WHO LET THIS RAT ON BOARD?

Before the onslaught of PC and the space-travel-like "progress" given us by "progressives", he would have been called a Wog. But of course you can't say that word any more. It's tantamount to the dreaded "N" word. However, it's a safe bet that Richard DiNatale, a senator and leader of the Australian Greens, was  called a Wog by his less swarthy school-mates. No big deal really. The cruelty of children is legendary. The name and the face that didn't quite fit in would have combined in a juicy target.

I'll hazard a guess here and say that young Richard was a sensitive type who, instead of sucking up the rough verbal treatment, which is what most did before the declaration that "bullying" was a crime against humanity in our feminized society. Richard probably quietly stewed over the affronts, nay, fairly marinated in them, plotting the type of revenge that hailed from the same boot-shaped country his parents did - one best served cold.

How else to explain his apparent hatred of all things Australian Anglo Saxon: Australia Day, the Australian flag, our system of Constitutional Monarchy and probably Anzac Day as well given the arse-kicking Australian soldiers dished out to their Italian counterparts during WW11. To digress slightly, who can forget the story of a lone Australian soldier armed only with a pistol who was highly decorated after taking a score of enemy soldiers prisoner? Rumours of him being asked for the return of the medals when it was discovered they were only Italian soldiers are highly exaggerated.

 Admittedly, he's not alone in this ongoing, treasonous sabotage; many trendy Anglo Saxon (and Celtic) Leftists cherish the same destruction as worthy goals, a noteworthy example being a former Wallaby (for the uninitiated, Australian representative Rugby player ), now wannabe pirate, judging by the childish and ridiculous red bandanna he habitually wears around his skull, who also sees the fool's gold of an Australian republic being about the best thing since humans discovered sex.

The naivety and stupidity of those who truly believe that Australia, once freed from the apron strings of Mother England, or so the thinking goes of brains that haven't quite caught up with the 21st century, possibly even the 20th, and becomes a republic, will magically be transformed into a rolled-gold, 100% guaranteed, totally independent state is beyond incredible. One can only assume they've never heard of Globalisation which daily, like some, monstrous, earth-moving machine, rolls back the nation state into a status whereby its government is merely a branch management of Global United. Even if this wasn't happening, just how independent is Australia, regardless of its being a republic or a constitutional monarchy, when all factors leeching away its autonomy are considered; factors such as the UN which never tires of blackening our human rights record while studiously ignoring some of the worst outrages imaginable in the countries constituting the bulk of the UN.

Similar to a man believing he has free-will until he actually stops to consider all the factors eating away his supposed freedom of action, the same process at a national level dissipates much needless illusion. In order to avoid boring readers, a full list of the institutions and nations robbing Australia of true sovereignty will not be given, but here are some of the main offenders: the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation, various "think tanks" such as the Bilderbergers, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Club of Rome, the Pacific Asian Group (from out of the loins of the infamous Trilateral Commission), the People's Republic of China which if it ever decided to stop selling us stuff could blow us back to the pre-industrial age, and of course the good ole USA who's collective arse must be tender from all of our kissing -that is when our leaders are not kissing Indonesian arse for reasons totally unfathomable.

But back to DiNatale. He's not stupid, or at least not as stupid as Australians who have deep roots in the country, thus much more skin in the game than DiNatele but who nevertheless express the same sentiments. At least DiNatale, arriving effectively in the last shower, can feel unsoiled by the mythical blood- guilt for which he demands Anlgo Saxons atone. This is most likely the reason his self-righteousness know no bounds.

DiNatale knows that once (probably not if) his favourite obsessions are realised and historical ties are irrevocably severed, Australian Anglo Saxons will have their legs cut out from under them. Welcome to year zero. The people who once considered Australia theirs, people who demographers once referred to as the "host population", including other whites who've seamlessly assimilated, will be relegated to being just another ethnic group, another tribe, albeit the one most other tribes like to despise and one without the privileges and rights of all the others in what, if history is anything to go by, will culminate in the war of all against all. For DiNatale, how's that for getting square for all those school-yard slights?

 But of course his imagined Utopia is the unspoken goal of all truly dedicated  multiculturalists. For those who watch a never-ending parade of colourful characters from, to use a Trumpism, every shithole on the planet and quietly ask, "haven't we got enough multiculturalism by now?", this is your answer.

DiNatale's recent rabid cultural-Marxist support for homosexual marriage which the mugs recently agreed to after an almost unprecedented blizzard of propaganda (what harm can it do? in a wheedling tone) was a two-for-one deal. Not only did he succeed in sticking it right up Australian conservatives, he was there at the undertaker's when one of the final nails was driven into the coffin of Western civilization.

DiNatale is a perfect fit for the Greens, which is just as well as it's unlikely any other party would be loony enough to have him, as, as it seems, one would have to be loony to want to join the party which originated from a patching together of rabble from outfits comprising tree-huggers, anti-nuclear King Canutes, Marxists wandering lost, dazed and confused after the fall of the USSR and champions of "refugees", aka, illegal immigrants.

One of the looniest of the loons to find eventually find her way to the Greens' loony bin was one Sarah Hanson-Young who went on to be added to the list of Greens senators whose at all times total number could be comfortably accommodated in a telephone booth. She may be remembered for a stunt she pulled in 2015 in which she claimed to be helping to rescue refugees when in fact she was participating in the transportation of illegals by boat to Italy. Hanson-Young is the nation's number one self-appointed bleeding-heart and big-mouth advocate for illegal immigration into Australia. You'd think there'd be a law against that. Wait a minute! There is! It's called incitement to commit a criminal offence. So why the get-out-of-jail card? According to deep-thinkers like Hanson-Young, national borders are just so silly - a patriarchal invention to oppress the brothers and sisters of colour.

Initially, though it prominently displayed the colour green, its other true colours were kept tightly under wrap. One can imagine an early party meeting where the first order of day was the problem of being seen as a "single issue party" which as anyone with any political nous knows is poison to any party wishing to be taken seriously. The rationale for single issue parties, such as Peter Garrett's erstwhile Nuclear Disarmament Party - Peter later proved himself  a true politician when as a member of the Labor Party he couldn't see anything wrong with uranium mining in South Australia -  is to attract attention, be a form of protest or simply to annoy rather than be a credible competitor in the political power struggle.

