Get online to Google. Go to Google News and search the following words: “Bendigo + ice”.

Here’s some of the headlines you’ll get.

“Ice challenge leaves editors out in the cold.”

“Bendigo public gathers to learn about destructive effects of ice on the brain.”

“Bendigo police support ice sniffer dogs.”

“Bendigo police do ice challenge.”

It must be so confusing for someone who just stepped off a slow boat from Afghanistan or anywhere else. 

On one hand we have our leaders and worthies drenching themselves in ice, and on the other we have our leaders vowing to wipe out the ice plague.

Ice has become both a matter of fun and funds at the same time as it is becoming an absolute destructive scourge.

But can we please spare some sympathetic thoughts for the people who manage and staff Bendigo Ice, who proudly advertise they have for years been the suppliers of pure ice to pubs, clubs, restaurants, service clubs and special functions...

Calling Hisenz

If you once signed yourself “Hisenz” and came to Bendigo from the NSW Central Coast, let us know how you’re getting on.

DTM just stumbled across a long online chat from a while back in which Hisenz was thinking of taking a job at the Bendigo Hospital and asked people what Bendigo was like.

Some responses were at best entertaining and at worst bloody annoying.

Such as: “There’s no sea near Bendigo.” And “The water’s salty.” Part of Bendigo was described as “bogan”, which really got up the nose of one contributor who said his mum lived there and she was very nice.

One reminded people that Bendigo had been named the Hoon Capital, to which another responded that surely they mixed us up with Moe, which apparently everyone knew was an anagram for Moccies On Everyone.

Lots of locals jumped online to try to keep the dialogue accurate, while others tried to reassure Hisenz that the Calder was not “bumper to bumper” all the way to Melbourne.

At least someone was able to reassure him that prices were not “double what they are on the coast” and that, yep, we actually have them newfangled supermarket thingummies.

So, what happened Hisenz? Did you do it or not? Let us know.

Future customers

Nice to see that smoking is to be banned at the entrances to schools, hospitals and some government buildings soon.

In recent years, DTM had reason to make use of the wonderful services at the Bendigo Hospital’s cancer unit, in the Kurmala Wing, and it seemed particularly confronting to have to hold one’s breath and stride through clouds of smoke from people standing right on the entrance boundary.

A friend who worked in the Oncology Unit used to threaten to tack a sign to the gate: “Morning Smokers: See you soon.”