Don't know when Dad took this first photo of Brent, myself and the James Craig at the Domain Slipyard, but the Tasman Bridge has been repaired, so that's betwen October 1977 and when the James Craig was towed to Sydney in 1981.
I took the second photo today, on Macquarie Wharf. Great to see her back in Hobart, in all her restored glory.
THERE wasn't much warning.
I'm on a good basis with the national park rangers … they are over the fence from me. Ranger Tony Fitzgerald was giving us updates on what was happening, but as we got our last update we could hear the fire coming up the ridge behind us. He went down the hill of the national park on one of the tourist roads and came back up and said the fires were 700 metres away. He said: "You can leave now if you want to. If you want to stay we will help you out if we can."
We decided to stay in the house. Within three minutes the flames were 30 to 40 metres high. There were horizontal sparks and embers — the wind was just incredible. The word "firestorm" — I have a clear understanding of it now.
We were inside the house and the noise outside was incredible. Sparks and embers were bashing up against the roof and the windows, the fence had caught fire, the woodpile against the house caught fire.
Then the windows started exploding — it sounded like a 747 taking off. It was broad daylight but it went dark because there was so much smoke and stuff — it just went dark.
The house was on fire. I had three attempts at getting everyone out safely — they were all in the lounge room. I kept going outside to see if we could get a decent path out, but the radiant heat was the killer. The first two times I went out, the radiant heat just forced me back in the house.
At that point I knew I had to wait for that initial part of the storm to pass over. Unfortunately, it consumed the house while we were in it. I shut all the bedroom doors.
We lost two cats and five kittens — I had to shut the bedroom door and we listened to them die. We saved our little dog, Cougar. It was traumatic for the kids. I had to shut the door because the windows had exploded and the bedrooms were on fire.
I made my third attempt at going outside. The radiant heat had passed a little, and I just thought, "We have to get out." I had buckets of water outside. I took them in and got sheets and towels, dipped them into the water and wrapped everyone up over their heads and their faces and told them we had to go.
When we were 100 metres from the house, the roof collapsed. That was one or two minutes after we got out.
We ran out into the street. There were flames everywhere. You just looked down the street and there was devastation. It was like the army came in and bombed the whole thing with napalm.
We were running down the street. Gas cylinders were exploding. A lot of the cylinders had safety features on them … apparently when a gas cylinder heats up, a valve releases and all the gas comes out of the cylinder, so there was lots of shhhh noises.
A lot of cars were exploding — it was like a war zone. We had to step over power lines, go under power lines, there were power poles falling over in front of us, trees coming down everywhere.
And the noise — all I can compare it to is the sound of a 747 taking off. We were running down the street and the radiant heat was getting at us. We had to keep moving. If you stood still you would have shrivelled.
We ran down the street for about a kilometre — there was just no one, no one to help. My girlfriend was going, "Where the hell are the fire brigade?" I said, "We are on our own, we have got to go." I just had to keep them going, I said, "Keep going, keep going, faster."
We got to one house about a kilometre away and there was someone there spraying water on it. We took refuge in their house. There was a lady inside. We were probably there for about 10 minutes.
I was popping in and out of the house because I was paranoid about what was going to happen. His pump stopped working and then his balcony caught fire and I just went back in and said, "We gotta go." My girlfriend didn't want to leave. I started swearing: "We have got to go f---ing now." We got the kids and the dog and we left … we left those people there. Fortunately we caught up with them at the third house we got to — our final refuge.
We went to another house where a man was watering down his house. He had his son with him. He told us to get inside and we felt quite safe. He was outside running round, wetting it all down. Then another 10 minutes went past and he said, "I can't save it — we've got to go."
We had to go only 50 metres over the road to the third house. It was owned by a lady who was a CFA member and she had left the firefighting front to come home and save her home. She was really well set up. She had fire pumps.
The kids sheltered in the basement part of the house — they were very traumatised. My daughter was having an asthma attack at that point. We had no medication and we had to get her down low on the floor because it was all full of smoke under the house as well. I just had to talk her through it, telling her, "You have just got to calm down, you have to breathe through it slowly, just relax, we are safe now."
When she was feeling a bit better I went out and helped the men. We were there for about half an hour until the bulk of the flames had left. Then we were just going around the house blacking out spot fires.
We stayed there for probably about an hour and then went to the local CFA and slept on the floor there for the night.
