Sunday, July 01, 2007
INCREDIBLE BULKER
Newcastle’s big pal is on the move:
The Pasha Bulker has moved significantly with three hours still to go before the peak of tonight’s high tide.
The ship has now been moved such that it is almost parallel with the beach after it was stuck at a right angle - bow first - to the beach.
Salvage crews are hoping the 8.54pm (AEST), 1.9m tide will allow three tug boats to pull the ship from Newcastle’s Nobbys Beach.
Earlier, the Bulker unleashed an oil assault:
“I have been advised that a sheen of oil a micron thick, which is 0.001 of a millimetre, was observed on the surface of the water at the stern of the ship,’’ NSW Ports Minister Mr Tripodi told reporters in Newcastle today.
A team of sixty oil spill experts was called in to deal with the massive slick.
UPDATE. BulkerVision.
CAULDRON TROUBLE AGAIN
Novellist Alexis Wright, rambling like a crazy woman in the SMH (no link available):
In my wildest imagination, I suspect that the ancient knowledge of fear still locked away deep in the conciousness of many non-indigenous Australians is still whispering to them but the cauldron’s magical power is malfunctioning and can cast no spell that totally works for this land. The power of wizards and witches transported from European cultures is being diluted and misused here.
The cauldron conscience improvises with the wrong ingredients and refuses to grant the vision of white supremacy as far as the eye can see.
In preceding paragraphs Wright complains about mining development and “our government’s cowardly endorsement of outsourcing torture.” Alexis Wright is the winner of the 2007 Miles Franklin Literary Award.