Has Oprah lost the plot?

from w
On Channel Seven Today Tonight I was interested to see Dr David Millikan speaking intelligently about Oprah's shifting sands as she engages and entertains New Age ideas, particularly the latest crazy book she is promoting. David is from Geelong. and he is a Uniting Church Theologian working in Sydney. He has spent several years investigating cults. Regarding the book Oprah was enthusiastically promoting, David said it's like a cult.

In an ABC interview a while back David said, "I think people are at their best and at their worst in religion - sometimes... at the very same moment. For that reason I say you cannot praise religion enough for the way it has ennobled the human soul, but then I also say you cannot criticise religion enough for the damage it has done because it's my view that when faith goes bad, when religion goes bad, it causes more pain than anything else."

This time Oprah has not only recommended a book but she has gone into business with the writer of gobbledygook mixed with platitudes and a few half-truths, as some New Age writing is. For one view read one view of the situation.

New fence

from w
This morning the fence man put up a 220 foot fence in three hours - after the uprights had gone in with cement yesterday. Seven foot high! There goes the neighbourhood. For six weeks one little black dog from two doors down has had the run of three compounds, even barking at us as if we don't belong! Anyway with the plan for four units going up next door, Chris, the owner of the land, decided a high fence was a good idea. There is not much chatting over fencelines these days. You have to hold up a glove on a stick to say hello! When I was a child we even had gaps cut into the fence or a small gate to run in and out of the neighbour's gardens! Not now. People want PRIVACY! So here are quick pics of the new fence. It's a bit different from living in a Fijian village like Vatuadova, our other home, where there are no fences between houses.

A couple of months ago Bill's house was here and it was demolished in a few hours to clean the compound for the planned units.

Tomato chutney and Detention Centres

from w
What has Afghan Azaadi (Freedom) Tomato Kasaundi got to do with a Detention Centre?

Once a week a group of Geelong and district women meet together in a kitchen (approved by the Health Department) to make chutney using recipes from Afghan refugees - what the refugees remember from their mothers' kitchens. These are sold to fund aid for Afghan refugee families.

But there's more to the story than that. This morning at our Geelong Women's Znterfaith group we had a Queenscliff woman from the Rural Australians for Refugees as guest speaker. She told us of two Afghan young men who were in the Baxter Detention Centre for years and years and the difficulties they had in proving that they were genuine refugees. After years they eventually gained temporary visas to allow them out of incarceration - which is worse in some respects than a prison as there are so few rights for visitation. Our speaker had been going to Baxter (out of Port Augusta) in South Australia, a long journey each way - several times to talk with her 'adopted' sons. The detention centres in Australia are not government-run but are privatised and the rules and regulations are dreadful. One legal hurdle after another is placed in front of these detained people until they become clinically depressed.

Anyway right at the end of the story, the speaker said that one of the men she had helped and who has not seen his wife and daughter for eight years had recently gained Permanent status so was able to obtain travel documents to go to Pakistan (but not to Afghanistan) to find his family who are in a refugee camp there. This morning at 3 a.m. our speaker received a phone call from Pakistan. It was to say 'Mohammed' had just met his wife and daughter and his eight-year-old daughter 'is gorgeous'! He wanted to phone his Geelong Mum who had been his supportive Aussie for so many years.

We asked the speaker why she had this passion to help refugees and she said she was just an ordinary grandmother and mother who once heard someone speak about the detainees who were incarcerated after being washed up on Ashmore Reef and she decided to do something, just write a letter to one or two of the people detained.

Rascals and heroes

from w
On the weekend when we think of the brave young men and women we call the Anzacs the local newspaper, the Geelong Advertiser has been running stories about a couple of rascals who seem to have mishandled $70 million of other people's money. Chartwell is the name of this financial company playing on the stock market with a group of gullible lenders, including one of our Geelong writers/artists, Ann who gave her story to several newspapers when she discovered how her friend had diddled them all. Here is a photo of Ann in happier days when she made a large sketch of one of the rascals. And the other picture is NOT the blues brothers but the two big spenders.

