Catch-up

The bushfires in Australia have dominated the news for the past two weeks and as such I have left the previous blog up for a while. But we have been living and doing things in the meantime and I think everyone deserves a catch-up on what has been happening in Australia.

The 8th February was the main event of the St Kilda Festival. A major music festival held in St Kilda, the main day saw streets closed down and the whole of St Kilda was pedestrianised. The main stage was on the grassy area over the road from our Flat so we were given unadulterated access to the show, without leaving our own balcony. There were several stalls on the main road but the best place to be was in the Foxtel world. Foxtel is a supplier of pay to watch and they were advertising in force. The main gimmick they used was a Foxtel Passport. At the Foxtel main stand they handed out passports, a simple flyer, and at each stall in the world, representing the different channels available, there were stamps to collect. Collect more than 8 stamps and you were given a bright orange festival bag containing goodies. So we got ourselves a passport and started collecting. Visiting every single stand, except the children’s channel, and collected our stamps. It’s amazing at the variety of things you can get through Foxtel, the cartoon network, BBC news, Travel, Discovery, actually anyone who has seen sky will know what there is. After collecting as many stamps, including some duplicates, we went to collect our Goodie bag. Yeay!! An assortment of give-aways all advertising Foxtel but I didn’t care about the blatant advertising, after all these were free and I had beaten the old axiom and actually got something for nothing. Sound! I had a fridge magnet advertising the movie channel, key-ring advertising music channels and a football advertising the sports channel. Moira was similarly endowed, even receiving a stuffed toy, perhaps our new mascot.

Now somebody in the Foxtel marketing department didn’t really think things through properly. You see the football I received was a miniature football, made of leather type material, and was in a state of deflation. Not a problem lets blow it up you think, as did I. Unfortunately the football in question has a small inflation hole, just like the real thing, and I am devoid of an inflation device. I have a bicycle pump but alas no adaptor to get the air from outside the football into the inside of the football. So my football sits on a shelf, not much fun for the beach, throwing a fully inflated football to each other in the sea is a fun game, throwing a small hard piece of leather at each other is just dangerous. But never mind that as Moira has a stuffed toy to play with. Well lets put it this way. In England there was an advertising campaign, a very successful one too, for the Corsa. In the advert soft toys, each styled to look like parts of the car, would race around driving Corsa’s and shouting C’mon! We all know the advert. Now imaging that the advertising company who produced this advert had called out to the industry for some designs for cuddly toys and they got 20 responses from 20 design houses which were rated in order of most stylish. Now the company who’s design were bottom of this list probably went through 10 or so design changes before they were satisfied with something they would submit. So imagine how bad their first design really was! Then double it or even triple it. That’s what was sitting in the bottom of Moira’s bag, waiting to scare the living daylights out of the poor people who received it. I am sure it would give children nightmares! My best description would be a toy kidney, with eyes and half a smile.

The rest of St Kilda was infested with bad buskers and stalls selling foodstuffs, this being Australia there was a veritable feast of meat options. Indeed if anyone has read Terry Pritchett’s discworld novels then it seemed as though the place had been invaded by an army of “Cut-My-Own-Throat Dibblers” selling an assortment of “Snags”, Pies and various foods on sticks. I tried a kebab (cold) and Moira tried a Noodle dish (not soupy enough). We retired to the safety of our balcony with beers and watched the amusement from there. We still managed to have a good time and I have to say we are still enjoying the delights of the free helium balloons they were giving away. Come on, everybody has done the “I’ll be back” with the squeaky voice.

Next time - the fishing trip. Booze, boat, sea, rods, fish and a generous dose of ginger!

