Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Australia. Show all posts

Wednesday, June 16, 2010

Kick out Conroy!

Friday, March 19, 2010

God save Oz

In viewing some of the dull videos associated with the recent Atheist Convention in Melbourne, I was struck by the fact that certain debaters, opposed to Richard Dawkins, punctuated their sad and silly remarks by phrases such as "here in Australia"... as if there might be two world orders: one for Aussies, and another for ungodly wogs (outsiders). For me, the notion that Australians or New Zealanders or seven-day bike-riders might have some special connection to the Almighty is so weird that I can say no more... apart from mentioning the fact that apparently serious compatriots would appear to evoke such illogical conjectures.

I fear that media coverage of the recent event didn't result in a positive image of Australia. Tourist authorities say that they'll only have to publicize messages from friends of Australia, and that everything will be bananas. We love a dollar-burnt country... but we Australians need to stop believing that we can simply turn on our nationality like a tap. Our only birthrights are those that a precious few of our ancestors acquired through a lifetime of determination and hard work.

My compatriots persist in seeing things as "ordinary", whereas things in our modern universe are antipodean: extraordinary, upside-down, unbelievable, unimaginable.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Sea change

Up until the age of sixteen, I was an adolescent in a dull Australian place named Grafton, where the Good Lord surely intended that nothing unusual should ever happen, not even my birth. In my time, this magnificent landscape had sadly lost its pioneering soul before losing forever its spirit of social evolution and economic development. Today, Grafton is a charming empty carcass, whose sole awareness is the fact that it's a boring old town, with nothing to say nor even hide.

Downstream, at the estuary of the Clarence River, our outlet on the Pacific Ocean was named Yamba. In 1954, surrounded by school friends, I found it an enthralling place.

My most moving recollection of Yamba dates from the summer of 1957. I had returned to Grafton after a year at the University of Sydney, and my parents had decided kindly to take me on an excursion down to Yamba... which I had not visited for quite some time. I remember, as if it were yesterday, that my father Bill Skyvington had parked his LandRover while Kath was buying food down in the new shopping area of Yamba. I was exploding internally with the urge to tell my father that, during my first year in Sydney, I had just encountered a fabulous corpus of knowledge about the nature of the world. I can even recall the slim volume of relativity physics that had engendered my enthusiasm. In a backstreet of Yamba, on that sunny afternoon, I tried naively to transmit an iota of my enthusiasm to my father. He looked at me as if I were a Martian, and informed me abruptly that he had no time for such nonsense... which was vastly less urgent, in his mind, than the question of earning one's living by grazing and slaughtering beef cattle (my father's business). By the time my mother returned from her shopping, I had lost forever all possible intellectual intimacy with my paternal progenitor. In an instant of incomprehension between a father and his son, on that sunny Yamba afternoon, I moved forever away from my ancestral ignorance... into enlightenment.

In my mind, Yamba remained nevertheless a seaside sanctuary, which my children were able to encounter briefly with joy during their teens.

Today, I learn sadly from the Australian media that something seems to have gone wrong at Yamba [display]. Is it just Yamba, I ask innocently, or Australia at large?

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Atheism seen from Down Under

In today's issue of The Sydney Morning Herald, there's an article entitled Atheism's true believers gather [display], written by the newspaper's religion reporter Jacqueline Maley, concerning the forthcoming Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne. Sure, the article is imperfect, but it's better than nothing... and surprising, above all, in the mentally stultifying context of Sydney's once-great newspaper, which now specializes in trash. Concerning the celebrated Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins, here is the most sublime idiotic pearl from Jacqueline's pen: "Dawkins has been criticised for his ignorance of Christian theology, and his inability (and that of science in general) to disprove the existence of God." Saying that Dawkins ignores theology is akin to deploring the fact that Pope Benedict XVI hasn't participated in much advanced research in molecular biology. As for the inability of Dawkins to disprove the existence of God, that's the fault of human reasoning and formal logic (about which Jacqueline Maley probably knows as little as the pope about molecular biology). Until the end of time, and beyond, nobody will ever be able to prove that the famous orbiting Celestial Teapot of Bertrand Russell [display] is not somewhere out there, maybe in the vicinity of Jupiter and Saturn.

