Swan Magazine April, 2020

e m o H t a y a t S l a i c e p S g n i d Re a

1

IN THIS ISSUE FEATURES ANZAC

PAGE

2020 Anzac Day

4

Books and Writing

Auntie Karen’s Survival Guide

16 Bookworm’s Corner 11 Editorial 3 Fiction Loyalties 20 Just Out 7 The Idler 49 The Noble Recreation 38 Your Voice Matters 10 Business

Business Card Board Front Page Photograph: Open for business Photographer: Public domain

Have a book to publish?

R Family History R Non-Fiction R Autobiography R Biography R Fantasy R Fiction R Poetry Get expert advice on layout, editing, costings, publishing and marketing from professional editors First consultation free Free quotes

55

Community Federal Notes 12 Flinders University News 31 Mapping the Makarda 30 Notes From Parliament 10 SAFE 35 SVRN CoS Response to Covid-19 50 Free Advertising 50 The Compassionate Friends 53

PAGE

Covid - 19

Australian Red Cross Camping as Isolation How to Manage WA Boosting Health System

27 15 26 15

Entertainment

Dining In 18 Film 32 Footnote People in History 36 TV with Chris 28 Leisure

House and Garden Obituary

Raymond Omodei

24 14

DISCLAIMER The information in this publication is of a general nature. The articles contained herein are not intended to provide a complete discussion on each subject and or issues canvassed. Swan Magazine does not accept any liability for any statements or any opinion, or for any errors or omissions contained herein.

Swinburne Press (founded 1989) P: 0418 934 850 E: douglas.guvnor@gmail.com

SWAN MAGAZINE WEBSITE:

www.swanmagazine.com.au

Email: editor@swanmagazine.com.au Registered Address: 18 Tokay Lane, The Vines, Western Australia 6069 MAY DEADLINES: Advertisements: 1st May Editorial: 1st May Copyright: Swan Magazine 2020

I.S.S.N. 1833-9336

DISCLAIMER The information in this publication is of a general nature. The articles contained herein are not intended to provide a complete discussion on each subject and or issues canvassed. Swan Magazine does not accept any liability for any statements or any opinion, or for any errors or omissions contained herein.

2

EDITORIAL A PRETTY KETTLE OF FISH

‘I

quite the same way again. The things we took for granted, kisses on the cheek, big hugs when we meet, firm handshakes, are now things of the past.

We have seen our political leaders cope with an unknown and completely alien situation. Some have shone, truly embodying the qualities we associate with leadership. Some have not.

We have seen different strategies employed with varying degrees of success from the ‘Let’s build herd immunity’ to ‘social isolation and lock down’. It is far too soon to say which will be the more effective, either, or indeed both, may prove to be ruinously expensive in terms of lives or economies.

The one thing we can say with absolute certainly is that the effects of this pandemic will be felt for decades to come as the world struggles to recover.

It is too soon to be talking about ‘exit strategies’, but not too soon for our leaders to be thinking about it. It will require courage, foresight and strength. Petty Party squabbles will have to be set aside, politics must take a back seat to recovery. We have no room for anything but the main objective of survival.

t was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...’. Well, it often is, isn’t it? But these times seem to be the oddest times.

The Covid-19 pandemic appears to have simultaneously brought of the best, the most selfless, heroic traits in most people while at the same time provoking selfish, mean-spirited aggression in others.

But for every ‘buy every toilet roll in the shop’ hoarder, there’s five or six front line heath workers, battling away in the most arduous conditions to save lives , while jeopardising their own and abandoning their own families to do so.

For every person screaming at a hapless cashier because they can only buy five kilos of rice there are a dozen truckies working long, long hours through the night hauling bags of rice to that store so that we can all eat.

For every non-asthmatic buying up Ventolin inhalers ‘just in case’ there are nurses, and doctors, phlebotomists and health professionals and the huge support staff of cleaners, cooks, administrators, working literally until they drop to make sure as few as humanly possible die, and every life that can be saved, is.

Millionaires have donated millions, millionaires have sent workers home without jobs, without cash and without any kind of hope.

In Italy, more than a hundred doctors have died fighting this virus, and throughout the world our best and brightest are at risk, as well as every single person on the planet.

A month ago the world was busy making plans - plays were due to open, family celebrations were planned, anniversary dinners were booked at restaurants, long-planned cruises were being paid for and looked forward to while the stay-athomes were longing to be off traveling, mixing with the local populations of exotic places.

Within thirty days, all that has gone, some of it permanently in our life-times. No one now will ever look at a cruise liner in

LOCAL

What can we as individuals do in the face of this disaster?

The very first thing is ‘follow the rules laid down by the health professionals’. Commit to social distancing, stay inside, stay away from friends and family until better times dawn.

Wash your hands, cough into your elbow. Don’t think ‘I’m young, this won’t affect me, I’ll be fine.’ Because, while that may be true (and we’re seeing many, many cases when it isn’t) it’s not true of your grandparents, those with chronic diseases, the vulnerable, the venerable and the venal.

‘I’ll just nip down to the shops, what harm can it do?’ says a person just returned from a trip to America - she has no

Australia's living Victoria Cross heroes - Keith Payne VC, Mark Donaldson VC, Daniel Keighran VC, Ben Roberts VC Thank you for your service. (Photograph courtesy of British and Commonwealth Forces) 3

ANZAC 2020 ANZAC DAY RSLWA

I

n an effort to minimise the spread of COVID-19 in the community, and following the advice from the Federal Government, Retrurned Services League Western Australia made the difficult decision to cancel all public commemoration services for ANZAC Day in 2020.

ANZAC Day is a day, above all other days, when we remember, respect and acknowledge all those who served in the war, in particular, those that did not return. Even though we are unable to come together as a community to mark this sacred day, we do urge the community to continue to honour our Diggers this ANZAC Day.

We have planned a range of activities to maintain awareness of ANZAC Day, its purpose and our ANZAC Appeal. We invite you to be part of it.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS • Is the ANZAC Day commemoration service happening this year at Kings Park?

No. In an effort to minimise the spread of COVID-19 in the community, and following the advice from the Federal Government, the RSLWA made the difficult decision to cancel all public commemoration services for ANZAC Day in 2020.

EMBRACING THE SPIRIT OF MATESHIP

RSLWA is encouraging all Aussies to get creative in a show of mateship this ANZAC Day – by standing in quiet contemplation at the end of their driveways, or on their balconies, at 6am on April 25.

RSLWA has listened to its followers on social media and will run with this beautiful tribute to our fallen servicemen and women, and those who have or still serve today, with a collective show of respect in the wake of the first cancellation of our ANZAC Day services since WWII, due to the COVID-19 crisis.

We invite the community to get behind our new-look, resilient ANZAC Day by:

• Will there still be an ANZAC Day March this year?

No. Unfortunately, there will not be an ANZAC Day March this year. While this is regrettable, it is necessary to stop the spread of COVID-19 in our community and to protect our most vulnerable.

• How can I still commemorate ANZAC Day from home?

As we approach the very first ANZAC Day since WWII without our traditional Dawn Service, we hope you will continue to help us honour our fallen, as well as those who served and still serve today.

This year, we invite you to take part in a unique 6am ANZAC Day Dawn Service. Simply stand at the end of your driveway, or on your balcony, at 6am and tune in on the radio for one minute’s silence at followed by The Ode and The Last Post.

Following that, perhaps you and your household can share in a traditional gunfire breakfast – an ANZAC Day tradition that honours the dead and unites the living – and raise a mug to our older Diggers, who, along with our entire community, remain at home, in isolation.

• Watching out for our moving community service announcements on TV and social media in coming weeks, starring some of WA’s most inspiring Veterans, as well as the WA Governor, His Excellency Kim Beazley AC, State Premier Mark McGowan and RSLWA CEO John McCourt.

• Sharing our mateship-themed Veteran video profiles and articles on the web and social media.

• Having children draw beautiful poppies with rosemary to post on our Facebook page.

• Light a candle at 5.55am and join our ANZAC Day driveway Dawn Service for 6am on April 25. Tune in to the radio (TBA) to hear The Ode, The Last Post and join in the one-minute silence.

Keep an eye out at this time for a traditional RAAF fighter-jet flyover.

• What else can I do to commemorate ANZAC Day this year?

Together, but apart, we can continue to honour our ANZACs, veterans and fellow Australians – and demonstrate that the resilience and bravery they showed is still very much alive in us all today.

• There’s a range if resources including veteran stories available on the RSLWA website (www.rslwa.org) and also via the Virtual War Memorial Australia (www.vwma.org.au) • This year ANZAC Day’s theme is mateship. Perhaps take the time to connect with those mates you don’t talk to often via a phone call or a FaceTime chat and honour the spirit of mateship.

• For parents, we encourage you to talk to your children about ANZAC Day and even encourage them to design and colour their own poppy, or write their own story of mateship, to place in your front window.

• Fire up the barbecue for a traditional gunfire breakfast of bacon, eggs and sausages … plus a mug of (rum-spiked) tea or coffee to toast the fallen.

• Post all your ANZAC Day tributes and photos to RSLWA’s Facebook and Instagram pages.

And most importantly, please donate to our to our annual ANZAC Appeal – which ensures the health, wellbeing and advocacy of today’s Veterans – by clicking here: www.rslwa.org. au/donate/

Below, we’ve endeavoured to answer all your questions about this most sacred of days.

And trust that you will be inspired by the mateship, courage and resilience of our ANZACs to join us in the special commemoration.

For at the going down of the sun, and in the morning, we will remember them.

Lest we forget!

• Will there be a service on TV or the radio?

A very special live broadcast of RSLWA’s Commemoration Service will be televised this ANZAC Day at 10am.

Watch from the safety of home as our His Excellency, the Governor of WA Kim Beazley, and Premier Mark McGowan lead tributes to the fallen in a moving ceremony.

4

ANZAC

• How else can I support ANZAC Day? Please consider giving to our ANZAC Appeal. We very much rely on the kindness of our community, government grants, corporate, philanthropists and organisations such as Lotterywest to support our lifesaving programs of advocacy, welfare and service.

Every donation we receive is placed in the State Welfare Fund, allowing us to assist Veterans and their families in need.

ANZAC REQUIEM

We remember those who still sleep where they were left – amid the holly scrub in the valleys and the ridges of Gallipoli – on the rocky and terraced hills of Palestine – and in the lovely cemeteries of France.

We remember those who lie asleep in the ground beneath the shimmering haze of the Libyan Desert – at Bardia, Derna, Tobruk – and amid the mountain passes and olive groves of Greece and Crete, and the rugged, snow-capped hills of Lebanon and Syria.

We remember those who lie buried in the rank jungle of Malaya and Burma – in New Guinea – and in the distant isles of the Pacific.

We remember those who lie buried amid loving friends in our Motherland and in our own far North.

We remember those who lie in unknown resting places in almost every land and those gallant men whose grave is the unending sea. We remember those who died as prisoners of war, remote from their homeland, and from the comforting presence of their kith and kin.

We think of those in our women’s services who gave their lives in our own foreign lands and at sea, and of those who proved to be, in much more than a name, the sisters of our fighting men.

We recall, too, the staunch friends who fought beside our men on the first ANZAC Day – men of New Zealand who helped to create the name of ANZAC.

We recall of those who gave their lives in the Royal Navy, the British Army, the Royal Air Force, the Merchant Service and in other British and Dominion Forces. We think of those British men and women who fell, when, for the second time in history, their nation and its kindred stood alone against the overwhelming might of an oppressor; and we think of every man and woman who in those crucial hours died so that the lights of freedom and humanity might continue to shine.

We think of those gallant men and women who died in Korea, Malaya, Borneo, Vietnam, Somalia, the Gulf, East Timor, Afghanistan and Iraq as well as in Peacekeeping Forces and on humanitarian missions, defending the Commonwealth and other countries of the Free World, against a common enemy.

May these all rest proudly in the knowledge of their achievement, and may we and our successors in that heritage prove worthy of their sacrifice.

• If I practise social distancing, can I still visit the State War Memorial at King’s Park or other memorials to pay my respects this ANZAC Day? This year we ask that you refrain from visiting our memorials and instead commemorate the spirit of ANZAC Day from the safety of your home.

• I’m a veteran. I’m feeling very isolated and alone at not being able to come together with fellow veterans this ANZAC Day. ANZAC Day, above all days, is a day we recall and give thanks to those who served in war and those who did not return.

During this time, more than any, we recognise people are isolated from loved ones and feeling lonely and worried. We want all members of our community, including our veterans, to feel connected and encourage you to connect with family and friends this ANZAC Day.

Be it a phone call, an email or a Facetime chat, ANZAC Day is a time to come together in any way possible and support one another.

We encourage any veterans requiring welfare assistance at this time to get in contact with one of our team via welfare@ rslwa.org.au

5

symptoms, feels fine and healthy, although in fact positive for the virus - and really needs some sweets and a magazine or two to get her through the fourteen days quarantine she has been told to take.

‘Oh, but I need to change the American dollars, so I’d better pop into the bank. And I need to post those thank-you letters and buy stamps - best to get it done all at once ..’

And so she goes out, trailing Covid-19 germs over the supermarket, the cashier, the bank counter and tellers, the post office counter and staff, the petrol bowser because ’look it’s only 89 cents, haven’t seen that for years, better fill up’ before going home and finally containing the disease.

Unemployment has risen in the last month from roughly seven percent to about sixteen percent. Restaurant workers, actors, musicians, performers of all kinds, bar staff, kitchen hands and a whole host of unexpected people are suffering the fall-out from this disease.

To take just a small example, this magazine, the Swan Magazine is entirely funded by advertising revenue - a large portion of which comes from theatre, film and restaurants.

Consequently our income has taken a pretty drastic hit.

Not to mention our content. Regular readers will know that we publish a lot of reviews of film, theatre and restaurants - almost a third in fact. Our new regular sports column by Chris McRae has, naturally, been canceled and the two pages we devote to free advertising of local events called ‘What’s On’ has been temporarily pulled since nothing is on.

As a result what has become our usual sixty-four pages this month is slightly reduced as we have filled in the space so suddenly available with reading material drawn from our ‘slush pile’ as editors call the unsolicited material sent to us for consideration.

And we can assume this state of affairs will continue for some time - at least six months as we become the victims of our own success, unless or until a vaccine can be found, or a viable treatment discovered.

During this period of confinement we think it is even more important than usual that we offer diversion and entertainment that does not involve contact - solitary pleasures, such as reading, always close to our hearts and now we can give much more space to reviews and notices of new books and recent arrivals on the literary scene.

Always considered as a virtual back fence where neighbours can chat to each other about things that matter to them, we can now talk more about books we have enjoyed, make recommendations to others of our favourites and discuss what’s on TV, and the many streaming services, podcasts, YouTube and other on-line broadcasts.

We will continue to review restaurants - but their newly developed take-away services. Please, if you can, try and make one family meal a week something from a restaurant. Many offer truly great food at modest, even discounted, prices.

And if you want to be able to dine there after this is all over, we need to support them now - wages, costs, rent, waste - all the killers of restaurants continue while income dwindles, so force yourself to eat out at home from your local family restaurant.

The burger and chips from a well-known pseudo-Scottish chain will cost about the same as take-away Chinese, Indian, BBQ ribs from Swans, fish and chips from Edgecombe Brothers, Pizza from the Abbey or a special treat Cream Scones from Cottage Tea Rooms - all delivered fresh and hot to your door in perfect safety.

Stay safe, stay at home and be grateful to the many thousands who are risking their lives and livelihoods to make that possible.

Have a happy and Safe Easter.

ANZAC 2020 ANZAC DAY Commemorating ANZAC Day

Anzac Day is one of the most important days on our national calendar.

The current coronavirus situation means we can’t gather in large numbers like we normally do to mark the day.

But this doesn’t mean Anzac Day is cancelled.

At its heart, Anzac Day is about personal reflection where we demonstrate our solemn respect for those who have served, and those who continue to serve in our nation’s uniform.

There are a range of ways we can all pay our respects and mark the day.

You can tune into the Australian War Memorial’s national dawn service which will be televised on the ABC.

This year, RSLWA is encouraging everyone to take part in a unique 6am ANZAC Day Dawn Service. Simply stand at the end of your driveway, or on your balcony, at 6am and tune in on the radio for one minute’s silence at followed by The Ode and The Last Post.

You can use the hashtags #AnzacAtHome and #TYFYS (thank you for your service) to share pictures and videos of your private commemorations on social media.

You could also use this Anzac Day to look into your family’s military history. The National Archives of Australia and the Australian War Memorial websites are great places to start.

I also encourage you to think about reaching out to a veteran you know to thank them and for their service – you could to this by phone, email or even a letter.

It has been inspiring to see different ideas emerging about the ways we can pay our respects this Anzac Day.

Whether it’s a solitary driveway tribute, baking Anzac biscuits, or a small ceremony with your household, I encourage everyone in our local community to pause, reflect and say a simple ‘thank you for your service’.

Lest we forget.

The Hon Ken Wyatt AM MP Federal Member for Hasluck Minister for Indigenous Australians

6

BOOKS AND WRITING JUST OUT Title: Author: Publisher: ISBN:

I

• Tackles complex social issues including while entertaining the reader with Adler-Olsen’s trademark mix of suspense and humour. - Daily Express • Jussi Adler-Olsen, with his unrestrained humor and warm heart, is a kind of Danish mentor to us . . . Victim 2117 grows into a hard-hitting fist that lands heavily and relentlessly in the midst of our time. - Lars Kepler, #1 internationally bestselling author of the Joona Linna series • Victim 2117 is a mind-blowing adventure, a huge adrenaline rush. Trust me on this, you won’t want to put it down Catherine Coulter, bestselling author of Deadlock Everything you could possibly want from a thriller and much, much more. - Kirkus ~oOo~

Victim 2117 Jussi Adler-Olsen Quercus Publishing 9781 4059 3964 5

n the heart-pounding new installment of the No.1 bestselling Department Q series, a terrifying international investigation reveals the complex backstory of one of the department’s own – the enigmatic Assad.

The newspaper refers to the dead body only as Victim 2117 – the two thousand, one hundred and seventeenth refugee to die in the Mediterranean Sea.

But to three people, the victim is so much more, and the death sets off a chain of events that throws Department Q, Copenhagen’s cold cases division led by Detective Carl Mørck, into a deeply dangerous – and deeply personal – case: a case that not only reveals dark secrets about the past, but has deadly implications for the future.

For a troubled Danish teen, the death of Victim 2117 becomes a symbol of everything he resents and is the perfect excuse to unleash his murderous impulses. For Ghallib, a brutal tormentor from the notorious prison Abu Ghraib, the death of Victim 2117 was the first step in a terrorist plot, years in the making. And for Department Q’s Assad, Victim 2117 is a link to his buried past and to the family he assumed was long dead.

Title: Author: Publisher: ISBN:

Camino Winds John Grisham Penguin Random House 9780 3855 4593 8

The next book in the no 1 Sunday Times bestselling Camino Island series!

W

hen Hurricane Leo threatens Florida’s Camino Island, the Governor is quick to issue an evacuation order. Most residents flee but a small group of diehards decide to ride it out. Amongst them is Bruce Cable, proprietor of Bay Books in downtown Santa Rosa.

The hurricane is devastating: homes and condos are levelled, hotels and storefronts ruined, streets flooded, and a dozen people are killed.

One of the victims is Nelson Kerr, a friend of Bruce’s who wrote timely political thrillers. But evidence suggests that the storm wasn’t the cause of Nelson’s death – he had received several mysterious blows to the head.

Who would want Nelson dead? The local police are overwhelmed with the aftermath of the storm and in no condition to handle the case. Bruce begins to wonder if the shady characters in Nelson’s novels were more fact than fiction. And somewhere on Nelson’s computer is the manuscript of his new novel – could the key to the case be right there, in black and white?

Bruce starts to look into it and what he finds between the lines is more shocking than any of Nelson’s plot twists – and far more dangerous.

About the Author Jussi Adler-Olsen is Denmark’s number one crime writer and a New York Times bestseller. His books routinely top the bestseller lists in Europe and have sold more than eighteen million copies around the world. His many prestigious Nordic crime-writing awards include the Glass Key Award, also won by Henning Mankell, Jo Nesbø and Stieg Larsson.

What reviewers say: • The new “it” boy of Nordic Noi.r - Times • Gripping story-telling. Guardian • Mesmerising writing. - Independent • Scandinavian crime novels don’t get much darker than Jussi Adler-Olsen’s Department Q police procedurals.

- New York Times Book Review

About the Author

John Grisham as a child dreamed of being a professional baseball player. After graduating from law school at Ole Miss in 1981, he went on to practice law for nearly a decade, specialising in criminal defense and personal injury litigation.

One day, Grisham overheard the harrowing testimony of a twelve-year-old rape victim and was inspired to start a novel 7

exploring what would have happened if the girl’s father had murdered her assailants.

Getting up at 5:00 am every day to get in several hours of writing time before heading off to work, Grisham spent three years on A Time to Kill and finished it in 1987.

His next novel, The Firm, spent forty-seven weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and became the bestselling novel of 1991.

Since then, he has written one novel a year, including The Client, The Pelican Brief, The Rainmaker and The Runaway Jury. Today, Grisham has written a collection of stories, a work of non-fiction, three sports novels, seven kids’ books, and many legal thrillers. His work has been translated into forty-two languages. He lives near Charlottesville, Virginia.

When tragedy strikes and his daughter comes under threat, Skinner steps in. His quarry is about to discover that the road to hell is marked by bad intentions . . .

About the Author

Quintin Jardine was born once upon a time in the West – of Scotland rather than America, but still he grew to manhood as a massive Sergio Leone fan.

On the way there he was educated, against his will, in Glasgow, where he ditched a token attempt to study law for more interesting careers in journalism, government propaganda, and political spin-doctoring. After a close call with the Brighton Bomb in 1984, he moved into the even riskier world of media relations consultancy, before realising that all along he had been training to become a crime writer.

Now, forty novels later, he never looks back. Along the way he has created/acquired an extended family in Scotland and Spain. Everything he does is for them. He can be tracked down through his blog: http://quintinjardine.me

What reviewers say: • A bewitching blend of high-stakes spying mission and summer romance, with a fascinatingly ambiguous central character. – The Sunday Times • The gripping plot will have you devouring the chapters in such a frantic fashion you’ll begin to wonder if you are somehow complicit in this perfect crime. – Heat • Grisham shows charm, wit and a light touch. – The Times • The best thriller writer alive. – Ken Follett ~oOo~ Title: Author: Publisher: ISBN:

What reviewers say: • Skinner’s lost none of his hard edge when he steps up to the plate after his daughter Alex, a legal eagle, is in trouble when a cold murder case explodes red hot and dangerous. Someone’s going to meet his match in Skinner.

- Peterborough Evening Telegraph • Well-constructed . . . intriguing’. Scotland on Sunday • I would recommend anyone new to the series to give yourself a treat and read them all!!

• I have given this book five stars because of the ingenious plot, the excellence of the narrative and, after quite a number of years, Quintin Jardine is still producing superb crime fiction.

• A fantastic gripping read and I didn’t want to put it down.

• As always Mr Jardine had me hooked from the first chapter to the very end. ~oOo~

The Bad Fire (Bob Skinner series, book 31) Quintin Jardine Headline 9781 4722 558

Scottish crime-writing at its finest, with a healthy dose of plot twists and turns, bodies and plenty of brutality’ - Sun

T

he gritty new mystery in Quintin Jardine’s bestselling Bob Skinner series, set in Edinburgh and the Scottish countryside; not to be missed by readers of Ian Rankin and Peter May.

