It showed Victoria had the fastest population growth rate in Australia at 1.8 per cent and that in the past year we’d grown by more than 100,000 – which is like adding another Bendigo to the state in one year!

Also, during this week’s Separation Day commemorations – marking the separation of Victoria from NSW on July 1, 1851 - it was said that the entire Victorian population when we became a state was just 77,000. That’s about 10,000 less than the current population of Central Bendigo.

Secret gold

Actually, the Separation Day should be better known in Bendigo following the exposure this week of why we split from NSW.

Three months after we split, the Victorian Government revealed that massive gold deposits had been found … some months earlier.

We’re still small

Australia now has about 23.6 million people and this seems to have sparked an odd call from one or two in Canberra for the creation of more states on this continent, including one with (ahem) Ballarat as its capital.

Really, though, in world terms Australia’s entire population is still less than the Indian city of Karachi and much less than China’s Shanghai.

Lollies mourned

And, of course, we should not overlook the biggest story of the week: Allen’s won’t make any more spearmint leaves or green frog lollies.

Social media went volcanic at the news and ABC radio devoted an entire 10 minutes to a discussion with Queensland’s “Lolly Doctor” Dr Toni Risson who studied lollies for her PhD.

She reckoned the reaction wasn’t about the lollies, but about a company allegedly messing with people’s childhood memories.

The lolly industry, she said, was “a never-ending tale of loss.”

But she warned the industry there may well be national pandemonium if anyone tried to ditch Jaffas. They’re sacred. Not because of the taste but of the memories of a generation of kids trying to cripple theatre ushers by rolling them down the aisles.

Start with a bang

Wonder what happened to the Daylesford Gift athletics event?

If the Sporting Globe reports of the first event, 63 years ago are any indication, the second one possibly never got off the starting blocks.

The Globe’s man on the sport reported it seemed the event was run by the Marx Brothers.

The official state athletics starter didn’t turn up and 40 minutes later, a handicapper was conscripted to be the starter – using a single-barrel shotgun and some cartridges.

They quickly ran out of cartridges and began cutting some in half and trying to recycle them, but the complaints came that they sounded like cheap crackers and half the runners couldn’t hear it.

Bells and gongs were tried and rejected.

So, they found some more live shotgun cartridges, one of which blew up the gun, badly damaging the handicapper’s hand (no pun intended) and he was carted to hospital in Bendigo.

Bye bye, losers

We went out for a bit of a recreational drive around central Victoria the other day and were passed by some friends in a nifty sports car.

Later that day, a photo turned up on our smartphone.

It was taken through the passing car’s side mirror … onto which a small sticker had been placed.

“Objects in this mirror are LOSING.”