I'd Love To Believe This Pair Were Tourists

...but they sound far too Australian to me. Sigh.

Click the headline for the (very short) news story.

Pair rescued after sex doll river ride

I dunno. When I was a kid in Far North Queensland, the wet season was a time for some serious fun. Gullies became creeks, and big, open culverts became water races. You'd climb into your swimmers, grab a beat-up polystyrene surfboard or a vinyl air-mattress, and go flood surfing.

In all the years I was up there, I don't recall any kid getting killed playing in the monsoon flows. I know it's verboten these days, of course. And I know that Sydneysiders are routinely sucked down drains during flash floods.

But we lived there, and the rains came every year. The roads were quite reliably cut for maybe two weeks a year (not all at once, usually.) The power would get knocked out, and you'd have to rely on your stocks of non-perishable food, plus candles and Tilly lamps, and you'd boil your drinking water.

I'm not saying that we're not better off these days. But there's something to be said for being prepared, and for knowing the enemy. Almost nobody had to rush off to buy kerosene and lamps and candles and matches and tins of food, because everybody had a cupboard or a box full of essentials for the cyclone season.

And as for stormwater surfing... again, I don't think kids then were smarter than kids now. But I do think they were allowed to take more risks, and as a result, developed a better sense of their own physical abilities.

We didn't get sucked into stormwater drains because we didn't play in the places that might have been too dangerous for us. And we knew how to judge that because we'd been given the chance to have a few falls, take a few risks, and acquire an understanding of the need to look after ourselves.

Ah well. There's progress for you, eh?

Anyone Got Designs For An Ark?

The image above isn't mine. It was taken by my brother-in-law. It's the interior of the business that he and my sister run in Toowoomba, on the day of the now-infamous flash flood. My young nephew was in there too.

They survived, though they had to climb on top of the counters to avoid the rapid rise of the waters. My sister is fine too, though it will be quite a while before things are straightened out down where they live in Brisbane.

The picture is up here -- with permission -- as a reminder. That wall of water rose in nothing flat, and caught people completely by surprise. Toowoomba is a wreck, large chunks of the Lockyer valley are in trouble, and there's a hell of a clean-up to come in Brisbane.

If you haven't already found a way to offer a bit of help to Queensland, now's a good time to think about it. The kids and I did a big gather-up here in the house -- six big, sturdy bags full of clothes, toys, books, and house-hold items: serviceable things which can be sold on by the Salvation Army, or even directly contributed to people who are looking to rebuild lives.

There are many ways to donate. The Queensland Premier's Flood Appeal can accept donations directly from this website, for example. But don't forget that in such a sweeping disaster, it's more than just money. A register of volunteers for the cleanup is already in place - but even simple things like donations of non-perishable foodstuffs and basic household materials can be useful.

Meanwhile: if you've read about floods in Tasmania, don't worry about us. We're well set, and well stocked, and floods down here never last more than a few hours. Besides, the worst was over on the East Coast, where a couple roads have been cut.

Of course it never rains but it pours, as the saying goes. So it's raining here - not too hard, but with a maniacal, relentless quality. I won't be too surprised if it turns out that by tomorrow we've seen 200mm or more here. And that's a bit problematic, what with Natalie still on the mainland, planning to fly home this afternoon.

And naturally, it's been pissing down over where she is, near Kyneton in Victoria, on the music camp. I found out today they've been sandbagging in anticipation of rising rivers... she says the roads are clear and she can get to the airport. I hope so. The kids are looking forward to seeing her, and I'll be glad to stop doing the sole parent thing after the better part of a week.

That last, of course, would be why you've not heard a lot from me. Trapped indoors with three small kids for the last five days or so. We played a six hour game of Arkham Horror yesterday, defeating Yig the dreaded Serpent God with style. Today I've sent 'em up to the shed to play Wii games. Hopefully that'll keep 'em entertained until we have to go to the airport...

...wherever you are, whoever you may be: stay safe, and consider how good your life has been to you. Things could be a lot worse.

Melbourne Weekend

Natalie's yearly celtic music extravaganza is upon us. Every year, she takes a week and goes to Kyneton to practice folky music on her fiddle with a bunch of like-minded musos. I was supposed to go along this year and do some singing -- the people running the sing-sessions are old, old friends of mind from the Bad Old Brisbane days -- but things didn't work out that way, what with the difficulty of placing three kids for a full week, etc. So in the end, all five of us zipped over to Melbourne for a weekend of food and tourism, while Natalie will be staying until Friday.