[Click to display a bigger image.]

Then there's all the exciting literature and debate concerning the fabulous Flying Spaghetti Monster [display], whose existence has never yet been disproved, not even by the Vatican.

Fortunately, if you wish to listen to Jacqueline Maley talking about more everyday matters, which she masters admirably, you can read her amusing article entitled Pastor's ban sparks unholy Anglican stoush [display], on the heart-rending theme of a Sydney suburban parishioner who declared: "I was forbidden to hand out pencils or stack chairs in church because of my theology.'' [Some kind soul might please tell me what stoush means.] But don't spend too much time delving into the archives, religious or otherwise, of The Sydney Morning Herald. You would be taking a silly risk. It's the sort of nasty reading that could well induce permanent brain damage.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Sister's blog

My sister Anne Skyvington, whose married name is Onslow, has just started a blog called Philomel. [Click the banner to access Anne's blog.]

Anne lives in Coogee, on the coastal outskirts of Sydney. Her husband, Mark Onslow, is a university professor who has become a world expert in the domain of stuttering therapy. I shall publish details on my Antipodes blog, as soon as they become available, concerning the professional and cultural activities of my sister and her husband.

Thursday, December 17, 2009

Nasty stuff, should be censored

The list of nations intent upon censoring the Internet is not very long: China, Iran, Egypt... and, soon, Australia. Nice company! Think of it as a select little club, with visionary guides such as Stephen Conroy, and well-tested high-tech means to impose the desired censorship.

This hilarious guy is known as "Some Grey Bloke":

Click the picture to visit his website, where you can appreciate his broad and profound wisdom on many subjects. If you happen to be Australian, you should hurry. One never knows. Progress is such that you might not be allowed to watch this fellow in the near future.

Here's an encounter between Some Grey Bloke and a Man of God:



Members of the new generation (?) of Aussie Christian pollies are likely to be moved by these videos.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Voice of a blind black angel

Geoffrey Gurrumul Yunupingu is a 39-year-old Australian. Not an adoptive Australian, like me and my millions of white compatriots. An authentic Australian.

Gurrumul, who speaks only a few words of English, sings in the Yoingu language of his ancestors. He is currently touring Europe. The following song overwhelms me by its mysterious simplicity and beauty.



In Germany, John Kennedy once said: "Ich bin ein Berliner." Overcome by the universal strains of the music of Gurrumul, I make an equally exaggerated emotional declaration: "I'm an Australian."

Monday, October 26, 2009

Actually Asian?

I was born in Australia in 1940, in the country town, Grafton, that will be celebrating its 75th Jacaranda Festival from October 30 to November 8. My great-great-great-grandparents from Tipperary—the convict Patrick Hickey [1782-1858] and his wife Elizabeth Brerton [1784-1850]—had reached New South Wales a century earlier, respectively, in 1829 and 1837. So, my ancestors—like those of countless Australian compatriots—have been Down Under for quite some time. But there's a question that has often bothered me: Are we Australians actually Asian? Genetically, older generations of Australians such as my ancestors had few marriage links with folk from the traditional lands of Asia... although this situation has evolved, to a certain extent, these days. So, I would be incapable of saying whether Australians remain merely superficially Asian, because of the geographical location of our continent, or whether our nation has indeed started to be an integral element of modern Asia.

Meanwhile, for the last 42 years, a ten-member organization named ASEAN [Association of Southeast Asian Nations] has existed.

They even have a corny anthem:



As you can see, Australia is not included in ASEAN, whereas most of our closest neighbors are members. So, I've often felt that we have there a credible answer to my earlier question: Are we Australians actually Asian? The answer would seem to be no.

Now, ASEAN had a summit meeting last week in the delightful Thai resort of Hua Hin, and Australia was invited along as an observer.

