Category: Personal

James Fairfax, former Chairman of John Fairfax Ltd, died on 11 January 2017 at the age of 83. He generously gifted the Retford Park homestead, in Bowral, NSW, to the National Trust.

For her 95^th birthday celebration on 11 December 2018, Libby and Oscar drove Wilma Furlonger from Wollongong to Retford Park for a guided tour through the house and gardens, plus champagne and afternoon tea. Gil and Mic came with their three kids – Wilma’s great grandchildren; Charles came down from Sydney; and Alpha and I travelled for the occasion from Canberra.

We had a lovely afternoon, with the organisers giving us extensive access to what felt to me like a recently occupied home – not just a house. Assuming that other visitors feel the same way, this means that the conversion of the homestead to a ‘house museum’ is being very effectively managed.

However the whole exercise seemed to me to be bathed in irony. The gauche residential development stands cheek-by-jowl with the gardens and stables of the old house; on the guided tour inside I had a strong sense of the elite company the rooms have kept, and a vague feeling of unease about not actually knowing  who all these original visitors were and what they represented.

But for me the strongest sense of irony came from the total absence of reference to changes in Australia’s media landscape that are centred around the likely loss from it of the Fairfax name and brand.

The word ‘Fairfax’ hung in the air, but despite (or perhaps because of) the ongoing corporate developments, there was no mention of them. Indeed the topic of journalism scarcely came up at all, strengthening the sense that by coming in to Retford Park one had crossed back into a world that no longer exists. It was a world without social media; with slow communications and information exchanges normally characterised by parochialism and by local language and personnel, not global entities.

This previous world was one in which companies such as Fairfax prospered because of the classified ads ‘rivers of gold’, now dried up by their diversion upstream to online copy.

"Illustrating the maxim that sometimes your greatest strength can be your greatest weakness, Fairfax failed to protect its classified advertising revenue when the internet arrived and tore apart the print media’s longstanding business model. The elegantly compiled bundle of news, entertainment, service information and advertisements that was the twentieth century newspaper, was unstitched by the internet, which enabled the creation of standalone websites meeting customers’ individual needs. By the mid-2000s, if you wanted to hunt for a house or a car or a job you could do that for free.  Instead of wading through pages of newsprint, you could narrow your search and quickly turn up precise information. The new online classified advertising sites could undercut Fairfax’s rates because they were in that business only and so had none of the other costs associated with gathering and distributing news." (Matthew Ricketson in the Sydney Review of Books, 19 November, 2013.)

One needs to resist a misty-eyed view of the way the world and its media used to be; but the absence of Fairfax is symptomatic of massive changes in the ownership and management of information and news that should concern everyone.

The name Fairfax is inextricably linked with public interest journalism – that is, “journalism that keeps a watching brief on society’s main institutions”. Most people living in Australia with any connection to current affairs and politics, particularly if they live in the Eastern States, have treasured the Fairfax mastheads and brands: the Melbourne Age, the Australian Financial Review and the Sydney Morning Herald. How odd, then, to spend the afternoon with James Fairfax and to have no mention of that brand or of its recent absorption into Nine Entertainment.

How is this possible? How did James, whose home this is, fit into the business? What would he have thought of the $3 to 4 billion takeover by Nine Entertainment? Should I ask someone on-site here what the Retford Park view is of the approval of the takeover just this month [December 2018] by the Federal Court?

No, don’t ask. Our visit concerns a philanthropist and his art works, not the altered political and media landscape out beyond the topiary hedge.

Ironic or not, James Fairfax’s wish that the Retford Park homestead “should be preserved for the enjoyment and benefit of future generations, particularly those of the local district” is now being put into operation, thanks to the local branch of the National Trust Australia (NSW). [www.nationaltrust.org.au/places/retford-park/]

The house at Retford Park was built by Samuel and Jane Hordern in 1887 on land promised to Edward Riley Senior by Governor Macquarie in 1821. (The motto of the Anthony Hordern and Sons  department store: “While I live, I’ll grow”.)

