I'm going to post a series of blog entries commenting on the mechanics of the 2010 Federal Election. It'll be more psephological than political, although I'm sure there may be a blending of the two from time to time.
To kick things off, I'm going to have a look at what needs to be authorised during an election. You've all noticed the familiar words "Written and authorised by Joe Candidate of 1 Capital Road, Some City" at the end of TV ads or on leaflets and letters to the editor in newspapers. My first thought was: If I'm commenting on an election, do I need to put an authorisation name an address on my blog? The short answer is "No", (although things aren't quite so clear if you are commenting on a Tasmanian or South Australian election).
The Australian Electoral Commission's Electoral Backgrounder document specifically says that authorisation is needed for "internet advertisements" and that the requirement "applies to electoral advertisements intended to affect voting in a federal election where a person has paid for the advertisement to appear on the internet."
So I can comment on elections in this blog without disclosing my name and address: although I've got no special need to hide my name: "Anthony Holmes".
An example of why Authorisation is useful: Melbourne City Council Elections 2008
The need to put an authorisation on election material always seemed a nice thing to do, but hardly of vital importance. My opinion changed during the 2008 Melbourne City Council election when a pamphlet arrived that said "Why does the Greens Party want to close MacRobertson Girls' High School & Melbourne High". The pamphlet annoyed me because schools weren't relevant to a city council election, the schools weren't in the the city and schools policy is hardly central to the Greens' party.
Irrelevant scare-mongering greatly annoys me in politics.
The authorisation revealed that they had been authorised by campaign workers for Bob McMullin (of the ALP), although he stated that they hadn't been authorised by ALP headquarters. Anyway, you reap what you sow, so I was more pleased than I would have expected when the pamphlet didn't seem to benefit the ALP aligned candidates, and Robert Doyle (former State Liberal Party leader) won the mayoral election.
Afterword: In the 1980s, I ran elections for the Monash Association of Students a couple of times. For those elections it wasn't simply necessary for all advertisements to be authorised by the person who wrote them, they also all needed to be seen and approved by the Electoral Officer (me). This is unlike Council/State/Federal elections where the Electoral Commission doesn't need to view things ahead of time. In the hothouse of student politics pre-approval made sense. I kind of hope it won't ever be necessary in 'adult' elections.
An excellent way of ensuring fairness in campaigns is to shine a strong light upon them. Instead of allowing leaflets to be seen only by the limited number of people they get distributed to, ElectionLeaflets.org.au is encouraging people to scan or photograph all leaflets so that anybody can see them. My favourite one so far is from Stephen Mayne. He's not seriously expecting to get elected, although I suspect he might turn out to be an excellent member if he were elected.
When you get electoral leaflets, I strongly encourage you to scan them and upload them.
Anthony Holmes July 24th, 2010 07:33:53 PM
The ABC launched ABC News 24 last night.
They funded it by "saving money" elsewhere (which explains the repeated difficulties ABC News has often had recently showing the correct titles under people during news stories). I'm guessing that they also saved some money by not buying chairs for the presenters:
I'm a long term ABC NewsRadio addict, so I've watched the arrival of its television equivalent with great interest. The "no new funding" statement worried me: I had a vision of the day being filled with each state's Stateline being run in succession over and over. After being riveted with an account of local politics in South Australia, we'd progress to Tasmania... for the third repeat.
As it turns out I've been impressed by the amount of new programming. It's all almost all ABC News 24's own content until 7:30pm when it starts switching between ABC1 news/current affairs programs and ABC News 24 content (from 1:00am we have the pleasure of mixed half hour crosses to the BBC between replays). (This is where we do eventually get repeats of Stateline, but they appear from 1:00am Sunday morning. To be honest, I've got nothing against an occasional Stateline, even for other states, but it's good not to have six of them in a row.)
So far the programs are nicely presented with a good range of material and not too much repetition (yet!). The Drum (which is now a program as well as the ABC's blog site) even managed to put on a distinctly right wing commentator who was opinionated yet self deprecating and amusing. Who would have imagined that it was possible for the ABC to find someone other than the execrable Andrew Bolt who (even assuming you accept his world view is different) really doesn't have anything of interest to say. Ditto Piers Akerman (mostly). Time will tell whether the said commentator (Chris Berg) will continue to be provocatively interesting, or if he will fall into the temptation to be too smug.