Prime minister Kevin Rudd even had an opportunity of pleading for the opportunity of teaming up with ASEAN nations in the establishment of a so-called Asia-Pacific Community. But he added a curious proviso. He wants to bring along a mate: the United States of America! Rudd's suggestion reminds me of my recent invitation to become a naturalized citizen of the French Republic. Reacting in the spirit of our Australian prime minister, I might have told the French authorities: "That idea of my becoming French is fine with me, but I would like you to also naturalize all my relatives out in Australia." I'm sure the French would have been intrigued and annoyed by such a proviso. And I can't even be certain that my Australian relatives would have appreciated this idea.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

Aging ghost from a ghost town

This year, my home town is celebrating the 150th anniversary of its proclamation as a so-called city... which no longer exists in reality, because the former municipality has been dissolved into a geographically broader entity that might be described as a regional administration. In a foreword to the following commemorative book, for example, the senior elected individual refers to himself, not as the mayor of Grafton, but as the mayor of the Clarence Valley Council.

Today's my birthday. I was born in Grafton (New South Wales, Australia) exactly 69 years ago. Now, if you want to know what Grafton was like when I grew up there (up until I reached the age of 16, when I left for university studies in Sydney), well you should simply go there today. Little seems to have changed. Nothing whatsoever appears to have evolved in a positive sense. It's a place devoid of visible development, of civic progress. A place where almost nothing of significance ever happens (apart from their antiquated colloquium on science and religion). The "city" makes a brave effort to take itself seriously (for example, the authorities commissioned the above book, written by an outsider), but the major economic actors moved out of town long ago, just as most of the dairy farmers on the banks of the Clarence abandoned their time-honored activities. Today, the global scene in Grafton is one of genteel decadence. When I last visited my birthplace, in 2006, I had the impression that I was wandering around in a ghost town whose ghosts are kindly requested to stay away from the few remaining pubs that still attract customers, and to keep off the streets after dark. I'm told that it remains nevertheless a nice town for people who like a quiet existence.

As the sole resident of Gamone, and happy to remain so, I guess I should appreciate that viewpoint. But I'm sure I would be terribly frustrated if I were obliged to reside in Grafton. I'm much better off here in my adoptive home in France.

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Leafies

Aussies like to refer to tradesmen as tradies, firemen as firies, etc. To designate individuals who desire to lead an existence surrounded by trees, leaves, bark, etc... I've invented the word leafies. In a typical leafie home, leaves are literally part of the decor.

In polite Aussie terms, leafies might be designated as environmentalist militants, greenies, who've created lobbies against protective burning. Leafies are romantic citizens who like to sit on the balconies of their homes in the wilderness, guzzling beer and admiring the sunset, while the bushfires advance.

Today, we must designate these naive ideological leafies as murderers. Leaves or lives? That is the question...

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Vision of a city

This extraordinary but frightening photo (which I've modified slightly) of the great Victorian city of Melbourne, taken from burnt-out Kinglake by David Geraghty and published today in The Australian, is truly apocalyptic. We reasonable human citizens, residing in nice suburban sites or resolutely rural places (such as me at Gamone), would appear to be moving into a terrible era (global warming?) in which Hollywood horrors will be enacted, de facto, before our unbelieving eyes.

In what words would you describe this apocalyptic vision to a child? Maybe your own offspring...

Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Big movie mess

My 93-year-old uncle Isaac Kennedy Walker—a former dairy farmer from my birthplace at Waterview, near Grafton—has been living for the last ten or so years in the Australian seaside city of Coffs Harbour. At that place, in the midst of the sunny slopes dedicated to banana production, a local guesthouse operator decided to erect a tourist gimmick, made of painted plaster, that soon became famous: the Big Banana.

This banana was in fact the first of a long series of Aussie big things, described on Wikipedia [display].

In France, most ugly monstrosities of this kind feature the Virgin Mary. You find big virgins from one end of France to the other, often at prominent spots in the landscape where everybody is obliged to observe these hunks of stone and concrete. Hopefully, future communities will surely dynamite them and use the rubble to build roads...


In the domain of big things, totalitarian states inspired by a personality cult have invented a spectacular gadget that has rarely been exploited in our so-called free democracies. This is the idea of erecting a Big Me.

In France, not so long ago, a guy was sly enough to take this interesting idea to its logical conclusions. An adept of yoga named Gilbert Bourdin [1923-1998], from the French Caribbean island of Martinique, founded a weird sect known as Mandarom. He settled in the superb Provençal landscape of Castellane and erected various pseudo-Tibetan statues including a gigantic representation of himself that could be seen for miles around. Finally, in 2001, after tedious legal wrangling, the French army dynamited this eyesore.

