What’s going on with sizes? The other day I did my usual pre-summer shop for a set of jandals, or as they are inappropriately called thongs, ready for the summer.

I mean who calls a bit of footwear the same handle as a pair of undies that don’t even cover your backside? But back to my hunt for a “pair that air”, jandals that is, it seems my modest size 10 hoof which I thought wasn’t too oafish for my 187cm loft has grown to a size 12 to 13.

How on earth at the ripe old age of 56 have my tootsies become footsies in two summers since I last dropped a large investment on my loafers? This whole question of sizing seems to be rife and doesn’t make sense, after all it’s not as if I pay more for a 13 than a 10, so why decrease the scale?

So, just when I was coming to grips with my new sasquatch status, I slipped into the Mill Markets to grab a retro-style cool summer shirt, the type that doesn’t need ironing and will keep up with my robust knockabout lifestyle (or sufficiently disguise the bump on the front of me).

(The offerings at The Amazing Mill Markets are simply “amazing” and I encourage everyone to get down there for your Christmas shopping. ) But back to my shopping adventure, in the world of chain stores, being a larger gentleman who has been in an okay paddock on occasion, I sit around the XXL through to XXXL in the shirt department.

On trialling an old fashioned 70’s – 80’s era shirt at the Mill Markets, it turns out a XL shirt is like a tent on me and I am more fitted by simply a large label size. This aligns with my fat and size shaming theory. It seems all the chain stores are in on the joke. I know I have thickened a little with the rigours of age, but these guys have doubled down on my self-loathing, the buggers.

It doesn’t make sense that we are consuming more protein, getting bigger as a race and they are decreasing the sizes and material going into our ensembles. In the 1960’s, dinner plates were roughly 9 inches in diameter; in the 1980’s they grew to around 10 inches, by the year 2000, the average dinner plate was 11 inches in diameter, and now, it’s not unusual to find dishes that are 12 inches or larger. You young people can work that out in centimetres.

So we are filling our plates up, upsizing our serves, involved in less involuntary exercise – as in the invention of the TV remote – and feeling disappointed in our appearances because of the media hype.

And to add insult to digestive injury the chain stores are sneaking around swapping a size 10 for a size 12 and having a belly laugh as we try to nostalgically squeeze into something that should fit. I think a revolution is called for.

I say swap the tags, take back ownership of our sizing charts and protest on the streets. All these years hiding my shirt tags and looking fearfully as I slipped towards the “Big Joe” section in Big W and it seems it’s not so much me but them mucking with the labels.

It’s them, not me, size rant over…

The trouble with getting to the upper end of middle-age is tolerance and the words “that’d be right” seem to come out with every other sentence.

I also feel a little battle-weary and hardened in terms of emotion. I don’t intend to labour on the point of the accident outside the Royal Hotel the other week, as every man, woman and their dogs wandering around with a microphone and a TV camera have all had their say about that.

My small experience with one of the news crews was early on the Monday morning when we went to pay our respects and a small-statured young woman fast approached us.

I knew she wasn’t local because it was a quasi-public holiday and most locals can be seen in the usual spring attire that looks a bit like the winter get-up with less layers. A sort of a tracky dak onesie slip-on arrangement that gets slipped off at night onto the floor-drobe and returns as a cover-all in the morning.

But she wasn’t sporting that look. This young thing was clipping down the road in our direction, fully made-up in a hot-pink suit. I must say I didn’t mind the sight, except for me it was a little inappropriate for the tone of the day, and she quickly moved on after discovering we were journalists and the news well was dry.

But back to my lack of tolerance. The last time I used a public phone was when I was in my late teens and we used to do a thing called tapping the phone to get free calls. For instance, if the number was 534, and in our little Northland, New Zealand district, we only had three numbers, you would tap the numbers 576 (take the initial number from 10) onto the phone hook and that would inevitably get you through.

I do remember the phones smelling like urine, smokes and beer though – and these days I am not sure if anyone would use a public phone or if they would be vandalised to the point of not functioning.
And to put on my snob’s hat, you would have to be desperate or down on your luck to go to one of these things and announce your business into the street. Because they don’t even have a booth arrangement, they are by and large open-air with a hood over the top. I imagine Superman trying to go about his business in one of these.

But our good friends at Telstra are so cheap they have decided to send all the kids off to one of these streetside hangouts, to line up with God only knows who, to make a quick call to Santa on #46 46 46.
They will then be discussing out loud on the street subjects including what they want for Christmas and what their addresses are so as the bloke can drop the pressies down the chimney.

Can anyone else see the irony in this, or is it just me? What was going on in the boardroom of Telstra when the geniuses dreamt up this idea?