Nine years ago, divorcee Marcia Brown took her own life. A pillar of the community, she had been accused of theft, and it’s assumed that she was unable to live with the shame. Now her former husband wants the case reopened.

Marcia was framed, he says, to prevent her exposing a scandal. He wants justice for Marcia. And Alex Skinner, Solicitor Advocate, and daughter of retired Chief Constable Sir Robert Skinner, has taken on the brief, aided by her investigator Carrie McDaniels.

Title: Author: Publisher: ISBN: 8240 5

The Turning Tide Catriona McPherson 9781 4736

A perfect literary treat for a rainy Sunday afternoon

I

t is the breezy Scottish summer of 1936, Lady Dandy Gilver has been called, with trusted colleague Alec Osbourne, to solve the strange case of the Crammond Ferrywoman on the Firth of Forth.

A small island is home to a woman, Vesper Kemp,

8

who has lost her mind, spending her days rambling in rags.

What is more troubling, is that Vesper claims to have murdered a young man. A concerned group of residents have good reason to believe she is innocent. But Dandy and Alec will have a dangerous journey ahead if they are to uncover the truth in the River Almond’s murky waters.

arrives from a mysterious Cornish Countess revealing that Jack’s mother – long believed to be dead – may have survived a shipwreck off the coast of Java. Seizing the opportunity to track down his only remaining family member, Jack and Jenny board a boat heading East.

The trail takes them to a run-down Siamese hotel where a motley assortment of drifters has washed up. Here a spy, an assassin, a deserter, an old soldier and a fading Hollywood movie star all await the arrival of a missing part for a flying boat and a journey that will take them into the realm of myth.

But if Jack is ever to see his mother again, he has to stop them…

About the Author Catriona McPherson was born in the village of Queensferry in south-east Scotland in 1965 and educated at Edinburgh University. She left with a PhD in Linguistics and spent a few years as a university lecturer before beginning to write fiction.

The first Dandy Gilver novel was short-listed for the CWA Ellis Peters Historical Dagger 2005 and the second was long-listed for the Theakston’s Crime Novel of the Year Award 2007. In 2012 Dandy Gilver And The Proper Treatment Of Bloodstains was nominated for a Historical Macavity Award.

Catriona writes full-time and divides her time between southern Scotland and northern California. www.catrionamcpherson.com .

What reviewers say: • With sharp wit and an Agatha Christie-style ability to create a lively cast of characters, this is an intriguing historical mystery. - Women’s Weekly • A great pinch of humour and a sprinkling of absurdity, McPherson beautifully evokes the feelings and images of postwar Edinburgh. - The Wee Review ~oOo~ Title: Author: Publisher: ISBN:

About the Author

Malcolm Pryce was born in the UK and has spent much of his life working and travelling abroad. He has been a BMW assemblyline worker, a hotel washer-up, a deck hand on a yacht sailing the South Seas, an advertising copywriter and the world’s worst aluminium salesman.

He is the author of the bestselling ‘Aberystwyth’ novels. He lives in Oxford.

What reviewers say: • A welcome return by the author of the quirky, poignant and utterly unique Aberystwyth noir series ... It’s sheer pulp and all Ripping Yarns like in the good old days of adventure writing, but led with joyful irony. Absolutely delightful. ~oOo~ Title: Author: Publisher: ISBN:

Allegation R G Adams Bloomsbury Publishing 9781 5294 0466 1

A scandal will shake a small community to its very foundations.

S

andbeach, South Wales. Two women have come forward to make historical sexual allegations against a pillar of the local community, Matthew Cooper. And child-safeguarding protocol demands that Social Services remove the accused from his home and his family, while a formal assessment is carried out.

The Cooper case lands on the desk of inexperienced Social Worker, Kit Goddard.

Although intrepid and intuitive, she is ill-prepared for such a high-profile case.

Kit finds herself navigating a local minefield of connections and class, reputations and rumour. Unsure whether her interference is a heroic intervention or a hurtful intrusion, she knows one thing: it will have an impact. The question is whether this impact will be to expose an iniquitous lie, or destroy an innocent life…

The Corpse in the Garden of Perfect Brightness Malcolm Pryce Bloomsbury Publishing 9781 4088 9531 3

A perfect literary treat for a rainy Sunday afternoon

T

he perfect quirky nostalgic crime read – a tale of steam trains, giant squid, missing screenplays, missing mothers and a quest for the truth, from the inimitable Malcolm Pryce

It’s the winter of 1948.

The four great railway companies have just been nationalised and Jack Wenlock – the last of a fabled cadre of railway detectives – is thrown out onto the street.

Penniless, with new bride Jenny to support, and hiding from a murderous organisation called Room 42, Jack’s prospects look bleak.

But then a letter 9

BOOKS AND WRITING NEIL AND YOUR VOICE SHERENE STRAHAN

The tale of what happens when an international author makes you cry ou don’t have enough time to write or time to write enough.

You want to write or write more, for all sorts of very good reasons. But - there’s not enough time at the moment.

There will be One Day, just not now.

I thought so too until this. That’s the stage at the Perth Concert Hall, right before author and screenwriter Neil Gaiman stepped into the glittering pool of light and began to speak.

I’d almost missed out - the tickets all sold within minutes of going on sale and I was massively disappointed as I’m a huge fan of Gaiman’s storytelling. But my lovely, lovely friend Karen (bless her generous soul) managed to get a ticket for me at the last minute and there I was.

The show started with questions from the crowd - scribbled on notecards before the show and handed to Gaiman backstage.

The first was not from me but seemed to come from my heart.

‘How do you find time to write and do book tours and be with your family and do everything else you want to fit in?’

Seventeen hundred people leaned in.

‘I don’t’.

Neil Gaiman is an internationally celebrated writer - he makes a very good living from writing very excellent stories. Yet he can’t find enough time to write.

That’s when the tears started. Strangely, they were not tears of defeat but of relief.

Because with that admission Neil Gaiman threw away the myth of writing, of creating anything.

That when we reach that income or stage in life or degree of success, THEN we’ll have more time for what we really want to do.

With his words, I was free to realise (remember even) that writing is something I need to fit into my life as it is, not delay until everything is perfectly aligned.

Even at his level of success, Neil Gaiman still struggles to fit writing in - but he still writes.

He chips away at what looks like the impenetrable stone of daily life and carves out enough space to include writing.

Sometimes the space is a full day and other times it’s just a few minutes. But he uses all of it to bring his work slowly into form.

What an insight. It’s not time that is lacking but the determination to see our own wall of stone for what it is something we can carve into - instead of allowing it to be what it looks like - a barrier to the path we want to follow.

The next morning, I got up thirty minutes earlier to write.

I’ve been doing it ever since.

What can you chip away at to create the space you crave?

spend all that time on it?

I hope so.

Because - we just don’t know who that one person is or what they will do… Their voice might make all the difference to someone else and that person might be the one who saves a life or makes a huge breakthrough in their field or starts a dialogue between two warring factions.

We just don’t know.

I’m using my voice right now.

In my communications job, I’m being dogged on behalf of my audience about separating facts from fear. I wrote about how to do it for Linked In:

Hey Chicken Littles, there’s something you could do instead

The unknown is scary and right now, that’s where we are.

We’ve been pulled from the street where we live, had a hood thrown over our head, been driven around for hours (in a white van of course) and then thrown out into the deep snow.

It’s cold and we’re scared - and nobody in this new place seems to know for sure what to do.

There are just all these chickens running around squawking about the sky falling.

It’s time to take a deep breath and ask for what we need.

To the leaders (all of them - even you Mr Politician)

• We want to know:

• What do you know for sure?

• What are you doing?

• What can we do?

• Keep it clear and simple; give us just three to five main things and keep telling us those main things until any of them change - and then tell us, with evidence, what’s changed and why.

Yes, this coronavirus is new (we get that from the ‘novel’ part) and there’s a lot that’s still to emerge about how it will affect us health-wise, economy-wise and many otherwise.

But there are some things that are known - so can you please check your messaging against what IS known (evidencebased) and what is speculation before you speak?

Remind us what you are doing to fix things - remind us often and remind us in ways that make sense to us. We’re all a little bit freaked right now so don’t go too scientific on us (although make sure proper science is behind what you’re saying).

And here’s the most important part - we want to do our bit to make sure we get ‘home’ again safely. Our loved ones are obviously our biggest concern but we’re all human and we’d like everyone to be okay. So keep telling us what we can do that would be practical and not create more problems. Because that’s how we need to ‘roll’ (yes, toilet tissue reference).

And if you are one of the Leaders already doing this? Thank you from the bottom of our scared hearts. Please keep doing it and show the others how it’s done.

To the Listeners (that’s us) We can do something about this.

We can keep demanding that our leaders tell us what they know for sure (and only that); we can let them get on with their job of doing what they’re doing and we can follow their advice about what we need to do.

It will be okay but how okay it ends up being, depends on us. We need to find our way back home together (without those media outlets, including social media, that want to lead us on a trail to the witch’s house - and yep, I just brought in another fairytale reference.

Y

YOUR VOICE

What if using your voice made all the difference to someone? Made them say, ‘Oh I never thought of that’ and then take action. Got them to realise, ‘Oh I never knew that’ and then take action.

That would feel good, wouldn’t it?

But what if it was only one person? Just one who was inspired by what you wrote. And if you knew beforehand that it would only be one person, would you still 10

BOOKWORM’S CORNER mutilated by demonic swords, the gouging of eyes, bookworms eating away at the entrails of thieves, and even having the book turn into a serpent in the hands of those who borrow and do not return them. Most curses, however, simply involved excommunication (being expelled from the Catholic Church, with an implied sentence to hell.

In Addition to Curses, Medieval Books Had Chains

Most reference libraries in the Middle Ages (and some up to the 18th century) would have chains attaching books to their shelves to prevent theft. The chain would typically be placed on the corner of cover of the book, and the book would be placed in the shelf with the pages facing outwards.

ALL THINGS BOOKS AND BIBLIOPHILE our excursion through the bye-ways and literary Continuing lanes of bibliophilia.

Liking the Smell of Books is a Recognized Thing, There’s Even a Word for It

If one of the first things you do when you get a new book is smell the pages, you’re not alone. The act of smelling books is called “bibliosmia”, it’s actually pretty common.

The “Old book smell” is produced by the breakdown of two chemical components in paper, cellulose and lignin. The by-products of this process are toluene and ethylbenzene (which produce a sweet odour), vanillin (which produces a vanilla odour), benzaldehyde and furfural (which produce an almond odour), and 2-ethylhexanol which produces a flowery odour.

Much like with carbon-dating, scientists can analyze the chemicals responsible for “old book smell” to determine the age of a book. The process is called “material degradomics”.

Buying Books and Not Reading Them is Also a Thing

The Japanese word Tsundoku means “to let reading materials pile up in one’s home and never read them”. It sounds pretty noble when you frame it as an ancient art.

In January 2017, Amazon Sold Out of Physical Copies of 1984

In January 2017, two of the biggest trending topics in the media were “fake news” and “alternative facts”. This inspired consumers to buy every physical copy of 1984 from Amazon, the world’s largest online retailer, by the end of the month. Amazon was unable to get more newly printed copies in stock until February.

Medieval Books Came With Curses

Before the printing press was invented, books had to be written and copied by hand, which imaginably took forever (years).

Because most literate people in Europe were clergy, this job usually fell to monks who ended up with the vocation of being a scribe.

These monk-scribes would protect their life’s work with a wide variety of curses inscribed at the beginning and end of the hand-written tomes.

The curses could involve being

“Packhorse Librarians” Were the Bookmobiles of the Great Depression

During the Great Depression, one of FDR’s New Deal programs was the Pack Horse Library Initiative. Librarians would ride on horseback into the Appalachian mountains to provide books and literacy to the mountain-folk of Kentucky. In order to gain the trust of suspicious mountain families who did not take kindly to outsiders, book carriers would sometimes read bible passages to prove that they were not a threat.

Harry Potter is the Most Banned Book of the 21st Century (US)

According to the American Library Association, the Harry Potter series was the most banned and challenged book for the years 2000-2009. Most instances take issue with the series’ depictions of witchcraft and wizardry.

Charles Dickens Had a Novelty Bookcase Filled With Fake Books

Charles Dickens, author of Oliver Twist and A Tale of Two Cities, had a bookcase in his house filled with fake books with comical names. This bookcase functioned as a secret door, much like in a mystery novel or Scooby Doo episode.

Some of the titles included:

King Henry the Eighth’s Evidences of Christianity (5 volumes)

Jonah’s Account of the Whale

The Lives of a Cat (9 volumes)

History of the Middling Ages (6 volumes) The Art of Cutting Teeth More next month ...

Rare Chained Library At Hereford Cathedral, England 11

FEDERAL NOTES HASLUCK HAPPENINGS THE HON KEN WYATT AM MP

Federal Member for Hasluck, Minister for Indigenous Australians

T

ESSENTIAL INFORMATION ON COVID-19

he Coronavirus (COVID 19) is a significant global public health challenge and has affected many across the world, including Australians both here and overseas. While the virus manifests in many people in a similar way to the flu or a cold, it can have serious consequences for a percentage of people, including the elderly and vulnerable.

Understandably, it is causing significant concern here in our local community.

In Australia, the number one priority continues to be keeping all Australians safe and healthy. Our National mission is to stop the spread of the coronavirus to ensure our health services as well prepared as any in the world to treat and assist those who need it.

Although you may have heard a lot about this virus, it is important to keep up to date with reliable information and advice from official Government sources. As the knowledge and understanding of the virus continues to develop, the advice and action being taken to address it changes frequently.

I encourage you to regularly visit www.australia.gov.au to find the most up to date information and advice.

NEW JOBS HUB

The Government has launched a new Jobs Hub which highlights which businesses and organisations have multiple jobs on offer.

In this rapidly changing jobs market the Morrison Government is supporting businesses and those Australians looking for work.

An up to date list of a selection of businesses and organisations that are currently hiring, and how to contact them, can be found at: www.dese.gov.au/covid-19/jobs-hub

Minister for Employment, Skills, Small and Family Business, Senator the Hon Michaelia Cash said the Government was continuing to do everything it could to keep Australians connected to the workforce at this time.

“These are critical jobs that will contribute to keeping the economy going and keeping as many Australians in work as possible,” she said.

While many businesses have been adversely affected by COVID-19 and are reducing their workforces, there are some areas of the economy which have an increased demand for workers.

These include jobs in a range of sectors and occupations including health and care sectors, transport and logistics, some areas of retail, mining and mining services, manufacturing,

agriculture and government sectors, among others.

Federal Member for Hasluck, the Hon Ken Wyatt AM MP said every Australian with a job is an essential worker. The Government is committed to working with local employers, industry organisations, employment services providers and others in the labour market to identify where the jobs are and help move people looking for work into these jobs quickly.

“I know there are many people in my electorate of Hasluck who are doing it tough at the moment. This is just another way the Government is committed to helping Australians through this crisis by connecting those who are looking for work directly with those employers who are experiencing a demand for their services, so we can get more people into the jobs,” said Mr Wyatt.

Employers who are hiring and want support to connect with potential candidates can also contact the Department of Education, Skills and Employment at workforce@dese.gov. au to be connected directly with businesses reducing their workforces; and the employment services network to source suitable candidates.

“If you are hiring, particularly scaling up your workforce quickly, I encourage you to email our Workforce Contact Centre so you can be connected with the support you need to get your workforce on board.”

JOBKEEPER

Thisprogram will provide businesses with a fortnightly payment of $1,500 per eligible employee from 30 March 2020, for a maximum of six months.

This assistance will help local businesses to keep staff employed during these tough times.

The economic impacts of the Coronavirus pose significant challenges for many businesses – many of which are struggling to retain their employees.

Under the JobKeeper Payment, businesses significantly impacted by the Coronavirus outbreak will be able to access a subsidy from the Australian Government to continue paying their employees.

This assistance will help businesses to keep people in their jobs and re-start when the crisis is over. For employees, this means they can keep their job and earn an income – even if their hours have been cut.

The JobKeeper Payment is a temporary scheme open to businesses impacted by the Coronavirus. The JobKeeper Payment will also be available to the self-employed. The Australian Government will provide $1,500 per fortnight per employee for up to six months.

The JobKeeper Payment will support employers to maintain their connection to their employees. These connections will enable business to reactivate their operations quickly – without having to rehire staff – when the crisis is over.

Keeping Australians in work and businesses in business will lay the foundations for a stronger economic recovery.

If you require translating or interpreting services, call 131 450.

Please don’t hesitate to contact me in regards to COVID-19 or any other matter if I can be of further assistance.

12

Dear business owner’s Support for Local Businesses

Recently the Prime Minister announced the second stage of our economic plan to cushion the economic impact of the Coronavirus.

Our plan includes practical measures to help businesses to continue to operate including: • Providing further payments of up to $100,000 for businesses with a turnover under $50 million. This will help around 690,000 businesses, employing around 7.8 million people; • Guaranteeing 50% of new loans for small and medium businesses under the new Coronavirus SME Guarantee scheme; and • Relief for financially distressed businesses.

These measures build on the government’s first economic support package, which increases the instant asset write-off, provides accelerated depreciation deductions, supports apprentices and trainees, and provides targeted support for affected regions and communities.

Our plan also supports households and individuals, with expanded eligibility for income support payments, a new time-limited $550 Coronavirus supplement, provides payments to eligible recipients and allows individuals in financial distress to access up to $20,000 of their superannuation over the next six months.

These are challenging times, but we will do all that is necessary to support Australians.

Business owners can contact the dedicated business helpline on 13 28 46 to determine exactly what support their business can receive or if you need to discuss tax deferrals with the ATO, please call 1800 806 218.

For additional information on support for businesses please visit: www.business.gov.au Yours sincerely,

The Hon Ken Wyatt AM MP Federal Member for Hasluck Minister for Indigenous Australians

SUPPORTING BUSINESSES THROUGH CORONAVIRUS Providing Small Business cash payments up to $100,000 Guaranteeing Loans for Small Businesses Increasing the insolvency and bankruptcy thresholds Paying 50% of Small Business apprentice wages to 30 September For more information visit: www.treasury.gov.au/coronavirus

KEN WYATT AM MP

9359 0322

ken.wyatt.mp@aph.gov.au

kenwyatt.com.au

FEDERAL MEMBER FOR HASLUCK Authorised by Ken Wyatt MP, Liberal Party of Australia, Shop 10-12 Hawaiian’s Forrestfield, 80 Hale Road, Forrestfield WA 6058.

13

KenWyattMP

OBITUARY RAYMOND DOUGLAS OMODEI CIT WA (1936-2020) JAKE NEWBY

R

teaching.

Since 1971 Raymond had regularly returned to Perth as Artist-in Residence at UWA and to direct for the Hole in the Wall Theatre in Leederville where his productions of Hamlet and Long Day’s Journey into Night were outstanding successes.

In 1982 he was appointed Artistic Director of the Hole in the Wall Theatre Company, introducing many new Australian plays, modern overseas works and great classics in a series of repertoire seasons which culminated in a six-play season in the second half of 1984 at the Subiaco Theatre Centre where it was possible for subscribers to see all six plays in one week, ending with A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with the Mucky Duck Bush Band as ‘the rude mechanicals on Midsummer night.

Over the years Raymond received a string of awards including WA Citizen of the Year for services to arts, culture and entertainment and the Heritage Award for outstanding lifetime achievement in the performing arts.

Always an innovator, he introduced West Australian audiences to the plays of Nobel Laureate Patrick White; to Willy Russell’s Educating Rita and Shirley Valentine (which with Amanda Muggleton in the solo role eventually played for almost a decade in nearly two thousand performances) and continued his programme of producing new writing, classics and modern classics, training an ensemble of actors, introducing female directors into the main body of the Hole in the Wall’s repertoire.

With the creation of the State Theatre Company he became its first Artistic Director, and on the demise of that company returned to re-invigorate the Hole in the Wall Theatre Company, and eventually to return to freelance work, including with his always-admired young student actors.

His final two productions, in March 2018 and March 2019 were as a special guest director for productions of the Eighteenth Century comedy The Way of The World and a contemporary littleknown classic Salonika at Garrick Theatre in Guildford.

aymond Omodei was an Australian Adaptor, Designer, Director, Producer, Actor, Performer, Devisor, Costume Designer and Musical Director.

He was born in 1936, growing up in Wiluna until the age of seven when his family moved to Kalgoorlie. He attended Christian Brothers High School, gaining his Leaving Certificate with a Distinction in Art, then became one of the first intake of teacher trainees at Graylands Teachers College.

His first posting was in charge of the one-teacher Kookynie School, soon transferring to Kalgoorlie and teaching at Eastern Goldfields High School.

There he joined the Kalgoorlie Repertory Club, mentored by Senator Sedden Vincent and his wife Frieda.

The Club’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with Raymond as Oberon, was invited into the Festival of Perth and rapidly established his credentials as a theatre artist. Back in Kalgoorlie he directed several major musicals for the Rep at the Kalgoorlie Town Hall.

He transferred his teaching to the just-opened Scarborough Senior High School as a teacher of English, producing Sophocles Oedipus the King to an overflowing sold-out season attended by theatre-goers from all over Perth.

The following year, under his direction, the high school students performed Antigone and A Midsummer Night’s Dream in a night-by-night repertoire season, with surpassing success.

After several years in Melbourne and London Raymond returned to Perth in 1971, invited by Edgar Metcalfe to join the National Theatre at the Playhouse as Associate Director, where he enjoyed signal success as the director of Dorothy Hewett’s Man From Mukinuppin and ran a workshop course for aspiring WA playwrights.

In 1973 he joined the Old Tote Theatre Company and the Australian Theatre for Young People in Sydney as Associate Director, directing Angela Punch McGregor in The Playboy of the Western World, the fourth play in the newlyopened Sydney Opera House Drama Theatre amongst others, and directing two years of plays and workshop theatre-in-education projects based and in conjunction with the University of New England in Armidale NSW.

Invited by the WA Education Department of WA and the National Curriculum Development Centre, for two years Raymond directed a multiarts investigation project in Floreat, seeking modes of introducing arts processes into general

Salonika at Garrick 14

COVID -19 WA BOOSTING HEALTH SYSTEM

HON ROGER COOK BA Grad Dip Bus MBA MLA Deputy Premier; Minister for Health and Mental Health

T

he McGowan Government is working to increase the number of ventilators and IC U beds available.

A further 301 ventilators and 200 ICU beds are being ordered. The equipment will complement a wide-ranging program to increase capacity across the public and private hospital systems.

Hundreds of new beds and extra beds created through reconfiguration of services.

The McGowan Government has ordered more than $15 million worth of clinical equipment to boost the public health system's response to the COVID-19 crisis.

On order, and arriving in batches, are: 301 ventilators; 201 humidifiers; 4,000 pulse oximeters; and 200 ICU beds.

The private hospital sector will add further capacity to the system.

This equipment is being sourced from a range of global suppliers, and will arrive in batches - the first is due in Perth in the coming weeks.

Also being ordered are 200 ICU beds with their associated equipment - infusion pumps, syringe drivers and vital signs monitoring systems to equip these beds.

