St Stephens Girls School

Has anyone ever heard of St Stephens Girls School in the Brisbane CBD? Despite my interest in Brisbane's history, this school has never come to my attention.

But if you walk down Charlotte Street (the street behind St Stephens Catholic Cathedral), you will see an old building on the cathedral grounds facing Charlotte Street which is currently being restored. And high on the front wall are the words "St Stephens Girls School".

So I have to wonder if the words were revealed as a consequence of the restoration or whether they were always there and I just never noticed them before.

Google was no help whatsoever in learning more about this school. Given the name and the proximity to the cathedral, there are no bonus marks for guessing it was a catholic girl's school, but when did it operate? Was there a corresponding boy's school? Enquiring minds want to know.

Google Earth and cemetery photographs

When I first saw Google Earth, I thought "hey, that's neat" but after a preliminary play with it, lost interest as I didn't see what ongoing use it was to me. How many times can you zoom from your house to your office after all?

But now we've found a use for it. By locating the cemeteries we photograph on Google Earth, we can create a Google Earth Placemaker and put it onto our WWW pages. Here's an example (click on the link on the 2nd bottom line -- assumes you have already installed Google Earth). So our users can now find out exactly where on earth each cemetery is. Well, at least our broadband users can, I think Google Earth might not be a great experience on dial-up.

And since the placemarker file has a free text area, it can contain a URL to our photo pages. So I can upload the placemarker onto the keyhole BBS (with the embedded URL) where it is accessible to others. I presume that Google will index the keyhole BBS entries, thus enabling people to use Google to find placemarkers of interest to them. I've been adding them to the People and Cultures topic as that seemed the most appropriate place for cemeteries.

We've now added Google Earth placemarker to about half our cemeteries. In a few cases, the resolution for the area is so poor that it's simply not possible to accurately locate the cemetery. But where the resolution is good, you can usually identify structures like churches, pavilions, lychgates and so forth. And the graves themselves appear as a regular grid of white spots. Once you become aware of what a cemetery looks like from space, they become quite easy to spot.

I presume soon anyone putting a physical address onto the WWW will include a Google Earth placemarker.

What I am wondering is when we will be able to put the placemarkers (which are XML files when all is said and done) into the comment field of a JPEG photo and thus provide "streetscape" views to complement the eye-in-the-sky view of Google Earth.

DSTC FarewellSymposium

DSTC-Farewell-Symposium
Originally uploaded by Kerry Raymond.

Who is the mystery man in th back row between Jenny Mackay and Rob McArthur?

Brisbane Ekka - gotta love it!

As usual, the newspapers are no doubt publishing their annual story on "how a family of 23 can't go to the Ekka for less than the national debt" illustrated with a photo of a family struggling to carry 5000 show bags each.

But frankly for $20 admission (adults), I get my money's worth every year. Just the woodchop alone is worth it.

Every 10 minutes you can get to see the most unathletic-looking men (wiry old blokes, weedy young blokes, had-way-too-many-pies-and-beer blokes) chop into logs as if they were made of butter.

This is a sport where the veteran class is 60 years and over and most of them are still competing in open class.

This is a sport where you can see a man bouncing on pole shoved into the side of a simulated tree metres above the ground swinging an axe wildly at the top of the "tree"; you don't see a sense of balance like that very often.

This is a sport where handicapping is done to the finest of arts with almost all competitors finishing within seconds of one another, with many events going to a photo finish.

This is a sport where everyone wishes each other good luck (and seems to mean it) and nobody argues with the umpire.

This is a sport where the Dunlop Volley still seems to be the athletic footwear of choice. Nary a Nike to be seen.

This is a sport where there are no tarted-up sheilas presenting the winners with a bunch of flowers (a la Tour de France), but middle-aged men presenting a sash (which appear to be identical to those used in the horse events and the fruit cake cooking championships) with a manly handshake.

This is the sport where you get to spend your lifetime cheering for the Dingles, a Queensland family which has spawned (or perhaps hewned) one generation of woodchop champions after another. They certainly breed them tough in the Queensland bush.

And despite my many years of attendance at the Ekka and the wood chop, you learn a new thing every time. Did you know that competitive woodchoppers don't use ordinary axes, but special "racing axes"?

I notice that Sports Memorabilia stores never seem to have any woodchop memorabilia. I'd rather have a framed Qld maroon woodchop singlet over a pair of red-rubbed cricket pants any day.

why don't the defence forces like given names?

Our defence forces seem quite keen to provide plaques for their deceased comrades, but why do they record only the initials of the deceased and not their full given names? Here's a typical example:

http://www.chapelhill.homeip.net/FamilyHistory/Photos/Marburg_Trinity_Lutheran/index.php?image=182_8210.JPG

Is it just me that thinks it odd that we are not told B.J.'s name, but we are told the name of his wife, the name of his children, his rank and his service number etc?