Luke van den Berk is the caretaker of a 33-hectare Kinglake West property, owned by the Macedonian Church. When the firestorm hit, he was trapped in the house with his children — sons Aaron, 13, and Khyle, 12, and daughter Brodee, 16 — and his girlfriend, Lois MacDonald, 42. This is their story.
http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/i-now-understand-the-word-firestorm-20090209-8288.html?page=-1
It was (my beautiful wife) Katie's 30th birthday on January 17. Of course, we celebrated in style. Around a dozen of us tripped upriver by ferry to Moorilla, a pretty swish restaurant/winery/brewery/soon to be international modern art gallery on the banks of the Derwent, followed by cake and champers back at Bonnington Road with a whole bunch of wellwishers.
Over the Australia Day long weekend, a bunch of us trooped down to Pete's family's amazingly located shack at Randall's Bay to celebrate Richard's 40th birthday.
The Guardian cartoonist looks back at his years drawing the outgoing US president. Click here to play.
Obituary
In their early 1970s heyday, the Stooges were one of punk rock's archetypal bands, creating music that was to inspire and influence several generations of younger groups in America and Britain. Most attention was focused on the charismatic lead singer, Iggy Pop, but the band's sound owed just as much to the aggressive and elemental guitar playing of Ron Asheton, who has died aged 60. Paying tribute to Asheton, Steve Jones of the Sex Pistols said that the early Stooges albums had provided him with a blueprint for playing guitar.
Asheton was born in Washington DC but moved to the college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan, as a child. He and his younger brother, Scott, attended Pioneer high school there and soon became involved in the town's thriving rock music scene. At 17, he became the bass player with local groups the Prime Movers and the Chosen Few, and met James Osterberg, who had recently adopted the stage name Iggy Pop.
Pop soon left in search of a career as a blues drummer in Chicago, but according to Asheton, he abandoned this goal in 1967 and called him to suggest they form a band along with Scott, who by then was a promising drummer. With the addition of bass player Dave Alexander, the trio formed the Psychedelic Stooges, playing their first gig at a Halloween party.
Shortening their name to the Stooges, they were championed by Detroit rock magazine Creem and were given a recording contract with an advance of $25,000 by Elektra Records, which had recently signed another local band, the MC5. John Cale of the Velvet Underground produced the eponymous debut album, which accurately reflected the group's live sound on songs such as No Fun, Down on the Street and I Wanna Be Your Dog, a track that one critic said had "given birth to 50,000 bands".
The album was critically acclaimed but sold poorly, as did the next album, Fun House. The Stooges were inactive for a large part of 1971 and 1972 as Pop recovered from drug addiction. They re-formed, partly at the insistence of David Bowie, whose manager Tony de Fries undertook to find them a new record contract. With the addition of guitarist James Williamson, the Stooges played their first show outside America at the King's Cross cinema (now the Scala) in London and recorded a new album. Asheton reverted to playing bass, with Williamson taking the lead guitar role on Raw Power, which was produced by Bowie and issued in 1973.
Like its predecessors, Raw Power was a commercial failure, and in 1974 the Stooges disbanded. While Pop teamed up with Bowie and followed a solo career, Asheton formed the group Destroy All Monsters with former MC5 member Michael Davis. His later groups included the New Order and Dark Carnival.
In the 1980s and 90s, Asheton had little financial reward from his music, claiming in an interview that he often played for only $15 a night. Rolling Stone magazine rated him the 29th most important guitarist in popular music - describing him as "the Detroit punk who made the Stooges' music reek like a puddle of week-old biker sweat" - and he enjoyed the growing recognition of his influential place in the punk pantheon, especially in Europe. He told an interviewer in 2007: "It's great to be able to play in front of an audience that knows the lyrics to your songs."
His career began to revive in 1998 when he contributed music to Velvet Goldmine, a film celebrating the glam rock era. Two years later he, his brother and the bass player Mike Watt - replacing Alexander, who died in 1975 - recreated the original Stooges sound in a series of concerts.
Pop attended one show and suggested a Stooges reunion. The first shows were staged in 2003, after which the Stooges recorded a new album, The Weirdness - which, like the earlier albums, did not sell well - and toured several times, memorably performing at the 2007 Glastonbury festival.
Asheton's body was found at his Ann Arbor home. The cause of death was unknown, but unconfirmed reports said he had been dead for several days.
He is survived by Scott.
• Ronald Franklin Asheton Jr, guitarist, born 17 July 1948; died 6 January 2009
Wild Oats XI won line honours for the fourth consecutive time in the Sydney - Hobart Yacht Race this morning. The race record stayed intact, with a quite civilised 9.34am finish at Castray Esplanade.
