Oh Dear! Just when we think everything is looking bright and rosy and a major international coup is pulled off, that little dropped stitch that went unnoticed takes centre stage and threatens to unravel all the good work.
So it is at the $100 million Aussie-built Sir John Monash Centre near Villers-Bretonneux in France which was home this week for the super-talented National Archives of Australia to unveil a new digital exhibition featuring the Indigenous soldiers of World War 1.
Entitled Facing Two Fronts: the fight for respect, the exhibition explores the two conflicts WWI’s Indigenous diggers faced: One being the war, and Two their fight for social justice when they returned to Australia.
But the sad surprise that greeted this reader was the revelation that all Australians who fought in WWI have been rudely snubbed by the creation of the “Australian Remembrance Trail along the Western Front” of which the Sir John Monash Centre is a part.
This is because Australians back then – and even today – don’t have ‘trails’, we have tracks.
We have a Kokoda Track, a Birdsville track, a Strzelecki Track an Oodnadatta Track and many more but we don’t have trails. Americans, however, do have trails and while they fought on the Western Front, they weren’t us!
Perhaps a small amount from the $100 million-plus spent on the Australian Remembrance Track along the Western Front could now be spent on getting its name right.
Sneezin’ season
Many thanks to Suzette Searle of the Wattle Day Association Inc. for writing in to set me straight on the folly of my confession last week that as a hay fever sufferer I was happy to see Wattle Day overlooked as the date for Australia Day.
“Your article perpetuates the myth that Australia’s wattles cause hayfever,” Suzette sternly scolds, “when scientific and medical experts in national government agencies and organisations such as the Australasian Society of Clinical Immunology and Allergy Ltd, state otherwise.”
“What a shame,” she continued, that my colleagues and I “apparently stopped 1 September, Wattle Day, being considered as a date for celebrating Australia Day because of (our) erroneous fear that wattle pollen causes hay fever.”
Point almost taken, Suzette, but let me point out what Basil Fawlty termed the ‘bleeding obvious’ and suggest that if it’s not the wattle pollen that gives rise to debilitating hay fever, something else is doing it on steroids at exactly the same time.
Result = the same.
In my belief that the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) is a Government Agency with experts in it, let me refer to its November 2011 estimate that “around 15% of the Australian population” or about 3,600,000 Australians, suffer from hay fever.
As mentioned last week, that’s a lot of Australians to deny Australia Day celebrations to because they’re not comfortable (or capable of) going outside.
House rules
Turning to the Federal Parliament now where a Joint Standing Committee on the National Capital and External Territories is beavering away in Canberra inquiring into the national institutions in the national capital to see if they are viable and relevant and if we need any more.
In what may be the most circuitous and interbred inquiry in history, the Parliamentary Committee spent part of last week inquiring into Parliament House itself.
According to the Committee Chair “while the core purpose of Parliament House is to serve as a working parliament, it was also designed to be accessible by all citizens and plays an important role in showcasing democracy in action”.
No prizes for predicting the Committee will find its own home “viable and relevant” and no, we don’t need any more!
Live give away!
To our weekly giveaway now where it’s time for one lucky reader of PS News to pocket a DVD copy of the ‘best ever’ Jessie Stone film, Lost in paradise starring former TV private investigator, Tom Selleck as the crime-fighting Chief of Police, Jesses Stone.
To be a winner, all we had to do was answer Giveaway Queen Rama Gaind’s super simple quiz question and name the town where Jesse Stone works as top cop and then have our correct answer scramble from the PS News Barrel of Booty and take the honours.
The answer, of course was Paradise, Massachusetts, and the correct player with the fastest entry was Fiona M from the national Department of Agriculture and Water Resources.
Congratulations Fiona and thanks to everyone who joined in the fun. The DVD will be on its way very soon.
For another go at joining Rama’s wide world of winners, simply follow this link and try your luck.
Best wishes to all who do!
Hacked in!
And finally from the ACT, the local Government has launched an investigation into maternity services, to find out what services are available, whether they’re enough and whether they’re of high enough standard for the local community.
The task has been delegated to a committee of elected representatives which calls itself the Standing Committee on Health, Ageing and Community Services and which has invited community comment on the issues.
While PS-sssst! recognises the significance of the investigation, it also recognises the unfortunate aptness of the email address for lodging comments: LACommitteeHACS@…..
Until Next week…..
