Catherine Watson blog

Virus diaries 9

31/7/2020

The author does PPE practice

By Catherine Watson

Monday. July 20
A sign on the book shute at Wonthaggi Library: books must self-isolate for 72 hours after returning to the library. You register at a stand at the door with name and address, use the hand sanitiser, and then you get a 15-minute pass. Only this time I’m asked to show my library card and licence. Enemy aliens, ie. city dwellers, are not permitted inside. My blood runs cold. The librarian reassures me. “If they’ve come to pick up holds we can get them and bring them to the door. And if they tell us what kind of books they like, we can choose some books for them. We can even deliver them.” Good old librarians! Finding some way to subvert the system to get books to the people who need them.

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Virus diaries 8

17/7/2020

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Cartoon: Natasha Williams-Novak

By Catherine Watson

Monday July 6
For a moment my heart lifts when I read “For our coronavirus pandemic-free coverage” in The Age. Then I read the sentence more closely: “For our free coronavirus pandemic coverage, learn more here.” Not if you paid me, buddy. I already know more than I want to.

Tuesday, July 7
Premier announces we’re going back into lockdown for six weeks. Not us exactly, Melbourne and Mitchell Shire, but the lockdown extends to Lang Lang and it's coming down the Bass Highway towards us.

Even daggy old Wonthaggi is suspiciously busy for the middle of winter. Lots of people out riding bikes and striding the streets purposefully, which the locals don't do.

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Virus diaries 7

3/7/2020

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By Catherine Watson

Saturday June 20
With 25 new cases in Victoria in one day, the Premier announces some restrictions will stay and others will be tightened. The number of visitors allowed in pubs and cafes will stay at 20. The number you can have in your home is reduced from 20 to five. Bugger!

Sunday June 21
Megan has been complaining about the city people coming to Bass Coast and imperilling our safety. Now she jumps in her van with Sam and drives to the Grampians, where they stay in a camping ground with all the city people.

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No worries! Too easy

20/6/2020

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Jules Lebois-Fedeli, left, Harry Freeman and Maddy Harford at their West Creek farm

By Catherine Watson

JULES Lebois-Fedeli spoke English proficiently but when he arrived in Melbourne, he kept hearing an expression he’d never heard before. From bar tenders to tram inspectors to shop assistants, everyone told the young Frenchman the same thing: “No worries”.

The expression came to sum up the easy-going attitude he’s found in Australians. “I love Australian people, actually. Compared to France, they’re more sympathetic, more friendly, sociable. If they have a problem with you they just tell you. But they don’t judge you. They are more open.

“It was quite easy to meet people when I arrived. You just walk into a bar and start talking. When people hear you’re from France, they ask you lots of questions.”

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Virus diaries 6

20/6/2020

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Resurrection: Ertuğrul, "a 13th century
Turkish soapie"

By Catherine Watson

Monday, June 1
The libraries are open. Only “Click and collect” at this stage, you can’t wander the shelves or sit inside and read the newspaper, but it’s a start.

Tuesday, June 2
I walk with Catherine R and her greyhound Carol at the Mouth of the Powlett. I ask Catherine what she’s been watching. She’s up to episode 30-something of Resurrection: Ertuğrul, a 150-episode historical drama set in the 13th century. She describes it as a Turkish soapie, with lots of amazing costumes “and some over-acting”.

I’m doing my own comparatively modest binge watching, a Scottish series called The Story of Film – 15 hour-long episodes from the birth of cinema to the digital age, from Sweden to India, Iran to Korea, and all places between. I’m limbering up for the re-opening of the cinemas. Can’t wait for that moment when the lights go down and a hush falls.

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The positive disrupter

13/6/2020

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Kay Setches has been appointed to the Order of Australia for services to the people and Parliament of Victoria and to women in politics.

By Catherine Watson

Watch Kay Setches enter a crowded room and you see the eyes turn to follow her. A diminutive woman in her mid-70s, slightly stooped after a serious back operation, she has the aura of authority.

Kay Setches attained high office, including three ministerial portfolios in the Victorian Parliament.

