16/10/2019
today, i caught a bus, and that bus went through berkeley n.s.w. i never thought the bus was going through berkeley n.s.w. i never said a word whilst on the bus through berkeley n.s.w. there was voices all around me on the bus through berkeley n.s.w. it wasn't until tonight that i thought i could tell them voices a story or two about berkeley n.s.w. so here we are.
6nov2019
when i was born at wollongong hospital, i then lived at berkeley n.s.w . i don't remember all that much about berkeley n.s.w. the bits i do remember are patchy. but as the bus traveled through berkeley n.s.w. things came back. quite a few actually. even stuff i had no idea about. like, after i came home after being born. my mother said she left me in the pram at the little mall that was there, similar to the unanderra mall. luckily the shop keeper seen me. apparently there's some syndrome women get after giving birth they leave the kid or forget about them . i don't know about that stuff. never knew about that episode until about a year or so go.
4may2020
the beginning is the end. i had more too add here, a few photos and stories, but at the moment the library is closed due to covid ep. so, i have to wait to scan.
Wednesday, October 16, 2019
Sunday, July 28, 2019
1969
29july2019
i was wondering where to now. 50 years since a few things. so i thought yes and no about a 1969 blog. it's a lot to remember back then, but with all this moon stuff recently, it sort of brought back a few things from back then. i don't know if i can stretch them out, into a sensible writing. that may take time, in your head is one thing, if you know what i mean.
1aug2019
i've thinking about this a little tiny bit, mainly its not going to be too long and i better hurry up, or it'll 2020. the main thought about this is, i've written earlier blogs that have parts in them relevant to this, such as jester and midnight cowboy, probably other early things as well. to start off 1969, i can remember where i lived 17 beatus st unanderra for the first part. i don't live there any more so i don't give a shit about it now. i'd say we moved from the shack on the highway sometime during 1968. and by the end of 1969 we had moved to my grandmothers place, 2 fraser st. i can remember a summer holiday going to dapto pool and getting really sunburnt and living at beatus st. so that had to be january 1969.
6aug2019
i done a search for the beatus st house, the house is still there as it was in 1969. there was a large tree in the front yard , it ain't there now. the photo i checked out, were of the house, been renovated just like mutton dressed up to be lamb. as i can mainly remember the floor was of polished varnished floor boards. the was no flush loo, the dunny out the back, an out house. the dunny man came once a week or so, to collect and replace the dunny cans, shit tins. what's goes 10 mph, has 100 pistons (piss tins) and flies? a dunny truck.
13aug2019
i think when we lived there it was worth about 17,000. it last sold apparently for 340,000 aus$ in 2012, and is now valued 543,000. property is overpriced. getting back to january, i started fifth class, a lot has been written in earlier blogs as i said before. we got a new kid, although through the years earlier, we had people coming and going, a lot left and went to public school. there was one guy not one who came and went, but was an only. his parents adopted a little brother, who turned out to be a bad arse. so they sent him back and got a more timid one , and gave him the first ones name. i wonder what the first ones name went back to. up until that point in my life i felt like i was like birdboy. why? you might ask. me and birdboy only in the class had the foreskin. so when the new kid had one too, and he wasn't a spazznik. i felt a lot better about myself. you might think it's nothing, but when your young and don't know that stuff. i used think i wasn't a boy or girl just cursed. everybody was circumcised.
15aug2019
since writing that last bit, my minds been all over the place. i made the ginger beer at that whether it was 1968 or 1969, who knows, still tasted like shit anyway. i thought of how birdboys way had let us down in some past events. i'll throw this in just for the sake of it. a few years earlier before they moved the rugby league to figtree. they used to train at the park, we were asked to make a team after school, only the unanderra people. i remember reds old man was given the job to train us. we weren't very good, only nippers. you'd throw the ball to birdboy, and he'd be standing there, not clicking his fingers, but some weird finger movements there. i think reds old man just gave up, there wasn't no more team, don't know what happened there. not long after that red moved to the public school. getting back to 1969, with the new kid, john mc, he was from scotland, whether it be true or not he became my same ie equal, as a pose to birdboy.
27aug2019
i haven't forgotten about this, it's just thinking about it, and basically trying not to repeat myself too much. i know i've said in earlier blogs about bands and so called musical things here and there. i'm sure i said something about bands in back yards. as it happens, john mc had an elder brother , peter. i never meet him, even though me and john became good friends, and i would go to his place out of school and ride push bikes and things. when he first came to our school, he still had the old other school uniform on . anyway, he used to say his brother was a drummer in a band somewhere. for me to remember this shit, is really raking the brain. i sort of remember doing a google search a few years back , when i wrote it in the earlier blog, but couldn't really find much. time changes things , i remember searching about led light shows around 2002 and there was fuck all. now there heaps of shit. i remember john's brothers band set up a played in their parents backyard, could of been 1969 or 70. i think i might of missed some it , but the instruments were setup in the backyard, and had played a bit when i arrived. i remember talking to a few guys of the band vaguely on their back veranda. you know i was only 10 or 11. name of the band and songs are beyond me. john's brother name and drummer i remember , he was sometimes going on about it. i did another google search lately and came up with this ....red angel panic (there was a url link but the you tube page has been deleted, find about the band elsewhere.) .
11sept2019
haven't really thought much about this blog of late. my main thought is probably about name dropping. when i first started doing the main clag eartha blog, i tried to keep name dropping to a minimum, using alternative and christen names. with that red angel panic band , the chris bailey bass player, is not to be confused with chris bailey of the saints. although, chris bailey of red angel panic went on to other aussie bands. theres also the chance that ,that wasn't the band in the backyard. it was a one off thing. better i just left it there.
