Brisbane Bound

Another Jetstar Saga

2011-05-25T05:26:00.000+10:00

When you're dealing with budget airlines nothing's easy.

A few weeks ago I made a booking using frequent flyer points to get us from Saigon (Ho Chi Minh City if you must) to Singapore. We're talking Jetstar Asia here. All goes well until I get to the payment part (2 selected seats for US$4 each) when that ridiculously irritating Verify by Visa nonsense comes up on screen. I last encountered this 18 months ago when I was trying to book a British Airways flight. Of course, 18 months later do you think I can remember the password - not in a million years. So I switched from Visa to Mastercard whereupon the web-site crashed.

So I waited a while and had another go, deliberately not selecting seats so I didn't have to use the credit card. Success.

A while later I check my email to find I now have two bookings. So I phoned Jetstar to cancel one. They said I had to phone QANTAS because I used frequent flyer points. QANTAS said they couldn't do anything about it because they couldn't bring the bookings up on their system because they were Jetstar bookings. Another 3 phone calls later I finally get someone at QANTAS who confirms that if I cancel the flight with Jetstar I will eventually get the points back. OK. Good. Cancelled. Sorted.

Not that easy. Three weeks later I checked my points balance. Refund ? In your dreams. Points have been deducted for the original failed booking, also the real booking and, lo and behold, another booking that I'd never even heard of or received any email about. What's also odd is that I effectively managed to make three bookings for a flight that didn't have any seats left according to Jetstar's own web-site but that's another story.

So I phoned Jetstar (who seem to specialise in employing people who can barely speak English) and get the same run-around. Another couple of calls later someone at QANTAS actually manages to co-ordinate my refund with Jetstar. Apparently it will take up to 15 days to get the points back. Fingers crossed. I'll need a holiday to get over the stress caused by the online booking process.

The Black Sheep of the Family

2011-05-10T14:05:00.006+10:00

Every now and then I dust off the family history files and do a bit of an online search to check for new data available on the web. As every year goes by reams and reams of new records, indexes and databases are released online, some free, others not. I've been researching for close to 20 years now and slowly add extra bits of detail to the story. Sometimes, as last night, I unearth a veritable treasure trove of information which helps to flesh out the standard skeletal details of cold hard dates and census entries.

Yesterday's effort focussed on my Risby family connections, a stray family in an area of the UK where there is virtually no-one sharing the name. Thomas, the father and his Devon born wife, had a small brood of boys in Abingdon in the early years of the 19th Century. Henry, my direct ancestor is easy to follow but I'd always struggled to find information on his brothers, some of whom seemed to have simply evaporated. Henry went on to become a policeman in the early 1840s, not long after the County Police were established but at least two of his brothers didn't quite share his respect for the law.

Edward, the youngest brother, was brought before the magistrates at the end of March 1838 accused of stealing a quantity of pewter 'the property of William Ballad, ironmonger'. He was committed for trial and doubtless paid for his crimes.

Another brother, William, basically thanks to his complete incompetence and inability to perform his job as a toll keeper, scored numerous dishonorable mentions in the pages of Jackson's Oxford Journal in the middle of the 19th Century. At the end of May 1851 he was taken to court for charging the Reverend Barnes 5d for taking his dog cart through the gate. He was fined £1 with costs. Apparently he'd been fined a similar amount only a couple of weeks previously for the same problem.

In September of that year he was in court again, accused by Joseph Balgrove of trying to charge a toll for his threshing machine. Astute legal advice actually identified an error in the Turnpike Act and William escaped on a technicality.

In a reversal of fortune he fell foul of a similar case in November of that year and was ordered to pay £5 including costs.

The news went quiet for several years until February 1855 when William charged the superintending constable of one of the Police districts 6d. to take his horse and cart through the gate, despite claiming exemption from the regulations. Fined 5s. with 8s. costs.

Poor old William made the news again in June 1858 when he tried to close the gate on a runaway horse and cart. The cart hit the gate before it was closed and sent William flying and he ended up with a severe head injury from which he apparently recovered.

In early 1859 he tangled with the police again, charging a policeman for taking his horse and cart through a toll gate. Fined 4s. with 6s. costs.

Obviously a slow learner. Poor old William doesn't appear to have made it to the 1861 Census. It seems he passed away in early 1860.It's probably fair to assume he seriously embarrassed his brother Henry, the local policeman, on more than on occasion.

Bowing to the Inevitable

2011-04-27T19:24:00.001+10:00

Well that's it. I'm now officially visually challenged. I've got away with it for a long time. Usually the eyesight starts to give a bit of grief when you get in your 40s but I've hung on grimly until now, just past my mid 50s. I've seen a few people get glasses and then become very dependent on them very quickly so I resisted for a long time. I've given my eyes a few serious canings over the years by doing a lot of detailed work on computers such that I could barely read a book and they always recovered to an adequate level but it's been a long and very slow losing battle and I finally admitted defeat.

My eyes are a bit strange apparently. For distance work my left eye does all the work, for close up work it's the opposite. The optician thought initially that I was suffering from a complaint called monovision but turns out it is just a worse than usual case of ocular dominance.

Last time I had my eyes checked, the conclusion was that I didn't need glasses, this time I need reading glasses, the lowest setting or whatever, No. 1. So when I'm really struggling at the computer or with reading (usually on the plane in low light) I'll be able to continue with some man-made ocular assistance. Hopefully they'll give me an enhanced appearance as befits my managerial status and an air of quietly cultured intelligence. If not, well at least I'll be able to read without wishing I had longer arms.

Eon's A Go

2011-04-25T23:08:00.000+10:00

It's sad to think she was only 6 years old, maybe even a bit younger, 5 and a half perhaps, but she had become painfully slow and sometimes simply didn't want to get going. So we had to have her put down.

Down in the basement that is, under the bookshelf where she may yet get called upon to drag files off an old 3.5" floppy some day, but that's about all she's probably useful for. Good bye Celeron, it was nice knowing you but technology has moved on and you haven't. The new graphics card transplant helped for a while but you really coudn't cope anymore could you ?

Hello CORE i7, 8 gig of RAM, 1 gig video RAM, and 1Tb HDD and now we're cooking. It goes like the proverbial clappers and is a positive joy to behold. Windows 7 has been great so far and Microsoft Office will do just about everything we need. Mind you, I've been using Office 2007 for a few years now and I still think it was a bloody silly idea, Bill. An upgrade is supposed to be easier to use but it wasn't and I still yearn for good old Office 97/2003. I see you've now added a File menu tab to the various programs. Bloody silly idea wasn't it, hiding them in that big button thing up the top left. Whose bloody silly idea was that - have you sacked him ?

The new boy is called EON, that's what it says on the front and it's appropriate because it took me an eon to get the thing going. Oh it started up fine but then started bleating about being unprotected and suggesting that some form of cyber-protection might be necessary to prevent an influx of nasty viruses and that's where the fun started. I slipped the Kaspersky's internet security CD in the drive (time for a change, Norton 360 was driving us nuts) and ... nothing. Not a cracker. Tried it agan, zip, nada, niente etc. Encouragingly a green light was flashing but that was it. So, off with the sides and check the connectors. The power cable was OK but the tiny new SATA cable came out and wouldn't go back in again. Hmmm. There was no way I could actually get the DVD burner out so I persevered and eventually the cable did go back in again and the computer finally found the CD and installed the software. Since then I've discovered that it won't burn CDs so I suspect there are still issues with the connector. I suspect the socket has been clobbered at some point, it doesn't look quite right.

Then of course I had to load up all our old files and that took another small eternity. All up I spent the best part of a day buggerising around with it. I think I've just about wrestled our email into shape in Outlook after trying out Livemail twice (the first time and the last time) but there's still a few programs to load up in due course as we need them.

I hope it keeps going for as long as its predecessor did. Tech note : the new boy + software cost nearly $2,400. That's pretty much what I paid for an 8088 with 2 x 360kb floppy drives in 1984. It was a lot of money then.

Down the Range

2011-01-27T21:15:00.000+10:00

I worked for half of Australia Day and then jumped in the ute and headed for Townsville. The roads were quiet - in two and a half hours of driving I was overtaken twice (by the same person) and didn't overtake anyone myself. Driving around the outback isn't really challenging, the trickiest part is staying awake through the mind numbing boredom. It's bitumen all the way mercifully and I always welcome the above sight because I then know I'm only a short way out of Townsville and its generally civilized surrounds. This is at the top of the Hervey's Range on the imaginatively named Hervey's Range Road. The Hervey's Range isn't quite as spectacular as the various verdant rain forest clad ranges that you have to climb up out of Cairns but the locals are proud of it. Just round the corner from the above you get a very distant view of Townsville:

No, you're right, you can barely make out anything but it's the whiter patches right in the distance up against the two little hills in the middle, Mount Louisa and Castle Hill, the hill being decidedly taller than the mount - logic obviously wasn't the city fathers' strong point when it came to naming landmarks.I finally got to the airport only to find I'd missed my plane. Bugger ! Must look at the itinerary more closely next time.

River City Misery

2011-01-17T15:51:00.000+10:00

Maybe I should rename this blog 'Flood Bound' for indeed we were for a couple of days at the end of the week. With the Wivenhoe and Somerset Dams brim full there was no storage capacity for the massive downpour which hit the Lockyer Valley. Once again Mother Nature showed us who's boss as she drowned Brisbane's riverside suburbs in about 4 and a half metres of dirty brown floodwater. The lucky amongst us may have noticed no change in their suburban lifestyles except to wonder why there was no milk in Woolies. The only slightly less fortunate (like us) lost electricity for a day or so while those poor buggers within reach of the rivers swollen flood levels have paid a very heavy price.

The Handbrake's sister has a house in one of the worst affected suburbs (Fairfield) that they rent out. It's a highset,so the floor is perhaps 3 and a half metres above ground level. They scored almost a metre of water through the house. The neighbours next door have low set houses, the flood has left a tide mark on their roofs. On Friday after the waters had receded we went over and helped strip out the carpets, underlay, virtually all the tenants soft furnishings, whitegoods. The tenants are students, they've all lost books and personal stuff but probably count their losses in the $100s rather than thousands. I can't even begin to estimate what it costs to repair the amount of damage the householder will incur. We've since stripped off all the plaster board up to about chest height and tossed the kitchen units out and the stove. In their despair some people are throwing too much out, stuff that a good drying out and cleaning will render workable once again but very few are thinking straight right now.

What amazed me perhaps more than Mother Nature's show of strength was the human flood that followed the disaster as hundreds of people gave up their time to help clean up. At D's place alone we had a Chinese guy turn up with a Honda powered high pressure cleaner and work his way through the house hosing thick mud and silt out, and nobody knew who he was. People drove through the streets with sandwiches and cold drinks for everyone. A young chap from an adjacent suburb lugged sodden carpet and underlay down the stairs along with the rest of us. Again I don't even know his name.

Barely a few days later the city has gone back to work - or most of it anyway. For some it was more like a holiday, for others a life changing experience. The dams are still pretty full and the wet season has only just begun, In 1893 they had two floods about 4 metres higher than this one in the space of a fortnight. Fingers crossed.

Rowes Bay

2011-01-10T21:29:00.001+10:00

While the central and southern parts of Queensland are awash with floodwater the northern part of the state is having a relatively easy time of things. There are plenty of storms and showers around but the calamitous conditions down south certainly aren't evident up here. Most noticeable though is the effect the flooded coastal highway (the Bruce Highway) is having on deliveries to the shops. Supermarkets in Townsville have just about run out of fresh chicken, yoghurt is in short supply and fruit prices have skyrocketed, How much of this is due to actual supply price increases or simply opportunistic money-grabbing is open to debate. Today I saw apples for sale at $10/kilo.Anyway, I hope Southern and Central Queensland get some respite soon.

Today's picture shows Rowes Bay in Townsville. The big island on the horizon at right is Palm Island. The large rock on the left is Castle Hill which dominates the Townsville skyline and rises some 286 metres above sea level - not far short of the Eureka Tower in Melbourne. You can 'walk' from the CBD via the appropriately named Goat Track to the top of the hill if you're keen or take the road which is a lot gentler. I tackled the goat track early last week and went out a bit too hard and gave up the attempt. Yesterday I approached it slightly more sedately and made it to the top. I shall have to make it a regular thing, it's a damned good bit of aerobic exercise.

