Fremantlebiz - Paul's Letter from Australia

Sea Scouts in Western Australia - Camp Cornwell

2008-05-17T23:32:54Z

The Sea Scout headquarters facility at Pelican Point near Perth is officially named Camp Cornwell. There's a low sign adjacent to the main gate saying so. However it's rare to hear the name used these days. I checked with my eldest sons whom all have been senior Sea Scouts and none were familiar with the name or it's history. They simply knew the place as Pelican Point.

According to a local history, Sea Scouts in Western Australia started off in 1913 with a small troop near Albany on the south coast. By 1925 the interest in the movement had become such that the facility at Pelican Point was established. From the outset it was intended to be exemplary. A place with first-rate Scouting amenities as good as could be found anywhere in the British Empire.

Its name was chosen to honour of sixteen year old lad named John Travers Cornwell. A former English Scout, he'd attained the rank of 'Boy 1st Class' in the Royal Navy, but died of wounds after his ship HMS Chester engaged with the German navy at the Battle of Jutland on June 2, 1916. The action was a disaster for the Royal Navy. Fourteen ships were destroyed and 6,784 men were killed.

A curious story evolved after his death when he was posthumously awarded the naval Victoria Cross. This award caught everyone off guard and his body had to be hastily exhumed from a mass grave and accorded more dignified treatment. It's arguable that he received any. Instead he'd become the focus for a concerted propaganda campaign to revitalise enthusiasm for the war and invigorate patriotic support for the King and Empire.

With hindsight, the reasons for awarding the VC seem illusory. According to the story, after HMS Chester had been clobbered by the Germans and a large proportion of its crew slaughtered, John Cornwell was discovered alone and mortally wounded, but still at his gunnery post 'awaiting further orders.' This was interpreted as exceptional courage and devotion to duty. The rest as they say, was spin-doctor history. He'd died ashore a few days after the action, which was very convenient for the propaganda merchants to work unhindered upon the development of his heroic status.

But there are others who've spent much effort researching this sorry saga and it's better I insert an appropriate link to their efforts.

However, I'd like to add that I'm reminded of an earlier naval story about a heroic boy perpetuated in a poem titled Casabianca. The boy was purportedly on a French ship which engaged the British under Nelson during the 1798 Battle of the Nile :

The boy stood on the burning deck
Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
Shone round him o'er the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
A proud, though childlike form.
The flames roll'd on...he would not go
Without his father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
His voice no longer heard.

He call'd aloud..."Say, father, say
If yet my task is done!"
He knew not that the chieftain lay
Unconscious of his son.
"Speak, father!" once again he cried
"If I may yet be gone!"
And but the booming shots replied,
And fast the flames roll'd on.

Upon his brow he felt their breath,
And in his waving hair,
And looked from that lone post of death,
In still yet brave despair;
And shouted but one more aloud,
"My father, must I stay?"
While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud
The wreathing fires made way,

They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
They caught the flag on high,
And stream'd above the gallant child,
Like banners in the sky.
There came a burst of thunder sound...
The boy-oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
With fragments strewed the sea.

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
That well had borne their part;
But the noblest thing which perished there
Was that young faithful heart.

(Written by Felicia Dorothea Hemans - 1826)

John Cornwell's name was perpetuated in many ways and one of them was the naming of the Sea Scout facility at Pelican Point in 1925. It's not a bad thing he's remembered there, because in a way I see it as a tribute to a significant victim of the British establishment. An establishment which endeavoured to treat the working class and youthful young men of the time with appalling arrogance and insensitivity at every opportunity.

Last month when the Master Mariners' competition was getting underway I took a series of images from the Sea Scouts' jetty at Camp Cornwell which I've transformed into a panorama. One of my sons is in it. I suspect Scout John Cornwell would have enjoyed being there too if he'd had the chance. Click up the link to the max:

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

A dog and cat report

2008-05-16T23:08:32Z

Our cocker spaniel pup Milly is becoming a sort of canine teenager and trying to make her every waking moment a full-on experience.

She gets on quite well with our cats. Especially the two female black ones. We've often seen her give them a hug. She comes up behind and lies on top, almost flattening them. They don't seem to mind - well for about 30 seconds; then they wriggle out and go on their way. I think Milly is merry rather than gay.

Mad Max our tabby doesn't mind being in close proximity to the dog either, but hugs are out. A bit of a sideways rub on the way to somewhere else is quite enough. Max and Milly seem to regard each other on more of an equal footing.

For a while Milly had less eating manners than the cats. She used to gently shoulder them aside while they were eating. They tolerated this so we've insisted on making her wait until they've finished, but someone still has to stand guard.

The Rudd government's plans for increasing inflation are starting to be felt in the cat food area. Prices of dry kibbles are noticeably higher - like by about 30 percent since this time last year, and the cans of cat food we usually buy seem to have risen about 20 percent since the change of the federal government. What used to cost us 69 cents last year is now almost a dollar.

Milly occasionally gets a case of the yapps. We'd like her to spend more time in the garden by herself during the day, but she'd rather be inside. After about ten minutes she'll start yapping at the back door until we can't stand it any more. When we let her in the woman next door usually slams her own back door very loudly as a gesture of disapproval. She has a bee in her bonnet about noisy kids and animals - oh, and our macadamia tree which drops free macadamia nuts into her garden. There's no pleasing some folk.

With winter approaching the supply of food in our garden is lessening. The grapes are almost finished and last night my wife and I resolved that this morning we have to clean off any remaining traces from our vines. The catalyst for this decision was when our youngest daughter shrieked that one of our wannabe panthers had brought a mouse into the house and had left it beneath our dining room table.

Some mouse. It was the mother of all rats, except it was a healthy looking male. It was one of the biggest we've ever seen. The Rudd government's inflation plans are increasing the size of rats. Soon we'll have one sitting in parliament. Yes, yes, I know. Parliament is already full of rats, the two legged type.

My wife was still wearing her sneakers so I pointed out it was logical for her to do the disposal. My role would be to take a photograph. The rodent's corpse is now laid on top of our brick letterbox where Clarrie the one legged crow will find it for breakfast. As the woman on SBS's Food Safari often says, "Yummy!"

There is a movement of misguided people in this country who want to have cats eliminated from the domestic equation. They haven't figured out that less cats means more rats. If the cat haters succeed, here's an example of what they can expect lots more of. Personally, I think our moggie deserves a bravery award.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Our tornado anniversary - a flashback

2008-05-16T00:24:51Z

This morning is the third anniversary for when our house was visited by a small tornado in 2005. It was a frightening experience for us at the time, but nothing in comparison to what people have been experiencing with natural disasters elsewhere in the world over the past week or two.

By bizarre coincidence, a large team of power workers in half a dozen specialised vehicles rocked up at nine pm last night and set up powerful generator-driven lights to do a routine replacement of a power pole about 40 metres from our house. Their noisy exercise lasted most of the night. They were still at it at 2am. The place looked like a Steven Speilberg movie set - everything was so bright. My photo doesn't do justice to the floodlights and several dozen orange flashing beacons on top of the many vehicles.

