Racism in Australia

Australia is a tolerant nation. We are also the most diverse and multicultural nation on the face of the planet. At least, we are when looking at our predominantly urban society rather than our somewhat homogenous rural townships and settlements. Tolerance is a start, but tolerance does not equate to understanding and compassion for our fellow homo-sapiens. Indeed, the majority of us will tolerate new arrivals to our country, but only conditionally, and we certainly won't consider embracing such arrivals until those conditions are met. 

You're welcome to come to Australia, but you had better look white, sound white and/or love mainstream white culture. If not, then you'd best get your alien arse to one of our concentration camps on either the mainland or Christmas Island, until you at least reconsider your fashion sense, taste in religion, skin tan and accent.

Sadly, if you don't fit the requirements of being an Australian, but are already here, having migrated to Australia 60,000 years ago at a time too early for restrictions to have been put in place, then quite clearly you are a problem. Your very existence is an inconvenience to the mainstream who have over the past 200+ years tried to build up a history of great exploration, endeavor and accomplishment. The fact that your ancestors showed explorers the routes to take and where to find nourishment, and that the agricultural industry was built on your people's backs is not a matter to be discussed! It's not about you, it's about everyone else, and the sooner that you realize this or vanish from the face of the Earth, the better.

For you, as an Aboriginal person, you are to be expected to cop any negative comments on the chin, and go about being in the background, adding a slight, inoffensive, easily removed touch of colour to the decor. Step over this mark though and be prepared to be demonized incessantly. You're here to be on postcards, on tourist trails and work on remote cattle stations, nothing more.

To be Aboriginal in Australia, you must accept that it's perfectly OK to have your heritage dissected and labelled. Nigger, boong, abo, darkie, Full blood, half caste, quadroon; all are perfectly acceptable. You're also going to have to live with an occasional comment where if you have enough European heritage in your ancestry that you're fair game to be considered "not reaaaally an Aborigine", and this will especially be so should your skin be fair, hair be red, or your eyes blue - even if your siblings exhibit few if any of these traits, whilst sharing the same pair of parents, or that your children are dark despite both parents being fair! 

An as an Aboriginal person you are to be open to pseudo anthropological analysis from academics and layman alike. Get used to living in a fish bowl, because it's not your feelings that matter. They don't and they never did.

Yes, Australians are sensitive at times, but only to the needs of their own slices of life and those who inhabit the sphere they traverse on a daily basis. Self depreciation is an important part of being an Australian, but not as important as being swift in destroying those that differ from the Anglo-Celtic roadmap, or anyone who is an achiever, for that matter. 

In Australia you can call a person any name you like. You may even combine issues of abuse and go for a multi tasked assault and rip to shred any retarded nigger dyke you care to! Because in this country it isn't the feelings of those hurt that matters. It's the feelings of those making the abusive comments that matter! What's great about this setup is that it absolves the perpetrator of any and all responsibility for their actions! Fantastic, huh?

A 5 year old Australian child may insult their playmates with all manner of abusive terminology acquired from overhearing one's parents and other adult role models, and because they lack an understanding for their actions, their actions may freely be seen only as rude, and not racist, sexist or condescendingly brutal at all. It's so easy, try it yourself! Find an easy target, insult them in public, and because you don't understand the history of the word you've utilised, and aren't familiar with the baggage associated with such derogatory and oppressive behavior you'll be given complete social immunity and you'll be free to resume where you left off, if only on a slightly lower key. If anything, the media will give you sympathy and consider you to be the victim for being called out for your actions!

But if the Aboriginal people should ever raise an eyebrow to past injustices, never fear, there's an in-built safety mechanism. It's called the reverse racism discussion. You see, with this particular device, White people may go even further to insult and degrade, for the moment that a question of racism is raised, one can simply invoke this option and begin a spiel justifying all comments, based only on perceived benefits that Aboriginal people receive from the government, that are beyond those that white people receive. Should a white person have ever experienced an insult from a black person, or know of someone who did, then all bets are off. It's time to take a free penalty shot. For all Aboriginals are to be labelled pedophiles and lazy, leeching, drunkards. Huzzuh! Hell, you might even like to introduce your friends in the US entertainment industry to portray Aboriginal people as being primitives in the occasional sitcom one-liner! The possibilities are endless!!

And what benefits might you invoke in your defense to accompany your broad generalized insults? Well, certain educational and health care benefits, which some might dare to say were instituted to attempt to address the downsides to being black in a Anglo-Celtic run nation. But let's not speak of such down sides.

Let's never mention THE FACTS.

Blog changes

Why I rarely post on this blog these days..


I'm the sort of person who can't help collecting. I have a mass of hobbies and interests, and I need to be able to categorize and sort those obsessions into ways of processing information that fit with my own particular style. A prime example of this is how I treated my toy box as a small child. I would tip all of my toys onto the floor quite happily, in order to find that one specific action figurine that I wanted to play with, but when it came time to pick everything up, I would then place everything back into the box in an orderly, considered fashion. Everything had to go back in a way that made sense to me, so that next time I would be able to find it, even if the box would still look like a random pile to most others.

