While admitting you may not need to know this, Joan Brown of Orange says that “a sturdy red rubber band, the type favoured by postmen, will survive two minutes on high in the microwave. That’s what I discovered when one somehow was on a dinner plate while re-heating a meal”.
Proving he can obfuscate (C8) with the best of them, John Brown of Kianga calls “a spade a manually operated pedal powered soil moving apparatus just to make sure people know what it does. That’s what politicians do”.
The rocket’s “unscheduled disassembly” (C8) reminded Ray Franklin of Sippy Downs of the first use of helicopters by Sydney television channels. “They were single-engined machines usually piloted by Vietnam vets. Considering their background they were rarely troubled by an occasional forced landing. The pilots referred to such mishaps as ‘involuntary assisted descents’ – the assistance being the still turning but unpowered rotor. A ‘forced landing’ was when your tail rotor was shot off, or your cockpit controls damaged by gunfire.”
Prompted by the contribution from Shirley Rider about the pre-Berowra Waters Inn restaurant (C8), Robyn Douglas of Kurrajong shares that 66 years ago, her “parents George and Annie Pattricj owned what was then the Pacific Private Hotel. My mother was, indeed, a very good cook. I left school that year and may well have served their ‘memorable meal’. I would have certainly washed up their dishes”.
It’s beginning to feel like we’re playing a round of six degrees of Column 8 at the moment. Stephanie Edwards of Roseville reveals that the army camp near Bathurst mentioned by Geoff Nilon (C8) was “on land requisitioned by the government from my grandfather’s sheep farm. Geoff’s father was lucky – many of the troops who left from there became prisoners of war after the fall of Singapore. There is a memorial to the men of the 2/30th battalion at what used to be the entrance to the camp”.
Inspired by Geoff Nilon (C8), Peter B Buckley of New Ulm (USA) recalls the tale of how India’s first international canoe slalom team was chosen. “A group of Indian Army officers were asked if any of them had been in a raft before. A number stepped forward and were similarly told, ‘Congratulations, you’re now representing India at the Canoe Slalom World Championships’. With a week’s practice in kayaks, they were thrust into competition.” Peter found out their story while eating lunch with them at the championships.
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