Malcolm Douglas

The original crocodile man, Malcolm Douglas, sadly died today. Malcolm was only 69 and apparently was killed in a motor vehicle accident near his property in Broome, Western Australia. Details here.

I've been watching his wildlife documentaries for as long as I can remember. Long before Steve Irwin appeared on the scene Malcolm was bagging and tagging crocs and bringing outback Oz to us at home through his docos.

We visited Malcolm's Croc Park in 2002 on our Big Drive around Australia. We even managed to catch Malcolm loading his boat and 4 wheel drive in preparation for probably another documentary. I'll try and dig out the video I shot of Malcolm and the croc park and upload it to Youtube.

Malcolm's documentaries were always informative and entertaining and he will be sorely missed.

Charlie Stross at the Galaxy Bookshop

Worldcon is on next week in Melbourne. Worldcon is the huge World Science Fiction Convention held somewhere in the world every year to celebrate science fiction and fantasy and hand out the Hugo Awards. This year's Worldcon is Aussiecon Four and is the 68th Worldcon. Because Worldcon is in Melbourne we haven't had many of the big names in SF visit Sydney for book signings. That is, except for Charlie Stross.
Charlie is a British author and lives in Scotland. He's written about 15 novels and a couple of collections. I only had seven books on me to get signed but I have a couple more in storage and I wasn't able to dig them out in time for the signing. Charlie very kindly offered to sign them if I take them to Melbourne with me next weekend. Yep, I'm going to Worldcon next week. A five day nerd fest. Half the guest authors there are some of my favourite authors. If I was going down in a truck I might be able to take their books to get signed. Unfortunately we're flying so we're limited in what I can carry. I'll probably only take a couple of books with me for signings. Also, I stuffed up my itinerary and we're coming home on the Sunday. Worldcon finishes on the Monday and most of the scheduled book signings are on the Monday. D'oh.
Alastair Reynolds and George RR Martin will however be coming to the Galaxy Bookshop in Sydney after Worldcon. There's a few door stoppers I won't have to carry down to Melbourne.




Charlie Stross' blog
Galaxy Bookshop website
Worldcon official website
Aussiecon Four official website

Peter Garrett wasn't the only VIP at the footy...

There's the usual footy commentators doing their pre-match spiel before the game. Below we have Jason "The Chief" Dunstall and Alastair Lynch.

And of course one of the German branch of the family (hey Ben) visiting for a couple of weeks and here to get a footy fix before going back to Deutschland for that funny round ball game.

Peter Garrett

Former Midnight Oil front man Peter Garrett was at the footy (Swans v Dockers at the SCG) to toss the coin. So I had to get my photo taken with him. I asked if I could get a photo and he suggested that I should jump in too. I managed to stuff up the settings with the camera so the first picture taken was a total fail. This is the result for the retake which Peter was very obliging to re-pose for.

Tall isn't he. I'm 180cm (around 6 foot) and I felt like a tubby little Oompa-Loompa next to Pete. Peter is a friendly guy in a not too patronising way that some politicians are too. Hopefully being a government minister these days doesn't totally ruin the man.

I am a total Oils fan boy from way back. The first time I saw Midnight Oil live was in 1982 and sadly the last was WaveAid in 2005. Hopefully I managed not to make a complete arse of myself today.

Stephen Wiltshire

Stephen Wiltshire MBE is an artist from the UK who specialises in detailed cityscapes. At the age of 3 Stephen was diagnosed as autistic. He learned to communicate through his art and he eventually learned to speak by the age of nine. Stephen is to able to view a cityscape for 20 to 40 minutes and then go off and draw that view from memory. He was in Sydney, at Customs House, this week drawing the Sydney cityscape below after taking in the view from the Centrepoint Tower for 40 minutes. The artwork was done in ink and is amazingly detailed. Stephen is in Australia as a guest of Autism Spectrum Australia. Of course politicians have to jump in on the act to boost their profile and that is why Kristina Keneally, the current NSW Premier, is in the pictures below.

The Sydney Morning Herald has story and video about Stephen's visit here.

More info about Stephen Wiltshire can be found on his website:
www.stephenwiltshire.co.uk