As well as The Drum, The World (9:00pm) stood out as a good program. (That may partly be a reflection of the fact that I find important or diverse international stories more interesting than local trivia.)
Footnote: I chose my screenshot image above as a bit of a joke: "ABC News 24 Exclusive: Farmer Sells a Cow." In truth, the story was about Tasmanian farmers feeling forced to sell their farms to foreign purchasers.
Anthony Holmes July 23rd, 2010 09:40:20 PM
As we wandered out to dinner with friends last night, somebody walking down Flinders Lane tried to hand us a book. Oddly it didn't seem to be a religious tract, but we declined it nonetheless. It was at this point that Dennis thought to mention that when he had gone to the supermarket many hours previously, he had noticed that City Basement Books (at the end of Elizabeth Street) seemed to be closing, and had placed hundreds of books into a skip on Elizabeth street.
It hadn't really struck Dennis that I might be interested in a skip with hundreds of free books in it.
Apparently people had been crowded around the skip taking out books for for a good part of the afternoon and into the evening. So we stopped by it. And stopped by it again as we went home after dinner. Among many uninteresting books there were a number that struck me as interesting (for the price). Like a dozen or more other people at midnight, I helped myself to some books.
These included:
- The Golden Band; Holland's fight against the sea (OK: it might not be of interest to everybody, but I've already discovered a few interesting factoids by leafing through this book.)
- Security, Can we retrieve it? (Published 1938. Answer: "No. At least not without having the most widespread war the world has ever seen.")
- Churchill's secret speeches (Which sounds a little like the Brits had something like Khrushchev's secret speech denouncing Stalin, but which really only involves some speeches by Churchill to secret sessions of Parliament held during the Second World War, which is something I hadn't previously known about.)
- Prospects for Soviet Society (Published 1968. Should be good for a laugh. "The emergence of ... benevolent authoritarianism of great vitality and long range durability.)
- and a couple of other histories, and a bunch of probably worthless science fiction novels
As I was stuffing books into a plastic bag that I had found in the skip, two police officers walked up, shined their torch into the books, and one said to the other "technically this is theft". My mind started ticking over the Crimes Act's requirements for theft. I was pretty sure I could mount an argument that he was wrong: but didn't want to push the point by openly disagreeing with him. That sort of smartness might end in tears. Fortunately they decided that dozens of people helping themselves to literature was not the greatest threat to law and order in Melbourne that night, and they left.
Since then, I've looked up the definition of theft to make sure I'm not a criminal:
Crimes Act 1958
72. Basic definition of theft
(1) A person steals if he dishonestly appropriates property belonging to
another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it.
(2) A person who steals is guilty of theft; and "thief" shall be construed
accordingly.
s73(2) ...(2) A person's appropriation of property belonging to another is not to be
regarded as dishonest-
(a) if he appropriates the property in the belief that he has in law the
right to deprive the other of it, on behalf of himself or of a third
person; or
(b) if he appropriates the property in the belief that he would have the
other's consent if the other knew of the appropriation and the
circumstances of it; or
(c) (except where the property came to him as trustee or personal
representative) if he appropriates the property in the belief that the
person to whom the property belongs cannot be discovered by taking
reasonable steps.
I believe that the owner would have consented. The books weren't in a packing case: the skip had leaves and rubbish on the bottom. It was a skip for dumping rubbish. Dennis commented that there had been dozens of people at the skip during business hours (when City Basement Books was presumably still open), and they had topped up the skip: saying nothing and doing nothing to stop people taking books. I believe, therefore, that they were consenting to people taking the books.
So, from the safety of my blogging desk, I respond to the officer: It's not "technically theft'. The books are, indeed, property. I did appropriate them. But I have a belief of consent (and I'd argue that it's a reasonable belief). (Should City Basement Books put up a sign asking for people to return their books, I wouldn't intend to permanently deprive... but I think my 'belief of consent' at the time of taking is the key point to undermine the officer's "technically it's theft" claim.)
