Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, December 22, 2003
FLOWER POWER CHOOSES POPE
DRIVING back from the Margaret River district in Western Australia, my roving correspondent Richard B wrote to tell me he had passed a tree daubed in large white letters: DES LIVES. He said he had found it reassuring. Me too. I pass on the good news for no reason other than it is Christmas and a time for rejoicing. In the same spirit, let me add: POPE LIVES. Against the tide of time, illness and media impatience, Pope John Paul II lives on and on _ now into his 26nd year as Pontiff. Standby, though, because each year inevitably sees JPII shuffle closer to eternity. One of my little joys is to watch the media tie itself into knots predicting his imminent demise from every concentration lapse, and in choosing his successor. For you mad punters keen to have a flutter on the identity of the next Pope, I am here to tell you the fix is in. He has already been selected behind the scenes by a group of influential but virtually unknown Catholic power brokers. No, not the cardinals. Indeed, cardinals cower in fear and awe of these people. Of course the Vatican will still go through the motions of selecting a new Pope - the secluded ballots and the puff of white smoke - but in the end the cardinals will do what they are told. Even the hard men of the Vatican Curia are babes in the woods compared with this mysterious group of flint-eyed dealmakers, the real power behind the papal throne. They are the people who, though operating quietly and efficiently at the parish level, in combination operate a worldwide network of enormous clout. From the smallest parish church to the grandest cathedral, each group plots how to get its own man up as Pope. They caucus, conspire, jump to conclusions and pass judgement on other people's motives. Clerical reputations are made and lost. Between them is a shared intimacy of the inner-workings of the church. They are quick to recognise a rising star and they are just as quick to sweep up the mess left by many feet of clay. In the end they somehow divine a consensus on the Papacy and their decision is passed onto the cardinals who do their bidding, or else ... meaning the clergy would have to do their own flower arrangements. Yes, I am speaking of the band of deceptively mild-mannered women who arrange the altar flowers, remove candle wax from the carpet and dust the burning heart of Jesus statue in preparation for daily Mass. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions then the road to the Papacy is lined with women of a certain age. It should come as no surprise. Since Eve and the apple, women have always had a subversive power over men, and it is in the nature of Catholicism that the clergy will come under the influence of elderly women. Christmas is always a busy time for the ladies on the flower roster but this year, given JPII's failing health, they will be spending extra time on their knees praying for divine guidance in the matter of his successor. My mother is one of them. She has the smug look of someone who knows.
Friday, December 12, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, December 17, 2003
WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND
BEING the head of a union inevitably attracts critics - mostly within your own ranks - and I have heard people accuse John Gregory of all manner of treachery. I don't care. He is a mate and real friendship, if not absolutely unconditional, can certainly stretch a helluva long way before it snaps. I first met him in the mid-1970s when he was the president of the old SA Institute of Teachers and I was the editor of 5DN. Apparently some advice I gave him in passing struck a chord and he was grateful. I do not remember what I said - possibly something disparaging about his yokel hairdo or those spectacles that darkened in sunlight and made him look dodgy on TV. Later, when I was unemployed, John found me some casual work at the SAIT. I think he paid me out of his lunch money. To someone on the bones of his elbows and facing career oblivion, John's offer of support, friendship and belief was an act worthy of, well, Ard Thiel. Earlier this year, John gave the eulogy at Ard's funeral, a Mallee farmer and mentor, who was a neighbour of the Gregorys at Parilla Well. When John was 10, the eldest of six children, his father died. John was sent to boarding school at Mount Gambier. Cold, wet and lonely, with not two pennies to rub together, John was wandering around the Mount Gambier Show when he spotted Ard sheaf tossing. Ard gave him 10 bob - something like $25 today. "I didn't know what to say, or what to do, but I knew I couldn't repay him and said so," John said in his eulogy. "Don't worry, lad," he remembered Ard saying. "You can repay me. When you get the chance later in life, you do the same thing for somebody else." Which John did, for me. What Ard also gave him, John said, was a sense of social purpose and justice, and what it meant to give someone a fair go. "Ard taught me a lot of things, amongst them the difference between seeing through people, and seeing them through." John will be reading this now for the first time and possibly not thanking me for it. The stone tossers will be poised. John left the presidency of the Australian Education Union six months early, the cause of much uninformed sniping, to accept a job at the Education Department. In his new position, he was instrumental in arranging for me to visit the Pitjantjatjara Lands recently. Confusion remains over whether the necessary approvals for the trip were properly authorised all the way up the line. John, it seems, may not have complied with every step to the fullest possible extent. Typical. While the bureaucrats were having conniptions, the fact remained that yet again John vouched for me - a risky business in many eyes - and literally put his job on the line on the basis that I could be trusted. Everyone should have someone like John Gregory in their lives. So, John, in the same way that you paid tribute to Ard Thiel, this is my thanks to you. I could not be bothered waiting around for your funeral.
WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND
BEING the head of a union inevitably attracts critics - mostly within your own ranks - and I have heard people accuse John Gregory of all manner of treachery. I don't care. He is a mate and real friendship, if not absolutely unconditional, can certainly stretch a helluva long way before it snaps. I first met him in the mid-1970s when he was the president of the old SA Institute of Teachers and I was the editor of 5DN. Apparently some advice I gave him in passing struck a chord and he was grateful. I do not remember what I said - possibly something disparaging about his yokel hairdo or those spectacles that darkened in sunlight and made him look dodgy on TV. Later, when I was unemployed, John found me some casual work at the SAIT. I think he paid me out of his lunch money. To someone on the bones of his elbows and facing career oblivion, John's offer of support, friendship and belief was an act worthy of, well, Ard Thiel. Earlier this year, John gave the eulogy at Ard's funeral, a Mallee farmer and mentor, who was a neighbour of the Gregorys at Parilla Well. When John was 10, the eldest of six children, his father died. John was sent to boarding school at Mount Gambier. Cold, wet and lonely, with not two pennies to rub together, John was wandering around the Mount Gambier Show when he spotted Ard sheaf tossing. Ard gave him 10 bob - something like $25 today. "I didn't know what to say, or what to do, but I knew I couldn't repay him and said so," John said in his eulogy. "Don't worry, lad," he remembered Ard saying. "You can repay me. When you get the chance later in life, you do the same thing for somebody else." Which John did, for me. What Ard also gave him, John said, was a sense of social purpose and justice, and what it meant to give someone a fair go. "Ard taught me a lot of things, amongst them the difference between seeing through people, and seeing them through." John will be reading this now for the first time and possibly not thanking me for it. The stone tossers will be poised. John left the presidency of the Australian Education Union six months early, the cause of much uninformed sniping, to accept a job at the Education Department. In his new position, he was instrumental in arranging for me to visit the Pitjantjatjara Lands recently. Confusion remains over whether the necessary approvals for the trip were properly authorised all the way up the line. John, it seems, may not have complied with every step to the fullest possible extent. Typical. While the bureaucrats were having conniptions, the fact remained that yet again John vouched for me - a risky business in many eyes - and literally put his job on the line on the basis that I could be trusted. Everyone should have someone like John Gregory in their lives. So, John, in the same way that you paid tribute to Ard Thiel, this is my thanks to you. I could not be bothered waiting around for your funeral.
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, December 10, 2003
HAZARD WARNING: CYCLIST AHEAD
TWICE in two weeks, I have come a cropper off my bike, both times through my own fault, it has to be admitted. Now even my dreams are obsessed with falling off, wobbly handle bars and riding back to front. Go figure. I like riding my bike. Going in search of hills and head winds, the pain of tight leg muscles afterwards is almost pleasurable. But the injuries are not. My scarred, pock-marked left knee looks like the craters of the moon. My left elbow is musk pink raw. Left, not right, because on both occasions I fell to the left. The first time, turning at traffic lights, I was looking around to check if my riding companion had made it around the lights as well. Not watching where I was going, my left pedal clipped the kerb. Down I went, thrusting out both hands to break my fall, and the bike cartwheeled over me. The roadside verge where I landed was made of gravel, not grass. Typical. The list of injuries included bruised and shredded wrists, left knee bloodied in five places, scraped left thigh and ankle, and chipped toes from wearing sandals. It was a long ride home, let me tell you. All praise for Medipulv antiseptic powder. The next weekend, cutting across the footpath to avoid a red traffic light, I nearly hit a woman who suddenly appeared around the corner of a building. She escaped unscathed, thank goodness. A pity about me, though. Grabbing the front brake too hard, I toppled onto the same left side. Except this time my brain, with enough instinct to avoid self-harm if possible, wisely decided not to let me fall on the same old wounds. Instead, I hit the ground chest-first at full stretch, which left me with bruised ribs, possibly cracked by the feel of them. The bunch of keys in my pocket also punched a deep bruise into my left thigh. Not a corked thigh so much as a keyed one. The woman I missed was very nice. "You alright?" she asked as I lay there winded under my bike, front wheel still spinning. She kindly offered her hand to help me up. Wincing, I jiggled around a bit and was able to assure her that nothing important was broken apart from my bike, which had lost 12th and 14th gears. "Yew, you're a bit of a mess," she said, looking down at all the cuts and scrapes. "Actually, they're from last week," I said. She walked off shaking her head. The next morning, limping and finding it difficult to breath from the pain in my chest, I had to fly interstate.I kept thinking that a person with suspected punctured lungs really ought not be flying. I knelt on my one good knee to pray for survival, and I am back in the saddle. Any weekend when you do not fall off your bike is a good weekend.
HAZARD WARNING: CYCLIST AHEAD
TWICE in two weeks, I have come a cropper off my bike, both times through my own fault, it has to be admitted. Now even my dreams are obsessed with falling off, wobbly handle bars and riding back to front. Go figure. I like riding my bike. Going in search of hills and head winds, the pain of tight leg muscles afterwards is almost pleasurable. But the injuries are not. My scarred, pock-marked left knee looks like the craters of the moon. My left elbow is musk pink raw. Left, not right, because on both occasions I fell to the left. The first time, turning at traffic lights, I was looking around to check if my riding companion had made it around the lights as well. Not watching where I was going, my left pedal clipped the kerb. Down I went, thrusting out both hands to break my fall, and the bike cartwheeled over me. The roadside verge where I landed was made of gravel, not grass. Typical. The list of injuries included bruised and shredded wrists, left knee bloodied in five places, scraped left thigh and ankle, and chipped toes from wearing sandals. It was a long ride home, let me tell you. All praise for Medipulv antiseptic powder. The next weekend, cutting across the footpath to avoid a red traffic light, I nearly hit a woman who suddenly appeared around the corner of a building. She escaped unscathed, thank goodness. A pity about me, though. Grabbing the front brake too hard, I toppled onto the same left side. Except this time my brain, with enough instinct to avoid self-harm if possible, wisely decided not to let me fall on the same old wounds. Instead, I hit the ground chest-first at full stretch, which left me with bruised ribs, possibly cracked by the feel of them. The bunch of keys in my pocket also punched a deep bruise into my left thigh. Not a corked thigh so much as a keyed one. The woman I missed was very nice. "You alright?" she asked as I lay there winded under my bike, front wheel still spinning. She kindly offered her hand to help me up. Wincing, I jiggled around a bit and was able to assure her that nothing important was broken apart from my bike, which had lost 12th and 14th gears. "Yew, you're a bit of a mess," she said, looking down at all the cuts and scrapes. "Actually, they're from last week," I said. She walked off shaking her head. The next morning, limping and finding it difficult to breath from the pain in my chest, I had to fly interstate.I kept thinking that a person with suspected punctured lungs really ought not be flying. I knelt on my one good knee to pray for survival, and I am back in the saddle. Any weekend when you do not fall off your bike is a good weekend.
Tuesday, December 02, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, December 2, 2003
RING COMPLETES FAMILY CYCLE
WHEN marriage was still fashionable, your own children's partners were known as sons- or daughters-in-law. Now, with so many of them living in sin, what should they be called? Lovers-in-law? Greeting card makers need to update their range to reflect the new reality. De Facto Father's Day? Surrogate Mother's Day? Which brings me to a recent family gathering at Normanville to celebrate my daughter Melissa's birthday. A couple of days ahead, David, the man she lives with in Sydney, rang to say he had a birthday surprise that needed my involvement. "Sure, whatever," I said, up for all manner of pranks and japes. "I was going to ask Melissa to marry me. Is that OK?"
"No problems. Heard of the word elope?" Actually, I was surprised David formally asked for my daughter's hand. I mean, they have been living together for years and what would they do if I refused to give my blessing? Elope? Damn. Melissa said, yes, and cried, as did her mother. I, too, was feeling a little unsettled by then. The two hamburgers that BBQ chef Miguel had cooked for me were still raw inside. He argued they were tartare-style. In retaliation, I thrashed him and David at eight-ball doubles, a victory shared with my son Paul, who flew from Melbourne with his live-in girlfriend Amanda. She revealed that Paul kept being "hit-on" by the gays of St Kilda, where the pair of them lived, and she was always having to extricate him from possible trouble. She recounted how Xavier, the owner of a clothes shop, had spent an inordinately long time taking Paul's measurements and then, while Paul was in the fitting room, had asked Amanda if they were "you know, connected?". "Yes, at the hips," she glared back. Paul said he hardly ever walked the streets at night without Amanda on his arm. "She's my beard," he said, meaning her presence was supposed to deflect unwanted gay attention. Apparently Paul has gained a reputation as something of a "metrosexual" since moving to Melbourne. That is, he can cook, is concerned about his appearance and is sensitive to other people's feelings. He was never like that when I lived with him. Let me also add that I have never been targeted by gay affection. Not sensitive enough. Anyway, Melissa was showing off the ring and David was looking mighty pleased with himself. He must have received one of the few properly cooked burgers. "So what did you get Melissa for her birthday?" I asked. "Huh?" "You can't just give her an engagement ring and no birthday present. That's hardly fair." David blanched and looked utterly broke. At the end of the day, we shook hands. "Thanks for giving me your daughter," he said. "You're more than welcome. Elope."
RING COMPLETES FAMILY CYCLE
WHEN marriage was still fashionable, your own children's partners were known as sons- or daughters-in-law. Now, with so many of them living in sin, what should they be called? Lovers-in-law? Greeting card makers need to update their range to reflect the new reality. De Facto Father's Day? Surrogate Mother's Day? Which brings me to a recent family gathering at Normanville to celebrate my daughter Melissa's birthday. A couple of days ahead, David, the man she lives with in Sydney, rang to say he had a birthday surprise that needed my involvement. "Sure, whatever," I said, up for all manner of pranks and japes. "I was going to ask Melissa to marry me. Is that OK?"
"No problems. Heard of the word elope?" Actually, I was surprised David formally asked for my daughter's hand. I mean, they have been living together for years and what would they do if I refused to give my blessing? Elope? Damn. Melissa said, yes, and cried, as did her mother. I, too, was feeling a little unsettled by then. The two hamburgers that BBQ chef Miguel had cooked for me were still raw inside. He argued they were tartare-style. In retaliation, I thrashed him and David at eight-ball doubles, a victory shared with my son Paul, who flew from Melbourne with his live-in girlfriend Amanda. She revealed that Paul kept being "hit-on" by the gays of St Kilda, where the pair of them lived, and she was always having to extricate him from possible trouble. She recounted how Xavier, the owner of a clothes shop, had spent an inordinately long time taking Paul's measurements and then, while Paul was in the fitting room, had asked Amanda if they were "you know, connected?". "Yes, at the hips," she glared back. Paul said he hardly ever walked the streets at night without Amanda on his arm. "She's my beard," he said, meaning her presence was supposed to deflect unwanted gay attention. Apparently Paul has gained a reputation as something of a "metrosexual" since moving to Melbourne. That is, he can cook, is concerned about his appearance and is sensitive to other people's feelings. He was never like that when I lived with him. Let me also add that I have never been targeted by gay affection. Not sensitive enough. Anyway, Melissa was showing off the ring and David was looking mighty pleased with himself. He must have received one of the few properly cooked burgers. "So what did you get Melissa for her birthday?" I asked. "Huh?" "You can't just give her an engagement ring and no birthday present. That's hardly fair." David blanched and looked utterly broke. At the end of the day, we shook hands. "Thanks for giving me your daughter," he said. "You're more than welcome. Elope."
Friday, November 21, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, November 26, 2003
TEACHING LESSONS IN ANANGU REALITY
THE knock on the door at midnight was a little girl seeking help to steal flowers. Too scared of the dogs to go alone in the dark, she wanted her teacher to help pinch the sunflowers from someone's garden for a funeral the next day. Teacher by day; flower thief by night. Or ambulance driver or even gravedigger. Doing six jobs at once, such is life for teachers in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands. While the white bureaucrats fly in and quickly out of The Lands, the teachers are there to stay. Not everyone could do it. No drugs, no drink, no fraternisation. And losing contact with family and friends through isolation can be especially hard on the young. The other thing they quickly lose is any illusions they had about education. The standard methods they were taught at uni are not always practical in The Lands. Standing in front of the class to teach simply won't work. You need to sit among the kids even though departmental rules discourage it. The kids drape themselves all over you to learn. It's their way. They also dislike being singled out for individual attention, for praise or criticism. No-one willingly stands out from the Anangu crowd. Ask a child to name the colour of his pencil and the boy next to him will say "blue". Ask a girl her name and someone else will answer "Nadia". Even school assemblies may offend traditional law by forcing together children who should be in "avoidance". A man and his mother-in-law could be holding a perfectly normal conversation about the family ... except for standing back to back. Anangu "avoidance" custom forbids them from ever looking at each other. Nothing is ever simple in The Lands and education often comes second to culture. Even so, the schools are the community centres, the places where white and black culture unite for good purpose. Mind you, the real guiding lights are the Aboriginal Education Workers (AEWs). Without the support of AEWs, the system would collapse. At Mimili, AEW Ngupulya Pumani's coffee mug was plastered with merit stickers – all thoroughly deserved. The Lands' schools have much the same challenges as any school - "Don't smoke marawana, puyu wi'ya ukiri" - although the chronic health problems are more serious. Ninety five per cent of kids have hearing loss. Almost all have perforated ear drums. If the kids are deaf what hope do they have to learn? At Amata, a school trampoline was used to help clear the kids' respiratory congestion. At Indulkana, the school spent $15,000 on breakfasts annually. At Mimili, the school spent $6000 on fresh fruit. White teachers come away special from The Lands. One of the odd consequences is an uncertainty among them about whether they are still capable of teaching in "normal" schools, as if they need a refresher course in white society. I asked one teacher what she would be her first treat back in Adelaide for the school holiday? A facial, perhaps, or a massage? "A drink," she said. (Des Ryan travelled to The Lands in October 2003 as a guest of the South Australian Education Department.)
