Strayla Day

January 26 is Australia Day, the anniversary of the first European settlers arrival. In other words, it commemorates the last five – white –  minutes of Australian history and disregards the rest. Following the universal general degradation of patriotism to nationalism, it has been co-opted to privilege one version of history over all others. I thought this cartoon about the call on the populace to stop what they’re doing and sing the national anthem at noon was satirical. I was wrong.

First Dog cartoon

And then this morning, heard that the top Australian honour has gone to Prince Philip. Honest. Thank God that these things are handled so ineptly they feed the opposition.

BUT, but but. Something is changing in me and this seems as good as any a day to record it. For example, this is the first post in months, because I no longer experience Australia as a visitor; it’s where I live and work. I’m not really Down Under any more, just here.

I also noticed in my recent role as tourist guide and fellow adventurer with my sister, Kate,  on her first visit here over Xmas, I kept saying ‘we do this, we do that, here’. Seeing the now-familiar through her eyes was also instructive, and this post is about some of those observations (pt1).

Kate arrived with a foot infection that worsened over several days, leading to multiple interactions with pharmacists and eventually (successfully) the Emergency Room – every single person was so kind, concerned, helpful and warm. And I felt proud! You can, of course, still find this generosity in the UK, especially in the north of England and outside major cities, but it struggles against the pressures of business and rotten wages and the long years of austerity which have barely touched Australia despite various pleas to tighten belts.

I also had a great time doing touristy things that turned out to not so touristy after all. I assumed Katoomba’s  Scenic World would be some kind of sub-Disney tat, but it was brilliant. The thrill seekers took the funicular down and made their way briskly to the Up transport, abandoning the temperate rainforest of the valley floor for us to explore. The interwoven strands of roots and 19th C mining cables were poignant, like traces of a lost civilisation, which I suppose they are.

Admittedly the Jenolan Caves did look more like Disneyworld, on the surface at least, with a kind of Tyrolean look that seemed tenuously connected to the site and its Indigenous stories. But once underground, the magic was way beyond Walt’s imagination, with delicate organic structures as mysterious and beautiful – and old – as this land. Like a visit to the body of the Earth, folded and dark. The guide told the origin stories with such feeling our group of gawkers fell silent and let the tale seep into us like the crystal drips we could hear in the background. And then we emerged to the Blue Lake and fell silent again.

Jenolan Caves

caves

Blue Lake

Reflections on Utopia

Went to see John Pilger’s documentary Utopia yesterday, which  argues that nothing has changed in the apartheid treatment of First peoples since his 1985 book and film, The Secret Country,  and been reflecting on it ever since. At the end of the film, which was applauded by the audience at Mount Vic Flicks, a woman stood up and suggested we sign up to ‘do something’. I put down my name and joined some of the discussion on the street outside, all of us shamed and enraged.

But overnight, unease has crept into my response.

Reading The Secret Country  was part of my preparation for coming to Australia, so the content wasn’t entirely new. Since then I’ve seen much better, more forensic journalism on issues such as deaths in custody, like The Tall Man, a shocking case mentioned in passing by Pilger but not examined.  On the other hand, I had never seen the interview with Lang Hancock, mining magnate and father of Gina Rhinehart, Australia’s richest person, in which he advocates sterilising the water in Indigenous communities so they would ‘breed out’ – a tactic practised by early settlers who poisoned wells to clear land for their own use – but shocking to see in colour TV.

Nor was I aware of the role of the ABC news programme, Lateline, in generating the panic about abused children in Aboriginal communities that triggered the armed Intervention in the Northern Territory – an issue I would like to know much more about as one problem with this film is you can’t quite trust Pilger as a reliable source.  He does take a position and then gather interviews and footage that support him – and yet, and yet, I don’t want to join the ranks of those accusing him of failure to be objective, the sin of partisan journalism, as in this piece from the Sydney Morning Herald,

Partisan or advocate journalism has an important role in exposing the horrors Pilger finds in neglected communities, lacking electricity, water and basic amenities in the heart of one of the world’s richest countries. And because he seeks them out, he finds wonderful people with moving stories to tell, like Arthur Murray and his wife who spent their lives seeking explanation for the death of their young son decades ago. These stories are not on Australian TV and they should be – indeed it will be interesting to see what happens when – if? – Utopia is broadcast here. I know it created shock waves when shown in the UK, as everyone I spoke to in the following week or so mentioned it. Clearly the plight of many Aboriginal communities was news to those whose views of Australia are grounded in posters of beaches and Neighbours (just as many Aussies would be horrified at life on Britain’s sink estates, after gorging on a diet of Downton Abbey).

