Vicki is celebrating her birthday

It is well known within the family that I very much like cheese cake!!!!!!!


My punishment for not attending Vicki's 50th it seems is to be tortured with provocative photos of all the cheese cake I am missing out on.... I can assure my tormentors that I am well aware of the consequences of my decision not to attend the function being held at the Foster ranch at Wudinna.

While it is always disappointing to miss out on a feast of cheese cake it is much more so to miss the chance to see the family members who will be in attendance, as well as my favourite daughter I am saddened to miss seeing Alan, my oldest son, (he who sits grinning as he contemplates eating my share of said cheese cakes) Alan recently had a very bad fall which resulted in a fractured skull and a week in hospital, so it would have been nice to see him and his lovely wife Lyn, alias "the ferret" (a long story!!).

I'm guessing that the shadow of the photographers head which is in the photo belongs to one who desires to be known as my favourite son-in-law, he has on occasion gained this status but I should hasten to warn him
that tormenting me with photos of cheese cake I'm not going to have a share of is not the best way of getting to be FSIL!!!!

Please click on the photo to enbiggen it.


The gathering is being held as a "thankyou" to all the kind folk who have been so supportive of Vicki over the last 12 months when her health has been a very real worry at times, and also of Rex during his recent bout with prostate cancer, they are both enjoying very good health at the moment and we pray that this continues.
If you are a regular reader here you will already know of the troubles that have befallen them over the last year or so, and for those who do know the story, you have most probably offered some kind words or prayers for them during this time...
please join us in a "virtual party" to celebrate Vicki's birthday and their good health, thank you one and all!!!
it doesn't hurt that at this stage of the year they are looking forward to what has been a very elusive thing over the past decade... A GOOD YEARS HARVEST... too early to start cheering yet but the signs are good.

My favourite Daughter’s turning 50.

My little girl is turning 50

Don’t ask how this can be

Its seems such a short time

Since she bounced upon my knee.

Gone are the stages of her life

The joy, tears, and traumas of her youth

She is now a woman, mother, and a wife

May she get some peace now in her life.

She’s been a friend to many

One of the very best

You’ll never find her lacking

When she’s put to life’s test.

So to all who have gathered round her

To help celebrate this night

Make sure you have a good time

And make her night just right.

From a loving Dad.

Accidental damage

Its a sad day at holtieshouse!!!!!!

If you really want to see more of the damage click on photos to enbiggen them.

A lapse of concentration for just a couple of seconds is all it takes....
(But you knew that already,right?)
I was crossing the Gateway Bridge in Brisbane and found myself in the wrong lane, a quick glance in the rear view mirror told me I couldn't change lanes safely right then so I returned my attention to the road in front of me.... Just in time to see the traffic in my lane had stopped.... Ouch!!!! you can see the result in these photos.




The vehicle in front of me was a Ford Falcon station wagon with a BIG tow hitch... it suffered no damage while my poor little i30 came out with serious damage, fortunately no people or animals were injured in the making of this blog post so that at least is a good thing, now I just have a session in front of me with my insurance company and a period without my car while it gets fixed DRAT!!!

How "www.com" came to be.

I have always intended to rewrite this as an Australian version,

But verily, we do get lazy as we age so here is the original version.

THE RISE OF THE www: HOW IT ALL BEGAN

In ancient Israel, it came to pass that a trader by the name of Abraham Com did take unto himself a young wife by the name of Dot. And Dot Com was a comely woman, broad of shoulder and long of leg. Indeed, she had been called Amazon Dot Com.

She said unto Abraham, her husband, "Why doth thou travel far from town to town with thy goods when thou can trade without ever leaving thy tent?" And Abraham did look at her as though she were several saddle bags short of camel load, but simply said, "How, Dear?" And Dot replied, "I will place drums in all the towns and drums in between to send messages saying that you have for sale and they will reply telling you which hath the best price. And the sale can be made on the drums and delivery made by Uriah's Pony Stable (UPS)."

Abraham thought long and decided he would let Dot have her way with the drums. The drums rang out and were an immediate success. Abraham sold all the goods he had at the top price, without ever moving from his tent. But this success did arouse envy. A man named Maccabia did secret himself inside Abraham's drum and was accused of insider trading.

And the young men did take to Dot Com's trading as doth the greedy horsefly take to camel dung. They were called Nomadic Ecclesiastical Rich Dominican Siderites, or NERDS for short. And lo, the land was so feverish with joy at the new riches and the deafening sound of drums, that no one noticed that the real riches were going to the drum maker, one Brother William of Gates, who bought up every drum company in the land. And indeed did insist on making drums that would work only with Brother Gates' drumheads and drumsticks.

