I’m guest reviewing Great Australian Bushfire Stories over at Aussie Bloggers today.
Find out why I will never move to the Perth Hills.
Never. Nah ah.
And why I reckon this book is worth a read.
Australia
For those of you who haven’t caught Project Runway this is a snippet from Episode One of Project Runway Australia.
I fell in love with the US series. Some of the girls in the office have Foxtel and started talking about it. Then we started getting preview tapes. Now I live for the mailbag.
Will I get Foxtel?
Probably not. I really don’t need any more screen time.
Oooooh but I’m tempted.
Here’s what happened at the end of Episode One:
[pronounced ceremonny you understand not ceremoany]
It is endless isn’t it, the parade of nations. Both Groover and Dippity are asleep – Hugamuga on a sleepover. I’m a bit over it myself but determined to stay up to watch the Australians walk in. They come in third last.
Plus, I’m curious to see how the Chinese light the cauldron. We’ll see just how curious if I make it to the end.
So far the majority of teams appear to be wearing white. Yawn. Thank goodness for those Caribbean and African teams who bring a bit of colour to the scene.
Oooh I like the Spanish – red and yellow as you’d expect. And New Zealand look pretty stylish in black. And sure the Italians look stylish – but grey. Boring. The French looked bizarre – the women with huge red belts over their shirts.
The Americans – with their enormous team – I thought looked good. I really liked the fact that both the men and women wore the same gear. It looked so much better than having different uniforms for the women. Classy. Nice stuff.
I don’t know what happened to Channel 7′s commentary. We were watching on HD and there was practically none. Terrible. So we switched the sound to 720 ABC Perth and listened to Glenn Mitchell and Tracey Holmes describe both the spectacle and the teams entering the arena. Great job. Really added to the coverage – and also filled us in on what was happening during the TV ad breaks.
Hmmmm the Mexican women looked nice didn’t you think?
Waiting waiting waiting for the Aussies.
The Opening Ceremony was pretty impressive wasn’t it. The unison in which the dancers moved was exquisite.
And getting the athletes to walk through the paint… neat.
Ah they are coming in…
Oh.
They are wearing a shiny tracksuit top which is the palest of pale blue at the top fading down to navy at the bottom which blends into the trousers (held up by silver belts).
The tracksuit tops in close up don’t look like they fit terribly well, but I will say looking down on the stadium they do look rather nice.
Better en masse from a distance but … okay.
Phew. Always a heart in the mouth moment.
Gotta go now. A cauldron to light and a family to relocate to their beds.
Aussie Aussie Aussie Oi Oi Oi!
Updated to add: Oooh I like how they used the athletes footprints as the stage. Very neat.
(Xinhua Photo) Photo Gallery>>>
Updated again to say: The lighting of the cauldron? Rocked. London – you’ve got some work to do.
Maybe because I’d recently visited the Holocaust museum in Washington DC, I was totally ready for this book set around a rare Jewish book – the Sarajevo Haggadah.
The novel travels space and time. We travel the world as Hanna Heath uncovers the secrets of this ancient text and uncovers some unexplored areas of her own heart.
I love Geraldine Brooks’s other works – March and Year of Wonders – but what charmed me so much with this one was her Australian heroine. She is SO Australian!
Here’s a passage describing how to get hold of cow gut (don’t ask) to prove my point:
Ever since they moved the abattoir out of Homebush and started to spruce the place up for the 2000 Olympics, you have to drive, basically, to woop woop, and then when you finally get there, there’s so much security in place because of the animal libbers you can barely get in the gate
Or try this one:
In Australia only prats flaunt their PhDs.
I just love it. And I love the story. It’s a love story – boy v girl – girl v career – man v God – girl v parent… okay love/hate. A pleasure to read. Easy to read in fact (took me about 6 hours – around 400 pp) but you still feel you learned something.
And Geraldine Brooks is coming to Perth.
In some countries the convention of a secret ballot is called an Australian ballot. I only just discovered this fact which led me to do a little research as, you know, we’re coming up to a federal election (and I need to post every day for a month for NaBloPoMo)
This is because Australia was the first to introduce the secret ballot in 1856 [1].
And given we were one of the first countries in the world to give women the vote (New Zealand was the first [1]) I reckon we can be pretty proud of our contribution to world democracy.
Of course our record for the Indigenous vote isn’t so hot.
We started off okay giving all men over the age of 21 (including Aboriginal Australians) the right to vote in 1850, although it wasn’t compulsory and in fact Indigenous voters weren’t encouraged to vote. When Queensland gained self -government in 1859 and Western Australia in 1890, they denied Indigenous people the vote. [2]
Then in 1901 when we became a federation, only Indigenous people on the state rolls were allowed to vote and of course this was a way to phase it out because no new people were ever added to the roll.
They finally got the vote in 1962 (although Indigenous people who had served in the armed forces got the vote in 1949) but it wasn’t a compulsory vote until 1984.
Speaking of compulsory voting – we are unique in Australia in being the only English-speaking country in the world who has it! Compulsory voting was first introduced in Queensland in 1915 and the other states followed and in 1924 was introduced for all Federal and State elections [3].
Personally I think compulsory voting is a good thing. The amount of money spent on getting people just to the polling booths in countries like the US is ridiculous. Only one in five people bothered to vote in the recent local government elections here. That is pathetic. Now perhaps it was because it wasn’t well advertised. Certainly I didn’t see a lot of “vote here” signs to remind people, or perhaps people think local government is irrelevant or simply corrupt. Whatever the reason I think it points to a level of apathy in this country and compulsory voting goes some way to forcing people to engage in democracy.
So there you go. I find myself surprised at how interesting I found those facts… and how strongly I feel about compulsory voting.
4000 5-star hotel rooms. That, apparently, was the first requirement for any city wanting to host APEC 2007. 4000!
In Australia the choice was between Sydney and a combined Gold Coast/Brisbane. Which is why, despite the logistical nightmares of going to Sydney, it was chosen.
Interestingly this week I was speaking to the Department of Premier and Cabinet’s Terrorism expert who told me that hazard management agencies in all the other cities were on high alert this week because of the Glasgow Factor.
What’s the Glasgow Factor? I hear you mutter at your monitor…
Well remember the London Bombings? When they happened, the G8 was meeting in Glasgow. In other words, the terrorists may not necessarily target the city the officials are gathered in.
Do I feel alarmed?
Nope.
Not even alert.