And of course the latter is how the Greens wanted to be seen. The enormity of the problem would have been enough to settle a pall of silence over members at this early meeting until broken by an enthusiastic bearded chap at the back of the room who leapt from his chair and cried, "I've got it! Lets fill the gap left by the collapse of the Communist Party of Australia." Most looked doubtful. Some were sadly shaking their heads. However, the bearded one lifted a sandal-shod foot onto a vacant chair and continued, "but we don't need to be too specific and we won't be touching any of that Marxist economic mumbo jumbo with a barge pole. Capitalism with a human face; that's all we'll asking for." He was beaming. It was somehow contagious. Smiles were breaking out all around.

So the party, ostensibly concerning itself with environmental matters quickly forgot about such nonsense, busy as it was stationing itself somewhere between the Labor Party and Marxist/Leninism but much closer to the latter with the afore-mentioned economic mumbo jumbo jettisoned, ergo being informed by an ideology of Cultural Marxism with all the trimmings.

 It was for example one of the earliest proponents of homosexual marriage, this perhaps having something to do with its founder and first leader, Bob Brown, being a homosexual ... oops, can't say that any more. That's a term which, although value free, appears to be becoming almost as verboten as some of the old favourites like "shirt-lifter", "pillow-biter" and "wind-jammer". Bob, however, balanced things out by continuing to bang on about the environment and of course its greatest threat, climate change - the boogy man sure to frighten the bejesus out of children and adults and ultimately such a monumental problem that only a world government could solve. The early scare mongers of this myth predicted that well before now the inhabitants of most of the smaller Pacific Islands would be needing extra long snorkels, polar bears, or those remaining, would be ripping off their fur faster than an actress wanting a part in a Harvey Weinstein film shedding her clothes, and Australians would be living on a coastal belt thinner than a heroin addict with AIDS. Anyone with his head still above water would be aware that a measure of exaggeration had slipped into the narrative.

After considering all of the foregoing, it has occurred that no-one should really be giving a rat's about Richard DiNatale or the Greens even as much as they would like to be taken seriously and be seen as anything other than a party for which to provide a negative vote, that is, in protest at being forced by the stupidity of compulsory voting to vote for anyone at all, especially Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee when the largely disenfranchised wouldn't even consider ... well, doing anything at all for any of them even if they were on fire.

Without this negative protest vote the Greens and the traitorous DiNatale would be promoting a cause more lost than NASA succeeding forever with the fairy-tale that astronauts were actually sent to the moon rather than Stanley Kubrick's movie set. Sad but true: political illiterates vote for the Greens from a misapprehension that they are either doing something for the environment or choosing an impotent but innocuous alternative to voting for Lib/Lab. But that's democracy for you - a political system about which, none other than Winston Churchill  once claimed, a five minute conversation with the average voter would cause one to have serious doubts.

THE SHAME OF OUR NATIONAL DAY

Here we are at last, thankfully on the other side of the annual shit-storm known as Australia Day - our supposed national day. A full year before we have to go through it again. Given what it's become, it would be best if it was scrapped altogether. What has it become? Our illustrious prime-minister told us himself: it's a celebration of multiculturalism. "It's for everybody," he enthused, "from (weirdly) the hunter and gatherer who existed 65,000 years ago (the figure growing almost daily) to the baby in the arms of its migrant mother." Omitted of course is any mention of the silent, suffering, white majority descended from the pioneers who built the country - racist, murderous rednecks every one and as soon as a memory-hole big enough is bored out they'll all be dropped into it.

So now it is a colourful celebration of our propositional (non) nation held together by ... well, gloriously diverse people existing on the same plot of land. God forbid that it be a nation held together by such unmentionables as race, ethnicity and the religion that one thousand years go instigated a vicious war against peace-loving Muslims

The only way out of this annual quagmire of self-loathing and guilt is to scrap it altogether. Moving the date, as the current chant urges, will not solve anything and will definitely not change the history of this country being discovered, settled and developed into a shining outpost of civilization by white people. The pretend history preferred, that 300,000 stone-age nomads could have selfishly kept this continent to themselves would never have happened - even if Britain had never existed. Historical inevitability would not have allowed it. If not the British - perhaps the most humanitarian of colonialists - it would have been the French, the Dutch, the Spanish, the Portuguese or even Asians if they had not preferred the spadework to be already done before coming here. Without the British claiming the entire continent and willing to defend their claim, the land may even have been carved up between various powers. What could possibly have gone wrong with that?

Scrapping Australia Day would at least deprive the whingers, the bleeding hearts, race-traitors and human white-ants of a spot-lit stage. Unfortunately, this would only cause a minor slow-down. Once victim-hood is achieved, it will never been given up. Being a victim is a cherished position. It matters not what the supposed victimisers do to atone for the sins of the fathers; it will count for nothing. Victim-hood is too powerful a position ever to relinquish. It is no doubt so gratifying to be able to make so many people squirm and prostrate themselves in the dirt, as is the wont of white people, alone of all people to have such exquisite sensitivities to criticism of past wrongdoing. This is an Achilles's heel in the truest sense and where whites are most vulnerable - as so many nonwhites know only too well.

The most pathetic part of this Australia Day was seeing so many self-flagellating whites marching with Aborigines - of various shades from ebony to ivory - in their "day of mourning" protest, although most of these would simply be gullible stooges of the destructive Leftists pulling the strings.

These fools know so little, especially of history. "Invasion Day", as they refer to the date of the country's founding. When Arthur Phillip, the man who would become our first governor and who was given strict instructions from the British Government to treat Aborigines fairly and kindly, was organising settlement in Sydney Cove in the first few days of arrival, it's been recorded that curious Aborigines milled about trying to cadge food or whatever shiny objects were  available.

When one particular ignoramus was asked if this really sounded like an invasion, the response was, "well I don't know about that but ...." Of course she didn't know about that as well as any other relevant histgory. Her opinion, her jumping on the bandwagon when the direction it was taking could be safely determined, was based on nothing but feeling and emotion. This is perhaps excusable in a woman but to know beyond a doubt that so many men are arriving at the same opinion, the same way is almost enough to cause one to be embarrassed to be an Australian for a reason opposite to the cause of so many others' cringing pitiful embarrassment at being Australian.

