LOOKING FOR AUSTRALIA Part 2

Just after leaving Broken Hill I see a sign saying NO PETROL NEXT 200 KILOMETRES. I've got about three quarters of a tank. A quick calculation tells me I could probably shave it in but ... I head back to town. This is a part of the world I would definitely not like being stranded in. Only a few giant cacti with their arms raised to the sun would be needed to truly mark this landscape as the "badlands" of American westerns.

Again the stench of dead kangaroos scattered and decomposing by the roadside is as constant as the turbulence that buffets me. Often, up ahead, I see black clusters on the road. As I approach, the clusters fly apart, carrion birds interrupted in their feeding on the grisly road-kill. It's not something I'd be keen on doing anyway bu I've been warned to avoid running over the remains plastered on the bitumen. The shards of bone they contain can cause punctures.

The absolute dryness of the air has already caused my lips to feel as though scales have grown on them. Applying lip balm simply coats a slippery film over the roughness.

I've covered roughly one hundred kilometres from Broken Hill without, apart from the odd vehicle travelling in the opposite direction, seeing any sign of life human life. Then, in the distance, I can make out one solitary, lonely building that appears slightly dilapidated as I approach. It's a hotel - out here in the literal middle of nowhere. Naturally I'm not going to pass it up. Besides I'm deadly thirsty. I pull up carefully on the loose gravel, park my bike and go inside. The joint is empty of course - except for a middle-aged woman standing patiently behind the bar waiting to take my order. The word "surreal" doesn't cut it. For all I know, she could have been standing there like that for days waiting for a customer. I almost expect to see at least a few wisps of cobwebs attached to her clothing.

"What'll it be?" she asks. The perfunctory question sounds exactly as I've heard it asked in crowded pubs where it might have been the hundredth time that same night it had been asked. I tell her that cold soda water right now would be more welcome than the finest Champagne.

"Coming right up." The prosaic reality of the situation begins to disperse the crazy illusion I've walked into. She'd obviously been somewhere else in the pub on hearing my bike pull up and then gone to man her station behind the bar.

The monotony of the landscape is cheerily broken by a sign bidding me welcome to South Australia. It looks remarkably like New South Wales. But the geography at last begins to change in the reverse of how it did on my approach to the outback: the dirt  hugged by patches of bush that look to be, along with cockroaches, capable of surviving a nuclear attack, begin to be accompanied by bush that is trying to stand up. Then growths that could be exageratedly  described as trees begin to appear. More and more welcoming the country becomes until I'm near Peterborough, a hub of wheat country with its gently swaying fields of  man's ancient staple food since he first learnt to settle down.

Somewhere just south of Petersborough, rolling, lion coloured hills tell me I'm within striking range of the southern coast. Actual trees are growing in profusion. I'm beginning to feel more at home.

It's a long time since I've been to Adelaide. It seems bigger now - a bigger small city. The approach into the ever increasing density seems to be taking as long as the entry into a decent sized city. It's been a long day's haul, almost five hundred kilometres through dry, hot desolation. But then again, there wasn't much for which  to stop.

I find a cheap joint within the city proper to stay and a safe place to store my bike. A shower and a feed and I'm up for some exploration. I feel the familiar thrill of being in a strange city - well almost strange. I'm reminded of just how charming this city is. It's definitely grown since my last visit but I'm tickled that you can still see green, country hills from the centre of a city. Planned from the beginning, a little like Canberra but with a soul included, the grid system of the streets causes difficulty in getting lost, even for someone like me with an internal compass seemingly perpetually confused by a battery of magnets. But to the primary task at hand: observing the population. I want to know how far Adelaide has walked the plank of multiracialism.

A significant number of Asians are visible. On my last visit here, albeit many years ago, I can't remember there being any. However, from my cursory survey, it seems a manageable minority, not really much greater than to add an exotic dash of spice, much as Sydney's Chinatown did before it burst its walls. Whether Adelaide's host population is concerned about the Asian presence, I don't know. I suspect not, generally speaking. Like the people of Sydney once were, I fear they are frogs in a pot of slowly heating water and cannot extrapolate from the present to see where it's leading. One thing I'm fairly sure of though is that if a white inhabitant of Adelaide were to visit Sydney for the first time, he would be shocked and horrified by what he saw in spite of what he'd heard.

I spot and hear a few loud blacks in the city's pleasant hub of Rundle Mall - not ours but the imported kind. The not so dark from the sub-continent are also evident here, but again, not enough to inspire the fear of one's own racial death that one constantly lives with in Sydney. Strolling about the inner city is probably not the most efficacious way to take a city's multicultural pulse but it's reasonably reliable and besides, it's the only method of which I'm capable. All in all, I feel I'm walking about in what is still an Australian city.

Sadly noticeable though is a proportional number of white bums and beggars camping in prime locations, effectively giving the finger to everyone else and expecting money and sympathy in return. I for one, who have seen the most horrific of third world poverty and want, have no sympathy. 

I've somehow become aware of the city's Museum of Immigration. The next day, being the eternal glutton for punishment I am, I steal myself, bite the bullet and enter what I anticipate to be the devil's showroom.  However, causing me to slowly relax, it is not the blast of propaganda I've been hardened by. Notwithstanding the de rigueur featuring of the outrageous treatment and displacement of the local Aborigines and the not so gentle persuasion to accept European laws in place of tribal ones - who would have known for example that whites took umbrage at the sight of Aborigines wandering about the early town stark naked? - the treatment of the theme is surprisingly even handed. In fact it is conceded that a great deal of concern was shown for the Aborigines' well-being and ways and means for their protection was a primary issue.

 Most surprisingly, the exhibition dedicated to the white Australia policy treats the policy as a product of its time (although still a monumental mistake) and not something deliberately evil - the way it is usually presented via the historiographical crime of attempting to impose contemporary values and attitudes onto a bygone era.

I have to concede that the assembly and construction of the exhibits here have been very well done although at least some trumpet blowing is evident in the proud claim that South Australian was the only free state, meaning no penal colony ever existed here and no convict labour was ever used.

Of most interest to me personally is the information provided on the actual founding of the city. I marvel at how men from the other side of the world (which in those days was more akin to the other side of the moon) had the fortitude and vision to decide to generate here in a most alien and inhospitable land what would become an impressive city.