Naturally, we had a late flight Friday night. Of course. But I'd organised a car rental, and good Meister Barnes had agreed to put up our clan at his (nigh empty for the moment, saving only himself) residence, so we had a bit of leeway. Good thing, really. I'm not altogether happy with the signage on Melbourne's freeways. There was a certain amount of ... navigating which had to occur, and even then, we wound up taking the M80 instead of the M43 to the M40 and thence to the M1. Yeah.

But on the good side, the rental folks had lost the keys to the Skoda they were going to rent us, so we wound up with a farnarkling huge electric-blue Commodore with less than 9000km on the clock. Ridiculous bloody car. Piss poor rear vision, huge blind spots - so they accommodate with a built-in reversing-radar sort of system. Bleah.

Still. It did take off nicely when I needed it to do so.

Mr Barnes was wonderfully accommodating. He had an entire sleeping plan laid out, and by the time we got there, we were in no mood to rearrange things. Except for the Mau-Mau, of course. She couldn't possibly sleep on the perfectly good guest bed in the study. Oh dear no. Because she heard things, you know?

You know how it goes. Mau-Mau and Natalie inhabited the larger bed. I took the guest bed in the study. The boys infiltrated Young Master Barnes' presently unoccupied bed. And other than the cloying heat (curse that mainland weather!) it was fine.

We had cunning plans for Saturday, and they worked out okay. We took in the museum, and met with Mr Barnes to see a nifty NASA flick at the IMAX theatre there. Then we traipsed all to hell all over central Melbourne - but most importantly, to Minotaur Books and to Mind Games - and wound up just in time for an early dinner at a restaurant which Mr Barnes swears was once known as "The Dainty Sichuan".

Dainty. Yeah. Like a psychopathic bull moose on PCP. The restaurant has changed its name, I note, to the "Sichuan House". After eating there, I want the government to intervene. That goddam place should be known as something like the "Sichuan Citadel."

The food was great, yeah. Wonderfully cooked, and incredibly tasty. But the servings are beyond copious.

The Younger Son, for example - we ordered some salt-and-pepper quail for him. The menu showed one goddam quail. One! But when his plate arrived, there was a veritable goddam Jenga tower of deep-fried salt-and-pepper quail wobbling precariously back and forth. And my chicken baked with dry chili... the platter was the size of a semitrailer hubcap, with at least three full chickens chopped in bitesized pieces and then concealed cunningly within a mountain of chopped dried chilies. I had to go fossicking to find them!

We took a lot of food back to Chez Barnes. Including a significant portion of the rather magnificent chili-cumin pork ribs which Mr Barnes ordered. Actually, that's the only thing he ever orders there because he loves 'em, and why not? But on the good side: once he tried Natalie's order of Chicken and mushroom (which was absolutely delicious) he allowed that maybe once in a while he ought to extend his order a little.

Obviously, once we got back to Chez Barnes, we were a little tired. There was a whole lot of walking involved in the day, and with the flight of the night before, the kids were fractious. We took in a Studio Ghibli flick (courtesy of Minotaur... I wasn't as impressed with 'Tales of Earthsea' as I'd hoped I might be) and crashed.

The next day was supposed to be easier. We were going to ride a tram for Younger Son's sake, and have a bite at the marvellous Hutong Dumpling Bar to catch up with Large Bob and with Struggers. Of course, things got complicated.

We arrived early, and did some more walking, yep. Then over the meal, we discovered that Struggers is due to marry his beloved sometime in March, in Brisbane (if there's anything left of it after these floods) and then again in China, her homeland, a bit later. And so there was much of congratulations and eating and drinking.

Then Large Bob convinced us to check out the State Library, where he works. He's been trying to get us in there for years, so it was about time... plus there was an exhibition for kids. But being the man he is, enthusiasm got the better of us all and we got led willy=nilly throughout the entire labyrinthine edifice, up several floors, round and round, and back down again.

Jeez, there's some cool shit in that building. Really. Make the bastard take you through it sometime. But do it without kids...

Anyway, once that was done we walked out, grabbed an ice-cream, and duly rode an overcrowded tram - back to Minotaur, so Jake could pick out a reward for his very good behaviour of the two days. And then, finally, we made it back to Barnesland - whereupon I promptly collected Natalie and drove her out to Kyneton.

The original plan was to take the kids, and visit Sam, who lives out there. But that didn't happen because we thought Nat could get a lift with Struggers and his partner, who were going that way. Only the timing didn't work, so I had to drive Nat anyway. But it was good to leave the kids... they were flat worn out, and another drive of an hour-plus in either direction would have made the flight next morning a real bastard.

