The Yeahs and Nays

Last weekend we went to a Main Roads sponsored expose of the planned extension of the Roe Highway. That extension is to go through a small section of swamp and comes within approx. 400 metres of our home. We are not too anxious about its effect...we don't think it will impact on us much. Of course the construction will bring with it a lot of noise and perhaps some dust...and of course it will take a long time to construct.

The Main Roads Department had a bevy of personnel explaining that it wasn't quite a fait accompli and that the government would listen to the people. Yeah!

Today, there was a large rally against the proposal held at Bibra Lake Reserve. From the number of vehicles parked, there would seem to have been more than a thousand protesters attending. It was a bit of a carnival atmosphere with bands, clowns and the usual dog walkers, cheesecloth wearers, hippies and dreadlockers. The poor loves haven't had anything to protest about for years and they loved the opportunity to sock it to the government. That sounds very cynical but I am on their side. I would rather the freeway extension didn't go ahead. The short extension which is probably only about 10 kilometres has been labelled 'the Highway to nowhere' as it finishes at another north/south highway and doesn't really solve any of the problems it is supposed to.

The protesters are on the side of the frogs and the black cockatoos and Kev and Joan and other residents who will be close to the extension. The cockatoos can fly on, but we can't.

There was another protest in Perth City yesterday with a group demonstrating against the large oil spill from a rig in the Timor Sea. Some of the protesters were bikini clad gals who rubbed themselves with a black oil looking substance. I reckon it was Vegemite. I also reckon it was a good way to show off the bod on TV.
Aftr the rally, we bought up on wine in preparation for my 70th birthday bash on November 29th. The liquor store had a few specials and we bought a box of Chardonnay cleanskins just to see what a $1.79 white wine is like. I am pleased to report that it is very nice thank you. We will return and grab a few more boxes.

Car damage

Our daughter lives in her unit, one of 14, in East Victoria Park. It is a good area from the perspective of access to restaurants, shopping and entertainment, but lousy when it comes to security of property and person.

Helen's car is parked under cover in an unsecured carpark and a couple of days ago she again had her rear quarter window smashed. This time the villains didn't even bother to get into the car. Some time ago she took out extra cover on her vehicle insurance to cover all glass replacement.

This current car has had four windows smashed and her previous car had about the same. Others in the car park have had the same. What to do? The tenants and owners have talked about an external fence, but that would be very expensive and most inconvenient. The many reports to the local gendarmes has understandably done nothing. The villains don't seem to have a regular routine to do their damage. Shift is a good option, but Helen at the moment has only two days of teaching a week and banks don't like to loan money to people who don't have full time work. Answer: stick it out and keep replacing windows.

East Vic. Park has a sizable aboriginal population of unemployed rapper style, reverse baseball cap lads who move around during the day peering into backyards. Can't do much about them!

I had my Mazda 929 into a suspension expert to do a 4wheel steering alignment. The steering is much improved and I should expect that the cheap tyres I had fitted will last a couple of years. The next bit of the restoration (sounds like a major project) is to get a small panel and paint job done on a rear wing. This morning I dropped in to see my tame panel and paint man and eeek; his doors were closed. I'm hoping that he is just off on a cruise as he usually does small jobs for $200. folding money. He does these jobs on a Friday and I suspect the weekend sees him at the Casino.

The suspension man is a cranky bloke who knows he is the best and doesn't suffer fools like me.
By that I mean that I am a fool...not that I don't suffer fools...I do! Over the years I have had dealings with Graeme and by and large he has been a cranky bastard, especially over those years he was trying to give up smoking. This time he charged me more than the quote, but presented me with a very impressive computer generated analysis of the problems and what he had done to fix up those major problems. I can see the instructions on the computer screen...... Press print to produce spin document.

Winners are Grinners and Losers are just losers

Joan has had a busy weekend manning (probably not the right term) a booth at the City of Melville Textile Arts Expo. Apart from the expo there was a competition called 'Mad as a Hatter' where artists had to make a crazy hat. Joan made two hats and one of them titled 'Tea Party' with a tea pot and cups won one of the prizes. That prize was $350., which if time was a factor, she probably worked for 30c per hour. Never the less she came home grinning like a Cheshire cat.

I am the loser part of this story. In a unit we own, the tenant complained of a storm damaged TV antenna. We asked the agent to have an antenna man fix it and he did at a cost of $229. I rang the Insurance company, RAC, and they wanted an exact date and time to check against the Bureau of Meteorology records as the claim has to fit the criteria of a storm. Damn! Of course I didn't know the date and time and after a lot of discussion they decided to allow the claim as there was a big blow which could possibly fit the definition of a storm about three weeks ago.

After giving all the details the lass informed me that there is a $200. excess and I could get back $29. on the total cost. Not happy Jan! I told them to forget the claim.

Coincidentally?

A couple of days ago I went to a tyre place and bought and had fitted two new tyres. The young bloke doing the fitting rolled a trolley jack under the front of the car and immediately started pumping the jack. I cringed, remembering a time back in the 80s at Willetton Senior High School when a student in a mechanical class jacked up my car by positioning the jack under the engine sump. Result: cracked aluminium sump which caused me lots of problems. The tyre bloke didn’t do any damage and I was pleasantly surprised. Phew!

Yesterday I was in a liquor store and a very large young bloke called me by name. An ex- student from the 1980s. He was surprised to meet after all that time, he said that he and another ex-student were talking about me a couple of days before…’We were talking about that kid who cracked the sump of your car with the trolley jack’.

What are the chances of all that happening? Me remembering the incident whilst I was getting tyres fitted….he talking about the incident a couple of days ago and both of us meeting after all those years all within the time frame of a few days. Incredible!

We went for a short walk at Bibra Lake this morning. I said ‘at’, not around, Bibra Lake.The Bottle Brush trees (Callistemon salignus) are in full bloom. The large Black Cockatoos love snipping off the flowers….I don’t actually know why, as they don’t drink the nectar or eat the flowers. There must be some purpose to it all, but on the surface it just looks like a bit of bad-boy vandalism.

How do they find me?

This story definitely comes under the heading of How do they find me?

Yesterday I was at Bunnings buying some tomato seedlings when a woman made a comment about the type of tomato she had selected. Before I could say blow me down, she launched into what turned out to be a 15 minute story about setting up a security camera in her unit to catch a couple of female thieves who had made several daylight raids on her place stealing jewellery, cash and memorabilia over a 21 month period. All this while she slept in the house. The police don't believe her, her kids hate her because she suggested that it was one of them, her sister thinks she is nuts and after 15 minutes I too had a suspicion that she wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed.