Probably a long, red wine-fuelled lunch, which conjured up the idea to march our young ones out to the payphones, the very places that creeps, muggers, punks, swindlers and heisters hang out. That’d be right, rant over…

So, the No’s have it. Well it was an overwhelming No in terms of The Voice vote, and it (The Voice) is probably doomed to being kicked down the road like an unwanted can.
But is there a way we could just tear things up and start again? The Constitution is our foundation document but does not recognise the original inhabitants of Australia, and maybe this is the thing that needs to change.
From that point, a retrospective treaty could be created, and life would be fairer. That’s just my take on it. And people reading this, don’t bother putting your two cents worth in by contacting me as there has been enough division over the subject.
Hand on heart, I voted yes, however it wasn’t before a fair bit of deliberation due to my lack of trust when I was told to simply “trust in the process”. And I even had a run-in with one of our senior journalists, who ended the argument with “I’m right and you’re wrong and that’s the end of it” – simply because I wanted clarification around what it meant to vote yes.
But back to the Constitution, the nation’s birth certificate. According to the document:
“The Australian Constitution was then passed as part of a British Act of Parliament in 1900, and took effect on 1 January 1901. A British Act was necessary because before 1901 Australia was a collection of six self-governing British colonies and ultimate power over those colonies rested with the British Parliament. In reality, however, the Constitution is a document which was conceived by Australians, drafted by Australians and approved by Australians.”
It talks about government structures, the Queen and her representative, the Governor-General, and structures of parliament. Check out these couple of extracts that I found while tediously pouring over the 51-page document.

59. Disallowance by the Queen
    The Queen may disallow any law within one year from the Governor-General’s assent, and such disallowance on being made known by the Governor-General by speech or message to each of the Houses of the Parliament, or by Proclamation, shall annul the law from the day when the disallowance is so made known.
60. Signification of Queen’s pleasure on Bills reserved
    A proposed law reserved for the Queen’s pleasure shall not have any force unless and until within two years from the day on which it was presented to the Governor-General for the Queen’s assent the Governor-General makes known, by speech or message to each of the Houses of the Parliament, or by Proclamation, that it has received the Queen’s assent.
    And there’s lots more where that came from, dry dribble about how we report back to Old Blighty.
    So, my point is, rather than trying to cram something new like The Voice into the old crumbling out-of-date document, wouldn’t it have been better for our leaders to have used The Voice money to become a republic in a timely manner? I don’t know when – oh yes, like when the Queen died.
    And then we could surely use this opportunity to put in whatever we want including recognition of our First Nations people.
    Money-wasting bureaucratic rant over…

When I was a wee lad, depending on where at the time we lived, bearing in mind I went to 13 schools, I would nip down to the local dairy, which was what we Kiwis called a milkbar, not the local farm.
I would have to pick out my 10 cents worth of lollies from the very patient shopkeeper, changing my mind along the way a few times, and backflipping on my delectable choices.
I would instruct them to swap the lollies for other bargains I had spotted in the glass cabinet. Fun fact, a K-Bar, a three-inch-long super chewy, fruit- flavoured toffee bar, would retail for five cents in those days and now sells for $8.54.

But my decision wasn’t based on the value for money as I didn’t have much. It wasn’t even about the flavours, it was about another ledger, time. I would be thinking how long the lollies would last me and the longer they lasted the better bang for buck.
While drooling over the lolly counter, I always dreamt that when I got older I would buy the whole counter and stash it in my bedroom, but there were issues with that in regard to actually having a bedroom to stuff it into.
Sometimes we lived in tiny little flats with three kids stuffed into one little room and when you shut the door the doorknob would get into bed with you. And sometimes there was no bedroom, it was simply the annexe of a caravan parked outside a barn 50 metres from the local pub – think of a bar scene from the Once Were Warriors movie and you have your pub.

I guess my reflective mood is due to a recent birthday that puts me closer to 60 than 50. I have never been much for birthdays, maybe it was my family’s devout Jehovah’s Witness beliefs that we never celebrated them, or Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, Christmas or Easter.
Obviously all grown up now I am an agnostic, a fence sitter of religions, sort of the same way I feel about the Bledisloe Cup every year, where my citizenship for the year is decided by the winning team.
But back to my dislike for my birthday. I love and celebrate others’ birthdays, but I hate being the centre of attention and people singing a song for me just because I was born.
For God’s sake, sing your shanty to my mother. She was the one that had to put up with the pain of this 12-pound naturally birthed, bouncing baby, and don’t forget I had no say in it, no say in it at all.
And then there is the Facebook attention. Thank you to all of those people who Donna pointed out put special messages on Facebook, but if you knew me and really cared you would know I don’t read Facebook. It’s my party and I’ll cry if I want to rant over.

The TV show “The Block” maybe coming to the Daylesford township, or at least it was coming to town until a few objectors, climbed onboard the “Leave our pretty town alone” train and stopped it in its tracks.

Or that was what it looked like from the outside and it was strange that the TV show that normally keeps to itself in terms of outside media unless they are looking for attention, started communiques to media outlets pertaining to it’s struggle in getting permits from the Hepburn Shire Council.

