“Speaking of cubbies (C8), during our adolescence my cousin and I once hollowed out a neat hideaway deep into the massive haystack on his farm during a prolonged drought,” recalls Tony Hunt of Gordon. “We were perplexed by his father’s volatile reaction when he discovered we were using a hurricane lamp for lighting. Somehow, I don’t think his concern was for the instability of the structure.” Miles Harvey of Newtown recently noticed that “10 News First announced that some ‘undercover officers in high viz vests’ had just conducted a raid in the eastern suburbs. Is that a not perfect example of an oxymoron?” “The story of Caz Willis and friends shepherding the plovers across the road (C8), reminded me of the time when I was driving in the late afternoon on busy Castle Hill Road when, opposite the Anglican Villages, I saw a duck and several ducklings on the kerb to my left,” writes Elaine Siversen of Stanhope Gardens. “I immediately stopped and held up my hand to the approaching traffic. As they began to stop, I moved to the centre to stop the traffic coming the other way. Every car stopped and waited patiently for the duck and her little brood to cross. Oh, the power of it still thrills me, but it also still gives me a warm fuzzy feeling when I think of those little creatures.” Mark Roufeil (C8) isn’t the only reader to undertake sport sponsorship on the golf course: “The local funeral director has sponsored a hole at our course in Dungog,” notes local linksman Greg Mudie. “We have facetiously nicknamed that hole ‘Amen Corner’.” “Came across this on a bowling green in Arrowtown, New Zealand,” says Judy Brown of Carlingford. “Arrowtown Funeral Parlour. For all those dead ends. Phone 0800 game over.”