James Fairfax bought the property in 1964 “and began to turn it from an agricultural property to a gentleman’s residence”.

Driving up the gravel road to the house from the bitumen, the view is dominated by the residential property development springing up aggressively on part of the 120-hectare Park estate. The new houses seem to breast-beat about their size and presence, rather than peep modestly at visitors over the hedge as one wishes they might. (This disappointment is allayed when one hears that some of the costs of preserving the main homestead in perpetuity for the community are to come from this residential development.)

Our family party was about one third of the total group gathered for the tour last Saturday. The volunteers and National Trust managers gave us a conscientious welcome on a warm day, led by Scott, who was the tour leader and who was kind enough (and well enough briefed) to specifically acknowledge Wilma and her 95^th birthday in his spiel.

With the group inside and in-tow Scott introduced us to each of the rooms, both downstairs and up, and focused largely on the life-size reproductions on the walls of selected pieces from James Fairfax’s art collection. As part of what was described as “a unique opportunity to experience museum-quality prints in the 19th-century mansion”, the artworks were hung in the particular places in which the Master of the House liked to have them, and together with the house’s collection of (original?) furniture and decorative arts.

There were nineteen life-size reproductions of works by artists such as John Olsen, Charles Blackman, Tony Tuckson, Fred Williams, Frederick McCubbin and Russell Drysdale. James Fairfax donated the originals to the National Gallery of Australia under the Cultural Gifts Progam which made them eligible as tax deductions. The works on show included Sunset glow (Frederick McCubbin, 1884), Anteroom (Charles Blackman, 1963), The countrywoman (Russell Drysdale, 1946) and Water pond in a landscape 1 (Fred Williams, 1966). The curatorial staff of the National Gallery of Australia had assisted with the recreation of the works and the in-house exhibition.

James was the eldest son of Sir Warwick Oswald Fairfax, and was on the Fairfax Board from 1957 until 1987. He was Chairman from 1977 to 1987, during which period his half-brother ‘young Warwick’ launched his ill-fated takeover of the company. In 1987 James sold his share of the business to Warwick.

It has been said that after that, at the age of 54, for the first time in his life he was free.

James Fairfax owed his fortune to the publishing company founded by his great-great-grandfather. But for Wilma’s birthday celebration we were in the presence of a man of fine art and public generosity, not politics and journalism.

 

Apart from sundry genes, the most important thing I have given my children has been a full set of Anthony Powell’s A dance to the music of time.

The first in this 12-volume novel was published in 1951, the last in 1975. The stories, the writing style and the humour have fascinated and entertained me ever since I came across the first volume, A question of upbringing, around 1970.

At some random stage in the young life of each of my four children they have been presented with a set of the books and given the understanding that it is my favourite work. There is no other rite of this sort to which they have been subject. This makes Anthony Powell and these 12 books matters of great significance to me and, I hope, to them.

Family gatherings have occasionally been regaled with a reading of the opening scene of the first book, which sets the tone for both subject and style of the whole work.

"The men at work at the corner of the street had made a kind of camp for themselves, where, marked out by tripods hung with red hurricane-lamps, an abyss in the road led down to a network of subterranean drain-pipes. Gathered round the bucket of coke that burned in front of the shelter, several figures were swinging arms against bodies and rubbing hands together with large, pantomimic gestures: like comedians giving formal expression to the concept of extreme cold."

The works of Anthony Dymoke Powell (1905 – 2000) have remained in print continuously and have been the subject of TV and radio dramatisations. In 2008, The Times named Powell among their list of “The 50 greatest British writers since 1945”.

Some of the key facts of his life serve almost as a synopsis of the subjects of A Dance to the Music of Time. His father was an officer in the Welsh Regiment and his mother “came from a land-owning family in Lincolnshire”.  He went to Eton and Balliol College, Oxford, where he “was awarded a third-class degree at the end of his academic years”. He married Lady Violet Pakenham in 1934. During the second war he served in the Welch Regiment and later the Intelligence Corps. In 1973 he declined an offer of knighthood.

