Shorpy

It has been only a couple of days since the Indonesian fishing boat transporting Afghan refugees exploded and created not only mayhem for the refugees who were dispersed to hospitals across Australia for major surgery, but also political troubles for the Australian government which is being accused of going soft on ‘queue jumpers’.

It seems that there was a plan to elicit emergency treatment by dousing the boat with petrol in the event that the boat was to be turned around and sent back to Indonesia. Probably some dill lit a cigarette and boom.

Coincidentally yesterday there was a raid on Afghans in a coastal resort near Jakarta seeing the arrest of a large number of ‘refugees’ who were awaiting a boat to attempt a crossing to Australian soil.

Is this just a coincidence or is the Indonesian President helping out his Aussie mate Kevin Rudd, by coming down hard on these refos?

Ute V Pickup. A recent set of Australian postage stamps feature Australian inventions. One of them is the Ute. The Ute is a pickup truck, supposedly invented by a farmer in Australia in 1934. Today I was trolling through a site I have joined called ‘Shorpy’. It is a wonderful site featuring historical photographs in high definition, mainly from the U.S. There are thousands of photos accompanied by comments by people who remember a particular street, event or people. They go back to the American Civil War. The photos are arranged in categories such as buildings, bridges, wars etc. I found a reference to a 1926 Ford Pickup in a section dealing with kitchens and household items. Apparently Ford manufactured ‘utes’ or pickups as early as 1926 and although the general public could only buy them in black, companies ordering a fleet of them could get them painted in their own colours. Here is a link to that site.

I highly recommend you visit Shorpy, so named after a 14 year old lad who worked in a mine in Alabama a hundred years ago. Find it here.