GEOGRAPHICAL FEEDBACK

In last month's edition, we reported that an aboriginal widow living in a small town in the Western Australian outback had won $15 million in a Powerball lottery. In Scotland, we said, the Glasgow Herald had headed the story "Million-Ayer's Rock for £6m Oz Lotto Gran."

Adrian Martin, from Hobart, in Tasmania (Australia's island State), sent us this email:

Wow, that Glasgow newspaper's geography is still off the beam. Ayers Rock (correct name now Uluru) is about as close to Western Australia as Glasgow is to Zurich.
Way back in 1967, after we'd suffered a bushfire that killed 63 Tasmanians, a Glasgow newspaper reported that the island's population had been evacuated by a US submarine.

No-one knows how they got hold of that gem. Tasmania, about the same size as Scotland, has a population of 470,000.

And two readers from Western Australia questioned Queensland's claim that Lamingtons cakes were named after Lord Lamington, the Queensland Governor (who called them "those bloody, poofy woolly biscuits").

Eric Chamberlain wrote:

I grew up on the Kalgoorlie goldfields. The story there is a lady in the corner store invented Lamingtons, about 1895/97. There is now a suburb of Kalgoorlie called Lamington.

John Minagall wrote:

Your article about Lamington will no doubt disappoint the good people of Lamington, which I think is a suburb of Kalgoorlie. If my memory serves me correctly a local baker might have a good claim to the invention of the humble lamington."