Anthony Powell died near Frome, in Somerset, in March 2000.

One of the characteristics of Powell’s novel is the occurrence of coincidence at what might be regarded as an unlikely rate. People keep meeting in unexpected circumstances with those with whom they have had previous contact; newly-introduced characters turn out to have links with people and events that have gone before.

I have often defended the notion that ‘coincidence’ is more of a reality of life than is connoted by a normal understanding of the word, which goes to its rarity and surprise. Events do seem to recur, albeit with different personnel, and certain people encountered years ago seem incapable of escaping the ebb and flow of one’s own life.

This of course is the dance to which Anthony Powell refers. Often life has a kind of circularity which eventually brings back the partner with whom one traced figures around the floor when the music began.

One of the latest of such coincidences to affect me occurred three weekends ago. Having just read a biography of Paul Keating gave me an appetite for more Australian political biography. Browsing in the splendid Canty’s second-hand bookshop in Fyshwick I selected four titles without too much consideration, one of which is Bob Carr’s My Reading Life –  Adventures in the World of Books. Flicking the pages, what attracted me in the Introduction was Carr’s wish that his choice of reading had been informed by what he calls ‘How to Read’ books:

"I needed someone, in effect, to place a comforting arm on my shoulder and say, now Tolstoy isn't that hard. Persist with the Russian names in the first 50 pages. Remember that there are two key characters, Andrey and Pierre.' A bit of guidance, a few clues. That would have been enough. A reader needs a handful of notions so they don't think they're going to drown, some idea of 'Where is this writer taking me?' And that's enough to start."

It wasn’t until I was browsing the book a little more carefully at home that I came across the second chapter entitled Laughing out loud – the best comic writing. Carr begins the chapter with: “This twelve-volume novel may be the best I have ever read. I’ve reread some volumes and felt confirmed in that view.” Later on:

“Powell’s is the major postwar achievement in the English novel. While his work has been described as a combination of Proust and Wodehouse, Powell is consistently funny in a way Proust is not, and his story has none of the roadblocks that sit like indigestible lumps in the middle of Proust’s volumes.”

In order to compile the necessary collections for family members I have frequently made a beeline for “po” on the shelves of the better second-hand bookshops. If they have authors shelved in alphabetical order they almost certainly have also recognised the value and popularity of Anthony Powell’s books.

In the 28 May 1998 issue of the New York Review of Books there is a long essay by the redoubtable Christopher Hitchens (1949-2011)** about Powell and his major work https://bit.ly/2I1tPdw. In typical Hitchens style he provides a strongly intellectual analysis of the politics of the work and its relationship to real political developments of the period. (Incidentally, Hitchens makes half a dozen references to the use of coincidence in Pwell’s work.)

Hitchens is clearly impressed and intrigued with the novels and, like Bob Carr, laments the weakness of the TV production of the work. And rather in the same way as Carr, Hitchens is ultimately unsatisfied, particularly with the closing volume:

"To invert, in fact, what has been so often and unfairly said against Powell, the verdict here [about the last volume] must be that events are random and unstrung rather than intricately coincidental. The series does not end or conclude, still less achieve a resolution. It just stops."

I have been unable to feel dissatisfaction of this  type. I kept collecting – perhaps against the possibility of there being yet more members of my immediate family still to come.

Despite the care with which I collected it has been difficult to make collections of all twelve volumes in a single publishing edition. When I began collecting, the titles were in Penguin with that familiar orange livery and some with cover drawings by Osbert Lancaster.

The books were in fact first published by Heinemann in 1960 and then by Penguin in 1964. Once Penguins had become rarer the commonest version was the black-covered series produced by Fontana from 1967. Later editions in Fontana had cover caricatures by Mars.

