Do you remember Tom Hayden? He was a member of the Chicago Seven, the group of left wing radical misfits who led the riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention. He once said, “Communism is one of the options that can improve people’s lives.” Absolutely, Tom. All except for the 100 million people it killed in the 20th century.

In an ill omen for the state of California, Hayden married actress Jane Fonda to whom he eagerly introduced the Communist concept of sharing the wealth. This, of course, made perfect sense to him because the only wealth available to be shared was hers. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall during that socialist sales pitch. But let’s give credit where credit is due. Tommy Boy must have been one hell of a huckster because in the end he shared his vision with her and she returned the favor by sharing her wealth with him and they both considered it a fair exchange. She financed his election to the State Assembly and later the State Senate. All hail Communism.

He came from nothing. He was short, ugly inside and out, and yet he ended up a successful politician married to a beautiful, fabulously wealthy movie star. This pockmarked Marxist, this bullshitting Bolshevik, this troglodyte Trotskyite, this starstruck Stalinist, this money hungry Maoist, refused to sign a pre-nup agreement when he married Fonda and ended up with a $30 million divorce settlement when they split up.

This is making me reassess my opposition to communism. Clearly, some communists do very well for themselves.

The divorce settlement alone should have convinced him that anything is truly possible in America but, no, despite the huge chasm between where he started and where he ended up, Hayden thought the whole system was corrupt and should be overthrown, and of course, that he should be in charge after the revolution.

One hot summer night back in the early 90s, I attended a Dodgers game in Los Angeles. I lived 60 miles south of Dodger Stadium, and the home team was winning handily, so I left the game in the 8th inning in order to beat the crowd onto the freeway. As I reached the top row of seats and turned toward the parking lot, I looked up and suddenly realized that I was walking alongside the Castro Casanova himself, Mr Tom Hayden.

I don’t know what came over me, but the opportunity to tweak this twit could not be passed up.

”Tom,” I cried out cheerily. “Long time, no see.” I said this despite the fact that we had, in fact, never met and as far as I know had never before been within ten miles of each other.

This pompous little prick is a sleazy politician, I reasoned. He will assume I am someone he must have met, possibly even a wealthy campaign contributor, and will, therefore, be incapable of admitting that he doesn’t know who I am. He will fake it, I thought, and I will fake it right back just to see how he reacts.

”Hey,” he said a bit hesitantly. “How you doin’?”

”I’m great. Just great. What’s new with you?”

“Uhhhhh, not much,” he stammered while frantically searching through is mental data bank in hope of remembering who I was. “Same ol’, same ol’.”

”You know, last time was so much fun,” I said as we approached the stadium exit. I paused at the opened turnstile and he had no choice but to pause with me. “We gotta get together again,”

”Yeah. Yeah. We do.”

”How’s Jane? I haven’t seen her in a while, either.”

“Oh, she’s doing really well. Keeping busy.”

“Well,” I concluded, “make sure you tell her I said hi.” Then I turned and headed toward my car out in the vast Dodger Stadium parking lot, leaving Hayden standing at the exit.

”Yeah, I’ll do that,” he vamped as I disappeared into the darkness. “Good to see you again.”

Wish I could have heard the conversation when Hayden got home. “Hey, Jane, I ran into a guy at the game tonight and I just can’t place him. Tall, skinny guy with a reddish beard. Kinda looked like your brother. Apparently we’ve socialized with him. Does that ring any bells?”

Horse’s ass.

Australia is the world’s flattest continent. Mount Kosciusko, its highest peak, is the Danny DeVito of mountains. It’s a mere 7,312 feet high.

I grew up in Southern California’s San Bernardino Valley, an area known for mountains, but certainly not for towering peaks, yet Mount Kosciusko would not rank among the San Bernardino Mountains’ top ten peaks.

In fact, if you could move Kosciusko to California, the highest peak in Oz would only rank as the 73rd highest peak in the San Bernardino Mountains. Mount San Gorgonio, visible on a clear day from the deYong family farm, is more than 50% higher than Mount Kosciusko. But the comparisons get even more unkind because Kosciusko would be only the 553rd highest mountain in California, and just the 2,117th highest in the United States. The average elevation of Colorado is 6,800 feet, not that much less than the highest peak in Australia.

