Prowling about the Townsville boondocks , North Australia's only S(h)ipping Reporter took this shot of the cleared for action mooring for the Red Baron seaplane , indicating he might splash down soon after missing in action on the West Australian front for many months . Will the local media notice ?
The nautical snoop also reports that last week the Victory in the Pacific fountain was actually full of water, not working , of course , rubbish still visible .
He managed to snap the new puzzling name for The Parlour of Prophecy-Lighten up- just across the road from the fountain of strewth, rotten bananas and graffiti . How anybody could relax with all the noisy construction work going on outside the former parlour is hard to understand . Media still has not noticed that The Parlour of Prophecy has vamoosed.
The S(h)ipping Reporter nearly fell off his barstool at Molly Malone's Irish Pub when the Townsville Bulletin actually had a page two report about a waterfront drama...a steer drowning after escaping from a cattle export boat . Headed Steer's sad watery death, the story included the SMILING stock photograph of reporter Victoria Nugent . The paper has a long history of repeatedly running inappropriate photos of beaming staff reporters with tragic and serious events . (More about the paper's subbing and layout problems later in new North Australia Media Watch series .)
The drowning report , strangely, did not include the name of the cattle boat , to what country the beast was going to be shipped , this apparently top secret information .
Over the weekend , in the ABC TV Landline show it was stated about five overseas cattle shipments would be made out of Townsville in coming weeks . Surely the Townsville Bulletin will follow this up , or will cattle exports mainly go unreported for some odd reason ?