Category: Friday on My Mind

I so rarely go to Brisbane and this week I’m there four times, just when the whole city goes into lock-down for the outrageously expensive and disruptive G20 conference. It started last Sunday with our annual garden concert at Fairfield – our former neighbours have been hosting this event for 10 years (not counting 2011 when their back lawn was awash). We started setting up our small PA system, all the while being “buzzed” by helicopters, supposedly on manoeuvres, rehearsing their role for the coming week’s shenanigans.
Finally at 3pm we go up to start the concert and just as we did, a lone helicopter hovered overhead. What was he thinking?
“Ten four, HQ, we got ourselves a folkie gathering.”
“Roger that – have they go a permit?’
“It looks like a private house – and…they all seem, like, elderly.”
“OK BravoEcho, move on.”

We’ve had our share of G20 vehicles up here in the hinterland – black limos, white vans, all with G20 number plates. We imagine they are making half-day tourism forays into the hinterland − checking out the Glasshouse Mountains, browsing the cheese shop, tasting a few local wines, buying an investment property or two. The conspiracy theorists point to our well located comms (radio communication towers) on hilltops and move their internet security settings to high.
Ah well, it’s good to know the G20 folk feel OK about freely driving about in our town while authorities make it as difficult as possible for us to visit Brisbane at this time. Crikey, they don’t even have to pay to park.
We had tickets to the ballet in West End yesterday and were wondering (a) how to get there and (b) how to get home again until friends who live in Bardon offered us a bed for the night.
Then we got an email from Queensland Ballet, warning us to “Please plan your trip and allow extra time ahead of your journey.” We ended up taking the Go Between Bridge (one of two Brisbane bridges – the other is the Goodwill Bridge – named after ‘famous’ bands). That was too easy – we were half an hour early, but had to park three blocks away.

And then, this Monday morning, at what my musician friend Silas Palmer calls “stupid o’clock”, we will be driving to Brisbane so he can catch the 5am red-eye flight to Melbourne. We’re driving to Samford on Saturday night where Silas is playing at a G20 Women in Docs gig (it’s free). Then we’ll take him back with us and spend a day in the studio while he adds piano and fiddle to my new songs. Hopefully by then the 620 (sorry G20), road closures will have ended and Monday’s 2.30am drive will be easier than today’s three-hour drive to Maleny via Woodford. The freeway was a car park today and last night, on account of people doing what Mayor Graham Quirk urged them not to do (leaving town for a three-day weekend at the coast).

Tabling the G20 agenda
While the Federal government is spending some serious coin to stage this event, the businesses that are affected by detours, road closures and barricades receive no compensation.
Sydney Morning Herald political reporter Heath Aston was apparently shown some Federal Government G20 contracts that outlined some of the expenses incurred over the two-day meeting. There was a lot of talk about the meeting table, which was commissioned for the G20 finance ministers’ meeting in 2006 (at a cost of $70,000). The Abbott government has approved a further $36,000 to extend the table and another $68,000 for chairs.
More than $10 million is being shelled out to house the 20 delegates and their entourages at some of Brisbane’s leading hotels. Another $250,000 has been earmarked for taxis and rental cars and $150,000 for “tablet devices”. Oh, and did I mention $34 million for security?

Excuse me – I have a question. What happens to the table (which will apparently cost $150,000 to be moved around between lead-up meetings to its final destination at the Brisbane Exhibition and Convention Centre) once the G20 is over?
Considering it is highly unlikely the G20 will return to Brisbane in our lifetime, why not put the table and chairs up for auction? I would think some cashed up city council would love to brag about that. Or a high class restaurant could grab it for their VIP room. Or perhaps one of the country’s idle rich would like a showpiece dining table. They’d have to extend the dining room of course, but what else is money for?
Then again, the table (and other recyclable detritus from the G20), could be donated to a clever timber worker with instructions to build a small, affordable, sustainable house – a display home for poor people, if you like, located on a suburban allotment donated by a kind-hearted developer (they do exist). This house (I’m thinking three rooms, a kitchen, a bathroom and somewhere to chain the pushbike), should be rented at $50 a week to the person on the bottom of the public housing list. This, I think, would make several points about a few things.

I’ll admit we live in a sort of utopian bubble up here, gathering at our local watering hole on Fridays to harrumph about this and that. Mr Clean had a few pointed questions for the G20 organisers. Had they not ever heard of Skype? Were they deliberately trying to incite dissent by occupying a city for two days and denying its people freedom of movement? They could have taken over Hamilton Island for the weekend and repelled all boarders. All good points, Mr Clean.
One of my old business contacts observed that the main risk with the G20 is that they will listen too much to economists, who spend most of their time looking out the rear window, and over-stimulate world economies with money-printing and fiscal incentives.
He says most world economies have been recovering quite well over the past three to four years without their help.
He is expecting a stoush and will be disappointed if there isn’t one, adding that, whatever form it takes, he hopes that some degree of common sense prevails.

From the mouths of babes
That left me pondering what you’d say to a four-year-old, in that ‘why’ phase of life, if he asked why Brisbane was hosting the G20.
Kid: “Daddy, what’s a Geetwenty?”
Dad: “It’s a meeting of 20 finance ministers and central bankers who play a significant role in ensuring that international and domestic economic policies work together to protect the global economy against future shocks.”
Kid: “Yes but why?”
Dad: “They meet so they can restore business and investor confidence and address the causes of the global financial crisis and ensure financial stability.”
Kid: “A dress like what Mummy wears?”
Dad: “They also have to make important decisions about inflation.”
Kid: “What’s inflation?”
Dad: “Well, if Mummy buys a dozen free-range, organic eggs from the co-op and they cost $7 and next week they cost $9, that’s inflation.”
Kid: “Why don’t we get chooks, then?”

Two dead horses and the outcry from animal rights groups that followed unfortunately pushed a telling United Nations report on climate change off the front page. In any other week, the report would have had a better run, without having to compete with horse form and breeding analysis, gossip and trivia, sweepstakes (there’s another page gone), fashions on the field and heart-tugging articles about little Aussie battlers trying to knock off cashed up European stables.
I acknowledge that the connections of Melbourne Cup contenders Admire Rakti and Araldo would have grieved when their horses died after the running of the 153rd Melbourne Cup. But these things happen in racing, and other sports for that matter. Professional racing people bury their horses; they claim the insurance and move on to the next race. The strappers and track riders who knew the horses best will be disconsolate for a while, but the world goes on.

