A Note from Rafe Champion [UPDATE]

I recently received this email from Rafe with permission to post it here, with the added note, “I will be pleased to see it circulate.”

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Kilmeny Niland, spouse of Rafe Champion and webmistress of the Rathouse passed away last week after a lingering illness.

The funeral service will be held at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium
199 Delhi Road
North Ryde (Sydney)

in the South Chapel

at 10.00 am

Wednesday 4th March

A eulogy will be delivered by Mr Paul Delprat, the principal of the Julian Ashton Art School.

In a few weeks an exhibition of Kilmeny’s work and a celebration of her life will be held at the Julian Ashton Art School at Middle Head, with a picnic/barbeque in the adjacent park overlooking the harbour. This was one of Kilmeny’s favorite places. The date and time will be announced on her website.
http://www.kilmenyniland.com

All friends and admirers are welcome!

Rafe Champion

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UPDATE:  More from Rafe, again with permission to publish here:

Kilmeny with Hugh, Leo, Thomas and Paddy. (Courtesy of Rafe Champion)

Kilmeny and Rafe (courtesy Rafe Champion)

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**Previous post, with links to some touching tributes:  Very Sad News

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Australian Flag Collection

For some reason, we’ve been seeing a really large number of incoming searches for the images of Australian flags which are scattered here and there on our various posts, especially our Australia Day pieces, so as a public service and because I’m stuck waiting on hold trying to find out why I suddenly have no (not low, but no) water pressure and so have a bit of time to kill, I thought I’d stick a collection of Australian flags up here on this page, so they’re all in one easy-to-find place.  They’ll be below the fold, to keep our main site from taking forever to load.  (And if one of our “found” images [some are originals, some are “found”] belongs to you and you want credit, just email us and it’ll be done).

The originals are of varying sizes and resolutions – click on the thumbnails below for full-sized images.

The Australian Bushfires: An Ongoing News & Comment Round-Up [Updated]

Yesterday Nilk wrote an excellent post here at Tizona on the recent (ongoing) bushfire disaster here in Australia, and because of the number of hits it’s attracted and because of the still ongoing nature of the disaster, I thought I’d put together a collection of links in chronological order to the many updated reports both the Sydney Daily Telegraph’s Tim Blair and the Melbourne Herald Sun’s Andrew Bolt have been posting on this.

I’ll start with the first piece I saw, which was Andrew Bolt’s from Saturday night (Feb 7th) and continue in chronological order with his subsequent posts, then I’ll move on to Tim Blair’s from Sunday morning (Feb 8th) and similarly continue in chronological order with his subsequent posts.

Please please please, feel free to add via comments any other links you want added, and I’ll check back in the morning and add them in, and generally try to keep this updated as a general resource clearing-house, especially for our friends overseas who are touchingly concerned but are some of them having trouble finding very much news coverage or commentary on the issue.

All of the pieces linked below  have multiple updates, links to other news sources, and vivid if heartbreaking pictures, as well as Tim’s and Andrew’s commentary on many of the issues this disaster has brought up.

**List of links below the fold:

A View Of Melbourne

I was in a leisurely mood, and felt like driving somewhere a bit different.

So I drove to the Eastern Suburbs of Melbourne, and drove up Mt Dandenong. I forgot how many tight and dangerous turns there is along that road, but it’s fun to drive!

When I got up to SkyHigh, I took a photo of the view. And here it is for you:

On the horizon, you can actually see Melbourne CBD, and the white area in the foreground is an industrial area with a bunch of factories in it. The green area in the foreground is trees.