Maritime Museum more sketches

from w
These are actually on paper, and not just in cyber space. But I started wtih a printout then added colour. Click on picture to see enlarged. The Martiime Museum is a rather striking building with its bold dark grey against the white. It was once a stables, and a rather fancy one at that - for the building next door, Osborne House. The Geelong Council have major development plans alas and the museum might have to be relocated as the money-spinners move in.

Variety of views of Maritime Museum

from w
Using the photos taken at the Maritime Museum the other day, I played around with them - negative, cropping, edge, etc. and put pictures together as a collage for now. Later I might choose which ones that may be useful for small drawings and paintings. So far they are mainly in the ether and not on real paper! It is certainly an inexpensive way of making many pictures! No paper, no pastels, no paints! Click on picture to enlarge a little.

Anzac Day today and Ian McDonald

from w
It's a public holiday in Australia today for Anzac Day, remembering particularly an event at Gallipoli during World War 1 when thousands of young Australians and New Zealand soldiers died, mainly due to a blunder of planning by British army leaders. There are sevices at dawn, marches, and gatherings of mainly older men and women remembering fallen comrades from various wars. The pictures here are from a memorial window at Melbourne Teachers College.

I was surprised to see a photo of my friend Lyn James in the Geelong Advertiser with a story about her father Ian McDonald, who was a soldier in Belgium during World War I and he wrote a poem from there, remembering his home town.

Geelong Maritime Museum

from w
As a break from sorting books at the Donation in Kind Depot I did a quick sketch next door at the Maritime Museum. Then this evening while watching television I added a bit of biro. I'm afraid the chains on the anchor look a bit like squashed pasta. I might take some photos next week to use as a reference for some better drawings/paintings. This building was once the stables of Osborne House I believe, a very nice building that, alas, is to be altered to be turned into some kind of development in the future. It now houses classrooms for training adults as well as a very busy local history resource.
(photos added later)

Neighbourhood Watch

from w
item from Newcomb Neighbourhood Watch April. (Ha ha, guess who is their new eidtor?)


Who is your neighbour?

We have heard the song so often:

Neighbours, everybody needs good Neighbours
With a little understanding, you can find the perfect blend
Neighbours, should be there for one another
That's when good neighbours become good friends

But what does it mean? This month in Neighbourhood Watch there is a focus on youth so let’s think about how well we do with the subject of older people relating to the younger people. At the bus stops and on the Newcomb bus people are friendly, chatting, telling stories, but often we stick with our own generation and in our comfort zone. Perhaps this month let’s step a bit further out and engage in conversation with someone who may be twenty years different from us – older, or younger.

A neighbour is not just the person who lives next to you. He or she is the person we meet in the shops, offices, schools, day-care centres, the sports field. And our suburb of Newcomb is a very good place to live. And, there are times when a neighbour – or other person, not our relative, comes to our aid when we experience something dramatic and life tears us apart. To facilitate these tough times, we need to experience the day to day chit-chat to develop a relationship of trust.

One of my mottos is ‘Shelter your family and loved ones – and - watch out for your neighbour.

(from the new newsletter secretary, Wendy)

Drabble dabbling in Korean history

from w
Yesterday I read half of a novel by Margaret Drabble - The Red Queen - the second half after ten pages up the front. (I don't always read a book cover to cover starting at page 1). It's a strange book that even has the author as a character in the book near the end. There are two distinct parts to the novel, two storeylines set 200 years apart, the world of a Korean princess, and the world of an English academic going to a conference. It's about ghosts, obsessions, madness, loss of a child. It is based on research and truth and fiction collide, so in the end the reader doesn't know what is the truth. Anyway I have yet to read the first couple of hundred pages about the Korean princess!
I googled the title and found a response from a blogger who hated the book!

IT development proposed for Geelong

from w
I read about this in today's Geelong Advertiser but then found a better article in The Economic Times - more detailed, accurate I expect.