The real sad part of this story is the closing of an interesting city bookstore, and the fact that the best they could do with a large part of their stock was to throw it away. The good side, however, is that although it was threatened with being thrown into landfill it looks like a good 90% of the stock found new homes.
Not connected with anything: this is a photo I took in the Fitzroy Gardens, given an 'otherworldly' colour treatment.
Comments (1)
Anthony Holmes May 2nd, 2010 05:59:03 PM
At midnight on Friday, the ABC - possibly for the first time ever - released a program on iView (internet viewing) before it had been broadcast.
(Possibly it was a way of dissuading people from downloading it ahead of time via Bittorrent etc.?) The show was the latest series of Dr Who.
Being the IT literate cat that she is, Molly found herself unable to hold back: so she loaded up iView on Dennis's Macbook shortly after midnight. (Anybody wanting to view it on a proper TV in Australia can, of course, watch it on free to air tonight, Sunday 18th April 2010.) This is pretty prompt scheduling by the ABC. The show was originally broadcast in the UK on 3rd April 2010.
As you can see from her rapt attention, Molly clearly approves of the eleventh Doctor.
(I'm not making this up, and we didn't simply put her down in front of the screen. Molly really was watching the show. She kept blocking my view.)
Anthony Holmes April 18th, 2010 01:12:01 AM
Here's a video I made of the Great Melbourne Hailstorm of 6th March 2010. It's a little bit over a minute long.
(Note: I didn't edit the volume of the video, and the hail was rather loud, so you might like to turn your volume down a little bit before starting the video.)
Click on this image to start the video.
Anthony Holmes March 6th, 2010 09:59:16 PM
In 1999, Sydney had a hailstorm that they were speaking about for years afterwards: Houses had canvas on their roofs for ages, some cars never had their dents repaired. It caused a billion dollars worth of damage. Personally I suspected they were putting it on a bit. After all, how bad could a hailstorm be?
Well, this afternoon Melbourne had a pretty severe hailstorm. I don't imagine it was as bad as the Sydney one, but it was absolutely stunning for its ferocity.
Earlier this afternoon it suddenly got dark. Too dark to read inside. Looking across to Federation Square, the Moomba rides were lit up as though evening was setting. There were probably a thousand or two people down in Birrarung Marr and the Alexandra Gardens who were about to be seriously pelted.
In something like15 seconds it went from no rain into a heavy hailstorm: the sort with hailstones the size of golf balls. (I'd be exaggerating to say they were as big as cricket balls. I didn't see any that big.)
The Age reports that Southern Cross Station was evacuated during the storm... courtesy of that great journalistic tradition of looking out the window. (It's already obvious that moving out of the windowless Spencer Street Soviet into their new building is paying off in terms of better/faster journalism.)
As at 4pm (around an hour after the storm hit) the Southern Cross statement only appears underneath a single photograph on the front page. An article on the inside (from 3:36pm) speaks of winds of 100 km/h at Melbourne Airport, and warnings from the Weather Bureau and the SES. And they ask people to send in photos.
Update: by 4:30 they've got 13 photos from readers. The wording of the story hasn't been updated yet. (No news yet as to whether the entire roof on $300 million Southern Cross Station will need to be replaced. :-) )
Update: 5:40 The Age now has a photo of rain and hail cascading into Southern Cross following the collapse of part of the roof. When I jokingly postulated the need to replace the roof at 4:30, I was wondering whether it had been dented out of shape. It never occurred to me it might collapse. See photo.
Here are some of my photos of the storm:
Looking out whilst the hail came down.
These pots are almost a metre in from the edge of the roof line. It is rare for them to get wet, let alone fill with water.
A panorama.
Click on the photos to see them in a gallery (with multiple sizes), or click on links below to download full resolution copies.
Anthony Holmes March 6th, 2010 03:45:47 PM
Old people these days are much more modern than when I was young.