I wouldn't dream of complaining - power pole workers operate in all sorts of lousy weather and quickly fix stuff like tornado damage. They are exceptional people who can always be relied upon in emergencies. Heroic even. If they feel the need to schedule a routine replacement of a power pole in the middle of a calm night, then that's good enough for me.

And as for the anniversary itself, it seems much longer ago than three years. There was a lot of damage to houses in a swath through Bicton, Palmyra and Melville. It's all been repaired now. We got a new roof out of the HBF insurance payout so we are not disgruntled, even though we did all the labour of the repair work on our house ourselves. In another coincidence, the renewal notice for our house insurance arrived yesterday. There's no worries about our paying it.

I described our experiences three years ago in a series of entries in this Fremantlebiz journal. Naturally enough the first one was on 16 May 1985. That otherwise mundane comments suddenly finished with the words, "Oops, thunder storm starting up - 5.54 am - gotta shut down." Eight minutes later we had lost a considerable portion of our roof.

A few hours afterwards my sons and I had pretty well retiled and temporarily sealed our roof as best we could in the dark and rain. I'd had several hundred spare tiles stacked at the side of the house and some small tarpaulins in the garage. The insurance company never realised how much urgent effort we had gone to to minimise further damage. The physical exertion made me feel very sore and stiff over the next few days.

Bicton Primary School got clobbered too. It was about a kilometre away to the northwest. We found bits of it's exploded music room in our back garden. Had the tornado struck during school hours its very likely some people would have been killed. We had three kids enrolled there in 2005.

So now via the magic of my Picasa website, here is the link to an album of some of my pictures taken on the morning the tornado struck three years ago. A flashback, no less:

Tornado
hits our house 16 May 2005

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Mexican mania

2008-05-15T01:16:56Z

It's been raining during the night, but not much wind to go with it. Looking out my window to the east, the sky is almost clear - just a small patch of cloud in the distance. The sun has yet to make an appearance. The official forecast for today is "a few showers."

My mention of the American wedding of the year a couple of days ago got me thinking about Mexican cuisine. I don't know any Mexicans. I've never head of any forming an ethnic group in Western Australia. I have a vague idea I've seen advertising for Mexican restaurant, but never anywhere that sells Mexican ingredients. We're a long way from Tijuana in the physical sense. However, not in the online sense. I just Googled Tijuana and discovered there were 19 million results. So many.

In the past I've looked for Mexican pottery on Australian eBay. The results were as bad as for Moroccan pottery - zilch. We're a long way from Marrakech too.

I do have chilies growing in my vegetable patch. There's probably enough super hot-chili fruit to supply a couple of Mexican restaurants for months.

Plus about a month ago I acquired the seeds for three more varieties and planted them in pots. Two of the varieties have germinated. One of them will produce red chilies about a foot long. The other is the jalapeno variety, the commonest one in Mexico. (Click the pics for larger versions.)

How do I know it's the commonest one in Mexico? Last night on SBS TV there was a Food Safari programme with an episode about Mexican cooking in Australia. That was pretty good timing.

It seems most of the Mexicans hang out in Sydney, so there is quite a bit of support for their culinary needs. They even have a specialised bakery which fires up its line twice a week. It's good to be a Mexican baker. But Sydney is a long distance away too. Any 'authentic' Mexican style bread here its probably going to have to be do-it-myself.

I'm well equipped. I've had a bread press thingo I bought at a flea market for 50 cents a few months back. Someone had lugged the thing here from California in their excess baggage. By coincidence I'd cleaned it up yesterday without knowing about last night's show. Spooky!

Luckily I recorded last night's program. I need to watch it again. There's also an online page for the episode.

Maeve O'Mara, the nibblesome hostess of the series is a bit verbally challenged at times as she tastes the world's cuisine on behalf of us couch potatoes. Her favourite descriptors are "Yum" and "Yummy." Someone should buy her a culinary thesaurus.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Coping with natural disasters

2008-05-14T01:16:15Z

Natural catastrophes are a regular part of human life on planet Earth. In the past two weeks or so there has been inestimable suffering from several large scale ones.

The USA has experienced more tornadoes which have caused billions of dollars worth of damage and destruction. I can empathise with the victims because our house was badly damaged by a tornado in May 2005.

In Myanmar (Burma) there was a monsoonal cyclone which has left many thousands bodies to bloat in the Irrawaddi Delta. The under-resourced medical and public health facilities have been overwhelmed. There will be a significant rise in mortality as a result. A purportedly incompetent, despotic military regime seems to have spent more time keeping their own uniforms starched and pressed than formulating an effective response strategy.

In China two days ago there was a very strong earthquake which has caused the deaths of many thousands more people. On day one the western media was mentioning a mortality figure of ten thousand. It was plucked from the air. There was no way anyone could have known. Given the concentration of people in that area, the style of architecture and the intensity of seismic event there may be many more deaths. But at least the Chinese government has quickly mobilised its resources, seemingly as effectively as any nation could be expected - possibly more effectively that some western nations.

Meanwhile the widespread problems for Africa just go on and on. Pictures of starving children have practically become trade marks for various aid agencies over several decades.

These catastrophes have occurred at a time when there have been warnings that the global population is entering an age of serious food supply adjustments. Apparently there is a significant shortage of rice looming for most peoples. Even in Australia which has long been a significant exporter of rice, this year's crop will be one of the smallest ever. There is still some Australian rice on the shelves of our local supermarkets, but curiously most of what is on offer comes from developing nations - Pakistan and Thailand to name two.

The picture below is of seemingly identical packs of long grain rice in our pantry, but check the fine print.

The next photo is from two different varieties. The top one is from Thailand, the bottom one from Australia. The way to tell the difference is the tiny red 'Australia' logo on the bottom one. The company certainly doesn't make the origin of the imported variety obvious. We bought it in the mistaken belief it was of Australian origin.

The cost of oil continues to soar, and for Australia, today marks the highest price ever for diesel fuel. Over A$1.70 a litre. This is a critical matter, because our nation's agricultural and transport infrastructure is so dependent on oil. The rise is probably going to cause much greater inflation and collateral damage to the agricultural sector than already experienced.

Apparently there has been a rush in developed nations to convert from traditional food crops into the production of ethanol as a fuel substitute. How unethical can some people and corporations be? This has contributed to further food shortages, not only for people, but for their agricultural animals. Maybe imported rice won't be on our shelves for much longer either? In any case, I feel sure the victims of the recent catastrophes will need it more than we do.

Then there is the uncertainty of how to cope with climate change. I feel sure a lot of people won't be able to cope.

