Ghost ship

WHEN Bono was looking for a place to stay in Sydney, he inquired about chartering a yacht, the kind that tycoons and celebrities lounge about on.

WHEN Bono was looking for a place to stay while performing with U2 in Sydney last year, he inquired about chartering a yacht on the harbour, the kind that tycoons and celebrities lounge about on at Monaco every northern summer.

It was a source of some national disgrace that this country was unable to provide a yacht that fulfilled Bono's needs, but the remedy is at hand with the release of Ghost II, a two-year-old 36m luxury cruiser built by Warren Yachts of Brisbane, and worth more than $20 million, which is available for charter for the first time. "We were trying to find a boat for Bono last year, but we couldn't find one," says Richard Morris, of chartering service Australian Superyachts. But he's confident Bono will be cool with Ghost II, given that he's already been on its sister vessel Ghost I, along with other celebs such as Sting and Lady Gaga. Ghost II sleeps four couples (with a crew of six) or can host a party of 60, has a top speed of 26 knots, and can sail anywhere in Australia and the South Pacific. Yours for only $15,000 a day.

Yummy mummy

THEY take their fashions seriously in Melbourne, including Lord Mayor Robert Doyle, who is pictured here telling two models at the 17th Spring Fashion Week a good joke about his jaw. We can't imagine what else he'd be saying with his fingers in that position. The imported star is former Melburnian and now London resident Dannii Minogue, who may have segued from gossip column star to yummy mummy, but still likes a good time. She said all the right things about local fashion and gave a plug to her own fashion label, Project D, before revealing that she is keen to kick back and take some time out from her mummy duties with one-year-old Ethan, her son with model Kris Smith. "I would be working on fashion anyway but as a mum, I'll get to leave the baby at home and go to a few parties as well -- I hope. I won't be at home rocking the baby, wondering where the dummy is. I might have a cocktail or two." You can take the girl out of Camberwell, but . . .

Sick of it

THERE'S a new complexion, so to speak, in the already frosty relationship between Christmas Island residents and the Immigration Department. For the past few weeks untreated sewage has been pouring from the island's mothballed casino, which was reopened last year to house detention centre workers. The long, brown streak across a popular swimming and snorkelling area is similar to the slick off Flying Fish Cove last year when the island's main sewerage treatment plant struggled to cope with the influx of detainees and detention centre staff. "The public is advised that there is a risk to public health at the wastewater treatment plant at the resort and in the surrounding waters. Members of the public should not fish, swim or dive in the waters around the resort," says a community bulletin from Chris Dunn, the acting director of the Territories Office in Perth. Some locals are completely over the detention boom and want the island to return to its former sleepy self. "We are sick of the Immigration Department's shit, literally," said one cross resident.

Barker's best

NOT just the art world but the broader Australian community was yesterday saddened by the passing of Margaret Olley in Sydney aged 88. But Olley had a significant arts connection in Brisbane, where she was educated at Somerville House, the school where she came under the tutelage of celebrated artist and art teacher Caroline Barker. She had Olley and another artist who went on to make a name for herself, Margaret Cilento, in the same class of 1939. A few years later, National Gallery of Australia director Betty Churcher was also taught by Barker, who later in life painted a wonderful portrait of Brisbane's first female lord mayor, Sallyanne Atkinson. This information comes to Strewth from another remarkable Brisbane woman from the Somerville House class of 1939, Mary Fraser.

Thanks, Mum.