Monthly Archive for March, 2008

Search for Missing Bushwalker in the Yarra Ranges Called Off

Published on March 30, 2008 in Australia in the News and Victoria. 1 Comment Tags: , , .

The search for the 57 year old Canadian man Warren Meyer who went missing a week ago while bushwalking in the Yarra Ranges east of Melbourne has been called off:

Police have scaled down a search for a Canadian bushwalker missing since Sunday in the Yarra Ranges National Park, east of Melbourne.

Warren Meyer, 57, from Beaumaris, was last seen at the Dom Dom Saddle car park in the region last Sunday morning.

A police spokeswoman said the number of searchers had been scaled down as hopes of finding the man alive faded.

Earlier today, 53 Country Fire Authority volunteers, 40 State Emergency Service members and 15 search and rescue police searched over new ground in a last ditch attempt to locate the bushwalker. [The Age]

This weekend I went and hiked the same trail that Mr. Meyer disappeared on. I go hiking just about every weekend anyway and since I have never hiked this particular trail before I figure I would go and check it out. I began the hike over at Fernshaw which is opposite from where Mr. Meyer began his hike at Dom Dom Saddle.

In yellow below, I highlighted Morley’s Track that Mr. Meyer disappeared on:

I began at Fernshaw because I figured that the Dom Dom Saddle area would be packed with search and rescue personnel. At Fernshaw I was literally the only person there. The trail as can be seen in the map above runs nearly parallel to the road that runs through the mountains connecting Healsville to Marysville.

Here is the sign announcing the start of Morley’s Track and the route to Dom Dom Saddle:

Right from the start it becomes obvious how thickly vegetated this area is:

Most of the mountain ash trees are of medium size along the trail, but occasionally there are a few extremely large trees with some extending over 100 meters in height. The trail was overgrown in some areas due to the thick vegetation with plenty of fallen logs as well, but for the most part the trail was of decent quality like you see below:

Throughout the walk the trail remains heavily forested:

To further give readers a further idea of how forested and thick the underbrush along this trail really is, here is a quick video I shot of the terrain with my camera:

If Mr. Meyer did leave the trail it would be easy to get disoriented from where the trail is located. However, if he did leave the trail it would have to be towards the east because if he went off the trail and was disoriented to the west he could easily hear the cars on the highway to reorient himself. So if he was lost he would have to have been to the east. However, if he went east he would have to cross the stream pictured below:

This stream can be heard for quite some distance a way, so if Mr. Meyer was lost to the east it would have to be quite some distance from the stream. This stream runs right to Healsville so anyone lost can easily get back to town by following this stream. So he would have to be far enough from this stream not to hear it which would then put him on the slopes of Mt. Donna Buang.

I would think that since Mr. Meyer is an experienced bushwalker, he would know that there is a lookout tower on top of Mt. Donna Buang. If he was lost he could simply just head to the top of the mountain to find help. This why I don’t think he got lost during his hike.

This leaves the possibility he slipped and was hurt somewhere. It was reported that Mr. Meyer had a cellphone with him. I tested my cellphone out there and it did not get a signal so if he slipped and injured himself his cellphone may have been useless as well. I think this scenario will always remain a possibility, but I would think that with over 100 people looking for him in an area that isn’t that big somebody would have eventually found him. I say this will remain a possibility because the underbrush is so thick in the area that I think it is possible that the search party could have missed him, but probably unlikely.

After discounting the lost or injured scenarios as unlikely, I wasn’t surprised to learn that the police are opening a criminal investigation into his disappearance:

POLICE fear a missing Melbourne bushwalker may have been murdered and are investigating the movements of a man they suspect could be involved.

Detectives called in to probe the disappearance of experienced bushwalker Warren Meyer in the Yarra Ranges revealed yesterday that a man in his late 30s had been in the area at the time and was a “person of interest”.

Mr Meyer, 57, a Canadian national living in Beaumaris, was due to return from a 10-kilometre bushwalk in the Mount Dom Dom area at noon last Sunday but has not been seen since.

A massive search covering more than 100 kilometres of tracks and roads and more than five square kilometres of forest has failed to find any trace of the married father of two.

Mr Meyer, a consultant civil engineer, set out at 7.30am from the Dom Dom Saddle car park with food, water, a phone and GPS.

Police want to speak to a group of about eight people who were camping in the Black Spur, Narbethong or Acheron Way area over the Easter break and who might have given the suspect a lift to Warburton.

The man has been interviewed by police and admitted he had been in the area.