It was a bastard anyway, of course. Some prick checked a bag onto our flight, and then didn't pick up their own ticket and get aboard. Therefore we waited, in the aircraft, on the ground, for a full hour while they searched the airport for the thick-headed clot in question, and retrieved the bag from the hold of the aeroplane. Can't have a bag fly unattended these days!

Yeah.

That was my weekend. I got the kids home. We watched some Star Trek, and ate antipasto. And then we slept. They slept so solidly that none of 'em awoke unto 0830 this morning... which is unheard-of.

Today I took 'em into Launceston so I could wrestle with Telstra. This satellite internet shit is really crapulent, and Telstra have finally launched some 3G plans at rates competitive with what we get from the satellite mob. Of course, the 3G signal here generally degrades upload and download to 256kbps, which is even shittier than the 512kbps the satellite gives us, but the Telstra johnnies assure me that if I install a Yagi (high gain) aerial, we'll bring the speeds up to an acceptable level. And with Natalie's mobile phone tied into the deal, we can actually reduce our monthly 'Net bill by $20 or so.

Yeah, I know. I don't expect it to work out either. There's a ten-day window of opportunity to return the gear and tell Telstra to bite their own arses if the system doesn't work, though. I'm gambling that I can set up the aerial and the base station and establish functional connections to Nat's computer and mine, and test the speeds within that ten-day period.

Can't be that difficult, can it?

Meanwhile, Brisbane is by way of being swept off the map. Hey, all my homies from back that way... you know that Wivenhoe Dam which is keeping the worst of the water at bay? You know? The one they built after the floods of '74?

Yeah, that one. Did it ever occur to you it was built under the Bjelke-Petersen government? The same government infamous for allowing sub-tidal land to be sold on Russell Island? And for high-rises built on foundations of sand on the Gold Coast?

I know I wouldn't like to be gambling my life on the quality of workmanship in that dam...

Dear Gerry Harvey

Dear Gerry Harvey

It's really quite simple.

During the Keating era, and then at length through the pain of the Howard governments, we came to accept that the Australian manufacturing industry was going to be restructured. That with our rates of pay, we really weren't competitive with China, Taiwan, Thailand, and other countries where people are prepared to work a 12 hour day for two cups of rice and a handful of bean shoots.

We didn't like it, but we have learned to live with it.

We fell back on mining, and on agri-business. The latter is a bit of a bummer, by the way. Big corporate farms that sell to bigger processing corporations which deal with truly enormous distribution firms leave no room for the family-owned farms that are indelibly part of the Australian cultural image. And frankly, mining has always been a hard, hard business for the people who actually dig stuff up and process it.

But we did it. And we accepted it. We accepted it because we were told again and again and again that we were part of a global market, that we had to reduce protectionism, that we had to compete with other producers around the world.

Of course, the other side of that painful coin is the pay-off: the reasonably priced merchandise sourced from all those countries around the world which have a surplus of skilled labor. Cheap-ass televisions and DVDs and phones and computers from China, and Thailand, and Taiwan and so forth. That's the quid pro quo. That's the payback. As consumers, we get access to those goodies because we accepted the pain, and allowed our manufacturing industries to outsource the living hell out of everyone and everything.

So... near as I can tell, Gerry, you and your rich-ass corporate vendor buddies are trying to say something like: "Dear me, no. Of course you can't buy things cheaply! That would undercut our traditional Australin retail model, and deny me and my fat-bastard friends our traditional corporate retail profits!"

Please do feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, Gerry. But from what I can see, a whole lot of people I know and value had to change their lives drastically so this country could 'compete' in the 'global marketplace'. And the 'reward' for that lies, in theory, in our capacity to access cheaply made and moderately priced goods from this selfsame 'global marketplace'.

Only you want us to suck it up, keep paying you and your rich-prick buddies a superpremium because... uhh... because... uhh... well, just because you deserve it!

You know what, Gerry? I live out in the country. If I stick to local vendors, I can't get interesting DVDs. Or interesting music. Or interesting books. If I want to buy furniture or electrical shit from your nearest store, I've got over an hour's driving to do first. And then, of course, I have to pay your people a delivery fee to ship it here.

Even then, you never carry the things I want. Computer with Linux pre-installed? From Harvey Norman? You're joking, right? The staff at HN can't even spell Linux, because they're NOT ALLOWED.

So, to sum up: you want me to go on living out here in the boonies, contributing materially to the support and ongoing welfare of this nation in the various ways that I do. You want me to live in this town where globalisation has killed the vegetable processing plant and both goddam sawmills. You want me to watch people pack up and leave homes their families have held for generations because the global market forces have taken their jobs away... but at the same time, you expect me to keep paying anywhere up to five times the going market value for the kind of stuff that you sell -- and you expect me to purchase only the limited range of crap that you have for sale?

