Yeaster: The time of the year when we celebrate the savage ritual killing of a man with a yeast infection, 200 years ago, by a horde of brown rabbits adorned in brightly coloured battle armour. As a tribute to their savage successes in battle we celebrate by eating their unborn young.
The life cycle of the Easter Bunny is perhaps one of the more complex aspects of religion and biology ever devised. It's right up there with the Xenomorph and the butterfly for complexity, i.e. a domesticated rabbit and a rooster copulate, and their offspring is either a stillborn somewhat waxy but delicious brown rabbit, or an undeveloped embryo within an egg consisting of the same material as that of the sibling stillborn rabbit. So, never having seen one of the eggs hatch, do the brown rabbits grow hair, or will an occasional egg actually survive the refrigeration process and being wrapped in metal and thus produce a new rabbit?
It's a slow day. Can you tell?
The week has been fun though. Losing in a tight game at Thursday pub trivia, enjoying my TAFE studies and then there was Saturday..
Whilst the football was shit, catching up with Sim was a lot of fun. Although brief, it's a blast and helps makes the trip worthwhile when the team lets me down and I have a long trip home.
When I say long, I mean long. I was at Lidcombe station at about 10pm, where I asked what time the next service through to the Blue Mountains was. About 10.30 said the City Rail employee. So, I waited. Nothing. I caught the train to Parramatta, where I found that no services for the mountains would have stopped at Lidcombe at all that night. I waited at Parramatta until about midnight before catching another train into the mountains, to Katoomba, as it would only be going to Mount Victoria rather than Lithgow. I stopped at Katoomba because it has a decent waiting room and more vending machines than Mount Vic, which at night is like a morgue.
So, I stood around in the damn tunnel until about 2.30am because the waiting room was locked, whilst the station workers all sat in their nice warm office watching TV and having hot drinks. What arseholes.
I finally stepped through my front door at 4.01am.
Tired, but I ended up awake until 6am, as a basketball game I wanted watch was on. Hah.. yet another losing team.
Sunday, 23 March 2008
Monday, 17 March 2008
Sesame Street - Capital I
Yeah.. odd memories that just pop back into the head at random or with a little prompting..
Saturday, 2 February 2008
Sorry?
The Aussie Government has finally decided to offer an apology to the Stolen Generations, and it's about time.
It's a reasonable enough gesture to make. It's human and shows the sort of compassion for fellow human beings who were wronged that the Howard Government would never have It's also the right thing to do, and for a number of genuinely fair reasons.
People of varying backgrounds are removed from their parents and extended families every day, but not as a smokescreen for an assimilation policy, meant to feed a slow form of genocide. Children are removed for the wrong committed by parents, and not for the colour of skin or cultural heritage. It's true that many people in government agencies since the 1800's have genuinely had the best intentions in mind when dealing with Aboriginal people, but the best intentions can at times be the genesis of the most heinous of crimes, as history has proven on countless occasions.
My own family provides for an excellent case study in the effects felt in Aboriginal communities regarding the generations that were removed.
My great grandfather was born circa 1874 in the Upper Murray region of Victoria. In about 1883 he was taken from his family, never to see them again, to be placed on a Christian mission in S.W Victoria. At that point in time whilst the intentions were honourable to give Aboriginal people an education there really is no excuse to have destroyed a family in such a manner. For all intent and purpose my great great grandfather became an orphan, and all for the sake of an education that focused heavily on Christianity, with reading and writing as an afterthought.
By the age of 13 in 1886, three year after having been taken, my great grandfather was cut free from his rudimentary education/indoctrination and then forced into working as a farm labourer. This was standard policy for all male Aboriginal children aged 13 and older. The policy incidentally was introduced in the same year, 1886.
After being moved to another mission/concentration camp, still in S.W Victoria, my great grandfather was allowed the opportunity to finally move elsewhere in about 1901, moving back to the Murray River, and a mission near Moama. There he met the daughter of an Aboriginal man who was one of only a handful who had been allowed to purchase his own land. They married in 1902.
Things went well for a while, until conditions began to deteriorate. Children and adults alike had a high mortality rate and disease spread through the community. Of my great grandmothers 16 children, only 6 survived. Land that the people had successfully cultivated and that had allowed for the community to be self sustainable was taken away and awarded to neighbouring white farmers. The community then went into great decline and became a burden on the government.
