Thursday, November 26, 2009

 

The Effect of Overindulgence

Here's a prime example of what can happen to a small bear who enjoys his holidays too much. We all enjoyed our holiday on Hamilton Island. It was Milkshake's first trip to the tropics, so Scruffy and I had a lot to show her. Golf buggy hooning, yachting, sandcastle building, meeting the rellies, and so on. Unfortunately Scruff showed her one of the things not to do. We had dinner at "Sails" one night and us Littlies shared one of the giant Toucan Burgers (I hasten to point out that the name comes from the previous name of the ressertoraorunt "Toucan Tango", not from the contents of the burger (and I still can't spell "restaurant")). Scruff ate much more than his share, and most of the chips as well, and after we got home he started to turn green and complain about a tummy-ache. Dr Bart and Nurse Milky to the rescue. By the time we had poked, prodded and pounded him for a while, he decided to be cured. There is nothing that small bears can't fix.

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Oceanic Viking

Here's a boat that has been in the news a lot here in Australia. It is the Customs and Fisheries vessell "Oceanic Viking". Its job is to keep foreign poachers from stealing Australia's fish and to catch smugglers. We hear about it occasionally catching fishermen who are over-fishing and are catching things like the rare Toothfish. The "Viking" was on TV almost every night a few weeks ago because it had been caught up in an embarassing international problem. It had picked up a sinking load of boat people, who were trying to sneak into Australia illegally, and then couldn't find anywhere to unload them. They had come via Indonesia, but Indonesia didn't want them, and they didn't want to go back to where they had come from. It took weeks before the Australian and Indonesian governments sorted the problem out, and all that time the "Viking" was stuck off Indonesia with a load of passengers nobody wanted. I don't understand why people try to sneak into Australia like that. If they just go about it the right way, through the proper channels, they can usually come anyway, provided they aren't criminals or terrorists or other nasty types. Scruffy and I saw the "Oceanic Viking" earlier this year on our way from Perf to Rottnest Island. It was berthed in Fremantle harbour, being stocked up for a patrol in the cold ocean between Australia and Antarctica.

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A New Toy

Mum has a new toy on the computer. It is a snazzy little device that prints things out on sticky labels. Of course she uses it for serious-type things, like addressing Christmas cards and identifying what's in what box in the garage. Small bears can have lots more fun with it than that. Over the last few days I have stuck labels on everything that I can reach. For some strange reason the Oldies aren't too happy about that. Maybe they don't like the way I have labelled some of their stuff. Dad certainly wasn't too impressed with the "Old Codger's Plastic Surgery" label that I stuck to his hobby room door, but he does do a lot of cutting, shaping and glueing of plastic in there, so I don't know what the problem is. After all, if they didn't want me to do things with the computer and its attachments, then they shouldn't have taught me to type.

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Friday, November 20, 2009

 

A New Boss

We found this guy at the Egyptian exhibition in Sydney last week. I thought his name was A-New-Boss when I heard it first, but it turns out to be Anubis. In ancient Egypt, Anubis was the jackal-headed god who looked after the making of mummies and who led the souls of dead people through all the trials and perils of the afterlife on their way to judgement. He also was the protector of tombs. Jackals are doggie things that are often seen around the outskirts of Egyptian villages, digging in rubbish heaps and cemetries, so that's probably why the Egyptians made Anubis a jackal-headed guy. Actually, Anubis is the Greek name for him. Those of us who study heiroglyphs (Mum and I, around our house) know that the Egyptian name for him is actually Inpw. Anyway, I am glad that his name isn't A-new-boss because there is only room for one boss in this house and it's Mum.

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Ancient Ruler of the Sea

No, I am not ancient. I certainly don't rule the seas either, but way back in the last centuries BC ships like this did. This is a model of a Carthagenian warship that Dad and I have just finished making. The real ship was 72 times bigger, just over 150 feet long. Up to the time that the Romans destroyed Carthage, these ships ruled the Mediterranean sea. Actually, the Romans only won after they had captured a Carthagenian ship and made hundreds of copies of it. Roman ships had one addition that gave them the edge in battle. The ships of Cathage used sailing skill to ram enemy ships and sink them. The Romans added a "Corvus", a sort of a drawbridge with a spike on it that they would drop onto a Carthagenian ship, locking the two ships together, and then send soldiers across to take the Carthagenian vessel. The Carthagenians were much better sailors, but the Romans were superior soldiers. The old ships of the Mediterranean, be they Carthagenian, Greek or Roman, mostly used oars to move them. The one the model is based on had 116 oars and around 400 oarsmen; the biggest oars sometimes had up to 5 rowers pulling them. Sails were used only when the wind was right because these ships couldn't tack into wind like modern sailboats do. It took Dad and I ages to build this model, because it is the first time we have tried to rig anything. Rigging is hard. As soon as you add another line, all of the ones you have put in before go too slack or too tight and you have to fiddle a lot to get everything right. Still, I reckon we didn't do too bad a job of it. I particularly like the little sailors we put on deck. Do you know that nobody can agree on what colour Carthagenians were? We took a guess and made ours a light coffee colour like the people that the Oldies saw in Egypt. Now it's back to aeroplanes, where only the old ones have rigging and in 1/72 scale you can mostly forget it.

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Monday, November 16, 2009

 

The Hand Upon the Throttle is.....

