Sunday 24 February at the Folk Festival. Kicked off with Michael Menager and Friends in Magpie tent. Michael, from Tantawangalo, plays guitar and sings his own songs, shades of Arlo Guthrie in their simplicity. It’s all in the lyrics, which are personal, confessional, wry and honest. Michael was accompanied by friends Heath Cullen (guitar, banjo)…
Author: Jen
Earle Horne, 1923 – 2013
At Earle Horne’s funeral on Thursday 1 August we heard from his son-in-law Richard that Earle joined the army when World War II broke out, at just 16 years of age.
Rob Burgess, 1946 – 2013
They say you can tell a man’s heart by how he treats his dog. And if that’s true then Rob Burgess’s heart was solid gold. The Cobargo community would have seen Rob walking his Great Dane, Jensen, up and down the street on a regular basis until just a couple of months ago when his…
Dan Scollay’s Gospel Singing Workshop, 25-26 August 2012
Mumbulla Hall in Bega, Saturday morning. A ragtag crew of a hundred or so, mostly women but enough men to cushion our sound. Shrill sopranos, mellower altos, the velvety tenors and the gravel-toned basses. I don’t know what I am but I’m standing with the basses when we divide ourselves up, and I don’t move…
Dry River
It’s hard to spot, but there’s a path into the bush in the far corner of the Quaama Cemetery. As you pass the main cluster of graves – the smart new granite of the Colemans, the Conways with their river rocks and shells, the green trellis over Pato Taylor – you may see it. Enter…
Nine dead wombats
There are nine wombats on the road between Bega and Bemboka. Nine dead wombats. And it’s not even a bad season, a dry season, when what little rain we get runs off the roads and pools in the ditches beside them, creating green oases in a land of brown. Those oases bring the wombats to…
Joan Horne, 1924 – 2011
A common sight in Quaama, until recently, was a big old blue Falcon doing the morning run from Fieldbucketts Rd along Bermaguee St to the store, apparently with no driver. But then you’d hear a friendly ‘bip’ as it passed – Joan spotting a friend. Joan Horne, the little lady with the big presence.
Terry Irwin 1943 – 2010
Picture, if you will, a forest clearing. The chatter of birds in the treetops. A dirt track, recently graded. Heavy equipment stands idle all around – bulldozers, knuckleboom loaders, chainsaws. At one end, a ragtag group of people in beanies and coloured clothing, with backpacks and thermos flasks, sits chatting. At the other, workmen in…
Stink bugs: the Hoover cure
There must be more efficient ways of ridding a citrus tree of stink bugs than with a vacuum cleaner, but certainly none more satisfying. Thwok, they go as they hurtle up the tube. Thwok, thwok! A slurry of tinkling thwoks as a column of the little orange-backed bugs is sucked up the metal tunnel.
Cemetery Reverie
I’m gazing across my desk and out the window as a hearse glides down my street, a seemingly endless parade of cars in its wake. I wonder briefly who has died in this small town, to attract such a crowd. I mentally list the old and the sick, reach no conclusions and return to my…