TEACHING LESSONS IN ANANGU REALITY
THE knock on the door at midnight was a little girl seeking help to steal flowers. Too scared of the dogs to go alone in the dark, she wanted her teacher to help pinch the sunflowers from someone's garden for a funeral the next day. Teacher by day; flower thief by night. Or ambulance driver or even gravedigger. Doing six jobs at once, such is life for teachers in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands. While the white bureaucrats fly in and quickly out of The Lands, the teachers are there to stay. Not everyone could do it. No drugs, no drink, no fraternisation. And losing contact with family and friends through isolation can be especially hard on the young. The other thing they quickly lose is any illusions they had about education. The standard methods they were taught at uni are not always practical in The Lands. Standing in front of the class to teach simply won't work. You need to sit among the kids even though departmental rules discourage it. The kids drape themselves all over you to learn. It's their way. They also dislike being singled out for individual attention, for praise or criticism. No-one willingly stands out from the Anangu crowd. Ask a child to name the colour of his pencil and the boy next to him will say "blue". Ask a girl her name and someone else will answer "Nadia". Even school assemblies may offend traditional law by forcing together children who should be in "avoidance". A man and his mother-in-law could be holding a perfectly normal conversation about the family ... except for standing back to back. Anangu "avoidance" custom forbids them from ever looking at each other. Nothing is ever simple in The Lands and education often comes second to culture. Even so, the schools are the community centres, the places where white and black culture unite for good purpose. Mind you, the real guiding lights are the Aboriginal Education Workers (AEWs). Without the support of AEWs, the system would collapse. At Mimili, AEW Ngupulya Pumani's coffee mug was plastered with merit stickers – all thoroughly deserved. The Lands' schools have much the same challenges as any school - "Don't smoke marawana, puyu wi'ya ukiri" - although the chronic health problems are more serious. Ninety five per cent of kids have hearing loss. Almost all have perforated ear drums. If the kids are deaf what hope do they have to learn? At Amata, a school trampoline was used to help clear the kids' respiratory congestion. At Indulkana, the school spent $15,000 on breakfasts annually. At Mimili, the school spent $6000 on fresh fruit. White teachers come away special from The Lands. One of the odd consequences is an uncertainty among them about whether they are still capable of teaching in "normal" schools, as if they need a refresher course in white society. I asked one teacher what she would be her first treat back in Adelaide for the school holiday? A facial, perhaps, or a massage? "A drink," she said. (Des Ryan travelled to The Lands in October 2003 as a guest of the South Australian Education Department.)
Monday, November 17, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, November 19, 2003
QUICK HEADLINES OFFER NO EASY ANSWERS
WHEN I first went to The Lands in the late 1970s, it took me a long time - a couple of years, at least - before I had regained my composure enough to write anything coherent about the place. Petrol sniffing, chronic disease and squalor were too confronting for an ex-altar boy who thought amoebic dysentry was part of the Latin liturgy. I had gone to the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands, in far north SA, with the old Institute of Teachers to look at teacher housing. The housing was not too bad; it was my framework that needed underpinning. I remember coming away thinking white contact was the worst thing that had ever happened to the Anangu - an utterly useless reaction in the circumstances. Twenty five years later, I went back there recently with the Education Department and the same old problems still existed, no denying it. I saw no manicured lawns or topiary hedges. Yet I came away this time feeling optimistic. For one thing, life in general has moved on incredibly since I was last there. In the '70s, the old man who had taken his first ride in a car was still alive. He had sat in the back staring out the window and after a short drive had tapped the driver on the shoulder: "How do you make the mountains move like that?" And people could still remember another old fella, on spotting his first rabbit, who had quickly scrambled up a tree uncertain what the creature could do to him. Back then, The Lands had no TV, no radio and no mobile phones. The only means of communication was a shared radio telephone that even courting couples had to use for wooing. "For goodness sake, man, just marry her!" was one famous interjection. Now there are phones, computers, the internet and 30 satellite TV channels. A TV is the first item of household furniture even though it might sit on a 44 gallon drum linked by a long line of extension cords to a generator in the bush. The Aboriginal kids, relating to colour, wear the same gridiron and basketball singlets worn by black US players and wear 2PAC T-shirts bearing the message "Me Against The World". I am not a great advocate of American TV as a guiding cultural light but it offers better options than petrol sniffing. Which, by the way, was introduced by black US troops based in Central Australia in WWII. So it goes. At this stage, with a drum roll and a clash of cymbals, I should like to provide solutions to the problems. No such luck. The Lands are easy meat for visiting journalists looking for cheap, lazy headlines. To me, this is not much different than staring at a person with a birthmark covering half her face and saying, "Do you know who have a birthmark covering half your face?" The Pitjantjatjara know the problems and they need support to find solutions that suit their situation, not some whitefella bureaucracy's. The future can been seen in the bright, happy faces of the kids at school. Within them are the answers. They are the reason for my optimism.
QUICK HEADLINES OFFER NO EASY ANSWERS
WHEN I first went to The Lands in the late 1970s, it took me a long time - a couple of years, at least - before I had regained my composure enough to write anything coherent about the place. Petrol sniffing, chronic disease and squalor were too confronting for an ex-altar boy who thought amoebic dysentry was part of the Latin liturgy. I had gone to the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands, in far north SA, with the old Institute of Teachers to look at teacher housing. The housing was not too bad; it was my framework that needed underpinning. I remember coming away thinking white contact was the worst thing that had ever happened to the Anangu - an utterly useless reaction in the circumstances. Twenty five years later, I went back there recently with the Education Department and the same old problems still existed, no denying it. I saw no manicured lawns or topiary hedges. Yet I came away this time feeling optimistic. For one thing, life in general has moved on incredibly since I was last there. In the '70s, the old man who had taken his first ride in a car was still alive. He had sat in the back staring out the window and after a short drive had tapped the driver on the shoulder: "How do you make the mountains move like that?" And people could still remember another old fella, on spotting his first rabbit, who had quickly scrambled up a tree uncertain what the creature could do to him. Back then, The Lands had no TV, no radio and no mobile phones. The only means of communication was a shared radio telephone that even courting couples had to use for wooing. "For goodness sake, man, just marry her!" was one famous interjection. Now there are phones, computers, the internet and 30 satellite TV channels. A TV is the first item of household furniture even though it might sit on a 44 gallon drum linked by a long line of extension cords to a generator in the bush. The Aboriginal kids, relating to colour, wear the same gridiron and basketball singlets worn by black US players and wear 2PAC T-shirts bearing the message "Me Against The World". I am not a great advocate of American TV as a guiding cultural light but it offers better options than petrol sniffing. Which, by the way, was introduced by black US troops based in Central Australia in WWII. So it goes. At this stage, with a drum roll and a clash of cymbals, I should like to provide solutions to the problems. No such luck. The Lands are easy meat for visiting journalists looking for cheap, lazy headlines. To me, this is not much different than staring at a person with a birthmark covering half her face and saying, "Do you know who have a birthmark covering half your face?" The Pitjantjatjara know the problems and they need support to find solutions that suit their situation, not some whitefella bureaucracy's. The future can been seen in the bright, happy faces of the kids at school. Within them are the answers. They are the reason for my optimism.
Tuesday, November 11, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, November 12, 2003
YOU SPEAKING TO ME, KUNMANARA?
A NAME can make a big difference to your day. Call a child Christian, say, and the kid may have a chance of becoming Pope but he is unlikely to become the Malaysian Prime Minister. Or, based solely on their names, the Zimbabwean cricketers Heath Streak and Trevor Gripper both could have great futures as porno movie stars after their sporting careers end. Names not only identify individuals but in some cases they can also provide insights into the complex nature of a culture. For example, in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands which I visited recently as a guest of the Education Department,the name of a dead person cannot be spoken. Bad luck if someone else happens to share the same name - they lose it too. But since people cannot go around nameless, the Anangu have devised a way around the problem by providing a temporary replacement name, Kunmunara. A person could be known as Kunmunara for a few months or for several years, depending on the importance of the person who died. If the period looks like being a long one, a new name is usually assigned since, over time, there could be any number of Kunmunaras wandering around the place. At Amata school, there were four Kunmunara kids at one unfortunate time. Then a fifth turned up to make matters even more confusing. At their wits' end, the teachers checked the latest arrival's enrolment form to see if he had a second name they could use. Finding none, they looked up his birth date and discovered he was born under the zodiac sign of Leo. He became Leo and liked the name so much, he was still Leo 20 years later. Just was well he was not a Sagittarian. At Mimili, a teacher named Lisa was called Armory; at Ernabella, a Russell was called Tom; and another Russell was called Kunmunara while awaiting a renaming. One teacher named Peter Russell became Kunmunara Russell when another Peter died. And then someone named Russell died and the teacher became Kunmunara Kunmunara, or Kunmunara Squared to his colleagues. All this has a sad side to it - the high Aboriginal death rate. On average, they live 20 years less than the rest of the population at a death rate two to three times higher; in the 35-54 age group, their death rate is at least five times higher. For men, the life expectancy is 56. Their 50th birthday parties tend to be big ones. At Ernabella when I was there, the community had spent several days in a Sorry Camp following the death of a woman hit by a freight train. Sorry Camps are an unfortunate fact of life and teachers showing old photo albums to their students must be careful to place a hand over the image of anyone who has died. At Indulkana, among the junior primary students were the names Driscilla Walkabout, Nadia Whiskey and Julian Lennon. Such wonderful names. I hope they never become Kunmunara.
YOU SPEAKING TO ME, KUNMANARA?
A NAME can make a big difference to your day. Call a child Christian, say, and the kid may have a chance of becoming Pope but he is unlikely to become the Malaysian Prime Minister. Or, based solely on their names, the Zimbabwean cricketers Heath Streak and Trevor Gripper both could have great futures as porno movie stars after their sporting careers end. Names not only identify individuals but in some cases they can also provide insights into the complex nature of a culture. For example, in the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands which I visited recently as a guest of the Education Department,the name of a dead person cannot be spoken. Bad luck if someone else happens to share the same name - they lose it too. But since people cannot go around nameless, the Anangu have devised a way around the problem by providing a temporary replacement name, Kunmunara. A person could be known as Kunmunara for a few months or for several years, depending on the importance of the person who died. If the period looks like being a long one, a new name is usually assigned since, over time, there could be any number of Kunmunaras wandering around the place. At Amata school, there were four Kunmunara kids at one unfortunate time. Then a fifth turned up to make matters even more confusing. At their wits' end, the teachers checked the latest arrival's enrolment form to see if he had a second name they could use. Finding none, they looked up his birth date and discovered he was born under the zodiac sign of Leo. He became Leo and liked the name so much, he was still Leo 20 years later. Just was well he was not a Sagittarian. At Mimili, a teacher named Lisa was called Armory; at Ernabella, a Russell was called Tom; and another Russell was called Kunmunara while awaiting a renaming. One teacher named Peter Russell became Kunmunara Russell when another Peter died. And then someone named Russell died and the teacher became Kunmunara Kunmunara, or Kunmunara Squared to his colleagues. All this has a sad side to it - the high Aboriginal death rate. On average, they live 20 years less than the rest of the population at a death rate two to three times higher; in the 35-54 age group, their death rate is at least five times higher. For men, the life expectancy is 56. Their 50th birthday parties tend to be big ones. At Ernabella when I was there, the community had spent several days in a Sorry Camp following the death of a woman hit by a freight train. Sorry Camps are an unfortunate fact of life and teachers showing old photo albums to their students must be careful to place a hand over the image of anyone who has died. At Indulkana, among the junior primary students were the names Driscilla Walkabout, Nadia Whiskey and Julian Lennon. Such wonderful names. I hope they never become Kunmunara.
Tuesday, November 04, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide November 5, 2003
DRIEST PLACE IN THE DRIEST STATE
THE wife of a retired Australian military attache once told me that diplomats based in strict Muslim countries had to be utterly shameless when it came to obtaining a drink. In Afghanistan, she said, they had to register as alcoholics to be allowed a drink for medicinal purposes. Her story kept playing on my mind when I recently spent a week on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands in the far north - the largest alcohol dry zone in SA. The last time I was there 25 years ago, the whites had a nod-wink exemption that allowed them to drink so long as they did so discreetly in their own homes. They brought beer onto The Lands in cardboard boxes marked ``Brake Fluid'' and the empties were buried in dry creekbeds ... until the next flash flood washed them clattering downstream in their hundreds. Nowadays the alcohol ban applies equally to everyone regardless of colour. This is the land of ginless tonics. On the first night in Mimili, discussing Outback road conditions, satellite phones and anything but alcohol, Big Russ finally cracked and almost screamed: "So what do you reckon is the best beer in Australia?" From there we worked our minds through a well stocked bottle shop, shelf by shelf. Derek, a Welshman, said the Irish had invented whiskey, only to have it stolen by the Scots who mispelled it whisky, So how did the Welsh spell it, Derek? Wisgi, with a slash over the "g". One sober day blurred into another. Watching the Rugby World Cup on TV, every advertisement seemed to be for Heineken, Guinness, XXXX beer or Carlton Mid-Strength. An ad depicting a couple drinking champagne in a spa at an Alice Springs resort caused a near-riot. Russ glanced at himself in the mirror: "You're a fascinating looking man." Some people will say anything after two pots of coffee. The grog ban has had an effect on The Lands. At Indulkana, the school had to put out a call for empty springwater boxes to make Halloween lanterns. Once, unlimited numbers of wine casks would have been available. In fact, The Lands also offer a range of mind blowing alternatives. One is the yellow flower of the corkwood tree, which contains nectar that ferments in the sun and turns to alcohol. Stockmen picking the flowers as they rode along would be drunk by dinner time. The Aborigines also put the flowers in water holes to make the kangaroos go wobbly and then knocked them over for tucker. Another offering is the pituri shrub whose leaves contain a narcotic which, if concentrated in tablet form, could be distributed to nightclubs across the country in fair return for the alcohol and substance abuse inflicted on Aborigines. It could be sold as "Revenge". On our last night, at Ernabella, we found wine glasses in the cupboard and used them to toast outselves with Diet Coke, for tomorrow we drink again. At 2.10pm at Alice Springs airport, I had my first beer in five days. A second quickly followed and there were several others. That night I was thunderstruck by diarrhoea, the beer having gone through me like a dose of salts.
DRIEST PLACE IN THE DRIEST STATE
THE wife of a retired Australian military attache once told me that diplomats based in strict Muslim countries had to be utterly shameless when it came to obtaining a drink. In Afghanistan, she said, they had to register as alcoholics to be allowed a drink for medicinal purposes. Her story kept playing on my mind when I recently spent a week on the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Lands in the far north - the largest alcohol dry zone in SA. The last time I was there 25 years ago, the whites had a nod-wink exemption that allowed them to drink so long as they did so discreetly in their own homes. They brought beer onto The Lands in cardboard boxes marked ``Brake Fluid'' and the empties were buried in dry creekbeds ... until the next flash flood washed them clattering downstream in their hundreds. Nowadays the alcohol ban applies equally to everyone regardless of colour. This is the land of ginless tonics. On the first night in Mimili, discussing Outback road conditions, satellite phones and anything but alcohol, Big Russ finally cracked and almost screamed: "So what do you reckon is the best beer in Australia?" From there we worked our minds through a well stocked bottle shop, shelf by shelf. Derek, a Welshman, said the Irish had invented whiskey, only to have it stolen by the Scots who mispelled it whisky, So how did the Welsh spell it, Derek? Wisgi, with a slash over the "g". One sober day blurred into another. Watching the Rugby World Cup on TV, every advertisement seemed to be for Heineken, Guinness, XXXX beer or Carlton Mid-Strength. An ad depicting a couple drinking champagne in a spa at an Alice Springs resort caused a near-riot. Russ glanced at himself in the mirror: "You're a fascinating looking man." Some people will say anything after two pots of coffee. The grog ban has had an effect on The Lands. At Indulkana, the school had to put out a call for empty springwater boxes to make Halloween lanterns. Once, unlimited numbers of wine casks would have been available. In fact, The Lands also offer a range of mind blowing alternatives. One is the yellow flower of the corkwood tree, which contains nectar that ferments in the sun and turns to alcohol. Stockmen picking the flowers as they rode along would be drunk by dinner time. The Aborigines also put the flowers in water holes to make the kangaroos go wobbly and then knocked them over for tucker. Another offering is the pituri shrub whose leaves contain a narcotic which, if concentrated in tablet form, could be distributed to nightclubs across the country in fair return for the alcohol and substance abuse inflicted on Aborigines. It could be sold as "Revenge". On our last night, at Ernabella, we found wine glasses in the cupboard and used them to toast outselves with Diet Coke, for tomorrow we drink again. At 2.10pm at Alice Springs airport, I had my first beer in five days. A second quickly followed and there were several others. That night I was thunderstruck by diarrhoea, the beer having gone through me like a dose of salts.
Monday, October 27, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, October 29, 2003
THE ELOPEMENT OF PAUL AND JANE
NOWADAYS, when a couple already living together in sin decides on wedlock, it often comes as a surprise to their family and friends, especially when the nuptials occur overseas and almost no-one else knows about it. Live-in lovers Paul and Jane were married early this year in New York and they forgot to tell me. I forgive them. They did not act on a whim. Oh, no. I have never known Paul to act on anything without first carefully analysing all possible options and consequences, and then having second thoughts. No, this was a meticulously planned elopement, which Paul kept to himself. Not even Jane knew. Everyone except Paul believed the pair of them was going on a Italian holiday last Christmas. In Rome, however, he proposed marriage at the Fontana di Trevi, as you do. OK, Jane replied, and they went and bought rings and had dinner in a fancy restaurant to celebrate. At this stage, she thought they were travelling on to Venice but over dinner Paul announced he had organised a surprise wedding in New York, if she were interested, almost immediately. OK, Jane replied. They could have chosen to marry in Central Park. Instead they were married by a Federal Court judge during the lunch break in a Mafia mobster trial. There were two witnesses - possibly from the witness protection program - and the wedding licence apparently was cheaper than a gun licence. Afterwards, they had lunch at a pizza joint near the Brooklyn Bridge and emailed back a photograph of themselves standing under the bridge, without mentioning they were newlyweds. Their family and friends gathered recently at the National Wine Centre in Adelaide to belatedly celebrate the nuptials. Paul's mother told me she was not in the least fazed about not being there for the wedding. Having only sons, she was delighted to gain Jane and her four sisters as new daughters and, best of all, to have five new drinking buddies. Have another drink, mum. "We just wanted to do something different and with a minimum of ceremony," Paul told the gathering. It's called an elopement, Paul. He went on to recount how, at a low ebb in his personal life, a mate had reassured him that when the right girl came along, he would know it. Spotting Jane working as a waitress in Rundle St, he had experienced his "A-ha! That's the one!" moment. "Yeah, so did the rest of the footy team!" joked someone from the back. Weddings always provoke drunken interjections. Jane began her speech by immediately and repeatedly expressing love and devotion to both their mothers - a sure sign, in my view, of lingering guilt over the in absentia wedding, which Jane later denied and threatened to punch my lights out if I repeated it in print. Everything in life is structured to the advantage of couples, from twin-share holiday discounts to tax splitting. But is marriage really necessary? Sure. Any excuse for a party.