Dot did say, "Oh, Abraham, what we have started is being taken over by others." And as Abraham looked out over the Bay of Ezekiel, or as it came to be known "eBay" he said, "we need a name that reflects what we are," and Dot replied, "Young Ambitious Hebrew Owner Operators." "YAHOO", said Abraham.

And that is how it all began!

Dust Buffalo's on the move

You might recall that I spent 3 months away from home recently?

Well a couple of weeks after I got home I spilled a glass of water in the kitchen... it took an hour or so before I regained enough traction in the mud to get out of there!!!
Not being one to make hasty decisions.... about a week or so later I thought I had either better clean up a bit or plant something, not wanting the bother of harvesting a huge crop of marijuana I opted for a clean up.

Now I know you have all come across "dust bunnies" (when you've been visitin' an' the like....)
Well let me introduce y'all to "dust buffalo's" at first I thought they were "dust wallabies" but they were much larger and more active than that.
After I spent a couple of hours roundin' 'em up this lot were corralled in the bathroom

Elated with my successful roundup I went in search of new frontiers to tackle, it wasn't long before they started to turn up either!!!
At my current rate of progress I'll have the Vacuum cleaner out by early September to give the carpeted areas a good goin' over too.

So as this message I unearthed says.... Its time for you to move over Pamela and let the buffalo rancher through.

Slides by the thousand!!

This is what has been eating my time up lately.

My slides are stored in 10 of these wooden cases which hold about 500 slides each, as well as these there are numerous slide trays which fit into the projector, so as I said before the storage conditions have been close to ideal.

From the cases they go to the Canon MP980 where 4 at a time they are scanned, this takes about 3 or 4 minutes a batch so you can see where the time has been going.

This fortunately is a fairly rare case, the red blotches are a fungal growth that I have been unable to remove, just why some slides are affected and others from the same batch and case are not I have no idea.




A far more common case is where there are only a few spots which I have been able to fix.

Here the bottom of the photo has been cropped and some minor spots retouched.

We spent a day at the 1977 world parachuting championships (that's 32 years ago now) the photos from that day vary from over-exposed to under-exposed again for no reason that I know of.

An example of a photo that needed work on it

While this is far from perfect it is certainly better than it was above.

Pretty much a dark unrecognizable image here.

It becomes a lot better when tidied up a bit.

This sort of discoloration really spoils a photo.

It can be improved a lot by spending some time on it though.



Like the photos above these were taken on the same day with widely varying results, this one not too bad.

To this badly over-exposed one (none of the photos were stored in that condition BTW).

Fixable to some degree at least., but as I said ,it all takes time.

Another peculiarity using the Canon, each scan is referred to as a "crop" this in lots of cases results in the effect shown here.


When further cropped to remove the dark border the resultant slide becomes almost square instead of the original rectangular shape, now I'm gonna have to learn to speak Canonese as well as digital!!!

Christmas 1977 crossing the newly finished Westgate Bridge in Melbourne.

A lot better image here, I have since cropped the front of the F100 and bullbar out of this photo.

Hope that wasn't totally boring, I'm enjoying the project even though it is very monotonous at times.

Comparing Apples with Apples.

Please excuse my lack of posts recently, I have been busy converting several thousand slides to digital images as this task is progressing I am thankful that I am doing it before further damage to the slides occurs, even though they had been stored in practically dark conditions for most of their 25/30 year lifetime there has been substantial deterioration of some slides, so my efforts have been in some restoration work as well.
Just to complicate my life a little more I have been bitten by the Apple Mac bug (serves me right for messing about with so many photos) after an initial foray to the local Apple shop, where I was suitably shocked by the price of Mac's I ventured onto eBay for a look around, I came across a S/H 17" iMac.... in Adelaide... of all places, long story short, I bought it for just $560 and Vicki is picking it up next week!!!!!
Dah Dah.... its her 50th birthday on July 11 so guess who might be going to Adelaide AGAIN soon????
There is an element of doubt about this trip as I have an appointment next week with my eye surgeon to see whether I have to have cataracts removed from my eyes, as I already postponed this because I was in Adelaide when the appointment fell due I don't want to put it off again unless I have to....
so it goes, as my good friend "Ol' horse tailed snake" used to say.

This is an Apple promotional photo of the iMac range, the one on the left is the 17" model, everything is built into the monitor housing much the same as with a laptop but with a keyboard and mouse.


To compensate for the time I'm not spending blogging, here are a couple of things I've received lately that have tickled my fancy (again with the tickled fancy Pamela)

This one from my friend Lyle.