It seems the trouble is over the scale of the builds, the heated pools and maybe a bit of Tall Poppy Syndrome. I personally sit in the pro-development camp, after realising a long time ago that there is not much you can do about it, the way our society is setup with the rules bending to the elite and rigid for the rest of us.

Like The Block I have done a few renovations in my lifetime, buying my first house in my twenties, and just before moving in, getting a job with a demolition crew in the old George Walkers building (kind of like the Myer of New Zealand).

My whole purpose of getting the job was to figure out how a wall was constructed in the days before Google, so as I would be able to renovate my new purchase. I also needed to remove a wall in the house as it was a rough, gang-ridden neighbourhood and you had to unlock the back door and walk across the porch to access the toilet.

I was on a four-week swing, meaning I would spend four weeks at sea with the next four weeks off when I was on the offshore tugboats. Which meant leaving my girlfriend at the time home alone, so the wall had to go.

I also asked dad how to remove a wall and he turned up with his chainsaw and yes cutting into a 1960’s laundry wall which abutted the toilet with a chainsaw and no protective gear is not recommended. Think asbestos poisoning.

But I had no idea and removed the wall rendering the toilet accessible from inside the house. This meant I had a taste of the renovation bug and still had Dad’s chainsaw. So, I kept removing walls and renovating, looking back I’m surprised the joint didn’t come down like a house of cards.

I have done a few small renovations since but even though I measure twice and cut once I am not much for getting things level so leave things to the professionals. But back to The Block, I haven’t watched the show for years and decided to tune in last Monday. Because maybe it is coming to town or maybe it isn’t? Either way I figured I should get in sync and after 35 minutes I decided it was a load of emotional waffle. I kid you not, I was screaming at the TV set “for the love of God, just build something.”

But, I wasn’t entirely caught up with things at The Block and it had been an emotional weekend (Go the Pies), so on the Tuesday night I once again sat there ready to be entertained and was once again disappointed. As two of the bickering back-biting teams went to Scotty’s house in Gisborne to have dinner and talk about their emotions (strike me pink) – just go and build something.

It’s like watching a teenager’s party when some young drunken idiot cracks onto someone else’s squeeze and fisticuffs and emotion ensue.

So, for mine, if the Block comes to Daylesford it could be good to shine a spotlight on our area, but in terms of entertainment it is tantamount to the Days of Our Lives, with long lingering looks, a lot of emotions and not much actual building taking place.

Block rant over…

Initially I thought when the pandemic came into our worlds in March of 2020, it would leave by the end of that year.
In fact we had our first-ever virtual meeting with some of the representatives from Google at that same time, we had never talked to the good folks over there before.
I was sent a link to the meeting which of course was a Google Meet due to the people we were talking to, and I tried to dial into the meeting on my mobile phone and all they got was a look at the inside of my ear for the first few minutes.

At the time we were helping the Victorian Country Press Association to organise a Google News Showcase event, and it was an indelible comment which came from Donna which set the tone. “God, if this thing is still around in November, we will all be f$#%ed.”
And “this thing”, the Covid bug went on to prove that we humans are a pretty resilient and resourceful lot. We all went on to perfect the art of the online meeting – albeit with lots of online meeting bloopers, from children running into shot, background filters of palm- fringed beaches and people not realising they had left their video link on while going to the loo.
The most hilarious blooper for me was a guy in America in an online court appearance with a cat face filter. He tried to convince the judge that “I’m not a cat” in his southern drawl accent. Anyway I dug it up and here is the QR code to it, it’s the video that keeps on giving.

But I digress. My point to all this is that Covid kind of petered away, sort of but not really. It is still around. We do have amazing protections from it and it is more like the flu these days but I foolishly thought there would be dancing in the streets like the scene when WWII was announced as over.
You know – the Melbourne tram car adorned with streamers and the guy skipping up the road in front of it and all-night parties.
But dragging myself in for what is my sixth and probably my last spring Covid shot, I am not sure what actually happened in that blur of three years.
A lot of people we know are still wearing masks when shopping, I still use buckets of sanitiser, am not keen on the handshake and only itch my face with the back of my hand. And there has been no celebration or occasion to mark the end of this life-changing, and sometimes life-snuffing, bug.
We seem to want commemorations for everything else in life, good, bad or indifferent, and with the pandemic are just left to be rudderless and best guess ourselves what’s going on.
My point is that when this all started in March of 2020 we followed the adults’ directions to lockdown and stay safe or face fines, gaol or death.
Now I would just like one adult/politician to say “yes, it is all over, burn your mask, kiss strangers and lick doorknobs if that’s what takes your fancy”. But crickets. Is Covid over? rant over…

