An unexpected sight. 1935.

Regular readers might remember that I am not a fan of sharks. Selachophobia is my one completely irrational fear.

It is irrational for a few reasons. I know sharks have better things to do with their time that lurk in the shallows waiting for humans, so going to the beach isn’t really risky at all.

The main reason this fear is irrational is because we live more than an hour from the beach. Boats aren’t my thing either so unless one gets on the bus and turns up on my doorstep there is very little chance a shark and I will ever be trying to occupy the same space.

JG didn’t do me any favours the other day with her New Jersey shark post though. I remember seeing the movies about these events some years ago and thinking that the scene where the shark is spotted swimming under the bridge towards the unwitting ‘dinners’ splashing about upstream was a little too convenient and probably written in to the script to make the story more exciting. According to JG’s account of the events that’s how it really happened. Eeek.

For those of you who didn’t see that post (go and have a look), a quick summary is that up until 1916 people in New Jersey still lived safe in the knowledge that sharks only ate things like dolphins and seals. Humans were obviously not on the menu even though we are of a similar size and probably taste just as delicious*. In the early weeks of July 1916, after a few attacks in front of shocked onlookers, people realized that this assumption was totally wrong (and probably that all those previously attacked by sharks just didn’t live to point the finger).

The shark in 1916 not only attacked people on a beach, it also swam up a river and took some even more unsuspecting victims there.

Those of you who live in Australia (and South Africa, I suspect) will know that shark attacks in the news are not something unusual. We don’t see them all the time but we aren’t shocked when we hear of them, just unhappy. Of course we are happy for all you potential tourists to think that your average surfer dodges a Great White between every set. 😉

Sunday Times 28 April 1935 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article58757391

I had to rant post about sharks because I wanted to share this article. In 1935 a 14ft shark was placed in the Codgee Aquarium for the enjoyment of the masses.

The shark had been captured a week earlier and obviously had been having quite a few adventures recently.

In front of stunned onlookers it stopped swimming, thrashed about for a moment, and vomited up a human arm. The arm had a distinctive tattoo and a piece of rope tied around the wrist.

I bet the horrified crowd didn’t really care about the distinctive markings though and I am sure a few of them never went into the water again…..

The shark also disgorged other things, a bird, bones and parts of another smaller (6ft) shark who was the original eater of the arm (which is why it was intact enough after a week for fingerprints to be taken).

The arm turned out to be all that remained of James Smith, a petty criminal, and the story behind his death was one of the most convoluted stories in Australia’s legal history. Due to the lack of body, and the underworld creed of keeping your mouth shut, nobody was ever convicted of his murder (Dictionary of Sydney, wikipedia). Had the shark not eaten the smaller shark, then been captured by fishermen, Smith’s fate would have never been known.

Just because, and to show you that sharks really can pop up anywhere (so my fear is not entirely stupid) here is a clip from Brisbane, Queensland.

During flooding a few years ago half a dozen Bull Sharks were washed into the lake on a golf course and became a local attraction. Recently the course and lake were inundated again and those at the course were worried that their iconic sharks might have made their way back to the sea.

A later news article was happy to report that the sharks were still splashing about in the lake as usual, forgoing their chance at freedom. Maybe they have developed a taste for golf balls. After all, who is going in after a lost ball there! (I think the clip’s title ‘killer sharks’ is a bit of an over dramatization though….)

*I think that one day we might meet a killer whale with a taste for humans and our current assumption that they don’t eat us either will go the same way.

A strange theft. 1935.

Definitely a strange theft. 20 miles of sausage skins. Hmmm… what would you need with 20 miles of sausage skins?

The West Australian 21 Mar 1935
http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article32838783

A butcher, of course, would find a use for them but he would have to be a pretty popular butcher if he was expecting to sell the 302,400 sausages that would fit in that much skin.

I wonder if the thieves thought that the 5cwt (5 hundredweight, about 250kg) of sausage skins were actually something else?

Did they get this very heavy stash back home, rip off the covering with a flourish, and find disappointingly empty sausage skins rather than the big slab of meat they thought they had stolen?

I wonder what else you can do with sausage casings? Do ou think there is there some other reason they could have stolen them?

A dubious musician….