But, but, but. Another part of me thinks First Australians deserve better coverage than this. Instead of the generalised overview of Aboriginal-European relations since 1788, closer investigation of particular incidents might have shed more light. A minister, Warren Snowden, is harangued not interviewed, so his points regarding policy impacts for the future are lost not refuted. The SBS series, Dirty Money, Inside Australia’s mining business spells out much more clearly than Pilger does how government and industry contrived to evict peoples from mineral-rich lands over the past century and into the present, using interview, archival film and high research standards. It also documents the courageous resistance which actually led to the reversal of some of these land grabs. This voice of Aboriginal agency seems underplayed in Utopia. The documentary on Aboriginal history which moved me most was 88, which records activism and collectivity, including solidarity from white workers and other supporters.

One remark which hit home was the scathing comment about a Bradford woman who thought her experience with Pakistani communities would be relevant in the Western Australian prison system ( an enormous holding operation for Aboriginals) – at which the local movie audience laughed. It was assumed this meant she thought people of Pakistani origin shared cultural issues with First Australians –  but what if she meant that any public servant in the UK has to deal with institutional racism in its structure and processes and that this experience had made her more aware of her own prejudices and those of the systems she was operating in? The point is not about similarities between oppressed minorities but similarities among the systems of oppression and those that operate them. Now that’s a debate that’s barely started.

Tassie Tales #1

Just back from a week walking in Tasmania with a camera full of stories. Will try and unpack something each day.

Starting with Hobart airport – smallest I’ve landed in for some time (smaller than Granada, Spain, for example) – one baggage claim track, no buses to town, you’re kind of on your own here. A Yorkshire approach – if you don’t know your way round, what you doing here? Intrepid adventurer that I am, I made it to the city (!), which was closed – but then it was Sunday.  The centre (called CBD in Australian towns, for central business development, I think) reminded me of Preston, with its Poundstretcher-type shops and criminal concrete office blocks plonked into  old shop fronts and connected by standard issue malls. At least Preston had the excuse of being bombed. (Wait, it does get better…)

Yet the setting is absolutely lovely; Mount Wellington behind, deep harbour ahead, fringed with nineteenth century pubs and, the first building in every settlement, the customs house. Spent a great couple of hours in the Tasmanian Museum, which has the ramp from early settlement, around 1810, revealed in its forecourt, like Roman ruins. One of the oldest buildings in town, it contains both its own history and, on the top floor, that of the people the British displaced. Tasmanian Aboriginal peoples were completely wiped out as I understand it (from guides who refer to various explorers “encountering trouble” ) though their scattered descendants are now trying to reconstruct what was 40,000 years of continuous culture until a couple of hundred years ago. More on this later.

Tasmanian museum

Messing about on the river

Third visit to Wiseman’s Ferry on the beautiful Hawkesbury River.

First drawn to the place by Kate Grenville’s The Secret River, a novel based on the life of her ancestor Solomon Wiseman who settled the place, having arrived at the Sydney penal colony in chains.

Secret River

Then read Sarah Thornhill, the daughter’s story and now the History of the Secret River, about researching both novels. I get the sense of the immediacy of this history – the house that Wiseman built in 1826 is still the main pub, the chain ferry still runs all day, the landscape is unchanged since settlement. But, as she makes clear, it was utterly changed by the settlers who simply took the native lands, treated Darug people’s crops as weeds and planted their own European plants, using violence – including legal murder – to protect their takings. Grenville is aghast as she discovers for the first time in 2000 that the aboriginal people hadn’t all gone  by the time of settlement, the same story another friend learned at school.

At lunchtime I went to the regional museum in Windsor which has a collection of leg irons, farming and boating implements from the early 19thC and other artefacts from settler life, including a pamphlet called Marriage and Sex for Brides which I thought was very progressive until I noticed the publication date – 1966! But there were only two passing mentions of the people whose land this was/is – they are just not present in this version of history.

I seem to be more conscious of history here than in my own much older home, not sure why. Maybe the contrast between this very recent European presence and the tens of thousands of years of indigenous culture and the even older rocks before that – the land in Australia is the oldest on the planet, that is rocks formed millenia ago are abundant as I understand it – need to learn more.

Right now I’m at this funny hotel called Australis Retreat which is really a golf place but actually is a retreat too – I’m finishing the first half of my book and refreshing my reading on Jungian matters before starting into the second half. A perfect place to work – v peaceful setting & a beautiful saltwater pool for sunset swims at the end of the day. A good way to spend my birthday today – so good I’ve decided to stay on a couple of nights and hope the fires that closed the main road after I arrived here will be settled by the time I return. It’s safe here, but the fires are pretty scary on TV. Hope to avoid  closer contact.

