Don’t mess with a mermaid. 1911.

When I was a little girl I loved fairy stories. Not the Disney fairy stories we are subjected to today, I preferred those fairy stories where you don’t stop to listen to the merry music the fairies are playing or you will be lost for a hundred years.

So many of the mythical creatures we all know started off as a scary thing, the stories about them were full of taboos or warnings. They were not the fairytale creatures we make happy stories out of today!

Long ago when people believed in mermaids they didn’t believe in the Disney version, a young girl pining for a better life above the waves. Back then mermaids were at times spiteful creatures, best left alone.

Queanbeyan Age 7 Jul 1911 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article31380259

A perfect example of that is this article from 1911. The mermaid in this story sat on a stone and sang all night disturbing a baby.

The mother took the drastic step of having the stone smashed by her servants in the hopes that the mermaid would stay away. The mermaid then sang her vengeful intentions;

“Ye may think on your cradle,

I’ll think on my stane;

And there’ll never be an heir

To Knockdolian again.”

They story ends with the death of the baby and the extinction of the family line. Nasty.

The thing that started me on this subject was an item in the ABC news yesterday, Mythical mermaids big business in Zimbabwe – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).

This article is current news but could just as easily have been written in those fairytale believing times from my childhood stories. The Zimbabwean Pastor Togare Mapingure believes in mermaids, but not in a good way. He believes that they are a demonic force responsible for kidnapping, torture and murder.

He claims to have been taken by the mermaids and spent two years living like them and being educated by them. Interestingly he says they eat fish, rice and chicken only. Fish yes, I totally get that, but where did they develop a taste for chicken? The best part of his unlikely life-under-the-waves story to me is the rice, how do underwater dwellers cook rice? Hydrothermal vents? But why?

The mermaids can’t be that bad if they spent time sharing their knowledge and then let him go. He really should be a little nicer about them then, shouldn’t he? I mean he couldn’t possibly be using a story to gain power over….. oh…never mind…that’s a whole other post.

Launching the Parthia. 1947.

I really have no reason to post about this article. It is not connected to current news and has no Fortean undercurrent, in fact it is just an item of news. The reason I am posting it is that I think it is just a beautiful photo.

If you had spent as much time as I have flicking through old newspaper images you would be as excited as I am to find such a clear photo. It even shows the shine at the front of the ship!

So many times I find articles that describe an exciting photo, only for me to find the accompanying image is a black blob that seems to have absolutely no relation to the thing I was hoping to see. Grrrr. The quality of newspaper production has certainly come a long way in recent years!

The ship in this photo is called the Parthia. Sadly she was considered uneconomic and sold to P&O in 1961. Her name was changed a few times before she was sent to Taiwan in 1969 to be broken up. What a waste. This ship originally belonged to the White Star Line, a company we all know better for their ill-fated ship, the Titanic.

So here you are, for no reason except my appreciation of it, a photo taken at the Harland and Wolff’s shipyard of the launch of the newest ship in the Cunard White Star Lines fleet, the Parthia in 1947.

Launching the Parthia. Singleton Argus 25 April 1947 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article82366950

More Aussie music. You’ll need a tissue for this one.

This is another Australian music post, but it is not a band that is on my ipod helping me to get through the day with their boppy tunes.

I’m only writing about one song this time, an Aussie anthem you have probably heard before. I was only 19 by Redgum.

I though as a post ANZAC day song it might be appropriate to share this clip with you. The song was written by John Schumann in 1983 and has become an anthem for the Australian Vietnam Veterans. Nevertheless, the underlying message is something anyone in any battle can relate to.

And the Anzac legends didn’t mention mud and blood and tears,

and stories that my father told me never seemed quite real

 I caught some pieces in my back that I didn’t even feel…

 God help me, I was only nineteen.

It is desperately sad, and the historical black and white footage of young men at war in this clip makes it all the more forceful. Get a tissue first.

ANZAC Day. 2012.

Today in Australia we are celebrating ANZAC Day.

ANZAC stands for Australian and New Zealand Army Corps, and the 25th of April is the anniversary of the first major military action fought by Australian and New Zealand forces during the first world war.

On this day in 1915 Australian and New Zealand forces landed on the beach of Gallipoli. They were part of a movement that set out to capture the Gallipoli peninsula in order to open the Dardanelles to the navies of the allies, with the objective being to capture the capital of the Ottoman Empire, Constantinople (now Istanbul, Turkey), an ally of Germany.

Unfortunately, due to the fierce resistance of the Turkish defenders, it quickly became a stalemate and the campaign dragged on for eight months. By the time the allied forces were evacuated both sides had suffered through great hardships and suffered heavy casualties.

Many stories of bravery and heroism have been told of the troops involved in the campaign, and the ANZAC legend is something that endures in Australia to this day.

The Sydney Morning Herald 11 Nov 1933 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article17023113

One of the most famous stories of the battles at Gallipoli is that of Simpson and his Donkey.