THE ELOPEMENT OF PAUL AND JANE
NOWADAYS, when a couple already living together in sin decides on wedlock, it often comes as a surprise to their family and friends, especially when the nuptials occur overseas and almost no-one else knows about it. Live-in lovers Paul and Jane were married early this year in New York and they forgot to tell me. I forgive them. They did not act on a whim. Oh, no. I have never known Paul to act on anything without first carefully analysing all possible options and consequences, and then having second thoughts. No, this was a meticulously planned elopement, which Paul kept to himself. Not even Jane knew. Everyone except Paul believed the pair of them was going on a Italian holiday last Christmas. In Rome, however, he proposed marriage at the Fontana di Trevi, as you do. OK, Jane replied, and they went and bought rings and had dinner in a fancy restaurant to celebrate. At this stage, she thought they were travelling on to Venice but over dinner Paul announced he had organised a surprise wedding in New York, if she were interested, almost immediately. OK, Jane replied. They could have chosen to marry in Central Park. Instead they were married by a Federal Court judge during the lunch break in a Mafia mobster trial. There were two witnesses - possibly from the witness protection program - and the wedding licence apparently was cheaper than a gun licence. Afterwards, they had lunch at a pizza joint near the Brooklyn Bridge and emailed back a photograph of themselves standing under the bridge, without mentioning they were newlyweds. Their family and friends gathered recently at the National Wine Centre in Adelaide to belatedly celebrate the nuptials. Paul's mother told me she was not in the least fazed about not being there for the wedding. Having only sons, she was delighted to gain Jane and her four sisters as new daughters and, best of all, to have five new drinking buddies. Have another drink, mum. "We just wanted to do something different and with a minimum of ceremony," Paul told the gathering. It's called an elopement, Paul. He went on to recount how, at a low ebb in his personal life, a mate had reassured him that when the right girl came along, he would know it. Spotting Jane working as a waitress in Rundle St, he had experienced his "A-ha! That's the one!" moment. "Yeah, so did the rest of the footy team!" joked someone from the back. Weddings always provoke drunken interjections. Jane began her speech by immediately and repeatedly expressing love and devotion to both their mothers - a sure sign, in my view, of lingering guilt over the in absentia wedding, which Jane later denied and threatened to punch my lights out if I repeated it in print. Everything in life is structured to the advantage of couples, from twin-share holiday discounts to tax splitting. But is marriage really necessary? Sure. Any excuse for a party.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, October 22, 2003
RUGBY FAN BORN BY THE ROADSIDE
THE year was 1991. Late afternoon, driving through a heavy rain squall on a motorway towards Portsmouth, in southern England, and the hire car just conked out. The Rover's electrics failed completely in the wet. One would have thought an English car was designed to cope with rain as a bare minimum. Fortunately, the car rolled to a dead stop near an emergency phone from where I was able to call for roadside assistance. No sooner had I spoken my first few words than a cheery Cockney voice at the other end interrupted with an imitation strine accent: "Goodonya, cobber! Bee-luddy bewdy mate!" Standing shivering by the side of the road in the dark, lashed by a howling gale and drenched from the backwash of every passing truck, and I had a madman on the line. I thought it must be a wrong number even though the phone had connected itself. "You must be right chuffed!" he said. No, as a matter of fact, not since I was in danger of dying from exposure on the M27 unless he quickly found someone to help me. "What, have you not heard, man? Your lads gave Wales a royal walloping this afternoon at Cardiff Arms Park, 38-3." Racking my icy brain, it took a while to realise he was talking about the Rugby World Cup being played that year in the UK. So Australia had beaten Wales, big deal, as if I cared. Rugby Union barely rated as a blip on the sports screen where I came from, except among the hooray-henrys. In fact, it was a very big deal indeed in London. The next day's papers carried pages and pages on the illustrious Australians including Nick Farr-Jones, Michael Lynagh and David "Campo" Campese. Campo, who flipped cheeky passes over his shoulder and double stepped his way around heaving defenders, rated a full page in The Independent. Recovering from the Portsmouth flu, I began to take more notice of the World Cup as Australia scraped home against Ireland in the quarter finals and then crushed the fancied Kiwis in the semis. Well and truly hooked by then, I was an eye witness to the final between England and Australia at Twickenham, seated on a bar stool at the King Henry VIII pub in Bayswater. We won 12-6. I chanted and cheered with my Aussie Rules mates who, like me, had suddenly become rugby union experts and the hero worshippers of players who we barely knew existed a fortnight earlier. Two Rugby World Cup games are being staged next weekend in Adelaide. I wish I were in London to watch them. And another thing: At the opening ceremony in Sydney, did you hear the crowd boo when the Prime Minister went to the microphone? The boos were soon drowned out by the PM's cheer squad but did we witness for just a moment the turning of the political tide in Australia? Hmm, I wonder might the 2003 World Cup be remembered for triggering the collapsed scrum of a different kind altogether?
RUGBY FAN BORN BY THE ROADSIDE
THE year was 1991. Late afternoon, driving through a heavy rain squall on a motorway towards Portsmouth, in southern England, and the hire car just conked out. The Rover's electrics failed completely in the wet. One would have thought an English car was designed to cope with rain as a bare minimum. Fortunately, the car rolled to a dead stop near an emergency phone from where I was able to call for roadside assistance. No sooner had I spoken my first few words than a cheery Cockney voice at the other end interrupted with an imitation strine accent: "Goodonya, cobber! Bee-luddy bewdy mate!" Standing shivering by the side of the road in the dark, lashed by a howling gale and drenched from the backwash of every passing truck, and I had a madman on the line. I thought it must be a wrong number even though the phone had connected itself. "You must be right chuffed!" he said. No, as a matter of fact, not since I was in danger of dying from exposure on the M27 unless he quickly found someone to help me. "What, have you not heard, man? Your lads gave Wales a royal walloping this afternoon at Cardiff Arms Park, 38-3." Racking my icy brain, it took a while to realise he was talking about the Rugby World Cup being played that year in the UK. So Australia had beaten Wales, big deal, as if I cared. Rugby Union barely rated as a blip on the sports screen where I came from, except among the hooray-henrys. In fact, it was a very big deal indeed in London. The next day's papers carried pages and pages on the illustrious Australians including Nick Farr-Jones, Michael Lynagh and David "Campo" Campese. Campo, who flipped cheeky passes over his shoulder and double stepped his way around heaving defenders, rated a full page in The Independent. Recovering from the Portsmouth flu, I began to take more notice of the World Cup as Australia scraped home against Ireland in the quarter finals and then crushed the fancied Kiwis in the semis. Well and truly hooked by then, I was an eye witness to the final between England and Australia at Twickenham, seated on a bar stool at the King Henry VIII pub in Bayswater. We won 12-6. I chanted and cheered with my Aussie Rules mates who, like me, had suddenly become rugby union experts and the hero worshippers of players who we barely knew existed a fortnight earlier. Two Rugby World Cup games are being staged next weekend in Adelaide. I wish I were in London to watch them. And another thing: At the opening ceremony in Sydney, did you hear the crowd boo when the Prime Minister went to the microphone? The boos were soon drowned out by the PM's cheer squad but did we witness for just a moment the turning of the political tide in Australia? Hmm, I wonder might the 2003 World Cup be remembered for triggering the collapsed scrum of a different kind altogether?
Friday, October 10, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, October 15, 2003.
EMBRACING SUMMER'S FIRST WARM FRONT
LAST evening, the saddest of sights, a soft-serve ice cream van - overheated, hissing and already exhausted - was being hooked up to a tow truck by the side of the road. Not the best start to the warmer weather, one imagines, for the unfortunate owner. Back on my bike trying to lose weight faster than my body prefers, embracing the first really warm front of the season, I rode past poor old Mr Whippy on my way through the city. By the way, did you know the weather term ``warm front'' was coined in 1917 by Norwegian scientists influenced by the battlefield vocabulary of World War I? Now you do. Riding along Waymouth St past Koorong, the shop that sells bibles and religious stuff, and having a smile at the front door security system meant to deter shoplifting. If Christians cannot trust themselves, who can you trust? Prisoners must really miss the summer, I thought, pedalling on past the remand centre, in Currie St, which lacks a very long-term car park. One of the many drawbacks to being a prisoner, or a refugee at Gulag Baxter for that matter, must be the thought of the beach waiting out there beyond the wire. Speaking of refugees, I was standing in a bank queue recently and ahead of me a woman, in leopard-print leotards and a purple jumper, reached the teller just as her mobile phone broke into the theme from "Sex and the City". Instead of turning it off, she took the call and made the teller and the rest of us wait. Soon she was snapping back into the phone: "They've got rice, they've got pasta, haven't they? They've got bread, they've got plenty to eat..." Whatever happened to a balanced diet? The woman hung up, shaking her head angrily, and half-apologised to the teller for keeping her waiting, which was no consolation for the rest of us. "Hate doin' that, hate it when other people do it," she said, shoving the phone back in her shoulder bag. "I'm in charge of a buncha refugees, gotta get money out to feed 'em." Puh-leeze, lady! Surely the refugees have enough problems already? Of course, she might have been telling the truth; then again, withdrawing $105 - she was very loud and precise about it - she might also be heading off to play the pokies. For the sake of the refugees, let's hope it was the pokies. Riding around the corner into Hindley St and past a perfumed prostitute, very stripped down, who smelled like over-ripe tropical fruit. Either that or she needed to change her diet. Did you know the well-equipped hooker now carries both EFTPOS and a GPS device for satellite positioning? I just made that up. Hereabouts, the cafe windows offer a passing parade of pleasant girls in flimsy dresses, silhouetted by the sunlight, leaving not much to the imagination. Ahh, summer. Under the Taliban, the Afghan women had to wear purdah, veiled head to foot, which left everything to the imagination. It certainly fixed the Visible Panty Line problem - problem, what problem? - but knowing men as I do, they probably still ogled. Moving right along...
EMBRACING SUMMER'S FIRST WARM FRONT
LAST evening, the saddest of sights, a soft-serve ice cream van - overheated, hissing and already exhausted - was being hooked up to a tow truck by the side of the road. Not the best start to the warmer weather, one imagines, for the unfortunate owner. Back on my bike trying to lose weight faster than my body prefers, embracing the first really warm front of the season, I rode past poor old Mr Whippy on my way through the city. By the way, did you know the weather term ``warm front'' was coined in 1917 by Norwegian scientists influenced by the battlefield vocabulary of World War I? Now you do. Riding along Waymouth St past Koorong, the shop that sells bibles and religious stuff, and having a smile at the front door security system meant to deter shoplifting. If Christians cannot trust themselves, who can you trust? Prisoners must really miss the summer, I thought, pedalling on past the remand centre, in Currie St, which lacks a very long-term car park. One of the many drawbacks to being a prisoner, or a refugee at Gulag Baxter for that matter, must be the thought of the beach waiting out there beyond the wire. Speaking of refugees, I was standing in a bank queue recently and ahead of me a woman, in leopard-print leotards and a purple jumper, reached the teller just as her mobile phone broke into the theme from "Sex and the City". Instead of turning it off, she took the call and made the teller and the rest of us wait. Soon she was snapping back into the phone: "They've got rice, they've got pasta, haven't they? They've got bread, they've got plenty to eat..." Whatever happened to a balanced diet? The woman hung up, shaking her head angrily, and half-apologised to the teller for keeping her waiting, which was no consolation for the rest of us. "Hate doin' that, hate it when other people do it," she said, shoving the phone back in her shoulder bag. "I'm in charge of a buncha refugees, gotta get money out to feed 'em." Puh-leeze, lady! Surely the refugees have enough problems already? Of course, she might have been telling the truth; then again, withdrawing $105 - she was very loud and precise about it - she might also be heading off to play the pokies. For the sake of the refugees, let's hope it was the pokies. Riding around the corner into Hindley St and past a perfumed prostitute, very stripped down, who smelled like over-ripe tropical fruit. Either that or she needed to change her diet. Did you know the well-equipped hooker now carries both EFTPOS and a GPS device for satellite positioning? I just made that up. Hereabouts, the cafe windows offer a passing parade of pleasant girls in flimsy dresses, silhouetted by the sunlight, leaving not much to the imagination. Ahh, summer. Under the Taliban, the Afghan women had to wear purdah, veiled head to foot, which left everything to the imagination. It certainly fixed the Visible Panty Line problem - problem, what problem? - but knowing men as I do, they probably still ogled. Moving right along...
Wednesday, October 08, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, October 8, 2003
DYING TO CLAIM A BENEFIT
A QUARTER of all people sitting in doctors' waiting rooms are said to be hypochondriacs convinced they have a serious illness despite medical reassurances to the contrary. There is no physical explanation for their pains so why, may I ask, are they entitled to painkillers under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which subsidises the cost of prescription medicines? The question occurred to me while watching a government advertisement on TV warning us, not in so many words, to stop abusing the PBS system otherwise it might collapse. Featuring Dr James Wright, the ad suggested the blowout in PBS costs - 60 per cent in four years - was partly a consequence of soft doctors too readily supplying prescriptions to people who did not really need them. I know what he means. The last time I went to the doctor seeking antibiotics for an infected cyst, by the time I left the surgery I had also been prescribed tablets for high blood pressure, which I did not know I had until then. Later on, my mother informed me that hypertension ran in the family. She said her mother had suffered from frequent nose bleeds and in the worst attacks she had needed to stuff cotton wads up her nose. She had dropped dead from a stroke. My mother said she, too, had been on hypertension tablets since the day I was born, which must set some kind of record for post-natal depression. Not wishing to have my head suddenly explode, I accepted the doctor's prescription but the drug did not work. He twice increased the dosage and still it had no effect. We more or less agreed I had "white coat fever", which apparently meant my blood pressure rose only when I visited a doctor. I stopped taking the drugs and my life returned to normal. Dr Wright also laid part of the PBS blame on complaining patients, probably hypochondriacs, who expected to be given drugs on every visit to a surgery. What he failed to mention was that 80 per cent of PBS subsidies were used by concessional cardholders - pensioners and the chronically unwell. There is not much we as a society can do about concession cardholders until such time as we decide to leave the aged and the infirm in the desert to die. Do not laugh. The right to life is a right we have compromised for self-interest or expediency. Abortion is one example, capital punishment another, so why not euthanasia camps? Dr Wright's answer is for people to adopt healthier lifestyles by eating well and exercising properly. But what if they don't? Should the PBS subsidise people who do not look after themselves? Should fat people be allowed cholesterol lowering drugs when they refuse to diet and get fit? What about smokers and what about hypochondriacs? The PBS subsidy will be $4.5 billion this year; the Australian defence budget is $15.8 billion. By my calculation, therefore, the PBS subsidy could keep our armed forces going for 104 days, after which they would have to be sent home to their families. A nice thought. And if peace broke out, we might need fewer prescriptions for anti-depressants.
DYING TO CLAIM A BENEFIT
A QUARTER of all people sitting in doctors' waiting rooms are said to be hypochondriacs convinced they have a serious illness despite medical reassurances to the contrary. There is no physical explanation for their pains so why, may I ask, are they entitled to painkillers under the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme, which subsidises the cost of prescription medicines? The question occurred to me while watching a government advertisement on TV warning us, not in so many words, to stop abusing the PBS system otherwise it might collapse. Featuring Dr James Wright, the ad suggested the blowout in PBS costs - 60 per cent in four years - was partly a consequence of soft doctors too readily supplying prescriptions to people who did not really need them. I know what he means. The last time I went to the doctor seeking antibiotics for an infected cyst, by the time I left the surgery I had also been prescribed tablets for high blood pressure, which I did not know I had until then. Later on, my mother informed me that hypertension ran in the family. She said her mother had suffered from frequent nose bleeds and in the worst attacks she had needed to stuff cotton wads up her nose. She had dropped dead from a stroke. My mother said she, too, had been on hypertension tablets since the day I was born, which must set some kind of record for post-natal depression. Not wishing to have my head suddenly explode, I accepted the doctor's prescription but the drug did not work. He twice increased the dosage and still it had no effect. We more or less agreed I had "white coat fever", which apparently meant my blood pressure rose only when I visited a doctor. I stopped taking the drugs and my life returned to normal. Dr Wright also laid part of the PBS blame on complaining patients, probably hypochondriacs, who expected to be given drugs on every visit to a surgery. What he failed to mention was that 80 per cent of PBS subsidies were used by concessional cardholders - pensioners and the chronically unwell. There is not much we as a society can do about concession cardholders until such time as we decide to leave the aged and the infirm in the desert to die. Do not laugh. The right to life is a right we have compromised for self-interest or expediency. Abortion is one example, capital punishment another, so why not euthanasia camps? Dr Wright's answer is for people to adopt healthier lifestyles by eating well and exercising properly. But what if they don't? Should the PBS subsidise people who do not look after themselves? Should fat people be allowed cholesterol lowering drugs when they refuse to diet and get fit? What about smokers and what about hypochondriacs? The PBS subsidy will be $4.5 billion this year; the Australian defence budget is $15.8 billion. By my calculation, therefore, the PBS subsidy could keep our armed forces going for 104 days, after which they would have to be sent home to their families. A nice thought. And if peace broke out, we might need fewer prescriptions for anti-depressants.
Monday, September 29, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, October 1, 2003.
PRESERVE US OUR AMENITY
WHAT if Michelangelo had taken a hammer to his Pieta, the most sublimely beautiful piece of marble ever wrought by hand, and smashed it to smithereens? Or Jackson Pollock had sliced into Blue Poles with a meat cleaver? Since they produced the works, would they be entitled to destroy them? Would it be possible to obtain a court order to prevent them from wrecking their own work? Or if I owned Blue Poles - if only - would I have the right to dispose of it as I wished even if it meant destroying a great piece of art? And in destroying it, what if my motive was to cause grief to the artist or to the previous owner, say, after a marital breakup or a business dispute? Such questions raise interesting issues regarding property rights. Property ownership forms the bedrock of the law: A man's home is his castle, a place where he ought to be free to act as he wishes within the law. Yes? No. Over the years, multiple layers of government regulations have restricted what we can do on our own properties. We cannot light an incinerator in the backyard; we cannot chop down a tree over a certain size; we cannot wash our cars in the driveway; we cannot play loud music; and we cannot stand in the bedroom window and expose ourselves. Such actions affect something called "amenity", the freedom of neighbours to enjoy their properties without undue interference or intrusion from next door. I plant a tree in my garden - good or bad?; I plant the tree in a position that obscures my neighbour's coastal view - good or bad?; I plant the tree and block the view to deliberately cause my neighbour aggravation - good or bad? At some point, one man's property rights become another's amenity. There is also a broader concept of public amenity, a shared benefit in a property that we all own and value and wish to enjoy. A national park is one example. Glenelg was another such place until Holdfast Shores blighted the beach, and the property rights of the few spoiled the amenity of the vast majority. Can anyone even remember when Glenelg had a beach? Grrr. The art gallery cannot burn its art collection and the museum cannot pawn its historic artefacts yet we permit something just as precious - our sunny breathing spaces - to be ruined forever for a quick buck. What they have done to the Glenelg foreshore is a disgrace and in protest I refuse to go there any more. Now watch this space: The next battleground will be the inner harbour at Port Adelaide where it is proposed to line the historic riverside with apartment blocks stacked up to 12 storeys high. Too high, too much, too many: The river will be turned into a canyon of shadows and wind tunnels. The Port's redevelopment is overdue, true enough, but it should be of a scale that takes account what the community values about the river and its historic precincts.