(And meanwhile, you don't give to charities because they only encourage the no-hopers, right? Yeah, Gerry, I read that one too.)

I have some words for you, Gerry Harvey. They're not nice ones at all, and I'll reserve them for now. But if you and I should ever encounter one another in person, I promise to deliver those words to you in clear and painstaking detail.

Count on it, you miserable, tight-fisted, un-Australian piece of crap.

I Shot The Sherriff... But I Will Not Shoot The Deputy

It wasn't really the sherriff. It was the goddam rooster.

You remember quite some time ago, when Natalie thought it would be a good idea for the kids to get some eggs to hatch? Yeah? The fuss? The eggs that got roasted by a close encounter with a heat-light? The late-night run to someone else's house (carried out, naturally, by yours truly) to grab three more eggs just when they were hatching? The horrible 24 hour hatching process, kids not sleeping, stupid chicks slow emerging, wet, fugly little buggers?

Yeah. And of course, they were all goddam silky bantams, weren't they?

There were two hens and a rooster. One hen croaked for reasons which may involve over-loving from the Mau-Mau. Possibly. The other has been motoring along just fine. But the rooster decided he should take over rooster duties, and round up the Three Fat Ladies - our black Australorp laying hens.

Well, that was okay. I mean, I could put up with the little bastard crowing. He was well away from the house, down in the chook pen. That was all right.

Except Natalie thinks 'free-range' really truly means 'free-range'. So every now and again, she decides that our spacious, well-grassed, shaded chook pen with its long-term water supply and the feeding stations and all that -- she decides they need to 'really get out and scratch around'.

Okay.

Fine.

So they get out. They wander around. Natalie forgets to put them back in. And for about a week, they lurk around the place, scratching, shitting on the deck, etc. Eventually they stop going back to the nesting box to lay, and Natalie decides that yes, finally, we need to round them up.

The only real problem here - aside from the chookshit on the deck - was the stroppy, nasty little bantam rooster. Not only did he take to crowing under the bedroom window at dawn (about 0350 here in temperate Tas) but he decided to have a go at the kids when he could.

Roosters are nasty. Even Jake was frightened of him. And he kept going for faces and eyes.

Eventually, one day while Natalie was away -- but with her permission, I shall add; Mr Rooster having been a very bad boy that day and the Mau-Mau bleeding from an ugly scratch -- I arranged for an accident to befall the rooster. A twenty-two calibre accident.

Too bad. So sad. Goodbye, you vicious little shit.

That leaves only the Three Fat Ladies and the animated mop-head, the last of the silkies, trundling sadly along in their wake.

But damn me if one of the Three Fat Ladies hasn't started trying to crow. Dead serious here, folks. It's not a very good sort of crow, but it is unmistakeable. Not a cluck. Not even a squawk, but a sad, wheezy, tragic little crow, like a rooster with a five year three-pack-a-day habit.

Most pathetic thing I've ever seen.

Natalie says the thing has some kind of gender issues. I don't give a shit. She doesn't go for the kids' faces, and she still lays an egg a day.

Now, all I have to do is round 'em up and get them back in the pen again...

First Visitations Of The New Year

Yesterday it was the New Doc and his family.

Natalie's been rumbling on for a year or so about a 'new doctor' coming out from the USA. He's been "due to arrive" for so long I'd pretty much forgotten he existed. Apparently there were a truckload of paperwork issues. That's always the case, bringing an overseas doc into Tas, though.

The thing I didn't know was that the New Doc was actually jumping ship. I thought he was just another locum, passing through -- but he and his have sold up, packed up, waved goodbye to the Stars and Stripes and declared their intent to dwell under the Southern Cross.

Anyway, Nat phoned me at about two in the afternoon to ask if I could handle another four guests for dinner. I thought about it for a couple of seconds, and asked her to pick up another half-kilo of pork mince, and maybe some nice cheeses and dips and stuff.

So they all turned up -- the doc, his wife, their 19-year-old son who's off to UTas this year, and their 13 or 14-year old daughter. And I made a decent won-ton soup with plenty of pork dumplings, and a great big batch of fresh yeast doughnuts (the doughnut cutter worked a treat, Murasaki!) that I filled with a raspberry-mango jam and topped with whipped cream.

