Here Today....

Why do blogs just stop? Just as you get interested in them and build them into your life as essential reading, they just stop. Sacred Facts has done it. Fifty Quid Bloke has done it and now, thankfully restarted. I suspect it's a whole range of things, from running out of things to say to running out of time, with death and divorce and such like in between, though not in those two cases.

Of course, if you live in regional Australia, and that's most of Australia, the answer is probably "no power." We are in the season of spring storms. The morning starts sunny but hot. The heat and humidity builds during the day, as do towering clouds, and then by tea-time, the heavens are ready for a grand electrical display which lasts most of the night. At some stage, you can bank on the power going down, probably for many hours. Blogs are, I think, supposed to be spontaneous and nothing kills spontaneity like a blank screen.

Neither is it helpful when it comes to the ironing. Confronted with a pile of shirts the height of Uluru the other night, I managed precisely one sleeve before we were plunged into darkness. There are compensations, of course. The lightning is spectacular, the trees in the reserve silhouetted against the sky and the light sufficient to pick out blades of grass on the lawn. We get sheet lightning and forked lightning, in case you get bored, and the thunder is bowel-loosening.

At some stage, there is usually a downpour, hammering on our metal roof. Why a metal roof? Well, we also get hail stones the size of golf balls which can turn slate or tiles into slivers in a few seconds. They also make pretty patterns on your car, if you were foolish enough to leave it outside.

Whale Watch

Forget kangaroo-shooting heterosexuality officers (see Straight Up below) - this is what it's all about. From the beach this morning we watched whales spouting and breaching and this afternoon, Sara went up on the headland and saw five of them frolicking, about 400m off-shore. Even in the vast expanse of sea, they manage to make an impact.

Straight Up

Sometimes you come across a new item that is so culturally rich, you just have to share it. So I bring you the news that the students' union of University of New England in Armidale, a country town some hours' drive from here, now has a Heterosexuality Officer.

He's a trainee lawyer, who lives at home with his mother but, he swiftly points out, does have a girlfriend. As a trainee lawyer, he's also swift to point out that he's got nothing against gays. It's just that it's unfair that gays should get all the attention and resources (I'm not clear what these resources are, but never mind, there's more). Straight people should have someone to look after their interests, too (I bet no one's ever been insulted or thumped on the streets of Armidale for being straight so this puzzles me as well). He gets paid a small sum for his efforts but, at the time of being interviewed, hadn't actually done anything yet.

It was quickly pointed out in the national press that he wasn't much of a model for red-blooded Aussie hetero males as he lived with his mum and, far worse, he still had the "P" plate that probationer drivers have to display on his ute. Then again, he was photographed as he was preparing for an evening's kangaroo shooting.

Finally, this appointment comes at a strange time as students across the land are up in arms at the Government's proposals to end compulsory student union membership, along with the compulsory fee that keeps student unions going. Part of the Government's argument is that the money gets spent on frivolous things like, errr, well, I can't think of any examples just now because I've just been reminded forcibly that Australia really is a foreign country.

Buskers, Buskers Everywhere

It's the International Buskers' Festival and for days the streets of Coffs and nearby Sawtell, where this bendy lady was performing, have been full of brazen individuals gratuitously abusing passers-by, flinging fiery brands into the air, and generally working their socks off in the spring sunshine. Today we also saw the New Zealand duo Motley Two (there's a rock joke in there, folks). Quote, from the top of towering unicycle: "Want to know how I get off? Come and see me after I come down off this bike." And there was Mario, Queen of the Circus, who does a juggling tribute to Freddie Mercury. You had to be there, really.

Ashes to Ashes

There's a bitter taste down here this morning as the nation comes to terms with yet another sporting failure. On these occasions, the media takes it upon itself to cushion the blow. ABC's Radio National (the loose equivalent of Radio 4) ran a sports bulletin that mentioned that the final Test had been drawn but omitted the fact that England had won the Ashes. (This is quite normal. If any Aussie wins a bronze medal in a major sporting event, we never hear who won gold, as it is clearly immaterial).

The Sydney Morning Herald was a little more generous, pointing out that the triumph was almost entirely due to a South African-born batsman. My colleague, Greg, agreed wholeheartedly, adding that there were also two Welshman in the side. And this from a nation of immigrants. The Australian remarked that it was a South African who broke Australian hearts, though he is best mates with Warney, so that makes it a bit better.