According to the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), it will be a world of melting polar ice, rising sea levels, higher temperatures and extreme weather. The IPCC says worldwide we need to act urgently to stop burning coal, and to replace fossil fuels with renewable energy. We also need to stop producing greenhouse gases and to discourage investment in dirty industries.
The IPCC’s key findings are completely at odds with Team Australia, which has dismissed the carbon tax and is still trying to scrap or at least wind back the 2020 renewable energy target. Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been widely quoted as saying coal is “good for humanity” and has decried the efforts by some institutional investors to divest (sell) shares in carbon-intensive sectors.
However, the world’s top scientists have given their clearest warning yet of the severe and irreversible impacts of climate change. The 116-page IPCC synthesis report, a summary of its last three, is a dry read (no pun intended). But its message is blunt: greenhouse gas levels are at the highest they have been in 800,000 years. The most recent increases are largely blamed on the burning of fossil fuels.
“Continued emission of greenhouse gases will cause further warming and long-lasting changes in all components of the climate system, increasing the likelihood of severe, pervasive and irreversible impacts for people and ecosystems,” the report said.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who says he is no punter, despite having a totally wild bet against the science of climate change and the burning of fossil fuels, tipped Signoff (4th) to win the Melbourne Cup.
The connections of Signoff might have picked up a healthy cheque ($250,000), but bookies don’t pay out on fourth. And voters seldom return a politician who has shown poor judgement on serious global issues.
Imagine if there was indeed a race, the winner of which would be allowed to implement their method of repelling the advances of global warming.

The Climate Change Stakes.
“The horses are parading for the Climate Change Stakes. Looking fit and determined in the birdcage is Mitigation, the 6-4 on favourite, heavily backed by every greenie on the planet. Climate Denier, a 33-1 pop with a reputation for coming home when least expected, is expected to struggle with its big weight and the track conditions (wet again). Pay the Polluters has found some support from the Society for Illogical Thinking. Carbon Tax Mk II, having his first run for the Green stable, will find it hard from the outside barrier, but if he gets an inside run coming into the home turn, look out. Solar Leader, a German import, will need a sunny day, as will Sunshine Valley Stables entry, South Australia’s Beam Me Up. The Northern Territory entry, Diesel Rules, is a late scratching. Apparently his transporter ran out of fuel. CeeCeeEss was disqualified for having a stupid name.”

It is now nine months since the chairman of the Climate Change Committee, UK conservative Lord Deben, described the Australian government’s then plan to scrap the carbon tax (which it has since done) as irresponsible.
“Australia’s actions are appalling,” Lord Deben (a former MP in the Thatcher government), said in a statement. “While the 66 countries that account for 88% of global emissions have passed laws to address global warming, Australia is repealing them.”
The IPCC’s synthesis report made four key recommendations, all based on broad scientific consensus.
If the planet is to be kept from warming by more than two degrees:
• Renewable energy (i.e. solar, wind power, wave power et al), nuclear energy and carbon capture and storage (CCS), should comprise 80% of the world’s energy by 2050 (it is currently about 30%);
• Investors need to switch their allegiances from polluting industries to clean energy sectors;
• The world must stop using fossil fuels by 2100 (unless fossil fuel power generation uses CCS),
• Greenhouse gases must be cut by 40% to 70% by 2050, and to less than zero by 2100.
Meanwhile, Team Australia got its Direct Action Bill through. An alternative to the carbon tax, it pays polluters to clean their act up. Under political pressure, the Abbott government is now talking about a renewable energy target of 5% by 2020, rather than scrapping the original RET of 20%, so there is a glimmer of hope.

My research assistant Little Brother found a gem of a story in The Guardian which harked back to Budget cuts in May. While Mr Abbott has recently said Australia’s energy future lies in coal, five months ago his government cut $495.3 million in forward research funding to develop carbon capture and storage technology. CCS captures carbon emissions that would otherwise have been expelled into the atmosphere and stores them underground. LB says there is only one large CCS plant in operation (in Saskatchewan, Canada). The science has many detractors.
The Labor government also slashed funding for CCS, so while it has been flagged as an alternative by the IPCC, it seems out of favour here, with just $191.7 million left to develop trial plants over the next seven years.
Despite all the obstacles in its way, the solar energy sector keeps signing up new industries (the Brisbane Markets is using the massive amounts of roof space it has at Rocklea to install a 1.06MW system). Construction will start next year and when completed it will be one of the largest in Australia.

Last time I wrote about renewable energy a reader studying the solar sector wrote to tell me that financially disadvantaged sections of the community continue to pay more for electricity as a result of past solar policies. And so far, commercial solar power stations can’t compete with coal-fired stations. But while that debate is played out, more households and commercial businesses are installing solar systems so they can control their own destiny. Smarter technology (thermal storage) and a mass market, will make solar a less expensive option. Besides, it’s irrelevant whether solar “stacks up” in the conventional sense of being the cheapest alternative. As the IPCC says, we have to act and we have to act NOW.

We’re back in the studio after our three-month road trip, trying to pick up the threads of what was as an intensive three-week recording session back in June. The last thing I did in the studio before we left was to re-record harmonica tracks with a new, $55 Hohner E harp. I use harmonicas a lot when we perform live, playing the instrument with a rack around my neck. The cheap harps I normally use did not stand up to scrutiny in the confines of a studio.

The humble mouth harp was given credence 84 years ago when a fellow called Larry Adler saw an advertisement in the Baltimore Sun for a mouth organ band. Adler went to the audition and a grand career was born. He worked with the likes of Fred Astaire, Dizzie Gillespie and George Gershwin. Vaughan Williams composed music for him. A jazz musician from the same era, Max Geldray, was a pivotal part of The Goon Show. He provided musical interludes and the closing music for at least 160 episodes of that madcap radio programme.

I was thinking about Max, who died in 2004 and Larry (in 2001), as they were without a doubt the people who helped me overcome shyness and make use of my natural musical ear to embark on a journey which, 55 years on, is still bringing me joy, even if my neighbour’s dog howls when I play harmonica.

I’m a lazy player, quickly inventing instrumentals to add colour to my songs and I clearly don’t practice as much as some of the people in the videos at the end of this essay. But I’m happy to report that my harmonica tracks survived the cut. I did my three tracks in a couple of takes. We got it done quickly because I know the stuff backwards, but also with my new hearing aids, I can hear snails sliding across the studio’s tin roof.

My laziness extends to the maintenance of my harps. When a great blues harp player, Matt Moline, came to the studio to add harmonica to one track on our first CD, he had a very large number of instruments encased in a soft travel pack.
We got on to the subject of cleaning them and I confessed I had never done that. Matt got that look on his face that you see when nurses are gowning up to go into the infectious diseases ward.

It was all Santa’s fault
I sometimes wonder just how many children, apart from me, found a harmonica in their Christmas stocking when they were six or seven. It used to be a good way to assess if your child had any latent musicality. (I suspect a large number of said harmonicas were “lost” sometime on Boxing Day.)
The radio was our only entertainment in those days, so there was lots of time to learn things that require hours of practice, like knitting, embroidery, 1,000-piece jigsaws or learning to play the spoons. I was always coming second in talent quests, usually to a comely lass with a guitar and a sweet smile.