There followed Flamingo editions (still Fontana) from 1983  – my favourites –  with cover drawings by Mark Boxer and, from 1991, Mandarin paperbacks with artwork by the same person.

There is a biography of Anthony Powell by Hilary Spurling. I am yet to find a copy.

** re Christopher Hitchens, from Wikipedia: "Having long described himself as a socialist, Marxist and an anti-totalitarian, he broke from the political left after what he called the "tepid reaction" of the Western left to the Satanic Verses controversy, followed by the left's embrace of Bill Clinton and the antiwar movement's opposition to NATO intervention in Bosnia and Herzegovina in the 1990s. His support of the Iraq War separated him further. - - he regarded concepts of a god or supreme being as a totalitarian belief that impedes individual freedom. He argued that free expression and scientific discovery would eventually replace religion as an ethical code of conduct for human civilization. The dictum "What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence" has become known as Hitchens's razor."

 

The Alliance saw more movement – for the word had passed around

That the colt from in our midst had paddled off

To join the Health Department – with his pay a thousand pound –

Enough to satisfy most any Toff

 

He got up every morning in the cruel winter frost

All rigged out in his gold and in his green

And only he knew secretly the trouble and the cost:

His sorest point remained below unseen

 

He paddled hard with Russians and he met them stroke for stroke

In countries to the east and to the west

And Canada was where he went with hardened motley blokes

To put their training to the final test

 

The tried and noted paddlers from their clubs both near and far

Had gathered at the jetty overnight,

For the boatmen love the challenge where the coldest waters are

The competition starts with great delight.

 

Our muscled Dane was off the grog for many endless days

And ate up porridge oats and lots of gruel

To see him pine for beer and wine was tough enough I’d say

But think of his sore backside: seems so cruel

 

His paddle-ing was paralleled by toils with us at work

On mental health and PHNs and such

He’d come at nine and work til five and never ever shirk

His humour pleased us all so very much.

 

With Helen first he toiled away and was by duty bound

They jointly shaped up policies and stuff

When Helen left he seemed bereft and obviously found

The work on Fact Sheets was a little tough.

 

With Anne-Marie he formed a bond – his wit and wisdom grew

Their vigour never ever seemed to flag

But once again his partner went, and when we made a brew

We fell back from tea-leaves to use tea-bag

 

Then Andrew with his tested figures came to lend a hand,

No stats man ever made of him an ass;

For never puzzle threw him while his formulae did stand

He came with numbers strong from Sassafras

 

Fiona then did join him and she leapt into the fray

She valued him as much as any chum

She’ll miss him in the pod they share when he has gone away –

We hope he finds a new de facto mum

 

He’s hard and tough and wiry – just the sort that won’t say die –

Recall the many funnies that he’s said;

He bears the badge of fitness in his enigmatic eye,

His witty words can often knock one dead.

 

And down by Burley Griffin, where the pine-clad ridges raise

Their torn and rugged battlements on high,

Where the air is clear as crystal, and the white stars fairly blaze

At midnight in the cold and frosty sky,

 

Just near the Murrumbidgee where the reed beds sweep and sway

In breezes and the stunted trees are clipped,

The man who paddles his canoe’s a household word today,

This doggerel tells the story of his trip

 

As he strokes into the sunset with his yet untested crew

We’ll toast him once and toast him once again.

His sore bit’s healed – that’s such relief – his bottom is like new –

We’re one seat down: farewell our paddling Dane.

 

On whether to take two points or to go for a try when awarded a penalty within 20m of the opposition’s line.

Practical application

At GIO Stadium in Canberra last night the Raiders twice opted to take two points when given a penalty inside the Knights’ defensive 20m. We ended up losing by two points. Is it possible to say whether, in probability terms, it would have been better for us to have gone for tries when given these two penalties?