Whilst my great grandparents then moved to greener pastures in the NSW town of Wyalong, where my grandfather and his siblings were allowed the rare opportunity of a high school education, things were not as comfortable for my great grandmother's two sisters and their children still on the dwindling mission station on the Murray.
The early 1900's saw my great aunt's four daughters stolen from her. This was despite the fact that she was an assistant school mistress, had a husband gainfully employed, that she spoke 3 languages fluently (English, French, Yorta Yorta) and also trained as a midwife and helped deliver many of the successful births in her community. In the autobiography of one of her daughters the reader is shown the terror and heart rending loss as experienced through both mother and daughters eyes and followed the mothers years of documented struggle to regain her children.
The truly saddening aspect of this small slice of history is that the occasional successes of some of the stolen children are used by some as justification, and to promote the idea that policies were ever reasonable. Such logic is based on a loose understanding of matters, discounting of history and media spin as dictated by unsympathetic.
My great aunt's children are again an excellent example. They gained their education whilst with their family and then were placed in a training camp for domestic servants, far from their parents for no viable reason. There they sure enough were taught the multiplication tables, but a number also learnt about the pains of rape and other forms of physical and mental abuses, at the hands of often unskilled workers. When old enough, those girls (like their male counterparts learning to be stockmen, regardless of being from the city or country) were then sent out to upper middle class white families as low wage domestic servants, whose wages were then kept in trust whilst only being allowed sixpence as pocket money. The majority of those people who for all intent and purpose were slaves never did see their wages that were kept in "trust." That is why reparations are an important part of any government apology.
Despite those hardships those four girls did go on to make something of themselves. But not without seeing the trauma claim one of them in a suicide and another attempted suicide. One founded a college and became an author, another an author and co creator of a television series, and another the matriarch of a family whose achievements range from sports star to playwright, academic and novelist, whilst founding an Indigenous medical service and co-founding a legal service.
Despite the pains inflicted upon those four girls and many of their cousins in varying family lines, the barbaric assimilation and destruction practices remained in vogue until the mid 1970's. Despite my fair skin I missed being removed by less than 5 years. My father only escaped removal in the 1930's to 40's by being taken by his mother to Boys Town at Engadine, where her work in the kitchens and friendship with the school's founder saw that her son would remain unmolested by government policy. Sadly, that didn't save my father's six sisters. They followed in the footsteps of my great aunts children, being forced into slavery a generation earlier. There at the camp they weren't short for the company of family. It's no surprise that those girls who were most heavily traumatised are those that have commonly passed those unresolved issues and developmental pains to their own children.
Again another generation, and their children too were in some cases removed. And again there were suicides and those who drank themselves into oblivion to forget their pains and memories.
I don't think that the average Aussie should feel guilt, but empathy is most certainly something that more should feel as they are allowed to learn more of the truth. As in my prior post regarding Australia Day, I believe the government must take responsibility, as they represent Australia's past as much as they do Australia's present and future. They are leading a nation that has benefited in no small way from the injustices committed against Aboriginal people, for well meaning and ignoble reason. Acknowledging and regretting the mistakes of the past is as important as taking pride in the strides that have been made, because examining those mistakes and understanding them is the only way forward for all.
It's a reasonable enough gesture to make. It's human and shows the sort of compassion for fellow human beings who were wronged that the Howard Government would never have It's also the right thing to do, and for a number of genuinely fair reasons.
People of varying backgrounds are removed from their parents and extended families every day, but not as a smokescreen for an assimilation policy, meant to feed a slow form of genocide. Children are removed for the wrong committed by parents, and not for the colour of skin or cultural heritage. It's true that many people in government agencies since the 1800's have genuinely had the best intentions in mind when dealing with Aboriginal people, but the best intentions can at times be the genesis of the most heinous of crimes, as history has proven on countless occasions.
My own family provides for an excellent case study in the effects felt in Aboriginal communities regarding the generations that were removed.
My great grandfather was born circa 1874 in the Upper Murray region of Victoria. In about 1883 he was taken from his family, never to see them again, to be placed on a Christian mission in S.W Victoria. At that point in time whilst the intentions were honourable to give Aboriginal people an education there really is no excuse to have destroyed a family in such a manner. For all intent and purpose my great great grandfather became an orphan, and all for the sake of an education that focused heavily on Christianity, with reading and writing as an afterthought.