Apparently the human population is over six and a half billion people. It's not surprising there are problems. Lone voices have been warning for decades that the crunch was coming.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

The American wedding of the year

2008-05-13T00:49:12Z

I haven't seen the name of the former Australian PM Mr Howard mentioned as one of the guests at the wedding for President Bush's beautiful daughter Jenna last weekend. This is strange because it was only last year that John and George were still great mates. Peas-in-a-pod in the socio/political sense. Mr Howard and his wife had even been guests at the Bush family ranch in Crawford, Texas. Rumour is that Mr Bush had a sign made up to place on the door of the guest bedroom, "John H. slept here." Zzzzzz!

They were heady days. I think the former British PM Mr Blair and his wife also tested the same facility. If the recent reports of Mrs Blair's memoiric revelations about her guestly visits to the Queen's residence at Balmoral are anything to go by, Mr Bush might have had to order a sign to read, "Tony B didn't get any sleep here."

We've seen some nice official photos of the Bush/Hager wedding. It appeared to be a very civilised affair, fully catered of course. Nice people, nice clothes, nice weather, nice food. Well of course they had nice food, not prairie dog stew either

What do wealthy Texans get to eat at exclusive weddings? It seems that the bride wanted to keep the menu secret. Outsiders might not have understand her craving for fillet of armadillo served up on a compote of cactus. Probably the guests wouldn't either, that's why it was eventually deleted from the menu.

But I've done a bit of serious research and discovered a few hints of what might have really been served up at the wedding breakfast.

All good weddings have a rehearsal. These can be a pain in the old saddle department. However the Bush rehearsal also included a meal tryout at a place called The Range Restaurant.

Presumably the name related to the famous Texas cowboy song, Home on the range. "Oh give me a home, where the buffaloes roam, and the skies are not cloudy or grey..." By now any American readers will be starting to appreciate that I know quite a lot about American foklore.

The Range Restaurant looks like it was a good choice - not a hint of prairie dogs or armadillos on the menu. I don't know what chicken empenadas or quessadillas are, but as long as they're not a colloquial name for barbecued chicken feet, I reckon I could eat them until the Texan cows came home. Whatever, it sounds like there's no need to send in Scottish TV chef, "effing" Gordon Ramsay to give them a few pointers.

So what was on the rehearsal menu? How about lemon-crusted rainbow trout and grilled pork tenderloin over roasted corn pudding. It was the Henry the groom's 30th birthday, so he was also served a lemon-vanilla cake. I suppose this menu was something a bit different from the real breakfast. They wouldn't have wanted the same thing twice so close together, unless it was fricasseed armadillo. Another thought just occurred. Do they call wedding feasts in Texas breakfasts, or simply eats? "Hey everybody, lets eat." "Yahoo!"

I've read the Mr Bush is a fast eater. A case of wham bam, thank you ma'am. When he eats everyone eats, when he finishes everyone finishes, when he pays... It's good to be a king - or president.

There's actually is a photo on the Whitehouse website of one of the courses. It's obviously one which the guests ate with their fingers because there were no forks provided. The official description doesn't say what it is, but it looks like jellied rhubarb layered with rich-crab mousse and a slice of guava on top. "Hot diggetty dog!" (That's Texan speak too.)

Now every decent wedding has a decent wedding cake. The Bush cake was decent and a bigun' at that. Four tiers - a Texas cake no less. But there was something else about it which caught my eye. The top tier was lopsided. My guess is that some goon from the Whitehouse security detail had done a close inspection for a booby trap and had an accident. Oops! He may be on his way to Iraq by now.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Stay close to shore unless you want to be eaten by the media sharks

2008-05-12T01:13:00Z

There was another attack on a swimmer by a white pointer shark on the weekend. The event was at Albany's Middleton Beach on the south coast. A teacher named Jason Cull was doing his swimming thing about 80 metres off shore when the several-metres-long hungry fish decided to have a taste of him.

Mr Cull was lucky. The damage was sufficiently 'minor' enough for him to find one of the shark's eyeballs. With his thumb he pressed the release button and got spat out. He had a badly bleeding leg. An artery had been severed. He started doing the backstroke towards shore, generating a cloud of blood as he went.

Meantime a diminutive 50 year old woman who had seen the attack swam to rescue him. Joanne Lucas will undoubtedly receive bravery awards for her selfless action. She'll become a legend for sure. There's probably been a media feeding frenzy already. My tip is 60 Minutes next Sunday night.

There was some amateur-taken TV news pictures of the two with the fin of the shark close by shown on the weekend. A highlighted frame appeared in The West Australian today.

Joan and Jason can be seen swimming in. Their heads are high out of the water as they watch the shark behind them. It gives me the heebie jeebies.

Jason was taken to hospital. Repairs to his messed up right leg turned out to require five hours of surgery. Meanwhile the big shark is still lurking about. Maneaters are protected species in this state.

During the preparation of my 2001 PhD dissertation Maritime resource exploitation in southwest Australia prior to 1901, I became aware of several unhappy encounters between sharks and humans along the south coast. Aborigines and European sailors alike were very wary of white pointers with good reason. The following paragraph is purloined from a chapter in my dissertation.

Sharks were viewed as the common enemy of all sailors, and investigating the stomach contents of large specimens always evoked much interest and amusement. Those on the south coast could be very large, and required a considerable amount of expertise and effort to bring them aboard. Upon hooking and bringing alongside, a noose was slipped over the head, worked along the body to be secured round the tail, thus allowing the fish to be safely hauled aboard. The crew of the Investigator, under Matthew Flinders, caught a large shark in this manner while exploring the Recherche Archipelago in 1801. The fish which was probably a white pointer (Carcharodon carcharias), contained a dead seal, with Aboriginal spears embedded.

The Sea Scouts' busy bee

2008-05-11T00:47:22Z

Yesterday was earmarked as Busy Bee day at 1st Fremantle Sea Scouts. My wife and I and three of our kids rocked up to lend a hand in the moring and were there for most of the day. One of our 'kids' was 27 year old son number two. His task as a master plumber was to supervise the replacement of a section of large diameter concrete underground stormwater drain pipe with new PVC stuff. It was a major job and luckily he had the help of half a dozen Sea Scout fathers.

The job took a few hours. Getting the old stuff out was straight forward, physical work for the volunteers. Lots of digging. The pipes were heavy because they were full of silt. When they'd been installed decades ago no one had thought to put in inspection points for maintenance. Anyway the men did a great job. There's few things worse than blocked drains, but that's been fixed now for many years to come.

Elsewhere, parents were cutting down dead trees and testing the capacity outdoor campfire area with the unwanted branches. This was more in keeping with the physical abilities of me and my wife.

Later both of us helped sort out a collection of old books in the Scout Hall library. There was a large assortment of publications intended to wise up Scout leaders on organising interesting activities, as for example a booklet titled, Jungle Dances and their variations. But they were from the days when kids were allowed to exercise their imaginations around the adventurous themes espoused by Rudyard Kipling. No one does jungle dances anymore lest some ethnic minority is offended

One of the tasks I've undertaken is to scan these booklets into PDF format before someone throws them all in the bin.