You don’t scale Mount Kosciusko. You don’t climb it. You don’t ascend it. You hike it. You walk it. And you can make the round-trip up and down in just 6-8 hours. From bottom to top and back down to bottom is just 11.5 miles. No base camp is necessary. No sherpas, either.

Oddly enough, the mountain was named after a Polish military hero who never set foot in Australia. And even odder, it isn’t even spelled the same way Tadeusz Kosciuszko spelled his name.

The mountain is spelled Kosciusko. The hero spelled his name Kosciuszko. For some reason a ”z” was deleted from the mountain that bears most of his name. Nothing honors a man better than misspelling his name on the thing that’s named after him.

Who was Kosciuszko? Back in the 18th century, Prussia’s preferred route to invade Russia cut through the heart of Poland. And Russia returned the favor by marching through Poland on its way to invade Prussia. As you might imagine, these frequent uninvited visitors annoyed the hell out of the Polish people, but Kosciuszko was the one who finally did something about it. He became a hero by leading uprisings against both invading armies. And he was just getting warmed up.

Inspired by the noble concept behind the American Revolution, he sailed 1776 to America to join the cause. By 1783 he had been promoted to the rank of brigadier general, which allowed him to add some lovely epaulettes to the uniform he wore while defending American military forts from West Point down to the Carolinas. He was tight with the Founding Fathers. So tight, in fact, that he might be thought of as a Founding Uncle. He so revered Thomas Jefferson that he named our third president as the executor of his estate.

Australia’s highest peak is far from the only thing named after this forgotten Polish hero. Hundreds of places in America also bear his name, including a county in Indiana (without the “z”), a city in Mississippi (also without the ”z”), and a bridge in New York City (finally one that uses the Pole’s preferred spelling).

So why was the highest point in the Australian Alps named for a guy who never set foot on the continent? Simple. The first man to climb it (Hike it? Walk it?) was Paweł Strzelecki, a Polish explorer. The peak reminded Strzelecki of Kosciuszko Mound, a monument in Krakow dedicated to the Polish hero.

Now here’s another really odd thing. Mount Kosciuszko isn’t technically the highest peak in Australia, just the highest peak on mainland Oz.

Back in 1947, Great Britain handed over to Australia one of its most remote territories, Heard and McDonald Islands in the southern Indian Ocean. Heard Island is home to Mawson Peak which stands nearly 1,700 feet higher than Kosciuszko. It’s an active volcano, so I suppose that means it grows a bit higher with each eruption, leaving Mount K further and further behind.

Believe it or not, two even higher peaks lie in what’s called the Australian Antarctic Territory, but the rest of the world refuses to recognize Australia’s claim to anything on that icy continent.

To review: Mount Kosciusko is the misspelled name of mountain that was named after a mound, that’s called Australia’s highest peak even though it really isn’t

This may just be the original Polish joke.

Russell Kasselman, our official website guru, just installed a cool little button called “The Random Article Generator.” You can’t miss it. It’s the red button right up there where the red arrow is pointing.

Click on it and you’ll be taken to a completely random JimandJamie.com article with each click. You never know where or when you’ll end up.

Continue Reading

American Congressman Eric Swalwell got caught sleeping with a Chinese spy named Fu King Ho. It’s not easy for any politician to look dumber than Swalwell, but Australia’s Lidia Thorpe is making it a contest.

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation revealed last week that Senator Thorpe ”briefly dated” (don’t you love euphemisms?) Dean Martin, a former president of the Rebels outlaw motorcycle gang. That would be bad enough on its own, but while they were “dating” Thorpe was also “sitting on the joint parliamentary law enforcement committee, which was receiving confidential briefings about bikie gangs and organised crime.”

I believe that may be what they call a conflict of interest.

Martin has ridden with the Rebels for more than 25 years. He had been president of the Victorian chapter of the biker gang but stepped down in 2018 after his brother was deported to New Zealand due to his links to the Rebels and for his long, sordid criminal history.

When Thorpe’s staff found out about the relationship, they were so horrified that they ratted their boss out to Parliamentary officials.

“We … briefly dated in early 2021,” Thorpe attempted to explain. “We remain friends and have collaborated on our shared interests….”