Once shunned as a toy instrument for the poor, the humble 10-hole diatonic harmonica has progressed to become a mainstay of contemporary rock, folk and blues music.
There are great players who have gone on to play harp in the choir invisible (Sonny Terry, Little Walter, Big Mama Thornton), and a good few who are still with us, including Australian players Chris Wilson, Doc Span and Jim Conway. Charlie Musselwhite is lauded by some, as are Charlie McCoy, Christelle Berthon and Stevie Wonder. Stevie learned to play when he was five and invented a completely distinctive style.

And (OMG I didn’t know this), Billy Joel played harmonica on “Piano Man”, inspired by Bob Dylan using a rack to play guitar and harmonica at the same time. The less said about “Piano Man” the better. I prefer Weird Al Yankovitch’s “Sling us a web; you’re the Spider-Man”.
You can spend $250+ on a chromatic harmonica (it has a slide which enables you to play sharps and flats). You need two, in different keys, to cover the complete range of anything you might like to play (William Tell Overture, Night and Day, Clare De Lune).
But most players today use diatonic, 10-hole blues harmonicas. They have a small range of notes and lack of sharps and flats, so in theory there is a limit to what you can play. I use a cheap set of seven Hohner harmonicas bought from the Internet for $99. They are what you think they might be! I have some old harmonicas I paid a lot of money for (Lee Oskars) and they are still better than the new ones in the box set.
You can pay upwards of $85 for a quality Lee Oskar, although you’ll find them cheaper on the Internet. Those of you obsessed with music trivia already knew this, but Lee Oskar is a Danish musician and harmonica manufacturer who featured in Eric Burden’s band War and performed in Cheech and Chong’s “Up in Smoke”.

People who don’t know how to do it think that being able to play guitar, sing and play harmonica at the same time is one of the dark arts. All you need to do is put a rack around your neck, insert the instrument (the right way up), keep a steady tempo going on the guitar, and save some breath for singing.
Kath Tait, a Kiwi who lives in London, has a special way of playing the concertina and a harmonica in a rack while singing. The harmonica bits happen in the instrumentals, but I guess you’ll figure that out.

Kiwi expat Brendan Power, now domiciled in the UK, is a harmonica virtuoso who manufactures, repairs and tunes harmonicas. He uses a loop pedal and other gadgets to put on a one-man show, but is still heard to best effect jamming with other musicians.
If you had no idea how versatile the harmonica can be, check out at least one of these videos. I especially like the fan comment (sic) at the end of M-S Blues: “I dont no who let you off the chain but you shore can play that thang.”

Life’s most embarrassing moments. It is sometime in 1996 and I am attending a corporate function as a business reporter for The Courier-Mail. I am about as excited as I get, because for the first time I have the prospect of meeting the great Gough Whitlam. He has been invited to the conference to engage in a debate with Sir James Killen. Firebrands of the left and right; true intellectual discourse, brimful of wit and rhetoric and demonstrating a transparent fondness for one another.

I spot the man in the lunch break standing by himself near a platter of fruit, cheese and crackers. I approach, shake his hand and offer my business card. I look up (Gough was very tall), as he inspects the card.
“Oh, The Courier-Mail!” (an orator’s voice, laced with gathering opprobrium). “That’s what’shisname, that crank who keeps going on about Manning Clark.” And with that he turned and walked away.

He was referring to a series of articles in The Courier-Mail in 1996 that claimed the late historian Manning Clark was an “agent of influence” of the Soviet Union. I returned to work that day and confided the story to a few of my colleagues. We agreed it indicated a degree of haughty arrogance, but given the long friendship between Gough and Manning Clark, it was an understandable reaction. Crikey, I didn’t want an interview, I just wanted to shake his hand.

The series of articles mentioned above caused a great fuss at the time. Later that year, the Press Council upheld a complaint by 15 prominent Australians, saying the newspaper had insufficient evidence to claim Professor Clark was an agent of the Soviet Union or that he was awarded the Order of Lenin. But, as is the case with all daily newspapers, the content has long been forgotten, the paper recycled as garbage wrap or garden mulch.

That’s the problem when great men or women die – their lives get picked over by journalists, each as keen as the next to find that little untold vignette. I was not even in Australia when Gough was sacked in 1975 by the then Governor-General John Kerr.
I remember reading coverage in the UK newspapers and wondering if there would be a revolution in Australia as a result. Gough would probably find it amusing that his passing alone was the news event that pushed Tony Abbott off social media. Most of the FB tributes to Gough were touching, some even overly-emotional. I posted a link to the Whitlam Institute and a summary of the Whitlam Government’s achievements. It is almost 40 years ago, so for those not even born then, here’s a summary:

“The Whitlam Government brought about a vast range of reforms in the 1071 days it held office between December 5, 1972 and November 11, 1975. In its first year alone, it passed 203 bills – more legislation than any other federal government had passed in a single year.”

Under Whitlam, women trapped in loveless, abusive marriages were able to escape and apply for the Supporting Mothers’ Pension (or men for the lesser known Lone Parent Pension). Pregnant women without a partner were able to keep their babies instead of adopting them out. Under Whitlam, bright children from poor families were given a free university education (this continued until HECs was introduced in 1989).

Medibank, Medicare and Medibank Private

In 1974, Whitlam created Medibank, a national health insurance system providing free access to hospitals and other medical services. Medibank (re-named ‘Medicare’ in 1984) provided health coverage for the 17% of Australians who then could not afford private insurance. A year later, Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser introduced the government- owned Medibank Private, with the aim of providing competition in the insurance sector.
Labor governments opposed any notion of Medibank Private being sold/privatised/floated, just as Liberal politicians, starting with John Howard, swore that if elected they would sell off Medibank Private.
Medibank was a national public authority until PM John Howard made legal and accounting changes in 1997.
These changes made it easier for Tony Abbott to appoint agents of private enterprise as Joint Lead Managers (ie float promoters) to run a public float. The heavy irony is that the prospectus for Medibank Private, which is going public this year, emerged the day before Gough passed on.

It is an expensive business. If you delve into the 204-page prospectus you will find that $17.5 million has already been set aside for fees paid to accountants, auditors, lawyers and business and capital market advisors. The float promoters, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs and Macquarie Bank, will collect a $5 million fee and up to $5 million in incentive management fees if the float goes well (plus commissions).
You will hear a lot about Medibank Private now that the prospectus is out and about. A 2012 Harvard University survey found that two-thirds of investors do not read a prospectus before applying for shares. They rely on people like me, sifting out a few key points.

