Tag Archives: Australia

Put a Light in Every Country Window

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Winter temps have kicked in, but at least Monday’s drizzle and mist didn’t become ice. Now we have dry subfreezing conditions. Tolerable.

Meandering around online recently — often the best way to find anything interesting — I came across “Put a Light in Every Country Window.” A song about rural electrification in Australia. Can’t say I’ve ever heard one of those before.

Put a light in every country window,
High-speed pumps where now the windmills stand.
Get in and lay the cable so that one day we’ll be able
To have electricity all over this wide land.

Catchy tune. Wasn’t long before I found the liner notes of Folk Songs & Ballads of Australia, recorded in 1964 by Gary Shearston, a star of the Australian folk revival (another thing I didn’t know about).

“A song from the pen of Don Henderson, one of Australia’s best and most prolific contemporary songwriters, who has travelled and written throughout the Eastern States,” the notes say. “This song was written three years ago after a journey through the area of the giant Snowy Hydro-Electric Scheme.”

Of course it isn’t the only song about rural electrification. Surely Woody Gutherie’s “Roll on Columbia” counts as one, and maybe “Grand Coulee Dam” does indirectly. Considering how many songs Gutherie wrote, there are probably others too.

There’s also this recent oddity about Rural Electric Cooperatives, to the tune of “The Battle of New Orleans.” It’s interesting, but a little hard to listen to.

Space Ghost, Osaka Winter & Anticipating Australia

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Not long ago, I dug up a letter I wrote in Japan, dated December 8, 1991. At the time I was preparing to travel to summertime Australia. I’m impressed by the references to obsolete things: VHS, travelers cheques, international land-line calls that need to be scheduled.

The other day, in an unusually listless moment, I decided to watch the Space Ghost tape you sent. As I mentioned, I only had the vaguest memories of that cartoon, and none at all of Dino Boy. There’s nothing especially remarkable about either… SG seems like it was a pretty minor effort, slapped together without regard to originality, a sense of humor, or more than the rudiments of the art of animation. In short, dreck. Ditto for DB.

Today I was off, and some of the time I was at home, cleaning up and re-arranging the furniture a little. I went to the grocery store early in the morning and rode my bicycle around the park late in the afternoon. The day was cool and cloudy. Almost pleasant. This time of the year in Chicago would already be down-coat weather most days, but Osaka makes up for the fierceness of its summers during its mild winters.

I can’t remember that I’ve told you about the upcoming trip. The ticket and visa are squared away, and the itinerary is as complete as I care to make it. I bought some Australian dollars the other day. Some Australian travelers cheques, actually.

I’ll call you from Australia on Saturday, Dec. 28 your time. It may be a little earlier or later than usual, owing to differences in time zones, and my location on that day. I might be on the west coast by then (Perth), or maybe not. This time of the year, the east coast (Sydney) is 17 hours ahead of U.S. Central. They have daylight savings too. I believe Western Australia doesn’t have DST, so that would put Perth only 14 hours ahead of Central. Regardless of my place, I will try to time the call to fall between 8 to 10 your time. It is possible that I will be in transit at that time, in which case I will call 24 hours later.

I’ll also try to get a letter to you in the mail, perhaps after Christmas. And a few postcards from various places. If you have anything to mail to me, remember that Dec. 20 is the last day I’ll pick it up in Osaka for three weeks.

I was pretty hard on Space Ghost. That was before his revival in Space Ghost Coast to Coast, which I’ve only heard about, never seen, but which seemed to give him a new fan base. At least, that’s what I assumed when I saw a reveler decked out as Space Ghost at the Greenwich Village Halloween Parade in 2006.

I don’t care. It was still a substandard cartoon, product of the ’60s Hanna-Barbera cartoon mill.

Cow Ride at the Mall

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Australia Day has come and gone. Oz is reportedly suffering a viciously hot summer this year. Adelaide, a pleasant place in my recollection, seems to be getting hit especially hard.

Meanwhile, here in North America, or at least my part of it, after being a slacker for most of December and part of January, winter is hitting hard. Dead ahead, according to the NWS on Sunday evening:

WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY REMAINS IN EFFECT FROM 9 PM THIS EVENING TO 6 PM CST MONDAY… Heavy snow and blowing snow tonight with freezing drizzle and blowing snow likely at times Monday. Snow rates overnight into early morning are likely to reach up to an inch per hour at times. This will result in very low visibilities and rapid snow accumulations into the early morning commute. Total snow accumulations of 3 to 7 inches and ice accumulations of a light glaze expected.

This after subzero temps on Friday, and ahead of temps as low as minus 20 by Tuesday (Fahrenheit, the only scale that’s made for humans). Still, on Saturday things had warmed up to low double-digits, so we were out for a while. The three of us and a friend of Ann’s, on the occasion, not quite precisely, of Ann’s birthday. Nice to get out of the house.

We ate at Gabuttø Burger at Ann’s request. Since I discovered the place at the Mitsuwa food court, the Japanese burgerie has moved into a small strip center on a busy street in Rolling Meadows and seems to be doing well there. We visit a few times a year.