Interesting. I’ve “collaborated on shared interests” with a number of women over the course of my life. I just never thought of calling it that.

I once knew a biker (or for our Aussie readers, a “bikie”). We weren’t pals, but we were acquaintances. My college buddies and I often ate lunch at a local drive-in Mexican restaurant owned by his parents. He worked mid-days at the restaurant, the same time of day we usually stopped in for lunch.

Tim made no secret of the fact that he was an outlaw biker. In fact, he seemed to revel in his outlawedness. Whenever he was working, his gleaming, big ass Harley was proudly parked right in front of the restaurant.

He was a big, hulking guy who would have been fearsome if he hadn’t worn a friendly grin and hadn’t laughed at himself so easily. He usually sported a scruffy beard and long hair as greasy as the ground beneath his Harley. He had tattoos back before they were hip. Looking back, I’m sure my pals and I found it a wee bit exciting and dangerous to talk to him over lunch, but none of us were stupid enough to extend our relationship with Tim beyond those superficial conversations.

Although Tim worked in the family business, that was not his primary source of income. He served as a fence (the guy who sells stolen merchandise for those who stole it) and his talents were highly-valued by both the Hell’s Angels and Los Diablos biker gangs. Although the gangs were sworn enemies, Tim’s skills as a fence enabled him to circulate freely back and forth between the two. He occasionally told us hair raising stories about his ”social interactions” with the legendary gangs. And in this case, ”social interaction” is another one of those euphemisms.

Tim lived in a shack just a few blocks away from my parents’ home. It had once been a neat but inexpensive little house, but had badly deteriorated under his stewardship.

Because of his suspected motorcycle gang-related activities, the house was always under surveillance by one law enforcement group or another, and none of them chose to be very discrete about it. They were clearly trying to send a message to Tim. A message he chose to ignore.

”There’s always some guy up the telephone pole working on the lines right outside my house,” Tim told us. ”It was obvious they were listening to my phone calls, and it pissed me off, so I went outside and lit the pole on fire while the cop was up there.”

As you might expect, Tim disappeared for a few months after that adventure. He was awarded an all-expenses paid vacation at the Graybar Hotel courtesy of the San Bernardino County prosecutors.

Some months later, soon after he was released from jail, the cops busted down Tim’s front door and discovered cases of dynamite stacked in his living room. The explosives had been stolen from a local construction site and the cops explained that they had raided Tim’s home after receiving a tip from some public spirited citizen.

When the cops asked where the explosives had come from, Tim was ready with a novel alibi.

”I have no idea,” he protested. ”Somebody must have been trying to blow up my house.”

$%#&!

The parallels to the Lidia Thorpe case are glaringly obvious. The Aussie media has decided that her ”collaboration” with the president of the Rebel motorcycle gang is pure dynamite. And the story has blown up the House of Parliament in Canberra. I could also say that the biker was caught busting down Lidia’s door, but that would just be another one of those euphemisms.

NOTE: This story is dedicated to my old pals Steve, Keith, Ray, Tim, Jeff, Larry, and the other Steve.

Nothing says Australia like a kangaroo. Unless it’s a kookaburra. We love ‘em. There’s nothing better than being awakened in the morning by their raucous laughter.

We were out and about in Tanunda this morning when Jamie suddenly stopped and asked, ”Did you hear that?”

Indeed, I had. Somewhere very nearby, just off to our left, a kookaburra was laughing hysterically.

Although you may not know it, you’ve probably heard a laughing kookaburra hundreds of times. Seems like Hollywood sound editors use it every time they need a sound effect for a jungle scene. It doesn’t matter where the film is set — Borneo, Africa, India — this uniquely Australian bird’s cry gets inserted.

Here you go: Enjoy the sound of a laughing kookaburra for yourself.

Oddly enough, the kookaburra was the central figure in one of the most famous legal cases in Australian history. And it was no laughing matter.

In 1934 Victorian schoolteacher Marion Sinclair rushed home from church one Sunday after hearing a kookaburra. She quickly scribbled out the lyrics to Kookaburra Sits on the Old Gum Tree and was as surprised as anyone when the song went on to become a favorite of children around the world.

