24 August 2008

Walkers wed in Walkerville

This is a cute story from The Australian:

Where else would a pair of walkers get married but in Walkerville? Australia’s walking hero Jared Tallent desperately wanted the silver medal in yesterday’s 50km walk to go with his bronze from the 20km to make it a full set. He gets his “gold” when he marries fiancee and fellow walker Claire Woods next Saturday.

The two walkers will get married in the Adelaide suburb of Walkerville.

Tags: life, news, Sport
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13 July 2008

Royal jammies go missing

There’s a nice teaser on the front page of the Herald-Sun today. Beside a picture of the Queen is text: “Victoria’s royal request: Hand back our PJs, Ma’am.”

Intrigued, I turned to page seven and found it was somewhat misleading, but in a non-offensive way. The story was a beat-up but funny.

The City of Ballarat presented embroidered silk pyjamas to the Prince of Wales (late Edward VIII) in 1920.

Five female hundred employees of a local garment factory each put a stitch into the royal present.

Edward, who was something of a ladies man, might well have claimed to have slept with 500 sheilas in Ballarat.

A group of the city’s historians want the jammies back to put on public display. They wrote to Buckingham Palace humbly petitioning Her Majesty in that regard.

The bemused Royal Archivist wrote back saying they couldn’t find the sleepwear. She thought Edward might have taken them with him when he abdicated and shot through to France.

“They are no longer in royal custody,” Pamela Clark advised.

Tags: news, offbeat
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17 June 2008

Parents should be licensed

The story that 18-month-old twins were found dead, apparently from neglect, in a Brisbane house defies belief. A 28-year-old man and his 30-year-old partner have been charged with failing to provide the necessities of life.

The charges could be upgraded to murder.

An earlier court hearing was told that police found the bodies in a “state of decay” and the toddlers appeared to be malnourished.

It’s too easy for people to have children. It’s harder, in fact, to get a licence to drive a motor car. Read more »

Tags: news, parenting, society
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26 May 2008

Former Premier exhumed

We arrived in South Australia to hear and read the extraordinary story about Charles Kingston, a colonial Premier and founder of Australia, being exhumed for a paternity test at the request of an Adelaide businessman.

Sounds like something out of Monty Python doesn’t it?

“The Attorney-General, Michael Atkinson, approved an application to exhume the body of Charles Cameron Kingston, one of the Fathers of Federation, as part of a paternity case,” the Adelaide Advertiser reports.

The bodies of two other people suspected of being Kingston’s illegitimate offspring also were exhumed. They are Genevieve Grey and AA “Bert” Edwards. Read more »

Tags: Australia, History, media, news, south australia
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19 May 2008

Don’t wee in the bush

Just browsing the Kalgoorlie Miner web site and gained a reminder about this story.

An 11-year-old boy on a camping trip discovered a skeleton when he went for a pee.

I received a message from the boy’s mother following a similar story we reported a week earlier. That involved a tradesman finding bones while having a wee break in the bush.

Don’t know about you, but I’m not game to seek relief in the bush any more.

Tags: Kalgoorlie, news, Western-Australia
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8 May 2008

Murder mystery

I feel quite drained at the end of this working day. A lot of my time was spent dealing with the investigation into a suspicious death.

A tradesman on a remote job was taking a leak in the bush when he discovered human remains concealed beneath a pile of wood near Menzies in the northern Goldfields.

He came into our office today and provided photos of the grisly find.

Earlier, one of my staff had called me aside to say he suspected whose body it might be. Read more »

Tags: crime, justice, law, media, murder, news
5 comments


7 May 2008

Australian killed in South African mine

This story has surprisingly received no coverage in the national or international media, so I’m posting it here in the hope someone picks it up.

An Australian mine worker, Matthew Norman, was among the nine people killed in an accident at the South Deep gold mine operated by Gold Fields near Carletonville outside Johannesburg last Thursday. Read more »

Tags: Australia, media, mining, news, South Africa
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6 May 2008

Randy penguins and seals

Quirky stories are popular on newspaper web sites. When a man ran down Hannan Street in a mankini on a Saturday morning, it was published to the Kalgoorlie Miner and became one of the most viewed articles.

Today, I found a couple of stories involving penguins and seals which would never cut it in the main news pages but somehow attract interest on the internet.

The Age reported “Little penguins get frisky feet” at Phillip Island. Read more »

Tags: internet, journalism, news, wacky
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5 May 2008

FeedBlendr

Do you use an online aggregator or desktop software to read RSS feeds? I mostly use Google Reader and have an account at Bloglines as well.

I’ve also discovered FeedBlendr.

It takes the feeds you give it, pulls the individual entries from each of them, sorts them in date order and provides a new, blended feed of all entries. Read more »

Tags: aggregator, computers, internet, news, Technology
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26 April 2008

Bog snorkelling

We ran a photo in the Kalgoorlie Miner of international bog snorkeller Julia Galvin (pictured in a bog), who was visiting town, astride the statue of Paddy Hannan complete with snorkel and mud.

I had never heard of bog snorkelling until yesterday, but apparently it’s quite big in Wales.

The “sport” involves competitors completing two consecutive lengths of a 60-yard water filled trench cut through a peat bog, in the shortest time possible.

Competitors must wear snorkels and flippers, and complete the course without using conventional swimming strokes, relying on flipper power alone. Wet suits are not compulsory, but are usually worn.

Julia Galvin, from Ireland, told us she also participates in wife carrying, which brought her to Australia for recent championships.

I thought our headline “Muck of the Irish” was rather clever, but the Townsville Bulletin beat us to it.

Julia made a great comment to us: “A lot of people tell me I’m crazy. I tell them I’m not crazy, I’m just surrounded by terribly dull people.”

Indeed!

Tags: Kalgoorlie, news, Sport, wacky
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