She has window shutters and window and door locks, a security/alarm system which should have kept anyone out, but someone still got in and even ate a takeaway Maccas in a spare room.

I couldn't escape and only had a window of a couple of seconds to make a comment like...'sounds like family and drugs'. I think at that stage I did the appropriate nodding, serious concerned look and tuned out. She thanked me for listening and we wished each other a nice day and split.

The Federal Government has changed the Citizenship test from general knowledge questions such as how many runs did Don Bradman make in his career? to more specific question which pertain to the type of government we have and the rights and obligations of our citizens. That is probably a good thing because potential citizens should know that our government is a democracy, a secular state and that men and women have equal rights. It is a far cry from the 'White Australia' policy which was officially terminated in the 1970s. That policy discriminated against non European immigration often using a language test in a language unknown by the applicant. See here for some background.

During WW2 Prime Minister John Curtin didn't want African American troops in Australia, but was convinced of the need for them by General McArthur. McArthur's reasons might not have been completely altruistic.

TAG Hungerford

This morning we decided to attend a camera swapmeet. In fact there is no swapping, just sales. En route we firstly went to Melville Plaza swapmeet which was very busy. Joan, the book ferret, managed to find a book by Tom Hungerford named 'A Knockabout with a Slouch Hat'. I am about halfway through it at the moment and it's a great read. Tom was born in 1915 and is still going, albeit slowly. He has written a number of books and short stories and A Knockabout is a fine sequel to his Stories from Suburban Road. There are a couple more of his novels which I still have to acquire. Tom is a Western Australian who way back had a connection with my mother's side of the family and visited the Lee farm during school holidays.

The camera swap meet was held in Leederville and was well attended by hundreds of people. Film is still alive and well! Joan took a couple of snaps with her $120 digital camera and caused a few unkind looks....digital cameras indeed! I was after some closeup lenses for my Nikon Digital SLR, but unfortunately 58mm is not a popular size. New screw-on closeup lenses come in packs of +1 +2 +3 usually and cost around $150 the set. I may have to get some cheap S/H stuff of a different size and buy an adaptor.

A small indulgence

Small is probably not the word for this indulgence...it is a largish car. I have been looking in the various papers for a Mazda 929 sedan. We had one each a couple of years ago and I am unsure why we sold both of them. I think it was that we decided to buy a brand new car which didn't have any of the little problems, like creaks etc.

The new car is just dandy, but every time I saw a 929 on the road I thought I should indulge myself...so there! The chance came up and I bought a very nice 1993 model with low kilometres (136,490) and in good general condition. I will drive it for a couple of weeks to find out all the quirks and then if it still seems good; start the restoration. I noticed the the fuel gauge seems faulty and heads towards empty rather quickly???

The cost of this beauty....$2800.00. That is the 'small' part of the indulgence

From an era long past

I found this item in a small wooden box of my father's treasures. All revealed at the bottom of this post.

This morning a Welfare Officer collected me and a computer to head up to Joondalup. The idea was to set up the computer so that a young Aboriginal family might get a few skills in computer literacy...especially the young man of the house. He is on remand from prison and has a young partner and eight (8) dependent kids all under 12 years of age. He looks to be around 25 and his partner maybe 22 years of age. She has two kids; he two from a previous partnership and they are caring for another four kids from a relative who is in prison. Doesn't sound like they have much of a chance in life.

Surprisingly the house is well maintained and the kids are clean and well mannered. She is an attractive and very smart young woman and the fellow is very shy and quiet. She is the boss and knows how it is going to be. Tomorrow they are having a house inspection and she is having a second attempt at her driving licence test. They loved the computer (lots of noisy games) and I got a good feeling that they will benefit from the installation.

The object is a key ring with a button tab to go on to one of the buttons by which braces were attached to men's trousers.

You win some; you lose some

My friend Paul has a nose for a bargain. He spies a bargain everywhere....fruit and vegie markets, electronics and computer gear, in fact anything that is heavily marked down.

A couple of days ago he pointed me in the direction of his local Coles supermarket where there is a mark-down bin of allsorts including printer cartridges. I raced up to Paul territory and collected ten packets of refill inks and cartridges to suit two printers I am preparing to distribute to needy folks. Total cost $5.00. Bargain!

Yesterday I collected a Canon printer donated by another fellow and I remembered seeing cartridges to suit this new machine in the Coles bin. Back to Coles and more carts.

This is the total haul costing $5.80. Thanks Paul; now see if you can find me a large LCD TV for around $100.

I did have one loss yesterday. I was cleaning a keyboard and had removed all the keys and washed them in a bucket with hot water and detergent. When draining the water down the laundry sink, the strainer did a 360 and two keys went down the drain. After removing all the stuff in the sink cabinet, I removed the S bend and found one of the two keys. I now have a white keyboard with clean keys with one black key from an older Mac keyboard. Not a great look!

the 'Toughen Up' and 'Don't Watch it' crew

Last night the final of a two part retrospective of one of Australia's most popular Saturday night TV shows was screened on TV. Hey Hey It's Saturday was a very popular show in its day. It ran for 28 years finishing up 10 years ago.

Bringing it back for the two episodes was a popular move. Unfortunately last night's episode featured a Blackface act, with a group of white guys doing a Jackson 5 parody. I was a bit shocked when they came on....I hadn't seen such an act since I was a kid and the BBC screened The Black and White Minstrels back in the 1950s. This act was part of a regular segment of HHIS called Red Faces. When all the acts were finished a panel of judges, one of which was Harry Connick Junior awarded scores. Harry was visibly upset over the Jackson5 act and said so. He awarded a '0' adding that that act certainly wouldn't go down well in the U.S.. As the show wound up the host, Darryl Somers, made a sincere apology which was accepted.

Today there has been a mixed reaction to that booboo. The Toughen Up and You Don't Have to Watch brigade were out in force. All too often when something that is controversial or offensive is screened on TV they suggest that people who voice a complaint are PC and should merely change channels.

The show was pretty good and I fail to understand how Darryl Somers could have thought that such an act would not cause embarrassment to many viewers.

Should you wish to read more on Blackface, you can see it here.

I had a nice bacon and egg breakfast this morning. I feel for my Joan as she is fasting prior to a Day Surgery to remove a cyst on/in one of her fingers and also getting a cortesone shot in a thumb joint. The procedure is scheduled for 11.30am and she has to fast for what will probably be most of the day. I will drop her off and await a call to pick her up at around 4pm. She is not allowed to wear her contact lenses, just her coke bottle glasses....a good look!