16sept2019
getting back to the main about this 1969 blog. the main is about the moon landing, 50 years since. how many times in that 50 years, have people asked the question, where were you? that question is the main reason for typing this. our class missed the moon landing, we were at a funeral for a girl in our class who was run over or hit by the school bus. very sad really, so i'm reminded of that every time i hear that question. she lived in the berkeley suburb, where half of the class lived. i can't really remember much about that. the funeral was at the berkeley church, when we got back to school , it was all over, man had made the giant step on the moon. that's it really. i could go on about it but choose not to. http://ryersonindex.org/search.php
18sept2019
with that ryerson index, you could use your wits ie, location and date. saves me naming names, r.i.p. i thought about the incident, i couldn't remember or didn't know how she died. i decided to go to the library, and check out the micro film. it's now hooked up to the computer, but with age the poor old mirco is getting a bit blurred. in my search i found a few interesting snippets. i'll throw them in for keeps sake.
22sept2019
this next bit is about how i feel now about that stuff. i said before i've died many times, i believe in a secular way , that when people you know die, part of you dies too. i say secular cause the spirit doesn't. it's a realm i haven't really enjoyed going back to, although i have learnt somethings . i honestly thought that kennedy thing happened sometime like 1974. i wonder if he had time to enjoy the moon landing. when his brother robert was shot a year earlier , the class used to pray the rosary everyday for him up unto his death , which was some days. all the even type years, kinder, 2nd, 4th & 6th classes we had nuns. and the odd years we had a woman teacher, not a nun. it was 5th class that jester wrote the shit on the wall. i'm not sure if that was before or after the accident. i say this because he had a sister who was run over ,while she was in a pram as a child. we thought that had affected him with the height thing. that happened years before, we never talked about that stuff, but my mind remembers we were told about it when we were younger. when you've moved on from that stuff, it's not so pleasant going back there.
8oct2019
that's pretty much as all i had to say in this blog about 1969. there's probably a few more things that happened personally that year, i don't feel like digging for that stuff. good or bad who cares, it all levels off in the end, nothing to serious happened that rings a bell. serious then a that age, would be seen as trivial now, i remember one thing about primary school whether it was 1969 or not. i sometimes chuckle about. the teacher left the class and got a goody goody to watch the class. if someone played up, the goody goody was told to write the initials of that person and a cross next to their name, if they didn't stop playing up. then that person would have to write lines. we never heard of lines before. me and another guy thought, you draw lines with a ruler. so we'd play up and she'd put a cross next to our initials. we just draw a line on the page and play up again. when the teacher came back and saw all the crosses on the blackboard , she said what's this, and sent the goody goody back to her chair. don't know what happened, can't remember. then the teacher saw the lines we had drawn, and said what's that , we said lines. she said that's not lines. we soon found out.
i was wondering where to now. 50 years since a few things. so i thought yes and no about a 1969 blog. it's a lot to remember back then, but with all this moon stuff recently, it sort of brought back a few things from back then. i don't know if i can stretch them out, into a sensible writing. that may take time, in your head is one thing, if you know what i mean.
1aug2019
i've thinking about this a little tiny bit, mainly its not going to be too long and i better hurry up, or it'll 2020. the main thought about this is, i've written earlier blogs that have parts in them relevant to this, such as jester and midnight cowboy, probably other early things as well. to start off 1969, i can remember where i lived 17 beatus st unanderra for the first part. i don't live there any more so i don't give a shit about it now. i'd say we moved from the shack on the highway sometime during 1968. and by the end of 1969 we had moved to my grandmothers place, 2 fraser st. i can remember a summer holiday going to dapto pool and getting really sunburnt and living at beatus st. so that had to be january 1969.
6aug2019
i done a search for the beatus st house, the house is still there as it was in 1969. there was a large tree in the front yard , it ain't there now. the photo i checked out, were of the house, been renovated just like mutton dressed up to be lamb. as i can mainly remember the floor was of polished varnished floor boards. the was no flush loo, the dunny out the back, an out house. the dunny man came once a week or so, to collect and replace the dunny cans, shit tins. what's goes 10 mph, has 100 pistons (piss tins) and flies? a dunny truck.
13aug2019
i think when we lived there it was worth about 17,000. it last sold apparently for 340,000 aus$ in 2012, and is now valued 543,000. property is overpriced. getting back to january, i started fifth class, a lot has been written in earlier blogs as i said before. we got a new kid, although through the years earlier, we had people coming and going, a lot left and went to public school. there was one guy not one who came and went, but was an only. his parents adopted a little brother, who turned out to be a bad arse. so they sent him back and got a more timid one , and gave him the first ones name. i wonder what the first ones name went back to. up until that point in my life i felt like i was like birdboy. why? you might ask. me and birdboy only in the class had the foreskin. so when the new kid had one too, and he wasn't a spazznik. i felt a lot better about myself. you might think it's nothing, but when your young and don't know that stuff. i used think i wasn't a boy or girl just cursed. everybody was circumcised.