Problem

When it comes to a decision about whether “to take two points” (the false assumption being that the kicker will not miss) or to go for a try, there are five variables:

the clock (eg whether it's useful to run the clock down, thus depriving the opposition of the ball etc);

the scoreboard (the current state of play);

the probability of succeeding in 'taking two';

the probability of scoring a try; and

the probability of converting the try if scored.

For the purpose of this exercise let us ignore the clock. Where the scoreboard is concerned, let’s consider the best option across the whole season rather than at any particular point in any particular game.

Let us assume that:

on average, there are two penalties received per game within 20m of the opposition's try line; there are 26 rounds, that means 52 penalties in a season (N=52);

the success rate for the side's kicker (Goal Kicking Conversion Rate - GKCR) is 80% from anywhere inside the 20m line, whether from a penalty or a try conversion attempt; GKCR = 80%; (Jarrod Croker's current all-time conversion rate is 81.46%); and

x% = the success rate for scoring a try when that option is taken.

With a GKCR of 80%, the decision to ‘take two’ on every one of the 52 occasions would result in 84 points over the season.

To be calculated

We are looking for the smallest value of x that would result in >84 points in the season if the try option was exercised every time (52/52).

Method

Let x be the success rate for scoring a try when that option is taken.

Let pTRY = the percentage of times a team goes for the try option when given a penalty in the opposition’s 20 metre line – a percentage between 0 and 100.

x = (pTRY(52) x 0.8 x 6 points) + (pTRY(52) x 0.2 x 4 points)

Let us set pTRY at 30%:

x = ((0.30 x 52) x 0.8 x 6 points) + (0.30 x 52) x 0.2 x 4 points

x = (15.6 x 4.8) + (15.6 x 0.8)

x = 74.8 + 12.5

x = 87.3

87.3>84

QED

Conclusion

Across a full season, if the probability of scoring a try from a tap penalty from within the opposition’s 20 metre line is 30% or higher, this would be the preferred option (ie better than opting for attempting two points from a penalty shot at goal).

This does not account for the potential ‘value’ of absorbing time with a slow penalty; and it assumes an 80% Goal Kicking Conversion Rate across the board.

The 30% figure is a global guide. It does not account for the position on the scoreboard at the time, or the assessed strength/weakness of the opposition, or whether someone might be in the sin-bin, or the preference of the crowd watching on.

For a couple of reasons the 30% figure is a little conservative, or higher than it need be to make the try attempt preferable. For one thing, it results in 3.3 more points than estimated for the penalty kick option. For another, the proof here does not allow for the fact that, even if a try is not scored from the six tackles after the tap re-start, the attacking side may be in a strong field position for its next set of tackles; or the opposition may drop the ball in playing their set. Whereas, if the penalty kick has succeeded, the opposition returns to the half-way line and kicks deep into ‘our’ territory.

Simpler proof

80% of 2 points = 40% of 4 = 26.7% of 6 = 1.6 points

 

 

 

How does one give up cricket? How does one declare when the time comes?

For my close friend and colleague, the end came in a welter of bad feeling and recrimination. Always someone who wanted to give back to the game, he volunteered at the end of last season to umpire a fifth grade final. Having failed to uphold two or three appeals for caught behind on the grounds that he heard and saw no edge, he was verbally set upon after the game by a small group of angry grown men. For a while it threatened to become even worse than verbal.

For him this was the last straw. During the season and for some time previously he had rather begrudged the time spent on the game. And each time he padded up, normally to take first strike, he asked himself why he was putting himself through such unnecessary stress. So he told our supremo, Col, that he was no longer available.

I don’t have the courage to do that. I am not good at closing chapters. Once begun, I have to finish reading a book even if I’m not enjoying it.

But fortunately what happened two weeks ago put me in mind of a plan. It was a hot Saturday and I would have found it difficult to be in the field for 45 overs. As luck would have it, our third grade side finished early (we are fifth grade) and five of them turned up at our home ground and were keen to sub in the field. So I was able to be a part of the team, play in the game, but only field for 15 or so overs in the heat.

