And'y finally gets around to writing the next load of smelly brown stuff...

The song ‘Waltzing Matilda’ has apparently been offered up as a potential national anthem. So much hype is attached to this 1903 song by Banjo Paterson that there is even a museum in Winton, Queensland called, appropriately enough, ‘Waltzing Matilda Centre’. Strewth…I’d have NEVER thought of that…give that man a job at Saatchi and Saatchi. Banjo was a young solicitor when he wrote the now infamous tune, and he was holidaying in Winton with his fiancé, later to bust up. In fact he wrote the words in 1895 but not the tune, which was written by Marie Cowan later….and with a few modifications to the words to get them to fit….! If your interested go to here.. http://www.matildacentre.com.au/EducationCentre_WaltzingMat.asp . …and here… http://www.anu.edu.au/people/Roger.Clarke/WM/#Words

Here he is:

Quiz: - So anyone know what the swagman was called? (Answer at the bottom of this entry).

Matilda was a slang for ‘swag’ and 'waltzing it' was to sling it over your shoulder and walk. The term is thought to derive from a German expression Auf die Walz gehen meaning to take to the road. Another use of the name Matilda, is for a bed roll…which is a bit of a come down from the Teutonic Mathilde, which means ‘Mighty in Battle’. Our very own Matilda embodies the Teutonic meaning as you all know…ha ha.

Interestingly, there’s some debate here about the cost of fuel, and shock horror, they’ve reached between 108 cents a litre and about 124 cents a litre. Oh they don’t know the half of it eh…. That’s about 50p. There’s a search site that tells you where the cheapest petrol station is to you…and the cheapest one to us right now is in a place called ‘Kalinga’. Guess what the fuel company is called! ‘Matilda’ (See pic)

Here’s another good idea: The Ipswich council (the one that runs our current area) hosts this site http://www.toiletmap.gov.au/toilet.aspx?type=toilet&id=de4670c9-e55d-474d-afb5-9f071baad449 which shows the public toilets in Kalinga. Good eh? Another good one is this: http://media01.couriermail.com.au/multimedia/2007/04/070400-traffic-cams/traffic.html which shows what the roads are like at any one time….this is what our nearest camera is doing at the time of writing (about 2.45 am)…

Which makes me realise its time for bed. Been busy today building stuff with bricks…but I won’t bore you with that, save to say that its like trying type with sandpaper stuck to your finger ends…

Goodnight.

Answer to the quiz: The swagman was called ‘Andrew’ - How do I know this? Cos the song says it… ‘andy sang as he tucked that jumbuck in his tuckerbag….’ Of course in the Esperanto version he’s called ‘Kies’….Oh you knew that already…sorry.

Here it is in Esperanto for those of you who didn’t know that.

Valse Matilda

Gaja vagabondo kampis apud bilabong

kie la Coolabah ombris por li

kaj li kantis atende gxis bolos en la billipot

Vi vagas valsa Matilda kun mi

Venis sxafido por trinki en la bilabong

kaptis vagulo kun gxoj` plena kri`

kaj li kantis sxovante la sxafon al la mangxosak`

Vi vagas valsa Matilda kun mi

Aperis farmisto sur pursanga al cxeval

Venis gxendarmo unu, du, tri

"Kies bela sxafo, tiu en la mangxosak"

Vi vagas valsa Matilda kun mi

Tuj la vagoulo saltis al la bilabong

"Vi vane kaptas vi min," diris li.

Kaj fantomon vi auxdos pasante cxe la bilabong.

Vi vagas valsa Matilda kun mi.

A.B. Paterson

Trad. En Esperanto: Ralph Harry

Lethal animal....

....I believe they also have these in the UK?

The AXE factor?

Its Saturday night, and there’s a weird noise coming from the next room…which is the rest of the house singing along to a bizarre PS2 game that is a karaoke thing in which you can have ‘battles’ to be the best singer when you sing along to some famous track or other….its not my thing at all…but DAILE!!!! I had NO idea that she’d be into it. I mean we all know how she’s shy and retiring don’t we…I mean would YOU have thought that she’d go for it? I KNOW!!!! Its funny cos everyone else gets a bit pissed up before they do it…but Daile’s just on the rosie lee..and nothing else. It’s quite impressive really. Have a look…Luckily for you, its just a picture with no sound…..

