BETWEEN A ROCK AND A HARD PLACE

The seats made from local stone -porcelanite- at the Casuarina Square shopping centre have been much admired. An information plaque shows stonemason Tom Finlay working on the colourful stone. Finlay's famous place on the highway, complete with dinosaurs, Chinese dragon and assorted oddities , is up for sale.

Interestingly , bushman, raconteur , Protector of Aborigines and author , Bill Harney , noticed the distinctive rock when he was in Darwin in 1940 and mentioned it in his book , Life Among the Aborigines , first published 1957 . He said the Wargite name for Darwin in those early days -Karamalal- was derived from the flat, porcelanite rocks that formed the base of the town. Harney was intimately involved with another rock- Ayers Rock (Uluru)- where he became the popular ranger.

THE YEAR OF YOWIE POWER

Lumbering out of distant , mist shrouded rural electorates have come the terrifying hairy creatures , Yowies, better known as independents. These three metre tall , howling, smelly monsters strike fear into the hearts of our political leaders. One particularly fearsome beast wears a cowboy hat , a three-piece Savile Row suit and is armed with a .45 calibre banana which he threatened to insert up the sago palm of a trembling Townsville chimp.

Plans are being made to capture the Yowies when they next set foot in Canberra to emulate King Kong climbing the Empire State Building by scampering to the top of parliament house with Julia Gillard screaming for mercy . Once netted they will become part of Tim the Yowie Man's Destiny Trips which specialises in weird Canberra ghosts ,poltergeists and history tours ( Coming soon : Rare interview with a fearless Yowie hunter and Territory sightings .)

BRIZ VEGAS GOING BROODY ?

No wonder the ALP was well and truly plucked in Brisbane at the election . There is a new breed of Bananalander in the Queensland capital which is very flighty . Some are keeping chooks as pets inside their houses and take them out on leashes with designer label chook NAPPIES !!! There is also a range of bling jewellery for the cacklers. On top of this , some woman hold botox hens' night parties where you can have your wrinkles puffed out so that you come home looking like a spring chicken instead of a pot boiler. This will surely mean the end of tame Tuppa Ware parties.

BATS IN THE BELFRY & QUEENSLAND

TOWNSVILLE : Lavarack Barracks military base will be moved from here to Charters Towers next week under a special deal struck by the Gillard Government to win the support of the patron saint of Australian bananas, Bob Katter. The troops will be instructed to wage war on the smelly fruit bats which have plagued the Towers community for years. While shooting anything which squawks in the dark, the soldiers will be allowed to plug hairy arsed James Cook Uni students who stray into town and use napalm on any National Party weirdos who arrive in stretch limos . Field Marshal Katter has instructed the grunts that any greengrocer in North Queensland who sells Filipino bananas is to be dragged screaming behind a Brahmin bull or an Abrams tank to the border and turned into one of those tragic buggers , a Mexican.

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SHIVER ME TIMBERS ! WHALE OF A TALE

In a bizarre prediction, Little Darwin said the election contest for the seat of Herbert in North Queensland could end in the political death of a person who is dragged into the depths by a pod of frolicking whales. We wish to make it known that this preposterous scenario was exaggerated -it only required a single run of the mill albino whale to end his life. According to an eyewitness account, a rope attached to a harpoon made out of a steel post from a white shoe brigade's building site KEEP OUT sign wrapped around Captain Ahab's false ivory leg and yanked him screaming into the briny. Passengers on a Magnetic Island ferry , namely Rebecca and Chas. , attempted to save the unfortunate fellow with a barge pole and a flensing knife and later had to receive counselling for hysterical laughter.

ART MARKET DEPRESSED

As a result of the the Darwin Aboriginal Art Fair , many are now asking if the boom is over. Very few sales were made and although there were many viewers in galleries throughout the city, the buyers were few and far between. Dealers have been comparing notes and the message is uniformly one of gloom. There is talk that one gallery will be closing down in the near future

DEATH OF A CERTAIN PARTY

As the fateful election looms, word has come through that my mother is at death’s door. A rusted on Labor voter , she helped pass out how to vote cards at elections in Brisbane . Fate dealt her a bad hand from her teens when she became a single mother , after refusing to turn me in embryo into a Bondi Boy like so many others. During WW11 she made parts for bombers and then spent many years working her guts out as a poorly paid nurse in nursing homes for the aged and handicapped . In recent years she expressed warnings about the future of the nation and alarm at the thought of the Coalition regaining government.