Wreck of Centaur found by same team that found HMAS Sydney

The wreck of the AHS (Australian Hospital Ship) Centaur has been found by the same team, led by David Mearns, that located the wrecks of HMAS Sydney and HSK Kormoran

In today's Australian Andrew Fraser discusses the find and dusts off some interesting questions eg why did the Japanese submarine attack a well lit up hospital ship? Unlike the HMAS Sydney situation where several conspiracy theories had a good run before the wreck was found and filmed, the existence of survivors means that the facts (other than the position of the wreck) have never been disputed.

Whatever happens here (and I suspect the inconvenient questions will be swept under the carpet) the actual discovery is yet another feather in the cap for David mearns and his team.

Catastrophe averted....

Thank goodness yesterday, which the authorities here deemed to be, at least for some of the state, a day of "catastrophic" fire danger, passed without fatalities caused by fires. (There were alas several road deaths)

There has been some confusion about the additional fire damage rating of catastrophic which has been superimposed on the existing ones (supplanting extreme) . Though there's a Cape Catastrophe on Eyre Peninsula near the proclaimed area I'm not convinced that everyone understands this multisyllabic term and what it means when it is invoked. Is it really necessary, I wonder? Whatever words are used and no matter how effectively warnings are communicated in a high fire risk situation each person usually has to make their own decision about whether to stay or leave.

The last couple of days have once again shown the value of a free to air public broadcaster for keeping people informed in emergency situations. The ABC staff were generally well informed about SA place names and their pronunciation, while Sky News persisted in mispronouncing "Wirrabara". one of the YHA's 20 Frequently Mispronounced Australian Destinations even though a local fire official appearing on its news programs pronounced it correctly.

I also wasn't too impressed with the inability of the SA Police media liaison person to provide ABC radio yesterday afternoon with the CFS hotline phone number. You'd think they'd have it if not in their mind then in front of them. A small matter perhaps, but possibly indicative of some gaps in interagency cooperation which need to be plugged before the next emergency.

Heat...and more heat

Friday 13th. Black Friday. Yet another 35C+ day. It's now (2.40pm CDST) 38.1deg. The sequence is easily a record for this time of year, when there may be the occasional hot day or two but not this preview of January - February. And I I thought that a few days with temperatures nudging 20C when I was in the UK was uncharacteristically warm!

When will it end? Forecast is for 39 tomorrow and 40 Sunday before 28 Monday. We shall see.

Not quite like de Botton.....

Just back from overseas, visiting family in London with a side trip with them to Istanbul. All very enjoyable notwithstanding the customary hazards of modern international air travel, notably airport chaos/ inefficiency and the brusqueness of (most) UK border protection officials.

Earlier this year Alain de Botton spent a week in the employ of the British Airports Authority as a writer in residence at Heathrow Terminal Five. He's just published his diary, which is a characteristically fluent distillation of his week, which is one a long way removed from my and, I expect, most other airport users' experiences. That said it's worth reading, if only for the very different perspective he brought to his task. He must have been almost the only person with time to reflect about the terminal: everyone else was of necessity focused on a particular task: travelling (departing or arriving), security, selling (a big, big part of modern airport life) or maintenance.

I may have more to say about this topic later....

Unfashionable virtues?

ABC RN's Life Matters recently ran a poll about which unfashionable virtues "should make a comeback".

Results:

Humility (23%)
Magnanimity (21%)
Perseverance(18%)
Modesty (15%)
Prudence (11%)
Stoicism (9%)
Meekness (4%).

I voted for stoicism.

The results were discussed on air and can be downloaded (at least for the time being) from the program website by clicking on the link above.

Beauty's double meaning

The front page of today's Advertiser (prominently) and the Adelaide Now website ( less prominently) print this photo taken by a reader at Gawler earlier this week on a sunny day.

It shows a red-bellied black snake approaching a duck (identified as a "Moscovy " by the paper at p14 and a " Muscovy" by the website) .

Snake-Away snake catcher Ian Renton said it was likely the snake was feasting on ducklings and was chasing the mother duck away.

"The duck is way too big for the snake to eat so it probably would not be entertaining that side of things," he said.

Or was the mother duck attempting to interpose herself between the reptile and her brood? The Advertiser published a couple of other photos which are clearly part of a sequence taken in quick succession. It would be good to see more of them or to hear what happened.

