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by Ian Rogers US Grandmaster Timur Gareyev may have walked away with the coveted Doeberl Cup at the Southern Cross Club in Woden on Monday, but his co-winner James Morris had plenty to be happy about. The 23-year-old Melbourne International Master not only shared $6,500 with Gareyev and increased his world ranking, but also catapulted himself into contention for Australia’s team at the Batumi Chess Olympiad in September. Morris is one of three players in their mid-20s battling for the final two places in the team and his form this year has been imptressive. His performance at the Doeberl Cup was half a point more than needed to secure a Grandmaster norm, but once again he missed out for technical reasons. In 2016 Morris played one foreigner too few and in 2018 one Grandmaster too few for his result to be registered by the world body FIDE. This Easter Morris needed only to be drawn with the top seed, Chinese GM Ma Qun, in the final round to have played
ph: (02) 6685 1444 the requisite number of GMs. However, the computer-generated pairings gave Morris untitled Mu Ke as his final opponent and the GM ‘norm’ was then unachievable. Morris might even have won the Doeberl Cup outright had he taken his chances in the fifth round. Playing White in the diagrammed position against NSW’s Igor Bjelobrk, Morris played: 71.f4!! and Bjelobrk realised that a winning check was coming. He decided to play one more move before resigning, 71...Ra4 and then Morris, thinking that almost any move won, carelessly played 72.Kg5??, instead of 72.Kh3, and after 72...exf4 73.Re8+ Kd2 74.a8Q Rxa8 75.Rxa8 f3 76.Kf4 f2 77.Ra2+ Ke1 78.Ke3 f1N+! 79.Kd3 Ng3 Morris realised he was no longer winning. The game was drawn 25 moves later.
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Over-wintering with the trumpeter swans
12 April 11, 2018 The Byron Shire Echo
The call of spring
Story & image David Lisle
Every morning shortly after sunrise the swans fly past our cabin. Their arrival is heralded by a great resonant trumpeting – they are Cygnus buccinator or trumpeter swans. The unmistakeable exclamation of this most expressive fowl provides the opportunity to race to the window and observe these majestic birds. Trumpeter swans have brilliant white plumage and slow powerful wingbeats. In flight their long necks crane forward, and with wings to the rear, they resemble the Concorde. They approach from the north in bevies of two, three, four, or sometimes even seven, and land in the field between us and a patch of dark forest harbouring a creek. On final descent, triangular feet the size of dinner plates appear, swaying vigorously to provide lateral control, like ailerons on aircraft wings. The swans spend their days foraging for succulent green vegetation in the shadow of Mount Washington.
Man’s greed
White to play and win
netdaily.net.au
The trumpeter is the world’s largest swan and north America’s largest wa-
terfowl. They have wingspans of two metres and weigh up to thirteen kilograms. The deep trumpet-like call thatemerges from their looped trachea closely resembles the French horn. Trumpeter swans came alarmingly close to extinction. In the early 1930s their population is believed to have dropped below two hundred. Although they had always provided sustenance to native peoples, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries human greed and vanity nearly got the better of the trumpeters. For 125 years the Hudson’s Bay Company shot them for their skins and feathers — fashion accessories for ‘the ladies of Europe’. The noted early American ornithologist John James Audubon – who shot thousands of birds and delicately impaled them on wires in lifelike poses in order to illustrate his celebrated book The Birds of America – preferred the hard, elastic trumpeter quills for drawing fine detail in the feet and claws of small birds. Vigorous conservation
efforts helped trumpeter populations rebound, although human chauvinism means they remain vulnerable to an array of threats. Vancouver Island is a favoured over-wintering site for the trumpeters. Like us, they’ve been here for months. There are many special birds around the Comox Valley – ravens, bald eagles, great blue herons, Canada geese, and with the onset of spring, hummingbirds and swallows – but we feel a connection to the trumpeters. We first met them last summer up in their Alaskan breeding grounds. They nest in the endless expanse of boreal forest among lakes and dams, often atop beaver lodges or muskrat pile-ups. Perched on tangles of sticks and rushes these huge glistening birds present a magnificent spectacle. The cygnets feast on the abundant mosquitoes and other insects and fly about one hundred days after hatching. Families commence the southward migration in late fall when the breeding grounds start to ice up.
continued from page 13 agenda. That in turn means that I then get another chance to raise the issue by complaining about staff evasiveness. Ken Gainger hated this, and in the last four months of his tenure, in my opinion in contravention of the code, Council refused to publish staff responses in the agenda – which denied the second opportunity to raise the issue. Mr James’s report seeks to formalise this evasion by changing things so that answers to questions appear only in the minutes, not in the next agenda. The minutes of Council meetings are documents that almost no-one ever reads. In other words, Mr James’s efforts do not reduce councillors’ loads but do preserve the staff hegemony over informa-
tion and protect the staff from accountability. There will be less opportunity for people like Matthew and me to tell councillors what the staff should be, but are not, telling them. Fast Buck$ Coorabell
Illegal holidays
Byron Shire Council has recently updated their website about illegal short-term holiday letting (STHL). Council state that complaints include: ‘Prohibited development in residential areas; loss of neighbourhood amenity; noise and antisocial behaviour, particularly from late-night parties; excessive numbers of people and cars; parking that may block driveways or impede visibility and traffic movement; excess or
This morning a dozen swans, trumpeting madly, flew in from the north directly over our cabin, performed an arc around the field, and then set off northward. It was an unusual manoeuvre. Two swans grazing in the field became extremely vocal and with frantic wingbeats gradually drew themselves aloft, climbed out of the meadow, and belatedly joined the wedge. The fourteen gained height and continued north. I watched them for a long time as they grew ever smaller, eventually becoming specks and disappearing. They will not return until next winter. I felt bereft, abandoned by our winter companions. Now only a few stragglers remain. Like the trumpeter swan, the bicycle nomad is a migratory species. Winter is rapidly becoming spring, the snow has shrunk from the valley, and the swan herd is headed north to their breeding grounds. We are also desperate to leave on our summer migration – through the Inside Passage by ferry and then on through the Yukon and up the Dempster Highway to the settlement of Tuktoyaktuk, deep within the Arctic circle on the Beaufort Sea. We would have been long gone had Vix not crashed her bike and broken her collarbone. Now we are feeling acute Zugunruhe – a German compound word referring to migratory restlessness. This expression of the migratory instinct manifests as anxious, restless behaviour in captive birds who are prevented from migrating. The north is calling, and in a week we’ll be gone. Free. poorly managed garbage.’ ‘Housing affordability and stock has also became an issue with houses being purchased specifically for holiday letting reducing the available stock in the rental market.’ Council is currently using a number of options to prosecute illegal holiday letting. On Council’s webpage there is a tab to report problems with illegal holiday letting. You do not have to tolerate this damage. Doug Luke Co-ordinator VOHL
Cost of rail and trail
Walking the disused railway line by Paul Bibby (Echo April 4) is just another glossy promotional piece from the rail trail movement. continued on page 14
Byron Shire Echo archives: www.echo.net.au/byron-echo