IT was the morning after New Year’s Eve.
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I breezily asked Keith Klippel how many people had been at the Nariel Creek Folk Festival overnight.
“There were hundreds here when we took the stage at 11.30pm,” the canny accordionist replied.
“But I couldn’t say exactly how many, as you can’t see in the dark.”
Yes, I suppose it was a silly question to ask.
Another daft question in my reporting career was asking a new cemeteries manager in Albury, Robert Willcox, which would he personally prefer for himself — cremation or burial?
“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” the 40-year-old replied.
From silly questions to silly replies.
This time last year, the Wangaratta soccer coach made a profound statement to our sports reporter.
“Our key objective tomorrow is to score at least one goal more than them when the final whistle blows, and if that happens then I will be happy,” he said.
About the same time, a Hotspurs player discovered why his team was losing.
“We’re just not putting the ball in the back of the net and that’s what wins games,” he said.
Wow!
Sometimes, an MP or VIP might reveal something that’s more surprising than silly.
I once asked former MP Lou Lieberman when he first asked about shifting Wodonga’s dreadful High Street railway crossing.
“I met Sir Henry Bolte (ex-premier) in a pub 29 years ago,” he said in 2000.
“His advice was: ‘If you want to remove the railway you’ll have to become a politician’.”
Lou got elected in 1976, but served 25 years before governments agreed to the rail job — and he waited another nine years for it to happen.
When people retire, we journalists ask them to list their career highlights or to relate any funny incidents.
Lawn mower repairer Robin Clark, of Wodonga, had plenty.
“I’ve had a bloke who hammered his mower with a shovel because it wouldn’t start and another who used a shotgun,” Robin said.
“Someone drove in 160 kilometres to see us in Wodonga because his mower wasn’t working but he hadn’t turned the fuel tap on.
“Then there was the customer who wondered why his chainsaw wouldn’t work — he’s put the chain back on the wrong way round.”
And then there was the bub who put milk in a mower — but that’s another story.
David Lombe was a top city accountant handling $13.5 million of cash rescued from the $46 million that Albury-Wodonga and other people had invested in the notorious Tietyens funds.
Grim-faced, he told many of the 830 investors in Albury in 1998 they’d get zilch until he did all the sums.
“I can’t hand out money like instant coffee,” he said.
David eventually got everyone all their money back, with interest.
Women crashing through glass ceilings occasionally make the news.
In 1998, former nurse Iris Stevens ran successfully for president of the SS & A Club, which only a few years before had been forced by NSW legislation to admit women members.
Iris had been the first female director in 1989 and said of that time: “The other directors were dubious but they got used to me.”
Also in the ’90s, Albury Council dumped the very large portrait of Queen Elizabeth II in the council chamber when Les Langford was mayor.
Ugly copper-faced entrance doors, often used to shut out journalists, also went.
“They look like something from a medieval castle,” Les said at the time.
We journos considered learning to lip-read councillors through the new glass doors to access the news.
But we got a few to leak information instead.
