I’ll save some of my thoughts for an editorial that I’m writing, but I noted on 2CC’s news at 8am that former Mix 106.3 breakfast host Mark Parton is going to run as an independent candidate in the upcoming ACT election.
Mark has noted on his blog that he will make an announcement on 666 ABC Canberra at 8:30am. Sorry Mark, looks like 2CC beat the exclusive.
Anyway, this should make for an interesting contest. Mark is quite popular in this town, so it will be interesting to see how that translates to the electorate.
Update 10:48am: The official announcement will be at 11am according to Mark. If I wasn’t working, I’d probably be interested in attending even though he is not in my electorate.
Most people who have listened to me in the last 10 years know what I stand for. I stand for the community.
For families, I want this city to be a sustainable, prosperous community so that my children and hopefully their children can proudly call it home.
I am for common sense in Government and for supporting and nurturing business people who have the courage to put their neck on the line and “have a go”.
We need to think green, but we need to do it in a practical common sense way and I want to foster that approach in our community and in business.
I stand for openness and honesty in Government and for solutions that are not shaped by party politics.
Grand statements, but a good brief summary that people will be able to remember the gist of. The Ginninderra electoral race just became interesting. End Update
Samuel
If there is one thing that I have to give Jon Stanhope credit for, he is very good at playing with the media. Whether it’s his “I will spend five minutes answering your question about what you perceive to be a lack of rubbish bins by telling you a story about the social interaction between rubbish trucks and rubbish bins and why the cost of diesel dictates how many of these interactions can be made on a weekly basis, and why we therefore have the most economically sustainable and responsible number of rubbish bins per rubbish truck in the industrialised world” answers during time-limited radio interviews or his surprisingly effective “I’ll keep saying this publicly, and people will believe it, no matter how irrelevant it may be” way of wriggling out of trouble, Jon Stanhope continuously manages to make the media run the message that he wants to have aired.
It’s not foolproof, and people do see through it, but it works surprisingly well. I was rather intrigued by this statement yesterday (courtesy of WIN News and The RiotACT).
The story was about ACTEW Corporation’s yet-to-be-approved, but already heavily advertised, projects to secure Canberra’s water supply. It’s hard to tell whether Mr. Stanhope referred to himself as the leader of the Liberal Party by accident, but it hardly matters. If it was accidental, then Mr. Stanhope showed how well he knows the media by correcting his entire sentence, and not just the errant word. Most of us in his position would have said “I’ve been the leader of the Liberal..err, Labor Party for” etc, whereas Jon Stanhope restarted his sentence, knowing that most, if not all, broadcast media, if they wanted to use his answer, would cut out the erroneous sentence due to their own time constraints, effectively nullifying his slip-up. Correcting only the erroneous word would have meant that the sentence, including error, would have been broadcast by anybody who wanted to use his answer.
The other possibility is that Mr. Stanhope made the reference on purpose. The answer he was providing was clearly one of his “my track record speaks for itself” answers as he was using his line about how many years we have all known of him, and that line is generally part of a defensive argument. In this case, by referring to himself as the leader of a party he his not the leader of, he has distracted the media and the public from his answer.
“Chief Minister makes amusing mistake” is a much more interesting story than “Chief Minister defends his record”, and even if the media did run his answer in full, the public would be much more likely to remember his amusing mistake than his dreary answer. Even more importantly, in a month or so when commentators are looking back over Mr. Stanhope’s reign as Chief Minister, they’re going to have a chuckle about this incident, rather than having anything negative to say about the topic he was talking about. Far from making him look incompetent, it will make him look human in the lead-up to the election.
When it comes down to it, the only person who truly knows whether the statement was an accident or intentional is Jon Stanhope (and possibly his advisors), and regardless, it has given the public something to laugh about as they enter the weekend, rather than remembering the rather awful week that he had. People won’t forget the week of events, but they won’t be as prominent in their minds. And the fact that I’m writing about this, and not the week of events, says something about how good Jon Stanhope is at making the media (and I’m including bloggers in the definition of that word) see and hear what he wants them to see and hear.
I didn’t catch the full details in 2CC’s 3pm news as I was distracted, but there has been a motor vehicle accident at the corner of Gladstone Street and another street (Update: the other street is Wollongong Street, and traffic is blocked in both directions) in Fyshwick. A vehicle has crashed in to a power pole, causing a power outage in the area.
