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Local volunters turned out in huge numbers to help with the City of Casey’s ‘Plant Your Roots’ revegetation event.
Something in the soil Volunteers planting over 12,000 trees last weekend is just part of a huge revegetation project in Casey // Page 4 Weather Today Late shower or two Tomorrow Shower or two
Sunday Shower or two
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July warmer, drier █ William Kulich @WillPJK
CLIMATE • Between good snowfall on Mount Baw Baw and cold nights earlier in the month, it might come as a surprise to some that July was unusually warm and dry in Victoria’s south east. In fact, the whole state has had yet another relatively warm and dry month. The Bureau of Meterology’s Monthly Climate Summary for Victoria concluded “rainfall was generally below
average, especially in the east.” “A large area in the southeast recorded rainfall in the lowest 10 per cent of July totals, with rainfall averaged across the state the lowest since 2010,” the report stated. “The below average July following on from a record dry June gave Victoria its second driest start to winter on record, after 1982. “The statewide maximum temperature for Victoria was
1.14°C above average, the sixth highest on record.” The BoM data shows Morwell in the Latrobe Valley recorded two record July temperatures - its highest on the 29th (22°C, up from 21.8°C in 2009), and its lowest on the 3rd (-4.8, down from -3.5 in 1994). All areas of the state recorded “above average” and “very much above average” mean daily maximum temperatures, apart from an area in the north east
which met its average. Melbourne and most of Gippsland recorded “below average” and “very much below average” rainfall. An area near the border of Wellington and East Gippsland shires logged its “lowest on record” rainfall, while almost all of South Gippsland and a small area of Latrobe and Baw Baw shires achieved average rainfall. You can find the detailed report and graphs at bbcit.co/bomvms.
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Windows 10 comes of age █ This is a sponsored story
called QuickHeal, which has been effectively and consistently blocking ransomware. It can do this because it uses the generic definition of how ransomware works, rather than looking at specific ransomware which have already been and gone. “Nothing replaces the security of regular backups, but it has been a long time since we’ve had to deal with it from one of our existing customers. Certainly people who are using outdated or inadequate antivirus software are still at risk. “We can install QuickHeal for people in store at a great price.”
While Microsoft prepares for the release of the next feature update for Windows 10 later this year, it’s worth reflecting on what April’s “Creators Update” has brought to our computers. According to Jon Cavell of Warragul Computer Repair, the update has proven to be one of the best yet. We sat down to chat about his experience. “The Creators Update is a monumental milestone in Windows 10 and, finally, a snapshot of why we’ve gone through all this grief of Windows to get to a certain point,” Jon said. “Foremost is the security side of things. There’s a lot of stuff there which one might argue they’ve just straight out pinched from Apple MacOS. “Some people have been saying ‘well, I don’t get viruses on my Mac.’ Well you do get viruses on Macs, but malware is a lot more difficult to install on a Mac. It’s not impossible, but it’s a lot more difficult. This is because of a feature on Mac which only allows you to install programs from the Mac store. “As of the latest update, Windows now has that feature as an option. If you turn it on, you have more-or-less the same security, if not possibly better, than Mac. How do people get the update on their computer? “First you need to be on the Creators Update. That will naturally come through on each computer as long as you leave your computer connected to the internet. You can google ‘Creators Update’ and force it through if you want to. We also offer that forced upgrade as a service. So there are a number of
New security features recently introduced to Windows 10 allow users to restrict where apps come from. Image: Microsoft.
