Bruce Tuncks

Tiw's day, Wodensday' , Thorsday and Freyas'day followed by Saturns day Sun-day and Moon-day. Why only seven? Were there seven crystal spheres? same why?

They ( the Aborigines) were not always treated well. There was miss Pink, a batty old lady who hung around the town courthouse ready to lecture the beaks about Aboriginal law, ( they would treat a ritual spearing as a violent crime and ignore Aboriginal law.) I will never forgive my parents and teachers for not telling us about Olive Pink. Today she is practically a saint, but all we knew about her was that she was ugly and batty and hung around the courthouse with a bunch of Aborigines.

I have to admit that my "no" vote has its roots in the feeling that aborigines already get a lot of largess from the government. In Alice Springs, they already are free to break the law. I know a person who is leaving her job and town because she feels unsafe from aboriginal violence. I have said this before, but in year 4/5 I sat next to Walter, a quite black kid from Borroloola. We were good mates, and there is NO WAY that stolen kids were around us at that time. We would have known all about them including their names. This is not to say that stolen kids didn't occur elsewhere in Australia. I can imagine a bully of a cop in Qld, for example, actually stealing kids. But I wonder if they were truly stolen, for example a sister-in-law was a Darwin cop. Once, she had to go to an aboriginal house where there was a dehydrated infant lying in 3 days of its shit. What would you do? If you were well-trained, you might call an ambulance for the kid, which is what happened. The ambulance carted the kid off, we guess to hospital. NOW.... was this kid stolen or not? I reckon there are some who would have you believe that the kid was stolen. ( the mother was told all about everything at the time, but she couldn't be raised to consciousness) Anyway, this story comes from later in life. In the 1950's me and Walter sure never heard of anything similar, and I reckon we would have known all about it. ( Incidentally, Walter went home to Borrolloola for holidays. He thought he was at boarding-school.)

Sorry about the topic drift, Jerry. I really like your story about the renovation, it takes me back a long way.

OME, your Renault 750 renovation car was just like my first... It was truly the most awful design of car ever. I remember that the final drive to the rear wheels was through a housing which was fixed to the gearbox with 2 horizontal needle-rollers, only a few inches apart. So any wear here manifested itself as fore and aft movement of the rear wheels. Of course, the wear on each side was not the same, and the result was sideways movement of the car rear on every gear-change. Oh, how I longed for a vw final drive! I actually saw, at a wreckers, a Renault 750 with an attempt at doing this. Trailing arms had been fixed to the body near the rear wheels. I got $2 from a wrecker for that Renault. He complained a lot about how much it was, and I bought a mk1 Zephyr for $80. This was too much money as the zephyr was rusted out. I remember that the windscreen wipers were pneumatic and they only worked when you were slowing down or going downhill.

Misinformation? I reckon the "yes " side has come up with a lot of that. Like how we should be ashamed of the "stolen generation". I never even heard about the stolen generation until recent years, and I certainly would have known all about them as a kid if there were any around Alice Springs in the 1950's. I honestly don't believe it is racist to expect all people to work at their jobs properly even if their skin is a bit black. So I am intending to vote "no" even though I sure don't like the company there on the "no" side. Then I will go back to supporting Albanese.

Here's a real Australian invention... the wine cask. To those who say this is nothing much, i ask them if they would rather be hit on the head with a half-full flagon or a half-full coolie cask.

And , one day years ago, I was building my old sk jabiru with the wireless on as usual. I was engrossed and missed changing the channel when they started reading out the death notices, when they said a name ( complete with middle name ) of a guy I knew well but hadn't seen around for a few weeks. Well they just had the same name, and it was not my old mate after all.

I too have have an unusual name, plus a middle name, and I thought the same as old K. But one day when I said this at the local ( Gawler ) bank, the teller-lady told me that there was another customer at that branch with the exact same name, including middle name! Wow, thought I.

I think you meant "offensive" and not "defensive"

It's a good idea to get those short trips done electrically. I may buy a kit myself if they are priced ok.

Alice Springs had a fuel depot on Railway Tce once, run by Snowy Mitchell with a full-blood as his helper. Apart from stealing all the money, this abo was a good worker according to Snowy, who didn't really blame the abo for his thefts. ( Snowy later became famous in the town when his wife nearly cut off his penis, but that is a different story) So, it is possible for an abo to have a work ethic, but it was very unusual.

Helicopters don't really fly... they are so ugly that the ground repels them.

If it's one Elvis, is it two Elvii?

I reckon that eliminating endemic health conditions in remote areas would REQUIRE what some people would call racism. Personally, I would pay that price but I don't think the voice would do so. I would like it if the voice was required to answer questions like OME suggests, but I have no evidence that they would. My only evidence is that of ASIC etc. AND, I would like evidence of a work ethic among abos, but I doubt if there are many examples of this... I would like to be proved wrong, so please go ahead. I don't accept that playing music or painting pictures or playing sport is good evidence since they are well-known leisure activities.

There are so many "cosmic events" in the OT that cherry-picking one and suggesting the thing could really have happened makes one wonder about the other, plainly impossible , ones. So... if the sodom and gomorrah story is true, what about Jonah etc etc. If they cannot all be explained scientifically, what is the point of trying to prove one story?

I have finally come to terms with the requests for name changes. IF the item is plainly the result of white effort then it belongs to those who built it. Thus Sydney should not be renamed, but Ayer's rock is ok to rename.

I know I keep coming back to trachoma, but it does encapsulate the nonsense of asking for 2 contradictory things at the same time, which is what the voice does. It asks for equality in health outcomes AND it asks for abo culture to be respected. How can the abos claim the benefits of a work ethic when they have none and no desire to have one?

We know now that the person could not have been really dead.

They were very bad at diagnosing death in those days, Now we know that the"resurrected" person had not been really dead.

There is a big problem applying this logic to women's sport.... I want my gifted grand-daughter to play AFL, but my son ( her uncle) says that there never will be money in women's sport because it will be taken over by men who have ticked some gender box. Is he right?

AND I hate corruption of any sort, including the abo corruption in their organizations. At least the white organizations have ( or should have) a sense of shame at corruption. There is no comparable taboo on abo corruption.

Sort of right Jerry. Trachoma is sure on the decline, which is good news. But the basic proposition still stands.... getting rid of the disease means getting rid of abo "culture" to the extent that the culture stops you washing your face. IF health equality is one of the looked for things to come out of the Voice then this is the sort of thing which must be addressed head on.

England more or less started WW1 ( 60%, germany 30% ) and before starting the war, it was the richest country by far in the world. I reckon they were treated well by the USA. WW2 was a sort of continuation of WW1.

People float too. they bloat when they start to rot. This is why the mafia weigh you down. I dunno how long you float for, it would not be for ages.