Further update 3:30pm: Apparently it’s a truck which has run off the road, and it has hit a building. End Update
4pm Update: The truck has damaged a store and spilled a large amount of fuel in the process. According to 2CC, ActewAGL claim that power has been restored to most businesses, but 20 or so businesses will need to wait until the power pole is repaired this evening. I had a look on Google Street View and it would appear that the power poles on that corner carry a lot of power lines, so I’m not surprised that so many businesses were affected by the crash. 1WAY FM are running scheduled programming, so I can only assume that they have power.End Update
Correction 4:14pm: 1WAY FM’s part of Fyshwick was not affected by the power outage. They’re just having Internet connection issues. Apologies for any confusion. End Correction.
As you would probably be aware by now, Google Street View was launched in Australia this morning, with pictures of many places across the nation now available as part of Google Maps.
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the concept, basically Google sent cars with cameras mounted on them around a large number of streets and how now made the pictures available in conjunction with their place on the map. It’s an interesting concept and good for a quick bit of research if you ever need to work out exactly what a place looks like before you get there…or maybe want to know what some of the nearby landmarks are.
I had a little play with it this morning and noticed, amongst other things:
That my old car appears both at home and at my former workplace.
A friend’s car does not appear at their house, but might be visible at my old workplace (to get close enough to see it clearly, I have to move to a point where Google have switched to weekend footage of an empty carpark…probably due to privacy concerns).
There was a time when petrol was only $1.28.9 per litre.
Google drove through the “buses only” zone of the Civic bus interchange illegally
and were quite happy to show some people in relative clarity
but decided to blur out others.
Buildings which no longer exist (and that I forgot to photograph before they were destroyed) are saved temporarily for posterity
and buildings which could only have been designed by somebody who likes monstrosities unfortunately still exist in Google’s world.
I suppose the thing which Google must be very happy about though, is that this country is not one of the odd countries where taking pictures like this
can get you in a whole lot of trouble.
I did briefly consider the possibility that Google’s project may nullify my plan for a photographic series after I finish the “Canberra’s Dams” series, where I was going to pick a random street in Canberra each week and take photos of it…but then I noticed that Google’s photos don’t come with a date attached, whereas mine would. Mine would also last longer than “until we decide to drive around again”, which means mine would have some lasting historical value. I think I’ll go ahead with my series anyway.
[..]the National Parks section of Corin Dam Road (past the ski field) will be closed until further notice due to rocks falling.
The ski field will still be accessible to motorists however Corin Dam will not.
Barriers as well as warning and diversion signs will be erected to alert people to the road closure.
For up-to-date information on road closures please call Canberra Connect 13 22 81.
Corin Dam was the next on my (seemingly halted) list of dams to photograph as part of my photographic series on Canberra’s four main dams. That reminds me that I still haven’t made the pictures of Googong Dam available publicly…I must get around to doing that.
Yesterday my copy of The City Chronicle arrived in my letterbox. I’ve been concerned about the seemingly dropping journalistic standards of this weekly paper since its parent company Rural Press merged with Fairfax a bit over a year ago. Unfortunately this week’s front page confirmed my fears.
Click image to enlarge
For those of you who aren’t aware, The Chronicle is a free weekly (except for a couple weeks over Christmas) newspaper produced by the people who produce The Canberra Times. It comes in a tabloid format and is delivered to approximately 128,000 households and workplaces across Canberra and Queanbeyan, and read by approximately 178,000 people. Editions of the paper are produced for each region across Canberra and Quenabeyan, with content differing slightly between these editions.
So, back to this week’s front page of The City Chronicle, and the lead story is about older buses in ACTION‘s fleet struggling in wet weather.
Click image to enlarge
The story comes complete with a digitally altered image of an older bus sitting under an umbrella which seems to be floating in mid-air. The sky has also been altered to be a more menacing colour.
But what about the article itself…surely many many buses must have been off the road for this to warrant the front page of a weekly publication, especially when the story doesn’t relate to a particular region and could theoretically be used on every edition (I’m still checking up on that).
Out of action
Older buses struggle with recent rain
By Rebecca Thistleton
CANBERRA’S recent damp weather was too much to handle for some of Action’s older buses.
Last Monday, 13 buses were unable to operate because of wet weather.
