Okay, so it happened 13 years ago and most of us missed it, but devout Bendigonian, Rob Stephenson, has alerted us to this appalling snub.

Rob is head of campus at La Trobe Uni Bendigo and is officially Not To Be Mucked About With.

He bought a copy of Australian travel writer John Baxter’s 2005 book We’ll Always Have Paris which explores how people travel to Paris in pursuit of love and a bit of a frolic between the sheets.

On page 308 Baxter talks about love-making in Parisian films and how people managed to control their, err, physical reactions while the cameras were rolling.

Peter Finch once said he closed his eyes and thought of England.

The author said to an actress he was discussing this with: “Je suis … umm, Australien.” I am Australian.

She replied: “Oh … I live zere for one year.”

“Really?” he says. “Where?”

“Bendigo.”

Baxter writes: “That did the trick. I defy anyone to be sexually aroused while thinking of Bendigo.”

+++

There could be a blip in Bendigo’s birthrate in April 2019. The power went out for a few suburbs this week.

Powercor swiftly sent out a text to about 1100 households, saying it was aware of the problem, was working on it, and hoped to have the power back on by 9.30pm.

Soon after 8pm, the power came back on and Powercor sent around another text saying it had been restored, but if any households still had problems, they should check their power-boards and let Powercor know.

We were pretty impressed with their communications, so we thought we’d send them a text back saying: Well done, and thank you.

However, it seems the digital system doesn’t like compliments and – in paraphrased textese – it said: No-one’s reading this text. No one will reply to you. Go away or, if you don’t like it, then here’s how to un-subscribe.