YES, WE HAVE NO BANANAS

Sydney, May 5 NZPA - The newspaper that ran a feature on cooking with bananas this week must have been joking.

Bananas have been in short supply in Australia since Cyclone Larry devastated crops in Queensland in March.

The Australian Government doesn't allow imports, so bananas are not cheap these days.

If you can find them in Sydney supermarkets, they are selling for between $10 and $15 a kilo.

So why the Australian Financial Review thought it was a good idea to have a full-page spread on cooking with bananas in its weekend edition is anyone's guess.

Maybe, an ill-wind has blown in off the fake Pacific tsunami and caused life to go a tad wonky this side of the Tasman. News outlets have run bizarre stories by the baker's dozen.

Food prices are very much on the public's minds, particularly after an interest rate rise that will affect mortgages as families struggle to cope with high fuel -- and banana -- prices.

A survey in Melbourne found the locals benefited from cheap breakfast cereal, tomatoes, cuts of meat and light beer, but had to pay more than other cities for milk and bread, prompting the Herald Sun newspaper to write: Melbourne's a great place for lactose intolerant, light-beer-drinking carnivores who like their sausages without bread.

The major news of the week was the rescue attempt of two miners trapped in a cage at the Beaconsfield mine in Tasmania.

The gloom after one of their colleagues was found dead was replaced with joy when it was learned Brant Webb and Todd Russell were still alive.

As rescue teams painstakingly drilled their way through rock in the hope of reaching them a kilometre underground, on the edge of the mine news anchors for the main television channels preened themselves with makeup before bringing their viewers up to date with the latest news.

There were reports that the channels and magazines were pestering relatives of the miners with big money offers for exclusive interviews.

The Australian newspaper reported a combined magazine, television, book and movie deal could fetch the miners and their families up to $A2 million. But hey let's get them out first.

It was also the week when Private Jake Kovco was finally laid to rest after his death in mysterious circumstances while serving in Iraq.

The federal government was left embarrassed after the contractor it hired to return his body to Australia sent back instead the body of a Bosnia soldier.

If things weren't bad enough for his family, a Channel Nine reporter sent to cover his funeral in Melbourne slipped up by talking about the "wedding" that was about to occur. The flukey wind was affecting Melbourne. A Melbourne man was jailed for six months for belting the grandmother of the groom at a real wedding that spiralled out of control, while Victorian police were hunting for a Bonnie and Clyde couple who were robbing jewellery stores.

Clyde was terrorising store owners with a sawn-off shotgun before escaping with a blonde Bonnie as his getaway driver.

Sporting types struggled with the wafting breeze.

In the Australian Rules match between the Fremantle Dockers and St Kilda, the umpires didn't hear the final siren sound and allowed play to continue, with St Kilda kicking a late goal to draw the game amid scenes of uproar.

The Australian Football League bravely decided that the spirit of the game was more important than the rules and awarded the match to Fremantle. That actually pleased more than it disappointed.

The lead-up to the Australia-New Zealand league test became farcical after some of the Kiwis spoke of retribution on the paddock for Karmichael Hunt, a Cook Islander raised in New Zealand who has decided to play for the Australians.

This "targeting" nonsense upset the sensitive Aussie players and their adoring media. On the back page of the Daily Telegraph blared a headline of "They're a bunch of hypocrites" with mugshots of five members of the Kiwis side who happened to be born in Australia.

Television channels ran breathtaking stories about how Johnathon Thurston, selected in the Australian squad, had knocked back the Kiwis invitation to join their ranks. Hardly news though. He did that two years ago.

In rugby union, former Australian coach Eddie Jones, who will be in charge of the Queensland Super 14 side next season, had to explain his "idiots" remark to his new employers.

Jones told a Sydney radio station that "only idiots repeat failure and that's what's been happening here" but later clarified that he wasn't calling Queensland rugby heads idiots.

"Only idiots repeat failure and I'd be one if I didn't change a whole lot of things in Queensland rugby and that means looking at new players, new attitudes," he told his new bosses. Out in country Victoria, the wind started to swirl around the Warrnambool racecourse.

On Thursday, a barrier malfunction caused a false start to race nine. As some of the horses sprung out of the gates, a barrier attendant was knocked to the ground. He wasn't badly injured but what happened next was really strange.

The red-jacketed clerk of the course was about 50 metres ahead of the gates and about to head back to assist one of the jockeys when the gates sprung open again. She speared her horse across the field, just clearing them in the nick of time. After the race a patron, who looked to have overindulged in food and drink, strutted his stuff on the course, dressed only in black boxer shorts. He showed a keen appreciation of non-rhythmic gymnastics before police decided enough was enough.

You had to go to the Northern Territory to find some normality to life.

In Darwin, publican Bruce Cavenagh was responsible for almost 300 pesky live cane toads being handed in to the RSPCA with his "beer 4 toads" campaign in tandem with a national brewery. Anyone who took a live cane toad, which are considered a noxious pest in the territory, to the SPCA was eligible for up to six free middies of Cooper's beer. Now that's common sense.