Police spokeswoman Creina O’Grady said the man claimed to have come across the group of campers on the day Mr Meyer disappeared and that they gave him a lift to Warburton. Detectives want to speak to the campers to check his story. [The Age]

On the map below you can see Warburton is on the opposite side of Mt. Donna Buang:

The Black Spur, Narbethong, Acheron Way area is just north of Dom Dom Saddle. So this mystery hiker may have hiked from Warburton over Mt. Donna Buang to Dom Dom Saddle and then walked further north up the Black Spur road before finding some campers to catch a ride with back to Warburton via the Acheron Way road. If anyone knows anybody who was camping in this area over Easter Weekend you might want to tell them to contact Victorian police.

If this mystery hiker did assault Mr. Meyer while their paths crossed on the trail, it would seem to me that Mr. Meyer’s body would at least have been fairly close to the trail for the searchers to find. Once again I can’t stress enough how thick the brush is and maybe the searchers just missed him.

I don’t know what happened to Mr. Meyer, but it is strange and tragic at the same time. When I reached Dom Dom Saddle there were a lot of people, police, and even ABC news there. I didn’t take any pictures because I don’t believe taken photos of people obviously very upset is the proper thing to do. I just took a quick look and left. I just hope authorities will be able to find out what happened to Mr. Meyer so his family can have peace of mind about what happened.

Earth Hour in Melbourne A Failure

Published on March 29, 2008 in Environment. 0 Comments

Last night was the highly publicized Earth Hour which today as expected the Australian media is touting as this great success:

EARTH Hour returned to Australia tonight, with Sydney’s postcard-perfect harbour again temporarily plunged into darkness.

At 8pm (AEDT), the Harbour Bridge and its neighbouring Opera House dimmed from flood-lit tourism icons to still recognisable silhouettes.

Only security lighting remained on the structures, while elsewhere in Sydney’s CBD, the office towers glowed rather than blazed against the night.

As lines of office lights inked out, a crowd of about 100 people at the harbourside park of Mrs Macquarie’s Chair cheered.

“Earth Hour is a call to action. People have now responded and it’s time to introduce some significant long-term changes,” Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore said at an official Earth Hour function at the park.

“One inspired idea that began in Sydney just 12 months ago has become a world movement,” she said. [AAP]

However in Melbourne, Earth Hour was a failure:


Melbourne Before


Melbourne After

The Arts Center and its spire was nearly the only building that turned off its lights. The Age got caught last year Photoshopping their Earth Hour pictures in order to make it appear more people turned off their lights then really did. Since they couldn’t get away with Photoshopping pictures this year The Age despite their attempts to gloss over this failure ultimately had to admit instead had to admit that Earth Hour was anti-climactic:

At the top of the Rialto, a small crowd had a sense of anticlimax when there was no widespread blackout at 8pm. In fact, across the CBD rows of illuminated office windows, with little sign of beavering workers behind them, showed not everyone had read the memo. [The Age]

Funnier yet was that Carlton and St. Kilda were playing their night time footy game in the Telstra Dome last night with full lighting. To further emphasize the failure check out the energy demand of Victoria last night from the National Electricity Market Management Company:

Total Energy Demand for Victoria:

If you look at 20:00 (8PM) when Earth Hour started, the demand for energy actually increased in Victoria. It wasn’t just Victoria either, look at the energy demand for the rest of Australia:

Total Energy Demand for New South Wales:

Total Energy Demand for South Australia:

Total Energy Demand for Queensland:

Total Energy Demand for Tasmania:

Looking at these graphs I have to wonder what was going on in South Australia last night at midnight? Energy demand went through the roof. You can also tell by this graph that not a whole lot is going on at night in Tasmania considering their energy demand dropped to next to nothing.

As for myself all the lights in my house were turned off last night, not because of Earth Hour, but because my wife and I had a dinner party put on by my employer to go to which yes all the lights were on. We turned the lights off at our house simply because that is what we always do when we leave the house. The functions we went to was scheduled for months and the organizers decided to hold the function even though the Earth Hour was going on.

The Earth Hour did provide some good discussion at the event last night though with many people I talked to believing that Earth Hour was ultimately pointless and symbolic at best. Many wondered why doesn’t the government do something to create more non-CO2 polluting electricity so people do not have to feel guilty about having their lights on? Another friend of mine may a great point that the Australia 2020 Summit is going to be as pointless as Earth Hour. Instead of the 2020 Summit the government should have an 2020 Energy Summit to come up with an ultimate solution to what the nation is going to do in regards to generating more non-CO2 polluting electricity by 2020.

