October 24, 2009
· Filed under The Big Lap, parenting, society
Grassy Hill
For some reason I hadn’t realised until now *why* Cooktown was called Cooktown. I mean, if I’d contemplated the issue, I probably could have figured it out. Cook……Town. How funny. I’m glad I don’t have an eponymous town.
It’s spectacular around here. We went to the top of Grassy Hill where Lieutenant Cook went to have a look around. Apparantly he was a bit concerned by the navigational conditions. It must have been a bit like Apollo 13 – no Houston, but unlimited oxygen and coconuts. The drive to get home seems to be very strong, as evidenced by these pioneers. It’s interesting – so much effort to go so far away, but *really* wanting to get home….. even at the risk of shortening your life.
However, we obviously weren’t inspired enough by this derring-do, as we decided *not* to go to Cape York. Initially I was very hopeful that we would do this, but I think we just didn’t have the energy levels required to get the kids up and down an extra 2000km of dirt. I’ve pencilled it in for P and the boys in about 10 years time. One of those “coming of age” masculine rituals, where the boys can do a lot of driving even though they don’t have licenses. (I have loads of ideas as to how P can replicate male initiation ceremonies for our boys in this bereft culture. Do you think this is a problem? I don’t have any daughters to plan a menarche ceremony for, so my enthusiasm manifests inappropriately.) I’m trying to avoid the binge-drinking, drugs and disrespect of women which seem to be the current ways in which boys try to tell the world that they’re “all grown up”.
“Good luck”, I hear you say.
PS. This was also the site of another of my excellent attempts to impart Australian history. “Captain Cook is remembered for discovering Australia. But of course, he didn’t discover it. Aboriginal people had been here for around 60 000 years, and other seafarers had also visited before he got here….. (desperate look to P – who obliges “Captain Cook claimed Australia for England”.. which gets a blank look from T and segues into a conversation between P & I as to the strange mores of the time that allowed him to consider doing this, and the sad truth that maybe not much has changed…..) so T is able to summarise “Captain Cook didn’t discover Australia.” I’m glad we’ve got that covered.
Musical Boat
October 24, 2009
· Filed under The Big Lap
So named by Lieutenant Cook, as this was where his troubles started. But really it’s “Paradise Found”.
Two nights camped tucked into the rainforest with the perfect beach 25m away. Boys collecting coconuts and building sandcastles.
I couldn’t quite figure out why we were leaving, but it’s like a compulsion – onward ever onward.
J on gate duty
October 24, 2009
· Filed under ethics, feminism, society
So said the sign outside a “spa” in Port Douglas. And that gives you a good idea of the type of place it is. Very beautiful, but teflon.
This got me thinking (again) about the ways in which the culture tries to clone us all into one definition of beauty (tanned, with white teeth!) Surely something not confined to our own time and place, but now that all the photos are photo-shopped, and you can literally cut and paste and colour your own body, it seems more extreme. Plastic surgery actually exists in my own social world (baffling but true.) I particularly remember a child who had her ears “pinned back” as soon as it was legal – aged 7. It was ‘to save her from being teased at school’. I wonder what other lessons and values she draws from that experience? Looks are important. It’s important to be like everyone else. Don’t stand out. You can’t cope with being teased.
Does she feel sorry for the other kids with sticky-out ears who haven’t had their ears “done” yet? Will she ever feel that her body and choices were violated?
Am I just sensitive to this because I have sticky-out ears?
But as it happens I am here to confess that “teeth” is one area where I have been thoroughly socialised into believing that they have to look a certain way. Blessed with a higgley-piggley mouth of teeth, I had braces when I was 13, and I never questioned the necessity of this, and even now can feel happy that they were “fixed”. Due to the (painful) rapid movement of my teeth into their “correct” positions, I now have a dead tooth in the front of my mouth that is getting more and more yellow as I get older. (A dental plot?)
I hope you’re getting a good visual of me, witch-like, with sticky-out ears and yellowing teeth. It’s amazing I can function in this world at all.
