Sad News

Our friend 'Grub' Younger visited us yesterday on his way back from Lakes Entrance where he spent the weekend in a fishing party of eight people from around Greta and Moyhu. He went in his own car over the top so he could do the detour to Gembrook and visit us. We had not seen Grub since Mark Kelly's send off in Wang late in 2008. He'd rang last Friday morning to tell us of his intention to visit.

Grub had been to our place twice before. When we moved into our house in July 1981 from Wang it was Grub who moved our furniture down with his cattle truck. He wouldn't even let us pay for fuel, such is the the generous nature of the man, saying he was going on to Dandenong the next day to pick up some steel. He and 'Squeak' Dinning camped on the floor by the open fire in our freezing house still without curtains or carpet and with no electricity as it was not yet connected. The second time Grub and his wife Kerry left baby Shelley with us a year or so later when they attended Bill Forge's wedding somewhere in Melbourne, returning late to stay with us. I had forgotten this but Grub reminded me. He said they must have placed the two boys who were under 5 somewhere back home.

Grub turns 65 this year. He and Kerry had 4 children who are all married. Grub has 10 grandchildren the oldest is eight. He's no longer married to Kerry, they split many years ago. He contracted cancer in his face some 7 years ago and was given even money survival chance, then told if he survived the initial treatment he had a 60 percent chance of living 5 years. He lost an eye and a cheekbone and part of his jaw and forehead. Last year he had an operation to get a new skin patch over where the eye once was as it "rotted away". The new patch has had a fluid leak ever since it was put on and the medicos have not been able to get it to heal.

When he and Kerry split he had to borrow a big whack of money to settle the dissolution, if that is the right term, so that he didn't have to sell his 500 acre farm at Hansonville, which he purchased as a young man from his uncle. He reckons now he has paid for it twice. His eldest son helped remove the debt by buying into it over a decade or so and he now owns a share.

Grub was always a short and thin but he is quite frail compared to the tough little wiry bloke I knew, mainly because it's difficult for him to eat with his reconstructed face and limited chewing ability. Red meat is out. We had a barbie and he managed a couple of chicken kebabs that he cut up very fine and some mashed potato with cheese worked in. That was it, no salad bread or sausage or chop that was also on offer. For all Grub's difficulties he remains positive, always with a quick wit and clear memory for stories.

We talked about many Greta people I have not seen or heard much of in recent times. When I asked him if Terry Wadley had come back from wherever he was in Qld he said, "Yes, he's been back in Wang for a while but things have got bad for him, he was in court last week as he robbed a bloke, and has gone to jail."

Sad Indeed. Terry's older brother Gary is one of Grub's good mates and was one of the eight in the fishing party at Lakes. Apparently Terry stayed with Gary and his wife for a while fairly recently but they ended up having a blue. Then Terry stayed with his sister for a while with the same result.

Terry was an excellent footballer good enough to win the O+K comp best and fairest in 1978. He played for Wangaratta in 1979 but came back to Greta in 1980 to "play in a premiership team", which he did. He was powerfully built for a first rover and an extremely strong runner, he'd explode out the pack and run 50 metres or more bouncing the ball. Molly called him 'Speedy Gonzales'. We were good friends. He had a broken romance which affected him greatly, but he married one of Lib's friends and I well recall their wedding in Yea. The marriage did not last all that long. Prior to all that I recall him staying at the farmhouse I rented in Moyhu, where we sat up drinking all the night till dawn after a football match, and I recall going to his parents place for dinner after training and staying the night, probably when I had lost my driver's license and moved back to live in Wang. Terry worked at the Post Office in Wang then. He was a bit of a gambler, he'd go up to the clubs in Corowa on bus trips and blow $100 on pokies no qualms. That was close to half a week's wage then.

When Lib and I left Wang to come to Gembrook to live we brought with us a rubber tree in a pot that was a gift from Terry's mother Jean. 33 years later we still have it. It has been frostbitten a number of times and dried out and been moved inside and out and repotted but at the moment it thrives and is dear to us and goes by the name 'Wadley'.

After Grub left today I googled the Wang Chronicle and came up with the newspaper report. It does sadden me, it has troubled me all day. I really liked Terry and can only think that he had some problems that were never addressed or identified and somewhere along the way this caused him to veer off the rails. The report below is nothing like the person I knew in the late 1970's.

