The election has been and gone and unless you have just woken up from a coma you will know we now have a Coalition guvvernment.
What’s done is done and we now have according to some sections of the MSM.
3 years of
Domestic harmony
Economic Boom
Environmental Bliss
Foreign Affairs Triumphs
Probably Australia will be first to send a man to Mars and return him safely thanks to our new dear leader.
Blood Oaf Abbott.
While all this is going on what about we have Raffle Night Anyway.
Play some happy music,share a few stories,have a few drinks with friends.
Look forward to the next 3 years. It is a opportunity for Labor to rebuild and renew and come back stronger for the next election.
Welcome to our new posters, I hope you enjoy raffle night, Get your tickets from raffle master ckwatt and everybody have a good night.
Kitty $280.00
THE PUB 
i would recommend the group Australian Working Dog Rescue. they are on facebook. they have beautiful and useful working dogs ready for adoption.
Tony’s Fridge
As I said, your friend John is one clever bloke – the paddock rotation system is the way to go whether it’s sheep or cattle.
Indi will go right down to the wire, McGowan currently leads by 515 with 3,500 votes to count. If the current trends of the voting continues McGowan will have a lead of around 285 with 377 Provisionals to be assessed for eligibility.
A certainty for a recount I would suggest and a possible challenge over the 1000 found votes.
Phew, Labor’s just pulled back ahead in McEwen. They’re down to only 400 Lib favouring postal votes and Rob Mitchell is doing quite well with the Absent votes. Now hopefully the Pre_poll votes will favour Labor too and McEwen should be retained.
http://www.workingdogrescue.com.au/
They rescue these dogs from pounds, private surrenders, animal shelters, and give them new homes.
I make no apologies for cross posting these gorgeous guys and gals who would love a mob of sheep/cattle or a family to organise! woofle dust please.
I so hope these last votes favour McGowan.
Abbott’s former el cheapo digs in Canberra.
http://www.hotelrealm.com.au/
Gawd, the Ballarat Liberals don’t have a clue. They’re raising the sulky argument in the paper that since Ballarat returned a Labor MP, the Liberals will just tell us to go to hell when it comes to federal funding.
Um, that’s not what good governments do, they’re supposed to govern for all Australians. But then again, I guess they would know that Abbott wants to divide society and treat one side as second class.
Kirsdarke
Was it in Ballarat that the Liberal candidate ran the newspaper or radio station or something? Going out to dinner but will catch up in the morning.
Kirsdarke
We are gettting the opposite line rammed at us in Lyne. Now we have a National Party MP again we are beng told he will be ‘a strong voice’ in government’ and will have ‘a seat at the table’. What table that might be is not specified. The local paper even ran a story (complete with happy snaps of the young families at Gillespie’s farm) about Gillespie being Abbott’s best mate because they met at boarding school and have been friends ever since. I noticed that no-one mentioned their time together at the notorious St John’s College, when they were both uni students.
I’ve suffered trhrough a few decades of National Party ‘representation’ and none of the turkeys has ever done anything for anyone but themselves. Our former MP, Mark Vaile, did get his finger out and organise a linear accelerator for the local hospital, but only becaue he had cancer and thought he might need it.
Rob Oakeshott got us $116 million worth of hospital extendsions, a GP super clinic, a research lab, billions of dollars worth of other stuff and best of all, a university. In contrast David Gillespie has promised us extensions to a tennis club and a surf club (Wazza Truzz then cut the funding for those projects) and two Green Army projects – a few hundred metres of path to a reserve and a bike track out in the bush. What a contrast.
“will have ‘a seat at the table”
Below the salt for sure.
The table in the servants’ hall, most likely.
@2gravel
Yes, that’s right, he runs the local radio stations. You can tell his influence there, I’ve been putting up with this smug little snotrag Andrew Kilmartin happily reading LNP propaganda every hour on the Latest Hits station for the past 3 years (The radio is on all day at work), and he still hasn’t been sacked for blatant bias. If he was a paid up ALP member that’d be a different matter, but it turns out he’s a paid up Liberal member. Funny that.
Well, we’re back from our Sticky Weekend in Gulgong.
A good time was had by all.
If you ever get a chance to go to the Gulgong Museum (it occupies an entire block, over several buildings) do it for your own sake. I thought it’d be just another one of those local curiosity barns with a nice Lady from the CWA at the desk and lots of old buggies and pot bellied stoves on display. I coudn’t have been more wrong.
Believe me, it’s fabulous.
We were there four hours and could have stayed double that time. It’s got EVERYTHING, including several kitchen sinks. A unique place and worth the trip there just to see it.
Perhaps if they had a professional curator it would be twice as good, but was still by far one of the best and most interesting museums I have ever set foot in. Something amazing around every corner.