PRESERVE US OUR AMENITY
WHAT if Michelangelo had taken a hammer to his Pieta, the most sublimely beautiful piece of marble ever wrought by hand, and smashed it to smithereens? Or Jackson Pollock had sliced into Blue Poles with a meat cleaver? Since they produced the works, would they be entitled to destroy them? Would it be possible to obtain a court order to prevent them from wrecking their own work? Or if I owned Blue Poles - if only - would I have the right to dispose of it as I wished even if it meant destroying a great piece of art? And in destroying it, what if my motive was to cause grief to the artist or to the previous owner, say, after a marital breakup or a business dispute? Such questions raise interesting issues regarding property rights. Property ownership forms the bedrock of the law: A man's home is his castle, a place where he ought to be free to act as he wishes within the law. Yes? No. Over the years, multiple layers of government regulations have restricted what we can do on our own properties. We cannot light an incinerator in the backyard; we cannot chop down a tree over a certain size; we cannot wash our cars in the driveway; we cannot play loud music; and we cannot stand in the bedroom window and expose ourselves. Such actions affect something called "amenity", the freedom of neighbours to enjoy their properties without undue interference or intrusion from next door. I plant a tree in my garden - good or bad?; I plant the tree in a position that obscures my neighbour's coastal view - good or bad?; I plant the tree and block the view to deliberately cause my neighbour aggravation - good or bad? At some point, one man's property rights become another's amenity. There is also a broader concept of public amenity, a shared benefit in a property that we all own and value and wish to enjoy. A national park is one example. Glenelg was another such place until Holdfast Shores blighted the beach, and the property rights of the few spoiled the amenity of the vast majority. Can anyone even remember when Glenelg had a beach? Grrr. The art gallery cannot burn its art collection and the museum cannot pawn its historic artefacts yet we permit something just as precious - our sunny breathing spaces - to be ruined forever for a quick buck. What they have done to the Glenelg foreshore is a disgrace and in protest I refuse to go there any more. Now watch this space: The next battleground will be the inner harbour at Port Adelaide where it is proposed to line the historic riverside with apartment blocks stacked up to 12 storeys high. Too high, too much, too many: The river will be turned into a canyon of shadows and wind tunnels. The Port's redevelopment is overdue, true enough, but it should be of a scale that takes account what the community values about the river and its historic precincts.
Monday, September 22, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, September 24, 2003
IN SYMPHONY WITH LOW NOTES
MY OLD record collection included Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, which I mention now, at the outset, in order to confirm my Baby Boomer bona fides. I once went to a rock concert featuring The Who and The Small Faces on the same bill. True, I also went to a Glen Campbell concert at the old Apollo Stadium but it was marital blackmail at the time, which does not count. Now, I am more likely to attend a Beethoven concert rather than one by the Rolling Stones, although they are around the same vintage. Adelaide is fortunate to have its own fine symphony orchestra, equal to playing Wagner or the theme from The Magnificent Seven, and willing to perform virtually anywhere if it means attracting a new audience. I have to say, though, the Entertainment Centre is not my favourite concert venue: the traffic gridlock, the foyer T-shirt hucksters, the wandering ice cream vendors and the sheer industrial scale of the auditorium. Yet I still turned up there a while back for an Adelaide Symphony Orchestra concert ``spectacular'', complete with military band and a 200 voice choir. The ASO ploy to attract a younger audience seemed to have worked a treat this time to judge by the number of youngsters, hoods pulled over their heads, sucking Chupa Chups and crumpling cellophane chip bags in my ear. Spotlights zoomed around and around and giant video screens above the orchestra displayed what could not be seen of the stage from where I sat in the back corner. At different times, a body-builder also strutted his stuff and giant balloons were sent bouncing over the audience, with the orchestra and their instruments protected behind netting. The music itself included such tunes as Fanfare for the Common Man, Toreador and Ride of the Valkeries, to which hundreds of paper helicopters fluttered from cages under the roof in the style of Apocalypse Now. Unfortunately, despite the seven technicians crewing the control centre amid the stalls - more than on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise - the sound system was over-amplified to the point of distortion and had no hope of coping with soprano Kirsti Harms' highest note on a headset mike. Whenever a lull occurred in the music, the air was filled with a feedback hum. Here was a symphonic concert for the generation who could not imagine music without an electric guitar and a drum machine. By interval I had a headache and, from sitting half-twisted to see, I also had a crick in my neck and my left buttock was numb from leaning at an angle. The finale 1812 Overture, set against a background of industrial welders spewing sparks, brought the crowd to its feet and I quickly left without waiting for an encore, having to trudge halfway to Croydon to retrieve my car. Last week I went to a Musica Viva concert at the Adelaide Town Hall featuring the baroque quartet Red Priest. No criticism of the ASO - whatever it takes to get bums on seats - but by comparison it was wonderful to be listening to glorious music in gorgeous surroundings, as was originally intended. Am I growing old? Apparently so.
IN SYMPHONY WITH LOW NOTES
MY OLD record collection included Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple, which I mention now, at the outset, in order to confirm my Baby Boomer bona fides. I once went to a rock concert featuring The Who and The Small Faces on the same bill. True, I also went to a Glen Campbell concert at the old Apollo Stadium but it was marital blackmail at the time, which does not count. Now, I am more likely to attend a Beethoven concert rather than one by the Rolling Stones, although they are around the same vintage. Adelaide is fortunate to have its own fine symphony orchestra, equal to playing Wagner or the theme from The Magnificent Seven, and willing to perform virtually anywhere if it means attracting a new audience. I have to say, though, the Entertainment Centre is not my favourite concert venue: the traffic gridlock, the foyer T-shirt hucksters, the wandering ice cream vendors and the sheer industrial scale of the auditorium. Yet I still turned up there a while back for an Adelaide Symphony Orchestra concert ``spectacular'', complete with military band and a 200 voice choir. The ASO ploy to attract a younger audience seemed to have worked a treat this time to judge by the number of youngsters, hoods pulled over their heads, sucking Chupa Chups and crumpling cellophane chip bags in my ear. Spotlights zoomed around and around and giant video screens above the orchestra displayed what could not be seen of the stage from where I sat in the back corner. At different times, a body-builder also strutted his stuff and giant balloons were sent bouncing over the audience, with the orchestra and their instruments protected behind netting. The music itself included such tunes as Fanfare for the Common Man, Toreador and Ride of the Valkeries, to which hundreds of paper helicopters fluttered from cages under the roof in the style of Apocalypse Now. Unfortunately, despite the seven technicians crewing the control centre amid the stalls - more than on the bridge of the Starship Enterprise - the sound system was over-amplified to the point of distortion and had no hope of coping with soprano Kirsti Harms' highest note on a headset mike. Whenever a lull occurred in the music, the air was filled with a feedback hum. Here was a symphonic concert for the generation who could not imagine music without an electric guitar and a drum machine. By interval I had a headache and, from sitting half-twisted to see, I also had a crick in my neck and my left buttock was numb from leaning at an angle. The finale 1812 Overture, set against a background of industrial welders spewing sparks, brought the crowd to its feet and I quickly left without waiting for an encore, having to trudge halfway to Croydon to retrieve my car. Last week I went to a Musica Viva concert at the Adelaide Town Hall featuring the baroque quartet Red Priest. No criticism of the ASO - whatever it takes to get bums on seats - but by comparison it was wonderful to be listening to glorious music in gorgeous surroundings, as was originally intended. Am I growing old? Apparently so.
Monday, September 15, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, September 17, 2003
HEAD FULL OF CONGESTION
THE bus in front had a yellow sticker in the rear window, which read: "Do Not Overtake Turning Vehicle." "Some people prefer to die at home among friends," said the funeral parlour advertisement underneath. Juxtaposed like that, I had to smile even though my head was clogged with a heavy cold and I was stuck in even heavier traffic trying to skirt around the city via Mile End. Is it just me or has Adelaide's traffic also become clogged lately? The urban traffic flow seems to be worsening, not improving. The more roads we build, the more cars will use them. Extra traffic always fill the gaps and the congestion becomes just as bad again. Even if the traffic lights are sequenced properly, which they rarely are, the flow lasts only until the next rail crossing, B-double truck or road crash. A fatal accident recently on Tapleys Hill Rd resulted in a 40 minute gridlock around the airport during which it was feared emergency vehicles could not gain access in the event of a plane crash. Gridlock is a great leveller: the rich have no advantage over the poor; the old can keep abreast of the young; and the hottest Lamborghini can go no faster than the oldest Corona. Speaking of which, do you know the scientific name for the common cold is the corona virus? Who would name a car after a cold? Different motorists respond differently to the shared experience of a traffic jam: some people sit with a distant smile on their faces; others are driven to road rage; and some of us frankly could not care less when we are unwell. I was feeling dizzy and sweaty although not much more than usual, and had been coughing phlegm although not nearly as much as if I had still been smoking. Why does the International Olympic Committee not ban smoking? After all, it affects performance and kills you. Stuck behind the bus, I was dosed up with enough IOC banned drugs to defy the cold symptoms, free to go about my business and to infect as many people as possible when I should have been home in bed. When illness occurs, I usually like to give my body a chance to cure itself first before resorting to drugs. Animals treat themselves so why not us? For example, cats and dogs eat grass if they have upset stomachs. How do they know to eat grass? Trial and error? Copying other animals? Are they born with inbuilt knowledge? Hmmm. In the case of a cold, however, there is no known cure and I rely heavily on Codral. Dragging myself out of bed this morning, resolving to lose weight before starting my summer get-fit program, I strained my shoulder doing up my trouser belt and then sneezed on my tie. The survival of the fittest plays no part in the treatment of colds.
HEAD FULL OF CONGESTION
THE bus in front had a yellow sticker in the rear window, which read: "Do Not Overtake Turning Vehicle." "Some people prefer to die at home among friends," said the funeral parlour advertisement underneath. Juxtaposed like that, I had to smile even though my head was clogged with a heavy cold and I was stuck in even heavier traffic trying to skirt around the city via Mile End. Is it just me or has Adelaide's traffic also become clogged lately? The urban traffic flow seems to be worsening, not improving. The more roads we build, the more cars will use them. Extra traffic always fill the gaps and the congestion becomes just as bad again. Even if the traffic lights are sequenced properly, which they rarely are, the flow lasts only until the next rail crossing, B-double truck or road crash. A fatal accident recently on Tapleys Hill Rd resulted in a 40 minute gridlock around the airport during which it was feared emergency vehicles could not gain access in the event of a plane crash. Gridlock is a great leveller: the rich have no advantage over the poor; the old can keep abreast of the young; and the hottest Lamborghini can go no faster than the oldest Corona. Speaking of which, do you know the scientific name for the common cold is the corona virus? Who would name a car after a cold? Different motorists respond differently to the shared experience of a traffic jam: some people sit with a distant smile on their faces; others are driven to road rage; and some of us frankly could not care less when we are unwell. I was feeling dizzy and sweaty although not much more than usual, and had been coughing phlegm although not nearly as much as if I had still been smoking. Why does the International Olympic Committee not ban smoking? After all, it affects performance and kills you. Stuck behind the bus, I was dosed up with enough IOC banned drugs to defy the cold symptoms, free to go about my business and to infect as many people as possible when I should have been home in bed. When illness occurs, I usually like to give my body a chance to cure itself first before resorting to drugs. Animals treat themselves so why not us? For example, cats and dogs eat grass if they have upset stomachs. How do they know to eat grass? Trial and error? Copying other animals? Are they born with inbuilt knowledge? Hmmm. In the case of a cold, however, there is no known cure and I rely heavily on Codral. Dragging myself out of bed this morning, resolving to lose weight before starting my summer get-fit program, I strained my shoulder doing up my trouser belt and then sneezed on my tie. The survival of the fittest plays no part in the treatment of colds.
Monday, September 08, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, September 10, 2003
TAKING SWINGS WITH POLITICAL BIAS
THE only saving grace in attending management conferences and leadership seminars is the opportunity they provide to catch up with old faces. Which, in the case of the conference I had to attend recently in the Hunter Valley of NSW, meant Sylvia B. She turned up in typical Sylvia style: jumper, leggings and boots, all in black except for red fireman's socks; green jewellery; henna hair cut into a flyaway bob; and electric blue glasses with strong lenses that gave her a half-blind quizzical look. Among the conference papers was a list of stipulations including that ``smart casual'' attire must be worn during the day and ``very smart casual'' at dinner. No one knew for sure what the difference meant.``Very smart casual is when I suck my stomach in,'' Sylvia said. While many women her age would be starting work on a facelift, Sylvia said she was chuffed recently to receive a letter asking for $87 to pay for another year's storage of two frozen embryos. She took perverse satisfaction in knowing she still was able to cast her offspring upon the planet, beyond her own reproductive shelf life. Revenge is a meal best served frozen. Sylvia has at least two kids of her own that I know of, possibly more. She says her parenting style has been simple: if you cannot be a good example to your kids, be a horrible warning. When I first saw her in action nearly 20 years ag, she was working as a marketer at The Age. She told a conference of newspaper executives that she had visited a primary school in working class Footscray to ask what the kids thought of The Age. "Effing boring," one had replied. Sylvia wanted to know where the kid had learned the word boring? She won me over, there and then. We did not meet on that occasion but I assumed anyone who worked on The Age at a time when it was laying waste to the Liberal cronyism and corruption in Victoria, she must also have been cut on the same left-wing bias. She had departed The Age by the time I next saw her at a conference in the Parramatta Park Royal, and we quickly became drinking buddies. When the downstairs lounge closed at midnight she invited herself into my room to help empty the contents of the bar fridge. Had I known what was going to happen next, I would never have let her in. Nooo, not that. Instead she harangued me with her wacky political views that were far, far to the right of mine, and of Genghis Khan's, and I was shattered. We argued fiercely all night until I finally managed to throw her out, fearing that if she were spotted leaving my room at dawn I would never live down the shame, not of sexual innuendo but of political mortification. She now claims to have mellowed politically although her natural bent is still what is called Neo-Conservative, or NeoCon. At their core, I told her, NeoCons had a fundamental belief in inequality. "That's right," she said, beaming. That night in the Hunter Valley I kept my door locked and bolted.
TAKING SWINGS WITH POLITICAL BIAS
THE only saving grace in attending management conferences and leadership seminars is the opportunity they provide to catch up with old faces. Which, in the case of the conference I had to attend recently in the Hunter Valley of NSW, meant Sylvia B. She turned up in typical Sylvia style: jumper, leggings and boots, all in black except for red fireman's socks; green jewellery; henna hair cut into a flyaway bob; and electric blue glasses with strong lenses that gave her a half-blind quizzical look. Among the conference papers was a list of stipulations including that ``smart casual'' attire must be worn during the day and ``very smart casual'' at dinner. No one knew for sure what the difference meant.``Very smart casual is when I suck my stomach in,'' Sylvia said. While many women her age would be starting work on a facelift, Sylvia said she was chuffed recently to receive a letter asking for $87 to pay for another year's storage of two frozen embryos. She took perverse satisfaction in knowing she still was able to cast her offspring upon the planet, beyond her own reproductive shelf life. Revenge is a meal best served frozen. Sylvia has at least two kids of her own that I know of, possibly more. She says her parenting style has been simple: if you cannot be a good example to your kids, be a horrible warning. When I first saw her in action nearly 20 years ag, she was working as a marketer at The Age. She told a conference of newspaper executives that she had visited a primary school in working class Footscray to ask what the kids thought of The Age. "Effing boring," one had replied. Sylvia wanted to know where the kid had learned the word boring? She won me over, there and then. We did not meet on that occasion but I assumed anyone who worked on The Age at a time when it was laying waste to the Liberal cronyism and corruption in Victoria, she must also have been cut on the same left-wing bias. She had departed The Age by the time I next saw her at a conference in the Parramatta Park Royal, and we quickly became drinking buddies. When the downstairs lounge closed at midnight she invited herself into my room to help empty the contents of the bar fridge. Had I known what was going to happen next, I would never have let her in. Nooo, not that. Instead she harangued me with her wacky political views that were far, far to the right of mine, and of Genghis Khan's, and I was shattered. We argued fiercely all night until I finally managed to throw her out, fearing that if she were spotted leaving my room at dawn I would never live down the shame, not of sexual innuendo but of political mortification. She now claims to have mellowed politically although her natural bent is still what is called Neo-Conservative, or NeoCon. At their core, I told her, NeoCons had a fundamental belief in inequality. "That's right," she said, beaming. That night in the Hunter Valley I kept my door locked and bolted.
Monday, September 01, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, September 3, 2003
WHIPPING CRIME INTO A FRENZY
NOT long after the Rann Government came to power in South Australia, I met a Cabinet Minister at a social function and asked him why the Premier was taking such a hard line on crime so early in the electoral cycle? Mike Rann was already talking tough on sentencing and overriding Parole Board recommendations. Crime was not usually hammered this hard as an issue until, say, the final months of an election campaign. "Mike has always been tough on crime, it's one of his hobby horses," the Minister had told me with a stage wink. Having observed Rann for nearly 30 years, I had not previously noticed any particular desire by him to reach for the cat-o'-nine-tails. The explanation was simple, the Minister said, sighing at my naivety. In the first instance, if you laid early claim to law'n'order as an issue and made it your own, you left no room for your opponents to move onto the patch. True enough, and good politics. Secondly, he grinned, sounding tough on crime cost no money. Ah, the sweet'n'sour smell of political cynicism. When it comes to crime, I am no "do-gooder". I believe some criminals are indeed incorrigible. I think there are evil people who are not victims of poor parenting. In the worst cases, the key should be thrown away forever and I would not lose any sleep. Nevertheless, I still believe the power to decide how long to keep a criminal in prison should reside with the law courts and the Parole Board, not with vote hungry politicians. Otherwise, the rule of law ceases to exist. "Media Mike" is too experienced as a political operator for his law'n'order tub-thumping not to be a deliberate policy. Cabinet meetings are accompanied by the rattling sound of handcuffs. He appears to see the political currency of crime as too valuable to be left to the justice system. Under his Premiership, the concepts of deterrence and retribution have become political, not judicial, requirements. Some politicians are just incorrigible. People being human, they are easily frightened by crime. They are inclined to believe the justice system is too soft and the criminals get off too easily - contrary to the facts in most cases. Also, the public always think crime trends are worse than they are. In one British crime survey, the public believed that average jail sentences were a third shorter than they really were. The same result would likely emerge here in South Australia. The Premier, an old hand at spinning the facts for political ends, knows which buttons to push: judges are too liberal, sentences are too lenient and hanging's too good for 'em. Next thing, we will be stoning lepers. All the while, intentionally or not, he is ratcheting up the level of public disquiet and eroding confidence in the justice system. People do not like being frightened and they do not like being frightened by their governments, especially for cynical political motives. Giving voice to public fears is not giving leadership.
WHIPPING CRIME INTO A FRENZY
NOT long after the Rann Government came to power in South Australia, I met a Cabinet Minister at a social function and asked him why the Premier was taking such a hard line on crime so early in the electoral cycle? Mike Rann was already talking tough on sentencing and overriding Parole Board recommendations. Crime was not usually hammered this hard as an issue until, say, the final months of an election campaign. "Mike has always been tough on crime, it's one of his hobby horses," the Minister had told me with a stage wink. Having observed Rann for nearly 30 years, I had not previously noticed any particular desire by him to reach for the cat-o'-nine-tails. The explanation was simple, the Minister said, sighing at my naivety. In the first instance, if you laid early claim to law'n'order as an issue and made it your own, you left no room for your opponents to move onto the patch. True enough, and good politics. Secondly, he grinned, sounding tough on crime cost no money. Ah, the sweet'n'sour smell of political cynicism. When it comes to crime, I am no "do-gooder". I believe some criminals are indeed incorrigible. I think there are evil people who are not victims of poor parenting. In the worst cases, the key should be thrown away forever and I would not lose any sleep. Nevertheless, I still believe the power to decide how long to keep a criminal in prison should reside with the law courts and the Parole Board, not with vote hungry politicians. Otherwise, the rule of law ceases to exist. "Media Mike" is too experienced as a political operator for his law'n'order tub-thumping not to be a deliberate policy. Cabinet meetings are accompanied by the rattling sound of handcuffs. He appears to see the political currency of crime as too valuable to be left to the justice system. Under his Premiership, the concepts of deterrence and retribution have become political, not judicial, requirements. Some politicians are just incorrigible. People being human, they are easily frightened by crime. They are inclined to believe the justice system is too soft and the criminals get off too easily - contrary to the facts in most cases. Also, the public always think crime trends are worse than they are. In one British crime survey, the public believed that average jail sentences were a third shorter than they really were. The same result would likely emerge here in South Australia. The Premier, an old hand at spinning the facts for political ends, knows which buttons to push: judges are too liberal, sentences are too lenient and hanging's too good for 'em. Next thing, we will be stoning lepers. All the while, intentionally or not, he is ratcheting up the level of public disquiet and eroding confidence in the justice system. People do not like being frightened and they do not like being frightened by their governments, especially for cynical political motives. Giving voice to public fears is not giving leadership.