Navara Truer Word

2011-01-08T13:37:00.000+10:00

Partly for security reasons and also because it needed a service I left the ute at Townsville's Nissan dealership over Christmas and the New Year and picked it up last Monday. It already had about 16,200 kms on the clock when I took it in. The little sticker on the windscreen now says the next service is due at 16,000 kms or in June - whichever comes first. Which does leave me a trifle confused.

I'm also not sure who came up with their business plan but they phoned me up while we were on a tram in Melbourne and asked for my credit card details so they could finalise the account. I could understand this if they didn't have the vehicle and the keys as security in their yard up in Townsville. Why do so many businesses do things which inherently irritate their customers. If the $400 stopped them going under financially then I'm very happy that I saved so many people from the dole queue.

I'd also note in passing that the inordinate amount of time they took to get the car back to me when I went to collect it bore absolutely no similarity to the speed with which they demanded payment.

Wasabi rip-off

2011-01-03T13:56:00.000+10:00

So does anyone know why you have to pay for your slug of wasabi in Melbourne where they squeeze 50c worth (actually about 10c worth) into a little black plastic bowl while you get it in a free sachet in Brisbane ? Money grabbing Victorians...

Cheap and Cheerless

2011-01-02T06:10:00.000+10:00

Our flight down to Melbourne on Tiger was OK, nothing special but in view of the fact that you already know you're going to get treated like cattle it met our expectations.

Coming back was a different story. The Handbrake had already checked in online (cheaper that way) but two of us had the bags and we had to check in the normal way. Between the two of us we were 3.5 kilos overweight. "That'll be $45 please sir," ($15/kg) to which I replied that I'd take some stuff out to which the check-in girl said "you'll have to go and join the queue again". After taking a few books and the heavier items out and putting them in our back packs we joined the queue again. No problem., well, one problem maybe.

I do have a slight problem with an airline that is so nutty that it almost seems to like annoying its customers to the point where they'll never ever bother to even think about using them again. For the sake of trying to gouge an extra $45 for 3.5kg of excess baggage you end up losing a customer while you let all sorts of fat-arsed, grossly overweight bastards fly around and not charge them a penny extra.

Can't say it was a pleasure, Tiger.

River Views

2010-12-12T21:50:00.000+10:00

The boss has been at me for some time to rent an apartment in Townsville so that we can cut back on some of the hotel expenditure that I've been clocking up over the last few months. If it was just for myself it would be a marginal saving but I think he has designs on other people staying there from time to time so we will ultimately save a bit. Cheap, decent flats simply aren't available. $420/week is about the bare minimum for a furnished place but we've scored a reasonably good deal and landed one for $450/week in a nice spot. Other units in the same complex are being rented for $650 so we've done well. The view is reasonable, overlooking the Ross River with a bit of passing water traffic. The only blot on the horizon is the giant sugar warehouse but you can't have everything.

I gather the flat was until recently occupied by an elderly lady. She has now either gone in to care or to live with relatives so the flat has a bit of an elderly lady's feel to it. It's certainly not the neutral look you get in a lot of furnished places, it's a bit like living in someone else's house at the moment. There's knick-knacks and prints and soft furnishings all over the place so the inventory went on for pages and pages and I still haven't found the 5 beer glasses. Also, the trained monkey that typed it up failed to distinguish between coat hangers and wall hangings (all hangers) and had some stuff in the wrong rooms. I'll also have to break the news to the agent that the second tumble drier they have listed is in fact a washing machine.

So, it's a stinking hot Townsville Friday afternoon when I move in and of course the first thing I discover is that none of the three split system air conditioners works. I've spent the last couple of nights sleeping on one of the very comfortable sofas right under a fan with both front and back doors open to let whatever totally insubstantial breezes there are pass through the flat. Then, this morning the toaster decides it doesn't want to work any more after it has half toasted my two slices of bread. It's brand new, one of those <$15 Chinese imports with a girl's name like Tiffany or something. The good news is that the washing machine works. So, I can have clean clothes but I can't sleep and have toast.

A Tiger's Tale

2010-11-01T19:27:00.000+10:00

In a rare display of forward planning I booked our flights to Melbourne this morning. We're planning to spend the week between Xmas and the New Year down there. I've only been an occasional visitor to the Victorian capital, the Handbrake has never been and no-longer-even-slightly-little A has only been there for a few days on a school trip. Philip Island is on the intinerary so we can look at cute little penguins but the rest of it is still a mystery. Shopping, bookshops, Chinese restaurants, you know, that sort of self indulgent binge that prevails at that time of year.

I did the usual - check Webjet and then go off and visit the chosen airline. Tiger was streets ahead, a smidge under $450 for the three of us return Brisbane to Melbourne. Let's be honest that's pretty cheap. So the booking process began. Don't forget the bags, $20 to $25 each with one of us having to check in online otherwise that costs money too. Pick the seats; that'll cost you too - $30 for lots of leg room, $20 for the front of the plane and $8 for the back - each. Pay more if you want to get on first. Then the coup de grace, $7.20 per person, per sector, for the use of a credit card, the total being bloody near 10% of the advertised price of the flights. I carried on to the bitter end because it was still cheaper than any of the alternatives but the creeping inflation over and above the initial declared flight costs did start to leave a sour taste in my mouth. We ended up pretty close to $700 with about a third of the costs being additional to the basic flight costs.

And then that accursed VBV - Verify by Visa - reared its ugly head. I last bumped into that last year while trying to organise some BA flights for our holiday to the UK. QANTAS doesn't need it, nor does Virgin, nor Jetstar. Extra security maybe but it was just another thing that irritated me by this stage of the proceedings. What was really odd was that I actually got the password right on my first go.

We'll give them a go but it's a strange way to do business and win a loyal clientele.

Pick Me Up

2010-10-09T16:41:00.000+10:00

Blimey, last night I dreamt that I had to pick myself up at the airport and even dreamt about the philosophical and logical conundrum.that presented. Time for a job that involves less travel perhaps ?

Golden Circle

2010-10-03T16:42:00.000+10:00

No, I'm not talking about a popular brand of canned pineapple which is now owned by the Americans (another piece of Aussie heritage swallowed by the Yanks). The Golden Circle is the name applied to the main tourist route in southwest Iceland, taking in Gullfoss (the waterfall on the left), the Geysir area (the geyser Strokkur) and the Thingvellir area, site of the national cemetery, cute Icelandic church and the site of the nation's first parliament - not to mention sitting on top of the mid-oceanic ridge.It's all pretty fascinating stuff and classic Iceland. Lots of water, stark landscapes and several thousand German tourists.

After our weekend sojourn on Vestmanneyjar we collected our cute little red Jeep Wrangler on the Monday morning and headed off in hot pursuit of a couple of ridiculously over-pimped 4WD station wagons which conveniently led us to a fabulous viewpoint overlooking a geothermal power station at the southern end of the Lake Thingvallavatn. From there we did the rounds of Thingvellir, Geysir and Gullfoss and then called in to look at Kerid crater on the way back to Reykjavik. It's close to 30 years since I drove on the wrong side of the road but I adapted fairly quickly and, the car being an automatic, none of that tricky gear changing with your right hand was necessary. I doubt if I'll ever rent a soft-top Jeep Wrangler again though, it was noisy and uncomfortable - but got us everywhere we wanted to go so I can't be too critical. The other option would have been jumping on a tour bus. One Canadian we spoke to at Gullfoss had spent that day on a tour bus and was fairly scathing of the exercise so I'm glad we spent the money and rented a car. The roads aren't crowded once you get out of Reykjavik and you don't have some anti-social bus driver threatening to leave you behind if you don't emerge from the toilet or restaurant at the specified time.

Gullfoss is pretty spectacular while the Strokkur geyser at Geysir was fascinating - it's one of the best on the planet. Thingvellir was charming, the heart of Iceland's democratic stability but potentially one of the most geotectonically unstable places going. The high heat flow pulling Iceland apart at this divergent plate margin causes a phenomenal amount of tensional separation hereabouts and the rugged landscape with its tilting basaltic crust and tensional rifts, gashes and gullies is simply mind boggling (remember, I'm a geologist, not a normal person when it comes to interpreting andscapes). The rate of separation has been estimated at 70m over the last 10,000 years - sprinting in geological terms.

The ridiculous amount of daylight means you can still be driving around the countryside looking at touristy things well into the evening. We did and generally got back to Reykjavik quite late at night. More next time.

Iceland

2010-09-18T16:34:00.000+10:00

After a few days in the motherland we headed for Iceland. For some bizarre reason every flight from Europe seems to land at Keflavik at about 11 o'clock at night. (Why ? Someone please tell me !) Our Iceland Air flight was followed to the terminal by about 3 other aircraft, most of which seemed to have originated in Germany. Consequently you get to your hotel after midnight, generally quite exhausted and ready for sleep but then your body clock goes haywire because it's not remotely dark. We picked the wrong accommodation bracket in Reykjavik (serves me right for being tight-fisted but I caught frugalitis from The Handbrake). It was adequate but not quite what we were really after and a bulb in the bedside light would have been useful.

Day 1 we did Reykjavik, up at a reasonable hour (9 am) only to find there was barely anyone else about, presumably a function of the fact that most Icelanders seem to be night-owls (which may explain my question above). We liked the feel of Reykjavik, compact and easy-going. Nearly everyone involved in tourism speaks English very well and it was just, well, nice. On the second day we headed off to the Vestmann Islands for the weekend, staying overnight in the fishing town of Heimaey. Cast your mind back to 1973 if you can. This is when a new volcano erupted, buried half of the town and threatened to block the harbour and destroy the island's fishing economy. It was a big thing on TV, man versus nature etc, as the townsfolk sprayed sea water on the lava flow to try and stop its advance. The incident became one of those things that got implanted in my memory and I'd been promising myself a trip here for many years. That's a view from the 1973 volcano Eldfell, looking southwest along the mid-Atlantic spreading ridge through the nearby Helgafell volcano which supposedly erupted 5,000 years ago. The very small island in the distance is Surtsey which first appeared as a new volcano in the 1960s.

Heimaey's not your regular tourist spot but we loved it. It was about the only place we went where we weren't surrounded by German tourists. Seriously, I heard more German spoken than Icelandic. They didn't get there in the Second World War but they're certainly making up for it now.

2010-09-06T17:55:00.000+10:00

So, we spent the first couple of days in Kent, chez Maman et ma soeur. It used to be the garden of England, now it's the pedestrian precinct of England, pedestrian in more sense than one. Every town has had the character ripped out of it and relocated to some huge shopping centre somewhere (Tent City at Ashford is a prime example). To fill the void a plethora of charity shops has moved in, recycling people's discarded possessions, accompanied by the £ Shop and the 99p shop and an endless range of card shops, all selling complete crap and junk. Every place looks the same with its paved mall, no through traffic. It's totally soulless.

Herne Bay, Whitstable, Sandwich, Ramsgate, Margate, Broadstairs, Dover, Canterbury - you name it we went close to it. I had to take a picture of this ridiculous sign on the dock-side at Ramsgate. Why don't they just erect gates at the edge of town and prevent people from coming in ? When you finally find somewhere to park there's no point getting out of the car because you're not allowed to do anything and they're watching you in case you do ! It's a harbour, there's water around, it's slippery when it's wet. Has everybody in the country become so stupid that you need to tell them this crap ? All it would take is one judge to say, 'What, you slipped over because the pavement was wet ? Well you're a complete twat, watch where you're going and stop blaming everyone else for your own stupidity !' and all this litigious nonsense would stop overnight. Why did Britain become an insignificant third world European backwater in the 21st Century ? Because everyone was too busy blaming someone else for their own actions. Give me strength.

Anyway, Kent's very pretty (except the towns and motorways and service stations and car-parks and pedestrian malls) and I really did like Chilham. It's often described as the archetypal English village and it is - it took 1 hour and 20 minutes to get four sandwiches the second time we went there... Don't go to Sally's tea rooms.

