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I picked up my mail from the post office. Hidden among the bills was my 2012 fridge magnet calendar from our federal member, Bob Katter. This year’s effort is a definite improvement on last year’s, which featured Mr Katter’s signature but no sign of the Man in the Hat. As you can see, our illustrious member’s beaming fizzog and trademark headgear are back. As is a demonstration of one of Katter’s Australia Party’s platforms — the freedom to boil a billy wherever you damned well please. And as badly as you like.
I am deeply disappointed that neither the photo of Mr Katter nor of our state member, Shane Knuth, has the hat deep etched. I have been a fan of deep etched hats ever since a friend who worked on a rural newspaper pointed out that if the main front page photo was of a man in an Akubra — especially a man in an Akubra accompanied by a kelpie or a cattle dog — the headgear would be deep etched. It’s tradition, you see. Like lukewarm billy tea.
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From 16 January, Atherton Library will be hosting From Ship to Shore, a travelling exhibition from the State Library of Queensland. The display features notebooks and journals from the SLQ's archives.
Four of the diaries describe 19th Century immigration, another was written in the 1890s on board a South Sea Islander labour recruitment ship for Queensland’s sugar industry, and one is from a post-World War II immigration voyage.I've made a note about it in my diary. I should also probably mark it on the Katter 'n' Knuth fridge calendars. I will report on the exhibition in a couple of weeks.
