DIARY UPDATE: Week 8, 2025

MONDAY, FEBRUARY  17

A lass from Lille in France serves me at the French patisserie here at Casuarina where my wife, Marie and I are staying at the Mantra. This lass also lived in Belgium. There are a few conferences at the Mantra this week, one for chiropractors.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 18

As I wait for coffee from SaltBean, a South African chap waxes lyrical about the Waratahs having a win in the Super Rugby. Care factor! The new coach of the Marist Brothers’ Rugby League side is Darryl Butcher, a friend of my former Murwillumbah Brothers’ teammate, Darryl ‘Dagga’ Gear. ‘Dagga’ knows Butcher from Dagga’s days running the store in Nimbin. I learn of the passing of Garry ‘Tiger’ Singh from Murwillumbah. He owned buses, and played rugby league with the Old Boys rugby league club.

A number of Queensland Rugby League employees have been made redundant, a few from the media area, including Ricki-Lee Arnold, Jorja Brinums and Jacob Grams. I worked with Ricki-Lee at The Courier-Mail, while Jorja was in charge of an Origin project that I was part of in 2020. I haven’t had a lot to do with Jacob, but he wrote some really good pieces for the QRL website. It seems the QRL doesn’t need, or want, all the content it has been running on its website, and will target mainstream media a bit more, to get their messages out there.

Former Australian Associated Press sports journalist, Margaret McDonald has received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Australian Sports Commission Media Awards. I covered numerous games with ‘Margie’, who was the ultimate professional. I recall her telling me one of her favourite players was dual rugby international, Michael O’Connor.

Former Broncos’ forward, Sam Thaiday, a resident of Samford where Marie and Marie and I live, has won the latest ‘I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here’ challenge.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 19

I ENJOY a long chat with Lithuanian born, Sam Galpern, a former Sydney Roosters’ junior who played senior football with Paddington Colts, and was something of an oddity at the club given he was an accountant and most of the other players were wharfies or fishermen. Sam has contacted me on behalf of Roosters’ historian, Alan Katzmann who is seeking information about my former Murwillumbah Brothers’ teammates, Daryl Gear and Peter Nunan, who played for the Roosters in the early 1970s. Sam went to Randwick Boys High with Bob Hooper, who I got to know during a trip to in Italy in 2017. Sam also played for Helensburgh in the Illawarra competition, alongside former St George winger, Geff Carr. Sam’s son, who played 200 games for Randwick Rugby Union, is a paramedic.

Marie and I have lunch at excellent Black Drop, Pottsville and then walk to the mouth of Cudgera Creek.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20

The movie ‘Covenant’ is a must see according to my brother, Jeff and his wife, Ann who saw it at the Byron Bay Cinema. Marie and I enjoy lunch at Casuarina Tavern with Jeff and Ann, who live at Tweed Heads. Ann says the Regent at Murwillumbah is no longer showing movies. How sad. I sat in the backrow of the movies on a Saturday night with…..you know the rest.

QRL contributor, Michael Nunn has as a Q & A with former Indigenous cricket and football player, Adrian Coolwell. The Coolwell family took-in Greg Inglis when the future Test star came to Brisbane to complete his schooling at Wavell High.

A ‘glamour’ and her man hop in the spa here at Mantra with a bottle of champagne and glasses as the rest of us are watching night time TV. Hope there is no broken glass in there when we have a spa tomorrow.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 21

Playing fullback for Murwillumbah Brothers against the Mullumbimby at the Mullumbimby Showgrounds was a nightmare, as the ground runs east/west, and the winter sun late in the day meant kickers exploited the situation. I have not been to the showgrounds since I last played there in 1972. I played at Mullumbimby in the next couple of years, but by then they had moved to the new Botanical Gardens Ground. Today Marie and I attend the markets at the showgrounds, and they are absolutely sensational with live music and so much lovely food, to eat there or take away. I tuck into a dozen Brunswick River oysters, and boy, aren’t they good. They are actually seeded in the Brunswick River before maturing in the Tweed River, the next river to the north. Noel Baguley, who sells me the oysters, is a long term local and his dad helped build the road bridge from the Brunswick Heads township to the surf beach. My father, Jon William, used to get oysters from the bridge pilons. Dad would give me some, and while I disliked them to begin with, I grew to love them. My sister, Gay Lynch recalls sitting on Dad’s shoulders while he shucked the oysters.  Dad always had an oyster knife in the car, and a .22 in the boot. Would be arrested as a terrorist now. My wife would crawl over broken glass to get a mango. Ditto me with oysters. Noel Baguley played rugby league for Mullumbimby High, where a teammate was Paul Alidenes. Paul was hooker in the last game I played at the showgrounds in 1972, and I recall two of our forwards – Russell Walsh and Robert ‘Foxy’ Graham – dishing out some punishment to him after we won a scrum and the ref followed the ball, while some of the forwards disengaged from the scrum.