An especially interesting one was simply titled Seamanship by Hal McKail. It was published in Perth for local Sea Scouts and yachtsmen. This copy was a third edition printed in 1944, during WW2. It contained sketch maps of the Swan River and offshore islands with handy hints for navigating past danger spots. Here's an hypothetical excerpt from page 34 on piloting to Fremantle Harbour then back past the part of the river where the 1st Fremantle Sea Scouts are located:

Through the bridges

A red dolphin to port gives us a fine lead to the bridges. In going through there it is the rule to keep to the right, and it is wise to get the span clearly sighted well before we reach it, as if the tide is going out we may get a nasty bump. The railway bridge in particular is full of all sorts of nasty tricks. A reef to the starboard between the two bridges needs to be carefully avoided.

Now for the return journey. It has fallen dark, but as far as the flashing dolphin we shall have no trouble. The wind is rather westerly at to beat round Rocky Bay will be a tiresome business. But as we pass the flashing dolphin on the far side of the way, are two little pumping plants. Steering for the lower of these we shall find a swatch-way with two or three feet of water, and the wind will just carry us through nicely...

The reef between the bridges was removed in about the 1960s and the old railway bridge replaced to make way for Fremantle harbour extensions. However, modern generations of yachtsmen might still recognise much of what is written in the second paragraph. By coincidence I took a photo yesterday of an aggregation of shags in a feeding frenzy and it shows the modern version of the "flashing dolphin on the far side of the way." Click Here to see it. The shags followed the school of fish up the river and were out of sight withing a few minutes. What I'd like to discover is how did so many birds figure this out at the same time.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Thanks for the memory

2008-05-10T00:21:32Z

My personal computing experience goes back to the early 1980s - to the days of the Vic 20 and may one of the most exciting computers ever, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. The Sinclair had a a staggering 16 kilobytes of internal memory, otherwise known as RAM - random access memory. The demise of my Sinclair was caused by a shonky Perth dealer upgrading the RAM with dodgy replacements which ultimately killed the internal power regulation circuitry. It's stored on a shelf here somewhere.

It could only run one program at a time, which was loaded in with the use of an external audio tape recorder. It didn't have a screen, it plugged into any TV and produced a colour display. The keyboard still looks pretty sophisticated. All the electronics were beneath the keypad, like a modern laptop. My favourite game was Ant Attack.

Memory capacity has advanced a long way since those days. So called thumb drives which are solid state and the size of a small thumb can be bought with 1 gigabyte of memory for about five dollars. Only a few years ago when these things first appeared I paid over a hundred dollars for one with 125 kilobytes of memory. They're used as portable data-storage devices and plug into USB connectors on computers.

Similar 'flash' memories are used in digital cameras, but are packaged in small plastic 'cards.' Various camera manufacturers have adopted different shaped cards in an attempt to dominate the competition, but the winner is the SD or secure digital shape adopted by Nikon and Pentax.

The price on SD cards is dropping dramatically. From the outset camera manufacturers didn't include memory cards with their devices. They had to be bought separately. It's still like that.

My first SD card was like the thumb drive, 125 kilobytes and costing over a hundred dollars. Last year I bought a 1 megabyte card from Big W for about A$8. About three months ago I bought a 2 megabyte one at office works for A$19. This provided me with storage space on my camera for over 400 high definition photos.

Then about two weeks ago I was loitering on eBay and discovered that's really the place to buy SD cards. I bought a 4 gigabyte card for A$18 including postage from Hong Kong. It wasn't supposed to be from Hong Kong, the seller said the item was in Australia, but anyway it turned up in the post as promised and was a genuine SanDisk job which worked perfectly. It has enabled over 900 high definition pictures to be stored on my camera. I'd never keep that many on it. I usually download/upload my pictures to my computer on the same day I take them.

However, the people at SanDisk have been busy. Their 8 gigabyte cards are readily available on eBay for around A$30. By this time next year I expect them to be much cheaper. Already there are plenty 16 gigabyte cards of other brands appearing on eBay as well. They cost in the vicinity of A$70. They're sure to drop in price by this time next year. By then the bargain hunters will be scrambling for cheap 32 GB cards like this one:

There are two ways to buy SD cards on eBay, via an auction at via a 'Buy it now' fixed price. My tip is to do what I did and scrutinise the fixed price deals. Most of the auctions go well over the fixed price I paid for my 4GB card. People seem crazy, or are simply too lazy to do their research. Often the same seller might be involved in the two types of sales. That person must be having a good old behind-the-sleeve laugh at the suckers.

There's plenty of SD cards being sold on eBay. I checked the feedback yesterday for the dealer I bought mine from. There had been about 500 more entries since I entered my positive comment a few days ago.

So where is it going to end? Well already SanDisk have 72 GB cards in the pipeline. What this means is that very soon computer makers like Apple will no longer have hard-disk drives with moving parts. They'll be like the old Spectrum in a way. Too bad they won't be able to play Ant Attack.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

It's been a "sailors ahoy" week

2008-05-08T23:55:58Z

This week has been a bit nautical at Fremantle with the visit of USS Tarawa and other things. Not long after after the Americans slipped away another spectacular ship tied up at the wharf to disgorge tourists and take on some new ones. The vessel was a luxury cruise liner called the Sun Princess. It will be a regular caller here for a few months. There are plenty of cashed up Western Australians who like nothing better than a tropical ocean cruise in winter.

The ship looked a pretty good place to spend a decadent few weeks. Here's a cheapskate's picture taken from the platform of Fremantle railway station. Sigh!

One of the last things all ship passengers see when they leave Fremantle are the lighthouses at the end of the North and South Moles. (Breakwaters.) These cast-iron structures were first switched on at the beginning of the twentieth century and have remained solidly in place doing their nautical duty ever since. The southern one is painted green and the northern one red. As every boat person should know, this is the world standard for channel marker colour schemes when heading upstream. Get them mixed up and you'll be in trouble.

From the decks of huge ships like Tarawa and Sun Princess the lighthouses look puny, and well they might be, but they're much easier to fit into the camera frame for closeups.

Here's a picture taken this week of the South Mole lighthouse. Our cocker spaniel pup Milly is posing in front of it. You can tell I clicked the shutter just in time. She decided enough posing was enough and wanted to check out what I was doing.

To end this interesting week, here's something pretty cool from NASA in the USA. They're getting ready to put a robot lander thingo on the Moon and anyone, even opinionated Australians, can enter their name on a data base which will be aboard the device when it lands or crashes. (NASA still seem to used metric measurements for some things and feet and inches for others.)