Then to a northwest suburban mall. Not the biggest one, the 2.1 million-square-foot Woodfield, but a smaller one. The one we visited isn’t a dying mall, but it has lost an anchor or two, along with some of its inline stores.

Still, the mall is doing what it can. It now sports a number of places to take children and entertain them, for instance. Not playplaces in the middle of the mall, but small entertainment venues that used to be more conventional retail.

Including a place where you can rent animal-ride scooters for a few minutes. She’s not in the main demographic, but according to Ann, it was a birthday thing to do, so she and her friend spent 10 minutes tooling around the mall.

She picked a cow. Looked like she had a jolly time of it.

Circular Quay to Manly, 1992

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Australia Day has come and gone again — it was Friday — so what better time to post pictures of early ’90s Sydney Harbour? One of the things I did in January 1992 in Sydney was take the ferry from Circular Quay to Manly, which offered some fine views of the harbor.

Toward the center-left of the image is the 1,000-or-so-foot Sydney Tower, the narrow tower with the observation bulb on top, and one of the places I visited when I first got to town. A fine view.

The Opera House. I saw that during my first-day walkabout, as you’d expect. It was closed, so I didn’t see the inside. But it’s an impressively odd structure from the outside.

The Sydney Harbour Bridge. At one point during my visit I walked across it. The bridge is the same league as the Golden Gate Bridge or Brooklyn Bridge or the Seto Ohashi.

Finally, just a picture of people doing what I was doing, watching the harbor go by.

It was a windy summer day out there on the water.

50 Oz Cents

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I have a few more colorful banknotes from the third world, but today’s Australia Day. I don’t have any notes from that country — being real money, I exchanged them when I got back — but I do have coins. Such as a dodecagonal 50-cent piece dated 1984, one of the 26.3 million minted that year.

It features a fairly ordinary obverse.Australian 50 cents 1984The Royal Australian Mint says: “Since her coronation in 1953, five effigies of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II have appeared on the obverse of Australian coins. Previous effigies were designed by Mary Gillick (1953), Arnold Machin (1966), and Raphael Maklouf (1985). Since 1998, Australian coins have used the current effigy by Ian Rank-Broadley.” So I’ve got the last year of Arnold Machin.

The 12-sided coin replaced a round 50-center in 1969, apparently to help avoid confusion with the round 20-cent piece. The reverse sports the Oz coat-of-arms by Stuart Devlin.
Australian 50 cents 1984I like the distinctive kangaroo and emu. Squeezed on the shield are the symbols of the six Australian states, united as a nation.

I also enjoyed reading that for a while, Stuart Devlin, who was Australian-born but is a resident of the UK, was Prime Warden of the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths.

Sorry, Ocker, the Fokker’s Chocker

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Australia Day has rolled around again, and what better way to take note than with a little Oz slang?

In November 2000, my brother Jay forwarded me the word of the day from Wordsmith: ocker.

ocker (OK-uhr), noun
1. An uncultured Australian male.
2. An uncouth, offensive male chauvinist.
adjective
3. Of or pertaining to such a person.
4. Typically Australian.
[After Ocker, a character in an Australian television series.]

“While Australian sports teams and individuals continue to soak up success everywhere you look, the average ocker is getting lazier and putting on the beef.” Daniel Gilhooly, Aussies with gold in laziness, Daily News, Sep 11, 2000.

Also in the email: the following comment from A Word A Day Mail Issue 20 (feedback on recent word of the day columns). Apocryphal or not, I like it:

From: Monica Clements
Subject: ocker

Seeing the word ocker reminds me of a story told by a friend. It took place during the Australian air traffic controllers’ strike of the 1980s, when interstate travellers were desperate for any form of airborne transport and all the light planes were full.

My friend’s father was one of the people who tried to hitch a ride on a light plane. He rushed up to the steward — about to close the plane doors — and asked breathlessly whether there was any room, only to be answered with the immortal line: “Sorry, ocker, the Fokker’s chocker.”

A Few Beverly Houses

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This was one of my favorites on the Beverly walking tour on the Southwest Side of Chicago, 10340 S. Longwood Dr., also known as the Hilland A. Parker House.
Beverly, ChicagoNote the enormous yard, sloping upward, which we were told continued quite a ways toward the back. The area was wide open when the house was built in 1894, so there was no reason to build on small lots. An architect named Harry Hale Waterman did the design. He did a fair number of houses in the neighborhood, but this one was for himself.

The AIA Guide to Chicago says: “Site and style combine here for high drama. The base of the huge rusticate brownstone blocks rises on the hill to form huge arches on the big semicircular porch. The tall roof, pierced with steeply pitched gabled dormers, exaggerates the height.”

Not far away is this charmer by Walter Burley Griffith, the Harry N. Tolles House, 10561 S. Longwood, which was built in 1911, with some later additions, such as the glass bricks.
Beverly HousesGood old Walter Burley. I learned about him when I visited his signal creation, the city of Canberra, during the warm Christmas season in ’91.

