Sunday 1 August 2010

Incontinent Victorians and other southerners brown off one Northern Rivers cane farmer


From The Daily Examiner letters to the editor on 27 July 2010:

Browned off

IF you'll excuse my language, I write to say that I am sick of the s**t and the p*ss. No, I don't refer to the election.
I refer to the travellers through our region - almost exclusively Victorians in my observation - who think it reasonable to come onto my property to take a pee and a poop. I am sick of the toilet paper along the side of the road, the disposable nappies and the doggie doo.
I am sick of people pulling onto a cane pad 150 metres off the highway, down a gravel country road, hidden behind large cane, within sight of a single farmhouse, without a public notice anywhere evident, who think it is reasonable to say: "Oh, we didn't realise this was private property."
Apparently you and your dogs can take a crap on any piece of public property in Victoria.
Ferry Park, Maclean, is five minutes one way from my place and within half-an-hour drive in the other direction you will have come through Grafton, South Grafton, Ulmarra, Brushgrove and Tyndale village.
I believe there is a website now which lists public conveniences all over the country.
Is there an epidemic of incontinence from Victoria?
Then of course there are the decent people who call in to ask if they might have a closer look at a piece of sugar cane - mostly southern New South Welshmen,South Australians and Tasmanians.
Happy to oblige and put on a bit of an act with the old fashioned cane knife.
I get four or five a year, but I imagine there are more who just pull up somewhere out of sight and steal a bit.
Because, yes, it is theft, and it is trespass, and it is public indecency.
My front paddock is no more open to public utility than their balcony or driveway at home - unless it could be considered an invitation, a mutual exchange of convenience when next we travel south - is the garden state facing a compost shortage?
So I have started a log, if you'll again pardon the pun, of the rego numbers of the dumpers and slashers, the overnighters and the light-fingered.

JAMES MOLONEY
Tyndale

Are whaling nations slaughtering cetacean friends?


Young Humpack Whale in waters off the Clarence Coast July 2010
Photograph in the Clarence Valley Review

It is known that Japan's whaling fleet kills lactating female whales and their young in the Southern Ocean, but is this slaughter doing even more damage to cetacean social bonds?

Humpback whales form lasting bonds, the first baleen whales known to do so.

Individual female humpbacks reunite each summer to feed and swim alongside one another in the Gulf of St Lawrence, off Canada, scientists have found.

Toothed whales, such as sperm whales, associate with one another, but larger baleen whales, which filter their food, have been thought less social.

The finding raises the possibility that commercial whaling may have broken apart social groups of whales.....

The longest recorded friendships lasted six years, and always occurred between similar-aged females, and never between females and males. (BBC NEWS )

Mayne gets down and dirty in Senate seat fight


Senate hopeful Stephen Mayne was emailing this about last Tuesday:

"The gaming watchdog will investigate the presence of two teens on the gaming floor of an Altona North hotel part-owned by Liberal Senator Julia McGauran, after a complaint by rival Senate candidate Stephen Mayne.

Mr Mayne, an independent, said that two 15-year old girls in the gaming area at The Millers Inn last week. Senator McGauran is a part-owner of the pub, at which punters lost more than $12 million last financial year.

A spokesman for anti-gambling independent Senator Nick Xenophon, cited as a witness, said the girls were on the gaming floor for 10 minutes. Senator McGauran said it was 2.5 minutes."

2010 Election Campaign Day 16 - Political advertising


Can you find any legible authorisation on this official National Party campaign pic gracing candidate Kevin Hogan's Facebook page?
























Nup, didn't think so.