Sold down river

AMID the deluge, it's pleasing to see The Australian Financial Review embodying the spirit of Winston Churchill's defiant wartime mantra of KBO, or Keep Buggering On.

AMID the deluge, it's pleasing to see The Australian Financial Review embodying the spirit of Winston Churchill's defiant wartime mantra of KBO, or Keep Buggering On.

The centrepiece of the Fin's executive property page in its weekend Life & Leisure section was a pad of surpassing loveliness in a location others may have baulked at. "The chairman of Campbell Brothers, Geoff McGrath," the piece begins, "is selling his riverfront villa on the Brisbane River." More specifically, it's in Rosebery Terrace in the suburb of Chelmer, which may be familiar to non-Brisbanites from lines such as "homes submerged to the roofline in dress-circle . . . Chelmer in the city's southwest" (The Australian, Saturday) and "Iconic streets in Brisbane, known for their historic homes and sprawling mansions, such as Rosebery Tce in Chelmer . . . are all on the Brisbane City Council's list of streets expected to be affected" (The SMH, last Thursday). Perhaps it's just the perils of printing in advance, but we like to think of it as the doughty AFR giving Mother Nature the finger. "There are 15m of north-facing river frontage," the piece continues, not to mention "large rainwater tanks for irrigation". Hopefully, next weekend it'll feature somewhere in Victoria; Echuca looks promising.

Prince of daftness

SPEAKING of KBO, Prince Charles has gone on British television and opened his heart about the floods. He's opened his wallet, too, so if he's a little fuzzy on some of the details, not to worry: "For so many people in the United Kingdom, we do feel really deeply on behalf of the Australians, particularly in the state of Queensland, which has had such a terrible battering over the last several weeks from this cyclone . . ." Cyclone? Still, he salutes our resilience and even if he throws crocodiles into the mix of inundation-related dangers, it's a lovely message. It's up on YouTube, complete with a breast pocket handkerchief in a colour scheme that may not be entirely legal. Perhaps David Flint could have a quiet word in the royal ear.

Love and theft

SPEAKING of crocs, many cling to a theory that without them, our Darwin-based sister papers would be up a certain creek in a lead-lined, mesh-bottomed canoe. So one imagines they would have been a little shaken by this mesmerising effort from The Sunday Territorian: "Goldilocks bandits hungry for porn and booze". Not a croc in sight. But then, sadly, no bears either.

Serving darkness

IT'S not uncommon for Europeans to make the observation that the nocturnal hours are something of a different proposition in Australia. Scottish thinker Billy Connolly, for example, once noted that in comparison to the gentle progression from light to darkness at day's end in higher latitudes, night here falls like a brick. French tennis player Gilles Simon joined the tradition on the weekend after beating Serbia's Viktor Troicki to win the Sydney International. Asked about the closeness of the match, Simon began gamely: "The thing is tonight I think we didn't serve very good. It was hard to serve with the night. It was so dark. I mean, the night in Australia is always like this, but it was so difficult to see the ball."

Ted takes a punt

WE'RE fairly sure QC and former Fraser government minister Neil Brown isn't in the market for a new job, but that hasn't stopped him perusing bemusedly an ad from the new Victorian government seeking an adviser on gambling policy issues. "You would expect the adviser to be well qualified for the $150,000 per annum on offer," Brown observes. So let's have a look at what Ted Baillieu and his crew are looking for in the ideal candidate: "Proven track record." Ahem. Says Brown, "As governments gamble most of it away, that is probably a good qualification to insist on." If only we were willing to stoop to the depths of punning awfulness, we could file the gig under "odds jobs". But we won't; it's important to know when to draw the line.

Field day

OUR story about Kevin Rudd lugging suitcases along the submerged Brisbane street that was once home to Labor Party rat Albert Field has stirred a memory for Perth reader David Hawkes: "The story goes that Fred Daly was showing the newly arrived Queensland senator around when the bells went to announce a division was being called. 'What's that?' asked Field. Replied Daly, 'One of them's escaped.' "

English patience

THERE'S a push to make Russia's public servants learn more English. One impetus appears to be Sports Minister Vitaly Mutko's speech in Zurich in aid of his nation's World Cup bid, which was delivered in such heavily accented English, it's become a YouTube hit (presumably taking everyone else's mind off the fact that Russia won the bid). But the drive could have something of a sinister side. Speaking to The Moscow Times, Russian Academy of Civil Service linguistic department head Alexander Dolgenko said: "We have used a carrot for a long time, but the bureaucrat has such a mindset, he needs a stick, too."