I have to admit I'm a sucker for painstakingly constructed models of sailing ship so it's hoped the reader will indulge me in my standing for some time before a glass case containing a superb model of a ship aboard which John Hindmarsh, the first governor of the colony of South Australia, arrived in Adelaide from Britain.
I mull over the odd name for a sailing ship - Buffalo. 

From Adelaide I plan to hug the coast all the way to Jervis Bay, the jumping off point for Kangaroo Island. This route takes me via Glenelg, Adelaide's answer to Bondi perched on Holdfast Bay in the Gulf of Saint Vincent. Naturally, it's also a long time since I've been here. I remember the sand, salt air and seagulls but not much else apart from it's lack of noteworthiness. What I see now comes as a shock. The development here is breath-taking. Towering apartment blocks are reminiscent of Surfers Paradise - but in a nice way.

 My luck is holding with the weather. A radiant, sunny day accentuates the beauty of the area. As I scan the wide-open green park-lands, I spy - could my travel-strained eyes be playing tricks on me? - a sailing ship in a kind of dry-dock. Naturally I'm drawn to it like a dog to a butcher's shop. I'm a little giddy. I don't believe it. It's the Buffalo. I take a few snaps from various angles, marvelling at the craftsmanship involved in the building of these wooden ships capable of sailing around the world. The technology involved is, to say the least, outdated, but for its day it was the best man's ingenuity could provide. And it's in remarkable good condition. Obviously a great deal of loving restorative work has gone into it.  It's not until sometime later that I discover that the ship I have swooned over is actually a replica ... but still.

To be continued

LOOKING FOR AUSTRALIA Part 1

I mount my metal steed, leave the multicultural zoo, otherwise known as Sydney and go looking for Australia (respectful nod to Easy Rider).

 It's just after sunrise, my naive thinking being that I can avoid the punishing peak-hour rush but it seems I get caught in the rush to beat the rush. It's almost an hour of accelerating and braking before I reach the freeway leading west out of the city. Here at last I can open the Bonneville out and get acquainted to what will be the soundtrack of the trip: the howl of the engine being drowned out by the hiss and roar of the gale-force wind I'm creating by slashing through the atmosphere. The buffeting I'm getting from the turbulence will be my constant companion. (Note to self: get windshield.)

With the sun at my back, I'm soon climbing into the Blue Mountains. Although it's early summer, the wind-chill is combining with the cooler altitude to having me thinking I've ridden back into winter. I'm wishing I'd brought along something more substantial than the thin cashmere jumper I'm wearing under my jacket.

The huge Carrington Hotel dominates Katoomba. It's a time-capsule from the century before last when it was a summer retreat for members of the more affluent classes wanting to  escape the sultriness of Sydney. I don't stop here though. I haven't gone far enough. I feel I haven't yet escaped the gravitational pull of the great city behind me. I'm unsure of how many people now live in the mountains and commute to the city but I suspect it must be in the thousands. In an effort to beat the system, they've bought real estate here, the equivalent of which in Sydney is every day more unaffordable, they however spend probably as much as they've saved in toll charges and fuel bills or crippling rail fares, not to mention the countless hours lost in mind-numbing travel. Back and forth they go like the drones in Fritz Lang's Metropolis. This is the new working poor but they will one day own their own homes - and pay off the interests on their loans. That is, if they don't stumble along the way and have their bank foreclose on them.

I spur my machine onwards. It's warmer now on the plains on the other side of the mountains but loosening up my hands from their bunched positions is like prying open a death-grip. Towns I've been in before - Lithgow, Bathurst, Dubbo - for which I slow down to the required speed limit and consequently feel as though I'm hardly moving, I don't dally in. Except for fuel and coffee I keep moving. The pace of my departure has been like an escape, which in a way it is.

When my body and mind tells me I've done enough riding for the day I'm in the town of Nyngan. For me, this is virgin territory. Nyngan, Cobar, Wilcannia are just names I've heard in weather reports. Nyngan is dry enough for me to know I'm on the edge of the outback. It's a small town, neat but tired looking and I can imagine it lying prostrate in the full blast of summer.

A local tells me I should think twice about trying to reach Broken Hill in one hit but I'm still eager as a pup and I just want to move. Besides, I've just recently seen a woeful remake of the film Wake in Fright whose only redeeming quality was the locale in which it was shot, which is Broken Hill. Peculiarly, I'm keen to be alone in that kind of scorched, despair inducing landscape.

I'm grateful for daylight saving because I roll into Broken Hill with sunlight to spare. I'm now well and truly into the scrub. On this leg of the trip, the geography has changed markedly as it would on most other legs. From patches of green grass giving way to a uniform, dried out fawn colour and decent sized gums providing splashes of shade becoming sparser until they bid me farewell, tough looking stunted excuses for trees stood in their stead until they too gave out leaving only mean, low lying scrub. This also became sparser still till equalled in surface area by baked, naked dirt. I'd entered red sand, Mad Max country. I wonder if this ever would have become white men's country if it hadn't been for the fabulous wealth waiting to be dug out of the ground. I marvel at how Aborigines would have been able to not only subsist but do quite well in this kind of country. I've been reading Geoffrey Blayney's Triumph of the Nomads and have developed a new appreciation of the ingenuity and logic of  Aboriginal hunter and gatherer tribal life. It is truly sad that it has been trampled under the march of time but if any villain of the piece can be truly identified it would have to be historical inevitability.

 For most parts the Barrier Highway had been rifle barrel straight with only gentle undulations providing the only variety. The stench of decomposing road kill has been so constant I imagine I can still smell it as though my clothing has absorbed it. So much death. I'd been scared of causing even more of it. Hitting a kangaroo on a bike travelling at high speed can't end well - either for the kangaroo or the bike rider. The consternation however never lasted long and spurred along by a featureless landscape engendering the surreal feeling of riding furiously on a treadmill and going nowhere fast, I would  soon be gunning the bike again toward somewhere.

Belting in the pegs, I pitch my tent on hard but sandy dirt that almost immediately begins finding its way inside like some living thing seeking shelter, then I begin my introductory exploration of Broken Hill at the foot of a blazing sunset. I've travelled one thousand kilometres through space but decades through time to an Australia I knew when I was young - an Australia, oddly enough, consisting of Australians, before it was decided we were a "country of immigrants".  Each time I visit the country from the uncaring city I have to adjust to its natural friendliness. So again, I'm taken aback by being greeted by complete strangers. But reorientation doesn't take long and I quickly begin to feel comfortable. It's almost like being amongst family - people I instinctively understand and who understand me. We are bound together by so much: history, heritage, values, language, accent, sense of humour, basic trust, view of the world and, most of all, by the thin red thread.

