FQ Blog

Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘Bluebeard’

Kurt Vonnegut has always been a favourite author of mine. I’m just finishing the final chapter of his novel ‘Bluebeard’ which, among myriad other story lines,...

Fish Man

The tragic tale of a man who wanted to be a fish. NOBODY knows why Neil Gordon Wilson, 49, liked to pretend to be a fish.

Word Of The Day #1

quotidian adjective occurring daily, ordinary, mundane, commonplace, not exceptional in any way. “two quotidian political leaders; both from quotidian political parties have made the quotidian...

Letter From Kev

It’s Federal Election day and just yesterday Prime Minister Rudd took time out from his busy schedule to write to ME of all people! It...

A middle aged man in lycra

A bicycle riding, catholic, misogynist, boat dealing, climate change denying budgie smuggler was sworn in as Australian Prime Minister today …and, we don’t even know...

Xenophobic Deja Vu

It is not the bad qualities, but the good qualities of these alien races that make them so dangerous to us. It is their inexhaustible...

Hopalong Cassidy

Hopalong Cassidy, the TV ‘good-guy’ cowboy who wore a black hat was a good-guy off screen as well. He visited Australia in November 1954. 60,000...

Moomba

I’m in deep culturo-anthropo-Melbo shock!! As a kid I attended a couple of Moomba parades circa 1958-59 and in my ignorance I believed Moomba MUST...

Too much of a mao-ful

China bans wordplay in attempt at pun control The Chinese State Administration for Press, Publication, Radio, Film and Television says: Radio and television authorities at...

The Dunny

Growing up in the unsewered Melbourne suburbs of Bentleigh and later Moorabbin in the 1950s, I became accustomed to the delights of the outside...

Glowing Demon

It was my 63rd birthday recently. The following article appeared in Melbourne’s Argus newspaper on the day I was born in 1952. When do we see...

Hungarian Goulash

Everyday Signs of Incipient Madness Dr. George S. Bunn, a brain specialist, of Boston, United States, America, in a lecture recently delivered before an audience...

Crying In The Sane

INSANITY AND TEARS One of the most curious facts connected with madness is the utter absence of tears amid the insane. Whatever the form of...

Heartburnings and bickerings briskened

LAST SCENE OF ALL   By “Kicker” (1910) The last day of the League Matches. Tomorrow will be the end of the season, and either...

Kicking Behinds

LEAGUE FOOTBALL    By F. Keith Manzie Good old Geelong. At last they’ve done it. They have won a semi-final for the first time in their career. Having...

No Men Poodles or Milksops

THE FOOTBALL JUBILEE: HOW THE GAME STARTED By OBSERVER Exactly fifty years after Mr. Harrison and his cousin discussed the founding of a new game,...

Hooked on the Colliwobbles

Collingwood’s amazing ability to lose Grand Finals led to the term the ‘Colliwobbles’

Inflated cowhide to Mother Earth

From about age 11 and all through my teenage years I engaged in my hometown (Melbourne) religion and played footy every Saturday afternoon. The top...

Hirdy Girdy Hugs Mug

AFL: Round 3, 2004 Some have described it as the best last quarter performance by any individual in footy history. 15 possessions and a match...

Us Fellas

Jim Bancks first drew his “Us Fellers” comic strip in 1921 and changed its name to “Ginger Meggs” in 1939. It soon became Australia’s favourite comic strip...

A Blethyn In Disguise

To my knowledge, Essendon’s Geoff Blethyn is the only person to have ever played senior level VFL /AFL footy wearing spectacles.* In 1972 the 21...

Floggin’ Noggin’ Snoggin’

KISSING 0dysseus kissed his head, shoulders and hands. Kissing the image of a God was a recognised rite of adoration among Romans. On leaving and...

Ladders and Snakes

As I was born in Melbourne my pagan religion, naturally, was footy (Aussie Rules). As a 13 year old I drew this wonky picture...

Flick Schtick

The Flick Pass The legality of the flick pass has varied throughout the history of the game (of Aussie Rules): it began to gain prominence...

Lips and Arsehole

Amongst my cartoons on this site are some devoted to the illustrious Saveloy! The Sav is jokingly referred to here in Oz as being made...

5th Beatle

THE LONELY WAIT It was a melancholy ex-Beatle who waited alone yesterday at Essendon Airport, Melbourne, for his plane to take him home to England....

JOK

AUSTRALIA’S KING OF ROCK If you “knock the rock” (condemn rock-‘n-roll) you are sadly misled, according to Johnny O’Keefe, a pint-sized dynamo who is Australia’s King...

War Years Footy

LET’S LOOK AT FOOTBALL with HUGH BUGGY 1915-18 First war years PRESSURE of war almost strangled League football in 1916. The game reached the lowest point...