Satyam to build software development centre in Australia14 Apr, 2008, 1422 hrs IST, IANS

SYDNEY: Satyam Computer Services will build a new software development and training campus, creating 2,000 jobs, in the cosmopolitan town of Geelong in Australia's Victoria state.

Speaking at the future site of the development at Deakin University's Geelong campus on Monday, Satyam founder and chairman Ramalinga Raju said: "We are delighted to be able to announce Geelong as the location of the new Satyam Technology and Learning Centre and we look forward to cultivating new friendships with Victoria and Australia."

Geelong is located 70 km southwest of Melbourne, the capital of the state of Victoria.

State of Victoria's Premier John Brumby said the centre was expected to boost the state's economy by around Australian $175 million ($161 million) annually within a decade.

Brumby said: "Satyam's decision showcases what Victoria and regional centres like Geelong have to offer big business. This is great news for the people of Geelong and Victorians generally. This new project will more than double the current number of Satyam jobs in Australia."

The new centre will mirror the company's campus-like facilities at the head office in Hyderabad and feature facilities for training, research and development, a convention centre and housing.

Satyam will source around 70 percent of all recruits for the new Geelong centre from Victorian and Australian universities. The company has laid major emphasis on local employment generation and today over 42 percent of associates in Australia are local nationals.

It will train and employ local ICT professionals to develop and provide end-to-end IT solutions for Satyam's 570 customers including Coles Myer, Medibank, National Australia Bank (NAB), Nestlé, Optus, Qantas, Queensland Rail, Suncorp, Telstra, Unilever, Vodaphone and Westpac.

The state's Information and Communication Technology Minister Theo Theophanous said: "Victoria is the largest source of ICT university graduates in Australia so it is fantastic to see global companies recognising the value of our highly-skilled workforce."

Victoria's ICT sector generates annual revenue of $24.4 billion, exports of over $1 billion and employs around 85,000 people, over a third of the national ICT workforce.

Deakin University has recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with India's major biotechnology company, Biocon. Biocon is helping Deakin in establishing a mammalian cell bioprocessing facility at the Geelong Technology Precinct (GTP) at the university's Geelong Campus.

Some of the other top Indian ICT companies already located in Victoria include Birlasoft, iGate, Infosys, NIIT, Patni, TCS and Wipro.

Earlier in March, India-based global integrated technology and operations company, iGATE Global Solutions Ltd announced that it would be investing $2 million and creating up to 40 new jobs in the picturesque and affluent historic gold mining city of Ballarat in Victoria.

Chockers in Westfield today

from w
It was the grand opening today so everyone seemed to abandon the shopping strips in the suburbs and the family businesses to have a gander at the re-opened Westfield shopping centre in Geelong. Thousands of people were there as the crowds flocked inside. I was there 15 minutes (in between a writing group and a Bible study) and that was enough to get the gist of it. It's not a good place if you are claustrophobic but of course all the magic of millions of dollars have sparkled up the place and the variety of food and coffee is tempting.

And many people think it is a marvellous project, not monotonal at all as in my drawings. For real photographs, history of the project and a video go to an article and pics in the Geelong Advertiser.

Illustrations in children's books

from w
Each week we go and sort books for Rotary Donation in Kind to send to places like Fiji, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, hoping to find hundreds of beautiful story books for primary schools and secondary schools, gifts from schools, shops and libraries. We find so many treasures. It is hard to believe they are given away. But...some are just not suitable - Year 12 solid science and maths books, pristine, brand new, we don't send. Tattered books also go into recycling. Sometimes I borrow a book or two for a week to glance through, then give them back! One took my interest - on children's book illustrations and another with paintings by Ingpen. Graeme Base is a super book illustrator in children's picture books and I heard him talk one time at a writing seminar.

The shift from rather innocent stories over the years to very dark themes is noticeable particularly in the fiction read by secondary school students in Australia. We don't send stuff that is about demons/devils/witchcraft but fantastic dragons are okay!