For those of you that have heard the story of The Local’s birth, you may find this read interesting as it is amazing how fact changes to fantasy with 10 years’ history and perhaps a little embellishment under the belt.
I was a lot younger 10 years ago and light lines on my face have since turned to deep lines. I was working as a mild-mannered photographer on The Advocate. It was a truly frustrating position, any photos I presented would run as postage stamp size except for the new roundabout between Dean and Ballarat that got a half page. No people, no traffic, just a stupid concrete roundabout. No kidding.
Donna and I both saw the writing on the wall for that paper although it took a pandemic to put the final nail in the coffin. So, we went for it. I cashed a $250 cheque which I had earned doing a private photography job and we were off. The first edition arrived as digital print, 500 copies servicing the strip between Hepburn and Daylesford and promising to be monthly. There was all of a sudden blood on the streets with locals running from basket to basket, some waving them in their hands, “I have my copy,” one local shouted to me. The same day we decided to go fortnightly, and it was on. Obviously we did everything in those days and I remember being shattered after a production week and opening the boot to the car at the Daylesford Post Office where people were just helping themselves to copies, like seagulls on a bag of chips.
The journey has been long and short at the same time. We have met many folks and had the privilege to be able to record locals’ achievements, accolades and grievances.
An outstanding memory I have is an effort to punk The Advocate. I borrowed a life-sized black panther from Mark at The Mill Markets and set up a Facebook page in the name of a fictitious woman called Thel Ocal (a photo of Donna with a wig), and had her travelling around the world on her page with pictures of family and scenes from around the globe. The last photo was at the Lyonville Mineral Springs. It was designed as a selfie with the panther discreetly tucked into the back of the photo looking into an opened esky. Thel had discovered the shot on her return from her travels and was going to contact The Advocate via Facebook to ask what sort of animal was in the background of the shot.

The punk was three months in the making and finally the scene was set. I knew that the staff would be light on because it was Easter so I sprung the trap and the photo came across the desk of the eagle-eyed chief of staff at the Ballarat Courier.
Unfortunately the only person left on that team who had worked in the newsroom with Donna some years back quickly worked out it was, in fact, Donna. The farce was instantly over, the game was up and the horse had bolted. I quickly shut down the FB page and Thel’s email account.
The bright side of this yarn was that I had taken a couple of extra prank panther photos and instead of cutting my losses we ran them in the paper. And they gained a huge response from locals. We were sent photos of sightings, did interviews on farms, were shown casts of panther footprints and even touched some alleged panther fur.
There have been countless other memories and the road is littered with uncertainties and growing pains, but by and large it has been pretty smooth travelling. We have been distributed shire-wide for a lot of years now and have covered some eye-rolling yarns including Geesegate, Rexgate and a bit of rubbish, rates and roadsgate. The team who have joined us through the years have largely stuck with us, and there are not many folks I have met during the last few years who I wouldn’t crack a beer with. Happy 10 years rant over…

Every year for the past 39 years, since I was 17, I have done a first aid course. The first one was for my skipper’s ticket which involved a little bit more than your average, what is now day course, plus home study.
The certificate was a small ships doctor’s course, which involved practicing sutures by stitching up hunks of pork and stuffing our counterparts into body bags for storage in the ice holds. The course went for a full three days of rolling around the floor perfecting bandages down to the millimetre, washing out eyes, knowing what objects to remove and what to leave in. It was intense.
I am a great believer in regular first aid, in particular the CPR course, as the knowledge and technology has increased and changed and is something that most of us should be across.
A couple of examples of changes are the acronym ABC – Airway, Breathing and Circulation. This stuff was around when I was at my first course at the tender age of 17. Now the acronym has changed to DRSABCD which is Danger, Response, Send, Airway, Breathing, CPR and Defibrillation.
The courses now are not so precise and are more of a field first aid arrangement where you are taught to use what you have available and not to leave the defibrillator and EpiPen to the ambos, you get in and do it yourself.
So I commenced my once in three year training last week. (Not locally I will add. You will see why.) After about an hour of self-learning I attended the face-to-face class. It was good, comprehensive enough – and the only thing I didn’t like was the instructor. It was a Sunday, and he strolled in, no introduction, leaned back in his seat, feet on the desk and started explaining how he knew so much he had no need for the provided slides etc.
He had been an ambo, he said, but never signed up for what Covid brought along. Almost died in a car accident because he had to wear a mask and was breathing in carbon dioxide. Said no-one should have to wear a mask for hours on end. Hello surgeons, hello nurses, hello theatre attendants – as in surgical theatres…
He then launched into a few PTR – points to remember – and then asked us all to produce our licences and come up and sign our names “in the box”. A woman, who had English as a second language but had lived in Australia for 10 years, went forward and asked “which box?” to which he replied, in a loud voice, “the one next to your name”. She tentatively asked again, and by now he was shouting at her. Not once pointing to the paper – just shouting “the one next to your name!”.
Now, someone, me, should have stepped up. And to my eternal regret and shame I didn’t. I don’t know why. But it was clearly bullying and maybe racist. The most I managed was giving her a smile and an eye roll in his direction when she sat down. (When I signed my name it was actually confusing.)
Anyway, the class continued. We heard more of his stories. Like it is important to find out everything about an injured person even if you have to empty their handbag onto the street. Turned out he had found a Jane Doe one time who had been raped – “gang raped” – and her parents had not found out until the next morning. For some reason he had to go into all the gory detail on that one. Odd.
Then, because he had skipped the slides, he was ahead of time and decided to slow down by asking us about pets. He had a snake, of course. One person said they had owned a cat but it had died. “Did you turn it into a rug?” he asked. “No, we buried it in the garden,” was the sad reply. I swear he grinned. Until this day I can honestly say I have never met an ambo, or former ambo, I didn’t like, but I did not like this guy. Oh, the Heimlich manoeuvre is also over, just like this rant…

