony from a bad back, is not the way to see Fraser Island to its best advantage ... at least the driver had a great time. Afterwards, urgently in need of sun, I head north to 1770 - yes, 1770 - a coastal village out of mobile phone range. Remnants of the '60s beach bums are still here, paunchy in their Hawaiian shirts, greying mullets and bad teeth, driving around in Kombis covered in swirling psychedelic reminders of the '67 Summer of Love. After a swim on the secluded beach where Saint James Cook landed on his 1770 world discovery tour, I walk back to the shack across rippled sands decorated with the filigreed dot paintings of burrowing crabs. Toasting the sunset in shorts and T=shirt, and going naked to bed under a mosquito net although a woman in the local shop said she was already wearing her winter pyjamas, I declare 1770 to be Seachange perfection. It won't last. Council surveyors are everywhere with measuring tapes and clipboards preparing the way for the developers, ready with plans for apartment blocks along the foreshore once the water and sewer are connected this winter. The first mansions have already gone up on the same headland above where Cookie landed, and a mobile phone tower has been completed this week and the locals are impatient for it to be turned on. Do spare me. Someone always blocks the view.
Monday, June 07, 2004
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, June 9, 2004
CARTOON CORNER AT NOOSA HEADS
TRAVELLING north, here I am at Noosa Heads, which would have been wild country once: Inaccessible rainforest, pristine beaches and streams - paradise in a time before Mercedes coupes with personalised number plates and spray-on tans. Now it is one large construction site. An early morning walk is accompanied not by the cheep-cheep of birdsong but by the beep-beep of reversing trucks, roaring generators and bulldozers. The pulse of Queensland is the banging of a builder's hammer. Wondered lately why you cannot find a tradesman in Adelaide? Because they are all in Noosa, that's why. If you are a plumber, an electrician or even a crane driver, this world is your oyster. Noosa is also filled with terrifically healthy looking people, power walking their toddlers in three-wheeled strollers, perfectly suntanned, smiling, happy to be rich. I return their smiles until my cheeks hurt. The young women with golden, sun-bleached hair on the nape of their necks and forearms are a delight to behold walking towards you in skimpy Lycra tops and shorts. From behind, however, the view of G-strings hitched high above their buttocks, frankly, is off-putting. I belch louder than intended in Noosa National Park, only to have koalas in the nearby trees respond with barks. Respect. A frill-necked lizard also checks me out, a low-flying kookaburra crosses my path and perched high on the dead white limb of a gum tree, a sea eagle eats a fish. Butterflies of violet and buttercup yellow float in my face while dragonflies hover around yellow bottlebrush blossoms. It feels like being in a Disney cartoon. Something about the salty aroma of the ocean always makes me feel like going for long walks. Except in Noosa the effect is spoiled by the waft of musk or jasmine perfume as you cross paths. Women seem to wear more perfumed cover-up than men. Are they naturally smellier and is their need greater? Older women, in particular, drench themselves in the stuff. Perhaps their sense of smell is deserting them. The beautiful people in the coffee shops are reading The Australian's Wealth section. Many of their tanned faces are weathered into scowls. Me, I prefer the cartoon pages. Being beautiful one day, perfect the next, is not always what it seems even in Noosa Heads. The local council has announced plans to remove the humpies and caravans occupied by people who have bought blocks of land and have no intention of erecting a dwelling. Having paid a king's ransom for the land, they probably cannot afford a house. The surf club opens at 10am, so by 10.05 you could be sitting on the balcony with a cold beer in hand watching the ocean, and not much else to do for the rest of the day. Pinch me, someone. Up the coast, a pall of white smoke from burning sugar cane is rising like a thunderhead, beckoning.