15aug2019
since writing that last bit, my minds been all over the place. i made the ginger beer at that whether it was 1968 or 1969, who knows, still tasted like shit anyway. i thought of how birdboys way had let us down in some past events. i'll throw this in just for the sake of it. a few years earlier before they moved the rugby league to figtree. they used to train at the park, we were asked to make a team after school, only the unanderra people. i remember reds old man was given the job to train us. we weren't very good, only nippers. you'd throw the ball to birdboy, and he'd be standing there, not clicking his fingers, but some weird finger movements there. i think reds old man just gave up, there wasn't no more team, don't know what happened there. not long after that red moved to the public school. getting back to 1969, with the new kid, john mc, he was from scotland, whether it be true or not he became my same ie equal, as a pose to birdboy.
27aug2019
i haven't forgotten about this, it's just thinking about it, and basically trying not to repeat myself too much. i know i've said in earlier blogs about bands and so called musical things here and there. i'm sure i said something about bands in back yards. as it happens, john mc had an elder brother , peter. i never meet him, even though me and john became good friends, and i would go to his place out of school and ride push bikes and things. when he first came to our school, he still had the old other school uniform on . anyway, he used to say his brother was a drummer in a band somewhere. for me to remember this shit, is really raking the brain. i sort of remember doing a google search a few years back , when i wrote it in the earlier blog, but couldn't really find much. time changes things , i remember searching about led light shows around 2002 and there was fuck all. now there heaps of shit. i remember john's brothers band set up a played in their parents backyard, could of been 1969 or 70. i think i might of missed some it , but the instruments were setup in the backyard, and had played a bit when i arrived. i remember talking to a few guys of the band vaguely on their back veranda. you know i was only 10 or 11. name of the band and songs are beyond me. john's brother name and drummer i remember , he was sometimes going on about it. i did another google search lately and came up with this ....red angel panic (there was a url link but the you tube page has been deleted, find about the band elsewhere.) .
11sept2019
haven't really thought much about this blog of late. my main thought is probably about name dropping. when i first started doing the main clag eartha blog, i tried to keep name dropping to a minimum, using alternative and christen names. with that red angel panic band , the chris bailey bass player, is not to be confused with chris bailey of the saints. although, chris bailey of red angel panic went on to other aussie bands. theres also the chance that ,that wasn't the band in the backyard. it was a one off thing. better i just left it there.
16sept2019
getting back to the main about this 1969 blog. the main is about the moon landing, 50 years since. how many times in that 50 years, have people asked the question, where were you? that question is the main reason for typing this. our class missed the moon landing, we were at a funeral for a girl in our class who was run over or hit by the school bus. very sad really, so i'm reminded of that every time i hear that question. she lived in the berkeley suburb, where half of the class lived. i can't really remember much about that. the funeral was at the berkeley church, when we got back to school , it was all over, man had made the giant step on the moon. that's it really. i could go on about it but choose not to. http://ryersonindex.org/search.php
18sept2019
with that ryerson index, you could use your wits ie, location and date. saves me naming names, r.i.p. i thought about the incident, i couldn't remember or didn't know how she died. i decided to go to the library, and check out the micro film. it's now hooked up to the computer, but with age the poor old mirco is getting a bit blurred. in my search i found a few interesting snippets. i'll throw them in for keeps sake.
july 19 to 21,1969
22sept2019
this next bit is about how i feel now about that stuff. i said before i've died many times, i believe in a secular way , that when people you know die, part of you dies too. i say secular cause the spirit doesn't. it's a realm i haven't really enjoyed going back to, although i have learnt somethings . i honestly thought that kennedy thing happened sometime like 1974. i wonder if he had time to enjoy the moon landing. when his brother robert was shot a year earlier , the class used to pray the rosary everyday for him up unto his death , which was some days. all the even type years, kinder, 2nd, 4th & 6th classes we had nuns. and the odd years we had a woman teacher, not a nun. it was 5th class that jester wrote the shit on the wall. i'm not sure if that was before or after the accident. i say this because he had a sister who was run over ,while she was in a pram as a child. we thought that had affected him with the height thing. that happened years before, we never talked about that stuff, but my mind remembers we were told about it when we were younger. when you've moved on from that stuff, it's not so pleasant going back there.
8oct2019
that's pretty much as all i had to say in this blog about 1969. there's probably a few more things that happened personally that year, i don't feel like digging for that stuff. good or bad who cares, it all levels off in the end, nothing to serious happened that rings a bell. serious then a that age, would be seen as trivial now, i remember one thing about primary school whether it was 1969 or not. i sometimes chuckle about. the teacher left the class and got a goody goody to watch the class. if someone played up, the goody goody was told to write the initials of that person and a cross next to their name, if they didn't stop playing up. then that person would have to write lines. we never heard of lines before. me and another guy thought, you draw lines with a ruler. so we'd play up and she'd put a cross next to our initials. we just draw a line on the page and play up again. when the teacher came back and saw all the crosses on the blackboard , she said what's this, and sent the goody goody back to her chair. don't know what happened, can't remember. then the teacher saw the lines we had drawn, and said what's that , we said lines. she said that's not lines. we soon found out.
Saturday, December 15, 2018
rubix
15dec2018
just to prove i'm still somewhere, i thought i put up a solution for the cube. probably stories about the thing popping into my worldly earthy space, would also be a story of the eighties and the people twirling the thing in the most strangest places. if you could remember that time.
Rubix have a go with my paint time and my interpretation of
according to wikapedia this is the original colour setup. since the start of the cube, colour setup can be different depending on manufactured product.
centre cube - is stationary. edge cube - two colours , moved to edge. corner cube - 3 colours , moved to corner.
