Sign of the times on the home front

The Age

01-07-2025

'Your recent interest in Burra (C8), South Australia, evoked childhood memories,' writes Phillip Moore of Middle Cove. 'During World War II, my mother took me to visit her bridesmaid who was married to the resident headmaster (and sole teacher) at Booborowie, some 50 kilometres north of Burra. The present population is a couple of hundred, and I suspect it was much the same then. We travelled by train. On the journey, we alighted twice at the wrong place and had to be redirected by the train guard. This came about because all the destination signs on the railway stations had been removed and randomly relocated because of the threat of invasion.'
Pamela Kerr of Moonta Bay has more: 'The Cornish mining sites of Moonta and Burra were added to Australia's UNESCO World Heritage Tentative List in September last year. Any Column8-ers who visit will find me doing my volunteer stint at the Visitor Information Centre (the old railway station) on Thursday afternoons.'
In the lead-up to Wimbledon, Mick Miller of Ettalong Beach notes that Australia's Maya Joint 'just won the Eastbourne Open tennis title. I wonder if she suffers from tennis elbow.'
A number of Gilligan's Island (C8) pundits have rained on George Zivkovic's position that the SS Minnow (with a top speed of 12 knots) would only have ended up 42 miles from civilisation. Ron Schaffer of Bellevue Hill reports that ''the weather started getting rough, the tiny ship was tossed' and she was blown rapidly far off-course.'
David Gordon of Cranebrook adds: 'Sixty years ago, when my father was stationed in Guntur, India, one of his subordinates was caught in a typhoon that lashed the East Coast and was swept into the Bay of Bengal. Fortunately, he was rescued — 300 km offshore! The SS Minnow may have experienced something like that, George.'