AUSTRALIA ~ The Antipodes

AUSTRALIA ~ The Antipodes
I love a sunburnt country / A land of sweeping plains / Of ragged mountain ranges / Of droughts and flooding rains / I love her far horizons / I love her jewel-sea / Her beauty and her terror / The wide brown land for me / ~ Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968)

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Thursday, January 24, 2008

Another Australian closure - just a day later


When The Bulletin's young, enterprising proprietors threw open the shutters in 1880, most Australians lived in the country; 20 years later, they had shifted to the cities. The poet A.B. "Banjo" Paterson recorded the change by collecting and publishing the old bush songs treasured by generations of Australians.

MEDIA RELEASE
Thursday, 24 January 2008

ACP Magazines Chief Executive Officer, Scott Lorson, today announced that weekly news and current affairs title The Bulletin with Newsweek would cease publication from the current issue of the magazine which went on sale on 23 January 2008.
The Bulletin is Australia’s longest running magazine and was launched in 1880.
In the latest Audit Bureau of Circulations figures, The Bulletin had 57,039 in sales (Sept 07), which is down from circulation highs of over 100,000 in the mid 1990s. This trend is consistent with that experienced by many leading weekly news and current affairs magazines globally and is somewhat symptomatic of the impact of the internet on this particular genre.
“This is a sad day for all of us at ACP Magazines. The Bulletin has been an institution in Australian publishing and has provided its loyal readers with the best quality, in-depth news and current affairs analysis in the country. The Bulletin has often set the political agenda, broken many important stories and won many awards for journalism over the years,” Lorson said.
And the final publication was a special Australia Day edition.
~
Ref: Wilsons Almanac - 1856 JF Archibald (Jules Francois Archibald; b. John Feltham Archibald in Warrnambool, Victoria; d. September 10, 1919), Australian publisher who in 1880 co-founded (with John Haynes) The Bulletin, which published a great many of Australia's writers and artists.
Like many Australians of his day, he was fascinated by all things French, changing his name from John Feltham to Jules Francois; he even wore a French goatee beard although they were not fashionable. Under Archibald's sole control, and with
AG Stephens as his literary editor, The Bulletin became Australia's leading outlet for poets, cartoonists, short-story writers and comic writers. Henry Lawson was one who 'Archy' of the 'Bully' took under his wing as a young writer.

In his later years, when he was an inmate of Sydney's Callan Park Lunatic Asylum for the Mentally and Criminally Insane, Truth magazine wrote of him (1916, following a Bulletin attack on the recently deceased Truth publisher, John Norton): "The crank used to go tearing around Sydney buying diamond necklaces for flash barmaids: he used to imagine he was Moses, and was writing a new set of commandments; he drove his wife to drink, he behaved like an orang-outang at the Zoo, and, generally speaking, was as freaky a freak as was ever permitted out on probation from a lunatic asylum." There was some truth about "Archy's" wife, the drink and the asylum.
In his will, he made the two bequests by which he is best remembered by the general public: funds for the Archibald Fountain in Sydney's Hyde Park, which he specified must be designed by a French sculptor, and the Archibald Prize for portraiture, now Australia's most prestigious art prize ...
~
~ And today, it was reported that people were stranded on Luna Park's Mad Mouse. Curious! Now I am told by a reader it happened in Melbourne! But all I find of Melbourne's accident did not occur today, but earlier - December 28 when there was a power blackout! Yet TV news flash (no details - just a line) said Sydney! Curioser and curioser! Yes! There are 2 Luna Parks! One in St Kilda, Melbourne and one on the shores of Sydney Harbour near the Harbour Bridge! Too hasty reporting? Hmmm Perhaps tomorrow will bring more enlightenment!
~
And I heard from some voice on another TV report, I hated travelling after 9/11. Thankfully, I wasn't actually watching at the time. I just heard the distant voice.
~
There is a sense of losing
Sense~
As if the safety ropes
Are slowly being
Cut
One by
One
~
It would be so easy
To throw up the hands
In utter despair
And scream
A soundless
~
WHY!
~
But
I remember a Queen Mum
Of some old England
Far across
Commonwealth seas
Who stayed
Unflinching
At the heart of
The bombing
~
Perhaps
I could pretend to be
Some royal mum
~
Then
Perhaps
As fortune
Smiles
A little
Again
The pretence
Will fade
And
There really will be
A commonwealth
Of hope
~
There MUST be
~
Australia Day
Is just a tomorrow away~
And her spirit
Must smile
For her birthday!
~
P.S. LATEST LATE NIGHT NEWS! China is experiencing its fastest economic growth in 13 years! So it's China! It's good news at last! (Does little happy dance!)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think you'll find the people were stuck on the roller coaster at Luna Park in Melbourne, not in Sydney.

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  • A perfect summer day is when the sun is shining, the breeze is blowing, the birds are singing, and the lawn mower is broken. ~James Dent
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  • Autumn is the bridesmaid of Summer and the flowergirl of Winter ~ Gemma Wiseman
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  • Spring paints the stars of heaven in Earth colours ~ Gemma Wiseman
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  • The object of a new year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul. - G.K. Chesterton
  • Winter is an etching, spring a watercolor, summer an oil painting and autumn a mosaic of them all. - Stanley Horowitz
  • Winter is the fire, simmering lonely in the soul ~ Gemma Wiseman
  • Winter is the shadow, the etching of the seasons in the mist ~ Gemma Wiseman

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