16dec2018
i always thought the cube had been around a lot longer than it actually is. i genuinely thought it was around in the 60's. for some reason it reminded me of them chinese finger torture things, you got in them crappy christmas stockings in the 60's. finger torture, did i hear you say. they were just small matted/platted roll, not many knew what it was. put your finger in either end, easy in , never out. you know what i mean. the time of the cube was slow at first, then it took off. personally, i liked brain teaser things, ie jigsaw puzzles , puzzle rings , mastermind game and that stuff. popular before computers .at that time i was busy doing other stuff , like work and going out. i might/probably got one of them early on, but never got past one side, and there it stood for not done. i went from brain teaser wiz to dumb fuck. too much , too many other things. as time went on, and the popularity grew, and people just took the stickers off and on, saying i done it. not many people could do it. then came the book/s of how to do it. for me, back then, if you can't do it out right , then why bother, cheating. for those who weren't around then, it was fadtastic, marriages were breaking up, cause husbands spending all their time on the cube and not responsibility.
19dec2018
sometime between 1981 and 1983, i noticed someone had been trying to solve the cube and it was left around the house, like goldilocks. i just thought half your luck. then after a few days, i saw the cube with the middle bit done. i thought i never got that far, must of moved the stickers.
13april2019
around 1983 we got some new blokes on the railway gang, not really, i seen many come and go during my time there. one chap by the name of john, done that job for a while, maybe a few months. only a short guy, i can still picture him sitting in the truck canopy, his little legs swinging back and forth and twirling his cube. he was a bit of a wiz with it. he asked if someone could twirl it to a hard solution, and he'd figure it out. i said i know a really hard positioned squares , he gave me his cube, i moved two stickers while he wasn't looking. and said here you are, work this out. he twirled for a bit, and said hang on , then got the shits. you don't do that. i said , you said, you wanted a hard solution. i still laugh at that. he was the first cube nut i meet, that's how far it got. he apparently was a piano player, and ended up teaching the piano, i'd see his ad in the paper a few years later.
20april2019
that reminds of this other person , also a musician, even pictured in them ironworkers photos. he was probably the first person i ever knew who apparently worked the cube out by himself , most probably around 1980, early on in the fad. he was the dux of his school, them type of people seem troubled to me, somehow. he died sometime ago now. as for the cube, i wasn't much interested in the thing. a time after twirly john left. even longer, after a bit of trouble with the shifty job, i was back on the day shift gang doing the hard yakka. we had this old, well old to me then, truck driver.
26april2019
today, i done the old google on twirly john, he's still tuitaring the piano, it says 30 years at it. i wonder when was the last time he twirled the rubix. if you think this rubix blog don't fit in with the other blogs, the truck driver may change all that. the trucks were contracted, and the drivers worked for that company, they didn't do no railroad job, just drove us to the job then back to the yard. over them years we had about two handfuls of drivers, we're talking the dayshift gangs.
30april2019
you know everybody has a story, and this particular truck driver did have some. seeing i was stuck in the dayshift gang, with no really way out. after a time, we got a talking. if i had only known things i've found out latter, very many of. one not really related, was early on doing the platelaying job, at lunch time, we were working close to my grandmothers house. i nearly said to john henry lets go over my grand mothers house, i never did. stuff like that. anyway , the truckdriver had heaps of stories of the early fifties of singing contests and fisticuffs fights. i told him the story of twirly john, he said he figured out the cube on his own.
29may2019
not long after he was seating in his truck twirling on the cube, this is after the big fad, around 1986. he showed me he could do it, i said, i never got round to figuring it out. next, he brought in a 4 in a row one , he figure that one out too, i don't know where their heads are at. i asked if he could write down a solution. i never thought much about it. but that i showed interest in it. not long after, he brought in some paper with the solution all drawn and instructed. at the time you could get a cube for 10 cent, they were throwing them away. i picked one up from somewhere, and sat down one night and read the paper and done the thing. his instructions were sort of easier to follow than the book that was released. i actually made a little book out of a tobacco pouch paper, the paper in the middle of a drum tobacco packet, with the solution in pages in it. i gave it to brain wave at tech in 1995. i've also got in on a floppy disk, an old apple floppy disk. as soon as i figure out how to transfer it to here i will,
18july2019
rather than figure out how to transfer from the old floppy disk. i found some old dot matrix print pages of that continuous stuff, stashed away with other brickaty brak pass age. went and scanned it.
note ditto, wtf
just to prove i'm still somewhere, i thought i put up a solution for the cube. probably stories about the thing popping into my worldly earthy space, would also be a story of the eighties and the people twirling the thing in the most strangest places. if you could remember that time.
Rubix have a go with my paint time and my interpretation of
according to wikapedia this is the original colour setup. since the start of the cube, colour setup can be different depending on manufactured product.
centre cube - is stationary. edge cube - two colours , moved to edge. corner cube - 3 colours , moved to corner.
16dec2018
i always thought the cube had been around a lot longer than it actually is. i genuinely thought it was around in the 60's. for some reason it reminded me of them chinese finger torture things, you got in them crappy christmas stockings in the 60's. finger torture, did i hear you say. they were just small matted/platted roll, not many knew what it was. put your finger in either end, easy in , never out. you know what i mean. the time of the cube was slow at first, then it took off. personally, i liked brain teaser things, ie jigsaw puzzles , puzzle rings , mastermind game and that stuff. popular before computers .at that time i was busy doing other stuff , like work and going out. i might/probably got one of them early on, but never got past one side, and there it stood for not done. i went from brain teaser wiz to dumb fuck. too much , too many other things. as time went on, and the popularity grew, and people just took the stickers off and on, saying i done it. not many people could do it. then came the book/s of how to do it. for me, back then, if you can't do it out right , then why bother, cheating. for those who weren't around then, it was fadtastic, marriages were breaking up, cause husbands spending all their time on the cube and not responsibility.