How much is a date palm worth?

from w
This morning a guy strolled across to us as we worked in the back garden. Peceli was chopping overhanging branches on the opposite side and I was picking up junk blown from that dust-storm a couple of weeks ago. The stranger said,'Is your palm tree for sale? It could be moved easily now without the fence and this open block. I'll give you $2000 for it.'

Well, Peceli thought, Hmmm nice money for it. I said, 'Hey, wait on. It's the best tree in our compound and is probably thirty years old or more. And the palm leaves remind us of Fiji.' The guy gave us his card and we said we'd think about it.

I rang a nursery and asked them the financial value. They said a tree like this would be about $1000 per metre. And ours is about 10 metres tall. $10,000! No, it's not for sale anyway. The nursery owner said that if it was to be shifted it would cost over $1000 to move. Also it would really deteriorate and nearly die for three years before it recovered from the move.

So I decided to draw this very valuable tree, by standing in the empty block facing the tree and behind it is our garage which is never used for a car. I used mainly pastels, then sprayed it to set the pastels. The smell has kept Peceli out of the lounge room for two hours! Then I messed about with variations using Photo-edit. The pic was too big for the scanner so that's why there are two pictures. Then I made a collage with Picasa.

Fijians in Melbourne

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Not doing much drawing this week but here are a couple of rough sketches I did at the home of some of our friends (they mightn't be our friends after seeing these crook versions of themselves though!) And the picture of the two men, now in charcoal and chalk from Photo-edit.

A Geelong artist - a national treasure I reckon

from w
A book illustator, Robert Ingpen, lives in the Geelong region and has had a prolific career as an illustrator of children and adult books - fiction - especially fantasy and books about nature. Born Geelong 1936. educated at Geelong College 1957, with a Diploma of Graphic Art at RMIT in Melbourne 1958, he was appointed as an artist at CSIRO to visually interpret and communicate the results of scientific research. Since then he began work as freelance designer, illustrator and author. He was also a member of a United Nations team in Mexico and Peru until 1975.

Robert has written and/or-illustrated more than 100 published books. These include children's picture books and fictional stories for all ages. His nonfiction books mostly relate to history , conservation, environment and health issues.


Every year in April the children of Geelong join in a festival, called the Poppykettle Festival which is based on the book by Ingpen about the journey across the Pacific of a group of elves in a tea kettle and they arrive in Geelong.

The gift of a barbecue

from w
Recently Peceli was given a lovely barbecue (when his golf club upgraded their barbecue) and he only had to buy the gas bottle and gas. We tried it out last week with marinaded chicken pieces etc. just for three of us, and then last night had a small party with about a dozen friends - from various Pacific Islands. A lovely evening of telling stories and sharing fine food. Our local cultural group meets about every fortnight on a Friday night.

We still haven't got a new fence so the dust continues to blow across the empty block next door but there are signs of some action happening soon - a guy came yesterday to trim back the trunk of the huge date palm as over forty years or more it had taken over a foot or more of the neighbour's space!

Derelict buildings in Geelong

from w
From the Donation in Kind depot, looking north, you see these old derelict buildings. I think this one was once a powerhouse. Maybe it will all come down, bulldozed like our neighbour's house, to make way for clean development because it is beside the sea. The other pictures are of Smorgies on the pier but they are a bit rough.

A wedding at Fyansford

from w
Yesterday Peceli and I went to Jasmine and David's wedding at Fyansford just out of Geelong opposite Queens Park Golf Course. We knew Jasmine the bride and her family. It was a lovely occasion with the reception at the Truffle Duck after a ceremony in the garden. Here are some pictures including one of Jasmine's Finland 'mum' and 'dad' who had especially come over to Australia for the wedding. Jas stayed with them during her Rotary Exchange year.

Democracy at work in Oz

from w
This was passed on to me and it's not spam mail but an opportunity for anyone (who wants to contribute, has access to the internet and knows about it in time) to write something up to 500 words on the direction Australia is taking.

from Jenny's letter:
In case you haven't heard about the 2020 Summit:- 1000 Australians were invited to Canberra to discuss ideas the Australian Federal Government can do by the year 2020.
I am sure many of us would like to submit suggestions for the Prime Minister and Australia as a whole to listen to, so here is a web site where 500 word submission will be accepted until Wed April 9th (5pm Aust EST).