The most nauseating characteristic of these idiots is their rank hypocrisy. Given that the hair-shirt syndrome is essentially a middle class disease, and almost by definition the middle class comprises property holders, here's a tip so golden it should be taken straight to the bank: instead of dicking around with meaningless, feel-good activities such as the change-the-date chant, do something that will really make a difference, such as giving your stolen property back to the rightful owners, the dispossessed Aborigines, then fucking off back to wherever you think your ancestors may have invaded from. What? No takers? 

If perhaps the cards had fallen a different way in the 1940s, if Hitler had been able to overcome his sentimental liking for the British and allowed his generals to eliminate its army at Dunkirk thus knocking Britain out of the war and at the same time precluding the US from using Britain as a springboard and becoming involved in the European war, the rationale for the US starting a war with Japan would have evaporated. Given this premise, it's arguable that Japan, emboldened, would have gone ahead and raided the Dutch East Indies for the oil of which it was being starved. Japan's "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere" may well have become a reality. How tempting then would poor, lonely, isolated Australia have become to the Japanese, after kicking the Dutch and the British - the once mighty whiteman - out of the way.

Even though we are now constantly told that Aborigines are the only real Australians, Australian white men, sadly deluded into thinking they were not merely blow-ins or "immigrants", recklessly threw away their lives to prevent the feared Japanese invasion of Australia that the Japanese High Command  had, unknown to anyone here, actually scotched.  In our alternate reality though, a Japanese invasion of Australia would almost have been assured. The British invasion of the Great South Land? That's not an invasion! The Japanese invasion of Australia? Now that's an invasion! Would Aborigines still be whinging about the Japanese invasion? That is highly unlikely. That's because, given the savagely racist nature of the Japanese - they regarded the Chinese as subhumans so one struggles to imagine their view of Australian Aborigines - in contrast to the trumped up racism of whites, it's highly unlikely an trace of Aboriginal life would still exist.

Scrap Australia Day? You can't be serious. I hear you. But look at it this way: it's headed for the scrapheap anyway so we might as well get it over and done with. We are involved in a war of attrition only one side knows is being fought. The Left, the side that is fully aware of the war and is actively  waging it, is fired with religious fanaticism and is indefatigable and will keep attacking like ravenous wolves against a herd of sheep. A decade ago, for example, who would have thought homosexual marriage would be legalised? The same will happen with every other obsession of the Left - the flag will fall, Australia will become a republic, the borders, if not completely abolished will become ever more porous, the name of Australia changed perhaps to something a little more indigenous (if not already given a Chinese name)  and Australia Day, a thing of shame, will be air-brushed out of history. That is, unless the other side gets to know about this war.

LOOKING FOR AUSTRALIA Part 5

THE BLUE LAKE AND MOUNT GAMBIA

The air smells like Pine-O-Clean, only natural. I'm entering the lush pine forest surrounding the city of Mount Gambia. Years ago as a dopey kid hitch-hiking through the area I had thought all these pine trees had sprung up of their own accord. I know now however they've arrived courtesy of the hand of man, one man in particular who had the perspicacity and vision to be able to see the area's potential for such a valuable co-operation with nature. It's late in a day of baking heat and I've been beginning to droop but the pine air has revived me like a dose of smelling salts.

I'm soon in the centre of the city, riding up a steep hill which is actually an extinct volcano, relatively young as extinct volcanoes go, coming in at a mere 4,800 years. Aborigines would have been present during its active life and indeed myths still exist in the uniquely creative way Aborigines have of explaining natural phenomena.

What I like about this particular volcano - admittedly I haven't seen many although the sight of the aftermath of Mount Pinatubo's last eruption in the Philippines is one I won't soon forget - is the lake held in the crater. By the time I reach the rim still enough light is left in the sky to paint the lake its unique bluer-than-blue colour. Scientists, volcanologists and geologists have scratched their brainy heads over this phenomenon but alas in vain. No-one has a clue why the lake is the colour it is - it just is.

I take some time to drink in the strange beauty then ride off to pitch my tent in a caravan park conveniently close to the lake. It's an upmarket park with fees reflecting the fact and if I wasn't feeling so good I'd be stewing over how much I have to pay for the minuscule patch of grass my tent takes up. I know I won't be using the swimming pool as I prefer a real swim as opposed to a splash and I definitely won't be using the huge inflated rubber "jumping cushion" although it's amusing to watch kids doing their moon-walks, or rather moon-runs along its length.

It's a Friday night and in town the joint's jumping, the pubs are full of drinkers still in the happy stage before their individual personalities take them to whatever mood in which they are destine to end up.

My road-diet fails to improve as I strategically ensconce myself in a pizza joint across the road from one of the big pubs from where I can keep an eye on the dolled-up girls exiled to the footpath outside the pub while they smoke their all but outlawed cigarettes. Blondes predominate. In my mind, trained as I have it in my own peculiar way, blondes are somehow quintessentially Australian (no telling how many times I've been fooled by the peroxide variety). Perhaps the sentiment is not completely groundless; early observers of Australia, including DH Lawrence, noted the suntanned bodies and blondness of Australians. I'm no sport's fan but I'm oddly gratified at the sight of handsome female Nordics representing Australia at international sporting events - Valkyries prowling the battlefield.

 The male companions of the footpath girls, some of whom are not even smoking so it's easy to tell their real reasons for being outside while the beer remains inside, are healthy looking, strapping specimens lacking the pallor one often sees in office workers.

As I confirm in my wandering about the city in the couple of days I stay, this is another solid Australian town, suspended in amber to show how all of Australia once was. It is so far from Sydney and Melboune in ways in which distance is only a bit player, it could be an alternate reality. It is Australia before the Fall.  Here one hears only pure Australian accents, not the Babel-like mixture of languages one can hear on any street corner in the central business district of Sydney, not the English so heavily accented it is incomprehensible, just the English we've styled for ourselves.

Unsurprisingly, the volcano in which the Blue Lake nestles was not a solo outburst of the Earth's internal furnace; the entire area saw forms of volcanic activity. Virtually in the city's centre is a deep sink-hole. It is now the site of a nightly light show with projections of images telling of the spiritual characters and their conflicts that caused so much fiery mayhem so long ago.

An English couple I meet in the caravan park who have been touring the country on, from all accounts, an indestructible BMW bike for the last eight months - given I'm starting to wilt after a mere couple of weeks in the saddle, I can't help being impressed - tell me of another extinct volcano sans lake about twelve K out of town, so I decide to investigate.

