Costello and Homer
Okay, we’ve established a similarity between John Howard and Montgomery Burns. The main challenger to the Liberal leadership is Peter Costello.
Can we relate Costello to a Simpsons character? Ask someone associated with the mining industry and they might well draw an association between Peter Costello and Homer Simpson.
It’s folklore in the Goldfields that Costello sold much of Australia’s gold reserves at a ridiculously low price because he thought the time was right, yet he continues to commentate on commodity price issues. Doh!
Flow-through shares. Does Costello know what they are or is he indoctrinated by his department to milk the mining cow until it has nothing more to give?
Montgomery Burns and John Howard
Kevin Rudd is about as colorful as a dead fish. Apparently his speech to the Labor conference contained a few gems but rambled on way too long.
Either Kevin has some hidden talent though, or some good advisers.
I’m enjoying the current debate about which party and which leader actually has a vision for Australia. I’m not convinced that any party or leader has a vision beyond the next election, but it’s interesting to follow the debate.
Rudd has accused Howard of being in denial over climate change. Howard has accused Rudd of being the puppet of the Greens and Left over carbon trading, and released a courageous policy in support of nuclear energy.
Fans of Yes Minister will know what I mean by courageous.
I really liked Rudd’s response, when he referred to Howard as “Montgomery Burns”. It was a great rejoinder and I think it will stick. The caricature is there to be made.
Personally I don’t have a fixed view on nuclear energy for Australia but I support uranium mining.
Junior soccer begins
The junior soccer season opened in Kalgoorlie today. Michael (pictured) is playing in the under 12 division for Hannans Sharks.
Kathleen is playing for Hannans College in under 14s, which meant I spent more than four hours this afternoon at the playing fields.
Michael is a very skilful player. He shows a lot of natural ability and has a good work ethic.
He was unlucky not to score a goal today in his team’s 9-1 victory.
Kathleen is playing soccer for the first time and did quite well in a mixed gender competition. Her side lost 0-2.
Junior soccer is huge in Kalgoorlie-Boulder. There are eight teams in most divisions and good-size crowds watch the games.
The surface is patchy at The Oasis, where the kids play. It’s a low rainfall area here, with scratchy soil, but some grounds are better than others and The Oasis is not one of the best.
I don’t know much about soccer but I thought the games were of a high standard. The enthusiasm of the kids is infectious and given their passion for the sport you have to believe that soccer poses a threat to AFL and the rugby codes.
I know that has been said before but soccer really is a sleeping giant in terms of its potential in this country.
Family history section
I’m reorganising the content of the former family history section to make it appear as part of this WordPress site. That’s why there will be a fair sprinkling of historical material over the next few weeks.
The direct link will be to the History category. Discussion can occur either on the individual posts or in the forum. I’ve made the change for a couple of reasons:
The program running the standalone genealogy section was giving me problems that I couldn’t fix and there was little support available. The last straw was trouble importing files that sent everything pear shaped.
This site is thoroughly indexed by search engines and it’s easy to maintain everything together. It’s better here for text-based content.
I thought of excluding the historical articles from the home page but consider them interesting enough in their own right.
I’m currently looking for a way to upload the family tree data, which unfortunately will have to live outside WordPress given the lack of any integration tool.
Angustown Primary School
Picture: Angustown Primary School, some time in the 1890s
After moving frequently about the Corop and Echuca districts early in their marriage, Edward and Sophia Gorey settled at Angustown near Whroo in 1889.
A list provided to the Education Department about 1890 shows that four children of Edward Gorey were attending the recently opened Angustown State School. These would have been Charles, Elizabeth, William and Michael.
The school had a total enrolment of 23 students including four children of Daniel Gorey, probably Francis, James, Emma and John.
A map on the school building file at the Public Record Office shows the school was 1.5 miles from Edward Gorey’s residence. The school was located near Reedy Lake and close to a sawmill operated by local entrepreneur Angus Cameron, who gave the district its name.