Airborne

2010-09-05T10:47:00.000+10:00

So here we are at Changi in Singapore after the flight from Brisbane to Sydney and Sydney to Singapore. Only a brief stop for the big bird. We perused the shops and got back on board again. The flight to the UK was as good as it gets (22 hour of total tedium) and my first glimpse of the motherland as we dropped through the clouds somewhere over Essex was, as ever, a bit emotional. Nostalgia ? Home again ? Pride ? This is where I came from, a country that you could be proud of but is now rapidly transforming into something else I can barely relate to after 30 years of not being involved. Now it just feels like a foreign country where I half know my way around and they all speak English, well not all, but most anyway, and I'm not talking about the Geordies.

Traveling on my little blue Aussie passport I stand in a queue with all manner of other nationalities as it becomes transparently obvious that ethnic, commonwealth and linguistic links no longer count as much as the commercial and political links that have been forged with the EU countries. This is all the more galling since the number of immigration officers attending to EU passports is totally out of proportion to the length of the queue. I'm tempted to stand up and say out loud 'Excuse me ! Does it make any bloody difference that I was actually born here ?', but of course I won't, mainly because I don't want to embarrass the Dear Handbrake who's waiting patiently with me. But it does get up my nose more than just a little bit.

We pick up the little French Peugeot at Avis and head for Kent on the M25. Next time I think I'll just head for Leicester Square and then try and find my way out again towards Kent, it can't be any more stressful. On the way I note that every second car that overtakes me seems to be either an Audi, a BMW or a Merc. What the hell has happened to the British car industry ? Congratulations Germany, it's taken you 70 years to destroy British industry but you've certainly done it in spectacular fashion now !

Moan, moan, moan. Must be back in England, eh ?

On the Road Again

2010-09-04T17:24:00.000+10:00

My new job ( same company) has me scooting around all over North Queensland visiting our various operational sites. I'm going to be doing a lot of driving henceforth and Thursday was a taste of things to come. Six hours at the wheel and I covered something like 500 ks between 2pm and 8pm. I probably overtook half a dozen other cars and got overtaken twice. I even got lost once which probably added 20 minutes to the trip.

Compare that to one of our recent experiences in the UK, driving from Bodmin down in sunny Cornwall to Herne Bay in Kent. 480 kilometres. NINE hours.

It usually doesn't take me very long to appreciate my adopted land once I get back. How do you lot in the UK put up with it ?

Kingston Riverside Reunion

2010-06-12T10:17:00.003+10:00

John's video of the recent Reunion by the Thames !

Back to School Time.

2010-06-02T12:17:00.001+10:00

Another fine example of the sign-writer's art seen in a Brisbane suburb. Not the world's greatest photo, I'm afraid, snapped from inside the car in a no-parking zone. Honestly if you're engaged in the noble art of sticking needles in people you'd think you'd know how to spell it.

Royalties

2010-05-03T11:29:00.000+10:00

I got my first royalty cheque the other day (actually a direct deposit but it doesn't sound half as exciting). Some government body used a photo of mine they found on my old blog in a couple of magazines. Is this the start of a lucrative photographic career I hear you asking. Probably not. I've had my digital camera for about 6 years and it's earned me A$51.04. It will however buy a nice breakfast for the Handbrake and I sometime soon. Meanwhile I plan to milk this rare event as much as possible amongst my acquaintances and relatives.

The Weeknd Paper

2010-04-27T19:45:00.000+10:00

Out here in the sticks, 2 and a half hours drive from the big city on the coast the niceties of life can be difficult to get. Take the weekend paper for example. Every second Saturday when I'm here I ring up the general store and ask them to keep two copies of the paper for myself and a colleague. This might sound simple but it obviously isn't. A couple of days later one of us will venture into the ~~town~~ village and claim our papers. Sometimes they've forgotten, more often they've only got one copy, as was the case today. So I headed back to work primed to do the sudoku puzzle and discovered it was the previous weekend's paper.It really shouldn't be that difficult should it?

I've been on my 'no wheat products' diet for about three weeks now and every afternoon I'm absolutely stuffed, fall-asleep-on-the-desk-if-I-could kind of stuffed. Fruit and veg really doesn't get me through until dinner time and I can only eat so many oranges (2 a day maximum, any more is disastrous - try it if you must). Today I had three small scones after lunch and it was like taking an energy pill. I must do that more often.

And this afternoon someone phoned up and said they'd been offered a job and would probably take it. Oh bloody hell.

Long Time No Talk To

2010-04-21T18:27:00.000+10:00

HELLO !!! Yes, I know it's been ages. Too busy by half these days. Work takes up more than its fair share of time and my breaks have been more than happiily occupied with my historical research. I've started writing a book, factual history based on newspaper reports and other sources and it's very time consuming. I'm even struggling to find time to do the washing up... I'm not pretending it's going to be a best-seller but it will fill a gap in the available literature and it's more a labour of love than a way of making money.Mining history has ben my focus for many years and I'm back into it with a vengeance. What else has been happening ?

My job is driving me nuts. I've been there for over 4 years and all my jobs seem to have a 4 year use by date. I'm over that now and starting to get itchy feet. My role is changing slightly and that may involve me travelling north once a week instead of once a fortnight. That'd be good for the frequent flyer points but not good for my peace of mind otherwise. I spend enough time in the QANTAS club and airports generally. More I do not need. Time will tell. My mate in Chile might yet come up with the goods. 18 months to 2 years over there would be good but the downside would be not spending as much time at home.

Life is generally pretty good though. Yesterday I caught a steam train into town - QR has been running a few as regular services to train drivers for heritage train tours. I'd like to think it's a strategic move in case we ever run out of oil but there's no way the Queensland Government would be that forward thinking. They're a dull bunch and the opposition's not much more inspiring.

Less than three months before we jet off to Europe - UK, Iceland, France & Sweden - assuming of course Iceland hasn't blown itself to smithereens and we're forced to settle for a week on the Gold Coast.

That's yer lot ! A bientôt ! Mind you, if it takes as long to come back here as it did this time it won't be very tôt at all will it ?

Eucalyptus

2010-02-27T18:53:00.001+10:00

There's a bit of a seep out the front of the office and every now and then a gum leaf will drop in and start to stew in the hot weather. As they rot they give off their eucalyptus oil and create these distinctive oily smears. A little bit of oil goes a long way but it does help to explain why Aussie bush fires can be so ferocious. The camera doesn't quite capture the colours even with a bit of help from Photoshop.

Almost Another Spelling Mistake

2010-01-26T20:13:00.001+10:00

I was going to make some witty remark about famous oriental desserts after I saw this menu at our local noodle take-away the other evening but after my previous Homoeopathy post I thought I 'd better check Google first. Yes, it is indeed one of the ways you can spell Pad Thai but hardly the most popular. Pud Thai scores 140,000 hits against 1.6 million for the more popular Pad Thai spelling. If the menu didn't have teriyakl chicken on it as well I'd be very confident that it was deliberately spelt that way...

Spelling aside, the Red Treasure Box was lovely although the two chillis didn't really indicate that much of a challenge.

Priorities

2010-01-23T14:20:00.000+10:00

I spotted this sign at the Brisbane Grammar School (BGS) rowing shed a couple of weeks ago. Rowing presumably now has a higher priority than the correct spelling of Latin.

Double Take

2010-01-12T16:09:00.000+10:00

I did a double-take when I saw this sandwich board in Indooroopilly the other day. 'Surely that's wrong', I said to myself, but no, there are two ways you can spell the word, one with the extra 'o', the other without. The former gets 3,650,000 google hits, the latter 4,930,000. You learn something new every day. Pity, because if it had been a spelling mistake it would have been a doozy.

Cheap Apostrophe's

2010-01-10T01:23:00.002+10:00

Yes, summer's here and it's time for the annual markdowns and the disintegration of whatever limited grammatical awareness remains.

Planning for the Podes

2009-12-27T12:46:00.000+10:00

I've spent quite a bit of the last couple of weeks planning our summer trip to the UK and northern places (if we're in the antipodes, up there must be the podes, OK ?). One of the few benefits of spending half my life in airplanes (when did they stop being aeroplanes ?) and airports is that I've got a very healthy frequent fliers' point balance so we've used those to get us to the UK and back. Now that the Dear Handbrake is not stuck with the usual school holiday dates we can pretty much come and go when we like although we nearly left our run too late to get flights when we wanted them so we're heading off about a month after we originally wanted.

We land in the UK a week and a half before the summer school holidays start so after a few days rest with the family we're off for a week to Iceland before the airfares go berserk. We've included a couple of days at Heimaey in the Vestmann Islands for something different. Horse, puffin and guillemot are on the culinary 'must try' list for our Iceland trip.

Being the Francophiles that we are a trip to France is almost mandatory so we'll be doing Provence or parts of it anyway - Marseilles, Arles, Nimes (oh bloody hell, Nîmes if you must) and Avignon to see the pont. It's a part of France that neither of has been to previously. Time to see if Peter Mayles was telling the truth.

A bit of a jaunt around Cornwall is also called for and I'm holding out for a long weekend break in Stockholm which seems to have the casual tourist edge over Copenhagen or Oslo.

Ireland is now sadly off the list, something had to give. One thing's for sure - I'm going to be totally stuffed at the end of it.

Hans' Five Commandments

2009-12-26T21:27:00.000+10:00

A few months ago I walked past this van parked in a quiet street on the south side of the river some distance from the city on one of my long walks. I accidentally deleted all the photos of that day but recently retraced my steps. It was in good condition when I first saw it but it's a bit of a mess now, a smashed driver's side window, a couple of flat tyres and the rear door prised open. I can't imagine why, maybe Hans has upset someone...

Yep, Telstra Again

2009-11-17T20:27:00.003+10:00

It was only a matter of time before I mentioned the word Telstra. Regular readers out there (all 2.5 of you) will be thinking, "Oh no, what now ?". But yes, they've done it again. They've exceeded even my wildest expectations of ongoing corporate stupidity and chaos. Read on...

Some months ago one of their door-to- door reps asked the Dear Handbrake if we wanted Cable ADSL at the same price as our current ADSL broadband delivery method. Exactly the same terms and conditions. So when he called back while I was home we signed up for the deal. That was on the 28th July. It was to be installed within 20 days. I thought no more of it for a few weeks - after all it wasn't going to cost anything and our internet system is reasonably fast anyway (I remember dial-up).

Today they phoned up trying to sell us Foxtel. The Dear Handbrake and I barely watch TV (Morning Show and News being about it) so I said, "No thanks - but you can tell me what's happened to our cable broadband installation...". After some investigation it now transpires that cable broadband isn't available hereabouts and never was. But I think I'd already assumed that since it was 3 and a half months ago.

Then he said, "Your mobile is just out of contract, would you like to renew it ?" To which I replied, "I did that a few months ago - just before you announced you were trashing my old website in your quest for a smoother and better customer service delivery." He checked. I was right, I had renewed it.

I have shares in Telstra. I worry sometimes. Am I alone ?

Some Instructions

2009-11-16T20:25:00.004+10:00

Presumably these instructions are for those doughy country folk arriving at Brisbane Central Station who have never seen an escalator before or don't know how they work. I'm not quite sure about the 'automatic' aspect. I guess it works automatically whether anyone is on it or not. Good old QR.

Brownsville

2009-11-01T14:18:00.002+10:00

Brownsville, the derogatory term by which Cairns residents often refer to the best city in North Queensland, Townsville. They know nothing, it's a great place. The frangipanis are at their best.

I got to spend a few days there for work recently and it makes a change to work normal office hours rather than the sunrise to sunset nonsense that I have to put up with normally. The only problem is that I still wake up at the normal time and then spend an hour and a half wandering the streets waiting for the office to open. On day one I thought I'd have breakfast in the mall and selected a likely looking café. I got ushered onto the upstairs balcony round the edge of some corporate strategic breakfast meeting (which would have annoyed me if I'd been presenting at the time). I had a quick glance at the menu and ordered one of my standards - cinnamon toast and a black coffee. The young waiter was probably a backpacker, sounded German, and had a lot of troubel with 'cinnamon'. Eventually I said ' the guy in the kitchen will know what I want' and off he went. A long time went by and as soon as he emerged onto the balcony I knew it had been a colossal mistake. Whatever it was, it wasn't cinnamon toast. A plate of smoked salmon appeared before me which I graciously declined. Eventually I ended up with a slice of toast with cinnamon sprinkled on it. Not the cinnamon sugar mix I and every other person in the country is used to, but straight out of the spice jar. OK, maybe it's not quite an antipodean culinary icon but it's not that unusual either.