However, such a summit would require tough political decisions to made; it is much more simple just to ask people to turn off their lights instead.

New Zealand Man Claims He Was Raped By Wombat

Published on March 28, 2008 in New Zealand. 0 Comments

Australians often claim that their neighbors in New Zealand are a bit slow and this story will only reinforce this commonly held belief:

Arthur Cradock, 48, from the South Island town of Motueka, called police last month to tell them he was being raped by the marsupial at his home and needed urgent assistance.

Cradock, an orchard worker, later called back to reassure the police operator that he was all right.

"I’ll retract the rape complaint from the wombat, because he’s pulled out. Apart from speaking Australian now, I’m pretty all right you know. I didn’t hurt my bum at all."

He pleaded guilty in Nelson District Court to using a phone for a fictitious purpose and was sentenced to 75 hours’ community work.  [Daily Telegraph]

Unsurprisingly police claim alcohol was involved in then incident.  Here is a word of advice to anyone in the future that wants to claim they were raped by an animal, at least claim you were raped by an animal that is native to your country.  Wombats are a marsupial native to Australia and are not found in New Zealand, but then again I guess claiming to be raped by kiwi would be even less believable. 

Australian Farmer Finds Space Junk

Published on March 28, 2008 in Australia in the News. 0 Comments

Space Junk in Australia

A Queensland farmer is wondering who the litter bug is that left this on his property:

A cattle farmer in Australia’s remote northern outback on Friday said he had found a giant ball of twisted metal, which he believes is space junk from a rocket used to launch communications satellites.

Farmer James Stirton found the odd-shaped ball last year on his 40,000 hectare property, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) west of the northern Queensland state capital of Brisbane.

But Stirton only started inquiring into what the ball of metal really was, and where it had come from, in the past week.

“I was riding out to check some cattle, and I came around the corner and there it was in a paddock,” Stirton told Reuters on Friday.

“I know a lot of about sheep and cattle but I don’t know much about satellites. But I would say it is a fuel cell off some stage of a rocket.”

He said the object was hollow, and covered in a carbon-fiber material. He has contacted some U.S.-based aerospace companies to try to find out what the object really is.  [Reuters]

I wonder what the fees for littering are in Queensland?

Search Continues for Missing Man in the Yarra Ranges

Published on March 27, 2008 in Australia in the News. 0 Comments Tags: , .

A fourth day of searching has come and gone for missing 57 year old Canadian hiker Warren Meyer:

MORE than 100 people have joined the search for missing Beaumaris bushwalker Warren Meyer, amid fading hopes he will be found alive.

The 57-year-old Canadian national was last seen at the Dom Dom Saddle car park in the Yarra Ranges National Park about 7.30am on Sunday and failed to return by noon that day.

He was set to face his fourth night in rugged mountain bush as rains dumped 20mm on the area and overnight temperatures dropped to just 5.5 degrees celsius.

The search – which resumed at first light today – now comprises more than 40 State Emergency Service (SES) volunteers, 20 members of the Bushwalkers Search and Rescue Association (BSARA) plus police trail bike riders, search and rescue dog handlers and mounted police. [Herald-Sun]

The area where Meyer has gone missing is in thickly forested bushland just to the East of Melbourne and northeast of Healsville and just southwest of Marysville:

The hike he went on was only 10 kilometers long to the Dom Dom Saddle. The hike was only supposed to take a few hours, but when he didn’t come back on time his wife began to worry and ultimately ended up contacting the police. Since then the police have been searching for Mr. Meyer in the bushland along the trail. It is believed that Mr. Meyer left the trail and some how either became lost or incapacitated in some way. Even though he couldn’t have traveled very far finding him is proving to be difficult because of the terrain.

In this picture the area of mountains that Warren Meyer became missing in is not too far from Maroondah Reservoir picture below:

These trees and bush in the area are extremely thick. The picture below is of a road in the area that surrounded by the giant mountain ash trees that grow all over this area:

Along with the thick brush is the fact the mountains are steep and now poor weather is hampering the search as cold and rain is currently hitting Victoria with snow projected in the high country. Mr. Meyer is an experienced bushwalker and he left well equipped with water, food, a GPS, and a cell phone. This offers some slim hope that he can still be found alive. Let’s pray for the best and hopefully Mr. Meyer can be found.

