"Get punched by Nat (Young)?"

After the pic of Angourie (above), which is a ripper, was posted on Kurungabaa by Kim Satchell, a sharp-witted Stu Nettle responded, "Tell us a story Satch! Don’t just leave us wondering. Was it as good as it looks? How’d your board go? You get many barrels? Get punched by Nat (Young)? C’mon brother!"

Nat ... a surfing legend?

Blistering barnacles, Mr. Editor!

Letter to The Daily Examiner editor, Peter Chapman, published on 25 June 2009.

See other posts:
Brave young Maree Jay takes on the ugly face of Australian journalism at The Daily Examiner
Greatest problem! Crisis! It's extravagation time at Tabloid City

The Clarence Valley takes it own temperature and declares it is fit and well despite global economic downturn. But will the good news continue?

Image: Google Images

Clarence Valley Council has released its upbeat June 2009 bi-annual Economic Monitor of this large Northern Rivers local government area.

Unfortunately, as communities along the Clarence Coast are heavily dependant on tourism income, increasingly rapid environmental change may well undercut this economic optimism.

This year coastal erosion is continuing to cause concern.

According to The Daily Examiner last Thursday:

MANY beaches along the Clarence coast are off-limits today as king tides ravage the coastline.
Clarence Valley Council has declared most beach accessways too dangerous, ordering that barricades and closed signs be erected at beaches from Yamba to Wooli.
“This is about personal safety and people should not go past these points,” Clarence Valley Council deputy general manager Des Schroder said.
If people really have to go onto a beach, Mr Schroder said they should use the beach access points that were still open or use open beaches such as Main Beach in Yamba.
“You might have to drive to get to them but it's for your own safety,” he said.
“People should be really cautious about being on a beach.”
The dangerous beach conditions are the result of ongoing extensive beach erosion and a series of two-metre king tides this week.
The high tides have gouged steep cliff faces along some beaches and stripped sand from others to reveal bare rock shelfs.
The erosion has left many pedestrian and vehicle access points unstable and dangerous.
“People should stay away from all beach accesses until the seas have subsided and accesses have been repaired,” Mr Schroder said.

Only in Tassie......an explanation for mysterious crop circles

In scenically beautiful Tasmania they have found an explanation for those mysterious crop circles according to the The Mercury yesterday:
"WALLABIES are hopping into Tasmania's opium poppy fields and getting high.
The revelation has also solved what some growers say has spurred a campfire legend about mysterious crop circles which appear in the state's poppy paddocks. In true X-Files style, Attorney-General Lara Giddings said yesterday the drugged-up wallabies had been found hopping around in circles squashing the poppies, creating the formations. The wallabies are increasingly entering the fields and eating the poppy heads. That causes them to get high and run around in turns creating "crop circles". "The one interesting bit that I found recently in one of my briefs on the poppy industry was that we have a problem with wallabies entering poppy fields, getting as high as a kite and going around in circles," Ms Giddings told a Budget Estimates hearing. "Then they crash. We see crop circles in the poppy industry from wallabies that are high." ......
Ms Giddings was answering questions about the security of Tasmanias poppy stocks, that are considered some of the safest in the world."

The Malcolm Bligh Turnbull Narrative - abridged version

One version of the Turnbull narrative which may just survive into the future:

There once was a fairly ordinary Australian boy who grew into a young man rumoured to have a nasty temper and an inflated opinion of his own intellect.
His name was Malcolm Bligh Turnbull.
The young man first became a part of the fourth estate, but having a short employment attention span then entered the legal profession where many of his ilk flock, got himself a property so that he could style himself a country gentleman, flirted with authorship, became for a time a merchant banker and along the way made pots and pots of money (not always in a much admired fashion).
Not content with his lot he decided that he would very much like to be President of Australia and so helped mount a national campaign to dismantle the Australian Constitution and form a republic.
The now not so young political peacock saw this campaign fail in the face of contrary voter opinion and, being essentially both lazy and impatient decided that he would rather have a bird in hand such as the job then held by John Winston Howard - Prime Minister of Australia.
Having virtually brought himself Liberal Party pre-selection through sizable party donations and spent a barrow of cash on an election campaign in the Wentworth electorate in New South Wales, he won a seat in the Federal Parliament.
Utterly shocked that the Prime Minister and Cabinet did not immediately bow down before him and clear his path to the prime ministership or at least the treasurer's job, he not so graciously made do with being a parliamentary secretary and then Minister for the Environment and Water Resources.
As part of the Howard ministry he actively assisted the Coalition into the political wilderness in November 2007.
Since then he has been either trying to convince Coalition power brokers that only he can lead them back to victory in 2010 or fending off those who would like to replace him once he actually became Leader of the Liberal Party and Opposition.
To that end he has been rather busying playing at political theatre (a la Machiavelli's Prince, John Wilkes Booth or Burke & Hare depending on your particular point of view) and in consequence his nose has been growing soooo long that it will no longer fit though any door in The Lodge.
Enter Joseph Benedict Hockey........

'Typhoid Mary' Fielding goes too far

Struth, there's yet another idiot pollie fronting the teev this week!
Family First's leader and one and only member of the Australian parliament Senator Steve Fielding apparently not only thinks man-made global warming doesn't exist, he thinks the principles of viral transmission don't apply to his august person.
The obviously lobotomised senator has someone in his household he says has been diagnosed with swine flu, but is determined that even if he might be infectious himself he "doesn't want to take a sickie".
Yeah, nice one Stevo - go trotting through an air-conditioned workplace (open to the general public) dominated by older, sedentary men who would probably be more vulnerable to swine flu.
Look! See how quickly Steve can bring Parliament to its knees!
See how powerful Family First is!
Did we really vote this drongo in?

Q: What's a 2830?

A: A dubbo, of course.

As reported yesterday, a couple of Dubbo Zoo inmates, oops that should read Dubbo City Councillors, who previously resided in the Clarence Valley, are making big impressions in the local government arena in central western NSW.

Richard Mutton (left) and Peter Bartley (right), who are councillors on Dubbo City Council, have done their level best to demonstrate how effectively the National Party performs.

At Monday night's meeting of council a motion, moved by Mutton, that Bartley had breached the council's code of conduct, should be counselled and should apologise to the council was carried.

So who are Mutton and Bartley?

1. Mutton

When Gerry Peacocke retired as the State National Member for Dubbo in 1999 a swing of 19.4% was required if the Nationals were to lose the safest seat in NSW. With its remarkable collective wisdom the Nationals saw fit to preselect Mutton as their candidate. The rest is history ... Mutton suffered a humiliating defeat and lost the seat to the independent Tony McGrane.

2. Bartley

Bartley is chairperson of the Nationals Dubbo electorate council.

Gee, the Nationals are a weird breed of cattle.

Pics from Dubbo City Council