PS Australia, land, psyche

This morning, a new book promo (see link) arrives going deeper into some of the themes above. Looks irresistible.
New book on Australia, land, psyche

Australia Day thoughts

Been paying attention to how people talk about Australia Day: in the staffroom a silence descended when I asked, some weeks ago, whether Aboriginal peoples shared the celebrations. That’s how I found out about Invasion Day, though others call it Survival Day which is perhaps more celebratory. There’s an uneasiness in the  Australian flag waving, more so, I think, than I’ve noticed in US on Independence Day. Perhaps Thanksgiving has the same echo in that it marks the sharing of food between settlers and native Americans, before the former wiped out the latter. January 26 is the arrival day of the First Fleet, so is also a celebration of colonisation. I’ve done a couple of links to this – one an article full of shame at this past, which attracts some hideous abusive comments; the other a contribution from an indigenous artist on the oneness of creation. Had hoped to add some pix from local Australia Day events but they were all washed out today.

As an outsider I am aware of  three levels of my Australian environment – there’s the educational and other institutions I deal with, the TV and other media I consume, the banking, the telecomms, the familiar  Anglo/US structures (and media content), with interesting variations (no Thatcher or EU regs, so still a vibrant public sector). This life is plentiful, well educated, healthy, outdoors, high quality comfort. People come here to raise kids and you can see why. The life I don’t see is on the other side of town and I know almost nothing about how aboriginal peoples live here, though I understand the educational, health and living standards are nothing to be proud of. But at least I know that I don’t know ……  Then underneath all this is the land and the astonishing fact that the peoples who live in the margins now, as fas as I can see, have a 40,000 year continuous culture in relationship with that land. All the flag waving just looks a little, well, feeble in comparison.

Also conscious I may be exporting that English embarrassment at patriotism; someone mentioned, before I left UK,  that one of the good things about Australia was that it was one of the few countries that still feels good about itself.  Suspect some Australians feel much better than others.

Australian Day article

http://www.globalonenessproject.org/videos/garysimonclip3

country welcome

Last week’s conference in Albury-Wadonga started with ‘Welcome to Country’ the ritual which opens every major event in Australia it seems – a greeting and ceremony conducted by a local Elder. Mrs Nancy  Rooke of the Wirajudi (think I have that wrong*), welcomed us and we walked through the cleansing smoke of burning gum trees (eucalyptus) into the conference centre, where again we were welcomed with words about education and history and the land. It seemed rather wonderful to connect with the land on which we stood, though apparently some people think this is all tokenistic, given mortality rates of indigenous peoples for example. I just don’t know enough to say yet, but am fascinated by the debate – this is really different from home!

On Sunday I drove into the Blue Mountains to see a friend of a friend (Sandy, for those who know her); turned out we had met before but vaguely in London – ended up having wonderful proper conversation followed by a walk in the rocky mountains nearby where I saw my first kangaroos (Wallaby, strictly speaking, though no one seems sure of the difference, other than Ws are smaller than Ks). Extraordinary creatures, one old and wizened, the other a young, fuzzy haired fawn, both with delicate front legs and paws, beautiful, fragile faces and industrial rear quarters packed with muscle and power. As we were leaving the older animal made three leisurely but ground covering hops through the undergrowth, which I also took as a country welcome.

* turns out there are loads of spellings and I wasn’t that far off – more here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiradjuri

Nights at the circus

Drove 700 kms (I did the last stint) yesterday to attend a university wide conference on education – beautiful country, open, bright, green. Realise I know three Australian forms of nature: kangaroo, jacaranda trees and kookaburra. Alas the only kangaroo I’ve seen was dead by the side of the road (apparently there’s a number you can ring if you hit one with the car – a team will come out and either rescue or destroy the animal; sad but impressive). Saw loads of jacaranda trees but was woozy with the intensity of the sunlight – not too hot, just too strong (it reddened my skin through a linen shirt leaving white bra straps!) so forgot to take pictures. Plus long drive, hours since breakfast and SO much information – every scene imprints itself stacking up waiting to be processed. We stopped at Wagga Wagga , only a four hour drive away where the other half of our school is located (!) and looked round their TV studios, art gallery and theatre there – terrific provision and interesting buildings.

But none of the them as brilliant as the purpose built circus school we saw last night at Albury Wadonga, down near the Victoria borders. It’s the home of the Fruit Flies circus, the seedbed of Australian circus arts it seems – our colleague and fellow traveller Dan is a delightful man, circus performer, trainer and now teacher, and we were there on his invite. The space is vast and when we arrived the skies were full of trapeze artistes rehearsing routines – no flash photos please. Got given a grand tour by Marcus the director who took my denial of vertigo at face value, so I ended up 9 metres above the studio floor on a mesh walkway. Not too proud to hold on – eventually I was able to look down and even take my camera out the bag to record the moment.

Better stop now as I have a presentation to prepare for tomorrow and am simply exhausted by all this new experience (not complaining, it’s what I came for)………… BTW if you read this on FB you might want to follow it from joinoz.wordpress.com as FB are breaking links with blogs from November 22.