I communicated the grand plan to Col in the Golf Club afterwards. Col would make me twelfth man in fifth grade each week and I could score or perhaps umpire. And if it wasn’t too hot I could offer some respite to my colleagues when we were in the field.

A good plan. Sensible.

But when I arrived at the ground Zac, our captain, said we had nine – or 10 with me. It was forecast to be 38°.

The tree which is our home ground pavilion casts a shadow on a small arc of the outfield for the first few hours of the game. Gradually, as time passes, the area in shadow leaves the outfield, rather reluctantly crosses the boundary and turns its back on the game.

An important part of my contentment at being part of the team is that I feel cared for. Without any verbal confirmation of the idea, my position in the field was clear to everyone – even to the opposition, who made sure that I kept hydrated. Staying in the shaded area meant that when there were two right-handers batting I was at third man (right on the edge, naturally) and long-on (right on the edge). Occasionally I would venture towards the wicket when the apparent ability of the batsman made it seem potentially useful for me to be closer to the action.

At third man and, especially, at long-on – I think because of the different angle of the trees in the background – my fielding was certainly not useful. What everyone can see is that I am slow to move, and cannot bend, run or throw. What they cannot know is that I cannot see. The only way in which I can detect that the ball is coming to me at long-on is by the body language of the batsman and the fielders: if everyone turns to me in apparent expectation, the ball is likely to be on its way .

Fortunately this didn’t happen very much, the most notable exception being when I happened to be close up at mid-on and their captain spooned it gently in my direction. It was perhaps some sort of peace offering, and while I was trying to decide what to do about it, Zac – the other Zac, not our captain – charged across from midwicket and dropped it, as I would have done, only with much greater effort. It didn’t matter much; the batsman was out soon after.

No game in fifth grade is completely satisfactory without some niggle. The background to the day’s niggle was evident to me through what I was able to overhear from my vantage point in the shade and close to the tree where the opposition, like us, were camped. Because we are a Queanbeyan team their attitude towards us is influenced by prejudices relating to occupation, income, class and language. Among the jibes was one to the effect that “We are in Queanbeyan – but not of Queanbeyan”.

Mind you, in the jibes and sledging stakes, we are top of the table. Our Rick, a talented, vociferous 17-year-old, took the lead in complaining about the sportsmanship of their opener who, the way we saw it, failed to walk when he nicked one to the extremely tidy Jason behind the stumps. After that it was on for young and old, particularly between the two of them. Rick had the major victory by bowling him soon after and I heard his adversary and his colleagues under the tree planning how they were to get back at Rick when he batted. I wondered whether they were wise to plot such things given the natural talent I have seen Rick demonstrate with the bat. Had he batted they might have be in for a nasty shock.

Anyway the stage is set: They-don’t-much-like-us, and We-don’t-like-them.

Their innings prospered, particularly in one over from Zac (fielder not captain) to ‘Binger’. I was up at short mid-on and he pulled the ball along the ground to my right. I was within an inch of ‘diving’ for it (ie falling down and reaching for it) – but an inch is enough in my condition and it sped to the boundary with me having failed to lose my feet. I felt more than the usual remorse for not having stopped it when Binger, with his momentum up, pulled four of the next five through mid-wicket for more fours. Twenty off the over. That seemed like a significant setback to our chances.

The next setback was when the sprinklers came on at the far end of the field. It was towards the end of our time in the field. They had 10 men and their ninth wicket fell in the 43rd over. A clump of four or five sprinklers at the far end of the outfield were on, with one of them trespassing on the actual wicket. There followed a full hour during which people of both sides made calls on their mobiles to various Council numbers, wandered around the whole area searching for a hole in the ground and stop-cock, and disserted unfavourably on the situation relating to paying rates and on the frailties of local government. (I was relieved that Nick and Alex weren’t with us, so that none of the unkind reflections could get back to the Mayor directly.)