19dec2018
sometime between 1981 and 1983, i noticed someone had been trying to solve the cube and it was left around the house, like goldilocks. i just thought half your luck. then after a few days, i saw the cube with the middle bit done. i thought i never got that far, must of moved the stickers.
13april2019
around 1983 we got some new blokes on the railway gang, not really, i seen many come and go during my time there. one chap by the name of john, done that job for a while, maybe a few months. only a short guy, i can still picture him sitting in the truck canopy, his little legs swinging back and forth and twirling his cube. he was a bit of a wiz with it. he asked if someone could twirl it to a hard solution, and he'd figure it out. i said i know a really hard positioned squares , he gave me his cube, i moved two stickers while he wasn't looking. and said here you are, work this out. he twirled for a bit, and said hang on , then got the shits. you don't do that. i said , you said, you wanted a hard solution. i still laugh at that. he was the first cube nut i meet, that's how far it got. he apparently was a piano player, and ended up teaching the piano, i'd see his ad in the paper a few years later.
20april2019
that reminds of this other person , also a musician, even pictured in them ironworkers photos. he was probably the first person i ever knew who apparently worked the cube out by himself , most probably around 1980, early on in the fad. he was the dux of his school, them type of people seem troubled to me, somehow. he died sometime ago now. as for the cube, i wasn't much interested in the thing. a time after twirly john left. even longer, after a bit of trouble with the shifty job, i was back on the day shift gang doing the hard yakka. we had this old, well old to me then, truck driver.
26april2019
today, i done the old google on twirly john, he's still tuitaring the piano, it says 30 years at it. i wonder when was the last time he twirled the rubix. if you think this rubix blog don't fit in with the other blogs, the truck driver may change all that. the trucks were contracted, and the drivers worked for that company, they didn't do no railroad job, just drove us to the job then back to the yard. over them years we had about two handfuls of drivers, we're talking the dayshift gangs.
30april2019
you know everybody has a story, and this particular truck driver did have some. seeing i was stuck in the dayshift gang, with no really way out. after a time, we got a talking. if i had only known things i've found out latter, very many of. one not really related, was early on doing the platelaying job, at lunch time, we were working close to my grandmothers house. i nearly said to john henry lets go over my grand mothers house, i never did. stuff like that. anyway , the truckdriver had heaps of stories of the early fifties of singing contests and fisticuffs fights. i told him the story of twirly john, he said he figured out the cube on his own.
29may2019
not long after he was seating in his truck twirling on the cube, this is after the big fad, around 1986. he showed me he could do it, i said, i never got round to figuring it out. next, he brought in a 4 in a row one , he figure that one out too, i don't know where their heads are at. i asked if he could write down a solution. i never thought much about it. but that i showed interest in it. not long after, he brought in some paper with the solution all drawn and instructed. at the time you could get a cube for 10 cent, they were throwing them away. i picked one up from somewhere, and sat down one night and read the paper and done the thing. his instructions were sort of easier to follow than the book that was released. i actually made a little book out of a tobacco pouch paper, the paper in the middle of a drum tobacco packet, with the solution in pages in it. i gave it to brain wave at tech in 1995. i've also got in on a floppy disk, an old apple floppy disk. as soon as i figure out how to transfer it to here i will,
18july2019
rather than figure out how to transfer from the old floppy disk. i found some old dot matrix print pages of that continuous stuff, stashed away with other brickaty brak pass age. went and scanned it.
with was a mini cube, are these rare now
Friday, June 15, 2018
ginger beer
16june2018
today was one of them days when you are looking for some past thing, a piece of paper with something written on it. i didn't find the thing i was looking for. i did find a few other things stashed away, bits of crap . one of the things was a recipe for ginger beer. i don't think i'll ever use it, so i thought i'd put it here , maybe someone will find it useful.
29june2018
firstly, me and ginger beer go back to my youth, just like for others my age and older. just like poor man's oranges, ginger beer was the staple beverage of old. too me, it's a bit like sea monkeys, a concoction that turns into a so called plant that is feed. i remember making it back in the sixties, but it turned out crappy. there's a lot of work in bottling, just like real beer. being young at the time there was no waiting, ended up opening to early and i think it tasted rubbish. others had problems with exploding bottles. the whole thing is trail and error and art.
2july2018
to make plant:-
- 8 sultanas
- juice of two large lemons
- 1 teaspoon lemon pulp
- 4 teaspoons sugar
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 2 cups cold water
to feed:-
ground ginger
sugar
method:-
combine all plant ingrediants in a screw top jar.
leave for 2 to 5 days or until beginning to ferment.
then each day for 7 days, 'feed' with two teaspoons ground ginger
and four teaspoons of sugar.
this is the ginger beer 'plant' from which ginger beer is made.
to make ginger beer:-
- 4 cups of sugar
- 4 cups boiling water
- juice from 4 lemons
- 7 litres of cold water
method:-
place sugar in a large bowl, add boiling water and lemon juice
and stir until sugar has dissolved.
strain ginger beer plant through fine muslin in to water + lemon
mixture;
squeeze muslin dry.
add cold water and pour into clean, dry airtight bottles.
seal with patent seal caps.
keep, five days in a cool cupboard before opening.
to keep plant alive
divide in half the mixture left in muslin after straining
and discard one half or start a second plant or give it to
a friend.
put the other half in a screw top jar with 2 cups of cold water
and feed each day for a week with 4 teaspoons of sugar and
2 teaspoons of ground ginger.
today was one of them days when you are looking for some past thing, a piece of paper with something written on it. i didn't find the thing i was looking for. i did find a few other things stashed away, bits of crap . one of the things was a recipe for ginger beer. i don't think i'll ever use it, so i thought i'd put it here , maybe someone will find it useful.