I still prefer  things to be done my way, but I'm OK with alternatives. Another example being that when I was in my teens I often had a messy bedroom. This was because I wanted my possessions to be laid out and displayed in a way that would allow them to be easily sorted. I would have preferred to have had a room full of shelves and cupboards, but without those options, the floor and other areas were a poor, but logical substitute.

So what does this have to do with my blog? Well, put simply, I've occasionally started blogs in the past, only to give up after 2 or 3 posts. I've found however that in running 4 or more blogs, as I am currently, I am much more inclined to keep up with my posting. This is because it allows me to sort my thoughts into categories of major interest, and not throw them all together in the one location, where to my way of thinking - it's a random mess. It's simply not focused enough for how I like things to be done.

To get around the problem of sorting, I've been thinking about the potential for this blog to become more of an organized reflection of myself, perhaps in a way that many blogs are already organized, via everything being tagged and thus categorized automatically. The idea, which I'm certain has been done before, and probably quite often (despite my lack of knowledge for examples) is to order my blog as I would a model of how I'd imagine (wrongly) that my brain is organized. That instead of tags being the product of my writing, more often than not I will find my writing being influenced by a set of tags, to map my brain and my thoughts on an array of subjects as wide and varied as humanity itself.

Whilst I have no grand vision for this blog being anything more than the typical online journal or blog, I do expect that my writing from this point on, on this blog at least, will leave me very exposed and open to debate, if not insult. Which is a problem, given that generally I am a rather measured and guarded person in how I portray myself, and in what I allow to be public domain.

I don't mean this to sound as though I am going to be making any peculiar revelations in this blog, but in the process of offering opinion, and more opinion, I am bound to alienate all readers at one point or another in the future. Which is simply the nature of interpreting opinion. The more you speak, the tighter the odds become for disagreement in opinion.

OK, so having said this..   do I rename the blog?

PfffFFfFFffttttttttttt

Achtung ladies!!

Why is it that when a woman farts on a train, and I'm surrounded only by women, those who choose to look for a culprit will indelibly choose to focus upon the only male within cheese-cutting distance?

Listen very carefully, for I shall say this only once:

Chicks fart. They are just a lot sneakier about it.

Sydney v Melbourne

I've been living in Melbourne now for close to 2 years. I've enjoyed the transition and all the changes I've made to my life a great deal. It's been a pretty wild ride.

in the processes of change, I've gained an insight into the differences between people an environs in New South Wales and Victoria and to what makes them so different. Sydney is a fast paced city with perhaps a million too many people. It's public transport system is a joke, with buses being a last resort and trains being an irregular inconvenience. Despite Melbourne having a better public transport infrastructure, Sydney actually has better trains. They hold more people due to on average having more carriages and two decks as opposed to Melbourne's one. Packed trains in Sydney aren't uncommon, but in Melbourne it's often very hard to even find space in which to stand at peak hour.

Sydney is Australia's sports capital, regardless of what Melbournians are told to think, thanks primarily to the diversity of sporting interests and saturation of team sports franchises. A swag of rugby league clubs in the NRL, pro soccer clubs, rugby union and AFL. Melbourne is perhaps better classed as Australia's 'events capital'.

Sydney loses out in the pollution stakes. Melbourne is a greener city, with more environmentally minded people actively taking an interest in their city and its future. Its air is clean but its water quality is on par with Sydney's, where on a typical day the humidity in tandem with the pollution can leave a person not yet accustomed to its weather systems with a feeling of greasy, grimy, discomfort.

Media-wise, both cities have it quite poor. Melbournians are the most insecure of all Australians. References to Sydney and a need to prove any form of superiority abound, and to an outsider not allied to either city it's very tiring and at times very irritating. Sydney-siders on the other hand couldn't care less, happy in their lot regardless of how other cities perceive them.

It's perhaps a result of such parochial feelings that the Melbourne media is absolutely saturated with Victorian rules football coverage. It's their game, and the media does everything it can to sideline any perceived threats, particularly from the likes of rugby league - not what one might expect from a city proclaiming itself the national sporting capital.

Women in Melbourne are generally thinner, paler, and smoke more than those in Sydney. I'm not really sure why, but Victorians seem to be absolutely petrified of the sun. Kids are taught that exposure to the sun is a terrible thing, are covered up at all times, and for this reason kids in Melbourne on average have weaker bones than those in Sydney, even if the children in Sydney take the reverse too far and have more skin cancers.

Men on the other hand tend to be taller and much weedier. Perhaps this is due to body-shape aspirations of Melbourne men being that of Vic rules footballers, and basketballers whereas men in Sydney seem to carry frames that are less metrosexual and/or child-like. There are exceptions to both rules of course.