A Territory and Municipal Services spokeswoman said this was 3.9 per cent of Action’s fleet of 339 buses, and was caused by “heavy rain and inclement weather.”
Gosh, so many buses off the road because of the rain…and such an unlucky number too. I wonder what could possibly have caused the buses to have so much trouble in this batch of rain when they didn’t have this much trouble with the last batch of rain?
“Action believes there is an increase due to issues such as the irregular use of windscreen wipers,” the spokeswoman said.
So, thirteen buses mysteriously had their windscreen wipers stop working on one day? Surely Ms. Thistleton thought there was something fishy about that figure and asked some questions about the number of buses which were “unable to operate” on previous rainy days…or was she just being taken for a ride by the good folks at ACTION Public Relations?
On a normal day, the average number of buses unable to operate properly was 2.7 per cent – that’s about nine buses out of action every day.
Nine buses out of action every day…wasn’t there a figure about the number of buses out of action last Monday earlier in this article?
Last Monday, 13 buses were unable to operate because of wet weather.
Um, doesn’t thirteen minus nine equal four? Does that mean that, in reality, The City Chronicle is running a front page story complete with digitally altered photograph, about four older buses having a windscreen wiper problem? Perhaps…let’s read on and find out.
One of the buses to break down on Monday was a newer, compressed natural gas model, the rest were older diesel models.
So, that’s actually only three more older buses off the road than usual. It’s hardly, as the sub-headline suggests, older buses struggling with recent rain. And it’s not as if there weren’t more important stories in the last week. Pages 14 and 15 contain a double page spread about Jon Stanhope’s ideas for a light rail network…surely a story like that deserves more prominence than a story which can only fill a column if the journalist quotes and paraphrases a TAMS spokeswoman droning on for three paragraphs about standard procedures for when a bus breaks down.
If The Chronicle keeps this up, I’m going to start to think they’ve hired all of the (freely distributed daily News Limited publication in Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane) MX journalists. The writing and sensationalism is almost as good.
Now, just in case you’re interested in this awful beat-up of a front page lead story, here it is in all its glory…and if you’ll excuse me, I have an email to write to the good folks at Media Watch.
Yesterday I mentioned that I had coffee at a coffee shop a few metres away from the Civic bus interchange. The coffee shop in question was Coffee At Helen’s which seems to have had a minor refurbishment since the last time I was there. Unfortunately the refurbishment seems to have brought with it a rather peculiar drop in the level of service.
Me: Could I get a flat white and a custard tart to have here please?
Shop Attendant (in an almost thick accent): Yes, would you like the cuppy mug please?
Unfortunately my brain, due to the accent of the shop attendant, heard one of the Cs as a P, which meant that what I heard was:
Shop Attendant (in an almost thick accent): Yes, would you like the puppy mug please?
Needless to say, I was perplexed.
Me: I’m sorry, what?
Shop Attendant (in an almost thick accent): Cuppy mug, cuppy mug please?
I thought about it for a moment and decided that the question must be whether I wanted the coffee in a cup or a mug.
Me (with some hesitation): A cup please?
(Awkward pause)
Shop Attendant (in an almost thick accent): Ahhh…..cup?
Me: Yes please.
Shop Attendant (somewhat confused): Yes yes, um OK yes.
(Shop attendant walks over to cash register and battles with it for a few moments)
Shop Attendant (in a not so thick accent): The forty-five please…err zero…um four fifty
Surprisingly after that exchange, the coffee and custard tart were quite good…and I didn’t have to drink out of a cuppy mug, which I can only assume is a dog’s bowl with a handle attached. I was almost expecting to end up with coffee on a plate and a custard tart in a cup, especially when the shop attendant took a plate to the coffee machine.
I’m almost certainly going to be howled down for this post…I can see the usual suspects dismissing me as a fanboy already, but hear me out because there is actually some substance to this.
This year, from the perspective of somebody like me who happens to like the two commercial AM radio stations in this town and takes note of what frequency various radios are tuned to, has been fairly disappointing. Apart from my own, I’ve struggled to find a radio which isn’t tuned to an FM commercial station. I’m not sure where all of the 666 ABC Canberra listeners are though, because I’ve barely spotted any of them.