The McGowan Government has also initiated a major capacity building program, creating hundreds of new beds across the public hospital system to fight the COVID-19 crisis.

For example, the East Metropolitan Health Service has increased capacity by 185 beds by reconfiguring wards and hospital services, such as pausing maternity services at Bentley.

The maternity services have now been transferred to specialist services at both Armadale Hospital and King Edward Memorial Hospital.

Across the health system all our hospitals are actively increasing capacity, with all health service providers working to ensure our system is best placed to take on the challenge of dealing with this pandemic.

The State Government is committed to minimising the impact of COVID-19 on the WA community and while our efforts to date have been focused on containing the virus, we must prepare for the prospect of more cases becoming seriously ill.

We need to be flexible and nimble in our approach and with the reconfiguration of beds across the system, together with valuable capacity from the private sector, we are well placed to cater for an increase in demand.

The new equipment will significantly enhance the ability of our medical staff to care for an expected increase in cases.

All these new initiatives are just the first stage of increasing capacity across the public hospital system to fight the COVID-19 crisis.

CAMPING AS ISOLATION SCOTT CUPITT

I

've been listening to a few people talking that camping at the moment would be fantastic self isoloation.

It made me think of Barry, Barry from Bondi. Barry decided to take the family camping over Easter.

They didn't get away when expected and by Lithgow the kids were starving, they stopped for lunch at Macca's. As they continued on the young fella realised that he didn't pack his fishing rod. Being a great Dad, Barry stopped in at BCF Bathurst.

Continuing on, Barry and the family got to the fantastic isolated camp site just past Wellington. The first night was far colder than expected so Barry decided to head into Dubbo Big W for some warmer clothes.

The esky wasnt the best so Barry headed to Wellington for ice on day three. After a fantastic time away Barry and the family

are heading home. Unfortunately Barry wasn't feeling great so stopped off at the Blackheath chemist for some medication.

Barry gets fantastic fuel economy so he didn't need fuel until Blaxland, also Macca's for the hungry ones. Barry and the family got home that afternoon after a great time away and Barry decided to go to the doctor - turned out to be positive for the virus.

It was at this time that Barry realised how many people he had come accross during his isolated camping trip.

I love getting away and camping as much as anyone and I dont want this to go on forever like this.

Please don't be like Barry, stay the Fuck home so that Australia gets though this as quick as possible without the life loss that overseas is experiencing.

Do the right thing now and we are closer to life being normal again.

15

WRITING AUNTIE KAREN’S SURVIVAL GUIDE KAREN R TREANOR

How to prepare for an independent life in only three weeks

this will pass as bedmaking unless your grandmother is coming to visit.

S

o they finally did it! Your parents told you they've got the family home on the market, have put a down payment on a condo in Mandurah, and you've got three weeks to pack up and find a new place to live.

They haven't invited you to come along, but your mother has said you can have your bed, the old vacuum cleaner and the you-beaut juicing machine.

You've got three weeks to learn how to survive on your own. This series will help you do that. It will tell you (almost) everything your mother tried to tell you over the past eighteen or twenty-six or thirty-five years that you were too busy to listen to.

Pillow protectors: those pillow-sized bags with a zip on the end, are useful if you can afford them. They keep the pillows looking and smelling newer longer. About every third or fourth change of bed linen, wash the pillow protectors.

A mattress protector is another useful thing to have, especially if you're fond of drinking coffee or doing other messy things in bed. It is much easier to clean a mattress protector than the mattress itself. In a pinch, an old blanket can stand in for the more expensive purpose-made mattress protector, but it will get rumpled faster.

Every three months, turn the mattress around and flip it over, unless it’s one of those pillow-top things that has only one surface. The idea is to distribute the wear pattern more evenly.

The cheaper the mattress, the more important it is to rotate it.

Chapter 1 ~ Cleanliness is next to Godliness--advice for

dirty pagans. Clothing care tips, and basic

cleaning products that cost half what the brand

names do.

Chapter 2 ~ How to shop, cook and eat without paying half your

wages for food

Once you are living on your own, you will be amazed how much you have to buy. When you open the cupboard under the bathroom sink, you won't find any toilet paper there unless you bought the rolls and stashed them yourself.

No matter what those quaint out-back biographies say, newspaper is not a satisfactory substitute for toilet paper. Nor is last year's edition of the Yellow Pages.

If you are really lucky, your mother will have sent you out on your own with a basket full of useful stuff, because she'll have known just how much you don't have. One of the best wedding presents I received was a big white enamel bucket, with a huge ball of green string.

Tied to the loose end of the string were all sorts of useful things such as a scrubbing brush, a package of sponges, a roll of sticky tape and five or six other things that I'd never thought about needing. Those items came in far handier than the box of fancy undies.

Your first shopping trip after signing the lease is where you have to be really careful. Yes, the lava lamp at the Retro Boutique is a fantastic bargain, and we'd all like one of those snappy little Finnish area rugs with the geometric patterns--but stop and think: what do you need?

We've already mentioned the loo rolls. Also while we are in the bathroom, let's remember toothpaste, soap, a sponge for mopping up the sink, and some towels. If you are lucky, Mum gave you a few towels.

Otherwise, check out the big discount stores. Most of them have regular sales in the Manchester section. (Note: Manchester is an umbrella term for bed linen, towels, tablecloths, etc. Once upon a time, before the Global Economy, things like that were made in the huge mills of Manchester, England.)

If you are really tight for money, check out your .local Salvo's store or church op shop, you can often get pretty decent towels there.

A single person can get by with two bath towels, one to use and one in the wash. If you hang up the damp towel in an airy spot, you'll get more use out of it. Towels crumpled on the floor turn into mildew mansions very quickly.

Bed linen: You can get by with only one set, but two is better if you can manage it. Fitted bottom sheets will save time and make the bedroom look tidier instantly. When you get up in the morning, fold back the bedding to air and fluff up the pillows-16

In the kitchen you will discover that there's nothing you can use except the sliver of soap the previous tenant left on the drain board, and a curled-up sponge that looks and smells as if a dog had worried it.

Don't throw out that sponge: pour boiling water on it, wring it out when it's cool, and zap it in the microwave for 90 seconds.

If it's a cellulose sponge, it will now be germ-free and usable in the bathroom for cleaning the tub and sink. If it's a plastic sponge, you will have made an interesting bit of modern art.

So what do you need in your kitchen? Dish soap and cleaning materials. You can buy huge bottles of cheap dish soap, but you'll discover that you have to use quite a lot to get a good soapy sinkful. If you can afford it, a bottle of the better brand of soap is in the long run more economical, because one squeeze will go further.

What you spent on the good soap you can save in other areas. Don't buy expensive kitchen spray-on kitchen cleaners: buy a bottle of cheap white vinegar, a bottle of ammonia, and a box of the cheapest baking soda. That's soda, not baking powder.

Buy two cheap spray bottles from a Two Dollar shop, or better yet, beg a few used spray bottles from a relative and recycle them. Mix ½ cup of ammonia carefully with two cups of water, and you have a cheap spray-on grease cutter, bug killer, floor cleaner, dirt-shifter and just about any other type of cleaner you will need. OK, it stinks to high heavens, but it works.

And it is one-third the price of fancy brand-name cleaners.

For things that need a bit of abrasive cleaning, a damp sponge with some baking soda works wonders. Grimy sinks, icky

longer cares what your room looks like.

If you can afford a washing machine, lucky you. But most people starting out on their own have to go to the local laundrette. And in the local laundrette, you can almost always find a helpful middle-aged lady who will take pity on you and give you good advice about how much soap, what setting, what you can wash with what, and even lend you the last twenty cent piece for the dryer.

In case you don't meet one of these kindly women when you need to, try to remember that white things, or light-coloured things, should be washed together and dark things (jeans, socks, lumber shirts) should be washed together. Delicate-feeling things such as jumpers and silk shirts should be washed on a gentle cycle (the machine will have a setting for this), and really dirty stuff, like work clothes, needs to be done on the heavy-duty or extra-long wash cycle.

Before throwing laundry into the washer, read the manufacturer's advice tag. It may say that this garment is 'dry clean only'. Sometimes this is the truth and sometimes it isn't. I have washed all sorts of things that were 'dry clean only'. Wool jackets really mean it when their tags say dry clean only, but most other things you can get away with washing on the delicate cycle in cold water. Jackets will stay clean much longer if you wear them with a collared shirt or a scarf. Brad Pitt looks cool with his t-shirt and jacket, but he can afford to send the jacket out to the cleaner after every wearing. You can’t.

Drying: Some clothes that say "Do not tumble dry" are just fooling, and you can in fact dry them by machine. But other clothes turn into gnome-sized garments at the first hint of heat. This is where you hope the nice middle aged lady is at the laundrette when you go there.

As a general rule, wool, linen and new cotton will all shrink like violets in a dryer. Cotton that has been washed and dried a few times probably won’t shrink any further.

Cotton-polyester shirts dry almost wrinkle free, but the secret here is to bring coat hangers with you so that when the dryer stops you can hang up the shirts and keep them pristine.

Polo shirts and T-shirts won't be quite wrinkle free, but hanging them up will reduce wrinkles. There's no point in spending $2 on the dryer and then bundling everything up like a dog's bed.

FOOD

Unless you are a corporate lawyer or neurosurgeon, you won't be able to eat out very often; maybe once a week if you’re lucky. So what will you do for the other twenty meals a week?

spots in the fridge, and, in a pinch, stained teeth, respond well to baking soda. (A very old lady I know has brushed her teeth with a mix of salt and soda for over ninety years, and she still has all of her teeth. I suspect good genes come into the equation somewhere, but she does have a very fine set of choppers.)

For shifting soap scum, whether it's on your shower screen or in your hair, you can use vinegar. Use it straight on the scummy shower screen, or mix ½ cup in a litre of water as a hair rinse. Strangely, it does not leave your hair smelling like salad dressing.

Plastic foam sponges push water around in ever decreasing bubbles but never quite soak it all up. Cellulose sponges are better than the plastic ones in my opinion. (That opinion should count for something, as I have been sponging up dirt and mess since the War of Jenkins’ Ear, more or less. OK, a bit less.

Cellulose sponges can tolerate boiling water poured on them, and they can be zapped in the microwave for forty-five seconds to kill germs.

Do this several times a week at least.

Clean Clothes: you won't have these unless you make them clean yourself. The days when your mother got fed up with how your room looked and in exasperation did fourteen loads of laundry are gone. Mum's in that townhouse in Mandurah, and she no

Breakfast: Some people claim they don't need it. OK, that's your business. If you do eat breakfast, you probably eat cold cereal.

Keep your eye out for cereal on special prices: every big store has a really good price on cereal several times a month.

Take the time to figure out what the cost per serving works out to, and also read the nutrition advice on the side of the box.

Avoid cereals with high salt and sugar content if you can: they are usually the most highly-processed and therefore the most expensive, and the least useful for your gut.

Your gut craves fibre, and whether it works like a super highway or a winding back road, fibre is what it needs. A mueslistyle cereal is your best bet, but check the ingredients for sugar content, palm oil, salt and other nasties.

Oatmeal is, according a recent news story, is not only the most affordable, it's the best for your body, and stays with you longer so that you wont be ravenous for a sugar doughnut at morning tea time.

Lunch: If you make your own lunch and take it to work or school with you, you will save a bundle of money, and you'll also know that if there's anyone's dirty thumb in your sandwich, it's your own. Tip: if you like sliced tomato in your sandwich, put it in a separate container and insert it into the sandwich just before eating. This will prevent your lunch looking like a pizzeria cleaning cloth.

Concluded on page 54 ...

17

DINING IN

The Thoughts of an Ageing, Balding Foodie

And I see with interest that the Swan Valley Brewery on Great Northern Highway where we had an outstanding meal recently is offering Fish and Chips - a tempting offer since of favourite chippy has closed down.

Next month we’ll be putting together a list of which restaurants in the Perth Hills/Swan Valley/Midland/Guildford region and surrounds are open for take-aways and other useful stuff.

HOME COOKING

The other change we’re seeing to our dining habits is the re-introduction of family meals - since everyone’s home meals are in many homes reverting to sitting around a table eating together (once the phones have been confiscated) and talking.

My generation (late boomer) always did this while eating the food that mum cooked. Never dad - he only cooked if it was outdoors, an odd thing in the 50’s was the sex divide over cooking inside or out. Outdoor cooking would be dad with a bbq and several pounds of good red meat, while mum made all the salads, laid the table, cut the bread (pre-sliced bread was the work of the devil) and prepared the sauces while dad chargrilled the meat and claimed credit for the meal.

Mum’s meals were of the ‘good plain cook’ style of economical home cooking - simple foods, wholesome, satisfying and comforting. Casseroles, pies, stews, ragouts and ‘messes’ made with some meat and a lot of vegetables served with potatoes, carrots, peas and gravy.

She could feed a family of four on very little, and when I tell you that dad’s take-home pay in 1953 was thirty-six pounds a month, very little is what I mean.

She developed, as did all her friends, ways of cooking cheaper cuts of meat so that the true flavour came out, the dishes were both tender and full of richness. Long slow cooking of cuts we would now not eat, up to and including offal. There was very little waste.

My granny made a brawn that was the talk of the neighbourhood, rich and succulent, the meat held captive in

DINE OUT AT HOME

T

DOUGLAS SUTHERLAND-BRUCE

he editorial has spoken of the necessity to continue supporting your favourite local restaurant through these dark days. Many have closed down, laid off staff and gone home to worry about the rent, mortgages and school fees.

But many others are trying to continue, ‘open for business as usual’, as in the spirit of the Blitz, when many businesses were even more open for business than usual with frontages blown off and wares displayed on rickety tables perched in rubble.

We need to support them - as a family we have pledged to order in at least one take-away meal a week ordered from one of the restaurants we might normally patronise. This week it was Swans Restaurant and Function Centre on West Swan Road.

We ordered a mixed selection of two excellent pizzas (the seafood of prawns and asparagus particularly yummy), ribs, chicken wings, a very nice salad and some very superior chips the whole cost $104 for a good meal for four adults with enough left-overs for a good light lunch the next day.

No getting dressed, no using the car, no problems of any kind - a phone call and a knock at the door. Wonderful.

The traditional take-away/ drive-thru pizza, burger and chicken restaurants have this down to a fine art, many having branched out into home deliveries even before Covid-18 made it so desirable, but I note with approval that a few have added eggs, milk and bread to their menus for drive-thru, so that you can collect all your essentials along with your dinner.

We must support these restaurants, both the traditionally take-away and those trying it for the first time - and many fine dining restaurants are being pro-active in trying to keep their staff employed, even with greatly reduced hours.

Chef & Co, in Beaufort street, Bedford is one such restaurant - readers may recall that I reviewed them as a dine in restaurant a month ago - our last meal out, as it happened. I was vastly impressed with the prices, the service, the setting, but above all - the food. All of which is available in the comfort of your own home.

A modern Australian Restaurant in the heart of Bedford - come and try our award-winning food!

Opening Hours Monday & Tuesday - Closed Wednesday, Thursday - 11:00am to 9:00pm Friday & Saturday - 11:00am to 9:30pm Sunday - 11:00am to 9:00pm Contact Information 1000 Beaufort Street, Bedford, WA Email: bookings@chefandcorestaurant.com.au Phone: 0438 803 630 18

DINING IN a clear glutinous aspic with trails of carrot and onion through it. if you’ve never tried it, you have missed a treat - but it’s preparation uses a pigs head and feet, or occasionally a cow’s foot.

Calves Foot jelly was popular, made from exactly what you think it is - and Mock Turtle Soup. If you’re familiar with the Alice in Wonderland story you know it’s made from a calf’s head, but here’s the actual recipe: Mrs. Fowle’s Mock Turtle Soup: Take a large calf’s head. Scald off the hair. Boil it until the horn is tender, then cut it into slices about the size of your finger, with as little lean as possible. Have ready three pints of good mutton or veal broth, put in it half a pint of Madeira wine, half a teaspoonful of thyme, pepper, a large onion, and the peel of a lemon chop’t very small. A ¼ of a pint of oysters chop’t very small, and their liquor; a little salt, the juice of two large onions, some sweet herbs, and the brains chop’t. Stand all these together for about an hour, and send it up to the table with the forcemeat balls made small and the yolks of hard eggs.

Now, doesn’t that sound appetising?

But as times get harder and we eat more meals at home and imagination palls, we may well need to think about some of the cheaper, more nutritious meals our mothers cooked. I’m not suggesting tripe and onions, or rabbit stew, or liver - although each of these can be delicious in its own way and I have fond memories of Granny’s famous liver and onions, and Mum’s tripe in white sauce with onions.

But we may well need to think more about long slow cooked meals in that wonderful invention the crock pot. Some cheap steak, onions, peas, carrots and some stock and eight hours layer you have a fine rich stew worthy of any plate, served with richly buttered mashed potatoes at a cost of $2.50 a head.

We’ll be doing our bit by suggesting some dishes for you. Dishes tasty, simple and economical that can be made by anyone. And may I suggest that with the children home on holidays it is an excellent opportunity to teach them to cook.

All too often we meet otherwise quite nice young men totally unable to cook or fend for themselves and having to resort to carb-heavy, fat-laden fast food high in sugar to survive.

Not good as a staple diet, expensive and, in the long run, unwholesome. Far better to be able to make a few simple dishes and bake a few basics.

Our own Chef-Explorer, forced to curtail his exploring adventures will be providing us with some imaginative suggestions but in the meantime - can you feed six people for under a dollar a head?

Why, yes you can.

1 tsp. ground cumin

1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper (25 cents)

2 tins canned kidney beans ($2.00)

Total: $4.25 Method: Heat the oil in a stockpot over medium-high heat. Add the onion and garlic and saute for five minutes, then add the rice and saute for another couple of minutes. Next, add in the vegetable stock, bring to a boil, lower the heat and cook for twenty minutes. The spices and black beans should be added right before you’re ready to serve.

Cost per serving: 71 cents STOVETOP MAC N’ CHEESE

If your kids love mac n’ cheese, throw away the boxed stuff and try this instead.

Ingredients:

375g. box of shells, elbows, or other pasta ($1.50)

3 cups whole milk ($1.00)

3 Tablespoons flour (25 cents)

Sugar and salt to taste (5 cents)

3 cups shredded cheese ($2.25)

Total: $5.05 Method: Just boil a box of pasta and, in a separate pot, whisk together the milk and flour, adding about a teaspoon of salt and a bit of sugar and pepper to taste.

Stir constantly until just boiling, then lower the heat and continue stirring for a few moments as it thickens. Next, add the shredded cheese and mix until melted, and then pour the cheese mixture over the pasta.

At this point, it’s ready to serve — or if you want, you can add some “extras” to make a more tasty grown-up version, like peas, diced bacon, cubed ham, tuna or tomatoes. If you have time to go all out, you can dump it all into a casserole dish, top with buttery breadcrumbs, and bake for 20-25 minutes at 180C.

Price per serving: 85 cents.

With all the emphasis of ‘stay home. stay safe’, those who can should take advantage of the Coles/Woolies home delivery service where possible.

Fresh veggies are a bit more of a problem but there’s always businesses such as the Doorstep Grocer who provides safety; both in food bio-security (he knows where the produce is grown or processed, unites the community and offers fantastic food boxes, excellent value for money)

www.facebook.com/thedoorstepgrocers/

BLACK BEANS AND RICE

Black beans and rice is one of those easy, cheap meals almost everyone loves, and a staple dish of many cultures. This recipe only requires a handful of inexpensive ingredients, yet is full of flavour.

Ingredients:

1 Tablespoon of olive oil

1 large onion, chopped

2 cloves garlic, minced

3/4 cup uncooked rice

1-1/2 cups vegetable stock

(25 cents) (50 cents) (50 cents) (50 cents) (25 cents)

19

Stay safe ... til next month....

FICTION LOYALTIES JAMES FORTE

T

an app to optimize cycling routes given the position of the sun and the wind speed/direction obtained from online weather forecasts.

David’s team floundered at first in their quest for a product to develop. Louisa had asked what was most likely to impress the school in years to come. Mark, the group comedian, had immediately proposed a tower clock that worked.

Thus their project became ‘The most accurate, reliable and interesting school clock in the country’.

David encouraged each member to contribute their favourite ideas and the specification was soon bloated with fantastic imaginings and features. The clock face would be a computer display panel that could show almost anything.

At this point, David had asked Louisa to step in and analyse the requirements.

She stripped away the gimmicks and produced an elegant essence - a purity of design that everyone agreed was a winner.

The evening work in the computing lab became a high point of the day for all of them. The project progressed rapidly and there was a growing confidence that the cup should be theirs.

Towards the end of term, all the teams were assembled to provide progress reports.

That morning, David was surprised to find Louisa missing when he called the group together. When he asked if anyone had seen her, there were secret looks from the other five members and a quiet snigger from Mark. The mystery was solved when David entered the meeting room and found Louisa sitting with Kate’s group. Before he could demand an explanation, the headmaster called the meeting to order.

For Louisa, it was an amusing prank. As one fun-loving girl to another, Kate had approached her with a trivial trick devised to tease David. Louisa joined in the laughter when Kate loudly announced that she had swapped groups. The head also thought it amusing.

For David, being struck by lightning would have been less of a shock. The girl he had placed on a pedestal had tumbled.

The girl he had trusted above all others had betrayed him.

The girl he had thought was full of grace had done something ugly. The girl who had produced such a wonderful design had abandoned it. The girl who had been the core of the team had deserted it. The girl who represented a bright future was no longer there.

Everyone, even his team, was in on the secret and was laughing at him. David could only stare at his report with a face the colour of volcanic ash. He could see with great clarity that the remainder of the year at Appleby was going to be a misery.

After the meeting David was seething inside. Somehow he repressed all signs of emotion. As team leader, he would have to carry on and save whatever he could from the wreckage.

He reconvened the team and adjusted roles to cover the defection. No one dared correct him, nor point out that it was just a joke, nor that Louisa was still very much a member of the

he logo was of an old stone clock tower. It looked ridiculous on the glossy cover of a complex report about the latest technology. The authors could not care less. For them, the logo was perfect.

The tower was located at Appleby College. The school was widely cited as a fine example of how the old could accommodate the new. Visitors were impressed by its grand architecture – which had long since celebrated its centenary – housing up-to-the-minute science and computing laboratories.

The centerpiece of the main building was the clock tower, which had a look of Sir Christopher Wren about it. Sadly the rusty gearing inside was locked solid. The clock had not run in years.

The school motto was ‘Loyalty’.

This was loosely interpreted by the new headmaster as ‘Commitment’.

Students were admonished that being only half-committed was a mortal sin.

You either did something with passion and total commitment - or you failed. There was no in-between, no compromise.

It was a motto that resonated strongly with final-year student David Stewart. His family had migrated to Australia from Scotland and, although not particularly religious, brought their strict Presbyterian work ethic with them.

Like most schoolboys, David had surreptitiously rated the girls in his year and Louisa Bradshaw had come out on top.

She was fun loving and pretty. But so were most of the girls. To David, she had grace. He simply could not imagine her doing anything ugly.

David was oblivious to the fact that Louisa had developed a schoolgirl crush on him. Although one of the taller boys, he was conscious of always being reported as ‘good’ rather than ‘excellent’ for sport. He was surprised to be made school captain for both cricket and rugby. Louisa was not. Like the coach, she could see his leadership abilities. He was able to inspire people to make an extended effort for the greater good. ~oOo~

Upon arrival, the headmaster had been, like his predecessors, determined to make his mark on the school’s educational philosophy. He developed a curriculum which encouraged experimentation and group projects.