Australian Schools Debate Whether to Introduce Mandatory Drug Testing

Published on March 26, 2008 in Australia in the News. 11 Comments

Interesting article I read in The Age newspaper yesterday which debated whether Australian schools should implement drug testing or not.  This debate comes on the heels of the recent debate to raise the Australian drinking age from 18-21 years of age.  Here is the rationale why some want the schools to implement drug testing:

AT FIRST glance, the idea of drug-testing our school students may not seem palatable. But when we look more closely at the position we are now in, Australians may need to rethink how we can prevent illicit drug use among our young.

The fact is that rates of illicit drug use in Australia are higher than other countries in the developed world. For example, the US has lower per capita rates of amphetamine and cannabis use than we do. Its binge-drinking rates are also lower than those of Australian teenagers. Indeed, a recent international comparison of under-age alcohol use, conducted by Australian and US researchers and involving 6000 children, found levels of binge drinking are up to three times higher among Australian year 9 students compared with equivalent American teenagers.

Given that the US is making better headway than Australia, in both binge drinking and illicit drug use among its young people, we should be looking more closely at what is working there. One strategy that we have not yet tried as a preventive measure is drug-testing students. Unfortunately, this week’s Australian National Council on Drugs report on drug testing in schools fails to mention the many successful drug-testing programs being carried out across the US. These programs are now carried out in more than 1200 schools with documented high success rates in reducing drug use among students. [The Age]

When I went to school in the US there was no mandatory drug testing in my school.  There was drug testing for people who participated in athletics though, but we were only tested once year and I did not know of one person caught taking drugs from the testing.  I can understand drug testing for athletics to prevent athletes from taking performance enhancing drugs, but I don’t think it is necessary to test the entire school population.  The expense and time for what is statistically a small problem doesn’t appear to me anyway to be worth it.  Also it seems like this is the creeping of the schools into parenting.  Parents should be responsible for whether or not their kids are taking drugs. 

Speaking of parenting, here is a perfect example of how parenting can actually lead to kids taking drugs:

ILLICIT drug use by Australian schoolchildren is more common among those with the most pocket money, according to new research.  (…)

The report found that students with relatively high disposable incomes were most at risk of getting into drugs. Those who had between $21 and $60 a week in pocket money were 60% more likely to have used drugs in the past 12 months than those with less than $20 a week to spend.  [The Age]

This finding confirms what I personally experienced in high school, kids who’s parents gave them large allowances were the ones mostly smoking pot.  In my opinion if teenagers have to work for their money they will be less likely squander it on things such as buying pot.  However, I knew of very few people that even used drugs in high school.  

Here is what I find to be the most troubling findings of the study:

The research, by the Australian National Council on Drugs, found that in any given week, one in five 16 to 17-year-olds drank at harmful levels. By contrast, fewer than 4% of school students were regular users of cannabis, and fewer than 1% used other illicit drugs.

20% of 16-17 year olds in high school binge drink?  Amazing.  This is probably a higher percentage of binge drinking then what I experienced in college in the US.  This is something that raising the drinking age will not change because these teenagers are already under the legal drinking age and binge drink anyway.  It seems to me focusing on the under age drinking problems in school would be a more worthy pursuit then drug testing everyone in the nation’s schools.  Of course I could be wrong, any other thoughts from anyone?

On Walkabout At: The 2008 Bendigo Easter Parade – Part 2

Published on March 26, 2008 in Victoria. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Prior Posting: 2008 Bendigo Easter Parade – Part 1

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With about half of the 2008 Bendigo Easter Parade completed my wife and I continued to sit back and enjoy the remainder of the parade. Sun Loong the highlight of the parade may have passed but there was still plenty more things to see such as the Scouts of Australia:

For those that don’t know, in Australia there is no Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts because they are both combined into one organization called Scouts.   Following the scouts was the Lions Club which just like last year’s parade, this would be the only time the Stars & Stripes would make an appearance during the parade:

Next up was a Bendigo skate board club:

Shortly after the skaters the next marchers were from the Falun Dafa:

As well as the Falun Gong:

The Falun Gong marchers included some incredibly beautifully dressed women in Chinese attire:

They also had a group fan dancers that were quite skilled and put on a good show:

These people meditating though was just boring to watch:

I would be more impressed if they were meditating while doing a handstand or something.  Of course the Falun Gong had Chinese drummers as well:

When the Falun Gong procession passed it reminded me of another group that is persecuted by the Chinese government that did not march in this year’s parade, the Tibetan Monks.   Last year the Tibetan Buddhist monks marched in the parade and I’m curious if the current crackdown of Tibetans in China had anything to do with it?