I love trains. All sorts of trains. That is one reason that I like going to Sydney, because it is almost as quick (city centre to city centre) and a lot more comfortable to go by train. The Canberra train is not as big as the one that hauls the Indian-Pacific because it only has a few passenger carriages to pull. This trip I got to do something really special. While I was being carried up the platform to get a picture of the train, the driver asked if I would like to see inside the driver's cabin. Would I and what? I have been on the driver's plate of steam trains before this and they are really cluttered with levers and gauges and things and are pretty grotty with coal dust and soot. This set of controls is very different. It looks more like the dashboard of a big truck and it is very clean. That's important because Mum gets stroppy if I sit in coal dust or soot. Anyhow, it looks pretty easy to drive this train, just a batch of engine instruments, a big red button to stop things in a hurry, and a little throttle joystick to set the speed. The driver says it is actually a bit more complicated, but that's the basics. I could easily have helped drive the train back to Canberra if I was a union member.

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Magic Christmas Window

Last Thursday we went to Sydney to see an Egyptian exhibition at the Australian Museum. Mum and I try to get to all the Egyptian exhibitions we can because we have been studying heiroglyphs for years now and it is fun seeing what those people wrote thousands of years ago. Actually, it is a lot like what people write now. On one of the streets that we walked along there was a really magical window display. It was in a store called David Jones and there were lots of windows full of puppets illustrating Christmas carols. The pictures are only of small bits of the windows because if you try to take pictures from far enough away to see the whole window display all you get is reflections of the street and yourself. Maybe you can work out what carol the puppets in each picture are illustrating. I guessed most of them straight away because Mum is a Christmas carol nut and around about this time of year all she plays are carols. Dad spends a lot of time in his hobby room with the door shut playing wild guitar music. Anyway, displays like this must mean that Santa is due sometime soon and it is time to start dropping hints about small bear sized motorbikes.

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Monday, November 09, 2009

 

Party Weekend

We have had a weekend of parties. The Oldies had invited a lot of their astronomy buddies around for what Mum calls "high tea" on Saturday, so we had a housefull of hungry people to feed. You can see some of the spread in the top picture. Mum had just put the cold stuff out on the table and the hot stuff into the oven. I was supervising and checking out the goodies. Scones, jam, cream, sandwiches, peanuts and bickies I knew about, but there were two new things. I nibbled on one of them, a small black thing called an olive, and didn't think much of it. I was just making a grab for the other new thing when Mum saw me and put me away off the table. It turns out that the new stuff was chocolate walnut caramel log slices. Next time I go for that first and leave olives alone. On Sunday we went back to Shaw winery for a wine, roses and jazz lunch. I am not sure if I like jazz, but I sure do like wine and lunch, particularly dessert-type lunch. You can see me digging into dessert in the small pictures. The boy is my friend Alex. His dessert had a huge thing made out of toffee on it and he let me eat lots of it. Friends like that are really useful.

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Super-buggy

This is one big golf buggy. I found it when we went across to Daydream Island one day during our last visit to Hamilton island. We had been using a small buggy on Hammo, but this one is at least twice the size and has a much bigger motor. It is the stretch-limo version of golf buggies. Naturally, Scruffy, Milkshake and I had to give it a real going over so that we could compare it to the smaller ones. Well, the first thing is that the brake and gear pedals are just as far away from the steering bear's feet, so it would be a combined effort to drive it. Given that the roads on Daydream are mostly right at the water's edge that would probably be a bit unsafe for us. Anyhow, it was all rigged out for a wedding and the real driver came and evicted us before we could get it started. And we had to run and catch the ferry back to Hamilton anyway. I hope the Bride and Groom and whoever filled the other seats appreciated the vehicle as much as we would have if we had got it going.

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Sunday, November 01, 2009

 

Sandcastles Again

Here's another castle that Milkshake and I built on the day we went across to Whitehaven Beach. Actually, we sort of inherited this one from a small boy who had to leave before he had finished it. His Mum seemed to think that catching their boat back to Hamilton Island was more important than finishing the castle. So Milky and I finished the job. We based the design on the old castles that the Oldies saw on their UK trip. The oldest ones have a central keep and an outer ringwall, so that's what we built. The keep was high enough for Milky to keep lookout for pirates, crabs and other dangerous vermin, and the ringwall was just the right height for me to wait with my whacking stick to repell attackers. The crabs must have got the message because they kept right away from us. So did the pirates. The only thing that succeeded in getting us out of the castle was (you guessed it) Mum. We had to catch a boat back to Hamilton as well. I wonder what becomes of all the sandcastles that get left on the beaches every day?

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Desert & Sea

I love this country of ours. It really is a land of contrasts and there is always something interesting to see no matter where you travel. One of the trips that I enjoyed most was our trip across the continent from Sydney to Perf on the Indian-Pacific train (note from Dad: Bart just will not call the place Perth). The changing landscapes out the train window were amazing; the cliffs and valleys of the Blue Mountains, the plains of New South Wales, South Australia and Western Australia, the mining towns of Broken Hill, Kalgoorlie and small places that were just a pithead and a mullock heap, and of course the oceans at both ends. Here's a couple of pictures that show one big contrast. The top one is the deserted remains of one of the little railway towns on the Nullarbor Plain. I think it may be Forrest as there are some trees near a house in the background. All that's left are the foundations of the goods sheds, the loading ramp, and the old telegraph line. Nothing for hundreds of miles around but flat, treeless plain and saltbush and sand. The only people are occasional railway repair gangs. The bottom picture is one of the bays at Rottnest Island, in the Indian Ocean near Perf. There are not many buildings near this bay but there are lots and lots of boats, and lots of people as well. People from Perf come over in their boats and anchor in the bays around Rottnest for the weekend, or in some cases for the whole summer. They spend their time swimming, snorkelling, fishing and partying. Desert and sea are both great places for small bears to visit.

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