An Australian Blog
There are a few blogs I read written by writers back home, but either I'm looking in the wrong places for it or the material I'd like to read isn't being generated in huge quantities.
Among those I do read are Mr Lefty and Mr Thruster and Mr Lettuce and Miss Liberated (almost) and most recently ... Michelle.
Michelle is another Queenslander... I lived in Queensland for two years back in the early 1970s when I was still (actually only just) attending primary school. As a family we spent those two years in a truly very remote and isolated town in a land richly endowed with such far flung and difficult to reach places.
But it was there or Bougainville Island, and mum had read some horror stories about Bougainville so she put her foot down - rather in the same way she put her foot down when Dad began to talk of acquiring a pet carpet python. So we lived in Weipa for two years.
It was work for Dad. It was the great escape for my younger sister and me. It was two long slow years of torture for mum. There was a narrow social circuit, no TV, no radio, no news, no familiar faces at the start, no shopping, no prospect of employment, no meaningful escape from the house let alone the town. She'd gone off to London independently in her early twenties, she'd travelled Europe on her own, got married, went on to North America to work and live in some of the biggest cities in the world.
She got pregnant and as an almost direct result wound up a prisoner in a company town in the back of beyond with a population in the hundreds; and most of people living in the town were single men who lived and were expected to live quite separate lives from the 'executive' population.
Her reward? As the end of the two year stint approached she became concerned about changes in a mole on my father's back. They returned to Melbourne rather than extend the stay, so that he could get the best possible medical care. Quite possibly he did. He still died from melanoma three and a bit years later, at the age of 36.
Weipa wasn't to blame, of course. After dad died we settled in Melbourne, which is where both my parents had been born and brought up. I haven't been back to the Deep North in all the years since. I know that Weipa's changed a lot in the years since we departed. Access has been improved and the town itself is no long a closed company possession. It's now possible to visit the town as a tourist, something that simply wasn't permitted in those days. I don't know if I'd ever get back to Weipa, but I'd love to take my B up to Queensland; big State, plenty to see and do.
One of the most vivid memories I retain to this day of the journey from Melbourne to Cairns is cresting a hill and catching my first view of Queensland's vast sugar cane fields - in bloom, heads swaying in the breeze as far as the eye could see. I'd dearly love to show her stuff like that.
Having spent two years in the state, two years that were the last two entirely happy and secure years of my life I've a degree of tolerance towards Queenslanders not always found in those from the southern states, who often exhibit a fairly flagrant contempt for their slow, backward, uber-conservative, rustic northern cousins.
So I'm not going to criticise Michelle too harshly for being wrong about football.
Never mind confusing the code the rest of the world (ok, also excepting the US) calls football with netball, which is plain peculiar. What Michelle is misguided about (and she's from Queensland so allowances must be made) is the codes that are played and followed by the overwhelming majority of Australians.
Union must be set aside as a sport that only really matters when we're playing the sheep-shaggers or the poms or the Sth Africans.
And as for league; a strange sport: in Australia an incomprehensible obsession of those who live north of the Murray, in England an incomprehensible obsession of whippet owning types from north of the Watford Gap. Which actually goes to show how deeply different the French are, as the stronghold of the game is in the south. Trust the Garlic Munchers to be out of step.
What poor Michelle seems to reject about the only home grown code is the space within the manly game of Aussie Rules for occasional exhibitions of actual skill, something that's stamped out of league players when they're still playing in the under-8s.
Aussie Rules is the only code that encapsulates Australia and the Australian character; big, expansive, rugged, prone to lawlessness - the abandoned bastard off-spring of parents that don't recognise it, often spectacular, more often gritty, occasionally breathtakingly beautiful.
Among those I do read are Mr Lefty and Mr Thruster and Mr Lettuce and Miss Liberated (almost) and most recently ... Michelle.
Michelle is another Queenslander... I lived in Queensland for two years back in the early 1970s when I was still (actually only just) attending primary school. As a family we spent those two years in a truly very remote and isolated town in a land richly endowed with such far flung and difficult to reach places.
But it was there or Bougainville Island, and mum had read some horror stories about Bougainville so she put her foot down - rather in the same way she put her foot down when Dad began to talk of acquiring a pet carpet python. So we lived in Weipa for two years.
It was work for Dad. It was the great escape for my younger sister and me. It was two long slow years of torture for mum. There was a narrow social circuit, no TV, no radio, no news, no familiar faces at the start, no shopping, no prospect of employment, no meaningful escape from the house let alone the town. She'd gone off to London independently in her early twenties, she'd travelled Europe on her own, got married, went on to North America to work and live in some of the biggest cities in the world.
She got pregnant and as an almost direct result wound up a prisoner in a company town in the back of beyond with a population in the hundreds; and most of people living in the town were single men who lived and were expected to live quite separate lives from the 'executive' population.
Her reward? As the end of the two year stint approached she became concerned about changes in a mole on my father's back. They returned to Melbourne rather than extend the stay, so that he could get the best possible medical care. Quite possibly he did. He still died from melanoma three and a bit years later, at the age of 36.
Weipa wasn't to blame, of course. After dad died we settled in Melbourne, which is where both my parents had been born and brought up. I haven't been back to the Deep North in all the years since. I know that Weipa's changed a lot in the years since we departed. Access has been improved and the town itself is no long a closed company possession. It's now possible to visit the town as a tourist, something that simply wasn't permitted in those days. I don't know if I'd ever get back to Weipa, but I'd love to take my B up to Queensland; big State, plenty to see and do.
One of the most vivid memories I retain to this day of the journey from Melbourne to Cairns is cresting a hill and catching my first view of Queensland's vast sugar cane fields - in bloom, heads swaying in the breeze as far as the eye could see. I'd dearly love to show her stuff like that.
Having spent two years in the state, two years that were the last two entirely happy and secure years of my life I've a degree of tolerance towards Queenslanders not always found in those from the southern states, who often exhibit a fairly flagrant contempt for their slow, backward, uber-conservative, rustic northern cousins.
So I'm not going to criticise Michelle too harshly for being wrong about football.
Never mind confusing the code the rest of the world (ok, also excepting the US) calls football with netball, which is plain peculiar. What Michelle is misguided about (and she's from Queensland so allowances must be made) is the codes that are played and followed by the overwhelming majority of Australians.
Union must be set aside as a sport that only really matters when we're playing the sheep-shaggers or the poms or the Sth Africans.
And as for league; a strange sport: in Australia an incomprehensible obsession of those who live north of the Murray, in England an incomprehensible obsession of whippet owning types from north of the Watford Gap. Which actually goes to show how deeply different the French are, as the stronghold of the game is in the south. Trust the Garlic Munchers to be out of step.
What poor Michelle seems to reject about the only home grown code is the space within the manly game of Aussie Rules for occasional exhibitions of actual skill, something that's stamped out of league players when they're still playing in the under-8s.
Aussie Rules is the only code that encapsulates Australia and the Australian character; big, expansive, rugged, prone to lawlessness - the abandoned bastard off-spring of parents that don't recognise it, often spectacular, more often gritty, occasionally breathtakingly beautiful.
posted by Enyo @ 9:34 pm
2 Comments:
At 11:13 pm,
Michelle said…
Hello Enyo,
My spouse told me that I should only let other Queenslanders read "There is no P in Rugby".
I am enjoying your blogs!
Bye, Michelle
At 9:15 am,
Parton Words said…
Glad that you can appreciate the great game of AFL from so far away.
You've entertained me. Thank you.
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