Kalgoorlie Road Trip

Early next month we are off on a road trip to Kalgoorlie.  Kalgoorlie is east of Perth by 600 kilometres and is a large gold mining town with a population of around 31,000.

Kal, as most people call it, was established in 1893 after the discovery of gold by Paddy Hannan, Tom Flanagan and Dan O’Shea.   No prize for guessing their nationality.

The ‘we’ in this road trip are Joyce, Margaret and me.    Margaret was brought up in Kalgoorlie and we will be taking a look at what she remembers about the house and surrounds where the family lived.  Joyce (Joy) like me, has an interest in the history of Kal, but mainly we are ready for a road trip.  Initially we thought of using the Seniors’ card for a cheap fare by train, but I thought a drive would be better and so I will be driving my car.  We will be staying at the ‘Star and Garter’ motel (how very Western is that?) for the three nights we are there.

My uncle was a policeman at Kalgoorlie in the early 1940s and he told of many incidents which would be typical of isolated mining towns.  He ran afoul of the Superintendent of Police who had warned him not to upset the gaming houses and brothels.  One incident where he booked the proprietor of a gaming house won him a year’s posting at the end of the Wood Line living in a small railway carriage and doing his rounds by horse.  That railway carriage and uncle’s notes are on display in the Kalgoorlie museum.  A must see.

The Wood Lines were railway tracks built out from Kal to supply timber and firewood needed for the mining industry and townsfolk.  

Other things to see is Hay Street, the street of brothels, the water pipeline from Perth to Kalgoorlie, the impressive old buildings, the massive Superpit, the Two-up school and minesites close to town.

The Goldfields' Pipeline was the baby of Engineer, CY O'Connor.  O'Connor   committed suicide almost a year before its completion.  Like many other visionaries, he was the target of harsh critics of this major project.  

Read about the pipeline here. 

Anzac Day 2013

Today is Anzac Day here.  There were Dawn Services throughout Australia honouring Australian and New Zealand servicemen and women who served and died in conflicts starting with the Gallipoli campaign in WW1.   When I was a youngster in the 1950s,  there was not the interest in Anzac Day that there seems to be now.   As as member of the Boy Scouts back then it was almost obligatory for us to attend the Dawn Service at Fremantle war memorial.  It usually gathered a crowd of around 150 or so.

Today as I drove our son to work in Fremantle at 6am, we passed ceremonies at two memorials and judging by the number of cars parked up every side street, there must have been thousands of people attending.  

In this morning’s newspaper there is a photo of an retired SAS Commander who is now a politician who ‘urged vigilance so that nationalism, the toxic by-product of patriotism, does not rear its ugly head on Anzac Day’. 

Boston

This morning I woke to find that the Boston Bombers have been found.  One was shot and later died, the other is under arrest.     In one report on-line is a reference to a radical site named infowars.com.    Alex Jones is its owner and he is also a radio shock-jock.   I looked at his site and it is extremely anti-government and loaded with conspiracy theories.  He tells us that the bombings were orchestrated by the U.S. government to support the President's crackdown on assault weapons.

When Martin Bryant murdered 35 people and injured 22 others in Tasmania, Australia in 1996, conspiracy theories about Marty also popped up.  A search for Martin Bryant shows that there are many sites claiming that he was set up by the then Prime Minister John Howard, to enable the government to seize automatic weapons from the citizenry. 

After watching two of Jones’ diatribes I felt quite ill.  He  advocates a peoples’ coup d’état.    It would seem that he has many followers.   Sick!                                 

Placebo effect

I took the advice of a comment poster and dosed my passionfruit with Epsom Salts.  An old method of ‘keeping your bowels open’ was to be forced to drink a mixture of water and Epson Salts.....it worked!   I have tasted the first ripe fruit and it did taste sweeter than previous years’ crops.   Placebo effect?  The vines are ‘loaded’ and I am looking forward to feasting on ice cream and passionfruit.   Years ago I owned a Datsun 240z.  It was a sheep in wolves’ clothing.  Whenever it gave me a bit of trouble I would drive past a wrecker’s yard en-route to work and I swear it perked up.  Maybe the passionfruit sensed that I was about to rip them out if they didn’t start to taste better?

                         A 240z.  I bumped that sharp nose a few times.

The parcel of B & W film and paper I collected from my old high school went in no time.  I tried giving it to a technical college which until recently still practised a bit of ‘wet processing’ of film and paper, but they have completely gone over to digital photography.  So, I advertised it as a free come collect package in Gumtree, an on-line marketplace.  Within minutes of placing the ad the calls started.  By lunchtime it was all gone and I withdrew the advert to slow down emails and phone calls.  Happy to see it go to worthwhile projects.

