Baptism
James Peter and Margaret Johanna Gorey were baptised today at Our Lady of the Snows Catholic Church in Bright. The celebrant was Father Matthew O’Hagan.
Godparents are uncle and aunt, Trevor and Jenny Fletcher.
ADSL demand sham
Telstra’s ADSL demand register is a classic example of how the company treats rural Australians with disdain.
My business would benefit greatly from ADSL, but the chance of it being available through the Porepunkah exchange on a demand basis is minimal simply due to the small number of properties.
Linking service provision with demand is Telstra’s way of saying it no longer has a universal service obligation.
Small towns and remote areas will always miss out if this philosophy is allowed to guide communications policy.
The provision of high-speed Internet at affordable prices should be a right and not a privilege. The cost of connecting all Australians should be cross-subsidised in the national interest, like postage.
As a 50 percent shareholder in Telstra the Federal Government should exert its influence to ensure a fair deal for country Australians.
This is a question of equity rather than numbers.
Wee master James
Baby James is a wee master. There’s no doubt about it.
I’m not a frequent nappy changer, but I know enough after two kids previously that you can avoid being sprayed while attending to babies’ personal hygiene.
But James is smart. So far I’ve fallen for his sucker punch about half the times I’ve changed him. His cute little baby face and still-receded hairline inspire a false sense of security.
Just when you’re busy on the finer detail he takes aim and fires the missile.
Travelling to Wangaratta on Tuesday he got me all over my jeans and only deft footwork saved my shirt as his fountain reached higher in an impressive arc.
He’s taken some big scalps in his short lifetime.
The first thing James did upon being pulled into the world was wee on the doctor responsible.
He dampened two midwives at Wodonga Hospital before collecting the paediatrician, who conceded James’ greatness in this unique field of endeavor.
“You’d think I would know enough to avoid this happening by now,” said the 50-year-old doctor who’s seen 20 infants a day for the last 26 years.
Who knows where this acquired skill will lead? His marksmanship is uncanny, so perhaps archery or shooting, or maybe it’s a sign that he has excellent co-ordination.
We’ve told him already that he has to be a golfer or tennis player to support us in old age.There’s no way we’ll be saving much between now and retirement!
Operation
Kathleen saw an orthopaedic surgeon in Wangaratta this afternoon. Our GP had sent her the x-ray of Kathleen’s broken wrist after he discovered a second break in a follow-up scan.
The outcome is the specialist wants to operate tomorrow to manipulate Kathleen’s wrist back into proper shape. She’s concerned the bone won’t mend correctly and could leave Kathleen with a permanent problem.
We’re booked into the Wangaratta Private Hospital and have to be there by 7am Tuesday. The operation wil be about 9am and Kathleen should be able to come home at the end of the day.
It’s a good thing I cleared the decks of immediate work commitments on Sunday, anticipating a trip to Walwa tomorrow. I’ve been asked to help the Walwa Bush Nursing Centre with their fundraising campaign for a new building.
I’ll head there after Juliet arrives in Wangaratta with the twins around 11am. We’ll tag team in support for Kathleen. I want to be there when she wakes up from the operation.
It’s going to be a busy day, starting at 5.30am.
Ethical dilemma
I confronted one of those modern ethical dilemmas today, like you read about in the magazine lift-outs of weekend papers.
I was shopping in the Bi-Lo supermarket at Myrtleford when I noticed some tender chicken breasts selling for about $3.50. Similar merchandise in the cabinet was double the price.
I looked for a use-by date or some other catch, but there wasn’t any, until I realised the chicken had been incorrectly labelled as mince beef. It quickly landed in my trolley and I sheepishly put it through the checkout hoping no alarm would ring and store detectives pounce on me.
That suggests my conscience believes it was wrong to snaffle the mistakenly identified chook. But was it?
Legally I was entitled to the goods at their marked price.
However, if it had been John Smith’s grocery store instead of Bi-Lo, and especially if I knew and liked John Smith, I would have felt compelled to point out his error, or I simply would have taken chicken at the accurate price or none at all.
I still don’t know the answer to this one. On one hand it’s not worth worrying about $3, but ethicists around the world grapple with similar concepts.
I sought Juliet’s opinion and she simply asked why I didn’t buy more chicken masquerading as mince, when I confirmed there were others!
It tasted great tonight with spicy tikka masala.
Broken wrist
Kathleen broke her wrist yesterday evening when she fell off a swing at the local park.
