I began watching again last Thursday, and tuned in again last night. It does lack the magic of last year, but last night there was a BIG surprise. Talk about talent!
Noriko Tadano – not what you were expecting
Of course there were others that were good. Like the guys and girls from Penrith – Outside the Box.
What’s hot here in May 2012
Both this blog and the photo blog have gained this month – best figures for the year, but more of that tomorrow when the final count is in. Meanwhile, the most read posts here in May have been:
Interesting to see such a strong involvement from India this year.
World No Tobacco Day 2012: Tobacco industry interference
Tobacco use continues to be the leading global cause of preventable death. It kills nearly 6 million people every year through cancer, heart disease, respiratory diseases, childhood diseases and others. It also causes hundreds of billions of dollars of economic losses worldwide every year. Over the course of the 21st century, tobacco use could kill up to a billion people unless urgent action is taken. The action we need to take is laid out in the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (WHO FCTC). So far, 173 nations (plus the European Union) have pledged to work together to implement the Convention. However, these tobacco control efforts are systematically opposed by the tobacco industry. In its efforts to derail or weaken strong tobacco control policies, tobacco industry interference takes many forms…
Click the image above for more.
As for me:
Hello Neil Whitfield!
Your Quit Date is: Monday, February 28, 2011 at 12:00:00 AM Time Smoke-Free: 456 days, 20 hours, 8 minutes and 8 seconds Cigarettes NOT smoked: 22842 Money Saved: $14,592.00
WHO’S BETTER THAN YOU TODAY? You’ve made it! A whole 15 months without a cigarette! In that time, you’ve successfully navigated the physical chaos of withdrawal, the emotional highs and lows of early quit, and the pitfalls of relapse!
WHO’S BETTER THAN YOU TODAY? Countless times you’ve refused the offered cigs. More times than that you’ve craved nicotine, but opted for health, instead. You’ve endured teasing, lack of support, and feeling uncomfortable and out of place among smokers. You may have had issues with weight, anger, tension or sadness, but still you stayed SMOKE-FREE!
A cart drove between the two stringy barks and stopped. These were the dominant trees in that part of the bush, rising above the involved scrub with the simplicity of true grandeur. So the cart stopped, grazing the hairy side of a tree, and the horse, shaggy and stolid as the tree, sighed and took root.
The man who sat in the cart got down. He rubbed his hands together, because already it was cold, a curdle of cold cloud in a pale sky, and copper in the west. On the air you could smell the frost. As the man rubbed his hands, the friction of cold skin intensified the coldness of the air and the solitude of that place. Birds looked from twigs, and the eyes of animals were drawn to what was happening. The man lifting a bundle from a cart. A dog was lifting his leg on an anthill. The lip drooping on the sweaty horse.
Then the man took an axe and struck at the side of a hairy tree, more to hear the sounds than for any other reason. And the sound was cold and loud. The man struck at the tree, and struck, till several white chips had fallen. He looked at the scar in the side of the tree. The silence was immense. It was the first time anything like this had happened in that part of the bush.
More quickly then, as if deliberately breaking with a dream, he took the harness from the horse, leaving a black pattern of sweat. He hobbled the strong fetlocks of the cobby little horse and stuck the nosebag on his bald face. The man made a lean-to with bags and a few saplings. He built a fire. He sighed at last, because the lighting of his small fire had kindled in him the first warmth of content. Of being somewhere. That particular part of the bush had been made his by the entwining fire. It licked at and swallowed the loneliness…
I must confess that when I first read this book while studying OzLit under Professor Gerry Wilkes at Sydney University in 1964 I did not take to it. That came later when I was obliged to teach it to a Year 12 Class at Wollongong High School in the late 1970s. I had also recently read The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough around that time – a book I found then ineffably stupid and badly written – but I read with the page-turner motive of discovering whether something even more unlikely would happen next or whether the cliche count could possibly grow. I still think the book a bit of a travesty, though one day I must give McCullough’s Roman books a go. I began to read passages aloud from both books to my Wollongong students. Invariably McCullough had them rolling in the aisles.
But my and their respect for what White was doing just grew and grew, and those lessons became a talk at an HSC study day organised by the English Teachers Association – one of the best things I ever did.
My Patrick White reading grew in earnest from that time on, and I devoured the earlier works and anticipated each new one. Some indeed I liked more than others, but I am looking forward to seeing at last the movie – excellent we are told – of The Eye of the Storm on ABC next Sunday night.