A senior member of the House of Representatives congratulated me as we entered Parliament House this morning and noted that England played the better cricket. I though this was magnamimous and relayed his comments to Greg, who promptly remarked: "No, we played worse." The real tragedy is that this opportunity for glee is mostly lost on me. I did try watching it on Sunday night but nothing seemed to be happening and then I became confused by the issue of "the light" (a revelation, perhaps?) and went to bed.

For guidance in all Australian sporting matters, I usually turn to the writings of Scratcher Gillespie at The Bladder I suggest you do too.

Some Success

I feel I should report that the Australian women's rowing eight (see Down Under and Out below) did bounce back from adversity to win a gold medal at the World Championships, all eight finishing sitting up and holding their oars. The Wallabies, however, did go down to the All Blacks. Coach Eddie Jones said the players just weren't good enough. This is good news for the northern hemisphere where the Wallabies will be touring shortly and bad news in this neck of the woods, representing a shocking blow to the national psyche. A lot rests on the Ashes.

Down Under and Out

We’re having a national crisis of confidence at the moment. Of course, it’s all about sport.

The Wallabies (that’s rugby union) have lost their last four matches which hasn’t happened since dinosaurs roamed the earth and there are calls for heads to roll (it’s very Welsh, really). They face a rampant All Blacks on Saturday. One luminary said that no one feared the side’s tight five because “they couldn’t pull a boy scout off your sister.”

Aussie tennis players are leaving tennis tournaments even quicker than Tim Henman. And as for the cricket - well, as you probably know, with one test to go and all to play for, when the team isn’t attacking the opposition, they’re attacking each other. So with the Ashes and the Tri-Nations to be decided at the weekend, and the rugby a foregone conclusion (we're going to lose), they can at least look to rowing for some meagre consolation.

You’ll remember the outrage at the last Olympics when the women’s eight was going strong for a medal and one of team, Sally Robbins, stopped for a rest, sorry, collapsed with exhaustion. Here’s a picture....


Un-Australian activity

The team are now back in business and have been competing in the World Championships in Japan, minus poor Sally and most of the rest of the Olympic competitors, apparently consumed by bitterness. Well, back in business, apart from a broken oar that lost them their heat and put them out of the competition. But, just to show it’s not all gloom and doom, I offer you this quote from their high-peformance director, Neil Donaldson: “At least they all finished sitting up.”

Yes Minister or Yes Mate?

Two telling pieces from the this week's news. First to the Parliament House in Canberra, where I spent much of last week, the flagpole of which you can see here. I've noted before that it's a very informal place, where Ministers expect to be called by their first names when they drop into the staff canteen, so it came as a surprise when security staff were told in a memo that they should no longer use the word "mate" as a form of address. Even a newcomer like me was shocked. The word is ubiquitous, a form of male bonding and the last thing that anyone would take offence to.

Predictably, the media denounced it as "un-Australian", which is the most damning indictment you could possibly use here; the Prime Minister, no less, said it was absurd and looked disgusted; and mate-ship was resumed at the security desks within 24 hours.

The other item has a less happy ending. Further north, in Queensland, the state that is home to all things crawly and poisonous and vicious, a husband and wife were fishing from a boat in one of their favourite water-holes when he was taken by a crocodile. She made it to the shore and raised the alarm but there was no sign of her husband. That's horrific, but what was interesting was the reaction.

It's been illegal to shot wild crocodiles since 1972 and there were calls for culling to be restarted. I thought this was ridiculous. There are parts of this wonderful country where very wild animals live and humans really shouldn't venture, unless, to put it bluntly, they want to become part of the food chain. If you do venture into that territory, then I reckon you go at your own risk.

And that is exactly what the man's widow said. She objected to the shooting of the crocodile thought to have taken her husband and said no others should be killed. That was not what her husband would have wanted, she said. Clearly a woman of some character.

Neighbours

Been a weekend for meeting more neighbours, or at least finding out more about the people you wave at when you see them on the street. This came about about because Carmen, next door on one side, had a small party on Friday, and because my new two-stroke whipper-snipper wouldn't start on Saturday.

Carmen is the owner of Stolly, the large Russian Blue cat who spends some time sleeping at our place and her house has many large fish tanks, housing local fish she and her parents have caught while diving nearby. They're quite intrepid, I think. Not sure fish tanks go with having a large, confident tom-cat but apparently they live in harmony.