Over the past decade our family members' names have been somewhere on a variety of space probes via similar offers. It's sort of like doing space graffiti. Maybe one day some alien life form will discover them and we'll all become famous. Anyway the URL is http://lro.jhuapl.edu/NameToMoon/index.php Be quick, because opportunity will close soon.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

The Fremantle railway yard

2008-05-08T00:32:46Z

Living within sight of the crane-tops on the Fremantle wharves we are frequent visitors to the port and have seen a lot of changes over the years. Sadly the place has lost a lot of its former dynamism. It used to be known for its large working class population - the thousands of men who kept the wharves, railway and any number of other tasks which where essential to a fully operational port. A port which was in essence the gateway to Western Australia.

Nowadays this intensive human activity is absent. Cargo-containerisation ensured that the word 'lumper' has slipped from common usage. There are no more gangs of lumpers working in Fremantle. Just a few lonely individuals driving cranes and forklifts. The place has become akin to an occupational desert as far as the traditional working class is concerned.

Similarly with the railways. I'm old enough to have experienced the end of the age of steam. Fremantle used to be a steam-engine lovers' paradise. The central area in my panorama above was packed with branching railway lines leading onto the wharf, plus steam locos, goods wagons of every description and all the necessary infrastructure to keep everything going. There was plenty of noise too. I can particularly remember the rattling of an old coal elevator where the steam engines stopped to have their coal tenders refilled.

There was a place adjacent to the coal elevator where the engines had their boiler innards cleaned. The large circular fronts of the locos swung open on hinges to allow access. I've since learned the unfortunate workers probably also received unhealthy lungfulls of asbestos fibres.

Across the way, the Fremantle railway station used to be much larger than the single platform affair now. Below is another historical image I found online. Both were taken in the early nineteenth century before I was born and are from the impoverished State Archive collection.

The same area looks pretty different in the picture I took a few days ago. All electric and only one platform beneath an uninspiring shed. If you click to enlarge the image you'll discover a single railway employee lurking behind a pole with his hands in his pockets.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Thinking about the war - five years on and counting

2008-05-07T01:18:19Z

It's been five years since President Bush and his cohorts engineered the current war in Iraq. The multi-trillion dollar exercise hasn't gone well for the families of America. More than 4,000 of their sons and daughters have been killed and many more thousands have been physically and mentally incapacitated.

From time to time I've commented in these pages about the war. One of my essays, "Thinking about the war" was posted on October 25 2004. I mentioned that the US casualty figure had reached 1,200. There's certainly a lot of American, Iraqi and Afghan blood which has flowed beneath the proverbial bridge since then.

This week an American warship USS Tarawa called into Fremantle after a four month deployment in the Persian Gulf. I put some images of it online and to my surprise I received some grateful comments from family members of some of those sons and daughters who were aboard. I could tell from the few words that these anonymous folk sent that they will be very pleased to get their offspring back home safely. My parents were the same with me and my Vietnam tour with the Australian Army. (1966-67)

I posted another large panorama of the ship for these US parents to my Picasa site last night. Click the link at the end of this entry.

This is not to say I approve of what has happened with US foreign policy over the past five years. I'm appalled at the loss of life on all sides since the beginning of this ill-conceived war. I'm also appalled at the manner in which the US administration attacked the integrity of the Geneva Conventions and manipulated a proportion of the US citizenry to accept that systematic torture and murder was a legitimate strategy. The war has gone so badly for the US that a serious suggestion has emerged it could go for another hundred years. That's pretty appalling too.

I watched a long documentary on SBS last night titled, Taxi to the dark side. I now have it copied to a DVD. The film won an Academy Award earlier this year. It focussed of the systematic beating to death of an Afghan taxi driver named Dilawa by American soldiers and the abandonment of ethical behaviour and human rights by senior military officers and the Bush administration.

According to its Wikipedia entry there was a significant effort to prevent the documentary reaching the eyes and minds of the American public. Many of the American soldiers who participated frankly admitted their involvement in atrocities.

Today comes disturbing news from the US National Security Archive that a significant number (millions) of White House emails covering the early stages of the Iraq War which by law were supposed to have been preserved, but have apparently been destroyed.

Obviously there are many Americans who have been outraged by these sort of matters. They would like to see certain members of the Bush administration prosecuted as criminals, but I don't suppose it will happen.

Anyway, here's the new panorama of USS Tarawa. Give it a click.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Tarawa tourists acquire unforgettable memory of visit to hoonville

2008-05-06T00:50:23Z

I was annoyed to read in this morning's newspaper that three sailors from USS Tarawa were mugged by a gang of youths in one of the shopping malls in central Perth. Fortunately the victims escaped with bruising and the loss of their wallets and cigarettes.

Not only is smoking bad for the health, but it has long been an excuse in these parts of the world for ratbags to cadge for a cigarettte and then take the innocent target by surprise.

Too often victims get knifed, killed, or suffer brain damage. When/if the perpetrators are caught, the punishment handed out by the courts is usually feeble. The criminals never have to make restitution, they seem to have have more rights than their victims.

In this case, two youths aged 13 and 14 were arrested with the help of closed circuit TV. Two more of them are lying low. They 'll probably all have several previous convictions, and be back on the streets in a few months. Doing time is a rite of passage. Their identities will be kept secret because of their age.

It's Law Week this week. In his opening address the Chief Justice reportedly said he was concerned about the state's growing culture of violence - assaults were increasing at a faster rate than any other crime. Well how about that? The WA public have known about it for a long time.

I had to go into Fremantle yesterday and saw USS Tarawa was still alongside. The timing of ship departures are never made public any more in case some imaginary terrorist takes advantage. It's a stupid rule because the information will be common knowledge amongst thousands of people engaged in the service industries - taxi drivers, hoteliers and the like.

However, my business was at Valentine's camera shop in Market Street. In March I bought a Hoya UV filter for one of my lenses. When I was cleaning it on the weekend I noticed a small flake of glass was missing from the edge. It had to have been done by pressure from the spring clip which holds the glass against the rim of the screw mount. The man behind the counter agreed and replaced it without any quibbling. They always give good, cheerful service in that shop.

Then it was a trip out of the port to visit Spotlight. This is a large shop specialising in secret womens' business. - in this case coloured sewing threads to match the badges which need to be attached to the shirts of our recently invested scouts.

While my wife attended to this assignment, I entered the nearby premises of JB HI-FI. They have more DVD titles than it would be possible for a single human to watch in a lifetime, and they are usually one or two dollars cheaper than anywhere else. On the five dollar table I found a copy of The Four Feathers. Not the recent Heath Ledger version which I enjoyed watching on TV last month, but the 1939 version starring Ralph Richardson. The blurb says, "The film is a handsome tribute to the glories of early Technicolor." I just had a quick peep and it looks like the glories have been spoiled somewhat by a transfer from a salvaged cinema print. Maybe I should have shelled out another five bucks and gone for the Heath Ledger version.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

The bad, the good and the just plain ugly

2008-05-04T23:54:30Z

Alas, it was another bad day for the Fremantle Football Club yesterday. They played against Melbourne at the MCG. Early in the third quarter Freo were leading by 51 points. Such a lead is usually the stuff of great victories, however in this case it wasn't. Melbourne won the game by six points. Arghhhh!