In France, the term "turnip" is used (God knows why) to designate bad movies, and everybody understands this curious metaphor.

In my humble view, the award for the Big Turnip goes surely to the film Australia by Baz Luhrmann, which has just opened in France.

On Boxing Day, I drove up to Grenoble, with my daughter, to see the English-language version of this movie. Frankly, I find it a bloody catastrophe, from every point of view. I have no positive evaluations whatsoever concerning this bundle of clichés tied up with pink ribbons. Above all, the entire final part of Luhrmann's overblown product, presenting a make-believe World War II conflict in Darwin, is technically appalling from a movie viewpoint. You can't believe an instant of it...

Someone said that the cinematographic encounter between the pale giant Nicole Kidman (former wife of Tom Cruise) and Hugh Jackman (the alleged sexiest man on the planet) has the sensual intensity of a Vegemite sandwich. Although I've never tried to eat this Aussie shit, that sounds like a pretty good comparison. The film is so ridiculous that I have nothing more to say about it...

Friday, December 5, 2008

Man created God in Queensland

I used sarcastic words concerning the Queensland politician and would-be photographer who has detected the wrath of God behind the planet's current financial fuck-up. But don't get me wrong. I'm not anti-Queensland. In fact, some of my best friends have been Queenslanders. Indeed, my father was born there, in Rockhampton, and his own father retired to a place on the Gold Coast, Burleigh Heads, that he thought of as the nearest approximation to Paradise on the surface of our planet. But I've often felt that Queensland thinking—and political thinking in particular—can be rather... well, different, as my mother used to say when she couldn't find an appropriate synonym for "weird".

I've just stumbled upon an enlightened Queenslander named Ronnie Williams: a musician, father of five, who doesn't like the idea that state schools in his native state are dispensing religious instruction in a surreptitious fashion. He blew up, in particular, when his daughter was asked to help make a replica of Noah's Ark at the local state school. Well, Ronnie Williams has set up an imaginative website named Renaissance of Reason. As a teenage adept of romantic pantheism, I was thrilled to discover that Williams invokes this same kind of thinking in the context of his movement called Infinite Deity (where the term "deity" appears to me as in bad taste).

[Click the image to visit the website.]

You know how wide-eyed smiling Evangelical groups have been stuffing God down our ears for ages with their syrupy musical stuff. Well, here's an amusing Ronnie Williams variation on this theme:




Some people might consider that Williams, too, is "different"... when he advocates, for example, "a simple Palaeolithic-inspired diet supplemented by a sensible vitamin and mineral regimen". Critics will say that we're in the same ballpark as James Bidgood, who suggested that we should seek explanations of the current financial mess in the Book of Revelations. I don't really know whether my compatriot is a serious intellectual disciple of great god-veering present-day thinkers such as Richard Dawkins and Steven Pinker. I would simply conclude that, like my father, Ronnie Williams appears to me as an inspired and intelligent Queenslander... of the quiet kind I appreciate.

Saturday, November 1, 2008

Romantic Australia

I see that a new packet of romantic Down Under hype is about to hit the fan. I'm referring, of course, to the much-awaited Australia saga by Baz Luhrmann, starring Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman.



Personally, if I saw an anemic Nicole Kidman on a cattle station, I would have doubts about the quality of their beef. Can she survive the dusty heat and the burning sun? She looks like the sort of tasty fair creature who would attract flies, mosquitoes, spiders, snakes, etc... and it would be a frantic life-or-death affair getting her to a doctor in time. Funnily enough, sticking to facts, we hear that it was angelic Nicole who actually saved Hugh's life during the shooting by using her delicate fingers to remove a scorpion from her partner's leg. So, maybe I should shut my mouth and wait for the movie before saying anything more.

