If so, did you see a group of people, three of whom had bicycles? Can you describe any of the people on bicycles?
If the answer is yes, please contact ACT Police. The three bicycled aboriginal thugs attacked me and stole $50, plus my phone and iPod.
It’s unlikely that I’ll see any of the stolen stuff again, but it would be nice if the police were able to catch up with the three thugs at some stage.
If you’re wondering, I’ll be OK. I was punched in the nose, but the bleeding stopped after a short time. It still hurts, and I will see a doctor about it…but on the whole, I’m just lucky that they didn’t have (or at least produce) any weapons.
It is now fair to say that this year is not in the running for “my favourite year of all time”.
Update: The police media unit has been rather busy today with a number of press releases, so I’m rather pleased that my press release has not only gone out to the media, but is online.
Police seek witnesses to Barton robbery
Monday, 19 October 2009
ACT Policing is seeking witnesses to an aggravated robbery of a 22-year-old Reid man which occurred near the Kings Avenue Bridge, Barton, last night (October 18).
The victim left work around 11.20pm and began to walk home. When he reached the south-end of the Kings Avenue Bridge he was approached by three males on push bikes.
The three males demanded money and the victim handed over $50. They also stole his iPod and mobile telephone. During the robbery the victim was punched once in the nose by the youngest offender, causing it to bleed.
All three offenders were described as being of Aboriginal/Torres Strait Islander appearance. Two were described as being around 18 years old and the third around 14 years old.
Once the offenders left the victim hailed down a taxi and was dropped at City Police Station. Woden Patrols searched the area a short time later but were unable to locate any persons of interest.
Police would urge anyone who may have seen suspicious behaviour in the Kings Avenue Bridge area overnight to contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000, or report it via the Crime Stoppers website at www.act.crimestoppers.com.au.
Also I’ll be chatting with Mike Welsh about the robbery on 2CC this afternoon. I’m heading off to the doctor so we’re pre-recording the interview, and I therefore don’t know what time it will go to air. Between 3pm and 6pm on 2CC anyway. End Update
It’s bizarre but true…I stop writing, and I get more visitors. Work that one out.
Anyway, the intermission has now finished. I decided to postpone the Musician(s) Of The Week award on Sunday as I took a nap on Sunday afternoon and then had to go to 1WAY FM, which takes longer at the moment while I am car-less (I found my stolen car on my way to 1WAY FM in an undrivable state which was interesting…and Firefox spell check wants me to say that it was in an undrinkable state, which is also correct). I then caught up on sleep on Monday and was busy with work, errands and further sleep yesterday.
The Musician(s) Of The Week is coming up tonight, and I’ll publish Maritz’s column at some stage today. I have a few other things for you as well.
Incidentally, it looks like I’m back from my two-day break on the same day that Andrew Bolt is back from his month-and-a-bit break. It’s funny how these things work out.
I made a couple predictions about the NRL Grand Final a couple weeks back, and in the spirit of seeing if I am able to maintain my 49% accuracy rating, it’s time to review them.
And so it begins again, Daylight Saving starts at 2am and will be with us until the other end of April…a whole seven months of adjusted clocks. Personally I don’t see why we can’t just have Daylight Saving for the whole year rather than slowly increasing the number of months we have it for.
Amusingly the ABC have managed to push their digital television electronic programme guides in to daylight saving time early, although it’s not amusing for me as I relied on their programme guide to schedule a recording of The Bill. My recording started an hour late at 9:30pm (10:30am GMT +11) instead of 8:30pm (10:30am GMT +10), meaning that I will have to wait for somebody at the ABC to upload The Bill to iView.
This may interest you, but it’s more for my reference. The updated KXNT schedule for programs of interest in Canberra’s daylight saving time.
Sunday
4am-7am: Casey Hendrickson and Heather Kydd weekend edition
Monday
4am-7am: Sundays with Ciara
11pm-Midnight: The Morning Source with Alan Stock
Tuesday to Saturday
Midnight-3am: The Morning Source with Alan Stock
3am-6am: Rush Limbaugh
6am-9am: Sean Hannity
9am-11am: Mark Levin
11am-1pm: Casey Hendrickson and Heather Kydd (includes Jerk Of The Week at 12:09pm Friday)
During the night I will have the fun job of setting all of the clocks in my house to daylight saving time, which doubles as my twice-yearly “make sure every clock is in sync” session. I can’t stand having clocks that have the wrong time, especially when they’re out by a minute or two. It drives me nuts.
So happy daylight saving to you. If your sleep cycle is similar to mine, you will welcome the extra hour of darkness in the morning. It will make getting to sleep at 5:30am much easier.
