:: One People, Many Cultures ::



::Living Together in Respect and Friendship::

We were having an interesting conversation at Sunday lunch yesterday about the ‘aboriginal problem’ in Australia. There were no aboriginies present, so it was a one-sided view, but worth noting down as it does represent the thinking of some more recent immigrants.

The older generation agreed that the aboriginies that they knew 30 years ago were delightful people and that the problems have really started since then. I was very happy to hear that the blame for this change wasn’t all put on the aborigines. Most of the blame was put on the government for pushing them all into small communities and giving them lots of money to compensate for that relocation. The money has become an expectation so that most aborigines see it as their right to be supported by the intruders.

Most of us agreed that the money couldn’t keep coming and the problem has to be solved another way. The solution probably involves continuing to provide good education (which could surely be free) and encouraging employers to take on aborigines when all else is equal. Right now, I think most employers would choose a non-aboriginal given any choice. Of course, all this probably involves money in the short term, but should require less as time goes on.

Another school of thought is that their problems generally come from a lack of sense of belonging to any culture (particularly to mixed race aborigines) and the aboriginal culture should be allowed (encouraged!) to flourish in this country. I wonder if it’s possible to have large areas owned and governed by the aboriginal community with open borders so that they can choose to move into the urban world as and when they chose. Better and more well-informed minds than mine have worked on these issues, but it’s an interesting idea, nonetheless. Chances are that these communities would be able to build a tourist economy based on the artwork and tools they create and that more and more of the young ones would be inclined to take their skills into the towns and cities. Dedicated schools within the communities would get the interested students ready for university without necessarily forcing statewide exams on them at particular ages.

Food for thought.

One of the things I’ve missed most about Australia is the thriving music scene and the ease of getting tickets to high quality concerts at short notice. Last night I went with Lyn (the daughter of the house) and a few of her friends to see the Idea of North at the Basement. Imagine an a capella group good enough to win a university band competition – and they’ve been improving for the last ten years. The Basement itself is an intimate jazz bar environment and TION take full advantage of that to create a dialogue with their audience and playing amongst themselves in a natural (but probably rehearsed) way. As they imitated playing trombones, the bass guy corrected the extension of the tenor. In a gospel song, the girls jump in with banjo twanging. And hidden amongst the Stevie Wonder and Sting covers are their own classics such as ‘An Ugly Woman Told Me No’.

Reading the Drum Media on the way home, I found out that My Friend the Chocolate Cake are still around and will be playing in May, but I’m going to have to put in the effort to seeing newer bands very soon.

While I was in Perth, we watched a TV show called Cool Aid that measured the comparative environmental impact of our lifestyles. It went a bit far, talking about seas rising by 6m, which is far beyond realistic limits for the forseeable future, but showing the impact our actions have on greenhouse gases was interesting and even encouraging.

Some facts it showed were that hybrid cars save about 3 tonnes of carbon per year vs standard cars; efficient bulbs save about 100kg of carbon vs standard bulbs; and newer TVs save about 60% on standby vs older models. The question I didn’t hear them answer though, is ‘What is the cost of upgrading?’ If I have one of these older cars or TVs, is it better to keep it for its life or to upgrade immediately? What damage will be done to the environment by throwing out a 50″ plasma TV? Or disposing of a car that’s only done 50,000? In some cases, the impact of throwing out a still useful item must be more than what would be saved by upgrading.

I’ve just returned from my trip to Western Australia, so I’m now able to claim having been to all states and territories in this massive country. As expected, it’s extremely open and hot, but I guess I wasn’t expecting it to be so flat or well forested.

The heat and forest work together to make bushfires and in just a week, I was witness to two separate fires. The first was in a park right next to Tim and Chris’ house. On our way back from the beach one afternoon, we were blocked by police and asked to take a detour. The detour took us past another edge of the park already black and smoking from the fire. As we made our way around the park, a water-carrying helicopter swooped in to help douse the remaining flames.

The second instance was on a trip down the coast south of Perth. I was on my way from Walpole to Denmark when I passed along a section of road with blackened forest and smouldering ground on either side. The flames still seemed to be moving away through the fields to my right. On the left, a burnt truck sat with its nose down in the field and its tail up on the edge of the road and I wondered if this crash was the cause of the fire.

That coastal trip showed a few other interesting sights. Perhaps the most touristy is the Tree Top Walk. The area near Walpole is a forest of Tingle trees and the Red Tingle is the tallest of all the Eucalypts. It stands out for its wide hollow base that gives it the support needed to climb to about 60m. I walked through the hollow of one which was tall enough for me to stand tall (6’1″/185cm) at the lowest point. The tree top walk is a swaying metal walkway that rises to 40m above the forest floor so tourists can feel like the nocturnal creatures that inhabit their heights.