Next day I found Café Bambini next to Woolies and proceeded to have breakfast there for the rest of my stay. They open at 6, know what they're doing and make a damned fine cinnamon toast.

Byron Bay Weekend

2009-10-20T20:18:00.004+10:00

Last weekend we headed off to Byron Bay. We'd been promisi9ng ourselves a trip there for a while but our last effort coincided with the annual Blues Festival and accommodation was non-existent. This time we had no trouble getting accommodation about 30ks up the coast at Hastings Point. Accommodation at Byron Bay itself was out of the question - I already have a mortgage. The Friday night journey down from Brisbane was a nightmare, the first (and hopefully last) time I have to cope with such a ridiculous amount of traffic which I gather is pretty typical for the end of the working week. Driving about 80 ks out of the way when we reached the area because I hadn't looked at the map beforehand didn't help my mood either.

It's been a while since I've visited country New South Wales and after Queensland the roads seem horrendously over-regulated with more speed signs that you can shake a stick at and usually about 10 - 20 ks slower than an equivalent stretch back home. There were so many roundabouts on the coast road between Kingscliff and Pottsville I was starting to get quite nauseous at one stage. The scenery was beautiful though and the views from the lighthouse at Cape Byron are fantastic. Apart from an obsession which some businesses seem to have about reminding everyone that they work on New South Wales time (an hour ahead of Queensland sometimes) the area was well worth the drive. A special mention must go to Mokha in the main street where we had an excellent breakfast.

Perth - the City of Disappointment

2009-10-16T15:40:00.003+10:00

I don't know what it is about Perth. I stayed at one of the hotels in the CBD for a couple of days for work earlier this week. It's not an unattractive city, it has a lovely setting on the banks of the Swan River and it's far from ugly. It's just that the CBD after hours (and we're talking 5.30) is as dead as the proverbial dodo. There's a couple of pubs open and some restaurants if you look hard but it lacks something undefinable that Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne and even Hobart seem to have. Part of the reason is the ridiculous trading hours in the CBD which ensure that most things close early. I walked all over the place one evening looking for an appealing looking chinese restaurant and eventually found an Asian restaurant that resembled a milk-bar more than anything. Not a piece of red velvet wallpaper or chandelier in sight. Of course, on the way back to a hotel I passed another Asian restaurant with Cambodian overtones offering far more exciting dining options.

Maybe I've just got a bit of a thing about the place. On the first morning at the hotel they forgot to bring the undoubtedly delightful Manjimup truffle honey to go with my porridge. Next morning the café where I had breakfast got confused between a long macchiato and a giant sized flat white and took an eternity to bring me two pieces of toast. While my pad thai tasted OK. it lay like a giant lump of semi-digested noodles in my alimentary canal for half the night and I think I'm still getting over it 36 hours later. It came with some sliced chillis on the side which turned out to be capsicum masquerading as chilli. Quality control seems to be lacking. Perhaps it all stems from the city fathers who seriouslyneed to get on a plane and fly to Brisbane to see how it's done.

Perth, wake up to yourself before it's too late.

Virgin on the Ridiculous

2009-10-10T11:17:00.005+10:00

I've never minded travelling on Virgin Blue. OK, I don't do it enough to make the velocity points really worthwhile but I judge them a bit above Jetstar although they also seem to be a bit more human these days at least judging from Friday afternoon's flight from Cairns to Brisbane.

I was originally coming home for a wedding this weekend and was scheduled to fly back to Cairns on Monday. However, changed work duties mean I now have to go to Perth on Tuesday afternoon so the Cairns flight was surplus to requirements. It was a cheapie Blue Saver fare so I couldn't change the destination, it had to be Cairns - or, as the pleasant young lady advised me over the phone, I could cancel it and use the credit for a different flight so long as I didn't mind the $48.50 cancellation charge. That sounded like a good option so I went back online and hit the big 'Cancel' button.

Now you and I might both be thinking that I would end up with a credit balance that represented the original cost of the flight, $172.00 minus the $48.50 cancellation charge i.e. $123.50. Like me you'd be totally and completely wrong. They actually deduct the $48.50 from your credit card. Perhaps I was going through a naive moment or was mentally drained by the two weeks at work but I really didn't see it coming.

Why do Australian airlines seem hell bent on irritating the crap out of their passengers ? To add insult to injury, now that I have a credit in the system I have to phone up and make a booking. Yes, you guessed it, that'll cost more than if I did it online....

Oh, there's a picture of a couple of tugs towing the Australian Navy vessel Wotsername (No 06) up the Mulgrave River taken from a delightful Cairns lunch spot called Mondo's on Friday. It's also called Mondo's on other days of the week too. My mobile phone takes a really crap picture doesn't it ?

She's Not Apples*

2009-09-19T17:39:00.003+10:00

Sometimes it doesn't take much to set me off ranting and this morning presented me with a fine excuse. I was fairly crabby anyway because I had to get up at 4.10am to catch the 5.30 flight from Cairns to Brisbane and then it rained while I was waiting to board the plane (rain in Cairns shouldn't really come as a surprise though should it ?). Somewhere over Bowen the hostie passed a tray of breakfast over to me and it included this gem - a packet of sliced apple. To be honest it was quite nice and I suppose it's more manageable for the cabin crew than a pile of apples but is this a triumph of marketing genius or what ? Ready to Eat !!!! Thanks to the wonders of modern technology this version of the once popular fruit has been conveniently sliced up into individual bite sized pieces for easier handling and consumption.

If your eyesight is good and you can read back to front you'll note that the pack contains Apple and 'Natural Antioxidant' (302') which is, as everyone will know when they read the next few words, the preservative calcium ascorbate (a non-acidic form of vitamin C). But what the hell is a 'natural antioxidant' ? Antioxidizing properties it may well have but I fail to see how a manufactured chemical can be 'natural'. What a load of cobblers.

Anyone who eats this product also urgently needs to know that it 'may contain seed or seed pieces'. When did they stop being called 'pips' ? Oh for pity's sake !

And then there was the idiot on the airtrain on the way into Brisbane who tried to pry the train doors open with his hands because he hadn't seen the bloody great green button on either side of the door with 'Press Button to Open Door' written on it. At least that put a smile on my face.

* From the Aussie colloquialism, 'She's apples'.

Pancake Day

2009-08-24T13:24:00.004+10:00

A couple of weeks ago I was over at Toombul talking to a man about a dog. Well, not a dog really, but a three letter word with an 'o' in the middle, such is the unsatisfactory state of affairs at work. It was lunchtime and after I'd downed some sushi I spotted some sort of prawn fritter at the Greek take-away. I was full so I passed.

Today I chance upon the same thing at Indro, glorifying under the name of a 'prawn and veg pancake'. They looked OK so for the price of $2 I weakened and ordered one. I know that the term pancake doesn't exactly conjure up some sort of imaginary light and fluffy crepe delight but this was absolutely horrible; thick, doughy and greasy with a hint of prawn and I do believe I found at least one pea inside. Of course this was totally unpalatable unless you tipped half a bucket of salt over it which I promptly did of course.

Today's dietary disaster. Bleeaarrrggghh. Bring on tonight's massaman curry.

Mushrooms

2009-08-22T15:22:00.004+10:00

Look at that. It's taken mushrooms to drag me back to blogland. Work is driving me nuts at the moment and I'm starting to feel rather tired of it all. The daily grind has left me uninspired and generally kn***ered since we got back from hols and blogging has been the furthest thing from my mind. Until today that is.

Why have mushrooms bought me back to cyberspace ? Well, we went out for breakfast this morning to one of the posher restaurants in Brisbane - Anouk. Well maybe not posh but it's in Paddington and that's a posh area and it has made quite a name for itself as a breakfast spot. I can see why. The food was good, service a bit slow but it was busy and the prices are very reasonable.

I had mushrooms on toast - throw in some wilted spinach and some tomato chutney but it was basically mushies on toast. Wild mushrooms they were called and it had some of those very thin funny looking enoki mushrooms (Flammulina velutipes if you must know) mixed in. I'm a fan of mushrooms but circumstances must have dictated against me trying this particular type before which is odd because I'll try most things vegetal (is that a word ?) and fungal.

Now I've never thought the texture of mushrooms was their biggest drawcard. Some people find them almost slimy and hate the damn things like my brother-in-law who can detect even the tiniest nano-particle of fungus in a stew. Anyway, I bit down on a mouthful of these things and they were actually crunchy and fibrous. Crisp might be a better term but they were really quite nice. Crunchy mushrooms, a new taste sensation for my jaded palate.

That's it, nothing earth shattering about it but it's nice to get a culinary surprise with your breakfast. We won the lotto too, all $40.05 of it. A big day.

Back from the Hols

2009-07-13T10:20:00.002+10:00

I haven't blogged for over a month now, slack, must try harder etc. Work was full-on before I left and heading off on leave for three weeks was just the tonic I needed. I was getting very tired and unproductive. There's still three days before I fly back up north but the batteries really feel recharged. After 10 days in exotic parts, work is going to seem a little drab though. Here's a potted timetable with comments:

June 29th - flew from Brisbane to Singapore courtesy of QANTAS frquent flyer points and overnighted at the Changi Hotel solely because it is close to the airport and we had to be up and away at the crack of Dawn. We had a fifteen minute stroll through a local market and bought some fruit and that was our Singapore experience. Funny to see several streets named after UK airbases - Dad was stationed here briefly after WW 2.

June 30th - Off at sparrow fart to Siem Reap. Landed and met by our guide and driver and then dropped off at the hotel for a rest - 9.30 in the morning so we went for a stroll aong the main street and bought some fruit and water. Instant culture shock. Later that day we went for a trip out on Lake Tonle Sap past floating villlages with floating schools, floating churches and a glimpse of the fishing lifestyle.

July 1st - Temples - Sunrise at Angkor Wat and Ta Prohm (as in Tomb Raider). Visually stunning, architecturally magnificent. Words fail me.

July 2rd - An early morning chopper flight over the temples followed by an elephant ride to the Bayon temple, the one with all the giant faces. Preah Khan temple in the afternoon, more Khmer architectural magnificence.

July 3rd - Morning trip to the Buddhist shrine at Phnom Kulen, the River of a Thousand Lingas and waterfalls. Banteay Srei temple, the most delicate of the Khmer temples with stunningly intricate carvings, in the afternoon.

July 4th - Wedding Anniversary. A long drive to the Boeng Mealea temple site, basically untouched and still very much as nature has left it. Visited a local school and helped distribute pencils and exercise books. The children have so little yet are so appreciative and well behaved. Education in Cambodia faces a daily uphill struggle for resources and teaching staff.

July 5th - Road trip to Phnom Penh. Nobody's driving very fast which is good because all other traffic regulations are at best only loosely observed. Most people seem to drive on the right. Stopped at Skuon road house to check out the tarantulas.

July 6th - Tuol Sleng S21 prison camp and the killing fields at Choeung Ek. The horror and futility of the Khmer Rouge genocide hits home very quickly. No photos today for us. Our guide lived through it and lost his father and many relatives. His grief is palpable. I won't mention the complete lack of respect displayed by some Japanese tourists - oops I just did.

July 7th - Out to the Buddhist shrine at Oudong and to the silversmiths at Kampong Luong - beautiful craftsmanship. Spent way too much money. Wrap up the day with a cruise on the Tonle Sap river and the mighty Mekong.

July 8th - Off to Phnom Penh airport after breakfast only to find that the Jetstar Asia flight had been cancelled a month before. Yes, I did get an email from them about a schedule change, the half hour did register but not the different day. Doh !!! Full marks to Silk Air who let us use their office to make an internet booking to get us to Singapore while the flight was checking in. We spent a couple of hours wandering around Singapore's Kampong Glam district - we'll be back - and flew out late that night for Darwin.