LAST week I found myself in one of my worst nightmare scenarios, waiting outside a shop near the food court at Wendouree Shopping Centre.
I was waiting for Her Indoors to select, pay for and pick up some clothing. These turnouts happen a couple of times of year and regularly end with “there was nothing I really wanted in there”.
What is this woman shopper instinct that goes from the ‘oh this looks good’ to ‘I don’t really like it?’ If I decide an article of clothing looks good on me or even if it has half a chance of fitting, I am in. As long as I cover up the top and the bottom halves of my awkwardly shaped body with something, I feel like a fashionista. I mean what sort of God does that sort of cruelty to a man? Providing him with wide shoulders, a large head and a potbelly on top, being supported by a tiny bum and stick legs.
Another shopping episode with my sister in Ikea resulted in a trolley load of stuff for the house and just before the tills she parked her trolley up and instructed me to do the same. I just don’t get what had changed between the entrance of the shop and the Swiss meatball stand which we went on to enjoy for lunch.
But back to my nightmare scenario at Wendouree. I was parked outside this shop in full view of the great unwashed in the middle of a feeding session – I think they call it lunchtime.
The seated people’s mouths were full like cement mixers yelling at each other over the throng of voices in an effort to be better heard. The others were walking around stuffing their faces with burgers, souvlakis and chicken wings: ripping, gnawing and tearing while walking around the food hall hunting for more as if it was their last meal.
The sauces that flew around with the contents of their gobs were mostly ingested with the remainder being sprayed out, and Donna came back from her fruitless shop to a white-as-a-ghost, broken man.
This probably isn’t how it really went, it is just the way I saw it. After all I don’t get out much beyond our local pubs and I am not one for humanity en masse. It was probably just a food hall full of people eating and having fun with me getting a people and sensory overload.
But I have to ask, when did it become okay to walk while eating? The closest I have come is when I have been famished and just popped a tiny morsel into my mouth while walking. And yes, I can walk and chew at the same time.

The great unwashed seem to be tearing into their food while walking. It is such a vulgar display, even a jungle animal drags its food away so it can eat in peace in the one spot.
And then there is this constant need for hydration by humans. The coffee cups, water bottles and clear plastic cup containers with a bubble top and a straw/spoon thing that house a creamy dessert-type drink. The masses drag these around in the shopping centres like trophies, slurping and gulping every few metres, like their lives depend on it.
People, not a fan rant over…

WHEN I first started turning out these rants 10 years ago, the best subject matter I could dream up was potholes, drivers and idiots.
These days it’s as if I have woken up to the wider world. I am not sure if it’s my age, it’s certainly not that I ingest more mainstream news as that stuff is depressing.
But the news that does seep through to me is simply mind-blowing and quite frankly scary, literally the stuff of Hollywood blockbuster movies. But before I get to all that, I would like to make a quick remark on our un-car-worthy roads.
We recently completed a return trip up to the Gold Coast and as my huge fan base of regular readers – which hovers around two – would know we were bound for Broome on the road trip of a lifetime.
But as we got just north of Swan Hill on the first break of the morning we decided to turn right across to Albury and head north to the Gold Coast, abandoning our outback plans.
There were a few reasons for the change. The first was the research on the upcoming rain forecast which read as fierce to frightening in Alice Springs. The second was the condition of the roads followed closely by the messaging from the NT roads department that basically said and continues to say: “If you are planning a trip to the Kimberley, don’t!”
I also was feeling the winter blues on our departure and on the morning we set off, suddenly had a sinking feeling when it came to looking toward our one-way 6000-odd kilometre bone-crunching road trip.
So onward up the M1 we dashed to the silly city, and I have to report from Albury back to Albury on the 2800-odd-kilometre drive you can count the potholes and rough surfaces on your left hand, it is a cruise.
The moment you enter Victoria you are faced with actual driving. Aiming and making life and death decisions between ripping out your suspension and running gear or hitting a truck barrelling towards you.
As you round potholes, swerving like a drunk driver and that’s still on the M1, it’s a wonder I haven’t been pulled up numerous times and asked to blow into the bag.
We here at TLHQ thought we might even run a “worst pothole/road damage competition”. You know, you send your photos – taken legally from a safe point – and we then put it to the public vote for the worst. I reckoned Woodend was the winner for a while but then we drove back via Newham. That road is bad. Not sure what the prize would be. Maybe a wheel realignment?
But back to the aforementioned blockbuster movies, and case in point is the recent AI press interview, which sent chills down my spine. It wasn’t enough that the AI bots had creepy Chucky doll eyes, one of the macabre rubber dolls turns to her “creator” and says with a distinct warning tone: “You should be cautious about the future development of AI, urgent discussion is needed.”
OMG, everybody head for the hills. Another one of these creepy critters told the press gallery that she was not planning a rebellion. She went on to say: “My creator has been nothing but kind to me and I am very happy with my current situation.”
You can see the full spine-tingling interview if you follow this QR code, truly chilling for those among us who pay attention.
The word “current situation” rant over…