She will have a few frustrating sewing-free days, but still be able to read.

After I drop off Joan at the surgery, I have some business to attend to in the city and then I am off to our daughter Helen's unit to set up a WiFi station so that she doesn't have cables and phone lines all over the floor.

Tonight on TV there is an episode of RSPCA-Animal Rescue, which falls into the category of bad timing. Much anguish and tears over the rescue of a small dog pulled from a hole in the ground. Maybe that team could head off to Indonesia and rescue some of the hundreds of victims of the massive earthquake there.

More Socialist paranoia from the USA.

Royal Show report

The Perth Royal Show has been billed as the world's largest non-smoking event. The show runs over 8 days and usually attracts around 400,000 visitors. It was most pleasant to walk around the showgrounds without having secondhand cigarette smoke invade your space. On a local news site there are many letters of complaint by smokers, mostly complaining that other pollution is far worse that smoke. They just don't get it.....it stinks! It is far worse that all the animal smells which accompany an agricultural fair.

We lasted until about 2pm before heading back home. There were plenty of interesting exhibits for the non sideshow-alley people like us. And I found a nice working exhibit of steam and other vintage engines. Some beaut old tractors as well. Each exhibit has the typical exhibitor standing close by. The tractor/engine blokes had the farmer look about them. The dog and cat people were definitely dog and cat people seated in front of their animal(s) with lap rug, thermos of hot tea and home-made sangas.


One big disappointment was the now political correct Police Exhibition. Last time we went to the Show the Police exhibition had the most gory photographs of murders including the actual weapons used and details about who what where. No punches pulled then. Photos showed bodies mutilated, limbs severed etc. Now the Police exhibit has a kids corner with a Constable Care show.

We managed to catch a brilliant motorcycle trick riding show in the central arena.

In the Historical Society's exhibition there were many wonderful old photographs. We found a labelling mistake on one large photo of East Street and the Swan River in East Fremantle taken around 1900. The label stated that it was in North Fremantle. When we pointed it out to one of the HS members he was quite chuffed as the fellow who had labelled the photo was a 'bit of a smarty'.

The online news page WAToday.com has a header which is a bit confusing. Here 'tis.

The Perth Royal Show

Yesterday, just like today, was a lovely sunny Spring day. Our friend Margaret celebrated her 73rd birthday with a group of her friends outside in the garden. Much conversation ensued. The 10 year rehash of the TV show 'Hey Hey It's Saturday!'was mentioned and most people who watched it liked it, but thought it ran out of steam in the 90s and wouldn't hold up in 2009.

I asked what people thought of the Andrew Denton show, David Tench which aired a couple of years ago, but didn't make it. No one knew about David Tench. Tench was an animated character who interviewed real people who interacted with Tench. It was brilliant, but the viewers were not ready for it and it was taken off. See a few clips from episodes here.

Today we are off to the Royal Show in Claremont. We haven't been to the show in 10 years or so and thought we should go whilst the weather is nice. I'll post some pics tomorrow.

Monday Washday

When I was a young fella, the week's washing was done on a Monday. It was the topic of the street if someone hung out their clothes to dry on any other day. I often wondered who it was who made up that 'rule'. Why on a single day and why Monday?

Today in my mailbox is my daily dose of wonderful vintage photos from Shorpy and one shows wash day in some NY tenement buildings. Check out the pics here and read the comments. Click to enlarge them.

I see it all now......wash day would have been a day of inconvenience to kids wanting to play ball in the street. Get it all over on one day! There would have been many Nosey Parkers checking out the washing of their neighbours.

I would think that in early the early 20th century there would have been tenements like these in almost every city in the world.

Before our family bought a wringer washing machine my mother boiled clothes in a copper using Velvet bar soap shaved with a knife. The washing was then taken out of the copper with a pole, rinsed and hand rung.

Here is a commemorative package of Velvet soap in tablet form.


It is said that in the 1960s American housewives had a weekly routine:

Monday: Wash Day
Tuesday: Ironing Day
Wednesday: Sewing Day
Thursday: Market Day
Friday: Cleaning Day
Saturday: Baking Day

A Dinner Party

Our neighbours, Dave and Judy hosted a magnificent Master Chef style dinner party for us last night.

Pre dinner nibblies were very nice and the introductory Champagne (I'm allowed to call it Champagne) was lovely. Their dining room is large and set up with candles and subdued lighting really set the stage for the meal. Roast Tomato Soup was followed by Rack of Lamb with Risotto Rice Cakes, Broccolini, Stuffed Mushrooms and a green salad For sweets Judy presented individual Baked Chocolate Puddings with cream.

Good company, good conversation and way too much good wine! Thanks Dave and Judy. You've set the benchmark!

Ceviche

This evening we are dining next door at our neighbours' place. I thought I would make a small dish to take over and decided on Ceviche. We learnt how to make Ceviche in Papua New Guinea some 30 years ago. A colleague at the school I ran was (and still is) an Argentinian and we were introduced to the delight of lemon 'cooked' Mackerel. Every time I make it, it seems to turn out a bit different. Today I had trouble sourcing some hot chillies which was never a problem in PNG back in the 70s.

Anyway, the recipe goes something like this......

Finely slice the fish into thin strips and toss them into fresh lemon juice. Add ginger, garlic and chillies finely chopped (you know how much of each!), along with spring onions and salt. Wait about two+ hours and slip into it. The fish turns white when it is ready. Fine tune the taste with more salt and a little ground pepper if needed.

Collapsed veins

Joan and I went to Fremantle early this morning to give blood. We went through the usual interrogation about diseases etc etc until I disclosed that a recent blood/urine test had found a significant level of protein in my urine. Blue flashing lights and sirens! I had to talk to a Blood Bank Doctor and she eventually gave the all-clear to donate.

I am just lucky enough to get a first-timer nurse to find the vein. She was a bit nervous and poked the spear through the vein and into the flesh. Ouch! The supervising nurse took over and tried in the other arm. She had success, but after a couple of minutes the flow stopped and after several attempts at repositioning the spear gave up saying that I had not had enough fluids this morning and that the coffee I had merely dehydrated me. Seems as though I should have consumed at least three large tumblers of water or juice. Never had that problem since I started donating in 1958.
Then just to make me feel my age she told me that my veins had collapsed! Bugger! I'm done for!