CARTOON CORNER AT NOOSA HEADS
TRAVELLING north, here I am at Noosa Heads, which would have been wild country once: Inaccessible rainforest, pristine beaches and streams - paradise in a time before Mercedes coupes with personalised number plates and spray-on tans. Now it is one large construction site. An early morning walk is accompanied not by the cheep-cheep of birdsong but by the beep-beep of reversing trucks, roaring generators and bulldozers. The pulse of Queensland is the banging of a builder's hammer. Wondered lately why you cannot find a tradesman in Adelaide? Because they are all in Noosa, that's why. If you are a plumber, an electrician or even a crane driver, this world is your oyster. Noosa is also filled with terrifically healthy looking people, power walking their toddlers in three-wheeled strollers, perfectly suntanned, smiling, happy to be rich. I return their smiles until my cheeks hurt. The young women with golden, sun-bleached hair on the nape of their necks and forearms are a delight to behold walking towards you in skimpy Lycra tops and shorts. From behind, however, the view of G-strings hitched high above their buttocks, frankly, is off-putting. I belch louder than intended in Noosa National Park, only to have koalas in the nearby trees respond with barks. Respect. A frill-necked lizard also checks me out, a low-flying kookaburra crosses my path and perched high on the dead white limb of a gum tree, a sea eagle eats a fish. Butterflies of violet and buttercup yellow float in my face while dragonflies hover around yellow bottlebrush blossoms. It feels like being in a Disney cartoon. Something about the salty aroma of the ocean always makes me feel like going for long walks. Except in Noosa the effect is spoiled by the waft of musk or jasmine perfume as you cross paths. Women seem to wear more perfumed cover-up than men. Are they naturally smellier and is their need greater? Older women, in particular, drench themselves in the stuff. Perhaps their sense of smell is deserting them. The beautiful people in the coffee shops are reading The Australian's Wealth section. Many of their tanned faces are weathered into scowls. Me, I prefer the cartoon pages. Being beautiful one day, perfect the next, is not always what it seems even in Noosa Heads. The local council has announced plans to remove the humpies and caravans occupied by people who have bought blocks of land and have no intention of erecting a dwelling. Having paid a king's ransom for the land, they probably cannot afford a house. The surf club opens at 10am, so by 10.05 you could be sitting on the balcony with a cold beer in hand watching the ocean, and not much else to do for the rest of the day. Pinch me, someone. Up the coast, a pall of white smoke from burning sugar cane is rising like a thunderhead, beckoning.
Monday, May 31, 2004
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, June 2, 2004
DESERT BOY GOES TROPPO
HERE I am driving to Queensland on holiday and none of it, so far, has been wasted because I never consider the time spent in my own company a waste - you are a long time dead. Through Broken Hill, still prospering despite forecasts to the contrary, to Wilcannia, security meshed against Aboriginal raiding parties, where the petrol costs $1.11 a litre compared to the 97 cents at the Hill and 94 cents in Adelaide at the time. Swirling willy-willies left and right, the highway hereabouts is littered with fresh roadkill. For fear of hitting a ‘roo, I want to make damn sure I am off the road by dusk. Feral goats are already out for a feed in the lengthening shadows but I have yet to see any goat roadkill. Smarter than your average ‘roo. An enormous wedge-tailed eagle, perched atop a kangaroo carcass by the side of the road, glares back defiantly – “Mine, all mine, find your own!” – unmoved by the cars whooshing past only metres away. I love wedgies. With a full moon rising, I drive into Cobar thinking a margarita would be a perfect end to the first day. Only Cobar is not a margarita town. Cobar is a Bundy and beer town where a Magnum is not an ice cream but a brand of chemical for treating sheep lice and blowflies. A sign in the Great Western Hotel reads: “If it wasn’t for guns we’d be speaking Japanese by now.” I settle for a quiet beer and leave. Next day, across the flatlands of thirsty cotton fields in northern NSW where the roadside is littered with cotton balls, and into Nyngan where the parking signs read: “Rear to kerb 45 degree angle parking.” The proverbial old cockie in a hat trying to park back-back-back causes traffic gridlock in the main street. Then to Gilgandra - “Home of the Cooee” – and the sign, Brisbane 787, and other signs warning of speeding fines up to $3300 plus loss of licence. Good grief, how much is the fine for parking the wrong way around? Through a spattering plague of locusts, to Narrabri and