Go to this website
Although I am not one of the 1000, local MPs (Ministers of Parliament) did regional Summits a week earlier. I joined in the Geelong one on Friday April 4th. The MPs were easier to talk to than I imagined. (About 20 Federal, State and Local politicians took part in the Geelong Summit)

No, this is not a chain letter or SPAM. But if you know of any community minded people, feel free to forward this on.

Written submissions are limited to 500 words per topic and should focus on one of the ten identified areas. You may contribute a submission in one or more policy areas. Submissions will be collected by the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, which is acting as a secretariat for the Australia 2020 Summit.

All submissions require a ‘name for publication’. This can be an individual, group or organisation. In addition to this, each submission is required to include a contact person, their name and details. These contact details will not be published.

Summit Topics

Productivity Agenda - education, skills, training, science and innovation
Australian Economy - the future of the Australian economy
Sustainability and Climate Change - population, sustainability, climate change and water
Rural Australia - future directions for rural industries and rural communities
Health - a long-term national health strategy – including the challenges of preventative health, workforce planning and the ageing population
Communities and Families - strengthening communities, supporting families and social inclusion
Indigenous Australia - options for the future of Indigenous Australia
Creative Australia - towards a creative Australia: the future of the arts, film and design
Australian Governance - the future of Australian governance: renewed democracy, a more open government (including the role of the media), the structure of the Federation and the rights and responsibilities of citizens
Australia's Future in the World - Australia’s future security and prosperity in a rapidly changing region and world

Remembering Judith Wright

from w
This afternoon the Geelong Writers and the Geelong Libraries are sponsoring an afternoon at Newcomb Library to remember one of Australia's best writers, the poet Judith Wright. The main guest speaker is Sr Veronica Brady from West Australia which is great.

(later) It was a treat to meet Veronica Brady,the Loreto sister now academic, philosopher, national treasure. A woman of 79 who is so alert, has a sense of humour, and is so in tune with the land and passionate about justice and integrity. Instead of writing up a report on the program, I penned a few lines, first draft. Some of it won't make sense I guess. Last section is about when I noticed that the speaker was half in front of the powerpoint light so her face was in two colours. The other point of explanation is that one poem discussed was about two women sitting at a table, one Aboriginal, the other the writer and the poem was about communication.

Remembering Judith Wright

The Jacquard sleeveless top denotes her age
of this petite woman capped in silver white,
her notes on a paper folded three ways,
crammed with squiggles, cursive and small print.
Veronica from Perth. We've read her papers
shining with attitude and expertise,
a Loreta sister immersed in words,
leaning towards 'being' and Heinneger,
as we all ask where are we going.
Even Gauguin asked that kind of question.

The pursed mouth and fiery scowl denote the stance
of the large woman, warm in coat and hat,
whose photo is projected beside book lists,
finely organized from teacher's laptop.
Judith from Queensland wrote her poems
cleanly with metaphors of bone, bark and leaf,
a farm girl energised by a life of words
until she left them, leaning towards action
as we all do, wondering, who do we speak for.
Even sorry Kevin said it for us.

I make a sketch, notice light and dark,
a face divided - beige and bright light
projected then casting a shadow
of head and sloping shoulders
blocking the print poem
also beamed in light.
Our shadowed selves are real
but transient, cannot be caught.
Colour, after all, a mirage,
Just beams of light, not skin at all.

Across a table what can be said
between sage and curious student,
physically beige but worlds apart.
Why is there always distance
though we are creatures of the moon
and swivel of the same earth?

A book about France in 40s

from w
I'm in the middle of reading a super book published 2004 in France and two years later translated into English - though it was written in the 1940s in France. It's a chilling tale of how ordinary people, even very rich people, react in an emergency situation - running from Paris when the Germans moved across France. Some acting dishonourably when in a crisis. It is beautifully written and structured (though unfinished) in a musical form. It's called Suite Francais and is by Irene Nemirovsky. I'll write more about it later.