The main street is straight out of the 19th century, with the addition of electric light. It’s narrow, single lane (when cars are parked), but everyone is courteous and dedicated to making your stay in Gulgong one to remember. Plenty of great food, too, from excellent “pub” type to a delicious Indian place (Indian restaurant in Gulgong? Yes!) and everything in-between, including (by all reports) many fine restaurants in the wineries around the town.
For those who have forgotten, Gulgong’s main street was featured on the original ten dollar bill, along with a portrait of Henry Lawson. Most of it is still there, in place.
Nice countryside, but very dry ATM. We managed, however, to have two delightful mornings watching the antics of the local birds just after dawn, as they established territories: flocks of galahs, corelas, cockatoos, little wren-looking things, parrots (rosellas and king). Whenever the local eagle flew high above there was a general panic and everyone took to the trees. I could almost hear the eagle giggling to himself, in that nasty way eagles giggle.
Last night a giant huntsman spider – easily the biggest I have ever seen (yes, I know, they’re ALWAYS the biggest you’ve ever seen, but this one was bigger than my hand) – plonked itself upside down on the ceiling directly above our bed.
About once an hour it would move one leg, or, if you took your eyes off it, it’d change position because you weren’t looking.
We got into bed last night and watched the telly because we didn’t want him to drop on us. One eye on the telly. One eye for the pidey on the ceiling. If you’ve ever had a huntsman drop down onto you, you’ll know it goes down as one of the scariest events of your life (I’ve had two do it).
Anyway, sure as eggs, this one, at 11pm, dropped right onto the bed, around about where our knees would have been if they had not been curled up into the foetal position under our chins.
I don’t normally kill huntsmen, as they are so brave and noble. Real warriors. And proud, too. But I was about to do this one in – put it down to two hours of will-he-or-won’t-he stress – when HI said, “You can’t kill it!”.
So we fossicked around for something to pick it up with and found a dessert bowl to cover it, plus the back cover of the local telephone directory (which I ripped off in true muscleman manner) to act as the slider underneath him. He didn’t move as I scooped him up, and took him outside.
In fact, he was there next morning in exactly the same place. It was then that we started thinking perhaps he’d been trapped inside the room at the B&B we were staying in and hadn’t had a moth between his mandibles for a week or so.
Convinced he was dead, we put him on a verandah post, and the poor critter hung on with one leg. The others drooped. This was a sick spider.
Finally I thought I should move him onto a post that was attracting the morning sun. With great trepidation I did so and still he hardly moved. Just sort of hung on for grim death.
We kept checking him every 15 minutes, but he was almost comatose, as if his legs were moving with some vestigial, but entirely morbid energy. I even started worrying that I’d fried him by putting him in the sunlight.
Just before we left at 11am, HI went over to see how Boris (we call them all “Boris”) was. She was getting so bold she touched a leg…
You have never seen a spider move so fast. Before you could say, “SHIT! HE’S ALIVE!” Boris scampered right to the top of the verandah post and parked himself just under the tin roof, around the corner from a house spider, who was busy weaving a web… a web full of succulent moths and flies.
It looks like we saved Boris, by warming him up a little on that post… and it’ll be the NEXT guests in our cottage who spend A Long Night staring at the ceiling. A job well done, we thought. We do like to spread the joy.
It’s part of City Meets Country “thing”, after all: Borises the size of dinner plates, corelas, galahs, eagles, busy little wrens, newborn lambs following their mothers everywhere, trepidacious suburbanites roughing it in a supposedly civilized farm-stay, and a maniac rabbit who deliberately waited for our car three times – upon our arrival, going out to dinner, coming home from dinner – and made us chase him in the car up the driveway, a hundred metres or more long. Crazy wabbit. He could have veered off the track at any time, out of our way, but he was having too much fun.
If I was an MSM journo I’d probably find a metaphor in there somewhere for why the Labor Party is fucked. Something to do with rabb(o)ts and huntsmen, I suppose.
But I’m too tired after driving 900 kilometres round trip (after diversions).
Let me just it was great weekend. Good people. Tasty food. Fantastic museums, beautiful scenery, a large (really large) spider, a rabbit possessed, and a couple of much-needed nights of untrammelled funny business thrown in.
And not one argument between us. That counts for a lot.
P.S. Dogs were VERY glad to see us back, especially Bob, who was in a blue funk for the first hour until we both gave him a complete body cuddle each.
@Leone
The fact that the National party still exists is proof that better rural education is urgently needed.
The only somewhat powerful National I’ve heard of is Peter Ryan who kicked around the Victorian libs under Baillieu, but everyone else fits the bill as a cashed up suit who pretends to be a ‘true blue son of the soil’ farmer and wins 60-70% of the vote in their safe seats, and all they do after that is eat caviar in the capitals.