other towns with unfinished names that could do with an “-ng” or a “-de” or “-nt” added to their tails. Also in Narrabri, the cars are required to park at 45 degrees facing the kerb … I give up! Across the border to Goodiwindi for the night, feeling out of place for not wearing a giant stockman’s hat, I order a XXXX beer in the Victoria Hotel and – this is embarrassing – enjoy it. I can only offer in my defence that beer usually tastes better under local conditions brewed using local water suited to the local climate. Next day, I hit a kangaroo that hops out of nowhere from among the prickly pears. Lucky for us both, it’s a glancing blow and, in the rear vision mirror, I am relieved to see him bounce back across the road although I expect he will have a sore rump for a few days. Serves him bloody right. Through Millmerran, “Camp Oven Country” – not enough incentive to make me stop, I am afraid – and then to Toowoomba, and through Brisbane on the freeway without stopping. Bless freeways. And after 2200km I flop into the lukewarm Pacific Ocean at Noosa Heads and, floating on my back, realise I really am a desert person at heart but, in keeping winter at bay, for the next four weeks heading north I will have to put up with rainforests, coral reefs and sandy beaches. Do not think I will be enjoying myself.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, May 26, 2004
HEADING UP THE COUNTRY
THE world today has revealed itself to be pretty much what it was yesterday and the day before that, which means I need a holiday. Indeed, as you read this, I will be driving across Outback NSW towards Far North Queensland. Three days should be plenty, cross-country through Broken Hill, Bourke, Walgett, Goondiwindi to Noosa. Something like that anyway. And then head up the coast until it is time to come back again. With Australian tourists now being compulsorily fingerprinted in the US and the rest of the world a damned dangerous place, FNQ seems a far more pleasant option despite Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin and the XXXX beer. The lack of a real itinerary reflects the state of my mind lately. I seem to be losing control over life's direction and purpose. I might as well go with the flow, come what may, on this journey as well. I like road trips. The whole world contracts to the horizon and nothing matters beyond the distance of a day's drive and a quiet beer at the end. Wandering into the wilderness can be a liberating, purifying experience. Detached from your usual life, losing all connections, it can make you reflect on the stuff hidden deep in your soul. Your existence is reduced to thoughts. Here's a thought: Scientists have traced the DNA of modern man back 50,000 years but the female DNA reaches back 150,000 years. How is the discrepancy to be explained? Why is Adam so much younger than Eve? I am travelling light - a bottle of water and a change of underwear - although I have made sure the first-aid kit is stuffed with all manner of potions, pills, powders and bandages. Every time I go on holidays I seem to catch a cold, cut a foot or become infected in one way or another. I even considered arranging for phials of my own blood to be left at depots along the route in case of emergency. Don't scoff. Visiting the UK in the 1950s, Charles de Gaulle took with him bottles of French blood so he would not be contaminated with British blood if he required a transfusion. And whenever George W. Bush travels, he is accompanied by his own medical unit and a supply of American blood, which is said to be kept in a fridge in his armoured car among the cans of Coke. Fear of blood contamination is possibly carrying paranoia too far. I mean, what possible damage could a litre of Queensland blood do to me? Then again... Moving right along, by the end of this trip, blood could be the least of my worries. Psychiatric care might be more in order. In seeking to distance myself from my everyday existence, alone with my thoughts, I may get too close to my insecurities for comfort. Only to re-emerge later, even more disconcerted than usual, to resume the same old life. Or not. We shall see. Keep in touch.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, May 19, 2004
TAKE YOUR PHOBIAS LYING DOWN