The next day my exploration is more complete. This is a solid, upstanding community, an isolated island of civilization surrounded by a vast desert but hardly lacking in mod cons. I'm in fact so taken in by its modernity that in the evening I will exhibit my city slickness by asking in a cinema how many theatres it holds. "Only one," is the dour reply that brings me straight back down to earth. Some confusion then arises about the starting time of the one film. It's here that I find I'm now on South Australian time. Makes sense but seems somehow disloyal to the home state.

 Looking for the tourist information office, I pass an ornate, seemingly freshly painted building solid enough to be a fortress. Across arched entrances, right across the front of the building are painted the words, TRADES HALL. This is a reminder of the power the working class once held in this country, of a time when Australia was known as the "working man's paradise". The building I stand in front of represents the peak of power and unity attained by class warriors before apathy and complacency set in, enterprise bargaining, by which trading off rights took the place of winning new ones, was agreed to and the long, slow slide back into the maw of laissez faire capitalism began, its worst stench coming from union leaders doing deals with employers behind the backs of the rank and file. (Not mentioning any names here Bill.) The building is still owned by a combination of unions but is now little more than a hollow shell.

Not long after, I'm stopped in my tracks by a similarly ornate building, the bronze plaque on its cornerstone advertising that it was opened by Sir Henry Parkes, a man who if alive today would tower over our present Lilliputians in parliament like a political Gulliver. Here was a man amongst similarly extraordinary men who wrestled with issue no less great than the birth of a nation. The great issue of our time? Homosexual marriage.

To be continued

THE PRICE PAID

     "It’s Billy," the voice on the phone said. It took a moment for Steve to orient himself. Billy? Of course, his sister’s boyfriend, or "partner" as was now insisted on. He hadn’t heard from either of them in a while. Come to think of it, he couldn’t remember Billy ever calling him.

     "Yes mate. How’re you going?"

     "Not bad. Listen, something has happened" His voice sounded strange. After an intriguing silence he added, "something bad has happened."

     Steve gut clenched with a sick feeling and his legs stiffened against possible loss of balance. "What? What’s happened?"  

     "Emily’s been attacked."

     "Attacked? What do you mean?"

     "She’s been raped." He was choking on the words. "It’s bad Steve, very bad."

     Steve arrived at Liverpool Hospital one and a half hours later. He had to resist the urge to jump straight in a cab at the rank on Darlinghurst Road but the fare from  there to Liverpool would have been much more than he could afford. And with the rationality that survived in the whirling of his mind he reasoned that with the traffic at this time in the late afternoon he wouldn’t be arriving much earlier than he would by train.

    

     When it arrived it was already crowded but he was able to claim an aisle seat. Dazed, he either looked unseeing through the window or let his eyes drift over his fellow passengers. Easily excited school kids shoved each other close to the sliding doors, making a nuisance of themselves to people trying to board and light, leggy young ladies admired the reflections of themselves looking back from the sealed windows, and grey-headed men's faces reflected the seriousness of their daily tabloids. Most of the passengers were white but as the train got further out into the suburbs the collective whiteness of the passengers changed to a darker hue until Steve became dimly aware of being the lone alien.

   Unlike the rattlers remembered from his childhood, the train slid quietly and smoothly, aimed directly at a sunset that appeared to be leaping from a great fire. Its beauty reminded him of the tropics. Tropical sunsets however hadn't mocked him though the way this one did. 

     By the time he stepped out onto the station platform a bracing coldness ensured by the clear sky of earlier in the day was waiting to meet him, He pulled the collar of his jacket up, thrust his hands into its pockets and hurried up the stairs.  

 

     "Emily Sheffield," he told the nurse behind the reception desk.

      "Are you family?"

     "Yes, I'm her brother."

      After quickly scanning a page of names she gave him the room number and directions on how to get there. Along the seemingly never-ending corridor he made his way to the lifts. Apprehension bordering on fear dogged his every step.

 

 

     He found the number of the shared ward and turned into it. He could see maybe five or six patients in bed, none of them Emily. The only staff present was a plump Philippina about to wheel away a food trolley. In response to his enquiry, she pointed at a curtained off bed in a corner of the windowed side of the room.

     He parted the curtain. Surprised, Billy sprung up from a chair beside the bed. In two paces he was in front of Steve, grabbing his extended hand and then pulling him into a hug. In a detached part of Steve’s mind it registered that this was the first time he’d ever done this. His usually well cared for appearance was tipped  out of kilter by his hair looking as though he’d just gotten out of bed. His eyes were red-rimmed.

     Steve pulled away from him enough to be able to look down at the bed. The figure on the bed looked disconcertingly like a corpse. All he could see was the form of someone around Emily’s size in the foetal position covered completely by a sheet.

     "She’s been like that for hours," Billy said. His eyes were red-rimmed. Steve took hold of the edge of the sheet and tried to gently pull it away from his sister’s head but it was weighted down with a hand. When he tugged a little more determinedly the fingers of the hand tightened in the sheet and held it firmly. "It’s probably best to leave her alone," Billy advised. "The doctor told me she’s in shock and could be that way for a while"’

     "Has she said anything to you?"

     Billy was silent for a moment and then said, as if still trying to understand it, "all she said was that she was sorry."

    

     The curtain parted again behind them. Steve turned to see a young woman in a white hopital coat

     "This is the doctor"’ Billy said. He motioned to Steve and said to the doctor, "this is Emily’s brother, Steve."

     The woman shook Steve's hand almost with grip almost masculine. "I'm Doctor  Briant," she said. "I'm afraid there's no way to soften this. Your sister been subjected to a terrible experience; I'm sorry. Her physical injuries will probably heal in a matter of weeks but ... well it will probably take longer for her psychological health to return. I understand that you are her only remaining family. Is that correct?"

     "Yes."

     "Then Steven, she's going to need all the support and love you can give her."

     "Yes, she'll get it. Thanks Doctor."

