The world’s sluggish response to climate change is a mystery to many. After all, overwhelming evidence of a problem usually results in mitigation of the problem. Witness the global response when scientists suggested in the 1990s that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) might be busting a hole in the ozone layer, leading to high rates of skin…
Finnegan’s Release
The rusty flatbed lumbered along the track, the wire cage on the tray rattling and lurching with every rut. The old man heard the bird squawking. This was the place. He pulled off where the track ran down and across the creek, where the water ran shallow, clear and cold over glistening stones, under a…
Ten years lost: Ken Henry on the economics of climate change
It was an unseasonably balmy night at the Bermagui Hotel. The speaker was Ken Henry and the subject “The Economics of Climate Change”. We’d all been congratulating the Bermagui Institute’s Jack Miller on his orchestration of the China-US emissions reduction deal just in time to create a dramatic backdrop for the talk, when Henry told…
Dennis Blanchfield 1949 – 2014
It was a cool, drizzly day on 13 October for the funeral of Dennis Blanchfield at Quaama Cemetery. He must have been well-remembered and liked, judging from the crowd. Dennis’s brothers Jim, Danny and Brian all still live here in Quaama. I didn’t know Dennis; he left Quaama well before my time. But I heard…
Tony Windsor: The man with no secrets
It seems these days of political spin that you only find out what’s really going on from those outside the fray. Be they an ex-security advisor, or an ex-department head, or an ex-parliamentarian, at last they don’t owe any favours to anyone and can speak their mind.
Busted: The Baseload Myth
The restaurant in the Bermagui Hotel is buzzing as I enter at 6pm on Thursday 3 April for the Bermagui Institute Public Dinner. Such is the interest in tonight’s speaker, the Institute has raised its booking limit, and still I meet a couple of ticketless friends hanging hopefully by the door. Dr Mark Diesendorf is…
Cobargo Folk Festival delivers again
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)…
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…