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)

lucky me

Today included passing Lake Wendouree in Ballarat and of course I had to say hello to these swan babies gliding around in the winter sun. Swans are monogamous, vegetarian, and very good parents. What's not to love?

(images copyright Annie O'Dyne)

dawn in frosty paddock

(image copyright Ann O'Dyne May 2011. Newborn calves at Navigators, Vic. 3352)

Thank you , thank you dear PM Gillard.

Update 5 days after:
Errol Simper writes in The Australian Business Section:

Four Corners' report on animal cruelty is what journalism is all about ...

'Tony Jones interviewed Meat And Livestock Australia's export manager, Michael Finucan, last Wednesday and must have felt rather as you might after smashing your head against a brick wall for hours. The way Finucan had it, all would be well with a bit more training of Indonesian abattoir people, a bit more community patience and a massive belief in the MLA's honourable intentions.

Jones: "You're talking about sending in trainers to train (Indonesian abattoir) people, yet again. But as we know, Australian trainers from MLA had recently visited two of the worst abattoirs Four Corners filmed at. The worst of them all, the Gudrun abattoir, had six visits by Australian experts like yourself in the previous 14 months. This whole process seems not to have worked at all."

Finucan: "Well, what we've learned is that we need more intense training."

To be fair, Finucan gave viewers no reason to suspect he was anything other than a decent, well-meaning bloke. For all that, you had some empathy with Jones' next interviewee, Bob Katter. Jones: "You've just heard what the industry specialist (Finucan) on the ground is saying. What do you say in response?"

Katter: "Almost every single aspect of that interview filled me with anger, almost every single aspect of it . This person admitted they knew what was going on, that they'd sent people in to have look at this. They've known for years and years about it, and they've done absolutely nothing . . . They've been paid a fortune to carry out things in a toweringly incompetent manner."

Meantime, some will be grateful for small mercies. White, the RSPCA and the Four Corners reporter who somehow did the abattoir story without having a nervous breakdown, Sarah Ferguson (with nudges of help from Xenophon and independent MP Andrew Wilkie), have at least managed to get the grisly trade in live cattle suspended."

Thank you Errol! and Go Sarah! - dry your eyes, take the sleeping pills, and find a gown for accepting your Walkley Award.

Now the sheep exports ... ?

Crashville Skyline

Autumn twilight, 5:30pm Ballarat CBD. The air has changed from crisp to chilly and the birds are making their Close-Of-Business calls. People buying dinner while rushing home from their work. Warm lights through windows of houses on hills while driving ... not 'home', merely 'back'.

Back to paddocks with young steers steaming as they wait in damp grass to become burgers, and to a naughty cattledog who killed a ringtail possum last night, and to two rough types building new steel stock chutes down by the old sheds.

The mood is triste, ennui settles over me. Then I remember I bought chocolate.

Divine retribution

Roof collapses on abbatoir workers Herald Sun
Abattoir worker dies after roof collapses
Sydney Morning Herald - Stephanie Gardiner - ‎28 minutes ago‎
A man has died after a roof collapsed at an abattoir. NSW Hunter Valley emergency services attended the Primo Smallgoods abattoir ...

The voodoo continues to succeed. I do not repent. And I am weary of people mentioning that Adolf the Austrian was a vego. There are no vegetarians in the news pages of paed0philes, rap1sts, or guys who chuck their children from bridges. There are no vegetarians in the bowel cancer wards either.
La vache qui rit, and I, both have something to rit about today and I am riting like mad. A pox on all abbatoirs - they are all foreign owned too, as if you care.

Dairy cows have a rotten life, their calves are born when the frost is heavy on the grass, and ripped away from them so WE can have the milk which results. The male calves have a really bad time at the saleyards before they become the veal for your $12 Parma & Pot. The female calves retained to add to the herd, bawl all night for their mothers, so a clever farmer invented rubber gobstoppers for them. The Weekly Times is a horrific, but very political read if you dare try. Do not buy supermarket chain milk which rips off the farmers, because the less money the milk earns, the less care the herd gets.
I wish I had not gone for the Weekly Times link where this upset me -Cow damage slows CityLink traffic
Fkn foreign owned 'CITYLINK was forced to close the centre lane of the Domain Tunnel after a cow reared in a truck and it's head hit a low-clearance overhead sign.'
I SO HATE ALL TRUCK DRIVERS. MORONS.

Country roads

Yesterday I was on the road from Shelford to Skipton and so was this mob of ewes and lambs.

I love the west (except for the part where the stock dies).

Steer me through the fog

 

These steers are weary as I am of the endless fog - this photo of them and their friends the cattle egrets was taken in the afternoon yesterday. Everyone is very relaxed so I guess the egrets have eaten all the ticks off the steers and are just hanging out.

Gorgeous Photography

Feeding our spiritual health is just as important as eating for physical health,

and visual beauty is everywhere to find.
Even in pigs.
I love pigs.

I don't eat them either.

This dear Babe of a piglet is a

Gloucestershire Old Spot .

The breed is known for having a strong maternal instinct and because of this, the lowlifes who factory-farm pigs, tried to add this strain to the less glorious pigs they torture.

This picture was made by Jo Sax in London for The Times as part of a set illustrating jewellery. Do follow the link for the beautiful mouse peeping out of a sparkly evening purse.

Put some joy in your heart.

If Jez Coulson* thinks it's good, that's all you need to know.

(* he said so in a comment at my previous post: Tiara for CopperWitch's birthday)