JORDAN BRODIE LIVE AT ANDY'S SATURDAY NIGHT HOME SHOW
On Saturday night, a small group of music lovers gathered for a concert – in Andy Redhead’s living room. They enjoyed a stunning performance from 16-year-old Cairns guitarist Jordan Brodie, and they may well have been part of a historic first.
Andy Redhead has been performing music and teaching guitar in Cairns since 1981. Like many FNQ musicians, he’s watched the local music scene rise and fall – when the economy takes a down-turn, paying gigs become harder to get, booking agents take a sometimes painful slice and musicians struggle to survive.
Andy Redhead
So Andy has come up with the idea of having live gigs at home. Guests bring drink and nibbles, and they kick in a few bucks each to pay the musician. The musician gets an opportunity to perform and interact with an audience on a more intimate scale, and learns something about running their musical career as a business.
The first “home show” was a great success – Andy says there will be more and he hopes the idea catches on with Cairns music lovers.
Click on the audio player to hear Jordan and Andy explain the “home show” idea.
TOURISM HAS LONG BEEN THE FOUNDATION OF THE FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND ECONOMY. IT’S HARD TO IMAGINE HOW WE’D SURVIVE WITHOUT THE REVENUE AND JOBS IT CREATES.
These days most of our visitors arrive by air. Our tourism industry owes its existence to aeroplanes and the people who pioneered aviation in FNQ. Their story is eloquently told in a recent addition to the Cairns Airport domestic terminal – the Aviation Pioneers display.
It looks back to the days when the airport site was a mangrove swamp, and its earliest use as a landing ground. It tells the stories of the people, the companies and the aircraft that made safe air travel in FNQ possible.
CLICK ON THE AUDIO PLAYER TO HEAR KEVIN BROWN, CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF NORTH QUEENSLAND AIRPORTS TALK ABOUT THE PIONEERS DISPLAY.
QANTAS WAITING ROOM CAIRNS AIRPORT 1945
One of FNQ’s pioneering aviation companies was Bush Pilots Airways, founded by the late Sir Robert Norman in 1951. Bushies grew from a small operation to be a significant airline that developed new approaches to tourism in the region.
Bushies closed down in 1987, but its former staff are still in regular contact a quarter of a century later. They’re gathering in Cairns tomorrow for a re-union at which tall tales and true will be told.
CLICK ON THE AUDIO PLAYER TO HEAR EX-BUSHIES PILOT LYLE COOKE TALK ABOUT HIS TIME FLYING WITH BPA.
FORMER BUSHIES LYLE COOK & LIONEL DYER AT THE AVIATION PIONEERS DISPLAY CAIRNS AIRPORT DOMESTIC TERMINAL
CLICK ON THE AUDIO PLAYER TO HEAR FORMER BPA JACK OF ALL TRADES LIONEL DYER TALK ABOUT THE AIRLINE AND THE RE-UNION.
THE F-27 FOKKER FRIENDSHIP IN BPA COLOURS CAIRNS AIRPORT
RON ENTSCH & BUSHIES CREW WITH A DC-3 CAIRNS 1970s
CAIRNS AIRPORT CONTROL TOWER 1957
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Queensland’s Wild Rivers Act was a contentious creature long before then premier Peter Beattie steered it through Parliament in 2005, with strong support from the Wilderness Society. Environmentalists loved it. Opponents said it sold out far north Queensland in return for “green” electoral support in the south-east corner. Cape York people said it restricted economic opportunities, especially for indigenous folk.
The Wild Rivers Act said the Government could regulate or prohibit “certain activities” on or near rivers that met certain environmental criteria by declaring them to be “wild rivers”. Several Cape York rivers have since been declared “wild rivers”.
The new Queensland Government had said it would review the Act and withdraw the declarations made under it. Since taking office, the Government is on record as saying it will replace the “wild rivers” process with a Cape York bio-regional plan. Work has commenced on that plan.
OUR ON-LINE POLL ASKED IF YOU SUPPORT THE GOVERNMENT’S APPROACH. 42% SAID YES, 50% SAID NO. 7% VOTED FOR OTHER OPTIONS. THE POLL HAS NOW CLOSED. WHILE IT WAS RUNNING, A LINK TO ADVERTISING MATERIAL APPEARED BRIEFLY ON THIS PAGE. IT WAS PUT THERE BY THE SERVICE THAT PROVIDES A PLATFORM FOR THESE POLLS. I DO NOT CONSENT TO THIS AND DO NOT ENDORSE THE ADS. WE WILL FIND ANOTHER WAY TO CONDUCT POLLS IN FUTURE.