July 9th - Back in Brisbane. Nice to be home but it all seems very dull and boring.

This was our first Asian experience. It won't be our last but there's so much left to see elsewhere that I'll probably never get back to Cambodia. I'll miss the amazingly friendly Khmer people with their crazy driving, wonderful cuisine and relaxed sense of humour. After 30 years of mindless war the recovery is slow but they're definitely going places. Go there !

Back in Business

2009-06-07T18:44:00.002+10:00

One of the few good things about having a bad back is that it feels absolutely marvelllous when it starts to get better. Touch wood, it's well on the road to recovery, a little tired at the end of the day but my mobility is improving rapidly. One of the OHS guys at work lent me a support 'girdle' which has been a great help - I really notice it when I take it off. I'm also off the drugs (isn't Voltaren fantastic ?) and trying to do a bit of walking around to try and build up the strength again. It's amazing how out of condition you can get during a fortnight of enforced idleness.

I can once again wash my left foot reasonably well, get my socks on in the morning and tie shoelaces. I shall declare the recovery complete when I can once again cut my toenails, a chore which I'm actually looking forward to - heaven knows they need it !

I just wish I couold work out what I actually did to my back in the first place. I sure as hell wouldn't do it again.

Dirty Big Pond

2009-06-02T20:00:00.003+10:00

I've had a web site with Telstra for years. I don't use it much, it mostly has family history material on it, 'for the record'. This turned up today in Telstra's Bigpond Ponderings newsletter.

Why is BigPond phasing out the Personal HomePage, Personal Website and Webstart products?

As part of Telstra’s five year transformation plan, we are rationalising and simplifying our product offering to customers in order to provide a better and simpler customer experience. BigPond will continue to offer customers a choice of flexible and easy-to-use hosting options to meet customer needs today and into the future.

What will happen to my website and content after 30th September 2009?

After the 30th September 2009, your website will no longer be available and all website content will be permanently deleted (and unable to be retrieved).

My customer experience is certainly going to be simpler isn't it ? Arrivederci web-site ! Of course I can have a new web-site, for only $9.95 a month and no extra charges if it's less than 10Mb. I'm having a wee bit of trouble comprehending exactly how this is a better experience. If I'd known this before I renewed my mobile contract this morning I may well have told them to shove their 'better and simpler customer experience' up their fundamental corporate orifice.

Bad Back's Back

2009-05-30T17:24:00.005+10:00

Sorry, couldn't resist the alliteration. I'm not sure what I did on the charter flight up to work just over a week ago but I 'put my back out'. It started to come good and then I made it worse by trying to tie up my shoelaces. Then it started to come good again and I made it worse by trying to wash my left foot in the shower. 'Thou shalt not bend over' should be my motto at times like this. Here I am five or so days later and I can finally report that it appears to be on the mend - pending bending over of course. In the meantime I've spent a considerable amount of time either lying flat on my back or sitting bolt upright - magnificent posture but it's about 40 years too late.

I first stuffed my back up when I was 16 going for ridiculously long rides on a sports bike with drop handlebars. I've lived with it ever since, every six months or so getting a reminder of my youthful stupidity and every few years or so a bout of agony. My pain this time has been put into perspective by reading an account of life in a Soviet detention centre - 'Grey is the Colour of Hope' by Irina Ratushinskaya. The ordeal she and her fellow detainees had to put up with as recently as the mid-1980s is truly staggering.

Breakfast Creek

2009-05-20T11:12:00.004+10:00

Winter has arrived in Brisbane. It has been cool so I caught the train into the city last night for my Spanish lesson wearing jeans and a long-sleeved rugby shirt. Most people on the train were wearing jackets, boots, leggings, even scarves - a climatically sensitive bunch obviously. As a rule I love the cooler weather but I could have done without having to trudge home from the bus stop in the pouring rain at the end of the night. Now, if I'd turned my mobile phone on after the lesson I would have received a message from the dear Handbrake telling me that she would pick me up from the station or wherever. Bugger !

I did manage to get in a reasonable walk on Monday before the rainy weather set in, from Central Station to Eagle Street pier and then along the river past New Farm park and all the way to Breakfast Creek. It was a good opportunity to test out my new walking shoes, a pair of carefully fitted New Balance joggers which cost more than I've ever paid for a pair of shoes in my life before. Mind you, no blisters eventuated on the +11 kms walk so it was a successful outing. That's the Breakfast Creek hotel in the piccie, one of Brisbane's most recogniseable buildings.

Brown Ladies

2009-05-17T14:42:00.003+10:00

How many ladies ? What colour is the cardigan ? Why do they have to share a cardigan ? Why is it so hard to grasp the fundamentals of the English language ? So many questions, so few answers. It must be a well-loved cardigan because the brown ladies that lost it have stuck posters all over Taringa in an effort to find it again. If only they'd told us what colour it was we may have been able to help.

Life has been very busy of late and I've been indulging myself of late with one of my past loves - industrial archaeology and have little time for blogging right about now. In other news, I'm still learning Spanish and still losing weight. Life is good and the anticipation is building before our Cambodia trip at the end of June. I've also started work on an itinerary for our 'I' Land trip next year - Iceland and Ireland.

Green Bridge

2009-04-22T14:55:00.003+10:00

Time to head back to work for another week. My long two week break didn't quite work out like that - having to fly to work for two days in the middle made sure of that. I've been keeping up the walking Yesterday's marathon 13.88 kms (according to Google Maps and it certainly felt like it !) took me from Central Station along the south bank of the river through West End and Highgate Hill to the green bridge and then through the Uni and St Lucia back home. I must confess to being a bit perplexed by the green bridge. It has a bike-way and a pedestrian section but what is the point of only letting buses use it ? I would have thought that the cost of building a bridge capable of carrying buses would have been much more than just providing a pedestrian + cyclist bridge. All it basically does is save the bus passengers a few hundred yards walk. It would have been greener if they had to walk across. It's also known as the 'Singing Bridge'. The responsible artist 'believes the sound of the cables is the voice of the bridge, calling out concrete music, the vibrations telling stories from the life and memory of the structure' - which also suggests that there are too many government grants available to the arts community.

This morning I scored a 79kg on the scales although ours only measure in 0.5 kg increments but that's encouraging all the same. I probably haven't been 79kg for almost 10 years and I don't think I reached that weight when I last seriously dieted about 4 years ago. Last night's Spanish class was better. Not so many people turned up and we covered a lot of ground. Unfortunately I'll have to miss the next one while I'm up at work.

Spanish Lesson 1

2009-04-15T13:53:00.003+10:00

I headed into the city last night for my first Spanish lesson. I did a TAFE course many years ago (ca. 1990) but much has been lost so it was time to pick up the rapidly diminishing threads and revive them. A working knowledge of French helps greatly with a whole lot of grammatical issues and will no doubt stand me in good stead but we spent most of lesson 1 learning the sounds which would have been a good refresher if there had been some consistency.

The teacher is Latin American, a nice guy, but I question just how much teaching experience he has. We discussed briefly the fact that South American Spanish often sounds different to the original article. The double 'll' sound was quite perplexing, in passing conversation and discussion it sounded exactly like a breathy 'y' sound (which I thought was correct) but when we consciously studied the sound we were told it made a 'j' sound - sort of. When we looked at verb conjugations he basically disregarded the Spanish plural 'vosotros' and its 'ais' ending and gave us 'ustedes' and the 'an' ending. One of the girls in the class (not sure why she's in a begginner's class) took him to task over this (and other things). I wasn't bored but I wasn't entirely happy with the class either. I shall persist.

Up and Down

2009-04-15T13:39:00.002+10:00

It had been about a week since I'd done any serious exercise so I set off this morning for a decent walk with the intention of getting to the top of Mt Coot-tha. Google Maps tells me that I covered about 11.4 kilometres (yes, it felt like it) fuelled only by coffee and a grapefruit and previously stored resources in my rapidly diminishing overhang. Since the doctor read the riot act at me a few weeks ago I've been very serious about losing some weight. The scales tell me I'm hovering around the 80kg mark, down a couple and with a few more to go. I even see numbers starting with 7 early in the morning so it is working.

The view from the top is great despite it being a bit hazy this morning. Several things disappointed me on the walk. Cyclists, who no longer terrorise car drivers have taken to the footpaths and apparently now terrorise pedestrians instead. Sadly, I only saw one other person out walking which is a poor advert for most Queenslanders' state of health. On the way back I went down the Summit Track which goes pretty much straight downhill. This has to be one of the least maintained bush-tracks I've come across and was almost unsuitable for walking - it needs some serious attention.

Figs

2009-04-03T17:25:00.003+10:00

With the onset of autumn, the native fig is back in season which makes wandering through the bush a more pleasant experience with the occasional native fig tree quite laden with these slightly sweet, moist, little figs. These are about the size of a hazelnut or chick pea and rarely get any bigger than that. They're a far cry from the commercial figs which the Dear Handbrake loves so much but quite tasty little morsels all the same. Unfortunately the local insect population is quite keen on them as well and many of them get 'bitten'. I also chanced upon a bush today which I could have sworn was a Cape Gooseberry. I'm very familiar with the berries in their papery husks but until I get a positive i.d. on the leaves and flowers I'll be leaving them well alone. Apparently they're quite common in the bush and have spread quite well since they were brought ashore during the 19th Century.

I currently can't see my blog or read comments because our IT dept. has installed DansGuardian to prevent my colleagues from downloading anything of a dubious nature. Sadly it has also taken exception to something in my last couple of posts although I can't imagine what ! Even a proxy doesn't seem to help. Blogging blind.

Here Comes April

2009-03-29T18:40:00.005+10:00

There's an awful lot of cows in North Queensland, most of them Brahmin or Brahmin cross. Apart from getting mustered once or twice a year they spend most of their lives wandering around the scrub eating or trying to find grass to eat and generally don't have a lot to do with humans - except occasionally running in front of your car and causing total mayhem and insurance claims. Young April here is an exception. She's taken to hanging around our offices, eating the best part of a loaf of bread every day and generally making an amusing nuisance of herself. Young calves are pretty cute but April is rapidly reaching the stage where she will be large, decidedly uncute and potentially very tedious. And then one day the local farmer will send her away to be made into hamburgers.

Just Testing

2009-03-27T19:05:00.002+10:00

Ever since I switched over to Blogger I've been wondering how to get bigger pictures onto the blog. Drag the corner of course. Doh ! I don't have many pictures on my laptop so you'll have to put up with this one again.

River City

2009-03-24T18:39:00.004+10:00

A view of Brisbane from the cliffs on Kangaroo Point, taken during my stroll the other day from Fortitude Valley and back to the city. It's obvious why Brisbane is also known as the River City, a more attractive alternative than the popular Brisvegas. It was quite a stroll, all 6.4 kms of it, including walking over Story Bridge which I didn't enjoy one bit. I'm quite happy 1000 metres below ground in a mine but send me 10 metres up a ladder and I'm clinging on for dear life.

The Hep B reaction continued this morning, my knees ached and I could barely walk up and down stairs. It's evening now and I seem to be mostly back to normal, just a bit tired. I'm back off to work tomorrow for another fortnight so blogging will be a rare event.

Eifel Tower, Brisbane

2009-03-23T18:39:00.003+10:00

I'd made an appointment to start getting my shots for Cambodia at one of the travel medical centres in town so I caught the train in with the Handbrake and duly presented myself at 9 and had two needles stuck in me - Hep A + Typhoid and the first of a series of three Hep B injections. I probably don't particularly need the latter but this won't be the first time we head OS. Then I walked home through the Roma Street Parklands, along Petrie Terrace and down Milton Road past the XXXX brewery, and into Milton in search of likely looking restaurants for dinner one night. I'd obviously never driven down this road before otherwise I would have spotted this miniature version of the famous Parisian icon adorning the forecourt of the Rue de Paris restaurant - the Savoir Faire Tower - constructed to commemorate Expo 88 or some such.

I eventually made it to Auchenflower where I caught the train home. They say only a few % of people will get an adverse reaction from Hep B vaccine. I must be one, this evening I feel like complete crap ! A bit like the picture actually - crap. I did take a much better one except I chopped the top bit off and won't publish it on principle.