Final-year students were put into teams and expected to carry out some engineering enterprise. Points were awarded for areas such as creativity, design, production and marketing.

A graduation-year cup was commissioned and competition was expected to be fierce.

Louisa and David were pleased to be allocated to the same team of seven students. David knew Louisa to have a knack for engineering design. She quietly pushed for David to be elected leader. The most serious contender for the cup was Kate Harrison’s team. Her father was a professor of jurisprudence - with high expectations. For her product, he had suggested 20

team, nor urge him to inquire further. Then he disappeared in a fury.

When Louisa arrived twenty minutes later, still giggling over the event, she was taken aback at the idea that she needed to make peace with her leader. She found him in a library carrel.

The meeting was brutal. David cut short her stammered explanation with a formal verdict: that if she wanted to join Kate’s group, then he would not stand in her way. Further he had already passed a note to the headmaster stating he accepted the new arrangement. He would continue with a group of six.

Louisa left the carrel shattered.

She sat for half an hour on a park-bench to compose herself.

Then, as instructed, she passed her work over to the other team members. After that, she went home and wept.

David continued to seethe inside. The shame of being laughed at by the whole meeting – particularly Louisa – was unbearable. His group – which had worked so well together – was broken. He drove them hard; there was no laughter in him; he was icily formal with everyone. All except Louisa for whom he showed a silent disdain. If she entered a room, he left it.

She became depressed and her work suffered. When David’s behaviour did not improve, the school had to intervene.

Louisa wrote him a beautifully worded note of apology. He was approached by friends and urged to reconsider. Take Louisa out for a pizza or a cappuccino. They were certain she would accept.

But David’s trust was too deeply wounded. He was not going to be set up for a second humiliation. ‘You trick me once, shame on you. You trick me twice, shame on me.’ His reply was simple. As far as he could see, Louisa was happier with Kate. Why should she want to change again? Then he went on hating the world.

Eventually the headmaster summoned him and told him to snap out of it. The tower clock was beautiful. The design comprised a large illuminated cream disk with the hands indicated by blue LEDs. It could be easily read a kilometre away.

It was never more than a second out and its backup battery ensured it worked - even in a power failure.

Sadly, David’s demonstration of its capabilities lacked passion and Kate’s team won the cup. Then it was the end of the school year and everyone went their separate ways. On the final day, Louisa hung around places where he might go. She nearly bumped into him once, but he dodged around her without a word.

Such are the follies of youth. ~oOo~

David moved interstate. They went to different universities although both studied science – she mathematics, he software engineering. David ended up in a government office: the Therapeutic Equipment Commission or TEC. Louisa gained a doctorate in optimizing complex processes and joined a private company, Williamson Systems. They kept in touch with mutual friends, but never asked about the other.

David traveled. Louisa married Oscar and acquired an Old English sheepdog which she called Wookie. They both became dedicated to their respective careers and prospered. They might never have met again, but fate thought otherwise…

It was seven years after school that David and Louisa found themselves at the same function – a large conference on safety-critical computer systems. It was a mild shock when they recognized each other at the ‘meet and greet’ party.

From across the room, Louisa gave him a small smile and a half-wave. Her schoolgirl crush flashed in front of her eyes and she froze in anticipation, a glass of Riesling halfway to her lips. He hasn’t changed one iota, she thought. David automatically gave a nod to an old school friend. In her black cocktail dress, she was the most desirable woman in the room – even with a wedding ring.

Progress in human relationships depends on the smallest of signals – the curve of a mouth, the rise of an eyebrow, the tilt of a head or the move of a hand. Sadly David’s sensors were not

picking up any of Louisa’s signals. His brain jabbed at him: ‘Don’t you remember who she is?’ He struggled to decide whether to carry on where he left off – denying her existence - or to go over and say hello.

And suddenly he was a schoolboy again, unable to decide what to do. He prevaricated. He needed time to work things out.

He was bound to bump into her at some point in the conference.

He turned and started a conversation with some boring naval officer who was on his fourth gin and tonic.

Louisa, who believed she had grown out of such things, felt the blood rise to her face. It had been such a trivial prank, blown out of all proportion. And now he was continuing to give her the ice treatment. Perhaps she had liked him once – but this was intolerable.

By the next day, he had worked out a couple of acceptable phrases – a mention of school memories – and summoned enough courage to approach her. However when she saw him, she slipped into a lecture room. When he followed uncertainly, she sat down in a crowded area where there were no spare seats.

They avoided each other for the remainder of the conference.

Each made a mental note not to attend the following year. They continued living on opposite sides of the country and ignoring Appleby College reunions. Until… ~oOo~

Williamson Systems won a large and prestigious contract to supply the TEC with the Benedictus clinical software system.

A technical liaison officer would need to be posted to the client’s office for the initial installation. Frances Montague, the software manager at Williamson, had a problem: Louisa was a bright and rising star and looked like being her principal competitor for an upcoming promotion. It was not a difficult decision to post her far away for three months. Problem solved.

Louisa was offered an airline-club membership and a salary increase. A serviced apartment would be rented for her just around the corner from the TEC office. The task was made to sound like an important and interesting challenge. She went home to discuss the posting with Oscar. He was a young man who had a talent for translating Korean user manuals into English and did not care much for anything else.

As Louisa walked through the door of their apartment, she suddenly realized that her marriage had been drifting for several years. There were no plans for raising children. Wookie was just about their only common interest. She felt stagnant.

She felt in need of something new. She felt a need to get away for a while. And she was not surprised when Oscar showed no interest at all. With obvious indifference, he told her that it was up to her.

So she swapped big hugs with Wookie and off she went.

At the TEC, David had been involved in evaluating the various proposals for the new software systems. He thought Benedictus was a magnificent concept and was full of praise for its design. He successfully fought to be appointed the manager of the project to commission it.

David had no idea that Louisa worked for Williamson.

Louisa had no idea that David worked for the TEC. The day before the project was due to start, David and Louisa discovered that they would be working closely together. Each spent the night trying to devise a means of getting out of the appointment.

As the office manager and David’s chief assistant, Olga Stutzke welcomed Louisa to the TEC next morning. Louisa was impressed by the efficient yet warm and motherly approach of the older woman. She looked capable and approachable. On the other hand Olga was concerned by Louisa’s furtive and worried look. Olga crossed her fingers as she showed Louisa into David’s office.

He had decided the best strategy was to treat Louisa as a total stranger – forget about any past history – and start afresh.

She had decided to look him in the eye and coldly demand that he be professional about the project.

They shook hands. The stern face each was adopting slipped and became a small formal smile of welcome. These 21

grew into wider smiles and then small chuckles. Which in turn developed into full laughter. Olga stood puzzled until David asked her to organize lunch at a good restaurant. Camillo’s.

Louisa accepted.

“I’m so, so happy to see you… to be working with you again,” he said.

“Likewise.”

“We made a great team. You should never have left the group.”

“You kicked me out!”

“A pathetic over-reaction. I was a little boy who’d lost something beautiful.”

“Kate’s joke was puerile.”

“And then at the conference… you wouldn’t talk to me.”

“You turned your back on me.”

“I was in shock! You looked wonderful.”

They laughed again.

David leaned forward earnestly. “I want you to know I’m totally committed to Benedictus. We’re going to do great things together.”

Louisa grinned. “That’s what they all say. Every job I’ve ever worked on. But, thanks. I know you mean it. Me too.” Louisa was given an office just along the corridor and work started. ~oOo~

cases of an okay result when in fact the patient is ill.”

“We call them false positives and false negatives.” David supported her every step of the way.

“The system takes many factors into account in choosing the treatment and calculating dosages. It then monitors the patient’s response.”

Again David reinforced the message. “Obviously both the diagnosis and the treatment are safety-critical. Get them wrong and there’s a negative outcome.”

‘You mean the poor bugger dies?” Karl Curtis, a senior manager, laughed. Louisa laughed too.

“Exactly. But Williamson Systems have a vast experience in this area. Much lower mortality.”

“That’s why we gave you the contract,” Karl added dryly.

David nodded. “And Dr Bradshaw here is an expert on the mathematics of the process. Of the correctness of the software.

The system works.”

The project had a perfect start. The first few weeks of staff training, test preparation and product certification went quickly and smoothly. Although maintaining a professional relationship, it was clear that Louisa and David enjoyed each other’s company very much.

Too much for some. Whispers started going around the office that David was just a little too friendly with the Williamson representative. Just a little too soft in any bargaining over system modifications and contract variations.

And then the project hit the first bump. Such innovative projects as Benedictus are rarely straightforward. The sub– contractor that built the hardware missed a deadline and revised some specifications. Then the software had to be modified to cope with the new requirements, causing further delays. This put Williamson Systems in a bad light and senior TEC management became wary. Karl Curtis vowed to keep a closer eye on the scheduled milestones.

David and Louisa negotiated a fair payment for the extra work but the sub-contractor refused to accept responsibility.

TEC had to pick up the invoice to keep the project moving - and suddenly there were people questioning whose side David was on. A rumour went around that he was to be posted to another project. Louisa heard it before he did. She quietly phoned Frances and engineered some discreet pressure from

The project brief was full of the usual marketing jargon. It stated: “The purpose of Benedictus is to optimize the care of patients with a given set of conditions. It integrates a diagnostic system with a therapeutic function – all controlled by Artificial Intelligence or AI. Clinicians are informed every step of the way, but the Benedictus expert diagnostics have already been demonstrated to be far superior to those of any single physician. The treatment is dynamic, continuously adjusting choices based on the patient’s history and feedback.”

In short, it analysed the symptoms and selected a treatment.

As Louisa would explain in her briefings to senior staff: “It’s a case of precision. We have far fewer cases of identifying a poor condition when the patient is actually healthy and also fewer

22

Williamson that David was their preferred contact at TEC. He stayed. At least for now.

Frances took the whole episode as a red warning flag and took some prudent action. Many suppliers cultivate a ‘project champion’ from within the client’s office. Some clients call it ‘spying’ as if your suppliers were your enemy. Frances found an officer at TEC who would accept a secret retainer to keep her informed of any murmurs of client unhappiness. ~oOo~

The Benedictus project settled down again. Karl called weekly meetings for progress reports. He had to admit that things were progressing smoother than with most such projects.

David and Louisa had an uncanny knack of anticipating problems and coming up with good solutions. By the time Karl heard about an issue, a response was usually in place.

Like Kate at Appleby before him, Karl soon recognized Louisa’s talents and began to consider the idea of luring her away from Williamson and onto his team. One Thursday morning, with the work nearly complete, he called Louisa into his office and confided how much he admired her work.

Louisa was immediately on her guard. These were the type of comments which usually preceded a speech about how his wife did not understand him and how much he would like to take her out to dinner. She ostentatiously touched her wedding ring and prepared to tell him she was otherwise engaged.

It was with some relief that she heard him make her an offer to move to the public service. It was an offer he believed was too good for her to refuse. She formally thanked him and agreed to consider it. She added that being so far from home was eroding her marriage.

Louisa took David to lunch at Camillo’s and asked his advice. The response was immediate. He made it clear that he enjoyed working with her very much and was strongly in favour of any move that would keep her at the TEC.

However, word quickly reached Frances Montague and she was not happy. The headhunting of good staff was a part of life in the corporate jungle. A call to Louisa, still at the restaurant, made it clear that there would be a financial bonus at the end of the project, but in the mean time Williamson Systems wished to be assured of her allegiance. Louisa gave it.

Listening to Louisa’s half of the phone-call, David was shaken by the speed with which the news had traveled. But that was pushed aside as he realized that it was not just the working relationship with Louisa he wished to hold on to. He now had deeper feelings for her. He wanted to be with her. If she was not going to move to his organization, then maybe he should try and move to hers.

Karl took Louisa’s refusal well. He was basically a decent enough person – but the temptation to balance his loss with the imposition of a little authority was too strong. He put out a memo discussing the safety of Benedictus and requiring twice as much clinical testing before it would be accepted by TEC. The next day, David and Louisa went to see him. They were armed with tables of test measurements demonstrating that the system-integrity criteria had been met.

Karl welcomed them with an offer of coffee. But he was not shifting. He needed more convincing. David leaned forward in his chair.

“Louisa…” He formally corrected himself. “Dr Bradshaw has done a mathematical analysis of the critical code. We can get an independent mathematician from the university to check her work. It’s correct. It’s safe.”

Karl was prepared for the assertion. “This is an AI system.

It learns from experience. It has self-modifying code. It can change itself to some unknown state.” Then he smiled at Louisa.

“With respect, even you can’t prove some future unknown condition is safe.” Louisa smiled in return. “That’s true. But…”

“But. But what?”

Louisa made a small gesture to gain permission and then walked over to Karl’s whiteboard. She drew a meandering line.

“This might be the system’s progress in optimizing its own

performance.” Then she boldly slashed four lines to form a box around it. “We’ve imposed constraints on its operations. And we’ve proven those limits to be safe. It can’t stray into dangerous areas – it can’t go outside the box - without first notifying an operator.”

“And,” David added, “A physician has to sign off each time. The patient is protected. Much more than with previous methods.”

Karl stubbornly shook his head. “Benedictus needs more testing.”

“But we’ve met the terms of the contract,” Louisa pleaded.

“This extra testing will take ages,” David said in support.

“Williamson Systems will be paid for the work. When Benedictus passes all its acceptance criteria.”

“The extra criteria,” Louisa added bitterly. “You’re breaking our contract.”

“So sue us.”

“I’m here to look after technical stuff. I’m advising you…”

“Thanks for your advice, Louisa. Noted.” Karl’s voice had gained a condescending tone. David could feel his temper rising.

He suppressed it and took a deep breath.

“Everyone will lose. Benedictus will not be available for months. If Williamson sue, it’s going to cost both sides. It gets worse. Then we won’t be able to use the software. TEC will have to get another system. Start all over again.”

Karl shrugged. He was getting a certain pleasure in watching David and Louisa groveling.

“You’ll be withholding a better treatment to patients who need it. Some people will die,” Louisa quietly but emphatically noted.

Karl was adamant. “It’s only your opinion your system is better. Until we do the extra testing. If you can’t do it, I’ll get Williamson to send me a replacement.” Then he turned to David. “You have a conflict of interest here. You’re supposed to be helping me protect TEC from inadequate products. Maybe it’s time you moved to another project.”

Louisa looked like she was about to explode. David took her arm to steer her towards the door.

Karl fired a parting shot as David pushed her along.

“Just get the work done. The Computer Society has an Ethics Committee. A complaint from TEC could end both your careers.”

David went icy cold. He gripped Louisa’s arm tighter to keep her from speaking. Then he formally thanked Karl for his advice.

As they walked to the lift, he whispered: “Don’t worry. Got a plan.” Louisa gritted her teeth.

“Better be a good one. Way I’m feeling.”

Olga made them coffee as they collapsed in David’s office.

She made sympathetic noises as they related the details of the meeting with Karl. David asked her to check the files and summarize the contract with respect to safety testing.

Louisa slowly calmed down but wanted to know about David’s plan.

David asked her to wait until he had checked the documentation. Half an hour later, a text message from Williamson Systems came in on Louisa’s phone. It was blunt.

Any delays to the project would see the technical liaison officer looking for a new job. Once again David was shocked by how fast the news had traveled.

“Talk about ‘carrot and stick’,” he said bitterly. “Yesterday they were offering you a bonus to keep you. Now…”

“I’m feeling rather used.”

“We’re the meat in the sandwich.”

“Frances is bad enough. But Karl… how dare he say you’re unethical. You’re doing your best for TEC… and the patients.”

David laughed. “We can go over his head. We just need something new. Something to convince the top floor that the system’s safe.”

“What?”

“How about an independent module - which checks the output and warns if it’s dangerous?”

23

Concluded on page 54 ...

HOUSE AND GARDEN BACKYARD LANDSCAPING ON A BUDGET - 2 MARION LOGIE

A

free.

For plants, you can get cuttings or divided clumps from friends or family gardens or even sub-divided from one’s own prolific . These can be transplanted into your new garden for virtually nothing. Most plants can be propagated by cuttings, but you may need to use some root hormone powder that you can pick up from any nursery or warehouse store.

Also have a look around at local markets, or council giveaways for cheap or free plants. Local independent nurseries are another great option.

Lots of these places will do some pretty sweet deals on bulk purchases to keep afloat. Wholesale nurseries will also be considerably cheaper to buy from. It might mean taking a bit of a drive out of town, but cut out the middleman and save some money!

Pots and sculptures can be found at second hand stores, on online classified websites (Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace), and even on the side of the road. Don't be afraid to recycle someone elses unwanted stuff if it saves you money!

Materials are a bit tougher to find cheap, but you can save some cash if you can source what you need. Try some local tree loppers, or council arborists and see if they

a month ago we were ytaking about landscaping your garden as a great way to improve your outdoor space and add value to your home.

But we spoke as if it was a long term project, spaced out as and when you could fit in time from you busy lives. How things have changed in the space of a month! Now, saving lives by staying at home, we have more time to lavish on the garden, on the family and ourselves.

Time of Year

Landscaping does have busy periods like any other business. Spring and Summer (getting everything ready for the busy public holiday periods) are the boom times, with demand for tradesmen being really high. When everyone is asking for work, tradesmen can pick and choose jobs that are going to make them more money, and may even charge a little higher rate, because they know the demand is there.

If you can, consider holding off on getting a quote until autum or winter. As the work slows and demand drops, tradesmen may take a cheaper project to keep the income flowing. Now, of course we approach autumn and tradesmen are looking for work. Do you bit where you can and employ locally.

Do things yourself

It may seem daunting, but there's actually a lot of backyard landscaping jobs you can do youself. It's a really rewarding activity, and it's a great way to save money. Unless you know what you're doing, I'd suggest steering clear of the hard landscaping, but things like digging holes or trenches, painting, mulching, planting plants and trees, or laying turf are relatively easy.

You can save yourself loads of money in labour time, and get large jobs done quickly. I’d normally suggest getting a group of friends round and paying them with a BBQ afterwards, but now ... perhaps wait for some months.

Get things for free or cheap Plants, pots, sculpures and materials can be really expensive to buy new, but there's a few ways you can cut the costs associated with these and even get them for 24

sell their chip mulch cheap (some even give it away!). Be wary of what they've chipped though, it may contain weed species seeds, or nasty nutirent absorbing species like camphour laurel, that will destroy your soil.

You can also save some coin by using cheap clean fill to bulk up garden beds, or as a turf underaly, as opposed to expenisve humus or sand/soil blends. Even rocks around your

Think about using junk as a feature. An unexpected garden object can be just as enticing as an amazing sculpture or water feature. A collection of old glass wine bottles in a spray painted plastic pot with a simple little fish tank filter can be used to make a cute little water feature.

Big rocks in a flat garden stand out like a sore thumb. A hidden table and chair setting under a tree, or an old broken tyre swing. Filling things like wheel barrows, old urns or vases with cascading flowers, or even an old pair of work boots with some veggies growing out of them.

Anything that catches the eye will work.

Use these options and save money on buying items.

Hopefully, by following all these tips and tricks, when it comes time to landscaping your backyard you'll get an amazing, rewarding, and practical outcome, without breaking the bank.

old yard can be used as features, or if you've got enough, make a nice rock wall.

Old recycled timber is another great option to save some money. You can use old timber like railway sleepers, recyled decking timber, offcuts, or tree branches for things like garden beds, decks, or features in your garden.

Think outside the box.

Features

Feature objects in a landscaped backyard are a must. They draw the eye of the visitor to a point in the garden, allowing you to control their view and experiences. Correct landscape design will focus the best aspects of the garden around these feature objects, or on the route to them. Whether it be a smell, a noise, or leading the visitor around a corner to a surprise garden full of flowering blossoms.

Essentially it makes the feature object, not the feature at all. So obviously, these are pretty darn important to a great landscaped backyard, but how can you do such magic on a tight budget? Get creative, that's how!

25

COVID -19 HOW TO MANAGE

M

SHAYNE ELLIOTT, CEO ANZ Bank redraw balance. Other options that might be available to you include making repayments using funds in your linked offset account or other deposits you have available to make loan repayments; • If you don’t have a redraw balance available, you can request to defer home loan repayments for up to six months, with interest capitalised1; • We’ve decreased the standard Variable Home Loan rate by 0.15% p.a. effective 27 March 2020.

any banks are doing loan suspensions for six months ask your bank if they will do the same thing? The ANZ announced a range of new support measures to help their small business and home loan customers in Australia who have been affected by the financial impacts of COVID-19, and they're working hard to stay open for business while prioritising the health of their team.

For the most up to date information, including full details about these new support measures and how you can apply, please visit www.anz.com/covid-19.

If you’re a small business customer: • You can request a six-month payment deferral on loan repayments for term loans and asset finance, with interest capitalised; • You can request temporary increases in overdraft facilities for twelve months; • Variable interest forsmall business loan rates has been decreased in Australia by 0.25% p.a., effective 27 March 2020.

This represents an overall decrease of 0.5% p.a. since 13 March 2020.

ANZ have also introduced their lowest fixed-rate home loan on record (two-year fixed rate of 2.19% p.a. for owner occupiers paying principal and interest on the ANZ Breakfree package, effective 23 March 2020). If you currently have a standard variable home loan, you may want to consider switching to this historically low rate.

We know that many customers are limiting their time away from home and may be unable to visit our branches. Remember you can use the ANZ App and Internet Banking to check your balance, make payments, pay bills and much more. To find out more, visit www.anz.com.au/ways-to-bank/.

My primary focus is now COVID-19 and ensuring we are doing everything possible to support our customers through this.

On behalf of the team at ANZ, thank you for your patience and please, take care of yourselves and your loved ones.

If you’re a home loan customer: • If you’re ahead on your repayments, you can access your

Stay informed on coronavirus.

Real Estate Agents and Landlords: Consider dropping rent for your tenants for a period of six months and take advantage of the graces your banks are giving you. Make rent affordable for your tenants based on the income (with them proving their financial hardship)

COVID-19 information is being updated daily, for current advice visit health.gov.au.

Real Estate Agents: Tenancy Inspections in person are unnecessary – consider doing a video inspection or waiver all inspections for a period of six months (new legislation is in the process of being looked at by the WA government as we speak).

The best defence against most viruses including COVID-19 is practising good hygiene.

Lost your job?: Centrelink is providing payments to people in hardship, consider doing this via the phone or online at: www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/online-help/createmygov-account Phone numbers: www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/individuals/ contact-us/phone-us Your mutual obligations have been suspended for the time being – no need to report with Centrelink.

Wash your hands frequently with soap and water.

Cover your cough/sneeze and dispose of tissues.

Avoid contact with others if you are unwell.

If you have travelled overseas or been in contact with a confirmed case and have symptoms, call your GP or the National Coronavirus Health Information Line on 1800 020 080.

Looking for work? (Want to work?):

Consider applying at a Dr surgery

Consider applying at a Chemist

Consider being a security guard and apply to the security companies

Consider being a delivery driver or courier

Consider working in a supermarket

Consider working at a hospital (All these jobs are in demand at the moment)

For information on the Government’s economic response to the coronavirus visit: treasury.gov.au/coronavirus.

