It's that time of the year again. The pulse quickens and the heart starts to pound, in the Middle of Winter, the finest competition outside the Rugby World Cup gets under way. The Six Nations Tournament Brilliant, or it would be if I weren't stuck in dismal Auckland, New Zealand. I can't believe that I cannot see any of the games, or at least I haven't yet found a pub that carries the Rugby Channel. All the six nations are being shown on the Rugby channel here, but most people don...
Dear all, Australia Day Part II On this, Australia day 26th January 2004, Billy Young was honoured with the Medal of the Order of Australia. This story is not so much a fete of Billy Youngs remarkable life, this has been told elsewhere, notably by Lynette Silver, who has painstakingly compiled Billys history and those of his fallen companions. It is rather the consequence of a elderly chap I met at a little know secluded oases in the heart of Sydney, where away from the madness o...
Dear all, Australia Day. It is Australia day here, unsuprisingly, in the land of Oz. Strolling through Sydney, everywehere is crowded with flocking Australians, while bemused foreigners such as myself stare in wonder at all the flags and the overt patriotism. Trying to get lunch is a formidable obstacle, a madness in itself, but fortunately I have made friends with a Latvian owner of a Bavarian restaurant and am able to find a table, and more importantly to be fed, in a reasonabl...
From Efwa:Efwa, 'I loved the drama and poetry of this' It's a fantastic story isn't it? But remember it's Mollys story. I haven't seen the film, but I have seen where it was made in the outback. There's this little shanty town, the name escapes me for the moment, I'll dig it out of my notes when I get a chance, which is basically a bunkhouse next to a railway line. Population is four. There's a mad Englishman called Harry who wanders the outback every day searching for a ...
Dear all, Heading North from Port Augusta, the outback stretches endlessly before you. It is hot, dusty, dry and drippingly empty. The Stuart Highway winds slowly west and then north, skirting the magnificent Flinders ranges. It passes between vast, inland salt lakes, remnants of an ancient inland sea that evaporated millions of years ago leaving a rheumy white crust as the only memory of water. A warning sign on the shores of these desolate lakes, covered like ice, tells yo...
Dear all, The songlines are a fascinating concept. Among other things they are also a map of Australia from the aboriginal perspective. In theory an aborigine can sing himself right across the land, from one end to another. The song is like a mental map, a list of routes from one water hole to another, one piece of hunting ground to another. When an aborigine is born, he inherits part of the dreaming, and this is his responsibility for life, to maintain the land that he inherits ...
The Welsh Taxi Driver. In Coober Pedy I met a Welsman who told me a little story. Many years ago he had been prospecting in Northwest Canada in a one horse town called Broken Stick for anything the earth would yield; ore, gold, oil anything that could be sold further south. There was one road in town a kilometer in length and dotted with higgledy-piggledy hotels, busy bars and bordellos. Men slept ten to a room where it was dangerous to light a cigarette because of the fartin...
Dear all, In the outback, other than keeping whip snakes out of your swag bag, there is little to do other than gather around the camp fire with scrubby old diggers and swap tales of BLOOD CHILLING TERROR! On one particularly chill night, with a host of stars crowding the sky, an old aboriginal opal miner from Coober Pedy bade us gather around the flickering flames and crackling gum-bark to hear tell of the min-min lights. The min-min lights were named by the abor...
A small Chinese man pushes porter from the vast red-bricked megalith of Market City towards the rat infested destinations of of Chinatowns restaurants. His cargo is wide punnets of purple broccoli, and he sings to himself in a strange, alien sort of nasaly wail as he coughs and spits his way eyes shut throught the familiar songlines between gawping tourists and touting waiters. A beautiful young woman in impossibly tight white jeans that draw the male eye to consider, is she or isn...
From the Australian Newspaper: 'There was another story doing the rounds in Sydney some years ago which, one could only assume, was a furphy but which, delightfully for those who live off the grist in the gossip mill, turned out to be true. It was divorce time for a well-heeled couple and things were unusually acrimonious. He was in London on business, she here in the family mansion from which he had not moved. The telephone ran hot with screaming, tantrums, threats and accusations. Sh...
This week the Libyan Prime Minister said that his country was not responsible for the Lockerbie bombing in 1988. He said that his country only argreed to take responsibility so that sanctions and travel restrictions would be lifted and ordinary Libyans could then 'get at the white women who were easy' Following outrage in the US, the Prime MInister later withdrew his remark, saying 'Okay then we did do it'. The US has accepted the retraction saying 'They have done what they needed...
Israeli troops this week have seized over $8 million US dollars in raids on Palstinian banks, claiming the money was ear-marked for terrorism. An Israeli bank robber, sorry, spokesperson, said from his new Penthouse flat that the money seized would be used to improve the lives of ordinary Palestinian people. This would include paying for an extension to the wall being built to protect the Palestinians from themselves, along with a new swimming pool for his wifes servants tennis partner...
from the Australian Newspaper: ' My hairdresser sucked me in; she told me it had happened only last weekend. Her best friend in the whole world, a legend in the iconoclastic world of straight blow-dries, had been clearing up the salon on her late-night shift. Caught up in the intricacies of separating hundreds of small pieces of foil in readiness for the next day's bleachings, at first she didn't hear the rapping on the glass door. When she did, the hapless young man standin...
I recall reading this in a paper several years back. It's probably not true, hence the title, but what the hell, I'm in a storytelling mood. I proably made it up, who knows? Some years back, a Welsh couple were travelling through a remote part of the outback when a kangaroo leaps in front of their hired car. The driver desperately wrenches the wheel to try and avoid hitting the roo which simply stops in the road and observes its impending destruction by the four wheel ...
Dear all, I was shocked last night to see a debate on the Larry King show, carried by the moronic CNN news channel. I was shocked in many ways. Firstly the level of the arguments on both sides was so childish that it was almost unwatchable. I have never seen people present arguments that you could literally drive a truck through. The background is that in California, the mayor? has given approval for some 300 same sex couples to be married. This is important, because this all...