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Canberra Today 15°/16° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Canberra Confidential / Addicted to streamliner lovelies

Smooth, sleek streamliners… heading to Goulburn.
Smooth, sleek streamliners… heading to Goulburn.

FIRST it’s the spy festival, now go-getting Goulburn has come up with another original reason to visit the town – Streamliners 2016, a long weekend of celebrating 65 years of streamlined diesel locomotives in Australia.

Organiser Bernie Baker is expecting national and international fans to the October 1-3 festival of diesel.

“Like many, I’ve developed a passion for these old diesels. I can’t stay away from them and I don’t think I’m alone,” Mr Baker said.

“It’s time to get the classics together while we still can.”

And so they will with more than 20 of the locomotives in different colour schemes on display at the Goulburn Rail Preservation Centre.

Smooth, sleek streamliners were first built in Australia in the early ‘50s and quickly proved their superiority to steam and required less maintenance.

More information at streamliners2016.com

Chris Coleman, left, shares the port with Ian Meikle.
Chris Coleman, left, shares the port with Ian Meikle.
Message in a (port) bottle

The special port bottle. Photos by Geoff Koop
The special port bottle. Photos by Geoff Koop
RADIO presenter Chris Coleman’s rare piece of Canberra memorabilla has taken on special meaning with the passing of Parliament House architect Romaldo Giurgola.

The 2CC drive announcer’s engineer dad John Coleman had worked on the building and scored a “private collection No. 36” bottle of the Parliament House Construction Authority Employees’ Port. The PHCA staff are named on the back of the bottle.

John gave it to Chris, who selflessly popped the top and shared a drop when editor Ian Meikle called by the studio for the weekly “CityNews” Thursday spot. The port got the thumbs up, but it’s the bottle itself that’s  priceless.  

Brass in muck

AS they say in Yorkshire, there’s brass in muck and few would know this better than the ACT’s garbage truck drivers, who have been upsetting their Sydney-based contractor bosses Suez and the ACT public with work stoppages aimed at improving their lot.

In calling on the Transport Workers’ Union to help sort the impasse, local manager Jason Stewart revealed that the drivers were paid well above award and, on average, earned $95,000 a year, with the offer of a 2.2 per cent wage increase, well above the national CPI of 1.3 per cent. Toss in the bracket-creep tax benefit from the recent Federal Budget and you’d have to wonder how much better it could get for them.

Reporting on the reporters

RED faces at the cop shop the other day. CC was sitting in a meditative state when, suddenly, out of the universe drops a curious email titled “End-of-Day Brief” from the police media group.

There, listed for all (the media) to see, was the day’s inbound media enquiries and outbound press releases. This daily report names inquisitive reporters, their media outlets and what they were bothering plod about.

Inevitably, a short while later came the hapless “recall” of the report. We love recalls because they serve only to draw attention to email that’s trying to be withdrawn. We also love the optimism of recalls; as if they can suddenly suck those unitended missives off the screen without a trace. They totally don’t.

 

 

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Thank you,

Ian Meikle, editor

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