Anyway the Falun Gong marchers were quite good and were followed by a few more marchers such as this local Bendigo floor hockey team:

The Central Deborah Gold Mine also put a float together for the parade:

A word of advice for anyone visiting Bendigo, I highly recommend taking a trip to check out this interesting gold mine in Bendigo.  Toward the end of the parade we got to see another person dressed up as an animal:

At least I knew why this person was dressed up as an animal because it was part of a group of Humane Society  marchers.  Finally the end of the parade featured an Australian Defence Force vehicle called a Bushmaster:

The Bushmaster is manufactured by the THALES corporation in Bendigo which is a major employer in the city.  Then right behind the Bushmaster and the very last marchers in the parade were soldiers from the Australian Defence Force:

Overall the parade was still fun to go and see this year, but last year’s parade my wife and I felt was better.  Last year we believe had better floats and more of them.  Heck the gay and transsexual groups didn’t even have a float this year like they did last year.   What’s a parade in Australia without gays and transsexuals?  Anyway if anyone is in Victoria during the Easter holiday it is a great day out to see the parade and tour around one of my favorite cities in all of Australia, Bendigo.

Australian Officials Looking for New Tourism Campaign Slogan

Published on March 25, 2008 in Humor. 0 Comments

The Australian tourism catch phrase of "So Where the Bloody Hell are You?" has been quite effective in luring more tourists to Australia for obvious reasons.  However, the tourism campaign is getting old and Australian tourism officials are now on the lookout for some new ideas.  So what does everyone think of these ideas?: 

Warning some coarse language.

Australian Kangaroo Cull Creates International Controversy

Published on March 24, 2008 in Australia in the News. 0 Comments

The new Australian governments plan to cull kangaroos in the Australian Capitol Territory is coming under heavy criticism after the plan made international headlines in newspapers such as the New York Times:

The new Australian government is coming under international criticism over a plan to kill 400 kangaroos on a former military base.

The government has portrayed the cull as a necessary case of being cruel to be kind, but the international focus has been mostly on the cruelty. The growing battle over the fate of the kangaroos has pitted the former rock star Peter Garrett of the band Midnight Oil, now environment minister of Australia, against the likes of Paul McCartney, the former Beatle and animal rights advocate.

The former base is overrun with about 500 kangaroos, according to the authorities in the Australian Capital Territory, which includes the capital, Canberra, and which is in charge of the base, an unused naval transmitter station. The kangaroos are endangering themselves as well as other native species and rare plants, they said.

“If nature is left to take its course, there will be severe effects on the endangered grassland and many kangaroos will suffer a slow death by starvation,” the territory government said in a report.  [New York Times]

The New York Times also reported that last year the Australian government gave licenses to kill 3.7 million kangaroos in Australia which was about 15% of the population.  I have done plenty of hiking in and around the ACT and as I have posted before, there is an abundant amount of kangaroos in the territory:

kangaroos in the ACT

However, the nation that is making the biggest headlines over this kangaroo cull is the Japanese media.  In this link you can watch a video from FNN News in Japan.  The video is in Japanese of course so let me do a little translation for you.  Basically the Japanese are calling Australian Environment Minister Peter Garrett a hypocrite because he supports the cull of kangaroos yet criticizes the Japanese for their hunting of whales.

Garrett makes a big deal about how the Australian government is using scientific means to measure kangaroo populations to conduct culls that will keep a sustainable amount of kangaroos in the wild.  The Japanese are claiming they are doing the same exact thing by conducting scientific research to measure whale populations to ensure that they to keep a sustainable amount of whales in the ocean.   Ironically enough the 2007 Australian of the Year environmentalist Tim Flannery actually agrees with the Japanese on this fact.  The top environmental scientist in Australia supports the Japanese whaling program yet the vast majority of Australians are brainwashed to think the minke whale the Japanese hunt is endangered when in fact they are plentiful.

For those that don’t know this is how a kangaroo cull is conducted:

Australian animal protection groups questioned on Monday a new government guide for the humane killing of kangaroos which recommends “forcefully swinging” the heads of young animals against a vehicle tow bar.

A proposed code of conduct for shooting young kangaroos, called joeys, and smaller wallabies released by the Department of Environment also recommended a single close-range shotgun blast.