Plastic Man and Woozy Winks

Plastic Man is probably my favourite comic book character. Jack Cole created him for Quality’s ‘Police Comics’ Issue #1, in August 1941. Plastic Man...

Word Of The Day #2

quisling noun a traitor who collaborates with an enemy force As in…   the quisling Pig Iron Bob exported our iron to Japan synonyms:  collaborator,...

You can’t kill an ideal with a bullet

To my knowledge there has only been one significant assassination attempt on an Australian in ‘high political office’. It occurred in June 1966, when a...

Black Berry Wednesday

Graham Berry was a Premier of Victoria who fought against the “securely entrenched men of property” who made up the Legislative Council in the 1870s. He...

Bodgie, Widgie

I am just a bit too young to remember much about the Bodgies and Widgies of Melbourne. First media references I found in old newspapers...

Goanna Oil

Goanna Oil Goanna oil is credited with properties speedily curative of rheumatism. Lying along either side of the back-bone, for nearly the whole length of...

Long Sleever

A ‘Long Sleever’ is, in brief, an outdated Aussie term for a long draft of beer. The word ‘sleever’ itself originally referred to a Welsh measure...

Fashions Of A Century

FASHIONS OF A CENTURY (1900, December 29). Evening News (Sydney, NSW : 1869 – 1931), p. 4

Robots and Rucks

The Mechanical Footballer Some time ago the English papers announced the invention of a “mechanical bowler.” We pursue the idea still farther. Why not have...

Morphy and The Devil

Paul Morphy, born in New Orleans in 1837, is considered by many competent judges to have been the strongest chess player who ever lived. His...

Word Of The Day #3

hamartia noun a fatal flaw leading to the downfall of a hero or heroine. (Well worn example: Achilles hamartia was his heel: As a baby,...

Bunny Money

Rabbit trapping In The Stoney Rises Trapping is a remunerative occupation, many men being able to make in the season, from March till November, sufficient...

Only Bluffing

I recently went for a walk with a friend to Kangaroo Bluff battery on the Eastern shore, Hobart. It was built in 1880 following fears...

Set Against Him

LONDON, Thursday. — A London divorce court yesterday came up against a new complaint — television cruelty. Robert Scott complained that his wife Jean was...

Archie

With the 2018 Archibald Art Prize winner to be announced in a few days time, here’s excerpts from an article from 1952 about the man...

Comical Cleansing

MOVE TO CENSOR COMICS Two resolutions designed to protect the housewife and mother were passed at the biennial conference of the Australian National Council of Women, which...

Heed Rashid

Despite playing and studying chess intermittently for 40 years, I only recently learned of the dashing, brilliant play of Rashid Gibiatovich Nezhmetdinov. Say that a...

Nerdy Purdy

As a youngster Cecil John Seddon Purdy moved with his family from Egypt to New Zealand, then to Tasmania, Australia, before they settled in Sydney...

Bunter

The Story Of Billy Bunter Billy Bunter, dubbed by his companions at Greyfriars School ‘the Fat Owl of the Remove,’ but introduced by himself as...

Dame Slap

ASSAULT & HOSTAGES IN THE ENCHANTED WOOD Excerpts from ‘The Enchanted Wood’ by Enid Blyton….. Let’s hope Dame Slap doesn’t catch sight of us! Every one looked...

Word Of The Day #4

Kirked Stems from the noun ‘kirk’ which originally meant the Church Of Scotland. Presumably the article above refers to old Scottish superstitions and, in this...

A Whiff of Jolliffe

Eric Jolliffe (1907 – 2001) – Australian cartoonist and Spearfisher. PARLIAMENT would work better if shifted to Bungendore show-ground. This is the conviction of Eric Jolliffe, the nation’s...

Cheeky

Jitterbugs

Human “Jitterbugs” Pose For Cartoons NOBODY ever knows what a jitterbug will do next. Even those masters of miracles, the Hollywood animated cartoonists, who can make pigs...

Real appeal of Emile

Mercier’s single-panel newspaper cartoons of the 1950s and ’60s focused on daily life rather than current events. Journalist and poet Kenneth Slessor once observed that...

Hartt starter with brummy Dummy

Cecil Hartt:  ARTIST AND SOLDIER Back In Australia after having been on military work abroad for more than three years, Cecil L. Hartt, the young...

Artists’ Black and White Ball

Black and White Ball D.H. Souter, who supervised the decorations for the 1923 artists’ ball, described it as a ‘jazz fantasy’. It was at this...

Cyclorama

I was researching the Eureka Stockade in Ballaraat, 1854. (yes, it had 4 “a’s” then) and came across a pictorial phenomena I hadn’t been aware...

