Aug2014_Mt Mee Ramblings

By Ian Wells

Yes, it has turned into a cold winter –  plenty of Mountain paddocks are looking frostbitten and plenty of cattle are learning about Jenny Craig. But it’s almost Ekka time and things will soon warm up. Whether or not the gods will bring rain is a matter for conjecture though – the SOI isn’t very promising.

 

Talking weather, I was overawed by the perception of an ABC radio announcer the other morning, on air he questioned the BOM spokesman whether the unusually cold temperatures that morning were caused by the weather pattern!  That reminded me of the very senior ABC sports commentator a year or two ago, who on watching and commentating on his very first game of womens’ cricket, announced to the airways in all seriousness  “Women’s cricket is well worth watching, never mind the knockers!"

The most important news that I bring you this month is to confirm that the Savoyard Singers will perform in the Mt Mee hall on Sunday September 14th.  The tunes that Phyll Griffin has selected promise a super performance, and I am really looking forward to hearing the two young performers that she has recruited to her little troupe.  This will be another good Mt Mee concert – and you can read more about it elsewhere in this edition of the Grapevine.

The Mt Mee Hall Committee continues to work on the idea of a Celtic night – or “Ceilidh” – probably for early next year. Thinking at this stage does include a very polished vocal quintet performing Scottish and Irish songs, a dance floor and a supper, to include haggis for the adventurous.  We will hear more…….

I am very pleased to report that my pestering of local member Andrew Powell seems to be bearing some fruit.  He has sent me a letter stating that the State Government’s planned review of the South East Queensland regional plan is running a little behind schedule, but will now enter the public consultation phase in the second half of this year – i.e. any time soon!  My strong advocacy for a lowered Mt Mee subdivision limit of 16 ha (40 acres), instead of the present 100 ha is widely known.  The days of intensive agricultural production here are gone, thanks to extensive earlier subdivision we are already a dormitory lifestyle suburb, and the retired farmer landholders amongst us need to be able to realize on their land to support them in retirement.  Let’s hope that the current government sees this matter more rationally than did its predecessor!  Keep your eyes open for this review!  As I write I’m still confused about the Council’s Draft Regional Plan and can make no sense of the website.  I have worries about the proposed “Mountain Ranges, Forests and Waterways” overlay – especially that it could be the thin edge of a wedge leading to fencing of gullies and maybe exclusion of dams.  But Councillor Adrian tells me to relax…………

There is an email funny doing the rounds about the more mature citizen demographic choosing a computer password.  It is a bit ‘close to the bone’ and it made me think of Ryle Winn’s description in the July Grapevine of how he left his unit turned off.  What wisdom!

This household has had more than its share of electronic misfortune in 2014.  It began early, with the faithful old clunker and its loyal Windows XP simply giving up the ghost. Accepting this philosophically as an inevitable function of age, we looked around.  With all new PCs committed to Windows 8, and everyone suggesting that should be avoided like the poison”, we went for a used machine, and Windows 7 – I still think that this was a very good decision.

Very sensibly, we transferred our old hard disc complete with all data to an external drive- where we could easily access it. Terrific – except that sadly, for some reason, our Outlook address book didn’t make the transit.  But we slowly put an address book together on the new machine, and all was going swimmingly.   

Then I decided to copy a CD – dead simple with XP, as complex as all hell with Seven. In the process I was asked if I wished to format the disc – a requirement I hadn’t seen since the far off days of the little floppies.  But I considered that it must be a fair thing for our sophisticated and all – knowing new system, and so I said “yes”. 

Then “Oh dear!”  What I had formatted was not the blank CD but the external hard disc.  And all of its data shot up the spout and into the ether.  Gone!  The family photo collection and lots of important records.  Gone!  Gone!

Our local guru Mick Tomlinson was holidaying in his new caravan, so we took the wreckage down to Morayfield.  The man smiled and shook his head, “But” he said, ‘We do have a special programme for these disasters, it takes a week to run and we can try it”.  He did, but to no effect – all still gone. “Now there is another process that might work, but it costs $900”.  No thanks!

Mick finally came home and heard the sad story. “Give me a look” he said.  And a few days later he rang and said “I’ve got a lot of material back for you, including reams of pics”.  Good old Mick!  You beauty!

But now to the latest development.  Last week our son- in- law, pitying the poor oldies, “tidied up” our Outlook files, despite our protestations that things were working just fine.

And guess what??  He lost our entire address book again – including the concert advice circulation list!

If any reader still has one of the concert advice notes sent around early this year, please copy it back to me so that I can retrieve those addresses.  Please!  Please!   

And otherwise, follow the sound example of Mr Winn.  Don’t turn the bloody thing on!