Greg and Linda, on the other side have two children, two cats and a husky. Greg does a lot of fishing when he gets the chance. He has a ferocious four-stroke whipper-snipper but he wasn't around yesterday. Phil and Tracy live across the street with their children - Phil used to drive a wrecking truck in Sydney but prefers it here. We first met Phil when the people who sold us this house failed to provide us with any means of getting in. At least, we had remotes for the garage but they'd locked the interior door. He was very helpful and calm.

Liz and John live behind us. She's a lawyer working from home and John runs his own smallgoods supply business and he's surfed since he was five, but not in the winter. He dreams of buying some land and living off it, which seems to be a recurring theme here. Having met them once, it'll be shame if they move.

Lee, directly across the road I'd met with her Jack Russell on one of my morning runs. She was trying to take a photo of the moon just as the sun was coming up over the ocean. Partner Peter I met when I was about to dislocate my shoulder trying to start our new whipper-snipper. He's originally from Germany and they actually do have a small farm, inland from here. He kindly confirmed that the failure to start was not due to my incompetence (that must be a first)and then kindly dealt with the offending grass with his own four-stroke. Oh yes, and as I mentioned previously, Anne from Bethesda lives round the corner. That's all for the moment.

Meeting and Sleeping

The beach is a great meeting place, I suppose for no other reason that people spend so much time there. Marcus, the estate agent who sold us this house, told me he often did deals "out the back" ie bobbing up and down beyond the wave-break on his surf board. And Luke, the MP for whom I work, often gets harangued about everything from the Pacific Highway to industrial relations when he dons his boardies and wanders down to Diggers, where we used to live.

My own meetings are simpler, I'm glad to say. Among the regulars on the dawn shift at Sandy Beach is Ann, a colleague of Sara's whose terrier sometimes licks the salt off my legs when I've been running. Actually, it's not quite so simple, because Ann comes from Bethesda, so there's an element of coincidence. But it's very simple for the dog.

On Saturday, I was wandering along, sizing up the surf, when I saw a familiar figure in T-shirt and boardies, board under his arm, clearly making his way back into the village. I see him often but don't know his name. Had he been in, I asked? No, he replied. "I came down early but then I fell asleep and now the wind's come up. Tomorrow morning about 7.30 to eight. I'll give it another go then." I went home, changed and surfed despite the wind.

Come 8.30 on Sunday, I was in the water and noticed the same bloke - same T-shirt, boardies and board - and watched him make his way down to the end of the beach, put down his board on the little dunes, lie face down in the sand, and evidently fall fast asleep. He was still there when I left, desperate for breakfast, some time later.

I suppose there's simplicity in the fact that, if you don't feel like doing anything, you can just lie down on the beach in the middle of winter and fall asleep, but I can't help feeling there are one or two questions hanging in the air as well.

Round Trip

We’re both on leave this week and so decided to go for a drive, just to remind ourselves how big this place this. We went north up the highway to Grafton, turned inland across the hills to Glen Innes, home of a Celtic festival and some faux standing stones, along the New England Highway to the small university town of Armidale, and then completed the circle by returning through Ebor, Dorrigo, Bellingen and Coffs. It was about 600km, I guess.

It was a day of broken cloud, and we’d had some rain, so the light was spectacular, navy blue clouds lurking over the still-parched inland fields. For the most part, the countryside looked empty, with just post-boxes hinting of a farm or homestead down the end of a dirt track. It reminded us of Mid Wales, only much more lonely. Although the road signs are in English, of course, it still feels foreign.


Caution - Quoll

You wouldn’t see “CAUTION - QUOLLS” in the UK, would you? And here, CATTLE AHEAD doesn’t mean that, occasionally, some cows will cross the road, it means that there’s a herd apparently living beside and on the road.

Every watercourse is named - Bullock Creek, Boggy Creek, Boundary Creek and Skeleton Creek - I guess because water’s so important but also to try to confer some ownership, some sense of security or continuity. Then it strikes you that for centuries before the Europeans appeared, all these places had other names, all foreign to us and with their own stories. At the end of the day, it’s just the kind of countryside to see ghosts.

I Agree....

Required reading for all podcasters......

Last Plane to Jakarta: Memo

Red Hot Chilli Peppers

To the Sawtell Chilli Festival this weekend. I have to say that the only chilli-based activity was a capsicum juggling competition, several stalls selling fiery chutneys and mustards, and one selling pepper plants, but the atmosphere was good. We bought these, and then went for a coffee and listened to a rather good Latin Jazz band. I never thought I'd have a garden with chillies growing in it.