You could talk with people who had fought in the Boer War. And I once spoke with somebody who (as a history project) had spoken to people who had participated in the Boxer Rebellion (1898-1901). Older people remembered a time before motor cars and aeroplanes. The typical caricature of an old man had a long beards like Ned Kelly in the 1880s, rather than today's older men with the clean shaven look of the 1920s. In theory you could have spoken with somebody who had once spoken with somebody who had met Napoleon (although it was pretty unlikely).
In reading a recent article in The Economist, I learnt of a notable survivor who I hadn't suspected was still alive: Otto von Habsburg.
He's 97 and he was the heir apparent to the Austro Hungarian Empire when his father Charles took the throne in 1916 following the death of Archduke Franz Joseph Otto Robert Maria Anton Karl Max Heinrich Sixtus Xavier Felix Renatus Ludwig Gaetan Pius Ignatius of Austria, Emperor when World War I started. As The Economist points out, he's probably one of the last people alive who can remember what the Empire was like, having been heir apparent (and six years old - which is old enough to have distinct memories) when it collapsed in 1918. Should the Austrians, Hungarians, the Czechs, Slovaks, Serbs (perhaps with some Poles, Italians, Romanians, Bosnians, Herzegovinians, Slovenes, Ukraines and maybe some others) decide to reinstate the empire, then Emperor Otto would assume the throne without any successor being skipped.
Otto has been the pretender since has father died in 1922. The fact that he's still around tickles my fancy.
Here's a photo of him with mum and dad when he was a little tacker:
Comments (1)
Anthony Holmes February 24th, 2010 10:04:42 PM
This year we hosted Christmas lunch... for 18 people.
The link above is to the Christmas video. Click on the image above to see a 2.5 minute video of the lunch. (The video hasn't got any particular plot, it's just a collection of scenes from the day to give a feeling for what it was like.)
And for the full gallery of Christmas photos, click here:
Christmas Gallery
Comments (0)
Anthony Holmes January 4th, 2010 09:54:12 PM
Oscar
I'll post separately about New Year's Eve 2009/10. But for the record, here's a description of Oscar's exciting New Year's Eve.
Because of the rain on New Year's Eve, I took photos of the fireworks from our upper balcony. After they finished, I went downstairs and had some champagne with Dennis and watched the Graham Norton New Year's Eve show (rewinding it to get the bits I missed whist the fireworks had been happening).
After a while, Dennis's mother Monika and her partner Len arrived home from their New Year's Eve cruise on the Yarra/Docklands. We chatted for a while, and then Len went upstairs to get ready to go to bed. Shortly after, he came downstairs to say that he could see Oscar looking in through his bedroom window. (A bedroom window that is seven storeys high.)
This was Oscar's adventure: When I finished photographing the fireworks, I must have failed to shut the balcony door properly. (Guilt, guilt.) So Oscar, who loves the allure of the forbidden balconies, went out. So far, no danger. Then he saw a pot plant sitting on a trolley: with grass in it (a bit like the photo above, but out on a balcony). So he must have jumped up to have a nibble. He likes chewing on grass. And then he must have looked back towards the building and seen Len through the window of the room next door. Being the friendly cat that he is, he stepped off the pot plant and onto the edge of the railing so that he could see Len better.
Fortunately, with a little gentle coaxing from the balcony door, he decided to jump back down to the safety of the balcony and - a little more reluctantly - to come inside again.
Comments (1)
Anthony Holmes January 3rd, 2010 05:49:19 PM
I get the Guardian Weekly delivered. Over a cup of coffee today I read a sentence that I initially skipped past quickly. Then I went back and looked at it more closely. Eventually I pulled out a piece of paper to decode what it was saying. Six different countries are mentioned in the sentence. It's not a list of countries: every country is playing a different role in the story.
The sentence seemed complicated. It's certainly a very carefully thought out way of communicating a dense amount of information. My initial instinct is that a sub editor should have simplified it. There's an argument that if I needed to get a piece of paper out to understand it completely, then it lacks clarity. But on further contemplation, maybe it does its job well. The sentence was giving background information about a previous event. It appeared in the sixth paragraph of the article.