While red-bellied black snakes are venomous their venom is (I believe) not normally strong enough to kill a human. They are also very attractive, as Judith Wright put it so succinctly in her poem "The Cedars":

The snake, the fang of summer, beauty's double meaning,

shifts his slow coils and feels his springtime hunger.

As I recently posted my most recent snake sighting was on 20 July this year in the Adelaide Hills (near Tungkillo) when it was much warmer than it's been for the last couple of days. If, as I hope to, I get out and about when the springlike weather returns, I'll expect to come across other snakes. When I do so I'll keep my distance but also try to take a photo or two.

Catalina

When I heard on the radio that a Catalina was going to fly over Adelaide I ventured on to my roof with camera. This was the best photo I could take with the 42-150 mm zoom on my Olympus E410 DSLR at its max focal length. My photoshopping skills are deficient so I've not been game enough to tinker with the raw material, but if you're interested you can enlarge it by clicking on the image, when you'll be able to see the characteristic (and quite elegant) outline of the plane, even if this one lacks the floats suspended from each (high) wing which I'd assumed was one of the model's defining characteristics.

After warm winter, early taste of summer

Today's estimated max temp is 29deg C, 10 deg above the September average.

The BOM records that it's already reached 27 at 10.27 though it's fallen to about 25 at noon.

Climatologist Blair Trewin in The Punch reflects on the warm August many Australians have just experienced:

August 2009 was Australia’s warmest on record. Temperatures averaged over the country were 2.47C above the long-term average, nearly a degree above the previous August record set in 1998, and 25% of the country had its hottest August day on record at some stage during the month.

Trewin points out

Average temperatures in Australia have warmed by about 0.8C over the last 100 years, most of it in the last 50.

and concludes

...while we can’t blame global warming for any individual extreme warm event it is certainly making these events more common.

The entire piece, which includes several graphs, is worth reading.

Seventy years on

Today is the 70th anniversary of Australia's entry into the conflict which is now known as World War 2.

At the time Prime Minister Menzies explained the reasons in a broadcast.

Here's what he said. I've emphasised the key words:

Fellow Australians,
It is my melancholy duty to inform you officially that in consequence of a persistence by Germany in her invasion of Poland, Great Britain has declared war upon her and that, as a result, Australia is also at war.
No harder task can fall to the lot of a democratic leader than to make such an announcement.

Great Britain and France with the cooperation of the British Dominions have struggled to avoid this tragedy. They have, as I firmly believe, been patient. They have kept the door of negotiation open. They have given no cause for aggression.

But in the result their efforts have failed and we are therefore, as a great family of nations, involved in a struggle which we must at all costs win and which we believe in our hearts we will win.

Spring

Today is the first day of spring. With very little assistance from me (I didn't prune the bush during winter) this rose bloomed right on time for the official opening of the season.

Not everything is rosy in our national garden, though, as today's Australian reports

Australia has just experienced its warmest winter on record.

While the claim won't be official until data for August 31 is collected from the nation's 850 temperature observing stations, yesterday's relatively warm temperatures across the country should see the winter of 2009 rewrite the record books.

The Bureau of Meteorology's National Climate Centre has produced a Special Climate Statement whose title " Exceptional winter heat over large parts of Australia" is self-explanatory.

South Australia appears to have had its warmest winter on record. This doesn't surprise me as I saw a snake in the Adelaide Hills on 20 July when the max temp in the city was a springlike 21.7 deg C (today it was 18.0).

Detailed records for Adelaide and other weather stations can be found here

HMAS Sydney report handed down

The Final Report into the loss of HMAS Sydney II has been handed down and is available online.

The Report consists of two volumes of evidence and conclusions and a third entitled "Frauds, Comspiracies and Speculations". The website also includes links to transcripts of evidence, some animated recreations of the Sydney- Kormoran action, and appendix and ships' plans. I've not yet read it all (I wonder how many people have) but the Summary looks to be a good overview of the major findings.

Media reporting has tended to focus on the degree of culpability of the Sydney's captain. From what I've read so far the Report, while acknowledging that it was not wise for the cruiser to approach so close to a ship whose identity was unconfirmed, stops short of saying that the captain was negligent.

It's a long time after the event, and many people who lost friends and relatives may be seeking closure rather than retribution. Perhaps they'll be able to draw their own conclusions from reading between the lines of what may not be (given the various matters which the Report dismisses as frauds, conspiracies and speculations) the last word on the topic but should be the most authoritative one.