There's a funny spoof trailer:



Once again, this movie will no doubt be capable of persuading countless hordes of fatigued New Yorkers and Parisians to think about packing up their bags and moving out to the exciting El Dorado that awaits them Down Under. I can already imagine such innocent folk stepping into an antiquated subway train at Wynyard, on their way out to Mascot, to board bravely a Qantas plane bound for Darwin... where they'll be thrilled to discover that the damage from Japanese bombing and cyclone Tracy has all been cleaned up spotlessly.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Australian backyard view

My friend Bruce Hudson sent me this delightful view of cockatoos on his back lawn near the New South Wales town of Young. It's a splendid image of everyday Australia.

I was struck by the fact that almost all the beautiful gold-crested birds, engaged in eating capeweed seeds, are aligned in parallel. Scientists have found (the references escape me for the moment) that animals tend to orient themselves, while at rest, with respect to geomagnetic fields. Maybe Bruce might undertake rigorous experimentation in the context of his backyard cockies (as they're called Down Under).

Meanwhile, I've installed a kangaroo banner in the right-hand column of my blog pointing to the wilderness tours organized by John Thompson. Ever since our recent Internet encounter [display], I've liked the intelligent style of this man (whom I've never met) and the nature of his touristic services. He sounds like authentic Australia.

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Antipodean adventures

People imagine that the great island continent of Australia is far away from everywhere. In fact, as the following map indicates, the northern tip of Queensland is only a few hundred kilometers from two foreign lands: Papua New Guinea and the Indonesian province of Papua.

A few weeks ago, five Australians decided that it would be fun to take off from Australia—more precisely, from Queensland's Horn Island in the Torres Strait—in a light plane and drop in at Mopah airport. They thought naively that, once they touched down on Indonesian soil, it would be easy for them to obtain tourist visas enabling them to do a bit of sightseeing before flying back home. Well, the latest news is that they've been fined several thousand dollars, and they're still in jail. In this context, my sister Susan Skyvington has been interviewed in The Australian:

Susan Skyvington, whose son Saul Dalton was detained in Papua for six months in 1999, said the similarities with her son's case were chilling.

"In the first few days he was under house arrest in a hotel and (we were told) we were going to be able to get him out in a few days ... when the documents were sorted out.

"Then they were saying he was not going to be released, they were going to put him through a trial and he was moved to a military police outstation in the jungle."

Mr Dalton, then 25, had gone to East Timor to hand out how-to-vote cards during the referendum on independence from Jakarta. Indonesian-backed militias were intimidating independence supporters at the time and took a dim view of foreigners participating in the political process.

Ms Skyvington said that when violence erupted her son boarded a ferry to Papua to escape, and was told he could sort out his documentation when he arrived. In Papua, he was put to trial and given 10 months' jail, which was reduced for good behaviour. He ended up spending six months in detention.

Ms Skyvington said that her son had never fully recovered from the experience, and now suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Another affair. In the above map, I've highlighted a magnificent place in northern Queensland called Cooktown, at the mouth of the Endeavour River, where the navigator James Cook berthed his vessel for a few weeks in 1770, to carry out repairs and replenish their stocks of water and food.

Today, tourists are warned that it's crocodile country, and that they must be constantly "crocwise".

[Click the banner to visit the Cooktown website, which lets you download a
page of survival instructions that should help you to avoid getting eaten alive.]


A few days ago, a 62-year-old Brisbane man who had been camping there with his wife strolled down to the edge of the water to retrieve his crab pots before driving off home. His wife never saw him again, but police discovered the man's camera on the river bank, along with his wristwatch and a sandal. There were track marks of a crocodile, and the line to the crab pots was cut.

Another local animal, the kangaroo, is in the front-page news. An Australian specialist on climate change, Ross Garnaut, has just suggested that people should give up eating beef and lamb and change to kangaroo meat, since our marsupials have the advantage of farting in a less noxious fashion than conventional livestock.

When I observe the quantity and variety of Oriental herbs, spices and Thai fish sauce that are recommended by chefs, to make kangaroo dishes tender and tasty, I'm wary about the possibility of a new source of urban flatulence pollution. Before implementing a change to local mammal meat, Aussie authorities might carry out comparative methane-rejection tests on humans who eat spicy kangaroo dishes as opposed to the ordinary farting of old-fashioned beef eaters.