29june2018
firstly, me and ginger beer go back to my youth, just like for others my age and older. just like poor man's oranges, ginger beer was the staple beverage of old. too me, it's a bit like sea monkeys, a concoction that turns into a so called plant that is feed. i remember making it back in the sixties, but it turned out crappy. there's a lot of work in bottling, just like real beer. being young at the time there was no waiting, ended up opening to early and i think it tasted rubbish. others had problems with exploding bottles. the whole thing is trail and error and art.
2july2018
to make plant:-
- 8 sultanas
- juice of two large lemons
- 1 teaspoon lemon pulp
- 4 teaspoons sugar
- 2 teaspoons ground ginger
- 2 cups cold water
to feed:-
ground ginger
sugar
method:-
combine all plant ingrediants in a screw top jar.
leave for 2 to 5 days or until beginning to ferment.
then each day for 7 days, 'feed' with two teaspoons ground ginger
and four teaspoons of sugar.
this is the ginger beer 'plant' from which ginger beer is made.
to make ginger beer:-
- 4 cups of sugar
- 4 cups boiling water
- juice from 4 lemons
- 7 litres of cold water
method:-
place sugar in a large bowl, add boiling water and lemon juice
and stir until sugar has dissolved.
strain ginger beer plant through fine muslin in to water + lemon
mixture;
squeeze muslin dry.
add cold water and pour into clean, dry airtight bottles.
seal with patent seal caps.
keep, five days in a cool cupboard before opening.
to keep plant alive
divide in half the mixture left in muslin after straining
and discard one half or start a second plant or give it to
a friend.
put the other half in a screw top jar with 2 cups of cold water
and feed each day for a week with 4 teaspoons of sugar and
2 teaspoons of ground ginger.
Sunday, April 8, 2018
ayres rock
8 april2018
lots of people have an ayres rock, Uluru, story, i don't have one of those.mine is somewhat different, in actual fact, i've never seen it or been there, but there is some symbolic connection. my intention here is to tell a story the best way i can remember it. plus add other interesting bits of time.
9 april 2018
this came about through mucking about searches on twitter. knowing my friends aren't on twitter, either they're old, dead or just not interested. i done a wollongong search to see what's happening. i do mucking about searches every so often, probably due to boredom. a couple of interesting things there, not much. i did a wollongong punks search, knowing probably dead as anything. but there might be someone doing something. i found a tweet and i thought, i remember that.
the tweet lead me to this page ← ⬅️ (you click)
26oct2021
how the above link was deleted was totally predictable . it doesn't matter. it just shows how the world writes off the little guy. in fact it proves a point .
10 april 2018
as i read the story, which is a crikey.com post about punks, junkies, bikies and a poster, the hand over of uluru to the traditional owners. browsing through it i was interested in this punks bit and if i knew anyone. as it turned out, the punks bit was about sav the cheery punk, and that's me. before i go on, i was reminded how over the years i've told some people that story, and they just thought whatever they thought. i got the sense that, i was full of shit. this type of thing happens to me a lot. i don't want to go on, trying to convince some dickhead i'm not talking shit. like ed koch once said, fuck em. it's a story i tend not to talk about.
12april2018
if you'd read an earlier blog thing, i'd moved from a flat to the house with artists. this would of been early 1985, which means i would have been 26. looking back now, it was ok at first, i was working, they worked, mainly a couple commuted from sydney and on weekends had places in sydney. on occasions people would come down do a bit of screen printing or whatever. me, personally just done what i did, at that time, my job was spare shifty. basically i was a platelayer, which is railway maintenance a daytime job. they also had a gang of 4 on call 24/7 for derailments and things. so, when they brought in the 38 hour week, they were short a bloke. the spare shifty filled the gap. i worked 5 day shift work, monday to friday there for sometime. work was something you tend not to think about. what i'm trying to say, is there was days i seen the artists and others i didn't. there was a girl from the tiwi islands, who was at the house mostly. as time went on, so did people. one of the artists got a offer to work back up the northern territory, and it got quiet there some weekends.
13april2018
that's basically set my mind in time. enter chips and co. looking back, there was probably a clash of cultures on all sides. i tended to relate more to the aboriginal man, than i did the artists. there was definitely an alcohol problem going on there. i could never understand the drinking thing. with me if things start to get a hold, i start to think about priority's. although i have drunk, i think i never really liked it. and i've seen first hand the damage it does cause. with the man, there are only several incidents that comes to mind, one of which was prolific, not quite sure if that's the right word here, through the years since. i'll come to that. i remember him camped out on the lounge floor. his clothes were that of a park ranger, they reminded me of matt hammond, the ed devereax character in skippy. i can't really remember much more about the house life, a few bits.
14april2018
one thing i remember from quite early on was a female artist taking photos of the man. i didn't think he liked it too much. the final item from some photo was a silhouette image of the mans profile. it reminded me of them luna park silhouette images of yesteryear. i think he was happy when all that stuff was over.