In her unpublished autobiography, Kookaburra, she admitted that she didn’t really ”compose” Kookaburra because it was really more of a collection of “snatches of songs.” Some musicologists say it sounds suspiciously similar to an old Welsh folksong.

Let’s pause for a little history that may sound like a detour, but is really key to this story.

Aussie rock group Men at Work’s song Land Down Under was a huge hit, selling more than 30 million copies worldwide. It hit number one on the Aussie music charts in late 1981 and a similar lofty position on the American charts in late 1982. Seven years later, in 1988, Sinclair died. She bequeathed the Kookaburra song to the Girl Guides (a group not unlike the Girl Scouts), and they later gave those same publishing rights to the State Library of South Australia. Finally, in 1990, Norman Lurie, managing director of Larrikin Music Publishing, bought the rights to Kookaburra from the library for a mere $6100.

The legal controversy began in 2008 when an Aussie TV quiz show asked, “What children’s song is contained in the song Down Under?”  Its answer was, “The Kookaburra Song.” 

Sinclair had gone to her grave without thinking Men at Work’s worldwide hit had infringed on her song. Apparently any so-called similarities had also eluded Lurie because he didn’t bother to file a copyright infringement suit until June 2009, nineteen years after he acquired the rights to the Kookaburra Song and twenty-eight long years after the The Land Down Under topped the Aussie music charts.

The suit always seemed a bit dodgy to me. Lurie didn’t claim that the entire song had been ripped off, just the flute riff that encompassed five of the song’s 92-bars.

Nevertheless, the court ruled that Down Under’s flute riff “…reproduced a substantial part of Kookaburra”. Men at Work was ordered to pay Larrikin Music 5% of its royalties backdated to 2002 and a similar rate on future royalties.

It was a Pyrrhic victory because 2002 was twenty years after Land Down Under had been a hit and the royalties had long ago dried up. Whatever royalties Larrikin was awarded must have been dwarfed by its legal expenses, and the case generated so much negative publicity that Larrikin ended up changing its name. Even worse, Greg Ham, the Men at Work flutist who laid down the offending notes, ended up committing suicide due to his despair over being labelled a plagiarist. In other words, there were no winners in this suit.

Here Is a quick comparison of both songs. Do you hear a similarity between the two? Even if you do, should Men at Work have been found guilty of plagiarism when the ”composer” of the original song admitted that it was nothing more than ”snatches” of other songs?

Jamie and I and a bunch of our San Luis Obispo neighbors were having a dinner party one night when one of the neighbors, a Scottish immigrant, mentioned that Colin Hay, the lead singer of Men At Work, was appearing that night at a local bar. She felt some kinship because he had emigrated from Scotland to Australia as a child. After about two minutes discussion, we all jumped in our cars and headed for the bar.

Hay put on a great show and demonstrated a beautiful self-deprecating sense of humor. He told the story of how as a member of Men at Work, he had played sold out stadium shows around the world. And then, without a trace of embarrassment, he told us that within a year after the group broke up he found himself playing in a ramshackle outback bar for an audience composed of two drunks and a bored traveling salesman.

This bar in San Luis Obispo, however, held a couple hundred avid fans. Colin sang lots of Men at Work songs, but everyone in the audience was clearly waiting to hear the very identifiable opening notes of ”Land Down Under.” When that moment arrived, everyone enthusiastically sang along. Hay didn’t even attempt to sing, he just held his microphone out to pick up the audience’s vocals.

Looks like the he got the last laugh.

What a week for Jamie. On Wednesday she accompanied neighbor Doctor Margaret to the exclusive Barossa Valley Ladies Food & Wine Club dinner. On Saturday she won the top prize at the Great Barossa Bake-Off. And today she capped off her great week by picking the 20-1 long shot winner of The Melbourne Cup horse race and pocketing $421.

Thoroughbred racing is nearly dead in America, but it is huge Down Under. Every two-bit town has an eight-bit racecourse.

The Melbourne Cup is called ”The Race That Stopped The Nation.” It’s the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest horserace and it’s like the Kentucky Derby, the Super Bowl, and the Fourth of July all rolled into one.

It’s not an official national holiday, but it might as well be because the entire nation does, in fact, stop while it takes place.