Passionfruit

My Passionfruit vines are producing flowers and fruit.  The bees have been few and I have had to hand pollinate the flowers with a fluffy brush.  I took the advice of an anonymous comment poster and gave them a liberal dose of epson salts which it is claimed will sweeten the fruit.  I had done that in previous seasons without noticeable improvement in the bitterness.   Hope it works this year.

Wet photography

A couple of days ago I visited my old place of employment, Willetton Senior High School.   It is still a great school, the largest government school in this state.   I was there to use the Industrial Arts workshop to do a bit of welding for my friend Dennis.  Whilst there the IA coordinator offered me a couple of boxes of photographic supplies, which when purchased, must have cost a pretty penny.  Schools long ago stopped teaching ‘wet’ photography and now exclusively teach digital photography which is the far better way to go. I recall doing weddings and sweating on the results at the processing lab.  The digital camera can instantly show you if the shot just taken is OK and before printing, Photoshop can perform miracles even if the photographer has made a few mistakes.   The one nice thing about wet processing of photographs was the magical emergence of an image before your eyes in the developing tray.

After a bit of research I found that there is a photography course at a local technical college which still has students experience ‘wet’ photography.  The bulk film and paper has been kept in an airconditioned room and should still be OK.  Next week I will contact that college to see if they can use this stuff, otherwise advertise it for free in a local trading paper.

Excessive downloads

Soon after our son returned from Melbourne and moved in with me I noticed a marked increase in my internet usage of my 15Gb plan.   I decided to upgrade to an unlimited plan @ another $20 per month.  ‘Can’t take it with you’......that’s the money, not the plan.

Two days after upgrading I noticed a massive amount of downloads pushing my download to 64Gb.  I panicked a bit and assumed someone had hacked into my wireless network, so I changed the wireless password and trashed all cookies which I thought may have been a source of silent updates etc.  Still, the usage was  excessive.   Then I received a message from  BackBlaze a trial piece of ‘cloud’ type software announcing that my backup had finished.   I can’t remember activation BackBlaze and I uninstalled it from my computer.  All is well.   In the two times I exceeded my download allowance I was cut back to dialup speed....eeeck!

My garage ceiling repair is finished and it would look pretty good galloping past on a horse.  Actually, it isn’t too bad and will not fall down again unless something from North Korea comes this way.  What can one say about North Korea?  A rouge state run by a 28 year-old who loves Dennis Rodman. When Rodman visited Nth Korea as a personal guest of Kim Jong Un recently, he would have been the only person in Nth korea to be so adorned.  

                                                   That’s love!

I placed a leftover plate of Spaghetti Bolognese on the lawn for the crows to finish off. It seems that they liked everything except the onions. If you don’t eat your onions you can’t have your Spag.                         

                                           Apologies to Pink Floyd

71st Birthday party

On April 2nd, Daughter Helen and hubby James hosted a small gathering to celebrate what would have been Joan’s birthday.  As it was thought to be her 70th we invited  a gathering of our close friends to celebrate her birth date.  Joan’s sister Dorothy brought us back to earth when she informed us that Joan would have been celebrating her 71st birthday, not the 70th.  On reflection Dorothy was correct.  Joan died on 25th February and her birthdate was April 2nd.  She was 68 when she left us and it has been just over two years and that is how we miscalculated.  It was a great afternoon with much laughter and storytelling, just as she would have wanted it.

There was plenty of food and drink; so much so that I never got to break out the ‘Little Boys’.  Little boys, is a recent term for cocktail Franks.  I will leave you to work out why they are called little boys.

I am nearing the end of my garage ceiling repair job.  One part of the repairs necessitated me climbing an extension ladder to get on my roof and remove terracotta tiles giving access to cornice which has to be attached to the brick wall with a special cement. Shouldn’t be doing that at my age especially when I have already experienced a nasty fall from five metres, dislocating my shoulder and breaking a piece of bone off my rotator cuff requiring two operations and months of recovery.  That accident happened some 11 years ago and I should not ever go roof climbing again.

Props holding the last piece of cornice  whilst I get up on the roof to cement it to the brick wall.

              I knew there was a use for heavy old computers.

The Writers' Almanac

A bad luck  story was told in yesterday’s delivery of The Writers’ Almanac; an online freeby I subscribe to.    Google it if you are into a bit of poetry and birthday notifications of current and historical people.  

A couple of days ago it had a story about Benjamin Franklin proposing daylight saving.

Another story was about a bad luck (or judgement) story about a fellow losing a lot of money.

Ceiling repairs

A few weeks ago my brother Graham’s garage ceiling fell down narrowly missing his Beamer.   I had not heard of this happening before, but when the repairman came he told Graham that it was quite common.  The plasterboard ceiling is  attached to the ceiling joists with daubs of glue and a few screws and if insufficient glue and screws are used the ceiling can be forced loose in high winds.