• There is a restriction on any one shareholder (or its nominees) holding more than 15% of Medibank Private. This ensures that a predator cannot build a 20% stake, which triggers a takeover;
• Unhappily for some, this provision will lapse after five years;
• The government is selling 100% of Medibank Private – in previous privatisations the government has usually kept an interest;
• The nominal share price is between $1.55 and $2.00; but you have to send your cheque before you find out the final price;
• The dividend yield of between 4.2% and 5.2% is not generous. Retail punters and SMSFs could leave their $20,000 in a fixed term deposit at 3.5% without any risk at all;
• Medibank’s four million policyholders will be able to buy more shares, and earlier, but otherwise derive no bonus from the float.

There is a lot more in this document as the promoters cover all the bases by making sure you know about the risks and the competitive pressures in the health insurance business. The Abbott government says it will spend the proceeds of the float (up to $5.5 billion), on its Asset Recycling Initiative, providing payments to States and Territories that sell assets

and re-invest in Australian infrastructure.
I am aware there are people out there who think Medibank Private should remain a government asset. In 2013 it paid the government a dividend of $450 million, so it’s a handy investment.
There are also people who say all health care should be free. Or at the very least, a poor person needing elective surgery should not have to wait two or three years when those with private insurance can have it done next week.

In his 1972 election campaign speech, Whitlam outlined his reasons for introducing universal health insurance.
“I personally find quite unacceptable a system (ie in which private medical insurance was tax deductible) whereby the man who drives my Commonwealth car in Sydney pays twice as much for the same family (medical insurance) cover as I have, not despite the fact that my income is 4 or 5 times higher than his, but precisely because of my higher income.”
Hear, hear, Sir.

This week I choose to quote Paul Simon out of context for my own purposes. I’m sure he won’t mind. The short/little tautology aside, this is one of the hookiest lines from “You Can Call Me Al” where a man (probably), questions his mid-life existence – “Why am I soft in the middle when the rest of my life is so hard? Every songwriter on the planet yearns for just one of the multiple hooks residing in Call Me Al, from the bouncy, repetitive brass intro to the impossible bass solo (which much later I found out was just a normal jazz bass run played backwards).
This is not about Call Me Al, but it is a little bit about the “hooks” songwriters use to grab our attention, in much the same way newspapers use shock horror headlines. If you’ve never heard of a “hook” in the pop song genre, here’s a classic example. Think of that well-known song by Australian 60s band, The Easybeats, its title appropriated by yours truly. Venerable English songwriter and guitarist Richard Thompson tipped his hat to songwriters Vanda and Young when he included Friday on My Mind as one of the 22 songs he chose to represent 1,000 years of popular music.

When it comes to analysing what Vanda and Young were up to in the composition of their 1966 hit, I defer to learned US professor Paul Smith who dissects the song in his blog, appropriately enough called Hooks. You have to acknowledge the master songwriters of the 1960s as the experts at gaining people’s attention.
George Young and Harry Vanda penned Friday on My Mind in 1966, three years before the UCLA issued a press release introducing the public to “the Internet”.
In just 222 words and 2 minutes 37 seconds, employing one of the most recognisable riffs in the world of contemporary music, Vanda and Young created a worldwide hit. It was No 1 in Australia and Holland (The Easybeats had two Dutch band members), No. 6 in the UK and No.16 on the US Billboard Hot 100 chart. And they didn’t have to crowdsource, tweet or annoy people on Facebook to do that.

The Internet and our attention span
There is quite a discussion online about how the Internet has destroyed people’s span of attention. According to <psych.com>, our attention span has more than halved in 10 years from 12 minutes to five. I would really like to know the concentration span of the “always on” generation.
You know them – the not always young people with smart phones, tablets and laptops who are always connected. They’re the ones you invite over for dinner who furtively glance down into their laps every few minutes while their fingers and thumbs dance across the keyboard. Or they chime into a conversation with “I’ll just google that” and flop their Ipad out on the table to regale you with Wikipedia’s version of events.
A reader suggested I join Twitter, because apparently, that is where all the intellectuals, journalists, activists and commentators hang out. Well, OK, I’m there, but now what? Mr Shiraz advised: “say something brief and bright”.
As the length of a tweet is limited to 140 characters, by definition it has to be pithy. I haven’t tweeted much (said reader has promised me a tutorial later this month). I did find out via twitter that a former colleague of my vintage had died. I was also able to send a tweet to Guardian online columnist Van Badham saying how much I admired her rare, first-person account of a depressive episode.

The short span of attention is the biggest obstacle to building an online audience, we’re told. FastCompany says the ideal Facebook post is just 40 characters. Forty characters – about this much, give or take.
It is clear that a lot of my Facebook friends do not know this. All the same, 40 characters is a bit drastic. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” would fail this test. So would “Well may they say God Save the Queen, because nothing will save the Governor-General.”
When I started writing Friday on My Mind in May this year, the question of word length was uppermost in my mind. I sent a 1,750-word draft of the first one to Mr Shiraz who replied, “Very good, but I’d like to see that cut by a third.”
So perhaps we have him to thank for today’s 1,190-word essay. As it turns out, 1100 words is the optimum length for a blog. There are those who say blogs running to 2,650 words or more are likely to be taken seriously, as the word-length indicates a degree of research has been done. The problem with longer articles is that today’s student (anyone aged between 5 and 35) will lose concentration and not finish reading.
A Pew Internet study found that while students hooked up to the connected world system have instant access to an infinite body of wisdom, their attention span and hunger for in-depth analysis is diminished.
“The current generation of internet consumers live in a world of ‘instant gratification and quick fixes’ which leads to a loss of patience and a lack of deep thinking,” says a Pew analyst. The Pew study also found that while websites and blogs use videos, images and sound clips to capture that short little span of attention, videos disrupt concentration abilities. (Sorry about that).

I was browsing a list of the world’s longest books last night. Every one of you will jump to the wrong conclusion, as I did. War and Peace isn’t even on the list. No, the privilege goes to Artamène/Cyrus the Great, a 17th century novel of 2.1 million words spread over ten volumes. The work is credited to Georges de Scudéry and/or his sister Madeleine. According to <shortlist.com>, it is a romantic novel, with endless twists to keep the suspense, and the action, going.
While popular in its time, Cyrus the Great was not re-published until a (French) academic project was launched to make it available on the internet.
I provide the link because intensive research of my readership suggests that for some, a 2.1 million word book in French would be une promenade de santé.
I set about this week’s musings with three goals in mind. After banishing the black dog to the shed, I agreed to my friend Little Bird’s request to “write something happy”. I wanted to turn my head towards music, as (a) it gets me out of a funk and (b) we are going back into the studio soon to finish the new album. I also thought it was time to look at FOMM and see if it is doing what columns of this nature are meant to do (entertain, inform and amuse).

According to in-depth research carried out between 6.55am and 7.03am today, Friday on My Mind (the column) meets all the criteria of a successful blog. It can be read in less than seven minutes, its headline is six words or less, it uses sub-headings and it is free. All else, apparently, is irrelevant.

