Millipede menace

Posted on March 10, 2010 at 2:39pm | 1 comment

I’ve seen a lot of millipedes lately. Initially they were only outside, mainly in semi-rural areas on the fringe of town. I virtually tripped over them while out walking.

Then they started creeping into town and we began seeing them inside the house.

At Robe on the weekend they were everywhere.

I haven’t given much thought to millipedes before, probably because I haven’t previously encountered them in such prolific numbers as here. (more…)

Wannon Falls

Posted on December 19, 2008 at 8:08pm | 3 comments

Wannon Falls

We drove 550km from Mount Gambier to Moe today to spend the weekend before Christmas with my mother.

We stopped just over an hour from Mount Gambier between Coleraine and Hamilton in Western Victoria to see the Wannon Falls.

According to the Southern Grampians Shire, the falls were created by lava flows that surged upstream to the Wannon River.

They feature a 100-foot vertical precipice of hardened basalt lava over which water cascades into a deep plunge pool below. (more…)

Marsupial lion

Posted on May 26, 2008 at 10:09pm | 2 comments

Marsupial lionListening to ABC regional radio in the car today I heard about the discovery of marsupial lion bones near Burra in South Australia earlier this year.

The marsupial lion is regarded as part of Australia’s “megafauna” which became extinct about 45,000 years ago.

These were giant versions of wombats and kangaroos, and in this case a carnivorous predator.

The lion’s disappearance is unexplained, although it’s generally linked to climate change or the arrival of humans.

I reckon these beasts would have eaten any blackfellas who came after them, but one theory is the humans introduced fire which changed the lion’s habitat.

It’s a fascinating story and fun to ponder what happened.

Python eats family pet

Posted on February 27, 2008 at 9:04pm | 1 comment

Overseas readers will be interested to know the story reported in the Cairns Post of a monster python stalking and devouring a family’s pet dog.

Daniel Peric said he now would not leave his two children, aged five and seven, alone in any part of the house, after the “enormous” python ate his silky terrier-cross chihuahua.Roo with a gun

Mr Peric said in the weeks before, the family had found their cat’s body, which looked like something had attempted to swallow it and on Sunday a smaller python had eaten their pet guinea pig.

Add cyclones to the location risk, cane toads and various marine nasties, and you have to wonder why anyone would live in the tropical north.

Australia doesn’t have lions or other large animals of prey, but we do have plenty of hairy eight-legged creatures and slippery ones with fangs.

In the water, watch out for sharks, jellyfish and stingrays.

And as Baino wrote in her blog earlier this year, beware the Drop Bear. This great scary kangaroo pic came from there too.

Kalgoorlie dawn

Posted on December 24, 2007 at 7:20am | 0 comments

Dawn light, Kalgoorlie
We’ve had some mild weather lately and I’ve taken to going for longer walks in the morning. I discovered a little-used track (pictured) at the back of Hannans Golf Course which I follow and then cut back through the fairways.

I’ve actually seen more wildlife on these walks than in the Karlkurla nature reserve.

There isn’t much grass on the golf course and the “greens” are sand. For those who don’t know, an 18-hole international-standard grass course was supposed to have been finished by now and it is supposedly still under development.

There is some grass on the Hannans course though and it greened up nicely after last week’s rain. In the dawn light it looks quite attractive and the kangaroos love it.

Kangaroos on golf course

Kalgoorlie sunset

Posted on November 10, 2007 at 8:08pm | 0 comments

Kalgoorlie sunset
Kalgoorlie had a spectacular sunset on Thursday. Kalgoorlie Miner journalist Georgia Loney captured the scene.

Newspaper novels: The truth will make you fret

Posted on October 29, 2007 at 12:18pm | 1 comment

There aren’t many novels about newspapers. Stories involving print journalists are far fewer than those about lawyers, soldiers and police for example.

That’s a little surprising when you consider that journalists are writers. But when you think about it, we are craftsmen while novelists are artists. We ply a trade while they follow their creative spirits. We have responsibilities, they don’t.

Three good books about newspapers come readily to mind. PG Wodehouse wrote Psmith, Journalist in 1915; Evelyn Waugh wrote Scoop in 1938 and Terry Pratchett published The Truth in 2000.

In Wodehouse’s classic, Psmith arrives in New York on a cricket tour and becomes involved with the home entertainment weekly “Cosy Moments” which he transforms into a hard-hitting investigative journal. He rides the bumps of organised crime and American politics along the way.

In Waugh’s story, scribe William Boot is mistaken by the publisher of the Daily Beast for a war correspondent. He is uprooted from writing country garden features to covering the civil war in Ishmaelia. Both novels are cleverly satirical.

Pratchett’s The Truth is a typically fantastic work from the author of the Discworld series. The hero in this case is William de Worde, who teams up with dwarfs to print the first newspaper in Ankh-Morpork.

As usual, Pratchett offers some tremendous insights into human nature. His observations of the newspaper profession are also very sharp, suggesting excellent research or personal knowledge. For instance, he offers a rare literary tribute to the unsung work of sub-editors.

I’ve just finished reading The Truth for the second time. I found the focus on hired assassins to be distracting and kept wanting the story to get back to the trials and tribulations of The Times.

There are some great one liners, like when the dwarfs make a typesetting error with the newspaper’s logo, which becomes: “The truth will make you fret”.

I related personally to the serial pest who kept coming into the office with remarkable vegetables. Anyone who has worked on a country newspaper will know there are people in most towns who like to show off their giant tomatoes or funny-shaped parsnips.

I admit it’s one of my long-term ambitions to write a satirical novel about newspapers. I started taking notes of strange but true incidents last year, like when one of my reporters disappeared while on the trail of visiting Mongolian detectives.

I have heaps of material; just need the time to write it.

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