By the age of 13 in 1886, three year after having been taken, my great grandfather was cut free from his rudimentary education/indoctrination and then forced into working as a farm labourer. This was standard policy for all male Aboriginal children aged 13 and older. The policy incidentally was introduced in the same year, 1886.
After being moved to another mission/concentration camp, still in S.W Victoria, my great grandfather was allowed the opportunity to finally move elsewhere in about 1901, moving back to the Murray River, and a mission near Moama. There he met the daughter of an Aboriginal man who was one of only a handful who had been allowed to purchase his own land. They married in 1902.
Things went well for a while, until conditions began to deteriorate. Children and adults alike had a high mortality rate and disease spread through the community. Of my great grandmothers 16 children, only 6 survived. Land that the people had successfully cultivated and that had allowed for the community to be self sustainable was taken away and awarded to neighbouring white farmers. The community then went into great decline and became a burden on the government.
Whilst my great grandparents then moved to greener pastures in the NSW town of Wyalong, where my grandfather and his siblings were allowed the rare opportunity of a high school education, things were not as comfortable for my great grandmother's two sisters and their children still on the dwindling mission station on the Murray.
The early 1900's saw my great aunt's four daughters stolen from her. This was despite the fact that she was an assistant school mistress, had a husband gainfully employed, that she spoke 3 languages fluently (English, French, Yorta Yorta) and also trained as a midwife and helped deliver many of the successful births in her community. In the autobiography of one of her daughters the reader is shown the terror and heart rending loss as experienced through both mother and daughters eyes and followed the mothers years of documented struggle to regain her children.
The truly saddening aspect of this small slice of history is that the occasional successes of some of the stolen children are used by some as justification, and to promote the idea that policies were ever reasonable. Such logic is based on a loose understanding of matters, discounting of history and media spin as dictated by unsympathetic.
My great aunt's children are again an excellent example. They gained their education whilst with their family and then were placed in a training camp for domestic servants, far from their parents for no viable reason. There they sure enough were taught the multiplication tables, but a number also learnt about the pains of rape and other forms of physical and mental abuses, at the hands of often unskilled workers. When old enough, those girls (like their male counterparts learning to be stockmen, regardless of being from the city or country) were then sent out to upper middle class white families as low wage domestic servants, whose wages were then kept in trust whilst only being allowed sixpence as pocket money. The majority of those people who for all intent and purpose were slaves never did see their wages that were kept in "trust." That is why reparations are an important part of any government apology.
Despite those hardships those four girls did go on to make something of themselves. But not without seeing the trauma claim one of them in a suicide and another attempted suicide. One founded a college and became an author, another an author and co creator of a television series, and another the matriarch of a family whose achievements range from sports star to playwright, academic and novelist, whilst founding an Indigenous medical service and co-founding a legal service.
Despite the pains inflicted upon those four girls and many of their cousins in varying family lines, the barbaric assimilation and destruction practices remained in vogue until the mid 1970's. Despite my fair skin I missed being removed by less than 5 years. My father only escaped removal in the 1930's to 40's by being taken by his mother to Boys Town at Engadine, where her work in the kitchens and friendship with the school's founder saw that her son would remain unmolested by government policy. Sadly, that didn't save my father's six sisters. They followed in the footsteps of my great aunts children, being forced into slavery a generation earlier. There at the camp they weren't short for the company of family. It's no surprise that those girls who were most heavily traumatised are those that have commonly passed those unresolved issues and developmental pains to their own children.
Again another generation, and their children too were in some cases removed. And again there were suicides and those who drank themselves into oblivion to forget their pains and memories.
I don't think that the average Aussie should feel guilt, but empathy is most certainly something that more should feel as they are allowed to learn more of the truth. As in my prior post regarding Australia Day, I believe the government must take responsibility, as they represent Australia's past as much as they do Australia's present and future. They are leading a nation that has benefited in no small way from the injustices committed against Aboriginal people, for well meaning and ignoble reason. Acknowledging and regretting the mistakes of the past is as important as taking pride in the strides that have been made, because examining those mistakes and understanding them is the only way forward for all.
Tuesday, 29 January 2008
Back in the saddle
So, I'm back into dating again after giving it a bit of a spell. What triggered my new found interest and enthusiasm is the fact that for a moment in time I pondered the possibility of dating someone I consider to be a good mate, and not just someone I'd recently met, as per usual. That's generally reasonable enough, but when it comes down to it - I just don't think it's a smart idea. It's just too risky. So yeah, can that idea. I won't even consider such a thing in the future.