(Saturday) I've finished reading this remarkable book and mostly it was very good reading but suddenly it stopped, as if mid-sentence. Then I realised the author had intended to add two more sections according to her notes which were published also in this edition. Excellently drawn characters and a lot about collaboration as well as the contradictions that come with being occupied.

Here is part of a review of the book.
Review of Suite Francaise By Andrew Riemer
March 23, 2006
The publication of a lost masterpiece reveals a beautifully crafted and ambitious work Suite Francaise: a rival to Tolstoy's War and PeaceAuthor Irene Nemirovsky
Publisher Chatto & Windus

Until its publication in Paris in 2004, this superb panorama of French life in the wake of the catastrophic German victory of 1940 lay buried for 62 years. The two parts of Suite Francaise - each the length of a conventional novel - are the surviving fragments of an unfinished masterpiece.

Its author, Irene Nemirovsky, the daughter of a wealthy banker, was born in Kiev in 1903. After the 1917 revolution the family fled to Finland, then Sweden and finally to France. In 1929, at the age of 26, Nemirovsky made a sensational literary debut with a semi-autobiographical novel, David Golder. A series of highly esteemed books followed that initial success. After the German occupation of the northern parts of France, Nemirovsky went into hiding in the so-called free Vichy zone. She was detained in 1942 and deported to Auschwitz, where she was killed.

Nemirovsky's daughters survived the war. Throughout those terrible years, they treasured a fat notebook filled with their mother's minuscule, indeed microscopic, handwriting. It contained the text of the first two parts of an ambitious project: a five-part novel that would run to 1000 pages and chronicle the ignominy and tragedy of France's collapse during the first years of the war. Unaccountably, the text was not deciphered until the 1990s.......

It is a bird's-eye view, so to speak, of the great exodus from Paris in June 1940 as German troops advance on the city. Nemirovsky's skill in weaving together the fortunes of a large cast of characters is breathtaking. Nature's serenity in that golden month contrasts marvellously with scenes of terror, folly, selfishness and occasional altruism.

Several groups of characters stand out... Notable among these is a right-wing novelist, Gabriel Corte, and his mistress who, in the increasing panic and chaos, begins to drop her well-bred mask and reveals (to her lover's horror) her plebeian origins. There is also the Pericand family, devout upper-class Catholics who betray the shallowness of their faith when their world begins to collapse around their ears. And above all, we meet the Michauds, a struggling middle-class couple whose fundamental decency shines bright in a dark world.

In the second section, Dolce ... the focus narrows to Bussy, a small town where a contingent of German troops is garrisoned. At the centre of this wonderfully composed canvas stand two figures: Lucile, a young woman trapped in a sterile marriage, and a German officer, Bruno von Falk. In her mother-in-law's gloomy house, filled with the insigniae of provincial propriety and mementos of her prisoner-of-war husband, Lucile is appalled to find herself attracted to the polite, cultivated representative of an infernal regime.

There, as elsewhere, Nemirovsky's psychological insight, her compassion and a clear-eyed, sometimes sardonic ethical sensibility elevate a commonplace subject to the realm of great art. Several times in her jottings, Nemirovsky mentioned Tolstoy and War and Peace. Those allusions were not misplaced. Had it been completed, Suite Francaise might well have rivalled Tolstoy's achievement. Even in its incomplete state the novel reveals an amplitude and something that I can only call wisdom, which often bring that writer to mind.

Nemirovsky could not, in 1942, have known how the war (and therefore her novel) would end. Nevertheless, had she survived, she would, no doubt, have had to confront the fate of collaborators like Gabriel Corte, or indeed of Lucile, the unwitting, lovelorn traitor to her nation - at least in her mother-in-law's eyes. She might have dealt, too, with the terrible perils faced by Jews like herself who saw themselves as fully integrated members of French society...

This English version is a faithful, if somewhat pedestrian, rendition of a tour de force, the most affecting work of fiction to come my way for many a year.

