Bytes: March Days and More Oz Facts

Perhaps unable to find an actual card on which to write a Christmas card home, one World War I digger resorted to penning his message on both sides of a hard biscuit. His name couldn't have been more appropriate: Cecil Robert Christmas, a sergeant who wrote this message in 1915 while taking part in the Gallipoli campaign. The biscuit, kept by the Australian War Memorial, is broken and almost illegible. It reads: "Merry Christmas ... Prosperous New Year from Old friends Anzac, Gallipoli 1915". During WWI, these English-made Huntley and Palmers biscuits were an essential part of the Allied army ration. Described as "very hard but highly nutritious", the biscuits were commonly fashioned into messages to home.

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Hordes of children swarm Santa at 1936 party

Radio station 2CH hosted its children's Christmas party at the newly opened Sydney Trocadero concert hall on Tuesday, December 22, 1936. Kids were encouraged to attend in plain or fancy dress, and enticed by the prospect of meeting radio personalities, the Hello Man (A.S. Cochrane) and the Fairy Godmother (Margaret Herd). Of course, it would not be a Christmas party without Santa Claus, and he arrived with a mountain of boxed presents to distribute to all the children, be they naughty or nice. Tickets cost one shilling and sixpence for adults and children over six, and nine pence for children under six

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A camera for Christmas

While digital cameras and mobile phones have revolutionised the way we take and store photographs, there was a time in the not-too-distant past when capturing a moment with stand-alone cameras and film was considered novel. George Eastman popularised photography with the first simple camera, the Kodak, in 1888. Over the next half-century, these cameras became more practical. This Australian advertisement, circa 1938, pitches the latest Kodaks as more than Christmas gifts. They are the "happy promise of a thousand delightful snapshots", and the Kodak film they use, essential.

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The 100 year old cat who arrived on the First Fleet

There were 11 ships in the First Fleet: two Royal Navy Escorts, six convict transports, and three supply ships. One of these was the Golden Grove, "the Noah's Ark of Australia": it carried cows, horses, sheep, goats, pigs, dogs and seven cats. Incredibly (in the literal sense of the word), one of these cats went on to live for more than 100 years, eventually winding up in the NSW town of Gundagai. According to a Tasmanian newspaper's 1876 yarn, "this wonderful cat has subsisted on pork sausages, and will not touch any other diet." Fifty years later, a Gundagai paper denied any local knowledge of such a cat, sniffily dubbing it "a mare's nest" — that is, an astounding-but-fraudulent discovery. The local disdain for felines is hardly surprising. Gundagai is, after all, a dog town.

BTW:

For overseas readers not familiar with the Oz town of Gundagai and the town's tourism feature of a dog sitting on a tucker box (food box), see a previous Bytes story at:

http://bytesdaily.blogspot.com.au/2010/08/gundagai-and-dog-sitting-on-tuckerbox.html

Wednesday, March 2, 2016

March Days and More Oz Facts

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