Opinion Australia

An abolone diver had a narrow escape today when found he was on his way down the throat of a white pointer shark.

Somehow, maybe reflex action, he hammered at the shark’s face and eyes with the tool he uses to prise the abolone from the rocks and for some reason the shark let him go and swam away. To say he was very lucky is an understatement. Very few people have survived an encounter with these fish… and even those that have are usually missing a limb or worse.

All this guy had to show for his life and death struggle were cuts and bruises and blood-stained holes in his wetsuit.

People are now taking odds on whether he’ll get back in the ater or give up on his� job. If it was me I’d not have been there in the first place. Been here 14 years… never been in the sea… and I hope to be here another 14 and able to say the same.

The NSW Liberal party are unable to see a bandwagon passing by without leaping on it. This time they have taken up the non-story of a potential banning of the Australian flag at a concert event and called for it to be made illegal to ban the use of the flag.

If this is the best policy they can come up with they seem set for yet more years in the wilderness despite the Labor government having repeadedly shot itself in the foot.

No matter how bad the incumbent government may be… if the opposition is ineffective or� in this case all bar non-existent they’ll get back in by default.

And in this case the it will be de-fault of de-libs!

Ex-First Lady, Senator Hillary Clinton, has thrown her hat into the presidential election ring to make her attempt at making history in so many ways. She has a damn good chance!

She’d be the fist female president, the first spouse of a president to take on the job etc etc etc. Thing is with a huge following, a current administration in chaos and the legacy of public sympathy from the years of humiliation at the hands of husband Bill you have to ask can she lose!!

So the temperature was in the region of 44 degrees C today… so what did we do from 8:30 a.m. onwards?? Cooked sausages on a huge barbie of course. What else?

The wife decided she wanted to cook… God knows why… but she spent the best part of 6 hours poking sausages and interfering with onions. Me? I decided my best move would be to take the money… I’ve done my share of cooking snags but at the sort of temperatures we were experiencing today there was no way I wanted to stand over the hotplate as well.

In fact, it was so damn hot I decided even standing by the *cashbox* was too hot so had to go into the store to buy a market umbrella and stand… a bargain actually at $25 for the cover and $29 for the stand. Obviously the quality isn’t that great but for the price they’re excellant value.

Anyway… most of the people who visited were of a similar mine to me… too damn hot for sausage sandwiches. We didn’t excactly make a mint… but it was worth spending the day there just to meet some of the other guide parents.

Either way… I’m sure Noel Coward would have been pleased to see us out there… sweltering

Well… not so much her job, just her first week from *my* perspective… and my opinion is that 5:30 a.m. is not a healthy time for *anyone* to get up. Time was when I used to roll *into* bed at that time. Times change.

Actually, she’s not done too badly so far. Out of bed, tarted up and out in time for the 6:15 a.m. to the QVB, bag in hand and a smile on her face. But I have to admit I don’t know how she’s doing it.

This morning for example the alarm went off at 4:30 a.m. and I have no idea why. We fell about for a few minutes until we realised it was still dark outside and went back to sleep… only to wake at 5:40 a.m. instead… and those 10 mins make a difference! A sudden flurry of activity led to us both zooming out of the house… just in time to see a bus passing on the opposite side of the park.

Agghhh… panic… ’til she realises that was the *early* bus. We wander across to the bus stop… where she realises she’s forgotten to pick up her phone. Mine is no use to her… none of her numbers stored… so she runs back across the park, grabs the phone and runs back. Around the corner comes the right bus.. and she’s away… again with a smile on her face. The trip takes an hour and a half so she’ll get a chance to sleep a bit… maybe.

Still, all in all that wasn’t a bad effort bearing in mind going to bed later than intended, getting up and hour early, and then oversleeping.

There are days I almost long for the the sort of service you get in London. Tube trains every few minutes, buses so think on the ground you’d almost believe they were breeding. But of course in Sydney you *do* get a lot of public transport, out here in the sticks things aren’t so grand. Out here the buses run empty as often as not and are kept going by government subsidy… and even then they run on a shoestring.

No idea what the answer is… but people have a real reluctance to give up their cars and I can’t explain it.. except the massively increased costs are offset by the sheer convenience of shorter journey times and avoidance of living to a timetable. Who knows?