 

 

What timing! It is Mental Health Awareness Week and I am slowly, slowly sinking into the mire. She Who Hates Acronyms (SWHA) gently chides me: “Don’t be depressed – it’s boring.” Maybe, but it’s not like I can duck down to the Co-op and buy a happy mood.
The Black Dog* started sniffing around my door a fortnight ago, after we arrived home from a three-month road adventure. Aaah, I hear you say. It’s inevitable that you will go into a slump after a big, carefree colourful adventure, driving around the wondrous continent of Australia. (Theatre people report the same big mood swing when the performance finishes and the cast and crew “strike” the set.)
If I knew why my mood switched from carefree and energetic to pulling the blankets over my head and saying “no” to just about every encouragement to go and do something, then I wouldn’t be like this.
But let’s steer the conversation away from me and look at the numbers on depression in Australia. Beyond Blue is an organisation started to create awareness of depression and anxiety and the tendency of the average male to throw another beer down his throat and ignore his deepening mood.
Beyond Blue reckons that 45% of people will experience a mental health condition in their lifetime. In any one year, around 1 million Australian adults have depression, and over 2 million have anxiety. There is a tendency among men and women to self-medicate by drinking alcohol and/or smoking marijuana. Neither of these activities eases the blues nor makes one feel less anxious.
Both drugs tend to make the user feel as if he is happy and carefree again, but it is like throwing a doona over you in the nippy dawn – it will slide off and you will feel cold again.
Women often experience depression after childbirth and both sexes can be tipped into the blues after a bad bout of ‘flu’ or similar illness. Depression can be situational – it’s hard to stay upbeat when your partner is physically or emotionally abusive. Unemployment can bring on the blues, and, once entrenched, can cause an endless cycle of despair. Or, as in my case, it can be a biological imbalance.
The politicians who came up with the (now lapsed) plan that the unemployed have to make 40 job applications a month or lose the dole manifestly never suffered from depression or anxiety.
The key solution to combatting depression, I have found, is to get busy. First, make sure you are getting a good night’s sleep, even if it comes to taking sleeping pills. Next, review your diet. Skipping breakfast are we? Working right through lunch? Eat red meat at least twice a week, avoid or cut down on coffee and sugar and drink lots of water.
Exercise is a key tool. Just put on your walking shoes and go for a walk somewhere, preferably at first light. Then find at least one thing you do that brings you optimism and fulfilment (this could be anything from painting or knitting to singing in a community choir, playing guitar or the bagpipes, gardening or tackling all of those long-neglected handyperson chores). Get up on the roof and clean the gutters and the solar panels. If you don’t like heights or don’t trust yourself up there, get stuck into the garden. Bag all those weeds and take them to the dump. You are bound to meet other people there who are also “battling depression” by keeping busy.
Did I mention taking medication? It works for me, but even if you don’t trust anti-depressants and the tendency by GPs to over-prescribe, you can work on alternatives – yoga, meditation, vitamins, herbal remedies and, best of all, spend time with ebullient, optimistic people who don’t suffer from depression. They might not want to hang out with you in your current state of mind, but if you make the effort to be sociable, being around upbeat people can be therapeutic.
Blame the media – why not?
Moreover (archaic word used for effect to show I went to university), the media must take its share of the blame for the nation’s mood.
We have introduced a media ban in this house. After three months on the road and not watching the TV news, mostly not listening to radio news and only occasionally reading newspapers, we deduced that the media in general is to blame for keeping the population in a constant state of high anxiety and dread.
I asked my research assistant Little Brother to have a look at media coverage of terrorism in the past two weeks. He grizzled for a while as he’s not had much to do in the past three months. But as one of my old bosses used to say: “If you want something done, give it to an obsessive.”
LB came back from the local library, his pale English cheeks aflame.
“No wonder we’re all feeling anxious and depressed,” he said. It transpired that The Australian has published 84 items about terrorism and terrorists in just 12 days.
He says the preoccupation with Muslims under the bed is no less intense in the tabloid world, the Fairfax media or on TV or talkback radio. That’s the problem with the 24/7 news cycle – it forces media outlets to follow the herd. The haste with which news is published can force some horrible mistakes – eg Fairfax Media publishing the photo of an innocent party, claiming him to be the unfortunate teenager gunned down in Melbourne.
Little wonder there is an unquantifiable drift to what I call “Fair Trade” media – The Monthly, The Quarterly Essay, the Guardian online, Crikey, The Big Issue, The Epoch Times, The Conversation and the New Internationalist.
What messes with your head is radio and TV news (updates every hour). The nature of the beast demands attention-grabbing headlines. The print media uses the same tactics, either through its online pages or the posters outside newsagencies.
Little Brother told me there was a bit of a stir this week over a headline (“Monster Chef and the She Male”), used to describe a gruesome murder-suicide. “Don’t go there, mate,” he warned.
“Don’t they ever consider those poor people have Mums and Dads somewhere?”
He has a theory that the media is revisiting the era of Yellow journalism in a bid to shore up circulation. Yellow Journalism (using lurid headlines, exaggerations and sensationalism to sell more newspapers) was a technique used in a circulation battle in the late 1880s between William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer.

Sigh. Time to take the dog for a walk (or do some housework – it’s a lot easier now that there isn’t a pile of newspapers to tidy up.)

*this black dog alleviates depression

Those of us who love the serenity and pristine nature of National Parks had better start linking arms. Governments in Australia are bending to the will of mining companies to allow mining and coal seam/shale gas projects, if not inside National Parks, then way too close for comfort.

Karajini National Park in the Pilbara region of Western Australia is surely one of the 10 natural wonders this country has to offer – and it sits alongside an enormous open cut iron ore mine. The WA State government excised the Rio Tinto-owned Marandoo Mine from the national park in 1992. The WA government bans mining in all but three national parks – one of which is Karajini.
Rio Tinto operates 15 iron ore mines in the Pilbara and has spent $880 million opening up new mines. Even the 50-year-old Tom Price mine is still operating and now processing ore from the nearby Western Turner Syncline. While Tom Price is a mining town, almost all of these new mines use the preferred method of flying workers in and out of mine sites.

After spending three days camping in the breathtakingly beautiful Karajini National Park, we drove past the Marandoo Mine, located in a narrow valley of the Hamersley Range, effectively splitting Karajini into north and south areas.
Next day, we took a tour of Rio Tinto’s open cut iron ore mine in Tom Price. You could not develop a mine like Tom Price today. Some of its pits, like the one pictured, are 500m deep and require constant pumping, as they fill up with ground water. Big mining towns like Kalgoorlie, Tom Price, Broken Hill and Mt Isa were discovered and developed long before such inconveniences as environmental impact statements, air quality monitoring and workplace health and safety procedures.

