The best laid schemes … gang aft agley

[Cormanus]

Part 2—In which Cormanus has a quick look around

Fortunately, the assumption made earlier about the acceptability of the toasted sandwich was correct. It wasn’t stellar; but ‘ acceptable’ is a suitable adjective. As I ate it and drank my coffee I observed people coming and going from the café. Amongst them was a group of tourists, nearly all of whom had the sort of cameras with lenses so big you wonder how they hold them up. They were talking and I heard snatches of conversation which referred to Tasmania, the state where I grew up. I was a bit intrigued, but kept to myself. As I made my way outside to the sitting area which contained any number of signs imploring visitors NOT to feed the birds, there they were flinging seed about with gay abandon, cameras click-clacking at the visiting parrots. To be fair, one of their number soon pointed to the signs and they stopped. I was grateful to them as I got this shot of a crimson rosella. Red birds: they’re everywhere!



O’Reilly’s is a resort in the middle of a national park. The family has been present there since the early 2oth Century engaged in forestry, tourism and, more recently, but not on this site, wine growing. I recall that, in a former life, I worked briefly with an O’Reilly who rode a Ducatti up and down the hill from here.

Sitting on the site above the café is this replica of a Stinson airliner.



Friday 19 February 1937 was stormy in the afternoon and an identical Stinson crashed in the McPherson Ranges killing four out of seven people aboard. A search failed to find any wreckage.

Seven days later Bernard O’Reilly set out on foot to find the wreckage. He was convinced the plane had gone down in the Lamington National Park. He was right and discovered the wreckage. Amazingly, he discovered two survivors who, not surprisingly, were in serious need of medical attention. Bernard did what he could to make them comfortable and set off for help. He returned the next morning with a doctor and a few of his farmer mates and the survivors were stretchered to safety 11 days after the plane went down.

Of course, this is the stuff of which movies are made and, in 1987 [url=http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0136490/fullcredits?ref_=tt_ov_st_sm]The Riddle of the Stinson was released. To make the movie, a similar Stinson was rescued from the soon-to-be-closed Wangaratta Air Museum and turned into a model of the missing aircraft. The O’Reilly family bought it in 2012 and relocated it to the resort.

The Riddle of the Stinson starred Jack Thompson, an Australian actor who also starred in Clint Eastwood’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil alongside the wonderful Kevin Spacey and John Cusak. Thomson’s co-star was Richard Roxburgh who has featured recently on the small screen in a wonderful comedy called Rake.

All this allows me to segue into a rant. While America is responsible for many an excellent movie and television series, it has saturated the world with millions upon millions of hours of television so crappy it’s hard to understand how anyone could watch it. And yet they appear incapable of watching anything of any quality made by anyone else. My visit to O’Reilly’s lead me to reflect on two recent examples: Rake a brilliant Australian series which the US found necessary to remake starring Greg Kinnear; and Kevin Spacey’s House of Cards, which, while very good, pales in comparison with the English original from which it was copied.

And why, oh why, oh why, did America find it necessary to remake Ricky Gervais’ The Office which for comic genius is comparable only with Cleese’s Fawlty Towers?

Is it because Americans think only they can do anything properly? I have no idea; but I wondered about it as I walked to the car park and the waiting CB, blissfully unaware of what awaited me during the afternoon.