     "I think at the moment it would be better to allow her some space. There's tea and coffee available in a room down the corridor. Why don't you two go and try to relax for a while, then come back later. She may be wanting to talk to sombody by then."

     "Yes, good idea. Just one thing Doctor. Why can't she be in a room on her own?"

     "I'm sorry about that but she has no private health insurance. I'm afraid this is the best we can do with Medicare." 

     Steve sat in the small lounge while Billy stood at a sink waiting for a jug to boil. They were fortunate in having the room to themselves. "There were a couple of coppers here earlier; detectives, a man and a woman. No reply came from Steve who sat like a ventriloquist's dummy minus the ventriloquist, so Billy continued. "After they'd oranised a rape kit, whatever that is, and questioned Emily they wanted to speak to me to find out whatever they could about Emily's habits, her background, her family situation, her friends and so on. I told them what I knew but I can't see how it was of much help.

     "Then I asked them to tell me exactly what had happened to Emily. They wouldn't at first; said they wanted to spare me, but I put on a real turn and bloody well demanded that they tell me. They looked at each other then the female detective let me have it - with both barrels. Do you want me to tell you what she said Steve?"

     The dummy's head turned slowly, just as mechanically as a real dummy's. "Yes, tell me."

     "Well, when the paramedics reached her at the lady’s house where she’d gone for help she was hysterical, understandably. Everything she’d had been stolen from her. Her clothes as well. All she had to wear was the blanket the lady had gotten for her. She wasn’t making much sense and she had difficulty speaking anyway. Her mouth …. She’s copped it in the mouth. Steve, she was beaten pretty badly. It’s what the cops call aggravated rape." Steve was rocking, leaning with his elbows on his thighs and his head in his hands.

    "Steve, you’ll need to brace yourself. It gets worse."

     "How much worse can it get?"

     "A lot."

     "Give it to me."

     "It seems that Emily had finished work early for the day. She was walking through the park between the salon she’s been working at and her flat, just as she did every day. She was listening to music on her Ipad through ear plugs as she walked."

     "Yes, she loves music," Steve said, crouched over, looking at the floor..

     ‘She was almost to the other side of the park when she was grabbed from behind and then dragged into some bushes. There were two men. She was beaten and raped by both of them. Do you want me to continue?"

     Steve nodded, so he inhaled deeply before continuing. "I’m afraid that wasn’t the end of it. One of them held her down with a knife to her throat, while the other made a call on his phone then walked to the street bordering the park. A few minutes laterr he returned with another five men."  He paused like someone about to deliver the coup de grace. They held her for around another hour. The all raped her – both ways. While they were doing it the second way one of them asked her how she like being fucked Lebanese style." Steve was beginning to sob. Gary's voice was cracking with emotion as he tried to continue. "And then Steve .... the all pissed on her." Steve was weeping uncontrollably. "And there was the lipstick."

     Steve looked up, tears streaming down his face. "What?"

     "It was smeared by the time the doctors saw it but they could still make out what it said. These cunts had taken her own lipstick and written on her back OZZIE SLUT."

    

      When they returned to Emily’s bedside Steve was almost staggering. Billy had a hand on his shoulder as though to steady him. He turned him around, took him by the arms and steered him backwards to a chair he in the tiny alcove. He then went around to the other side of the bed to pick up a second chair, placed it beside Steve and sat down. A clock was ticking loudly, another patient in the ward coughed and the smell of extreme cleanliness hung in the air but Emily was now sitting up in bed. She was looking at them both but appeared not to see them. Steve was aghast. The whole of his sister's face was swollen. Both her eye-sockets were shades of black, blue and purple running together. Stitches laced together an angry red laceration running vertically into her right, partly shaved eyebrow. The sight of her mouth though caused Steve to press knuckles to his own mouth. A jagged cut ran a good inch from the bottom of her top left lip, ending only about a quarter inch below and to the left of her nose. This wound was bound by many more stitches than the one in her eyebrow.

     The light of recognition appeared in her eyes but  her attempt to smile was quickly aborted because of the pain it caused. The brief parting of her lips had though revealed a dark space below the cut where two upper teeth, once beautiful and pearly, were now missing. An ugly graze was visible on her shoulder where the hospital gown had slipped.

     "How are you Sis"? The stupidity of the question almost caused Steve to wince.

     "Couldn’t be better." She again tried to smile but quickly stopped again. "The doctors tell me I’ll be out of here in no time. My injuries are only superficial. Superficial," she repeated, almost savouring the irony.

      Steve rose and walked the few steps to the side of the bed. He leant over, put the side of his face to the top of his head, put his arm around her and tried to hold her as gently as possible. Billy, sensing he wasn't part of this, rose and slipped out between the parted curtains.

     "My lovely black blouse."

     "What?"    

      "I was wearing my lovely black blouse. I’d only bought it the day before. I saw it in a shop window a week ago and fell in love with it but it was much too expensive. Every day I’d stop in front of the shop and look at it. Finally I said to myself 'bugger it; you only live once' and walked straight in and bought it."

      The look in Emily’s eyes told Steve she had left him; she was away in time and space. "The just tore it off me. One of those bastards …the one who … the one who did it to me first … one of the ones whose eyes I tried to scratch out stood over me with his foot on my chest while his mate lay beside me with his hand over my mouth and started ripping the blouse apart. 'You won’t be needing this anymore you slut,' he yelled at me and then spat on my hair while his mate laughed.

      It was all happening again. Tears welled in her eyes like water in an overfilled bottle and began dropping on her gown. Her body convulsed with sobbing the likes of which Steve had never heard before. He put his arms around her and held her to him. He was suddenly thrust back through time to long ago when a bicycle riding lesson had ended in tears and a grazed knee. He had held her in the same way to comfort her. She had brightened up almost immediately and smiled at him. But not this time. Her crying seemed as unstoppable as as the turning of the Earth and he felt consumed by utter helplessness.

     Now and then, over the course of his life, Steve had mused over whether he was capable of ever killing someone. The answer now thrust itself up from somewhere deep and dark inside him. He was perfectly capable of murder. Not only that, he would enjoy it - he'd enjoy causing as agonising a death as possible. Consequences? Didn't care.