It was written by Simon Tisdall.
The sentence reads like this. (I include a lead in sentence to give it context):
The Bangkok arms seizure followed several recent incidents. In July, the French-owned, Bahamian-flagged ANL Australia bound for Iran was intercepted in the UAE after a US tip-off.
The full article is here.
Within the sentence we get the following information about six different countries:
| The ship's owner | France |
| The ship's country of registration | Bahamas |
| Name of the ship | ANL Australia |
| Final destination | Iran |
| Place where ship was intercepted | UAE |
| The country that gave the tip-off | USA |
Had Simon Tisdall wanted to squeeze a seventh country into this sentence, the option was open to him. The sentence doesn't mention the country at the heart of the article, North Korea. Comments (0)
Anthony Holmes January 1st, 2010 05:19:58 PM
So, newspapers are suffering a crisis in their business model.
It's not so much that people are no longer buying papers. (Sales have dropped a bit, but if that were the only problem, they'd survive.) The major problem is that their advertising revenue streams have dropped: general advertising, and more critically, classified advertising is evaporating.
I value (a good proportion) of the articles produced by Fairfax's publications, most specifically The Age. And therefore I understand how hard they need to work to generate new revenue streams. Accordingly, when I read The Age on the web, I'll tolerate the pages being crammed with display ads.
But I cannot, cannot, WILL NOT tolerate ads that start playing videos with SOUND when I open an article. And it's very specifically the audio that upsets me. (Although video that covers the article would also be a problem.)
Last night I was watching John Adams (on my Mac with its TV tuner). We reached the point where the Continental Conference started reading the Declaration of Independence. Dramatically they read the words "And we hold these truths to be self evident", which turned out to be the moment that the page I had clicked to on The Age started playing a ad's christmas carol and video.
It's hard to imagine the moment being more effectively spoiled.
The Age had received many page hits from me that evening, as I had browsed articles whilst watching TV. They got zero hits after that.
I believe that these video/audio ads are only supposed to come up occasionally, but I find them coming up repeatedly. By which I mean many times each day.
I'm making a list of advertisers that I will loathe, despise and not patronise. It seems heartless, but for the time being that's going to include the Salvos.
And since it happened again yet again tonight, I'm going to have to completely zero my page hit count. There are many convoluted ways to do this, but this will be the simplest way...
http://www.theage.com.au/text/
I'm giving Fairfax some feedback through their feedback link. I don't expect them to write back and tell me that they are dropping the audio/video ads simply because they happen to upset me. But it is true: Fairfax and their advertisers are driving me away from The Age's site. With luck they will learn, and this nonsense will stop. But I'm not holding my breath.
One final note for Fairfax:
If you're frustrated that I'm using your "Text" pages, don't think that abolishing them would force me back to your ads (video/audio/graphical). That's missing the point. There are a dozen other ways I could achieve the same result. Advertising isn't my problem. You need to get eliminate the compulsory and intrusive audio/video from your normal pages. They're just rude and counter-productive. Educate your advertisers that they're not worth it.
Anthony Holmes December 14th, 2009 08:06:35 PM
The ABC's Hungry Beast had some shots of the Melbourne CBD taken from a helicopter last night.
And here, thanks to the magic of screenshot technology, is a shot of the city block we live in, with our apartment circled:
![EyeTVSnapshot[83] Circle.jpg](EyeTVSnapshot[83] Circle.jpg/$file/EyeTVSnapshot[83] Circle.jpg){kind=link}
Anthony Holmes December 3rd, 2009 01:00:13 PM
I was sitting at my Mac today, reading (work) emails, when suddenly Kablooiii !!, my Mac rebooted.
I sat there feeling stunned and surprised: on rare occasions a program will crash, but a complete Mac crash is virtually unheard of. Maybe it overheated?
But no, flashing clocks revealed a power outage this morning: one that lasted about a second.
