Around the size of a leopard or very large dog with coarse orange fur with some darker mottled patterning (as seen in most Koalas). It is a heavily built animal with powerful forearms for climbing and holding on to prey. It lacks canines, using broad powerful premolars as biting tools instead.Clearly this is a dangerous beast. It reminds me of other dangerous creatures including the hoop snake. What advice would you provide tourists coming to Australia as to how they should manage all this wild life? We owe a duty of care and indeed need to ensure that our visitors provide informed consent.
A $100,000 reward was offered 11 October by the board of directors of the Queanbeyan City Festival Ltd for the capture of the monster known as the Yowie. A Canberra radio station promptly matched the offer bringing the sum to a staggering $200,000.
The offer is serious and expeditions are now being mounted, with world wide interest in the outcome. The eight-foot high Biped has been sighted in the Monaro region. Festival president, Jim Belshaw, said many people had reported their sightings since photos of Yowie footprints were published in a Queanbeyan paper.Sadly, despite the many well-equipped exhibitions mounted to capture this creature, the reward was never claimed. But it does remain the most effective PR exercise ever mounted by the aforesaid Jim Belshaw.
“ In heaven, the cops are British, the lovers are French, the food is Italian, the cars are German, and the whole thing is run by the Swiss.
In hell, the cops are German, the lovers are Swiss, the food is British, the cars are French, and the whole thing is run by the Italians.”
This poster came via Facebook. Going from the reaction at the office where a number of people asked for copies that are now pinned up, it has considerable appeal.
I am not sure that I was so freaking awesome on Saturday, although I did go to the movies to see Still Life with a friend.
The movie slowly drew me in through its use of silence, its detective and human elements. The ending left me cold. Of course it had an audience impact, but it was totally unsatisfying. It took a movie that was shaping as a must see multiple times, and turned it into a must see once. Ah well
Whether I was freaking awesome on Saturday, I certainly wasn’t on Sunday. For that reason, I leave you with this poster.
In comment on yesterday’s post An opening muse on just what is Australian food, kvd wrote:
Jim, all this cogitating about "native food" and "Australian food": are you sure this is not just your sublimating that nasty streak of New England populist nationalism? In other words, it may be code for something more sinister.
Finding it improper (within your better self) to talk of keeping out foreigners, and (possibly) rejecting multiculturalism, are you instead seeking a sort of "safety valve" in a discussion of plants - maintaining purity against invasive species, exhorting the virtues of native plants, etc.? A sort of anti-multi-horticulturalism creeping in to your continuing search for a defining New England identity?
Well I say get a grip, before you are fully lost to us. Relax and have a camel pie.
The comment, which made me smile, maintained a line that kvd has been following in responding to my recent food posts. Apart from sooling my feral olives onto kvd, this time I thought: what would a camel pie taste like? Here is the end of one description:
Camel pie is good. I like strong flavoured pies and the camel meat has a gamey flavour without being overpowering. It is meant to be low in fat, but it had a fatty taste to it (not a bad thing). Was it worth the wait? Yes, although it wasn’t as good as the kangaroo and emu pie. I would certainly like to try the sausages, or some other cut of camel if it becomes available. And it might make an interesting burger.
Staying with camels, they are reputed to be bad tempered animals that spit. A bit like the world around the Australian Government just at present.
We begin with Senator Eric Abetz's comments on abortion and breast cancer. According to the PM, Senator Abezt is now feeling “a little sheepish.” Baaa! Then both the Prime Minister and Attorney General Senator George Brandis ran into a degree of trouble over the definition of metadata, requiring the security agencies to come to the defence. Oops or perhaps baaa? ASIO (Australian Security Intelligence Organisation) chief David Irvine wondered what the fuss was all about?
Well, at the very least its about lack of clarity. This holds for the industry itself as much as anyone else. I quote from the Financial Review:
Optus has warned the government’s plan to make phone companies retain metadata is enormously complex and could cost it more than $200 million to implement, while the government admitted it announced the decision before devising the details.
Meantime, a story written by Phillip Coorey an Jacob Greber in today’s Financial Review (its behind the firewall) is headed “Hockey a whinger, say Liberal insiders”, referring to Treasurer Hockey’s complaints about the treatment of the budget including the failure of the business community to mount an open and wholehearted defence.
