Senator Andrew Bartlett
Sunday, January 09, 2005
 
What do Rugby league, gothic music, mouldy posters and blogging have in common?
Later today I’ll be getting on a plane again for the first time since 13th December – not quite as long a break from flying as I would like, but not too bad. I’m only going to be away one night and I don’t expect to be traveling anywhere else much for a couple of weeks after that, so I guess I shouldn’t complain too much. There’s still a bit of ‘hanging around at home’ time left. Tasks still to be done include throwing out as much garbage as possible from under my house and in my office – I’ve always had a bad tendency to accumulate junk, but this job multiplies that by at least 5 times.

As I’ve mentioned recently, I’ve spent a large proportion of time over the past few weeks on the computer, writing and answering emails, and looking at heaps of different types of blogs (leaving occasional comments along the way) and a variety of the other things on the internet.

Scanning lots of blogs, surfing the web and going through stuff to throw things out are all activities which spark lots of half-forgotten memories and ideas. These also have a curious habit of linking into each other. For example, cleaning under my house and checking out blogs have both led me – through totally separate paths – to recall with fond sadness the fading of Newtown from the Sydney premiership not long after a final failed tilt at premiership glory in 1981.

This synergy occurred via my finding an old poster I’d had on my bedroom wall as a 15 year old which had various pictures cut out of my favourite boyhood team, the mighty Valley diehards. Down in one corner were a few token pictures of Newtown players. No one in Brisbane followed the Sydney competition much in those days (late 1970s), but I’d adopted Newtown as a team because they had similar royal blue team colour.

This recollection blended with looking at some of the links down the side of the homepage of the bloggers at Enmore Station. These folks have kindly mentioned this site once or twice and left a few comments, and clearly have some degree of attunement to the delights of gothic music, going so far as to organise a goth benefit this week in aid of the tsunami victims.

Anyway, as well as clearly having some good taste in music and a well balanced approach to politics, these chaps also provide a link to the Newtown Jets rugby league club. Even though the club was kicked out of the main Sydney competition in 1983, I did have a vague realisation they still existed playing in some lower league. It was nice to see them all fresh on my computer screen again, just a day after seeing a mouldy 25 year old poster of them languishing under the house.

This nearly leads me into a fury-laden howl of outrage at the grotesque injustice of the poker machine enriched Sydney clubs buying up every good Queensland player in the 1970s and 80s, laying waste to our local competition and playing a major role in killing off the Valleys club – a club similar to but more successful than South Sydney which all these Sydney people said had to be saved because it was the pride of the league - but I’ll save that one up for another day.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Sunday, January 09, 2005
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