If you own a business you can call Treasury on 02 6263 3030 to determine exactly what support your business can receive or if you need to discuss tax deferrals with the ATO, small businesses should call 1800 806 218.

Still employed?: Ask your employer to change their business model and work from home if possible.

Considering Studying in the next few months?

University: www.open.edu.au

Authorised by Ken Wyatt MP, Liberal Party of Australia, Shop 10-12 Hawaiian’s Forrestfield, 80 Hale Road Forrestfield WA 6058.

26

COVID -19

TAFE: www.opencolleges.edu.au Want to get your year 12 or for school aged kids: www.swan. wa.edu.au or www.side.wa.edu.au Want to entertain yourself while staying at home on a budget: Consider pay TV such as Foxtel, Optus vision, or internet streaming such as STAN or Netflix. Consider getting DVDs/ Blurays from Online suppliers or cheap at your opshops (still open at present) often $1-$3. Watch digital TV for Free on your TV. Consider getting gaming consuls or video games for your PC online (you can sometimes find these cheap at Op Shops).

Consider reading magazines/books or online magazines at your library, newspapers, and ebooks (these are still in operation from home). Consider online bookshops such as Amazon for example. Consider board games with the family or online gaming such as Chess. Consider finding email friends or pen friends and correspond with other this way. Talk to friends on skype, zoom, facebook or other means such as the phone.

Don’t want to go to the shops

www.kmart.com.au/secure-online-shopping

www.jbhifi.com.au www.bigw.com.au www.amazon.

www.target.com.au Both Coles and Woolworths is doing online shops for those who are vunerable (check to see if you qualify):

www.woolworths.com.au and www.shop.coles.com.au Join the Doorstep Family and connect / Friend to Facebook - Share with your networks – be that industry, community, business, those in need.

www.facebook.com/thedoorstepgrocers/ Doctors and Pharmacies: Doctors are now doing phone consultations where possible – ring your doctor to arrange Pharmacies are now doing home delivery – ring your local pharmacy for details Dos and Don’ts of Covid-19 • Do social distance (2 metres) • Don’t have big family gatherings • Don’t see more than one person at a time • If you are ill do stay home at all costs • Don’t go to parks or amusement centres (closed now) • Don’t go to the shops unless necessary (and just one - not the whole family) • Do cough into your elbow • Do sanitise your shopping trolley handle • Don’t go to the doctor if alternative arrangements can be made over the phone • Don’t go to your pharmacy if they home deliver • Don’t go to skate parks • Don’t panic buy or hoard (even in a lockdown you’ll be allowed to go to the shops) • Do thank your essential service personnel for everything they are doing (be nice to people) • Don’t visit your friends • Do wash your hands and face frequently • Don’t go out as much as possible • Do as much from home as possible • Don’t go to the beach

AUSTRALIAN RED CROSS KAREN EDMEADES

H

ere at the The Red Cross Emergency Services Team we thought we would send through some information to stakeholders and media in this time of uncertainty.

The current evolving situation around the COVID-19 pandemic is certainly causing a lot of anxiety and stress in the community. We hope you are looking after yourselves?

Red Cross have a lot of wellbeing messaging, that when distributed can help people feel safer, calm, and connected to others, whilst helping them to access the services and support they need.

We ask you to consider sharing some of this information on your websites and via your networks to have a greater public reach. It can really make a difference, as we are all in this together.

Our Facebook page has a lot of wellbeing messaging and Psychosocial Preparedness tips you can share: www.facebook. com/RedCrossEmergencyServicesWA/?ref=bookmarks

It’s important to acknowledge It’s okay to feel stressed and confused, even scared and angry, about the COVID-19 outbreak.

It's normal to have a range of feelings. But good information can help. We've put together simple steps you can take to prepare on this How to Prepare webpage: www.redcross.org.au/coronavirus

It is really important to have good stress management and wellbeing strategies right now.

We have a Red Cross Webpage for mental health and wellbeing for COVID-19: www.redcross.org.au/news-and-media/ news/covid-19-and-your-mental-wellbeing

There is also a webpage for self-isolating tips for families; www.redcross.org.au/news-and-media/news/coronavirus-tipsfor-self-isolating

In addition we have advice on how to talk to children about COVID-19: www.redcross.org.au/news-and-media/news/talkingto-kids-about-covid-19

Our Get Prepared App is another great tool to promote – especially in regards to identifying your personal support network. This will be very important when self-isolating: www.redcross.org.au/get-help/emergencies/preparing-foremergencies/get-prepared-app

Positive stories can also help to give hope when there is so much uncertainty: www.redcross.org.au/news-and-media/ news/silver-linings-during-covid-19

Red Cross is adding more content all the time so stay in touch via this link : www.redcross.org.au/stories/covid-19

Most of all: DON’T PANIC! And use common sense!

27

TV WITH CHRIS APRIL 2020 LET’S STAY IN AND WATCH TV

T

he past several weeks and months have been challenging to say the least. People around the world have been challenged to ‘flatten the curve’ as the deadly coronavirus affects daily lives, routines.

One way in which Australians have been responding to this call to action is the simplest. Staying at home and limiting interactions with others to help slow the spread.

As a result, demand for television and streaming services are at an all time high as people and families find themselves self-isolating. But it is very easy to binge watch.

I could simply give you a list of amazing bingeworthy television series which would see you through hours and hours of quarantine.

However, being inside does not mean we have to lock ourselves in front of the television 24-7. Instead, I’m suggesting some of the best television shows currently streaming that will also get you thinking creatively. They may even prompt you to do more than just watch and consume but rather create or think beyond what you are seeing on the screen.

competitive Lego Building competition as teams of some of Australia’s best and most passionate Lego Builders battle it out for the crown of Lego Masters Champion and a grand prize of $100,000.

These are not your everyday Lego enthusiasts (such as myself). The creations these teams come up with wouldn’t look out of place in Legoland with incredibly intricate structures which involve layers, effects and storylines being built before our very eyes. Inspirational, great fun and very family friendly! ~oOo~

Title: LEGO MASTERS Media: Nine Now App and Channel Nine

With the second season of this smash hit reality show (and one of the few decent ones of this genre currently screening) about to premiere on Channel Nine, the Nine Now app has all the episodes of the wildly popular first season available for streaming.

Popular Australian personality and all round nice guy Hamish Blake hosts this

Title: SHOP CLASS Media: Disney + Sticking with the building and reality themes, one of the latest offerings from Disney+ teams Shop (or Design and Technology) teachers with dynamite young building enthusiasts ranging in age from approximately 11-16.

In each episode they are given basic materials, a set budget and three days to create and re-invent a set design. Challenges in this first season have included a ‘Little Public Library’, a Picnic Table and a Mini Golf Hole.

The creativity, critical thinking and imagination demonstrated by these young people and educators is phenomenal to watch and judging is undertaken by interior designers, engineers and representatives from the Disney Imagineerium team (who design rides and elements for the Disney Parks).

What results awesome truly incredible and interactive designs which may get your creative juices flowing and have you diving into your garages for spare parts and amazing finds.

28

struggling at present with the outlets that they know and loved closed down and on hiatus. But this series might just make them sing and dance and hopefully will lead young musical and theatre fans to appreciate what they have right now. ~oOo~ DISNEY + NATIONAL GEORGRAPIC PARTNERSHIP

Time spent at home can be a great way to discover a new interest or hobby and Disney+ has teamed up with National Geographic to produce some incredible new original content which will get you thinking and inspire you to learn more.

There is Science Fair in which high school students from around the world compete for their place at the International Science and Engineering Fair.

Popular actor and comedian Jeff Goldblum heads up his own exploration of science and history in The World According to Jeff Goldblum in which the history and inner workings of seemingly everyday items are put under the microscope.

In addition to these, there are also original films such as Free Solo and Atlantis Rising as well as original series’ exploring the animal and scientific worlds.

A great bank of content for knowledge seekers!

Title: ENCORE Media: Disney +

For the music and theatre fans comes Encore. Hosted by popular actress and singer Kristen Bell (Frozen and The Good Place) comes a unique series in which adults who formally starred in their high school productions band together to put the show together once again.

Along the way, they re-discover their passion for music and the stage as their collective efforts come to fruition.

Music and Theatre fans both young and old will be

29

COMMUNITY MAPPING THE MAKARDA EMMA CHADWICK

Bringing together science and traditional knowledge he largest mapping and research project of its kind has given traditional owners of Groote Eylandt, in the Northern Territory, the tools to better manage and protect their sea country.

The three-year project entitled Mapping the Makarda (sea country) is a partnership between Australia’s tropical marine research agency the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS), and the Anindilyakwa Land Council.

ALC Rangers and AIMS researchers, worked together on both sea Ranger vessels and onboard AIMS’ largest research vessel The RV Solander, to map Groote Eylandt’s deeper coastal habitats using a high-tech multi-beam sonar, and the European Space Agency’s Sentinel 2 satellite system to map shallow inshore areas.

AIMS’ project leader Dr Ben Radford said together, they had mapped 3200sqkm of ocean floor, an area nearly twice the size of Groote Eylandt, Australia’s fourth largest island.

Maps have been developed and translated into traditional language, and these have been delivered to the community.

“We used Baited Remote Underwater Video Stations (BRUVS) at 212 sites and we AIMS researcher and Anindilyakwa Land & Sea Ranger training with the camera section of a Baited Remote Underwater Video Stations (BRUVS) at the found the diversity of fish species was 53% Ranger station on Groote Eylandt. greater than previously recorded in shallow (Photograph by Nick Thake. Copright AIMS) areas of Groote Eylandt,” Dr Radford said.

“This study found 239 fish species at it as an important ecological area in the region.

Groote Eylandt, similar in diversity to those found at some

“The Anindilyakwa rangers and elders worked with us to inshore areas of the far northern Great Barrier Reef, identifying share their people’s traditional knowledge from 8000 years [of]living in the area, and we were able to share the latest in science and technology to map diversity hotspots and key habitats around the island.”

Anindilyakwa Land Council Chairman Tony Wurramarrba said improving the understanding of the marine environment in the Groote archipelago would allow for better management of the natural resource, as well as economic development potential for conservation, tourism and aquaculture.

“Even though we know what is going on there culturally, working with AIMS meant we could actually see what is happening under the water, so we can manage fisheries and the protection of this area for future generations to come,” Mr Wurramarrba said.

“We depend on the sea for our food and we have close cultural ties with the sea, so it is very important to us.”

Anindilyakwa Land & Sea Rangers and AIMS researcher studying a Groote Eylandt map during the mapping and habitat language classification process. Concluded on page 54...

T

(Photograph Nick Thake - Copyright AIMS)

30

FLINDERS UNIVERSITY VITAL CONSERVATIONPROJECTS Focus on saving plants, animals as climate changes ustralia’s environment is battling hotter, dryer and more extreme conditions – including bushfires – and scientists are being called in to help restore degraded landscapes and animal populations to prepare them for further climate change in the future.

New Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage Project grants, announced this month, will see Flinders University researchers team with industry and government agencies to develop better strategies for ecosystems to keep pace with climate change.

What better way to start then to focus on identifying the best seed to use in restoration plantings that are the most resilient to drought and heat stress in degraded environments.

A second project at Flinders University aims to improve methods of translocating endangered species into more secure or better environments.

“In many ways, we’re playing catchup with how to tackle climate change”, says project leader Dr Martin Breed, who’ll lead the three-year $439,000 native revegetation research project.

“It’s important we move swiftly to find ways to not only restore degraded ecosystems but to help them adapt to further changes on the horizon,” he says, which is particularly relevant after bushfires have impacted thousands of hectares of native vegetation in recent months.

“Our project will look at optimising seed sourcing for effective ecological restoration, aiming to produce useful guidelines based on studies that use plant population and environmental genomics, plant physiology and seed and soil biology”.

The Linkage Project goal is to help improve the way restoration takes place on the ground, contributing to the global movement in restoration such as under the UN’s recently declared Decade on Ecosystem Restoration starting in 2021 and The Bonn Challenge.

The Bonn Challenge has set targets to restore 350m ha by 2030, aiming to generate $US9 trillion in ecosystem services, help support the lives of more than 3 billion people, and take an additional 13-26 gigatons of greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere.

Partners on this Linkage Project include the WA Department of Biodiversity Conservation and Attractions, the WA Biodiversity Science Institute, the Australian Genome Research Facility, Hanson Construction Materials and Tronox Management.

Another new Linkage Project grant, led by Flinders University Associate Professor Michael Gardner, builds on long-running research at Flinders University to save endangered lizard populations

The latest ARC Linkage funding of $400,940 will support important new research into translocation as a conservation strategy for endangered species, focusing on an SA lizard species.

The project will support other projects on saving species exposed to various climate and environmental changes.

Combining different source populations in the past has seen conservation translocation efforts fail.

In the face of climate change, this Linkage project will provide the first empirical genomics testing with terrestrial vertebrates to discover the best means of translocating endangered species.

Part of the study will focus on regions of the animal’s genome important for considering in reintroducing species to new environments.

Industry and research partners include experts from the SA

A

Museum, Department for Environment and Water Conservation, Conservation Volunteers Australia Enterprises, Renewable Energy Systems, Field Naturalists Society of SA, Flow Power, Nature Foundation SA and Adelaide Airport Ltd.

ANEMONES FIGHT BACK

With climate change hitting coral reefs, Flinders University scientists have found one animal with a secret weapon against high temperatures and bleaching.

Anemones suffer badly from the effects of bleaching and climate change but their ability to keep producing venom gives them an edge in surviving long-term changes to marine

environments, Australian marine biology experts say.

‘Saving Nemo’ researchers at Flinders University have described the effects of extreme heatwaves and bleaching on anemone – the natural home of clownfish – showing they are not immune from climate change on our coral reefs.

“The loss of symbiotic photosynthetic algae under extreme climatic conditions causes whitening in colour, loss of internal food supply and reduction in health which can ultimately lead to death,” says Professor Karen Burke da Silva, from Flinders University’s College of Science and Engineering, who leads the global Saving Nemo conservation program.

“However even under extended light-induced bleaching over five months, the sea anemone (Entacmaea quadricolor) shows remarkable resilience in maintaining venom quality and quantity to stay alive,” she says.

In spite of the environmental stressors, the study showed the struggling marine invertebrates battled on to produce enough venom to maintain nematocyst production to capture prey during falls in internal algae food sources during the bleaching.

“One of the most venomous animals in the world, already under significant ecological threat due to rising pressure on marine environments, seems to use its amazing venom production as a last line of defence against climate change,” says Professor Burke da Silva.

“Their resilience during times of high stress will aid in the their survival and consequently the survival of dependent anemonefish.”

It is also important for the symbiotic relationship with colourful ‘Nemo’ clownfish which rely on anemone for protection and shelter.

The anemone used in the study are endemic along the north-eastern coast of Australia from Far North Queensland to North Solitary Island, NSW. 31

FILM A FESTIVAL OF FRENCH FAVOURITES JAMES FORTE

S

adly the French Film Festival, which was scheduled for MarchApril, has been temporarily abandoned with the closure of the cinemas. Not to worry; here is a guide to being happy with your own personalized festival, while staying at home and observing the self-isolation rules.

If you use your favourite search engine to look for “best French movies” you will get lists of impressive films that were innovative and models of the art form. Particularly of the postwar ‘new wave’ style. Go see them.

So why should you bother reading this article? Because my personal list covers those that were the most fun, the ones that will leave you happier in these troubled times, the best examples of what it is that makes the French, French.

In chronological order, the twenty-five films that would get at least four stars:

Le Voyage dans la Lune (A Trip to the Moon) (1902)

A space travel story directed (and hand-coloured) by Georges Méliès just six years after the invention of moving pictures. Long thought to have been lost, a complete copy was found in 1993. It is amazing what could be achieved with early

special effects and a hand-cranked camera. The work of Méliès is the central theme of the marvelous “Hugo” (2011).

Les Miserables (1934)

The best-known version of Victor Hugo’s epic novel is the 2012 British film of the stage musical - which stands out with the music of Claude-Michel Schönberg. Raymond Bernard directed the pre-war, critically acclaimed five-hour epic (actually three films) with Harry Bauer as Valjean and Charles Vanel as Javert.

Les Enfants du Paradis (Children of Paradise) (1944)

Directed by Marcel Carné. It is at the top of lists of great films (from any country) for its substance, style and exploration of ambiguity – how we hide who we really are from ourselves.

It is all the more remarkable because it was made during the German occupation. A three-hour epic of theatre life in 1830 Paris.

La Ronde (1950)

Is France really the world’s home of romance? Ten amorous encounters (each using one character from the previous episode) take you around in a complete circle. It was directed by Max Ophuls based on the 1890 play of the same name by Arthur Schnitzler. The film was banned in New York as immoral. In 1964, Roger Vadim remade it starring Jane Fonda.

Moulin Rouge (1952)

This is not the remake with Baz Luhrmann and Nicole Kidman. This version was directed by John Huston and starred José Ferrer as Toulouse-Lautrec and Zsa Zsa Gabor as the dancer Jane Avril. Although financed by a British company, much of it was shot in Paris and depicts the world of the Moulin Rouge nightclub, the can-can and absinthe.

32

Mon Oncle (My Uncle )(1958)

Every French list must include a comedy by Jacques Tati.

Through the eyes of a young boy, an enthusiastic Monsieur Hulot attempts to understand modern technology. It won the 1959 Oscar for best foreign language film. A fine example of what makes French humour just that little bit different.

L’Année Dernière à Marienbad (Last year at Marienbad) (1961)

The one extremely intellectual art-house movie on this list - because it is studied by film students everywhere. It was written

by Alain Robbe-Grillet and directed by Alain Resnais. A man and a woman may have met the year before and started an affair although time is non-linear. Some insist it is a masterpiece and some find it incomprehensible.

La Jetée (The Pier) (1962)

Only twenty-eight minutes long and comprising black and white still photos with voice-over, this is an impressive and important view of science fiction and time travel. Directed by Chris Marker. The pier is that part of an airport that protrudes from the terminal with airliners on both sides. It is the fixed image that orients the time-traveler’s world.

Maigret voit Rouge (Maigret Sees Red) (1963)

There are many actors (film and TV) who have played Maigret. This is a typical example of the French approach, directed by Gilles Grangier and starring Jean Gabin as the French detective. Music by Michel Legrand.

Le Salaire de la Peur (The Wages of Fear) (1953)

This film by Henri-Georges Clouzot is reckoned by many to be the ultimate edge-of-the-seat thriller. Somewhere in South America, two trucks carry loads of nitroglycerine over the mountains to put out an oil-well fire. It starred Yves Montand and won a Palme d’or. A remake entitled Sorcerer was done in 1977 – don’t waste your time.

Les Parapluies de Cherbourg (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg ) (1964)

Directed by Jacques Demi and starring a young and very beautiful Catherine Deneuve, all the dialogue in this romantic drama is sung - to music by Miched Legrand. A girl professes eternal love as her boyfriend is conscripted into the army. It won the Palme d’or at Cannes for its style and bright, vivid, primary colours - which predated La La Land by fifty-two years.

Le Ballon Rouge (The Red Balloon) (1956)

One of the best children’s films ever made – written and directed by Albert Lamorisse and just thirty-five minutes in length.

A boy in post-war Paris gets a large red balloon as a friend. It presents pictures of a Paris and a life-style that have disappeared.

Notre Dame de Paris (The Hunchback of Notre Dame) (1956)

Although the best known hunchbacks were Lon Chaney (1923) and Charles Laughton (1939) both in American films, this French production was well received.

Directed by Jean Delannoy and starring Anthony Quinn and Gina Lollobrigida, it is available with all parts dubbed in English.

One of the few versions to go with Victor Hugo’s original ending.

Et Dieu… créa la Femme (And God Created Woman) (1956)

It was believed by English schoolboys of the 1950s, that films were made in two versions. The British version where the young lovers held hands as they went up the stairs – then fade to black.

And the Continental version where the camera followed them into the bedroom. Directed by Roger Vadim and starring Brigitte Bardot, this is the Continental version.

Paths of Glory (1957)

The greatest film about the French in the Great War is probably La Grande Illusion (1937) but this is also about their army and uses a number of shots seen in the recent 1917. Made by Stanley Kubrick with an American (Kirk Douglas) in the lead role, it is pushing things to include it in this list. However, the ending, the men in a café, will leave you in tears.

33

Un Homme et une Femme (A Man and a Woman) (1966)

Both have been tragically widowed and send their children to the same boarding school. Directed by Claude Lelouch, this love story is brilliantly complemented by the music of Francis Lai. The big film of the year, it won the Palme d’or as well as the Oscar for best foreign language film. The most romantic of the films in this list.

vignettes. It was directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet - but the film belongs to Audrey Tautou. Five stars for a film which shows that the French can sometimes rival the eccentricity of the English.

La Vie en Rose (The Easy Life) (2007)

Edith Piaf had one of the most distinctive voices in the world. She sang as if she had a mouth full of gravel. She is best remembered now as singing the songs of hope as Europe rebuilt itself after the war. This is the story of her life – as directed by Olivier Dahan and portrayed brilliantly by Marion Cottillard.

Belle de Jour (1967)

The best known of the Louis Buñuel films - with Catherine Deneuve in gowns designed by Yves Saint Laurent. A belle-denuit is a prostitute so this title indicates that our heroine is a very expensive lady of the afternoon – while her husband is at work. A slightly twisted passion presented in a very stylish movie.

All these films can be obtained with either an English soundtrack or sub-titles.

So there you have my selection of twenty-five classic films you must see before you catch Covid-19. Making lists is a great deal more entertaining than playing dominoes or draughts. Try it.

And it is much more controversial.

Right now you are saying:

“How could he possibly leave out certain films?” Such as those with Anna Karina (Alphaville directed by Jean-Luc Godard) or Juliet Binoche (Chocolat or Three Colours-Blue) or a film of a Moliere play or Claude Chabrol’s Jules et Jim?

So here is the deal. Send off a note to the editor with the subject heading: “film list as incomplete as frogs without legs” stating what should be included and what should be removed. He will forward it to me. And next month, we will produce a summary and an improved list.

Enjoy your Bordeaux, Burgundy, Chablis or Champagne. And stay safe.

La Mariée était en Noir (The Bride Wore Black) (1968)

There were many other crime films that could have gone on this list. This one won out because of the slogan on the poster: “She was a bride when the violence happened. Now she’s a widow, and it’s going to happen again.” It was directed by François Truffaut (who also made Fahrenheit 451) and starred Jeanne Moreau as the avenger.

Les Fugitifs (The Fugitives) (1986)

A lightweight Gerard Depardieu crime caper in which a professional robber, just released from jail, is trying to go straight only to be continuously compromised by an incompetent amateur.

Directed by Francis Vaber. This will never make any great film list apart from this one. But it is a hoot.

Jean de Florette (1986)

This was the most expensive French film made up to that date. With its sequel, Manon des Sources, a tragedy about man’s inhumanity to man as two farmers of Provence work to take the property of a newcomer. It was directed by Claude Berri and starred the three top French actors of the time: Gérard Depardieu, Yves Montand and Daniel Auteuil.

Monsieur Hire (1989)

From a novel by George Simenon (but not featuring Maigret), this is a cool thriller, whodunnit and love story. The director, Patrice Leconte, used a score by Michael Nyman (The Piano) augmented by the music of Brahms. This film lingers in the memory long after viewing.

