{"id":119,"date":"2007-03-03T03:23:00","date_gmt":"2007-03-02T17:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pbw.id.au\/blog\/uncategorized\/about-the-muddle-headed-wombat\/"},"modified":"2018-05-22T22:10:35","modified_gmt":"2018-05-22T12:10:35","slug":"about-the-muddle-headed-wombat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2007\/03\/about-the-muddle-headed-wombat\/","title":{"rendered":"About The Muddle-headed Wombat …"},"content":{"rendered":"

… of fond memory. Memory of the Argonauts’ Club, primarily.<\/p>\n

The Children’s Session<\/i>, with its Argonauts Club, ran briefly in Melbourne in 1933-34, and was revived as a national program in 1941. By 1950 there were over 50 000 Club members. The Club encouraged children’s contributions of writing, music, poetry or art and was one of the ABC’s most popular children’s programs, running six days a week for 28 years, until it was broadcast only on Sundays and was finally discontinued in 1972.
\n<\/span>(From History of ABC Radio<\/b><\/span><\/span><\/a>)<\/p>\n

Sadly, I can’t find much more information on the wondrous Argonauts’ Club. The crew of the Argo<\/span> were named in Greek mythology; membership of the Argonauts’ Club meant being assigned the name of one of the Argo<\/span>‘s crew and a number. When crew-members’ contributions were lauded, it would be Asterion 37, or Iphiclus 142, who received the accolade. I was a member, name, rank and serial number long forgotten, with ambitions of receiving the 10 shilling (or whatever) postal note for the story I had written. That ambition languished with the others.<\/p>\n

One of the segments of The Children’s Session<\/span> was The Muddle-Headed Wombat<\/span>. Ruth Park subsequently published a number of books about the Wombat and his friends, but I never saw them. What I remembered, from the program as a whole, and more particularly from the Wombat<\/span>, was a voice. Years later, I heard it again in a T.V. program. Wikipedia tells me that the voice I was able to put a name to was that of Jimmie<\/a>. For some reason, I always associated it more with the Wombat<\/span> than any other character in the series.<\/p>\n

Vale<\/span> John Ewart. And here’s to the lost idea that exposure to the Classics was an essential part of the enterprise of raising men and women; lost as the idea that the raising of children is itself a glorious enterprise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… of fond memory. Memory of the Argonauts’ Club, primarily. The Children’s Session, with its Argonauts Club, ran briefly in Melbourne in 1933-34, and was revived as a national program in 1941. By 1950 there were over 50 000 Club members. The Club encouraged children’s contributions of writing, music, poetry or art and was one … Continue reading “About The Muddle-headed Wombat …”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-observations"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8SCfl-1V","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":91,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2008\/04\/cathedral-after-midnight\/","url_meta":{"origin":119,"position":0},"title":"Cathedral, after midnight","author":"pbw","date":"Mon 7th Apr '08","format":false,"excerpt":"Let's go back a decade, more or less. Find, in memory, some Friday night. After midnight, the Victory gradually quietens down. The groups of drunken kids wandering from pub to club along Charlotte Street, begin thin out. Wander up the ramp from the footpath into the grounds of St Stephen's,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Observations"","block_context":{"text":"Observations","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/personal\/observations\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1005,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2021\/04\/the-urgent-need-for-quotas\/","url_meta":{"origin":119,"position":1},"title":"The Urgent Need For Quotas","author":"admin","date":"Wed 7th Apr '21","format":false,"excerpt":"Published at Catallaxy Files on 30\/03\/2021 I was always opposed to the idea of quotas for women in Parliament. I operated under the delusion, not so much that selection on merit was a better idea, but that selection on merit could actually occur. Given the selection processes for the major\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Catallaxy Files"","block_context":{"text":"Catallaxy Files","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/publications\/catallaxy-files\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1404,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2026\/08\/proprioceptive-ghosts\/","url_meta":{"origin":119,"position":2},"title":"Proprioceptive Ghosts","author":"Me","date":"Mon 31st Aug '26","format":false,"excerpt":"Published at The Orthosphere on the 28th August, 2026. A name would not come to me. The name of a poet, Australian, Catholic, a writer of the verses of many hymns. Memory surrendered the composer of the music after a brief struggle\u2014Richard Connolly\u2014but the poet's name it would not cough\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Introspection"","block_context":{"text":"Introspection","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/personal\/introspection\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":90,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2008\/09\/anxiety-burnout\/","url_meta":{"origin":119,"position":3},"title":"Anxiety burnout","author":"pbw","date":"Wed 24th Sep '08","format":false,"excerpt":"Looking at the posting dates, I see that it has been nearly 6 months since the last. I descended into a pit of work-related anxiety, and now \u2014 well, it's not that I have overcome the anxiety; more that I am getting sick of it, and need to do something\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Introspection"","block_context":{"text":"Introspection","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/personal\/introspection\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":85,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2011\/11\/socrates-daemon\/","url_meta":{"origin":119,"position":4},"title":"Socrates’ Daemon","author":"pbw","date":"Sun 13th Nov '11","format":false,"excerpt":"If you start to read Xenephon's\u00a0The Memorable Thoughts of Socrates on your Kindle, or Kindle reader on PC or Mac, you will encounter in Book 1, Chapter 1, the following passage: What, in my opinion, gave his accusers a specious pretext for alleging against him that he introduced new deities\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Belief & knowledge"","block_context":{"text":"Belief & knowledge","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/belief\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":118,"url":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/2007\/10\/dad-died\/","url_meta":{"origin":119,"position":5},"title":"Dad died.","author":"pbw","date":"Sat 6th Oct '07","format":false,"excerpt":"Dad died on Tuesday the 22nd of May. He had a fall in the nursing home, where he was under house arrest due to his dementia, or, to be more precise, his inability to remember short to medium term events. He would wander, and lose track of the time and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Family"","block_context":{"text":"Family","link":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/category\/personal\/family\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":610,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119\/revisions\/610"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pbw.id.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}