Jetty Road Weekly Blog 22/6/25

Image: Evoke Classic

Dean Winter’s Guided Bus Tours

Dean Winter: “We did think of calling them Mystery tours but people might have thought we didn’t know where we were going”

ABC reporter with Winter Bus Tour Prospectus “So Dean you have started up a tour company?” “Yes Lucy. We are planning a tour of all the sports stadiums in Australia” “Where do I sign up?”

“Well it is a little way off”

“So when?”

“Well we have to wait for the new Spirits. Our bus will be too big for the current one’s”

“Wow! Must be some bus. Can you show me?”

“Well we haven’t built it yet”

“Really? So how come you are launching your new venture now?”

“Well we are doing tours up kunyanyi.”

“Without a bus?”

“No we do have transport.” Gestures behind him.

“What in God’s name do you call that?”

Winter smiles sheepishly: “That’s Eric Reece’s Morris Minor.

Image: News Ltd

Integrity

Back in 1984 Mick Young was forced to step down from his ministry for failing to declare a Paddington bear to Customs.

How times have changed. Let’s leave the US aside. D.T. has never had any integrity to begin with. There are any number of politicians today who would not have survived had 1984 rules been applied. Angus Taylor chief among them.  I liken Angus to Hanse Cronje the flawed South African cricket captain. Gifted, privileged, handsome – but definitely dodgy when it comes to conflicts of interest and adding zeroes to Clover Moore’s travel expenses.

Back in 1986 I came across a retired boilermaker called Ernie Mitchell. Small in stature big in heart, Ernie proudly related to me in his soft spoken Irish burr that he was from Belfast and had been a union member for 50 years. He was spending his retirement travelling around schools, including establishment schools like Grammar and Scotch, with a reel to reel projector showing the struggles and achievements of unions throughout the world, particularly in the clothing and manufacturing industries. Ernie had worked at Coats Patons for decades and was chief delegate for the Metal Workers Union. He told me that he was in the office so many times with management that they offered him a place to park his car inside the staff car park. He refused. I asked him why. He said he could not afford to be compromised. That he could not risk the opportunity that they might put something in his car boot and accuse him of stealing. I said that was most unlikely. Ernie agreed. He was still unmoved however. Whether they would or not was not the point. The point was that he could not put himself in the position for it to ever occur.

The Right love to bag unions and at times they may have a point. Nonetheless we can safely say that Ernie Mitchell, humble boilermaker and unionist of fifty years,  had so much more integrity in his little finger than many of today’s politicians including a recent Coalition Prime Minister.

Image: Annie Schmidt

A. tenuirostris

We have a lion on our flag. We have teams named after devils and tigers. None of them can compete with the endurance, tenacity and abundance of our short tailed shearwaters.

There are estimated to be 2.8 million pairs of moonbirds on Babel Island alone. These birds fly amazing distances when they migrate from Bass Strait to the Arctic circle: a distance of over 12,000 km’s in a straight line. When they return to mate they then fly up to 1500 km’s to Antarctic waters for up to three weeks at a time to fill up on krill to feed their chicks. They live for up to thirty years of age and mate for life. I no longer like to call them mutton birds. Somehow it brings them down to the level of a Big Mac. That is not to decry the sustenance they have provided for our first peoples past and present. They are truly noble fascinating creatures.

Song: The Shearwater Suite

G The Shearwater Suite

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