The last month of so has seen a rather interesting turnaround though. Mix 106.3 lost Mark Parton, one of their rather popular breakfast hosts (the rumours have been flying about that ever since then). It’s fair to say that Mark had a unique style…he was never my cup of tea but a lot of people liked him, and his replacement, FM 104.7 presenter Cam Sullings, is a very different presenter. The two stations, despite a few similarities, really attract two rather different and mostly incompatible demographics…replacing Parton with Sullings has had a predictably mixed reaction from the audience, sending some in search of something else. Some of those listeners will be back simply because they like the rest of the station’s format, but others who desperately dislike Sullings won’t be back…and if they dislike Sullings then they’re not likely to enjoy FM 104.7, which doesn’t leave them with a lot of other possibilities. In music radio it leaves them with 2CA and a couple community stations who want to emulate a lot of Mix’s format.
In the short term Mix aren’t likely to gain as many listeners as they lose due to the breakfast change, mainly due to the fact that people who are listening to other breakfast shows don’t have any incentive to change. In the long term the changes at Mix may work well for them, but in the short term, with a survey period only a couple weeks away, the timing isn’t great.
In my opinion, if any station is likely to gain from Mix’s change of breakfast lineup, it’s 2CA as they have the closest music format to Mix 106.3 of any Canberra station, although where listeners end up will depend on their individual music tastes and not which station has the closest match.
Moving on to a few practical examples. In recent weeks I have spent more time in other peoples’ vehicles (be they private or public) than I have done in a very long time. With the exception of one bus driver who was listening to ABC NewsRadio, another who was listening to FM 104.7 and one who didn’t like the radio at all, all of the bus drivers (the number in this category would be close to twelve) have been listening to 2CA and 2CC. I’ve noted that the Steve Price Morning Show on 2CC is particularly popular among Canberra’s bus drivers, and it seems to be difficult to catch a bus between 9am and midday and not hear Price’s voice emanating from a speaker.
I also never thought I’d see the day (I was going to use the phrase “live to see the day”, but given recent posts on this blog, it may convey the wrong message) when people on The RiotACT would write about how much they enjoy listening to 2CC’s breakfast host Mike Jeffreys, and how 2CA’s playlist is enjoyable. (See the comments on http://the-riotact.com/?p=7932, http://the-riotact.com/?p=7831 and http://the-riotact.com/?p=7849). I was also surprised to see a YouTube video of a 2CC program end up on The RiotACT. For such a long time RiotACT has had a habit of attracting an awful lot of 666 ABC Canberra listeners…perhaps that’s the real reason for former (and now once again) RiotACT editor Johnboy returning to Canberra and the site, he wants to steer them all back to the ABC.
Another example of good signs for the commercial AM stations in Dickson Seafoods, (not surprisingly, a seafood shop in Dickson). For as long as I’ve been frequenting there (late 2004) they have been a Mix 106.3 shop. Their radio has been virtually araldited to Mix 106.3. Imagine my surprise yesterday when I walked in and heard a voiceover from Ron E. Sparks informing me that I was listening to 1053 2CA. I didn’t probe the staff on why they changed station, but it did occur to me that, considering the number of students from Daramalan College and Dickson College who frequent the store, this change of station is a mini-coup for 2CA.
A few paragraphs ago I mentioned that the next radio ratings survey period is about to start. It runs from August 3 to August 30, which means that each calendar week of the survey period contains the Beijing Olympic Games. There are only two stations in Canberra with the broadcast rights to the Games, 2CC and 666 ABC Canberra. The news services of both stations (which also serve 2CA and the ABC network respectively) have access to the Olympic broadcast material, but the FM commercial stations are lumped with the usual onerous broadcast restrictions for non-rights-holders. Whilst they are allowed to report scores and results, they have to deal with some pretty hefty restrictions on what else they can broadcast.
2CC and the ABC on the other hand have full access to commentary and pretty much whatever else they want from the games, which will make their news services much more appealing, not to mention the fact that the stations will be the place people will turn to for coverage of the games in many vehicles and offices around the city. This survey will be skewed in the favour of 2CC (and 2CA to a lesser extent due to their access to news and being the only music station near an Olympic broadcaster on the dial) and the ABC, and because of the way radio ratings work in Canberra, that skewing in favour of 2CC, 2CA and the ABC will be “official” until at least February next year, probably later. When you consider that the ABC don’t accept advertising, the only people to truly benefit from the skewing of this survey are 2CC and 2CA, and that of course will be at the expense of Mix 106.3 and FM 104.7 who make up the rest of Canberra’s commercial radio market.
