By Madeleine Love.
We’re having so much fun down here in Victoria over the bush wanderings of water minister Tim Holding.
Mount Feathertop
He decided to go on a jolly overnight walk up snowy Mt Feathertop on his own over the weekend. The weather was rather grim. He was meant to reappear at 4pm Sunday but didn’t. All day yesterday we had news reports about the search for The Hon Tim Holding.
I wondered his opponents would be feeling. Surely no-one could wish for an ill outcome while friends and family lingered distressed? I know I couldn’t.
Oh,oh, getting lost.
Tim Holding is given continued abuse over the North-South water pipeline (pumping water destined for the food bowl and the dry Murray over the hills to Melbourne instead), and over the Wonthaggi desalination plant.
I have a good friend who’s very active against the desal plant, and I’m on the mailing list of the North-South pipeline opponents, so have a little insight into how his opponents may feel about his disappearance.
Last night things were beginning to look grim, such that the topic became a discussion at the dinner table. This morning I woke hopeful, and not long after dropping the children at school I noticed breaking news and sent this email to my desal friend…
Good News: “Victorian Minister Tim Holding found alive during helicopter search. More soon.” www.abc.net.au Thought you’d like to know.
And then we saw him get off the helicopter http://www.abc.net.au/reslib/200909/r428043_2042473.asx ,
alive, well and walking.
So I sent another email to my desal friend…
Desalination friend.
“quick, quick, get the lines out…
“Tim Holding loses his way over desal plant”
“Tim Holding stumbling in the dark with Victoria’s water”
“Victoria’s water strategy directionless”
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Where’s Wally seems more appropriate.
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Wally called up John Faine (ABC radio) and said it was all a stunt.
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yeah, I heard that exchange with Wally, too, Maddie. If there is an archetypal Wally about, then I reckon that libel suits Wally to a T! What an imbecile!
They vote, that lot!
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Dammit! I forgot to change my name back! Twice!
😦
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….. and the conical white hat ………. this was supposed to go under Madeleine’s question about wearing the Pig’s Arms T-shirt…. ah the mysteries of wordpress.
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Excuse me Sir; but Pvt first-class Voice DOES have a valid excuse for being out of uniform on the said occasion; as her defense lawyer, I therefore plead mitigating circumstances, beg that the court martial be lenient on her and throw her on the mercy of the court… SAH!
😉
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Shouldn’t this read “What was Tim Holding?”
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I wouldn’t ask that question of him, HOO. It might get a bit embarrassing. He forgot his… pick. Ice pick that is!
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Or “Where is Tim holding his New Years Eve party?” perhaps?
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So you can avoid the suburb, Voice? Chuck a stink bomb in the middle of it? Make all the clocks in his place go an hour fast? Deliver him a gorilla message? Send a Scandinavian yoddler? Oh, I can be sooooo evil some times!
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I hope never to offend you ato.
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The Scandinavian ‘yoddler’ terrifies me!
😉
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Here’s the latest: “Victorian Water Minister Tim Holding has described how he became lost after falling 100 metres down a ridge while hiking in Victoria’s alpine region.”
Let me tell you a story about the time I stayed in a tent in the snow for five days on The Razorback between Mt Hotham and Mt Feathertop…
I was a young woman and he was a young man and he chose not to kiss me throughout the adventure. I’d had a crush on him since I was about 14 but I always prefaced his name with the word MAD for jumping off high rocks in the Mt Beauty streams into small pools of water.
We skied out and it was so scary that I wanted to go back – steep icy slopes on each side of the Razorback. He said that if I didn’t go on with him we’d stay in the car for a week while he smoked dope. Ah the threats on young women. So I skied on. Sometimes I was so scared that I had to continue on my stomach.
Anyway, we found a lovely spot to set up the tent and I was happy at home doing telemarks down a friendly gully. Until he insisted I join him on a treck to the mountain itself. Off we headed. No sooner did we get to the final ascent than the mad bastard decided to ski off the side of it, down the south side onto the ice.
I lost sight of him, as I sat on the top of this snowy ridge. He did not return in a timely manner. I waited hours. I suspected there’d been a problem, but decided it was his problem. If I went near the edge, I be joining his problem.