ANOTHER week, another funeral: This time, standing at the back of the chapel in my funeral tie, which is overdue for a dryclean given half a chance, I was distracted by an old chap trembling with Parkinson's disease. The carpet under him was littered with yellow petals shaken loose from the rose stem he was holding. For some reason, it made me think of RSI. Remember RSI, as in Repetitive Strain Injury, which swept through Australian offices in the 1980s like a mass of hysterias? RSI was said to be an occupational injury resulting from excessive keyboard use, particularly affecting the forearms. Some journalists had it, coinciding with the introduction of computers to replace typewriters. Splints and slings suddenly appeared on editorial floors. Sufferers sought relief in drugs, physiotherapy and acupuncture. The unions quickly latched onto RSI, blaming inhumane working conditions. At the same time, other people using the same keyboards and doing the same work suffered no ill effects whatever, and saw RSI as a fake disorder by malingerers and malcontents. And, as they always do, lawyers made a killing, as did ``occ health and safety'' officers who were virtually unheard of until then. RSI was a bit hit-and-miss. A good friend of mine, a woman who has devoted her life to hypochondria, failed to catch it, to her great regret. Nor did I. But, then, I dared not. As a kid, I was never allowed to be unwell and, even now, taking a sick day still makes me feel nauseous with guilt. My mother, a nurse who insisted the beds had to be made with hospital corners, required a death certificate, at the very least, before a sick day was allowed off school. I carried the mumps around with me for years. As for RSI, from memory, more men than women complained of it, which possibly said more about the male embarrassment of not coping with new technology whereas females had lower expectations of themselves. Yes, men and women are hard-wired differently. At work the other day - between funerals - some of us were running our eyes over the newspaper photo of a bikini girl leaping in the surf with a panicky grimace on her face. "She looks like she stepped on a puffer fish," a female colleague said. Odd, because she looked to me as if her bikini bottom was being ripped off by the undertow. Just goes to show. I predict the office espresso machine will become the next RSI. I know of one legal firm that has disabled the milk frother on its espresso for fear of someone catching a killer disease from an unhygienic spout. Add FIH - Froth Induced Hysteria - to the long list of human phobias. Topping the list is having to give a speech, said to rank even higher than the fear of dying, which means the bloke lying in the coffin up front is feeling better than many first-time public speakers.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, May 12, 2004
TERROR IN WORDS OF BEHOLDEN
A SLACK and easy pitfall in journalism is to use "hot" words to spice up news reports: "Council slammed by outraged residents - crisis talks" ... when the only thing at stake is a traffic roundabout. Many grim hours of my life have been spent grinding back the purple prose and breathless beatups of young journalists. An editor's life is generally short and brutal. Even so, the most lurid journalistic excess comes nowhere near the bloodthirsty prose of al-Qaida. Here, in al-Qaida's own words, is its definition of diplomacy: "...written with blood and decorated with body parts and the smell of guns". This is not how people talk in normal conversation, not in my world anyway, not even among overwrought journos after 10 schooners of beer. And here is Saddam Hussein, with the Infidels at the gates of Baghdad: "With the help of God, their bellies will be roasted in the fires of hell forever. Our martyrs will go to Paradise." Normal everyday language apparently is inadequate for the purpose of holy war rants. Perhaps there is an al-Qaida University where students write essays on "The role of colourful adjectives in waging Jihad". In the US, an Arabic Language Analyser program is available for defence and security agencies to scour the Internet for websites written in Arabic in the hope of finding potential terrorists. It need only look for a handful of key words. Trusting instead in Google, I entered the sentence. "We have to turn the land of the Infidels into hell" - one of al-Qaida's milder threats - and 18,700 Web entries popped up. A bit of digging soon uncovered the ravings of anti-government loonies, militia weirdos, doomsayers and the amensayers of fundamentalist Christianity with a persecution complex. No Muslims, though, interestingly enough. Digging further, the Koran made increasingly frequent appearances - often written by the same Christian suspects preaching their own brand of hellfire and hatred. I wish everyone would leave Allah and God out of it. No religion advocates the murder of innocents. The Koran contains much the same "slay the idolator" language as the Bible although neither is quite as chilling as the US bumper sticker: "You can have my gun when you pry it from my paranoid, cold, dead hand." Ahhh, how I long for the simple days of the Cold War when the worst of it - "western imperialist running dogs" - now sounds like comforting nostalgia. Not for a minute do I under-estimate the seriousness of the threats made by terrorist groups but, as both an Infidel and an editor, I am deeply offended by their extremist, undisciplined language. Al-Qaida needs a good sub-editor.