But she remains resolutely down to earth, warm and funny, swears like a born Magpies supporter, can talk political intrigue all night and never forgets which side of the class divide she is on.

Everyone wants a bit of her and somehow she finds time for them all, whether they are road workers or MPs.

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Virus diaries 6

13/6/2020

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Civilisation returns ... with a host of new rules

By Catherine Watson

Monday, June 1
The libraries are open. It’s only “Click and collect” at this stage. You can’t wander the shelves or sit inside and read the newspaper, but it’s a start. I write a poem in celebration.

A Library in Lockdown

For a precious week between
the lockdown and the “new normal”
they had this hallowed house
of learning to themselves.

No hyped up teens hung round
the entrance F-ing and C-ing.
Mr Bennett didn’t return the DVD case
without the thing that goes inside.

Mrs Brown didn’t rip out the crosswords
behind a discreet cough or sneak
out the Green Guide inside the
front cover of Fifty Shades.

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Virus Diaries 5

29/5/2020

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It pays to think about the background before your Zoom meeting.

By Catherine Watson

Saturday, May 16
Harry and Maddy decide to do their civic duty and get tested for COVID-19. Harry says their tester was no Florence Nightingale. “He rammed the swab up my nose – it felt like the beginning of the brain. It was very painful. I would have confessed to anything.” Maddy got a blood nose. They both felt worse afterwards than when they arrived. The good news is they were both negative, and the results came through two days later. Unlike in London where some people waited weeks and others never received their results.

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Virus diaries 4

1/5/2020

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Wishart Street book and produce swap

By Catherine Watson

Monday April 20
I catch a glimpse of Onelia and Tiziano in Tank Hill, and we natter from afar. Onelia says Tiziano has been watching all the cooking shows with great attention but when she asked him to make her a three-course dinner he only offered a toasted sandwich.

A heading in my inbox grabs my attention: Temporary pause on redemption. An email from God? No, a message telling me I can’t redeem my Virgin frequent flyer points. Phew!

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Dinner is served

30/4/2020

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Bass Coast Local connects customers with
local food businesses.

By Catherine Watson

IT’S business, but not as usual, for our local cafes and restaurants. Now a home-grown website is doing its best to keep the customers coming while times are tough for so many.

Peta Wittig set up Bass Coast Local to bring together local food businesses and the people who want to support them during the COVID crisis.

Confined to home by the lockdown, she decided she needed to do something useful to keep herself away from daytime television. It seemed to her that while many people were keen to support local businesses it was difficult to find out what shops were open, when they were open, and what services and products they were offering.

So she set up Bass Coast Local, a website listing food businesses from Inverloch to Cowes, from Wonthaggi to Coronet Bay, and all parts in between.

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The virus diaries 3

17/4/2020

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My first loaf of bread, the lockdown loaf

By Catherine Watson

Saturday April 5
Chill Bill café has closed. Now my hairdresser. My cosy little world is disappearing. I email Lynne, my hairdresser: ”I'm looking forward to seeing how we’ll look in a couple of months when we're all cutting our own hair!” “Well I am hoping you won't look too amazing,” she responds.

I find half a packet of flour in my cupboard and make my first attempt at baking bread. It’s called a lockdown loaf and uses a stubby of beer instead of yeast. Takes about 5 minutes to mix and I bung it in the oven for 40 minutes. When it comes out I’m amazed. It actually looks like a loaf of bread. I cut a slice and slather it with butter. Delicious! I take a sample to Vilya, who promises to send me a review.

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The virus diaries 2

3/4/2020

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Dan Murphy's, not Wonthaggi!

By Catherine Watson

Monday March 23
The PM threatens to close bottle shops if people don’t stop panic buying, with predictable results.

Vilya calls in. (Yes, we maintained an appropriate distance.) The stories of despair are getting to her, and the idea that it may be months before she sees her young grandchildren.
I tell her to stop watching the TV news. All those numbers read out in those grave voices. This must be what it was like during the wars. Worse in an age when “news” is updated hourly and readers, watchers and listeners have to be constantly titillated by some new horror.