No road leads to the rim of this one. Shank's pony (for non-Australians, this is Australian English for going on foot) is the only mode of transport. Very considerate I think, noting the well-fashioned steps and smooth inclining paths of the initial climb but I change my opinion and decide that these exist simply to lure the unwary into a climb that soon dispenses with the helpful paths and steps in a return to an au naturel state, that is, a rude, rugged track. Luckily, showing rare foresight, I’d decided motorcycle boots weren’t exactly ideal footwear for climbing volcanoes but to save weight the only other shoes I've packed are a pair of light sneakers. After a short distance on the new, unimproved path it's apparent that neither are these the ideal apparel for the task at hand. It seems I'm feeling every little pebble and for preventing ankle twisting I might as well be barefooted. But I have no choice but to continue - that is if I want to continue living with myself. 

After a slog, although and liberally punctuated with rest breaks, that has my shirt soaked with perspiration, I finally reach the rim of the volcano and am able to look down at the bottom of the crater far below. For souls far more ambition than myself, another track leads down the inside wall of the crater and across it’s floor. Why does a floor exist and not a hole leading somewhere like in Jules Vern’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth? Being the ultimate layman in this regard, I can only surmise that after a volcano finishes its hell-raising and settles down, the hole becomes plugged with lava. I can see that some energetic person is taking the alternative route but from my lofty perch he or she appears only as a moving dot.

Looking outward from the rim affords me a magnificent view of the surrounding countryside of patchwork farms. I can see so far, the curvature of the earth is easily discernible. As far as I can tell, views like this provide the only reason people climb mountains, besides of course because they are there.

After the effort of getting up here, it seems a shame to go straight down again so I set off on what is about a five kilometre hike around the rim, stopping periodically to look back down into the crater and try to comprehend the energy necessary to blow a hole this big in the Earth’s crust. The dot is now moving up the wall opposite the part of the rim on which I’m standing.

The sign at the border welcoming me to Victoria should be accompanied by another adding “and we apologise for not spending nearly as much on roads as is done in South Australia”, because right on cue the smooth bitumen ceases as though its been neatly guillotined and on the Victorian side of the invisible line the road becomes like someone would design to test automotive suspension. There is though a sign a little further along that informs in hilarious understatement “Rough Road Ahead”. How about the road behind? If that wasn’t rough, I grimace at trying to imagine what Victorian’s consider true roughness. I’ll find out later that the two very hard-boiled eggs and small coffee plunger, which I can’t do without and has survived some serious punishment, and which I have stored in the bike’s rear top-box have shattered and have formed a mixture of specks of broken glass, tiny pieces of eggshell and almost atomized egg that has become evenly dispersed throughout everything else in the tightly packed top-box.

However, blissfully unaware of this, my attention is lasered on the road ahead as I try, sometimes standing on the pegs to absorb the shocks with my legs, to pick paths through the worst of the bumps, holes and corrugations.

I’ve left the calming scent of the pine groves surrounding Mount Gambia far behind. Now, reaching high, are drab green and, in comparison to the orderly and well-dressed pines, wildly non-symmetrical and unkempt natives, mostly eucalypts. In an uncanny flash of synchronicity, I spot a huge tree, evidently of great age, the trunk of which bears a long scar. It’s an obvious memento of, as I’ve learnt only a few hours earlier, while reading over coffee, Blainey’s The Triumph of the Nomads, the Aboriginal practice of removing bark with which to fashion one-man, throw-away canoes. The missing bark would never regenerate, leaving an elongated bald-patch, but no injury would be caused to the tree which would continue to grow.

 Here and there, creepy, pale and misshapen dead trees are transformed by my overactive imagination into emaciated, bony-fingered crones lying in wait for an unsuspecting Hansel and Gretel. 

To be continued

CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS?

MOVE RIGHT ALONG FOLKS. NOTHING TO SEE HERE

No nothing to see here folks, at least not for the Leftist Victorian Government led by Chief Leftist, Premier Daniel Andrews (adoring fan of "Safe Schools" gender bending outrage). Victorian Police Commissioner Graham Ashton, currently tying himself into semantic knots over what constitutes a "gang", scoffs at the suggestion of Sudanese gangs causing mayhem in Melbourne. This while ramping up the battle against violent crime by African street gangs with a newly announced task force - curiouser and curiouser. His state of denial and irritation is a reaction to the charge from none other then Peter Dutton, the Minister of Home Affairs - a super-portfolio including Immigration - that Victorians are now too scared to go to restaurants at night for fear of African violence and especially of being followed home by dark people with evil intentions.

 Ashton though is still not swayed even after a wide-ranging poll had borne out exactly what Dutton was saying - that a majority of those polled were far less likely to go out at night than they were a year ago, intimidated as they were by gang violence.

 Peter Martin, writing for the Leftist fake news monger, the Sun Herald, Sunday January 14, 2018 does see a problem but it's actually the problem of the media (the Sun Herald excepted of course) creating the illusion of a problem. He helpfully gives an earlier example of the same phenomenon:

"In Adelaide a decade ago, it was the "Gang of 49". There never was a Gang of 49; The Advertiser coined the term to describe 49 mainly Aboriginal youths the police said they were looking for.

"The catchphrase had unfortunate consequences. Former police say it created gangs. Dispossessed, often homeless youths started saying they were part of Gang of 49 and stealing cars and doing ram-raids to prove it."

So there you are. See how easy it is for confusion to arise. Exactly the same thing is happening now with Victorians reluctant to venture out of their homes so terrified are they of rampaging Sudanese gangs. Silly sausages. They should be listening to Police Commissioner Ashton (who obviously knows on which side his bread is buttered) who Martin quotes as saying, it was "complete and utter garbage" to, as Martin fills in "suggest ... that Victorians aren't safe.

The next day Sydney's Daily Telegraph columnist, Tim Blair, not so cosily agreeable with the Police Commissioner, notes Ashton's inability to come to terms with the word "gangs" in relation to Sudanese, well, gangs. "Those aren't gangs ... Rather, they are young people coming together and networking through social media and then engaging in criminal activity." (Perhaps simply like rowdy behaviour or crossing roads against the "don't walk" signal.)  