Monday, September 15, 2008

Wilderness, the key to Australia's future

I have just received a highly interesting email concerning yesterday's article about the Australian Outback. The author, John Thompson, has kindly authorized me to include this email in my blog. The photos, too, are included by courtesy of the Queensland-based tourism business operated by John and his wife: Nature-Bound Australia. They have two excellent websites:



Hi William,

I have just read your blog response to the media article portraying Australia as a failed state. I guess all media releases are drafted around drama and extreme "hooks" but behind this release there is considerable truth.

I have spent more than 30 years taking small groups of people into the Australian bush as a specialist tour operator. We are a boutique business, husband and wife, providing a highly personalised holiday experience and we focus on national parks and wilderness areas. On the side we are constantly in touch with people of the outback, tiny settlements, legend and history. It is true that there is a move by families and individuals away from the bush toward opportunities in the metropolitan areas along the coast. It is called a rural crisis. Banks and essential services and enterprises have vacated leaving small villages and towns in disarray, there are serious health service issues and the list goes on.


There are trends toward large scale property amalgamations being taken up and placed under corporate rather than family control. The plight of Aboriginals is an embarrassment and there are now serious issues revolving around global climate change, major rivers drying up, food production areas under threat and so on.

We have nearly two generations that are turned off from the wilderness on the strength that it is dangerous, uncomfortable, boring, nothing to see, a self perpetuating disease passed down by parents bent on wrapping their city children in care and comfort.

There has been a huge influx of Asian residents in our cities and they have no inherent connection with the outback, its spirit, legends or history and therefore no apparent interest. Tourism Australia has literally "flogged" the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef, Uluru (Ayers Rock) and Sydney, leading to massed mainstream visitations around tourist hubs to the detriment of wonderful regional and outback features and destinations, communities, family businesses, infrastructure and so on.

One of the major issues is politically we have no real visionaries who have the strength to see beyond their political careers, short term and to make some major milestone decisions. But there are a few positives to all this. The conservation movement is starting to gain teeth on issues like wholesale destruction of our limited old growth forests. Some 45% of Australia, the arid regions, has recently been highlighted as one of the world's greatest remaining wilderness areas and millions of American dollars by private foundations are going into enhancing this cause. Private not-for-profit nature conservancies are buying up large wilderness properties and positioning young scientists and managers on these in an effort to return the land to a pristine state and to assist endangered wildlife. There is no time to wait for national park departments and bureaucracies to initiate essential acquisitions.


There are of course incredible resources in Australia from coal, uranium, bauxite, sun, monsoonal rains, space and many controversial issues surrounding these. We are a country that simply extracts these resources and sells them to overseas companies which in turn are influencing control of our major companies, whereas some political strength might consider incentives which encourage Australian companies to value add to their resources and to develop their leading technologies before selling to the world. At present so many of our smart people and ideas have to go overseas for venture support.

I'm aware of one gentleman, a visionary, who has lobbied some 290 politicians in support of a major railway to run through the inland of Australia from Melbourne to Darwin to open up regional areas to new opportunities and development, bringing Australian goods readily to the Asian markets and taking huge numbers of large road transport off the major highways where drivers are under stress and tragic accidents are occurring regularly. Another gentleman who has made his wealth through technology has now applied his skills, contacts and wealth to buying up large traces of wilderness.

While the population is gathering in the south around cities and coast and these areas are under stress and threat from water issues we have a third of our nation largely unpopulated in the tropical zone where abundant water is available to be harnessed, for a whole new wave of food production if a visionary government could emerge.


It is real that other countries and funding could see and seize this opportunity through investment stealth (invasion) and have the Asian markets a short sea voyage or flight away.

My feeling is the governance of the country is not going to change and there is a case that we are too over-governed with three controlling stratas: national, state and local. We really need fearless visionaries with an ethical agenda, to take our great country by the throat and give it a good shake.

Our overseas guests on tour are absolutely wrapped in Australia and point to the natural history assets we have, the space and the people as wonderful. As we don't take tours into the city and theme parks etc they can only be referring to the Australian bush, so somehow it is a jewel worth saving.

We don't know how lucky we are but perhaps, as a nation, we are taking it all for granted.