Natural Resources and Mines Minister Andrew Cripps says “wild rivers” was a politically driven process. Mr Cripps has told ABC Far North its replacement will consider Cape York mining and other development proposals “on their merits”and “politics won’t be getting in the road”.
Click on the audio player to hear Andrew Cripps with our reporter Nikolai Beilharz.
The first project likely to be considered under the new system is Cape Alumina’s Pisolite Hills bauxite mine, on hold since the Wenlock River was declared a wild river in 2010. Cape Alumina M.D Graeme Sherlock explains the project to the ABC’s Lauren Day.
The Wilderness Society’s Gavin McFajin says the Pisolite Hills project should not go ahead.
IF YOU USE G-MAIL OR ANY OF THE OTHER FREE EMAIL SERVICES, YOU’VE PROBABLY ASKED YOURSELF HOW CAN THESE SERVICES AFFORD TO BE FREE? WELL, THE RECENT PRIVACY POLICY CHANGESAT GOOGLE, WHO OPERATEG-MAIL, SHOW THESE SERVICES ARE VERY LUCRATIVE. AND YOU ARE PAYING FOR THEM.
Here’s how it works. For a couple of months now, G-mail has been sending you ads, or attaching them to your inbox display. You can opt out of some of the ads, but not all of them. The ads you see depend on what your emails are about. I got an email from my flying school, along with an ad for Etihad Airlines. Somewhere in the heart of the Google system, something is reading your email and sending you ads based on what you write.
You may not remember agreeing to this arrangement when you signed up for Gmail, but it was in there somewhere when you clicked “yes” to the user agreement. But do you want to receive ads in your private email?
Are you comfortable with the service provider scanning your messages for key words that appeal to its advertiser clients? You are “paying” for your “free” email with your private data. This is how a lot of the social media, photo sharing and message services work. They offer you a free service, paid for by offering advertisers the benefit of your attention and information about you.
It’s called data mining. Should you be concerned? What can you do about it? Are there alternatives to Gmail? Click on the audio player to hear Cairns I-T expert Rob Rutten answer these questions.
Has the Queensland Government killed off the Cairns Entertainment Precinct project. Or is FNQ being told you can have what the LNP promised during its election campaign, dredging of Trinity Inlet, or an Entertainment Precinct? But not both.
A few days back Local Government Minister David Crisafulli told us the 57 million dollars promised by the previous Government for the project was secure, a statement he made again yesterday in Brisbane to Cairns Mayor Val Schier. But while that meeting was taking place, Premier Campbell Newman was in Cairns saying there’s no 57 million for this project. His Government won’t support it in its current form.
It’s not uncommon to hear a leader say one thing and a Minister say the opposite. But it raises some interesting questions about the future of the project, the way the new State Government operates, and Cairns Regional Council’s advocacy of its 155 million dollar proposal.
Here’s what Minister Crisafulli told us last week when asked about State funding for the C-E-P.
I LOVE THE GAME OF CRICKET – BUT TO PLAY IT FOR REAL YOU NEED 22 PLAYERS, TWO UMPIRES, EQUIPMENT, FAIR WEATHER AND A FAIRLY LARGE PARK. IT CAN’T ALWAYS BE DONE.
What if you could distill the essence of cricket into something you could carry in your pocket and play anywhere, whenever the mood takes you?
Hamish Sterling has done just that. You hear Hamish doing the traffic reports on ABC Far North. In his spare time he’s come up with Pocket Cricket.
The game is played with six dice, three each for the batsman and the bowler. The dice cover all the likely combinations of possibilities that make cricket so intriguing. You can get through an epic Test Match struggle in a quarter of an hour.
Click the audio player to hear Hamish Sterling and I playing Pocket Cricket live on the radio.
MY 23 YEARS WITH THE ABC HAS TAKEN ME TO MANY PLACES. FOR SIX OF THOSE YEARS I REPRESENTED THE ABC OVERSEAS, AND EVERY DAY I’D BE ASKED “WHERE ARE YOU FROM?” AND PEOPLE REACT TO MY ANSWER, “AUSTRALIA”, BASED ON WHAT THEY ALREADY KNOW ABOUT MY COUNTRY.
They might have met Australians before, and they may have seen Australians on TV or in films. Most of our knowledge of other countries is based on what we get from media and popular culture. So what do you know about Mexico?
Unless you’ve been there, you probably know Mexico and its people through US television or films, in which Mexicans are often portrayed in a poor light, as the “bad guys”. Bertha Corte was amazed to find that Australians and their Kiwi cousins reckon Mexico is a very dodgy place, full of corruption, criminals and druggies.
