Western Australia has a hoon problem. It exists everywhere to some extent, I suppose, but I never encountered it in the parts of Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia I lived in previously.
Hoon activity can be doing a burnout; dangerous or reckless driving; racing another vehicle, speeding, and accelerating or braking and skidding wildly.
I [...]
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. [...]
This is one of those five-question blog prompts. I first saw it on Synaptoman. The starting assumption is that you are the absolute ruler of a prosperous, stable country without any immediate threats, no poverty or unemployment.
That means I can answer this question safe in the knowledge I don’t need to interfere with the economy [...]
I'm a member of the Hannans Rotary Club and it's now a requirement that Rotary members obtain a police clearance because we sometimes work with young people.
I think it's bureaurcracy gone made. We sponsor youth exchange programs but unless you're a host family (for which a police clearance is reasonable) we hardly have anything to [...]
The Fifth Woman is the first novel that I’ve read by Swedish crime writer Henning Mankel. I saw a positive review of his work in The Age last year and purchased the book while in Melbourne between Christmas and New Year.
His main character, Inspector Kurt Willander, is a thoughtful introspective man who reflects on societal [...]
I’ve written a few times about Zimbabwe. Today, there’s a personal touch to the comments I make.
I visited Zimbabwe in 1991 when it was a prosperous happy country and before Mugabe went bananas.
My employer at the time, a Victorian farming newspaper, encouraged me to write some freelance articles about the agricultural situation while I was [...]
Cricket is a marvellous game. It ignites passions, as this report from the CricInfo web site confirms:
Nearly 400 people have been injured in a village in Bangladesh in a series of clashes over controversial umpiring decisions in a cricket match between two rural teams. At least one man is reported to have died while a [...]
My parents gave me my first car. It was a Datsun 180B. It didn’t look much, but it went okay and I travelled thousands of kilometres with it in two and a half years.
I got my licence in May 1985, a few months after my 18th birthday. Probationary drivers then had to show P plates [...]
My correspondent continues her story of the Gorey ghost in the Welsh mountains:
The haunting didn’t stop and there were many more times when we, or one or two visitors saw, or felt a spirit. I don’t know if it was the same one, or different ones. The house — Bwlch yn Horeb, known as the [...]
The story of Peter Halloran disturbed me. I’m pleased to read that he’s now been released. From The Age:
Senior Victorian police officer Peter Halloran was last night cleared by the Sierra Leone Court of Appeal of sexually assaulting a teenage girl while working as a war crimes investigator for the United Nations.
Superintendent Halloran was facing [...]
