Special dates

On certain dates, the alignment of the date/time forms special patterns …

Japanese bureaucracy gone mad !!!

Here is an example that I discovered of the way the Japanese mind thinks 🙂

Second anniversary !!!

January 2009 is the second anniversary of this Blog, and considering the lack of time I have had to work on it, particularly the second half of 2008, I still rather pleased with the amount of hits it is getting …

Please remain seated for landing !!!

A light plane pilot in the US has had what must be the most amazing survival from a plane crash …

A day in the city with Osamu Tezuka

Today I spent a day travelling to the city to visit the ‘Tezuka – the Marval of Manga’ exhibition at the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

A day in the Blue Mountains

Yesterday we spent a nice day out (except for the latter part when it rained) in the Blue Mountains.  

The Dog is dead :-(

The trip down the Hume Highway from Sydney to parts south is always broken by a rest stop at the famous ‘Dog on the Tuckerbox’ memorial, just north of Gundagai in southern New South Wales.

If you don’t know the background story, I’m sure you can find out about it easily on the internet, but it is a ‘legend’ that every Aussie knows. There are always lots of people there taking photos, particularly international tourists …

The cafe and gift shop has been there since 1956, and apparently run by the same people since 1982.

You can even post letters there and get a special postmark !!!

 

So imagine our surpise and shock when we saw this notice on the door …

We only missed it by 4 days 😦

The notice says …

“This shop will cease trading at 5 P.M. on Friday 22/12/06.

After 24 years the big boys have finally got us!

We have greatly appreciated your past support and we have done our best to make your visit here enjoyable.

Any enquires should be directed to the Gundagai Shire Council, TEL (02) 6944 0200.

Good luck from the management and staff and the dog.”

I imagine the ‘big boys’ refers to the nearby establishments of a large restaurant/souvenir shop called ‘Bullocky Bills’ (foreground in photo), together with a large service station complex that also contains a Subway and KFC (background in photo). We actually stopped for lunch at the ‘Bullocky Bills’ place on the trip down, and whilst it was busy, there is no excuse to have to wait 45 minutes for a simple takeway meal !!! They seemed to have lots of staff running around aimlessly not knowing what to do next, looking at dockets etc and not enough bodies in the kitchen actually preparing the food. However I must say when the food finally arrived there was nothing wrong with it.

There is also another service station across the road that has been closed for a while now, and another one a little way up the road in the other direction that is based around a couple of old railway carriages (not sure if it was still open though) .

This is a another shocking example of a famous Australian icon losing out to the greed of commercialism. It had lots of nice trees and shady places to sit and also to park your car under, and old farming relics scattered around. So what do the new places offer ? – no trees and acres of hot concrete parking !!!

If you want to voice your support, I urge you to ring the number listed in the notice above and make a complaint !!!