Don’t bother sending abuse, because I’m not a monarchist, nor am I a name dropper, but…

I met the former Prince Charles at a Royal Premier of master & commander in London, 2003.
Dani was 6 months pregnant with our first. We did the obligatory conga line of cast introductions, then we sat with him for the film.
The man who would be King was kind. He was also funny. Deeply intelligent and good company, and gallant in his deference to Dani’s pregnancy.
I’ll never forget the warmth in our last hand shake.
Good bloke.
I don’t think any of us can really

A very special experience as a family yesterday. Got to walk through the Vatican Museum by ourselves. Amazing. My mum had walked these corridors with my father 20+ years ago with the thousands of tourist that flock here daily and make it the third most popular museum globally… This time, with arrangements in place, we pushed her in a wheelchair down those same corridors. No tourist crowd, just us. My dad passed in 2021, but of course every fascinating corridor has its memories for her, directly associated to him.

Christopher Plummer ...
I worked with him twice.
The Insider (1999)
A Beautiful Mind (2001)
Good man. Fine actor.
We were sitting on the set of ABM one day and for some reason we started talking about the movie Network.
Particularly the performances of Peter Finch and Ned Beatty He told me that in the London theatre world of the 60’s that Finch had a fearsome reputation.
He’d come to the west end from Australia and had brought with him a certain inability to suffer fools combined with a deep unquenchable thirst the moment the curtain came down.

In the late 60’s my dad met a Chinese Australian fella called George Gow. They worked together. George is the man who introduced me to South Sydney.
By the age of 5, I was a dyed in the wool Rabbitohs fan, and remain so to this day ... Apart from South Sydney, George loved the outback, the folklore of the American West, wrangler jeans and belt buckles.
Over his life he traveled to every US state and bought the state shaped fridge magnet to prove it.

George was old school, used few words ...

In Australia we call wild horses Brumbies. Americans call them Mustangs. This Thursday in the land and environment court in NSW a decision will be made on the fate of some 4000 beautiful wild horses. If the decision goes against these animals..Track,trap and destroy is the plan. In 2018 there was a piece of legislation called the Kosciuszko Wild Horse Heritage Bill that was supposed to act as protection for the Brumbies. It doesn’t appear to be doing it’s job.

Now while I understand that the horse is an introduced species to the native landscape ...

A tale in a few tweets.
Goes better with tea.

In early 2003 my mum started agitating for a cat. We have a place in the bush, we get visited by all manner of native birds.
I was against the idea.
Domestic cats being the notorious enemy of bird life.

Read on... Later that year I started training for the film Cinderella Man.
One of the benefits was being able to do the physical work at home.
Everything was set up in the bush , training personnel and equipment, including a full size boxing ring under a marquee...