Quick Breakfast

2009-03-20T16:33:00.002+10:00

Today's urban stroll took me from The Valley across Story Bridge and along the cliff top round to Southbank and then back to Central. On my way through the Brunswick Street Mall I found this place which would probably be ideal for a quick breakfast. Streaky bacon presumably.

Election Eve

2009-03-20T09:45:00.003+10:00

Taringa's busy little Moggill Road yesterday afternoon. There's not a lot of parking and it's mostly specialty shops. Nearby Indooroopilly shopping centre has long ago sucked the life out of any sense of community in Taringa.

There's some electioneering advertising going on in the background (click for a larger photo) Labor: it's just not good enough. And it's not. Health is a shambles and the minister and his bureaucrats are a joke. Anna and the tattered remnants of Beattie's team simply don't deserve another run. Let's not forget this is the same Labor party that thinks giving nearly everyone $900 will help fix the economy (The Handbrake's will partly fund a new LCD flat screen TV from Taiwan or suchlike and I'm not eligible). I won't go on about Senator Conjob and ACMA and internet censorship but it's good to see we're joining such upstanding bastions of free speech as China and the United Arab Emirates in censoring the internet. Apparently ACMA banned access to an anti-abortion website recently - what the hell has that got to do with child pornography ? After so long in the wilderness the Federal ALP is certainly not short of evangelizing zeal or perhaps they're just trying to keep Senator Fielding happy. Hopefully this will all backfire on their state counterparts tomorrow.

Heaven on the Hill

2009-03-19T18:05:00.005+10:00

Out on my walk today I took a bit of a deviation and explored our local shopping strip up on the hill at Taringa. I'm a sucker for nice foody things so I couldn't help but pop into Mrs Flannery's and check the place out - on the pretext of looking for some nice ginger to send to dear Mama in the UK ( absolutely no self interest at all you understand). Not only did I find my favourite yoghurt from Mungalli Creek on the Tabelands but they also had the Queensland Yoghurt Company product. And those lovely cheeses from the Barossa Valley Cheese Company in Angaston. Does anybody see a dairy theme developing here ? No wonder I'm under doctor's orders to lose about 6 kilos.

Heaven. On the hill. About 200 yards from where we live. Love it.

It's Raining Again

2009-03-10T19:36:00.003+10:00

Yes, it's raining again, the creek's coming up and it looks like the wet season is trying to make a come-back. Hopefully, creek and weather permitting, I'll be out of here on Friday, maybe even late Thursday with an overnight stop in Cairns. The Qantas flight schedule still baffles me. Cairns is one of the busiest airports in the country, a major tourist hub and the last flight for Brisbane leaves at 5 past 5 in the afternoon. I'd love to know what genius came up with that idea.

Remember this ? Well, this is what it looks like if you leave your brand new turbo Landcruiser in a flooded creek for a few days and then drag it out with a front end loader. Yes, it's not a well car, is it ? Silly buggers.

Care and Maintenance

2009-03-07T20:13:00.003+10:00

We're on care and maintenance at work. There's no point mining ore if you can't truck it to the treatment plant and make some money out of it so we've stood most people down for a couple of weeks and made most of them take a week's leave - the lucky ones. Those without leave remaining simply don't get paid and so the global credit crisis hits home in a big way. Luckily I'm not included, I'm doing a range of project work aimed at reinforcing our future viability so I get to beaver away in relative peace and quiet while our work force has dropped from aboout 80 to 10. Very sobering times.

I've taken up walking again in the interests of regaining some sort of level of fitness. Last night I went for a big one, 35 minutes up the road to the mine and back, much of it uphill on the outward leg. Even though the return leg was largely downhill I was plagued by a cool, pollen-laden headwind, the peripheral stirrings of Cyclone Hamish as it headed south past Cairns, well out to sea. By the time I got back to camp I wasn't far short of tearing my eyeballs out ! Cyclone Hamish (what kind of a name is Hamish for a cyclone ?) has now proceeded well south along the coast and is predicted to make landfall somewhere near Rocky and will no doubt bring some more rain to southern areas.

I was supposed to be dining out this evening with The Dear Handbrake at Piaf, a French restaurant in Brisbane but I've had to make do with our camp fare. The Weekend Australian and a bottle of NZ sauvignon blanc will ensure that the weekend isn't a complete dead loss.

Oh oh

2009-02-24T21:11:00.004+10:00

Every place you move to has its linguistic quirks. In Bundaberg it was the unusual way of describing adjacent parts of the city like 'Over North' or 'Over East'. Brisbanites have, it seems, a propensity for truncating long words down to no more than two syllables. Laziness ? Maybe.

Even before we moved here we found out that Indooroopilly, the suburb next door to us was known to the locals as 'Indro'. This is partly understandable because it is a fiddly word, especially as the first two 'o's don't really get a look in when the word is pronounced. Unsurprisingly the suburb of Paddington back towards the city a little way is affectionately called 'Paddo' as are identically named suburbs in other Australian cities.

Only a few days ago we were however surprised to find out that Coronation Drive, which is the main road from this neck of the woods into the city is lovingly known as 'Coro'.

Lazy buggers. Anyway, tomorrow I'm off to the airpo to catch a plane to Townsvo.

City Views

2009-02-20T19:27:00.003+10:00

The view from our bedroom balcony this morning. In Brisbane real estate parlance those are 'city views' which are nice to have (assuming you like distant views of an urban monstrosity 5 kilometres away) but not worth the price premium they would suggest. The Handbrake and I had a good chuckle to ourselves the other day when we read an ad that talked of 'potential city views'. We are still wondering what massive urban renewal programme or landslide would be necessary to turn them into actual city views. Do real estate agents go on special courses so they can write complete drivel or does it come naturally ?

I'm glad we can see the city from our bedroom balcony because we can't see squat from our main balcony downstairs !

Brisbane Update

2009-02-17T19:42:00.003+10:00

Well, it's been about a month and we've definitely settled in. Much quicker than I thought we would as well. The biggest success has been young A who's made a few friends at school and settled into the suburban lifestyle with ease. The dear Handbrake is starting to find her way around and will slowly but surely become less dependent on the GPS to navigate around. As for myself, home is where the heart is, if they're happy I'm happy.

After 5 or 6 years of having my hair cut at Klippers in Bundy I had to go and find myself a new hairdresser today. I don't have a lot of hair so the recipe is easy (No 6 up the back and sides and trim on top) but there's a bit of an art to hairdressing, some do it well and others stuff it up. When I lived in Wagga it took me ages to find a decent hairdresser. Today's young lady, Kerrie, did a magnificent job and I thought I'd instantly found a suitable replacement but then she announced that she's on her way back to Scotland in a week's time - bugger.

Perhaps the biggest difference we've noted is that it takes ages to do what would have been relatively quick back in Bundaberg. There's no such thing as a quick shopping trip in Brisbane. Even though the huge Indooroopilly shopping town is only about 1 km away it seems to take forever and trying to do it on a Saturday is sheer madness.

Costochondritis

2009-02-16T21:14:00.002+10:00

About a month ago I suppressed a sneeze (apparently not a good thing to do) and felt a short sharp pain in my chest and then thought nothing more of it. Then, a few weeks ago, I started to experience chest pains while taking a deep breath. Not terribly painful but obviously not quite right so I waited for a few weeks to see if it was just some sort of strain and to see if it would just go away but it didn't. I've been stuck up at work for a couple of weeks but when I got home I Googled chest pains. Don't ever do this. In less than 5 minutes you can find several perfectly plausible reasons why you're just about to kick the bucket. This leads to an immediate increase in blood pressure and the certain conviction that now would be a really good time to start putting your affairs in order.

I'd already made an appointment with a doctor so despite wondering whether I should just present myself at the nearest Outpatients (Where exactly is that ? I really must find out.) and tell them I was at death's door I held off, not wanting to worry the Dear Handbrake unnecessarily. Anyway, it's plain old costochondritis, inflammation of the rib sternum junction. Nothing to worry about, just take some anti-inflammatories and it should go away. But of course my blood pressure was pumped right up in fear of some dreaded diagnosis. So the doctor's given me a blood pressure thingy to use for a few weeks, sensible because every time I stack a bit of weight on my blood pressure does tend to climb dramatically. I got back from a 50 minute brisk walk this evening and my blood pressure was 138/86 which doesn't sound too bad. I hope.

Macair Multiplier

2009-02-15T13:21:00.002+10:00

After two weeks at work I finally got home late on Thursday. We had some dry weather for the last few days but apparently the skies have opened again and the place is awash once more. The landcruiser pictured below was dragged out of the creek and is a complete mess, I'll see if I can get a picture when I finally get back to work.

On the way through Townsville I took this shot with my camera phone - some of Macair's former fleet, all lined up with nowhere to go as the liquidator works out the best way to maximise returns from the defunct company (or rather works out how to maximise his return from the defunct company). North Queensland's mining industry has taken a pounding in recent months so now all the ancillary and support industries must take their medicine. The airlines, freight carriers, suppliers and so on. Exact figures vary, but if you create one mining job you create several in support industries. Unfortunately the reverse also applies. It's called the multiplier effect. I wonder how much multiplier effect we'll get from KRudd's $900 hand-out.

Water World

2009-02-06T19:34:00.003+10:00

It might be baking hot and dry down south but North Queensland is gradually turning into a swamp. All the creeks are running a banker, the rain simply won't stop and although it's been relatively light where I am, other parts are awash.

There's nothing quite like the wet season and a bit of deprivation to make normally sane adults risk their lives for a few creature comforts. These guys went to the pub and got across the creek on the way there but failed dismally on the way back. They kicked out the windscreen and got away with it - lots of people drown in these circumstance - bloody idiots ! Just to make matters worse the road was officially closed so there'll be no inusrance payout and the driver's in line for a 'driving without due care and attention' charge. He'll probably lose his job to boot. The creek has been up and down a few times and, by all accounts, the car is slowly making its way downstream and becoming less and less valuable as it goes. I've run out of my favourite New Zealand sauvignon blanc (Giesen) so I'm carefully monitoring the creek level so I can get across for some fresh supplies. I won't be rushing though.

Mining Downturn

2009-01-31T18:50:00.003+10:00

In the last six months the mining industry has gone to complete pot as far as employment goes, mainly thanks to the dramatically reduced global demand for metals in the wake of the credit crisis - free market economics at its worst. Most of my mates and acquaintances are still in work but a couple have been laid off amongst the many thousands who've been retrenched in recent weeks. One mate declined a job only to find that mere days later they closed the mine and laid off a mob of workers. My last workplace has gone on 'care and maintenance' (in other words spend as little as possible and hope to hell that metal prices pick up dramatically) but the rumour is that it probably won't reopen. My current job ? Well we're haniging in there and trying to weather the storm.

Today I read that Macair, which had serviced many of the mining operations in the Cloncurry area including the one I spent four years at, had gone into receivership. Its days are probably numbered. Another victim of the collapsing economy.

Off to School

2009-01-29T19:07:00.004+10:00

Tuesday was one of the acid tests of our move to Brisbane - the start of term at the local high school for A who was, to say the least, very apprehensive about it all. We went with her but eventually we had to leave her to it and walk away but we were confident she'd be OK, she's quite sociable. Starting Grade 8 with a lot of other new kids is one thing but marching into Grade 11 and trying to worm your way into a lot of existing networks and friendships is a bit of an art. I don't think it would have helped her much but I did share her anxiety - I went to 10 different schools but I'd defy anyone to get used to it, I don't think I ever did.

At the end of day 1 she had a smile on her face and the grown ups were much relieved I can tell you.

Red Eye

2009-01-25T19:07:00.004+10:00

When it came to getting back from Perth to Brisbane there's a few options but I went for a cheap flight and plumped for the 00.40 (the lovingly named red-eye) which would give me all day Friday to finish a few things off. I spent the evening with some friends who've recently moved across there from Brisbane and left their place at about 10pm.