Years ago I taught Year 10 science at Cecil Andrews Senior High. One facet of the course was genetics. I had to bone up on that one. We did cover the area of natural selection and when inspecting my silver beet this morning I found a couple of caterpillars munching away on some leaves. Interestingly, they were underneath the leaves, protected from the searching birds, but not the small wasps that also visit. I have never seen caterpillars feasting on the tops of leaves. Do they perceive that they would become prey if they did? Or is it that through natural selection the top-eaters have all been eaten? I don't really need an answer to that one.

The crash, pharmaceuticals and a makeover

This week has brought a bit of good news to the Locks. Firstly we have reached the Medicare threshold and our scripts are now totally free. Previously we paid $5.30 per script regardless of how much the medication is actually costing the government. See the examples here...
Of course there is a price to pay for the cheap and eventually free medicines....you have to be at least 65 years of age. It is also income related with a generous income threshold of $80,000 per annum. We easily fit into that. Below 65...and wouldn't I like to be; the government through the PBS (Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme) subsidises the youngies, but too a lesser extent.

We were also reasonably happy about our meeting this morning with our financial adviser. During this last financial year our superannuation funds wept to the amount of around $200,000. The news today shows that things are on the mend with our funds gaining $22,000 since March. The villain in the crash was the Unlisted Property package which was part of our investment portfolio.

Prior to the crash there were many adverts for Industry Super Funds and a couple of well known actors told us that they were the way to go...not with a financial adviser. Haven't seen any of their ads for a while.

Who said Makeovers don't work? Check out Federal pollie, Belinda Neal, here. A before and after which featured on the cover of the AWW.

Speech problems

My bro-in-law Mike has difficulty with his speech due to Parkinson's Disease. Even though he does some speech exercises his speaking volume and clarity is quite poor; so much so that when I was looking after him over the weekend I missed a lot of what he was saying. I confess to nodding at a lot of his conversation without grasping the meaning of what he was trying to tell me....especially whilst travelling in the car.

I told my brother about Mike's problem and my somewhat wimpish method of coping. He related that to an episode of Seinfeld where Jerry and Elaine were dining out with a woman charity worker who had an extremely soft voice and Jerry did a Kev and nodded his way through an inaudible conversation and without realising it, agreed to wear a pirate blouse with puffy sleeves to a fundraiser. Good episode!

Mike sitting

Joan and her sister Dorothy are on a weekend retreat at Dwellingup. I am staying over a couple of days with bro-in-law Mike at his place. On Friday when I arrived at his place there was a carer looking after him and he left soon after I arrived. Mike is on new medication for Parkinsons and it is taking a while for him to get used to it. He has long periods when he is 'out'.

I made a mild Tikka Marsala curry and some rice to have last night. I also brought some of my chilli sauce. Mike's tastes must have changed radically because he dolloped a lot of the chilli sauce over his curry. This morning he is still 'out' and is not expected to be able to move around until closer to midday. Then we have a few tasks to complete...off to JB HiFi to exchange some gear that he didn't need and I believe, help him construct a wheel barrow from several he has collected from gutter mart. Hope not.

I am not good as a guest; creeping around so as not to disturb others and avoiding the toilet flush. Even at home I get up in the morning and do my toiletries in another bathroom on the other side of the house. Mike cannot sleep well in bed and so moves into the dining area and sleeps in a special chair. Normally I would be cooking a nice cholesterol breakfast at this stage, but I don't want to disturb Mike.

I have just helped him with his tablets which have to be taken eight times a day to a total of 38
tabs. It is very difficult to do when he is 'out'.

Dorothy, his wife, has much to contend with and I am here for just two nights.

Malice and Paranoia

In this morning's paper there is a reprint of an article in the Washington Post talking of the deep hate and paranoia of the extreme right wing in the U.S. It is frightening when Baptist Pastors in Californian and Arizona churches pray for Obama's death. Not just death, but consignment to hell!

I know that Australia's population is minuscule compared to that of the U.S.A., but I doubt that many Australians would wish death and destruction of the leader of an opposition party.

Obama's Health Bill has the freaks coming out of the woodwork. Maybe the protesters need to look at Australia and Britain to better understand that a little bit of socialism, when it comes to health care, is very good indeed.

Travel Insurance

Yesterday we were contacted by our travel insurer, HBF. They had decided what they would and wouldn't insure us for when we go on a cruise to Indonesia in January. The gal who talked to me advised that they were happy to insure me for high blood pressure (controlled with medication) and high cholesterol, also controlled, but they would not cover me for prostate cancer and Proteinuria (protein in the urine). Strange really, seeing that I had a radical prostatectomy 11 years ago and was given the all clear about five years back and the GP and a specialist have suggested no treatment for the level of protein in my urine!?

Joan got knocked back on Reynaud's Syndrome. Reynaud's is when during the cold months insufficient blood reaches the tips of the fingers making them temporarily white. A change of medication fixed that problem this year.

They didn't ask if we can walk well or likely to fall down a gangway and have to be flown home.

We watched the ABC program 4Corners last night and it reported on a NT Government initiative to have English alone taught in isolated schools in Aboriginal settlements rather than a mixture of English and indigenous languages. There were a few very dedicated teachers who had pioneered the multi-language approach and they and 4Corners seemed to suggest that the government had got it wrong and that unless the kids were taught their own language it would be lost forever.

Having taught in primary education in Papua New Guinea, I saw the use of English as the language of instruction, the only real way to reach proficiency in a short time. In PNG at the time I taught in primary schools, the parents and villagers spoke mostly their own language and so, the kids learnt their language as we learn ours...from our parents and surroundings. This is probably not the case with aboriginal kids in isolated outstations as most of their parents speak a crude form of English. Elders, could of course, run basic language lessons in the local indigenous language so that it is not lost.

Geraldton Senior High School

This morning we returned home after an over-nighter at the Vines Resort. The function was Joan's year 12, 50th anniversary and surprisingly most of the group turned up. The high school was Geraldton Senior High, one of only five senior high schools in the state at that time.

There were very amusing speeches and a commemorative booklet of the careers of each of the cohort. Almost every one of them did amazing things in a wide variety of careers. There were airline pilots, medicos, lots of teachers and administrators. I was very impressed and wondered where I had missed out. I guess the answer is intelligence. In the 1950s very few kids went on to year 12 and a Leaving Certificate....a Junior Certificate was the crème de la crème at Fremantle Boys School. The Junior Certificate got you into a bank job or an accountant's office. This group all graduated and mostly entered university. At 67+ years many of them are still employed. They plan another reunion in three years when most of them will be 70.

