When Charlie Mclennan and sons George and Bill went to get a COVID test at Cessnock Hospital, they decided to dress up.
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"The nurses have been copping it for a long time. They're having some really hard days. I expect they'll have harder days ahead," Charlie said.
"I said, 'let's get dressed up and give them a giggle and brighten their day'."
Charlie and George dressed as Richie Benaud. Bill wore a keg outfit.
"We're actually part of the Richies. We go to the SCG for day 2 every year for the test match [known as Richie Day], so we already had those outfits," Charlie said.
And Bill, well, we suspect he just likes beer.
When the trio went through the drive-through testing site, the nurses cracked up laughing.
"They were having a really good giggle. The whole aim was to create positivity and joy. When we got there, they said 'that's the best thing that's happened to us all day' and 'you've made our day'."
The nurses were wearing face masks, but their eyes were smiling.
"They were so happy. They were taking photos as well," Charlie said.
"It was such a good feeling in these times where there's so much negativity and everyone is fighting over what's right and wrong. It was good to put politics aside and do something nice."
When she got home, Charlie created a Facebook group called "Fancy Dress For Your Test".
"I've put the challenge out for others to do the same. We want people to get dressed up in their fancy dress. They've got nothing else to do, they're not going out. It might give them a bit of a laugh," she said.
Burning The Land
In the Herald's news pages on Monday, we reported that cultural burns were "making a comeback in the Hunter".
Laurie Perry, chief executive of the Singleton-based Wonnarua Nation Aboriginal Corporation, calls them "cool burns".
"The practice of burning country has been happening for thousands of years," Mr Perry said.
When Charlestown's Laurie Bowman, 84, read the story, he was blasted back to his past.
As a boy, Laurie lived at West Wallsend.
"A neighbour - Harold Blanch - worked for Coal and Allied cutting pit props," he said.
"He worked all around Minmi, Stockrington and part of the Sugarloaf range. He'd go through and cull out the scrubby stuff and leave every straight sapling to grow. He would cut the props that were ready to go and stack them against a tree.
"He'd make a track for the truck to come in and load them. I worked with him sometimes in my early teens.
"When he was finished in an area, he'd chuck a match here and there. It was quite a regular thing then - I'm talking 70 years ago - to see little quiet fires going in the middle of winter."