Thursday, August 21, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, August 27, 2003
ARMED, READY AND HALF-COCKED
TWO Messenger ex-journalists have worked on the staff of Senator Robert Hill - one when he was Federal Environment Minister and another now in Defence - and I presumed one of them must have been behind an invitation for me to have lunch with him. Strange, though. I had never formally been introduced to the man although we both were guests at the wedding of one of the staffers. On that occasion we were too slow off the mark and found ourselves standing alongside each other staring down at a wasteland of scraps left on the smorgasbord table. We each muttered something about making sure to be quicker when the desserts arrived and that was the full extent of our conversation. I could have chatted to him some more but I had been warned off earlier by the bride, who had ordered me not to harass or harangue Robert and spoil her big day. I resembled that remark. So let's just say the invitation to lunch was unexpected. While I could understand him wanting to pick my brains on the defence of the realm, on the procurement of the next generation of fighter jets and the role of the intelligence community in misleading us into Iraq, it seemed unlikely. I emailed the staffer bride - who now works in London - asking if she knew why I had been chosen? She replied that Robert liked a good red wine and perhaps he was just looking for entertaining company. It, too, seemed unlikely. If he were that desperate, surely he had plenty of other people to choose from before asking a stranger, and a newspaper editor to boot? Not that journalists have nothing to contribute to the country's defence. In the same week, the Australian Defence Association made a public criticism about the quality - or lack of it - of advice being provided by the spy agencies to the Federal Government. The Office of National Assessments was singled out for having too many former journalists on staff instead of spies. Old journos never die, they become spooks. Anyway, having briefed myself on Australia's defence capability by land, sea and air, I was standing at the restaurant bar waiting to impress Senator Hill and who should walk through the door? John Hill, State Environment Minister. Groan. "You don't want to discuss defence by any chance, do you, John?" I asked.
"If you like - why?" I explained how, owing to multiple levels of office confusion, I had been expecting the Defence Minister, not him. Never mind, John said, other people had made the same mistake and he was often called Senator or asked if he wore camouflaged underpants. We had a discussion about water, salinity, burnoffs and bushfires. No offence, John, but the problem of feral olive trees in the Hills did not provide the same level of thrill as the Joint Strike Fighter project for which I had come prepared.
ARMED, READY AND HALF-COCKED
TWO Messenger ex-journalists have worked on the staff of Senator Robert Hill - one when he was Federal Environment Minister and another now in Defence - and I presumed one of them must have been behind an invitation for me to have lunch with him. Strange, though. I had never formally been introduced to the man although we both were guests at the wedding of one of the staffers. On that occasion we were too slow off the mark and found ourselves standing alongside each other staring down at a wasteland of scraps left on the smorgasbord table. We each muttered something about making sure to be quicker when the desserts arrived and that was the full extent of our conversation. I could have chatted to him some more but I had been warned off earlier by the bride, who had ordered me not to harass or harangue Robert and spoil her big day. I resembled that remark. So let's just say the invitation to lunch was unexpected. While I could understand him wanting to pick my brains on the defence of the realm, on the procurement of the next generation of fighter jets and the role of the intelligence community in misleading us into Iraq, it seemed unlikely. I emailed the staffer bride - who now works in London - asking if she knew why I had been chosen? She replied that Robert liked a good red wine and perhaps he was just looking for entertaining company. It, too, seemed unlikely. If he were that desperate, surely he had plenty of other people to choose from before asking a stranger, and a newspaper editor to boot? Not that journalists have nothing to contribute to the country's defence. In the same week, the Australian Defence Association made a public criticism about the quality - or lack of it - of advice being provided by the spy agencies to the Federal Government. The Office of National Assessments was singled out for having too many former journalists on staff instead of spies. Old journos never die, they become spooks. Anyway, having briefed myself on Australia's defence capability by land, sea and air, I was standing at the restaurant bar waiting to impress Senator Hill and who should walk through the door? John Hill, State Environment Minister. Groan. "You don't want to discuss defence by any chance, do you, John?" I asked.
"If you like - why?" I explained how, owing to multiple levels of office confusion, I had been expecting the Defence Minister, not him. Never mind, John said, other people had made the same mistake and he was often called Senator or asked if he wore camouflaged underpants. We had a discussion about water, salinity, burnoffs and bushfires. No offence, John, but the problem of feral olive trees in the Hills did not provide the same level of thrill as the Joint Strike Fighter project for which I had come prepared.
Monday, August 18, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, August 20, 2003
HERITAGE KEY TO ADELAIDE'S FUTURE
THE lobby wall of the Stamford hotel, opposite Parliament House on North Tce, carries a brass plaque of tribute to the old South Australian Hotel. It bears a depiction of the hotel's three-storey, ornately verandahed facade, along with the words: "The South Australian Hotel was erected on this site in 1894 and until 1971 was an intrinsic part of the cultural life of the City of Adelaide." The South, as it was known, was said to be the epitome of splendour and elegance for Adelaide high society. The Beatles stayed there in 1964 but some people who remember eating there tell me the food was ordinary. Ansett Airlines bulldozed The South and in its place erected a lump known as the Gateway, whose dingy basement bar always reeked of stale cooking fat. Ansett who? Through deliberate neglect, ignorance or greed, much of our heritage - including Aboriginal - has vanished. Grrr. I do not remember The South. It was knocked down in the year before I arrived in town but its demolition produced a lingering shockwave that aroused public determination to save what was left of Adelaide's architectural heritage. Which brings me to the Gordon Curve, a theory that a building is most valued by the community when it is new but slowly declines in value until, aged 70, it is most likely to be razed. The South was 77. However, the Gordon Curve also contends that should a building be fortunate enough to survive beyond 70, its value rises again until, at 100, it is back at its maximum level and likely to be saved for its heritage value. The South missed by that much. I do not know the identity of Gordon but I wish he/she been around to argue The South's case in '71. It is too late now but if more buildings had been saved from the free-wheeling wrecker's ball in the 1960s, we would have been spared multi-level carparks and Adelaide would now be a world class tourist attraction similar to, say, Bath in England. Bath's curved row of Georgian terrace houses, made from the golden limestone mined locally, are still treasured almost 200 years after they were built. Mind, Bath had a few other handy historic links as well, any one of which by itself would have laid the foundation of a lucrative tourism industry in Adelaide. The Romans, for example, developed the natural hot springs into a number of healing baths - hence the name Bath - as well as building a temple to Minerva. In the Middle Ages, according to a contemporary account, one of the baths was still being used by diseased men and women who bathed naked together while onlookers jeered and threw animals into the water. Fashions change, thankfully. Remarkably, although 900 Bath buildings were destroyed and 12,500 damaged in the Blitz during WWII, the old section of town remained virtually untouched by the bombs. Thank God, Ansett was not running the Blitz.
HERITAGE KEY TO ADELAIDE'S FUTURE
THE lobby wall of the Stamford hotel, opposite Parliament House on North Tce, carries a brass plaque of tribute to the old South Australian Hotel. It bears a depiction of the hotel's three-storey, ornately verandahed facade, along with the words: "The South Australian Hotel was erected on this site in 1894 and until 1971 was an intrinsic part of the cultural life of the City of Adelaide." The South, as it was known, was said to be the epitome of splendour and elegance for Adelaide high society. The Beatles stayed there in 1964 but some people who remember eating there tell me the food was ordinary. Ansett Airlines bulldozed The South and in its place erected a lump known as the Gateway, whose dingy basement bar always reeked of stale cooking fat. Ansett who? Through deliberate neglect, ignorance or greed, much of our heritage - including Aboriginal - has vanished. Grrr. I do not remember The South. It was knocked down in the year before I arrived in town but its demolition produced a lingering shockwave that aroused public determination to save what was left of Adelaide's architectural heritage. Which brings me to the Gordon Curve, a theory that a building is most valued by the community when it is new but slowly declines in value until, aged 70, it is most likely to be razed. The South was 77. However, the Gordon Curve also contends that should a building be fortunate enough to survive beyond 70, its value rises again until, at 100, it is back at its maximum level and likely to be saved for its heritage value. The South missed by that much. I do not know the identity of Gordon but I wish he/she been around to argue The South's case in '71. It is too late now but if more buildings had been saved from the free-wheeling wrecker's ball in the 1960s, we would have been spared multi-level carparks and Adelaide would now be a world class tourist attraction similar to, say, Bath in England. Bath's curved row of Georgian terrace houses, made from the golden limestone mined locally, are still treasured almost 200 years after they were built. Mind, Bath had a few other handy historic links as well, any one of which by itself would have laid the foundation of a lucrative tourism industry in Adelaide. The Romans, for example, developed the natural hot springs into a number of healing baths - hence the name Bath - as well as building a temple to Minerva. In the Middle Ages, according to a contemporary account, one of the baths was still being used by diseased men and women who bathed naked together while onlookers jeered and threw animals into the water. Fashions change, thankfully. Remarkably, although 900 Bath buildings were destroyed and 12,500 damaged in the Blitz during WWII, the old section of town remained virtually untouched by the bombs. Thank God, Ansett was not running the Blitz.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, August 13, 2003
SECRET SHAKE A SLEIGHT OF HAND
A FORMER suburban mayor, who I knew to be a Freemason, gave me an unusual handshake at our first meeting that I took to be the Mason's secret grip. It felt quite normal except he used his thumb and forefinger to firmly squeeze the fleshy webbing of my thumb, twice. Obvious and yet undetectable by onlookers. Getting no reaction, the mayor never repeated it when we shook hands on later occasions, leaving me with the impression that I had failed a secret test, Masonic or otherwise. It may have been a gay sign although, so far as I knew, the mayor was straight. Anyway, I thought the gay handshake was a tickle on the palm by a wiggled hidden finger. Or is that the Masonic shake? A handshake is one of the few forms of physical human contact that is permitted among strangers without risking sexual connotations or an assault charge. Hugs and kisses are not so easily exchanged at first meetings. Yet a handshake, for its apparently innocent simplicity, can be full of meaning. It might be damp, lingering, limp wristed; or a hard bone-crusher; or offered palm down as if the victim were expected to genuflect and kiss it; or a sudden, painful twist of the wrist like a wrestling hold. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating never extends his arm full out. Instead, keeping the upper arm by his side, he simply cocks the elbow to offer a hand, making people come close to him. As a form of psychological domination, it has to be deliberate. His predecessor Bob Hawke, on the other hand, not only shakes hands aggressively but he also uses his left hand to clutch the victim's shoulder or elbow at the same time. There is no escape. I have also shaken hands with the current Prime Minister but, brooding on it now, I cannot for the life of me remember what it felt like. Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock has a two-handed technique, one shaking while the other one detains your wrist. My roughest handshake was with a stockman at Parachilna, in the Flinders Ranges, who used a bush knife to pare away the callouses on his palm; and the largest hand I shook was that of US president Bill Clinton when he was in Adelaide last year. It was the size of a baseball mitt. A handshake covers many purposes, from its origin as proof that a person was unarmed, to confirming a deal or a bet, as a sign of friendship and loyalty, or as a greeting. The Aboriginal handshake is something else again. I was watching members of ATSIC greet each other on TV the other night and their convoluted hand movements - thumb locking, fist bumping, palm brushing - looked like a magic trick. It was a good example of how something a highly visible could also have a hidden meaning. Still, nothing quite compares to the Biblical greeting, from Genesis, that doubles as an oath of obedience: "Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh and I will make thee swear..." Not on your nelly - but the Masons must be puce with envy.
SECRET SHAKE A SLEIGHT OF HAND
A FORMER suburban mayor, who I knew to be a Freemason, gave me an unusual handshake at our first meeting that I took to be the Mason's secret grip. It felt quite normal except he used his thumb and forefinger to firmly squeeze the fleshy webbing of my thumb, twice. Obvious and yet undetectable by onlookers. Getting no reaction, the mayor never repeated it when we shook hands on later occasions, leaving me with the impression that I had failed a secret test, Masonic or otherwise. It may have been a gay sign although, so far as I knew, the mayor was straight. Anyway, I thought the gay handshake was a tickle on the palm by a wiggled hidden finger. Or is that the Masonic shake? A handshake is one of the few forms of physical human contact that is permitted among strangers without risking sexual connotations or an assault charge. Hugs and kisses are not so easily exchanged at first meetings. Yet a handshake, for its apparently innocent simplicity, can be full of meaning. It might be damp, lingering, limp wristed; or a hard bone-crusher; or offered palm down as if the victim were expected to genuflect and kiss it; or a sudden, painful twist of the wrist like a wrestling hold. Former Prime Minister Paul Keating never extends his arm full out. Instead, keeping the upper arm by his side, he simply cocks the elbow to offer a hand, making people come close to him. As a form of psychological domination, it has to be deliberate. His predecessor Bob Hawke, on the other hand, not only shakes hands aggressively but he also uses his left hand to clutch the victim's shoulder or elbow at the same time. There is no escape. I have also shaken hands with the current Prime Minister but, brooding on it now, I cannot for the life of me remember what it felt like. Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock has a two-handed technique, one shaking while the other one detains your wrist. My roughest handshake was with a stockman at Parachilna, in the Flinders Ranges, who used a bush knife to pare away the callouses on his palm; and the largest hand I shook was that of US president Bill Clinton when he was in Adelaide last year. It was the size of a baseball mitt. A handshake covers many purposes, from its origin as proof that a person was unarmed, to confirming a deal or a bet, as a sign of friendship and loyalty, or as a greeting. The Aboriginal handshake is something else again. I was watching members of ATSIC greet each other on TV the other night and their convoluted hand movements - thumb locking, fist bumping, palm brushing - looked like a magic trick. It was a good example of how something a highly visible could also have a hidden meaning. Still, nothing quite compares to the Biblical greeting, from Genesis, that doubles as an oath of obedience: "Put, I pray thee, thy hand under my thigh and I will make thee swear..." Not on your nelly - but the Masons must be puce with envy.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, August 6, 2003.
GETTING YOUR 5 CENTS WORTH
THE exasperated young man at the Coles checkout was telling Bernie there was nothing in the supermarket he could buy for five cents. "Don't worry, I won't steal anything," Bernie said, scurrying past the checkout towards the back aisles. His clothes were filthy, his left eye was half closed and he had streaks of dried blood on his neck and cheek. For a man in his sixties, Bernie looked as if he had seen a big night. The Coles security guard had gone off duty at 6am and the checkout lad was alone for the moment having to deal with Bernie as well as serving insomniac customers like me. Bernie, who I suspect was having a bit of perverse fun with the lad, returned with a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. The lad kept respectfully calling him "sir", which I admired, and pointed out that Worcestershire sauce "cost a lot more than five cents, sir". Bernie left the bottle on the bench and disappeared again among the brightly-lit aisles, an Aladdin's Cave of consumerism, afire with the challenge of finding even one item for five cents. He was not drunk. He had been standing by the checkout jabbering away to no-one in particular when I turned up with my trolley of groceries to be scanned. A woman had walked in, saw Bernie, and walked out again. I said hello, Bernie, remember me? And he said, "What's your name?" That is the first question people like Bernie ask if someone ever bothers to speak to them. A name is the one thing everyone has in common irrespective of wealth or social status. I said we had spoken a couple of weeks earlier at the same supermarket and told him my name again. "Ryan? Ryan? That's right, yeah, you work in TV." He obviously had me confused me with the actor Gary Sweet, an easy mistake to make. On our first meeting, in the hour before dawn outside Coles, Bernie had been standing with a mug of hot tea and could not explain how it happened to be in his hand. He had revealed he worked as a railway fettler at Port Augusta in better days. Shaking hands, I had gone inside the supermarket and the security guard had told me to be sure to wash my hands before I handled the fruit. I suspected the guard had also provided Bernie with the mug of tea, a heart of gold beating under the stern, grey uniform. Afterwards, Bernie had followed me to the car, prattling about whatever came into his head as I put the bags in the boot. With nothing better to say, I had suggested that being a fettler on the Alice Springs to Darwin rail line would be a pretty good job for a man of his talents and good looks. He had stared at me as if I were completely mad. "Y'reckon I'd get a job, dooya? Too late for that now, couldn' do it." True enough. Bernie looked no better now than he did a fortnight earlier. I gave him a banana, something with skin on it that could be eaten without him running the risk of catching germs from my hands.
GETTING YOUR 5 CENTS WORTH
THE exasperated young man at the Coles checkout was telling Bernie there was nothing in the supermarket he could buy for five cents. "Don't worry, I won't steal anything," Bernie said, scurrying past the checkout towards the back aisles. His clothes were filthy, his left eye was half closed and he had streaks of dried blood on his neck and cheek. For a man in his sixties, Bernie looked as if he had seen a big night. The Coles security guard had gone off duty at 6am and the checkout lad was alone for the moment having to deal with Bernie as well as serving insomniac customers like me. Bernie, who I suspect was having a bit of perverse fun with the lad, returned with a bottle of Worcestershire sauce. The lad kept respectfully calling him "sir", which I admired, and pointed out that Worcestershire sauce "cost a lot more than five cents, sir". Bernie left the bottle on the bench and disappeared again among the brightly-lit aisles, an Aladdin's Cave of consumerism, afire with the challenge of finding even one item for five cents. He was not drunk. He had been standing by the checkout jabbering away to no-one in particular when I turned up with my trolley of groceries to be scanned. A woman had walked in, saw Bernie, and walked out again. I said hello, Bernie, remember me? And he said, "What's your name?" That is the first question people like Bernie ask if someone ever bothers to speak to them. A name is the one thing everyone has in common irrespective of wealth or social status. I said we had spoken a couple of weeks earlier at the same supermarket and told him my name again. "Ryan? Ryan? That's right, yeah, you work in TV." He obviously had me confused me with the actor Gary Sweet, an easy mistake to make. On our first meeting, in the hour before dawn outside Coles, Bernie had been standing with a mug of hot tea and could not explain how it happened to be in his hand. He had revealed he worked as a railway fettler at Port Augusta in better days. Shaking hands, I had gone inside the supermarket and the security guard had told me to be sure to wash my hands before I handled the fruit. I suspected the guard had also provided Bernie with the mug of tea, a heart of gold beating under the stern, grey uniform. Afterwards, Bernie had followed me to the car, prattling about whatever came into his head as I put the bags in the boot. With nothing better to say, I had suggested that being a fettler on the Alice Springs to Darwin rail line would be a pretty good job for a man of his talents and good looks. He had stared at me as if I were completely mad. "Y'reckon I'd get a job, dooya? Too late for that now, couldn' do it." True enough. Bernie looked no better now than he did a fortnight earlier. I gave him a banana, something with skin on it that could be eaten without him running the risk of catching germs from my hands.
