Gum Leaf Mafia invasion

WE JUST HAD the local ACCTA Awards in Sydney but this week it was also time for the International ACCTA Awards. Here are a few snaps from the event in Los Angeles. The Big Talk of the evening was the film Lion starring Nicole Kidman and David Wenham and based on the real life tale & book A Long Way Home by Saroo Brierley with Larry Buttrose.

The film stars Dev Patel, Rooney Mara, David Wenham, Nicole Kidman, Abhishek Bharate, Divian Ladwa, Priyanka Bose, Deepti Naval, Tannishtha Chatterjee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui and Sunny Pawar.
In our top snap is pictured Nicole  with Dev Patel and Sunny Pawar.
 Below is a trailer for the film which is tipped at least for a Golden Globe and maybe an Oscar or two.

And any day now it will be time for G'Day Australia where all those slebs will turn up again for another star-studded bash in LA.



Top row : Sunny Pawar,Dev Patel & Nicole Kidman

Middle row: Zoe Ventiura, Mel Gibson, Kim Wilson and Isla Fisher

Bottom row : Emma Stone, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban 

Tassie Dishwasher Takes UK Chef’s Crown

For a tiny population Tasmania is punching well above its weight.

With ex-real estate agent Mary Donaldson, now Crown Princess Mary who will one day rule Denmark, Ricky Ponting dominating the cricket, fashion queen Allannah Hill and the never to be forgotten Hollywood star Errol Flynn, comes the  Tasmanian born chef Ash Mair who has picked up the gong in the UK as Britain's Masterchef in the hugely popular TV series.

In  MasterChef: The Professionals Mair whipped up a three-course meal for judges Michel Roux Junior and Gregg Wallace. The menu included a starter of monkfish tail, a main course of lamb and a Spanish bread-and-butter pudding.

Michel Roux called Mair “a supreme talent” while Wallace said he had “given me some of the best food I have ever tasted.”

Ash Mair began his career as a dishwasher at the Cucina Simpatica in Launceston Tasmania and graduated to the 5 star Westbury Hotel in London where he now lives via several eateries in Spain and France.

Currently he caters for events and travels and writes about food. Amongst his private clients -Sir Phillip Green, Sir Elton John and the British Royal Family

Murdoch and the Communist

The British blogger Madame Arcati draws our attention to Cruden Park with this beautiful photograph.  It's the road leading to the home of Dame Elisabeth Murdoch the matriarch of the media family and mum to one of the most powerful men on the planet Rupert Murdoch.

Cruden Park will be open for one day on August 28th (co-incidentally grandson Lachlan Murdoch's birthday) under the Open Garden's Scheme.

Dame Elisabeth is noted for her conservative views and is said to have castigated her son for some of the more raunchy parts of his British newspapers The Sun and the News of The World .She's also the patron of the Australian Family Association that was recently outraged by Cate Blanchett's global warming adverts, and which campaigns against same sex marriage, human cloning and euthanasia.

Peter Cundall & Dame Elisabeth ABC TV

How pleasing then to see Dame Elisabeth had once hosted our favourite Communist, the ex ABC gardening guru Peter Cundall at  Cruden Park as our picture shows.

Cundall who has his own exceptional property in the Tamar Valley in Tasmania where he now lives was born into dire poverty in Manchester  and has been a fierce anti-war campaigner for the second half of his life particularly after his various experiences in theatres of war.

He was in the parachute regiment of the British Army in WW2 and in 1946 he was arrested as a spy by Marshall Tito's soldiers in Yugoslavia. He says he was enticed across the border by a beautiful girl who then vanished. Cundall spent a year in solitary confinement in a Ljubljana prison.

After joining the Australian Army as a librarian he ended up as a machine gunner in the Korean War.

He is now active in left wing and environmental causes and once stood as a Communist Party candidate for the Tasmanian Senate and he was a high profile opponent of the Iraq invasion.

In 1969 Cundall began a gardening talk back radio programme and became one of the most loved gardening experts on ABC TV when he fronted Gardening Australia for two decades, retiring in 2008 at the age of 81. Cundall recently led the unsuccessful anti-Gunns Pulp Mill campaign in Tasmania and is never shy for a few words against recalcitrant politicians.
Here he is being arrested at a rally outside State Parliament by some very polite coppers :