While Rio Tinto has become the industry leader in worker safety, mining is still very dangerous work. Safe Work Australia figures show that 70 people died in the mining industry between 2003-2004 and 2009-2010. In WA, the Department of Mines and Petroleum says 52 people were killed at work between 2000 and 2012, although the incidence has dropped since then. Despite the risks, the above-average wages and the work-hard play-hard environment is attractive to healthy young men and women eager to save for a deposit on their first home or build a career.
We spent half a day in Mandurah visiting relatives and were astonished by the rapid growth of what used to be a Perth satellite suburb and is now WA’s second-biggest city. It is crammed full of big, new houses where many of the Mums (and the occasional Dad) stay at home with the kids until Dad (or Mum), comes home for their days off from one of the FIFO mine sites.
The Tom Price mine started production in 1994 and Rio Tinto approved an expansion in 2011 that will extend the life of mine to 2030. The Hamersley Range is so full of iron ore you can never afford to say that the Marandoo excision was a one-off. Indeed, the hill behind the Karajini National Park information centre is of particular interest for its high iron ore content. Mines appear in all kinds of unexpected corners of the country. We headed down a dirt road toward Sandy Point, south of Geraldton, attracted by stories of a friendly, laid-back beachside campground with sparkling white sand, great fishing and safe swimming.
It was just as beautiful as we’d been told, but its immediate neighbours are two big sand mines. Sand dunes along the WA coast are exploited for their heavy mineral content – ilmenite, zircon, rutile and monazite.

Fracking comes to WA
The one thing I did not expect to see, driving along Western Australia’s Coral Coast via the Brand Highway, was a large sign denouncing the process of ‘fracking’. The 2-metre high neon sign simply says “Fracking Poisons Water”, a matter for debate, but in this instance serving as a “What’s going on around here?” prompt for motorists. (Fracking involves pumping high pressure water, sand and chemicals into subterranean rocks to release the gas trapped there).
What’s going on is that Sydney-based listed company AWE has made a significant new shale gas discovery in the Dongara/Wagina reservoir. Anyone familiar with the terrain along WA’s Coral Coast would realise that Dongara, south of Geraldton, is on the doorstep of Lesueur National Park.

Prior to our recent trip to WA, we were unaware of Lesueur National Park, a unique bio-diversity hotspot of some 27,000ha. It protects 900 different plant species, more than 10% of the flora of WA, and seven species of rare fauna. Lesueur, which is a must-do on the tourism wild flower trail, has already once been saved from the rapacious advances of the extractive industries.
In 1990 there was a rare meeting of minds between conservationists, lefties, righties, local land owners, fishermen and farmers to rebuff the mining/energy industries.
The Hill River Station proponents wanted a 2.5 million tonnes a year open cut coal mine and a 600MW power plant near Mount Lesueur, 25 kms from Jurien Bay and the Coral Coast.
The Environmental Protection Agency rejected the proposal as a result of overwhelming public protest and two years later the park was gazetted.
AWE has all but dismissed claims that its plan to exploit tight and shale gas reserves poses a threat to groundwater. The West Australian’s Daniel Mercer was invited to travel to the Senecio well site where AWE managing director Bruce Clement put his side of the story. He stated that horizontally-fractured wells found in WA’s mid-west were always at least 1.5 km deeper than aquifers and there is “invariably” an impermeable layer of rock between the gas and the water.
Conservation Council of WA director Piers Verstegen told the West Australian that if AWE was so comfortable with fracking it would have been more upfront in telling locals of its intentions. Land owners and environmentalists are concerned about the progress of drilling by AWE and others, given that a Parliamentary Inquiry into fracking is ongoing and unlikely to be completed this year.
The Green Left Weekly says if unconventional gas exploration and fracking is allowed on the border of Lesueur National Park, it would set a precedent that would allow fracking throughout the mid-west of WA.

Meanwhile, Queensland shuts the gate
It is probably worth pointing out that in Queensland, this kind of public support to oppose a mining proposal can no longer happen. A controversial new mining bill shuffled through Queensland Parliament last month (September), has restricted the right of appeal on “philosophical” grounds. The right to object is restricted to neighbouring property owners of the land to be mined, drilled or otherwise developed.
Understandably, the Lock the Gate Alliance does not think much of this new law, and the Greens are likewise upset.
You should be too. In theory, a drilling crew could set up at the end of your street and start looking for coal seam gas and only the people in the adjacent houses would have a right to object.

