It’s unusual to commemorate the anniversary of a shipwreck, but as someone with an interest in history I’m strongly in favor of anything like that. One hundred and fifty years ago today the SS Admella ran aground on Carpenters Reef near Mount Gambier. Over the next eight days, 89 people lost their lives, but miraculously, [...]
Basketball and Gough Whitlam
The Border Watch runs a weekly “looking back” column with news extracts from 10, 20, 30 and 40 years ago. This week I noticed the town’s basketball stadium was officially opened 40 years ago by Gough Whitlam (photo below). Known today as the Icehouse, the stadium hosts local basketball and the town’s only sporting team [...]
Swine flu rumor management
I’ve lived in country communities long enough to know that rumors spread like wildfire. Some rumors are true, many are false. The media will ignore many, and some are too big to ignore. Governments, organisations, businesses and individuals have three options when dealing with rumors: Confirm, deny or ignore. Some should be ignored because they [...]
Walk to work
I walked to and from work today. It’s about 35 minutes each way; I should do it more often, but sometimes need my car during the day. The quickest way to the office is down Wireless Road, then down Penola Road to Percy Street or Commercial Street. These are all major roads, with lots of [...]
Autumn in Mount Gambier
Autumn is my favourite season. It didn’t mean much at Kalgoorlie because of the arid climate, just shorter days and a lessening of the heat. We sort of missed autumn at Mount Gambier this year. March was fairly warm and we were out of town for most of April. When we came back it was [...]
