behind every successful man

Over at Twuntr, Scott Clarke  aka @Winetosser posits beautifully:

Peta: How did you handle the press?
Tony: I ran away.
Peta: You what?
Tony: I ran away and they chased me. It was cool. I won!

Peta: Did you say anything to them?
Tony: Nuh
Peta: Anything?
Tony: I might have told them
 to fuck off but they were chasing me. 





In this image, his Chief Of Staff Ms Peta*Credlin, is watching her PM giving a speech during the previous election campaign.

This is my photo. The stiletto heeled shoe came out of the ComCar first and alone, then the foot went into it. I liked her right from that moment.
Of course she is a Western District girl. They had driven that day from a Ferntree Gully speech to a 1pm Ballarat Party faithful gathering by invite.
See how tall she is - TA has to look up to her. Between these two photos they had a heads-together exchange, and before, he looked over at me to see if I was snapping them so I didn't.

Then The Candidate strides up a bluestone lane to a crowd waiting outside The Mining Exchange where local LIB members are waiting at an invitation-only occasion. HE immediately embraced the cardigan women waving placards protesting about puppy farms. It was genius for the next day front page Ballarat Courier, with him holding them and them holding small fluffy doglets.  Then he disappeared into the venue. The choice of ignoring several other organised banner wavers for the doggy sweeties was clearly arranged by cellphone well before he even turned that historic corner.
I would love to be that Malcolm Tucker puppeteer. I wonder if Ms Peta swears at Mr Rabbit?
I'd love to do that too.
Her husband is Bri Loughnane the LIB Party Director. It can't be easy. Do follow that link to a LIB refugee joke website he authorised and which will no doubt be taken down any minute.
UPDATE 25/10: it has it was, it's gone. the cartoon refugee boats LIB joke has gone. weasels. Now the schoolboy snipers pretend to be leaders they remove evidence of their nasty side.

black spot Friday

The internet is for nothing if it's not for cats, and this is dear crabby Kitty sleeping as she does so well and often. Her black-spot paw seems cute to me. When I got her, aged about 6 weeks, from the hot grubby but well-intentioned hands of some children in my street who had failed to convince their mother that she needed this new pet found in a paddock*, I took her to work everyday in a box so I could dropper-feed her. Lucky to have such a nice work environment, I now find other workplaces do cat stuff too. Click this link for the Kitten Races Office. * Yes I did find and catch the wild mother cat and when I got them together they spat at each other. wishing you all a safe, holy and chocolatey Easter.

not keen Keane

I get the bus. 
I got a MYKI on the first day it was sold in Ballarat in the winter of 2009. On arriving home I telephoned to register it and spoke with ‘Luke’. He gave me various security code numbers which I noted, but registering online-use proved too difficult for him to achieve and we both gave up. I should have realised how important this was.
I topped it’s balance up by $20 only days ago and used it normally on Tuesday 22nd January.
On Thursday 24th it was stone dead unusable. I bought a Daily ticket to travel.
On arriving home I went online to deal with my various MYKI numbers and ‘register’. 
No deal because ‘your MYKI has expired’.
I start from first-base to re-register and purchase online. DOB, address and phone are required in order to catch a bus. After giving all that, I got – ‘we already have that name’, ‘that email’ etc.

It would seem that I was supposed to organise my online use, and a new card, with transfer of my $20 balance, sometime before Wednesday 23rd January. 
 Where was that written? 
 How many thousands of similar balances are now in limbo?
‘Keane Australia Micropayment Consortium Pty Ltd (Kamco) is the Melbourne-based company

‘Kamco is wholly owned by Keane International Incorporated, a privately owned IT services company

From their ‘Overview’ page:
‘Employing more than 100 people in Melbourne, Australia, Kamco also boasts a dedicated team of software developers and testers in Hyderabad, India 
From their FAQ page: ‘Kamco is headquartered in Melbourne, Australia. It also uses a dedicated development and testing team operating out of Hyderabad, India.’

‘Keane has been in operation since 1965, employing more than 10,000 people across 11 countries.
Kamco was formed in 2005 to bid for the New Ticketing Solution.