Pirates to Pods...

There are many people, not least "the enigmatic RS" (see Real Reviews for his lighter work), who spend a lot of time pondering what's going on with blogs and podcasts and what it all means for the traditional media. There are also a lot of people pondering whether it's ever going to be possible to make a good living out of it.

One person who should know is Adam Curry, long-time broadcaster and podcast pioneer, and he's just devoted one of his Daily Source Code programmes (23 June) to a personal survey of how we got where we are and where we're likely to be going. It's a good listen, a fresh, largely unedited stream of consciousness by someone who's actually got something to say, taking you from the days of pirate radio, through do-it-yourself modems, to the current explosion in podcasts. I'll give you just one detail - you really should hear it for yourselves - but, bearing in mind he's probably one of the most successful podcasters, with 100,000 downloads per programme, it still costs him $350 an edition.

What he doesn't say is whether he's made any great efforts to commercialise it, either through advertising or subscription. I guess we're all used to having radio for free so any thought of subscription services probably won't get very far.

But then, that's not the point. The point is that, as long as you've got the patience of a saint to grapple with the technology, you can do it yourself and hopefully produce some content that's entertaining or useful to someone somewhere. It's a form of play (and, oh yes, I nearly forgot, and of communication) and not a means of making money. All of which tends to get lost in the debate, I think.

Just Warming Up.....

Gather the UK's having a spot of good weather. I know because most nights we watch the news on what we call the immigrants' channel or, to give it its proper title, the Special Broadcasting Service, which always ends with a global weather report, so you can see what the weather's doing where you used to live and decide whether it was a good idea to move or not.

It always starts in Australia, of course, then the globe swings east to New Zealand, and moves across Asia, Europe, Africa, and South America and finishes in North America. It also makes you realise how far away you are from home. The news reader, often Lee Lin Chin, with a staggeringly funky line in specs and hairdo's, picks out a few cities (somehow Asuncion always gets a mention, whoever's presenting). On the night that the outline of the UK was almost covered (it is very small) by the figure 32, Lee Lin dismissively intoned: "London - warm." If only she knew.

Anyway, I've also seem all the dire warnings about skin cancer, so remember what the kids are taught here: "slip, slop, slap - slip on your sunglasses, slop on the suncream, slap on a hat." Take care out there.

PS ...and just to show how different things are here...just watched the SBS evening news and the coverage of the elections in the Northern Territory. The Country Liberal Party did very badly and part of the blame is falling on their plan to hook the territory's electricity supply up to the national grid, a policy described by SBS's sound and sober political correspondent as "wacky."

Wrecks and Roos

It's a public holiday, so this morning we set out for a walk along Sandy Beach, over Bare Bluff, along Sandy Back Beach, Fiddeman's Beach, Emerald Beach and up on to Look At Me Now Point. The scenery becomes increasingly like Pembrokeshire, apart from the plaques commemorating shipwrecks, with considerable loss of life, and the colony of kangaroos on the point. It's the depths of winter, so shorts and t-shirt are fine.

Somehow, the thought of the trip to Canberra doesn't appeal after that. Although the clamour about Schapelle Corby (see below) seems to have died down, Parliament House seem to have almost daily deliveries of white powder, causing secuity alerts, presumably as some kind of reaction to the package that was sent to the Indonesian embassy. You'll be glad to hear that the loading bay staff who discover this stuff are offered counselling. It's not quite the image I had of Australians, I must admit.

Beauty and The Beast

I expect it’s hardly raised a ripple in the UK but down here, the country’s been convulsed by the case of Schapelle Corby. You don’t know who she is, do you? Well, she’s a young, beautiful (by common consent) beauty student who has just started a 20-year jail sentence in Bali after being found guilty of trying to smuggle 4.1kg of cannabis in her body-board bag.


Schapelle Corby

So much is fact. Nothing else is. The reaction to the sentence was in some cases hysterical and there have calls for a boycott of Bali as a holiday destination (Bali is to Australia what Majorca is to the UK), attempts to claw back donations to the tsunami relief fund, and suspicious white powder was sent to the Indonesian Embassy in Canberra, setting off a major security alert.

Why so much fuss? Well, the pictures have been riveting. The attractive Aussie girl next door in a scrum of Indonesian policemen, or weeping in the courtroom, pressing her hand to her forehead in her shock and grief etc etc. It’s hard to see anyone making such a meal of it if the defendant had been a middle aged man and, indeed, no one is making the slightest fuss about the 40-odd other Australians facing drugs charges elsewhere in South East Asia.