Best wishes,
John


John Thompson
Managing Director
Nature-Bound Australia
PO Box 1209
New Farm Queensland 4005
Australia

Sunday, September 14, 2008

Abandoned Australian outback

I was saddened by a recent press article that evokes a forthcoming Australian report according to which the remote Australian wilderness must now be looked upon as a "failed state". What a terrible expression! There's a sentence about extracted wealth that is not reinvested in local communities. I see the words "poor governance". The article speaks of "the failure of all levels of government to deliver basic services and halt the flight of non-indigenous people to more settled areas". Everything in this short article was frighteningly negative, even to the extent of evoking "possible invasion" from foreign nations. I have the impression that the great Aussie myth of the Outback is crumbling into dust, but I'm amazed that things could really be as bad as that. On the other hand, I've been wondering for ages what went wrong with Australia, and why there are no New Pioneers on the horizon to fix things up. Why aren't our leaders worrying about the Outback, and doing something about this tragedy? To guide Australia, it wasn't enough to be a fan of Donald Bradman, Elizabeth II and George W Bush. And it's obviously not enough to be a polite ex-diplomat who speaks English and Mandarin with the same lack of eloquence. Meanwhile, as I said in my recent article entitled My hilarious motherland [display], a NSW state minister has been dancing in his underpants. And the Outback has been dying...

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Entertaining information

As I've pointed out already, French people can be intrigued when they hear me talk. I've got a slightly strange accent, which people can rarely pin down, whereas my French grammar is fine and I use a good vocabulary. So, I'm often asked, politely, where I'm from. As soon as I say Australia, people are more intrigued than ever. First, there aren't many of us here in France, so we're rare birds. Second, there has been so much hype over the years about Australia being an exotic earthly paradise that French people are frankly surprised that any Australian citizen would decide to dwell in such an everyday place as France.

Last night, on prime-time TV, I watched a two-hour documentary about Australia. I make a point of watching such stuff because it's generally entertaining. Besides, the next time I'm called upon to tell a French person where I come from, he or she is likely to enhance the conversation with facts from this latest TV documentary about Australia. So, it's a good idea for me to keep abreast of such background information.

What amused me, yesterday evening, was that the French producer used a simple recipe that tricked viewers (and even the Télérama critic) into thinking that we were watching an original travelogue. He had simply unearthed half a dozen more or less exotic video sequences in remote corners of the continent. Then he concocted a map in which we see an animated kangaroo hopping from one place to the next, while the human presenter talked as if he and his camera crew were actually traveling along the same itinerary as the kangaroo, in a vaguely east-to-west journey across Australia. To make it look like an authentic travelogue, the presenter did in fact get himself filmed, two or three times, against a conventional Australian background. For example, there was a short conversation between the presenter and an old Aborigine seated on the ground alongside Uluru, doing his TV duties, who trotted out all the standard banalities: legends from tribal elders, the sacred rocks, the Dream Time, etc. In reality, I had already seen most of the video sequences in this allegedly new production, since some of them were four or five years old.

The show opened with shots of the boxing troupe of Fred Brophy in Queensland.

When I was a kid in Grafton, that was a popular attraction during the three-day agricultural show. I liked to watch the presentation of the boxers outside the tent, and the manager's call for challengers, enticing them with the promise of monetary gains. The proceedings were accompanied by the clanging of a brass bell and the pounding of a bass drum, which combined to produce a kind of martial music. Inside the tent, once the show actually got under way, the atmosphere was sweaty and spartan, almost sordid, since there was nothing like a real ring.

The TV kangaroo then hopped towards a remote place where we were able to see the Outback postal service in action.

Curiously, the aircraft was carrying three paying passengers: tourists doing the round trip with the postman. At one stop, as they waited in the shade of a tree, brushing flies from their faces, these one-day visitors expressed their astonishment that people could actually live permanently in the places they were discovering.