‘Kamco is a single purpose entity, established to build and operate the myki ticketing system on behalf of the State Government of Victoria.

In July 2005 Kamco was awarded the contract to build, operate and maintain the NTS (myki) system. Kamco is contracted to run the myki system for 10 years following implementation. Key among those subcontractors has been Giesecke-Devrient, which provides the cards and ACS Solutions Switzerland, which provides the software, maintenance, and: 1,000 ticket vending machines, 12,200 fare payment machines, 2,500 bus driver consoles, 1,000 tram driver consoles, 1,500 hand held devices for Transit Inspectors, 220 train station gates, 220 ticket office terminals, and 900 retail terminals'.  (for those 94,000 square miles of State - Ed.)

Keane Australia Micropayment Consortium Pty Ltd (Kamco) is at Level 14, 628 Bourke Street, Melbourne.
 I would like Level 14 at 628 Bourke to go down in history as the site of 

the Second Eureka Stockade.

a pink moth

This gorgeous MOTH was on the window frame yesterday, and it cooperated with my photography like a supermodel. It was easy to Google "pink moth" and discover at Andy's Nature Blog" that it's racing name is Oenochroma vinaria and that 'This abundant and colourful moth is widespread in Australia. Its distinctive yellow-lined pattern and fuchsia-pink colouring make it one of the easiest Australian moths to identify. The larvae feed on various plants in the Proteaceae family.' Andys photo of it is on a window frame as well. He also has other gorgeous moths - a peppermint green one with pink trim is a stunner.  I'll let you know if one of them turns up here.

blinking inking

If this lot had seen my camera they might have punched me as I waited and waited for a photo-op break in the Friday afternoon traffic roaring between us on the busiest street in Ballarat (where every single one of the ten bus routes passes) so please be stunned by this charmer, having a smoko, mid-ink.

My Seniors Card-holding friend Joan has a peacock feather inked on her foot and it is lovely. A tattoo tradition reserved only for princesses in Polynesia - vertical rows of tiny birds inked down their legs. How cool is that?

In Ballarat the Bogan Princesses only need the cash, and because the interior of this parlour in the image above is visible from my bus when it passes after dark I have seen their sign inside which says 'Minimum $150'. I wonder what you get for that? a happy face? This girls entire abdomen must be costing more than the NewStart allowance that's for sure.

Popeye and Bluto must have been my first exposure to skin ink, other sailors of course, drunk on shore in Marseilles and why not? Even Royalty in the navy has tatts - although I would bet the ranch that HRH Chuck is the one exception to that.

Japan has their Yakuza crim tatts and a museum of tattoos, with actual human skins if you please.

My first awareness of real world tatts would have been reading that girls in reform-schools like the infamous Winlaton, inked themselves with charming legends like I love J O'K, so when I read that dear Cher did it in the 1970's I thought that she was very hip to do a tough-girl thing without being a Tough Girl.

The headmistress at my school always threatened us with Winlaton if we wagged school, and thanks to the internet I now know that girls sent there for truancy were actually then denied any education. KAFKA LIVES!

And here is Daughter O'Dyne and the tatt she got herself for her 21st -

love the liberry

Love The Liberry is a journal blog by librarians, on all the batty customers who come to their counter. There are some gems in there that make me think they should get a pay raise for absence of any homicides. Today there was no homicide after I entered my library

I had been there a week ago, looking for a particular biography, and failed to find it, despite knowing my Dewey very well.

Today I tried again so intensely that I actually asked the librarian who replied "In the Business section because it's a biography of a business-woman". Right ....

and this is the exit view across Sturt St to the Memorial Bandstand dedicated to the band on The Titanic. The weathervane has a Titanic shape silhouette. There was probably a librarian on the ship as well, but no memorial for her.
Ballarat - you're welcome to it.

today in the 'Rat

Today I went to

Ballarat Fine Art Gallery

and saw an exhibit of works

by Michael Shannon.

Any of them would be a

pleasure to view daily.

I also had to see the re-installed and

revered Eureka Flag after the restoration work.