I whiled away the next couple of hours at the QANTAS Club, catching up on blogs and reading the weekend paper. The flight left at about 00.50, only slightly late. Catching it was definitely not the smart thing to do. Not long after you're airborne QANTAS serves dinner ! I mean, who the hell wants dinner at 1 o'clock in the morning ? I opted for the steamed Fish and rice - Thai style, actually very nice even though I wasn't terribly hungry. I'd seen the first movie, 'The Duchess' on the way across so tried to read and failed and then tried to get some shut-eye. This was rendered nearly impossible by the selfish wally in the seat behind who kept sticking his knees in the back of the seat. At one stage he manouevred his way to the toilet, grabbing hold of my seat and hair and effectively waking me up completely. On the negative side I got stuff all sleep but I did get to see the second movie, 'How to Lose Friends etc' which was entertaining although it doesn't actually take very much to entertain me at 4 o'clock in the morning, I'm usually fairly undemanding at that time of the night.

We finally got to Brisbane at about ten past six. I'd misread the itinerary so the dear Handbrake was still a long way off picking me up so I opted to catch the train. This involved a 25 minute wait at the airport and then a further 17 minutes wait in the city for an Ipswich bound train. It was close to 8 o'clock when I finally trudged up the driveway.

Bugger that for a lark - it will be a while before I catch the infamous 'red-eye' again.

Go West Old Man

2009-01-24T00:09:00.003+10:00

I'd only been at work for a day and a half when I got turned round and sent to WA for a quick project review. Time pressures meant I didn't have a great deal of spare time to go sightseeing but I did manage to take in a few of the sights. I spent most of my time in the city but also spent one day out in our field area. This involved a 5 hour drive through some of the most uninspiring country I've ever driven through, six hours on site, and then a five hour drive back to Perth - all in a Hyundai Excel. Just to add more fun and enjoyment I arranged the trip so I was driving into the sun both ways.

The lads on site showed me one of the area's distinctive thorny devils, a weird reptilian adaptation if ever I saw one. It looks rather ferocious with its spiny false head but is actually quite slow moving and essentially harmless. A cute little fella.

City Folk

2009-01-14T13:36:00.004+10:00

We're in. Saturday and Sunday were both long and tiring days but the ease with which our removalists handled the gear and valuable assistance given by the Handbrake's eldest, her fiancé and his tireless mate, Matt, we soon had the place squared away. The last few days have involved getting the place straight - opening boxes, fixing little things, storing stuff away and finding our way around the neighbourhood. Some pictures in due course.

We've got the roller door working again (at a cost), I've fixed one of the leaking toilets (thread tape was all it needed - who doesn't use it other than the idiot who tried to fix it before ?), put up the retractable washing line and generally made the place liveable. Telstra connected the phone when they said they would and despite reminding us that it could take no more than three working days to connect the broadband did so in the time it took us to go out for cake and coffee and pay a visit to Bunnings. Top job, Telstra, credit where it's due.

We're both pretty tired though. Lugging boxes up and down stairs has taken its toll. My ankles and lower calves were very sore for a couple of days and even my wrists. I'm woefully out of condition and need to get back to routine walking with a vengeance. I'm off back to work this afternoon, mainly for a rest ! I must say I'm looking forward to the simplified travel arrangements.

So now we're city folk. We have yet to learn to walk a bit faster, stand on the left of escalators to let more important busy people get past and become more aggressive in traffic. All in good time.

Last Night

2009-01-09T19:44:00.004+10:00

The packing is just about done. In another hour or so I'll be unplugging the computers and disconnecting the modem and then trying to work out where the hell to put them because we've run out of boxes. The guys with the big white truck turn up early at our place tomorrow and most of our worldly possessions get stowed away for the trip to Brisbane. A bit over a day later it all turns up at our new place.

The new washing machine and fridge are already installed and judging from the painful effort necessary to get the latter up the stairs some of our stuff is going to be exiled to the ground floor/garage for some time to come. In time it will all end up where it's supposed to be. Bigpond should have mustered the necessary corporate enthusiasm to reconnect us by the end of the week and life will slowly return to normal. I had my last flight into Bundaberg today, we had our last lunch at the coffee club, our last walk through Bunnings and Sugarland but tomorrow comes the tough one, the last few hours in our lovely Queenslander. We've put some sweat and tears into this one. Goodbye old girl. I hope the next owners love you as much as we did.

Cambodia it is.

2009-01-05T18:49:00.004+10:00

Enough is enough. It's nearly a full year since we headed for New Caledonia and did the holiday thing so I resolved today to rectify the situation. I rang these guys and discussed an itinerary with them. I'm going to cobble together a leisurely stay in Siem Reap together with a short stay in Phnom Penh, all very tropical and cultural. There's a 6 hour air-conditioned drive between the two but that's probably preferable to the short cruise alternative. As much as I love my dear wife I don't fancy sharing a cabin with a chunderous Handbrake for a day and a half. I'm really looking forward to the elephant trek and the helicopter flight over Angkor Wat.

Didn't I mention there was a helicopter flight on the itinerary my Dear ?

New Year's Musings

2009-01-01T12:56:00.002+10:00

2009. Where did 2008 go ? The New Year will bring some big changes for us with the move to Brisbane, saying 'Goodbye' to friends (or in my case the guys up at Qantaslink who are about the only people I'm on first name terms with in town), learning new routines, how to catch a bus and a train (I kid you not) and so on. The Handbrake becomes a lady of leisure until we get the new place straight and then no doubt she'll get bored very quickly and get a job. Little A has perhaps the hardest task of all, entering Grade 11 at a new school and making new friends. I changed school so many times it became second nature but it isn't easy breaking into existing networks.

This afternoon I'm back off to work, my last flight from Bundy, and I get back next week a day before the removalists descend upon us. Chaos will reign for a few days until we get ourselves at least half straight in the new place. All will, in due course, be fine.

For us the problems are small and relatively trivial. Amongst my Xmas mail I received news from an old friend whose partner walked out on her during the year (but still visits, sometimes with the new woman - insensitive bastard) just before she found she had cancer and had a breast removed. Another old colleague has developed Parkinson's disease. They both have an uphill struggle through 2009 which makes our life look easy.

Have a good New Year one and all out there. Don't let life drown you in its incessant demands - take some time off to do what you really want and go somewhere you've never been before.

Moving Telstra

2008-12-31T09:55:00.002+10:00

One of the big hassles with moving is changing over the power, phones etc. There's still almost 2 weeks before we move but I felt sufficiently inspired to try changing addresses/phone numbers with Telstra the other day. Firstly we tried the online facility which was going well until we hit the point where we had to decide what home line service type we wanted. The same as we currently have - except you just try and find out what kind of service that is. It's not on the online account and appears to be a secret so we abandoned our online effort.

So we rang up instead and the Handbrake did eventually get through, explained what we wanted (there was a lot of listening to messages, music etc before she actually spoke to someone) and was then put back on hold for a short eternity until she got fed up and hung up. Next morning, suitably refreshed, I rang up and after a very short wait talked to a vey helpful operator who said it had all basically been done the night before. She was unsure why the Handbrake had been put back on hold.

So all's well and good you might think. The phone here in Bundy will be disconnected and the one in Brisbane connected. Apparently though it's not quite so easy with Bigpond. It takes three working days to switch broadband on to the new phone line which I thought was a bit tragic in this day and age.

Last Times

2008-12-30T19:01:00.002+10:00

As you prepare to leave a place life becomes a succession of 'last times'. I've had my last Bundy hair-cut, probably been to the movies for the last time in Bundy and I've driven back from Brisbane for the last time.

I certainly won't miss the drive and I've forgotten how many times we've done it over the last 7 year or so. It's 4 hours or so of total tedium, broken only by a mid-journey stop at the Tramcars Café in Gympie where we've usually refreshed ourselves in the past. Our latest visit was a major disappointment, too many young staff and nobody apparently running the place which managed to make the nearby McDonalds look like a viable option. Also, some ill-advised bureaucrat with the DMR has estabished a 90km/hr zone a short distance north of Gympie and a long way south, about 22 minutes of it which does nothing more than increase frustration and annoyance in the driving public. One more trip down the Bruce Highway when we leave town and that's it.

Goodbye Molly

2008-12-23T09:13:00.003+10:00

It's done. None of the neighbours came forward so this morning we bundled poor Molly into a carry-cage and I took him off to the vets. I stayed with him until the green stuff did its job. Barely a minute is all it took.

I've done it a few times before for friends' cats and for our old family dog but I defy anyone to get used to it. I guess Christmas can only get better from here on.

Almost Monolingual

2008-12-21T12:11:00.003+10:00

For all of Krudd's trumpeting about how important foreign languages are to Australia, the statistics in Queensland tell a very different story. Fresh from the Courier Mail comes this tragic account of just how insignificant the acquisition of a second language is in Queensland:

'QUEENSLAND has the lowest rate of Year 12 language study of any Australian state at 6 per cent, new figures show.

The lack of interest in learning a second language has led to an Australian-first alliance between Queensland's three largest universities. Vice-chancellors at all three universities are determined to continue offering major world languages despite enrolments being in single digits in some institutions.

With $2.27 million in Federal Government funding, the University of Queensland, Griffith University and Queensland University of Technology will pool teaching of nine languages. Students at all three institutions will be able to major in Chinese, French, German, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian and Spanish. The new system will begin to be introduced next year. "If we applied accounting principles alone, some of these languages would disappear from university curricula," UQ Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Greenfield said. "However, the three universities' bottom line is that we can't afford to see language scholarship atrophy in Australia's third biggest capital city."

Too late, it sounds like it has atrophied already. You'll note there's no Hindi, nor Arabic. With most of Queensland's primary schools dumping LOTE for the wishy-washy 'Intercultural studies' it's not going to get better very soon either, is it ?

My Disconnect

2008-12-10T19:16:00.002+10:00

Telstra has been tinkering with its web-mail interface. I quote,

'MyConnectTM is a new service for BigPond and Telstra customers giving you the flexibility to stay in touch and access your data no matter what you're doing, where you have access to the internet and Next GTM coverage.

Now with MyConnectTM you can:

Send emails, text messages (SMS), pictures and videos (MMS) and access voice and video mail online.

Send and receive emails from your favourite accounts using your Telstra Next GTM mobile.

Automatically back up your contacts in case you lose or upgrade your mobile or computer.

Access free network-based spam and virus filtering.'

NOT ! I'd settle for just being able to read my email. The current new interface is nothing short of a sick joke that doesn't seem to be getting better. If it was a dog I'd have it put down.

Bigpond webmail was never the slickest piece of software but it worked. They've now replaced it with a new comprehensive interface called myConnect which supposedly gives you access to your SMS messages, voicemail etc but simply doesn't work. Buttons disappear when you roll over them, error messages pop up more often than your email. There's more graphics intensive advertising going on than you can poke a stick at but opening the email seems to be the last thing on the software's mind.

I could go on but I won't.

Wanted - One Broom Cupboard

2008-12-06T19:08:00.004+10:00

The airline system excelled itself the other night. My Jetstar flight was due to take off from Brisbane about 10 past 7 but was delayed by a big thunderstorm. I'm not sure of the details and distances but activity on the tarmac ceases when a thunderstorm comes within striking distance of the airport. Sure there was a big storm off to the south but I couldn't even see any lightning bolts, just very distant illumination, must have been about 100 km away. One of the Virgin flights was cancelled but Jetstar eventually took off about two hours late and we finally got into Townsville at about 10 past 11. That's not funny if you've got to get up next morning at 4.20 to catch the regular charter flight to work. What I really need is a quiet broom cupboard to sleep in at Townsville airport rather than renting a hotel room. I was back at the airport less than 6 hours after I'd left it the previous night.

The only funny thing about the whole episode was that the Jetstar flight still had to go back to Brisbane. There was a lot of very peed off people waiting at Townsville when we finally arrived. I reckon the poor buggers would have got back to Brisbane no earlier than 1.30 which is a pretty painful time to arrive anywhere.

The Poles Next Door

2008-11-30T17:34:00.003+10:00

When the dear Handbrake told me that there was a bunch of poles in the easement next to our house I thought she was going on about some East European immigrants who'd pitched a tent next door to our back garden. But no, they're the immobile kind, dug into the ground right outside our neighbour's back gate - carefully arranged to prevent him opening the gate. Yes, that's right, he can't get in or out that way and our back gate has also been padlocked shut so we can't get in or out that way either. I guess we didn't get the 'poles apart' treatment because there's a water line on our side of the drive.