Watch another space

Today the 2009 Ashes series begins and most of my blogging energies will for the next few weeks be devoted unashamedly to Nudges and Deflections. Will try to post here occasionally but no promises (or apologies for the focus on cricket).

PS Wednesday 0945:

As soon as I've posted the above I came across Paul Colgan's 10 reasons to love the Poms in The Punch.

His 10

1. The English language

2. English comedy

3. The least worst brand of colonialism

4. Good manners

5. The Beatles

6. Great journalism

7. The Premiership (EPL)

8. Parliamentary democracy

9. Literature

10. English sport, including cricket .

I'd agree with most of them, especially 1,2,3, 6, 8 and 9. .

I'm not sure that no 10 still applies modern cricket is very much an international rather than a national thing.

Good manners, eg queueing, may no longer be as noticeable as they once were: perhaps the modern iteration is the ability to lose more or less gracefully (after a day or so of tabloid fury).

Another battle lost?

"Its time. Sorry, it's time to save the apostrophe" argues Tracy Spicer in The Punch

It’s tiny but powerful.

Its incorrect insertion could mean the difference between life and death.

And it’s fighting for its very existence.

I’m referring to the apostrophe; specifically, the possessive apostrophe.

Even its proper name – saxon genitive – sounds more like a sexually transmitted disease than the pinnacle of punctuation.

Philistines and purists are waging war on the web, about whether this much-maligned mark should be banned.

Two photos accompany her piece: one captioned "Rabbit's die on a table", the other "Rabbits die on a table". (The first actually shows a pair of dice). .

I'm sympathetic to her general thrust though I think the battle for the possessive " 's" in certain situations, notably place names and the internet, has been lost, often with, as in the example from the UK she cites, official approval.

Here in South Australia the government has directed "In all cases the apostrophe is to be deleted" from place names.The Geographical Names Act 1991 s3 states

"place" means any area, region, locality, city, suburb, town, township, or settlement, or any geographical or topographical feature, and includes any railway station, hospital, school and any other place or building that is, or is likely to be, of public or historical interest;.

This has led to the absurd situation where the official geographical name of a prominent Adelaide school differs from what the school, retaining the apostrophe, calls itself on its website (though even here there's some hedging of bets as the apostropheless "Saints" is occasionally used).

Is, I wonder, the college commiting an offence by not using the "official" name? s13 of the Geographical Names Act 1991 suggests that it could, in certain circumstances, be. Might we expect to see the place names police investigating the matter soon?

"Breath" wins Miles Franklin Prize

Tim Winton's novel Breath has won the Miles Franklin award

I've read it, as I've done many of Winton's other books, and enjoyed it, as I enjoyed them, despite sometimes taking a while to enter into the worlds he creates.

I'm neither a dancer, a surfer nor a paramedic, but do have adult children. I find the last words of the novel resonate with me. Speaking of his adult daughters, the narrator says

They probably don't understand this, but it's important for me to show them that their father is a man who dances - who saves lives and carries the wounded, yes, but who also does something competletely pointless and beautiful, and in this at least he should need no explanation.

At the award presentation ceremony Winton criticised proposed changes to Australian laws which are likely to make it harder for local authors to be published. For further information and to see a video click here .

Foxtel CEO calls for free to air TV extension in Australia

Jane Schulze in today's Australian reports

Pay-TV group Foxtel has joined the growing chorus of media companies seeking a comprehensive review of Australia's media and telecommunications regulation ahead of the $43 billion national broadband network rollout.

Speaking to the National Press Club in Canberra yesterday, Foxtel chief executive Kim Williams also said the federal government should allow a fourth digital-only free-to-air TV network as soon as possible.

"It should issue licences to new players to provide new networks, either terrestrially or via satellite. That will help to drive digital television take-up," Mr Williams said.

"Why shouldn't a company like Foxtel or others have the opportunity to offer a fourth free-to-air network or a fifth over satellite if we can make a business case work? Why shouldn't any other reputable and well-financed company be able to offer a fourth network terrestrially if it can make the business case work?"

IMO this is an excellent idea, not least because the boundaries between free to air and pay TV in Australia are artificial. In the UK there is a crossover or hybrid area where channels such as the local Sky News are available as free to air. In Australia the so-called "Freeview" has added some channels and quasi-channels but otherwise has done little to engage with the pay TV sector. (Of course, the reverse is also true).