For example, we watched the race at John and Margaret’s house. The home across the street from theirs has been gutted and is being remodeled. The construction crew worked hard all day and then at 2:15, just before the horses lined up in the starting gate, the workers packed up their tools and disappeared. Probably down to the local pub to watch the race. Half an hour later, Melbourne Cup race concluded, they returned to complete their day’s labors.

I’ve never known Jamie to be a fan of the ponies, so I assumed she picked her horse, Gold Trip, because she thought the jockey’s silks were the prettiest, or because she liked the horse’s name, or some other completely unscientific method. I asked how she made her bet.

“I did some research,” she said, much to my surprise. ”He won another race on a muddy track and today was really muddy, too.” (Yes, it’s still raining here in Oz.)

I hope you’re as impressed as I am.

Gold Trip is a five-year old stallion from France. Jamie is a fifty-five year old filly from Texas.

This may have been the most exciting weekend in the history of the Barossa Valley.

All those hours spent watching the Great British Bake-Off have been handsomely rewarded, because the lovely and effervescent Mrs deYong has just taken home the top prize at the Barossa Farmers Market 20th anniversary baking competition.

To make the win even more impressive, she won for both flavor and presentation.

And just when you thought the win could not get any better, the judges’ decision was unanimous.

The competition was fierce. Five orange cake finalists were lined up on the judging table. The judges sliced small samples off the first entry, tasted it, cleansed their palates, and moved on to the next finalist. They repeated the process until they had tasted all the entries, compared notes just like Paul Hollywood and Mary Berry do on the Great British Bake-Off, and then cast their votes.

The crowd fell silent. The tension in the air was thick as a slather of orange frosting as one judge initially cast his vote for some lesser cake, but the wisdom of the other judge prevailed, the recalcitrant judge switched his vote, and Jamie was declared the winner!

The crowd erupted in cheers. Golden confetti rained down. She was mobbed by the adoring masses and hoisted upon their shoulders for a raucous victory lap around the Farmers Market. She sneered down at the saddened faces of her vanquished, pathetic competitors, knowing that she now holds the coveted titled of ”Winner of the Great Barossa Farmers Market 20th Anniversary Bake-Off.” And they don’t.

No, seriously, it was a lot of fun. Jamie had never before entered a cake baking contest, but she loves the Great British Bake-Off and she loves the weekly Farmers Market and thought it would be fun. But, honestly, she never thought she’d win.

The rules were simple: Make an orange cake using a century old recipe from the recently reprinted Barossa Cookery Book. Everyone was required to use the same recipe.

Effort obviously does count because she had been experimenting by making a new cake every day this week, refining and tweaking her technique as she went. My only contribution was to serve as Official Taster, offering my opinion of each cake. They were all delicious.

She was inspired by Sherilee, one of the Barossa Girls responsible for reprinting the 100-year old cookbook, and by our god daughter Stella, who definitely knows her way around an oven.

I was hoping the prize might be a million dollars, but no such luck. Nevertheless, Jamie is pretty damn proud of the apron emblazoned with ”Winner of the Great Barossa Farmers Market Bake-Off 2022” logo and bottle of wine she was awarded instead of the cash. I guess it all worked out for the best because she’ll have the apron forever, but would have just frittered away the million on more oranges and cake pans.

All hail Jamie, cake baking champion extraordinaire.

ONE UPDATE: One of the judges, Stuie Bourne, is actually an acquaintance of ours. We were dining in a local restaurant several years ago and the group of men at the next table were whooping it up and having a grand old time. On our way out of the restaurant I noticed that one of them was wearing an LSU (Louisiana State University) cap, so I stopped to ask if he had attended LSU. He hadn’t, but the ensuing conversation ended up with Stuie inviting us over to his home for dinner. He was named Barossa Winemaker of the Year in 2021. However, let’s make one thing clear: The cakes were submitted anonymously and Stuie had no idea that Jamie was behind the winning orange cake.

It’s been raining almost non-stop since we arrived here in Angaston. The skies opened up about a month before we arrived and rain has been pouring down ever since. Sunny days have been few and far between.

Although it’s been no more than a soggy annoyance here in the Barossa Valley, the same cannot be said for the rest of the country. Australia’s east coast is being devastated by massive flooding. Entire communities in the central outback have been cut off by historically high waters.