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 30, 2003.
THERE'S A WAITER IN MY SOUP
AFTER a month of non-stop dining out, playing host to a constant flow of interstate guests and being the unofficial meeter and greeter for just about anyone else who happened to be in town, I have had a gutsful. Literally. My circumference has expanded to the size where, were I a tree, I would now be declared "significant" and saved from the axe. What I have gained in girth, however, I seem to have lost in mirth when it comes to Fawlty Towers service levels in restaurants. I took an interstate couple to a noted seafood restaurant because they had wanted King George Whiting, which by the way I personally think is not a patch on garfish. We were having an interesting chat about Biggles - the woman had a full set of original volumes - until a young waiter barely out of his teens interrupted us to list the menu specials starting with seafood chowder. Leaving us to ponder our choices, he quickly returned with apologies saying the chef had changed the soup special, which was now asparagus and crab cake. Had he only left it there, I would have happily settled for the asparagus soup but, nooo ... the young fool went on to say: "The chef has told me not to let you have the chowder because we are having a large crowd in tonight and there won't be enough to go around." He was so tactless that it could only be the truth, that he was indeed repeating what the chef had told him. I ordered the chowder. "But what if we run out?" I did not give a crab's cake, I said, unless he could explain what possible difference it would make whether I had the last bowl of chowder or someone else did. "But what if there's not enough to go around?" he said in a rising falsetto. Care factor, zero. Chowder. The restaurant had an open kitchen where the diners could see the kitchen hands at work. The waiter leaned across the counter towards the chef who, to give him his due, kept a deadpan look on his face but his unblinking eyes read: "You told him WHAT!?" The waiter returned with, good news, sir, the chowder was still available, as if there were any doubts. He then took the rest of our orders inserting his own innane blather: "Excellent choice, madam, my favourite, too." Why are the new batch of waiters such irritating, ingratiating pests? Personally, I blame Regency TAFE, which does most of Adelaide's hospitality training. Someone there must be teaching them to do it because such inanities do not come naturally. Our waiter kept returning every few minutes. "Would sir prefer tap, still or sparkling water? Plain bread, foccacia or polenta? Oil or butter? Ground pepper?" And after each intrusion, my guests had giggling fits and, misreading the signs, the waiter thought he was the life of the party. "Are there enough bubbles in your mineral water, sir? And how's that soup?" As a matter of fact, I said, it was milky rather than creamy, contained hardly any pieces of fish and no doubt would have been a lot better before the chef watered it down. Yes, he said, personally he would have chosen the asparagus soup. Grrr.
THERE'S A WAITER IN MY SOUP
AFTER a month of non-stop dining out, playing host to a constant flow of interstate guests and being the unofficial meeter and greeter for just about anyone else who happened to be in town, I have had a gutsful. Literally. My circumference has expanded to the size where, were I a tree, I would now be declared "significant" and saved from the axe. What I have gained in girth, however, I seem to have lost in mirth when it comes to Fawlty Towers service levels in restaurants. I took an interstate couple to a noted seafood restaurant because they had wanted King George Whiting, which by the way I personally think is not a patch on garfish. We were having an interesting chat about Biggles - the woman had a full set of original volumes - until a young waiter barely out of his teens interrupted us to list the menu specials starting with seafood chowder. Leaving us to ponder our choices, he quickly returned with apologies saying the chef had changed the soup special, which was now asparagus and crab cake. Had he only left it there, I would have happily settled for the asparagus soup but, nooo ... the young fool went on to say: "The chef has told me not to let you have the chowder because we are having a large crowd in tonight and there won't be enough to go around." He was so tactless that it could only be the truth, that he was indeed repeating what the chef had told him. I ordered the chowder. "But what if we run out?" I did not give a crab's cake, I said, unless he could explain what possible difference it would make whether I had the last bowl of chowder or someone else did. "But what if there's not enough to go around?" he said in a rising falsetto. Care factor, zero. Chowder. The restaurant had an open kitchen where the diners could see the kitchen hands at work. The waiter leaned across the counter towards the chef who, to give him his due, kept a deadpan look on his face but his unblinking eyes read: "You told him WHAT!?" The waiter returned with, good news, sir, the chowder was still available, as if there were any doubts. He then took the rest of our orders inserting his own innane blather: "Excellent choice, madam, my favourite, too." Why are the new batch of waiters such irritating, ingratiating pests? Personally, I blame Regency TAFE, which does most of Adelaide's hospitality training. Someone there must be teaching them to do it because such inanities do not come naturally. Our waiter kept returning every few minutes. "Would sir prefer tap, still or sparkling water? Plain bread, foccacia or polenta? Oil or butter? Ground pepper?" And after each intrusion, my guests had giggling fits and, misreading the signs, the waiter thought he was the life of the party. "Are there enough bubbles in your mineral water, sir? And how's that soup?" As a matter of fact, I said, it was milky rather than creamy, contained hardly any pieces of fish and no doubt would have been a lot better before the chef watered it down. Yes, he said, personally he would have chosen the asparagus soup. Grrr.
Monday, July 21, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 23, 2003
ETERNAL OPTIMISM HAS NO DEADLINE
NO DOUBT about it, the opportunity to write a regular newspaper column such as the one I have been doing for Messenger newspapers since 1993 is a rare treat. Ask anyone, and they will tell you how lucky I am, especially those who disagree with me and would like to see me punished for being contrary. Being the Messenger editor possibly helped to get me the gig although, let it be noted, I have never received an extra payment for the additional worry. The editor is a hard man. I never set out to be the Messenger columnist; the legendary Des Colquhoun was doing a fine job at the time he went on a South African safari for a month in September, 1993. At a pinch, I filled in and the first column I wrote is also reprinted first in this selection, as well as the follow-up one, which pretty much wrote itself. One less column to worry about, I thought at the time. Colquhoun returned in late October and continued writing his column until the end of the year. Then he announced his retirement, somewhat prematurely if you ask me. At the start of '94, I wrote a column thanking Colquhoun for his contribution, also reprinted here, while casting around for a replacement. I am still here, for good or ill. In the early days, panicking, I remember having 14 columns up my sleeve at one stage in case I suffered writer's block. Now, I pretty much write as I go along but the panic is always there looking over my shoulder. One thing the discipline of journalism teaches you is that when faced with a looming deadline and not a thought in your head, just sit there until something comes. Not the best thing for high blood pressure, however. Some columns were dashed off quickly; others were agonised over; on average, though, each one took about three hours from the first thought on a blank screen to completion. For those of us who learned to type on paper, I love the way computers are so forgiving in letting you constantly change your mind, and can still keep up. Yes, computers are wonderful but notebooks are better. I carry one with me at all times and my friends have learned to be cautious in its presence. I have a pen and I know how to use it.
It took some convincing by Michael Bollen, of Wakefield Press, to make me bring together this selection in book form. I have always thought newspaper columns were intended to be read in their particular time and place, as dust on the wind, not to be contemplated many years later. My first thought was to stick in just the pieces that had Adelaide as a theme; then I thought, well, some people liked The Duke years; others liked to read about my failing health; or the soft little parables; or the edgy social commentary; and almost everyone seemed to like seeing me embarrass myself. What the hell, you never can tell with readers. Like Colquhoun, the day is coming when I, too, will be pensioned off and replaced by someone else. Did I say that or did I just think it? My work here is not quite done yet.
ETERNAL OPTIMISM HAS NO DEADLINE
NO DOUBT about it, the opportunity to write a regular newspaper column such as the one I have been doing for Messenger newspapers since 1993 is a rare treat. Ask anyone, and they will tell you how lucky I am, especially those who disagree with me and would like to see me punished for being contrary. Being the Messenger editor possibly helped to get me the gig although, let it be noted, I have never received an extra payment for the additional worry. The editor is a hard man. I never set out to be the Messenger columnist; the legendary Des Colquhoun was doing a fine job at the time he went on a South African safari for a month in September, 1993. At a pinch, I filled in and the first column I wrote is also reprinted first in this selection, as well as the follow-up one, which pretty much wrote itself. One less column to worry about, I thought at the time. Colquhoun returned in late October and continued writing his column until the end of the year. Then he announced his retirement, somewhat prematurely if you ask me. At the start of '94, I wrote a column thanking Colquhoun for his contribution, also reprinted here, while casting around for a replacement. I am still here, for good or ill. In the early days, panicking, I remember having 14 columns up my sleeve at one stage in case I suffered writer's block. Now, I pretty much write as I go along but the panic is always there looking over my shoulder. One thing the discipline of journalism teaches you is that when faced with a looming deadline and not a thought in your head, just sit there until something comes. Not the best thing for high blood pressure, however. Some columns were dashed off quickly; others were agonised over; on average, though, each one took about three hours from the first thought on a blank screen to completion. For those of us who learned to type on paper, I love the way computers are so forgiving in letting you constantly change your mind, and can still keep up. Yes, computers are wonderful but notebooks are better. I carry one with me at all times and my friends have learned to be cautious in its presence. I have a pen and I know how to use it.
It took some convincing by Michael Bollen, of Wakefield Press, to make me bring together this selection in book form. I have always thought newspaper columns were intended to be read in their particular time and place, as dust on the wind, not to be contemplated many years later. My first thought was to stick in just the pieces that had Adelaide as a theme; then I thought, well, some people liked The Duke years; others liked to read about my failing health; or the soft little parables; or the edgy social commentary; and almost everyone seemed to like seeing me embarrass myself. What the hell, you never can tell with readers. Like Colquhoun, the day is coming when I, too, will be pensioned off and replaced by someone else. Did I say that or did I just think it? My work here is not quite done yet.
Tuesday, July 15, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 16, 2003
TAXIS TRAVEL AT WARPED SPEED
TO LIVEN up a dull dinner party, ask people to share their horror taxi stories and very quickly tales will unfold of lost cabs and running out of petrol; of bigoted cabbies who stink and pick their noses; and of women saying cabbies often make them feel uncomfortable by reaching across their legs for the glovebox. "Ah, yes, Sydney," people once said. Now it is, "Yeah, Adelaide." Twice in the past month, interstate visitors have complained to me about our taxi drivers. In the first incident, Queenslander Simon M caught a cab from his Waymouth St hotel to dinner at a restaurant in Hutt St, a distance of 1.3km as the crow flies. Unfortunately, cabs are not crows and poor Simon had to endure a hellride with a driver who could not find his way there without Simon's help, the blind leading the lost. The driver said he needed to check the street directory, fair enough, but when he pulled out a magnifying glass, explaining that his eyesight was ``not so good at night'', I would have leapt out there and then. But simple Simon went along for the ride and the driver even asked him to call out each street sign on the way there because he could not see them. At the end of the trip, the cabbie had been unable to work the Cabcharge machine. This was not his real job, he explained, he was just filling in. His day job was as a truck driver, surprise, surprise. The second interstate guest was Meg S who, in a cab from the airport to the city, had asked if the blaring radio could be turned down while she made a mobile phone call. Enraged, the cabbie had sped like a maniac in and out of the traffic, which left Meg terrified and even angrier than him. Yet she never complained. As Australians, we are disinclined to dob, so I now dread catching a cab from the airport, knowing a particular idiot is possibly behind the wheel. My horror story is about a cabbie who recently took me to the airport. With the winter sun warming his side, I sensed his attention was not fully on the road when the car drifted across the lane toward oncoming traffic. "Driver!" I yelled from the back seat. His head snapped up, suddenly awake and angrily denying he had been asleep. He fell asleep again at the next traffic lights. He was not fit to deliver pizzas much less people. The taxi accreditation system sets standards for the ``fitness and propriety'' of drivers _ obviously not physical fitness to judge by some of the leadbellies behind the wheel _ as well as such rules as wearing a uniform and minimum waiting times. Keen to know what these standards might be, I did an internet search for the South Australian Taxi Association, only to be told ``You are not authorised to view this page'' and that I needed a password. Why? What dark secrets does the taxi industry possess that the rest of us are denied? Even the ASIO website allows me entry. I have a personal cabbie when I can get him, a friendly chap by the name of Roger who is clean, takes pride in his driving and is immensely knowledgeable about Adelaide. Simon and Meg now have his number.
TAXIS TRAVEL AT WARPED SPEED
TO LIVEN up a dull dinner party, ask people to share their horror taxi stories and very quickly tales will unfold of lost cabs and running out of petrol; of bigoted cabbies who stink and pick their noses; and of women saying cabbies often make them feel uncomfortable by reaching across their legs for the glovebox. "Ah, yes, Sydney," people once said. Now it is, "Yeah, Adelaide." Twice in the past month, interstate visitors have complained to me about our taxi drivers. In the first incident, Queenslander Simon M caught a cab from his Waymouth St hotel to dinner at a restaurant in Hutt St, a distance of 1.3km as the crow flies. Unfortunately, cabs are not crows and poor Simon had to endure a hellride with a driver who could not find his way there without Simon's help, the blind leading the lost. The driver said he needed to check the street directory, fair enough, but when he pulled out a magnifying glass, explaining that his eyesight was ``not so good at night'', I would have leapt out there and then. But simple Simon went along for the ride and the driver even asked him to call out each street sign on the way there because he could not see them. At the end of the trip, the cabbie had been unable to work the Cabcharge machine. This was not his real job, he explained, he was just filling in. His day job was as a truck driver, surprise, surprise. The second interstate guest was Meg S who, in a cab from the airport to the city, had asked if the blaring radio could be turned down while she made a mobile phone call. Enraged, the cabbie had sped like a maniac in and out of the traffic, which left Meg terrified and even angrier than him. Yet she never complained. As Australians, we are disinclined to dob, so I now dread catching a cab from the airport, knowing a particular idiot is possibly behind the wheel. My horror story is about a cabbie who recently took me to the airport. With the winter sun warming his side, I sensed his attention was not fully on the road when the car drifted across the lane toward oncoming traffic. "Driver!" I yelled from the back seat. His head snapped up, suddenly awake and angrily denying he had been asleep. He fell asleep again at the next traffic lights. He was not fit to deliver pizzas much less people. The taxi accreditation system sets standards for the ``fitness and propriety'' of drivers _ obviously not physical fitness to judge by some of the leadbellies behind the wheel _ as well as such rules as wearing a uniform and minimum waiting times. Keen to know what these standards might be, I did an internet search for the South Australian Taxi Association, only to be told ``You are not authorised to view this page'' and that I needed a password. Why? What dark secrets does the taxi industry possess that the rest of us are denied? Even the ASIO website allows me entry. I have a personal cabbie when I can get him, a friendly chap by the name of Roger who is clean, takes pride in his driving and is immensely knowledgeable about Adelaide. Simon and Meg now have his number.
Monday, July 07, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 09, 2003
BRISBANE IS BEST, SIMON SAYS
ON MY first visit to Brisbane, I was introduced to a ruddy man who roared ``We do things differently in Queensland!'' as he tried to crush every bone in my hand. On my last visit, he was the Premier. Brisbane remains one of my least desirable capital cities. The river smells fetid, the humidity is wretched, the cabbies reek of BO and the XXXX beer smells like a cabbie. A Brisbane friend, Simon M, was recently in Adelaide and it took him no time at all to unload the usual extravagant palaver about everything being bigger and better in Queensland. One of the things at which our Queensland cousins are undoubtedly the best is bragging. Damn shame about the mauling the Maroons copped in the State of Origin rugby game. Simon scoffed at the suggestion that Adelaide had better steaks than Queensland. He said the Breakfast Creek Hotel's steaks were indisputably the best in the country, indeed the world. Sigh. He left me no choice. I took him to Gaucho's, the red-blooded altar of blokey steakdom in Gouger St, whose co-owner Joe Puntareri spent 15 years doing ballroom dancing. Seriously. (I have been waiting a long time to slip that one in.) The first cut of Simon's knife slipped so easily through the Gaucho's fillet that he grudgingly had to agree it was indeed a fine slab of meat, if not in the same league as the Breakfast Creek pub's. Of course not. We had a bottle or two of red with friends and Simon was last seen tottering into the night towards the GPO pie cart, demanding to know where he could pick up a ``slab of Grange''. Next morning, on my way to work as dawn broke, I was driving along Gouger St and spotted Simon, in the same clothes as last night and unshaven, lingering outside Gaucho's window. Score one to us. Simon was here long enough and ate enough of our food to eventually be persuaded that some South Australian produce did indeed rate as the best in the land. By the time he left for home we had compiled a Top 6 list of local fare that he more or less conceded were the best. In no particular order they were the steak (yes, Simon, I am claiming it), grilled King George Whiting, baked snapper, oysters, any red wine and the erotically charged women for which Adelaide is justly famous. I made up the last one. Simon is the sort of bloke who barely notices the opposite sex. He went into hysterics on hearing Adelaide dismissed as ``Dubbo with poofters''. A cheap shot. He returns soon on the seductive promise of a Balfour's frog cake.No real rivalry exists between Adelaide and Brisbane, unlike our edgy relationship with Melbourne, and I would like to see that situation changed. Compared to Adelaide's genteel neglect, Brisbane is brash and uncouth and I am in no particular rush to return there, not even for a Breakfast Creek steak. The best thing about Adelaide is it's not Brisbane.
BRISBANE IS BEST, SIMON SAYS
ON MY first visit to Brisbane, I was introduced to a ruddy man who roared ``We do things differently in Queensland!'' as he tried to crush every bone in my hand. On my last visit, he was the Premier. Brisbane remains one of my least desirable capital cities. The river smells fetid, the humidity is wretched, the cabbies reek of BO and the XXXX beer smells like a cabbie. A Brisbane friend, Simon M, was recently in Adelaide and it took him no time at all to unload the usual extravagant palaver about everything being bigger and better in Queensland. One of the things at which our Queensland cousins are undoubtedly the best is bragging. Damn shame about the mauling the Maroons copped in the State of Origin rugby game. Simon scoffed at the suggestion that Adelaide had better steaks than Queensland. He said the Breakfast Creek Hotel's steaks were indisputably the best in the country, indeed the world. Sigh. He left me no choice. I took him to Gaucho's, the red-blooded altar of blokey steakdom in Gouger St, whose co-owner Joe Puntareri spent 15 years doing ballroom dancing. Seriously. (I have been waiting a long time to slip that one in.) The first cut of Simon's knife slipped so easily through the Gaucho's fillet that he grudgingly had to agree it was indeed a fine slab of meat, if not in the same league as the Breakfast Creek pub's. Of course not. We had a bottle or two of red with friends and Simon was last seen tottering into the night towards the GPO pie cart, demanding to know where he could pick up a ``slab of Grange''. Next morning, on my way to work as dawn broke, I was driving along Gouger St and spotted Simon, in the same clothes as last night and unshaven, lingering outside Gaucho's window. Score one to us. Simon was here long enough and ate enough of our food to eventually be persuaded that some South Australian produce did indeed rate as the best in the land. By the time he left for home we had compiled a Top 6 list of local fare that he more or less conceded were the best. In no particular order they were the steak (yes, Simon, I am claiming it), grilled King George Whiting, baked snapper, oysters, any red wine and the erotically charged women for which Adelaide is justly famous. I made up the last one. Simon is the sort of bloke who barely notices the opposite sex. He went into hysterics on hearing Adelaide dismissed as ``Dubbo with poofters''. A cheap shot. He returns soon on the seductive promise of a Balfour's frog cake.No real rivalry exists between Adelaide and Brisbane, unlike our edgy relationship with Melbourne, and I would like to see that situation changed. Compared to Adelaide's genteel neglect, Brisbane is brash and uncouth and I am in no particular rush to return there, not even for a Breakfast Creek steak. The best thing about Adelaide is it's not Brisbane.