The unexpectedly large deterioration in the labour market stats for July released by the Australian Bureau of Statistics yesterday was due in part to methodological changes. However, there was also a real deterioration especially among young people. Meantime, the Australian Reserve Bank has downgraded its economic forecasts. All this is not make Mr Hockey’s job in selling the budget including the changes to the NewStart Allowance any easier
Returning to the camel theme, one wonders what might cause the surrounding camels to spit next?
This cartoon came from Dan Piraro Bizarro Comics. What does one say except yes dear?! I guess that it’s a new theory of evolution!
This is one of those extremely clever advertising videos, in this case for Samsung LED television sets,that has gone viral. At first I thought that it must be digitally altered. Director James Rouse denies this.
Regardless, its very clever and really fun.
This one came via Facebook. It really made me laugh at a time when there is too much negative news around.
It seemed to be a newspaper clipping, so I searched around for the cartoonist.
Dave Coverly is obviously well known, especially in the US. This is his web site. It's worth a visit, for he obviously has an eye for the ridiculous and quirky.
The news that UK beef products were found to contain horse meat (in the case of supermarket chain Tesco apparently up to 30 per cent of the all beef hamburgers) has attracted some wry humour. Here are some examples that came around via email:
I must say I laughed.
Over on Skepticslawyer, Lorenzo's post Norm failure annoyed me sufficiently that I tried to leave a somewhat tart comment this morning. Whether the spam trap ate it or I just hit the wrong button I don't know. I do know that it wasn't censorship, for that blog doesn't generally censor comments unless obscene or very nasty in some way. Rereading, I may have misread some things, but I still want to call Lorenzo on a few things.
This post focuses on traditional Aboriginal life at the time of the arrival of the Europeans. It probably should appear on my history blog. I am putting it here because Lorenzo's interpretation of the past feeds into his analysis of the present. This is not a detailed critique of Lorenzo's views as they appear in this and other posts. Some elements I agree with, others I challenge. Rather, I want to pose and answer a few simple questions that bear upon Lorenzo's arguments.
Was Aboriginal culture and society static or did it change?
The archaeological record shows considerable pattern of change and especially in the last few thousand years. The Aborigines were not an unchanging people living in an unchanging land.
Were food and other resources shared equally on the lines so beloved once by the exponents of "primitive Communism"? And, no, Lorenzo is not a believer in primitive communism!
No. Different people were entitled to different shares of resources depending on their position in society and skills.
Did private property exist?
Yes, although the form is of property ownership is always culturally specific, as is inheritance. We have recorded examples of a variety of ownership forms.
Did the Aborigines invest in what economists call fixed capital. In other words, could they invest for the future?
Yes. Some of this was ceremonial, some purely economic. They built and maintained structures and systems that must have involved thousands of hours of effort each year.
Was there economic specialisation in labour?
Yes, although it was obviously simpler in a less economically complex society. Beyond gender specialisation, we have examples of craft or even industrial specialisation.
Did the Aborigines have what today we might call industrial technology?
Yes. Apart from the quarries, mines and industrial food sites such as eel traps and farms, they developed techniques that involved the modification of raw material to make it easier to work with such as the heating of stone to change its chemical composition.
Did the Aborigines trade?
Yes. There were strong ceremonial or fashion aspects to that trade but, hey, what's new? Talk to my daughters! Trade routes spanned the country and could carry items for thousands of kilometres.
Was trade influence by varying factor endowments?
Yes. Pituri came from certain locations, was carefully packed and carried long distances for trade purposes. Ochre or particular types of stone tools could spread widely from particular depending on what else was available.
Were the Aborigines interested in labour saving activities?
Too right, as we would say in Australia. They spread particular possessions across multiple camp sites so that they did not have to carry them. They developed new tools suitable to particular areas that would make daily life easier.
Could the Aborigines cooperate in larger scale activities to achieve particular ends?
Yes. Many activities required larger groups to deliver. Leaving aside war, always a human preoccupation, or ceremonial gatherings, many Aboriginal economic activities required cooperation among larger groups than the local band.
Did the Aborigines store food?
