That cute but corny aphorism came to mind as my friend Mr Shiraz misinterpreted my recent trip to Brisbane as a blood donor emergency. He wanted to know why we were braving extreme weather and I texted (flippantly) “Appointment with Dracula.” What I meant was we had tickets to Dracula, a production by Queensland Ballet. Dracula aside (one of that company’s best IMHO), you may have noticed there is a bit of a blood donor…
I will be forever grateful to the late Gough Whitlam for allowing me an opportunity to pursue a free education. I was 30 at the time with no qualifications and a chequered work history. My future lot in life was looking like casual labourer/dish pig. Not that there’s anything wrong with good honest sweat of the brow. But my undoubtedly sharp mind was frustrated by menial work and I was at a roadblock. At the…
I discovered only in the last year or so that up to 70% of ham and bacon sold in Australia is imported from Europe or the US. Your regular supermarket no doubt helps out by labelling pork products so you know what you are buying. For example, ham off the bone is almost always produced in Australia. Cheaper cuts and processed ham and smallgoods may contain up to 70% of imported pork. Australian Pork Limited recently…
This week, determined to write something without uttering the C word, I decided on a blow-by-blow description of our efforts to establish a garden. Great minds do think alike, apparently, as The Conversation published a timely piece on Monday. “It’s a great time to try – a vegetable patch.” The Conversation’s thrust is that we (the people) have more reason now than at any other time in recent history, to grow our own food. If…