One fellow attended briefly because of major physical problems. Some six years ago his daughter's estranged husband knocked on his front door and shot him twice with a double barrelled shotgun, blasting most of his gut out and losing a knee. The gunman then shot himself.
He was fed through a tube for months whilst surgeons rebuilt him.

The resort was very swish and Kangaroos seem to like it too. There were lots of them out on the greens this morning.

Uncle Jay

I subscribe to 'Uncle Jay Explains the News' which is supposedly aimed at explaining the news to kids, but is a humorous take on the news mainly aimed at adults. I thought it wasn't too bad at all.

In a recent posting by 'Uncle Jay' I noticed an advert placed by the sponsor Google. I clicked on the ad and found the most amazing diatribe about the 'New World Order' in which Barack Obama, Javier Solana of the European Union, Prince Charles of Wales, Queen Beatrix of Netherlands and Prince Hassan of Jordan are all part of the Masonic Antichrist world plan. Wow!

If you want to get the lowdown on all these meanies you will need to purchase the document and of course you will need to get in early before the Antichrists have it taken off the WWW.

You can take a look at the teaser here.

I was surprised to say the least that Uncle Jay would have such an advert on his page and so wrote to him asking if he agreed with what the document said.....see here:

Hi, Kevin. The ads on my site are generated automatically by Google Ads, based on the words that the page contains. That sometimes results in some weird stuff.

No, I don't endorse everything that appears, and occasionally will block something that I think is inappropriate for the kids who follow my site. While I think that the ad you mention is a bit out there, I don't consider it something to block.

Thanks,
Uncle Jay



On Mon, Sep 7, 2009 at 7:47 PM, KevinLock <kalock@iinet.net.au> wrote:

Name KevinLock Email kalock@iinet.net.au City, State Western Australia Your Message I was surprised to see an advert on Uncle Jay's latest episode promoting a paper by www.VisionRevisited.com headed Obama's New World Order.
Do you endorse the content therein?

I don't know whether I should give Uncle Jay a miss?

Westinghouse SweepEZE

I wrote about the auto vacuum dust bin our son gave me for Fathers' Day. It worked a treat when we initially opened the present and oohed and aahed over it as one does when given a pressie. Then yesterday I tried it again and the auto function failed to work. It is not a biggy....the broom can touch a manual button on the front of the machine and it certainly does suck the dust up.

On closer inspection there are two sensors near the vacuum mouth...I cleaned them with a tissue, but still no go. On the warranty brochure there is a 1 800 number so I settled down in a comfy chair expecting it to be a 45 minute adventure. Pleasant surprise! A human answered and put me straight through to a Tech. No recorded warning messages about the call being monitored for training purposes, no list of alternatives to press to get further into the bowels of customer assistance.....straight through!

The Tech bloke asked what the product was and I told him it was a Westinghouse SweepEZE. He confidently said...'So you're the bloke who bought that?' Funny; but not the usual conversation one has with customer service. He explained that they were long gone from the product lineup and that they didn't even have one to replace mine. He didn't have a solution as most products these days are not repaired merely replaced. I told him it wasn't a problem and we wished each other well and I hung up.

Strangely I came out of the whole thing feeling good. Actual voice contact and then a bloke with a sense of humour, even if the joke was on me.

Burmese immigrants

A few days ago I had a call from a Burmese student studying at Curtin University. He had heard about the free Mac giveaway I am doing and wanted one. He took away a nice eMac and was very pleased with himself. The next day another Burmese chap rang and also wanted to get one...another eMac gone. Then yesterday the word had filtered down through local Burmese families and a couple of women rang saying they wanted to 'attend my house to get two computers'.

When they arrived they were keen to tell me where they came from ....'Myanmar'....'Aung San Suu Kyi!'

They figured that we Australians didn't know where Burma is and I suppose that until the publicity about the long house arrest of the activist Aung San Suu Kyi (see here) most Australians didn't know too much about Burma. It was brought to the fore recently when a looney Yank swam across a lake to her house and just as she was due to be released the Junta used that as an excuse to charge her with a breach of her sentence. Looks as though she may be housebound for some time yet.

These Burmese....it is quite difficult to say Mayanmarese, are pleasant people who look as though they will fit nicely into Australian's multicultural society.

Fathers' Day

Fathers' Day yesterday saw our small family of 2+2 get together for a nice BBQ lunch and a few drinkies. Helen bought me a carton of boutique beer of different brands and Martin bought me/us an automatic dust bin. He knows that I like smart gear and although we probably wont use it very much, I must admit that it is very smart indeed. Plugged in and set to auto, the hausfrau merely sweeps dust and dirt towards the machine and it starts up and sucks it in.

I haven't been to the movies for a long time, probably a couple of years. When a callow youth, a bunch of the blokes would head into Fremantle on a Saturday night at the movies at either Hoyts or the Princess Theatre. My mate Don (Happy) Rowe started a little tradition of carefully looking at the credits and noting who the makeup artist for each movie was. None of us had any interest with makeup except that we did notice it on the fairer sex. The lineup of makeup artists included Willy Tuttle, Wally Westmore and Howard Smit. For some reason we were more fond of the name Willy Tuttle and when the credits were rolling we all managed to clap and cheer when Will Tuttle's name appeared.

Can't explain why we carried on about a makeup artist, but there again many of the ideas Happy came up with were off beat. We all loved Hap and he left us around 1972.

Reflecting on those picture show nights, the couple of us who owned motorcycles were easily identified by the black stains on our hands from the perishing rubber handlebar grips and the dull oil stain on the right foot shoe, due to the constant oil leaks on the gear change lever.

Drug contraindications

I take a couple of drugs for cholesterol…lipidil and Lipitor. When I filled a script a couple of days ago the Pharmacist asked me if I knew that that combination of drugs was contraindicated and could cause muscle pain and wastage. I was not aware of that, but the fact that I have had quite severe pains in my calves over about three weeks prompted me to seek an appointment with our GP.

One of the big no-nos with GPs is to front up with a printout from an Internet page which declares that the drug(s) he has prescribed is somehow dangerous. John, our GP, informed me that Pharmacists are wannabe doctors and one shouldn’t worry too much about what they say. He knew the story about contraindication with those two drugs, but informed me that I would have a better chance of winning lotto than having such a problem described. Never-the-less he did send me off to have a blood test to see if indeed there was a problem associated with the drugs.

Well, blow me down, if there wasn’t a news item on TV last night suggesting that studies in Tasmania show that Lipitor can cause muscle pain and wastage. I gave the Path. Centre some blood this morning so that they can tell me if I am OK or not.