Yes. Absence of refrigeration and limitations in what could be carried created difficulties, but the Aborigines did store things like grain. This was quite useful for some early European explorers who pinched it for stock feed!
Did the Aborigines modify the Australian landscape?
Yes. Over many millennia, they greatly modified it to meet their needs.
Did the Aborigines farm? If not, why not?
The answer to this question depends on the meaning attached to the word farming. They certainly used what we would call farming techniques. But they never became farmers in the way Lorenzo would use the word. Why should they? The evidence that I have seen suggest that in 1788, the Aboriginal calorie intake was higher than for the ordinary person in the UK. Why bother when you can feed yourself in many hours less than the working hours of industrialising England? Who wants to work a ten or twelve hour day?
Importantly, the extra time made available could be used for other personal, ceremonial and industrial activities.
Was traditional Aboriginal life idyllic?
No. All societies are organised in particular ways. Modern Australians would regard aspects of Aboriginal life and social organisation as quite repellant.
How did the Aborigines initially adjust to the arrival of the Europeans? What does this tell us about the potential flexibility of a hunter fisher community?
This is a sad and complex story. The spread of diseases such as small pox beyond the frontier caused a catastrophic collapse in Aboriginal populations. If we put that aside, how did Aboriginal society adapt?
The short answer is that incorporated those things that they thought were good into life. European axes spread beyond the frontier; they were useful. Creoles, mixed languages, emerged to facilitate communication. European clothes remained irrelevant, at least immediately.
But there was not time for adjustment. Maybe there never could have been. But wool sealed the Aborigines immediate fate. The things that then happened are another story. But not the story that you will read in the history books.
This photo from Occupy Wall Street made me laugh. It came from Chris Bowers via Lynne Sanders-Braithwaite.
I also laughed at a comment from Tony: "and the meek shall inherit the earth . . . if that's alright with you."
I couldn't find the story - I heard it in passing via car radio - but apparently a new organisation has been formed to try to bring a degree of real discourse to Australian politics. The argument is that this would improve policy making, as indeed it would.
I see from Twitter (#athomewithjulia) that the first episode of ABC's At Home with Julia has its fans. I thought that it was dreadful. My wife went ballistic.
I will largely leave my wife's views to one side. She is a strong feminist with somewhat different political views to mine. She said, among other things, that the program depended on the fact that Julia was a women, that it was actually stereotyping. I suspect that's right.
I and eldest daughter insisted that we watch it. My wife was already objecting on the basis of the promos. Eldest and I thought that we should give it a go. Eldest left in the middle, but I watched it to the end.
My first reaction to the opening scenes may seem an odd one. I thought if factually unrealistic. To make it work, they had to distort simple things like the actual operations of the Lodge, the Australian PM's residence. That nagged.
As the program went on, there were some funny lines. But increasingly, I thought that it was little more than a stitching together of cameo stereotypes designed to appeal to a fairly narrow audience. I say fairly narrow because, in a way, it was a series of in-jokes of a particular type.
Looking at the Twitter feed, those who liked it generally gave examples of parodies that they agreed with.
All these things are a matter of judgement, of style, of attitude. In the end, the thing that really turned me off was simply the feeling that it was all deeply disrespectful. I really don't like the Australian PM being treated in this way.
I am not going to say that you should not watch it, although viewers outside Australia are likely to find it obscure in the extreme. Indeed, I would suggest that those who haven't seen it and have reasonably strong stomachs do so. Yes, this may help the ABC in the short tem in increasing ratings, but you need to see it to understand both the anti and pro reactions.
I won't watch it again. The program was intensely parochial, inward looking and somewhat smutty. To somewhat distort a tweet from a Twitter colleague, it was a bit like Benny Hill but without the fun.
Postscript
Given the number of positive reactions to the show, I became curious about the pattern of likes and dislikes. This led me to do a two hour web search on reactions.
One outcome of that was a realisation about the impact of changing Google search algorithms, something that I will write about a little later.
On the negative side, one common theme was simply that the show wouldn't have been produced if Julia Gillard was a man. This came not just from feminists, although many of the this type of comments did come from feminists. Rather, people resented the portrayal of Tim.