Don't tell me your age; you probably would tell a falsehood anyway -but the Hershey Man will know! YOUR AGE BY CHOCOLATE MATH This is pretty neat. DON'T CHEAT BY SCROLLING DOWN FIRST! It takes less than a minute . Work this out as you read .. Be sure you don't read the bottom until you've worked it out! This is not one of those waste of time things, it's fun. 1. First of all, pick the number of times a week that you would like to have chocolate (more than once but less than 10) 2. Multiply this number by 2 (just to be bold) 3. Add 5 4. Multiply it by 50 -- I'll wait while you get the calculator 5. If you have already had your birthday this year add 1759 .. If you haven't, add 1758. 6. Now subtract the four digit year that you were born. You should have a three digit number The first digit of this was your original number (i.e., how many times you want to have chocolate each week).. The next two numbers are YOUR AGE! (Oh YES, it is!!!!!) This ultimately sensible plan came to me via blog friend Robyn. Dear Mr. Swan, (Australian Treasurer) Please find below my suggestion for fixing Australia's economy: Instead of giving billions of dollars to banks that will squander the money on lavish parties and unearned bonuses, use the following plan. You can call it the Patriotic Retirement Plan: There are about 10? million people over 50 in the work force. Pay them $1 million apiece severance for early retirement with the following stipulations: 1) They MUST retire. Ten million job openings - Unemployment fixed. 2) They MUST buy a new Australian CAR. Ten million cars ordered - Auto Industry fixed. 3) They MUST either buy a house or pay off their mortgage - Housing Crisis fixed. 4) They must send their kids or grandchildren to school / college /university - Crime rate fixed 5) Buy average levels of alcohol / tobacco a week, so there's your money back in duty / tax etc It can't get any easier than that! P.S. If more money is needed, have all members of parliament pay back their falsely claimed expenses and allowances. Please feel free to substitute your country for Australia, I'm confident it will work anywhere in the world.

A view of Hamersley Gorge WA.

Explanation !!!!
!Some readers have suggested that
(a) I was kind to soften the image of the 3 girls swimming in the buff in the previous post.
(b) That my photographic skills were less than they should have been.

I took the photo from the top of the cliff shown here, a distance of well over 300 feet to the subjects swimming below, and taking into account the natural tremble of my hands at my good fortune and the use of maximum zoom power, I think the resultant photo was very good indeed.

As to the inference that I encouraged the lorikeets (birds) with food, Phswaah (raspberry) these birds are so dumb they clamber all over whoever is silly enough to come into the open.

Jack, all I can say about you coming downhill on that alpine road is... you had better have your ski's on... cos you're gonna be goin' downhill really quickly.

BTW, have a look at the Ugg boot site on my Message Board.

Some more old photos

What to post?????

As they say in all the cooking shows on TV... Here's one I prepared earlier!!!!

More of those old slides.... they sort of fit the theme of my blog.... they're all Australian.

Dont forget to click to enbiggen.

A beautiful waterfall in Tasmania.

The ruins of Port Arthur penal settlement... (penal, that almost sounds rude doesn't it??)

Cradle Mountain, see it in the background and Lake St Clair in Tasmania.

For those who are fascinated by Australia's snakes this is the biggest one I've ever seen, about 12 feet long, but he is anon-venomous python so no need to panick, I DID stay well clear of him just the same.

A giant Poinciana tree in a park in Brisbane Qld.


Way down south to Wilsons Promontory in Victoria, the birds are all flocking around me again.

A lovely red bottlebrush

The sun back-lighting this leaf made an interesting image.

A thatched stable made from "Mallee Roots" when the Mallee scrub was cleared for farming land the last process was to dig up the Mallee stumps (roots) in many cases these were just heaped and burnt but many farming areas still use them as firewood scavenged from the huge heaps (The Foster's keep their house warmed in winter burning them) Mallee BTW is a small variety of eucalyptus tree.
As yet another aside; root is an Australianism for the sex act so mallee root takes on a different meaning in some (lower) circles.


Its important to keep the red posts on your left hand side when this alpine road is covered with snow!!!!


Mount Buffalo ski slopes in spring time, covered with wild flowers instead of snow.

A change of pace... Mount Tom Price open cut iron ore mine in the Pilbara WA.
The ore from this mine is so pure that they have to mix in some of the over-burden soil to make it meet the Japanese steelworks specifications.

The Pilbara is home to some very spectacular gorges, here blissfully unaware of the technology of the zoom lens these three lasses were taking a refreshing dip in the altogether.... they ordered prints when I told them about the technology.

More on hair styles.