Last week my garage ceiling almost fell and I have done a repair job on it to save a few dollars.    An older (better) method of fixing ceiling plasterboard was to temporarily set the board in place with some fasteners, climb up into the ceiling space and lag some Sisal/Hemp impregnated with lots of plaster over the ceiling joists to drape down on the plasterboard and make a secure fastening when set.     I tried to buy some Sisal, but the lads at the major hardware store I use had never heard of Sisal or that method....glue they told me was the stuff!  Old method 1 - New method 0.     I still have to fit some cornice which also supports the edge of the sheets of plasterboard.  After Easter I will visit a specialist plaster company and see if they sell Sisal.

                             A car jack and support whilst I made temporary repairs.

Part time gardner

I am a part-time gardener.  Not too interested in non-edible plants and sometimes successful in cultivating things like tomatoes and broadbeans.  At the moment I have a small tomato plot.  I didn’t think too much about the seasons when I planted this plot and now as winter approaches I realise that  I am not going to pick a lot of fruit as it gets colder.

I don’t know where and when I learned to pinch out unwanted shoots, but I have been doing it for many years.   I have observed that the new shoots that grow out between established ‘branches?’ do not bear fruit and take away nutrients from the fruit already setting.    I have, on the other hand, also thought that the more greenery might also benefit the plant with photosynthesis?  Happy to have someone advise me on that.

Other fruit such as Passionfruit grow exceptionally well in my backyard, but for some reason the fruit is not wonderful.  Thick skins and/or bitter taste.  There are many fixes for these problems on the internet, but I think the answer is to ‘rip ‘em out’ and start again.   Another problem with grafted passionfruit is that the rootstock usually sends out far ranging suckers which pop up in the lawn and garden beds.

Passion vine...and no; the fence isn't pink.

About six months ago I planted a locquat tree.  It was probably six months old when I bought it and whilst I hope to eat fruit from it, I am thinking, at my age, something that bears fruit within a couple of years might have been more practical.

Boab Tree

This morning I had an appointment with our financial advisor.   He is a  partner in a large firm, and we have been with him for more than twenty years. We were well pleased with the results he has produced over the years with the exception of a couple of periods when everyone experienced negative growth and even a minus growth, but now it is back to around 15.8%.   We talked about what will happen when I croak it and he suggested I write a new Will.  He offered a few suggestions about what could be written into the Will and stressed that the actual will should be kept in a large envelope without any attached note(s) either stapled or held by a paperclip to the original document.   It seems that when the Will is inspected for probate purposes it is scanned under an Ultra-Violet lamp and any evidence of a previous attachment could suggest that some important document had been removed and make the Will suspicious.    Interesting!

I was a little early arriving in Perth City so I did a drive into King’s Park.  The first thing I sought out was the Boab tree.  This tree was trucked down to Perth 3200km from far up North of the State from a place named Warmun.  It was in the path of the construction of the Great Northern Highway and it was gifted to Kings Park by the indigenous people, the Gija.  Not a beautiful tree, but certainly interesting.    It is estimated to be 750 years old and kudos must go to the horticulturists who re-established it in its new surroundings where it has flourished.

Kings Park is a wonderful park of 1003 acres of natural bush and cultivated gardens overlooking Perth City.  A must for any visitor to Perth.

The Boab 

Sculpture by the Sea

Early Saturday morning I drove to Cottesloe Beach to take a look at the Sculpture By The Sea ‘installation’ (as the arty folk say).  I thought I would easily get a parking spot, but at 8am it was buzzing and I had to walk some distance from where I left my car.  

I am not big on art, but Joan and I always visited Sculpture by the Sea and I have continued to visit it by myself after her death.  I like the mixture of serious and playful pieces.  There seems to be one vehicle 'inst……..' allowed per year.     Some photos..... 

The only one I think needs an explanation is the Balinese singing windmill installation with one windmill for each of the people killed by Islamic terrorists in Indonesia.   It is probably not PC to name them as Islamic, but that’s what they were/are.

Here is a short Poem written by our neighbour when I was very young.

WSHS Class of '93 Reunion

Last night’s reunion went well.   I met up with a few colleagues and many ex-students.

Brother Graham collected me and dropped me off at the Left Bank, a lovely colonial house long ago converted into a bistro/bar.  The place was packed.  

The 'Left Bank' is on the banks of the Swan River

They do a Friday deal with a Pizza and Pint for $10., so there were loads of people there apart from the 90-something reunioners.  Inside the area designated for the reunion it was extremely noisy with a live band outside and 90 people reminiscing, confessing and catching up on 20 years.  I am not tall...5’6”, but neither am I a midget, but I was staggered to see most of this generation tower over me.   What did they eat that I wasn’t fed by Mum?