Bertha is very proud of her home-land, its people and culture. She’s riding her bicycle around Australia to give us all a chance to meet a real Mexican and learn about her country.So far she’s done Sydney to Cairns, and she heads on to Darwin on Sunday, then Broome, Perth and across the Nullarbor to Sydney.
Click on the audio player to hear my interview with Bertha.
You can follow Bertha’s journey around Australia on her blog http://tbomx.com
WE LOVE LIFE IN TROPICAL FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND. IT’S A LOVELY, RELAXING AND HEALTHY PLACE TO LIVE. BUT THAT WASN’T ALWAYS THE CASE.
In the late 1800s, Cairns was a small frontier town surrounded by mosquito-infested swamps. Tropical diseases were a daily threat to life, and the medical profession’s understanding of these things was limited, at best.
But at the Cairns Hospital, Dr Edward Koch was doing his bit to change that. Dr Koch (pronouncedKoh) was a pioneer of tropical medicine. Among other things, he worked out the link between mosquitoes & malaria. Life in FNQ became better and safer because of Dr Koch’s work.
DR EDWARD KOCH MEMORIAL CAIRNS EARLY 1900s
So it’s fitting that the foundation that carries his name is working on one of today’s urgent health challenges — youth suicide prevention.
The Dr Edward Koch Foundation runs the FNQ Suicide Prevention Taskforce. This Thursday it will launch a Facebook page it hopes young people who may be considering suicide can use to find help, information and support. The same day, the Foundation will launch the Declan Crouch Fund, to raise funds to support suicide prevention efforts in Cairns & FNQ. Declan Crouch was a Cairns teenager who took his own life in March 2011.
The CEO of the Dr Edward Koch foundation is Dulcie Bird. Click on the audio player below to hear Dulcie explain these important initiatives.
MITCHELL AERIAL SERVICES DE HAVILLAND DH 84 VH-AIA AT CAIRNS 1959
IN THE YEARS AFTER WORLD WAR TWO, AVIATION BECAME THE LIFE-BLOOD OF FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND. PILOTS AND PLANES KEPT REMOTE COMMUNITIES SUPPLIED AND HELPED PROVIDE MEDICAL CARE. AIR SERVICES COULD GET THROUGH WHEN THE WET CLOSED ROADS. LIFE IN FNQ WOULD HAVE BEEN MUCH HARDER WITHOUT THEM.
There are many memorable stories from those times, and I hope you can help dig up some more yarns.
In the early 50s, Neville Mitchell started a charter operation in Cairns called Mitchell Aerial Services.
NEVILLE MITCHELL'S BROTHER FRANK AT THE MAS BOOKING OFFICE
Neville’s daughter Robyn and her husband Tony are putting together a family history. They’re keen to hear from anyone with Mitchell Aerial Services stories or memorabilia. Tony was an M-A-S pilot, and Robyn remembers growing up surrounded by a wonderful bunch of aviators. Click the audio player below to hear Robyn & Tony talk about Mitchell Aerial Services.
Can you help Robyn & Tony tell the story? Do you have a connection to Mitchell Aerial Services, a story, a photo? Leave a comment here or email me dinnen.richard@abc.net.au
100 YEARS AGO THIS WEEKEND THE RMS TITANIC WENT DOWN AFTER HITTING AN ICEBERG 600 KM SOUTH OF NEWFOUNDLAND, ON ITS MAIDEN VOYAGE ACROSS THE NORTH ATLANTIC. AND IT SEEMS THERE MAY HAVE BEEN A FAR NORTH QUEENSLAND CHAPTER IN THIS MUCH TOLD TRAGIC STORY.
RMS Titanic was the biggest ship of its time, the product of new methods of ship-building & design that supposedly made it unsinkable. The official death toll is 1514, but records are not entirely reliable.
If we accept those official figures, 710 people survived the disaster and it seems two of them may have settled near Cairns. Stories are told of a man and a woman who lived and worked around a gold mine at Mount Peter, near Edmonton in the 1920s. Otto Keller and a woman remembered as Mrs Zarr are said to have told staff at the Cairns Hospital that they were survivors of the Titanic sinking.
Their namesdon’t appear on passenger manifests, but we’re told the names of some passengers in “steerage”were found to be missing from the lists. We may never know for sure if Otto Keller & Mrs Zarr were on the Titanic — but we do know some FNQ locals in the 1920s certainly believed that was the case. Both have streets named after them in the Edmonton area.
CLICK ON THE AUDIO PLAYER TO HEAR LOCAL HISTORIAN KAY EARL TELL THE STORY OF OTTO & MRS ZAR.
More about Jordan Brodie at http://www.entertainmentcairns.com/jordanbrodie“and watch him playing at http://www.youtube.com/user/JordanBrodieMusic?feature=mhee
The Mojowire 