The school was placed there at the request of Mr Cameron. The families of the men he employed had 40 children, so he asked that a school be provided for them. Read more
Gullible information
The last few posts have been on the serious side, so here is some light relief. Unsurprisingly (because the web is all encompassing) there’s a web site devoted to discussion about rumours and so-called facts. It’s called Gullible.info. There’s a Fact Check Forum to discuss which are true or otherwise.
I’ve extracted a few discussion starters and can’t say that I know the definite answer to any of them:
- 82 percent of the people in Europe, Australia and the Americas are immune to the bubonic plague. Only three percent of the people in Asia and Africa are.
- Between 1995 and 2005, 67 people were killed by penguins.
- One in 311,000 mountain goats is acrophobic.
- Married women are four percent more likely to become cannabilistic than non-married women.
- More Californians are opposed to the legalisation of ferrets as pets than are opposed to the legalisation of same-sex marriage.
- Japan uses 200 pounds of disposable chopsticks per person each year.
- An average door is closed 79 percent of its lifetime.
- 73 percent of sheep owners find it easier to fall asleep than non-sheep owners.
I’m not concerned about any of these, except the higher number of cannabilistic married women!
World War 1 and Anzac Day
Anzac Day has captured the public imagination in Australia. My Anzac Day reflection is to acknowledge that all four of my grandfather’s brothers served in the First World War.
I remember attending April 25 parades as a cub scout in Traralgon where the returned soldiers outnumbered the spectators. There were Boer War veterans in the earliest march that I can recall.
Today it is fashionable to observe Anzac Day, which is great, but I wish I had a dollar for every time I heard people talk about “celebrating” the occasion.
There is nothing to celebrate. Read more
After the 1939 fires
Yesterday I wrote about how the 1939 bushfire destroyed my grandparents’ home at Icy Creek and claimed the life of my uncle Michael Gorey at Tanjil Bren.
The picture shows my father Peter leaving the Warragul relief depot with a donated pair of boots. It was published in a newspaper and he was three years old at the time.
Dad was the youngest of 12.
The family was under considerable strain at the time, as you can imagine, and some of the younger children were dispersed.
While researching in 1991, I came across a fascinating letter written by two of my uncles, Dan and John, with assistance from their aunt Jemima where they stayed, and published in the Shepparton News on February 6, 1939.
Here is the letter: Read more
Daylight saving in Western Australia
I meant to post this a week ago but time escaped me. Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT have agreed to extend daylight saving to fall in line with Tasmania. It will start on the first Sunday in October and finish on the first Sunday in April.
That poses an interesting problem for the Western Australian Government. Daylight saving is largely resented here, especially in February and March when it’s too hot to enjoy the extra daylight and many people just want the sun to go down.
One of the reasons given for a three-year trial in WA was to be in line with the eastern states, as written here on the government’s propaganda site:
It also brings WA into line with the majority of other Australian states and territories that have daylight saving. This means WA businesses will no longer be separated from their eastern states counterparts by an additional hour during summer.
That is obviously untrue now unless WA extends daylight saving for the extra four weeks.
A Kalgoorlie Miner reporter asked Premier Alan Carpenter about this when he visited the town recently, and he said the timeframe won’t be extended; that WA will stick with the designated dates.
He said this has been a difficult issue for the politicians. All the more reason, I would have thought, to bring forward the referendum.
The 1939 Bushfire
This is a photograph of my uncle Michael Gorey, taken I think in 1938. He was born in 1919 at Waubra and died on January 13, 1939 at Tanjil Bren.
I was prompted to think of him by an unexpected web reference on the ABC. Mick was killed in the 1939 bushfires, one of three to die in a dugout.
If he was alive today he’d be 88 years old. Our family will never forget him and it’s a nice gesture for the ABC to remember his name and the tragedy of those fires.
My grandfather’s family lost their home and most of their possessions when their house at Icy Creek burnt down, including sadly a lot of photos.
Here is the story I wrote about Mick Gorey for a family history book published in 1999:
Michael Gorey (Mick) was born at Waubra, the fourth child of Michael and Eleanor. He was educated at Macarthur Street Primary School, Ballarat.
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