Fifteen year old New Yorker Arthur Rappoport was clearly dedicated to learning his saxophone. According to his proud mother Olga he practiced for four hours a day.

Sunday Mail 29 Dec 1935 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article97856875

Clearly practice doesn’t equal talent, as six of the neighbours complained in court that his playing was “a cruel and unusual punishment” “disturbing our thoughts and minds”.

The magistrate in the case ruled that Arthur was to only play his saxophone during the day; presumably the neighbours were far more able to cope with their minds being disturbed during daylight hours.

The magistrate stated that he lived in that district himself and would be passing this dubious musician’s house every evening to check that the peace was being kept.

I wonder if young Arthur continued playing his preferred instrument after this ruling, or was the weight of disapproval of an entire neighbourhood enough to quench his love of music?

An unexpected gift. 1935.

I am going to have to bite the bullet and do bit of Xmas shopping for the boys soon. I hope that none of the presents I buy will conceal the kind of surprise that this gift did though.

Barrier Miner 14 Mar 1935 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article46685170

What kind of present was this from Miss Margaret Bignall’s parents back in 1935?

Surely if they had a plantation in the Solomon Islands as reported there would be many other interesting things that they could have bought home for their daughter as a gift rather than a crocodile egg, still full of crocodile.

I wonder what on earth she was really going to do with the egg anyway. Keeping a not-so-fresh egg in your wardrobe is probably not best practice and could only end in disaster couldn’t it? Stinky, gooey disaster…. Yuck.

I really think that finding a small crocodile hanging out with your frocks, while surprising, is the best case scenario here. 😛

An unexpected visitor. 1935.

Here in Australia we have a lot of different types of lizards, big ones and small ones but I think the guy in this photo from 1935 would have to be one of the biggest of them all!

This lizard is a 6ft long Bungarra (Sand Goanna) and can you imagine what was going through the mind of the dog in the background (which looks like a Border collie to me just for sizing purposes) when it wandered up? The dog was tied to the kennel after all which means that escape was not on the cards…. *cue Jaws music*…..

These lizards eat pretty much anything that fits in their mouth, and at this size that means pretty much everything that crosses its path is in danger.

My favourite old newspaper article about lizard was this post, The Mysterious Kumi and after seeing this photo I can readily imagine people believing in reptilian monsters!

I have done a few other posts about lizards over time, most recently about the lizards we came across on our holiday; a grumpy Stumpy Tail, a Jacky Dragon and a sunbather at Silverton.

The West Australian 26 Mar 1935 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article32854347

Wet weather 1935 and 2012.

We have been having a bit of interesting weather this week. It has been very cold, and on Tuesday we had a 5.4 earthquake across most of Victoria, followed the next day by very high winds and rain.

I know that a few of my readers in the northern hemisphere are suffering from the heat at the moment so I thought I would share some of our coldness with you, as I know that in your part of the world you are wishing for an unexpected blizzard or something similar to break the heat 🙂 I expect that you are not interested in sharing earthquakes though…

We have had a fair bit of rain lately, so the ground is no longer interested in soaking up water and is now just spreading it around in interesting ways. On Thursday I was convinced my trip home from work would be extended by about 50kms when I saw the rising waters on my way in! Luckily the rain eased and I didn’t have to take the long way home.

I found this photo from 1935 of a local road having some water issues, so when the Man and I went to the shop this morning I thought I would go past and have a look at it today.

The Argus 3 May 1935 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article12234886

Unfortunately nobody was silly enough to risk frostbite today and slog through the water for a photo opportunity. Darn… Plenty of people taking a watery detour for sightseeing purposes though which was nice, a flooded road photo is always better for having a speeding car in it. 🙂

Conveniently for me, the car in the photo on the right was about to make a turn up the street shown in the article above, so it doesn’t look like I am including a photo of somebody being an idiot for my own pleasure. 😉

I have also put in this last photo which was created thanks to the Man. The scene starts with me, car window open, looking for the perfect photo of a flooded paddock. The Man starts accelerating, just to annoy me, and the spray from the water covering the road gets higher and higher. We end up belting through the water with no hope of me getting a picture at all. Can you hear the laughter of the Man as I am cursing him and pulling my camera back inside to safety? Grrrr.

And yes, that means I am including another photo of someone being an idiot for my own pleasure. 😉