And the Age confirms it:
http://www.theage.com.au/national/falling-tree-branch-cuts-power-to-13000-in-city-20091203-k79j.html
As is typically the case: it seems as though the power companies try really hard to avoid outages in the CBD. Presumably they don't like the idea of thousands of people being caught up inside lifts and riots in the streets. So whilst the outage went for half an hour in some places, it was only a second or so here.
Anthony Holmes December 3rd, 2009 12:16:40 PM
At the risk of turning this into a blog about lightning, here's a second posting on the topic. This time I've got it in motion: six whole seconds of it! (Well, I didn't want to bore you, so I kept it short.)
Yesterday afternoon (Thursday 26th November 2009) it suddenly got dark as clouds arrived. I had a look at the Met's radar, and saw a narrow intense band of rain coming across. On an impulse I guessed there might be a thunderstorm on the way... which is exactly what happened. See the news report of its impact here. I pulled out my camera and put it into movie mode.
Click on the first image below to see the movie. I've slowed it down to 1/8th of its original speed so that you can see the forks of lightning. It's interesting to see how they build up, fade, reappear in a slightly different configuration, fade again, then reappear with a slightly more ghostly edging.
And in case your internet connection doesn't let you watch videos, here's a still frame:
Anthony Holmes November 27th, 2009 10:03:07 PM
Last night I commented to some friends that when we had moved into our apartment back in 2001 there had been a series of spectacular thunderstorms, but that lately the quality had dropped off. However tonight, to make a liar of me, we had a display of lightning as good as any that we've seen.
The images in my prior postings generally didn't have a bigger version behind them. I've finally decided to ensure there's a larger picture behind most the images I post in this blog from now on.
Clicking on the images takes you to my SmugMug gallery and lets you see the pictures automatically sized to suit your screen resolution. (Probably the best option.)
-or-
Clicking on the .jpg links below downloads each image in their highest resolution. (Normally this is the second best option, but the .jpg links below would work if SmugMug wasn't working for any reason.)
Anthony Holmes November 1st, 2009 12:14:53 AM
Some of you may know that I collect Street Directories. I find it interesting to look at how different map makers have represented cities as they have changed over time.
I used to compare Gregory's street directories with my preferred map maker: Melway. I'd smugly notice places where Gregory's hadn't done as good a job as the Melway. But it took a close eye to pick up problems.
By comparison, Google Maps provides a horrible slap dash map.
Have a look at this:
View Larger Map
This is a tiny bit of map. It has the following faults:
1. The former Batman Avenue tram would get stuck in sand as it tried to make its way up to St Kilda Road through Birrarung Marr - instead of following its proper route for the last decade where it travels across the Exhibition Street bridge to Flinders Street. Google Maps' Melbourne train and tram routes seem to be at least 15 years old.
2. The Embank Arcade looping near Elizabeth and Collins Streets hasn't existed for a very long time. It had closed before Google Maps was created.
3. Quick Quiz: Look at Google Maps and tell me which are laneways and which are arcades: Manchester Lane, Flinders Way, Centre Place, Lingham Lane? You can't tell. Street width is entirely unreliable for telling you what you are looking at.
4. Flinders Walk reaches out onto the Yarra. Special.
6. If you ware walking around Melbourne, you might like to cross the Yarra on a pedestrian bridge. Hmm. There isn't one. At least there isn't for Google Maps. Both the pedestrian bridge (the one with the arch) and the Sandridge Bridge are missing. (At some magnifications, Sandridge Bridge is marked with its name and a black square, but nothing that shows you can walk across it.) This is not a case of Google Maps simply (and consistently) leaving out footbridges: Three other footbridges across the Yarra appear elsewhere.)
7. Walking through the Flinders Station underpass from Elizabeth Street is a major way to get to Southbank. But if you follow Google maps, you'll have to go the long way around.
8. Feel like a drink at Melbourne's famous Young and Jackson Hotel? Follow Google and you'll find yourself trying to order your beer from the Macdonalds a couple of doors down. The placing of businesses is chaotic. Zoom in a bit more and a whole range of businesses are wrong. Some you can forgive, such as placing Lindt Chocolate near Elizabeth St/Flinders Lane (instead of Collins Street), because it's in a large property title. But the Punt Hill Apartments have crossed Flinders Lane. Journal Cafe has swapped buildings. Tiffany & Co. have moved from Collins Street into the Centreplace Acade. Wax Records appear in Degraves Street (in the section of the street helpfully misnamed as the Campbell Arcade).
