smoking ban

This is from the Age's Good Weekend magazine on 9 December 1989, in a kind of 'farewell to the 80s' article called 'Remembrance of things passed' (p. 126+) by Anthony Dennis and David Monaghan. I dug it up because I was having a think about when smoking began to be banned in earnest in public places in Victoria/Australia (ironically, within an hour or so of being interested in this, I saw a headline in today's paper which mentioned a Crown employee suing that organisation as he had contracted lung cancer, he alleges, from working in a part of the casino that allows smoking still). 

I was only reviewing the Age in the 70s and 80s searching on terms like 'smoking ban' and not getting that far, but marvelling at yet another example of the ways in which general attitude appears to have been 'this is how it has always been, people smoke everywhere and that is what we are used to, so there is clearly no way it can ever change'. 

What surprises me I guess is the way that a lot of the reportage is taking the side of smokers eg the piece above. Maybe it's because smokers are so bad tempered, notoriously. I remember complaining to a worker at the Gladstone Park Woolworths that smokers were always getting served ahead of everyone else at the 8 items or less counter and she said it was because they got shitty if they didn't get immediate attention. 

gladstone park shopping centre roof is leaking

You read it here first.

voting with their forepaws

I have gone many days at a stretch without reading the newspaper in the last few weeks as I have found it so disheartening. Disgusting, really. The only one good thing I can say if Abbott gets in is that it shows a trend towards greater exercising of democratic freedoms amongst some sectors of the population. The bad thing is it will make governments even more cowardly.

Up at Gladstone Park HS the scene was pretty sad. I was particularly grossed (about 120% as much as I would have been if it was a party I supported) by the family who had a small child (about 2, sucking a dummy) holding up a Liberal how-to-vote card as they exited the polling station.

I can't imagine what life will be like if Abbott gets in. I won't really know, I suppose: I will just withdraw.

charlie goes to gladstone park

So Charlie and I spent a few hours in Gladstone Park on Sunday just walking along being normal. We came in from the Moonee Ponds Creek side where many Gladstoneparkers back on to the reserve. This individual had an extensive and valid pipe system which, post-water tank, distributed rainwater onto their little out-the-back garden.


They kind of blotted their sustainability copybook with the new aircon unit the size of a car though. Didn't see the size of their car.


Still, it's nice to see improvisation is alive and kicking in GP with a terrific set of bird scarers (or catchers, not sure) - of which this is but one.


Everyone there under 60 wears tracky dacks with two stripes, but they pull it off, so to speak. Additionally there are a lot of old people around being active. I didn't photograph any. But I did see this amazingly fine house, the front of which stretches the entire property. The front yard is brown rocks. All in all it says something.


We met a woman (her name we did not glean) and her beagle, Bobby. She was shocked to find that we had walked from Jacana (a full 15 mins away). You might recall a few years ago the man in the GP Video Ezy claimed to have never heard of Jacana. Charlie and Bobby got on OK, on a Charlie gauge. We were also pleased to see a small dog being washed by these nice people in the street.


They love their dogs in GP. This young lady was using hers as a husky.


Charlie was amazed by this gate-no-fence scenario. We have no fence at our house, which she appreciates, but it would bug her seriously to have to wait for someone to open a gate.




Caulder House but no answer.


We were mainly walking along Carrick Road, which is one of the main roads of the suburb although as you can see from the map above that is a kind of a random design idea; the roads sweep curvily through and like the best 70s suburbia, it's dead easy to get lost. Once you cross the western ring road, you end up in a whole new world, of semi-industriality en route to Airport West, though if you move north it's similar to GP and for all I know technically still is GP, or perhaps it's Tullamarine.


We saw a spectacular pomegranate tree which made me want a pomegranate tree.


Charlie saw something she wanted too but it was similarly unavailable.


We were both impressed by the patriotic nationalism of the craftspeople in this home, which also had about six cars parked in the garden.


And the colour co-ordination of this wonderful home struck us as delightful. (Not sarcastic. True.)


'All in all', said Charlie, 'I'm buggered now and want to go home.'

progress

Gladstone Park's Safeway is moving ahead with a redesigned/rebuilt checkout area.
At first I was worried that there would be a cluster of those horrendous self-serve checkouts, most recently experienced by me in Adelaide, though they also have them at Big W Broadmeadows. Then I realised that they weren't putting in self-serve checkouts and became a little offended (don't they trust me?). I am pretty unattracted to the self-serve checkouts on a few levels. Many of the staff at Gladstone Park Safeway are familiar to me (though a new one was there today - a boy called Hamish). There is a woman at GPS'way who always smiles when she sees me as if to say, you again, you schmuck. So of course I would hate to lose that personalised service such as might occur with the advent of self-serve.
Here is all the old junk they haven't carted away yet which made up the old racks and shelves of the preredesigned Safeway:



Update 25/10: They are putting in self service checkouts after all and very proud of it they are too. I was in there this morning waiting in the express queue with my garbage purchases and a young lady gestured to me to come over and join the self-service fun. I shook my head and she registered understanding, with the subtext, 'it's only a matter of time, shithead'.

they're building something on the roof carpark at Gladstone Park shopping centre

Aren't they.

caught a glimpse

...of myself in the mirror at Gladstone Park