To the ACT public sector this week where the national capital’s Parks and Conservation Service is to throw open one of its nature parks for adventurous families to sleepover in among its wild animals and wildflowers during the upcoming school holidays.
Promoting the sleepover as a ‘Wildfest’, the Service was careful to avoid suggestions that its untamed kangaroos, koalas, wallabies, potoroos, possums, wombats, kookaburras and lyrebirds would be a potential threat to the adventurers but it did make the point that the families’ youngsters could be so moved by the occasion that they would skip past puberty and grow up right then and there, in the park.
To quote the Service: “The luxury glamping on offer is an alternative to families using our pubic camp grounds and is a new way to educate kids ….”.
PS-sssst! wonders whether the pubescent description of the playgrounds was an erogenous error of typing or a wink, wink hidden message to potential parents that the overnight stay with the wild animals could have a developmental impact on their children’s lives.
Years of publishing has led this writer to assume that in cases like this one, one is usually best advised to go with the typo!
Run of noses
Spring is springing, the weather is warming and wise medical practitioners are populating the media warning of the dangers of warm weather allergies, hay fever and asthma.
According to the Medical Officers around the country, Spring is the wheezing and sneezing season as grass and pollen take to the air and bring down untold millions of Australians with bouts of breathlessness, wheezing, tight chests and coughs.
And I am compelled to confess that I am one of them.
I also confess that only once in my Public Service career did hay fever raise its ugly presence and that was in the early-1980s when the date for celebrating Australia Day was under the microscope.
Ever the dutiful secretary to the high-powered committee entrusted with the task, it fell to me to compile a list of alternative dates that might replace 26 January and among the 20 or so that had a claim, 1 September, also known as Wattle Day, was included.
Thankfully for us hay feverers it was cut from consideration early in the piece when the committee wisely accepted the argument that a national day in which a quarter of the population would be unable to attend an outdoor celebration didn’t quite live up to the level of inclusion a proper national day should promote.
Of course the committee might also have baulked at the prospect of rewriting the national anthem to ‘Advance Australia Sneeze!” had it chosen the 1/9 date.
Chicken out
Credit: Goldfinch4ever
To another passing visit now by our ever-welcome occasional correspondent Philomena S of the Victorian Department of Health and Human Services whose penchant for the pun and playful play has contributed many a smile to the PS News ranks over the years and who has not lost her touch, if her latest missive is any guide – assuming she is into guided missives!
Philomena’s latest offering is a modern variation on an age-old conundrum.
“Why did the chicken go to the séance?” she asks supernaturally.
“To get to the other side.”
Ba-Boom!
Winning In Darkness
To our regular Rama’s giveaway now in which two lucky readers stand the chance of winning DVD copies of the psychologically thrilling movie In Darkness starring Natalie Dormer, Ed Skrein and Emily Ratajkowski.
To scoop up a free DVD all you needed to do was name for Rama one of the television series Natalie Dormer was featured in and then hope your entry emerges from PS News’s infamous ‘Barrel of Booty’ among the top two.
The lucky readers who named Game of Thrones (or even Hunger Games) as the series Rama was after have been declared the winners and they were James M from IP Australia and Molly K from the Federal Department of Health in Canberra.
Congratulations to James and Molly and thanks to everyone who took part. The new DVDs will be on their way to their new homes shortly.
For another chance to join Rama’s ring of rich rewardees, simply follow this link to this week’s competition and take your chances.
It’s free, it’s easy and it could be you!
Good luck in case it is!
Till next week.