Luckily I didn't see the game on TV. We had a commitment to watch the closing ceremony of the Sea Scout Master Mariners' competition at Pelican Point. Our youngest son was in a team from 1st Fremantle Sea Scouts. There were 11 groups from around the state in the two day event. One of the groups was from Kalgoorlie-Boulder which is a long way inland in semi-desert country. I think they must have some land yachts.

Competition is fierce for the perpetual trophies. This time 1st Fremantle guys and gals didn't come first, but their forbears have in past years. Here's a pic of the concluding presentations. Bear in mind that these are only the competing teams and leaders, there are plenty more Sea Scouts who had other business elesewhere

At the opposite end of the moral spectrum there is much turmoil in our state's politics. Last week it was revealed the the Liberal leader of the opposition had in the past distinguished himself by sniffing the vacated seat of a female staffer. Prior to that he'd interfered with the bra strap of another woman by giving it a snap. When confronted with the allegations there was obfuscation, but eventually he confessed. Today his party are to vote if they still want him as leader. It appears he has many supporters who feel such sexist behaviour is a mere storm in a teacup.

However, now it's also the turn of the Labor state premier to be in the hot seat. He just returned from a trade-trip to Russia. I always pegged him to be a pretty well behaved moral person, but he's been caught up in an alleged scandal involving buxom women at a ribald celebration a few years ago. He's denied that there is any substance in the allegations, but there's some juicy quotes from a female MP in this morning's local newspaper must make the readership wonder otherwise.

On page three there's a more disturbing story that the Australian Catholic Church has not gotten the Pope's message that child molesters have no place in church activities. Furthermore, it mentions some intriguing family links to a local senior politician.

There's a moral decline in Australia. That makes me sound like an old codger. I get a dozen or so spam emails a day offering to improve my sex life. But now in Fremantle there's a brazen and very large sex-spam advertisement gone up in Queen Victoria Street, one of the main thoroughfares into the port. I think it does little to enhance the somewhat seedy image of Fremantle.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

The Yanks are in town

2008-05-03T23:11:57Z

After we dropped our Scout son off at the Master Mariners' competition yesterday we went for a walk to check out the nature study prospects at Pelican Point. Unfortunately for humans the area is almost totally fenced off. A case of look but don't touch. The area outside the fence is a bit of a mess. The Nedlands Council have used parts of it as a dumping ground for street tree prunings and lawn clippings. It may be a good thing because it could be an added deterrent to inquisitive people - but not us. We had a good look. It's amazing what can sometimes be found in long grass, as can be seen from the following image:

Thus enriched we departed for Fremantle. There was an American aircraft carrier in the harbour and I wanted to take a few photos. Flushed with some new found cash, my wife and daughters had their minds set on a hair dressing salon, so we parted company on arrival at the port.

The aircraft carrier was the USS Tarawa. Apparently its purpose is to transport US Marines back and forth between zones of activity. It's just finished a four month deployment in the Persian Gulf and called in to Fremantle to allow those on board some R&R. Next stop is Hawaii.

I spoke to a group of three cheerful clean-cut young men with jarhead haircuts. They were drinking cokes at Captain Munchies burger bar. All three had come from one of the central states which never make the international news headlines. They'd signed up for five years as Marines and gotten lucky. They been trained to service aircraft on board USS Tarawa. They said they were glad to be somewhere they felt safe. I advised them to keep out of Freo's dark allys at night.

Like all the American carriers which have visited Fremantle over the years, this one had a flight deck packed with grey-painted aircraft. Its specialty seemed to be twin rotor Chinook helicopters and Harrier vertical-takeoff fighters.

A portion of the wharf was fenced off to keep terrorists at a distance, but there were still some pretty good photo opportunities to keep an average happy snapper like me happy. One of the best views was from a pedestrian bridge which crosses the Fremantle to Perth railway line to the wharf area. The somewhat ramshackle Captain Munchies facility at the southern end of the bridge has provided countess cokes and burgers to homesick American sailors over decades.

I did some panoramic sequences from the bridge and I've put one online. I waited about twenty minutes for the train to be in the right place: http://www.panoramio.com/photo/9870958

I've notice that not as many people are looking at my panoramas compared to the still photos. I presume this is because of their size. The largest image I can put up is five megabytes, but the 180 degree ones like this tend to be about 3.5 meg. With broadband they only take a few seconds to download, but if you are only on dial-up then it becomes a pain. Been there, done that.

So if you are so restricted, I've put a couple of 'ordinary' pictures from yesterday into my "Fremantle views" folder on the Picasa site. Click the image below.

Fremantle views

Sea Scouts - The Master Mariners' Competition 2008

2008-05-02T23:10:00Z

Another of our children was reinvested at 1st Fremantle Sea Scouts last night. This time its been our teenage daughter number two. She's now a fully fledged Venturer.

This is not her first time with Scouts. At one stage she was a Cub Scout, but the group she was with ran out of steam. There's no chance of that with this latest lot. The Venturers do plenty of adventurous stuff like rock climbing, orienteering, kayaking and sloshing in mud. It's all go. Another good thing for us parents is that our second eldest son went through all the Scouting levels to Rovers and then became too old for becoming anything except taking out his warrant to become a group leader. So he become one of the Venturers leaders. That also translates as chief transporter for our daughter. Perfect. She's always been one for an adventure. Here's a picture of her taken after sloshing in some mud in 1993:

Even though older kids do the occasional chauffeuring we parents still have to do a bit of running about. This weekend is set aside for the annual Master Mariners' competition. It's a two day event overseen by a group of real master mariners and our youngest son who is a Sea Scout is a competitor.

It's a two day competition against other groups to determine which is the most skilled in nautical arts like boat handling, chart reading, navigation, knot tying and so on. It's conducted at the Pelican Point Sea Scout facility which is located on the northern side of the Swan River. We have to drop our son off by 8am, and then collect him again this evening. Then someone has to repeat the process again tomorrow.

In the weeks leading up to the event there's some pretty serious training goes on. During the last school holidays the East Fremantle group where our kids hang out conducted a week long intensive training camp during which our son slept under canvas on the river side. These are his halcyon days.

Here's photo flashback to 1992, our eldest boys halcyon days when they were practising on the Swan River for the Master Mariners' Competition. Looking at our old photos makes me realise how worthwhile the effort has been

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Point Walter - then and now

2008-05-02T00:10:47Z

Golly gosh, it's Friday already. I was thinking it was about Wednesday, but it can't be so. It was Wednesday that my wife and I parked the car near the Attadale shore of the Swan River and took Milly the Pup for a long walk to Point Walter.

Our minds must have been in old codgerland then as well, because we now realise that we must have walked past at least a half dozen "Dogs prohibited" signs. If a ranger had turned up we might have been slapped with a hundred dollar fine.