If 2CC and 2CA can not only retain listeners after the Beijing Olympics but also use the extra advertising revenue effectively, then the games could be precisely the lift they need to be a very strong and effective competition against Mix 106.3 and FM 104.7
The next few months in Canberra’s radio landscape could be very interesting indeed.
Explosives were found in a home in Jess Place, Hughes yesterday causing police to evacuate residents while they attempted to safely remove the explosives. It is believed that the deceased resident of the house may have been collecting explosives for a number of years.
Residents were evacuated and handed this press release to explain the situation, while an ACT Government Evacuation Centre was setup in the Hughes Community Hall.
I spoke to one of the evacuated residents this morning:
[audio:https://samuelgordonstewart.com/wp-content/HughesBomb20080628.mp3] Download MP3
For those of you who aren’t familiar with the area, here’s an overview map that I created:
The interviewed Hughes resident, who does not wish to be named, has also kindly provided me with a map of the affected area:
(Click image to enlarge)
Red is the confirmed initial roadblocks I saw at 3.30pm, with the one on Brand street to stop people walking into the area through the nature strip rather than a traffic road block.
Blue were the roadblocks when i returned at 7.
Orange was the staging area, I assume will be the same place today. Kent St was covered in emergency service vehicles there yesterday so it’s hard to miss.
Yellow is the house someone said they strongly believed was the house in question, however when I passed last night on my way home I don’t recall many officers at that particular house, it may have been the one above it.
The house shaded in yellow is number 4 Jess Place, and the one above it is number 6 Jess Place. I will endeavour to bring you an exact address. Update: Address detailed below End Update
Residents are expected to be evacuated again today as the police and the army work on removing the explosives. Further updates as they come to hand.
Update 2:55pmThe activity has certainly died down in the area and only a handful of police and explosives experts remain on the scene. Marked police vehicles are intermittently in the area however it is two unmarked vans which seem to be the resident official vehicles of the operation.
I can now confirm that the house is number 2 Jess Place, Hughes, shown on this map in yellow:
(Click image to enlarge)
The scene is very quiet and the word is that any evacuations this afternoon are likely to be confined to Jess Place and neighbouring houses.
The police talk to a neighbour about the situation.
Number 2 Jess Place, with the explosive-laden garage visible between the vans
The scene from Birdwood Street
It’s a pity that I don’t have a time machine as the scene was apparently much more interesting last night, with many emergency service vehicles on the scene and a staging area which was being used rather than being completely cleaned up as was the case this afternoon. End Update
Further Update 10:21PM: No wonder it was quiet when I was in the suburb between 1pm and 2:30pm. The Australian Federal Police have issued a press release declaring the area safe:
Conclusion of Hughes incident
Saturday, 28 June 2008
ACT Policing has completed the search of a Hughes home for commercial explosives and military ordnance.
The search was completed about 2.30pm today (June 28) and all suspicious items have been removed from the area.
The items included a quantity of gelignite and a World War II era hand-grenade.
No evacuations of Hughes residents were required today.
Superintendent Matt Varley praised the Hughes residents saying, “We are grateful to all the residents of Hughes who were affected by this incident, for their patience and cooperation. This was a difficult situation which had to be dealt with in a slow and safe manner.
“This incident highlights the seriousness of collecting dangerous ‘souvenirs’ which put police and other members of the public at risk. The disposal of these items causes significant disruption to the community.
“If people are in possession of explosives in any form, they should contact police to discuss their safe disposal.
“I highly commend the officers involved in this operation for their hard work under trying circumstances,” Superintendent Varley said.
The explosives will now be disposed of at an undisclosed location by the AFP Bomb Response Team.
And so, without taking away from the seriousness of the matter, one of Canberra’s more interesting news stories this year, draws to a close. End Update
I ended up spending some of the afternoon at the Legislative Assembly watching the debate surrounding the no confidence motion tabled against ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope last week. In the end, the only people to support the motion were the Liberal opposition.
The Chief Minister survived the motion 11 votes to 6.
Oh well, there’s always the election on the 18th of October.
There is currently a power failure in Mitchell and Kaleen. ActewAGL hope to have the power back on by about 8:30am.