A second negative theme was that of disrespect, not disrespect of Julia Gillard as PM, but of the office of Australian PM, disrespect for people. The TV Week blog attempted to address this issue. There David Knox wrote:
Not for a minute do I subscribe to the theory that to undertake this comedy is disrespectful. If The Greeks and Shakespeare could take aim at authority, so can we. In fact in this country, affectionate mocking is a national sport. Gillard can wear it like a badge of honour. Amanda Bishop might even deliver her a poll boost. David Knox
Maybe. I am not sure that "affectionate mocking" is a national sport, although mocking certainly is. However, this show was personalised so that it dealt not with authority, but with relationships.
I should note here that the majority of TV reviewers that I scanned liked the show. They saw it as good TV.
One of the difficulties with satirical shows is that they are in fact fiction.
Good satirical shows bear the same type of relationship to life that cartoons bear to people, politics and events. They accentuate certain features. However, they are not life. The further the gap between the show and life, the bigger the problem.
One of the things that I found interesting about the positive comments lay in the number of people who appeared to believe that the show was actually a satirical version of reality in the way that, say, Yes Minister was. It is not. The show actually has little connection with the way things work.
The greatest number of positive comments were addressed to specific gags or cameos. Like many satirical shows, one's response depends upon one's starting point. One person's highlight may be deeply offensive to someone else. There is nothing wrong with this, that's satire, but it's always interesting to try to plot just what appeals to whom.
To do this properly, I would need to go through and draw up a table with the gag or cameo on one side, the likely audience on the other. It would be fascinating to do this, but I don't have the time. So let me cut to the chase with gut judgments based just on my limited scan:
That's enough for now. I do want to do a serious post on Google, blogging and search engines.
Never let it be said that I won't pinch material from a fellow blogger when it suits me!
Saturday Morning Musings - New Zealand, Australia & multiculturalism was triggered by DeusExMacintosh's post Australia Sux (New Zealand, Seven). Now the comment stream on DeM's post really made me laugh, so I am going to pinch part of it.
My excuse is that it deserves a wider audience (hem, special pleading), but it does say something about the NZA (or ANZ) relationship. When I am wearing my New Zealand hat, I always put the NZ part first! After all, I am only a first generation Australian on Dad's (NZ) side. This puts me in the 44% of Australians so often quoted as being born overseas or having at least one Australian parent born overseas.
Some might argue that we need a multicultural policy to assist Australians and New Zealanders to understand each other, to assist the rest of the world to make any sense of Australians and New Zealanders. In the interests of international accord, I have added a glossary at the end.
KVD wrote:
Good for them – sticking to their principles. Perhaps we should invade them as the only country in the world with proven, true Weapons of Mass Destruction: The All Blacks.
Legal Eagle wrote:
My mother-in-law is a Kiwi originally. My father-in-law was telling me a funny story last night about when they went to the Bledisloe Cup. My mother-in-law left NZ at 18 and has been a naturalised Australian for 20 years. But…who do you think she was shouting for 20 minutes in, despite her resolution to support Australia??? The All Blacks, of course.
Dave Bath wrote:
Can Julia beehive herself?
Angry Exile wrote:
At the risk of being kicked out of the country, Aussie and Kiwis sound the same to me. And now if you’ll excuse me I just need to hide from my wife for the next thirty tears
Dave Bath wrote:
Patrick@7: From Geelong, I’m happy enough for Oz triumphalism to be quietened with losses in the Bloodyslow Cup – and maybe more of the heathens north of the Murray will turn to the one true religion.
Mind you, I’ve seen REALLY scary hakas – from types that later kidnapped and beat up a girlfriend up so badly I had to give her cash to get out of town after she escaped and I patched her up – too scared to hang around and lay charges. Apart from the few crazy-scary, the rest of the kiwis are crazy-hilarious. But they are all crazy I reckon.
kvd wrote:
P@7 I don’t hate the New Zealanders – I reckon they are great; it’s just the full on ferocity which is unsettling. But if you really want scary, watch the All Blacks’ personal trainers in action. I think they call themselves the Silver Ferns.