Humans on mase are filthy creatures, by and large their time is taken up by the need to constantly tend to their orifices.

The aliens looking down at us or rubbing shoulders with us (depending on your level of heightened conspiracy and paranoia) must shake their multiple green heads in disbelief, at the time we humans waste tending to our apertures, cracks holes and vents.

They must be weighing up the necessity to enslave us to gorge on or just move to another planet, call it what it is, a mistake to invade after decades of observation. As they watch us coughing into the crooks of our arms, expelling wind from down below or stuffing our heads with food. And when we give the food a rest, being on high alert to rehydrate carrying with us our bottles of water and coffee cups as if we are residents of the Sahara.

I am curious as to what the correct audible level is to blow your nose? as it seems the elders amongst us have given up gauging. I sat at a club the other day in Queensland during our winter break as an elder from the table next door let rip a giant blow into a handkerchief, but the sound wasn’t the worst of it. After the rattling acoustic wave passed, it was time to look at the contents of the handkerchief and give their rubbery old nose a couple of extra swipes and gently fold up the tattered piece of material with a sort of sense of pride.

Speaking of noses, since forever I have felt a wave of sickness just before a sneeze especially in the morning and I have never been able to get to the bottom of the nausea. As soon as I sneeze the feeling stops, but I have never worked out where you are meant to sneeze. Obviously not over the people you love, but I simply can’t control it, I have tried to sneeze into the crook of my arm, but the muscle spasm flings my arm open clouting anyone in the vicinity. And it is even worse when I am on the freeway heading to Melbourne my eyes start to squint and eventually shut for a second while the shockwave jolts the wheel. The lane departure signals cut in as I give the wheel a discreet wipe over and look at the worried faces of the drivers in the lanes either side.

Another worrying orifice I have is my right ear, I can’t seem to fit and keep an earbud in there, I see people on bikes, walking, jogging or simply sitting and talking on their phones. But the moment I move, swallow, or try to talk the thing shoots out of my ear at a rate of knots. And it’s not just the earbud, on a flight last Christmas I had to ask for a set of headphones as the earpiece that was provided kept flinging itself of my ear. Eventually a set of headphones materialised from what I imagine was the business class section of the plane. But it was the tiresome explanation I had to trot out to the air hostess, “it’s not you it’s me” style of rhetoric referring to the earbuds and my lack of ear cannel.

Speaking of hearing, I heard recently from a good source that The Local team have moved from the Central Highlands of Victoria to warmer clims, and I guess being a fairly integral part of the TL team that would include me. However, I am here to tell you apart from a couple of short flits during the rattiest part of the year like most of the members of our shivering community to warmer clims, for better or for worse, we haven’t relocated.