Ahhh bless

Andrew and I have been putting a side onto the garage lean-to today, so that we have a proper room for the kids toys, and…more importantly…for MY toys! Also this will probably be where Josh stays when he comes out next year. After we’d finished, or at least got as far as we could, I then continued to lay a line of bricks to put the sliding door on… whilst the others all sat and watched. It must have been quite entertaining cos there were always a couple of people in easy chairs watching me lay this line of bricks. Not THAT many bricks…the total was only about 20 odd, but it took me about 2 and a half hours to do it…. They sort of did a rotating shift…always passing occasional comment to encourage me…. I reckon that they were all giggling behind my back….Ha ha. I ran out of light, and mortar, and then it was tea time so I stopped.

More tomorrow….when we’ll be putting up the sliding door.

Late night choccy run....

I’m becoming immersed in the property thing. I’ve now got quite a few books about it, as is my way, and I’m trying hard to make some sense of the rules here, the predominance of negative gearing and the admittedly more long term view of the property situation. I’m impressed with the amount of literature on the subject here, and have been happy to find that there are SOME authors whose opinion of the readiness to prostrate ones lifestyle to furnish negative cash flow from property investments is similar to mine. (Cautious) However the ready availability of property in the UK for which rents can be levied that equal or exceed the mortgage costs is not the case here. On the other hand there is a plethora of tax breaks that are designed to encourage property development and renting. For example it is possible to buy a new property here, and offset the cost of the house (but not the land) against your income as a depreciating asset over the early years of the mortgage.

I’ve also been trying to do other stuff, such as apply for jobs, and list my CV with agencies. To date however I’ve not ACTUALLY done this! (Although Daile is helping right now by looking for suitable stuff and e-mailing them to me). Nor have I submitted the plans for the house to the Logan City Council. I’m a little concerned that I’ve not done these things, since they are priorities, but I have been busy….

One job that I’ve been doing a lot of work in preparation for was a job as a ‘trade manager’ at a major hospital. However, having spent a day an a half on research in order to answer the questions on the screening form, I hit a brick wall. They asked for specific information about the mandatory maintenance tasks that pertain to the fire system of a hospital. Now I’m not that bad at finding stuff out on the Internet, but I could find nothing about that. Finally, with a little help from Bernadette (who works in a hospital), I was able to boil it down to the contents of a single Australian Standard called AS 1851-2005. However, to get a look at this, you need to pay for it…and the price is a ‘healthy’ $175. If anyone feels like trying to get it for me, I’d appreciate it…but don’t spend too long. I discovered that there is an obligation on the government to provide copies of the Australian standards at public places such as Libraries, so I went down to the local one and asked. They said that they had access to a digital copy of one that was ‘similar’ – but it turned out not to be. I’m a little frustrated that;

1. they are asking for knowledge of information that is obviously designed to filter out those of us that have never done that job….and
2. that the government see fit to make a law about the things that have to be done in terms of maintenance of fires systems in a public hospital, and then have the audacity to charge you to find out what the law is!

Aside from that…for those of you that have been trying to make contact via Skype, we’ve still got some issues: Daile’s computer is still playing up and the wireless bit is constantly falling over…mine is having a terminal problem with the sound card and the link to the microphone, meaning I can’t be heard, and Wayne’s has been hijacked by a virus that has changed his Skype password! Why? We’re considering getting Daile a new computer….or her having this one and me getting another.

….and lastly, Matilda has had a fairly good couple of days at school. She’s able to read all the ‘sight words’ that she’s been asked to read for her year….AND all the words that she would have been learning next year….so they’re trying to get some books in that are at her level. She can also do all the maths they would have been teaching her. Interestingly, this seems to have upset her…and she’s worried that she’s ‘not doing it right’. Turns out that she’s learned a form of writing that is different enough in appearance that the other kids have been telling her that she’s doing it wrong! The teacher has, I understand tried to put them right. Difficult innit? She and I went out tonight by ourselves to get chocolate….which seemed to help. God I’m such a bad influence!

Be sure to click on the image to read it.....