“Police officers at the Cabramatta command on Tuesday decided to chip in to have a supplier recreate the full set of medals in time for the digger’s Anzac Day appearances at the Sydney dawn service and his local RSL club.”
The police then surprised him at home with the medals on Wednesday.
What a wonderful thing for the police to do! (and the supplier to do it so quickly) 😀 Even though the medals aren’t the real thing I am sure they will still be special to him. Hopefully his real medals will be recovered soon enough.
Today a requiem mass was held for the famous Australian bushranger, Ned Kelly. Ned will finally be laid to rest in Greta cemetery next to his mother on Sunday, more than 130 years after his execution on November 10th, 1880. (ABC news.)
Gallows at Old Melbourne Gaol, where Ned Kelly was executed.
I was interested to hear that death threats were made to Monsignor White, the priest who was to officiate over the service. (The Age.)
It just shows that Ned’s story is still polarizing the people after all this time.
Poor old Ned is not going to lie too restfully for now; the part of Gippsland where he is to be buried is a little to close to a large bushfire for there to be much peace for him for a while yet.
Oh well, it has been over 100 years already, I think he can wait just a little longer….
Update: Here is a link to a report about the funeral on the Sunday.
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Other Ned Kelly posts I have done in the past are:
In 1945 residents of Almeria, Spain, were having a slight problem with white things left out in the sun.
Laundry left out to dry, and even white washed walls would burst into flame without warning. Not only that, people wearing white clothing would find themselves on fire! Eeeek!
I am not sure I agree with the peasants suggestion that the recent drought was followed by these unexpected fires because “God must be very angry with Spain”.
Hmmmmm… No. If there was a vengeful god up there, shooting fiery arrows, it would only seem that he was angry with the colour white.
If their god really was angry with Spain in general he was being quite selective as to who in Spain he was sending his grumpy message to, wasn’t he?
I am not sure how whitewashed walls could easily and spontaneously catch fire, and this article is punctuated in a slightly confusing way; “….laundry laid out to dry in the fields, and threshing floors have mysteriously started to blaze under the hot sun.”
Thanks to that comma I’m not sure if they mean it is laundry laid on the threshing floors to dry, or the threshing floors themselves which caught fire!
I wonder what really caused this fire from the heavens? The scientific explanations given, St. Elmo’s Fire, the area being a good electrical conductor, or static discharges are a little unimaginative for me. Surely they could have come up with something better!
This article is not very satisfying is it? They mention “arrows of fire” targeting people running towards the fires. Really? Did someone actually see a flaming arrow plummeting down? Surely the danger of the arrow would be more talked about than the fire!
I wanted to know more about the walls. Did they burn completely down, or was it just a small flame? Do the whitewashed walls and white washing have something in common, some sort of chemical that might react to the heat of the sun?
C’mon Staff Reporter! That Peasants’ Stories Confirmed header is a bit of an exaggeration isn’t it? Maybe a more accurate one would have been just a plain old Peasants’ Stories …
Every culture or belief system in the world has its own version of the creation story, some countries hatched from a giant egg, were created by thought or, as below, were fished out of the sea.
Something they all tend to have in common is that they usually feature a god or animal turning a vast emptiness into a world appropriate for human use. Oh, and devils. Just because life was never meant to be easy.
Australian Aboriginals use the term Dreamtime to describe the time when their world and ancestors were being shaped. One of the most famous and important Dreamtime characters of Australian Aboriginals is the Rainbow Serpent.
According to myth, the slitherings of this giant snake created the mountains and valleys. This story is probably the most well-known and widespread of all the Dreamtime myths.
Of course, Australia is well-known for its unusual, and at times dangerous, animals but I think that we are pretty lucky we don’t have giant, valley carving snakes travelling around the countryside today!
This post was inspired by this interesting article in the Herald-Sun about the discovery of giant snake skeletons in outback north Queensland. These snakes weren’t just big.
“Dated back to the Pleistocene epoch, between 2 million and 11,700 years ago, the fossils are believed to be akin to a constricting python, a predator that grew up to 7m long and as thick as a telegraph pole.”
Bushwalking wouldn’t have held the same kind of pleasure in those days would it? Although I love the comment from Dr. John Scanlon, one of the finders of giant snakes, who said;
“Serpent myths are universal, but whatever way you look at it, the world was a far more interesting place with giant snakes in it.”
Yes. It probably was. Although that kind of sounds like that old curse, ‘may you live in interesting times’. If there was a chance of coming across one of these guys in your garden (or a 5 metre Megalania, giant lizards and giant snakes at the same time, eek!) I think that Australians would be known for living in bunkers and having a tank parked in every driveway….
For those of you who have never heard of the Rainbow Serpent or Dreamtime myths here is a clip of the Rainbow Serpent story. It is narrated by the famous Aboriginal actor David Gulpilil and features the 1975 art of David Roughsey.
I know that some people delight in sharing the terrors of Australian wildlife with the world, making them think that after setting foot on our shores death could come from anywhere, at any time, and without warning. This news article from the Herald-Sun is not going to help matters…..
Today the Mitchell St Childcare Centre in Darwin was temporarily closed thanks to an ‘inundation of snakes’. How many snakes make an inundation you ask?
The director of the childcare centre was alerted to the snakes presence when a baby one was found in a side room. They had the same snake problem last year so she had a fairly good idea of what was going on.
Some blokes from the council turned up to take care of things and decided that taking some wall panels off would be the best way to get to the root of the problem. Once the panel was removed 23 babies, and their 2.5 metre mother, were discovered and a wildlife ranger was called to take care of them. Inundation indeed!
The snakes turned out to be harmless Carpet Pythons, and many of the kids, and the parents who were arriving to pick them up, seem to have been quite amused by proceedings. Carpet Pythons are quite common in Darwin so I guess they were just glad it wasn’t their own wall the snake decided to make a home in.
If you are a little nervous of the wildlife in Australia don’t let this put you off visiting us though. For your entertainment here is a song to scare you encourage you to come; the Scared Weird Little Guys Come to Australia. 😉
I know that there was a possibility that the world would end today, on the 21st of December, but assuming that little event didn’t go to plan I am scheduling this post anyway 😉
I bet you didn’t all go out and do things that you would regret, assuming that there would be no tomorrow to wake up and feel regretful in did you?
No, neither did I.
In late October 1953 the religious leader from the town of Muerzzuschlag, Austria, informed his people that the end of the world was nigh, and, unfortunately for neighbourhood peace, they were a little less sceptical that we are.
In the expectation that the time for repercussions was ending those villagers went on a doomsday spree, borrowing money they were unable to repay, dumping their wives for their girlfriends, giving away their belongings or dancing the night away.
Probably the most popular person in the village was the local publican who served free drinks to all comers.
I wonder what those villagers who weren’t members of the sect thought of the gullibility of those end-of-the-worlders?
Apparently there were a lot of regretful people when the world continued on. The authorities were called in to sort things out, and I guess for a few people their own personal little world had ended.
I am using this as an excuse to add a clip of my favourite end-of-the-world movie scene, the start of Armageddon.
“It happened before, it will happen again. It’s all a question of when…”
If you wish to use any images or text from my blog be sure to ask permission and include a link back to Buried Words and Bushwa, and full credit to it.
Trove.
The newspaper articles here come from the National Library of Australia (trove.nla.gov.au). Get on there and do some text correcting! You never know what you might find...
Buried words and Bushwa. 
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