Unlike the rapidly moving bush fires Australia is known for, this is a natural disaster that occurs in slow motion. The most populous regions of the country are already flooded, but the recent rains in the outback have only just begun rolling slowly down Australia’s sluggish rivers and will not crest in those areas for another six weeks. And yet the rain continues pouring down.

Here’s a news story to explain some of the devastation that’s already been caused by the flooding. And remember, the worst is not expected for another month and a half.

In 1956, heavy rainfall led to the historic flooding of the River Murray. It caused widespread damage and is still considered South Australia’s greatest natural disaster.

The photo below was taken three years ago along the Murray in Swan Reach, just 37 miles east of Angaston. Clearly, the infamous Flood of ’56 was one for the record books. Jamie’s standing at a spot that’s probably twenty feet above the level of the river, yet the sign shows that the river rose not just to where she’s standing but another fifteen feet higher during the worst of the flooding.

The Murray is Australia’s longest river. It’s 1550 miles (2508 kilometers) long, and flows through the states of New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. Almost 1200 miles are navigable, making it the third longest navigable river on the planet. Only the Amazon and Nile rivers are longer.

That being said, let’s not get carried away in comparisons to the Amazon and Nile because the River Murray really isn’t much more than a very long creek.

Its average discharge is a mere 27,100 cubic feet per second. The Nile’s average discharge is 99,940 cubic feet per second and the Amazon’s is a remarkable 7,380,765 cubic feet per second. In other words, more than 750 times as much water flows into the ocean from the Amazon than from the Murray.

At 1550 miles, the Murray’s length would rank fourth or fifth among American rivers. However, it would rank only 30th in volume, right between the Kootenia and Pend Oreille Rivers, which are both tributaries of the Columbia River and are probably unknown to anyone outside America’s Pacific Northwest.

We took this photo of the Murray three years ago about 100 feet north of the spot where Jamie was pointing up to the flood level sign. This is what the river looks like during a normal rainy season. It’s so narrow that the ferry crosses from one bank to the other in about 30 seconds.

According to American folklore, George Washington threw a dollar across the Potomac. Thanks to inflation, the dollar doesn’t go as far as it used to, and Washington’s arm ain’t what it used to be, so that probably wouldn’t be possible today. But the River Murray is so narrow that even wizened up ol’ Joe Biden could probably wind up and toss an Aussie dollar from one bank to the other. Unfortunately, he wouldn’t remember why he did it and would then veer inexplicably into telling some rambling, pointless, unrelated story until Jill approached the podium, took his hand, and led him back to the basement for another dose of Adderall and a Botox booster shot.

I beg your pardon. My apologies. I just did a bit of a Biden there myself, but unlike Sleepy Joe I am still able to correct course and get back on subject.

Unfortunately, this is just the nature of land and water in Australia. Years of torrential downpours and devastating floods always put emphatic exclamation points at the end of years of drought. It’s been like this for millions of years.

Nevertheless, Tim Flannery, Australia’s official Chief Climate Commissioner (and unofficial Chief Climate Hysteric) is one of those global warming scaremongers who keep getting quoted in the media even though he’s been wrong — embarrassingly wrong — with every one of his predictions for decades.

“I think there is a fair chance,” he frighteningly opined back in 2002, ”Perth will be the 21st century’s first ghost metropolis.” Luckily, Western Australia’s rains and reservoirs have persistently refused to cooperate with Flannery’s wild-assed scare quotes prognostications. It’s also been discovered that Perth sits atop a underground aquifer that holds a 500-year supply of water. (If we lived in Perth and Jamie watered our yard like she does in Texas, that supply would quickly be reduced to about 18 months.)

Flannery should have stopped while he was only slightly behind, but in 2005 he doubled down by saying:

But since 1998 particularly, we’ve seen just drought, drought, drought, and particularly regions like Sydney and the Warragamba catchment – if you look at the Warragamba catchment figures, since ‘98, the water has been in virtual freefall, and they’ve got about two years of supply left, but something will need to change in order to see the catchment start accumulating water again…. So when the models start confirming what you’re observing on the ground, then there’s some fairly strong basis for believing that we’re understanding what’s causing these weather shifts and these rainfall declines, and they do seem to be of a permanent nature… Well, the worst-case scenario for Sydney is that the climate that’s existed for the last seven years continues for another two years. In that case, Sydney will be facing extreme difficulties with water.