different ways, but eventually it will just land on your computer.” What else changed in the Creators Update? “There are a lot of subtle things. Mac users would feel quite at home thanks to some of the changes in just the way it works; scrolling gestures within Windows pages, not just browsers, for example. “It’s faster too - a lot faster. And there are less problems, and the reason for that is Microsoft is starting to turn off a lot of the old stuff there which was just there as an interim or emergency feature.” Stability has improved overall, hasn’t it? “The more stuff Microsoft turns off from the old system the better it gets. As always, I’d also recommend turning off Media Player and
Internet Explorer. Those programs are redundant, will slow your machine down, and destablise it. “There is a host of things you can safely do to Windows to trim it down, and we do offer a trimming service in-store which will speed Windows 10 up by around 20 per cent, even on an already fast computer. People often want to do their own backups and move files off their computer to speed it up a little, and often the best solution for that is an external hard disk. You have some good prices on those at the moment, I believe? “We’re now competing directly against online retailers for a substantial amount of products. We’re finding we’re actually undercutting what are traditionally cut-price retailers
which are household names. We’re undercutting them anywhere between 8 and 30 per cent, and we don’t have to charge for shipping in store. And we are paying GST, whereas a lot of these cut price places are registered offshore to avoid tax. “So by shopping locally not only are you supporting a local business, you’re also supporting your country and also getting great prices at the same time. We keep hearing about ransomware on the news, where hackers lock down the files on someone’s computer and demand money for the key. How has the war on ransomware been going for you and your customers? “Ransomware, for the bulk of our clients, is non-existent. Most of our clients use a product
You post updates about scams doing the rounds on your website, warragulcomputerrepair.com.au. What can people do to protect themselves? “People might recently have heard of Australians losing over $40,000 to just one type of scam this year alone. This particular scam is an epidemic at the moment, we need to talk about it as the community needs to be well aware this is not just something which happened in Melbourne or New York or England; this is something which is happening every single week in Gippsland. “To help out, I’ve just posted another useful fact sheet to our news blog. It’s available free and shows how you can avoid being scammed, along with a positive story from a local community member who acted swiftly and was lucky enough to get their money back after the scam! “Stay tuned also for an easy tutorial on how you can turn on the new Microsoft security feature we discussed earlier.” Be sure to check out Jon’s regular IT news and alerts at warragulcomputerrepair.com.au, or drop in to 6 Smith St Warragul.
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Making an impression █ William Kulich @WillPJK
Drouin-based artist Helen Timbury will be opening her first solo Melbourne show, Sky Above Me, tonight at the Queen Victoria Women’s Centre. Helen works with lino prints and is a popular feature at local arts markets. Long-time readers might remember her from our piece on the dyslexia exhibition held in Warragul in 2015. (If you want to read about that exhibition, head to bbcit.co/dys15.) We sat down with Helen to discuss her new exhibition. What’s actually going on at the art space? How did you get involved? The Queen Vic centre puts on all kinds of shows and talks for women and also has this non-commercial art space which you can apply for. It’s a lovely corridor right down the centre of the old refurbished building.
We have a lot of quite big-name artists in the area who exhibit regularly in Melbourne. Is this one of the more prominent exhibitions you have done? For me it’s a solo, and it’s also a survey. There’s a bit of a catalyst which got this show going, and it was actually the death of a friend. The friend died in January, and it made me want to make a certain piece of artwork. I started on the artwork and there was a lot of thinking but not a lot of doing. Then I heard of this place and everything sort of came together, and I said ‘okay, I’m having this show in this place.’ And it’s more or less a BAW BAW
CItIZEN
small survey of what I have been doing with my artwork for the last few years of my life, and I realised that a lot of it is about the outdoors and wide open skies and out country and landscape and I really just want to celebrate that. What was the piece you did in response to their death? There was moment I spent with some other friend. We were out camping, all in deckchairs, looking up at the sky, looking at the stars, and someone started complaining that their neck hurt. So we went and got a tarp and a blanket and we put it down on the grass and lay under a doona and stared up at the stars, and it was such an enjoyable experience. It was fun, it was quite informative, and we didn’t know at the time but this friend would not be with us two days later. That’s really sad, but this moment became quite an important moment and it was sort of like a flash point where you think ‘well, you know, you have to celebrate what you’ve got and get on with good times and not worry about what you’re always going to be doing in the future. For me it was a lurch forward into ‘hurry up and make some more work, exhibit it, and do what you love doing.’
Watch the full interview online Head to bbcit.co/ht784
You can hear more of this interview online via the link in the box on the right. Helen’s exhibition will be on display at 210 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne, until the end of the month.