Melbourne is insular. It's all about Melbourne. Sydney is outward looking, save for the fact that it is so aggressively tribal along social lines. Sydneysiders will happily travel across the globe and promote their city as an international hub, but you're much less likely to find someone from the Eastern fringe venturing into deepest, darkest Western Sydney, which may be the most foreign land of all. Western Sydney residents on the other hand are far more inclined to venture to the East of the city, but they will certainly point out how poorly they think of their Eastern neighbours once having gone there.

Culturally, Melbourne is a lot richer than Sydney. It's music, visual arts and live events are a rich tapestry. In Sydney they are more of an afterthought. Perhaps Sydney makes up for this in its own odd way, by being so utterly dominant when it comes to the Australian finance and business sector.

Misconceptions about Sydney from Melbournians aren't as common as those they hold about New South Wales as a whole. Melbournians have a weird, incredibly skewed view of NSW based on their limited experiences of travel to Sydney, and to Queensland via the Newell Highway. Every year Victorians head to Queensland in droves, looking for sunshine and great holidays, and in the process if driving they travel via the Newell Highway through the back of NSW. They see small dying towns, parched, endless flat paddocks, straight roads dominated by trucks and are then given to the idea that all of New South Wales is just as boring. They drive past everything that New South Wales has in common with Queensland without ever knowing it. Most people in NSW would prefer to keep it that way too.

Misconceptions about Melbourne from Sydneysiders are focused primarily on the occasional latest boasts coming out of Victoria and on the weather. It's a generally held belief by New South Welshmen that Victoria and Melbourne has the worst weather imaginable. Cold days, endless grey skies and incessant rain are the keys to this theory, and each of them are generally wide of the mark. Winter in Melbourne is very cold, and at times can approach those seen in the Blue Mountains of NSW, but Summer is perhaps a more pleasant experience in Victoria than it is in Sydney. Indeed, blue skies are not rare, even if muggy, sweaty days are. As for rain, the reality is that Sydney actually receives more rainfall that Melbourne, only that in Victoria it falls for longer, in a light, somewhat innocent drizzle. In Sydney the rain is more often driving, falls in bucket loads and is a worth planning weekends around, whereas in Melbourne you just go ahead anyway, because you'll barely notice it.

Perhaps the only real ugly side to Melbourne so far is its racism. A black man like my father can walk the streets of Sydney without even the slightest raised eyebrow. In Melbourne, perhaps due to the rarity of Victorian Aboriginal people, my dad becomes somewhat of a sideshow, and people in Melbourne have shown absolutely no shame with how they will stare, rudely at a person in the street, for being different. Going to the mall in Melbourne for an Aboriginal man with dark skin is a confronting matter, and it's really no wonder that people of Indian heritage are being murdered in the numbers here that they are.

I'm enjoying my time in Melbourne, and despite it being once a home to both my parents and grandfather, I really can't see myself forming any real attachment to the place, any more than I might to Sydney where both my parents were born. I'll be here a fair few more years, but in time I'll look forward to getting back - out of the rat race.

I'm a Dad!

Well, I'm a Dad.. again! I was already a stepfather to a charming young man by the name of Ethan, but now my first born has arrived to join our happy band.

Tiriki was born 21 January, 2010. He arrived at 12:10pm, weighing in at 8lb 10oz, stretching to 51cm in length.

So far my lad has settled in well, and his brother has adjusted to his new sibling very well. I'm so very glad for that. Some work went into it, but it does seem that there is a natural bond, and that will only grow, at least until perhaps they have to share some toys, haha.

My wife is doing well, and is mobile again, and it was nice having my folks in town for the birth. They were here a full month, after having arrived early, due to some false signs. They have now returned home however, as of yesterday morning.

Funnily enough, my Dad didn't get home in the amount of time he had planned, having instead pulled over for two hours, to give a radio interview about his boxing career. How the program got his number we don't know, but it sounds like he had a lot of fun doing it.

D-Day

10th of Jan, 2010, 7:04pm. My child is due to arrive in less than 5 hours. Despite telling it to get out, that its rent is due, so far there is little movement at the station and it refuses to join us out here in a world that isn't so cramped. This matter makes a mockery of the fact that both my wife and I thought that our little one would be joining us about a week earlier. So much for that!

My folks are getting very bored I am sure. They came down to Melbourne from the Blue Mountains, with the suggestion that my wife was very close to giving birth. We thought wrong. So, we're in the middle of a heat wave and my folks are bored, in a strange city, locked in-doors with their son and his family, and unsure as to how to entertain themselves. Avatar was yesterday's suggestion. They caught the train to the suburb with the nearest cinema complex, and upon their return told us instead of how they had found the nearest poker machine palace.

For the record, they spent little, and came away empty handed. Hopefully, their luck will improve and they will get to see their grand child arrive, prior to leaving on the 15th for the renewal of their car registration!

Happy New Year

A new year and changes are afoot. Baby Patten is due any time now. Which is good, because it was only last week that we got the name sorted out (that being related to asking permission to use the name, a tribal one).

My folks are here, staying with us for the birth of the baby. It's good to have them here, I do miss their company, living as I do a full day's travel by car from them.