The much-anticipated reopening of the Kyabram (Blue Brick) Hotel isn’t far off.
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Speculation has been running rife with activity at the hotel in recent times and Traps has it straight from the horse’s mouth that the reopening date has been set for Wednesday, March 1.
John Zurcas of Goulburn Valley Hotel family fame in Shepparton will run the business with a Melbourne mate.
Insights from Meldrum
Former Kyabramite Brian Meldrum appeared on Racing.Com television last week to reflect on the passing of race writer colleague Tony Bourke and the evolution of racing in his lengthy time in the industry.
Brian started his career in journalism at the Kyabram Free Press in 1965 and joined the Herald Sun racing team in 1970, being promoted to racing editor, a position he held for eight years up to his retirement in 2003.
Brian was a close friend of Tony Bourke who was a long-serving and highly respected racing editor of The Age newspaper.
Bourke worked for The Age for 42 years before leaving the Melbourne-based newspaper at the end of the 2008 Spring Carnival.
Good deed
Good stories can emerge from bad ones.
The Rochester flood clean up has thrown up all sorts of Good Samaritan stories.
One of the latest is a painter from Drouin, Bernie Wells, who has donated two weeks of his time to paint a flood affected home in Queen St, Rochester.
Play on Plains cancelled
The plug has been pulled on the Play On The Plains music festival at Deniliquin.
Low ticket sales for the event on March 11 forced organisers — the same group that runs the famed Deni Ute Muster — to cancel the event.
And another district event which has been called off is the Elmore Charity Committee’s Elmore Summer Send Off BNS ball.
But this reluctant decision was made for an entirely different reason — underwriters are refusing to offer insurance for stand-alone balls.
They will only insure BNS events that are incorporated within the umbrella of other companies.
Bobi beats Bluey
It’s finally happened — Bobi has beaten Bluey for a world title.
Bobi is a Portuguese pooch who on February 9 reached the grand old age of 30 years and 275 days.
This means he takes the title of the world’s oldest dog from the Rochester-raised-and-owned Bluey.
Bluey lived for 29 years and five months from 1910 to 1939 and held the Guinness World Record until Bobi dethroned him.
Despite the loss of a world title, a mural of Bluey by Echuca artist John Stevens stands proudly on a wall near the Rochester Swimming Pool.
Did you know?
1. You may be jealous of a bird’s ability to fly, but it may soothe your envy to learn they can’t live in space because they need gravity to swallow.
2. Bees can sting other bees — usually if they feel threatened or are protecting their territory. In other words, you’re not the only one who’s scared of getting stung.
3. Whether you’ve seen a tiger in real life or in a photo, you know that they have striped fur. But they actually have striped skin, as well.
4. If you’re a cat lover, then you may be surprised by this interesting fact: Cats can’t taste anything that’s sweet. That’s probably why they can’t get enough of their favourite salty snack.
Rain, rain come again
Kyabram has gone 16 days up to Sunday without a drop of rain.
And with no rain forecast for Monday or Tuesday of this week that dry period should at least last today (Wednesday) when some rain is predicted. The last rain was recorded was on Friday and Saturday January 3 and 4 when 4.4mm was recorded.
There has also been a spike in maximum temperatures with above 30 degrees days recorded from last Wednesday through to yesterday with Friday’s maximum reaching an uncomfortable 41.7 degrees
Man of many talents
Usually promising young cricketers are lost to footy but in the case of Moama’s Todd Murphy it’s the other way round.
When playing for Moama’s Under-14s Murphy needed to kick 10 goals in the last home-and-away round in the 2014 season to bring up his hundred goals for the season.
He replied by kicking 11 goals and then kicked another seven goals in the grand final in which Moama beat Cobram.
In this season he even gave up attending a junior cricket camp to play footy.
The season before as an underaged player in the Under-14s he had kicked seven goals for a winning Moama grand final side.
But his Under-14s footy coach at the time Conrad Farrell stressed he was a team player who also brought plenty of his teammates into the game.
Memorial wins gold
A Violet Town project has been honoured in the 2022 Australian Street Art awards.
The Southern Cross Aurora Memorial has received a gold medal for the best monument or memorial.
The memorial commemorates the Southern Aurora passenger train, which crashed just outside Violet Town on February 7, 1969, killing nine people and injuring a further 117.
Benalla cab drivers unite
They’re now a united group, the taxi drivers of Benalla.
All local taxi drivers have joined forces with Australia’s premier taxi company 13cabs to form a co-operative and offer a prompt and easy to book service.
Catch carp, raise funds
If you like you fishing here’s a chance with a good cause.
Tungamah Leo Club is holding its annual carp muster fundraiser this Sunday at the Tungamah Weir Pool between 11am and 3pm.
Entry is $10 for adults and $5 for students.
Money raised will be used in improvements to the Boosey Creek frontage.
KY FAMOUS PEOPLE FILE
Allan Salisbury (born 1949), known professionally as Sols, is an Australian cartoonist, best known for his newspaper comic Snake Tales.
Salisbury’s other creations include Lennie the Loser and Fingers and Foes, the latter helping to establish Salisbury in the United States.
Allan John Salisbury was born in 1949 in Kyabram, Victoria. After completing his secondary school education Salisbury took a job at the Cyclone Company in Melbourne, where he eventually became the company’s advertising officer.
It was there that he began working on a comic strip, The Ludicrous Life of Lenny the Loser. He then went to see William Ellis Green (“Weg”) at The Herald, who suggested that he get an agent to represent him, recommending Sol Shifrin.
Shifrin agreed to represent him, but suggested he develop a strip with dialogue.
As a result, Salisbury created Fingers and Toes (sub-titled The Little League of Disorganised Crime), an American gangster strip set in the 1930s. It became the first Australian comic strip to be purchased by a US syndicate, Publishers-Hall, without being published in Australia.
The strip debuted in March 1974, appearing in the Chicago Sun-Times, Dallas News, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Miami Herald, Vancouver Sun and Winnipeg Tribune. Fingers and Toes, however, encountered a number of problems with its US publishers, including its portrayal of a drunken judge, occasional muggings and US anti-violence campaigns (which resulted in the gangsters guns being painted out). The strip was dropped by mutual agreement towards the end of 1974.
Salisbury then created a new set of characters with an Australian background. His strip, Old Timer, made its first appearance in The Daily Telegraph in October 1974. In July 1975 The Sun News-Pictorial included it as a trial replacement for Les Dixon’s Bluey and Curley, following Dixon's retirement.
Over time Salisbury introduced a range of new characters including Snake, in 1976, who gradually took over the comic to the point where in 1978 the name of the strip was changed to Snake Tales.
The comic has been cited as the “first new Australian comic since the 1930s” and also as “the start of a different era in Australian cartooning”.
His work was the basis for the Art and Sols exhibition at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in late 2006, which in turn formed the basis for the education guide of the same name.
His strips are held by the Michigan State University Libraries in their collections.
In 2000, the American basketball team Rio Grande Valley Vipers adopted his character “Snake” as their official mascot, the first time an Australian cartoon character has been so adopted.
He resides in Launceston, Tasmania in Australia.
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