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Volunteers Ray and Jack. This year’s event was Ray’s 12th National Tree Day, while it was Jack’s first time taking part.
Something in the soil █ William Kulich @WillPJK
HARKAWAY • We have talked a lot lately about deforestation and urban sprawl, so it’s great to see a huge community turnout for a tree planting! The Plant Your Roots event, held on former farmland in Harkaway, set out to increase native vegetation and “build social cohesion.” Given the enormous number of people who turned out and the number of trees put in the ground, it was a success on both counts. “It has been absolutely brilliant, we’ve had an amazing turnout by so many different members of our community,” event organiser Mandy Munro told the Casey & Cardinia Free Press after the event.
“We have planted 12,000 indigenous plants into the ground today, it’s just an amazing outcome. The residents who were here participating have managed to get them in the ground in under two hours.
“They should be so proud of themselves; this is their legacy that they’re creating.” Around 250 community members got involved in the planting.
The land chosen for planting is council-owned and was most recently used for keeping horses. Another community planting site is nearby, on an old tip site. “Eventually this site will be part of a bigger picture,” Ms Munro said. “Next year we’ll come back and I’m thinking we’ll probably do another 10,000 - 15,000 plants again. So all up, in this planting today we got 12,000 in, on Environment Day we did a corporate planting and had 3,000 plants put in, so all up 15,000 plants have gone in on this site so far and we hope to double that again next year.” The importance of planting on the site is made clearer when viewed from the top of
its driveway. On your right are 12,000 new native plants, while on your left you can see urban sprawl. Casey city planning manager Nicola Ward said in a written statement the site would be an asset for the community into the future. “Our community planting days not only achieve improved environmental outcomes, but also foster community spirit and pride and help educate the community about the importance of native vegetation within Casey,” Ms Ward said. “The participants were such a diverse mix of ages, faiths and backgrounds, coming together to create an asset for the future Casey community to enjoy.
Four hungry young volunteers after the event: Hannah, Serena, Dushenka, and Hayden.
“My hope is that the young people of Casey who were there can bring their own children and grandchildren to the park in the future and share the story about how they planted the trees. “It is wonderful that the community of today can come together to create a legacy for the community of the future. “The City of Casey thanks all the individuals, families and community groups who volunteered their time on the day to help Council achieve a significant environmental goal and create Casey’s next bushland forest.” For more news like this, subscrive to our email updates: bbcit.co/ccfpe.
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Snow Train to return on Sunday! Did you miss Steamrail Victoria’s Snow Train on its pass through Melbourne’s south east last weekend? No worries - it will be back on Sunday! The twice-annual service takes people on a journey to winery tours, and connections to Mount Baw Baw and Walhalla. Steamrail is expected to publish the times the service is likely to pass through key stations on its Facebook page; just search “Steamrail Victoria” on the day. While you’re on Facebook, remember to give the Casey & Cardinia Free Press a like! We’d love to see your photos of the train posted there - the one on the right was our editor’s snap from last weekend’s journey.
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Downtime
‘Who the hell makes sketch comedy anymore?’
Michael Veitch (right) and Simon Oats (left) in character. Image: supplied.
█ William Kulich @WillPJK
The digital media revolution has brought us a lot of great new entertainment, but increasingly it isn’t on tele. An abundance of digital channels has created the illusion of choice while spreading advertising revenue thinner between shows. On top of that, what people are interested in and how they watch it has changed so much that many young people don’t even own a television. So where does that leave those entertainers who made their name in formats which are difficult to fund today? In the case of Australian comedian and author Michael Veitch, known for his roles in The D-Generation, Fast Forward, and Full Frontal, you end up parodying an even older, deader format: radio plays. We had a chat with Michael about the upcoming play, Mystery In The Air, a creation of his and co-star Simon Oats. We also asked him what he thinks of the state of comedy in Australia today.
