I was the unfortunate soul who was handed the reins of the City of Adelaide’s media relations function over the Christmas / New Year period in 2019. Our regular media guys were due for a break and I put my hand up to carry the can over what is typically a fairly quiet period. Normally…
Category: Stories
Common Dog and the Lobster
As a third year Army officer cadet at the Australian Defence Force Academy, I spent the blisteringly hot months of February and March 1994 at one of the Army’s most recognised field training hellholes: Singleton in New South Wales. Whilst the Air Force cadets jetted between air conditioned Officers’ Messes during their Single Service Training,…
The day I kissed the dirt
‘Make sure you eat breakfast in the morning’, the drillie said. If only I had heeded those instructions, maybe I wouldn’t have ended up ‘face planting’ into the parade ground – or ‘baconing’ as it was known in cadet lingo – during the 1992 Graduation Parade at the Australian Defence Force Academy. As first year…
Are you a tampon, Wehner?
I was amused to read an article on Business Insider recently entitled: ‘Military personnel share amazing one-liners from drill instructors‘. My favourite one-liners from the article: ‘Every time you open your mouth, stupid just falls out’ ‘Do it again and I’ll paper cut your pee hole’ ‘You’re a communist plot to fuck up my Marine…
Hey Wehner boy!
A bloke with a surname like mine was never meant to be in the military. Go on, dream up any nickname relating to sausages or the male appendage and I’m betting that I’ve been called that name at some stage of my military career. In the Army, one’s surname is prominently displayed on the chest in bold, capital letters…
The ‘ping’ of email, dopamine and mindfulness
This week our MBA mindfulness exercise was to monitor our emotional reaction to email arriving in our inbox. The idea was to classify each arrival into three categories: pleasant, unpleasant or neutral, and to identify the body’s sensations at the precise moment the email is received. This was always going to be hard job for…
Is mindfulness supposed to cause discomfort?
Tonight I moved on to the next stage of my mindfulness journey – I attempted a 25 minute ‘body scan’ meditation. Now, those people who know me well understand that I have great difficulty sitting still for more than several minutes at a time. Indeed, I have been flat out sitting still for the introductory 10-minute…
Me and Mindfulness – An Unlikely Pairing?
The practice of ‘mindfulness’ seems to be all the rage in contemporary business and management circles (and in wider society too). Before commencing my MBA degree, I hadn’t had any exposure to it whatsoever, but at least two of the study units that I have undertaken in the past year have included mindfulness exercises as part of…
Send in the clowns
Tomorrow, I get to realise a life-long dream; to tick off a major item on my ‘bucket list’. Tomorrow, I make my debut as a ‘clown’ – at least, my formal debut as a clown. My wife would argue that I have been a clown for much of my life. Yes, tomorrow I will play the…
Wehnerbier is coming this Christmas
Since I am on this crazy diet and can’t drink any alcohol, I’ve decided to do the next best alcohol-related activity…homebrewing. Much to my wife’s chagrin, I’ve decided to produce two big batches of beers for consumption over the Christmas period once my diet is over. I will, of course, be drinking in moderation and will be careful…
Is the ‘goon bag’ South Australia’s finest invention?
South Australia is home to some of Australia’s (nay, the world’s) best-known inventions – the Hills Hoist clothes-line, the stump-jump plough and, yes, we’ll even lay claim to founding pharmacological penicillin (Howard Florey was a South Australian). It is a little known fact, but perhaps SA’s finest invention of all is the humble ‘goon bag’ – a…
An Apricot, Peach & Chocolate Sensation from SA
Is there any better Easter gift for a Canberra-based friend than a 6kg bag of SA’s favourite chocolate treat, Menz FruChocs? I think not. I personally would love to be on the receiving end of such chocolately, apricoty and peachy goodness. Yet my goodwill offering was received coolly – ‘they were OK, but nothing to write…
Retractable Floodlight Towers
I have been revelling in frequent trips to the fantastic new Adelaide Oval to watch the cricket, AFL and soccer, much to the chagrin of my wife who bemoans having to stay home with the ‘clowns’ (our two children aged 4 and 6). The stadium is truly world-class and it has given the city of Adelaide…
Single-carriage passenger trains
The non-appearance of a booked taxi, and the resultant mercy dash to deposit my agitated Sydney-bound guest at the airport, recently highlighted for me a peculiarity with Adelaide passenger trains. Speeding down Park Terrace towards Port Road, what should befall this hurried duo but a pair of rapidly descending level-crossing gates and the ‘ding-ding’ of the…
Pigs in a pedestrian thoroughfare
Strolling through Canberra’s City Walk, the city’s most popular pedestrian thoroughfare, one can’t help but be taken aback by the confronting pose adopted by one of the merino sheep sculptures. On its back with legs in the air, the sheep seems to be ‘presenting’ to its woolly companion a couple of metres away. Hardly an…
How about this for a hybrid product?
It was reported last week in The Advertiser that Cooper’s has teamed up with Haigh’s to develop a new hybrid product, Cooper’s Stout Ganache chocolates, to mark Haigh’s centenary. I understand that this is just one of numerous collaborations that Cooper’s is trialling with other iconic South Australian brands. To date, Cooper’s best known hybrid product has been Beerenberg’s Cooper’s Ale…
Buses on tracks that run to Paradise
You know you’re in Adelaide when the nightly news bulletin is headlined by yet another story about a moronic, drunken European backpacker destroying the undercarriage of their hire car by accidentally entering the O-Bahn Busway at Hackney. Not only is the entrance clearly sign-posted, but there’s a special ‘second chance’ exit for cars that fail the…
‘Bung Fritz’-Dispensing Butchers
One of the enduring memories of my childhood is spending time at my Nan’s place in the Riverland town of Renmark and accompanying her to Lindner’s, a local family-owned butcher just around the corner. Once my Nan had completed her transaction, the generously proportioned butcher would smile at us kiddies, give his offal-stained hands a cursory…
The ‘stobie’: our indestructible electricity pole
Back in the late 1980s, the number one ruckman for our Adelaide Hills-based Under 14 footy team was a kid that we called Stobie pole. I’m not even sure that he had a real name. At least, I have no recollection of him having any other name. The nickname was apt. Having already broken the…
A South Australian drink that outsells Coca-cola
The servos, delis and bakeries in the eastern border towns of Pinnaroo, Bordertown and Yamba were always well stocked with South Australia’s flavoured milk of choice, Farmers Union Iced Coffee. Homesick, car-weary South Australians, returning home for Christmas via the badlands of New South Wales and Victoria, would pine for their first taste of the…