Wishing you a hot new year

Check the crepuscular rays on this one (although Hazel tells me they're not strictly crepuscular, as it's more the clouds than the rays that are streaming out*).

Still, it's amazing what one sees when one steps out onto one's front verandah toward the end of a hot new year's day.


*Divorce pending.

Urban decay

The sun is setting on this perfectly good fish factory.

It will soon be a block of townhouses - the kind that a fly-by-nighter like the Cheetah would like to live or invest in. (If he knew where Fremantle was).

Sunset clause

As the Chinese landscape architect reflected once or twice during a slideshow of his best work to a disinterested herd of Queensland University town planning undergraduates: "Aah, my picture".

Jabba the Hutt

I'm back in Australia, having seen the new year in with Prince Leonard, Princess Shirley, their sons Crown Prince Ian and Prince Wayne, and various minor royals, of the principality of Hutt River Province.

I, in fact, was the only interloper on hand when the clock chimed midnight. But the royal family's hospitality made me feel like I was a royal too.

A neighbour of the prince's even took me pig shooting. But we encountered no feral pigs - just some bunnies, foxes and a big red 'roo.

And no, I didn't get amongst the shooting. I'm a city-slicker who just went along for the ride. Fascinating stuff, though.

Prince Wayne also went out hunting - with family friend Mick. At one stage they were confronted by a wall of feral hog - one hundred of the cranky buggers, charging their vehicle.

But no guns for Prince Wayne. He lets the dogs bail the wild tuskers up, jumps out and hog-ties them himself for a later rendezvous at the dinner table.

That's tough.