Point Walter has been a favourite river haunt of mine since I was a kid. It's changed a lot since the 1950s. It's been "developed." There's sealed roads, and alfresco cafe and a huge, ugly car and trailer park for stinkboat owners.

There are two main touristic focal-points for visitors. One is a long sandbar which extends westward into the river for about a kilometre. It's called the Point Walter Spit and is a sort of no-mans-land of drifting sand. It changes shape every season. At the moment much of it is submerged, so only the very adventurous folk walk out to the end. In fact I don't recall ever having seen so much of it submerged in the past as it was on Wednesday. In the picture you can see from the previous tideline that the water had been much higher in the previous 24 hours.

When I was a kid both sides of the spit were guarded by extensive beds of weed which was a haven for small fish such as cobblers (catfish) and schools of mullet. We kids would try to catch the mullet by throwing steel kylies amongst them.

Kylie is a regional word for boomerang. We made them from steel strapping purloined from building sites. They were simply bits of metal about an inch wide and a foot long,, then folded in the middle. Mullet were usually smarter than we were, plus kylies were quite easy to lose in the weed.

These days the water is crystal clear. There is no weed to be seen on either side of the spit, and no fish. The clear water has equated to aquatic sterility. Perhaps the lack of weed has also allowed the sand of the spit to move much more than in the past?

Adjacent to the start of the spit is the T shaped Point Walter Jetty. It used to be a very popular destination for daytripping ferries from Perth. It was a great place for swimming and I spent many summer afternoons there with my mates after school. There's a low landing with steps into the water on the shoreward side.

The jetty structure has undergone a few renovations since I was a kid, but is still fundamentally the same shape and size. In the fifties it hosted a great deal of fishing activity. In summers from dusk onwards fishermen and women occupied every possie and often had no problem in catching a feed of tailor, herring, garfish or crabs. (There were off times too.) The crabs were caught with baited dropnets which were flung twenty feet or so out to where the big'uns were supposed to be. There were few sights more anticipatory than watching a baited drop net being hauled back in every ten minutes or so.

The other thing I remember I used to do on the long section of the jetty was lean beneath the railing to catch cobblers with a gidgie as they swam into the dim light of a kerosene pressure lamp. Gidgie was another regional Aboriginal word, meaning fish spear.

Along the shoreline on summer nights one could see dozens of lamps belonging to prawning parties. A couple of men from each party would drag a prawn net back and forth on the sand banks. On return, the waiting women and children would sort the prawns from the jellyfish and weed, being ever careful not to be spiked by small cobblers in the process. The best prawn parties were when people actual caught some prawns and boiled them over an open fire. Fresh bread and butter and a few beers to accompany the prawns was essential for a successful beach party.

But now those sort of events no longer happen, like with dogs, beach fires are banned, and anyway there are no more prawns to catch. Nor are the waters teaming with any other types of fish.

Here is the link to a 180 degree panoramic image I made on Wednesday. http://www.panoramio.com/photo/9788241 It shows the jetty and the shoreline where these simple pleasures were once pursued. The tranquil appearance is vastly different to fifty years ago. There are still some large introduced Morton Bay fig trees and larger Norfolk Island Pines visible, but most of the other vegetation, the buildings and other 'improvements' are more recent. There is some remnant native bushland on the hillside behind the shoreline, but this is being overtaken by South African weeds and feral olive trees.

As is usual with my panoramas, this one is best viewed when it's clicked to the maximum size. You never know what surprises you might find.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

A new Cub Scout in our family

2008-05-01T01:06:07Z

But first:

Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
In forty years time
I'll be a hundred and three.

I'm on the downhill run. I've got to be good today - no growling at the kids for leaving lights on, or for leaving the fridge door open, or for leaving DVDs on the floor out of their cases.

Last night was investiture night for our nine year old Cub Scout daughter at the1st Fremantle Sea Scouts' Camp Waller. The investiture is when kids officially become part of the world wide Scouting movement. Amongst other things, they recite the Cub Scout promise:

Cub Scouts are loyal and obedient
Cub Scouts do not give in to themselves.

Hmmmm, I like that. I must have recited that to old man Dagg when I was invested at the Melville Cubs the early 1950s.

The other thing that invested Cubs are entitled is to receive their first badges for their mums to sew on their shirts. There are the formal badges of affiliation; and the badges earned by the completion of set tasks. There were a few of the latter handed out last night because the kids have been working on earning these while waiting for their investiture. Perhaps the most important ones for Sea Scouts are the swimming ones. Our daughter did hers from the jetty in front of the Scout Hall over a month ago.

Scouting in Australia is undergoing a resurgence. There were twenty kids invested last night. Possibly an all-time record. I gather this is a widespread social trend. Possibly a reaction by concerned parents about the burgeoning drug, alcohol and violence problems in the wider community. The older Scouting divisions are also thriving.

We've had a long affiliation with 1st Fremantle Sea Scouts. Last night I noticed several pictures of our older kids in former groups still pinned to the walls.

There's an essay of mine about the historical origins of this group which I put online at Fremantlebiz 29 February 2006. Also a few Scouty pictures from last night and some taken a few weeks ago in a gallery at my the Picasa site. Click the image below:

1st Fremantle Sea Scouts

Men behaving badly

2008-04-30T01:04:27Z

I was looking at the camera and Apple computer magazines at the newsagent shop in Garden City yesterday while my wife was elsewhere paying some accounts. We'd arranged to meet later.

While I was trying to glean what information I could from a free read I heard a young kid grizzling. It was a girl of about three with shadows under her eyes looking as if she had been kept awake until midnight for several weeks. She was sitting on the hip of a ratish looking bloke who was impatiently rifling through the magazines in the section I'd be loath to examine in public - the section which has magazines containing risque images of women.

He knew what sort of literature he was looking for and pulled it out just as his size 18 wife turned up. He shoved the magazine at her and demandingly said. "Buy this!" then he turned and left the shop with the squawking kid still on his hip. The woman obediently went to the counter and paid for the latest edition of Zoo magazine. On the cover was a headline, "40 hottest cleavages in the world." I confirmed my memory of the headline by looking up the rag on the web.

Now call me old fashioned if you like, but I reckon if a bloke wants to read a magazine like this then he should have the guts to go to the counter and buy it himself. It seemed pretty insulting act to shove such a headline his wife. I suppose there are thousands of Australian families where this sort of thing happens. Zoo, an Australian production has a weekly circulation of more than 122,000 copies a week.

There was some sensational sexist-news yesterday that the Liberal leader of the opposition in the state parliament distinguished himself in front of other members late last year by getting down and sniffing the recently vacated seat of a female staff member. It's true. He offered a teary confession at a televised press conference yesterday. The day before he'd said it was an unsubstantiated rumour. This is the same man who confessed a few months ago that he had "snapped" the bra strap of another female staff member in parliament as a joke.

In response to the latest revelation/confession, his party colleagues have rallied round him and declared he is still the best person to lead the Liberal Party into the next election. What does that say about them? Are they all Zoo devotees too?