 

TIME TO GET UP OFF YOUR KNEES WHITE MAN

 Well, I've been down so Goddamn long
That it looks like up to me
Well, I've been down so very damn long
That it looks like up to me
Yeah, why don't one you people
C'mon and set me free

 - The Doors

Right from when we are very young and are already learning to feel sorry for ourselves we are reminded that, no matter how hard done by we feel, there is always someone worse off. These days however in which the evil "patriarchy" lies as shattered as the stature of Ozymandias, when the white man looks about for those even worse off, he discovers, at least in terms of rights he's at the end of the line. He's everybody's punching bag, especially that of his own women.

His ancestors were world-shakers. Milder types quaked in fear at the mere sight of them. As a pagan, unchained by religiously inspired remorse or feel-good altruism, the white man was as unstoppable as water bursting through a dam wall.

Tamed by civilization, he began the process of using his intellect to unlock the physical mysteries of the universe. He and made them his servants while the the ignorant huddled in superstitious fear. While others shied from the unknown, he explored the earth and rolled out empires over great swathes of it. He took life that was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short" as his raw material and converted it to unimagined luxury and ease.

What happened? Some would say it was this very luxury and ease that proved to be his downfall. Eliminating the brutality and savagery from life interfered with the natural selection that would have removed the less fit for survival, allowing the meek to not only proliferate wildly, but to also inherit the earth. Included among the inheriting meek was woman, who in a state of nature needed the protection of one man in order to stave off being a slave to all. Only in the artificiality of modern western life could woman pretend she did not need man.

Others aver that it was satanically inspired world-wars that not only destroyed the best genes of his race, but shook the white man's self-confidence to its core and, almost in inverse proportion, increased the confidence of other races who had discovered in the white man's self-destructive folly that he possibly wasn't as smart as first thought.

Now, wherever the white man lives, the story is the same shameful tale of men living like beaten curs, but perhaps the greatest disparity between the way he was and the way he is now is in Sweden, a living example of what a state looks like once becoming Feminism Central. The icy north was where the the dreaded Vikings set sail from toward where only two fates could be met: glory or Valhalla. The north was the domain of these master ship-builders, seamen and above all fearless warriors. His reputation struck fear from what would become the British Isles to the land that would be named after the Swedish vikings, the word "Russia" originating from the "Rus" as they were historically known. It was in Russia where the Rus performed
astonishing feats of  hardship overcome. These blonde beasts simply picked up their boats and carried them from a river that couldn't deliver them any further to whichever river allowed greater penetration of the land that they saw as theirs for the taking.

Now look at their descendants. Is it possible these men carry the genes of men who took life by the throat?
Some obviously do. This man does: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7SeqQGFLUsk
However judging by what he says about the training of boys in preschool where "toxic masculinity", meaning what was once simply masculinity, is being systematically drained from them, he may well be one of a dying breed. In a curious twist, a woman is doing more for the survival of ethnic Swedes than the great majority of the sons of the Vikings. See here: https://nationalvanguard.org/2015/08/saga-skinhead-subculture-and-spontaneous-rebellion/

It's difficult to imagine the Russ allowing their own land to be swarmed by dark-skinned invaders, let alone standing aside while their women were subjected to mass rape by these same invaders. As the flood of Red barbarism mercilessly conquering eastern Germany at the end of World War 2 demonstrated, no greater humiliation can be inflicted on a people than its men being shown to be unable to protect their women from mass violation. Yet in Sweden, Swedish men seem to be even unaware their country is under attack. And while the unprecedented incidence of rape in Sweden, the world capital of rape, (that's discounting Lesotho where men boast "if I see a woman I like, I just take her") shows no sign of diminishing and its being committed almost 100 per cent by "refugees", Julian Assange continues working on his moon-tan, self-imprisoned in a London embassy, dodging prosecution for the heinous crime of having sex with women without first asking permission to go in "unprotected". It's difficult not to suspect that the relevant legislation was passed by rabid female politicians, perhaps aided by the girly-boy politicians about which the man in the video complains.

Most western European cities have no-go areas where angels and police fear to tread. However, Sweden goes one better in the form of no-go city. It's called Malmo, the third largest city in the country. This is where native Swedish women are well advised to never leave home without a head-scarf - that is if they know what's good for them and don't want to end up being perceived as juicy meat left out for feral cats and as the probably little remembered Bazza McKenzie would have said, "screamin' for it".

However, in fairness, Swedish men shouldn't be singled out, notwithstanding a hand-over of an entire city to the invader with barely a murmur After all, the men of all western Europe have been infected with the same castrating disease (eastern European men being  grimly determined to hang on to theirs). On New Year's Eve 2015, for example, "men of Middle Eastern appearance" celebrated the occasion with mass feel-ups, robberies and rape of young women crowded in the immense plaza laid out in front of the the main train station and the towering  Cologne cathedral. Many more women were raped in other parts of Germany at the same time by the others expressing their gratitude for being offered a new home and a guaranteed income.

If this wasn't bad enough, it was made worse by an attempt by the authorities to keep a publicity lid on the outrage. It certainly wouldn't do to flirt with Islamophobia by besmirching the reputations of Muslims who are, we are constantly assured, by and large kind and beautiful people subscribing to a "religion of peace". The few who transgress are "uneducated" and anyway aren't real Muslims. If it hadn't been for social media and a number of dedicated police disobeying the order to shut up about what had happened, the traumatised girls may possibly have ended up feeling their ordeals had been figments of their overactive imagination, perhaps conflated with "rape fantasies".

But being mindful of the evergreen advice discouraging people living in glass houses from throwing stones, it's only fair to switch our focus to what is happening here in Australia. Are things here any better? Anyone who's read Girls Like You, by Sydney journalist Paul Sheean would know that if they are, it's only marginal and that if Muslim immigration into Australia continues at its present unrelenting pace it's only a matter of time before the margin disappears. Writing at times like a good crime novelist, Sheean follows the atrocious outrages committed by a Muslim rape gang and the ensuing court case. The record sentences passed on the accused reflected the belief that the rapes were squarely in the category of "hate crimes", a heightened level of evil usually reserved for whites offending against the rainbow. It was a difficult conclusion to avoid. The gang had specifically targeted white Australian girls who were spat on and called "Aussie sluts" while they were being raped. It was symptomatic of a raging hatred against all Australians, all things Australian and all infidels. Sheean wrote of the crimes being just the tip of an iceberg: "how many other cultural time bombs were ticking amid the Muslim male population living within the liberality of Australia".

