WHALE OF A TIME IN NEW ZEALAND



Sun setting behind Mount Maunganui, North Island .

Whale close to shore at  nearby  Rabbit   Island  with  board riders .

THE EYES HAVE IT, MR SPEAKER

Dynamic  President  Nixon  and  Arfur  used  car  team  conglomerate  inflaming  Australia .

DEATH OF A CURLEW



One of our two Curlew chicks  died  for no apparent reason and had to be buried with a  Desert Rose . The mother , with  surviving  bird under its wing , took up a position near the grave , the father nearby.

Shortly afterwards it was noticed that the surviving  chick had fallen down   inside a cavity block  in  a border  near the back shed . Its little head  could  be seen  popping up and down as  it  tried  vainly to  get out , the  parents paying close attention, unable to extricate. When the chick was removed  one of the defending parents  responded with  a  peck on  the  hand of  the rescuer . See  family  below  after  extraction, the chick in a flat as a pancake safety  position .

The father then chased  off  seven Ibis grazing  on  the property. To add to the stress , the   friendly Blue winged  Kookaburra which  drops in from time to time reappeared . As  Kookaburras  eat  baby birds, he was urged to move on by  gently waving the  strawbroom  at him . At first he was reluctant to  shift from the  fence, implying we were once close  cobbers me having fed him some of the Curlew food  and even allowed him to sit on and peck  my pyjamas on the back verandah  , but  then he eased the strain by   fluttering  a short distance away to  a shed in a neighbouring  backyard. After   apparently diving into a  swimming pool, he returning to  the fence  to energetically  preen  and  shake feathers. When politely told to fly away , he scornfully turned his back on me... so I pulled his tail feathers. Still he refused to hit the airwaves . Then  I reached up , grabbed a leg and gave it a gentle shake , causing him to swing around and  face  me , pop his strong  beak and  glare. In that position he sat for hours, under close watch, before  flying off.   Being a Curlew  minder  is certainly stressful  but sharpens your hearing and is  an excuse to  run  the  binoculars (with night vision)  over  the district  like  a  scene from  the   film   Rear Window. Last night a dreaded Barking Owl, the Murder Bird, was heard in the  nearby  Pope's  Land.  

AT THE FRENCH FRACTURED FLICKERS WITH FANTALES AND JAFFAS ADDICT PETER BURLEIGH

THEY COME IN CANNES : ATTACK OF THE  KILLER  B'S

Silver  screen  Queen  Bee   with  swarm of  photographers

Every year the gorgeous, facially-stubbled, overpaid, over-coiffed and self-obsessed in the International World of Filmmaking head for the town of Cannes on France’s Mediterranean coast. Amongst them are people who believe film can rightly be called art, and even some who can make a squillion from a movie with audience appeal.

 

This observer believes audience appeal is no longer the result of careful study and good story management but can be bought by special effects, comic book characters and putting minor celebrities on screen (some described as ‘actors’). Many A-list movies use meagre dumbed-down comic book plots which previously would have been derided as suitable only for B-movies. 


Of course there are exceptions, you say – but even so, if yesterday’s B-movies have become today’s A-movies, what has happened to the drivel we used to avoid like the plague? The answer lies in the gargantuan global structure of film investment, production and marketing. Take a look at Cannes and you’ll see the whole thing in miniature. 

Think of the Cannes Competition as an iceberg. The A-list movies  and the film stars are window dressing on the tip of this iceberg. The vast bulk of the Cannes monolith lies underneath – literally on the lower ground floor - where the companies buy, sell and distribute the movies.

If anyone asks “show me the money”, tell them to look down here. Underneath the main competition building, the Palais des Festivals, (at its inaugural Festival in 1949 its roof blew off during a storm) is a seething termite’s nest of tiny low-ceilinged marketing booths representing hundreds of companies, some flying obscure national flags and flaunting so-called national film industries – booths populated by swarthy, sweating men of short stature who talk too fast gesticulating against a background of lurid posters.

VIOLENT  PRODUCT  

They all have ‘product’ to sell - movies in every language known to the human race, mostly violent and bloody, others gloomy and repressed. For a moment you may think you are in a bustling slave market until you realise that this is where the D-grade now B-grade movies are on offer.  

It’s not all hard-nosed. There’s glamour, or rather dreams of glamour, down here with Dante. Writers, actors and directors struggle towards a big break; they are the traditional fuel which feeds this part of the industry. These people will work for peanuts and has-been TV actors queue up in the hope of reviving their careers. A very few titles like The Winged Serpent, The Evil Dead, and Polyester were successful in the 80s, but most died a death in the drive-ins (the drive-ins themselves died soon after).


