The urge to paint aeroplanes Deep Sea Blue continues and this time goes to extremes with a model of a particularly interesting but flawed aeroplane, the Grumman XF10F. This was a variable geometry fighter designed for the US Navy which was worried that the new jet fighters were flying too fast to land on the … More Models for January 2021
(December 2020) It’s like this, I keep having these urges. It’s as if some strange alien entity has got into the back of my mind and keeps pushing and pushing, wanting me to do things that I don’t want to do. Dirty, crazy, unimaginable things. I think it might be an alien invasion, like the … More Confessions of an AMS Survivor
(December 2020) A Tale of two 1/72 XF5Us The year 1995 seems like several centuries ago and in one way it is. That year I finally managed to get my hands of the Hasegawa 1/72 kit of the Vought XF5U-1, probably lurking at the back of one of those old fashioned model shops that … More Please Tell Me I’m Getting Better at This
(November 2020) In November 2020 Qantas celebrates its centenary. As a tiny celebration of this remarkable event here are photos of all the models I’ve made that are associated with Qantas. This includes Qantas Empire Airways, Australia Asia, Australian, QantasLink and JetStar, and the Australian domestic airline Trans Australia Airlines that was later rebranded Australian … More A hundred years of Qantas
Here is the next issue of iOTA, my little fanzine about the project to research and write the history of fandom in Australia up until 1975. In includes a lot of Lee Harding’s early fannish writing and the first chapter in draft to be written for this history which tells the story of Melbourne fandom … More iOTA 18
(November 2020) I don’t get to read many books these days but here’s one that has captivated me and which I only managed to put down without reading it straight through by sheer force of will. It’s A Pound of Paper, Confessions of a Book Addict by John Baxter. Doctors seem to be taking a … More A Ramble on Books and Collecting after John Baxter
(A version of this piece originally appeared in ANZAPA Mailing 316, August 2020) My life is remarkably unexciting, sometimes in an interesting way. Take last Tuesday for example. I count it as a good start to the day when I sleep in to 7am, so the day began well. Other days I can be … More Tuesday
This one is a paper I wrote for an Engineering Heritage conference, held in the Old Parliament House in Canberra. A lovely location and a good conference. It was published in the conference proceedings. It pulls together a lot of work I’d done on Main Roads Western Australia, the State Electricity Commission of Western Australia … More The Post War Project in Western Australia
(May 2001) This month one of my tools has let me down so I haven’t completed a model. My compressor has finally decided that compressing air is just asking too much of it and can’t be bothered any more. It sits there going chug-chug-chug as usual, but only a little air comes out. I will attend to the … More A modeller’s life – my box of tools
At last year’s Melbourne convention we held a panel item about the history of fandom in Australia. On the panel were me (as moderator), Lee Harding, Dick Jenssen and Rob Gerrand. The panel discussed the beginnings of modern fandom, mainly in Melbourne, in the 1950s, including earlier exposure to science fiction, the public attitude to … More The history of Australian fandom at Continuum