Local man jailed for terror car-jacking, robbery at knifepoint

March 19, 2014
Categories: Court, News
Tags: violence

A WANGARATTA man will spend at least two years in jail over a car-jacking where he forced his former employer to drive into a remote section of the Warby Ranges at knifepoint.

Terrence Wadley, 59, was wearing a hoodie over his face and holding a 6-8 inch long knife when he jumped into the passenger seat of the victim’s car on the afternoon of October 23 last year.

Wadley appeared in the Wangaratta County Court on Monday and received a four and a half year jail term, with a non-parole period of two years, after pleading guilty to armed robbery and false imprisonment.

Judge Marilyn Harbison described how Wadley – who had just left his job at Wangaratta Abattoirs – forced the victim to turn off his mobile phone and drive into the Warby Range, then took his credit cards and pin numbers before leaving him stranded on the side of the road.

“You set upon an unarmed man, to impose upon him an extended criminal act in a situation where he was rightfully fearful and which has caused him significant emotional distress,” she said.

“He left the track and ran through the scrub, fearing that you might come to look for him.

“His state of terror at that time is illustrated by the fact he decided not to approach the first house he saw because he thought you may look for him there.”

 

Footy

We, Lib and I that is, did not renew our MFC membership in 2013, after probably 20 years plus of continuous membership. The reason for this was a combination of factors but mostly because of a strong dislike for the AFL system which will hopefully be explained as this post continues.

Earlier this year we were cajoled by new CEO Peter Jackson who in his open letter apologized for the poor on field performance of the MFC in recent years and saying that he understood the frustrations of supporters who had dropped off. I intended to reply to him but didn't get around to it.

Soon after a similar request from new coach Paul Roos came by email with much the same message. It was signed 'Roosy'. This time I did reply, the email has been deleted but it was along this tack.

Dear Roosy,

Thank you for your concern for the MFC. I must inform you that my failure to renew membership is not due to poor on field performance of the football team in recent seasons. It's resulting from the fact that we rarely go to the football these days as our children are now independent adults and it is no longer a family activity for us. The last few years we attended perhaps 3 games for the season so club membership was expensive at $195 pp to attend 3 games.

Beside that, we probably would still sign up were it not for the total disillusionment we feel for the AFL administration. This administration constantly harps that clubs need higher membership while at the same time it introduces two new teams that have bugger all membership and who are totally bankrolled by the AFL, and who have concessions and advantages, and with AFL finance pinch players from the poorer clubs.

We pulled the pin. We can no longer make financial contribution to an AFL system that is contrived, compromised, and lacking integrity.

We remain faithful Demon supporters who wish you every success. I was there as a twelve year old in 1964 at our last premiership. We have a player's tankard from a premiership in the 1950's, that was all they got back then, given to Lib by Don Williams who played in five. We can be happy knowing we are not being shafted by a greedy self serving AFL system that promotes largess on every front, and is a rort in the extreme.

Good luck with it, Carey Williams

I received no reply to that email. My position remains as expressed. In the meantime I have watched the announcement of Demetriou's resignation at the end of the year and noted his salary of $1million plus with bonuses of $2million. This is a heads in the trough industry. I see greedy pig's eyes when I see interviews.

The MFC will have to survive without this pilgrim putting hand in pocket. And if it doesn't that fine with me. I'd be happy if the AFL self destructed and I think it probably will.

Fish Bowl Dreams

The two days of this week have been most pleasant weather wise as I have performed my duties in a relaxed way, all the while trying to make sense of what I see and hear as I move around. I do what I have to do and look for reward in the way of food and social engagement, mainly with family but also neighbours, shopkeepers and colleagues of one sort or another, and the odd stranger.

I've picked a fair bit of wild mint from the roadside, this having shot up among the grass in a low lying place following the summer slashing and then the rain. The stench of death was heavy in the air last week in this spot and it was most unpleasant. On Friday I found its source, a large dead deer close to the road in long grass, most probably road kill. Yesterday and today the stench was still strong but it didn't bother me as much now that I knew what it was and where it came from.