Anyway, I have been advised that the only way to “fix” my yellow tooth, is to have a crown. Which will involve vast expense, and the removal of a perfectly functioning tooth. So far I have baulked. All my principles are at stake: How can I spend money in this way when other people don’t have *any* teeth and can’t afford them? The money should be given to a dental clinic somewhere. If I do this, I will be buying into the whole beauty myth. The more happy yellow-toothed women out there, the better, as we demonstrate that white teeth are not pre-requisites for a fulfilled life.
BUT (and this is a big but) I *really* don’t like my yellow tooth. And no intellectual reasoning seems to be able to overcome my flinch of disgust/concern when I see photos of my smiling yellow tooth. I can intellectually realise that “it doesn’t matter”, but my socialisation doesn’t seem to allow me to emotionally realise the same. Of course, other people probably have yellow teeth too - I just don’t notice them.
October 13, 2009
· Filed under voluntary simplicity
Benefits of living in a tent:
1. No housework
2. Everything has to go back into it’s place every time you move.
3. When you do the grocery shopping, you put everything away into the kitchen in the car in the carpark, and when you get home, there’s no putting away.
4. You can’t buy or keep any extraneous stuff
5. There’s no TV
6. Everyone goes to bed when the sun goes down, and gets up when the sun comes up
7. Your menstrual cycle aligns with the moon
8. You rediscover novels (normally I can’t concentrate on them – I’m too busy with my ‘important’ reading. I knew novels were often better than non-fiction at probing the human condition – I’d just forgotten)
9. You rediscover music (though unfortunately not everyone wants to listen to blasting 80’s rock as I relive the road trips of my youth)
10. You live outside engaged with nature
11. You live outside and engage with other people
Benefits of living in a house:
1. You have clean feet and you can put them into clean shoes
2. You can choose privacy when you want it
3. You can have a garden
4. You can have an afternoon nap even if it’s boiling hot
5. You can keep the books you love and have them on a shelf
Can these two worlds be combined? I suspect not.
October 12, 2009
· Filed under The Big Lap, Uncategorized
Millaa Millaa Falls
An overnight in Georgetown and then heading into Cairns. As I started to read about all the great places in this area, I started to have one of my panic attacks: “there’s too much! – we can’t see all this! – how do we choose what to do!?” and had to calm myself down with my mantra: “You can’t do everything.”
This is funny for two reasons. One, in actual fact we have pretty much taken our home lifestyle along on this trip. We spend a fair bit of time in cafes flipping through books and magazines, and a lot of time sourcing places to sit/swim by water…. interspersed with excursions. In Perth we have “Friday Family Funday” where we ”go on an adventure” - picnics, the zoo, gokarting, etc – so we just have a few more of those types of days.
The second reason is, that I discovered that all of these beautiful Queensland islands – which I had only known about in the context of package holidays that I could never afford – are actually accessible on day trips, and better - you can camp on them! The good people at Queensland Parks and Wildlife Service have set aside national park camping grounds on the islands! Though our camping set up may be difficult to relocate out of the car and into a backpack….
Anyway, my first island destination was Green Island, and I showed P the gorgeous picture and read out the fabulous description of our life on that island for the day. To which P responded: “that’s not my bag.” I’ve realised too late that I’ve married into that minority group, People Against Tropical Islands (PATI).
P claims membership of a larger group, People Against Tourists on Tropical Islands (PATTI). Fair enough…. but as it happens, we *are* tourists!! How to overcome this misfortune??
For those interested in logistics, we had two nights camped at Millaa Millaa in the Tablelands- our eyes are being suddently soothed by all this green – and we then went into Cairns proper, and were buffeted by the busyness, so headed back into the mountains – and are now camped at Kuranda.
Steam train journey from Ravenshoe to Tumoulin
October 12, 2009
· Filed under The Big Lap
Fossicking in front of the Sunset Tavern
Had to go here, as with the exception of Bing Bong (I kid you not…. this is some type of mining port) it seems to be the only town actually on the coast of the Gulf of Carpentaria. Not sure how/why this huge stretch of coast has escaped the notice of developers, but so far so good.
