Wendy Illingworth of Kiama writes: “We’ve just been visiting the Portuguese archipelago of Madeira and were gobsmacked to find boomerangs in a tourist shop, complete with dot paintings of Madeira, traditional images of bananas, and Madeiran houses. It comes with a certificate of authenticity!”
Column 8’s latest pet subject has Ian Costley of Belrose “picturing aliens in a spaceship observing human intelligence on earth, whereby they decide that the most intelligent creature is, in fact, the dog, which has its poo carried for it in a little bag (C8) by the human.”
Here’s some tough love from Lesley Green of Castle Hill: “While going through our mother’s belongings, I discovered my Baby Book from the ’50s with the following rules: Fond and foolish over-indulgence, mismanagement and ‘spoiling’ may be as harmful to an infant as callous neglect and intentional cruelty! Baby must NEVER sleep in bed with her mother!” Granny recently found her Baby Book, too, and was a bit disheartened to see a recommended diet of brains.
According to Andrew Cohen of Glebe, tuppenny bungers (C8) and Thunders were the same, it’s just that “Thunder was the commercial name printed on tuppenny bungers.” But, apparently there was a larger variety: “There was a sixpenny bunger. By 1962 it was banned, but I did see one, and it dwarfed tuppennies. It was about the same length, but it was a cube shape with rounded corners. I estimate it to have been about a six on the letterbox scale if a tuppenny was a one. Do any C8 readers recall seeing one detonate?”
Dunno, but it’s going to be challenging to top Lyle Procter of Woollahra: “Cracker night at our little bush school was usually enlivened by a couple of the local miners planting half a stick of gelignite in an old tree stump up on the hill behind the school. The echoing boom on a clear, still, June night was awe-inspiring.”
“Looks like we’re set to keep these cracker stories firing right up until King’s Birthday,” says Meri Will of Baulkham Hills. “Some of my best memories of cracker night involve dancing on strings of Tom Thumbs as they popped beneath our feet and throwing tuppenny bungers into drain pipes to magnify the boom. The morning after was also exciting, going out into the misty dawn to hunt for unexploded ordnance and bending, lighting and spraying fizzers in all directions.”
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