Welcome to Bob and Laurel’s truly excellent slideshow of Western Australia and all the States and Territories we went through to get there (and back). Come on in and find yourselves a seat – you two can sit over there, Fred can sit here and Mary thanks for coming and sorry to hear Trevor has a cold. Now tonight’s show, just so you know, will go for about nine hours, but the good news is we’ll have a supper break, a midnight snack, frequent comfort stops and breakfast.
This second slide needs some explaining – Laurel took it through the windscreen. Admittedly it’s a bit fuzzy, but there is a cat in there… Unlike last year, that’s the only feral cat we spotted, but we needed a photo because I wrote a song about feral cats. Oh you didn’t know? It’ll be on my new album, out soon!
As you might have gathered, we’re home, and I’m talking to trees again. She Who No Longer Watches ABCNews24 (hereafter referred to as Ed. for the sake of brevity), plans to select her ‘Top 10’ photos once she downloads and goes through the 8,000 or so images. All I know about the 9,000-odd photos and videos that I took is that I will need to be very disciplined and employ my hard-earned editing skills (writers call it “murdering your darlings”). We both became keen twitchers (bird-watchers), on our three month sojourn, so there are at least 12 photos of every bird that caught our eye, even the everyday Willy Wagtail.
This particular Willy Wagtail followed us wherever we went. Even when we pulled into the driveway of our friend’s place at Warwick on the penultimate afternoon of the journey, there was Ms Wagtail, flitting about, harassing other birds and generally singing its merry little song that somehow reminds me of the song “Baby I’ve been watching you”. The Wagtail (and its Kiwi cousin the Fantail), are said to be messengers or spirit guides by the indigenous cultures of Australia and New Zealand. Just thought you’d like to know that.
Ah, the photos (some of which have already ended up on Facebook). There are so many wondrous vistas, close-ups of wild flowers, peerless sunsets, verdant gorges, wind-tossed deserts and wide open spaces, our friends are surely expecting a home-made calendar in the mail for Christmas.
Today’s technology is a long way from the old-fashioned slide evenings of our childhood. Someone would come over with a slide projector, one of those round cartridges that holds 300 slides and a suitcase full of 35mm colour slides. Mum would pin a sheet to the wall and we would all be herded into the living room where Dad had the kero heater going, puffing away on his Capstans. It was a struggle to stay awake through what seemed like hours of happy snaps from Harry’s two weeks in Japan at the 1964 Olympics.
“Now this is my favourite shot – there’s Peter Snell (record-breaking middle distance runner), leading the NZ team around the arena.” Taken with an Instamatic from seat 73, row 110 on the eastern stand looking into the sun. (New Zealand won three gold medals in Tokyo. Just thought you’d like to know that, too).
Now that we have all this amazing digital photo technology, it’s a shame not to use it as often as possible. We tried to be groovy old folks and took a few selfies (see opening photo at Wave Rock in Western Australia).
We noticed some people cheating – taking selfies with extendable kits – a monopod arm and a shutter release cable. Our preferred method is to chat to people who are admiring the same scenery and ask them to take a photo. Or you can prop your camera on a rock, set the 10-second auto button then run back into the picture. In most of those photos I look like a bloke who has suddenly discovered his fly is not done up.
We went on a steam train excursion in South Australia – from Quorn in the lower Flinders Ranges to a hamlet called Woolshed Flat. Whenever the train went around a bend, everyone would rush to the other side of the carriage and stick their heads, elbows and cameras out the window.
The typical photo is like this one (left) – mostly other people’s heads. It hardly seemed worth the risk of getting cinders in your eyes. The best photos and videos of this particular excursion, of course, were those taken by the people stopped at level crossings who waved as we chuffed our way up the next hill.
I chatted to a fellow passenger from Melbourne who was on the last leg of what Grey Nomads call “the lap”. Like me, she had taken thousands of photos and at this late stage of the game was a bit burned-out and was having a rest from the camera.
“What’s the point,” she said with a sigh. “When you get home the only people interested in looking at them are us.”
It did not escape our attention that taking photographs of landmarks and scenery is a low priority for people who are travelling the country on some sort of a mission. They rely on their support crew to document their journey.
The Black Dog Ride is a 32-day, 14,500 kms circumnavigation of the country by 65 bike riders who share the founder’s passion for raising awareness of depression and suicide prevention. This well organised adventure has raised more than $1.6 million for mental health services over the years.
Then there was the intrepid group of over-65s riding 50cc scooters from Port Augusta to Perth to raise money for Beyond Blue, an organisation dedicated to raising awareness of depression and suicide in Australian communities. The Scootarbor Challenge has so far raised more than $50,000 for Beyond Blue. The participants stop every 70kms or so and swap riders, probably a good idea as the day we saw them outside Ceduna, they were about to ride into strong head winds.
We also came across a group of 40 men and women riding 110cc ex-postie bikes from Brisbane to Adelaide via Birdsville and remote desert roads, for no other reason than they thought it was fun. Members of this group pay about $5,000 for the privilege, which includes an ex-postie bike, all accommodation and support while en-route and a flight home. Riders are encouraged to donate their bikes to Rotary at the end of the ride.
The above has renewed my resolve to delve into our documentary material and prepare a summary of our journey. It may well be this time next year before it’s done. It will probably include this photo taken on a timer when we arrived at the Welcome to Queensland sign on the NSW side of Goondiwindi. (Run, it’s flashing!)

You are probably wondering why, of the 2.04 billion disposable nappies Australians dump every year, I chose to write about one in particular. It was a while ago now − we had just discovered our first truly appealing free camp, on the banks of Mary Pool in the Kimberley. After setting up camp, we walked over a concrete causeway and spotted a (used) nappy thoughtlessly left lying on a flat rock next to the pool. She Who Keeps Changing Her Pseudonym hates it when I get on a rant about things like this (“bloody selfish idiots spoiling my “quiet enjoyment,” is one of my oft repeated comments).
I was going to puff and bluster this week about bloody Iraq and why are we going there (again), on a mission yet to be sanctioned by the United Nations. But I’m OK now. Alert, but not alarmed, apart from concern over the common law rights of the six people still being detained without charge after a counter-terrorism raid. They can do that, you know – it won’t happen to you, though, so worry not.
But let’s get back to the nappy story. While disposable nappies have been around since 1948, their almost universal use in first-world countries today is supported by those who say they are a safer, easier, more hygienic option than cotton nappies. But Robyn Barker, retired family health nurse and author of Baby Love, says single-use nappies have changed our behaviour. “Many otherwise fastidious people forgo the rules of normal hygiene and dump human poo in domestic wheelie bins, waste paper baskets, and public rubbish bins in parks, streets and shopping centres,” she wrote on The Drum.
From our own observations travelling many a kilometre in WA, it was no surprise to learn that Western Australia has the worst outback road litter problem of any Australian State or Territory.
The State Government makes “Outback Packs” available to people to keep in their cars so they can pick up after themselves (and others). Even so, roadside litter is often quite bad at outback rest areas and diabolical at places with no toilets. Often enough there will be more litter around the bright yellow metal bins (with heavy iron grate lids, so we can’t blame crows for the mess), than there is in the bins themselves.
I decided to do my own “Emu Patrol” after getting out of the car for a photo next to one of those Nullarbor road signs which warn you to watch out for camels, emus and kangaroos. I picked up a coke can, two beer cans, two stubbies, a triple-A battery (what the…?), a 1-litre plastic milk bottle, chip packets and chocolate bar wrappers and a dog-eared copy of Lazarus Rising (I made that bit up). I completely drew the line at toilet paper, ribbons of which flapped around amongst the saltbush. You’d never know where it had been, would you? I threw the bag in the back seat, irritated, swatting flies and convinced the task was only 20% accomplished. After a few more minutes down the road, SWKCHP complained about “that terrible stink” and she was right. We stopped at the next rest area and put the bag in one of the aforementioned yellow metal bins. I’m told some drivers and /or their passengers (male, obviously), pee into cans or bottles and toss them out the window.
It is this sort of deplorable behaviour that perhaps explains the excessive use of scolding signs by caravan park managers. A lot of parks have boom gates and require a $10 or $20 deposit for a key to the amenities. Upon entering said amenities, there are many and varied instructions on how to clean a toilet bowl after you have used it, and exhortations to flush twice (but not waste water, even though many of their taps need washers). One sign above a urinal said “No Smoking Grafitti” which is what you get when you use faulty ellipsis. SWKCHP particularly liked the sign that forbade men and women from sharing the same shower.
What do they expect if they are only going to give you one key? One manager wrote a mini-essay about why they lock the amenities – ‘because bludgers sneak in under cover of darkness and use the amenities and then sneak out again before sun-up without paying’.
So as usual, bad behaviour by a few tarnishes the rest and management uses bossy signs as a way of not having to hire more staff to keep an eye out for bludgers that don’t pay.
You see a lot of graffiti when you travel around this country using public amenities. Scribbling on dunny walls is a time-honoured way of leaving your thoughts, however deep or shallow, for posterity. It is also a way of declaring your public love for someone, or to leave a mobile number for anyone who wants a good time. Not all graffiti is limited to toilet walls, alas. I have lately become aware that a species of humans have been tagging and scribbling on Aboriginal rock art. Some have even had a go at mimicking said art. A few even took their own chisels, apparently.
There is a natural assumption that vandalism of this order is done by people who would not know the meaning of the word desecrate. Unhappily this is not always true. If someone scales a large rock in the remote outback and sprays “Terra Nullius” in large black letters, it is surely premeditated. This probably explains why a lot of the Aboriginal rock art we saw in South Australia is locked away behind heavy metal fences.
The ABC reported recently that vandals have permanently damaged ancient Aboriginal rock art in Western Australia’s Pilbara region. The damage at the site of some of the world’s oldest and largest Aboriginal carvings on the Burrup Peninsula has left elders devastated. Elder and senior cultural ranger Geoffrey Togo said he and others had been finding examples of people spray painting on rock art, on the face of rocks, and on some other old carvings.
“It makes me angry when they do it,” Mr Togo told the ABC.
“You don’t see me going to church and doing the same thing in the church or someone’s home.”
It’s a universal problem, unfortunately. In Washington State, the Salish tribe was assailed by the vision of someone declaring his (or her) love for ‘Miranda’. Georgia Newsday said the 43-million-year-old Tamanowas Rock northwest of Seattle has been used for millennia by the tribe for hunting, refuge and spiritual renewal rituals. So yes, the 2.5m long pink slogan, I (heart) Miranda, could in this context be deemed culturally inappropriate.
Now that you are suitably outraged, I will leave you with a bit of helpful advice about culturally appropriate practises: viz
“This is were (sic) you poo”- writ large on a dunny wall on the Nullarbor.
And this gem:

