NAVY BRINGS BACK OLDE RUM RATION

To cope with the ice  age sweeping across the southern states , the  Royal Australian Navy's  HMAS Adelaide is shown here in sunny  Cairns   taking  on  emergency rum barrels at Hemingway's Brewery, a daily tot of which will warm up  matelots when they sail  south into dangerous iceberg waters. This (Ernest ) Hemingway short story scoop includes photos by Aeronautical  Correspondent  Abra.  

(Navy. Rum . Cairns. )

BEFORE AND AFTER HOTEL

Shipping  Reporter  on  confusing  pub  crawl .

 

Townville's  Hotel  Sea-View which opened in 1929 changed in colour  and  profile over the years , now  in the  scooter age .

(Pub. Reporter. Townsville. 

RATBAG ODE TO A PACIFIC ISLAND

Magnetic Island  , off  Townsville, was  extolled in a poem   by the late Keith Garvey  in  the  book, Rhymes of  a  Ratbag  , published  by Hutchison in  l981 , the  jacket and  poems  illustrated by cartoonist  Dennis Hutton,the Magnetic Island  one   below. 

The drawing carried the message that leaving  Magnetic  Island  and  returning  to   the mainland  was  going  back to  the rat race. The island wildlife displayed  included  a  Peacock, a  Curlew, Laughing Jackasses-Kookaburras -and strange card- playing  creatures .

Garvey, born at Frog Hollow, Moree, NSW, of an Irish father and colonial mother,  in l922,  worked on many outback  jobs . He became   known as  the scribe  from the bush,  big  on  the  ABC  and   wrote  several  popular books .

Ned Kelly  and Captain Bligh  got a  mention in  his poems . So too did Lasseter's lost gold reef, the Dead Heart, Ted Egan's  songs  about the Northern Territory ,Gallipoli  battlefields  and  Korea.

(Poems. Island.  Garvey.)

TIDAL FLATS

Cairns. Aeronautical Correspondent Abra  photo.

 

BURLEIGH'S FEATHERED FRIENDS

The  above  crucified  chook near the end of life on Earth , drawn by columnist and illustrator Peter  Burleigh , contemplates  what came  first -the  egg  or  the  chicken?

Burleigh went on to say in the Bulldust Diary  he  kept on a  road trip across  Australia  what  a  great  debt we owe to the  humble chicken.

How many of them , he said , had died and will die to keep us sandwiched, roasted, saladed and breakfasted? Yet we make jokes about them, call them  cowardly, burn, boil and roast them.

If we ever need another religion based on an example of sacrifice, his vote was for the chicken. He  hoped a talented poet  would write a “Chicken Odyssey” some day.

(Burleigh . Chicken. Bulldust.)

POWERFUL NEW RUGBY TEAM

If  the proposed  Papua New Guinea rugby league team in the  Australian NRL competition no later than 2028 is  anything like the  powerful  Warrior  rum  then  there  will  be  fiece  matches.  Bottle, to be raffled by a Brisbane squad of  senior football players,  supplied  by  Petros.

(PNG. Rugby. Rum.)   

PERFORMING JUMPING CROCODILES

 

Adelaide River, Northern Territory.  Petros pix. 

(Crocodiles. Territory. Petros.)