Murray holiday
Holidays are an indulgence from the perspective of both time and money, but they’re important family occasions.
I still remember the occasional long trips we made when I was small and I’m sure it’s the same for our kids today.
This was a relatively small trip in terms of duration and distance, but a very enjoyable one.
We spent one night in Shepparton and two in Moama. In Shepparton we visited Kidstown, did some shopping, went to the Ardmona factory sales outlet and the children enjoyed an afternoon at the indoor swimming pool.
They have water slides there and all sorts of other devices to entertain young ones.
While they were paddling around I enjoyed watching the Lions win their third straight premiership.
They’re an awesome team and if they can find motivation through another long season in 2004 I think they can win another premiership.
Echuca/Moama is a great place for families. Attractions included go-kart rides and the inetvitable paddle steamer cruise. We had tennis courts and solar-heated pools where we stayed as well.
The Murray is a mighty river at that point and I love the river gums. September is an ideal time to visit, although surprisingly cold this year.
Kathy Reichs
Kathy Reichs is an interesting writer. Her books are first-person crime narratives written from the perspective of a forensic anthropologist, which is her “real life” occupation.
According to the author’s blurb, she is one of only 50 accredited forensic anthropologists in the United States.
She works part time for the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in North Carolina and part-time for the equivalent agency in Montreal, Quebec.
The book’s first-person fictional character, Dr Temperance Brennan, also holds those positions.
Apparently the job’s mundane regular task is to analyse old bones that are dug up on construction sites, in the forest or wherever. She needs to determine if the bones are human and if foul play might have been involved.
Brennan, known as Temp, has a knack for getting deeply involved in her work to the point of irritating police officers.
From their point of view she’s meant to provide a scientific reference point, but Temp goes beyond the call of duty and likes to play detective. She’s pretty good at it too, which irritates some of the officers even more, especially her antagonist Luc Claudel.
What I like about Reichs are her settings and the unique scientific perspective she brings to crime fiction. I’ve read three of her books now and they’re all similar in style.
Deja Dead and Deadly Decisions are set in Montreal. Temp has learnt French and blends nicely into the culture of what must be North America’s most fascinating city, perhaps with the exception of New Orleans.
As an Australian reader I’d like to be given more of a taste for Montreal, but I also understand the author not wanting to distract from the pace of her work. The French language references and selective place descriptions are interesting enough.
Grave Secrets, the second book I read, alternates between Montreal and Guatemala. In my opinion it’s her best work. It shows a genuine empathy for her subjects, compassion for the less fortunate and a determination to make right from wrong.
Deadly Decisions didn’t work as well for me, but I still enjoyed the book. It narrates a gang war between the Hells Angels and Vipers.
It goes a little over the top and it stretches belief sometimes that Brennan and her nephew somehow manage to get themselves into particular situations.
That seems to be the biggest challenge for crime and mystery writers; maintaining credibility in the storyline. There’s no doubt it’s a skill and some do it better than others.
Kathy Reichs is relatively new to writing and will hopefully deliver many more novels in the years to come.
The scientific background she writes from is surely unique and it’s to her credit that this aspect is usually not overdone (the blood splatter analysis in Deadly Decisions an exception).
Writing in the first person makes it difficult for her to develop secondary characters, but there is scope for her to do this in future books. Claudel, in particular, could be the focus of stories in his own right.
I look forward to reading more of her work.
Beehive and Bright
I have a couple of interesting walks to report.
Yesterday I drove to the Porepunkah Gully Road, which is a dirt track heading north from the Great Alpine Road near the flower farm. I parked the car near the rail trail and ventured forth.
The track starts flat and straight through farming country. It reaches wetlands near the shadow of a hill about 400 metres from the road. I suspect these wetlands are seasonal, but some of the ponds may be perennial. The sound of wind through reeds is uncommon here and I always find it fascinating.
The track then climbs gently up the hill, which has mature pine forest on one side and wetlands/farm on the other. It emerges overlooking a narrow valley, intersecting with Westons Road.
I’ll check my facts on this later, but I believe the Goldsworthys farm that land and breed Hereford cattle, which are walked annually up to the High Country in spring, returning in autumn. We see or hear the cattle drive in town as they actually walk past our house.
I suspect they will be going later this year as there is still over a metre of snow at Falls Creek and the paddocks in this valley looked wet and lush.
I followed the merged track for a couple of kilometres. Again there is pine forest on one side and farmland on the other. The hill on the other side of the valley is native forest, which I prefer to walk in, and I could see a track along the ridge line. I hoped to intersect with that track and follow it back to the rail trail.
The road eventually gave me an option of turning left across the valley and I found the other track, but it was locked by a gate, so I presumed it was private property and didn’t enter.
