Friends of the Armchair Traveller

  “THE OFFICE PICNIC” … REMEMBERED A few days ago my friend Tom Cowan posted a remastered version of “The Office Picnic” on his Vimeo site. Here you can see a short trailer Tom has compiled: I asked Tom to send me some notes about the pre-production, leading to the final release of the film. From Tom: The original budget was $4000. It was intended for a script called 'Sexes' for which I applied to the Experimental Film Fund. The assessors of the fund called 'Sexes' unacceptable -  possibly too experimental. They advised me to put in any other script. So the $4000 grant was applied to a 13 page script I called THE OFFICE PICNIC .      Here's how that turned into a 75min 35mm feature film: When I went to sign the contract, Bruce Beresford was the project officer. He said $4000 was a bit slim so he applied an extra $400 as a 'contingency'. Then I set about producing what was intended to be a 25 minute drama with that $4,400.   I went to Ilford as they ...

  Earlier this week our friend Ian Gibbins sent me   a copy of a presentation he gave recently.  Here's what Ian wrote to me about that event: "Meanwhile we in South Australia are having a major environmental disaster, probably the first biological event 100% due to climate change in this part of the world (in addition to the coral bleaching etc in the tropics): the massive toxic algal bloom has devastated marine life over a huge stretch of water, with no real signs of abating anytime soon.  I’ve become involved with the main citizen science projects monitoring and trying to explain what is happening. If you are interested, here is an extended article I recently wrote about the algal toxins following on from a talks I gave at a public forum hosted by Flinders University ." https://www.iangibbins.com.au/ science/citizen-science/south- australian-harmful-algal- bloom-2025/ Cheers IAN So I'm now going to do a very lazy thing and,  with Ian's permission,  cop...