16april2018
like i said before, i did my own thing. i knew the man was part of the traditional owners of that country up there. it was interesting. my personal view was probably indifference, although i could see the attachment, both spiritual and generational. the attachment goes back thousands of years. i can't really remember anything about town too much. i do remember, the man drank in the public bar in the old wollongong pub, i kept an eye on him there. the public bar was just serious drinkers, no jukebox, maybe a radio for the races. the tab (betting shop) was up the road a bit. and a cigarette machine. they pulled that pub down in 1986. i drank in the lounge part, they had a jukebox and sit down space invaders table and a pool table room separate. no card machines or pokies. that was it basically.
18april2018
with doing the shift work and the few weeks that they were there, i can't really say much about the incidents in that article. the thing that always made me think about that time, was the washing machine incident. come the weekend, time to wash the work gear. the one thing i never had was a washing machine. they had this twin tub hoover thing at the house. i was doing the work gear, and the man asked me if i could wash his clothes. i was only too happy to wash the ayres rock dirt from the rangers garb. i don't think those clothes had ever seen water, the colour of the water, magic dirt. the man gave me 10 dollars for washing them, i said don't worry, but he insisted. it had a sort of symbolic gesture of a new start. those clothes came out spick. i ended up having that machine right up until quite recently something like 32 years. it broke down i'd fix it. many a time, while washing i thought about that man and that time, and other times. probably could write another blog chapter on it. in actual fact that machine of late became unfixable, i'd saved up a bit of money and brought a new one. i took the old machine apart and got rid of it that way. the shell was put out on the curb, it lasted a few days before someone took it. in the few days it was there, i thought about that time when i walked past it. that would have been around the time of that crikey article, nov 2017. not that long ago.
25april2018
many changes and nothings have happened since 1985. looking back at that time, it was an ok time, before turning somewhere. the story with the house, again another story.
30april2018
so, i moved on from the house and the job. i learned that the aboriginal man had been stabbed by a relative with a screwdriver, and died. it saddened me. around 1989 i bought a van and trailer for the bike and started a driving trip. it's about as close as i've been to ayre's rock yet. i got to the turn off road to the rock, it was another 250kms from there to the rock, i passed. eventually i made it back to wollongong, i basically lived in the van for a year or so. i sold the bike and got a flat , then sold the van. it was hard times. jester from primary school lived not far, and his mate simon . he had a telecom job, and had an offer to work up the northern territory for a time. i encouraged him to go for it, and that he wouldn't regret it later. i remember him ringing me up from ayres rock on the radio phone really depressed about the hot weather. i just gave him words of encouragement to stick it out, and it would be an adventure he could look back on. he sent me a letter as well.
this photo was in the letter, the backhoe tractor is like a giant chainsaw, and is tiny in comparison to the rock
this was on the back of the photo
3may2018
there was nothing planned about this blog, it just happened, although it was already written, as for the letter. not many people have sent me letters over the years, and so i tended to keep the ones i got. i haven't read it in years. the cards he refers to are phonecards which i collected back then. haven't seen jester in some years now, i wrote an earlier blog about him.
Friday, September 15, 2017
top hits
15 sept 2017
seems like it's quieten down enough here, so to start a new post. the issue here is how to start the thing. seeing i've already done it , it wasn't that hard. another real issue that really shits me about this blog stuff, especially this one, there was always someone using apple and chrome checking out what i just put down to the blog. i had no qualms with this at first or ever. it just went on for so long. on one hand it was good someone was showing interest in what i was doing. on the other hand it had the creepy value of making paranoia. lately whoever it was has fucked off, which is probably for the better. this was originally was just going to be a tweet, but 200 odd characters became a bit short. this top hits thing is about a record. whether it's long or a short blog , is besides the point , at least i'm doing something.
18sept2017
not the first album i owned, but the first i brought with my own bit of money. i had bought a few singles before. this has come about cause my mother moved some time ago and lot of stuff was going. i grabbed a few things from my youth left behind. the time i bought the record was 1969/70, that's nearly 50 years ago. that makes this a bit like the wonder years. it's sort of weird how i remember that record, i think the circumstances of the time make it memorable.
25sept17
discogs view ← ⬅️ (you click)
seems like it's quieten down enough here, so to start a new post. the issue here is how to start the thing. seeing i've already done it , it wasn't that hard. another real issue that really shits me about this blog stuff, especially this one, there was always someone using apple and chrome checking out what i just put down to the blog. i had no qualms with this at first or ever. it just went on for so long. on one hand it was good someone was showing interest in what i was doing. on the other hand it had the creepy value of making paranoia. lately whoever it was has fucked off, which is probably for the better. this was originally was just going to be a tweet, but 200 odd characters became a bit short. this top hits thing is about a record. whether it's long or a short blog , is besides the point , at least i'm doing something.
18sept2017
not the first album i owned, but the first i brought with my own bit of money. i had bought a few singles before. this has come about cause my mother moved some time ago and lot of stuff was going. i grabbed a few things from my youth left behind. the time i bought the record was 1969/70, that's nearly 50 years ago. that makes this a bit like the wonder years. it's sort of weird how i remember that record, i think the circumstances of the time make it memorable.
25sept17
discogs view ← ⬅️ (you click)
these are my photos of my album brought in 1969/70
25sept17
once again music for pleasure brings you twelve 'top hits' on a single album - the sounds of pop recreated in stereo by top-flight sudio musicians. put this record on at a party and the fun will begin - listen to it on your own an hear again the songs that hit the charts in '69.
as usual, john lennon and paul mc cartney have said 'get back' to all other songwriters, with a song that was made up on the roof of apple's savile row headquarters. their closest rival was their own 'goodbye', gave mary hopkin her follow-up to 'those were the days' and another well-deserved hit.