Now this must be one of the most incomprehensible comment streams ever recorded. To assist you, the following table provides a glossary.
| Term | Meaning |
| All Blacks | New Zealand religious order that seeks to find salvation through bodily penance, body building, extreme training and stylised mayhem. The order is named after the black uniform worn. Because of the need to remain relevant in a changing modern society, the uniform has been redesigned to emphasise key features relevant to many in the congregation - abs and pects. See also Bledisloe Cup, New Zealand national religion, rugby and haka. |
| Australia | Small continent occupied by country. Originally settled by convicts, most of the population huddles within a few kilometres of the coast line looking seawards, perhaps looking for the ship that might take them away, even to New Zealand. See also New Zealand. Technically Australia as a country includes islands beyond the continent of which Tasmania is the largest. However, Tasmania keeps on getting dropped off the map and can be ignored for practical purposes. |
| Beehive | Name given to the New Zealand Parliament Building. While the name is based on the building's shape, it provides ample scope for local jokes. |
| Bledisloe Cup | Religious symbol awarded following gladiatorial rugby contest between Australia and New Zealand. See also All Blacks, Australia, New Zealand, New Zealand national religion, rugby and Wallabies |
| Haka | A religious ceremony performed by New Zealand men at the start of each sporting event. Originally a Maori war chant meaning bring it on, it provides an excuse for adults to stick their tongues out at others. |
| Netball | Religious ceremony technically played as a game in which seven people on each side wearing bibs use a ceremonial ball to undertake a variety of very stylised activities including attacking, shooting, passing and jumping but not stepping or contacting. Originally a British game based on basketball but with rules modified to suit the more genteel ladies of the Victorian era, modern netball compares to its past as modern warfare compares to village cricket. From its Imperial heartland, netball has spread to remote locations including Copenhagen where eldest daughter is able to practice the required ceremonies. See also Silver Ferns. |
| New Zealand | Island country separated from Australia by language, intense rivalry and the ditch (dutch), the local name given to the Tasman Sea. Also known as the Shaky Isles and famous for its mountains, sheep and Lord of the Rings. Object of many bad Australian jokes usually involving men and sheep, a necessary solace to frequent losses in annual religious ceremonies. See also Australia, New Zealand national religion, All Blacks, Silver Ferns and Bledisloe Cup. |
| New Zealand national religion | In theory, New Zealand is a modern secular democracy. In practice, sport is a national religion involving complex rituals and religious artifacts. Any sport is okay if it involves beating Australia, but the main denominations attracting greatest fervour are rugby and netball. See also New Zealand, Australia, rugby, Bledisloe Cup, All Blacks, netball and Silver Ferns. |
| Rugby | Short for Rugby Union. Religious ceremony technically played as a game in which fifteen people on each side use a ceremonial ball to undertake activities including rucking, mauling, jumping, throwing, tackling, passing and kicking. A break-away sect strong in North England and certain Australian States known as Rugby League denies Rugby's use of the word rugby. See also All Blacks, Wallabies, haka and New Zealand national religion |
| Silver Ferns | New Zealand women's religious order that seeks to find salvation through bodily penance, body building, extreme training and stylised mayhem. The order is named after the silver fern imprinted on the black uniform worn. Because of the need to remain relevant in a changing modern society, the uniform has been redesigned to emphasise key features relevant to many in the congregation and especially men. Known for their ferocity especially when playing Australia, they provide support to their male equivalents, the All Blacks. See also All Blacks, New Zealand, and New Zealand national religion. |
| Wallabies | Minority Australian religious order that seeks to find salvation through bodily penance, body building, extreme training and stylised mayhem. The order is named after the wallaby, a smallish inoffensive grass eating Australian macropod, and had to be adopted because a rival sect had stolen the name Kangaroo. Membership involves an annual penance, the Bledisloe Cup, which often resembles a Roo Drive in which the hunters (the All Blacks) drive the hapless Wallabies in whichever direction required. See also Australia, New Zealand, All Blacks and Bledisloe Cup. |
I really laughed at this tweet from Craig Wilson:
Any truth in the rumour that Egyptians have discovered President Mubarak has been behind a giant pyramid scheme?
During the week, ABC local radio had a talk back session inspired by the experience of musician Jimmy Buffett who fell face down from the stage. It was a bad fall. Fortunately, he fell in front of a doctor sitting in the front row seats who rushed to help. Richard Glover as ABC presenter asked his audience for experiences that they had had when the right person just happened to be present to help them.
