Flaky over food

Trying to be vegetarian when eating-out with friends, one is often drawn to order the fish plate, and very frequently that would be called 'flake' and occasionally some other names like Butterfish.
Trying not to be a hypocrite, this New Year I resolve to stop ordering it under any name.
Shark is over-fished apparently, and author Tim Winton, oddly for a surfer, is campaigning to save them. Did you know that the gummy shark, a.k.a. 'flake' is absolutely harmless, and poses no threat to humans?
The trade constrictions caused by World War 2 prevented Australian manufacturers getting cod-liver oil from Canada, so they began using sharks as their source. 'Give your growing child Shark-Liver Oil' was never shouted at the market though. 'Get some shark and chips' isn't either.
I have always loved the c.1960 fibreglass shark signs mounted over fish shops across Victoria. There is one in GlenHuntly Road, GlenHuntly I saw from a tram one time, and the one in my wonderful photo above is on a beach strip in East Gippsland.  I love that photo. A shark surrounded by 'fairy' lights.

UPDATE: thanks to Donkey Blog for alerting me to the wonderful 1939 Style Moderne Fish Creek Hotel, which has a huge fish sculpture laying across it's parapet. (click hotel link above for excellent images, then visit Donkey for a post on something I know so well it made me laugh to tears)

clean air

I haz been in Flinders on Westernport. This cottage is in the main street. Not far from the truly glamorous handmade chocolates shop.
Very lovely there, even in winter. The coast road past Cape Schanck is like a roller coaster and apparently: 'The cleanest air in the world
Fill a bottle with the air at Cape Schanck, which is bottled by CSIRO scientists after gale-force winds blow pure, uncontaminated air directly from the Antarctic' (Follow this Flinders link for more).

Named after Matthew Flinders who - 'In 1804 while imprisoned by the French in Mauritius, Matthew Flinders completed a map showing his circumnavigation of the continent, which he titled ‘Australia or Terra Australis’.

This original map is stored at the UK Hydrographic Office in Taunton Somerset.
Flinders returned to England in 1810, and his account of his explorations, A Voyage to Terra Australis, was published in 1814. A new map with the order reversed to ‘Terra Australis or Australia’ accompanied this two-volume work.

This was the first map of Australia to be published, and it is this map that is normally reproduced.
Matthew Flinders died on the day before the publication of his monumental work, and thus 2014 is the bicentenary of his death. To mark this anniversary, a campaign has been launched Bringing Home the Birth Certificate of Our Nation.
There is evidence to suggest that this 1804 map was not the first use of the term Australia on a map. But this quibble aside, the 1804 map is of considerable historic significance for Australia, and anyone wishing to support the call for the British Hydrographic Office to relinquish the map can add their name to the online petition.'
That's enough about him, so back to me: I was in a house with a mirrored wall and can report that seeing all of oneself every minute of the day, takes some getting used to ... I preserved this image of a Santa statue ... just for you.