My first coffee of the day is given to me in a china mug – no takeaway option. Remember, this is ‘Save the World’ greenie country. I have to return the mug to the ‘kitchen’, where it is washed. Things don’t look all that hygienic. The ‘opposition’ barista – Apex – offers a takeaway container. That’s more like it. He has a landline phone on the counter and pretends to make a call. The sausage rolls from Hayter’s Hill are superb and go down well with the coffee. At least it’s not all vegan here. When I go to the toilet, the chap in the cubicle next to me emerges at the same time as me, but charges out without washing his hands. He is an older hippie type. He probably wants to save the world by not wasting water. He ends up sitting opposite my wife; her sister Carolyn Soward and I while we enjoy morning tea. I look at him sternly, and I think he knows why.

The Northern Rivers Rail Trail – a small part of it anyway – is our means of walking off the delights of the market. We walk north from the old Burringbar Station and as we enter a wooded stretch there is a sign saying beware of snakes – right on queue a snake crosses the path. At its peak in the late 1930s, the station cleared eight trains a day loaded with local bananas and dairy products. Further along the rail trail – at Dunbible – we buy a bag of juicy passionfruit from an ‘honesty’ stall.

Next stop is Murwillumbah Leagues Club to see the framed Ron Saddler Indigenous jersey, designed by the former New South Wales’ skipper’s grand daughter, Chloe. I contributed $50 towards the framing of the jersey and a number of other former teammates – among them Darryl Gear and Kel Sherry – did the same, given Ron was our first rugby league hero, and along with Cliff Boyd is the reason so many ex Brothers Murwillumbah players follow the Roosters in the NRL. (Ron and Cliff joined the Roosters from Brothers in 1963). Marie and I are joined by Brothers’ Life Member, former top official, Bill Carroll and former Brothers and New South Wales Country representative forward, Gary ‘Mouse’ Dowling.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22

Salford rugby league player, Loghan Lewis’s dad and I chat about footy on the beach at Casuarina, after Marie I changed our minds about a surf after seeing all the blue bottles washed up on the beach. Loghan’s dad (I didn’t get his name) is concerned about the financial situation at Salford. “It’s a club run on chook raffles,” he says. I tell him about the big spending 1970s when Salford signed a host of players from rugby union among them Welsh stars, David Watkins, Colin Dixon and Maurice Richards and Englishmen, Keith Fielding and Mick Coulman.

Buying a newspaper here at Casuarina is a lottery. The owner of the 7/11 type store near the patisserie, a man of Indian background, turns up whenever he feels like it, even though he has a sign on the door saying opening time is 7 a.m. The papers have been out the front, waiting to be sorted, every morning I have arrived at the shop. Locals just help themselves, and then come back later to pay – I suppose. It’s hilarious. I saw one local borrow a knife from the patisserie to cut the rope binding the papers together. I have a chat to this Indian chap, and he is pleasant, with a carefree sort of attitude, which explains a lot. Locals tell me he has the business for sale. He tells me newspaper prices are set to rise again next week, and he believes a couple of mastheads might be cut altogether.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23

As usual, Rory Gibson has a great column in the Sunday Mail, this time targeting the Chinese for their military exercises in the Tasman Sea, with missile firing forcing commercial flights to plot new routes. Chinese – such wonderful world citizens. We saw their caring nature at work five years ago when Covid spread around the world.

Back in Samford, Cliff Turpin provides the music at a rock n roll afternoon at Samford Grove, and relates a few stories from his long career in music, including one about Easybeats drummer, Gordon ‘Snowy’ Fleet who died last week aged 85. After the Easybeats played Festival Hall in Brisbane, Fleet cruised up the street in a car yelling to female fans to jump in and join him back at the ‘team’ hotel, which a few did. They would all be grannies now, if they are still rockin. Johnny Preston hit, ‘Running Bear’ finishes the afternoon, just as it did back in our heyday.

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