Oddly, but perhaps not all that surprisingly, Australian feminists were conspicuous by their silence on the matter. Oddly, because even being looked at by the wrong kind of man - the right kind of man being the one for whom the yoga-pants stretched-over arse is being wiggled - is tantamount to sexual harassment and is enough to cause feminist melt-down. Not all that surprisingly because of the painful dilemma they find themselves in: multiculturalism - including the poison that Islam is to western liberalism - being as much a part of the leftist wonderland as feminism, the burning question is how, in a play-off, is it decided who's holding the trump card? The answer to this can only be inferred from feminists choosing to solve this problem by simply keeping their mouths shut. By avoiding condemning the sexual war being waged by Muslims they are also avoiding pulling rank. Ergo multiculturalism wins.

For more than fifty years now, Australian feminists have been waging their terror campaign. It seems like only yesterday sophisticated women were arguing against the taboo of women using obscene language. After all, "fuck" was just a word. What real damage can it do?   Silly old taboos.  With that particular one out of the way, the betterment of society has been immeasurable. Now busloads of schoolgirls are telling everyone to get fucked.

But of course this example is minuscule in the grand scheme of the way Australian society has been altered by feminism. Its greatest achievement is the extra large helping of guilt ladled onto men already doubled over with the load of guilt they have been trained to carry. The evil brought to this country has xy stamped all over it. It's not as if a ship full of buxom beauties were the first to spy the east coast of Australia and bring the beginning of the end to the Aborigine's idyll. And of course it wasn't dainty Victorian women hunting them down with murder seething in their poisoned hearts, and actually succeeding in their genocidal intent with the Tasmanians who'd only barely survived the genocide launched at them by the racially different mainland blacks. No! It was men responsible for all this - hardly a spark of good in the whole damn lot.

How different it would all be if women had been in charge of the world. Different indeed. We'd be still sweeping out the cave while madam prepared our next week's roster.

Your time is running out white man. It's you against the world and you can't even be sure which side your own women is on as they throw themselves into the arms of the exotic and dusky and persist in wanting to know why we can't just all get along. To musical accompaniment,"what a wonderful world it would be". Get this into your head: you're being mongrelised out of existence. While everybody else is allowed to have their own homes - the Africans, the Chinese, the Japanese, the Thais, the Arabs and especially the Jews (all welcome as long as you're Jewish) your home is now home to the rest of the world. How long do you possibly hope to survive in that situation? Your house has been invaded by  homeless bums and they're rearranging the furniture and decor so fast you no longer recognise it.

Your god is all but dead; Islam is a circling shark smelling blood and about to go in for the kill.. Like nature, man's need for transcendence  abhors a vacuum, and particularly despises a void attempted to be filled with comsumerism, hedonism, Facebook and sport - go team! It's difficult for you to admit to the sadness deep down where your soul hides. But it's hardly your fault, you cry. After all, what can you do but lapse into self-pity if there's nothing more to believe in? Then how about believing in yourself and your race once again and, most urgently, the survival of your race. It's still not too late. Even the despised and persecuted whites of South Africa are beginning to stand on their hind legs:   http://www.wvwnews.net/content/index.php?/news_story/blackmonday_was_south_africa%E2%80%99s_biggest_white_protest_in_decades.html although for them it probably is too late. But see their ordeal as a salutory warning.

 The same fate has been engineered for the white man of the Great South Land just as everywhere else. Every time some fellow traveller or useful idiot whines about the "invasion" or the "genocide" or about Australia really being part of Asia - the most screaming kamikaze attack on reality of them all - our claim to this land is sabotaged, our grip loosened just that little bit more.  And the eyes and ears of the world are watching and listening, especially those to our north, coveting with undisguised lust the wide open (but uninhabitable) spaces" that the "white trash of Asia" criminally let go to waste.

Those to whom you've handed political power are traitors. Your media lies to you. Your schools and universities are indoctrinating your children and emasculating your sons. Your priests are down in the dirt with leftist propagandists. A huge FOR SALE sign has been planted in your land. You're on your own. What are you going to do? Here's a good starting point. Throw off the guilt so many are trying to cripple you with. Understand that, like the individual, no race is in a position to  throw the first stone. And also like the individual, good and bad exists in every race. The difference is that your guilt has been weaponised against you.  And what a deadly weapon it is. Our enemies know only too well how deadly.

RED OVER BLACK

Red Over Black: Behind the Aboriginal Land Rights is the title of a book written first published in 1982 but even more pertinent today given  insistent demands for "Recognition" and a treaty being even greater threats to continued Australian unity than ever before.

The book's extraordinary value is lies in the background of the the author, Geoff Macdonald, writing as a lapsed Communist, being formerly a  high-flyer in the now defunct Communist Party of Australia (CPA) and intimately conversant with the methods and machinations of this Stalinist organisation Down Under, the most tried and trusted of which was the always reliable divide and conquer tactic.

Adding to his credentials as an authority on the subject he tackles is his many years experience in Central Australia where he represented the Royal Australian Nurses Federation, naturally having wide contact with the white nurses selflessly forsaking the comforts of city living, and the mostly full-blooded Aborigines to whom they ministrated. His obvious affection for both groups shines through the pages.

Red Over Black shows how in taking up the cudgel for Australian Blacks, the actions of the CPA were similar indeed to the way in which American Jews championed the rights of US Blacks, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) being founded and staffed almost solely by Jews. In both cases, the motivation was in fact not out of love for the supposedly downtrodden but rather the pursuit of a hidden agenda. Its not known how many members of the CPA were Jews but given the historical precedents of Jews swarming to the political philosophy invented by their kinsman, an over-representation could be fairly assumed.

MacDonald joined the CPA in 1948 as a callow but idealistic eighteen year old. As an example of  rapid- fire geopolitical transformation illustrated so well by Orwell, affable Uncle Joe Stalin had only a few years earlier been switched to being the successor of Hitler as the AntiChrist. However, the CPA was still enjoying the the lingering boost to Communism given by the Soviets being our gallant ally (the most atrocious mass rape since the hordes of Ghengis Khan rolled over the Steppes being conveniently ignored if not hidden).