I miss the Sports Rorts Affair. Such a hoot between our two catastrophes. It seems so long ago.

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The virus diaries

20/3/2020

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Cartoon: Natasha Williams-Novak

By Catherine Watson

Saturday
SCOTT Morrison says it would be prudent for all of us to prepare for two weeks in isolation.

I make a mental list of things I couldn’t live without: gin, wine, tobacco, coffee, tea, proper bread, yoghurt. Dog and cat food. Fortunately the first three seem secure and I’m not worried about toilet paper. Sooner or later even the preppers and hoarders will reach peak toilet paper.

I visit my friends Linda and Terry and we swap fruit and stories. They tell me their sons are worried that Terry is vulnerable because he deals with the public. We’re amused by their concern. It’s the old and frail who are at risk from COVID-19, not us. Then we realise: “But we are the old!”

It reminds me of a joke our local GP Nola Maxfield tells: “What’s the definition of an alcoholic? Someone who drinks more than you do.” Old people are older than you.

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Damn you, John Mutsaers

5/3/2020

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Red Cage, by John Mutsaers, part of the "Infinite Birdcage" exhibition at ArtSpace.

By Catherine Watson

IN NOVEMBER, Inverloch artist John Mutsaers invited local writers to take part in his forthcoming exhibition at Artspace Wonthaggi.

He’d already commissioned Inverloch musician Mark Finsterer to compose the soundtrack for “The Infinite Birdcage”. Now he wanted local writers to engage with his work, which is based on the theme of freedom.

First he buttered up the would-be writers by declaring that writing was the highest form of art. An outrageous claim but a smart move! Then he issued his challenge:

“Writers, using my artworks as a catalyst, are invited to share their understanding of freedom in 2000 words or less,” he writes.

Mission accepted, John. I’ll give it a go.

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A blazing star

27/1/2020

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Free spirit: Ricardo Alves-Ferreira

By Catherine Watson

EVERYONE remembers the smile and the bear hug. Artist, sand sculptor, writer, photographer Ricardo Alves-Ferreira left his mark on Bass Coast in many ways but most of all with his exuberance and warmth.

Ricardo died on January 13 at the age of 59. Guests at his funeral, held at the Penguin Parade on Friday, were invited to wear colourful clothes in memory of a citizen who brightened the lives of many, including some of the most vulnerable people in our community.

Ricardo had his first heart attack at 37. It did nothing to stop his headlong pursuit of everything life had to offer. His friends and colleagues recall an original who inspired others to be true to themselves.

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Weighty words

25/1/2020

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By Catherine Watson

AS ONE of three judges for the Bass Coast Prize for Non-Fiction, I sit down to begin the task one very hot afternoon with mingled anticipation and nervousness.

I’ve done the arithmetic. Forty-two entries, each 5000 to 10,000 words long. Total words 210,000 to 420,000. That’s the equivalent of two long novels or eight short ones. It’s almost as long as War and Peace, and that took me two months to read!

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Keep it #$%@!!*&#!$ nice

24/1/2020

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By Catherine Watson, Editor

A NEW Year confession: I've been too slack.

I used to pride myself on the fact that comments posted by Bass Coast Post readers were constructive, courteous, intelligent, relevant, respectful. So unlike those in most other online forums.

But I have to face facts. Our comments have gradually deteriorated. These days many are obnoxious and personal. Just like all the other publications.

I don't like censoring other people's views, particularly those with views that are opposed to mine, but I should have taken more notice.

When I set up the Post in 2012, I wrote a kind of credo: the Post was to be a forum for informed discussion, a civil place where people could debate issues and ideas, rather than criticise personalities.

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Tell him he's dreamin'

22/11/2019

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John Woodman. Photo: Watsons Pty Ltd

By Catherine Watson

IN LATE July, a silver-haired, silver-tongued salesman held the floor at a private briefing for Bass Coast councillors and senior planning staff.

Wonthaggi must have seemed like the back of beyond to the Ferrari-driving John Woodman, head of a Melbourne company called Watsons Pty Ltd, which lends a helping hand to people in need, provided they are rich and powerful.