Devastation

The weekend was hot and windy. Not the best weather for a weekend of bushfires. Temperatures soared to the mid forties and the wind was blowing in from the centre of the country. I had heard of the change, a local weather phenomenon, where the day suddenly changes from hot to cool in seconds but I really did not understand how it felt until Saturday. Moira and myself had been on the “Colonial Tram restaurant”, which is a series of 1946 W series Trams (one for the Tram spotters there) that have had a galley popped in and run around the city as a travelling restaurant. It is possibly the most “touristy” thing I have done since arriving. After the meal we popped into the Crown Casino and played some cards and roulette. We spent two hours in the casino and came out without losing any money, but not having broken the Casino bank unfortunately. As we left the casino the wind was blowing a fierce heat through the city, we almost turned round and went back inside but persevered and continued towards the tram stop. In the space of two or three steps the wind changed direction and the heat suddenly vanished, replaced by a cooling breeze. Within seconds we were in a tolerable temperature and the whole city seemed to release a sigh of relief. It was only when we returned back to our home that we heard of the fires that had started around Melbourne, it was only on Sunday that we began to hear of the devastating news of loss of life and homes that these fires had wrought. During the course of Sunday we listened to reports of the damage that had been done and watched as the figures of victims slowly rose.

It’s hard to describe how awful the fires in Australia have been. Over the past four days we have borne witness to hundreds of people having their lives ruined by what now appears to be a vicious and random act of arson. People at work tell of friends and family they know who have had to flee their homes or even worse. The magnitude of the disaster will probably takes weeks to be fully appreciated. All around me people are helping in the best way they can. We have been asked to donate household products to the salvation army to assist people with re-building their lives. One of the major supermarkets will be donating their profits from Friday to the disaster fund. Many Australian companies are offering to match contributions made by their staff to the fund. We have been assaulted by pictures of burnt bodies and family homes gutted by the fires, there have been many stories of people losing their family in seconds and the tragedy of it all begins to sink in. Fires are still burning around Melbourne and the brave volunteer firemen of the CFA are doing their best to control these fires. As if this wasn't enough there are now looters entering the devastated communities, stealing what they can find from the remnants of the houses destroyed. Sometimes you wonder just how low human beings will stoop to make a quick dollar. In the midst of all the devastation stories are being told of heroic actions during the fires. Like the woman who jumped from the safety harness of a rescue helicopter to save her dog from the fires. Or the eight families saved when fire-fighters herded them into a river and placed them inside cars they had driven into the water, covering them with fire blankets and hosing them down as the fire raged around them. There are too many stories to recount but they show the compassion and courage of the Australian public when faced with adversity. Sadly the loss doesn't just extend to humans, despite the amount of heart warming stories and images of firemen helping wildlife, even sharing water with a Koala, the animal sanctuaries are receiving many less animals than they were expecting, fearing that many have perished in the intense heat.

Luckily we were fortunate, living well inside Melbourne we saw little other than what was shown on the TV. Not such a sunny day in Paradise.

Cold

I am very impressed with all the pictures accross the web of Britian coming to a standstill. How come every time a single drop of snow falls there is a national failure of all the transport infrastructure. England hit by worst snowfalls in 18 Years!! That is quite something and I have to admit I am a little jealous of all the snow but surely by now somebody has put Snow and February together?!!

We on the otherhand find ourselves in the opposite extreme. This week has been the hottest in Melbourne for 100 Years with consecutive temperatures in the low 40's. Anyone watching the tennis would have noticed the players were suffering. Ironically enough our Transport system failed completely as well. Trains reported air-conditioning faults and suddenly there was a mass of cancellations. Does nothing work anywhere. We had a deluge of visitors to watch the tennis finals and I have to wonder if everyone would have called round had we not got air-con and a huge telly.

Personally I suspect that when a train driver wakes up and see's snow outside his window he goes back to bed. If he see's hot sunshine he goes to the beach! Thats the only way I can explain it.

St Kilda festival starts this week. We have a temporary nightclub outside the front of the house and at the weekend they are going to close St Kilda's roads and have a massive party! Sounds fun with street entertainment and music and drunken people all over the place. And on the same weekend we are going to have a meal on the Tram Restaurant. I just cannot wait! Although they are predicting a high of 44 on Saturday so I hope the tram driver is better than the train drivers.

Should have some more pictures soon, has to be a quickie today as I am at work, we failed to get ourselves to a Internet Cafe at the weekend.