Monday, June 30, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, July 4, 2003
TRAPPED IN WONDERLAND
THE whole world is a theme park but Canberra is its own special place, a land where superstitions, fables and fairy tales originate. In winter, with a fine lacework of ice decorating the bare tree branches and the grass crackling under foot, I would not be surprised to see a unicorn emerging from the mist over Lake Burley Griffin. Or a ghostly Prime Minister on his morning walk. Canberra is a town where the occasion of a federal budget sells more newspapers than a football grand final; where the pre-eminent human right is the right to a white government car; and where, sadly, your status is reflected by the number of security men assigned to shadow you everywhere. The PM crossed my path recently when I was in Canberra for a social function. He was accompanied by three men in black. Others may have been hiding in the toilet. He gave one of those stirring patriotic speeches, the wily old campaigner pushing the buttons marked Brag, Flag and Brag again. Patriotism is the first refuge of the Howard. Later on, I happened to be at a cocktail party attended by all sides of politics. Kym Beazley was there, having not long failed in his bid for the Labor leadership again. He appeared to be very chipper. Very. I heard him speculating on the timing of an early federal election while presumably assessing his chances of another leadership challenge in the meantime. Fairy tales, indeed. The temporary victor Simon Crean was at the same function, at a distance, looking like a lost soul from the Land of Miserabilia. Being a Labor leader in Opposition can crumple a man.Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock was there, too, shorter and greyer than he appears on TV, and wearing his Amnesty lapel pin. He gave me a warm two-handed handshake, which I did not enjoy, and asked if we had met previously? No, definitely not, I would have remembered that velvet-fisted clamp. The choice of Canberra as our national capital was made before commuter air travel began, in an era when being fogged-in for three months of the year made no difference. Some would say it is fogged-in all year round anyway. The fog comes down in layers. At one level, governments always believe they have an innate right to impenetrable secrecy. At another, the cries for help from the outside world can no longer be heard. At the same time, the cocktail circuit is noisy with the clatter of beans being spilled. Rumours, gossip and conspiracy theories are what passes for reality here. Heaven on a stick for a politician, a journalist or a spy. I am writing this in Canberra Airport waiting for the fog to lift so I can fly home, no doubt being monitored ever more closely by a hidden camera or ten. I may have been stuck here for a few hours or for days, it's hard to tell on this side of an inversion layer. A large white rabbit carrying an oversized fobwatch just scampered by muttering, ``I'm really in a stew. No time to say goodbye, hello! I'm late, I'm late, I'm late.'' Curiouser and Curiouser.
TRAPPED IN WONDERLAND
THE whole world is a theme park but Canberra is its own special place, a land where superstitions, fables and fairy tales originate. In winter, with a fine lacework of ice decorating the bare tree branches and the grass crackling under foot, I would not be surprised to see a unicorn emerging from the mist over Lake Burley Griffin. Or a ghostly Prime Minister on his morning walk. Canberra is a town where the occasion of a federal budget sells more newspapers than a football grand final; where the pre-eminent human right is the right to a white government car; and where, sadly, your status is reflected by the number of security men assigned to shadow you everywhere. The PM crossed my path recently when I was in Canberra for a social function. He was accompanied by three men in black. Others may have been hiding in the toilet. He gave one of those stirring patriotic speeches, the wily old campaigner pushing the buttons marked Brag, Flag and Brag again. Patriotism is the first refuge of the Howard. Later on, I happened to be at a cocktail party attended by all sides of politics. Kym Beazley was there, having not long failed in his bid for the Labor leadership again. He appeared to be very chipper. Very. I heard him speculating on the timing of an early federal election while presumably assessing his chances of another leadership challenge in the meantime. Fairy tales, indeed. The temporary victor Simon Crean was at the same function, at a distance, looking like a lost soul from the Land of Miserabilia. Being a Labor leader in Opposition can crumple a man.Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock was there, too, shorter and greyer than he appears on TV, and wearing his Amnesty lapel pin. He gave me a warm two-handed handshake, which I did not enjoy, and asked if we had met previously? No, definitely not, I would have remembered that velvet-fisted clamp. The choice of Canberra as our national capital was made before commuter air travel began, in an era when being fogged-in for three months of the year made no difference. Some would say it is fogged-in all year round anyway. The fog comes down in layers. At one level, governments always believe they have an innate right to impenetrable secrecy. At another, the cries for help from the outside world can no longer be heard. At the same time, the cocktail circuit is noisy with the clatter of beans being spilled. Rumours, gossip and conspiracy theories are what passes for reality here. Heaven on a stick for a politician, a journalist or a spy. I am writing this in Canberra Airport waiting for the fog to lift so I can fly home, no doubt being monitored ever more closely by a hidden camera or ten. I may have been stuck here for a few hours or for days, it's hard to tell on this side of an inversion layer. A large white rabbit carrying an oversized fobwatch just scampered by muttering, ``I'm really in a stew. No time to say goodbye, hello! I'm late, I'm late, I'm late.'' Curiouser and Curiouser.
Thursday, June 19, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, June 18, 2003
ABUSER PAYS FOR ROAD TOLL
IN OUR society, a driver's licence is one of the significant markers of growing up. You cannot yet vote or legally drink alcohol but in South Australia you can drive a car. I do not know how 16 came to be the age for being allowed to drive here when it was 18 in Victoria. Perhaps it makes no difference behind the wheel, maybe it does, although there certainly seems to be a difference in maturity between an 18 year old and a 16 year old, both physically and mentally. Recent headlines have highlighted the disproportionate number of young lives lost on our roads, especially teenage men. To appreciate the tragedy of such deaths, go and spend a Saturday night amid the trauma at the RAH, listening to a sobbing mother by her son's bed begging him not to die. And he dies. So it goes, and will continue that way until young males are required to take hormone pills to suppress their testosterone levels. It may also reduce the illegitimate birthrate. The surging testerone makes them do it. They think they are bullet proof. They hoon around in cars and turn the roads into rutting grounds, testing themselves, showing off to their mates. They are not fully in control. On any weekday morning between 7am and 7.30am, hormone-fuelled young factory workers, wearing black beanies and lying almost flat in the driver's seat, shoot red lights and swerve aggressively from one lane to another. I tremble. Then again, between 8.30am and 9am, young women, sitting bolt upright at the wheel with no peripheral vision whatever, blindly switch lanes and speed through the same red lights. A surge of oestrogen? More trembling. What to do? The whole issue is too complicated for knee-jerk solutions and buck-passing but let's keep it simple for a moment. Under the current system, people who pass the driving test at 16 do not have to sit it again until they reach 70, no matter how many times they ``lose'' their licence in the meantime. I believe anyone who ``loses'' his or her licence for whatever reason should be made to sit the driver's test again. Their licence is cancelled not suspended. Personally, I worry more about truckies than I do about young drivers. Once upon a time, trucks were slow and held up everyone. Now they thunder down the road, tailgating and trying to overpass as if their monster, 36-wheel B-double rigs were zippy little family cars. Nearly one in four truckies killed in accidents tests positive to stimulant drugs - six times more than other driver fatalities - and fatal accidents involving trucks account for about 20 per cent of the national road toll. Were it up to me, the police would also be empowered to take saliva samples from truckies at breathalyser stations. Any driver who returned a positive swab for amphetamines would lose his/her licence for at least a year and the truck would be temporarily deregistered to exact a heavy commercial penalty on the owner as well. Better to be wired on testosterone than on amphetamines, and catch public transport.
ABUSER PAYS FOR ROAD TOLL
IN OUR society, a driver's licence is one of the significant markers of growing up. You cannot yet vote or legally drink alcohol but in South Australia you can drive a car. I do not know how 16 came to be the age for being allowed to drive here when it was 18 in Victoria. Perhaps it makes no difference behind the wheel, maybe it does, although there certainly seems to be a difference in maturity between an 18 year old and a 16 year old, both physically and mentally. Recent headlines have highlighted the disproportionate number of young lives lost on our roads, especially teenage men. To appreciate the tragedy of such deaths, go and spend a Saturday night amid the trauma at the RAH, listening to a sobbing mother by her son's bed begging him not to die. And he dies. So it goes, and will continue that way until young males are required to take hormone pills to suppress their testosterone levels. It may also reduce the illegitimate birthrate. The surging testerone makes them do it. They think they are bullet proof. They hoon around in cars and turn the roads into rutting grounds, testing themselves, showing off to their mates. They are not fully in control. On any weekday morning between 7am and 7.30am, hormone-fuelled young factory workers, wearing black beanies and lying almost flat in the driver's seat, shoot red lights and swerve aggressively from one lane to another. I tremble. Then again, between 8.30am and 9am, young women, sitting bolt upright at the wheel with no peripheral vision whatever, blindly switch lanes and speed through the same red lights. A surge of oestrogen? More trembling. What to do? The whole issue is too complicated for knee-jerk solutions and buck-passing but let's keep it simple for a moment. Under the current system, people who pass the driving test at 16 do not have to sit it again until they reach 70, no matter how many times they ``lose'' their licence in the meantime. I believe anyone who ``loses'' his or her licence for whatever reason should be made to sit the driver's test again. Their licence is cancelled not suspended. Personally, I worry more about truckies than I do about young drivers. Once upon a time, trucks were slow and held up everyone. Now they thunder down the road, tailgating and trying to overpass as if their monster, 36-wheel B-double rigs were zippy little family cars. Nearly one in four truckies killed in accidents tests positive to stimulant drugs - six times more than other driver fatalities - and fatal accidents involving trucks account for about 20 per cent of the national road toll. Were it up to me, the police would also be empowered to take saliva samples from truckies at breathalyser stations. Any driver who returned a positive swab for amphetamines would lose his/her licence for at least a year and the truck would be temporarily deregistered to exact a heavy commercial penalty on the owner as well. Better to be wired on testosterone than on amphetamines, and catch public transport.
Wednesday, June 11, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, June 11, 2003
BRIGHT SPARKS BIT OF A SHOCK
SUNDAY evening is one of those rare times in the week when I make a deliberate effort to watch television although I usually give up by eight o'clock and do something else. Not that the programs are rubbish, which they often are, but the problem is the TV reception on Sundays is always too poor to watch without stressing out. The screen is as clear as crystal at other times but on Sundays it becomes a double-image shadow of itself. Only on Sundays. My theory is that so many sets are tuned to the same TV signal on a Sunday night, there simply is not enough picture to go around. On the other hand, I could always buy an outside aerial to replace the "rabbit ears''. Radios are another problem. Owing to all the computers in the office here, none of the radios can pick up an AM station. If there is something I really wish to hear, I have to go and listen to the car radio. Yet the FM stations can be received perfectly. At the same time, I only have to touch the hot tap in the bathroom at home and the FM radio on top of the cabinet is suddenly awash with static. Only the hot tap, never the cold. But if I touch the radio with my other hand, the static clears. And if I stand holding the TV aerial, the picture is terrific even on a Sunday. What is going on here? Static electricity, for one thing. At school we used to rub a cloth on a plastic ruler, which then was able to pick up slips of paper. It was also enough to make your hair stand on end, not that I would know about that these days. Brushing your hair could create the same effect, again just a memory. The other day I touched the shoulder of a colleague and received a mighty jolt of static electricity. "Sorry,'' she said, "I always do that.'' She must have been wearing nylon underwear although I kept the thought to myself. At night, she said, she always let fly with blue sparks if her partner touched her, which was neither inviting nor user friendly. Another woman here has a computer that crashes at least ten times more often than anyone else's. She says the thing is cursed. I have always blamed it on her fiddling ineptitude but, thinking again, perhaps she is so highly charged that she keeps short-circuiting the terminal. I touched her on the shoulder to check for a snap or a crackle. Nothing. Just as I thought, merely inept. The simple act of leaving a car and touching the metal door can also give you a tremendous whack. I wonder how many heart attacks are caused by static electricity when the victim is found slumped against an open car door, one foot touching the ground. Since it is impractical to go around wearing rubber gloves and insulated boots, or checking to see who is wearing nylon knickers, we need to find ways of putting static electricity to good purpose. For a start, there must be some way of squeezing more bright sparks out of this damned keyboard.
BRIGHT SPARKS BIT OF A SHOCK
SUNDAY evening is one of those rare times in the week when I make a deliberate effort to watch television although I usually give up by eight o'clock and do something else. Not that the programs are rubbish, which they often are, but the problem is the TV reception on Sundays is always too poor to watch without stressing out. The screen is as clear as crystal at other times but on Sundays it becomes a double-image shadow of itself. Only on Sundays. My theory is that so many sets are tuned to the same TV signal on a Sunday night, there simply is not enough picture to go around. On the other hand, I could always buy an outside aerial to replace the "rabbit ears''. Radios are another problem. Owing to all the computers in the office here, none of the radios can pick up an AM station. If there is something I really wish to hear, I have to go and listen to the car radio. Yet the FM stations can be received perfectly. At the same time, I only have to touch the hot tap in the bathroom at home and the FM radio on top of the cabinet is suddenly awash with static. Only the hot tap, never the cold. But if I touch the radio with my other hand, the static clears. And if I stand holding the TV aerial, the picture is terrific even on a Sunday. What is going on here? Static electricity, for one thing. At school we used to rub a cloth on a plastic ruler, which then was able to pick up slips of paper. It was also enough to make your hair stand on end, not that I would know about that these days. Brushing your hair could create the same effect, again just a memory. The other day I touched the shoulder of a colleague and received a mighty jolt of static electricity. "Sorry,'' she said, "I always do that.'' She must have been wearing nylon underwear although I kept the thought to myself. At night, she said, she always let fly with blue sparks if her partner touched her, which was neither inviting nor user friendly. Another woman here has a computer that crashes at least ten times more often than anyone else's. She says the thing is cursed. I have always blamed it on her fiddling ineptitude but, thinking again, perhaps she is so highly charged that she keeps short-circuiting the terminal. I touched her on the shoulder to check for a snap or a crackle. Nothing. Just as I thought, merely inept. The simple act of leaving a car and touching the metal door can also give you a tremendous whack. I wonder how many heart attacks are caused by static electricity when the victim is found slumped against an open car door, one foot touching the ground. Since it is impractical to go around wearing rubber gloves and insulated boots, or checking to see who is wearing nylon knickers, we need to find ways of putting static electricity to good purpose. For a start, there must be some way of squeezing more bright sparks out of this damned keyboard.
Monday, June 02, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, June 4, 2003
FARE THEE WELL FROM WIMMERA
ONE OF THE unrecognised art forms in rural Australia is the morning choreography of farmhands grabbing a sausage roll and sauce on their way to work. All wearing baseball caps, they get out of their utes and the first move is always to tug free their underpants from behind, and then to hitch up their jeans by the belt loops. These are the women. The blokes add an artistic flourish by rearranging their front ends as well. A stereotype is just an exaggeration of reality. I was watching the early parade while having a coffee in the Wimmera region of western Victoria, on the way home after visiting my son in Melbourne. Towns that have no scenic attractions such as a mountain or a lake have a hard time in the tourism stakes. In the Wimmera, tourist sites are few and far between unless wheatfields and large skies are your thing. In the Mallee, Karoonda's only claim to fame is being narrowly missed by a meteorite that crashed to earth 4km east of the town in 1930. I once met an old fella who was there at the time and he had neither seen nor heard a thing, just like the 99 per cent of a cricket crowd who misses the fall of a wicket. Before leaving Melbourne, I went into the RACV shop to ask if they had a strip map of the Wimmera? “Yes, are you a member?” the woman had asked. No. “You can't have it then. They're for members only.” What if I pay for it? “No.” $100? “No.” $1000? “Do I have to call security?” I later downloaded the same map from the RACV website for free. D'err. This morning I awoke with a sneezing fit in the motel room and could find no tissues. The reception desk was apparently there to ward off guests rather than to make them feel welcome. Autographed photos of country music singers lined the shelf. The woman took ages to answer the “Ring for Service” buzzer and at first she did not believe the room had no tissues. I thought I might need to provide a DNA sample from the back of my hand in order to pass muster. For dinner last night in the motel dining room, I ordered bruschetta, which I had always thought was chopped tomato on toast with olive oil on top. The Wimmera version came with tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, olives and green capsicum, which always repeats-repeats on me. I counted myself fortunate to find no ham and pineapple. The dining room had a “home cooked meals” sign over the door. I am no sentimentalist when it comes to home cooking. My mother's stew was a gristle pot; her tuna mournay was tuna mourning; and her minced meat pie was grey death. Strangely, my kids love “nana's pie” so there is no accounting for taste with some people. By now, I can hear mum saying, “Desmond, you have an awful lot to say for yourself.” My cousin Julienne was a dreadful cook, too, but her stock answer was that she could not be good both in the kitchen and in bed. I saw her husband Brian on my travels. “Her cooking has been on the improve for years,” he lamented.
FARE THEE WELL FROM WIMMERA
ONE OF THE unrecognised art forms in rural Australia is the morning choreography of farmhands grabbing a sausage roll and sauce on their way to work. All wearing baseball caps, they get out of their utes and the first move is always to tug free their underpants from behind, and then to hitch up their jeans by the belt loops. These are the women. The blokes add an artistic flourish by rearranging their front ends as well. A stereotype is just an exaggeration of reality. I was watching the early parade while having a coffee in the Wimmera region of western Victoria, on the way home after visiting my son in Melbourne. Towns that have no scenic attractions such as a mountain or a lake have a hard time in the tourism stakes. In the Wimmera, tourist sites are few and far between unless wheatfields and large skies are your thing. In the Mallee, Karoonda's only claim to fame is being narrowly missed by a meteorite that crashed to earth 4km east of the town in 1930. I once met an old fella who was there at the time and he had neither seen nor heard a thing, just like the 99 per cent of a cricket crowd who misses the fall of a wicket. Before leaving Melbourne, I went into the RACV shop to ask if they had a strip map of the Wimmera? “Yes, are you a member?” the woman had asked. No. “You can't have it then. They're for members only.” What if I pay for it? “No.” $100? “No.” $1000? “Do I have to call security?” I later downloaded the same map from the RACV website for free. D'err. This morning I awoke with a sneezing fit in the motel room and could find no tissues. The reception desk was apparently there to ward off guests rather than to make them feel welcome. Autographed photos of country music singers lined the shelf. The woman took ages to answer the “Ring for Service” buzzer and at first she did not believe the room had no tissues. I thought I might need to provide a DNA sample from the back of my hand in order to pass muster. For dinner last night in the motel dining room, I ordered bruschetta, which I had always thought was chopped tomato on toast with olive oil on top. The Wimmera version came with tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, olives and green capsicum, which always repeats-repeats on me. I counted myself fortunate to find no ham and pineapple. The dining room had a “home cooked meals” sign over the door. I am no sentimentalist when it comes to home cooking. My mother's stew was a gristle pot; her tuna mournay was tuna mourning; and her minced meat pie was grey death. Strangely, my kids love “nana's pie” so there is no accounting for taste with some people. By now, I can hear mum saying, “Desmond, you have an awful lot to say for yourself.” My cousin Julienne was a dreadful cook, too, but her stock answer was that she could not be good both in the kitchen and in bed. I saw her husband Brian on my travels. “Her cooking has been on the improve for years,” he lamented.