Cyrano de Bergerac (1990)

The ultimate swash-buckling romance, directed by Jean-Paul Rappeneau. This is one of many films based on Rostand’s play about the famous writer and swordsman - with the long nose. It was a toss-up as to whether to include the Jose Ferrer version of 1950 or the Gérard Depardieu of 1990. The latter won because the actor positively reeks of panache.

Van Gogh (1991)

This film follows the last few months of the life of the great painter – played by Jacques Dutronc. It was written and directed by Maurice Pialat and deliberately resists melodrama.

There is little about the paintings as it concentrates on the artist’s fraught personal relationships. For a brilliant depiction of his art, see Loving Vincent (2017).

Amélie (2001)

And the award for the quirkiest film of the last hundred years goes to… This movie is simply unique with cheeky jokes and whimsical 34

Photos : Sarah Norton, Katie Skinner, Katie Goodin

#AdoptLove

Self-Isolation Masters!

Have you been struggling with isolation? Here a few tips from the masters.

Make sure you lay near windows and glass doors for optimal sun. Mid-day napping is perfectly acceptable if you are getting exercise, we thoroughly recommend a good 3am ‘zoomie’. Ensure grooming levels are maintained to your usual standard, this will help you feel good on the inside whilst looking good on the outside.

Treat yourself, snacking is good for the soul.

Cats have been mastering the art of home quarantine for years, making them the ultimate self-isolation buddies. A lot of us have nothing but time to spend bonding with a new pet, now could be the purr-fect time to #ADOPTLOVE. Not ready to adopt a new companion?

SAFE Inc has 11 branches who are always looking for new foster carers. The only criteria, a willingness share some room in your home and heart until a permanent home can be found. Remember, you provide the love we provide the rest.

If you would like more information on fostering or adopting during these uncertain times, contact SAFE Metro at metro@safe.org.au today. With a network that spans through Western Australia, we are the experts in getting creative to finding care, transporting and find homes for animals in need.

Saving Animals From Euthanasia Inc (SAFE) is an animal rescue organisation that has saved and rehomed more than 26,000 homeless animals since its beginnings in 2003. It has grown to be WA’s largest volunteer-based animal rehoming organisation using foster care instead of cages. SAFE has 12 branches state-wide. In 2018 it was the national winner “Outstanding Rescue Group” in the Jetpets Companion Animal Rescue Awards. SAFE is the Western Australian arm of Animal Welfare League Australia (AWLA).

FOSTER CARE means animals live the lives of normal pets, with no time limits, being loved in their place of care, and socialised in the home and community. Their carers’ knowledge of how they respond to different situations means SAFE can make a great match.

Would you like to help animals on their journey to a new life? To become a foster carer, the first step is to contact our SAFE Avon Valley branch on 0409 000 259 or our Perth-based branch, SAFE Metro on 0475 346 545 or 0448 893 033.

VOLUNTEER: https://safe.org.au/volunteer/

DONATE: https://safe.org.au/donate 35

ADOPT: https://safe.org.au/find-a-pet/

FOOTNOTE PEOPLE IN HISTORY ROBERT ALEXANDER ‘RIKKI’ LITTLE (1895 - 1918)

R

obert Alexander Little, DSO & Bar, DSC & Bar (19 July 1895 – 27 May 1918), a World War I fighter pilot, is generally regarded as the most successful Australian flying ace, with an official tally of forty-seven victories.

Little was born on 19 July 1895 at Hawthorn, a suburb of Melbourne, to Canadian James Little, a seller of medical and surgical books, and his Victorian-born wife Susan. His family heritage was Scottish, and he was educated at Camberwell Grammar School and Scotch College, Melbourne, where he was a swimming medallist. He entered his father’s business as a travelling salesman, and was living with his family at Windsor when World War I broke out in August 1914.

Long interested in aviation, Little decided to apply for pilot training at the Australian Army’s Central Flying School in Point Cook, but with only four vacancies, he was rejected along with hundreds of others. He then decided to sail for England in July 1915 and become a qualified pilot at his own expense.

Gaining his flying certificate with the Royal Aero Club at Hendon in October, he joined the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) as a probationary flight sub-lieutenant on 14 January 1916. He suffered badly from air sickness early on, most likely brought on by fumes from castor oil that was employed as an engine lubricant in the aircraft he flew in England.

Little arrived in France in June 1916 for service with No. 1 (Naval) Wing at Dunkirk, where he initially flew Sopwith 1½ Strutters in bombing raids.

He married Vera Gertrude Field at the Congregational Church, Dover, on 16 September and a month later he was posted to No. 8 Squadron RNAS (“Naval Eight”) flying Sopwith Pups on the Western Front, under fellow Australian Stanley Goble.

Little scored his first aerial victory on 23 November, destroying an enemy two-seater north-east of La Bassée. By the following February, he had four victories to his credit and was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross (DSC) for “conspicuous bravery in successfully attacking and bringing down hostile machines”.

In one action on 4 December, Little and Goble “fought like mad” against a large formation of German fighters, each claiming a Halberstadt; Little did not return to base with Goble and was thought lost, but had only landed near Allied lines to

Captain Robert Little DSO & Bar, DSC & Bar

clear his jammed gun before taking off again to continue the fight.

On 24 April 1917, Little engaged a DFW C.V, forcing it to land. He then followed the German aircraft down to claim it as captured and personally take its crew prisoner at gunpoint. The Australian flipped his own plane in a ditch after touching down, however, prompting the surrendering enemy pilot to suggest: “It looks as if I have brought you down, not you me, doesn’t it?”

Naval Eight’s conversion to the Sopwith Triplane in April saw Little begin to score heavily, eventually registering twentyfour victories on the type to bring his total up to twenty-eight by 10 July, including twin victories in a day on four occasions.

He was the squadron’s top scorer with the Triplane, mostly in one particular airframe, N5493, that he christened “Blymp”, which also became the nickname of his baby son.

The unit then began flying Sopwith Camels, in which he scored a further ten kills in July to make fourteen all-up for the month. When he subsequently

Sopwith Pup - 1916 36

rotated back to England for rest, thighs. he was ranked Flight Lieutenant

He crash-landed in a field and credited with a total of thirtynear Nœux, and bled to death before eight victories, including fifteen he was discovered the following destroyed or captured. morning by a passing gendarme.

A bar to his DSC had Little’s skull and ankle had also been been gazetted on 29 June, for fractured in the impact; his body was “exceptional daring and skill in identified by his friend and fellow aerial fighting on many occasions” ace, Charles Dawson Booker. and he received the French Croix de

Little was buried in the Guerre on 11 July, becoming—along village cemetery at Nœux, before his with fellow Australian RNAS ace body was moved to Wavans British Roderic (Stan) Dallas—one of the Cemetery in the Pas de Calais. first three British Empire pilots to be

He was aged twenty-two so decorated. and he left a widow and a son; in

In August, he was awarded accordance with her husband’s the Distinguished Service Order wishes, Vera travelled back to “for exceptional skill and daring”, Australia to raise the boy.

Little’s headstone in Nœux followed by a bar to the decoration in Of Little’s forty-seven confirmed September for “remarkable courage and boldness in attacking victories, twenty were credited as destroyed, two as captured, enemy machines”. He was mentioned in despatches on 11 and twenty-five as “out of control”; he was believed to be December, and promoted to flight commander the following responsible for many others driven down or forced to land, month. which were not counted in his official total.

Despite Little’s prowess in combat, as an aviator he was

As well as the eighth most successful Commonwealth ace of ordinary at best, enduring a number of crash-landings. What World War I, and the ranking RNAS ace, this score made him the gave him his edge as a fighter pilot was his keen eye, excellent most prolific Australian ace of all time, ahead of Stan Dallas with marksmanship, and willingness to single-handedly take on an official score of thirty-nine. entire enemy formations and close in on his prey—down to

The propeller blade from Little’s Sopwith Triplane was twenty-five yards on occasion—before opening fire. fitted with a clock in its hub by his fellow officers, who presented

Fellow No. 8 Squadron member Reggie Soar recalled, it to his widow; she transported it back to Australia in three “Although not a polished pilot, he was one of the most aggressive pieces and it later went on display at the Australian War ... an outstanding shot with both revolver and rifle ...”, while ace Memorial, along with his awards and the wooden cross of his Robert Comptson described Little as “not so much a leader as original burial place at Nœux. a brilliant lone hand ... Small in stature, with face set grimly, he

The Sopwith Pup he flew with No. 8 Squadron RNAS, N5182, seemed the epitome of deadliness”. His squadron nicknamed was rebuilt to flying standard and in October 1976 led a flypast him “Rikki”, after the mongoose Rikki-Tikki-Tavi, which to commemorate the squadron’s Diamond Jubilee, before going outstrikes cobras in the story of the same name by Rudyard on permanent display at the Royal Air Force Museum, Hendon.

Kipling.

One of the buildings of the Australian Defence Force

Many who knew him saw a sensitive side, however, Soar Academy (ADFA) in Canberra, opened in 1986, was named in noting that in addition to his skill with guns, Little was “also a Little’s honour.

Lest We Forget collector of wild flowers”, and his wife contending that his grim appearance in photographs belied his sense of humour.

Squadron commander Raymond Collishaw, who would finish the war as the RNAS’ top-scoring ace, summed up Little as “an outstanding character, bold, aggressive and courageous, yet he was gentle and kindly.

A resolute and brave man.”

Following a period of rest in England, Little turned down a desk assignment and volunteered to return to action on the Western Front, joining Lieutenant Colonel Collishaw’s No. 3 Squadron RNAS in March 1918.

The unit evolved into No. 203 Squadron of the new Royal Air Force on 1 April, formed after the merger of the RNAS and the Royal Flying Corps.

Now ranked captain, and again flying Sopwith Camels, Little gained a further nine successes, beginning with a Fokker Triplane on 1 April, and concluding with two kills in one day on 22 May, an Albatros and a DFW.

During this stretch of victories, on 21 April 1918, he was brought down unharmed by Friedrich Ehmann.

On 27 May, Little received reports of German Gotha Little was awarded a bar to his Distinguished Service Cross and bombers in the vicinity, and took off on a moonlit evening then a Distinguished Service Order and bar. He was the only RNAS officer to receive two DSOs and two DSCs and was also awarded to intercept the raiders. As he closed with one of the the French Croix de Guerre. bombers, his plane was caught in a searchlight beam and His other two medals are the the British War Medal, 1914-1919 and he was struck by a bullet that passed through both his the 1914-18 Victory Medal.

37

NON - FICTION THE NOBLE RECREATION

DOUGLAS SUTHERLAND-BRUCE “The detective-story is the normal recreation of noble minds.” Philip Guedalla

THE RIVALS OF SHERLOCK HOLMES

private eye Jim Barnett, but he eventually merged them with Lupin. He continued to pen Lupin tales well into the 1930s.

Leblanc was awarded the Légion d’Honneur for his services to literature, and died in Perpignan in 1941.

Known as ‘The Prince of Thieves’, Lupin is France’s AJ Raffles. A brilliant rogue, he pursues his career with carefree elan, mocking the law for the sheer joy of it, rather than for purely personal gain.

Young, handsome, brave and quick-witted, he has a joie de vivre uniquely and recognisably French. His sense of humour and conceit make life difficult for the police, who would attribute most of the major crimes in France to him and his gang of ruffians and urchins.

Like most French criminal-detectives, Lupin is a master of disguise. His skill is demonstrated by the fact that he once impersonated Lenormand, Chief of the Surete for four years, during which time among other things, he conducted official investigations into his own activities.

Over the course of the books, Lupin travels to Britain where he outwits the police of Scotland Yard and makes a fool of an English consulting detective called Holmlock Shears (amended from Herlock Sholmes as the name was in the first edition) - no prizes for guessing who he was intended to be.

After a long criminal career of uninterrupted successes, Lupin begins to shift his position and aids the police in their work - usually for his own purposes and without their knowledge.

Towards the end of the stories he totally converts and becomes a fully-fledged detective, a la Vidoq, and finally joins the French Foreign Legion.

The stories are nowhere near as morally reprehensible as Hornung’s tales of Raffles, but are irritatingly slapdash and appear hastily written.

Not to be outdone by France and England, America also produced a gentleman thief - ‘The Infallible Godahl’. He was created by Fredrick Irving Anderson (1877-1947) and is a cross between Raffles, the Thinking machine and lupin. Godahl’s string of uninterrupted criminal success is brought about by his scientific approach to crime, make him a millionaire and he belongs to the Pegasus Club (which has a membership limited to fifty millionaires).

The prose style of these stories can charitably be called turgid and bemusing, but they are fairly skillfully and subtly written, although careful reading is required in order to follow the plot.

THE SILVER AGE ~ PART THREE 1890 TO 1925

C

ontinuing our look at the many imitators and emulators of the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels.

MAURICE LEBLANC (1864-1941)

Maurice Marie Émile Leblanc was born in Rouen, Normandy, where he was educated at Lycée Pierre-Corneille.

After studying in France and Germany and dropping out of law school, he settled in Paris and began work as a Police Reporter and to write fiction, both short crime stories and longer novels.

The latter, heavily influenced by writers like Gustave Flaubert and Guy de Maupassant, were critically admired but had little commercial success.

Raffles, gentleman thief, made his first appearance in print in 1898 and in 1901 Maurice LeBlanc (1864 - 1941) Octave Mirbeau published Les 21 Jours D’un Neurasthénique, which features a gentleman thief named Arthur Lebeau, and he had seen Mirbeau’s comedy Scruples (1902), whose main character is a gentleman thief.

The editor of the magazine Je Sais Tout, clearly under the influence of and in reaction to the wildly successful Sherlock Holmes stories, asked Leblanc, who was largely considered little more than a hack writer of short stories to write a story about a gentleman thief.

Starting in No. 6, dated 15 July 1905, the roguish and glamorous Arsene Lupin was a surprise success and fame and fortune beckoned. In total, Leblanc went on to write twenty-one Lupin novels or collections of short stories.

By 1907, Leblanc had graduated to writing fulllength Lupin novels, and the reviews and sales were so good that Leblanc effectively dedicated the rest of his career to working on the Lupin stories.

Like Conan Doyle, who often appeared embarrassed or hindered by the success of Sherlock Holmes and seemed to regard his success in the field of crime fiction as a detraction from his more “respectable” literary ambitions, Leblanc also appeared to have resented Lupin’s success.

Several times, he tried to create other characters, such as 38

THE CLUBLAND HEROES 1890 TO 1925

At the same time as the rise of detective fiction we see a parallel and in many ways similar rise in what we can loosely call ‘spy fiction’. There are many similarities and the occasional cross over from one to the other.

The genre can be said to have started in the early 19th century with the publication of James Fenimore Cooper’s second novel, The Spy, subtitled a Tale of the Neutral Ground in 1821.

This was the earliest American novel to win wide and permanent fame and may be said to have begun the type of romance which dominated U.S. fiction for the next three decades.

The action takes place during the American Revolution, at The Locusts. The plot ranges back and forth over the neutral ground between the British and Continental armies.

Harvey Birch, a peddler, has a meeting with a Mr. Harper at The Locusts, the country home of a British sympathizer located between the lines. The peddler comes under suspicion for being a British spy in consequence, but he is really a patriot, as Mr. Harper is George Washington in disguise, with whom Birch has other meetings in the course of the book. Birch’s role is revealed only after falling in battle.

Harvey Birch, peddler and patriot, is a character remotely founded upon that of a real spy.

In nineteenth-century France, the Dreyfus Affair (1894–99) engendered massive interest in the case and contributed much to public interest in espionage.

For some twelve years (c1894–1906), le Affaire, which involved elements of international espionage, treason, and antisemitism, dominated French politics.

The details were reported by the world press: an Imperial German penetration agent betraying to Germany the secrets of the General Staff of the French Army; the French counter-intelligence riposte of sending a charwoman to rifle the trash in the German Embassy in Paris, were news that inspired successful spy fiction.

The major themes of spy in the lead-up to the First World War were the continuing rivalry between the European colonial powers for control of Asia, the growing threat of conflict in Europe, the domestic threat of revolutionaries and anarchists, and historical romance.

Kim (1901) by Rudyard Kipling concerns the Anglo–Russian ‘Great Game’ of imperial and geopolitical rivalry and strategic warfare for supremacy in Central Asia, in Afghanistan. (Shades of the future).

The Secret Agent (1907) by Joseph Conrad examines the psychology and ideology motivating the socially marginal men and women of a revolutionary cell determined to provoke revolution in Britain with a terrorist bombing of the Greenwich Observatory.

Conrad’s next novel, Under Western Eyes (1911), follows a reluctant spy sent by the Russian Empire to infiltrate a group of revolutionaries based in Geneva. G. K. Chesterton’s The Man Who Was Thursday (1908) is a metaphysical thriller ostensibly based on the infiltration of an anarchist organisation by detectives; but the story is actually a vehicle for exploring society’s power structures and the nature of suffering.

Even Sherlock Holmes served as a spy-hunter for Britain in the stories The Adventure of the Second Stain (1904), and The Adventure of the BrucePartington Plans (1912).

In His Last Bow (1917), he served Crown and country as a double agent, transmitting false intelligence to Imperial Germany on the eve of the Great War. The Scarlet Pimpernel (1905)

by Baroness Orczy chronicled an English aristocrat’s derring-do in rescuing French aristocrats from the Reign of Terror of the populist French Revolution.

But the term “spy novel” was defined by The Riddle of the Sands (1903) by Irish author Erskine Childers DSC (1870 – 1922), he was a British-born Irish writer. He became a supporter of Irish Republicanism and smuggled guns into Ireland in his sailing yacht Asgard. He was executed by the authorities of the Irish Free State during the Irish Civil War.

Childers was executed in November 1922, by firing squad

ADVERTISEMENT

Donna Faragher JP MLC

WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Member for East Metropolitan Region

Here to help!

Contact Donna 9379 0840 | faragher.eastmetro@mp.wa.gov.au donnafaragher.com.au DonnaFaragherMLC Ground Floor 108 Swan Street, Guildford WA 6055 Authorised by S.Calabrese, Liberal Party, 2/12 Parliament Place, West Perth WA 6005.

39

either during the Boar War or the Great War - he would come from a good family, county rather than nobility and he would live life for the sheer joy of it. He would live in town and be a member of several clubs - he was the ‘clubland hero’.

CECIL WILLIAM MERCER (1885 – 1960)

Erskine Childers and his wife aboard the Asgard

in Dublin. Before his execution he shook hands with the firing squad. He also obtained a promise from his then sixteen year old son, the future President of Ireland, Erskine Hamilton Childers, to seek out and shake the hand of every man who had signed his death sentence.

The Riddle of the Sands described amateur spies discovering a German plan to invade Britain. Its success created a market for the invasion literature sub-genre, which was flooded by imitators - William Le Queux (The Invasion of 1910, The Poisoned Bullet, and Spies of the Kaiser) and E. Phillips Oppenheim became the most widely read and most successful British writers of spy fiction, especially of invasion literature.

Their prosaic style and formulaic stories, produced voluminously from 1900 to 1914, are of low literary merit but huge popularity.

Two other authors who wrote in the same ‘thriller’ genre, but were of a different category altogether are Edgar Wallace and Sidney ‘Horler for excitement’ Horler, who we shall look at in some detail later.

In the immediate post First World War the reading habits of the British public underwent a change. Railway journeys became shorter, more and more people traveled by car, the lending and circulating libraries flourished, literacy increased and as a result the short story became less fashionable and novel started its rise in importance.

As the length of the stories changed, so too did their content.

The detective story, pure and simple, containing a murder and its solution took a back seat, temporarily, to the thriller.

The hero of the thriller would usually be a man in his midthirties with an adventurous past, service in the armed forces;

Major Cecil Mercer (1885 - 1960)

The earliest example of this type of hero is the family created by ‘Dornford Yates’ - Berry & Co.

Richard Usborn in his delightful book Clubland Heroes describes the Berry family thus: Berry [Bertram Pleydell ] master of the house, is asleep in a chair on the flagged terrace, distended with good food. His beautiful wife Daphne, a lump of sugar in her slim fingers, is wondering whether to give it to Nobby the sealyam, or to throw it at Berry to wake him up. Boy Pleydell, Daphne’s young brother, is, through half closed eyes, admiring his little grey-eyed cousin, Jill. Jill Mansel is sitting, hands clasping her silken knees, her heart big with love for absolutely everybody and everything.

Jill’s big brother Jonah is tinkering with his Rolls in the drive.

These five, inter-related through common descent from Bertram Pleydell, formed the happy family which light-heartedly entered into adventures in England and abroad. They are wealthy, frivolous, facetious and entertaining.

They are a breath of nostalgia for a time that now no one can remember - the glory days of pre-war Edwardian England.

40

Although the books in actuality ran from 1914 until 1954, the golden period for Berry & Co is from 1907 to 1930 when the world was gay and innocent and having fun was a serious business.

As well as these ‘funny’ books Dornford Yates also wrote thrillers of the more conventional kind: featuring the very unfunny Jonathan Mansel, father of Johan and Jill, George Hanbury and the hero–narrator, Richard Chandos, as they tackle criminals, protect the innocent, romance beautiful ladies, and hunt for treasure mainly in Continental Europe (often in Carinthia, Austria).

The Chandos books, started with Blind Corner, in 1927. It is the Chandos novels to which Alan Bennett especially refers in the play Forty Years On (1972): “Sapper, Buchan, Dornford Yates, practitioners in that school of Snobbery with Violence that runs like a thread of good-class tweed through twentieth-century literature.” Yates also wrote other thrillers in the same style, but with different characters.

Dornford Yates was the nom-de-plume of Major Cecil William Mercer, born in Kent, the son of Cecil John Mercer, a solicitor whose sister, Mary Frances, married Charles Augustus Munro; their son was Hector Hugh Munro (the writer Saki).

Mercer attended Harrow School and University College, Oxford, where he achieved a Third in Law.

At university, he was active in the Oxford University Dramatic Society, acting in a number of productions Aristophanes’ The Clouds, Measure for Measure, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Taming of the Shrew.

In 1909, he was called to the Bar where he worked for several years. In his first memoirs, As Berry & I Were Saying, he recalls his involvement in the trial of the poisoner Dr Crippen.

In his spare time, he wrote short stories that were published in Punch, Pearson’s Magazine. At the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Mercer was commissioned as Second Lieutenant. He served in Egypt, Macedonia and Salonika before being sent home. He eventually left the army in 1919, but did not return to the law - his first novel, the successful Courts of Idleness led his devote the rest of his life to writing.

With the outbreak of the Second World War Mercer was recommissioned, this time in the Royal Rhodesian Regiment, where he was living at the time and attained the rank of major. After the war concluded, he and his wife moved to Umtali, Southern Rhodesia, (now Mutare, Zimbabwe), where they lived for the rest of his life.

Cecil William Mercer died in March 1960, having written thirty-four novels or collections of short stories, virtually all of them fast-paced action thrillers.

JOHN BUCHAN (1875 – 1940)

John Buchan, 1st Baron Tweedsmuir GCMG GCVO CH PC DL was a Scottish novelist, historian, and Unionist politician who served as Governor General of Canada, the fifteenth since Canadian Confederation.

After a brief legal career, Buchan simultaneously began his writing career and his political and diplomatic careers, serving as a private secretary to the administrator of various colonies in southern Africa.