The room it is in is very dark and flash is not permitted,

so I am surprised at the image really.

Seeing this flag is my version of

hallowed ground.

"The design of the flag was taken by Captain Henry Ross, one of Eureka's miners and a Canadian expatriate, to three women, Anastasia Withers, Anne Duke and Anastasia Hayes, to sew up in time for a large rally at Bakery Hill, at 2.00 pm on 29 November 1854. ".

Can you imagine the life of a woman on the diggings? All mud, dust, and tired drunken men. A bit like waiting for a popstar boyfriend to strike it rich with a hit record.

As I came out of the gallery a bike club

was assembled to resume

their ride to Warrnambool.

If you click to embiggen, you will see

a Ned Kelly doll lashed to one bike and he

has a Smurf in his pocket. I had not

been aware that Ned's infamous suit of iron

even had a pocket, but I did enjoy

the outlaw confluence of bikers,

Ned, and

The Treacherous Event Of 1854.

From the bus stop on Sturt Street,

this alley next to the old post office has

a view of the Art School built behind the gallery recently ...

... and this is the view I had

while waiting to go

11 kilometres out to

the gum trees on the edge of town

where, in spite of the CFA advising

that the area is

not defendable should there be a bushfire,

it is very pleasant to be.

Update:

An attempt to enlarge Ned & his pocket Smurf.

The flag by someone allowed to assert themselves.

walking the doglet

Walking the dog at 7AM on The Steve Moneghetti Track, a newish name for the path around Lake Wendouree. It is stinking hot at 36C / 102F and I just loathe people who don't think about dogpaws on HOT HOT footpaths like the bricked ones in Rye 3941 which are hell for dogs.

Not a joke Joyce

Under all this crap is a drophead Riley some car restorer would kill for. This disgusting collection belongs to avid Xtian Fundies who are too busy accepting the lord JC into their hearts to cleanup their bloody yard. I should never have climbed the compost heap to look over the top of the fence. No complaints will be made, as disturbing this lot will only cause mass migration of all the rodents and reptiles so comfortably housed within.
This is a temporary post just for commentors at Hawt Andrews Highrise, where Sedgwicke The Younger referenced my new neighbours (well actually I am their new neighbour and we are not gonna be good friends). . The origin of the saying "It's a joke Joyce" is the legendary In Melbourne Tonight of the 1960's where a regular comedy skit The Wilsons had Graham 'King' Kennedy playing George and Tivoli veteran Val Jellay playing wife Joyce bickering at the kitchen table, with Joyce never getting the meaning of sarcastic humour. Another George Wilson was the actual manager of GTV9 at the time and his teenage son George got studio tickets for all his Brighton pals when The Rolling Stones recorded there in 1965. Those were the days.
His 21st was at The Royal Oak on Bridge Road, where all the GTV9 staff drank, and it later became The Tiger Room where Radio Birdman played their first Melbourne gig and The Boys Next Door played their first pub gig. i was there for that too ...

better stop, but I could go on and on and on.

just Ducky

At the end of my street there is a swamp the council calls 'a lake' and these 12 baby ducks were bobbing around on it today.

billabong birdie

Eastern Rosellas in this burkes backyard.Parent birds look horrified to have bred a Thorpedo child.Scientific name Platycercus-eximius may have confused bird into swimming like a platypus.I enjoyed it all without even leaving my chair inside. It's freezing in Ballarat right now, and bloody Summer Time starts tomorrow getting up an hour earlier than it 'feels like' - up with the birds as they say.

swanning about on the lake

Cob: "hey Beryl! - don't take the kids near the bloody traffic ... "

Cob: "Jeepers darling, it's dangerous on land."


Pen: "Sheesh."

This blogger has come in from the goat paddocks out west, and now has swans at the end of the street. SPRING.

lucky me

Today included passing Lake Wendouree in Ballarat and of course I had to say hello to these swan babies gliding around in the winter sun. Swans are monogamous, vegetarian, and very good parents. What's not to love?

