THERE was a story this week in the metropolitan media about the happy relationship between a wombat called Walter and the Reptile Park keeper who rescued him after his mother was killed by a car.
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The now year-old Walter is a bit of a sook and won’t leave the keeper’s side.
That’s unlike a wombat called Samantha who was hand-reared by Yeoval farmer Virginia Wykes after her mother was also run over by a car.
One night she wandered away from the farm, crossed a heavily timbered mountain range, came across a homestead 18 kilometres away, found an open door and wandered into the kitchen.
Tallisan Fleming, then 12, was doing his homework in the kitchen and couldn’t believe his eyes.
Sam was well and truly tuckered out after her marathon four-day trek but was also pretty hungry so she got into a cupboard and devoured a packet of muesli breakfast cereal, then attacked a bag of nuts.
Tallisan phoned his artist father Dr Eris Fleming, who was in Sydney, to try to convince him a wombat was running around inside the house.
There was nothing he could do so Tallisan phoned the wildlife rescue service and they turned up the next day by which time Sam had retired under the veranda for a well-earned kip but all efforts to coax her out failed.
The only thing her would-be rescuers could do was rip up the floorboards and eventually Sam was collared, loaded into the back of a ute and taken away.
Meanwhile, back at Yeoval Mrs Wykes was fretting over the disappearance of her wombat but when a woman from the wildlife rescue service phoned to ask her what to feed a wombat, she knew she had Sam and wasted no time getting her back.
Mrs Wykes was worried Sam might have damaged Dr Fleming’s house and paintings and wasn’t game enough to phone him to ask until five years later when she owned up.
Tanks driving us mad
IF you reckon every second vehicle in your rear vision mirror is one of those tail-gating bull-barred four-wheel drives or tradies’ utes, you’re right on the money.
There’s now as many of these annoying things in Orange as cars and the way sales are going, they’ve taken over the roads.
Of 43,096 vehicles registered in Orange, 8537 are four-wheel-drives and 6773 tradies-type utes, making a total of 15,310, which is only 47 less than the 15,357 cars registered here in the three months October to December 2015.
The trend is the same at Bathurst where there’s 14,654 four-wheel drives and tradies compared with 15,094 cars.
The tanks have also taken over at Dubbo where there’s 15,464 of them compared with 15,111 cars while it’s the same sad story at Tamworth with 22,664 compared with 21,497 cars.
And Orange motor dealers, doing very nicely, are tipping the balance well and truly in favour of the tanks with new sales last year totalling 655 more than cars.
In the 12 months to December the Orange dealers sold 2954 new vehicles and of these 930 were cars, 906 four-wheel drives and 679 light tradies’ utes.
Dubbo dealers sold 2900 new vehicles (910 cars, 824 four-wheel drives and 633 tradies’ utes) and Bathurst 2530 (869 cars, 683 4WD and 551 tradies’).
Nuclear fly in the ointment
A FEW years ago Orange City Council took an unusual pacifist stand and put up signs on the entrances to Orange declaring us a “nuclear free city”.
That, of course, was despite the fact Orange Base Hospital had a nuclear medicine unit but the then alderman Borrie Gartrell, who proposed the signs, said it was meant to be a symbolic move.
The signs have since gone and we’re probably still a nuclear free city even though the new Orange hospital and other medical centres have specialised nuclear medicine units that involve giving patients a small amount of radioactive medication called a radiopharmaceutical.
This makes people slightly radioactive for a short time so a special nuclear magnetic resonance imaging camera can detect the radiation and take images of how everything is working.
But for the doomsayers, specialists say it doesn’t make patients warmer or glow in the dark because the amount of the radioactive substance given for most imaging tests is usually only millionths of a gram.
However, Central West Greens spokeswoman Tracey Carpenter is determined the Central West should be nuclear free while Bathurst mayor Gary Rush says that will impact extensively on the benefits of managing health issues from nuclear.
Can we assume it’s another symbolic move?
Post traumatic stress
AUSTRALIA Post in the past few months has made marketing decisions that have been away with the fairies.
It now costs a dollar to post a letter and then you have to wait up to seven days for it to be delivered but if you want it to arrive in three or four days, it costs you $1.50.
Bulk mail discount rates have gone and in some cases you have to lick and stick the stamps on the letters yourself.
But now Australia Post has topped all that off.
It wants to charge us to hold undelivered parcels at the rates of $3 for six to 10 business days, $6 for 11 to 15 days and $9 for 16 to 30 days.
OK, if Australia Post wants to play silly games, here’s what you do to turn the tables.
Next time you post a parcel and Australia Post hasn’t delivered it in six days, send them a bill for $3, the same amount it wants to charge you for holding undelivered parcels.
And make that $6 if it hasn’t been delivered in 11 days, which is quite on the cards because an Orange man posted a book to Sydney the other day and it took at least 11 days to get there.
So what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.
Paint tin brush-up
A HAWK-EYED Orange do-it-yourselfer bought paint from Bunnings this week and checking the docket found he’d been charged a 15-cents a litre levy.
It’s apparently for a new scheme just introduced called Paintback that’s been set up for you to get rid of left-overs rather than dump it.
There’s probably thousands of old paint tins in garages and sheds in Orange that people don’t want and this new levy will go towards setting up drop-off sites at councils where you can leave them.
It’s a voluntary industry-led scheme established and administered by paint manufacturers like Dulux and Haymes with support from the state government.
Waste paint is the single largest source of liquid waste in landfill dumps and can seep into soil and water systems, causing all sorts of problems.
So have a look in your shed and clean out any old paint you don’t want because you’ll be doing the environment a favour.
Logies protest
IF the Phonies, ooops Logies, was a horse race, there’d be a steward’s inquiry.