Watch out for alien activity
All things paranormal will be celebrated at one of North Queensland’s quirkiest festivals this weekend. JOHN ANDERSEN looks at whether the truth is out there in NQ.
IT’S UFO Festival time in Cardwell.
Most people when they think of Cardwell think crocodiles, barra, mountain swimming holes, mud crab sandwiches and views out to Hinchinbrook, Garden and Goold Islands.
Q. Who thinks of Unidentified Flying Objects?
A. Maybe not many of us, but just about everyone in Cardwell does. If you listen hard and long to folks in Cardwell, it seems other life forms from galaxies far away have taken a special interest in the town and pay the seaside village regular visits.
Perhaps the interplanetary visitors feel they have something in common with the earthlings below or perhaps they are working up the nerve to land their spaceships so that they can order a barra burger or a crab sandwich.
Can’t blame them.
They’re probably living on protein paste made from amoebas and parameciums squeezed from a tube. There is an alien costume party tonight – the highlight of this weekend’s UFO Festival – so get out your best Martian outfit and check it all out.
Part of this weekend’s festival involves talks from those who have had close encounters with those from outer space.
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There will be a discussion about Big Foot, that elusive half man, half ape that is the subject of thousands of ‘suss’ grainy black and white photographs from around the globe.
Big Foot, or at least some of his cousins, are said to live in the Kirrama Range near Cardwell.
Be there, because this is the year that a space ship might land on the road in front of the butcher shop and a hairless, hermaphroditic-looking crew member with bulging eyes, holding a ray gun in its hand, will emerge and say to the first human it sees, “I want mud crab on ciabatta and a schooner of VB”.
And then seconds later Big Foot shows up and wants to party. Don’t let the hairy bloke anywhere near the 40 pounder of Bundy.
All hell could break loose if he gets on the rumbo. Cardwell! You wouldn’t be dead for quids.
WARNING: if that creature from Alien steps out of the space ship – the one that scared hell out of us in the Sigourney Weaver movie –
If you have something to say, speak up, because it’s an open forum for all those who had made contact with ‘the others’. It’s not just space.
get out of Cardwell fast and don’t look back.
TRAGEDY SHOCKS COMMUNITY
THE August 4 Collinsville shootings where three people were shot and killed and a fourth shot in the stomach will be with us always.
These sorts of tragic events, even with the passage of the years, never fade away.
No one will ever drive past the Bogie River on the Collinsville to Bowen road and not think of the time three people died on a station near here and a fourth miraculously escaped after being shot in the stomach.
Disputes over cattle station boundary alignments happen from time to time.
An aggrieved party thinks he or she has been fenced off from grazing land that they believe, or worse, pretend to believe, is theirs.
Usually these matters are sorted out in the Land Court or through a dispute resolution process.
Firearms rarely enter the equation.
This month’s Collinsville murders reach back to the time cold-blooded killer Tom Coolon killed four men over a boundary dispute just 200 kilometres from here on a hot November day in 1918.
Coolon had discovered gold at a site near the present day hamlet of Mt Coolon and was working his very profitable claim.
He went away for a few days on business to Clermont.
While he was gone, four local men, ignoring the boundary to his lucrative operation, jumped his claim.
There was nothing he could legally do to remove them as under the law he had abandoned his gold mine.
To hell with the law, Coolon said.
He took justice into his own hands and systematically rode the area on his horse, shooting the men one by one at point blank range with his .38.55 Winchester.
One even got down on his knees and begged for Coolon to spare his life.
Such was his rage that day, Coolon spared no one, not even himself.
After shooting the four men who had taken over his claim, he rode home, shaved, had a meal, drank a glass of whiskey, kissed his wife goodbye and then went outside and shot himself in the head.
It’s a toss-up whether Tom Coolon’s life had been relatively trouble free up until the time he went on his murderous rampage or if he had always been a thug.
Some said he was “a good bloke”.
There are other stories that say he had form and was known to be vicious when dishing out retribution to those who had offered him insult.
One of his tricks was to toss piles of burning grass down the mine shafts where men he felt had wronged him were working.
When they climbed to the surface to escape the smoke he would be waiting and would smack them across the head with the butt of his rifle.
The graves of the four men he shot are in the town’s cemetery.
POWER OF PERSUASION
I MENTIONED last week how I had been advised that rust proofing of new cars was a waste of money because every component inside and outside modern cars is subjected to electrochemical processes during manufacture which is aimed at eliminating rust and corrosion.
There is no need to do it when you buy the car. Fabric care is another service you can pay for before taking delivery.
In response reader Tommy got back to me with a tale about two local professionals who had bought identical cars.
The pneumatically persuasive sales lady, according to Tommy, could have made a living selling Burdekin sand to the Arabs, such was her powerful marketing presentation.
One of these blokes succumbed to her ample charms and went for the whole kit and kaboodle with rust and fabric protection to lowered door handles, neon lighting in the grill and high-compression hub caps (Tommy made those last three up).
Three years later the blokes took their cars back to trade-in for a new model.
They were both offered the same trade-in price.
The bloke who had the works done blew up, arguing he should get more because of the extra money he spent on improving his car at purchase with rust proofing and the rest of it. This wasn’t the sales lady’s first rodeo.
She shook her head and said, “nah, nah, the other car’s driver is a non-smoker and weighs about 40kg less than you.”
She then ripped the scab right off by telling him that she was in fact doing him a favour by offering him the same price as his friend.
So, in fact he should be grateful and stop whining.
Talk about hurt, pain and humiliation, but ol’ mate just had to suck it up.