He evidently showed promise because within a relatively short time he was being "educated" at the party's secret training centre in Minto NSW. It was here some time later in 1959 that he first came into contact with two leading Communists of the era, JB Miles and Lance Sharkey, and it was from them that he learned that in order to bring about a red Australian republic, the first major step needed to be a splitting off of an aboriginal republic. Stirring up a crusade for aboriginal land rights was the method by which this was to be eventually achieved.

 Because a revolution was completely out of the question in conservative, relatively well off Australia, the type of "gradualism" honed to perfection by Fabian Socialists was deemed to be perfectly suited to achieving the same result. Patiently settling in for the long haul has shown proven results. As an example of how well "gradualism" can work, one only has to note the eventual creation of the basically socialist EU which was originally presented to the unsuspecting European people as the simple Common Market. Who could argue with such a concept when told that the rising synergistic tide created by free trade within this organisation would lift all boats and and rain gold over all involved? Downside? (loss of national sovereignty perhaps?) Why, none at all.

MacDonald was also to learn of how the party, driven by ideological fanaticism, was at the forefront of tearing apart the White Australia policy. Again, the ultimate aim was to produce discord, disharmony and as much damage as possible to Australian nationalism, nationalism being seen as a despised obstacle to communist internationalism.

Curiously though, the party was opposed to large parts of the great refugee programme offering Australia as a new home to some of the "displaced persons" wandering stunned amongst the ruins of a Europe shattered by the war.  It viewed with particular suspicion, for example, the "Balts" because of their perceived affinity with fascism. If the party had've had its way, it would have sorted the European refugees into those amenable or receptive to their philosophy and those that weren't, the latter not being allowed entry.

It would later have no disagreement with non-European immigrants except perhaps the perceived right wingers fleeing triumphant Vietnamese communists. The party was essentially colour blind, hardly surprising when class struggle was seen as the engine of history - class and not race was what mattered. This goes a long way  toward  explaining  how Australian whites would have been perfectly happy to see perhaps as much as a half of the Australian continent hived off into a red aboriginal republic. As long as people were communist, they could be any colour.

It was at Minto that MacDonald began to make sense of Marxist dialectics. He wondered for instance at the seeming contradiction of the party being vehemently opposed to South African Apartheid, while energetically trying to fashion what would essentially be the same thing in Australia. Dialectics is best explained as a system of thought that can accommodate glaring contradictions like this by focusing on the supreme good and the supreme good was the victory of communism. It is of course no secret that the driving force behind the destruction of Apartheid in South Africa was communism, the terrorist Mandela himself as well as his ANC being thoroughly Marxist indoctrinated. To sum up Marxist dialectics, the Good can be found by asking, is it good for communism? In this, Marxism is almost a twin of Judaism/Zionism, which shouldn't surprise considering the impressive overlap. Marxists ask, is it good for communism? Jews ask, is it good for Jews.

MacDonald was also intrigued to find out how much leftist tentacles had reached out to infiltrate churches, especially the World Council of Churches (WCC). He discloses how "Mick" Miller, another prominent Australian Marxist of the time was financed by the WCC while he was claiming to represent Aborigines through the North Queensland Land Council. In MacDonald's reincarnation as an anti-Communist he states that "Mister Miller represents only himself and a small number of radical activists." Radical activists, it goes without saying are invariably city-bred fair-skins, and this was while genuine spokesmen for Aborigines were all but ignored. On a separate occasion,  not long after holding its Central Committee meeting in communist East Germany, the WCC awarded 56,000 dollars to Autralian "Aboriginal organisations". This arrangement was almost identical to the marriage between Marxism and Christianity for which large swathes of South America became famous.

In a similar vein in a later part of the book, he writes, "... full blood Aborigines in the Northern Territory constantly complained of the whites and part-Aborigines who were continually meddling in their lives and acting as imposters because of a wrong authority given them by the Federal Government." These "imposters" even physically assaulted them when they tried to attend church. "Go back to the old ways," they were ordered.

In a major U turn from two thousand years of Christian teaching, churchmen were also discouraging Aborigines from attending church and were as well adivising that the old ways were best for them, regardless of the old ways - in strict compliance with the Malthusian assertion that population is limited by food supply - guaranteeing that even after many thousands of years the Aboriginal population probably never exceeded 300,000.  McDonald quotes historian, Geoffrey Blainey in elaborating on the dire result of ecological pressure: " the conclusion seems inescapable: over a long span of time millions of newborn Aboriginals must have been deliberately killed by their mother or father. Infanticide was almost certainly the strongest check on the increase of  the population of Aboriginals". Similarly, the old and the lame would simply be abandoned.

 Hunters and gatherers are particularly vulnerable to the deadly effects of droughts which in Australia are more normal than abnormal. And even though evil whites are invariable found guilty of introducing diseases to the "noble savage" in his halcyon idyll, the reality was that the land was long ravaged by disease. The effects were compounded by the superstitious beliefs of Aborigines causing sickness to be viewed as a the result of a curse directed by an enemy. The squaring-up added to the pile of bodies left by the disease. This was the life radical, mixed-race communists and leftists with a hot-line to heaven were urging Aborigines to return to.

Mainly due to lack of interest after the implosion of the Soviet Union, the CPA folded its tent in 1991. Naturally though, that didn't mean the end of Marxism in Australia - just a shape-shift into Cultural Marxism, basically what was left of the main body after jettisoning the ecomomic mumbo jumbo which had sunk the Soviets. It was quieter, much more subtle and far more palatable to a greatly increased range of people who would have felt faint in the face of the old ham-fisted communism. This was the crowd who now ran with the baton of social justice, especially "justice" for Aborigines, appearing not to notice how much had already been achieved for them - by foul means or fair.

The Australian people had essentially been hoodwinked in the lead-up to the 1967 referendum, purportedly to amend article 127 of the constitution which ahd failed to include Aborigines in the political process via a vote. That they hadn't been given a vote before this because of the near impossibility of providing ballot boxes to nomads was lost in the hyteria over white racism being the alleged real reason for the franchise not being extended to them.