Rub a dub grub

WITCHETTY HUNT Every Sunday, 30 people of Merbein, Victoria, go out into the bush along the Murray River and go “native.” After a picnic lunch...

Sinister Molly Dookers

Molly Dooker Being left-handed has come a long way. These days it’s even considered the sign of a creative mind. Yet so many questions about...

Pillock, Parrot & Pussy Pound Pacific

William Willis A cat, a parrot and a grizzled 61-year-old American went to sea on a raft last Tuesday to cross the Pacific Ocean. They set out...

Tale of a tail

Caudal Appendage in Man Naturalists have up to the present time given little attention to the study of tailed men. Such an organ has simply...

Beating around Busch

A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS — Shakespeare The greatest comic artist of the 19th century is the German, Wilhelm Busch. His innocent fun, based upon...

The Raven

I’m not too sure about Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘The Raven’, but I am definitely captivated by Gustav Dore’s steel engraved illustrations in this 1884...

Geared to unsheared beard

Two Hairy Subjects A BEARDED WOMAN In the Anthropological Exhibition recently held by Mr. J. B. Gassner, in Munich, was a bearded lady known as...

Word Of The Day #5

shicer noun AUSTRALIAN/NZ;  informal;  dated a worthless thing or person, especially a swindler MINING:  an unproductive claim or mine. ….With the hot winds whirled...

Thanks Bancks

J. C. BANCKS : CREATOR OF “GINGER MEGGS” IT is doubtful whether comic artists are really indispensable to society. Their passion for inflicting disorganised noses...

Proclamation

Cartoon: From the Italian cartone. The concept originated in the Middle Ages and first described a preparatory drawing for a piece of art, such as a painting...

Bluegum and Rumpus Bumpus

When koala Bunyip Bluegum first leaves home due to his Uncle’s whiskers; he can’t decide whether becoming a ‘Traveller’ or a ‘Swagman’ would suit him...

Bombs Away

I wonder if this spread about the effects of bombs helped people in the UK at all in 1938 when it was published – or...

Drawn On Redon

Odilon Redon [1840 – 1916] My drawings inspire, and are not to be defined. They place us, as does music, in the ambiguous realm of...

Linger on Klinger

Max Klinger [1857-1920] As long as the eyes and the stomach are well served, one is rich (…)  The magic of the picture lies in...

Toast to the Posts

The humble ‘big sticks’ i.e. the tall thin things at each end of a footy ground through which the footy must be propelled to score...

Unshackle Haeckel

While researching chimera (after Max Klinger) I stumbled across…. Ernst Heinrich Haeckel (1834 – 1919) There is much written about Ernst Haeckel in regards to...

Spate of great bookplate

Ex Libris When I moved my abode from house to boat a year ago, one of the most difficult decisions was how do “rationalise” a...

To Marquet to draw a Fat Pig

CLAUDE MARQUET A SKETCH OF A GREAT CARTOONIST’S CAREER Gone from this earth for evermore Claude Marquet, The Worker’s official cartoonist, and undeniably one of...

Vumps Stumped

“Vumps” has been proclaimed as Australia’s “first comic book” – published in Sydney in 1908. Unfortunately it didn’t survive beyond the first issue, despite high...

Down on Sundowners

I was a quite surprised, when scanning our old newspapers, at the repeatedly negative portrayal of our “sundowners” or “swaggies” as I’d call them. Lazy,...

Of corset isn’t

Stays and Springs: THE CORSET IS LOSING ITS HOLD. WHAT PHYSICIANS SAY OF THE ABOLITION OF WAIST SQUEEZERS. Pull, Mary pull. It is not half...

Telling Spelling

During my extended online trawls through old Australian newspapers, it became very noticeable that through the 19th century and up until about WW1, all of...

A Pox on the Boks

Springbok Rugby Protest – 3 July 1971 I went to a lot of protests and marches as a teenager in Melbourne but none was so...

Stratilingus

Happy and Panda

Harry Montague Hammond (7 May 1916 – 1 April 1998), professionally known as Happy Hammond, was an Australian comedian, radio host and children’s television show host, and television producer....

Scrabble babble & oodles of Doodles

Scrabble Is Latest Game Craze New York.  Right here in the middle of the television age, a parlor-game craze is sweeping America. All the wise...

Checking Nefertiti

A little clip re checking out a friend’s yacht while they’re away.

Comstockery Mockery

ITALIAN NUDES BANNED 50 PRINTS SEIZED DECLARING that their subject matter is prurient, the Customs Department has seized 50 prints of a painting by the...

Self Extermination Final

Saints; Go Marching Out

As the Crows fly