Eventually though he reappeared. Although he had fallen as soon as he’d hit the ice, failed to self arrest using his ski stocks and then his skinless elbows, the mad bastard had been sane enough to have crampons in his backpack, which he put on after he eventually stopped, somewhere near the treeline.
But I remember the snowgum leaf billy tea, on nights filled with stars and snow glow, and I learned how to tell the time from the southern cross.
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Now this was a really Mad person. We were sort of friends, but I was brought along, I imagine, for his safety. (I liked the idea of skiing for a week on a lovely looking mountain.) And he had his crampons.
But Tim Holding ‘slipped off’ (how?), and refused the company of an ascending party who could have safely delivered him to his track.
It’s just that he has been so incredibly arrogant and unresponsive in the water debate – everyone north of the divide has driven their trucks down to Melbourne and blocked the whole city on a couple of occasions.
And he didn’t give his girlfriend a proper “Thanks” hug – was this an “I’m a politician” image thing?.
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I am really seriously impressed, both at your physical feats and that you made the smart decision not to go after him.
Was he young enough to excuse him? Clearly didn’t take one second to think about YOUR safety. If you’d known him since you were 14, your fahter or his should have horsewhipped him.
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I’m impressed too, Voice… but tell me, what is it with you and the horsewhip? Always with the whips and chains!
You’re beginning to scare me Voice!
😉
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Maybe about age 20? It was in the young female stage before one discovers through hard knocks ‘respect to self’. He was extraordinarily selfish, but I didn’t know how to assess those sorts of attributes at that age.
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I must be terribly old-fashioned Madeleine. There should be family/community pressure to protect. A good horse-whipping. Society loses something when that option is taken off the table.
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Well, now that’s a good point Voice. It was the later ’70’s and my father was going through a renaissance – he might have been thinking that relational freedom was a good thing. He eventually recanted and went back to the ’50’s. But I was really on my own in every sense at that time – they wouldn’t have had a clue where I was. Although, my mother’s here right now and I’ve just raised the Tim Holding disappearance. She said “I thought about you and Mad Max as soon as I heard that” – so I must’ve said something at some time.
I think I’ll be trying to point things out to my daughters.
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I thought some one was going to write about Della Bosca…maybe Emm or Gerard will…?
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Yes, Helvi, I’ve been looking forward to some ‘Bosca Bashing’. No one in the media has asked the obvious question, “What sort of 26 year old would have an affair with the man? Did she stay drunk for four months?”
I gues she must’ve been better than the termagent at home!
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An affair of a politician is so incredibly trivial (political wife and all – what a shock for her!) that I’m taking the ‘this is a deliberation distraction’ tack of Susan Merrell.
Time to start looking for why he is really leaving, and what he is getting out of it.
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Yes Madeleine. Apart from it being an opportunity for a few remarks at his, his wife, or girlfriend’s expense, who really cares? It seems over the top to resign.
Or, could it simply be a smart political dmage control thing? Give it a thorough airing till people are bored, resign, then come back to politics when everyone calls for him not to resign.
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We’re all shocked to discover this flaw in his character after Iguanagate, but do you think they’ll call for him not to resign?
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They are already trying to ‘rehabilitate’ him.
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I can’t believe it! What a circle of scum.
Actually I don’t think affairs are ever trivial and I wouldn’t vote for anyone who’d had an affair – there’s got to be integrity in a promise (much too naive for politics) – but with Iguanagate behind him etc why get all outraged now?
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I am tempted too write, ”Whose Tim Holding”.
But as you have written that he is a Victorian Minister; I feel thwarted.
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Jayell, maybe Tim Holding was really hiding in our secret spot… somewhere on this very website! How else could he have avoided the media long enough to call it a ‘disappearance’?
Errrrr… you DO know about the existence of a secret spot don’t you? The ‘Undiscovered Blog’?
🙂
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I think I’m in it!
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Since b4 I was pregnant. John was trying to coax me up Buffalo pregnant but I pulled the line ‘what if I get high blood pressure?’ to escape.
