Mt Beppo -- a good place to die?

Maybe I just blinked at the wrong moment and missed something, but the town of Mt Beppo (in Esk Shire) seems to have about 6 houses and about 600 headstones. This seems somewhat out of proportion to me.

DSTC Farewell Symposium

Well, the DSTC Farewell Symposium has been and gone. It was good, it was sad, many of us ended up hungover. Check out what a good-looking bunch we are (before the hangovers):

http://staff.dstc.edu.au/kerry/DSTC-Farewell-Symposium.JPG

The popularity of blogs

I think I have finally figured out the real truth that underpins the popularity of blogs. My blog doesn't have to endure the signal-to-noise ratio problems that pervade most other internet forums. My blog is a perfectly moderated stream of quality opinion, closed to the rabble that inhabits the rest of the Internet. Nobody gets to tell me that I can't say "damn" or that I should have used American spelling.

Now it might be argued that since hardly anybody reads my blog, what's the point. But frankly I think it's a case of preferring quality to quantity.

Of course, I need to turn comments off on my blog to make absolutely certain of that. Excuse me while I pop off and do that.

Kerry, whose daily threshold for morons-I-encounter-on-the-Internet has just been reached

NCIS - slightly more subtle than usual

Normally I regard NCIS as a JAG-meets-CSI spin-off in which a Navy person meets with a grisly death and our heroes solve it, in between bickering about their love lives, shooting terrorists and sleeping in coffins. It's pretty much an on-the-surface kinda show, what you see is what it is.

So I was taken aback by a rare moment of subtle humour in the episode "Meat Puzzle" (remember what I said about grisly deaths!).

Anyhow, at one point, Ducky (played by David McCallum) says to Kate something about wishing she had known him as a young man. In response, Kate asks what did Ducky look like as a young man, so which Gibbs replies "Illya Kuryakin".

Given that the show here is on Channel Ten which aims at the under-35 demographic, I wonder if most of the audience got the joke. Well, I thought it was funny anyway.

high winds no impediment to the intrepid cemetery photographers

Despite the strong westerly winds on Sunday, we set out for a day of photographing cemeteries in the Brisbane Valley.

We began by fortifying ourselves at the award-winning Alvon Sundowner Pies on the Warrego Highway (between Haigslea and Marburg, turn off onto the service road when you see the waterslide to your left). The pies might be award-winning, but just don't expect a fine dining experience, as they operate from a demountable shed with some picnic tables out front. However, the pies are indeed baked on premises and very good to eat.

Full of pie, we headed off into the icy winds to photograph 4 cemeteries. First, there was Lowood Trinity Lutheran (St Mark's section) which is different to Lowood Trinity Luteran (Bethel section) but it is not at all clear to me why. Were there once two separate churches now amalgamated? As usual, the children were buried all in one row.

Second was the Apostolic church at Brightview. This is a pretty little church with probably the best maintained cemetery I have ever seen. It was also our first Apostolic cemetery, but, other than its excellent condition, Apostolic cemeteries don't seem particularly different to any others.

Third was Tarampa Baptist cemetery, for which there is no Tarampa Baptist church (it is now closed). According to the Baptist church, these Qld church cemeteries are now closed, but there appears to have been relatively recent burials at Tarampa Baptist cemetery.

Fourth was Glamorganvale Cemetery. It is not at all clear who runs this cemetery. The only signage indicates that the cemetery was established on land gifted by the Dwyer family, but it is not explained to whom it was gifted. It appears to be an active cemetery.

We also scoped out a couple of other cemeteries on the way home. First was the cemetery at St John's Evangelical Lutheran Church at Minden, which is not all that far from the church (and cemetery) of the Zion Lutheran Church at Minden. Does the presence of these two churches represent either a very large local Lutheran population or is there some difference between Evangelican Lutherans and Zion Lutherans?

The other cemetery we scoped was Tallegalla Cemetery, high on the hill. Although originally associated with a church (denomination unknown to me), it is now run by Ipswich City Council. At first glance from a distance, it appears to be a relatively small cemetery based on the number of headstones, but on closer inspection, it has a very large number of modern lawn graves which makes it a far larger project than we had anticipated. Ipswich City Council seems to be actively encouraging the addition of lawn graves to these older historic cemeteries. I have somewhat mixed feelings about this; on the one hand, I don't like aesthetically the close juxtaposition of the headstones and lawn graves, but on the other hand, the presence of new graves probably means the cemetery will be properly maintained which helps protect the older graves.

Finally, to cap off a fine day's cemetery touring, we passed by a War Memorial at Amberley and added it to our photo collection of War Memorials. It is rather weird driving through the town of Amberley, as the Air Force decided to close the town and then removed or demolished the buildings, so you drive along these streets with driveways and gardens but with no buildings.