There were some weird and wonderful tales. However, my favourite was a simple story of disaster averted.
A women with two young children entered the shopping centre car park. It was a stinking hot day, and the only place she could find was on the open roof in full sun. Getting out of the car, she accidentally locked it with keys plus one child inside. This is no laughing matter.
Distraught, she looked around for help. While she was standing there, a car arrived with a mother and son. Tears streaming down her face, she rushed across seeking help.
The pair in the car looked at each other a bit strangely, even sheepishly. Then the son shrugged, got from the car and opened the boot. There was a complete collection of differently shaped coat hangers all designed to open cars. Twenty seconds later her car was open. The women was so relieved that she flung her arms around the mother and hugged her.
As the women said on the program, what are the percentage chances of finding a car thief when you actually want one!
I had to share this one. It comes from an email sent to my wife. It completely broke her up; laughing while you are trying to eat breakfast gives rise to a great deal of coughing and spluttering.
I probably shouldn't have laughed too, but it is very funny from an Australian perspective. I really have no ideas as to the original source.
The document begins: Keep Reading! It is just great!
It continues:
"These were posted on an Australian Tourism Website and the answers are
the actual responses by the website officials, who obviously have a great
sense of humour (not to mention a low tolerance threshold for cretins!)
__________________________________________________
Q:Does it ever get windy in Australia ? I have never seen it rain on TV, how do the plants grow? (
UK).
A:We import all plants fully grown and then just sit around watching them die.
__________________________________________________
Q:Will I be able to see kangaroos in the street? ( USA)
A:Depends how much you've been drinking.
__________________________________________________
Q:I want to walk from Perth to Sydney - can I follow the railroad tracks? ( Sweden)
A:Sure, it's only three thousand miles, take lots of water.
__________________________________________________
Q:Are there any ATMs (cash machines) in Australia ? Can you send me a list of them in Brisbane ,
Cairns , Townsville and Hervey Bay ? ( UK)
A:What did your last slave die of?
__________________________________________________
Q:Can you give me some information about hippo racing in Australia ? ( USA)
A: A-Fri-ca is the big triangle shaped continent south of Europe .
Aus-tra-lia is that big island in the middle of the Pacific which does not
... Oh forget it. Sure, the hippo racing is every Tuesday night in Kings Cross. Come naked.
__________________________________________________
Q:Which direction is North in Australia ? ( USA)
A:Face south and then turn 180 degrees. Contact us when you get here and we'll send the rest of
the directions.
_________________________________________________
Q:Can I bring cutlery into Australia ? ( UK)
A:Why? Just use your fingers like we do...
__________________________________________________
Q:Can you send me the Vienna Boys' Choir schedule? ( USA)
A:Aus-tri-a is that quaint little country bordering Ger-man-y, which is
Oh forget it. Sure, the Vienna Boys Choir plays every Tuesday night in Kings Cross, straight after
the hippo races. Come naked.
__________________________________________________
Q:Can I wear high heels in Australia ? ( UK)
A:You are a British politician, right?
__________________________________________________
Q:Are there supermarkets in Sydney and is milk available all year round? ( Germany)
A: No, we are a peaceful civilization of vegan hunter/gatherers.
Milk is illegal.
__________________________________________________
Q:Please send a list of all doctors in Australia who can Dispense rattlesnake serum. ( USA)
A: Rattlesnakes live in A-meri-ca which is where YOU come from.
All Australian snakes are perfectly harmless, can be safely handled and make good pets.
__________________________________________________
Q:I have a question about a famous animal in Australia , but I forget its name. It's a kind of bear and
lives in trees. ( USA)
A: It's called a Drop Bear. They are so called because they drop out of Gum trees and eat the
brains of anyone walking underneath them.
You can scare them off by spraying yourself with human urine before you go out walking.
__________________________________________________
Q:I have developed a new product that is the fountain of youth. Can you tell me where I can sell it in
Australia ? ( USA)
A: Anywhere significant numbers of Americans gather.
__________________________________________________
Q:Do you celebrate Christmas in Australia ? ( France)
A: Only at Christmas.
__________________________________________________
Q:Will I be able to speak English most places I go? ( USA)
A: Yes, but you'll have to learn it first
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