But back to journalist/propagandist Martin and his shenanigans: "The perpetrators are overwhelmingly Australian-born." Sleight of hand really needs to be less ham-fisted to stand any chance of fooling anyone. "Australian-born" here is meant to imply that though they may be of Sudanese descent, the fact that they were born here and breathed Australian air and, given that race is simply a "social construct", they are magically just as dinky di Aussie as Crocodile Dundee. Here's a concession though: "Although Sudanese youths are over-represented in minor crime statistics (as might be expected given high unemployment and pockets of socio-economic disadvantage) [boo hoo] the perpetrators of serious assaults are 25 times more likely to be born in Australia than in Sudan or Kenya." Really! Only someone completely addled by drugs or Alzheimer's would be incapable of seeing through this garbage. Any reputable producer of propaganda would be throwing Martin out on his arse for this clumsy effort. In this second embarrassing attempt at deceit, he conflates the already used "Australian born" trick with no effort to adjust for the Sudanese percentage (born there or here; it doesn't matter) of the Australian population. And how atrocious does an assault have to be before it rates as "serious" in Martin's book?

So what are the figures when properly adjusted per head of population? Caroline Marcus, another Telegraph journalist quotes figures issued from the Victorian Crime Statistics Agency in a January 2 column. Specifically omitting Australian-born African Blacks, the information given is that "men of Sudanese or South Sudanese origin are six times more likely to be arrested by police than those who are Australian-born [that is, actual Australians]".

Could be the problem be here really racist white cops busting Sudanese kids just trying to have a little fun? Or so goes the Leftist wet-dream What then are their crimes if worse than pinching lunch-money from school-children? Let us count the ways.

Almost as an echo of the way Muslims celebrate New Year in Germany (rape, robbery and sexual molestation) and Paris (burning cars), Sudanese in Australia have their own unique take on celebration.

"In 'frightening' incidents on New Year's Eve  this year [2015] [Major Nottle of the Salvation Army] said large numbers of 'African youth' clashed on Russel and Swanston Streets in the early hours of the morning." This from a March 2016 article in The AGE, which being a fellow traveler with the Sydney Morning Herald and the Sun Herald, of course proceeded to roll out through the mouth of do-gooder  Nottle a defence argument citing disconnectedness, feelings of alienation, lack of education, lack of employment and the icing on the cake: after growing up in a country devoid of law and order, how were they supposed to recognise law and order when they saw it? Case dismissed.

Here though are a few statistics that would no doubt have have The Age journalist responsible for the foregoing apologia and Major Nottle desperately trying to imitate at least two of the three wise monkeys. They come courtesy of Victorian Police defying their government's bullshit initiative and relayed by gutsy, tell-it-how-it-is journalist Andrew Bolt (Herald Sun April 13, 2017):

Sudanese are 44 times more likely to break the law - than, presumably, everybody else living in Australia.

Bearing in mind they make up a mere 0.11 per cent of Victoria's population, they commit 48 per cent of aggravated burglaries, 5.65 per cent of car thefts, 13.9 per cent of aggravated robberies and 44 per cent of home invasions.

Let's for a moment focus on the latter which, in something of an understatement a recent commentator noted as "unAustralian" as indeed they are given they were unheard of before enrichment by mass, third world immigration. Now to ram home the 44 per cent figure, let's try putting it another way: our new black friends are 77 times more likely than are Australian youths to be committing these atrocities.

Anyone who has come home to find their home burgled knows well the sickening feeling of violation.  How many orders of multitudes worse must it be to be held up, robbed, threatened with violence or have violence used against you in your own home? The trauma caused would be unlikely to ever be completely outlived.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z-isB2ubXd4

One of the major and most troublesome gangs calls itself the Apex Gang which isn't exactly well thought out or fearsome. Let's be honest here; it's not exactly up there with the Bloods and the Crips and may even be confused with the Apex Club, a non-profit group of philanthropists. However, philanthropists they are not, being the polar opposites, hate-twisted misanthropes who, like most of the other gangs, have diverse interests that include, car-theft, robberies, assault, destruction of property and of course, not to be left out of the general festivities, home invasions. A much favoured interest is targeting Chinese students for robbery and assault, notwithstanding a long-standing meme that white racism was what Asians in Australia had most to fear.

Aftermath of African "party" in Melbourne

As with home-invasions, another form of crime previously unknown to Australians has arisen courtesy of the Sudanese repaying Australian generosity and refuge in the African way.

A year ago a happy crowd  attending the family-friendly Summersault festival in Melbourne's west were rudely introduced to this crime newly minted in Australia. It had been a day of fun, food-stalls and music. Around 10.00 pm while the crowd was enjoying the fireworks meant to be the climax of a pleasant day, a far different climax erupted. Initially, people distracted by the fireworks only started to become aware of a disturbance. The disturbance was a mob of up to seventy youths "of African appearance" swarming through the crowd, kicking and striking people and stealing wallets, purses, mobile phones and anything else they could lay their hands on. Saint John's Ambulance volunteers treated the injured and at least one person was hospitalised. Welcome to the jungle.

So what's being done? That is apart from Police Commissioner Ashton's hastily organised strike force to combat the crime-wave while he agonises over whether these gangs are really gangs. The betting would have to be that because of a State government dousing itself in politically correct perfume, it will be a softly softly approach with the police still kept on a tight leash. We've seen this before with Muslim crime, particularly in regard to rape, where police are placed in an impossible situation - too soft and they are accused of not doing their job, to hard and the accusations of racism start to fly. Is it any wonder the constabulary becomes effectively paralyzed?

With suspicions rife that this will be the end result, the ante has been upped and Leftist talking heads and politicians suitably outraged by a concerned group pledging to step into the void and do the job that is not being done. Naturally, the airwaves have been rent with the cry of "vigilantism!" Particularly irksome to the PC brigade is that the prospective "vigilantes" happens to be the True Blue Crew, a "far right" organisation pitted strenuously against mass immigration and multiculturalism, and have engaged in street battles against Antifa lunatics. So of course we get "Congratulations Australia. We've Normalised Neo Nazis". This after members of the TBC being interviewed on television by an interviewer perceived to be, horror of horrors, slightly sympathetic to the group's concerns.