We took her to the Bright Hospital and the doctor on call came in to take an x-ray. Her wrist was swollen and colored, so the x-ray just confirmed what we all thought.
She has to wear plaster for four weeks, which will include the first week back at school. There will be another x-ray on Friday just to make sure the bone is healing properly.
We don’t really know how she managed to fall off the swing. I guess it’s just one of those things that happens to kids.
It’s a shame Kathleen won’t be able to go swimming while she has the cast, as that’s been her main recreation on these hot summer days.
Dude and his friend Stephen went with me on my bike ride to Eurobin today. They wanted to go further, so we headed up the road towards the deer farm and they both swam in the Ovens River under the bridge.
We then rode a few kilometres along Wobonga Lane, up and down some hills, before heading back the way we’d come. Dude was riding Kathleen’s bike, which is a little big for him, but he did well to make it so far.
Bushfire anniversary
January 8 is the anniversary of when the horrific bushfires started in 2003.
Not many people will remember this because the fires crept up gradually, faded again and rebounded with greater ferocity.
The reason I remember is that the lightning strike responsible occurred just before the last deadline for our final edition of the Alpine News.
I was filled with a mix of sadness and relief that we were publishing our last newspaper. I was concerned the thunderstorm would cause a power cut and stop me completing the last page before it could be sent by e-mail to the printer in Yarrawonga.
I could have been forgiven for finishing the paper as early as possible, but the news instinct prevailed and I made efforts to track down why the fire sirens were blaring.
I called the CFA regional officer, who referred me to the Department of Natural Resources and Environment. I was put through to the man in control, with a warning to be brief. This is the small report I squeezed onto page two of our final edition:
Bushfire threat follows thunderstorm
Lightning struck much of the North East yesterday, igniting numerous fires including several near Bright and Porepunkah.
The lightning came from a dry thunderstorm, which moved through the local area about 10am.
Fire management officer for the Ovens district, Andrew Pook, said at 11.15am it was too early to assess the impact.
Mr Pook said many of the fires had potential to become serious threats, including four on Mount Buffalo. He said there were many fires in remote areas.
Andrew’s prediction proved correct as the fires became the fiercest to strike this area.
It all seems almost surreal now that we lived with the very real fear of being engulfed in flames. Like most other residents, we were on standby to evacuate. I packed the car with some of our irreplaceable belongings, like photo albums.
The smoke haze lingered for weeks and became more depressing than the fire threat. It was bizarre to experience the relative coolness beneath the thick layer of smoke.
We knew from the weather bureau it was touching 40 degrees throughout the North East, except here, where it was in the mid 20s thanks to heat inversion.
Then the wind would change and clear it all away for a few hours. We saw the flames on Mount Buffalo, where a few months later there would be snow.
After the immediate fire threat had passed we went down to Gippsland for a few days to escape the smoke. It took weeks to finally clear.
It’s interesting to compare some of the differences between this summer and the year before.
December 2002 was the hottest on record and very dry (19mm). December 2003 had average temperatures and near record rainfall (141mm).
Bright was like a ghost town in January last year. The tourists stayed away and few people ventured outdoors unless they had to. This year it’s again a vibrant bustling place.
On a purely domestic note our lawn is still green this year without any watering. In January 2003 it was a brown and grey dustbowl.
As I sit here today it’s currently 14 degrees at 10am and a light drizzle is falling outside. Such conditions in January last year were unthinkable.
The bushfires touched us in a small way as bit players on a greater stage. Many people saw flames on their doorsteps. Thousands of people fought the fires on the front line.
None of us will forget them.
Golden Fox
I’m currently reading Golden Fox by Wilbur Smith, which follows A Time To Die in the Courtneys of Africa series.
I’m yet to work out why they aren’t listed in opposite order. A Time To Die is set in the 1980s in Zimbabwe and Mozambique. Golden Fox is set in the late 1960s, early 70s.
Perhaps the reason will become apparent by the end of the book. Both are enjoyable, but considerably different to earlier novels in the series. These ones tend to focus on one character whereas the others narrated several stories at once.
Smith’s political views are coming through more strongly as well. He obviously disapproved of the Communist-inspired terrorist movements that pushed for independence in southern Africa, which is fair enough.
He speaks several times of the misguided simplistic solution that one man should have one vote. In A Time To Die one of the black character tries to escape from Mozambique to South Africa with Sean Courtney.
He says he can’t eat a vote!
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