Thanks to Malcolm and Jim for the info on Sheath and Knife. What a link!
Jim also wrote "Just when you get around to MacColl as an artist - along comes some eejit and changes the subject" I understand (and often share) the frustration but good conversations can, occasionally, be like that. At the risk of becoming such an eejit I'd like to comment on Big Mick's "Frank's post reminds me again why Lizzie Cornish's title and post are so unfair" with reference to a technique I've observed a couple of times.

In a past life I used to run school camps at Steiglitz, a more or less derelict goldmining town about 60 miles west of Melbourne. It's heyday had started in 1864 and finished in the 1920s and I was one of only three permanent residents. The old bloke living in what had been the pub was the only resident with any time depth and had been extensively interviewed by various people who were interested in the oral history of the area. A brash young fella I'd known while at university went and wrote an article on the history of Steiglitz for the Geelong Advertiser, the nearest thing to a local paper for the area. He included his contact details as part of the article, which I recognised as containing quite a few simple errors. He later told me that he'd been inundated with letters from all sorts of characters who'd previously resisted all contacts from other more local historians but who insisted that they had documentation to correct his mistakes and 'obvious ignorance.'

At the 1990 international conference on cycads held in Townsville attended by the usual academics (and, more unusually, a swag of seed collectors and plant nursery operators with no academic pretensions) I listened to a presentation by a friend of mine who proceeded to tell the audience that he was writing the then the forthcoming chapter on cycads in the "Flora of Australia" and outlined the names and distributions of the species he intended including. I didn't see him for the next day and a half. When he surfaced he commented "seven [or was it "seventeen"] new species and 12 new localities!"

Both were (and still are, I think) great examples of fishing expeditions where a proposition, whether declared subtly as part of a question or, more provocatively, as part of a declaration can elicit useful information. But I'm well aware that, if you don't want to raise hackles, the technique requires more skill than I can muster.

On a topic more closely related to the thread title, perhaps I should tell the story about how Ewan's classes on voice projection affected the tree frogs at Wyong. Unless you've all heard it before.

Cheers, Rowan