Men who indulge in shameful behaviour towards women have a fundamental personality inadequacy. Doing such acts in front of other men is akin to assaulting the woman. It's nothing less than blatent victimisation. Gutlessness fits in somewhere. This sort of behaviour doesn't start overnight, and nor does does it easily conclude. Such men often acquire encouragement through the acquiescence of onlookers. Sometimes the behaviour by reputedly "good blokes" can be much worse.

Both these incidents were apparently widely known in political and local media circles long before they were publicly disclosed. That it took so long is testament to the small town mentality which prevails here.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

An Afghan review

2008-04-29T01:31:18Z

On the weekend an Australian soldier named Lance Corporal Jason Marks was killed in a firefight in Afghanistan. He's the fifth killed since the Australian Army deployed there in 2002. Reportedly there have been about thirty others wounded.

Six years is a long time to be at war for Australia. Going by what the Australian PM Mr Rudd has said in the past 24 hours, there's plenty of conflict to come and a high likelihood of more Australian casualties.

The number of killed and wounded on the other side is kept ambiguous. Apparently more than 1,000 people have been killed in Afghanistan this year. An estimation by Associated Press reckons about 8,000 died in 2007. As is usually the case in such figures, the innocents are lumped in with the militants.

There was another incident in Afghanistan on the weekend. It was televised to the world. President Hamid Karzai, surrounded by a small stadium full of puffed up Afghan military officers was having a good old fashioned banana-republic style military parade in Kabul. There was even a military band wearing gold braided toy-soldier uniforms which looked like hand-me-downs from some other banana republic.

Everyone had just gotten comfortable when a sneaky Taliban squad spoiled the party with some nearby gunfire and grenade explosions. Everyone jumped from their seats and ran, but not as fast as President Karzai. Outside the stadium there were amazing scenes as Afghan soldiers fled in all directions. It was a case of every man for himself.

It appeared that a significant proportion of the Afghan Army was a rag-tag affair which was more interested in conducting grandiose parades rather than doing the sort of more aggressive things which Australians are doing elsewhere.

As for the invasive Taliban squad, no one should be surprised that the survivors seemed to have melted away. Nevertheless, President Karzai's goons have been rounding up hundreds of people and disappearing them for some confessional interrogation.

As for Karzai himself, he's got a curious tribal history with many twists and turns. The best place to read of these is his Wikipedia entry.

Here's a piece of Afghan history from a nineteenth century book titled The races of mankind. I have an original copy on my bookshelf. It was published between 1873 and 1876, The woodcut is labelled, "A group of Afghans." In many areas of Afghanistan it wouldn't be difficult to find a similar scene today.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!

Photographic memories

2008-04-28T00:11:05Z

We had a few gentle rumbles of thunder in the distance last night. Apparently April has been wetter than usual. The weather boffins reckon that if Perth gets another 3mm of rain this month it will be the wettest April on record.

I spent a bit of time skulking on eBay yesterday. I was looking at Nikon camera stuff - lenses and filters that I don't really need, and am not likely to acquire anyway because for the most part there are a lot of other Australians doing he same thing and the prices go way too high. Even for items which have descriptions like, "Quite a bit of fungus can be seen inside the lens."

There is a lot of stuff appearing on the Australian eBay by sellers who turn out to be based in Kong Kong. I paid for a Hoya Pro1D polarising filter last week. It was a third of the price being asked in Australia, even including the postage.

Honkers used to be a paradise for camera buffs before it was handed back to China. I went there on a week's R&R from Vietnam in 1966 and can still see in my mind's eye the camera shop where I bought my first Pentax Spotmatic SLR and a stack of superb Pentax accessories. I still have most of the items. They are in excellent condition, but are totally obsolete. The lenses have 49mm screw mounts which were abandoned by Pentax decades ago. So now they sit in a draw where I periodically give them a nostalgic fondle. The curious object with the extension bellows was a very expensive Pentax assemblage. It was used for ultra close up work and copying slides.

As for the Spotmatic itself, well that worked well in warm climates, but froze up in cold Arctic when I went there. I worked my way through a couple of them, then about fifteen years ago on a Good Friday the second one's strap came away and the camera crashed to a concrete floor. That was the end of my Pentax SLR era and the start of the Nikon. Spotmatics seem to have vanished completely now. I don't look for them on eBay because - well because they needed 35mm film and my film days are over.

It's all digital for me now. There are several digital cameras amongst our family members. We started with a Pentax compact a few years back. Paid about seven hundred dollars for it. Wow! So much! It's still giving service, but the prices have dropped substantially on compacts.

A couple of weeks ago we bought a Nikon L10 for $99 from the local Harvey Norman store. It does most of the things the older Pentax compact does. We bought it as a camera which our kids could take with them on school camps and such. It was cheap enough not to cause an apoplexy if something disastrous happened.

However we also have had a Nikon D80 SLR for about a year. They cost a lot more than $99, but are the ant's pants for a bumbling amateur like me. I'm still figuring out everything it can do.

Yesterday I upgraded it's firmware. That's the computer program which makes it work properly. The upgrade is supposed to make it work even better, not that I noticed anything wrong with the old firmware. Nevertheless, I downloaded it for free from the Nikon website and followed the install instructions - easy.

I bought a 2 Gig SD memory card for this camera a few weeks ago. The same type of card can be used in the Nikon and Pentax compacts. It cost just under twenty bucks and can contain over 452 high definition images which can be easily and quickly transferred to a computer or CD. That's the equivalent of about 19 rolls of 24 exposure film, plus the cards can be used over and over. I've seen 16 Gig SD cards on eBay for less than a hundred dollars.

It sure is a luxury compared to the days when I'd by a roll of film and later have pay to have it developed and printed. The overall cost was about the same as for the 2 Gig card. Not only that, but the results were always a bit of a lottery. Some pictures were good and some were very disappointing. As most people know, with the digital cameras the results are instantly viewable on the built in screen.

There are still film fanatics about. I met one a couple of weeks ago. He swore there was no substitute for being locked away in a darkroom for hours to produce a dozen or so prints the old fashioned way.

A few weeks ago there was a small item in the press that Polaroid instant photos are no more. The company has thrown in the towel on them. I was surprised they'd lasted this long. The announcement has caused a panic amongst devotees. There were two packs of film which went for over fifty bucks on eBay Australia last week.

© MMVIII Paul R. Weaver.

Click here to visit 'dogandcatwatcher', my YouTube website.

Original still photographs are stored online in a cache at my Panoramio website or my Picasa site. Most of them have a brief description and a link back to a relevant essay. Images on Panoramio can usually be enlarged several times by clicking them.

About the writer

Click here to see our backyard.

Check out each month's subject index on the Calendar Page for my "common-man" monologues about survival in 21st century Australia – plus a little history occasionally. An original essay is added most days as part of an undertaking to write at least couple of million words. Zzzzzzzz!