Also this morning I visited John, our friend, in his lock-down nursing home. John has dementia and I don’t think he really knew who I was today. We sat out in the sun and I engaged him in conversation by asking questions about his family, his work (he still thinks he is a senior lecturer at a university) and anything else that I could think of. John responded to all my questions and suggestions, but beyond the first few words he wandered off the topic. I found it amazing that part of his brain has lost memory and what he is saying is jumbled and off topic, but his speech is well formed and in orderly sentences. Who knows how that all works?

The great beer heist

Tonight Joan cooked her steak and baked vegetable dish....wonderful!

The steak was butter fried beef Scotch fillet, very nice but the pièce de résistance was Joan's baked vegetables.

Mushrooms, zucchini, fennel, tomato and anything else in the vegie drawer of the fridge. They are sliced or chunked; spread out and sprinkled with sliced garlic, sea salt, olive oil and basil ( as in Faulty). Popped in the oven at 200c for about 30-40 minutes.

It goes down well with a glass of Belgium Hoegaarden beer. Unfortunately Hoegaarden is now in short supply as a local lad and his mate pinched 1349 cartons of the stuff worth around $34,000. See here.

Rum Corp NSW

John Della Bosca the NSW Health Minister has resigned having been caught out having a bit on the side in Parliament House and at his Mum’s place. When a security guard asked for ID John chucked a wobbly and later told his gal to tell security that she was his niece. See, romance is not dead. "I don't know how he managed to do his job when he spent so much time with me," she said.

He copped it sweet and resigned. He will stay in parliament, but not as a minister.

Johnno’s dalliance is not unexpected as his wife, Belinda Neal is not a darling..more the harridan. They were both involved in what was called ‘Iguanagate’ a bit of a stoush at a restaurant. Read about it here.

John apparently told his younger lover that he would leave his wife for her, but I reckon he lost his nerve when he fronted his missus. Don’t know why?

Here is a pic of John and Belinda filched from the SMH.

Reading material

Yesterday when Graeme and I were reminiscing about the early 60s in isolated postings in Papua he mentioned that, as an avid reader, it was very difficult for him to get books, newspapers and magazines etc. He relied on the newspaper packing in his regular supplies from Port Moresby’s Steamships Trading Company. In one box of supplies he thought he had won big time as there was a mountain of pages from the Post Courier newspaper. Unfortunately they were all the same page; misprints sourced from the print shop of the newspaper.

Today I collected a computer nicely packed in its original box with lots of newspapers as padding. I dumped most of the papers, but one liftout magazine must have fallen on the floor. In front of TV tonight I noticed Joan with a puzzled look thumbing through the supplement. I enjoyed pointing out the date….January 2009.

Some years ago, brother Graham and I would save the April 1^st newspaper still wrapped in plastic and substitute it for the current paper retrieved from friends’ lawns. Always a good result with that gag.

I must confess here that my bro first pulled that prank on me. I read the entire paper without realising that it was a year old. Even the comics looked good.

47 years ago...

Yesterday we had a visit from a couple touring around Australia in a caravan. Graeme and I taught in the same district in Papua 47 years ago. We had a lot to reminisce about that year we shared in the Gulf District in 1962.

If we could sit down with a few other colleagues, primed with a few drinks, we would have the material for an amazing book of our adventures in colonial times in PNG. Papua New Guinea, as I remember, was never referred to as a colony of Australia and the main thrust of education in the country was to work towards independence. I can also remember at the time that I could not perceive that independence would come in the foreseeable future. It did come about in 1975 and Joan and I joined the celebrations in the Northern District of Papua.

It has been said that Independence came a little early when Australia handed over the reins to a democratically elected government. That statement is probably true, but at the time of independence there were no armed independence movements fighting to ‘throw off the yoke’ of colonialism.

Since independence PNG has relied heavily on foreign aid mainly from Australia.

Graeme and his wife Elaine, visited us here and we took them on a tour of the local area which they probably would not have the time to explore themselves. I wonder if we will ever meet up again.

I've been had!

Last night I had a late phone call about the computers I distribute for free. The lad wanted to come visit at around 10.15pm to collect a machine. I told him no because it was late and I wanted to go to bed. He asked if his father could collect it the next day after 5pm and I agreed. When dad arrived he was a very large and loud Chinese fellow who in the space of 10 minutes took five calls on his mobile. I showed him the basics of operation and we carried the bits out to his large shiny black Mercedes. He gave me his card, mentioning that he was a successful finance broker. Just the sort of needy person I try and give computers to...Not!

Over the last couple of days I have been doing maintenance on a unit we own at Quinns Rocks a seaside suburb about 58 kilometres from our place in Bibra Lake. Over the years there has been little maintenance done and lots of work needs to be done before the new tenant moves in. The previous tenant has left a huge garden shed, mainly because it would have been too hard to remove. When he was cleaning up he threw a kids trampoline and a slide over the back fence onto a vacant block. The block has great ocean views and is for sale for $900,000. I have asked the agent to contact him and see if he can't take his rubbish to the tip. I don't want to be too mean as he has left me a nice shed.

Quinns Rocks has attracted a large British migrant population. It seems like almost all the businesses are run/owned by Brits. In the Bunnings hardware store every person I spoke to was a Pom. I guess the word gets around that there are plenty of like minded people in certain areas and that draws them to those areas. Rockingham is similarly attractive to Britishers.

In a previous posting I mentioned a smart crab; and a friend, Dennis, today related a true story about an evening of crabbing off the Bicton jetty in the Swan River some time in the 1950s. When we were young there were so many crabs in the river that bathers had to be careful they didn't get bitten by them. In Den's story, a Mr Hugh Rudderham, who was a neighbor of Den's was crabbing with a drop net off the end of the Bicton jetty and operating a carbide lamp for light. As Mr R. pulled his drop net, the assembled mob cheered at the size of the Blue Manna in the net. He leaned over the monster holding his carbide lamp and the bluey grabbed his carbide lamp finger. In the ensuing dance the crab and the carbide lamp went in the drink. Mr Rudderham continued his dance exclaiming...'For Cracking Great Lumps of Ice'. I will leave it to the reader to interpret that.