In 2007, the climate expert alarmist once again opened his mouth and inserted his foot when he said:

So even the rain that falls isn’t actually going to fill our dams and our river systems, and that’s a real worry for the people in the bush.

2007 was a particulary bad year for Flannery. He also issued this outlandish prediction:

Over the past 50 years southern Australia has lost about 20 per cent of its rainfall, and one cause is almost certainly global warming. Similar losses have been experienced in eastern Australia, and although the science is less certain it is probable that global warming is behind these losses too. But by far the most dangerous trend is the decline in the flow of Australian rivers: it has fallen by around 70 per cent in recent decades, so dams no longer fill even when it does rain … In Adelaide, Sydney and Brisbane, water supplies are so low they need desalinated water urgently, possibly in as little as 18 months.

Sydney’s dams have been full to overflowing since Flannery issued the first of his awkwardly inaccurate predictions. One year, in fact, there was so much rain that the reservoirs couldn’t hold it all. In an effort to keep the dams from bursting, authorities were forced to release vast volumes of water which resulted in massive flooding downstream.

And now we have this year’s horrible, destructive flooding. I think I would be far more accurate than Flannery if I were to predict that he will continue making bad predictions.

One might even say that much like Australia’s dams in a rainy year, Flannery’s predictions just don’t hold water.

The Doctors suggested that we take a drive out to Kapunda to experience the Anlaby Spring Festival. It was a beautiful, sunny Sunday afternoon and well worth the drive.

Anlaby Station, established way back in 1839, is South Australia’s oldest merino stud and widely considered to be one of the state’s finest heritage properties.

Today’s flock of Merinos is directly descended from a small flock of sheep Frederick Dutton herded all the way from New South Wales to Kapunda. Think of it as Lonesome Dove except in Australia instead of Texas, and with sheep instead of cattle. Sheep take very small steps, so the marathon drive took six months.

Dutton started with a grazing lease on a mere 120 acres along the Light River, but within 30 years he had built an empire that covered 100 square miles of land and numbered more than 60,000 sheep. The vast, nearly unimaginable wealth created from all that soft Merino wool allowed Dutton to build Anlaby into one of the most legendary South Australian properties of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.

As the decades passed, the station changed hands over and over again. Eventually, the land was sold off piece by piece and the buildings were allowed to deteriorate. Finally, not too many years ago, new owners took over and dedicated themselves to rebuilding the glory of the past. They’re also acquiring adjacent properties that were once part of the huge station.

The homestead, originally built in 1861, sits within 10 acres of immaculate Edwardian gardens. It is flanked by a series of beautiful outbuildings including stables, workers cottages and sheds. It feels a bit like a small English village because it was located in the middle of nowhere and had to be fully self-sufficient. In addition to fully-restoring the Homestead, the current owners have worked similar magic with the Coachman’s Cottage, the Head Gardener’s Cottage, the Manor House, the Clydesdale Pavilion, the Peacock Aviary, the Old Conservatory, tennis courts, blacksmith shop, and of course, those Gardens.

I don’t know who I admire more — pioneers like Dutton who had the brains and guts and strength to build something out of nothing, or the current owners who have invested a small fortune to bring it back to what is once was. Flip a coin. I’ll take either side.

Here’s what Anlaby Station looked like back in the 1860s.

Here’s what the restored Homestead looks like today.

Here’s the Homestead and the Main Terrace.

And as seen from the grass tennis court.

Two beauties: the Manor House and Jamie.

Jamie learning about Clydesdale horses from a very proud stable master. Look at the pride on his face in the second photo.

The head gardener’s cottage, built back in the 1850s, is now at pricey bed and breakfast.

Entertainment at the Spring Festival. It wasn’t all this classy, though. Down at one end of the tennis court, some guy was singing sappy songs from the ’70s and ’80s.

If it weren’t for the eucalyptus trees and other Australian natives, it would feel like you were strolling through an English garden.

Of course, you can’t maintain ten acres of gardens without an extensive complex of greenhouses and ”starter” gardens.

And, finally, all this opulence was funded by the soft wool shorn from flocks of Merino sheep. Huge flocks of Merino sheep.