I just had a most unusual fault occur during my mobile phone conversation with a friend.
Mid-conversation, the call cut out, which isn’t all that unusual on its own, however at my end I received the Telstra disconnected signal (the one similar to the engaged signal, but with one tone quieter than the other), followed by the Telstra ringing signal, and then one side of another person’s phone call in which they continued to converse with the other party to their call, but seemed oblivious to my “hello? are you still there?”. It seemed that this mystery person was informing the other party to their call that somebody would be leaving at 6pm.
After about fifteen seconds of hearing one side of their call, the connection dropped completely, with my phone registering the end of the call.
Apparently, the person at the other end of my call did not hear any of this…I suspect that my phone registered the termination of the the call after the other party to my call hung up after hearing nothing for a little while.
I have to admit to being somewhat amused by this. The Penny Wong “what she did and how people have reacted” story in the 2QN and Classic Rock Regional News bulletins this mornings runs for 5 minutes and 44 seconds.
Such fun…but at least the long hours yesterday were worth it. It’s probably also a good thing that very little else happened yesterday and, as such, the other stories don’t need much time.
As noted a couple weeks ago, the roadworks on the Hume Highway which have slowed my trips down considerably, have now been completed…well, almost. For some unknown reason, the westbound run towards Gundagai still has a decent stretch of “roadwork” slowing the road to 80km/h…I say roadworks in quotations, because I’m not convinced that closing the overtaking lane for no apparent reason and slowing the remaining lane down by 30km/h counts as roadworks.
Anyhoo, my trip was faster, taking only four hours and thirty-six minutes this time around.
I left home at 9:02am and stopped in Gundagai at 10:38am. I was back on the road at 11:00am and arrived at the hotel in Deniliquin at 2:00pm (I was surprised when both times were right on the dot). It’s a 495KM run, which makes the average speed 107.61 km/h.
As usual, Regional News headlines will be posted here on weekday mornings at around 9am over the course of the next two weeks.
I’m off to Deniliquin again for two weeks. I’m not completely over the cold which has kept me from writing much on here for the last week, but over it enough to still go without infecting people.
As much as I would like to be in Sydney today for 2GB’s outside broadcast, it is simply not feasible as I have a cold at the moment. The sore throat is gone, which is a good thing, but I’m in day three of the headache, and back ache, and leg ache etc.
The cold is the reason it has been so quiet around here for the last few days. Today is the first time I have logged in since Monday morning.
It looks like Maritz has submitted her column, so I’ll read it before publishing it, and then go back to bed.
I was curious this afternoon to see how far my wireless network signal goes, so to test it I left the 2GB webstream running on my laptop as I drove to 1WAY FM. I didn’t lose the signal until I was two blocks from home.
I wasn’t expecting it to reach this far, and alas it’s not quite far enough to be useful, as the suburb’s church which doubles as the election polling place, is just outside my wifi range.
I was also somewhat surprised to have Windows Media Player resume the 2GB stream when my laptop connected to the network at 1WAY FM. I was in the middle of a conversation and it was a bit like having a Chris Smith ringtone interrupting the conversation.
Hmmm, now there’s a thought…I should cobble together a ringtone of all the talk radio personalities that I like.
As I noted earlier this morning, Countrylink had an open day at the Canberra Railway Station this morning to celebrate their refurbished Travel Centre (which seems to be code for “booking office”) and, albeit not mentioned on their website, refurbished trains and new staff uniforms. As part of the open day, they had free return train trips to Queanbeyan, and 2CC were broadcasting live from the train station.
I went along shortly after 7am, stopping off to pick up a packet of Tim Tams for Mike Frame and the 2CC team. Below you will find photos of the train station, a trip to Queanbeyan and back, some video footage, and a photo of 2CC’s Mike Frame and Garden Gurus. As usual, all photos can be enlarged by clicking on them.
First up, the front of the railway station, where a sausage sizzle was being set up when I arrived.
Inside, 2CC were busy running their gardening show, anchored by Mike Frame and horticulturalised (for lack of a better word) by the Garden Gurus Merylyn Condon and Judy Refshauge (sorry, I’m not sure which one is which in this photo…I have never been able to work it out).
Inside the railway station, staff seemed almost excited about their refurbished Travel Centre, which spent most of the morning (while I was there anyway) dealing with enquiries.
They were also giving away balloons (and exploding many of them accidentally as they filled them with helium, producing a decent bit of atmospheric noise for the 2CC broadcast).
I quite liked the model train.
The train station has a coffee machine which produces a heated beverage which I wouldn’t call coffee, but I had two cups anyway. The first one was a sensible temperature, but the second one was so hot that I needed to use a padded sleeve of my top to hold the cup, in order to avoid being burnt.