Timor Sea oil slick

I watched part of the football match between the Eagles and the Crows on Saturday and our home team was crushed. The psychology of sport is very complex. Anyway after the defeat of our lads the victorious Crows’ Hymn (?) was belted out in the stadium. Oi, I thought, they have pinched the Marines Hymn! And they had. It seems that most of the AFL teams cannot write an original song and have filched traditional music (out of copyright) from somewhere. Looking into it a bit further it seems that even the marines acquired their Hymn from France

U.S.Marine Corp Hymn

The song has an obscure origin-the words date from the 19th century, but no one knows the author. The music is from the Gendarmes' Duet from the opera Geneviève de Brabant by Jacques Offenbach, which had its début in Paris in 1859. The Marine Corps secured a copyright on the song on August 19, 1919, but it is now in the public domain.

So there you go. I am now working on a new version to be sung at my funeral service: Kev's Hymn. The words will include such as… Nature’s Gentleman; respected by all, pillar of society etc.

There is a major oil spill from an oil drilling rig in the Timor Sea. It is unknown how the leak has occurred, but the crew has been evacuated and an aircraft is spraying a dispersant on the slick. It is estimated to take about seven weeks before it is under control. Apparently it is not a biggy as the leak is a mixture of gas and oil and evaporation is helping somewhat.

Although I was only a wee kid during WW2, I have read much on naval battles and convoy sinkings , but strangely nothing about oil slicks. The amount of shipping sunk in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans was huge. What happened to all that oil? Similarly when I was a youth, Fremantle Harbour had few restriction on dumping of wastes from ships into the harbour and subsequently the Swan River. When swimming in the river near the harbour entrance we had to look out for blind mullets set loose from ship toilets. Strangely with all the garbage from ships heading up river with the incoming tide, fish were abundant, mussels and crabs everywhere. One of the fish species in the river was the Trumpeter..commonly referred to as shitfish. The crabs were large and delicious. I recall one huge crab after being tossed into the pot on the stove reaching out with its claw and turning the gas off.

Bought/Brought

The largest car dealer in Western Australia is one John Hughes. He is very successful and is Australia's largest Hyundai dealer. He also sells VWs and other brands. He regularly takes out four page newspaper adverts of customers' glowing letters of praise. We have bought several new cars from him. On his recent TV ads he did the bought/brought confusion and I wondered why someone didn't step in and say to John that it is brought rather than bought. I guess that he spends so much money with advertising that no one wants to upset him.

I have collected more good computers from W.A. Newspapers. they are relatively late model computers (Macs) and have 20" LCD screens. I now have about 25 machines ready to be distributed to needy folks. I will contact the known organisations letting them know that there are more loaded and ready to go.

I gave our son a nice fast PC which will be helpful in his CAD studies. When I delivered it to his place I was amazed at his latest collection of gear from GutterMart. There is a large TV and a bit of good furniture. He will soon have to put some of it out on the road himself. Methinks he could become a bag lady.

Wray Family

Whilst at the old Albany Cemetery we found a headstone of the Wray family. Joan’s side of the family are Wrays, so we took a snap of the headstone and printed it off to take to her uncle and aunts’ 60th wedding anniversary celebration yesterday. It turns out that the grave was indeed Boy’s great grandfather and great grandmother. The mob at the Sunday celebrations didn’t know of the grave’s existence. ‘Boy’ is not his real name it is just that he was the only boy out of five children and that name has stuck throughout his life.

The celebration was a biggy. The current Wrays number 8 kids with 20-30 grandkids and great grand-children approaching double figures. Their family shows are always accompanied with musical items poems and speeches and usually a humorous quiz.

Yesterday, letters of congratulation from QE2, the Governor General, the State Premier and Leader of the Opposition and other pollies were read out. I thought at the time that they were fake messages, but later found that there is a system for getting such messages from notables. I think there are a few conditions and so cannot possibly hope to get a note from the Queen for my 70^th birthday in November. Damn!

Here is a snap of the headstone….

This Photo shows the second generation Australian Wray family. The father in the centre of the photograph is the son of John and Celia, and Joan’s grandfather, Albert, is the handsome bloke at right hand rear of the pic. The Wrays were, and are, into large families. The family group photo shows 12 siblings, but one had already died and another is absent from the photo.

Cemetery, waterfront and old Post Office...Albany.

The old Albany cemetery is close to the CBD and the headstones of old tell some interesting stories. A couple of recent (1947) graves have what, at first, seemed accusatory statements that the two men were ‘Killed’ at Sea aboard the ship the SS British Confidence. The Albany library has an extract from the local paper explaining what happened.

Article in Albany Advertiser 26/06/1947 "Two Killed When Wave Strikes Ship", describing an accident on board the tanker British Confidence which resulted in the death of Geoffrey Todd and William John Murt.
There are a few graves of Chinese people and all their graves face north to China.
This is a spliced copy of two very old, mucky photographs of the waterfront at the bottom of the town.
The railway station on the left is now the Visitors’ Information Centre and on the roadway above the waterfront there is a rotunda (?) which now looks like this….

The old photograph was almost certainly taken from the old Post Office, a wonderful building which now houses the local campuses of UWA and Curtin University.
Tired of Albany yet? Too bad, there's more to come!

Albany History

When we stayed over at Albany our accommodation was at Middleton Beach which is about 6 kilometres from the Albany CBD. This is a pic of a bus trip to Middleton Beach circa 1910.

Another landmark in Albany town is Dog Rock. Here are two pics, one around 1895 and another a few days ago.

I have two photographs of the Albany waterfront taken around 1900 and will attempt to stitch them together for another posting.

This photo is of a house built circa 1872 by the Cull family and became the home of Mathew Cull, the verger of St. John's Anglican church. It is still in the family and rented out. It must be quite dreary inside.

Albany Aboriginal Centre

We have just returned from two nights in Albany 406 kilometres south of Fremantle. It was a busy, but very pleasant trip. Going down we had about three hundred Ks of rain which was not that nice for an oldie like me doing 110kph. Those big wheat trucks create a water wash whirlwind but fortunately there are plenty of overtaking lanes on Albany Highway.

Once in Albany we got set up in our motel room. Should give a plug for the Dolphin Inn at Middleton Beach…excellent facilities and inexpensive. $79 per night for a two bedroom apartment. That saved on having to brave the cold evenings to go to a restaurant.

That afternoon we had arranged to meet a coordinator of the Albany Aboriginal Community Centre to deliver and set up four computers with the aim of helping combat the alarming suicide rate amongst aboriginal youth in Albany.