DESERT BOY GOES TROPPO
HERE I am driving to Queensland on holiday and none of it, so far, has been wasted because I never consider the time spent in my own company a waste - you are a long time dead. Through Broken Hill, still prospering despite forecasts to the contrary, to Wilcannia, security meshed against Aboriginal raiding parties, where the petrol costs $1.11 a litre compared to the 97 cents at the Hill and 94 cents in Adelaide at the time. Swirling willy-willies left and right, the highway hereabouts is littered with fresh roadkill. For fear of hitting a ‘roo, I want to make damn sure I am off the road by dusk. Feral goats are already out for a feed in the lengthening shadows but I have yet to see any goat roadkill. Smarter than your average ‘roo. An enormous wedge-tailed eagle, perched atop a kangaroo carcass by the side of the road, glares back defiantly – “Mine, all mine, find your own!” – unmoved by the cars whooshing past only metres away. I love wedgies. With a full moon rising, I drive into Cobar thinking a margarita would be a perfect end to the first day. Only Cobar is not a margarita town. Cobar is a Bundy and beer town where a Magnum is not an ice cream but a brand of chemical for treating sheep lice and blowflies. A sign in the Great Western Hotel reads: “If it wasn’t for guns we’d be speaking Japanese by now.” I settle for a quiet beer and leave. Next day, across the flatlands of thirsty cotton fields in northern NSW where the roadside is littered with cotton balls, and into Nyngan where the parking signs read: “Rear to kerb 45 degree angle parking.” The proverbial old cockie in a hat trying to park back-back-back causes traffic gridlock in the main street. Then to Gilgandra - “Home of the Cooee” – and the sign, Brisbane 787, and other signs warning of speeding fines up to $3300 plus loss of licence. Good grief, how much is the fine for parking the wrong way around? Through a spattering plague of locusts, to Narrabri and other towns with unfinished names that could do with an “-ng” or a “-de” or “-nt” added to their tails. Also in Narrabri, the cars are required to park at 45 degrees facing the kerb … I give up! Across the border to Goodiwindi for the night, feeling out of place for not wearing a giant stockman’s hat, I order a XXXX beer in the Victoria Hotel and – this is embarrassing – enjoy it. I can only offer in my defence that beer usually tastes better under local conditions brewed using local water suited to the local climate. Next day, I hit a kangaroo that hops out of nowhere from among the prickly pears. Lucky for us both, it’s a glancing blow and, in the rear vision mirror, I am relieved to see him bounce back across the road although I expect he will have a sore rump for a few days. Serves him bloody right. Through Millmerran, “Camp Oven Country” – not enough incentive to make me stop, I am afraid – and then to Toowoomba, and through Brisbane on the freeway without stopping. Bless freeways. And after 2200km I flop into the lukewarm Pacific Ocean at Noosa Heads and, floating on my back, realise I really am a desert person at heart but, in keeping winter at bay, for the next four weeks heading north I will have to put up with rainforests, coral reefs and sandy beaches. Do not think I will be enjoying myself.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, May 26, 2004
HEADING UP THE COUNTRY
THE world today has revealed itself to be pretty much what it was yesterday and the day before that, which means I need a holiday. Indeed, as you read this, I will be driving across Outback NSW towards Far North Queensland. Three days should be plenty, cross-country through Broken Hill, Bourke, Walgett, Goondiwindi to Noosa. Something like that anyway. And then head up the coast until it is time to come back again. With Australian tourists now being compulsorily fingerprinted in the US and the rest of the world a damned dangerous place, FNQ seems a far more pleasant option despite Steve "Crocodile Hunter" Irwin and the XXXX beer. The lack of a real itinerary reflects the state of my mind lately. I seem to be losing control over life's direction and purpose. I might as well go with the flow, come what may, on this journey as well. I like road trips. The whole world contracts to the horizon and nothing matters beyond the distance of a day's drive and a quiet beer at the end. Wandering into the wilderness can be a liberating, purifying experience. Detached from your usual life, losing all connections, it can make you reflect on the stuff hidden deep in your soul. Your existence is reduced to thoughts. Here's a thought: Scientists have traced the DNA of modern man back 50,000 years but the female DNA reaches back 150,000 years. How is the discrepancy to be explained? Why is Adam so much younger than Eve? I am travelling light - a bottle of water and a change of underwear - although I have made sure the first-aid kit is stuffed with all manner of potions, pills, powders and bandages. Every time I go on holidays I seem to catch a cold, cut a foot or become infected in one way or another. I even considered arranging for phials of my own blood to be left at depots along the route in case of emergency. Don't scoff. Visiting the UK in the 1950s, Charles de Gaulle took with him bottles of French blood so he would not be contaminated with British blood if he required a transfusion. And whenever George W. Bush travels, he is accompanied by his own medical unit and a supply of American blood, which is said to be kept in a fridge in his armoured car among the cans of Coke. Fear of blood contamination is possibly carrying paranoia too far. I mean, what possible damage could a litre of Queensland blood do to me? Then again... Moving right along, by the end of this trip, blood could be the least of my worries. Psychiatric care might be more in order. In seeking to distance myself from my everyday existence, alone with my thoughts, I may get too close to my insecurities for comfort. Only to re-emerge later, even more disconcerted than usual, to resume the same old life. Or not. We shall see. Keep in touch.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, May 19, 2004