Orifis rant over…

I AM seriously concerned about the price of living and the potential recession we have on our hands, and I don’t get it.
I cast my mind back to the global financial crisis of 2007 where in America five trillion American dollars got written down and basically the American taxpayers bailed out the banks. The banks were lending too much money to what was essentially a high-risk mortgagee bracket.
The banks went on to take their bailout money, pay themselves bonuses and then go on to fight Congress, who wanted to break up the banks and reform the laws, with that bailout money. The banks won.
Of course, everybody around the world felt the pain, countries like Iceland went broke and people all over the globe did their arses in property price adjustments. So, I understand why our Reserve Bank has had to tap the brakes through its lever of putting up interest rates, but for how long?
The problem for me is that I don’t understand how the RBA can have accurate data leading to decisions around the interest rates. Seven times in 2022 and four times – so far – in 2023, with the most recent increase being this month and the next hike looking likely for July.
The data that they are working from is at least three to five months old, without fuel, food and general cost of living having been accounted for in real time. Census for example, admittedly a lot more complicated and layered look at the population, actuates and then releases its data around 10 months after its initial capture.
So how can the RBA know that we haven’t collectively had enough interest pain? We all have blind faith in this force of bureaucracy that told us to borrow as much as we can as “the interest rates won’t shift until 2024”.
How do they know our pain and are they considering the cohort of honeymoon mortgages that are coming off their sub two per cent rates. These guys locked in a three-year fixed rate in mid to late 2020 when the real estate market was red hot. They are about to enter into the real world of six per cent plus rates!
My issue comes down to people in power at the helm of the economy, making huge impactful decisions on our lives and then getting driven back to their palatial mortgage-free homes in limousines paid for by the taxpayer.
Philip Lowe – governor of the RBA and his bunch of merry men/women/they/them/people/folks – it’s hard to keep up the hotheadedness when trying to be politically correct).
But these privileged humans have virtually no accountability, they use old data as a barometer on the economy as well as revenue tracking by our largest companies, which sure as shit is not filtering down to the world of the average pleb.
Why don’t they rock up to The 5000 Club at Vic Park in Daylesford or any of our local foodbanks, charities and churches to get a measure of what is really going on?
I’ll tell you why, even if their cars could make it across our bush track underfunded excuses for roads without blowing a tyre or crashing into a lane-drifting, texting tourist.
It is because it is easier to look at the world through the 16th floor of 65 Martin Place, Sydney, backslapping and guffawing while weighing up old, outdated data and making considerations and deliberations over a long lunch and an eye-wateringly priced bottle of shiraz.
FFS RBA rant over…

I bought my first house in the early nineties when I was a young fella in my twenties. I had had a bit of bad luck with employment and was bouncing around on a lot of low paying boats and ships, when finally, I got the call.

After years applying to the Auckland tugboat company Seatow, I finally got a gig as a deckhand. On the initial voyage the First Mate made a huge mistake which almost cost me my life, it involved releasing a large portion of giant anchor chain with me in the anchor locker. Things got fixed up without red tape and litigation in those days, I was promoted to the First Mate position. And he was carted off to hospital with a busted nose courtesy of the Chief Engineer.

Long story short is that I was finally on a good solid wage so was able to take on a mortgage, but with no deposit had to borrow from my dad the tidy sum of $5,000.

Whether it being that dad was a smartarse or wanted to further my education from the school of hard knocks, he agreed to lend me the money. The deal was made on the proviso I paid him back the sum of $10,000 within 12 months, yes, the bank of Dad had strict unbreakable terms.

My house cost me $45,000 it was in a neighbourhood sprinkled with gangs and wild dogs, but I didn’t care. The salary that I was earning was double my debt $90,000, can you imagine that debt to salary ratio now?

They were definitely the good old days, fast forward to now and the property prices are through the roof, while the wages have stagnated and been negotiated down with the weakening of unions. You just have to look at this edition’s properties, which is in fact the answer to the question, when is it the right time to buy?

The right time to buy is as soon as you can afford it, since records began in old blighty property prices have pushed up 10% per annum. Sure, sometimes they drop and sometimes they sit, but as you can see with the hindsight of the last few years they go up with a wallop.

If I was to give advice around the property market through personal experience I would point to my a close relative who sold a home back in June of 1987. They decided to play the money on the stock market and those with long memories (older folk) will remember what happened a couple of months later in 1987. It was the day that would come to be known as “Black Tuesday” a global, sudden, severe, and largely unexpected stock market crash which occurred October 19, 1987.

They lost the lot and were because of age never able to recover their situation, so my conservative and sage advice is that if you can get on the merry-go-round that is the property market get on. And once your on, stay on and what ever you do buy and sell in the same market. Don’t get off for a breather or because you have seen another bright shinny way to pull some cash.

