Australia Day 2012

Tomorrow is Australia Day, the day in 1788 when the British Navy fleet of 11 ships landed in what is now called Botany Bay near Sydney, New South Wales.

I've often tried to imagine what it must have felt like to have been sent from your homeland to travel for months to some part of the world about which nobody knew very much at all. If things turned bad at any part of the voyage, it wasn't as if you could jump on the next Emirates airplane and head home within hours. Many of those who arrived in Australia would never have seen their homeland again. There were no houses, no hospitals, no schools, just three million odd square miles of native scrub and of course the original inhabitants, the First Australians who had arrived from Africa thousands of years earlier.

It could have been the Japanese, Dutch, Portugese, French or perhaps a handful of other nations' people that arrived to take over Terra Australis. Whoever it was would no doubt have created the same negative impact on the native occupants, but we are indeed fortunate that our roots are British. From the "Old Country" we inherited a robust system of law, democracy and governance that has served us well for the past 200 years and will serve us well for a bit longer until it is subsumed by a foreign totalitarian regime that is working to undermine Australian values as I write. Our failing is that we are too democratic and too nice.

The British flag (Union Jack) on our flag shows our roots; the Southern Cross the star pattern visible in the Southern Hemisphere. The Federation Star, directly below the Union Jack has a point for each of our States and a point for the two Territories, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory.

For the first time in years we have nothing planned for tomorrow, but when we wake up we will no doubt have a breakfast of fruit juice, pikelets, golden syrup, coffee, and reflect on how very fortunate we are to have been born Australian.

Robin
 

Christmas Day Was Almost Spectacular

We had a very pleasant Christmas Day 2011, with the sole exception that our grandson Tory wasn't with us. Had he been present, it would have been a spectacular day.

However, as I cooked roast lamb, chicken and pork in our backyard barbecue amid a 39C temperature, I couldn't help but ponder how inappropriate many of the traditions brought to Australia by our English forefathers were in our climate. Roast dinner in the Central Australian heat? I wonder.
With the rather hot outside temperature and lack of breeze, we decided to have lunch inside in airconditioned luxury. Around midday we untabbed our first cans of beer and blew the cork off a bottle of Moet Champagne for the women. (Real men don't drink campagne ... and it tastes terrible too).

The meat was cooked to perfection, but some of the vegetables were slightly overdone. Not to worry, we managed to have a lovely feast from about 2 pm and topped off the roast, vegetables and salads with two different types of cheese cake. Nobody complained about the food.

Friends Tina and Vivek had also contributed some Indian food, some of which, because I can never recall the name which sounds something like the politically incorrect gollywog, I call mystery bags. Whatever they are called, they are very tasty and usually come with an equally tasty sauce.

Incredibly, my total alcohol intake for the day was two cans of beer (1 x 500ml, the other 375ml) and a large glass of red wine. I can't recall a time in the last few decades when I have consumed so little at Christmas. I really must get a grip of myself before I become a teetotaller.

Above are photos of Dale and me with the vegies and Christina and Meredith taking a break from preparing something in the kitchen.

We hope you had a lovely Christmas Day too.

Robin

Season's Greetings!

To all of those who celebrate Christmas, we wish you a

Merry Christmas and Happy 2012.

Robin and Christina Henry

The Day My Blundstones Died

In 2009 I wrote a post about the Betts Shoes for Old Feet  wherein I described the many years of service I had from a pair of Airflex shoes. Today I have to decry the death of my Blundstones.

That death occurred in a very embarrassing and messy way. Having not worn my Blundstones for a while, I decided to wear them to work yesterday, the fateful day.

I work at what is known as "Q Block", the Prisoner Services Section at a correctional facility and have a modest office with a carpeted floor and share the block with 25 other people. The hallways consist of painted concrete and after a short while my colleagues started commenting on the black flecks appearing from one end of the block to the other (from coffee room to photocopier).

Eventually, the black flecks also appeared on my carpet and I realised that I was the offender. Within an hour or two, my carpet looked like the Stuart Highway (connecting Adelaide with Darwin) when a road train has a tyre blowout ... pieces of rubber everywhere!

 

As I had nothing else to wear, I had to continue walking and depositing shoe rubber for the remainder of my day. By the end of my shift, the two heels of my boots were almost completely demolished and parts of the sole were falling off too.

The photo at left shows some of the damage.

Now I'm left wondering why a pair of shoes that were so comfortable and which have walked the hills of Oman, the streets of Al Ain and Prague, visited the Louvre, and been many other places all of a sudden decided to fall apart.

There's a kind of sadness when you end a relationship with a friend that has provided so much comfort for so long.

Robin

Alice Springs National Transport Hall of Fame

Having visitors occasionally is good, because you get out of the house and take them to local venues that you would not normally visit. Like the National Transport Hall of Fame. 

According to the home page on the Internet site:
"The Road Transport Historical Society is a volunteer based project dedicated to the preservation and presentation of Australia's unique road transport heritage. It does this through its magnificant Shell Rimula Hall of Fame in Alice Springs, the traditional birthplace of the roadtrain.The charter is not only to remember the great trucks, buses and vehicles of the past, but recognise the contribution of the men and women who drove and lived with these great machines of the past."
It must be 15 years since I have visited the Hall of Fame. Since then it has expanded greatly and improved it's stock of old trucks and equipment. What surprised me most is that many of the vehicles in the Kenworth Museum are straight off the production line. They must be worth millions and the Kenworth company still owns them, but stores them at the museum.
There are dozens of photos of people, places and transport from the early days in the Northern Territory as well as the obligatory cafe and tourist shop. Adjoining the NTH of Fame is the Ghan Railway Museum, which we didn't visit today.
If you ever get an opportunity to visit Alice Springs and you are interested in transport you must visit the National Transport Hall of Fame.

Robin

PS: Double click on the photo strip at left to enlarge the images.