TAKE YOUR PHOBIAS LYING DOWN
ANOTHER week, another funeral: This time, standing at the back of the chapel in my funeral tie, which is overdue for a dryclean given half a chance, I was distracted by an old chap trembling with Parkinson's disease. The carpet under him was littered with yellow petals shaken loose from the rose stem he was holding. For some reason, it made me think of RSI. Remember RSI, as in Repetitive Strain Injury, which swept through Australian offices in the 1980s like a mass of hysterias? RSI was said to be an occupational injury resulting from excessive keyboard use, particularly affecting the forearms. Some journalists had it, coinciding with the introduction of computers to replace typewriters. Splints and slings suddenly appeared on editorial floors. Sufferers sought relief in drugs, physiotherapy and acupuncture. The unions quickly latched onto RSI, blaming inhumane working conditions. At the same time, other people using the same keyboards and doing the same work suffered no ill effects whatever, and saw RSI as a fake disorder by malingerers and malcontents. And, as they always do, lawyers made a killing, as did ``occ health and safety'' officers who were virtually unheard of until then. RSI was a bit hit-and-miss. A good friend of mine, a woman who has devoted her life to hypochondria, failed to catch it, to her great regret. Nor did I. But, then, I dared not. As a kid, I was never allowed to be unwell and, even now, taking a sick day still makes me feel nauseous with guilt. My mother, a nurse who insisted the beds had to be made with hospital corners, required a death certificate, at the very least, before a sick day was allowed off school. I carried the mumps around with me for years. As for RSI, from memory, more men than women complained of it, which possibly said more about the male embarrassment of not coping with new technology whereas females had lower expectations of themselves. Yes, men and women are hard-wired differently. At work the other day - between funerals - some of us were running our eyes over the newspaper photo of a bikini girl leaping in the surf with a panicky grimace on her face. "She looks like she stepped on a puffer fish," a female colleague said. Odd, because she looked to me as if her bikini bottom was being ripped off by the undertow. Just goes to show. I predict the office espresso machine will become the next RSI. I know of one legal firm that has disabled the milk frother on its espresso for fear of someone catching a killer disease from an unhygienic spout. Add FIH - Froth Induced Hysteria - to the long list of human phobias. Topping the list is having to give a speech, said to rank even higher than the fear of dying, which means the bloke lying in the coffin up front is feeling better than many first-time public speakers.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, May 12, 2004
TERROR IN WORDS OF BEHOLDEN
A SLACK and easy pitfall in journalism is to use "hot" words to spice up news reports: "Council slammed by outraged residents - crisis talks" ... when the only thing at stake is a traffic roundabout. Many grim hours of my life have been spent grinding back the purple prose and breathless beatups of young journalists. An editor's life is generally short and brutal. Even so, the most lurid journalistic excess comes nowhere near the bloodthirsty prose of al-Qaida. Here, in al-Qaida's own words, is its definition of diplomacy: "...written with blood and decorated with body parts and the smell of guns". This is not how people talk in normal conversation, not in my world anyway, not even among overwrought journos after 10 schooners of beer. And here is Saddam Hussein, with the Infidels at the gates of Baghdad: "With the help of God, their bellies will be roasted in the fires of hell forever. Our martyrs will go to Paradise." Normal everyday language apparently is inadequate for the purpose of holy war rants. Perhaps there is an al-Qaida University where students write essays on "The role of colourful adjectives in waging Jihad". In the US, an Arabic Language Analyser program is available for defence and security agencies to scour the Internet for websites written in Arabic in the hope of finding potential terrorists. It need only look for a handful of key words. Trusting instead in Google, I entered the sentence. "We have to turn the land of the Infidels into hell" - one of al-Qaida's milder threats - and 18,700 Web entries popped up. A bit of digging soon uncovered the ravings of anti-government loonies, militia weirdos, doomsayers and the amensayers of fundamentalist Christianity with a persecution complex. No Muslims, though, interestingly enough. Digging further, the Koran made increasingly frequent appearances - often written by the same Christian suspects preaching their own brand of hellfire and hatred. I wish everyone would leave Allah and God out of it. No religion advocates the murder of innocents. The Koran contains much the same "slay the idolator" language as the Bible although neither is quite as chilling as the US bumper sticker: "You can have my gun when you pry it from my paranoid, cold, dead hand." Ahhh, how I long for the simple days of the Cold War when the worst of it - "western imperialist running dogs" - now sounds like comforting nostalgia. Not for a minute do I under-estimate the seriousness of the threats made by terrorist groups but, as both an Infidel and an editor, I am deeply offended by their extremist, undisciplined language. Al-Qaida needs a good sub-editor.