Now come on gang... do I come over as a "comb over" type of guy?????
Surely you can recognize a joke without me having to use the iniquitous "LOL"

I would be wasting the opportunity to use this;

If a man has a bald patch at the back of his head, its because he is a great lover.

Photos will enbiggen if you click 'em.












If a man has a bald patch at the front of his head, its because he is a great thinker.













If he has bald patches at the back and front of his head, its because he thinks he is a great lover.

Hair styles of the poor & infamous.

Home as far as Wazza's in Brisbane after a 2.5 hour flight instead of a 25 hour drive between Brisbane and Adelaide.
As the weather has cooled down with the onset of our winter (mild though it may be by comparison with some other places) I have been letting my hair grow in the hope that it will insulate my head a bit, the supply of hair is fairly sparse so I’m working on a “double reverse comb over with a cow lick front and a degree of difficulty of 7.5).
At the moment its about 1 inch long instead of the normal 1/8th of an inch so in another month or so it should be about right to do the comb over from each side to the centre, I know you will all be anxious to see the result so I’ll keep the photos coming, my favourite daughter is most keen to see how it turns out I know so stay tuned Vicki.

Click on photos to enbiggen.

This pic shows Wazza and I sharing a glass of red to ward of the cold last winter.

This one shows the preparatory work that has gone into the double reverse comb over style that is to come.

It can be clearly seen that I come from good stock when it comes to the head covering that needs the above style, this was my dear old Dad at 90 years of age, I hope I got some of those genes as well as the hair style.

Its not much further to Wudinna!!!!

We have been on the move again!! Rex, who is recovering well from his recent surgery, decided that he was indispensable at Wudinna so we went home to the farm for a few days.

In truth, he is a born and bred farmer who was starting to get bored in the city!!!

This put paid to the idea that Wazza and I would have a look around at some of the sights close to Adelaide, luckily Wazza is pretty easy going and fits in with whatever is happening.

I have posted some more photos…. Makes for a quick and easy way to do a post and will finish the story of our weeks adventure sometime soon, we fly out of Adelaide to Brisbane tomorrow (Sunday) afternoon and there is a public holiday on Monday so we will be able to catch our breath then.

Please click on photos to enbiggen.

Just to finish "The Gnomes" story here we are with the instigator (and chief make up lady) receiving our instructions.

The lake and parkland at the Adelaide unit is now all green and beautiful after getting some good rainfall.

There is a fair bit of limestone in some of the paddocks so they were "stone rolling" to crush the limestone, each of the 3 rollers weighs about 30 tonnes so they do a good job on the rocks.

There is also quite a few granite outcrops in the area, the memorial to the local farming community was designed and made by a local artist, it looks pretty impressive in the flesh.

This encouraged us to visit one of the granite outcrops, Pindalpa Rock, for a look around... it too is quite impressive.

Here we have Rex and Vicki (Rex was very good and stayed with the car so he wouldn't put any strain on his operation.

Vicki on the other hand was really feeling well and clambered all over the rocky outcrop.

Wazza is seen here invoking the wrath of the storm gods who were gathering behind him, they sent down a torrent of rain upon us but we survived to tell the tale.

Vicki's dog Timmy really enjoyed running up, down, and around on the rock and showing us just how fit he was and how unfit we were.

Here the two of them are waiting for Wazza and I to catch up!!!!!!

We were tempted into all this exercise by the promise of some good "taddying" in the pools on top of the rock, for those who might not know about Taddying, it is the collecting of tadpoles that hatch from eggs laid in the pools by frogs, this is a time honoured occupation which we were only to keen to participate in... but alas, there wasn't a taddy to be found.

Rex is seen here resting with his wheat collar on after the adventure.

Here are some other goats out for some exercise, these are feral animals and are plentiful in some parts of Australia.

We've made it to Adelaide.

We ran into some wet weather on the trip down to Adelaide.

Don't forget to click on photos to enbiggen them.

Water lying along the road side

This is pretty much in the middle of nowhere, they do graze some sheep here but its pretty poor country and at the moment pretty wet too.

Next we came across some hilly country which got Wazza pretty excited.

As he explained it to me.... he saw it more like this which evoked some mammary's... oops memories.

He just wouldn't shut up about them so I tried gagging him........

That didn't work very well so the next move was into the tray of the utility!!!!!
(If you look closely you will see that Wazza is speaking digitally to me!!!)


For some unknown reason this seemed to upset him and when I untied him.......

Vicki had planted some new bushes and a tree in the front of the unit... she wanted a couple of garden gnomes for decoration!!!


Here you see two conscripts in place in the garden.

I must bow to superior gnomesmanship however... who could compete with this???