It was a really nice night. Once the sun went down, I took the kids out with a torch, and we spotted wallabies. It's funny walking around with people for whom wallabies are still a novelty. We saw a half-dozen or so, and that was impressive enough that I had to do a second tour for their mother's sake. Not that it's much effort... I think we walked all of twenty metres outside the house.

My kids were delighted with the visitors. I swear, the little bastards are turning into performance artists. They brought out their cellos and double basses and the Mau-Mau did her turn on the piano, and there was trampolinage, and then Jake and the Doc's daughter went down to the raspberry patch and came back with a bowlful of raspberries and blackberries, and the Mau-Mau danced frantically to music only she could hear, and by the end of the evening, I reckon maybe they felt a little more at home.

Heh. I know they're a little more comfortable with Australian food now. When I mentioned 'whipped cream' on the doughnuts, the Doc looked a little puzzled, and explained that it wasn't something they saw much of in the US of A. Mostly they just use this stuff from a can. You can spray it on, see? "Cool Whip", or something.

I shrugged, and said - yeah, okay. I haven't got any. I'll just whip some cream.

So when the time came, I tapped the Doc's daughter on the shoulder and invited her to the kitchen to learn how to make whipped cream. (Her mum said she liked to learn how to cook, you see.)

The lass gave me a doubtful look, and said she didn't like whipped cream much.

I nodded, and asked if she meant whipped cream, or the stuff that comes in a spraycan.

She said, well, I don't really like 'cool whip'.

That's okay, I said. Neither do I.

And then I put the cream in a bowl, and added some brown sugar and a little vanilla, and handed her the beaters. A few minutes later I made sure she didn't turn it to butter, and we were done.

She ate at least three of those doughnuts, each with a couple tablespoons of whipped cream, and announced that they were utterly delish. I guess 'Cool Whip' has its drawbacks, eh?

Today was another matter, however. Today was Beeso Day. The estimable Mr Beeso and his lovely lady rocked up here just on six in the evening. Beeso was promptly set upon by the children, who dragged him out to the trampoline, then wrestled him up and down the property. Meantime, we set out a bunch of nibbles including an amazing prosciutto-wrapped cheese they'd picked up on Bruny Island.

After that, I loaded them up with: steamed prawn dumplings with lemon verbena and vietnamese mint; smoke-grilled vegetable salad with sea-salt and balsamic vinegar; char-grilled salmon fillets, and finally the inevitable leatherwood honey/ mascarpone ice cream. Somewhere in the middle there was a palatable Bay of Fires bubbly, a few beers, a bit of cider, and a whole lot of conversation.

Good people. Really lovely to put faces to names, and make contact in a way not mediated by electrons. Tomorrow morning I'll fill 'em up with bacon from the local butchery, free-range eggs, whole milk and some espresso coffee. Then we'll go for a walk and see if the platypus is willing to show off for us...

Happy New Year

It's a fine, cool, sunny start to the new year and the new decade, and there are four extra kids about the place... hopefully not setting too much of a precedent.

We had our usual Flinthart movie night/watergun fight/barbecue evening to ring in the new year. Neighbours from uphill and down arrived. Much drinking and eating was done. Children ran about in all directions, spraying water.

When things finally calmed down enough, I discovered that a very large contingent of the visitors had never actually seen 'Big Trouble In Little China', which I think is the best thing John Carpenter ever managed to put on film. Chortling with delight, I cooked far more popcorn than is humanly feasible, and we settled back.

The film was new to most of the kids -- not mine, though! -- and the frequent action sequences were more than enough to keep them happy. The adults, who'd had just enough to drink to appreciate the sly parody underneath the action film, were equally entertained. Actually, I'd forgotten just how likable that movie is. If by some chance you've never seen it, you really do owe it to yourself to put it on, kick back, and have a blast.

It hadn't quite gone midnight when the film ended, so we called an intermission and went back down to the house. I made a bunch more popcorn, and the adults killed off a bottle of Kreglinger to toast the new year. Then we all trooped back up for 'Shaun Of The Dead', striking a balance between 'scary' and 'funny' that kept everybody happy. (I really wanted to put on 'Lair Of The White Worm', but there was a degree of dissent from adults who felt that Roman nun-rapage and giant dildo probings were probably not kid-appropriate... I suppose that's true.)

Thus, at about two in the morning, we folded our tents and called it a night. The Mau-Mau's best friend shared a bed with her (the girls stayed downstairs and watched cartoons. They were both tired as blazes from their previous night and day at the beach, so they didn't last long.) The three Mad Viking lads from down the hill occupied spaces on the mattresses up in the cinema zone, supplied with ample pillows, doonas, and so forth.

And I made my way to bed.

Happy new year, folks.