9. Given its width, I could only presume that Google Maps thinks you can drive down Block Place between Collins Street and Little Collins Streets (this part of the map is off the top edge of my window). But there isn't even an arcade for the entrance just to the west of the Block Arcade next to Collins Street, let alone a street.
10. Maybe it's a bit picky of me, but why is it that at this resolution we get Lingham Lane named on the map, but the much bigger and more important Degraves Street isn't? Degraves Street (and Rothsay Lane, just to the west of Lingham Lane) only get names when you are zoomed right in to the highest magnification, but Lingham is blessed with a name when you zoom out. Random.
Google have a big job: Their aim is to cover the world. For that I thank them. It was the only feasible way to get a map of the part of rural Italy that we visited a few years ago. But, if they're going to be ambitious, I think they need to do better than to make ten mistakes in an area of a couple of city blocks. Google gets its data for this location from MapData Sciences Pty Ltd. Either MapDataSciences Pty Ltd need to pick up their game, or Google need to licence content from a better supplier. And the best in the game for this country is Ausway. (Suppliers of GPS devices should do the same. I've seen some pretty dodgy GPS maps.)
Note: The Google Map may change over time, so here's an image of what it looked like on 26th October 2009.
Anthony Holmes October 26th, 2009 12:24:59 PM
We're back from Wilsons Prom: safely.. there was no need to set off emergency beacons, no disasters worse than the need to apply a bandaid or two to prevent blisters.
The wonders of modern technology (a GPS receiver and Google Earth) allow me to produce maps showing where we walked. See the map below. The numbers next to the days indicate when we walked: 1 = first day, 2 = second day, etc..
We ended up doing mostly doing northern walks on odd days and southern walks on even days.
The Lighthouse walk was a big effort (11.5 hours return - including taking plenty of time for photos - but on a day that had only 11 hours and 56 minutes of daylight). Good planning meant it wasn't as strenuous as some of the killer hikes that I was sent on at school, or some of the stretches on a Cradle Mountain walk (where I had a much heavier pack). I'm now keen to do some other long walks. Dennis tends to think that booking accommodation at the Lighthouse would be a better plan: and I guess that's true because it would allow South Point and Waterloo Bay to be visited: one on the way in, and the other on the way out. Roaring Meg was a special surprise. From its name and position I had imagined it to be rather windswept and 'beachlike'. Instead it was a very lush and secluded space: heavily regrown since a 2005 bushfire went through that part of the park.
Interestingly, some of the best photos of our time at the Prom came with one of the most 'local' walks: to Little Oberon Bay (with a loop to take Tidal River photos on the way back).
Anthony Holmes September 26th, 2009 09:36:58 PM
Whilst I was down the Prom (and could only browse the internet on my Blackberry), I started composing an entry (this entry) headed "Wombats"... but I couldn't edit it or upload any pictures. (Hence my comment below, because I could comment on my empty posting.)
Anyway: What I had intended to say was that within a few minutes of starting our first walk at Wilsons Prom (after driving down from Melbourne and unpacking the car), we saw our first wombat. This was just across the Tidal River footbridge.
A few minutes later later Dennis saw another wombat in the bushes, but I missed that one.
First day: 1-2 wombats
Day two: 2 wallabies on the Sealers Cove track.
Day three: 6 wallabies on the Lighthouse track and two falcons. (And lots of frogs.)
Day four: A rosella that sat on the seats inside our cabin for a while and looked like it wanted to move in with us. Six wallabies in and around the walk to Millers Landing. One wombat seen on the road back to Tidal River.
Day five: A skink on the walk to Little Oberon Bay. A kookaburra. Several butcher birds that tried to remove photographic equipment from my pack when I had left it alone on the beach for a few minutes. And a second wombat, very close to our cabin:
And on the final day, a couple of emus up on the main road, near the turnoff to Cotters Lake. On every day there were also many birds that I haven't specifically mentioned.