(images copyright Annie O'Dyne)

leafing through my past

Image copyright Ann O'Dyne June 2011

This is the entry area of the university of Ballarat. The only thing about the place that this ex-student can recommend is the autumn landscaping. There is only one road from the centre of Ballarat for the 10 kilometres out to the site. It has two lanes and there are seven schools on it. Buses buses buses, 40 kms limit = Total Gridlock, and that is before the city of Ballarat allowed a huge State Revenue Office to be built next to it, joining the huge premises of IBM. Total gridlock at 8am when they schedule lectures at 8:30am. One road.

That link at 'Buses' leads to a Coalition policy to fix it and I have no faith in it since their plandescribes a right turn that cannot be made by 95% of the traffic problem.
In their laughable School Of Business, they have lecturers in marketing who have never heard of Calvin Klein, or Tiffany stores, or Homer and the rest of The Simpsons. I know you don't believe me but it is true.
John Guyas said he got the job via the internet and wanted to work here because he liked the TV soap Neighbours. Never heard of The Simpsons.

When I expressed astonishment at this failing of a Marketing Lecturer, since TIME magazine voted it the TV show of the century, a third-year Business Degree student said to me "nobody watches that anymore anyhow".
I observed while there that the 'university' is merely a front for their truly profitable business - photocopying and the retailing of crisps and fizzy drinks.

Crashville Skyline

Autumn twilight, 5:30pm Ballarat CBD. The air has changed from crisp to chilly and the birds are making their Close-Of-Business calls. People buying dinner while rushing home from their work. Warm lights through windows of houses on hills while driving ... not 'home', merely 'back'.

Back to paddocks with young steers steaming as they wait in damp grass to become burgers, and to a naughty cattledog who killed a ringtail possum last night, and to two rough types building new steel stock chutes down by the old sheds.

The mood is triste, ennui settles over me. Then I remember I bought chocolate.

Perigee Moon update

UPDATE: Here is our moon, another time (6pm winter 2010) and place (Yeo Victoria 3249), taken with same lens and merely standing in the home paddock. It was red and hanging on top of the trees on the horizon of a paddock. It was much more impressive 'live', I can assure you.
For scale, the far left of this second image (same place and time) has a bonfire of tree-trunks in the paddock.

(Ann O'Dyne claims rights of/to these amateur 'snaps'.)

"When the Moon is in the Seventh House, and Jupiter aligns with Mars,

then peace will guide the planets, and love will steer the stars ... "
NASA has the tech talk -

'the Moon is still 356,577 km away. That is, it turns out, a distance of rare beauty'

... so when I captured this Perigee Moon image, 10pm Monday night in Ballarat, I didn't bother with Zoom on my camera.

I roo the day

Early morning and only 5 minutes drive from a shopping mall, 15 kangaroos grazing in the front yard of this house of which I am temporary guardian. They refuse to take direction so are not all in the photo. Two of them had a bit of a bitch-slap ...

... and then they all left.

(please click to enlarge any of these images)

The baby kanga could not jump the fence and was left behind, going up and down several times until it found a section of the wire it could squash through underneath. While fretting over all the other baby kangas abandoned beyond fences, I will be out there very soon, making that hole bigger .

nothing concrete to go on

This is my photo of partially demolished giant silos of

Joe White Maltings.
100 years an employer in the small regional city of Ballarat, the company was recently subsumed by a foreign multi-national and closed down. The land sold for housing.

The people who used to work there will be lucky to find replacement jobs, so next time you find yourself assessing another human as a benefits parasite, ask yourself first, how did they get that way.

This sort of thing is happening all over OUR country that we used to own but now just rent grace-and-favour style.

On the road

Leaving ...

I will miss the chickens.

I will miss the kangaroos.

I will not miss the creeps who logged away the kangaroo dormitory, and hope they go bankrupt for gouging the earth and spewing diesel fumes 12 hours every day.

I will miss these calves

that I meet every morning at the mailbox.

(poor things live 12 freezing weeks before slaughter so some dolt can get bowel cancer having a 'Parma & Pot $12' at the pub).

I will really miss seeing the sun the very moment the horizon meets it in the morning - it is magically different every time:

... and now I am in Ballarat the city built on gold, leaving slag heaps everywhere