coming back from canberra a week ago - bombala installment

Seems like I was last in Bombala 19 years ago. Or maybe I've been there again since then and have forgotten and didn't blog it which doesn't sound like me. Anyway, the main attraction for Bombala as far as I'm concerned (aside from the historical value of a town that was one of the three or four initially slated to be the national capital) is the small coterie of statues representing cartoon characters of the 1930s-40s, mainly Popeye and Ginger Meggs characters with the bonus of a representation of Dobell's painting of Joshua Smith (the implication being I suppose that it is not fine art but a caricature, which was a smooth-brained criticism of the time).

Bombala is a town I like a bit, and I was able to see that the weird little statues are definitely still there, and looking in not terrible shape, though some wag has I suppose pushed one or two over with presumably a stick or something. Can you imagine that boy going to bed at night still chuckling over the kerfuffle that he has caused by pushing a little statue over in the enclosure by the swimming pool. 'They'll never guess it was me,' he says to himself, and then the next day he forgets to not walk around town with the same stick poking everything he sees and giggling.

I had no time to stroll in Bombala but I see the Olympia Theatre is still there and looking good. 

This is it from behind:

not very interesting imo, me in the US forty years ago (and a bit)

This is me in Olympia (top) and San Francisco (middle and bottom). It was actually April 1986. I flew into SF just before my 21st birthday, and took a train I think (must have) up to Olympia, or near enough. Yeah, I know, there are train tracks in the Olympia picture but they were just for goods trains. I was kind of captivated by the train line in the road. I don't know why those state buildings (in the middle) were at all interesting to me. Supermarkets kind of thrilled me, with their crazy products (orange cheese etc). I seem apparently happy to just stand in front of things disengagedly. 

I was on my way to Thatcher's Britain which sucked a big turd but at least I saw The Smiths and, er, Stump or whatever. And I got to endure the Chernobyl cloud and be somewhat arguably possibly exposed to mad cow disease.