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Back in action

24/10/2019

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Neil Rankine shortly before his arrest on a charge of obstructing emergency services. Image: Channel 9

By Catherine Watson

NEIL Rankine doesn’t fit the stereotype of a climate change activist, by Channel Nine’s reckoning. He is too old and too respectable. “Sixty-two years old, a former mayor, long-time councillor and for decades a CFA volunteer,” reporter Brett Mcleod noted. “But Neil felt so strongly about this issue that he was prepared to be arrested and for the first time in his life locked up overnight.”

On October 7, Mr Rankine, a former Bass Coast mayor, was charged with three counts of obstructing an emergency worker during an Xtinction Rebellion (XR) sit-in near the Flinders Street Station. Holding up a hand-made sign reading “Tell the truth”, he was the first protestor to be arrested during a week of protest action in the CBD.

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There's an idea!

5/7/2019

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By Catherine Watson

I’VE HEARD so many good ideas lately. Some of them come from Post readers, some from radio conversations. With each one, I’ve thought “We could do that here!” These days I have to write things down quickly before I forget them so here goes. Feel free to add your own.

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The wordsmith

25/6/2019

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Roger Clark estimated he’d written about eight million words in his lifetime, not bad for a boy who started work in a shoe shop at the age of 13.

By Catherine Watson

FROM the age of 12, Roger Clark mowed lawns on weekends until he had enough money to buy his first typewriter. In his teens, he bought a second hand ink duplicator and printed greyhound form guides which he sold to punters outside the local track, at least until the authorities banished him.

Despite a 50-year career in sales, marketing, management and logistics, Roger was at his happiest when he was writing and publishing.

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This island paradise

13/6/2019

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Cartoon: Natasha Williams-Novak

By Catherine Watson

BY THE 1950s, according to the Australian Museum, “numbers of the Cape Barren Goose were so low that biologists feared they may be close to extinction". They remain one of the world's rarest geese.

Birdlife Australia still lists the Cape Barren goose as “vulnerable” in Victoria and NSW, and rare in South Australia.

How do we tie that in with a bird now described by some Phillip Islanders as “a pest” and “in plague proportions”? Cr Stephen Fullarton recently told the ABC the geese “could become the cane toads of the south”.

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Famous last words

28/11/2018

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Cartoon: Natasha Williams-Novak

By Catherine Watson

BOB Middleton was the Post’s second subscriber, one of the Post’s first writers and the only Post writer ever to be mobbed by a fan. As the pharmacist called "Bob Middleton?" a Post reader stepped out of a long queue and hugged him. “I love your stories” she said.

For all the accomplished writers who have called the Post home, Bob’s gentle, laconic stories were the most cherished. When I ran some workshops for prospective Post writers a few years ago, someone asked me to teach them how to write like Bob Middleton. “I wish I could,” I said. “I don’t even know how he does it.”

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Ventnor victory one for the ages

14/9/2018

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September 2011: Phillip Islanders protest at Planning Minister Matthew Guy's decision to allow a new housing development at Ventnor.

By Catherine Watson

IT WAS a David and Goliath battle, pitching a small community against the might of a minister of state. Seven years on, the Ventnor saga continues to make waves, with the Labor State Government gleefully wheeling 32 boxes of documents relating to the case into Parliament two weeks ago.

The documents reveal how then Liberal planning minister Matthew Guy tried to rezone a 24-hectare Ventnor paddock for housing, against the wishes of the local community and Bass Coast Council, and against the advice of two planning panels and his own department.

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Would you like a credit card extension with that?

3/7/2018

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Cartoon by Natasha Williams-Novak

On a visit to her local bank, Catherine Watson discovers that she’s too feckless to get a loan but still qualifies for the special offers.

By Catherine Watson

WHEN I told the bank manager my income, she looked amazed. And not in a good way.

A bit of freelance writing. A bit of rent. It didn’t amount to much. Any benefits or pensions? No. Any super? No. It didn’t look good.

I’d told them that as soon as I sat down. I didn't have a job or much income. I just wanted to know in general terms whether I could extend a loan for a few months until I sold a house.

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