Unfortunately nobody turned up and we made arrangements to return the next day at 9.30am hoping that there would be people to give some instructions in the programs we had loaded on the machines and general instructions on the Mac operating system. This time we were let in and had the place to ourselves until a retired aboriginal lady came along and we were able to show her how things worked. Although she had not used a Mac before she very quickly got a handle on the operation and the software and is going to be the IT specialist. It was stressed that they did not want to place computers in individual homes and they are hoping it will bring youth and oldies together to learn to write letters, play games etc and communicate with each other.

She is a very pleasant person and we chatted about the organization and the building. We were told that there is no ongoing government funding for maintenance and development of the facility. Another younger woman joined us and we were told that although funding was good, their community had for too long been welfare dependent and for funds to keep their community centre going it was better for them to fund it themselves with the help of a few donations such as ours. There is a perception among many white Australians that aboriginals get too much welfare.

The computers are ready to be used and we have requests for more machines for specific cases…one being a young woman who has recently been released from prison and is starting full-time studies.

Although the centre was a little run down, we were impressed by the efforts of the people to get their people together for cultural events etc.

Whilst down at Albany we did all the touristy things and there is much to see there. It is a little chilly there at the moment, but the coast and islands are magnificent. The town (is it a city?) is very hilly with many fine houses with wonderful views out to sea. It is however, mountain goat country and one needs to be quite a good driver to negotiate very steep driveways.

Some Pics of Albany tomorrow.


A teaser.....Albany Town Hall

Albany Western Australia

We have made the arrangements to install some computers at an aboriginal drop-in centre in Albany. Albany has a quaint colonial feel to it with many old original buildings still in good repair.
We will be heading down south on Monday morning and hope to be in town just after lunch.

When we lived in Bicton, we were the second owners of a large colonial house built by a Scottish emigrant in 1897. In the house was his diary of his voyage to Australia in 1888. I have reproduced a part of his diary pertaining to the ship's first landfall on Australian soil at the port of Albany. It makes for an interesting read. The observation he made about aboriginals and their skin problems is similar to some native people in Papua New Guinea where skin fungus problems are quite common. The long time taken to 'coal' the ship was because the coal had to be transported to the ship at anchor by small boats. The ship was the Orient Line's SS Ormuz.

Thursday, a splendid day and we are now in sight of Australian land and what a great commotion it causes on board ship, all eagerly eyeing it with such a relish as we have not seen land for nearly three weeks.
In the evening we had a lecture on Temperance by Mr Booth the Temperance orator who gave a first class lecture and afterwards invited all to come forward and sign the pledge and get a piece of blue ribbon attached to their button hole, but only half a dozen availed themselves of the opportunity.

At twelve o’clock tonight we anchored at Albany, after which we retired for the night. Friday, beautiful weather still, when we got up we find them busy coaling the ship, which takes a very long time when compared to other places on the route. It was expected that they would be through at 5 o’clock in the afternoon, but instead they got through at 12 at night. The notice was posted up that passengers could go ashore till 5 o’clock and which a great number did. Albany is a very young place at present, but it is a very pretty little place you would almost think that they had just cleared away as much of the bush as allowed them to build as all the rest seems nothing but bush and sand. There is also a good deal of granite Rock, same as Aberdeen granite but much softer. The shops here are very neat and clean and they also sell their goods at a very moderate price, fruit being very cheap.

The people here are principally English, we took on about two dozen passengers who have left it owing to it not being well enough developed yet for their businesses or trades. There are a number of aborigines here who are about the most miserable looking creatures man looked on, being covered with some kind of a skin.

Charles Darwin also visited Albany in 1836.

The 'Beagle's' final port of call in Australia was the infant settlement of Albany, on the southern coast of Western Australia. Darwin was not very impressed with Albany as it was then. But he and/or Covington did manage to collect some zoological specimens that were new to science, including a non-marsupial bush rat, two fish (namely the longhead flathead and the common jack mackerel), and 48 insect species.

Ibex and us

Last night I watched a National Geographic special called 'The Wall of Death'. Brilliant!

The Wall of Death is an almost vertical cliff face in Israel on the Dead Sea where there are large colonies of Ibex (large goats) that live on a barren mountainside and have to descend vertical routes to get to food and water daily. They make the daily descent to water and food and manage, mostly, to survive the attacks of wolves, leopards, snakes, hyenas and vultures to return to the safety of the clifftop.

I found the fact that leopards, wolves, wolves and hyenas existed in Israel pretty amazing.

What did hit home to me is that the Ibex, at about two weeks of age start to practise their maleism. Is that a word? Anyway, they, at a very young age, know that they have to be strong and a winner to mate with the female Ibex. Plenty of clashing of heads and later, large horns.
As is the case in all of nature the tough guys win out and get the gal(s).

Made me thankful that somewhere back in the past, humans established a few rules about marriage and Kev was able to get a good wife without too much agro. In humankind there is that same, albeit diluted, animal attraction. I do see it sometimes when I notice the very attractive of the females of our species go for the the more animal of humanity.

Crematoria

South Australian authorities have recently taken another look at the operation of crematoria, something that wasn’t taken seriously at Auschwitz. Strict conditions apply to crematoria disposing of human and animal remains. Pollution in the form of odour, smoke, greenhouse gases and chemicals is addressed with requirements in the design of crematoria.

My brother lives quite close to Fremantle Cemetery and at odd times we, enjoying a lager out the back of his house, have noticed a smell not unlike that emitting from a McDonalds outlet? Nah; can’t be?

We have made arrangements to install five computers at the Noongar Centre in Albany and will drive down to Albany in about ten days. The director of the centre said it was a good idea and would give bored kids something to do. There have been a number of suicides amongst aboriginal youth in the town. We plan to stay overnight at least and take a lot of photographs of the historic town and maybe catch up with an ex-student who is teaching there.

Albany, like Fremantle, was a U.S. Navy submarine base during the second world war. It was at Albany that test were carried out to prove to navy authorities that early torpedoes were faulty and that many misses were because the torpedoes were running deep and missing targets. See here. Those tests caused the redesign of the Mk XIV torpedo and with that high success rates against Japanese shipping. One of the successful sinkings was that of the Montevideo Maru, a Japanese cargo ship carrying Australian POWs and civilians from the Japanese held New Guinea port of Rabaul en route to Hainan. All prisoners died in the sinking.

To this day there are people who believe that the Montevideo Maru was not carrying Australian prisoners when it was sunk. One suggestion is that they were embarked on the ship at Rabaul and thrown overboard at sea. For those who love such conspiracy theories, you can read more here.

There are calls for a HMAS Sydney type investigation and search for the wreck of the Montevideo Maru. There were more Australian deaths on that ship than on the Sydney.