I was two hours cutting back trees and shrubs in Marguerita's garden this morning to clear her electricity line 2 metres as she had a notice to do this, she said, from the power people. I do things for her now and again without payment as she's a friend and her husband is eighty this year I think and has advancing Alzeimers. They left for a medical appointment after I got there and I enjoyed the solitude and my work in the quiet rural setting away from traffic noise and distractions. And when I finished it was good to see the wire from the pole in the paddock go to the house through the garden well clear of vegetation.

The nights are cool now, the mornings fresh. Birdsong at dawn is reduced, must be the changing season. A few weeks ago it was a veritable cacophony. It's nice to go to bed with the expectation of another pleasant day tomorrow. I may be restricted to my fish bowl but all the time I look out through the glass seeking insight and reason, with thoughts extending far and to many people. We all have our bubble we live and work in but I love to see and think outside it.

I'm finding it easier to day dream yet remain moderately competent doing what I have to do. Goodo hey! And I'm dreaming a lot at night. Maybe it's the cortisone. Annie in the post office asked me how I was the other day and I said, "Great, I don't know why, but I feel great."

With a grin she said, "It must be the drugs." Perhaps she's right.

Interview Panel

Last Thursday I was part of an interview panel to select a part time curator for the Emerald Museum, a position of about six months tenure or till the $30,000 allocated by council runs out.

The Cardinia Council offered me the chance to participate as I'm the current president of the committee of management. I accepted firstly as I saw it as a duty of the president that I didn't want to shirk, and secondly because if I declined then I would not know what happened. At least I was there, I saw and talked to the four candidates. These were narrowed down to interview stage from the 27 applications and short list of 12, which I was not part of.

It was a gut wrenching experience for me, to sit in judgement of four exceptional people who all presented magnificently. I'm sure any one of the four would make an excellent curator. I rated them all very closely and feel awful that we will not have the services of three of the four.

It was four man panel, or more correctly a three women one man panel. The three women were council employees, the heritage officer, the manager of the sustainability and environment and a HR lady who led the panel.

In the end the selected candidate was chosen on personality, or rather as the personality most likely to fit the requirements in terms of suitability to the role working with the volunteers and committee. So in the end it was a 'feel thing', and may well be fallible. That is the way of it. The credentials and experience of the candidates in their resumes was extraordinary. It all came down to gut feel and to select one over three others from 4 excellent people pained me greatly on the day and the pain remains.

The interviews took most of the day. There were three before lunch and one after, then the discussion and decision making. The successful candidate was chosen after the gradings of the four panel members were pooled and totalled, with only a whisker in it.

It gutted me. Then I had an appointment with the quack re the polymyalgia in the late afternoon, to set up a program of cortisone reduction over the next four weeks. I stumbled to the end of the week and did a 'Signpost' interview yesterday afternoon with a subject I had not previously met nor had any knowledge of, but who was recommended to me. I was not disappointed, the subject has had a most interesting life and I should be able to deliver a finished article by Tuesday's deadline if I can find the time and energy to write it up which is not as easy as you would think.

TAX IS GOOD

Further to The Great Australian Dream is Over-

Tax is Good, Tax is Good

Green is Good, Green is Good

The Great Australian Dream is Over

That was the title of a talk I heard last year on radio national 621 by an economist who presented a paper to the Festival of Dangerous Ideas in Sydney last year.

With Ford Holden Toyota announcing their withdrawal from manufacturing in this country and Qantas on its knees, the talk and title rings true.

I'm not surprised at the demise of the car makers. For years it seems to me most of the new cars I see on the road are Mazdas and Hyundais. Plenty of Hi Lux and Cruisers but it's Camrys that are built here and they don't sell well. My most recent purchase is a Renault, the two prior work vehicles were Suzukis, and Lib drives a Hyundai, after two Subarus. And in recent times I've flown Jetstar, Tiger and Virgin, but I can't recall going Qantas since way back.

I have no training in marketing but I know that people will buy on price and value for the most part. In my case it is a necessity. I couldn't afford a Holden or Ford while there were cheaper vehicles to do the same job that were more economical to run to boot, and better designed. OK maybe with not as much grunt but who would care about that in most circumstances, except a moron.