A sign told me I was at the intersection of Beehive Mine Track and Oregon Road. I chose the Beehive Mine option, which headed steeply uphill into bush. There were fallen trees blocking the road, so I can safely say this path hadn’t been used much in recent times.
After ascending a rise the road turned opposite and downhill. I fancied heading back up the valley instead and decided to walk cross country for a while hoping to meet another track. There was a path of sorts, but it didn’t lead anywhere in particular and I had to backtrack.
I continued along Beehive Mine Track, which traversed an interesting mix of mature pine and native rainforest. Rainforest only exists this side of the Divide, and at this altitude, in sheltered patches with a southerly aspect. A small clear stream crossed the track and I enjoyed a drink.
That was possibly the site of Beehive Mine, which was perhaps an alluvial field. I saw no sign of diggings. The track then rose to another ridge and an intersection of several tracks. I’m guessing that one of them was Oregon Road.
The pine forest in that vicinity had been recently harvested and I didn’t wish to continue any further, so chose what appeared to be the shortest route back to my starting point.
A steep downhill track through the pines promised a quick return. It wasn’t as steep as the downhill path I mentioned near Roberts Creek a while back, but it was more treacherous. The track was basically wet clay, extremely slippery, and I spent much of my time navigating footholds or on my hands. It was an unpleasant and time-consuming route.
As expected it took me to the start of Beehive Mine Track and I retraced my steps along the valley to my car.
A shorter variation of this walk is to follow Westons Road back to the Great Alpine Road. The loop takes 40 minutes to complete.
Hats and water would be necessary in summer as this area is rather exposed. As with most places around Porepunkah there are spectacular views across to Mount Buffalo.
Long way to Bright
Today I walked to Bright via Winters Hill and Tower Hill, returning along the rail trail. I didn’t plan this from the outset, but it was an enjoyable three-hour trek and not too difficult with my new-found fitness.
Winters Hill is a small peak literally in front of our house. The kids love playing up there for some reason. I kept to the main track and ignored steeper side routes that go up and down. One of them I know goes into the Buckland Valley.
It gained a fairly high elevation at medium gradient and I sensed I was getting close to the Tower Hill lookout, which I had climbed to once before from the base. A sign told me I was on Ritchies Road.
The pine trees parted for a magnificent view on two occasions, overlooking Bright and directly across the town to Mount Feathertop, which still has plenty of snow. The view was better than from Tower Hill because there were no power lines to interrupt. I must take a camera there one day.
I also observed the elevation was actually higher than Tower Hill lookout, so it must have been at least 800 metres. I gained my bearings and realised that Ritchies Road would travel downhill and intersect with the road that goes up to the lookout.
Indeed that was the case, but I continued down and followed a ridge line across to Stackey Gulley Road, which I had walked before. It emerges at the Bright Resort and Ovens Valley Motor Inn.
The rail trail crosses the Ovens River near there and goes past the golf course into Porepunkah.
I didn’t see much wildlife, just some rabbits. Yesterday though I saw two wallabies and the kookaburras thought it was pretty funny that I teased the local magpies about this week’s grand final.
Modern journalism
I was interested to hear Andrew Denton’s interview last night with veteran White House press corps member Helen Thomas.
I empathised with her comment that it’s hard to start writing opinion pieces after years of straight reporting.
It also made me realise that I’m in the older generation of (former) journalists who believe newspapers should mostly report rather than moralise.
Nick Higgins, who’s a few years younger than me, successfully juggles opinion writing with reporting on the Border Mail. He observed on Saturday that the only thing worse than an old person saying how good things were in the old days is a young one!
I guess at 36 I’m old or young depending on the reader’s age. I feel qualified though to comment on changes in the profession of journalism.
Generally I think standards have deteriorated over the past 20 years. I blame the training system, which today churns out hundreds of university graduates with limited practical knowledge.
Newspapers today contain more commentary and so-called analysis than reportage.
I finished year 12 in 1984 and fiddled around for a couple of years before committing myself to a newspaper career. A cadetship was the accepted entry mode, but I couldn’t get one.
I resorted to the next best option and was fortunate to gain admission to the RMIT journalism school in Melbourne, one of only about 40 students in the intake.
After one semester I was offered a cadetship on a country newspaper and said farewell to academic life. Since then there’s been a total reversal in training from on site to on campus, similar to what’s occurred in nursing.
I don’t think change in this instance is for the better. I’m a better writer for having been exposed to sharp-tongued editors, cynical sub-editors and aggressive newsroom rivals during my formative years.
It’s better to have hourly and daily feedback on your work than it is to wait for an assignment to be returned every few weeks.
What disturbs me is that many of today’s editors came through the university system themselves. There are fewer from the “old school”.
The good university graduates need to have bad habits knocked out of them pretty quickly when they land a job. That’s not going to happen if the people who edit their work have bad habits themselves.