Monday, May 26, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, May 28, 2003
DEAR SIR/MADAM, I AM APPLYING...
"I am enquiring into the possibility of a position within your company that may or may not become available in the very near future. Initially, my choice of employment was within the tattooing industry, this type of trade would have utilised my fine eye for detail and the ability to use my imagination in a very creative sense. I would like to do something with my artistic ability, as I need to be employed in an industry that can utilise all of my creative talents.''
THE Year 12 school leaver who wrote this gem was seeking a career in journalism at Messenger Newspapers. I keep it close handy, along with the letter from a gentleman who offered to write a "best buys'' column on the Central Market. The writer said he had a "passion for greengrocery''. Neither of them got a job unfortunately.
Lots of people wrongly think they would make good journalists including many who, somehow or another, are still in the game. There is no lack of applications and a fair proportion of them come from disillusioned school teachers seeking a career change: "I haf bin a teechr for elevum yrs & and sik off it.'' Depending on how you look at it, journalism is either a helter-skelter joyride or a good way to hide your intellectual shortcomings. Or both. One route is to adopt a set of prejudices early in your career and stick to them no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented. A career in talkback radio is then assured. In the old days, based on a short job interview and an inflated CV, the recruitment of journalists was a hit'n'miss lottery from which I regarded one good pickup in three to be a satisfactory average. Now, fed by a steady supply of UniSA journalism graduates, the candidates must do at least a week's work first to sort them out, virtually removing the need for an interview. Which is a shame in some respects. In the old days, after first trying to make the nervous applicant feel as comfortable as possible, the first question was: "So, are you or have you ever been a virgin?'' The interest lay not so much in the answer as in the reaction, from which you could tell a lot about a person's suitability for journalism. Political correctness and various anti-harassment laws have since taken their toll. Now, job interviews are done strictly by the book: name, rank and cereal preference but nothing much about age, marital status, medical condition or how often they clean their teeth. All a bit sterile and ho-hum. Thank goodness for internal staff newsletters. Here, with her permission to reprint, is what a new Messenger journo volunteered about herself in our newsletter: "I have never been into the 'girlie' aspects of life and choose to have a pint and a ciggy while wearing my ripped jeans each night when I get home from work. I don't even own a pair of high heels. When I was 17 I shaved my head and am tempted to do it again. I have three sisters and one brother and am the youngest by many years _ each of us has a different mother/father combination and so we range from red hair to blonde, fair skin to Asian.'' Wow, you just cannot get that stuff from a job interview. And she has turned out just fine.
DEAR SIR/MADAM, I AM APPLYING...
"I am enquiring into the possibility of a position within your company that may or may not become available in the very near future. Initially, my choice of employment was within the tattooing industry, this type of trade would have utilised my fine eye for detail and the ability to use my imagination in a very creative sense. I would like to do something with my artistic ability, as I need to be employed in an industry that can utilise all of my creative talents.''
THE Year 12 school leaver who wrote this gem was seeking a career in journalism at Messenger Newspapers. I keep it close handy, along with the letter from a gentleman who offered to write a "best buys'' column on the Central Market. The writer said he had a "passion for greengrocery''. Neither of them got a job unfortunately.
Lots of people wrongly think they would make good journalists including many who, somehow or another, are still in the game. There is no lack of applications and a fair proportion of them come from disillusioned school teachers seeking a career change: "I haf bin a teechr for elevum yrs & and sik off it.'' Depending on how you look at it, journalism is either a helter-skelter joyride or a good way to hide your intellectual shortcomings. Or both. One route is to adopt a set of prejudices early in your career and stick to them no matter what evidence to the contrary is presented. A career in talkback radio is then assured. In the old days, based on a short job interview and an inflated CV, the recruitment of journalists was a hit'n'miss lottery from which I regarded one good pickup in three to be a satisfactory average. Now, fed by a steady supply of UniSA journalism graduates, the candidates must do at least a week's work first to sort them out, virtually removing the need for an interview. Which is a shame in some respects. In the old days, after first trying to make the nervous applicant feel as comfortable as possible, the first question was: "So, are you or have you ever been a virgin?'' The interest lay not so much in the answer as in the reaction, from which you could tell a lot about a person's suitability for journalism. Political correctness and various anti-harassment laws have since taken their toll. Now, job interviews are done strictly by the book: name, rank and cereal preference but nothing much about age, marital status, medical condition or how often they clean their teeth. All a bit sterile and ho-hum. Thank goodness for internal staff newsletters. Here, with her permission to reprint, is what a new Messenger journo volunteered about herself in our newsletter: "I have never been into the 'girlie' aspects of life and choose to have a pint and a ciggy while wearing my ripped jeans each night when I get home from work. I don't even own a pair of high heels. When I was 17 I shaved my head and am tempted to do it again. I have three sisters and one brother and am the youngest by many years _ each of us has a different mother/father combination and so we range from red hair to blonde, fair skin to Asian.'' Wow, you just cannot get that stuff from a job interview. And she has turned out just fine.
Tuesday, May 20, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, May 21, 2003
ONE LUMP OR TWO GOOD FOR WHAT AILS YOU
A MATE of mine had an old dog that stretched out in front of the fire one evening and did not move for two days. He and his wife became worried. They tried feeding and patting it but the dog never shifted from the spot. It was a very old dog and the wife suggested the humane thing would be to have the poor creature put down by the vet. But my mate objected to paying the vet's fee, saying he would get his .22 rifle and do the job himself in the morning. He then left the room to go to the toilet and on returning, the dog was standing there wagging its tail. This is known as the placebo effect. The mere threat of a .22 bullet in the head brought about a remarkable revival in the dog's zest for life, as it would in mine too. In medicine, a placebo is usually a sugar pill given to an unknowing patient in a ``double blind'' test to check on the effectiveness of a real drug by comparison. Sugar is used because it is an inert, inactive ingredient that has no direct effect on the ailment under treatment. Supposedly. The placebo effect is a quite remarkable phenomenon, which is said to be particularly effective in patients suffering pain or depression. Even when sugar pills are given to people in pain, their blind belief in the treatment is sufficient for up to 50 per cent of them to say they feel better. So long as it works, who cares? In other documented cases: skin warts were removed by painting them with a coloured dye and promising they would disappear when the colour wore off; people suffering pain after tooth extraction felt relief from an ultrasound machine even though it was switched off; and among a group of patients with inflammed intestines, 50 per cent felt and looked better after treatment with a placebo. In some cases, a sham surgical procedure worked better than real surgery. In other cases, people who took plain sugar syrup suffered the same unpleasant side effects such as vomiting as those caused by the real drug. One of the placebo rules is the patient cannot know of the deception. Imagine afterwards, when your condition had improved, being told you were cured by sugar pills. Now start to worry. Or, if plain sugar is so effective, could it be the magic cure-all that the drug companies are keeping secret from us? Should it be repackaged as medicine and made available only from chemist shops? Perhaps this is what Pan Pharmaceuticals had in mind when, in the mid-1970s, most of the painkiller paracetamol in a batch of headache tablets was replaced with sugar. In fact, according to the story I read in The Australian, where the recipe called for 30kg of paracetamol, only 2kg was used and the remainder was sugar. Were the sufferers who thought it was the real deal left feeling better? Probably. Like the dying dog, a hopeful attitude and positive expectations can make all the difference. I have never heard of a placebo curing cancer but how did that Mary Poppins' song go again? ``Just a spoonful of sugar...''
ONE LUMP OR TWO GOOD FOR WHAT AILS YOU
A MATE of mine had an old dog that stretched out in front of the fire one evening and did not move for two days. He and his wife became worried. They tried feeding and patting it but the dog never shifted from the spot. It was a very old dog and the wife suggested the humane thing would be to have the poor creature put down by the vet. But my mate objected to paying the vet's fee, saying he would get his .22 rifle and do the job himself in the morning. He then left the room to go to the toilet and on returning, the dog was standing there wagging its tail. This is known as the placebo effect. The mere threat of a .22 bullet in the head brought about a remarkable revival in the dog's zest for life, as it would in mine too. In medicine, a placebo is usually a sugar pill given to an unknowing patient in a ``double blind'' test to check on the effectiveness of a real drug by comparison. Sugar is used because it is an inert, inactive ingredient that has no direct effect on the ailment under treatment. Supposedly. The placebo effect is a quite remarkable phenomenon, which is said to be particularly effective in patients suffering pain or depression. Even when sugar pills are given to people in pain, their blind belief in the treatment is sufficient for up to 50 per cent of them to say they feel better. So long as it works, who cares? In other documented cases: skin warts were removed by painting them with a coloured dye and promising they would disappear when the colour wore off; people suffering pain after tooth extraction felt relief from an ultrasound machine even though it was switched off; and among a group of patients with inflammed intestines, 50 per cent felt and looked better after treatment with a placebo. In some cases, a sham surgical procedure worked better than real surgery. In other cases, people who took plain sugar syrup suffered the same unpleasant side effects such as vomiting as those caused by the real drug. One of the placebo rules is the patient cannot know of the deception. Imagine afterwards, when your condition had improved, being told you were cured by sugar pills. Now start to worry. Or, if plain sugar is so effective, could it be the magic cure-all that the drug companies are keeping secret from us? Should it be repackaged as medicine and made available only from chemist shops? Perhaps this is what Pan Pharmaceuticals had in mind when, in the mid-1970s, most of the painkiller paracetamol in a batch of headache tablets was replaced with sugar. In fact, according to the story I read in The Australian, where the recipe called for 30kg of paracetamol, only 2kg was used and the remainder was sugar. Were the sufferers who thought it was the real deal left feeling better? Probably. Like the dying dog, a hopeful attitude and positive expectations can make all the difference. I have never heard of a placebo curing cancer but how did that Mary Poppins' song go again? ``Just a spoonful of sugar...''
Monday, May 12, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, May 14, 2003
TRUTH CAN BE CONTRADICTORY
THE truth is skittish and must be approached carefully. The closer we come to it, the more likely it is to take flight or change shape, depending on who is telling the story. My dear friend Margaret Simons is a story teller and a truth seeker. An obsession with truth is a common misfortune among journalists. Her new book The Meeting of the Waters, out this week, strikes boldly at the heart of the Hindmarsh Island bridge affair, a bitter controversy about belief more than anything else. A brave woman, our Margaret. Belief _ how some people believe one thing and others don't _ is at the core of an affair that gave us the term ``secret women's business'', which became the basis of an ultimately futile attempt by a group of Ngarindjerri women to block the bridge's construction. A Royal Commission found the ``secret women's business'' was a fabrication, not just a myth but a deliberate lie. The finding was wrong, as Margaret proves, and was later discarded by Federal Court judge John von Doussa - by which time the Ngarindjerri were in disarray, resentful and even more marginalised. The Meeting of the Waters reveals more about the multi-layered ``secret women's business'' - yes, it exists - than the Ngarindjerri women probably ever wanted told publicly. Margaret worries about it but the context is important in explaining the full story. Beyond that, she exposes a litany of deceit, abuse of process and power, selective misrepresentation, double dealing and political chicanery. Her book also makes me wonder if anthropology is a branch of science or a belief system itself. Even the rational approach - seeing, thinking, learning, understanding - cannot change entrenched ideology. In the crossover between belief and truth, the opposite of one truth is not necessarily a lie but another person's truth. The Ngarindjerri women's different levels of knowledge led them to believe different things, not to lie. But more than one truth at a time was too much for the white system, which therefore found that someone must be lying. Sigh. Belief is not far removed from faith _ the act of suspecting something is a fiction but believing it anyway. Religions depend upon faith but unlike other religions, the Ngarindjerri were not given the benefit of the doubt for placing their faith in the Dreaming. Many Ngarindjerri women now will not cross the bridge, believing its existence interferes with female fertility. A colleague of mine _ the harshest of cynics when it came to ``secret women's business'' _ bought a block of land on Hindmarsh Island in anticipation of the bridge being built. He moved into a new house on the marina and, at the age of 47, was making smug plans to buy a boat, followed by early retirement at 50 and the easy life thereafter. On their first weekend in the new house, his wife fell pregnant with their first child, which put an end to his retirement plans. Powerful stuff, that secret women's business.
TRUTH CAN BE CONTRADICTORY
THE truth is skittish and must be approached carefully. The closer we come to it, the more likely it is to take flight or change shape, depending on who is telling the story. My dear friend Margaret Simons is a story teller and a truth seeker. An obsession with truth is a common misfortune among journalists. Her new book The Meeting of the Waters, out this week, strikes boldly at the heart of the Hindmarsh Island bridge affair, a bitter controversy about belief more than anything else. A brave woman, our Margaret. Belief _ how some people believe one thing and others don't _ is at the core of an affair that gave us the term ``secret women's business'', which became the basis of an ultimately futile attempt by a group of Ngarindjerri women to block the bridge's construction. A Royal Commission found the ``secret women's business'' was a fabrication, not just a myth but a deliberate lie. The finding was wrong, as Margaret proves, and was later discarded by Federal Court judge John von Doussa - by which time the Ngarindjerri were in disarray, resentful and even more marginalised. The Meeting of the Waters reveals more about the multi-layered ``secret women's business'' - yes, it exists - than the Ngarindjerri women probably ever wanted told publicly. Margaret worries about it but the context is important in explaining the full story. Beyond that, she exposes a litany of deceit, abuse of process and power, selective misrepresentation, double dealing and political chicanery. Her book also makes me wonder if anthropology is a branch of science or a belief system itself. Even the rational approach - seeing, thinking, learning, understanding - cannot change entrenched ideology. In the crossover between belief and truth, the opposite of one truth is not necessarily a lie but another person's truth. The Ngarindjerri women's different levels of knowledge led them to believe different things, not to lie. But more than one truth at a time was too much for the white system, which therefore found that someone must be lying. Sigh. Belief is not far removed from faith _ the act of suspecting something is a fiction but believing it anyway. Religions depend upon faith but unlike other religions, the Ngarindjerri were not given the benefit of the doubt for placing their faith in the Dreaming. Many Ngarindjerri women now will not cross the bridge, believing its existence interferes with female fertility. A colleague of mine _ the harshest of cynics when it came to ``secret women's business'' _ bought a block of land on Hindmarsh Island in anticipation of the bridge being built. He moved into a new house on the marina and, at the age of 47, was making smug plans to buy a boat, followed by early retirement at 50 and the easy life thereafter. On their first weekend in the new house, his wife fell pregnant with their first child, which put an end to his retirement plans. Powerful stuff, that secret women's business.
Monday, May 05, 2003
Published Messenger Newspapers, Adelaide, May 7, 2003
PLANNERS AT ODDS WITH ARCHITECTS
PARIS is a beautiful place, no doubt about it, yet the man who rebuilt the city in the mid-1800s had an eye not for beauty but for the peasants, who were frequently revolting. The alleyways of the Paris slums could be easily barricaded in an uprising, therefore Baron Haussmann, on the order of Napoleon III, destroyed the old city and created wide boulevards with uninterrupted lines of fire for artillery to suppress insurrections. Haussmann's other agenda was to use the boulevards to link the Paris railway stations, creating a giant trading centre. The sidewalk cafes and the promenading by the bourgeoisie came later. The homes of 15,000 people were razed and the working classes were pushed from the city centre to the outskirts. Sound familiar? Haussmann's work restores your faith in the social merits of urban planning ... not. Along the way, admittedly, he also fixed the Paris sewerage system and created open green spaces but he then made sure one park was reserved for the rich and another for the poor. In any event, the boulevards did not prevent insurrections. The peasants simply became better organised, used more manpower and erected bigger barricades. Blast those accursed peasants! The point of all this is to ask whether, short of a revolution, Paris offers any lessons for Adelaide, particularly in the city centre which has seen an eruption of crowded apartment buildings in the past five years. The commentators of Haussmann's time protested that his slum clearance had left behind a fragmented, alienated city centre containing only luxurious apartments. Ditto here and much of what passes for new city living in Adelaide exists behind security gates, living cheek-by-jowl in a maze of alleyways and deadends where the taxis can never find anyone's address. In some cases it must be like living in a day-release remand centre. Are these the slums of the future? Where is the next Haussmann when you need him? As someone who lived in the city until I could no longer afford it and had to leave, I have a detached, cold view of these residential developments and do not know who to blame - planners or architects? A brittle tension seems to exist between the two sides over who should take the most blame for stuffing up a city, any city. I read recently where a Sydney architect Lionel Glendenning had suggested the answer to urban planning problems was simple - sack all planners. He listed among their many sins a lack of vision and creativity, hopeless inefficiency and a bureaucratic herd mentality that led to lowest common denominator solutions. ``A dry bunch of people,'' Glendenning said. Ouch.
The other day at the Rosewater supermarket carpark, I witnessed a young man sitting inside a car - inside, mind - who suddenly headbutted the driver's side window, smashing it to smithereens and, apparently uninjured, he drove off. True. An architect having just left a meeting with a council planner?
PLANNERS AT ODDS WITH ARCHITECTS
PARIS is a beautiful place, no doubt about it, yet the man who rebuilt the city in the mid-1800s had an eye not for beauty but for the peasants, who were frequently revolting. The alleyways of the Paris slums could be easily barricaded in an uprising, therefore Baron Haussmann, on the order of Napoleon III, destroyed the old city and created wide boulevards with uninterrupted lines of fire for artillery to suppress insurrections. Haussmann's other agenda was to use the boulevards to link the Paris railway stations, creating a giant trading centre. The sidewalk cafes and the promenading by the bourgeoisie came later. The homes of 15,000 people were razed and the working classes were pushed from the city centre to the outskirts. Sound familiar? Haussmann's work restores your faith in the social merits of urban planning ... not. Along the way, admittedly, he also fixed the Paris sewerage system and created open green spaces but he then made sure one park was reserved for the rich and another for the poor. In any event, the boulevards did not prevent insurrections. The peasants simply became better organised, used more manpower and erected bigger barricades. Blast those accursed peasants! The point of all this is to ask whether, short of a revolution, Paris offers any lessons for Adelaide, particularly in the city centre which has seen an eruption of crowded apartment buildings in the past five years. The commentators of Haussmann's time protested that his slum clearance had left behind a fragmented, alienated city centre containing only luxurious apartments. Ditto here and much of what passes for new city living in Adelaide exists behind security gates, living cheek-by-jowl in a maze of alleyways and deadends where the taxis can never find anyone's address. In some cases it must be like living in a day-release remand centre. Are these the slums of the future? Where is the next Haussmann when you need him? As someone who lived in the city until I could no longer afford it and had to leave, I have a detached, cold view of these residential developments and do not know who to blame - planners or architects? A brittle tension seems to exist between the two sides over who should take the most blame for stuffing up a city, any city. I read recently where a Sydney architect Lionel Glendenning had suggested the answer to urban planning problems was simple - sack all planners. He listed among their many sins a lack of vision and creativity, hopeless inefficiency and a bureaucratic herd mentality that led to lowest common denominator solutions. ``A dry bunch of people,'' Glendenning said. Ouch.
The other day at the Rosewater supermarket carpark, I witnessed a young man sitting inside a car - inside, mind - who suddenly headbutted the driver's side window, smashing it to smithereens and, apparently uninjured, he drove off. True. An architect having just left a meeting with a council planner?