The next sequence was frankly surrealistic. It showed preparations for an open-air desert ball at a spot named Curdimurka. You might think of it as the Outback equivalent of an opera weekend at Glyndebourne in England, or maybe a small-scale reincarnation of a remote Woodstock. Since this get-together was taking place in Australia, where distances are vast, the future dancers arrived in private aircraft, with their ball attire in suitcases. All the images were dominated by signs of heat, dust and wind, with the promise of showers under punctured food cans wired to overhead taps. TV viewers might well wonder whether these people were really having a ball, as the saying goes... but let's suppose so. At the scheduled time for the ball to get under way, a terrible sand storm blew up. The TV documentary didn't really tell viewers what happened after that unexpected intrusion of the elements. By searching on the Internet, I learned that the sand storm stopped the dancing in the desert back in 2004, and the concept of the Curdimurka Ball, imagined as a regular two-yearly event, died too on that hot windy evening.

Next, the documentary skipped to a presentation of the Aboriginal star David Gulpilil, first on stage for his one-man show at the Adelaide Festival of Arts in 2004, and then at his home place in the Northern Territory.

Seeing this charming fellow [looking much younger than in the above photo] strutting around behind the jawbones of a crocodile or the skull and horns of a buffalo has much the same effect upon me as watching Crocodile Dundee or Steve Irwin in filmed action. A little bit goes a long way.

At one point in the documentary, we saw this celebrated pub on the Oodnadatta Track. The guy in charge looked a little like a wanted Serbian war criminal in disguise.

It must be bloody uncomfortable to have a big beard like that, in the dust and heat, particularly when you've also got into the habit of wearing a hat indoors... but maybe it plays a positive role in keeping the flies away. And you can drink beer non-stop to keep cool.

There were countless other exotic anecdotes in the two-hour documentary. We saw an Aboriginal chef collecting witchetty grubs in the bush and cooking them for customers of his fashionable city restaurant. We saw fellows wading through a crocodile-infested swamp to obtain eggs for a local farm that breeds salt-water crocodiles for leather. We saw helicopters being used to round up cattle and camels. Etc, etc.

All in all, it was a worthwhile evening of entertainment for me. The next time French people, hearing my accent, ask me where I'm from, I'm determined to spin a hell of a good yarn. I'll tell them that, while flying on a Qantas plane from my camel ranch near Darwin for a weekend opera outing in Sydney, my seat dropped out through a big hole in the floor of the Boeing, whereupon I landed in a swamp full of crocodiles, with dingoes roaming around on the shore. I've still got to work out how I got safely from there up to Paris, but that shouldn't be too difficult. Maybe, for inspiration, I need to watch a few more good Aussie travelogues of the "made in France" kind.

Friday, May 23, 2008

Aussie prudishness: a taste for censorship

Outsiders probably imagine my native Australia as an open-minded nation whose citizens are accustomed to basking around half-naked in a carefree atmosphere of sea, sand, sun and sex. This is not the case. Australians are an exceptionally prudish people, who don't hesitate in using police intervention and censorship to handle certain situations. In my article of 13 March 2007 entitled Rambo caught with his pants down [display], I sketched a few notorious examples of this amazing prudishness and abhorrence of explicit sensuality that might be interpreted as sexual misbehavior... with the sole exception, curiously, of the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras.

Once again, this subject has come to the forefront of Aussie news concerning vaguely erotic images of adolescents by the celebrated photographer Bill Henson displayed in a Sydney gallery.

Yesterday, in the dawn hours preceding the opening of the exhibition, police invaded the private gallery and seized more than twenty photos. And this could well be the prelude to legal prosecutions.

The photographer Bill Henson is acclaimed internationally. His works have been exhibited in the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris and the Venice Biennale, not to mention the national galleries of Victoria and New South Wales. A deplorable aspect of this Philistine affair is the fact that justifications for this dawn seizure of works of art have been coming from the likes of Kevin Rudd (prime minister of Australia, who apparently employed the adjective "revolting" in describing Henson's photos), Morris Iemma (premier of the state of New South Wales) and representatives of the New South Wales police force. These individuals are deciding whether Bill Henson's work has artistic merit or whether it should be condemned as pornography.

Personally, since I harbor no desire of returning to my native land, let alone trying to get onto the same wavelength as my former compatriots, I guess I shouldn't get worked up by such a silly storm in an Aussie teacup. But I see it as interesting data of a genealogical kind. Maybe "anthropological" would be a more appropriate adjective.