'love me tonight', a song composed on the continent, was given a powerful delilah-type backing and provided a sure-fire hit for tom jones, while 'ragamuffin man' marked the return to the charts, after an unusually long absence, of manfred mann. there may not be too much room for sentimantality in pop these days, but 'my sentimental friend' showed that there's always a place for the kind of sad-cheerful sound that help herman and the hermits to another huge hit. and providing a dose of old-time sentimentality was 'my way', which gave frank sinatra the chance to say that he's got no regrets.
'dick-a-dum-dum' was des o'connor's first uptempo number, a light-hearted song that sounds like a tour of swinging london. 'the windmills of your mind', the oscar-winning theme song from 'the thomas crown affair', made a quiet contrast to the rest of the charts, and a newcomer among the hits was clodagh rodgers - in the absence of beatle competition she would certainly have made the top spot with the imaginatively-produced 'come back and shake me'.
from the states came 'harlem shuffle', which introduced two more names to the hit parade, the mysterious bob and earl. it turned out that they were a soul duo who had made the record six years before and had, among other things , influenced the righteous brothers. 'galveston' gave glen campbell a big follow-up to 'wichita linesman', and another great song from across the atlantic was 'the boxer', one of paul simon's finest compositions, and a song which was thought by many to be too subtle to become a hit - events were to prove them entirely wrong.
jack rind
18oct2017
as usual, john lennon and paul mc cartney have said 'get back' to all other songwriters, with a song that was made up on the roof of apple's savile row headquarters. their closest rival was their own 'goodbye', gave mary hopkin her follow-up to 'those were the days' and another well-deserved hit.
'love me tonight', a song composed on the continent, was given a powerful delilah-type backing and provided a sure-fire hit for tom jones, while 'ragamuffin man' marked the return to the charts, after an unusually long absence, of manfred mann. there may not be too much room for sentimantality in pop these days, but 'my sentimental friend' showed that there's always a place for the kind of sad-cheerful sound that help herman and the hermits to another huge hit. and providing a dose of old-time sentimentality was 'my way', which gave frank sinatra the chance to say that he's got no regrets.
'dick-a-dum-dum' was des o'connor's first uptempo number, a light-hearted song that sounds like a tour of swinging london. 'the windmills of your mind', the oscar-winning theme song from 'the thomas crown affair', made a quiet contrast to the rest of the charts, and a newcomer among the hits was clodagh rodgers - in the absence of beatle competition she would certainly have made the top spot with the imaginatively-produced 'come back and shake me'.
from the states came 'harlem shuffle', which introduced two more names to the hit parade, the mysterious bob and earl. it turned out that they were a soul duo who had made the record six years before and had, among other things , influenced the righteous brothers. 'galveston' gave glen campbell a big follow-up to 'wichita linesman', and another great song from across the atlantic was 'the boxer', one of paul simon's finest compositions, and a song which was thought by many to be too subtle to become a hit - events were to prove them entirely wrong.
jack rind
18oct2017
21oct2017
so the story is, i was up the local paper shop, and they got a carousel rack stand of records in. at the time i liked my sentimental friend by herman's hermits. i seen this record and noticed my sentimental friend. i spent some time reading the cover. i remember waiting to hear my sentimental friend on the radio. it came on the radio at my grand mothers place. it took a while but i remember they were doing the washing out the back, still had the old washing copper, where you lit a fire under a copper tub and ringers into tubs. i asked my mother what sentimental meant, she said, you. i never ever got a proper answer, just some riddle that took me years to figure out what she meant. when i think about it now, she meant i was being sentimental and couldn't explain, how many people know what something is but can't explain it. so, if a teacher asked me what sentimental meant? i would have said, you. my sentimental friend = you my friend. it sort of works. i was nearly going to buy the single, which was at that time either 75 cents or a dollar, which was a bit of dosh. a packet of cigs is now over 20 bucks, i remember buying them for the old man at 33 cents a pack, he'd send me to the shop. i thought you get a few extra songs that were okay, i wasn't that sure. every time i went to the paper shop , i'd look to see if it was still there. come friday hit the olds for a bit of cash and bought it.
18nov2017
like them top of the pops things, not the original artists. i think i felt a bit gipt by this, still it was okay. i think now, it sort of adds to the mystery, like who is this jack rind, who done the sleeve notes. and who were the studio artists, side two was the main play, i haven't heard this album for many, many years. if i still alive in two years i'll give it a whirl. thinking back, love me tonight was okay and the boxer. i played it on that old stereo gram i've talked about in earlier blog at my grandmothers place. i remember singing along with my sentimental friend turned down and everyone in bed sleeping, over and over . would have been 11 or 12. i later did the same with teaser and the firecat album.
18nov2017
like them top of the pops things, not the original artists. i think i felt a bit gipt by this, still it was okay. i think now, it sort of adds to the mystery, like who is this jack rind, who done the sleeve notes. and who were the studio artists, side two was the main play, i haven't heard this album for many, many years. if i still alive in two years i'll give it a whirl. thinking back, love me tonight was okay and the boxer. i played it on that old stereo gram i've talked about in earlier blog at my grandmothers place. i remember singing along with my sentimental friend turned down and everyone in bed sleeping, over and over . would have been 11 or 12. i later did the same with teaser and the firecat album.
30may2018
here's photo of the paper shop were i bought the record. judging by the cars, post 68
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