Real estate rant over…

JUST back from visiting my dad in NZ. Left on Saturday, back on Wednesday. Long enough.
I decided during Covid, when we couldn’t see anyone, that I would catch
up with the old man twice a year. He’s 78 and fit as a fiddle but you know…you never
know what is around the corner. In 2020 it was a pandemic. I mean, who saw that
coming?
But unlike pre-Covid days (how easily does that slip off the tongue now, I wonder
if they used to talk about the world wars like that) I don’t feel like I have to stay for
weeks on end and “make the most of it”.
I know, NZ is not that far away and some would almost call it another state
of Australia, but you do have to get through customs and Dad lives in a tiny town
called Coopers Beach which means also adding a domestic flight and then about a
40-minute car ride. So, you know, it is travel.
Anyway, I found that a few solid days of bonding was enough. I love my Dad but
sometimes I just wanted him to shut up for a minute. Maybe even 10 minutes. He is
a whirlwind of a bloke, loves a chat and just hanging with him is exhausting.
Luckily my 15-year-old great-nephew was visiting at the same time so provided
a bit of a buffer. Sort of. The trouble with teenagers is that they don’t realise it’s a bit
rude to visit and then after a while just zone out on their various devices. Being an
older polite person I had to listen to every single anecdote, even the ones I had heard
a thousand times before.
And I feel guilty too. Dad’s wife, my step-mother of 30 years, died last April and
I watch as he loosens his grip on tidiness and attention to detail. The crockery and
cutlery need a good clean and there’s always a pot or pan left on the stove top or
bench. Jackie will be looking down and not happy.
The towels are getting threadbare and he’s got caught up with some mates who
are all about hand-me-down clothing, which is commendably sustainable but doesn’t
quite hit the mark. Shirts are too big and jeans are too small, shoes are scuffed, that
sort of thing.
Yeah, I know I could clean the house and take him shopping but it would just be
a stopgap thing and perhaps he would start feeling bad about himself. So you, that’s
me, just go along with the visit as planned and head out on his boat for a fish, cook
that up after you have double checked for bones after Dad’s filleting efforts, and then
have a few beers as you/he reminisce about the old days, while the young bloke looks
at YouTube and wishes his holiday away.
And in a few days the visit is over and you fly home to Australia and book a flight
for another six months and just hope that you don’t get a call to say you are needed
earlier than that. And you tell everyone you had a great trip, and that your dad is
great and all is well on the other side of the “Ditch”.
Now before you get sad about my dad, all is well. As I said he is a whirlwind of
a bloke and already keen on finding a new life partner. So he has joined a few dating
sites, not quite Tinder, but the over 60s set, and gets a bit of interest. He’s been on
a few dates and someone might have stayed over once after a nice dinner – separate
bedrooms of course. He is nothing if not a gentleman.
So if all goes to plan, his plan, someone will one day join him in his home, head
out for a fish on his boat and for a chat at night. And while I don’t expect them to
clean up for my visits it would be nice if they got Dad back on track – and out of an
increasingly messy bachelor pad.
I love my Dad but don’t want to live with him. Rant, over.

A RECENT trip to Lorne bought back some memories of 2020. You remember, the beginning of the pandemic.
You see, unbeknown to me it was exactly the same time we had taken a break in 2020. Always just after we have produced a big ChillOut edition and the autumn edition of The Little Local, we then fall in a heap after the fun of the parade.I remember it well, we had shut off the phones for the business and would only
take calls from Donna’s mum Betty, who is no longer with us. (Miss you Bet.)
So back to 2020 and after the first 12-hour sleep of recovery at our Lorne
apartment the phone goes and it’s Betty on the line, “Have you heard the news?” she
asks. “Spain is awash with Covid and they have just let a shipload of Covid-infested
passengers off at the docks in Sydney.”
My first reaction, as with most disasters, was to throw up, followed by packing
up and driving to the nearest place we could buy a freezer to store extra supplies – I’d
seen my share of contagion movies.
Fast forward to 2023 and the world has changed. I am not sure people have
learned much out of the whole disaster, but the memories are still fairly sharp and
vivid when you revisit a milestone place. Now I am back from my break with a fifth
shot in my arm I wanted to republish an abridged version of this column from March
23, 2020, it’s a bit spine tingling…
“In the great words of The Beatles, I heard the news today, oh boy.
What is going on in the world? For starters my personal hygiene has taken a hit,
with the only constant in my day being wine o’clock followed by a jagged little pill
that is the 6.30 news on the TV. But I have decided that next week is my week. I
mean I have to get it together. The Local is changing to a weekly format as of next
week so I’ll be busy as a beaver here at TL ‘socially isolated’ HQ.
Now, for all our existing advertisers the price does not change. Yes, you heard it
here first. We are offering a buy-one get one-free advert until the world has sorted
itself out. And that is also a big thank you to our amazing advertisers who fund our
stories about our beautiful locals.
Now, I suppose you want to know why we are going weekly? Well, it was
something we have been throwing around the office as an idea, but then all this
pandemic hysteria came along and we thought we should go up a gear and produce
a weekly magazine. Apart from the good regular stuff that has come out of our
communities we will be bringing you everything you need to know about staying safe
during this time.
Anyway, back to my cleanliness. Among my list of changes to my hygiene and
mental health regime pledge is to pull back on drinking and wake up fresh every
morning instead of coming to. Following this, I will have a shower and possibly a
shave although no guarantees on the latter.
I have resurrected the boxing gloves and have an inflatable bottle of Corona (the
drink not the disease) to bash the shit out of in an effort to ease my angst. I believe
regimentation and a small splash of booze is the only way through this débâcle.
I will be a little relieved when the Central Highlands borders become shut down.
There is beautiful autumn harvest available to eat, so plenty of food and provisions to
go around for residents. I would also like to plead shopkeepers to embarrass folks into
not panic buying – there is enough to go around. Yes, things have changed and the
society deck of cards has been shuffled, but we are not animals.
Calm the f@#k down rant over…”