John Simpson Kirkpatrick (born 6th July 1892) was a Private in the Australian Army Medical Corps and became famous for his work as a stretcher-bearer.

Donkeys were used to bring water to the troops and Simpson obtained one of them to help him recover the wounded.

Day and night he and the donkey (he used a few different ones) bravely carried wounded men from the front line, often under fire.

Simpson is often described as an enigmatic figure. I expect this means that he was independent and not good at taking orders. Nevertheless, the story of Simpson and his donkey has become an enduring symbol of courage and persistence during a terrible time.

Simpson was killed by machine-gun fire only weeks after his arrival, on the 19th of May, while carrying two wounded men, and was buried on the beach at Hell Spit.

Celebrating this day and showing our respect for those that fell at Gallipoli has become something that all Australians are aware of. Over time ANZAC day has become a day where we honour all of those who sacrificed themselves in wars around the world.

Aussies are known for their love of public holidays and we really don’t care what they represent, we just love ’em. ANZAC day is probably the only one I can think of where people actually care why we have that day. Every year it seems to be becoming more popular to go to a local dawn service or commemorative march.

To be standing around a cenotaph in the dim light of dawn hearing the melancholy notes of the Last Post and the recitation of The Ode sends shivers up your spine. You have likely heard The Ode, but not known where it came from. It is the fourth stanza of a poem called For The Fallen written by Laurence Binyon in 1914.

They shall not grow old, as we are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun, and in the morning,

We will remember them.

 

If you would like to know more about ANZACs and Gallipoli have a look at http://www.anzacsite.gov.au/ . It has video, photos, audio and just about anything you could want.

The Australian War Memorial website http://www.awm.gov.au/ has great information too (and is where I found the ‘why’ of the Gallipoli invasion).

Individuality is the modern watchword. 1938.

Last week a blogger I much admire did a post about what she called ‘Nosferatu days’. You know, those days when you wake up, look in the mirror and say ‘what the?!’

Wander over to Bluebird Blvd and have a look at it if you like, I can wait… http://bluebirdblvd.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/adulthood-confidential-you-better-make-friends-with-your-face-cause-youre-gonna-be-here-awhile/

A ‘Nosferatu moment’ is when some sort of time-space-thingo happened when you were asleep and you have woken up looking completely different from what that little mental picture of yourself thinks you went to sleep looking like. Did you age years overnight? No, you are having a ‘Nosferatu moment’.

There were interesting comments made and different opinions aired and it got me thinking yesterday about the inordinate amount of attention paid to the way we look. Mind you I was thinking about this at work, an exclusively (well, apart from me) male environment where the only fashion prerequisite is a flannie shirt and workboots. Not a high fashion environment!

What I thought about was; when (and why) did it become OK to expect to change the way we look in those big ways? A nose job or a boob job, lip plumping or stomach sucking. Those procedures that have become almost not worth commenting on as they are so commonplace.

It is frightening to see what those women (mostly) in the public eye  do to make themselves saleable to the masses. Do they ever look at their real motives for changing their appearance or are they so caught up on the treadmill of eternal youth they don’t have the chance to stop and look where their next step is taking them?

I couldn’t think of anything worse than being in the public eye and having the pressure of not only maintaining some sort of discernible talent, but having to look good all the time (no more workboots and flannies for me then….) I think I would rather maintain my anonymity!

These days it is not only people who have based their career on their appearance that have this need to constantly update their look, it seems that every level of society has been infected. If only people accepted that aging is what happens and is not something that needs to be battled against.

Of course, once I got home I had to have a look at the old newspapers to see what they had to say on the subject.

The Mercury 27 Jul 1938 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article25472395

I was amused when I found this article from 1938 on attractiveness. Clearly the current celebrity climate is not something that has bred our obsession with appearance. Even back then the virtues of personality and internal beauty were something that they felt needed to be reinforced.

I love that the article finished with ‘Individuality is the modern watchword’. Yes, it should be.

Tom Cole is branching out. 1937.

Here we are catching up with Tom Cole again. Last time we talked about him we had just found out that he was getting an offsider in the form of Darwin barber and former ballroom dancer Samuel Delaney. Not really the sort of bloke you would think of as roughing it and hunting wild buffalo. So far I have been unable to find out any further news about how their trek through the wilds went, and this article may give us a hint as to why.

The Canberra Times 18 May 1937 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2433352

It seems Tom Cole is in the process of opening a tourist trap, a ‘Dude Ranch’ where people can kill all day and sleep comfortably at night. Although, touting the virtues of a place by  telling me that it has crocodile infested rivers is not going to get me there!

Quite a departure from where we have seen Tom in the past, spending Easter on an exposed platform surrounded by miles of floodwaters or being knocked about by horses.

I am now suspicious of the original article I posted about Samuel Delaney and his desire to become more of a bushman. It is beginning to sound more like a sneaky advertising campaign!