The following isn’t from any manual, but the golden rules of reporting for me are:
1) Summarise your story in less than 25 words in the opening paragraph.
2) Finish the main points of your story within the first five sentences.
3) Write your story so it can be cut from the bottom.
4) Never write an opinion that isn’t attributed to someone.
5) Avoid redundant words.
6) Never assume (or you make an ASS out of U and ME).
My nine-year-old daughter has to complete a weekly project in which she needs to summarise a newspaper article and read it to the class.
I told her to read the first five paragraphs, but when I checked her examples I was appalled at how little information was conveyed in these critical opening words by experienced metropolitan reporters.
It remains a fact that if you haven’t captured your reader’s attention from the outset then you’ve lost him forever.
I’ve noticed for several years that many journalists fail to attribute opinion and often give their own opinions, especially in political reporting. This tendency is more apparent on the broadsheets (eg The Age).
The standard of journalism on small country newspapers has become poor due simply to bad writing. For this I blame the employers, who continue to get away with paying sub-standard wages for the same work; a situation that doesn’t exist in any other industry.
Getting back to my original point (this is my Blog so I’m allowed to wander and rant), I’ve found it hard to break good habits.
My goal now is to rediscover a childhood talent I had for creative writing. Newspapers knocked creative writing out of me.
Adjectives were banned unless they described a crime suspect.
Letting loose in this Blog may stir some latent creative ability.
The Rainmaker, John Grisham
John Grisham has a lot to answer for. He kept me awake until 3am, regaling with another splendid yarn. Eventually I had to sleep and this morning I needed to finish some work before the story could resume.
I only have one regret that I finished all 568 pages of The Rainmaker in 18 hours, and that’s finishing.
It was typical Grisham. A young struggling lawyer grapples with ethics and reality as he takes on corporate America in a landmark trial.
The theme and plot are familiar, but the story was fresh and entertaining.
The hero in this case was Rudy Baylor, a university graduate who defies the odds to successfully take on an established city law firm and an insurance giant. He has a lot of luck along the way, but suspense is artfully maintained and the outcome remains in doubt until the end on a number of fronts.
I like the way Grisham introduces and treats secondary characters. They perform more than cameo roles but never distract. Much of the humor shines through these minor roles to balance scenes that are more intense.
An example is the 80-year-old widow Birdie Birdsong, or Miss Birdie, as Rudy knows her. His first legal challenge is to change her will and he’s shocked to discover that she wants to disburse $20 million.
Angry with the children and grandchildren who’ve abandoned her she seeks to endow a television evangelist.
Rudy handles her skilfully and eventually discovers that she has little money. He keeps this fact to himself and watches with amusement as the TV pastor and long-lost relatives suddenly become interested in the little old lady from Memphis.
Other members of the support cast were also terrific: Deck the ugly “paralawyer” who can’t pass the bar exam but excels at chasing ambulances; Prince and Bruiser, the pimp and his crooked lawyer; Butch, the amateur investigator; and movingly the leukaemia victim Donny Ray, whose failure to obtain cover from his insurer triggers the legal stoush.
Grisham is a master of suspense and his ability to keep a plot moving is phenomenal.
Upon reflection I do have one more regret - that I only have three more of his books to read.
Rogue snail
Dude was bored yesterday evening so I came up with the clever idea that he should make pets out of two snails I found near my office.
We fetched a container and filled it with grass, leaves and some water. We covered it with cling wrap and punched air holes with a fork. Dude sticky taped the plastic.
He named the snails Fred and George, then strenuously denied a link with Harry Potter after Kathleen observed they were the names of twins in one of the boy wizard stories.
Dude’s boredom evaporated as he spent the hours before bedtime giving the snails a guided tour of the house and generally entertaining each other.
This morning we discovered that one of the snails escaped; made a run for freedom in the night.
We think it’s George. We have no idea where he is, except probably in Dude’s bedroom. The other snail also got away, but I found him on top of the coffee maker.
Last time a creature escaped in Dude’s bedroom we found it in the bathroom (a frog) before it got stepped on.
I’m not sure this story will have a happy ending. We’ll just have to wait and see.
Recent comments
- Sue: mmmmmm… *drool* Tim Taaaammmmmsssss Heaven in a rectangle. Sues most recent article …Accents to...
- Michael: Congratulations Sue. That was the 1000th comment on this site. You win a Tim Tam.
- Sue: One more reason to love your country… awesome plate! Sues most recent article …Feeling Disconnected
- Angela Aguilar: READ CAREFULLY Hi to all, My name is angela and im one of the reservation of TIMESHARE here in the...
- Stephan Miller: Cool. I have tried so many ways around the javascript in post issue. I went as far as using an ad...
Links
Random posts
Archives
Useful stuff