The first free return trip to Queanbeyan started at 8am, which is well and truly after the morning Canberra to Sydney train departed at 6:37am, and was followed by other free return services every 45 minutes, except for a window of time around the 11:21am arrival of the Sydney to Canberra service (those passengers would probably have received a surprise when they got off at the busy open day).
To board the train, naturally you had to be given a ticket. They were using different colours of tickets for each trip, although I don’t think they were actually checking them. Amusingly, the tickets they were using were the Countrylink luggage tags.
Countrylink stations have interestingly elaborate identifying signs on the platforms.
The train to Queanbeyan and back had three cars.
Once on the 8am train (the first of the day), I noted the view, and the rather oddly worded sign (from a passenger’s perspective).
As the train took off, I noticed the collection of carriages at the Canberra Railway Station.
The 8am train travelling under the Monaro Highway.
And then under Ipswich Street in Fyshwick.
A video from the train as it passed Fyshwick and travelled under the Newcastle Street overpass. Apologies for the dodgy frame rate of this video.
(The original video can be downloaded by clicking here)
Video of cows in fog which the train passed on the way to Queanbeyan.
(The original video can be downloaded by clicking here)
A picture of the Queanbeyan Train Station. There was no time to get off the train as it only stayed at the station for a few moments.
A video of the train departing Queanbeyan.
(The original video can be downloaded by clicking here)
On the way back, the most spottable sight was the Direct Factory Outlet sign.
The train then arrived back at the Canberra Station, about 25 minutes after departing.
ct width=”425″ height=”344″>(The original video can be downloaded by clicking here)
I also filmed the departure of the 8:45 train.
(The original video can be downloaded by clicking here)
And before I left the platform, I noticed that the door to the luggage room was open, and lockers could be easily seen. Two of the lockers had old radio station stickers on them, one for 2CC.
And one for 2CC’s then supplementary FM station, Kix 106 (now Mix 106.3).
I then stuck around until 9am to see the end of 2CC’s garden show (which managed to get me roped in to doing the prize draw, to select that day’s lucky caller), and say toodles to Mike Frame who, incidentally, once he gets back from holiday in a couple weeks, will be 2CC’s permanent weekend morning host…and it’s fantastic to have him back permanently!
And that was my morning at the Canberra Railway Station open day. There is a similar event at the Goulburn station tomorrow which will be attended by 2CC’s sister station in Goulburn, 2GN. I, however, will not be there.
I’ve been offered money to work on Sunday and cover news and sport, including Andrew Demetriou’s ludicrous “Green Round”. Capitalism defeats my objection to the AFL’s cuckoo greenie loopyness, and my boycott is therefore off, and I get to revel in the nuttery of having footballs and umpires which blend in with the grass.
If it weren’t for the fact that the AFL teams are still flying all over the country and games are still being played under lights, I might take it a bit more seriously and continue my boycott…however considering that it’s just a laughable token gesture, I will just write to Andrew Demetriou to express my disgust at his strange “Green Round” instead.
The bottom line on this is, if I can make a profit from some cuckoo bloke’s nuttery, then why wouldn’t I? I’m profiting…the AFL are losing by buying the greatest con of recent times, carbon credits. I win and capitalism wins. I’m much happier now.
Apologies for the break in transmission. I’ve been pretty well snowed under with menial tasks for the last few days and haven’t felt like writing much here during my downtime. I was going to post photos of the Tuggeranong Weather Station this morning, but the upload scripts on the photo gallery seem to be broken, so after half an hour of being annoyed by that, I gave up.
I should also note that I know that I am behind in Sunday audio clips. I will catch up this weekend by posting two audio clips. On that front I have come to the conclusion that the backlog of airchecks to post is going to become quite annoying to manage if I keep posting them in chronological order. What I really need to do is produce a list, and start posting them at random like I do for the Musician(s) Of The Week award, whilst adhering to the “must be three months old” rule.
Normal transmission will resume shortly. Until then, here’s something which I found a couple weeks ago by accident, and which brightened my day considerably. Mike Jeffreys interviewing Scott Driscoll from The Retailers Association on 2CC on the 19th of June last year.
It would appear that I am still suffering withdrawal symptoms from a lack of Mike Jeffreys on the radio.
A $90 fine for administrative nonsense, and defect notices for window tinting which is legal in New South Wales, but apparently not in the ACT, plus clear tail light covers (the bulbs produce red light…who cares if the covers are clear? I would have thought clear covers with red lights were a better and more noticeable option that red covers which have their shade of red altered by light bulbs which aren’t always very good at their job), and an exhaust which “might” be too noisy, but wasn’t actually tested before being defected.