Yesterday's storm in Geelong

from w
Peceli will tell his story (after golf or later) of going to Melbourne and the storm there, but here are some pictures from the Geelong Advertiser - of yesterday's sky at dawn, Ryrie Street from opposite Macdonalds and a tree down in a nearby suburb of St Albans Park where a tree fell on the scout hall. This morning I had a look inside our greenhouse which doesn't have a back wall (because the fence used to be there) and everything is in a mess - tables down, pots on the ground, so I had better start cleaning it up after I finish posting this and another blog!


A news item from the Addie lists some of the damage yesterday.
Reporter: Aleks Devic
The fierce winds sparked more than 2000 calls to the SES and the CFA was kept busy with several spot fires after trees were uprooted and landed on powerlines. Geelong residents caught in the ferocious storm described the scenes as chaotic. The day caused devastation across the region including: A TREE crushing two cars in Belmont; A SCHOOL bus filled with children being hit by flying roof sheeting; A LAUNCH boat being swept away to sea and nearly crashing into Smorgys Restaurant at Cunningham Pier; A SCOUT building at St Albans Park sustaining damage from a falling tree; and A BRICK wall collapsing in Belmont. Geelong Weather Services director Lindsay Smail said an intense pressure system with a cold front caused the gusty winds yesterday. Colac was among the hardest hit, with winds topping 132km/h at 1pm. "The summer was so dry and warm and when this comes upon us we think it's unusual but all the weather is doing is getting back to a normal type pattern," Mr Smail said.
"There was also muddy rain across Geelong with very strong winds picking up dust across paddocks. We also had many dust storms." Newtown's Ben Beard said the wind flipped over a large billboard trailer along Melbourne Rd in North Geelong. "It was absolute carnage with trees and rubbish flying through the air it was crazy," Mr Beard said. "It was like something from Armageddon or a like a storm in a desert like Iraq."
Commuters heading back to Geelong from Melbourne faced a horror drive home with the West Gate Bridge having two outer lanes closed in both directions and speed reduced to 40km/h. Jetstar media manager Simon Westaway said the powerful winds delayed an Avalon to Perth flight yesterday by 90 minutes. "The severe winds created some problems in terms of getting passengers to board and disembark safely," Mr Westaway said. "It's unfortunate, but safety comes first and there were times where it was too risky to fly." Geelong CFA boss Bob Barry said several powerlines, which hit the ground, caused grass fires throughout Geelong but all were contained. Leopold's Matilda Fitzgerald said at one stage as she looked towards Melbourne there was a purple haze and 20 minutes later it was an orange dust cloud. "There were also a few mini water tornadoes at Lake Connewarre," Ms Fitzgerald said. Winchelsea's Kaylene Stocks said there was debris scattered all over the town. "At one stage it looked like there was a huge bush fire and the dust was so thick you couldn't see in front of you."

Gales of laughter and a real gale

from w
This morning the sky was a peuce colour, like I'd seen it the day of a bushfire - yellowy brown and the wind was coming up as I went up to the church hall for a morning coffee with a group of about fifty women. Our guest speaker, Enid Baker, had us in gales of laughter with her stories and extended jokes, some oldies nearly falling of their seats. Laughter is a great medicine. Coffee and cakes were excellent too as the wind bashed against the windows and walls outside.

After some computer stuff I had to do in the church office, I caught a bus and it was gale-force by then and as I waited for a bus I did a kind of Marilyn Monroe pose. At the ATM my money almost flew into the traffic but I grabbed it in time and paid the car insurance. The trees and the traffic light signs were really shaking.

On the bus home I noticed trees down and some fences in tatters, and when acouple of us got off the bus, sand and grit whipped us in the face. Then, what a shamozzle I found our back yard to be. The dead branches from the date palm were scattered about, the pots and pot plants all over the yard, a small tree was down on the ground, two unattached doors were wrecked with glass shattered. And yesterday Peceli had been so proud of a neat, tidied up compound! They say the winds were up to 150 k an hour at times so it was almost like a hurricane.