The Bassett family site
Maxwell Edgar Fatchen, AM (3 August 1920 – 14 October 2012) was an Australian children’s writer and journalist and a cousin; see https://www.bassetts.com.au/tree/index.php?route=%2Ftree%2Ftree%2Fbassett-sandry%2Findividual%2FX8271%2FMaxwell-Edgar-Fatchen
IT was news of the opening near the end of the year of the Adelaide Hilton that set me thinking about renovating the fishing shack. It usually happens this melancholy time of year: the hunt for furniture no longer needed in the real world: the collecting of half-empty paint pots the assembling of odd pieces …
SA fishermen are being asked to devise ways of tapping our blue crabs resource on a commercial scale. Research suggests that large reserves can be exploited without affecting the viability of the species. Certainly I have never met a blue crab with a large reserve; blue crabs are outgoing, particularly on the receding tide. So …
The news that SA will soon plug into satellite technology to monitor the environmental resources and vegetation of the State has sent a thrill of expectancy through our publicity-mad household. My wife said that the whole complicated apparatus up there would be focusing not on missile silos, the wakes of prowling warships but upon the …
Ever since Billy Bunter showed a decided liking for them and his figure showed a decided tendency after them, buns have been regarded as a soft option by dietary hard-liners. “Buns.” they shriek and go into culinary shock. Yet this doughy darling of childhood still penetrates the more sophisticated gullets of maturity. All over the …
Welcome to Chutney Junction. Draw yourself up a stewpan and we’ll boll you with raisins. For this [is an] apricot chutney, the golden tide from a tree of plenty. Spread it on your stomach and put yourself between a couple of slices of bread. This can be your scene, too. Oh the wild, dangerous kitchen …
The news that the US is closing a switchboard especially manned to communicate with possible intelligent beings in outer space, has come as a relief to the Martians, little. green men and certainly to me. I have enough trouble with earthly switch boards jammed with people in the outer suburbs without some garrulous interstellar gremlin …
It seemed a simple enough thing, a picnic. But I have got out of the way of them. The picnic paraphernalia, the folding chairs, the plastic plates, the knives and forks, the complicated Esky content (cold chicken; cold drinks; cold ants). I had forgotten the lining up at the ice self-serve with all the sandaled …
I saw them arrive, mate, in their yellow campervan, with the load of kids and the two dogs and all of them full of vulgar, youthful energy. I was sitting in my old chair, with my old bait box and my old radio, my old fishing rod in its holder, and I was listening to …
Have you noticed in this shrinking world how the art of the farewell has been knocked sideways? When leisurely liners called at Outer Harbor (and we may see one or two in this new year) I made a practice of ingratiating myself with all my friends or their friends who might be travelling. This entitled …
The tardy Arab sheik who was forced to pay $1.52m. for a hotel bill for a mere 50 rooms in Florida, shows that opulence is not dead. It just takes a little longer to pay for it. My days of opulence have vanished with the speed of dew from spring time grass but there were …