Monash Pioneers, News Snippets July 2025Emeritus Professor Ross Fitzgerald AM and Ian McFadyen’s new book Chalk and Cheese -a fabricationNot only is Ross considered a top tier historian whose newspaper articles and recent SBS TV appearance on Insight about elder health promotes independent thought, he is prolific author, coauthor and editor of forty-six books ranging from the serious to outrageously hilarious fiction with his Grafton Everest series.  Fiction maybe but ingrained with some elements of real life (and too pertinent for us aged ones).As a fellow Arts graduate I was always somewhat envious …

From The Courier-Mail, September 22, 2017 by Terry Sweetman
As Queensland premier, Joh Bjelke-Petersen’s savage use of defamation writs not only silenced his political critics, it made the media understandably gun-shy when it came to looking under rocks.
Not even history was safe from his baleful glare.
In 1984 when Professor Ross Fitzgerald published the second volume in his history of Queensland, the first print run had to be recalled and pulped because of defamation action threatened by Bjelke-Petersen’s government.
The alleged libel concerned the government’s pursuit of conservationist and schoolteacher John Sinclair, who …

Telstra last night was dealing with a new crisis with some of its broadband users unable to access hundreds of websites most of yesterday. Businesses were among those hit, in some cases unable to access mail and with their hosted websites inaccessible to customers.
Not all websites were affected. But users were complaining that websites hosted by Bluehost, HostGator and Hostmonster would not load in the browsers of some Telstra broadband users.
The outage appeared to have gone on all day yesterday in what was a separate incident to Tuesday’s massive mobile …

WHEN I heard GoPro was releasing a harness for dogs I was curious. Could dogcam vision be as riveting as hang-gliding action, mountain biking, rock scaling or clips of catching that big wave?
So I harnessed up our favourite local dog, a West Highland White Terrier called Maddie who attends a weekly dog obedience class in inner Sydney.
She wore a regular GoPro Hero3+ black edition camera for the exercise — the same one used by extreme sports nuts.
Maddie just fits the weight range of dogs GoPro says the harness is suited …

Dame Marie Bashir, Governor of New South Wales, awards me a Member of the Order of Australia at Government House, Sydney, on September 3, 2014. I was appointed Member (AM) in the General Division of the Order of Australia, for significant service to education in the field of politics and history as an academic, and to community and public health organisations.

HECTOR’S DIARY, ‘Bali Advertiser’ May 28, 2014
by 8 Degrees of Latitude
Bad Burghers
A new Facebook group has appeared in cyberspace, dedicated to curbing crime in Ubud. This is an unpleasant sign of the times. Ubud may be where everyone goes to commune with the fairies, go Vegan, try to find anything that remotely resembles the purported revelations in Elizabeth Gilbert’s bodice-ripper book ‘Eat, Pray, Love’, and get in touch with their inner Pilates, but it’s also catching up with the modern world.
Some of the good burghers of Ubud, local and foreign, …

POLITICIANS, public servants and judges have dominated Queensland’s top gongs in the century they have been dished out.
The knighthoods which are supposed to recognise the state’s great and good, have been hijacked by the political establishment, handed out to more politicians than any other group.
An analysis of the more than 200 Queensland identities who have received the top Australian and Royal honours exposes the boys club dominating the top awards , more than a fifth have been handed out as the ultimate pollies’ perk, while public servants received 16 per …