Now we're off to the first day of the Taste Festival. Tis a good time to be in Hobart.
Officers had warned cyclists gathering in London every month for the Critical Mass protest that they were liable for prosecution for failing to notify police.
However, the Law Lords ruled that since it was a regular protest with no specific organisers, it was not subject to controls.
The ruling will have an impact on similar gatherings around the country that face regulation by the police.
The Critical Mass protest has gathered in London every month for more than ten years. The colourful and often noisy gathering of up to 1,000 people began as a celebration of cycling but over the years has become a wider protest on environmental issues and against war.
However, the Metropolitan Police argued the protest was unlawful because no advance notice was given. They said the police needed prior notice of the ride's date, time and route and the names and addresses of the organisers in order to maintain public safety.
Critical Mass fought back, claiming that because the cycle rides are "commonly or customarily held" they are exempt from public order legislation.
Five law lords at the House of Lords agreed that the ride was a "customary procession". They said that since the protest is spontaneous and not organised by anyone it is not necessary to give the names of organisers or the route.
On the question of similar protests, the Lords said the legislation was not designed to restrict gatherings like Critical Mass.
Phil Michaels, the lawyer for Critical Mass, said it set a precedent for other types of protest that take place on a regular basis.
And following a crackdown on protests around the House of Commons in the wake of anti-terrorism laws, he said it had wider implications for free speech.
"This is a case in which the highest court in the land has upheld the right to protest peacefully and has said in essence that if those rights are to be curbed then it needs the clearest possible language from Parliament before that happens."
The Sun Princess leaving Hobart at 11.30 this morning. The Diamond Princess (still docked) pushed off about 6pm. They're just floating motels really.
If I swivel 180 degrees. Click the pic for full image, cos there's some missing.
Well, the day of judgement finally arrived for young Ham, Sausage and Cha Xiu. Duncan took them off to the Cradoc Slaughterhouse Sunday a week ago, and on Friday night just gone, He, Katie and myself collected our sharpest knives and decamped to Tim's place for a night of home butchery. 
(fuelled by Duncan's home brew) we managed to get oursleves a fair whack of lovely organic pork. By the end, the pigs came in at about 70Kg each, which meant hams of about 15Kg. You can work out the rest of it from there. needless to say, the frypan was working overtime cookin the scraps on Friday night. I've buried our ham
(as displayed here by the beautiful Katie) in about thirty kilos of salt. Gonna leave it there for a month, and then hang it in Mum & Dad's beautifully cool, yet sometimes drafty workshop for probably the best part of twelve months. We'll see what comes out of it then, eh? As for the rest of the product, it's bloody tasty, and well worth the effort involved. In fact, some Gordon's Knob Pork Neck was one of the primary ingredients in one of the dishes Mary served up to us at a sumptious Chinese dinner party hosted by Becher and herself on Saturday night. Yum yum.THE retail king Gerry Harvey may have a personal fortune of about $1.6 billion but the Harvey Norman founder thinks donating to charity is "just wasted".
Asked in a new book about the role he and Harvey Norman play in the community, Mr Harvey said giving money to people who "are not putting anything back into the community" is like "helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason".
He said he believed in helping "develop people to their potential" because "when they achieve [their potential] they will put a lot more back into the community".
"You could go out and give a million dollars to a charity tomorrow to help the homeless. You could argue that it is just wasted. They are not putting anything back into the community.
"It might be a callous way of putting it but what are they doing? You are helping a whole heap of no-hopers to survive for no good reason. They are just a drag on the whole community.
"So did that million you gave them help? It helped to keep them alive but did it help our society? No. Society might have been better off without them but we are supposed to look after the disadvantaged and so we do it. But it doesn't help the society."
Mr Harvey added: "That is not to say we don't give money away to charities because we have given plenty away over the years. At the end of the day, the more quality individuals you develop in the community, the better off the community should be."
Earlier this year, Harvey Norman donated beds to a charity, Bridge Back to Life, that helps homeless men find rental accommodation.
The comments are in a new book, Master CEOs, by the Sydney funds manager Matthew Kidman.
Clare Martin, the chief executive of the Australian Council of Social Service, said: "I have really been impressed at corporate Australia and their real involvement in the wider community … and I always thought that Harvey Norman shared that as well.
"It does surprise me that Gerry Harvey, who's a very significant business figure, should not share the values of many other corporates."
In the interview, Mr Harvey also said that despite his wealth, "I still have a fear about going broke. I always think about it."
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| Dobbin, with what remains of the ""ghost bike |
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| James Foster |
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