All the group has revealed so far is that they will begin patrolling known trouble spots. If in the event of their being attacked, they are reserving their right to self-defence. Citizens' arrests would also be their absolute right. Conceding for argument's sake that they will become vigilantes, so what. Is that really so bad. It is not as though precedents haven't been set. It may be remembered that New York's Guardian Angels originated for exactly the same reason - to provide safety to citizens when no-one else was. Initially frowned upon, the organisation is now a world-wide phenomenon and has been actually praised by a number of New York mayors (but of course the Angels are not weighed down by the same explosive political baggage as the TBC).

In 2005, Professor Andrew Fraser, a Canadian born academic teaching Constitutional History at Macquarie University in Sydney ignited a furor by simply writing a letter to a local newspaper in which he claimed Australia was heading for trouble by agreeing to accept refugees from Sudan, people who were so different in every way to the host culture as to render them impossible to integrate. "Experience everywhere in the world shows us that an expanding black population is a sure-fire recipe for increases in crime, violence and other social problems," he wrote.

Outrage naturally followed. Initially, although hurriedly distancing itself from Fraser's views, Macquarie University stood by Fraser citing his freedom of opinion and expression. However, as academia, once the marketplace of ideas, has instead become a closed shop, support was wavering almost as soon as it was given. Fraser was then only around five years from retirement age. Would he be interested in an early retirement sweetened by a generous severance pay-out? Fraser said, "no thanks". He equated what was being offered as a "dishonourable discharge".

Worried and fearful, with the ball back in its court, the university leapt upon an outcry from the Sudanese community, represented by photogenic fellows in suits who could speak English, against endemic Australian racism, to suspend Fraser from teaching. The grounds were fears that the "race debate" would spill over onto the campus thus impeding students' ability to concentrate on their studies. This incidentally was not the first time an academic career in Australia has been destroyed because of temerity in not cleaving to the party-line.

To any reasonable person, Professor Fraser would now have to be vindicated. Unfortunately, the Left is anything but reasonable. It must remain blind to reality or its complete world-view would collapse and rather than that happen, it would prefer nations to collapse.

LOOKING FOR AUSTRALIA Part 4

Back on the mainland, I feel somehow freer, less confined which when I reflect on it seems utterly ridiculous. After all, I was  only on Kangaroo Island – not Devil’s Island. But the road beckons and I succumb to its lure.

However, I don't get far. This is because I make a snap decision to turn of the road in the direction of a sign pointing to a place named Victor Harbor. I'd been slowing down anyway because of the scenery acting on my progress like a wind-anchor. But right up until now Victor Harbor had been a total black spot in my consciousness. On the quieter road diverting me closer to the coast, I'm already taking exception to the misspelling of "harbour". (The lame but best explanation later research throws up is that around the time of the settlement's founding, American spelling was making a concerted effort to muscle in on an Australian English just finding its feet.)

Officially its a city but I have a mental block in thinking of towns of this size as cities. As I ride along the dog-legged main street I can feel myself being captivated. Perhaps Aborigines really are on the money when they talk about spirits residing in various places. That may explain where the charm offensive is coming from - the spirit of Victor Harbor. I'll just rest for a bit, have a cup of coffee and then be on my way, I tell myself. After the coffee is drunk, and it being such a beautiful day, I decide to take a short stroll before throwing my leg over the bike.

WOODEN CAUSEWAY TO GRANITE ISLAND, VICTOR HARBOR

As usual, I'm drawn to the sea. It fairly glitters in the noonday sun. But what do I see here? It's a long wooden causeway connecting the seaside to what looks like a scrub topped clump of rock. It's named Granite Island, I find out later. Even better, moving along the causeway pulled by two beautiful and beautifully groomed matching draft horses is an open upper deck tram appearing out of the nineteenth century. The horses are Palominos with white faces and tails and wearing impeccable white horsehair boots. Oh, this is just too much, I'm thinking. This is one of those moments when looked back on, it's realised one was happy. Blink and you miss it.

HORSE DRAWN TRAM VICTOR HARBOR

I really should get going, but what's that over there? Closer investigation reveals it is a whaling museum. Victor Harbor, like so many other southern Australian coastal locations rode not on the sheep's back but on the whale's back when whale oil was ocean-going gold. Unlike the whalers prowling the seas - windblown predators - the land-bound hunters such as operated from Victor Harbor took to the sea in flimsy whaleboats, no matter the weather, to row like hell in pursuit of the biggest animal in creation. This was definitely men's work. If it still existed today, it's highly probable that even the most feisty of the "girls can do anything" brigade would draw the line at entering this kind of employment.

As I'm standing for long moments outside the entrance of the museum, looking at my watch trying to decide if I have enough time to check it out, I hear a voice from inside saying, "Are you going to stand there all day or are you coming in?" I enter the cavernous building as though I've been pushed in the back. The owner of the voice turns out to be a young Englishman volunteering at this monument to a (happily) bygone era. He in no way matches the gruffness of the voice and I'm soon being beguiled by his knowledge of and passion for his chosen subject. I have to break away from him if I'm to see the exhibits here. I do, and it's fascinating. Rammed home is the realisation that catching the whale at distinct danger to life and limb was only half the fun. Extracting the oil was the other half. Brown tinted photos show men stripped to the waist, standing on dead whales and wielding what look to be poles with cutlass-like blades forming the business end. With these they would slice long strips of blubber from the whales. I've worked at some very physically demanding jobs myself but I can only imagine how hard this work would have been. 

Several rusting try pots are on display. These were the pots (roughly the size of those used by cannibals to make stew of missionaries in old cartoons) in which the sliced and diced blubber was melted down into the end product.

By the time I finish my journey into the world of whaling and have a parting conversation with the English volunteer it's well into the afternoon. As I rather subconsciously suspected, I'm not riding any further today. This quaint locale is where I would be pitching my tent.

I can't even follow through on my plan to get an early start the next day. A leisurely breakfast in a cafe smelling richly of coffee and croissants is followed by the inclination to have one final look around.

It's almost noon by the time I'm back on the highway that will take me along what is now known as the Limestone Coast, aka the shipwreck coast, an apt name as the area is virtually littered with old shipwrecks, far more than I ever thought possible. That's probably because I'm thinking in terms of modern navigation aids which by comparison, the navigational tools of the wooden sailing ships and even the later steamships were primitive. Some ships were wrecked because their captains believed them to be miles from where they truly were.