Before the Australians tapped him to build their capital, he “designed more than 130 designs in his Chicago office for buildings, urban plans and landscapes, half of which were built in Illinois, Iowa, Michigan and Wisconsin,” PBS says, in the years before WWI.

At 10616 S. Longwood: the house that’s now home to the Ridge Historical Society, dating from 1922 and designed by John Hetherington. Not this fellow, though.
Beverly, ChicagoThe organization calls it the Driscoll House on a sign in the front; the Graver-Discoll on a plaque around back; AIA calls it the Herbert S. Graver House. Hope no one has come to fisticuffs over the nomenclature. Graver, it seems, commissioned it, while Driscoll was the last owner before the historical society. More about it here.

The oldest house on the tour was the Chambers House, 10330 S. Seeley, dating from 1874 and designed by that prolific architect of previous eras, Unknown (who also did the Irish castle mentioned yesterday).

Beverly, ChicagoAIA says: “The remarkably well-preserved house [indeed] is a classic suburban villa, complete with ‘French’ tower.” Maybe a French tower is a vantage from which to taunt passing Britons clapping coconut shells.

Oz Day ’15

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Early Sunday morning more snow fell here in northern Illinois. About as much as in the pictures of subtropical Texas with snow posted yesterday — which is to say, not much for this part of the country. Not even enough to cover the grass completely. On the whole, it hasn’t been so snowy this winter, unlike last. But there’s still time for that.

Snow doesn’t deter the dog from checking for the sight, sound, and smell of intruders on her domain.

Payton Jan 25 2015Australia Day’s rolled around again. We could use a bit of that Southern Hemisphere summer about now, but not the aridity. Years ago, I had access to National Lampoon’s Tenth Anniversary Anthology, 1970-1980, which included japery by the young PJ O’Rourke, originally published in the magazine’s May 1976 issue: “Foreigners Around the World,” subhead, “A Brief Survey of the Various Foreign Types, Their Chief Characteristics, Customs, and Manners.”

More than 30 years later, I remember parts of it. So I found it online. The entire thing is linked here. It isn’t for the easily offended. From the section on Australia:

AUSTRALIANS: Violently loud alcoholic roughnecks whose idea of fun is to throw up on your car. The national sport is breaking furniture and the average daily consumption of beer in Sydney is ten and three quarters Imperial gallons for children under the age of nine. “Making a Shambles” is required study in the primary schools and all Australians are bilingual, speaking both English and Sheep…

Proper Forms of Address: Steady there, Cool off, For Christ’s sake, not in the sink, Stay back, I’ve got a gun!

My Online Encounter With Yabba

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I woke up this morning wondering, is there really a statue of a baseball player in London? I dreamed about it. I made notes in my dream, so that I could write about it. I didn’t think it the least bit odd. Such are dreams.

As far as I can tell, there are no such statues, at least not in a public setting. I didn’t spend a lot of time looking into it, though. But I did come across the Sporting Statues Project, which seems to list sport-themed statues all over the world. I looked at a couple of its maps out of idle curiosity, including the World Cricket Statue Location Map. At a glance, you can see where people care about cricket: the UK, the Indian subcontinent, Australia and the Caribbean.

Look a little further and you can examine curious works like “Yabba.” The web site says: “Sydney Cricket Ground. ‘Yabba’ (Stephen Gascoigne). A tribute by the Sydney Cricket Ground Trust to every spectator who has ever come to these Grounds. Sculptor: Cathy Weiszmann. Benefactor: Basil Sellers.”

“Yabba” was one Stephen Harold Gascoigne, “remembered as a heckler at Sydney Cricket Ground cricket and rugby league games in the early part of the 20th century. Yabba was known for his knowledgeable witticisms shouted loudly from ‘The Hill’, a grassy general admissions area of the SCG.” – Wiki

Good useless fact for the day. You never know where your dreams will lead you.

Tidbinbilla

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Christmas Eve 1991

A summer’s day. I bought sun block today. Along with Pete, his brother, and his brother’s enormously pregnant wife, we went to the Tidbinbilla Deep Space Tracking Station southwest of Canberra to take a look at the big dishes and the small museum, which emphasizes Australian, Japanese and European efforts to explore space.

Had a “Jupiter Dog” at the Moon Rock Café. You’d think there would be a Great Red Spot on it somehow, but it mainly featured onions and diced tomatoes (maybe one of those tomatoes counts as the spot). Returned to town the way we had come, winding through hilly bush and flatter farmland. Sometimes emu and kangaroos bounded across the road ahead of us.

Postscript 2012: The formal name of the place is the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex, and it still functions as one of three stations operated by NASA to keep track of far, far away spacecraft, with the other two in California and Spain. “This strategic placement permits constant observation of spacecraft as the Earth rotates, and helps make the Deep Space Network the largest and most sensitive scientific telecommunications system in the world,” notes NASA.