Old Koreelah

Back in topic, people have questioned how a Voice could help Aboriginal people. Just one concrete example was provided by Prof Marcia Langdon while addressing the National Press Club. She pointed out that during the recent Pandemic, Indigenous communities had acheived a remarkably low infection rate and no deaths (IIRC). How? Health authorities listened to the Indig people. Saved the country a bundle of money.

What happens to all that expensive experitise when the big project is over? After their Moon shot, America was awash with engineers and technicians and entrepreneurs setting up new ventures. After Australia built the Snowy Mountains Scheme, we dismantled one of the world’s best engineering units.

Critics often decry the billions spent on The Space Race, but it has paid enormous dividends in new technology and may help save humanity, with an overdue realisation that we are all alone here; we don’t have a Planet B.

That clever campouflage netting over a huge aircraft factory is a story in itself, and shows how much they were spooked by Japan. Why they didn’t build their critical factories far inland I don’t know. During WWI Australia set up a steelworks and arms industry at Lithgow partly because it was out of range of naval guns.

Recently my wife and her friend stopped in the street to talk with a local Aboriginal bloke we all once taught. A few minutes later he dropped dead. He’d had a life of health problems and had not been very productive, but was always very polite and respectful to us, his old teachers. Who knows what his life might have been like had he been born into a different world.

This seems to be at the centre of most resentment of our Indig people: the perception that they are getting something the rest of us don’t. (Often stirred up by overpaid radio jocks). Plenty of white fellas have always got more than the rest- do we hate them too?

Hard to imagine a future peace deal, but perhaps it should have Crimea become a Tartar Autonomous Region.

How many of us vote at meeting of our clubs, etc, much less stand for office?

Much as I hate vandalism, one black night it saved us. As we drove through an unfamiliar rural village looking for a friend’s address, I almost drove into a grain train that was crossing the street. The ONLY indication was occasional graffiti flashing past my headlight beam.

I tend to sit forward in urban traffic and move me head around a bit near intersections, but Old Man’s Neck is an impediment. It only takes one lapse to cause mayhem. A couple of weeks ago we were called to a level crossing fatality. Old mate was known to me, but younger and maybe his OMN disease prevented him turning to see the fast train approaching from behind his B-pillar.

But wait, there’s more! Tailgaters deserve to be heavily fined. They must think they have the skill and reflexes of a Formula One racer, but they’re a menace to the rest of us. Like most motorists, I drive at the GPS limit and usually pull over and let tailgater pass, but this morning a cretin had his bullbar filling my rear mirror. Why? Total impatience; I was overtaking a slower vehicle at 10 over the limit and was planning to then pull over and let him past, there being a very long, clear straightup ahead. But no, this moron had to be a road bully. On the highway I keep at least a three-second gap ahead of me, but so many drivers cut in to fill that gap, as if they are in city traffic. My reaction time is slowing and it amazes me to see mature-aged motorcylists tailgating cars and trucks. They’d have no warning of dead animals and bits of retread on the road.

Two gripes, both sparked by today’s drive home from Newcastle: I almost ran over a disabled person being pushed across the street on a sort of wheelchair. Luckily I saw them move out onto the crossing and stopped in time, but hadn’t noticed the red light. Why? I’d just driven around a corner and there they were, on the street. As I approached, I should have seen the pedestrian crossing lights, but was distracted by traffic on the roundabout. (Perhaps an amber light might have caught my attention, but the red blended into the bachground.) Closer to the crossing, the red lights were obscured by the car’s A-pillar and the rear-view mirror. Being taller than average, I sit well back, so my field of vision is much narrower than most drivers. That’s a design fault in cars that tall people have to put up with, but the thickness of the A-pillar is something that should be addressed. That solid barrier is far wider than the distance between your eyes, in every car except the 1972 Holden. I’ve been cutting people out of crashed cars for over forty years and can’t recall that Holden being less safe. There is no structural reason for such a dumb design. Often there’s rubber seals and trim either side of it; bluddy poor design that’s thick enough to obscure a bike or even car approaching from your RHS.

In the good old days, the King/Emperor/Shogun/Don, etc. would either remove his head, or brand his forehead as a permanent warning to everyone he meets, that he is a defective humanoid.

You reckon?

I totally agree, Bruce. Much the same thing happened in this country; the first white explorers in the Riverina expressed surprise at how few people they encountered. A generation before, in about 1797, an epidemic of smallpox started in the new colony and quickly swept through indig communities, killing a large percentage of those who contracted it. The trade routes pre-1788 were extensive and spanned much of the continent, bringing Asian artifacts and influences. A recent study of feral cat genetics indicates that Asia DNA predominates north of about Alice. That applies all over the planet. Decades ago, one study of the very complex skin system in Western Desert peoples claimed it could ensure genetic integrity in a population of 50- a feat that the would have require the best computerised breeding program at the time.

That deserves a thread of its own. In Poland during the Solidarność uprising, it was said that nobody trusted anything said by the Communist government, but they had faith in the Catholic priesthood. At the same time in Italy, nobody trusted the church and the Communist Party, under Enrico Berlinguer, was held in high regard.

Spacey I’m tired of people moaning about the cost of this government actually consulting the people; it’s peanuts compared to the billions the previous mob wasted on foreign consultants. They also casually wasted more than that in some pre-election stunts.

Never say never; a few years ago I attended a large meeting to protest plans to dig up the Liverpool Plains for coal. The guest speaker Jack Munday told a similar story to mine: of growing up on a dairy farm before becoming a builders labourer in Sydney. How his union took firm action to protect our heritage. Never, in all my dreams, could I have imagined a hall full of farmers giving a militant unionist and former member of the Communist Party a standing ovation.

Looked everywhere and couldn’t find which part of the body that is.

Even a cursory investigation of his career would find him not fit to run a newspaper, let alone a global media empire. Farmers are starting to realise that even the Nats put mining ahead of agriculture.

Onetrack and others on here have made valid comments supporting the No case, but I’ve heard too many No supporters simply spouting stuff they read in the Daily Telegraph. To me, this is like a red rag to a bull, yet another demonstration of the Murdochs manipulating Australian public opinion; they’ve been doing it for well over a hundred years.

“If you don’t know, vote no” has a catchy ring. But an informed vote is so much better. If finding out is easy – and it is – why not take the opportunity to cast an informed vote at a referendum of great importance for Australia? https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/sep/01/indigenous-voice-to-parliament-yes-campaign-what-you-need-to-know

…and Pence was a fence sitter at best.

Who cares about the price of a stamp; in years to come, those letters to your grandies will be treasured relics if a bygone age. Future research into family history will have precious little to go on, unless emails and SMS messages somehow last that long.