This place is not going broke. @ $9.50 per 330ml stubby the business is in good shape I would think.

The photos are snapshots, so no mean comments about the subjects or the photographer.      Around 9.30pm I rang Bro and he came and collected me, drove me home to have a sleep in a recliner.  

I am pretty sure I won't be able to attend the next reunion in 10 or 20 years.

Willetton SHS class of 1993

Tomorrow  evening and almost certainly late into tomorrow night, I am attending the Willetton Senior High School class of ’93  20th reunion at a riverside establishment.    This is not my class of ’93; I taught many of the people who will be attending.    I will be the oldest person there at 73 years of age and if it is going to be anything like the 10 year reunion I last attended it will be a blast.  Photos to come.

Willetton Senior High School was quite a wonderful place to teach.  I still have contact with lots of WSHS students and it is going to be great to see this cohort together again. It seems that there are about 80 ex-students attending and three or four teachers. Of course over 20 years this group is spread across Australia and the world.   I am past long drinking and socialising bouts and will probably taxi it home around 10pm.

Here is a pic from the school magazine at the time.  As I was the school photographer, I am not in the pic.

Where's.......?

What evil lurks beneath the keys of a Graphic Artist’s Keyboard?

I get computers donated from  an Australia-wide printing company and the condition of the keyboards is an indication of the work the graphic artists do when stuck in front of  a computer for a full day.  I imagine they snack, pluck nose hairs and drink coffee whilst on the job and a goodly amount of those waste products end up in the keyboard hiding under the keys.  

Click the pics to embiggen them.

This is a closeup of part of the board.  See if you can see a staple, some eyebrow hairs, odd bits of coloured paper and some aluminium foil resting in a soft bed of fluff.

When I get keyboards I remove all the keys and wash them in hot soapy water. The boards themselves need a solid brushing and a blast with compressed air.  Then finally, the glue (coffee/hair/crumbs), is wiped out with warm water and cotton wool buds.  The keyboard is reassembled using another board to remind me where most of the keys go.

At one school at which I did relief teaching after my retirement, miscreant youths would rearrange the keys in preparation for the next class.  I had to come down heavy on that practice.

Keeping the brain active

I recently supplied a computer to a woman for her daughter’s high school studies. For several days on my kitchen bench, I had given the computer a good run playing music and doing web searches etc.  It was running fine.  A couple of days ago she rang me to tell me it wouldn’t start and that they had been unsuccessful connecting to the wifi modem she had in the house.   I loaded up another machine as a backup, tested it on my modem which is identical to hers and drove to her place, around 40 kilometres from here.  The original computer started up OK and I figured that the power cable had been dislodged.  I could not get a connection by wifi as I believe one of the kids had changed the password.  I brought both machines back home and purchased an ethernet cable and will return this morning to make a wired connection to her modem.  This project can end up costing me.

Every time I think I have had enough of this project (it has been around 12 years now) I get offered some more Macs and I cannot knock them back when I know they would otherwise go to landfill.

This is an Apple eMac.  This model was destined for educational institutions only, hence the 'e' in the name.  It was very popular and was very soon sold to the public. It, like me, is getting a bit old in the tooth. But also like me, still works pretty well.

Driving to her place yesterday I experienced what thousands of daily commuters do....a major traffic jam.  It took me almost an hour to cover the first 12 kilometres.  I will wait until later in the morning when the traffic thins out before heading up to her place again.

Our son Martin is settling into his new job as a maintenance man at a hotel.  The range of repairs and general maintenance is extensive.  He comes home very tired, but satisfied that he is doing well.

Lance Armstrong

Thanks Lance for alerting us all to the fact that many sports people use performance enhancing drugs. Lance didn’t actually say that, but after all the publicity about LA coming out about his drug use, it would seem that all sorts of sports have had a serious dabble with drugs.  Football, rugby and soccer teams have fessed up.  Next, some disaffected lawn bowls player will blow the whistle on his/her team mates.  We all now know that cycling and horse racing is a bit dodgy and I seriously wonder how anyone could think that Championship Wrestling is real, but football codes being a bit naughty is something else.  What next...cricket?

Here is a pic of  a crow secreting excess food from my back yard in a pencil-pine tree.  He/she will return and consume it at the proper meal time.

I like the internet, but it is a medium open to abuse and untruths.  This story about KFC is so outlandish that it is hard to see how anyone could believe it...but lots of people do. A simple way to recognise a hoax is the line ‘please forward this message to as many people as you can’.     'Snopes' is the premium source to check out and debunk such messages.

Google Snopes and type KFC in the search space.  Worth a read.