The easement between our house and the neighbours is legally owned by the people who own the property up the back, the Italians who live next door to us (on the other side) and the old lady who lives behind our place. When we advertised our place for sale the ad originally (and misleadingly) noted 'rear access'. Our real estate chap got an anonymous phone call from an 'Italian sounding lady' (I simply can't work out who the hell that might have been) who advised him that there was no entitlement to rear access - so he changed the ad. In their minds (which obviously have nothing important to worry about) the whole thing has now become of vital strategic importance hence the defensive works and padlocks. What's particularly ironic is that when I found out our gate was padlocked a couple of weeks ago I was actually on my way out into the easement to pick up rubbish and do some weeding. We thought we'd had a pretty good relationship with our Italian neighbours over the years but it has finally become clear why they've always had so much trouble with their other neighbours and their tenants.

I'd estimate we've used the easement about half a dozen times in the 5 years we've lived here and I can only remember a handful of times when I've seen our neighbours trespassing on the 'holy highway'. Six weeks to go and we're out of here - at which point I shall be cutting the padlock off the gate - it might be his road, but it's still my gate.

Can't Connect

2008-11-28T09:24:00.003+10:00

Bloody daylight saving ! When the Mexicans stuff around with the clocks down south, QANTAS always does a schedule shuffle and adds a little extra frisson of excitement into my travelling life. A lot of the time I don't have any trouble getting the early flight from Townsville (10 to 6) and then catching the first Brisbane to Bundy flight at 8.15. But stuff around with the clocks and change the Townsville departure to 6 o'clock and it all gets a bit too close for comfort. So much so that QANTAS will no longer book a through flight so I have to make two separate bookings. I've lived with this for the last 5 or 6 years and escaped by the skin of my teeth numerous times. Once or twice even going to the loo in Brisbane has been out of the question but I've always made the connection.

Until today - mostly due to a downpour in Townsville and airspace congestion on the way in to Brisbane.

When you've just got to go.

2008-11-26T19:05:00.004+10:00

Working underground presents all manner of hazards. Any task you have to perform is, to my mind anyway, at least twice as complicated as an equivalent task undertaken on surface. It's dark of course, it's dirty, often wet and slippery and you're carrying all sorts of paraphernalia around your waist and on your head and gummies hardly make for agility and a quick response. Not the least of your worries is the odd occasion when you've simply got to go and you're not going to make it back up to surface in time for a civilised interlude at your nearest, friendly water closet. That's where this thing comes in handy, an underground toilet, glorifying in the name of a Poo Pod, an evil necessity if ever I saw one.

Many years ago when I worked in Africa we had multi-seat versions of these tucked not particularly discreetly away behind a curtain in a cuddy off the main haulage drives. Thirty years on I'm sure the technology has improved although between you and me I shall be doing my utmost to avoid having to avail myself of the underground facilities. Having to get out of a pair of overalls in the dark and keep your gum-boots on all the while is definitely not for the feint-hearted, especially if you're in a hurry.

Goodbye Cassettes

2008-11-23T19:24:00.002+10:00

The big clear out continues. A Bundaberg couple are heading off to SE Asia to work in an orphanage so we contributed a load of useful stuff for their big garage sale a couple of weeks ago. In a feeble attenpt at emulating The Handbrake's decluttering capabilities I pounced on our collection of archaic music cassettes the other day. I dread to think what I paid for some of them. Our cassette deck is long dead so they've basically become a pile of useless magnetic tape and plastic. Into a plastic carrier bag they went. Lifeline bin here we come. Gone, never to darken our musical lives again.

I did rescue a handful and I've taken them up to work to play in the work car which is currently missing an aerial. I've been treating my colleagues to the joys of the Doobie Brothers, Motown classics, XTC (did I ever seriously like that ?) and, the highlight, South African Top 14, vintage 1977, all the betetr because they're covers, not originals. I wouldn't mind getting a CD of the Doobies (damn, they were good) but I think I'll pass up on digital versions of the others.

No Way to Get to Cairns

2008-11-18T19:03:00.002+10:00

A heavier than normal workload meant I had to head back to work earlier than normal - Monday instead of Thursday. The only sensible way to get to Cairns from Bundaberg in the morning is via Brisbane (of course) and then transferring across to the international terminal for the first leg of a Japan bound Cairns flight. I'd overdone the gardening on Sunday and strained my back and wasn't looking forward to all this rigmarole but the Dear Handbrake delivered me to Bundy airport early Monday for the 6.45 Flight which left at about 7.25. Then we spent 10 minutes flying in circles over Caboolture because Brisbane airport was busy. I missed a train to the international terminal by mere seconds and arrived there only half an hour before the scheduled departure. I headed for the check in and got accosted by an over-zealous security woman who insisted I'd missed my flight and I'd have to go and rebook. I basically ignored the silly woman and headed to the check-out. Travelling only with a back-pack they were happy to book me in and told me to make haste for the departure gate.

With bare minutes to spare I stood patiently in line at security marveling at how stupid people can be as they got repeatedly sent back to take off belts, shoes etc. Finally through, I ran for the gate.

That's right, they hadn't even started boarding. Then some wally had checked their bags in and disappeared so they had to offload their bags (they should burn them to teach them a lesson - the bags not the people). We took off 40 minutes late and arrived 40 minutes late in Cairns. Then I had a 2 and a half hour drive to work.

I am not going to go to work that way ever again.

Dilemma for Molly

2008-11-16T12:06:00.004+10:00

We're going to print this out and do a letterbox drop in our immediate neighbourhood, fingers crossed.

Hello Neighbour !

We ‘own’ a black and white cat. Correction - nobody can actually own a cat, you just get to feed it and take it for a ride to the vet occasionally and it rewards you by purring sometimes and rubbing itself against your legs, but only if it feels like it.

Our cat may or may not answer to the name of Molly. He’s a neutered tomcat. I know Molly’s not a very masculine name but we thought he was a she until we got him/her to the vet to be neutered. At least it turned out cheaper than we thought, but I digress.

Molly doesn’t appear to spend much time at our place, except to turn up for a regular feed so we assume he spends most of the day somewhere else. Does he spend the day at your place curled up on a chair ?

Here’s the problem – we’re moving to the big smoke after Christmas. That leaves us with four choices:

· Find a new home – very unlikely.

· Take him with us – almost certainly not happening.

· Take him to the vet and have him put down.

· Abandon him, which would be very irresponsible.

At the moment, taking him to the vet is looking like the only sensible option.

If any of our neighbours has been adopted by Molly for day-time cuddles and snacks please call us on XXXXXXXXXX or YYYYYYYYYY to discuss Molly’s future.

One Step Closer

2008-11-01T23:09:00.003+10:00

There, one step closer to our C change. It took little more than a week to find someone who took a fancy to our little Queenslander and decided that the price was right. The Dear Handbrake had spent a lot of time checking local prices and we set what we thought was a fair thing. Let's be honest, there's no point holding out for another 10 grand and waiting two months only to have to lower your expectations and anything that's a bit overpriced in the current market isn't going to go anywhere fast. Settlement day is in January, mainly because the legal profession and half of Queensland closes down over Xmas and the New Year.

So now it's time to start clearing out all the stuff that's not going to fit in our town-house. If you're a hoarder like me you know that's going to hurt a lot.

Does anybody in the Bundaberg area want a cat ? It's a nice cat, very pleasant disposition, no trouble at all because we only see it twice a day when it's hungry. Jeanie, surely you need a cat ?

Moan, Moan, Moan

2008-10-23T11:14:00.003+10:00

The more I travel the more confused I get. I thought the security system at Brisbane airport was working OK, maybe a bit chaotic at times but speedy enough until last night. For some odd reason they've now dictated that everyone has to be coralled by those movable barriers, stand in a big long queue and be directed to the next available security check point. No doubt this was some administrative pillock's bright idea but the only problem with it is that it took about 10 times longer to get through security than it ever did before. Change for change's sake with no real benefit.

At Townsville airport they've spent a motza in recent months and rerouted traffic and taxis and now they've stuck in a coin-operated barrier so that all departing taxis have to pay $2 - correction, the passenger does. That's presumably to pay for all the 'improvements', none of which have served any use at all except perhaps satisfy some bureaucratic twat who didn't like the way it was working before. More change for change's sake. The taxi drivers certainly can't detect any improvement, nor can I.

I wish I could shake this horrible head cold I've got - it's obviously put me in a bad mood. Moan, moan, moan, moan etc

Thats Real Estate

2008-10-20T18:48:00.004+10:00

There, it doesn't get any more real than that. When that chappie came through the house this morning and took loads of pictures I knew something serious was happening and The Handbrake wasn't bluffing. We've fixed a price and the countdown has started. Ideally we'd like to be out by the end of the year but time will tell.

The front lawn has been mowed and the fly-screens repaired. Tomorrow it's the turn of the back lawn and some touching up of the paintwork and shovelling and redistributing two cubic metres of mulch. The house has never been tidier, it'll take me weeks to find some of my stuff.

Tomorrow I'll also have to get the texta out and add an apostrophe to the sign. I can't live with that on my front lawn.

The Wrong Geraldton

2008-10-17T18:15:00.003+10:00

Here we are in sunny Innisfail. Well it was sunny on Wednesday anyway. I'd previously been through the place many times but never really stopped. The town looks to have recovered from the pizzling it got two and a half years ago when it got right royally clobbered by Cyclone Larry. There's still a couple of semi-derelict buildings around and quite a few sporting new sheets of roofing iron. Apparently the town is well-known for its art deco architecture dating from the 1930s but I only had my mobile phone with me so this is the only photo I took. Must go back.

Innisfail wasn't always called Innisfail, something I only found out abut a few weeks ago. Way way back it was actually called Geraldton and this happy state of affairs lasted until 1910 when a Russian ship with cargo for the other Geraldton (in Western Australia) ended up just down the coast at Cardwell, no doubt with a very perplexed captain and crew. The local Geraldton name is preserved in one of the bridges which crosses the Johnstone River. I'd love to be able to tell you where the new name came from but I haven't got a clue so you're on your own there.

Intentional Brains

2008-10-13T19:03:00.000+10:00

I'll eat most normal things but I'm a bit hesitant when it comes to offal. When I was a lad I used to eat tripe and onions as much as once a week but after many years a psychological barrier went up, one which many people seem to share. Liver was always OK, I even enjoy the stuff, kidneys were OK in pies but that was about as far as I'd go. Some years back I was staying at a hotel in Brisbane and was up early for a cooked breakfast and dived in for a serving of chicken nuggets along with the usual eggs, mushrooms etc. The first one went down a treat and the second was looking good until the crumb case broke off and I realised I was munching on brains. Believe me when I tell you that wasn't a good start to the day but in all honesty I hadn't even noticed that I wasn't eating chicken. But that strange psychological barrier kicked in and I refused to eat any more.

Tonight at camp I lined up for tea and the cook warned me that the 'Chef's Special' was crumbed brains. In one of those interesting contrary moments I shrugged off the negative mindset and plonked one on my plate. I ate it first, suitably garnished with the delicate mustard cream sauce, while the barrier was down. Of course it was OK, pleasant even, just like a soft chicken nugget. I may even be tempted to have them again who knows. Hey, when we go to Asia, I might even hunt down one of those restaurants where they shove a live monkey up the hole in the middle of the table and knock the top of its skull of so you can get stuck into the warm brains. Only joking.

Lilly Pilly

2008-10-08T13:48:00.000+10:00

Back again ! Not that I was gone for very long, scarcely a month, but I was fed up with the old blog and it was simply time for a change. So here I am on blogger with a new home for my favourite photos, memories, amusing incidents and the odd rant.

For starters here's a picture of the lilly pilly in the back garden (well one of the flowers anyway). This will be the last time we see the lilly pilly in bloom. I know, that sounds a bit melodramatic, but we're off to the big smoke/Brisvegas/Brissy/Brisbane (even) at the end of the year. That's the big one in Queensland Australia, not the littl'un in California. It's our C change, C for city, we're heading for the concrete and the bright lights and whatever else the move brings in its wake. You're all welcome to join us.