When I read that Karumba was “part of Aussie fishing folklore among blokey types who keep company with barramundi and saltwater crocodiles”, P sort of winced (that’s not him in case you hadn’t guessed) but it turned out to be great. Sort of a tropical Lancelin.
October 9, 2009
· Filed under The Big Lap, Uncategorized
Putting the Nissan through it's paces at Lawn Hall NP.... T & I elected to walk down after the trip up
After leaving Hells Gate we detoured down to Lawn Hill National Park for lunch and a swim. This is good evidence of our (ridiculously) recalibrated sense of distance - that we would go out of our way by around 250km on dirt roads for a lunch stop. Adels Grove campground there was very nice - billed as an eco-tourist venture – meaning you can pay to stay in on-site tents.
Reading about Burketown en route, I discovered that we would be in town for the “morning glory”, a long tubular cloud formation that comes here for about six weeks a year, and is only found in Burketown and in the Gulf of Mexico. Apparantly glider pilots make pilgrimages here to surf the morning glory…. and there was a glider trailer parked at the front of the caravan park. The first guy we met in Burketown was a suitably enthusiastic type who was shooting a doco on the clouds for Discovery channel. He was able to pass on the hot tips from the locals as to how to know whether the clouds would be coming the next morning…. you’d get condensation on your beer, and the tables at the cafe would start bowing.
No morning glory for us the next morning, and P advised that he wasn’t “hanging around waiting for a cloud.” What a romantic.
Welcome to Qld
October 9, 2009
· Filed under The Big Lap
Camp Kitchen - Hells Gate
5.10.09
Exiting Darwin, we were on a mission to the East Coast – destination Townsville - to get a bit further south, out of the heat and potential rain.
Overnight in Katherine, morning tea & a swim at Mataranka (*not* recommended due to overwhelming stench of flying fox), lunch at Larrimah (Pink Panther Hotel) and evening at Daly Waters. Daly Waters Pub could write the book on how to run a successful business – as they are doing it in the MIDDLE OF NOWHERE. The pub has been decorated by the passing patrons (think undies, bras, thongs, notes and photos and foreign currency) We arrived at an empty campground, which gradually filled, then around 5.30pm the truckies and their rigs pulled up, then six Harleys (from where?) and then a variety of station hands until the whole bar was propped up by a row of men in wifebeaters. A good night was had by all, as evidenced by the same men the next morning – some having beer, others (nancy-types) orange juice, with very limited conversation (“we’re not going far today mate are we?”) One leg and an arm protruded motionless from a swag near us.
500m from the turnoff, I put in a bid for Cairns instead of Townsville (I set off for Cairns 20 years ago – shamelessly inviting a range of friends and relatives to come and say goodbye to me as I was going to live there….. I never made it that far and was back in Perth twelve months later) so we changed plan and headed off down the Carpentaria Highway. Lunch at Cape Crawford (Heartbreak Hotel) and then overnight at Borroloola (no themed hotel….. how backward!) where we bumped into our slide guitar friends again.
From Borroloola we joined the Savannah Way (more dirt roads and water crossings) and are currently camped at Hells Gate Roadhouse. P had decided that this was the one sticker he was going to buy….. but they haven’t got onto the merchandise here as much as you might expect.
Savannah Way
October 1, 2009
· Filed under politics
Aboriginal kids should attend school every day. No reasons, no excuses. That seems to be the consensus of the school hierarchy and the Australian newspaper.
I went to the community store in Kalumbaru and it was the after school rush, and one of the teachers was haranguing a parent who was there with her child, insisting that it was important that the child went to school and she had to be there tomorrow, etc etc…… which made me cringe. How would it be to live somewhere so small that when you go to buy your groceries you’re publicly bailed up by govt representatives for perceived infractions? Who knows why the child wasn’t there that day? Certainly all the people in the store didn’t get to find out, as the poor mum scurried away.
Then in Halls Creek they had posters all over town “It’s not cool not to go to school” or some equally trite line, and charts showing the previous week’s attendance – 70% – complete with patronising comments on “well done year 4!!!! 81%!!!!!! Sigh.