“These changes are basically saying the federal government believes it’s okay to blast a defenseless joey to bits with a shotgun,” Pat O’Brien, President of the Wildlife Protection Association, told local newspapers.  [Reuters]

For whatever reason this doesn’t create the righteous outrage against kangaroo culls in Australia as it does against Japanese whaling.  Is it any wonder why many people in Japan see this as a racial as well as an eco-imperialism issue against them even though the vast majority of Japanese do not even eat whale meat?

Just for the record, I have nothing against the Rudd’s government’s kangaroo cull plans, as long time D.B. readers know I am a big fan of kangaroos.   :grin:

On Walkabout At: The 2008 Bendigo Easter Parade – Part 1

Published on March 24, 2008 in Victoria. 0 Comments Tags: , , .

Today my wife and I took a trip over to Bendigo to watch the annual Bendigo Easter Parade. Long time readers probably know that I am a big fan of Bendigo and enjoy visiting this great city every chance I can get. My wife and I went to last year’s parade and had a great time and we were sure this year’s parade would be great as well.

However, before we could enjoy the parade we had to find a place to park. Parking is very tight on the day of the parade so it is best to get there a little early. My wife and I found a place to park over at the city train station and then walked downtown from there. It took about 10 minutes to walk to the downtown area that was all sealed off for the parade. Something people don’t realize is that Bendigo during the Easter holiday does more then just hold the parade. It also has a number of cultural events along with turning the entire downtown area into one large carnival complete with rides.

Once my wife and I successfully waded through the crowds we made our way to the heart of downtown and found a spot in front of the Soldier Memorial to watch the parade from:

Soon enough the parade began and the first of many marching bands to come walked on by:

Then the first of the few bagpipe groups in the parade marched on by us:

These bagpipe players were from the Clan MacLeod and they looked every bit Scottish. Shortly after the bagpipe players the most famous part of the parade began to come by which is the Bendigo Chinese Association:

The Bendigo Easter Parade began in 1871 to raise money for a local hospital and has been ran annually ever since making the parade the oldest parade in Australia. The large Chinese community that moved to Bendigo during the gold rush years began participating in the parade in 1893 and ever since then has been the most prominent contributors to the parade which includes the world’s longest imperial dragon, Sun Loong which is without a doubt the star of the parade.

Before Sun Loong was going to make an appearance the Chinese marchers from not only Bendigo, but from Melbourne as well put on a variety of shows with their dragons, drums, gongs, and firecrackers:

You can probably see from the pictures that the Bendigo Chinese Association is not all full blooded Chinese. Most of the members we saw were white Australians that I am assuming have Chinese ancestry of some kind. Other marchers were of obvious Chinese ancestry:

Since the Chinese came to Bendigo during the gold rush in the 1860’s they have been fully integrated into Australian society including through marriage. I had a guy at work tell me that the Bendigo Chinese are actually more Australian than most Australians since they have lived in the country for so long

The kids were also getting into the act and they looked like they were having fun as well:

These dragon performers from Melbourne I really liked:

There was also guys lighting off Chinese fireworks on the road as they walked by:

Then eventually Sun Loong made its long awaited appearance at the parade:

Sun Loong is a really long dragon and I am estimating that it must of had about 100 people to move the dragon as it went by:

For those of you that couldn’t attend the parade to see Sun Loong you can actually see the dragon at anytime during a visit to Bendigo by stopping by the Golden Dragon Museum located in downtown that is home to the dragon. Additionally for anyone wondering, the beautiful building you see in the background of the above photograph is the historic Shamrock Hotel, one of my favorite buildings in Bendigo.

After Sun Loong went by we were greeted with yet more bagpipe players:

Then later on these two guys on stilts came by:

These two guys were actually quite impressive because they could walk on stilts and juggle at the same time. I would think that is no easy feat. Then they were followed by a procession of historic fire trucks:

The fire trucks were actually pretty cool, but I definitely wouldn’t want to be depended on them to save my house if it was burning down back in the days they were in service. Then following them was another Chinese inspired group, the Fu Wa Dancing Girls:

They were definitely girls, but we didn’t see any dancing though. They were followed by the weirdest thing in the parade, this person dressed as a giraffe:

I have no idea why this person was marching in the parade dressed as a giraffe, but it was an impressive outfit nonetheless. Another thing in the parade I couldn’t figure out why they were there, was this guy dressed as a dinosaur:

The guy in the dinosaur outfit was definitely having fun though because he was attacking little kids on the sidewalk watching the parade much to their amusement. Anyway there was yet much more to come in this fantastic parade.

Next Posting: The 2008 Bendigo Easter Parade – Part 2