Not a problem, I'm still in the saddle and still looking and hopeful and have met someone new.
Not sure what it is about women from out west, but that's where my current thoughts roam. It's very early days with the new interest, and maybe I'm not even the woman's type, but our conversations are interesting, and a lot of fun. That's a pretty good start. I won't get too excited just yet, but so far so good.
Not a problem, I'm still in the saddle and still looking and hopeful and have met someone new.
Not sure what it is about women from out west, but that's where my current thoughts roam. It's very early days with the new interest, and maybe I'm not even the woman's type, but our conversations are interesting, and a lot of fun. That's a pretty good start. I won't get too excited just yet, but so far so good.
Saturday, 26 January 2008
Australia Day
National Aboriginal Day of Mourning, January 26, 1938. On the right is my grandfather, my grandmother with children, including my father.
It's January 26 - Australia Day.
It's a great idea, but I've never been able to celebrate it given its particular timing. That lack of enthusiasm for the day is a fact that sometimes many people find hard to accept and have sometimes been somewhat aggressive in addressing. I can understand that, and I appreciate that the day holds great meaning for the majority of Australians, but at the same time I wonder why there is not much tolerance for differing views? I don't expect others to embrace my stance, but I do believe that the logic behind it if heard out is worthy at least of some tolerance if not understanding.
Unlike in most other countries Australia's national day of celebration is not held on the day of its founding, rather it celebrates the founding of a penal colony (New South Wales) in January 1788. The colony is one that in practice encapsulated the eastern half of the Australian continent. The colony eventually went on to be sub divided into several further colonies (Tasmania nee Van Diemen's Land, Queensland nee Moreton Bay, New South Wales and Victoria nee Port Phillip) which finally reunited as a nation and Commonwealth on January 1901.
So why isn't January 1 considered as a more appropriate day for celebration? Well the obvious answer is that Australia historically has been an Anglo Celtic dominated nation, and quite rightly their descendants (myself included) take pride in how they have helped shape this country. But Australia is a multicultural nation, with a history that has been shaped as much by the many other waves of immigrants that have come to these shores, those that have no ties to New South Wales or its colonial and penal history. What interest is there for the 60,000 years of history that Indigenous Australia brings to the table on this date?
When this subject is raised it invariably is seen as an attack by an Aboriginal person who refuses to let go of the past and embrace being Australian, when the reality is closer to the opposite. The injustices of the past committed against Aboriginal Australia are important to remember, but they don't figure too greatly in this particular view point that I hold. Even so, I find it offensive when issues such as the Stolen Generations are trivialised in such a debate or argument, given that no Aboriginal person alive today has not been adversely affected by such government policy. If not directly, then through the trauma wrought upon mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, cousins and kin. I personally check all of the above boxes save for my mother.
I have ancestors that arrived in Australia on the first convict fleet. I also have ancestors that were already here. For the latter people the arrival of the first fleet was not a positive, whilst later developments in European and Aboriginal relations were.
Australia Day should be a day for all Australians to celebrate, and I believe it should have as much meaning to the average Vietnamese or Italian immigrant or Aboriginal person as it does to a 6th generation Australian of English or Irish convict stock, and not via acceptance of the status quo, but through looking to be truly inclusive and respectful. The arrival of the first fleet and the founding of New South Wales should of course be marked on this day and celebrated in its own right, and aimed at those whom it is relevant to.
To those of you celebrating the day, I hope you have a great time, but forgive those of us whose views may differ to yours without aiming to insult your own views.
Tuesday, 22 January 2008
Did you see..
OK, so did anyone see that last post - the one that I pulled? No? Good. Whiny, semi drunken moaning in public is bad shit.
Unless getting paid for it.
Unless getting paid for it.
Wednesday, 2 January 2008
Lookin' kinda campy..
New Year's Eve Party - Webby and I. Goodbye 2007 and hello to whatever number comes next. Here is what I want to happen this year:
1. Find THE woman. Not A woman.
2. Souths win number 21.
3. Either make living in this town more rewarding, or finally surrender and move to the inner city of Sydney.
4. Finish my genealogical novel.
5. Be a little easier on my brother.
6. Learn to play flight of the bumblebee on trumpet, and sound good at it.
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