Bushfire Bill,
It sounds like a truly delightful weekend.
Gulgong has been on my list of places to do for ages – I know very little of New South Wales on the western side of the Hume. One of my “retirement” plans is to go on slow motoring trips with my mother, and the Central Tablelands and New England are high on the list.
Kirsdarke
Our new Nats bloke is a gastroenterologist, the son of a doctor, educated at Riverview and Sydney uni. He started up a private clinic here then sold out to Ramsay Health and has managed the place for them for a few years. his kids, of course, went to expensive private schools in the city. The local state and private schools, which are excellent, were not good enough for his offspring. He lives on his rural estate, a small cattle property not far out of town, where he plays the squire of the manor. What he actually knows about farming you could write on the head of a pin. We are stuck with him for as long as he wants the job. He’ll do nothing for anyone .With his history and snooty attitude he’s not going to be at all interested in public health care or state school funding or in anyone who needs any sort of benefit or pension.
I’ve said this a million times – if Bessie the Cow ran as a National candidate she’d be elected with a strong majority, National Party voters are too stupid to ever think about what they do with their vote. They just blindly vote the way their grandpappy voted. It saves wear and tear on the brain.
leonetwo, I was wondering myself, if the trouble could be, that many do nit really want 15 members of Howard’s front bench, sitting behind Abbott.
In fact, I never believed he would get away with such an action. He was backing off before the election.
Do people realise, that Ruddock and the elder Bishop are into their seventies, when reelected on Saturday. Time for them to move on, one would think.
Albanese said that the police advise that GIllard move out of the flat because of security reasons. Funny, she did make such a big thing out of saving money, as Abbott is.
Another stunt, that I sense has fell like a lead balloon.
Got a feeling, stunts do not work when one is PM. Well they have not, since he become PM elect.
I suspect the unit at the academy is much bigger, that what we are being led to believe.
Bet, it is a separate building within the grounds. Maybe one for staff.
BB, been to Gulgong a few times. That museum is amazing, totally unexpected. Having grown up on a farm a lot if what was on display was very familiar. However, my boys when they were quite young thought the narrow streets and old houses were creepy.
I don’t care where the creature lives, except for his influence on AFP recruits. Why is everything such a drama with this guy? Just find some digs, like the rest of us. Go bunk up in the shed out the back of the Mirrabellas for all I care, or in JOe Hockey’s garage.
Puffy,
I don’t think Mrs Mirabella would be interested. Not enough, erm, you know …
Brendan Nelson (remember him?) lived in Joe Hockey’s garage for a while after a divorce.Maybe Joe can put Abbott up for a while.
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-opinion/just-an-ordinary-joe-20091009-gpjm.html
Fiona
Not enough sex appeal?
Leone,
I wonder what Ms Schubert makes of Mr Hockey’s more recent statements concerning Mr Rudd and the Kokoda Track?
Sex appeal, Leone? Even Mrs Mirabella …
No, I was referring to that notorious $700K mortgage, not to mention the likelihood that the property is owned by Mr and Mrs Abbott jointly.
Ms Schubert’s adoration of Mr Hockey may have taken a bit of a downturn recently.
Fiona
Abbott is nowhere near old enough for Mrs Mirabella, she likes them old and forgetful. Although Tony does seem befuddled enough to gain her affection. What a shame he hasn’t got a cracker. That shed has been empty for too long.
BB
You are the most excellent story-teller. And you always tell it from a bloke’s point of view. But, believe me, you and my mother could have been collaborators.
You seem to have the same sense of humour. And the same sense of pathos; the same sense of drama and the same sense of a je ne sais quoi element that defies description.
It’s so everyday. And that’s what makes it so humorous.
My mother leapt from spoonerism to worst deed to sheer innocence to goddam godbuggery within an instant. And, shit she was funny.
You keep her alive for me. Don’t ever change.
How sad, too bad:
http://latika.me/192UMVD
Ian Who?
Kezza,
Good to see you.
Yes, Bushfire Bill is wondrous, and I really think he doesn’t know how good a yarn spinner he is. It must be the Viking in him.
Leone,
For some reason, the image of a vacuum pervades my mind.
Fiona
Thanks for the welcome back.
I don’t understand the Viking reference, but it probably makes sense. All I know is that BB makes me cry laughing at his stories.
Oh, if only I had the gift of the same gab, as did my mum. But BB’s got it.
Anyway, check you later. I really can’t indulge in an opposition Opposition Fest for the sake of it.
Too boring. There’ll be much more happening as time goes by,
Kezza,
It’s been a strange week. However, thank you for the reminder:
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