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Peter Spriggins's avatar

Thanks Hugh, your 3 part story is a wonderful tribute to Chris Herrmann, a great Australian from a time when Australia was so different to the computer and mobile phone age of today. Great you manage to record such gems like Chris describing emus as being able to 'move like wind through a barb-wire fence'

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Hugh Lunn's avatar

Yes Peter, it's a shame all Chris's old Aussie lingo has gone out with straw hats. Ten-to-one it'll never come back either!

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Sheryl Chambers's avatar

I am so impressed you stayed on this Drovers run. In particular as you didn’t like Bore water to drink and had only what was absolutely necessary. Also the Tea made from this Bore water was so bad you couldn’t drink it and started drinking Milo. The thought of having to take corn flour if you had dysentery from drinking the Bore water would be another reason to limit your intake Then on top of all this there was the Spinifex!!

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Hugh Lunn's avatar

Yes Sheryl, the bore water was the worst thing about the trip. It smelt like sulphur and tasted like ink.

Hugh

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Sheryl Chambers's avatar

That would have been terrible.

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MelitaO's avatar

more homesick!

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Hugh Lunn's avatar

Sounds like you'd better come back!

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MelitaO's avatar

Can't atm. As you say, there is plenty to appreciate in CH, but am still an Aussie to the core. xxx m

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Maureen Millar's avatar

We are inclined to not consider who are going to be the Chekhovs of the future ...let's not wait for that...we won't be here but often we don't recognise what we have as I am sure the people who lived in Chekhov's time didn"t.....as did not the people of Shaespeare's time. Most people don't recognise thst John Lennon write a Christmas carol thst will ensure for hundreds of years...when he wrote The War is over. We should be acknowledging the legends of the future. Perhaps we could have a chat griuo at Taringa anc catch uo wirh Mike Kidson at the samd time

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Hugh Lunn's avatar

I agree that's yet another brilliant John Lennon song -- like "Imagine". Of all the Beatles he was the genius, It turns out.

Hugh

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George Williams's avatar

Gday Hugh

Good yarn about your drovin days.

Like your crisp punchy style. l None of hose wanker adjectives getting in the way.

Just heard Rupert's star phone tapper Rebekah the liar is in town and a big change coming at the Oz tomorrow. Sydney side

what would you reckon ...going tabloid and weekly like gentle James Hall wanted about 50 years back but made the mistake of going home on Friday night and was unemployed by Monday morning and Thomo lumbered in teeth first to take us on a drunken ride

What's it matter. Reckon print on paper is doomed anyhow... ever see anybody under 40 read a newspaper?

ooroo Time to take some pills

Georgew in the swan river colony

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Hugh Lunn's avatar

Thanks George, coming from a top journalist that's extra special.

So more big change at Rupert's Oz papers.

That's why I stopped writing for The Oz and 20 months ago became my own publisher by starting a Substack site -- yes, newspapers are going very rapidly the way of the Dodo ... not helped by their concentrating almost solely on feature stories giving political opinions -- over, and over, and over, again: very predictable.

That's why no one can predict what I'll write about next ... and no politics. I don't want to tell other people what to think, and why should they listen to me?

Yes Geroge I remember Jim Hall, very unfavourably -- and hanging up in my ear.

And Owen's drunken ride.

Hugh

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Maureen Millar's avatar

From Vietnam to the bush...from London to "the bore war" et al .....our very own Chekhov

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Hugh Lunn's avatar

Love your line about my story Maureen: "the bore war".

That's high praise comparing my writing to the famous Chekhov ... but someone working away at home on his own needs a lift.

I'm still planning a poetry story for you.

Hugh

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Maureen Millar's avatar

How do I love thee..let me count the ways...

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Maureen Millar's avatar

I mean chat group and Lennon wrote a chtistmas carol..

bloody predictivr text

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Maureen Millar's avatar

How do I love thee, let me count the ways...

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Maureen Millar's avatar

Sublime Hugh...no bullshit here

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Hugh Lunn's avatar

Well ... we did have 60 bulls with us Maureen.

A reader of my books once wrote a letter to me saying: "I love your no bullshit way of writing".

Wish I could say that about our Australian political commentators.

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Maureen Millar's avatar

Yes it's an insult to bullshit

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Maureen Millar's avatar

Yrs It's an insult to bullshit

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Denise Erbacher's avatar

What a fab life you have led, surely a few autobiographies coming up

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Hugh Lunn's avatar

I hate to tell you Denise that I have already written seven autobiographies which must be some sort of record. I started with my Vietnam: A Reporter's War in 1968 (not published until 1985), but stopped writing books four decades later in 2010 for some very good reasons ... which I will reveal in an upcoming article: "Why I don't write books anymore".

But some others to write first.

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Gay Strong's avatar

“The word has passed around” - great reading -

Gay S.🦅

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Hugh Lunn's avatar

"That the colt from old Regret had got away" -- you sure know your Aussie poems Gay, as I would expect!

Hugh

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