The growth of cable television helped support the low-budget film market. Many B movies quickly wound up as "filler" material for 24-hour cable channels or were made expressly for that purpose (Tarentino’s Grindhouse series is a high-budget tribute to those movies).  

The broadcast version of the midnight movie remains popular and low-budget horror also appears in Hotel TV menus worldwide. The video rental market became vital to B-film economics when producers who used the right model aimed to make a profit not from theatrical rentals but from the video store. Now DVDs are nearly dead (remember VHS & Betamax videotapes, 8-track audio and video casettes?) new technology now sees B-movies going direct to Netflix and others to be cabled or streamed digitally to viewers. A few ‘new releases’ might appear briefly in those theatres where the carpet sticks to the bottom of your shoes, so it’s better to watch B-movies at home.


NEXT:  Bikini Babes for  wholesome  evening  viewing  with recycled popcorn way  passed   use  by  date in  Chinese .

DIVING INTO THE SPIRIT AND SEPIA SOUL OF A TROPICAL ISLAND

Soaking up the sun at  Alma  Bay , Magnetic Island , are the late philosopher  John Clendinnen  and wife, Inga, a  noted Australian author, historian , anthropologist  and  academic.*** 

Different to  the usual  glossy, formula  written  books  about  choice locations on the  Great Barrier Reef  is Magnetic Island-A sense  of place by concerned photographer and  conservationist, Vandhana. 

In  the volume  she married  her  striking photographs  with  a range of  poems and  prose  from  islanders  and  former  residents  in  a bid to  capture and portray  the essence  of  the  place that she has known for some 35 years , first going  there on  holidays  with  her  parents.
 

 

There are contributions from a wide range of people, ranging in age from eight to a woman in her nineties . Olivia Illidge, 12, at  the International Day of Climate Change  Action  on the island   before the 2009 Copenhagen  conference, urged world leaders there to give  her some hope for  the future and  that of the  planet.  Eden Pi-Gram, 11, expressed his concern about the treatment of water in a poem  for World Oceans Day 2010. 

There  are  odes  to  the sea , the  pub ,  Maggie Magic , Dawn on Anzac Day , an   acrostic poem  spelling out Magnetic Island  by  another 11 year older, Marley Hannan.    

 

Wulgurukaba elders , the postman  on  his round, a  drumming workshop , interval at the Magnetic Island  Film  Festival  and  the old  jetty are  captured in sepia in  a  work  of  love  that  took  five  years  to  come  to  fruition .

The  book sells for  $35, postage $11, Contact: magneticvandhana@hotmail.com . Vandhana  was  selling the book from a stall at  Horseshoe Bay ,when an  American student , who had been  in a car accident which had impaired his  eyesight , peered  at the book.  Realising he had a sight problem , she asked him what  was  the matter and he explained , saying it was hoped that his vision would be restored  in six months . On hearing  this, she gave him a  copy . Later she received an email from him  saying  his eyesight was back to normal  and that the book she had kindly given  him  had brought back fond memories of the island .   

 Magnetic Island from the old jetty at Picnic Bay .

*** For years  the   Clendinnens   escaped the  cold of  Melbourne by coming to  Magnetic Island where they  had  a  house in  Henry Lawson Drive, Horseshoe  Bay,   and held   lively dinner parties .

In  2001, at a function organised by the Magnetic Island  History and Craft Association ,   Inga Clendinnen  officially launched  the book  The Island and Me by  Tom Wetherell, 90, whose 18 year-old- brother, Henry, had been fatally attacked by a shark  at Alma  Bay on Australia  Day  weekend   1929,  this  being where  the Clendinnens   were   photographed  for  Vandhana's  book.

In her speech, Inga said  historians and local historians usually did not  get on very well because the professionals  were  jealous of  the  local historian's guaranteed  happy readership.

She  referred to  part of Wetherell's book  in which he discussed the death of his wife in 1991 after 60 years of marriage . A day after her death, he noticed the Butch Birds  were silent , which left him feeling  lonelier. He hoped they might be nesting , she said . "They were , and a little later they  brought their two chicks to visit . He happened to  be listening  to a flute concerto at the time , and the chicks were mesmerised , listening intently  to what the famous Butcher Bird  James  Galway  could do , and  Mr Wetherell  was  comforted."

Wetherell , who described himself as an ordinary bloke , was 101 when he died . 

 Inga  received the  Order of Australia for services addressing issues of  fundamental concern  to Australian society and  for contributing  to the shaping  of public  debate on  conflicting  contemporary issues . Her books covered Aztec and Mayan cultures , the Holocaust (voted one of  best books of year in 1999 by New York Post )  and another, Dancing With Strangers, examined  the  relationship between the First Fleeters  and  Aborigines .

