When Mao-Tse Tung was melting saucepans in the Cultural Revolution, the Victorian gold-town of Bendigo asked Mr Lo On of Hong Kong to put 90,000 mirrors and 6000 silk scales into the longest (and possibly last) imperial dragon called Sun Loong.
(Imperial - in the dragon sense - means blessed by the Emperor, which accounts […]
Dutchman Renee Boissevain has farmed mink in Norway and hunted crocs down under. But the wild life needed the wondrous too. So Renee has created his own universe in the shape of Crystal Caverns, an artificial grotto that extends beneath the streets of Atherton, in far northern Queensland.
Using egg-cartons for insulation, polystyrene for stalagmites and […]
Harold Cazneaux was a photographic retoucher. The itchy-footed lad tired quickly of studio work in Adelaide, and longed for the scenic beyond. He travelled to the Flinders Ranges in 1937 and there he found a giant tree.
What struck him most were the bent fingers of its roots clinging grimly to a creek bank. For […]
On the first Tuesday in November, 2002, Damien Oliver won the Melbourne Cup on Media Puzzle. Two strides past the post, the jockey blew a kiss to the sky, a gesture aimed squarely and tenderly at his brother, Jason.
Also a jockey, Jason Oliver died during a barrier trial in Perth, less than a week […]
Vegemite’s inventor, Cyril Callister, came from a one-chook town called Chute, just north of Beaufort on the Raglan Road, in midwest Victoria.
A sign, larger than the town itself, celebrates the fact. But the true reward for the offbeat traveler is Registered Mail Box 832, a Ned Kelly statue with a shotgun in his lap. […]
Better off drinking Adelaide’s famous beer, than the city’s infamous tapwater. To see the plight played out, take a trip to the SA Brewery where a dozen citizens will be collecting water from the coin-operated spigot.
Four wells lie beneath the brewery, drawing off the Wilunga Aquifer. The bounty used to be free, but nowadays every […]
Botticelli didn’t paint The Birth of Venus, not above the Palace Hotel’s foyer anyhow. That gal-in-the-clam was the brushwork of Mario Cellotto. The Broken Hill publican toiled for weeks with eyestrain and an itsy-bitsy postcard of the original canvas. But the vistas don’t stop there.
Gordon Wyen, a student of indigenous painter, Albert Namatjira, arrived at […]
Quick - you have another five weeks from the time of posting to hear the mobiles phones ringing in Melbourne.
Wait, wait - before you start carping - I know we hear a mass of Motorolas bleeping any day of the week - but these phones are very different.
Suspended high on a cement wall, the eight […]
The Djab wurrung people once camped on the slopes of Mount Langi Ghiran, Victoria. While their dreamtime links to the land have been frayed by time, one dreaming image remains.
Locals call her the Sleeping Princess, the regal silhouette cast by the Langi Ghiran ridgeline. The best spot to see this supine maiden is from One […]
Elizabeth Gold ran across the tennis court with a bullet in her breast. She was trying to escape her lover called Russell Snodgrass. This was 1897, and the period gown wasn’t helping her dash one jot.
The trouble started a year before, in the gold town of Coolgardie, when her first husband, Captain Charles Gold died […]