red750

Uncle Jack Charles, Indigenous actor and activist, dies aged 79.

My hearing is getting progressively worse. Even with hearing aids I have difficulty with what is being said. I usually have to ask my daughter three times what she has said, and my son is worse. I often just give up.

Watching television has also become a problem. They have the volume set at 25 - 27,and I can barely discern that it is not muted but cannot make out what is said. If I turn it up, i get to a bit over 30, then it doesn't sound any louder no matter how much further I go. When I get to about 55, all I hear is "mwa mwa mwa."

I have tried usung the closed captions, but as I have said before in another thread, it has serious drawbacks. It's not so bad on previously recorded programs like films and sitcoms, where they have had time to convert the script to caption, and schedule it to appear at the right time, but live broadcasts are another matter. Because they have to wait till after the word is spoken before the can caption it, they are way behind the speech so trying to link caption to lip-reading is hopeless. then the captions change before you get to read them. It appears that an artificial voice-to-text is used, which often displays homonyms making it hard to make sense of the caption. A couple of examples from this morning's new broacasts:-

Post Master for Bushmaster when talking about the Australian vehicles being used in the Ukraine.

Virtual for vigil when reporting the Royal family  keeping watch on the Queen's coffin.

Being without a car, I am relying on a couple of friends to get to the Men's Shed. I have to say, I've had a few anxious moments. Going down a straight stretch of road, I have had to point out to both of them that the traffic lights ahead had turned to amber. No apparent attempt to slow down, then having to brake hard. One driver has on two occasions continued into a right turn after the arrow turned amber, resulting in completeing the turn on a red arrow. Had there been a red light camera, he would have been snapped on both occasions.

I learnt to drive when I was 22, with a driving school and an Australian instructor. This was supplimented by driving with my father in the left seat. I took each of my three kids for driving practice, usually in empty parking lots (before 7 day trading), but they also used professional driving schools to ensure I had not passed on any bad habits, and to oversee the testing.

My only serious accident, which wiped off most of the car forward of the firewall, occurred when I was making a right turn off  a main road into a side street, and a pedestrian stepped onto a crossing forcing me to stop. A car came over the hill from the opposite direction at a great rate of knots, hit the brakes and skidded into me leaving a long skid trail. He struck me on the left front wheel and spun my car 90 degrees. I got out a little shaken, but uninjured. I was held responsible because I was turning. The other car was not visible over the rise when I commenced the turn. 

Just for a laugh, I checked out the cost of renting a Toyota Corolla (or similar) from 10 am to 4 pm (6 hours) from Rent-A-Bomb. $50 for manual, $52 for automatic.

And everything that was government operated and has been privatised has gone to the pack - power generation, trains, etc.

In our street of 42 houses, there are about 6 that have Anglo-saxon or European origin.  The rest are Asian of various nationalities, Indian or Sri Lankan.

It's why you have to grip your dentures and fasten your bra straps in Melbournes suburban streets - because of all the speed humps.

Victoria is in for a four day weekend, with consecutive public holidays. Thursday as the national day of mourning, and Friday as the Grand Final Parade.

1 hour ago, Jerry_Atrick said:

the monarch is also the constitutional head of each state

Gov Gen Hurley made the national proclamation today, as did Perettet for NSW. Victoria will make theirs tomorrow.

There are those who claim aboriginal heritage, whose great great grandmother was frightened by an aborigine, just for what they can get out of it.

Who you calling a poof?  

We were discussing this at the Men's Shed on Friday. A number of the men, retired gents, say they have difficulty driving in todays traffic, and they have driven for years. Round-abouts give some the heeby jeebies, others don't like right turns and prefer to do a series of left turns and go around the block. A lot of people cannot handle 'hook turns' in Melbourne where the tram has right-of way in the middle of the road, and a right turn is made by pulling over to the left and turning when the lights change. If you watch the dash-cam footage on the news, so many drivers barrel through an intersection as if they are out on a back road in Woop Woop, or take a corner far too fast and overshoot, colliding with other cars or ploughing into a house. Is it any wonder they come to grief, at the expense of others, life included.

The girl is entitled to her opinion. It is just bad form to express it under the current circumstances. Keep it to herself. I see her as just another Adam Goodes. You don't hear CAthy Freeman saying things like that. She shows more propriety.

Maybe she was his daughter and the senior ladies step-daughter.

I see whhere Peters has renamed their Eskimo Pie as Polar Pie.

There is also contention over the minute silence at an AFLW game which caused the cancellation of the Welcome To Country ceremony, after which the minute silence was dropped from further matches, due to "cultural inappropriateness".

OK. It was unfortunate that the passing of the Queen coincided with the indigenous round of AFLW. But we have to put up with this smoking ceremony (I could call it a lot of other things) EVERY SINGLE DAY somewhere or other, sporting events, parliament, and so on. How many times do we have to be welcomed to country? And yes, the aborigines, and a lot of others, many be agrieved at the way they were treated generations ago, but are we going to be held responsible for it forever? I wasn't involved, my parents weren't involved, my grandparents weren't involved, and my kids weren't involved. 

There is a lot of anger - and joy - being expressed at the Queen's passing, in African nations, as well as here in Australia. 

NRLW player's "Dumb Dog" post.

I was in grade 3 when King George VI died, so I do remember singing God Save The King. I first saw the Queen on her 195 tour of Australia. All the students were marched to the local showground, forming a large circle. She and Prince Phillip drove around in a burgundy Land Rover.

I have never visited central or Western Australia, but in 1962 I did climb Cradle Mountain in Tasmania. Somewhere in a cupboard I have some colour slides, but haven't seen them in many years.

Opening post was one week short of a year ago. They removed the scaffolding today. Still a lot of finishing off, cleaning up and landscaping to do, but here's what it looks like naked.

Here is a photo from the builders website showing a completed version.

I lived in Sydney from 1972 to 1978, and travelled home to Melbourne a couple of times a year. I remember the 1974 flood at Gundagai. The Hume Highway used to travel through the town and over the Middleton Bridge. This photo from Google Maps shows the river from the bridge today. During that flood the water was lapping the bottom of the planks, and traffic was limited to one way at a time, with no more than two cars or one truck on the bridge at any one time. Along the highway near Jugiong, debris was caught in the fencing along the highway, and there was a high water mark on the service station wall a metre above ground level.

Got mine when I was 22, when I could afford a second-hand car.