Published by  Text, Melbourne , 2003, Dancing With Strangers, contains  unexpected Northern Territory  references.In the introduction , Clendinnen wrote that  during a boat trip across the top of Australia with her husband they made a  brief  visit  to  the early, ill fated  British garrison  settlement  at Port Essington on the Cobourg Peninsula, which, unknowingly, eventually led to the writing of  the  book after she read the descriptive journals of British Marine officer  Lieutenant-General   Watkin Tench  in  the First Fleet  that set up Port Jackson . 

Clendinnen's  bibliography  listed   The Day The Sky Fell Down : The Destruction of the Tribes of the Sydney Region 1788-1850s, by  one-time Darwin  journalist  and  three time  Walkley Award  winner, Keith  Willey. Clendinnen wrote that Willey had  constructed a near continuous narrative  from the major sources  to provide  the most coherent account of Aboriginal-European interaction  through the early decades of  settlement. (After Willey left the Territory he took an honours degree in Australian history at the Australian National University and lectured  in  journalism at the Darling Downs Institute of  Advanced  Education, Toowoomba ,Queensland).

Inga  presented a  copy of  her book  to  an island resident , the late  Peter Le Grand on his 60th birthday with an inscription, see below , which  acknowledged  his  concern for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islands and  passion  for  the  arts,  social  justice and  the  environment.

During  his involvement in Queensland politics he was on the personal staff of Townsville Labor  State  politician , Mike Reynolds ,who held several ministerial portfolios , his   last post in government  that  of  Speaker . Reference to the " tower"  in the inscription  is  thought  to  have related  to  Inga and her husband  looking  at  things from  the  academic  ivory heights , a  self deprecating  term , but one Peter raised in the lively evening  debates  with   the  Clendinnens  on  the  island . 

 

The  Clendinnens  sold  their island property (now occupied by artists Sharon and Steve Crowe )  when  John became  ill  and  settled  back  in  Melbourne , where he died in 2012. When Peter Le Grand's partner ,   Linda  Wootten ,  secretary of   the Magnetic Island branch of  the ALP and a  wildlife carer ,  went to  Melbourne for a wedding ,  she visited the Clendinnens  and  Inga said she  missed  the  cry  of   the  Curlews on  the island .

 

As a result of  that statement , Wootten  bought a special card  on the island  which emitted the cry of  a Curlew when  opened  and sent it to Inga who was  then  in a   retirement home. A  nurse opened the card  for  Inga  and  got a fright when  it  let loose with  the  distinctive Curlew  wail. 

TO  COME : More  interesting  photographs  and  tales  from Vandhana .

PACIFIC WAR MEMORIAL NEGLECTED



Much  publicity is being  given  in Townsville  to  the looming celebrations to mark the 70th  anniversary  of  the  end of  the war in the  Pacific. The Townsville Bulletin, for example , ran a  front  page  story  about  four women  who served in the Australian Women's  Army Service in World War ll , which  announced  the paper would run a special VP70 feature  on Saturday , August 15   to  mark  the  major event. Just up the road from  the  newspaper  at the Railway Oval  is the   Victory  Fountain VP5O , lettering  badly faded or  missing , making it hard to  read . Another   plaque (above)  says  the  oval  was reopened as part of the VP50 celebrations  in  1995.

 Little Darwin  recently  reported  the fountain was not working properly;it now is .  Excavations  about  the  fountain  area for Optus and  Telstra  have produced uneven  paths  at  the  busy intersection making it look as if  hostilities  have  resumed  in  the  Pacific. Adjacent to the  fountain  is  a  civic trail information  sign which is faded , hard  to read , plastic  cladding torn and   flapping in the breeze when  we  last  looked . 

ANOTHER HISTORIC HOTEL SHUTS

 

Without  warning and little follow up by the media , the Criterion Hotel, on the Townsville waterfront heritage walk , recently closed  its  doors . The original hotel on the site , Townsville's first,   was a log hut constructed  in 1865  for William Ross after whom nearby Ross River and Ross Creek are named . He introduced the first barmaids, marrying one. In 1869 the popular  hotel was replaced  with a  two storey timber building ; badly damaged by  Cyclone Leonta in 1903  , the new owner , S. Murdoch , engaged  local architects  to design a new brick  hotel in the Federation style, which opened  in  1904.

 Still closed is the 1900 built  Great Northern Hotel, damaged by  an arsonist ,with a banner  saying it hopes to reopen in the near future . There has been an unclear , small  report  suggesting several  other  Townsville  hotels  have changed  hands .