He eventually wrote propaganda for the British war effort during World War I. He was elected Member of Parliament for the Combined Scottish Universities in 1927, but he spent most of his time on

John Buchan (1875 - 1940) photographed in native Canadian heddress (Photograph by Karsh of Ottowa)

his writing career, notably writing The Thirty-Nine Steps and other adventure fiction. In 1935, King George V appointed him as Governor General of Canada, for which purpose Buchan was raised to the peerage. He occupied the post until his death in 1940.

Buchan attended Hutchesons’ Grammar School and Brasenose College, Oxford. He was elected as the president of the Oxford Union and had six of his works published.

Buchan entered into a career in diplomacy and government after graduating from Oxford, becoming in 1901 the private secretary to Alfred Milner, who was then the High Commissioner for Southern Africa, Governor of Cape Colony, and colonial administrator of Transvaal and the Orange Free State. He also gained an acquaintance with a country that would feature prominently in his writing, which he resumed upon his return to London

In 1910, Buchan wrote Prester John, the first of his adventure/thriller novels, set in South Africa.

With the outbreak of the First World War, Buchan went to write for the British War Propaganda Bureau and worked as a correspondent in France for The Times.

He continued to write fiction, and in 1915 published his most famous work, The Thirty-Nine Steps, a spy-thriller set just prior to World War I.

The novel featured Buchan’s oft-used hero, Richard Hannay, whose character was based on Edmund Ironside, a friend of Buchan from his days in South Africa. A sequel, Greenmantle, came the following year.

Following the close of the war, Buchan turned his attention to writing on historical subjects, along with his usual thrillers and 41

novels.

In 1935 Buchan’s literary work was adapted for the cinema with the completion of Alfred Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps, starring Robert Donat as Richard Hannay, though with Buchan’s story much altered. This came in the same year that Buchan was elevated to the peerage, as Baron Tweedsmuir.

His reign as Governor-General of Canada was markedly successful, although short as he died in office. On 6 February 1940, he suffered a severe head injury when he fell after suffering a stroke and he died on 11 February drawing a radio eulogy by Canadian Prime Minister Mackenzie King: “In the passing of His Excellency, the people of Canada have lost one of the greatest and most revered of their Governors General, and a friend who, from the day of his arrival in this country, dedicated his life to their service.”

Buchan’s considerable output of hundred works include what he called ‘shockers’ of nearly thirty novels, seven collections of short stories, and historical biographies of Sir Walter Scott, Caesar Augustus, Oliver Cromwell, starting with Sir Quixote of the Moors, published in 1895 when he was only twenty.

His historical and biographical books are generally acclaimed for their accuracy and scholarship despite their popular approach.

But it is his ‘shockers’ that are best remembered today.

These involve, among others, Richard Hannay, and heroic figure modeled on one of Buchan’s real-life heroes - Field-marshall the Lord Edmund ‘Tiny’ Ironside.

The first book of the series, The Thirty-nine Steps (1915), finds Hannay the object of a massive manhunt across the Scottish landscape in the days just preceding the First World War. He is sought both by the police, who believe him to be the murderer of an American agent, and by foreign spies who want to prevent him from delivering vital information to British authorities.

In the sequel, Greenmantle (1916) Hannay, now a major in the army is summoned to the Foreign Office for undercover duty.

He must learn the significance of the word ‘Kasredin’, which may be vital in determining whether or not Turkey becomes an ally of the Germans in the Great War.

With several aids, including the American secret service agent Blenkiron, Hannay searches Germany and Constantinople for the driving force behins a Jehad (Holy war) said to be brewing in the Eat. Hannay ended his fiction career as General Sir Richard Hannay K.C.B., D.S.O., J.P.

As well as Hannay, Buchan created several other adventurers - Sandy Arbuthnot, Edward Leithen and Peter Pienaar. Pienaar is the central character of Mr Standfast (1919), a tale of counter-espionage in which Hannay appears, again working for British Intelligence.

Pienaar, who was Hannay’s oldest and best friend, is an air ace from South Africa who gets shot down, wounded and taken prisoner. He is released in time to return to save the day for Hannay and his Division and to win a posthumous V.C. (spoiler).

McNeile’s first known published story, Reminiscences of Sergeant Michael Cassidy, was published in the Daily Mail in 1915. As serving officers in the British Army were not permitted to publish under their own names except during their halfpay sabbaticals, many would write under a pseudonym. Lord Northcliffe, the owner of the Daily Mail, gave McNeile the pen name “Sapper”, as the Royal Engineers were commonly known as the Sappers.

McNeile later confided that he had started writing through “sheer boredom”. Drawing on his experiences in the trenches during the First World War, he started writing short stories and getting them published in the Daily Mail.

After the war McNeile left the army and continued writing, although he changed from war stories to thrillers. In 1920 he published Bulldog Drummond, whose eponymous hero became his best-known creation.

The character was based on McNeile himself, on his friend Gerard Fairlie and on English gentlemen generally. McNeile wrote ten Bulldog Drummond novels, as well as three plays and a screenplay.

McNeile interspersed his Drummond work with other novels and story collections that included two characters who appeared as protagonists in their own works, Jim Maitland and Ronald Standish. He was one of the most successful British popular authors of the inter-war period before his death in 1937 from throat cancer, which has been attributed to damage sustained from a gas attack in the war.

McNeile’s stories are either directly about the war, or contain people whose lives have been shaped by it. His thrillers are a continuation of his war stories, with upper class Englishmen defending England from foreigners plotting against it.

Although he was seen at the time as “simply an upstanding Tory who spoke for many of his countrymen”, after the Second World War his work was criticised as having fascist overtones, while also displaying the xenophobia and anti-semitism apparent in some other writers of the period.

In 1920 McNeile published Bull-Dog Drummond, whose eponymous hero—a member of “the Breed”—became his most famous creation.

He had first written Drummond as a detective for a short story in The Strand Magazine, but the character was not successful and was changed for the novel, which was a thriller.

Captain Hugh “Bulldog” Drummond DSO, MC was described in the novel’s sub-title as “a demobilised officer who found peace dull” after service during the First World War with the fictional Loamshire Regiment.

Demobilised officer, ... finding peace incredibly tedious, would welcome diversion. Legitimate, if possible; but crime, if of a comparatively humorous description, no objection.

Excitement essential. Advertisement placed in The Times by Drummond in Bulldog Drummond Drummond went on to appear in ten full-length novels by McNeile and a

HERMAN CYRIL ‘SAPPER’ MCNEILE (1888 – 1937)

Perhaps the most clubbish of all the clubland heroes is ‘Bulldog’ Drummond, the creation of ‘Sapper’, who had actually been a sapper (Royal Engineer).

He was born in Cornwall, the son of a Royal Navy captain. He was educated at Cheltenham College and the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, graduating as a second lieutenant in 1907, commissioned into the Royal Engineers.

In 1914 McNeile was promoted to the rank of captain. When the war broke out he was ordered to France.

42

HC McNeile, taken in the 1930s (Photograph by Howard Coster)

further seven by his friend Gerard Fairlie after McNeil’s death.

Drummond is a gentleman adventurer who finds peace dull after demobilisation following the First World War. In peace Drummond continues to defend England against her enemies, who are always ‘foreign’. often Germans (the ‘filthy, murdering Boche’), sometimes Russians (‘stinking, cowardly Bolshevik’) but most often against against the arch-villain Karl Peterson who will work with anyone willing to further his personal aims.

Intensely patriotic, Drummond will do literally anything for his country - break the law; risk imprisonment; risk his life; risk the lives of his friends; commit acts of violence angaionst the ‘foreign devils’ who would do the same if given the opportunity.

He is frequently contemptuous of the Law, which often goes counter to his notion of ‘Justice’.

Drummond does not think (a case may be made for ending that sentence there) in terms of politics, finding England’s enemies on the right as well as the left. He plays no favourites has little toleration for either extreme. Although not the creator of the phrase popular during the First War ‘Wogs begin at Calais’, doubtless Drummond would subscribe to the sentiment.

‘Years ago,’ he says once ‘we had an amusing little show rounding up Communists and other unwashed people of that type. we called ourselves the Black Gang, and it was great sport while it lasted.’

We see here ‘sport’ used in the same sense as that in which Raffles used it. Interestingly enough, their idea of ‘sport’ involved the inflection of pain on others.

The character of Drummond was an amalgam of Fairlie, McNeil himself, and McNeil’s idea of an ideal English gentleman.

Drummond’s roots in the literary characters Sherlock Holmes, Sexton Blake, Richard Hannay and The Scarlet Pimpernel ae obvious.

Drummond was characterised as an “apparently brainless hunk of a man”,who was also a gentleman with a private income; he could also be seen as “a brutalized ex-officer whose thirst for

excitement is also an attempt to re-enact the war”.

Poet Laureate Cecil Day-Lewis, author of rival gentleman detective Nigel Strangeways, described Drummond as an “unspeakable public school bully”.

Physically Drummond has the quality necessary to handle the situations in which he so frequently finds himself. Six feet tall, broad and muscular, he is an excellent boxer and ‘a lightning and deadly shot with a revolver’.

Not even his best friend could call him handsome, but he had the sort of cheerful ugliness that inspires confidence in other men.

In the first adventure, Bulldog Drummond, he discovers that Peterson is behind a Russian plot to overthrow the British government by means of a ruinous General Strike, supported by several prominent Englishmen who plan to lead the new social system. The plotting seldom rises much beyond this fairly typical example.

McNeile introduced other characters - Jim Maitland, Ronald Standish, ‘Tiny’ Carteret. All cast in the Drummond mould and nowhere near as popular.

McNeile died in 1937 from throat cancer “traceable to his war service” and attributed to a gas attack.

Drummond, McNeile’s chief literary legacy, became a model for other literary heroes created in the 1940s and ‘50s.

W. E. Johns used McNeile’s work as a model for his character Biggles, while Ian Fleming admitted that James Bond was “Sapper from the waist up and Mickey Spillane below”. Sydney Horler’s popular character “Tiger” Standish was also modeled on Drummond.

At his peak in the 1920s, McNeile was the highest paid short story writer in the world, and it was estimated that in the last five years of his life he was earning around £10,000 a year; it has been estimated that during his writing career he had earned £85,000. [Nearly six million pounds in today’s money - no wonder he was the inspiration for other writers].

A common theme in all the clubland hero books is that the villains are foreign, un-English and frequently Jewish. In all the stories but chiefly in those of Sapper there is an underlying delight and crypto-sadism. We find Drummond in Bulldog Drummond forcing the villainous Lakington into a bath of acid from which he emerges with his clothes burned off and ‘mad with agony.’

In The Black Gang (1922), the group Drummond refers to so fondly, two Jews working in the service of revolution, described as ‘a little flashily dressed, distinctly addicted to cheap jewellery’ are told by a, masked, Drummond: ‘my friends and I do not like your trade, you swine,’ before beating the two ‘to within an inch of their lives’ with a cat o’ nine tails.

The quality of the writing between Buchan, Yates and Sapper is not to be compared, and the only reason for comparing them at all is because they wrote about the same sort of people.

Buchan was a fine writer and his and Yates writing rises well about that of Sapper’s ‘blood and thunder’ thrillers - although his war stories are far better written than the Drummond ones.

Tom Sharpe (1928 - 2013) the modern satirist of the Wilt series of novels was fascinated by the clubland heroes and sent them up wickedly in to novels - Indecent Exposure, set in Apartheid South Africa and involving a knock-off Berry & Co family, and Vintage Stuff, set in a mythical school very much like the one in which Sharpe was educated and about the adventures of the monocle-wearing Gerald Glodstone and his assistant Peregrine Roderick Clyde-Brown, a guileless and dim-witted teenager, who dashes off all over Mittle-Europe trying to rescue a non-existent beautiful Countess very much in the style of Sapper’s heroes.

43

ARTHUR HENRY SARSFIELD WARD (1883 - 1959)

Ward, better known as Sax Rohmer, was a prolific English novelist, best remembered for his series of novels featuring the master criminal Dr. Fu Manchu doesn’t really fall into the Clubland Hero mould, but the plots are much of a muchness, with a huge dash of xenophobia as a side order.

Born in Birmingham to a working-class family, Ward initially pursued a career as a civil servant before concentrating on writing full-time. He worked as a poet, songwriter and comedy sketch writer for music hall performers before creating the Sax Rohmer persona and pursuing a career writing fiction.

Like his contemporaries Algernon Blackwood and Arthur Machen, Rohmer claimed membership to one of the factions of the qabbalistic Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn along with WB Yates and Aleister Crowley.

His first work was published in 1903, when he sold a short story The Mysterious Mummy was sold to Pearson’s Weekly.

Rohmer’s main literary influences appear to have been Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle and M.P. Shiel.

He gradually transitioned from writing for music hall performers to concentrating on short stories and serials for magazine publication. He published his first book Pause! anonymously in 1910.

In 1897, the Russian sociologist Jacques Novikow coined the term Le Péril Jaune (The Yellow Peril) in an essay on China.

Later, the German Kaiser Wilhelm II, used Yellow Peril racism to encourage the European empires to invade, conquer, and colonize China.

The anti-colonial Boxer Rebellion of 1900 in China reinforced the concept of ‘The Yellow Peril’ , ‘The Yellow Terror’ or ‘Yellow Spectre’ and by 1912 when the first Fu Manchu novel, The Mystery of Dr. Fu-Manchu, was serialised the wicked, wily Oriental was well-established in the public consciousness.

The book was an immediate success, with its fast-paced story of Denis Nayland Smith and Dr. Petrie facing the worldwide conspiracy of the “Yellow Peril”.

The first three Fu Manchu books were published in the four years between 1913–1917; but it was not until 1931 that Rohmer returned to the series with Daughter of Fu Manchu. The reason for the long interval was that Rohmer wanted to be rid of the series after The Si-Fan Mysteries.

Opposing Dr. Fu Manchu in the stories are Sir Denis Nayland Smith and, in the first three books, Dr. Petrie. They are very much in the Holmes and Watson tradition, with Petrie narrating the stories while Smith carries the fight, combating Dr. Fu Manchu more by sheer luck and dogged determination than intellectual brilliance. Smith and Dr. Fu Manchu share a grudging respect for one another, as each believes that a man must keep his word, even to an enemy.

In the first three books, Smith is a colonial police commissioner in Burma granted a roving commission, which allows him to exercise authority over any group that can help him in his mission. He resembles Sherlock Holmes in physical description and acerbic manner, but not in deductive genius.

He has been criticized as being a racist and jingoistic character, especially in the early books in the series, and gives voice to anti-Asian sentiments. When Rohmer revived the series in 1931, Smith (who has been knighted by this time for his efforts to defeat Dr. Fu Manchu, although he would always admit that the honour was not earned by superior intellect) is an ex-Assistant

The Yellow Terror in all His Glory (1899) is a rebellious Qing Dynasty (1636–1912) Chinese man, armed to the teeth, who stands astride a fallen white woman representing Western European colonialism.

Commissioner of Scotland Yard. He later accepts a position with the British Secret Service.

Several books have him placed on special assignment with the FBI.

In the twenty-eight years from 1931 to 1959, Rohmer added a further ten books to the Fu Manchu series, making the series total thirteen books in all.

The Fu Manchu series drew much criticism from the Chinese government and Chinese communities in the U.S. for what was seen as negative ethnic stereotyping. Critic Jack Adrian has written: “Rohmer’s own racism was careless and casual, a mere symptom of his times”.

After World War II, Rohmer and his wife moved to New York, only returning to London shortly before his death. He died in 1959 at the age of seventy-six, ironically from “Asian flu”.

Rhomer’s writing is meticulous, though erratic, and well-researched. Although his plots are often fantastic, they are wholly accurate as regards background material. If a seven-inch poisonous millipede drops from the ceiling with evil intent, then the reader can be assured that such an insect actually exists.

Many of the seemingly bizarre tales are actually based on historically accurate events in China.

For the run of thirteen novels over thirty years the plots varied little from the first; Rohmer’s chief problem, seemingly from the reader’s point of view, is the devising 44

of some reasonably credible explanation of how the evil doctor had managed to escape the end so graphically described in the previous one.

The plots, such as they are, of the Fu Manchu novels would be meaningly in paraphrase. They are a jumble of incredible encounters, pursuits, traps and escapes.

Who is trying to accomplish what, and why - this is never explained. All that seems certain is that a titanic struggle is being waged by a man called Nayland Smith to thwart the designs of Fu Manchu.

Dr Fu Manchu (how, where, how many and in which disciplines he earned his doctorates is explained many times and with varying answers) we are told is a diabolical fiend who ruthlessly seeks to become Emperor of the World. In addition to possessing a variety of degrees from a variety of universities he has a vast knowledge of the occult and secrets of chemistry, medicine and physics unknown to western man.

He also commands the Tongs of Asia and is a master of the East - Dacoits, hashishan and thugs.

Fu Manchu is believed to be a Chinese noble descended from members of the Manchu dynasty. The most sinister villain

Christopher Lee as Fu Manchu

in history, the devil doctor is nevertheless bound by the code of a gentleman, his word is his bond. (Unlike Doyle’s Charles Augustus Milverton, who’s bond is your word.)

Manchu’s constant adversary, Sir Denis Nayland Smith, seems hopelessly over-matched against the ubiquitous, iniquitous, doctor. Vaguely connected with Scotland Yard, Smith’s life is frequently saved entirely by luck.

Prominent among Dr. Fu Manchu’s agents was the ‘seductively lovely’ Kâramanèh. Her real name is unknown. She was sold to the Si-Fan by Egyptian slave traders while she was still a child. She rescues Petrie and Nayland Smith many times.

Karamaneh falls in love with Dr. Petrie and eventually the couple are united and she wins her freedom. They marry and have a daughter, Fleurette, who figures in two later novels.

Tall and slender, Fu Manchu generally wears a yellow robe or a black one with a silver peacock embroidered on the front.

His eyes are his most notable physical feature: long, magnetic and a true cat green - so piercing and compelling that their gaze is often sensed even before his presence is made known.

The vitality of Fu Manchu is demonstrated by the fact that it is almost impossible to hear of a ‘sinister oriental’ without instantly calling to mind the devil doctor. ~oOo~

We couldn’t leave the subject of thrillers without mentioning the two blockbuster writers of the early part of the twentieth century in the genre - Edgar Wallace and Sidney Horler.

RICHARD HORATIO EDGAR WALLACE (1875 – 1932)

Arthur Henry ‘Sax Rohmer’ Ward (1883-1959)

Wallace was born at Greenwich, the illegitimate child of actors Richard Horatio Marriott Edgar and Polly Richards as the result of a brief encounter at an ‘after-show’ party.

The baby Edgar was fostered to Mrs Freeman, a mother of ten children, whose husband George Freeman was a Billingsgate fishmonger. In 1878 the Freemans adopted him.

By his early teens, Wallace had held down numerous jobs such as newspaper-seller at Ludgate Circus, milk-delivery boy, rubber factory worker, shoe shop assistant, and ship’s cook.

In 1894 he enlisted in the infantry under the name Edgar Wallace, after the author of Ben-Hur, Lew Wallace. He 45

million Congolese were killed. Isabel Thorne, of the Weekly Tale-Teller penny magazine, invited Wallace to serialise stories inspired by his experiences.

These were published as his first collection Sanders of the River (1911), a best seller, and Wallace went on to publish eleven more similar collections.

They were tales of exotic adventure and local tribal rites, set on an African river, mostly without love interest as this held no appeal for Wallace.

His first twenty-eight books and their film rights he sold outright, with no royalties, for quick money.

The period from 1908 to 1932 was the most prolific of Wallace’s life. Initially, he wrote mainly in order to satisfy creditors in the UK and South Africa.

Wallace began to take his fiction writing career more seriously and signed with publishers Hodder and Stoughton in 1921, organising his contracts, instead of selling rights to his work piecemeal in order to raise funds. This allowed him advances, royalties, and full scale promotional campaigns for his books, which he had never before had.

The publisher aggressively advertised him as a celebrity writer, ‘King of Thrillers’, known for this trademark trilby, cigarette holder, and yellow Rolls Royce. He was said to be able to write a 70,000 word novel in three days and plough through three novels at once, and the publishers agreed to publish everything he wrote as fast as he could write it.

In 1928, it was estimated that one in four books being read in the UK had come from Wallace’s pen. He wrote across many genres including science fiction, screen plays, and a non-fiction ten-volume history of the First World War.

All told, he wrote over 170 novels, eighteen stage plays, and 957 short stories, and his works were translated into twentyeight languages.

By 1929, Wallace’s earnings were almost £50,000 per annum (equivalent to about £2 million in current terms).

Wallace was the first British crime novelist to use policemen as his protagonists, rather than amateur sleuths as most other writers of the time did. Most of his novels are independent stand-alone stories; he seldom used series heroes, and when he did he avoided a strict story order, so that continuity was not required from book to book.

In 1931 he wrote the screenplay for the first sound film adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1932).

In December of that year, Wallace was assigned work on the RKO “gorilla picture” (King Kong, 1933). By January he was diagnosed with diabetes, his condition deteriorated and he died, on 10 February 1932 in Beverly Hills.

More than 160 films and several radio adaptations have been made based on Wallace’s work. Wallace narrated his words onto wax cylinders (the dictaphones of the day) and his secretaries typed up the text. This may be why he was able to work at such high speed and why his stories have such narrative drive.

Many of Wallace’s successful books were dictated like this over two or three days, locked away with cartons of cigarettes

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace (1875 – 1932)

was posted in South Africa in 1896. He disliked army life but managed to arrange a transfer to the Royal Army Medical Corps, which was less arduous but more unpleasant, and so transferred again to the Press Corps, which he found suited him better.

Wallace began publishing songs and poetry, much inspired

by Rudyard Kipling, whom he met in Cape Town. Wallace’s first book of ballads, The Mission that Failed!, was published that same year. In 1899, he bought his way out of the forces and turned to writing full-time. Remaining in Africa, he became a war correspondent, first for Reuters and then the Daily Mail and other periodicals during the Boer War.

After the Boer War returned to London where Wallace worked for the Mail and began writing detective stories in a bid to earn quick money.

Unable to find any backer for his first book, Wallace set up his own publishing company, Tallis Press, which issued the thriller The Four Just Men (1905). A vast advertising campaign and a unique publicity gimmick - a five hundred pound reward was offered to any reader who could guess the solution - resulted in enormous sales and ruinous losses as many readers worked out how the British Foreign Secretary had been murdered.

In the story four, actually three, since one dies before the story begins, wealthy dilettantes find pleasure in administering justice where the law is unable or unwilling to do so.

It was a theme to which he returned many times.

During 1907, Edgar traveled to the Congo Free State, to report on atrocities committed against the Congolese under King Leopold II of Belgium and the Belgian rubber companies, in which up to fifteen 46

and endless pots of sweet tea, often working pretty much uninterrupted in seventy-two hours.

Selling over fifty million copies of his works, including 170 novels, Wallace was very much a populist writer, and was dismissed by the literati as such.

Critics Steinbrunner and Penzler stated that Wallace’s writing is “slapdash and cliché-ridden, [with] characterization that is two dimensional and situations [that] are frequently trite, relying on intuition, coincidence, and much pointless, confusing movement to convey a sense of action. The heroes and villains are clearly labelled, and stock characters, humorous servants, baffled policemen, breathless heroines, could be interchanged from one book to another.”