A Brisbane lawyer I know who is an ‘Australia all Over’ listener came over at a corporate function one time to say he’d heard ‘Underneath the Story Bridge’ on Macca again. “So tell me,” he said, “Are you responsible for “Not Bloody Golf Again”? (A popular tune performed by Frankie Davidson and the late Dawn Lake). He seemed agreeably pleased to hear I didn’t write the song, probably because the corporate world is serious about its golf and doesn’t like anybody dissing (Gen Y speak for disrespecting), the sport.
I was musing about the people I know who do enjoy a good round of golf when we started crossing the Nullarbor this week. The Eyre Highway Operators Association has come up with up with a magnificent tourism gimmick – the world’s longest golf course. The Nullarbor Links is an 18-hole, Par 72 course spread over 1,365 kilometres. You tee off at Kalgoorlie in WA, then throw the clubs in the car and drive a good few hundred kilometres to the next hole at Norseman. And so on across the Eyre Highway, playing one hole in each participating town or roadhouse all the way to Ceduna in South Australia. And good luck to them.
We started our run back east on Sunday, travelling from Lake Douglas Recreation Park, a quiet free camp some 12kms to the west of Kalgoorlie. We did a whistle stop tour of Kalgoorlie (the museum, the Super Pit (500m deep open cut gold mine), the Arboretum and the 24/7 IGA) and then drove to and through Norseman to Fraser Range Station. We’d become so used to good weather on this trip we failed to notice the huge low system developing across the south west. Many places had rain – some even had 40mm! But the rain came with strong, squally storms and wind gusts of up to 100kmh.
Fortunately, Fraser Range Station had good sheltered van sites so we more or less slept through the night.
After Fraser Range – beautiful granite country and part of south west WA’s vast hardwood eucalypt forest, we drove on to Cocklebiddy, another roadhouse outpost.
We got through the journey quickly (tail wind). It was so windy in Cocklebiddy (population 8), that we left the roof down on our pop-top caravan and went to the roadhouse for fish and chips (me) and lamb shanks(ed). Tuesday it was still windy, though not quite as extreme. We got up early and headed to Eucla, the first stop on the eastward crossing where you can easily get to the beach. The ruins of the Eucla Telegraph Station lie half buried in sand dunes about 4 kms down the hill from Eucla Pass. We drove to the end of the road and walked to the ruins, marvelling at the stoicism of the first Telegraph Station keeper, living way out on a salty windswept plain surrounded by white sand dunes. In 1877 the operator sent his first message: “The Eucla line is open. Hoorah!”
We walked on another 500 metres or so to a desolate beach on the Southern Ocean – thankful to get back to the car after navigating our way through disorienting salt pans, sand dunes and scrub.
Australians tend to refer to all of the land between Perth and Adelaide as ‘The Nullarbor’, but if you look at the NASA satellite photograph (left), the Nullarbor Plain is the pale brown semi-circle bounded by the Southern Ocean to the south and the Great Victorian Desert to the north. It’s big, though − 200,000 square kilometres of flat, arid and virtually treeless land. It encompasses part of the Woomera Prohibited Area, where the military has tested weapons over the last 60-plus years.
It’s not a Lawrence of Arabia-type desert. This one has saltbush, bluebush, Mallee and other hardy plants, not to mention birds, reptiles and other fauna. If you are interested in nature, conservation, bush walking, bird watching, palaeontology, botany, geology or Australian history, you could spend a year on the Nullarbor and still not be bored.
If you are on a drive (some guide books depict this as Australia’s ultimate road trip, akin to Route 66 in the US), then be aware, it is a gruelling trip. The road is in very good nick, but dead straight in many places, including the “90-Mile Straight” – 146.6 kms between Balladonia and Caiguna.
Ah, so many impressions: a P-plater out for a drive with Dad − a sort of white fella desert initiation, I guess. Cyclists cross the Nullarbor – the smart ones wear fluorescent safety vests and do their riding in the early hours of the day. Birds of prey don’t stray much from their hunting zone, but they are always there. We saw a wedge tail eagle that, intent on a road kill breakfast, only just escaped our front bumper bar. There was a big male emu outside Eucla picking his way through the foliage with six or even eight chicks trailing behind. We saw several Southern Right whales and calves frolicking in the Southern Ocean just off the Head of Bight, a conservation park with a boardwalk and lookouts just 12kms off the highway. From there you can also see ancient sand dunes and the epic Bunda Cliffs.
But each to their own − some are on a journey, some are just driving, and some are on a deadline, delivering goods from one state to another. We encountered many a road train, but no scary moments with these.
We saw a convoy of Model T Fords on their way to a convention in Busselton and just yesterday chatted with a woman who is driving solo from WA to Strathalbyn in South Australia for the Australian sheepdog championships (towing a caravan and carrying eight dogs in a cage on the back of the ute).
Many people use the Nullarbor Crossing as a way to raise funds for charity. We met a group of seniors riding 50cc scooters from Port Augusta to Perth to raise awareness about depression and suicide.
At the first lookout where you can see the eroded cliffs of the Great Australian Bight, we met a man in his 50s on a pilgrimage and taking Mum and Dad along for the ride. “I did it years ago in an XY Falcon with three Aussies and three Germans,” he said. Dad was walking slowly with a stick, but he got to the lookout and you could see how happy son was to relive his epic trip and share the joy with his folks.
They got back into his shiny red Falcon sedan and off they went, down the Eyre Highway towards the Nullarbor Roadhouse, watching out for wandering stock, camels, emus, wombats and kangaroos.