While Foxtel could put a few rooms in its own house in order, eg by making Al - Jazeera TV available (not just as a counterweight to Fox News), it does otherwise provide a variety of programs some of which which deserve a wider audience. Sky News Australia reports on events in Canberra and Sydney in some depth (and occasionally runs an eye over happenings elsewhere) while the relatively new A-PAC channel has caught the ABC asleep at the wheel by providing live video coverage of federal parliament (check it out to see how rapidly each chamber empties after question time).

As the internet and other technology increasingly provide alternative means of viewing TV programs perhaps there's less need to bang on about this, but while my monitor is smaller than my TV screen it would be good to have the bigger, and broader, picture.

Snake in Melbourne CBD in June

"Snake in the city. Reptile on the loose after attack" screamed the front page of mx, Melbourne's free commuter paper. Other outlets including the ABC and The Age reported the story less feverishly.

The victim, said The Age " was taken to St Vincent's Hospital, where a swab test confirmed he had been bitten by a brown snake, one of the deadliest snakes in the world and the leading cause of snakebite deaths in Australia. But a hospital spokesman said the snake's highly-toxic venom had not entered the man's bloodstream. He remained in a stable condition, but would be kept in hospital overnight for observation."

I was surprised by this, not only because I'd believed that snakes would find it hard to survive undetected in a busy environment like the Melbourne CBD but also because it was so cold on the day (I can confirm this as I was near the scene later in the morning).

Video of the scene of the incident shows a lot of rubbish which could harbour rodents which in turn could attract snakes. But in winter? A 20cm brown snake is a young one, and therefore probably not alone....And if it can happen in Melbourne then why not in any other Australian city?

D Day 65 years on

Another anniversary : 6 June is the 65th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied landings in Normandy .

The occasion has been commemorated with a ceremony attended by several world leaders and some of the diminishing number of surviving veterans.

Another 4 Sept anniversary

Philip Adams' interview of Martin Krygier on ABC RN's Late Night Live last week reminded us that 4 June is another significant anniversary. It is 20 years since the victory of Solidarity in the first round of an election which saw democracy restored to Poland.

20 years on, how much has changed?

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square "incident". Naturally the media, the non-Chinese media that is, has commented on the occasion.

This morning Stephen McDonell reported live from the Square for ABC Radio's AM.

For a video showing how the Chinese authorities muzzled the international media check out this Al Jazeera report.

I visited Tiananmen Square in late 1997. Apart from being impressed with its size I remember thinking how calm everything looked. Perhaps it was the tourists, perhaps the lack of a visible security presence, perhaps the presence of souvenir vendors (from one of whom I bought the kite in the photo above) which made the place look much like so many other global tourist focal points (Trafalgar Square minus Nelson's Column came to mind). Maybe I was just beguiled by the hospitality and friendliness of the people I met. I don't remember asking any questions about 1989. Probably I was content to be the quintessential innocent abroad who believed that because I saw no signs of dissent that all was, if not well, at least on the mend....

Police reaction to Indian student protests damages Australia's reputation

Video of the - to put it mildly - vigorous police response to the protest by Indian international students in Melbourne against race motivated assaults has gone around the world.

Unfortunately the official response from authorities here has been deficient. Last night on ABC TV's Lateline Simon Overland came across more like PC Plod than the Victoria Police Chief Commissioner:

SIMON OVERLAND, CHIEF COMMISSIONER VICTORIA POLICE: There were other people who became involved, most of them weren't Indian, they were there for their own reasons, and I think the whole thing just got hijacked and got out of control.

RAFAEL EPSTEIN: With international attention on his officers, Simon Overland was there this morning and personally entered the crowd.

SIMON OVERLAND: We'd been in discussions with them for a long time. It got to the point where we needed to clear the intersection. So as I say, if they've been injured, I regret that, but in terms of what I saw, the police action was entirely justified and appropriate.

.....

SIMON OVERLAND: They've made their point, they've made it very powerfully. It's a point we already understood, but they've made it to the rest of the community, and I think the rest of the community understands it. If they're not careful they'll overplay their hand and the support for them will quickly evaporate.

Both the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition have condemned the attacks which gave rise to the protests but it's taken until tonight for the Foreign Minister to get out of the blocks and announce the establishment of a taskforce to investigate the issue . Commissioner Overland is not a member.

Better late than never but a lot of damage, some of it unnecessary, has been done to Australia's reputation as reports in, for example, The Hindu , Al Jazeera and the BBC attest.
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