BARRY HUMPHRIES: Well, David is the author of a great biography of Patrick White and I think today is a special day, isn’t it, David? DAVID MARR: It is 100 years today since little Paddy came struggling into the world in a Knightsbridge apartment with a view of Hyde Park and about 16 indoor servants. Yes, his struggle began a century ago today. TONY JONES: A typical Australian by the sound of it? DAVID MARR: He was, in fact, one of those Australians – he came from one of those families who believed themselves and felt as at home in England as they did in Australia and I would just guess that you, Barry, are another of those who feel just as at home in Britain as you do here and they lived in a big world, which was absolutely Australian but it had England too and that was a very Australian experience. It wasn’t just here, it was Australia, it was, in fact, in those days the empire and they were part of they felt themselves to be part of a very big world as Australians. TONY JONES: And now, of course, the Australian experience probably includes being part of Malaysia or Indonesia or Iraq or many other countries as well so there has been a sort of great shift in our country.
Met ex-TIGS (1975) student Ian Turton – and his son!
Music at Illawarra Brewery
Update
Just saw the program about Jack. Inspiring, and he is inspirational. I did have an Extension English class for Yr 12 in Jack’s year but he wasn’t in that class – though some pretty amazing kids were, as happens at SBHS. But we (ex) teachers really do know our place: so often we really are humbled by the humanity that passes through our hands, as it were, and what we contribute is never all that clear. Even so, with no real justification I guess, I couldn’t help but feel proud about what I saw tonight – and cheered to see something we so often have regarded as an intractable problem yielding to this young man’s vision. There’s hope there eh!
ALICIA JOHNSON, AIME MENTEE: What I think makes AIME so good is it was developed and created by an Indigenous youth, for Indigenous youth. And other people ask me about the program and ask me about my involvement and I just said, "It’s made for us, pretty much by us and that’s why I believe it’s so successful." It’s not someone trying to save us. It’s not someone trying to tell us what to do; it’s about giving us self determination and hope.
IAN THORPE, ‘FOUNTAIN FOR YOUTH’ CHARITY: I think Jack probably has a plan that we have to get Australia right first and then why not AIME in Africa, why not AIME in other countries that have similar problems? I think, for someone like Jack Manning Bancroft, and I think, you know the world really is his oyster. He could be doing anything.
JACK MANNING BANCROFT: It’s pretty humbling to see what AIME has done for a lot of different people. Personally, I think that it doesn’t make sense today that an Australian kid who is Indigenous doesn’t have the same chances that every other Australian kid has. And until I can see an Australia where that happens, I don’t think I’ll be happy or satisfied.
I am not normally disturbed one way or the other by the fact Australia is a constitutional monarchy whose Head of State may or may not be an old lady who lives in England. (It is either her or the Governor-General, depending on who you ask or where you look.) As far as I am concerned the whole odd thing has a certain charm, and it works. Every time I see the ongoing saga of a US Presidential Election I am rather glad we are at least spared that – and spared the spectacle of turning the judiciary into yet another gaggle of elected politicians.
So roll on the Diamond Jubilee, as far as I am concerned. And I like the Queen.
Back in Sutherland we were mad for her, as I recall.
Sutherland Station decorated for the Royal Visit in 1954.
Yes, I know it looks like someone has put out their washing, but we thought it splendid at the time —
and look at those soot stains from passing steam engines!
I have to say, however, that I find Professor David Flint and the monarchists profoundly annoying. I have met the man. And no, they can shove their petition up their Khybers…
Our Canadian siblings-in-royalty aren’t devoting their national public broadcaster to the Diamond Jubilee either, though BBC Canada is giving live coverage – much as ABC 24 is here I suppose. I couldn’t quite ascertain what the Kiwis or Jamaicans are doing…
Meanwhile, you can trot down to Australia Post and pick up one of these beauties. That’s the special silver one. I will await the plebeian cupro-nickel edition.
Meanwhile I am looking forward to the final episode of The Diamond Queen on ABC tonight. I have seriously enjoyed it for the past three Sundays.
Douglas Hurd said the most subversive thing by far, commenting on the Queen’s relationship with Margaret Thatcher: "They each thought the other was rather strange… which was true," he chuckled.
#Strongwomen. "I write about the power of trying, because I want to be okay with failing. I write about generosity because I battle selfishness. I write about joy because I know sorrow. I write about faith because I almost lost mine, and I know what it is to be broken and in need of redemption. I write about gratitude because I am thankful - for all of it." Kristin Armstrong
Neil's final decade 