Meanwhile my captain, Zac, had been calling for a volunteer to open with him. I didn’t need to keep my head down since it would be obvious to everyone that I would bat last. But everyone else was exercising modesty about their credentials as an opener, had gone to Macca’s, or were hunting the stop-cock.

“Hey Gordy. Will you open please. We might as well get it over and done with so you can go home perhaps. It’s hot.”

In fact, just for the while the sky became speckled with cloud and there was little direct sunlight. I lay down on the grass, padded up, and drank a lot of water.

By the time two men with fluoro-vested tummies had arrived to join and give a semblance of professionalism to the stop-cock hunt, the watering cycle had passed through the phase in which the middle group of four sprinklers were doing their thing and it was clear that very soon it would be the four or five immediately adjacent to our teams’ camping ground. The pace of excitement grew, with full (and so weighty) eskies being placed tactically on the sprinklers nearby to stem the aerial tide.

I’m not sure whether a useful tap was discovered or whether the pre-determined watering cycle came to its natural end, but very soon discussion turned from questions of a re-match and the grounds to which we might move, to how long it would take for the affected areas to dry out.

The opposition – recall that although we have been joined in friendly banter about the Queanbeyan Council, “We-don’t-like-each-other” – must have felt confident when play resumed, having posted 204 when all out.

Zac and I put on 39 in the first ten overs, with my contribution including a decent square cut. Following its execution I stood stock still in a mixture of amazed marvel, strong hope that it would reach the boundary, and a lack of enthusiasm for running. Zac came to join me at my end and began the fruitless challenge of persuading me to run at least a single. It made the boundary by a few yards. Our friend the opposition opener was at first slip, chirruping away with banter-cum-sledging.

During the ninth and ten overs I was feeling a form of heat different from his sledging; the direct sunshine was back. It must have been nearly 5.30. I determined to arrange my leave from the crease. Jasper fetched me out a drink from under the tree and next ball, the first of the 11th over, struck me low on the pad and in line. I turned, not needing to check for Rick’s raised finger, and left, passing the chatty slip fielder on the way back to the much-needed shade.

He may have felt that he was in the ascendancy but I had a feeling he would be less chatty in an hour or so.

Captain Zac made 46. Jack and the other Zac then put on 96. Jack batted extremely well: calm, watchful as necessary and punishing to the bad ball. Towards game’s end we needed 16 off five overs, 11 off four. Jack finished the match with a sweetly-timed pull for six over mid wicket, taking him to 96*.

During this period I did the lap of the ground – something I’ve done so rarely in my time with the Queanbeyan Razorbacks – and went to the Golf Club feeling chuffed. Col wasn’t there so I couldn’t congratulate him on the success of our plan for me slowly to retire.

For many years I was a slow and inaccurate typist. Now, at relatively good speed, I am going to compose a piece to recommend that – if you don’t already do so –  you try using speech recognition software for your own writing.

Initially my failure as a typist was hidden by the capabilities and commitment of two colleagues to whom I would regularly dictate. Leanne and Lexia served me and our shared endeavours with extraordinary patience, speed and confidence. And our work together also served to build lasting friendships between us.

But one day, perhaps 12 or 14 years ago, our colleague Michael suggested that I try Dragon NaturallySpeaking, a new-fangled computer system to convert spoken words into written text.  As I recall it, the cost to the NRHA was something in the order of $200 for the software and the headset. The rest, as they say, is history – including the rest it meant for Leanne and Lexia.

As you probably know, the system ‘learns’ to ‘recognise’ a particular voice and a particular vocabulary. What this means is that one should not allow other people to dictate to the program, for fear of confusing the poor beast.

Those last words attest to the fact that, very soon, there was a significant amount of anthropomorphism attached to the Dragon and its use. For some reason we adopted a Tiger rather than a Dragon – perhaps there’s something more friendly about the former? – less breathing of fire and brimstone?