Update 8:30am: Power has been restored. ActewAGL are blaming an accident on the corner of Hoskins Street and Sandford Street in Mitchell for the outage. End Update
Since 2CC got back on the air just after the 7:30 news was replaced by the emergency tape version of The Carpenters, Mike Jeffreys and Jason Morrison have been having a rather amusing conversation. It’s almost a pity that they’ve gone to a sensible conversation, although they did manage to get the SMS system back online and listener opinions have been fairly evenly divided whether to continue the rambling or have a sensible conversation…the “no music” opinion has been quite unanimous though.
Update 7:58am: Of course Greens MLA Dr. Deb Foskey would be on to talk about carbon rationing during a power failure. Goodness knows what the buzzing noise on the phone line was just when Mike and Deb seemed to be agreeing on the subject of energy efficient houses. “That’s an interesting noise” said Dr. Foskey. All things considered, she took the whole “we’re running on backup power and I can see the time if I point a torch at the clock” thing quite well.
Just a thought, will the satellite receiver work on emergency power? If not Steve Price might be missing a station today. He has already missed his usual chat with Mike at 7:55. End Update
Update 8:15am: Even though I can rarely ever get words right in text messages, I sent 2CC a text message: “2cc no carpenters, but you can croon if you like. Hang in there mike, this is great entertainment from this end of the radio. Samuel”. Mike believes that I just like it because it’s unusual and has put everyone at the radio station in an odd position…well yes, but I also like the fact that this is live, almost completely unplanned radio, and there are a number of people with a good sense of humour keeping the ball rolling. Perhaps I should have suggested that this is precisely why we need to new power station near Hume. End Update
Whoever is responsible for organising today’s Canberra leg of the Beijing Olympic Torch Relay is clearly doing a fantastic job at applying to be come to become the head honcho in the Department of Inconvenience. Starting the torch relay during peak hour and closing roads as they see fit during this time is a stroke of genius. Making everybody who lives or works in or around the road closures leave very early for work, and forcing extra traffic on to arterial roads which were cleverly opened with one lane each way along various parts of the road is also very clever.
And as if last night’s 6pm fireworks weren’t enough (they weren’t inconvenient) there had to be another set of fireworks at 6am today. That was a very inconvenient wakeup call, as was the 45 minutes of bird hysteria which followed it. The helicopter which has been in the air for about the same amount of time and flew directly over my house at 6:30am was also very inconvenient.
I’m just glad that my working day does not start in the normal place today, because otherwise I would be leaving for work at about 7:40am to ensure that I am out of the area before the random rolling road closures, and before everybody else has the same idea and clogs my alternative routes.
Update: Oops, a stroke of sanity from the Department of Inconvenience, the closure of Parkes Way has been delayed until 8:30am. At least their P.A. system is blaring out across the lake and wafting noises over my suburb, hope is not lost for this new government department. End Update
The power has been out in Weston Creek for about the last twenty minutes. From what I can see, it looks like most, if not all, of the business district has lost power. Other areas may be affected.
If you’re waiting for the Canberra Radio Ratings to be released, I would suggest not holding your breath as Nielsen have announced that they are delayed until next week, due to a delay in data processing (probably code for “two or more households didn’t return their ratings book on time”).
In October last year I continued my photographic series of Hills and Mountains of Canberra by visiting Oakey Hill, but for one reason or another I never got around to captioning the photos and making them publicly available…well, now they are.
Oakey Hill’s summit is 684 metres above sea level, the hill itself is surrounded by the Tuggeranong Parkway to the west, Hindmarsh Drive to the south, the subub of Lyons to the east and Heysen Street to the north. It is probably most recognisable for the mobile phone tower near the summit.
The phone tower can be seen quite clearly from many parts of Canberra, including Liardet Street in Weston.
Which, in turn, can be seen from Oakey Hill (click the image to enlarge…the previous photo was taken from next to the street sign at the end of the road between the petrol station and orange building).
Oakey Hill also has some nice views of Canberra such as looking towards Civic
Woden (on a slight angle)
And Parliament House
And much like almost every other hill in Canberra, Oakey Hill features a water reservoir.
The full set of photos can be viewed on the photo gallery at http://photos.samuelgordonstewart.com/Oakey-Hill-20071031, and it’s probably worth pointing out that I came very close to twisting my ankle on this hill…that’ll teach me to stand on small concrete columns and get off them without looking. Can anybody find the photo which features these small concrete columns?