I want to make it in one hit to Mount Gambia, a city I have fond memories of, especially the incredible Blue Lake which oddly sits far above the town. This is because it is actually a dead volcano filled with water. It's a decent slog from start to finish and I'm not even sure why I want to cover so much distance. It's perhaps I feel I've been dawdling and need to make up some time, which I don't really because, as the Stones once sung, time is on my side.

Even so, I'm guilty of doing a little more dawdling on some of the areas I pass through, each in their own way every bit as enchanting as Victor Harbor. Unsurprisingly, most of the towns and villages along the coast have rich maritime histories. Wooden boats more than a century old tied up at street-long, grey/blue wooden wharves don't seem to be all that far out of place.

Eventually I come to the city of Kingston SE (South East, added to distinguish it from another Kingston in the state which later became Kingston on the Murray, adding another layer of protection against it being mistaken for the wrong town. Now one would think that development would have allowed the Kingston along whose main road I'm now riding to ditch the SE once it was safe from confusion, but it hasn't) I don't have any problem in thinking of this town as a city as it is spread out and confusing enough to be legitimately thought of as such.

The Big Lobster I can safely avoid without it troubling my conscience but with my passion for Australian history, how can I go past the maritime museum and replica nineteenth century village?
The museum is filled mostly with artifacts retrieved from wrecks, some rusting and decidedly worse for wear, while others appear to be in mint condition. I stand before and old diving helmet and suit and wonder how,with my claustrophobia, I'd like to have my head in such a thing, not to mention the total trust that one would have to have in those above pumping air down through a vulnerable rubber hose. Here is another job I suspect would not be causing women to complain about "male-dominated" professions.

Even while I'm expecting the exhibits I'm peeking through windows at the little re-created village below, eager to get down to it.

OK, it's a bit kitschy but I'm loving it, all the little shops in faithful rendering of a long ago time - the dress shop containing clothes so unlike what women wear today and which would no doubt cause the nineteenth century ladies to positively swoon. There's the blacksmith's, the ships chandler, the tiny newspaper with hand-operated printing press, the pub in the likes of which it would be highly unlikely for responsible service of alcohol regulations to be rigidly adhered to. Those pubs had a singular purpose. They were places in which to get pissed. There's even a quaint tea shop which sells real tea and coffee served by wenches in nineteenth century attire. I'm hoping the scones are not of the same era.

Coffeed and sconed, I continue my meandering. I pop my head into a shed stuffed full of old equipment that I'm tipping is the real deal. Instantly capturing my attention is an old sign on which is written in fading script, "Rocket Crew Practice" below which is a scarred blackboard where dates and times of practice were presumably chalked. To the uninitiated, the term "Rocket Crew" would conjure up an impossibly futuristic image for something supposedly belonging to one and a half centuries ago, but I'm familiar with the concept. I know it has nothing to do with men hurtling through space, notwithstanding the imagination of Jules Verne.

Au contraire, the rocket crews of which I speak operated far from outer space in the more familiar but often even more deadly environment of rocky coasts usually in the midst of howling storms. The mainstay of apparatus used by the crews was invented in 1808 by one of those old fashioned humanitarians who these days appear to be fairly thin on the ground. He was the Englishman, Henry Trengrouse who, appalled at the loss of life on ships smashed on coastal shores, dedicated himself to finding a way of alleviating it. (Lifeboats sent from the shore in violent seas often resulted in an even greater loss of life.)

He determined to improve on the semi-successful existing system of firing a lifeline from a mortar on shore to the doomed ship. The main reason for its limited success was that the instant velocity at which the shell left the mortar often snapped the line. Trengrouse reasoned that a line attached to a rocket which took longer to attain full velocity would solve the problem - and it did. The problem remaining was that a ship any further out from shore than around 500 yards, or about 460 metres, was out of range, the passengers and crew essentially doomed. Even so, an enormous number of ships were being wrecked within that range,

The rocket and tube from which it was fired was the centrepiece of equipment that usually needed a cart to transport - lines, rope, tripods, pulleys, blocks and tackle and breeches buoy which was a life ring forming the rim of a canvas bag with two holes in the bottom for legs to go through. The method comprised firing a rocket attached to a thin line over the stricken ship. In raging storms with wild winds, this was obviously no easy task and the reason regular practice was called for. Once succeeding to get the line aboard it would be used to pull aboard a hawser, or heavy rope which would be secured to the ship. The shore end of the rope would need to be at least initially attached to a higher point than where it was attached to the ship in order that a pulley attached to a line and holding the breech buoy could then be sent out to the ship and used to safely transfer passengers and crew to shore. It must have been the wildest flying fox ride imaginable. When the Sirius (a first fleet ship and workhorse of the early colony) was wrecked on a reef in Sydney Bay on Norfolk Island, a similar system was used to save the human cargo, supplies and much of the food of which the ship was making an emergency delivery.

In LP Harley's novel, The Go Between, the famous opening sentence is "The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there". Was there ever a truer sentence written?

To be continued

SO YOU THINK YOU LIVE IN A DEMOCRACY

 You really think you live in a democracy? Ha ha ha! Sorry. It's just that, well "democracy" is really very close to being just a made up word like "homophobia" designed to have you thinking a certain way. For an analysis of this kind of scam, you couldn't do better than checking out George Orwell’s essay, Politics and the English Language. 

Speaking of Homophobia (you may say) haven’t we just been given an excellent illustration of true democracy in action in the postal vote/survey/plebiscite in which we were able to have our say in whether or not to overturn thousands of years of history, tradition and normality and allow homosexuals to marry? True enough; you were. But this was really just a gimmick to spin the illusion that people could prevent something that was going to happen anyway, by whatever means. Something this fashionable and trendy and such a hot number with the leftist hegemony was never going to be stopped.

Let’s look at something a little more substantial and far more nation-wrecking than homosexual marriage – something like, say, mass immigration and its conjoined twin, multiculturalism. Now think carefully; when was the last time you were allowed to have a say regarding these twin evils. That’s right. Never. Rather than an illustration of democracy in action, this has been a graphic illustration of revolution from the top down. You were never allowed to have your say because our masters knew perfectly well what you would say – that you didn’t want a bar of either. Every opinion poll ever conducted has shown that conclusively.