Anyway, ‘Tiger’ soon became a critical member of the NRHA staff, one who could be blamed for written errors, – while the credit for any good pieces written could remain with me.

I have become heavily reliant on my Tiger, particularly after the onset of Parkinsonian  tremor. However, and despite very heavy usage, I am sure that I am not what used to be called ‘a power user’. What I mean by this is that, like the motor car I drive, the system over which I have control has functionality that I use sparingly or not at all. For instance:

“The software has three primary areas of functionality: voice recognition in dictation with speech transcribed as written text, recognition of spoken commands, and text-to-speech: speaking text content of a document.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragon_NaturallySpeaking

My usage is restricted almost entirely to the transcription of speech. I use a few spoken commands (for punctuation,  new paras) and text-to-speech not at all.

While on the Dragon website, let me give credit where it is due:

 "Dr James Baker laid out the description of a speech understanding system called DRAGON in 1975. In 1982 he and Dr. Janet M Baker founded Dragon Systems - "

"DragonDictate - - utilized hidden Markov models, a probabilistic method for temporal pattern recognition. At the time, the hardware was not powerful enough to address the problem of word segmentation and DragonDictate was unable to determine the boundaries of words during continuous speech input. Users were forced to enunciate one word at a time, each clearly separated by a small pause."

Well things have improved immeasurably since then! My Tiger certainly has its moods and sometimes it helps if I give it some TLC, perhaps by checking the audio reception. But rarely do I think to improve its service by the other means available, such as tailoring special words for its learned vocabulary.

Tiger is willing but, despite becoming familiar with my voice, vocabulary and subject matter, still relatively naive. Tiger’s work is undertaken by the recognition of sound, by deducing or estimating what is phonetically apparent. (That is certain to be an entirely unsatisfactory description of the scientific means to which Tiger is slave!) The problem is that English is not wholly a phonetic language and the propensity to occasionally get something amusingly wrong is what provides some of Tiger’s charm.

No matter how helpful, Tiger does not have the human capacity to select a word according to the context or nuance of the sentence. He’s just a machine. Vive la différence.

So let me leave you here with just a taster of my Tiger’s sense of humour. It’s actually this that I set out with this piece to inform you about; but enough, for now, is enough. There can be more of that later.

Exhibit 1: “R. would be happy to be apart of this great event.” One cannot criticise Tiger for choosing ‘apart’ rather than ‘a part’. But by so doing, the sense conveyed is the opposite of what was intended. It’s a reminder of the need to check what’s been drafted onto the page – a habit which is essential for good clear writing whether with a Tiger or not.

2: “One of the key recommendations endorsed by the dissidents in the 9th National Rural Health Conference related directly to this matter.” What I said was ‘the participants’, not ‘dissidents’. The amusement is enhanced by the fact that it is always hard to get everyone at a large conference to agree to a particular recommendation, so there may well be a number of dissidents.

3: “For those unaware, it was the Toowoomba Hospital Foundation which hospiced the very first National Rural Health Conference in Toowoomba in 1992.” ‘Auspiced’ was intended but ‘hospiced’ is nice in this context.

4: “The NRHA’s but it’s tried cheese and election policies.” This is lovely! The trick is for you to say the words over and over until an alternative truth is heard.

5: “Andrew Waters, Manager of policy and kinetic oceans.” (Communications.)

6: “In many areas, pregnant women and their family have two wheeler Kate for an extended period prior to the birds.”

Ladies bicycle made in Melbourne by Arthur James Sutherland for his wife Marion Sutherland about 1910. National Museum of Australia. Photo: Katie Shanahan.

Post script: it occurs to me that in this matter I may owe a debt of gratitude to the incomparable Afferbeck Lauder (Alastair Ardoch Morrison, 1911-1998), whose Let Stalk Strine was published in 1965, way before I had any mind to go to Australia. Presumably it’s still available but I cannot answer the question Emma Chisit.)