Enduring the Rees circus? I’ll let you know when I’m going to enter the ring. Not sure whether to wear my Pigs Arms t-shirt or not.
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Wear it, Madeleine, and proudly!
🙂
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My submission is aimed at police conduct. They may cross-examine me. Should I wear the Pigs Arms t-shirt?
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Oh… I see… I suppose it could be rather easily misunderstood under those circumstances, Voice; perhaps, discretion being the better part of valour, you would be wiser not to wear the t-shirt on this particular occasion! I would hate to be responsible for giving you any bad advice!
🙂
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Oops! Sorry! I mean Madeleine; sorry Maddie; it’s late and I was just answering another of Voice’s posts… I certainly didn’t mean to call you another woman’s name…
😉
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Yes… while I’d love to offer the Pig’s Arms the exposure…
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Exposure? Madeleine I thought you were talking about wearing the T-shirt, not taking it off.
You considered the walking billboard angle too huh? I actually wore mine the other day for the first time and got an approving comment about “your Mambo T-shirt”. Now if he could get Natalie Imbruglia to wear it he’d really be getting somewhere.
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Wasn’t the Tennyson slouch and the Hendrix dishcloth all about billboard. Was that not a sign to go billboard. My arms aren’t that pig-like.
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Since b4 I was pregnant. John was trying to coax me up Buffalo pregnant but I pulled the line ‘what if I get high blood pressure?’ to escape.
Enduring the Rees circus? I’ll let you know when I’m going to enter the ring. Not sure whether to where my Pigs Arms t-shirt or not.
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This is meant to go once under Warrigal’s comment at the bottom.
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Maddie , we don’t care. We love your responses where ever they land…
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I saw the headling “Holding reunited with family” and wondered why a west indian cricketer made the headlines, just my penchant for cricket I suppose
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Shame about the cricket. Plenty of openings for Little Warney though.
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Who’s ‘little Warnie’, Madeleine?
😉
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The leggie son of the mother of Little Warney.
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Oh… I see.. that explains everything… clear as mud!
😉
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Hi Madeleine. Can’t think about anything serious but wanted to say acknowledge article. Serious is good, but just doesn’t fit in today.
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Gee, Voice, lucky I was sitting down, you not knowing what to say, outrageous
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Oh Voice, Surely you can come up with a headline to TTP out of a politician?
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Look guys, I could have faked reading the article with a general purpose politician bagging out but I respect you all too much.
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Mars is on the sabian degree “At A Railroad Crossing, An Automobile is Wrecked By A Train” and allowances must be made. It would be terrible if this Mars was conjunct with one’s retrograde natal Mars, and worse still if conjunct with one’s progressed Mars.
We must all make the most of it until the early hours of September 3.
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He’s a politician Madeleine. He may be taking lessons from Putin. You know the sort of thing; hairy chested minister seeks elemental face time, gets himself into some directional dither but comes back to defeat the elements all on his lonesome. Check my rippling pectorals.
The spin will be interesting though don’t you think. Just how did he get lost. We may have to wait for the Fourty Seven Minutes “EXCLUSIVE!!!!!” Of course he’ll donate his fee to some enormously deserving environmental cause, like better signposting in National Parks.
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John Brumby said he was waiting to see how it all comes out in the wash up, and I’m hoping the spin cycle will be fabulous. More fun alive than dead, I say. I don’t know if waiting on a spur in his blue coat before being winched up by his friends the police is exactly defeating the elements, nor rippling pectorals.
I love this event called the Four Peaks, happening over the Melbourne Cup weekend. Mt Porepunkah on Saturday, Mt Feathertop on Sunday, Mt Hotham on Monday, Mt Buffalo on Tuesday. Haven’t done it since the first pregnancy, but great tracks, fully signed.
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Maybe the Four Peaks will be his encore, though heaven forefend that he should get it right the next time and stay lost. Not being part of the Rees circus we’re enduring up here, he’s a poli about whom I know next to nothing. Of course that hasn’t stopped me enjoying the sport.
And you say you tramped up these peaks pregnant! You’re obviously made of sterner stuff and more power to you.
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I reckon you’re right Warrigal; it’s a stunt…
🙂
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