What exactly is Mystery In The Air? This show started just by myself and my partner in crime, Simon Oats, mucking and talking about the days of radio drama and how much fun it would have been. I have worked in radio, and radio drama is largely a thing of the past. So what we decided to do is just start looking at a couple of old, out-of-copyright radio scripts. And they were really funny, often really bad funny, and we decided to just perform two of them in a show for our local restaurant. It went so well we decided we should actually try to make something of this, and not just getting payers up to hear us do radio plays. It’s a completely original show, even though it utilises two original, although highly adapted, radio scripts from the 1930s and 1940s. It’s set just after the war
where the hit show of the week is called Mystery in the Air. It’s a radio play put together by an old stalwart of radio played by myself, Clifton, and it has been going really well. But there’s a new kid on the block who’s a young gun and a very good actor. The play is about the changing of the guard. Clifton, my character, is a kindof-delightful but ploddy, old-fashioned, very professional radio actor and writer. Simon’s character, Tony, is the younger, brash star who’s in it for the money and fame and girls. The two have this incredible clash during a show, [but they still] have to put the show to air. The play itself is a wonderful Peter Lorre, spooky, waxworks genre horror, and it’s in the ad breaks where what’s going on in their lives is revealed. Clifton actually has this fabulous idea for a new radio format called talkback, which he’s trying to sell to his station. Then it’s revealed (spoiler alert) they’ve given the new show to Tony, so at the end of the first act poor old Clifton’s life, personally and professionally, is virtually in tatters. A week later there’s a whole new radio show, and it’s a Flash Gordon-genre, ridiculous science fiction title from the 1930s, and it’s Clifton’s revenge on Tony. The billing for the show boasts ‘two actors, 50 characters, over 100 sound effects.’ It sounds like it could be a slapstick disaster - how have you managed to put it together? Well at the end of it, without wanting to give too much away, the whole thing breaks down in a fight scene which is incorporated in the denouement of the second play. It gets out of hand and management has to step in to separate these two people who are at each other’s throats. Part of the attraction in the play is the fact both Simon and I are good at voices,
and in the 1940s actors did sound effects themselves. It was all foley; things being crunched and broken. For an audience, it’s great fun on at least two levels: seeing Simon and I bring a play to life with the sound effects and our voices, and also the overarching drama between these two men.
You actually just touched on my next question, which was about translating a radio play to the stage: you’re standing behind two microphones and one wouldn’t think there’s much to see during one of these kinds of shows. What are you doing differently? What makes it a play is what’s happening is the drama which unfolds increment by increment in these two men’s lives at a personal and professional level. Poor old Clifton, who represents the old guard of true theatre, is being usurped by this young blood who’s handsome, and has charisma, and is the station’s darling.
You were talking about your character being the old guard - you yourself started in comedy in 1985, which wasn’t all that recently. Do you identify with Clifton? Oh, yeah, frighteningly so! We (The D-Generation) were regarded as the young usurpers when we came along. Anyone who’s new on the block [provokes responses of] ‘oh my god, he’s not respecting the craft, they’re young, they don’t know anything.’ But it’s the post-war boom which is what this play is all about, and the gradual change in attitudes. Clifton is the last gasp of the old guard, and Tony represents what came in after the war and continued to come in in the next 20 to 30 years, and the rapid social change which is still evolving now. I certainly have been doing it for a long time, and Simon is quite a bit younger
than me, and the roles are quite suited to us! But it has been a delight working with him.
You write a lot now on quite serious topics, and thinking back to other D-Generation names and people you have worked with in the past, a lot of you have moved away from comedy in the same format you had previously. No, because there’s no TV any more. Who the hell makes sketch comedy any more? No one!