Anthony Holmes September 15th, 2009 08:05:22 PM
Tomorrow we head off for a week at Wilsons Promontory.
In our new 'walking' mood, I've got hopes of doing some significant walks. However: we don't have a (portable) tent, so any walk will need to be a day return trip.
In theory it's possible to walk to the Lighthouse and back in a single day: but it's a significant trip. We'll see whether we manage it. I hope so, but no promises.
Our preparation for this trip has, however, been influenced by the Tim Holding effect. Despite the fact that I don't really think I could seriously lose my way in the Prom (since I'll be walking with navigation aids - a topographical map, GPS, National Park signs, the sun)... and although there is substantial mobile phone coverage... the recurring message when Tim Holding got lost on Mount Feathertop was "if only he had an EPIRB" to signal for help. And getting lost isn't the only risk: one could fall down and injure oneself in a spot without mobile coverage. So I went off in search of an emergency locator beacon. And I can understand why people don't pick them up more often. There might be more than one store in the CBD that stocks them: but they certainly aren't sitting out on display in camping stores. I could only find one store in the CBD that had them easily visible: Bogon Equipment had one Kannad Personal Locator Beacon and one Spot meter (which uses a different satellite system, and requires a yearly subscription in return for a lower up front cost). The woman who served me had never sold one before. I bought their Kannad XS3-GPS. So if anybody feels like getting santimonious about people who go out hiking without them: these devices are still 'cutting edge' and certainly not seen as mainstream items by hikers. (But I'm guessing that in 12-18 months time they will be.)
Here's a photo from the last time I was at Wilsons Prom. Taken on Kodachrome slide film. In 1990. (!!! !! Yes, it has been waaay too long since I've visited the Prom.)
Comments (4)
Anthony Holmes September 14th, 2009 10:58:24 PM
Whilst I love my digital SLRs, one thing I miss from the days of film is having a pocketable camera that I can just carry around with me for opportunistic snaps.
Until recently there have only been a limited number of small digital cameras that meet my quality requirements: possibly a Canon G11, provided I only use low ISO settings (like 400 or less). More recently, the Olympus Pen E-P1 appeals to my heart, and I suspect the similar - slightly less stylish, but slightly better performing - Panasonic Lumix GF1 might be the compact(ish) camera that I buy one day. But for the time being I don't have money to buy those cameras.
So today I pulled out my old film Ricoh GR1s camera. I then went out to buy a roll of film. That's where I got a bit of a shock. The couple of camera stores that I walked in had virtually no film available: maybe 20 rolls per store in total, or less. Heck: in the past I have gone on holidays stocking more film than these major city camera store retailers currently have on display.
When Kodak announced they were discontinuing Kodachrome, that was sad but understandable: since the 1960s/1970s, it has been a very small part of the total film market: maybe less than 1%. I figured that it would still be relatively easy to buy (and process) colour print film for a long time to come.
One day, getting colour film processed will require you to send it to the last lab in the world (situated in Hungary or Kansas, or somewhere like that)... but I expected that it would still be possible to buy film at a retail store for another 5-10 years. Based on what I saw today, I'm not sure whether it will be possible to walk down Elizabeth Street Melbourne and buy film from a store in 2014. It's likely to be mail order only by then. I'm guessing there will still be one or two people processing film in Melbourne in 2014. By 2019 I'm guessing you'll have to post the film off to somewhere remote for processing.
An interesting aspect of the remaining stock is that instead of consolidating down to a single type of film (say, Kodak 400 Max), the last rolls of film are clearly being aimed at people who are experimenting: there was traditional silver black and white and chromogenic black and white, and (E-6) slide film available. That was encouraging.
A film snap taken with my Ricoh GR1 in 2001. Missing in 2001: Eureka, Freshwater Place, The Travellers (sculptures) on the Sandridge Bridge, ANZ Headquarters (Docklands), etcetera.
Comments (0)
Anthony Holmes September 7th, 2009 08:21:34 PM