In the same area, on the other side of Walpole, there are a few trees that can be climbed to the full height. The tallest is the Bicentennial Tree which I dared to climb. In fact, I thought it would be a great place to stop and rest, so I took a book up with me. The trees were used in years past as lookout towers for spotting bush fires, and the spotters presumably sat at the top throughout the day. They climbed on metal spikes driven into the tree so that about 2′ remained protuding as rungs of a ladder that spiraled the tree. These days, they’ve added a set of roof spikes and joined them up with chicken wire to create a psychological protection for climbers. As I started up, though, I realised that I’d be far more likely to slip through the spaced rungs than to twist off the side.

By the time I reached the first platform at about 25m, my legs were shaking in fear and my hands wear slick with sweat. It was not pleasant to be greeted with a sign that said ‘That was the easy bit!’ After a rest to wait for a couple on their way down from the higher section, I took a deep breath and forced myself on. I determined not to look down and focused on the rhythm that kept three limbs firmly anchored at all times and suddenly found myself climbing into the bottom platform of the tower. There, I sat carefully with my back to the tree and hands gripping tightly to the metal cage and moved only my eyes across the scenery for a few minutes. It took that long to get up the courage enough to let go, get out the camera and take a few photos of the canopy surrounding me. I’m still not sure where I found the strength of will to climb the next ladder (standard vertical type) to the next platform, and the next, up about six levels, well over the height of the tree, to the top, but I remember standing, looking out across the forest to the white, sandy shore in the distance.

I can only imagine that the lookouts became used to the height, but on those most dangerous bushfire days of high wind, even they must have had stomach problems as the tower swayed 1.5m from side to side. Fearing the descent, I skipped trying to relax enough to read and clamboured down, not stopping until I reached the ground. Somehow, it seemed easier than the climb up, probably because of the focus on the rungs taking attention from the ground blurred in the distance.

The other highlight of the coastal trip was near Albany, where Antarctic rocks make up the coastline of bridges and gaps. Explorers have even found the matching rocks on the Antarctic continent, proving the Gondwanaland theory. Nearby is the windfarm – 12 tall, elegant German windmills catching the southern winds to power 15,000 homes. Sustainable energy for me too, please.

Back in Perth, I had a relaxing weekend of large bushy parkland (in the heart of the city), coffee shops, beach sunsets and family barbecues before catching the red eye special home at 1am.

Tim and Chris, the couple I’ve been staying with in Perth, took me out surfing a few times over the weekend. It’s been about 20 years since the first and last time I tried, so I was happy to catch the second wave I tried and to standup (briefly) on that same wave. Of course, it was all down hill from there.

The first time we went, it was ostensibly to watch a couple of their friends taking surfing lessons. I’ve heard of a lot of people my age doing that recently and I think it highlights a shift in culture. When I was at school, it seemed that if you hadn’t learnt to surf as a child, you were never going to. Now it seems, despite the tendancy to avoid the sun for long periods, that people are keen to make the most of their time in the water.

I’m in Perth – finally having travelled to each of Australia’s states and territories. On the way over, I saw a couple of amazing sights from the plane. The first was the coast of the Great Australian Bight. Cloudless, the picture was of a strong blue ocean meeting forrest in a sharp edge. The dark green moved stronly away from the shore for some hundreds of kilometres before mottling with the pale brown of desert sands until there was nothing left but desert.

The second looked like salt lakes, grey blobs edged with sandy beaches before giving way to the forrest green. The highlight here was that thousands of these lakes pressed together in patterns that looked like traditional aboriginal drawings. Clearly aboriginies (who’s presence defies explanation, having arrived 40,000 years ago, before any other culture had seagoing vessels) were brought here by aliens and saw it from the air. Either that or they have a stronger bond with this country htan even I believed.

This is a long overdue post. Australia has been in drought for many years and I’ve had frequent reports from my parents and friends to say that stored water is down to a couple of months for major population centres. You can see from the Sydney Water website that we use nearly 1500 Megalitres per day, but that we have only 1 million ML in our dams. That leaves enough water for 2 years assuming no more rain – probably 4 years at the rate we’ve had in the last 8 years. The graph at the bottom tells the story better. At the end of 1998, the dam was full. Over the next 8 years, it’s fallen to 37%.

While other countries complain about having too much rain, even the coastal regions of Australia are facing the prospect of running out of water. The government is arguing about how money should be spent to address the problem. The side in power has put all effort against recycling and desalination. Parks are watered with recycled water and I’ve heard talk of flushing toilets with recycled water too. The opposition wants to focus on better collection of the little rainwater we actually get. We’ve had a good run of rain since I got back, including one deluge that dumped 30 billion litres of water on Sydney in one day. A newspaper article stated that of that, only 1.5 billion litres was collected by Sydney Water. Another 5 million (now I’m stretching my memory) may have been picked up by private rainwater tanks, which is another activity that Sydney Water is pushing.

Either way, we’re all hoping that the current rains will continue through the next year because it will take at least that much to relieve the stress on our current water systems. If not, we may all be drinking bottled water and washing in sea water.