What are your thoughts on the modern landscape then? Do you think we’re missing out by not having sketch comedy any more? God, we’re certainly missing out on satire at the moment, and my god was there ever a time that we needed it! The world has changed so much. Digital really killed all that, because now everyone is so individually catered for that there’s no collective experience. There’s no way you could get a whole generation of kids doing something like watching Countdown every week and going to school and talking about it, because all those kids have been catered for by their own little individual niche through social media and all the other outlets. I actually think it’s quite sad. And it’s not just kids, it’s anyone. This has led to the demise of tele, really. This is why everything’s so cheap - people just stopped watching it. The way people watch free-to-air TV has completely changed now, and the less people who watch it the worse it gets to the point now where it is almost completely unwatchable. But, in terms of comedy, nowhere picked up the mantle in Australia. There were a couple of attempts to revive it, including from myself, but they were unsuccessful and completely unsupported by the networks, really. >>
Downtime
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D-Generation’s Michael Veitch on the changing face of Australian comedy... and his new play << It’s a shame, because I think that satire which used to occur is really important now, and it’s missing. So people like The Chaser here and Stephen Colbert in America don’t quite fill the niche? Oh, yes, absolutely, and so of course does wonderful Shaun Micallef, but it’s still pretty nice. Most people in Australia don’t know about Stephen Colbert and haven’t really watched Shaun Micallef. Of course it’s still more [alive] in other countries, thank god there’s still Saturday Night Live, but that tradition of a large number of people regularly choosing to tune into something knowing that sacred cows were going to be poked fun at is kind of gone. It’s all more incidental now, notwithstanding the work of those wonderful people. Just thinking of the way comedy is moving among young people; what do you think of memes as a collective experience? Yeah. I do have children your age (25), and where things are happening is things like YouTube, and people making really good stuff on YouTube, funny stuff and things which get passed around. But there’s still an underground feel to it,
and the beauty of how it used to be was it wasn’t really generationally specific. I don’t think many people over 40 regularly subscribe to their favourite YouTube channels or memes, sadly, but in previous times it was much more of a universal experience. And I really think it had an effect when there was a mass consumption of people taking the piss; people didn’t seem to take things as seriously as they do now. I’m not saying that was the cause, but I’m sure it’s some kind of influence. Would you consider doing something online?
Actually, yes. One of the other things Simon and I are doing is having a little YouTube channel.
It hasn’t launched yet, but we’re working on the content for it. It’s basically remiming some out-of-copyright, old TV shows from the 1960s which we have
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been given access to. That will launch some time in the new year.
That sounds very similar to... I can’t remember who did it, but Barge Arse... That was D-Generation, that was me! We started that when we got an old episode of Homicide and redubbed that, but then when it moved into The Late Show, Tony Martin took what he’d done with Homicide and a couple of other shows and did Barge Arse, which was a stupid Australian cop show called Bluey, and the other one was Rush, set in colonial times. So you’re looking at doing something similar to that online now? Soon. We’re just not quite sure when. We need some more content from our providers and that’s all in the pipeline. It must be exciting to be launching into that new space! It’s great fun! It’s really good fun.
Do you think radio plays are due for a bit of a revival? There have been a few popular podcasts recently like Welcome to Night Vale. Do you think there’s a market for a new modern day radio play? I really think so! There’s the whole kind
WEST GIPPSLAND ARTS CENTRE
of retro aspect, the amazement of how we did things before the digital age. It links into the whole revival of vinyl - the simplicity of it appeals to a lot of people. Just having no pictures, simply hearing voices and sounds, and having to make up the rest in your head is an astonishing notion for a world which is incredibly visually and orally overloaded. And it’s so stimulating! Hearing a radio play is quite invigorating because what happens in your head, what your brain can make up, is far more interesting and stimulating than what can be given to you on a screen, I think. You almost feel like you’ve contributed somehow, that you’ve been a part of the process. That’s what I feel. You just feel like you’ve mentally been on this fabulous long run. Your head helped create the experience. Mystery in the Air will start its Victorian tour next month, stopping at Yarragon’s town hall on 14 September. You can buy tickets at wgac.com.au. The show will also be touring other parts of Gippsland. Visit mysteryintheair.com for information on Stratford and Bairnsdale shows, as well as shows in the city.
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Vibraphonist Nick Parnell is a five star musician – and a secret revealer. Nick’s magical mallets lovingly caress his vibraphone keys, seamlessly braiding jazz, world and classical music into one living twist of musical enjoyment. Thursday 14 September 7:30pm Yarragon Public Hall
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