Wadeye | Thursday, May 25, 2006 |
Australia is a big place and has many climatic zones. They have mountains down south and with a bit of luck, we'll get a weekend on them with our boards as winter comes into effect.
Up north they have rainforests and monsoons. Large areas of the country are rendered all but inaccessible when the rains come. That in itself is strange. I recall as a child in the winter the Thames would top the banks at Maidenhead and make the roads impassible, but this would be for a few days at most, and for regular vehicles, not the souped up ones they have here.
There's a healthy 3rd party market here for replacement of suspensions and exhaust systems on 4WD vehicles (not SUV's, but real, honest to goodness 4WD's) and these are necessary for much of the northern reaches though not enough for some areas.
This week on the news was a call for military intervention at a small town in the Northern Territory where civil unrest has gotten to such large proportions that there are in effect refugees.
This is almost unfathomable, but in the days since the inital report more information has come out, and yes, there appears to be a real problem in Wadeye. Other official reports of systemic domestic and sexual abuse have been reported (South Australia this time, not the NT).
That problem appears to be that the town is indigenous (they don't use the word Aboriginal here much). The press say that conditions in many of these towns are awful. Too few houses (figures of occupancy rates of 14-20 people per house are reported as common, and these are your typical two bedroom places), many without sanitation, no or few schools and inadequate medical facilities. It's like 3rd world on your doorstep.
After living in NZ where the Maori are to a large extent fairly well integrated (don't like that phrase), this is a shock. It's not all resolved in NZ by any means, but by comparisson things are pretty good and there are structured processes for dealing with land claims, compensation and what not.
Australia is very different. Unlike in NZ where you see Maori working, eating, drinking and watching sport like anyone else (in fact to even mention it is a bit like saying "I don't have a problem with X's, in fact, one of my best friends is an X"), here the only Aboriginals that I've seen in the time I've been here have been shitfaced on a park bench. It's a sterotype, but all to true. Perhaps it's just that there are not all that many of them. Regardless, there's a segregation here as effective as apartheid but less well documented.
I'm not saying that some people aren't trying hard, but frankly the damage has been done and the cultures are so different that trying to have the two walk in tandem is likely to be impossible. Alcohol (and to a lesser extent drugs) is cited as a huge problem and behind much of the social ills that afflict indigenous peoples and Europeans have clearly been a plague as damaging as any virus. The reasoning behind the "Stolen Generation" is making an appearance again and enforced relocation of children is, if not serious being discussed, is being ventured by senior political figures.
It's a complex series of problems and I'm still trying in vain to understand the whole thing. I suspect that it is going to take a long time.
Up north they have rainforests and monsoons. Large areas of the country are rendered all but inaccessible when the rains come. That in itself is strange. I recall as a child in the winter the Thames would top the banks at Maidenhead and make the roads impassible, but this would be for a few days at most, and for regular vehicles, not the souped up ones they have here.
There's a healthy 3rd party market here for replacement of suspensions and exhaust systems on 4WD vehicles (not SUV's, but real, honest to goodness 4WD's) and these are necessary for much of the northern reaches though not enough for some areas.
This week on the news was a call for military intervention at a small town in the Northern Territory where civil unrest has gotten to such large proportions that there are in effect refugees. This is almost unfathomable, but in the days since the inital report more information has come out, and yes, there appears to be a real problem in Wadeye. Other official reports of systemic domestic and sexual abuse have been reported (South Australia this time, not the NT).
That problem appears to be that the town is indigenous (they don't use the word Aboriginal here much). The press say that conditions in many of these towns are awful. Too few houses (figures of occupancy rates of 14-20 people per house are reported as common, and these are your typical two bedroom places), many without sanitation, no or few schools and inadequate medical facilities. It's like 3rd world on your doorstep.
After living in NZ where the Maori are to a large extent fairly well integrated (don't like that phrase), this is a shock. It's not all resolved in NZ by any means, but by comparisson things are pretty good and there are structured processes for dealing with land claims, compensation and what not.
Australia is very different. Unlike in NZ where you see Maori working, eating, drinking and watching sport like anyone else (in fact to even mention it is a bit like saying "I don't have a problem with X's, in fact, one of my best friends is an X"), here the only Aboriginals that I've seen in the time I've been here have been shitfaced on a park bench. It's a sterotype, but all to true. Perhaps it's just that there are not all that many of them. Regardless, there's a segregation here as effective as apartheid but less well documented.
I'm not saying that some people aren't trying hard, but frankly the damage has been done and the cultures are so different that trying to have the two walk in tandem is likely to be impossible. Alcohol (and to a lesser extent drugs) is cited as a huge problem and behind much of the social ills that afflict indigenous peoples and Europeans have clearly been a plague as damaging as any virus. The reasoning behind the "Stolen Generation" is making an appearance again and enforced relocation of children is, if not serious being discussed, is being ventured by senior political figures.
It's a complex series of problems and I'm still trying in vain to understand the whole thing. I suspect that it is going to take a long time.