Of the many characters Wallace created, few stick in the mind. The Four Just Men, of course; Mr Commissioner Sanders was very carefully written and memorable, aided by Captain Hamilton of the Houssas and silly-ass Lieutenant Augustus ‘Bones’ Tibbetts; Mr JG Reeder and The Ringer.

His best known, and certainly best written detective is Mr John G Reeder, a timid, gentle little man with the mind of a criminal. he served for many years with Banker’s Trust and was then attached, in a vague sort of way, to the Pubic Prosecutor’s Office. Although he is the most benign of men, he thinks of himself as ‘vicious’ and credits his success in detection to his ‘criminal mind’, which sees wrong in anything.

Reeder’s extraordinary memory for faces is an invaluable aid in his career as one of England’s leading experts in solving bank robberies and forgery cases. Small and middle-aged, he sports mutton-chop whiskers, wears steel-rimmed pince-nez and an oldfashioned, flat-topped bowler.

He carries a resolutely furled umbrella, rain or shine, day or night, in the handle of which is a concealed blade. This gentle man also carries a well-oiled revolver in his coat pocket. He prefers meditating in his private library to action and does not seem to be capable of intense emotions. On one occasion he tells a romantic policeman ’love is a very beautiful experience - I have frequently read about it.’

Despite this, in one of the stories Mr Reeder has a romantic attachment to a ‘typewriter’ - as secretaries were then called.

Mr Reeder’s cases may be found in:

Room Thirteen (1924)

The Mind of Mr JG Reeder (1925)

Terror Keep (1927)

Red Aces (1929)

The Guv’nor and other Stories (1932).

These are all short story collections except Room Thirteen and Terror Keep.

SYDNEY HORLER (1888 – 1954)

Horler was born in Essex,educated at Redcliffe School and Colston School in Bristol. His first job was with Allied Newspapers in Bristol started in 1905. He moved to London to work in Fleet Street, although he also worked in the propaganda section of Air Intelligence towards the end of the First World War. In 1920 he decided to become a full-time writer, publishing Goal that year. He became a popular with the publication of his first crime novel, The Mystery of No.1 (1925.

Horler’s work was heavily influenced by other popular thriller writers such as Edgar Wallace and Sapper. His main hero was “Tiger” Standish, a character similar to Sapper’s Bulldog Drummond - The Honourable Timothy Overbury ‘Tiger’ Standish, son o f the Earl of Quorn - a hearty, two-fisted, soccer-playing superhero. Tall, strong and impeccably dressed he is endowed with, ‘All the attributes of a thoroughly likable fellow ... he likes his glass of beer, he is a confirmed pipe smoker, always ready to smile in the face of danger.’

Horler’s work began to be commercially successful after being serialised in the News of the World. By the 1930s, Horler’s books had sold an estimated two million copies.

Horler frequently used his work to put forward his opinions.

He was a supporter of the British Monarchy and the Church of England.

Horler’s works also incorporated his own prejudices. Colin Watson notes that both his fiction and non-fiction regularly express negative sentiments about non-English peoples.

Horler’s heroes, such as Tiger Standish, regularly use derogatory terms like ‘wogs’ and ‘stinking Italianos’, and Horler also expressed contempt for both the Americans and the French in his diaries. Horler’s novels regularly featured negative depictions of Jews as criminals and racketeers, and he made denigrating comments about the Jewish community in his memoirs, Excitement: An Impudent Autobiography.

In his fiction, Horler spent a large amount of time emphasising how ‘virile’ and ‘masculine’ his heroes are. One of Horler’s characters, the gentleman thief ‘Nighthawk’, only steals jewels from women he sees as sexually immoral, pausing in his work to scrawl the word “Wanton” on their pillowcases.

Literary reviewers of the time, such Dorothy L. Sayers and Compton Mackenzie, generally gave negative opinions on Horler’s fiction and Horler’s novels have steadily declined in popularity since his death.

Critics have taken issue with Horler’s plots, described

by William L. DeAndrea as “unbelievable” (Horler himself claimed to “give old man coincidence’s arm a frightful twist”) and characters seen as cliched. He has been described as “among the worst” of British thriller writers. Horler wrote some 158 novels advertised under the slogan ‘Horler for excitement.

Next month - ‘The Golden Age, when all detectives were titled ...’

47

SWAN VALLEY

SWEET TEMPTATIONS

TRAIL

handcrafted artisan produce

1121

swanval

48

ley.COM.A

U/sweet

THE IDLER The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Mind

SUCCESSFULLY WORK FROM HOME GLENNYS MARSDON

I

t has never been easier to work from home. Thanks to the current Covid-19 situation many of you have been given an opportunity to taste the forbidden fruit of freelance life, while resting in the safety net of a regular wage.

The question is how many of you will be successful and want to continue down this path once life returns to normal? The answer, I believe, is greatly influenced by how you set yourself up at the outset.

For the past twenty years I’ve been working from home as a consumer psychology/branding consultant and freelance writer. Over that period, I’ve lost count of the number of times someone has asked me about working from home.

The queries usually increase at the end of the financial year or during times of restructuring. The discussions usually end with the enquirer lamenting, “I don’t think I could do it”, delivered in wistful tones, signifying their strong desire to do just that.

Working from home has taught me a lot. I’ve made mistakes over the twenty years for sure. However, I’ve also experienced several surprising successes that I’d never have thought possible. Winning the Consumer Protection Rona Okely Award and being nominated for the City Of Perth Community Citizen of the Year were two of them. If that can happen to me while working from home, just think what you can achieve.

Overall, the experience has taught me that you can have as much, or more success working from home, if you just set yourself up well in the beginning.

People tend to think the main benefit of working from home would be getting up late and working in your pajamas. While that is possible let me assure you this phase doesn’t last too long.

Boredom, dwindling money and pressing deadlines soon signal

an end to that. There are however many other long-lasting benefits.

Things like increased productivity, the psychological benefits of greater control and self-belief, both of which far outweigh the financial benefits obtained.

Working from home is not without its challenges though.

Challenges like procrastination and social isolation.

But also having to deal with the Clutter Effect as your work is always all around you, and the Choice Paradox where too much choice renders you unable to make a decision. Worse still is the strong potential of becoming a workaholic.

But why am I telling you all this?

Well, with no focus groups to run (who wants to sit in a small room with ten strangers and critique new television ads) and no events to review, I’ve had some time on my hands.

The hiatus has given me the opportunity to condense my twenty years of experience into an eBook called 30 Tips To Successfully Work From Home. I’m hoping the book will help people make the most of the benefits while reducing their concerns.

The book is broken into five main areas covering the benefits, concerns, the home office, setting standards and managing distractions. It includes tips such as: 1. Setting up a dedicated work area.

Working in bed is the first step on the slippery slope to chocolate and NetFlix at 2am; 2. Setting clear standards from the outset. The types of standards have been discussed in the book e.g. definite work hours; 3. Setting clear ruthless expectations for friends and family; 4. Considering how much work is enough?

Armed with these insights it will be interesting to see how many of you will take control of your work situation post-Corona.

Good luck and enjoy the process.

For a copy of 30 Tips To Successfully Work From Home go to www.amazon.com.au/dp/B08687R1JH/

49

SWAN VALLEY AND REGIONAL NETWORK THE CITY OF SWAN’S RESPONSE TO COVID-19 CR KEVIN BAILEY MAYOR, CITY OF SWAN

W

e’re responding to the ongoing situation and acting on Government advice to ensure the safety of our community while continuing to deliver services as best as possible.

On the 23rd March the City closed the doors to our leisure centres, libraries and the Midland Junction Art Centre following the government directive announced on Sunday evening.

Since then The City of Swan has had to make some changes to our practices to comply with new Government regulations of the 31st March.

The most significant of these is the closure of our playgrounds, skate parks, BMX tracks and outdoor gym equipment and will remain closed for at least a month.

It’s not always possible to fence off large public areas, so we’re asking the community to use common sense and adhere to the State Government’s closures for their own safety.

For a full list of our closures visit the City’s COVID-19 webpage.

We also know that many of our small business operators throughout the City have also had to close their doors in response to this directive.

The health of our community must be our priority but there is no ignoring the fact these measures are impacting people’s livelihoods.

We are making decisions every day about how to refocus our resources to continue supporting our community.

We’re taking innovative steps to ensure we continue to service our community where possible, including:

staff who can assist with library enquiries, City services and payments.

Please visit www.swan.wa.gov.au/libraries for updates from City of Swan’s libraries which are offering some great online programs and activities. While the libraries’ doors will be closed until further notice, our services continue to operate and should you require assistance, the phone lines to most of our libraries will remain open – Guildford Public Library staff can be reached by email.

You can subscribe to get updates here: www.swan. wa.gov.au/Your-Council/Contact-Us/Subscribe

Stay connected and keep you and your loved ones entertained during this difficult time.

BUSINESS OF GOVERNMENT CONTINUES

Council Meetings

We’ve made changes to our Council meetings and Agenda forums. These changes seek to find a balance between protecting our community, allowing community participation and continuing the business of government.

These temporary measures see the suspension of Agenda Forums and the closure of the public gallery in the Council Chambers as we move towards online meetings.

Residents and Ratepayers are encouraged to participate by submitting deputations and questions in writing as outlined on the City’s website.

We will continue to live-stream our Council meetings.

We are currently still welcoming in-person enquiries and payments at the City’s administration building in Midland, however when you visit please use the sanitiser provided and maintain social distancing protocols.

CITY YOUTH WORKERS OUTREACH

Our Youth workers are thinking outside the box to maintain connections with young people during this time.

Staff will be in the open spaces near the youth centres to connect with young people who may be feeling isolated, anxious and unsure and may find themselves in difficult circumstances.

To ensure the safety of staff and young people, the operating times have been adjusted slightly to take place during daylight hours: Cool Room, Ellenbrook –

Mondays and Fridays, 3.30-6.30pm Bullseye, Bullsbrook –

Tuesdays 3.30-5.30pm and Fridays 4-6pm

Rates

We understand the economic pressures impacting families during the pandemic. Many families are unable to work or have lost their jobs and utility bills, tax, rent and mortgages still need to be paid.

Council is working to prepare a budget with a zero per cent rate rise for 2020/21. This is to recognise the severe impact the COVID-19 pandemic has had on our community and to help the local recovery efforts.

The State government has confirmed they will not be increasing service and utility charges for 2020/21, which also has a significant and positive impact for ratepayers. A common reason for increases in council rates and charges is the increase

Staff will promote hygiene and social distancing protocols at all times. The Youth Centre buildings and any equipment will remain out-of-service.

These outreach sessions are planned until the end of April unless advised otherwise. For more information about other youth services or service providers within the City of Swan please go to our COVID-19 page on the City website.

LIBRARIES

While the library’s doors are closed, our online services continue to operate and the phone lines to all our libraries remain open enabling access to library 50

SWAN VALLEY AND REGIONAL NETWORK of State Government fees such as the waste levy, emergency services levy, power and water supply costs and vehicle registration. With these charges fixed at 2019/20 figures, it helps us to achieve a zero per cent rate rise for 2020/21.

Revaluations

Landgate, the State Government’s Valuer-General, recently completed their latest property revaluations. The new revaluation is based on the value of your property at market rental value on 1 August 2018.

The new figure comes into effect on 1 July 2020, however the City of Swan and other local governments are calling on the State Government to postpone the implementation of this revaluation for 12 months to ensure the City’s rate in the dollar can remain frozen at last year’s figures.

State Government Investment

The State Government has announced a $159 million relief package for organisations helping people experiencing hardship as well as for community groups impacted by event cancellations.

This package is funded by Lotterywest sales and eligible groups can apply immediately for grant support by visiting the Lotterywest website or by calling 133 777.

What’s next?

The City of Swan continues to operate and deliver services as efficiently as possible during the closures. Our main administration building and Gidgegannup place office remain open, however I encourage you to use our online and phone services to reduce face-to-face contact.

City staff are also working to ensure government continues to invest in our community. Major projects and roadworks provide significant employment for our residents and, where the work can be undertaken safely, we will continue to plan, construct and maintain the City’s assets.

More Information The Federal Government launched a new Coronavirus mobile phone app for apple and android users this week.

I encourage you to download the app and keep yourself updated with reliable and accurate information. Download the app on Android or iOS and find more information.

Our dedicated page on the website may be found here: www.swan.wa.gov. au/Covid-19

WASTE AND RECYCLING SERVICES

Our waste and recycling services are being maintained so please continue to put your bins out.

The Tip Shop in Bullsbrook is temporarily closed for the foreseeable future.

Recyclable Goods Drop Off Days are temporarily cancelled for the time being.

Services for Easter 2020. Waste Recycling Management do not work on Good Friday and all services usually taking place on this day will now be done the following day (Saturday 11 April).

All bin services normally collected on Friday 10 April 2020 will be collected on Saturday 11 April 2020.

All Pre-Booked Bulk Verge Collections booked for Friday 10 April 2020 will be collected on Saturday 11 April 2020.

The Recycling Centre – Bullsbrook will be closed on Good Friday 10 April 2020.

All operations will continue as normal on Easter Monday 13 April 2020.

EMERGENCY RELIEF FUNDING

Lotterywest have opened up a new Grant fund specifically for COVID-19 – Local Government and Community groups and organisations are all eligible. Follow the links below for further information:

www.lotterywest.wa.gov.au/lotterywest/covid-19/ covid-19-grants and

www.lotterywest.wa.gov.au/assets/more/documents/ covid-19-crisis-and-emergency-relief

STAY UP-TO-DATE

The situation is changing rapidly and the City’s role in the pandemic will change over time. Please stay up to date through the following channels:

City of Swan website www.swan.wa.gov.au

Subscribe to these notification and e-newsletter via our website.

Please follow the social distancing and health advice being communicated by the Government, be kind to one another this is stressful for everyone, and stay across the facts from reliable sources.

For the latest health information and advice, please visit the WA Department of Health website, which is updated daily, or call the Coronavirus health information line on 1800 020 080.

Cr Kevin Bailey Mayor, City of Swan

FREE ADVERTISING Take this opportunity and promote your business ocal community radio station Valley Comes Alive, VCA 88.5fm, has kindly offered free advertising for businesses within the City of Swan that are continuing to trade during these difficult times.

The station not only broadcasts via radio which reaches the whole of the City of Swan and some fringe suburbs like Bassendean, but they also stream their service via the internet which has a global reach!

Alain Gaudet is one of the announcers broadcasting from 11-1pm Mondays & 10-12pm on Fridays.

So you can be sure to hear him give a positive plug for your All you have to do is this:

Send an email to radiovca88.5@gmail.com with the following details:

Business Name

What you do

Contact details, including address

Hours of business

Any specials currently running

L

Feel free to share this information with any other City of Swan business operators also trading through Covid-19.

51

WE HAVE MOVED

Now Open

52

COMMUNITY Compassionate Friends of Western Australia strives Tthathetochild’s support families who have lost a child, regardless of age throughout WA.

We are a non-profit, non-government funded charity that provide peer call support, group meetings, a drop in centre, sending out quarterly newsletters, Anniversary Cards, we hold Walk of remembrance and a candlelight service (non-religious) at Christmas.

We are run by volunteers and bereaved parents that are further along in their grief and wish to help others who have suffered this tragedy.

Although everybody’s grief is different it helps to talk to someone who has actually had this tragedy happen to them.

They WON”T say “I know how you feel” as no one can, but they will say “I don’t know exactly what you are feeling but this is how I felt when my child died”.

We raise funds by holding events, charity drives and donation from our members and outside bodies.

Although this is fantastic, we still struggle with the cost of keeping our doors open so any suggestion on fundraising or donations are gratefully accepted.

events along with peer support volunteers (bereaved parents) for telephone support and group meeting facilitation.

WALK OF REMEMBRANCE HELD IN MARCH EACH YEAR Events like these above give the bereaved some hope of a life after the death of their child. They connect with others that have been through the same tragic experience.

In doing so its helps them to feel that they are not alone in their grief, that there is a worldwide connection to other suffering the same.

DONATIONS Donations allow us to purchase stamps so we can send our booklets and other information to the newly bereaved, community groups, doctors surgeries and hospital throughout Western Australia.

They help us cover advertising cost in newspapers throughout Western Australia, pay for our office and utilities allowing us to have Peer Support Workers come in and contact to bereaved that wish to have contact.

VOLUNTEERS NEEDED We are always looking for volunteers to help man Sausage Sizzles, Charity Shopping Centre Drives and other

54 Simpson Street, Ardross 6107 6257

53

The Compassionate Friends of WA Inc. receives no Government funding in any way.

Concluded from page 23 ...

“It would have to be totally independent. Separate sensors, inputs, code… the lot.”

“Sure. We could call it Bene-check.”

“How do I convince Frances to build it?”

“It’ll get this project finished and paid for. Also it makes Benedictus look safer for future sales. What are you doing this weekend?”

“Flying home. Oscar sent me a text. He has to go to Korea for a while. Says it’s my turn to look after Wookie. Basically my marriage is on the rocks.”

“We could design this thing. I’m betting just the design would be enough to sway everyone. Even Karl.”

“Maybe. Wouldn’t have to be very big.”

“Let’s go get some lunch. Then my place. Remember that super-clock you designed at school?”

“How could I forget?”

“We’re gonna do it again.”

They worked until midnight, when Louisa went back to her apartment. She was at David’s place at eight the next morning with a large paper bag of comfort food. By two on the Sunday morning they had a clean draft of something good. David had contributed some new AI concepts to the design.

“Using learning systems to monitor learning systems?”

Louisa was cautious.

“Exactly.”

Louisa analysed their performance. Benedictus and Bene-check would be opposing modules – the former tuned for treatment efficacy, the latter for patient safety. They should converge on an optimum dosage. If not the system would shut down. David named the approach the ‘Bradshaw Circuit’.

Louisa just laughed, but even she had to admit it had real potential. Working together, bouncing ideas off each other, had been a source of joy to both of them. Exhilarated but exhausted, Louisa collapsed onto David’s bed. David pulled a blanket over her. Then he too fell asleep.

Louisa was awoken by late morning sunshine. She could see no point in leaving. Slowly she removed her shirt and jeans and snuggled back under the blanket next to David. He awoke to find his hand caressing her bare skin and the scent of her hair in his face. That afternoon they formulated their plans.

Louisa transmitted the design of Bene-check to Williamson Systems. Frances would include it in a new proposal to TEC on Monday afternoon. Meanwhile David would be lobbying senior management about an ‘even-more-reliable’ Benedictus version two. Karl would be out-maneuvered. There was an abusive note from Oscar. He had put Wookie into boarding kennels with the bill to be sent to Louisa. He would not be back from Korea for many months. Sarcastically, he hoped she was enjoying her project. Even that failed to dampen the excitement.

By the Wednesday, their triumph was complete.

The TEC confirmed an accelerated schedule to put the enhanced Benedictus into operation. Frances had sent her congratulations and was flying over for the announcement.

Over a bottle of champagne at Camillo’s, David and Louisa discussed the best weekend they had ever had.

“You know we could do this all the time?” he murmured.

“We could start up a new company. Checking AI systems that are safety-critical. How about Appleby Consultancy?”

“It’d be brilliant. Even if it wasn’t… I’d be working with you.”

“And Wookie.” Louisa squeezed his hand. “Giving Karl and Frances a month’s notice. That would be so sweet.”

David nodded. “Your super-reliable clock-tower. That will be our logo.” ~The End~

Concluded from page 15 ...

Put your mayonnaise in a small screw-top jar for the same reason.

You can make a ham sandwich at home for less than half the price you will pay at a lunch bar. It takes less than five minutes to make the sandwich at home. So, you save money and you save time--more of the lunch hour is now available for something other than standing in line waiting to pay for a sandwich.

That leaves us with six evening meals to prepare. (Because with all the lunch money you saved, you can afford to go out to dinner once a week.)

It's very tempting when you are on your own to buy convenience meals. A box of chicken fillets that just have to be popped in the oven seems so easy. It is easy; it's also quite an expensive way to eat chicken.

If you hang around the barbecued chicken section of your local supermarket just before closing time, you can usually buy an entire roast chicken for the same price as a 450 gram box of chicken tenders.

The roast chicken will give you at least three meals, probably four if you are willing to work a bit. You eat some of the chicken hot the night you buy it, with a salad and a crusty bread roll.

You carefully pack up the large sections of the chicken into sandwich bags and store them in the coldest part of the refrigerator for another evening. You chop up all the little bits of chicken that you pull off the bones and mix it with a bit of mayonnaise and you have your lunch for the next day.

Lastly, you put the carcase into a pot with two cups of water and gently stew it for half an hour. Let it cool on a plate and then pull off all the edible bits and return them to the pot, then throw out the bones, skin and wingtips which only cats can successfully eat.

Add some parsley, pepper, chopped onion, celery, maybe some diced capsicum. Put half a cup of rice in the pot, and stow the whole thing in the refrigerator until tomorrow. You now have a decent bowl of chicken soup ready to go that only wants a tad more cooking to finish the rice.

Don’t be tempted to false economy. The two kilogram bag of frozen peas is a bargain for a large family, but not for a bachelor with a miniscule freezer compartment in his secondhand fridge.

A 500 gram bag of peas that you will use up before they get freezer burn is a better deal than a huge bag that won’t get used up or will make you hate peas forever. (However, if you do have a reasonably amount of icy space, you can take advantage of sales and bargains.)

Tune in again next month for the next installment, if the Lord spares us and the crik’ don’t rise.

Concluded from page 30 ...

ALC Sea Ranger Jenifer Yantarrnga said the rangers had gained many skills over the life of the project, including surveying and monitoring techniques, and unique experiences including working onboard a world-class marine research vessel.

“Our aim was to document the habitats and species in the Indigenous Protected Area of the archipelago, so we have a good baseline of information to help us better manage our sea country, and we have achieved that, so it is a great outcome.”

AIMS’ research team returns to Groote Eylandt to deliver a series of maps of the Makarda which includes information on the fish and iconic marine species which live there.

The maps and a series of Ranger training videos have been translated into traditional language with the help of the rangers.

54

BUSINESS CARD BOARD ACCOUNTANT

DOG TRAINING

BOOKKEEPING

ELECTRICAL

BRICKPAVING

EDITOR

Specialising in Brickpaving & Soakwells

Need an editor?

Get expert advice on layout, editing, costings, publishing and marketing from a professional editor.

First consultation free. Free quotes.

FREE Quotes No job too big or too small Call Larry: 0431 057 124 or 6278 2301

Swinburne Press (founded 1989) P: 6296 5161 E: douglassb@iinet.net.au

CEILINGS

GARDENING

COSMETICS

GARDENING

55

BUSINESS CARD BOARD GLASS

SHEDS

MAINTENANCE

TREE SERVICES

Just Trees Your Affordable Local Tree Service Pruning - Lopping - Removals - Mulching

9274 3236

~ Fully Insured

~ Call for a Free Quote

7B Bushby Street, Bellevue, WA 6056

MARKETS

TUITION

PUBLISHERS

TV ANTENNA

Have a book to publish?

v Family History v Non-Fiction v Autobiography v Biography v Fantasy v Fiction v Poetry

Swinburne Press (founded 1989) P: 6296 5161 E: douglassb@iinet.net.au

WEB DESIGN

Your business could be here being seen by more than 100,000 readers for only $25.

Ring 0418 934 850 56

57

SWAN VALLEY

SWEET TEMPTATIONS

TRAIL

handcrafted artisan produce

1121

swanval

ley.COM.A 58

U/sweet