That white Australia had a bountiful store of good will toward their black counterparts was demonstrated by 90.77% voting in favour of the Aboriginal right to vote. The quiet rider in the referendum though was the second question regarding an amendment of article 51: "The Parliament shall, subject to this constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: [section 26] The people of any race, other than the aboriginal people in any state for whom it is necessary to make special laws." [emphasis added]

Oddly, no attempt was made to clarify what this actually meant, so it is not surprising that voters saw this as yet another slight to Aborigines which needed rectifying. How could they have known that this provision had been aimed negatively at races considered problematic at the time of Federation - people of uncertain status at the fringes of Australian society such as Chinese and Kanaka non-citizens with an eye to a potential need to decree where such people could live and at what jobs they could work? The exclusion of Aborigines from this was in fact protection against their being affected by this law. The opposite perception though naturally led to this having having to be ditched along with the prohibition of the aboriginal vote.

How could they also have known that the amendment of 51 that they voted for, after including Aborigines in the purview of "special laws" would convert the original negative potential effects to potential positive effects for Aborigines for whom laws could be passed but which could not be passed for the general population. Ergo, the land rights that communists, half white radicals and fellow travellers had agitated for so determinedly began springing to fruition like mushrooms after a rainstorm.

The magic of once having achieved victim status is that the ending of grievances perpetually recedes like a mirage on the horizon. At the time Red Over Black was first published, land being claimed by Aborigines extended over 738,032 square kilometres of Australia's total land mass. "This vests 9.6 per cent of land in 1.2 per cent of the population, and the national total could rise even further ..." Macdonald writes. And it has.

But it's still not enough. In referring to  "the now redundant eyesore that is the Aboriginal Tent Embassy in Canberra ...", a Mister David Davies had this to say in a recent letter he wrote to Sydney's Sunday Telegraph, "... We have the Native Title Act. We have had a national parliamentary apology. We have an annual Sorry Day and NAIDOC Week. We both recognise and rejoice with indigenous citizens achieving their best. But can we not also be mature and willing enough to admit that the good of our first peoples is not now predominantly dictated by past sins, present racism or outstanding land claims, but by culturally self-inflicted wounds? ..."

We are now well and truly into the zone of diminishing returns. In fact white Australia is perilously close to crossing into the black from the red in the ledger of good will toward Aborigines. Expecting people to continue giving when they've given their all and are still being excoriated for past sins to not become resentful is the dream of someone asleep at the wheel while driving through reality. Further insatiable demands can only be counter-productive for Aborigines. The deep well of good will displayed by white Australia in 1967 is rapidly drying up  Reaction awaits in the wings. It's called human nature.

The current demand is for "recognition" and a treaty. Whatever "recognition" means, we have a clear idea of the meaning of the word treaty. The Concise Oxford Dictionary has this to say: "Treaty: formally concluded and ratified agreement between states." [emphasis added] Needless to say, an aboriginal "state" has never existed. The words, absurd, ridiculous, nonsensical are simply not up to the job in describing a treaty between whites and Aborigines.

The British settled the land that would become Australia on the legal basis of Terra nullius (nobody's land). This is now of course bitterly contested, the argument being that it was somebody's land, willfully ignoring the original intended sense of there being no-one, no organisation, no state with whom to deal - only a relatively small number of wandering hunters and gatherers. However for argument's sake let it be conceded that Terra nullius doesn't hold up. That leaves only conquest as the legal basis for British settlement. A treaty in the sense of one drawn up between warring parties with a view to end the conflict (such as the 1845 Waitangi treaty between New Zealand Maories and the British) is not something appealed to in the case of conquest, allowing that isolated skirmishes over isolated grievances constituted an actual war. Conquest in fact abrogates entirely the need for a treaty. Calling for a treaty more than two hundred years after the non-war is several orders of magnitude even more ridiculous.

But contiuing the game of hypotheticals, let' say we've crossed over to the world of anti-reality and a treaty is drawn up and signed. Would this mean that by implication aboriginal Australia, albeit scattered, disorganised and the opposite of monolitic, has become a state and thereby realised the dream of the communists? Probably not. That would have to be the next step. And given that once a group or subculture has attained victim status, relinguishing this status would be tantamount to killing the golden goose, (for example who would dare suggest that, now that homosexuals have been granted the right to marry, no more demands for "rights" will somehow be conjured up?) there will of course be a next step.

"Assume a virtue, if you have it not." So said Shakespeare through the mouth of Hamlet. A reasonable interpretation of this might be that the assumption will eventually become the reality. By appealing to a supranational body such as World Government in waiting, the UN, such as has been done long ago by the likes of the fair-skinned communist radical, Gary Foley, quite a bit of assuming was being done - so much so that one could be forgiven for thinking Foley already represented a separate sovereign state.

Fortunately though, with the UN still being much more than the paper tiger than the tyrannical giant its founders envisioned it to be, Foley was pretty much relieving himself into the wind. But what if, even if only  on paper, some kind of large autonomous aboriginal body was one day formed, and representatives of that body - which they have begun calling a republic - actually appealed for help to a foreign body with a little more fire-power than the UN? That foreign body could hypothetically be a national government - one like China's for example which, again purely hypothetically, has taken umbrage at the way it perceives the huge number of Chinese in Australia being mistreated. Listen once again to McDonald: "As we have shown, the call for a treaty was an invention of white radicals. It has been equally so with regard to predictions of violence and international support with military aid, or what they sometimes call 'physical' support from other countries. The tranlation of 'physical' is military aid from outside the country."

As already noted, push-back will eventuall arrive. But why hasn't it come sooner - much, much sooner? Here's an outsider's take on our paralysing, national neurosis: "Today's Australian schoolchildren are taught that whatever its present virtues, their nation was founded on genocide and theft. The fact that those original colonial forces were also white and European makes the act unsurpassably worse than it would be were the story the equally familiar one of dark-skinned peoples taking land from other dark-skinned peoples." (Coincidentally, an accumulating body of evidence points to this actually having happened in Australia long ago.)

Moreover, "But for Australians the historic treatment of the Aborigines ... is a subject that has in recent decades moved from the margins of public debate to the core - to the country's deepest founding sin. Strangely, this narrative of guilt seems actually desired and welcomed by Australian society."*

The writer, Douglas Murray, is completely on the money. Unless we break out of this trance and stop wallowing in guilt like the nation of masochists we've become, the destruction of the Australian nation, originally planned by communists and carried on by cultural Marxists, will inexorably find its  Götterdämmerung. In this version though, there will be no renewal - not for anyone, not for comunists, not for bleeding hearts, not for dreamers, and not for Aborigines.

*The Strange Death of Europe, Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017