There’s also (and this is an opinion frequently expressed by Australians) latent racism. Turn a place into a holiday destination and it loses some of its foreign-ness, it’s colonised, and you can forget that you're abroad where different attitudes and customs apply. Until something like this happens. Then it’s foreign again and corrupt and contemptible.

There’s been much confusion about how the Australians could react so generously to the tsunami appeal and then react so extremely to this trial and verdict. The easy answer is that the people who donated their money to the Boxing Day victims are not the same people who calling for boycotts etc now. Well, the ones who want their money back clearly are the same, but you know what I mean. The fact is that many have clearly decided that she’s innocent and a victim of a corrupt and inadequate judicial system.

Anyway, whatever the rights and wrongs of it, it’s rare that one sees the Prime Minister, John Howard, looking rattled but he certainly did last night when the Indonesian Embassy was being evacuated. And his line of not interfering in the judicial system of another country clearly doesn’t stand up for many weighed against the weeping beauty student in the hands of foreign devils.

And I’m sure it’s not the same people castigating John Howard for not doing enough that are currently on holiday in Bali and taking photographs of the jail where she is held or writing the spoof adverts mentioned in the Daily Telegraph, one of her main supporters, for the Schapelle Lawn Mower (holds 4.1kg of grass) or the Schapelle Beauty Treatment (takes twenty years off your life).

The Drug Dogs Don't Work

Funny old weekend. Started off by recovering from the drugs the dental surgeon administered so he could take a tooth out through the side of my gum (don't ask). If anyone offers you "twilight sedation", take it. It's great at the time. Then we made our way to the garden centre to start our project to soften the stark outlines of 15 Ti-Tree Road. Now I can look out my study window and see a Lady Palm, two Sago Palms and a Milky Way. Looks good.

Sunday has so far seen a short but somewhat volatile surfing session. No one told me there were so many different kinds of waves. And as I'm flying off to Canberra (not jetting off, you'll note; the plane has propellors) I read with interest about the airport sniffer dogs who have to be retrained because the cocaine they were given by the police to practise on turned out to be talcum powder. I wonder how many old woman and babies they arrested before they sorted that one out.

Corridors of Power

Been working in Canberra this week. Don’t ask me what the city is like because although I was there all week, all I saw was the road from the apartments where we stayed and Parliament House. On a rare daylight trip, I did notice that the leaves had turned brown, a welcome reminder of autumn back in the UK - we don’t really get seasons in Coffs.

Parliament House is a fine building, though suffering at the moment from work to install concrete barriers against car bombers. It was built in the eighties and fine wood and Australian art are much in evidence. Stand in central, enclosed courtyard and look up and you’ll see the vast Australian flag flying against a perfect blue sky through the glass roof.

It’s confusing, though, as most of the corridors look exactly the same and much of the prowling the corridors of power is because the prowler is lost, at least in my case and I gather that’s common. But I have the route between our office and Aussie’s Coffee Bar pretty well mapped. I even know the short cut that runs through one of the many open courtyards, still warm enough to sit in with a sandwich and a book in a rare break.

I guess most Westminster MPs would die for offices like these. Two large working rooms, an anteroom, bathroom and kitchen. You’ve probably gathered from anything you may have seen about proceedings in the House of Representatives that things are somewhat less formal. Electorate Officers like me are the lowest form of life but that didn’t stop the Deputy Speaker joining three of us for breakfast.

G'day, Minister...

Spent Friday roaming around Coffs Harbour with a visiting Government Minister. It was very different from what used to happen in my Welsh Office days. For one thing, I can't recall any British Minister greeting people with a cheery "hi, guys". Also, I never worked for a Minister who used to be a shearers' cook, even in Wales, or who held a pilot's licence. It was rather refreshing.

One thing was familiar. Her staff seemed to be just as firmly glued to their mobiles and just as harassed as I remember being so I must have made some progress. On the other hand, later this evening I will carefully pack five shirts, five pairs of pants and five pairs of socks (and a few other things of course)in preparation to spend next week in Canberra, a process that does seems horribly familiar even after all this time. It's Budget Day on Tuesday, against the background of a leadership dispute between the Treasurer and the Prime Minister. Funny, but that's ringing bells, too...

Still, I don't have to go every week and I consoled myself this afternoon by registering the domain for the forthcoming podcast. Watch this space.