Then in a more recent paper I read about the Yarrabah community, where Year 3 students have tripled their literacy and numeracy competency levels…… but at the end of the article we discover that their attendance rate hasn’t changed, and is only 70% as well. Is it the “consistent focus on high expectations and standards of curriculum delivery….” cited by the Principal, or is it the Men’s group formed in 1998 which has worked to restore the role of men in their families? Increased school attendance didn’t seem to be the factor.
Anyway, despite this rambling (it’s late) I’m not necessarily concluding that there is no place for school in the lives of aboriginal – or other - children. My main argument is always that if you want to change outcomes for children you need to focus your work on families, and not the red herring of school. And by the by, if you still want children to attend school, you might want to make it an attractive propostion, rather than some of the dusty barbed wired places I’ve seen around here. Rather than threatening parents with a $1000 fine – as seen on the posters in Halls Creek, or loss of Centrelink benefits (that’s bound to help children) maybe school could be such a great place that children are busting and pestering to get there.
It’s the whole soft power thing. Researchers drew a small picture of a fly on a urinal and found that that one needed a lot less cleaning than the others. Give people an attractive target and they will probably do what you want. Imagine if you were only allowed to go to school three days a week. On ’your’ days, there were up to 10 kids there. It was held in a small cottage amongst lovely gardens with pets and a swimming pool. Inside was real, comfortable furniture, great games, books, food for preparing lunch together…..
but apparantly there’s no money for school buildings.
October 1, 2009
· Filed under homeschooling, parenting, politics, society
Halls Creek was a weird kind of apartheid arrangement, where all the white “service” people (police/teachers/public servants) had nice houses at one end of the town, and the local aboriginal people lived in the seeming ghetto - at the other end of town. I can understand that if the community doesn’t have enough skilled people to take up local positions then you have to attract them from somewhere else, and that probably includes access to a reasonable house. But why is the urgency and outcome there for one end of town and not the other? Why are there ”ends”? How is it that decent housing has been achieved in only half the town? I read in the paper that the Fed Govt SIHIP (strategic indigenous housing initiative program – or something like that) for the NT has spent $45 million dollars and haven’t yet built a single house. Where the money went seems unreported.
Speaking of the lack of investigative journalism – another article in the Oz the other week….. Lightening Ridge, a community in NSW. Many of the children have been removed by DoCS. The mothers claim there has been no abuse; that the DoCs workers view their lifestyle through a white middle class prism and don’t approve, and remove the children citing “neglect”. Presumably the families have gone through the relevant DoCS/govt processes and got nowhere, so contacted the fourth estate. The relevant journalists managed to get the official line from DoCS, that the childrens’ removal had been appropriate, and nothing else. Any 15 year old could do that. Where is the investigation? If my children were removed because my lifestyle didn’t fit with govt official values and I was desperate and contacted a journalist and their “investigation” comprised a phone call to the relevant govt dept and writing down the official line….. I don’t know what I’d do. That seems more like what you would expect in China, rather than Australia.
Anyway, this was an interesting article for me on another issue as well. When they visited Lightening Ridge, the journo interviewed a white middle class woman who had lived there for many years in an abandoned bus with no running water and homeschooled her children (I know this as the journo reported these astonishing facts) It seems there is no school there. This mother was waxing lyrical about the fab childhood her kids had had, learning about the bush and cars and cooking etc…. and that this was the childhood that all the kids (black & white) were having….. anyway her kids had “made good” (more astonishment) one doing postgrad studies in Canada, and the other a public servant with the Vic state govt (you can see where the journo got sidetracked….) Anyway, obviously I appreciated the h/ed kids “success” stories, but I wondered whether the aboriginal children were seeking/sourcing similar opportunities from this childhood – not so much that these are the only type of outcomes that are “good” in my view, but did the white middle class mum in that environment continue to express/espouse those middle class values of “the world is your oyster” “you can do anything” ” what will you study at uni?” etc etc… and it was actully her input at this level that made a difference??
Anyway, I have no knowledge of the potential ”successful” outcomes achieved by the aboriginal children of the community as the article didn’t go there.