There's a lot of bleating going on. The trouble with Australians is they are so busy running around telling each other and the world how great they are that they wouldn't know their arse from their front. The only reason it's such a great country is that we've had only about two hundred years since we dispossessed the indigenous inhabitants (who stood no chance to defend without any technology) to divvy up seven and a half million square kms and immense natural resource including gold iron oil copper nickel uranium coal gas, massive timber reserves along the Great Divide, fishing all around us, and huge areas of productive grazing and cropping land. We are still subdividing and ransacking and even fracking. Huge wealth has resulted in the land of the 'fair go', and everybody seems to want as much of it as they can get.

Half the country has been on strike in recent times or taking prolonged industrial action including Qantas, the police, teachers, nurses, the ambos now. Give me more give me more, more more, more. On my recent holiday to Qld I was staggered at the number of grey nomads with their big 4X4's and caravans and luxury campervans, all retired young enough to spend their several hundred thousand dollars of retirement perks. Or $millions. The radio constantly has ads for people to seminars for investment schemes of multiple investment properties to negatively gear interest against tax so that little if any is paid. In the meantime home ownership has become a dream only for a large percentage of our young people.

Australia is, I fear, by and large, becoming a nation of greedy people who whinge and grizzle at a few cents a litre rise in petrol price and who resent paying tax and welfare to the unfortunate.

Of course this is a generalization and I know many people who are not like this, but sadly a grim picture is emerging in our society that is appearing more and more farcical to me.

As for the economist who gave the talk, he said the three linchpins of the Great Australian Dream, A Good Steady Lifetime Job, Home Ownership, and Comfortable Retirement, were over for the majority of Australians into the future.

As for Qantas, Holden and Ford, I couldn't give a fig.

It's my children I worry about, and their children should they have any.

 

 


  

Polymyalgia

For most of January and February I struggled physically with debilitating stiffness and pain in my legs particularly but also my hips and buttocks and  even neck. I knew there was something wrong with me but during that time with the the severe heat I was busy watering things nearly everyday carrying buckets of water to new plantings in NHP and stuff at home. I didn't worry about stuff at the farm as Meredith and Jod are there and I worked on things that would die as no one else would attend. It was an awful summer.

I wondered if I was dehydrated, short of electrolytes or salts, it was a fatigue thing, I was lacking energy, motivation. Quite frankly I was miserable.

The weather changed mid Feb, there was no improvement with the cooler weather. In fact I was worse. My legs did not want to work. With my reduced mobility and soreness my work rate slowed and productivity dropped right off. I was having all sorts of negative thoughts and decided with great reluctance it was time to go to doctor and have blood tests.

I hadn't visited a doctor since 2011 when I had the arteritis scare so I went to the same bloke in Berwick. He asked me some questions and told me to come back in two weeks after getting blood tests in the meantime, after fasting, for a whole list of things including PSA, cholesterol, blood sugar, thyroid, kidneys. CPR, ESR, FBE, and possibly more that I don't recall from the list.

I went back to him last Thursday to get the results. In the week previous to this visit my condition worsened and I could barely drag myself out of bed with the strong pain and stiffness. The first hour or two of the day was agonizing as I did chores. After eating I took 2 ibuprofen tablets and gradually I improved so as to be able to function reasonably and get through the day albeit at reduced capacity due to slowness and lack of agility, always my greatest asset, suddenly taken away.

His diagnosis was polymyalgia. The same thing Elvie has had for 12 months. There is a hereditary factor, although it is usually occurs in people over 65. Looks like I'm old before time.

The good news is that the prescribed cortisone medication has worked a treat and I'm now getting about as normal with little pain and soreness. I take this dose of cortisone for one week then see doc again probably with a view to slowly reducing the cortisone over coming weeks, as was the case with the arteritis scare but thankfully this time there are no specialists involved and no talk of biopsies and all that other crap that cost me so dearly last time.

The good news also is that all my other test results were positive. Even my cholesterol was OK at 5.6. It was always in the 7.5-8 range  in the past and doctors were always wanting me to go on statins which I did for years but rejected about 5 years ago after my own investigations.

With my energy levels down for the past couple of months I have not posted much. I have kept my posts to comments about natural observations but there are a number of things happening I would like to comment on and I intend to in the next days. I'm pissed off about a few things and I intend to speak up.

I'm back.