To completely shut the people out of a political decision is obscenely easy. All that’s needed is a bipartisan policy. This is when Lib/Lab drops the charade of being mortal enemies in the game of my turn – your turn, and show their true colours of being a united elite saying “up yours” to the proles. “We have every right to do this because of conditions agreed to in the social contract,” they might add. (I see you scratching your head, trying to remember when you signed up to such a thing.)

The quarantining of the immigration issue represented a doubling down on any form of open debate with a place at the table for those most affected by it: those lacking the wherewithal to take take to the air in white flight. Former Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, for example, stated bluntly and arrogantly that “We will not allow to become a political issue in this country the question of Asianisation”. The Liberal Party and the lapdog media were only too happy to comply.

Their never-fail fall-back is to remind us after all that our political system is called representative or responsible government, meaning that we have chosen them to represent us and take on the responsibility for what happens (which curiously they never do. This is where the two-party system comes into its own. The party responsible for the fuck-up simply blames the other party for laying the ground-work to it.)

It has to be grudgingly admitted they have a point. Anything coming close to the ideal democracy of which we dream could only appear in a city-state such as ancient Athens, about the size of Dubbo and even then, it was a male only affair (settle down girls). Applied to anything bigger, it would cause the system to seize up and collapse under the weight of its own complexity .

And of course, as civilization became more intricate, complicated and technologically advanced, Joe, the working stiff would have been hopelessly out of his depth in contributing in any meaningful way to arriving at a decision that would affect all. Representative government was an idea whose time had come. The problem here though is that, distilled into its purity, the idea was that mug citizen could compare and contrast candidates for government with a view to winnowing out the person with the views, opinions and attitudes closest to his own to represent him. Note the emphasis is on him (OK) or her. Him or her and not the frigging party to which said candidate belongs. This is the party trick that's been pulled on the proles for centuries.

No matter what your "representative" has told you before the election, it doesn't matter. Once in, he or she will have to toe the party line and if by some slim chance that somehow coincides with what you want, then you've won the electoral lottery, but most times it won't. It's not outside the realms of possibility that a politicians' handbook exists providing a surfeit of excuses for not being able to follow through on a promise to voters. Top of the pops would be that a sudden, totally unexpected downturn in the economy has thrown up a road block to planned initiatives. Another favourite is that the previous government has wrought even more damage than was formerly suspected. This could be termed the "damage control" clause. Or perhaps, linked to the economic excuse, the sudden sinking of the dollar has unfortunately caused the expense of the bag of promises to be prohibitive. It doesn't matter that you know they are lying; they don't care. After all, lying is what politicians are expected to do. It goes with the territory almost to the point where it is a prerequisite for the job. And naturally to be able to lie so convincingly and so utterly remorselessly presupposes a certain level of psychopathology.  

If wondering who the all time champions in this game were, look no further than the 1940 US presidential election in which both candidates, Wendell Willkie and FDR, both went to the people promising to keep America out of the war when both were conniving to get America into the war. (The rest of course is history. FDR forced and allowed Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor - the infamous "back door" into the war.)

Most people have heard of "pressure group" politics but its possible few have considered the phenomenon as a wrecking ball swinging against what shell of democracy may be remaining. While all voters are equal (as long as they haven't voted early and often which in Australia is particularly difficult to rule out) not all pressure groups are equal so neither is the power they wield. And of course it all takes place after a government has been elected. The Teachers' Federation, for example, is powerful in its ability to steer curriculum toward the lunatic left. However, its power pales considerably in comparison to really big hitters like the media or big business, closely aligned of course. But the biggest elephant in the spare bedroom is the banks, while riding the elephant is the central banks and the central banks' central bank, the Bank for International Settlements, BIS, in Switzerland radioing instructions to the jockey. 

How powerful are the banks?  Would you agree that wealth equals power? Then how much power would you have if you had a machine that could produce an infinite supply of money?  It just so happens that the banks have such a machine whereby, courtesy of a magician's trick known as "Fractional Reserve Banking", banks have the ability to conjure up credit (money) out of thin air and then charge crippling interest on it. Their most valued customers? Governments of course - guilt edged prospects because of the power of taxation they have over their mug subjects. Common politicians' lie omitted from previous list: "we will reduce the national dept!". No they won't. The national debt will not only remain, but continue to grow like a fat person trapped in a MacDonald's. Why? Because this is the way the banks want it. Who after all would like to see their golden goose slip the chain?

And not to leave out a powerful interest or pressure group, let's not forget the Jewish Lobby, which former NSW premiere Bob Carr politely termed "the Israeli lobby", when wanting to draw attention to its power staggeringly disproportionate to the number of Jews in Australia.

Now for a spot of interactive blogging. See if you can guess from the short list of pressure groups provided which groups drive our immigration policy.

It could be argued that nothing prevents Joe Citizen from organising his own pressure group once he realises the worthlessness of his vote, but even if he had the time, the education, the resources, the energy after slaving at his slave job five days a week, or even the inclination, his efforts, given the phalanxes of hostile giants ranged against him, would be no more than a mosquito bite on a rhinoceros.  

All of the above may just provide some insight into why the American founding fathers decided to include the second amendment in the US constitution. They were prescient enough to know that there had to be a better way than the ballot box to get rid of a regime that was fundamentally opposed to the interests of the people for whom it was supposed to providing government, moreover, showing by its actions that it had nothing but contempt for those same people. Interestingly, they never even pretended to be giving birth to a democracy, something they feared and loathed as mob rule. It was the founding of a republic with only limited suffrage they were concerned with. Perhaps it was another example of their extraordinary vision that they knew exactly where democracy would lead to - a secular religion with fraudsters and psychopaths as its high priests. Where we are, at the end of that long road, democracy bears an uncanny resemblance to communism in that a promise of the purest freedom led to its opposite. 

LOOKING FOR AUSTRALIA Part 3

 I

I'm now heading east in my planned curcuit of the south eastern Australian mainland back in the coastal belt where the great majority of Australians live and it's obvious why they've never wanted to leave it. The scenery I'm seeing through my visor is a 3D artistic rendering as though by a god. It's the most spectacular I've seen since a visit to New Zealand some years previously. (The Kiwis have to have something going for them beside the All Blacks.)

Y

I slow down and lift my bug-spattered visor to get a better look. An extensive paint box has been used in the production: the fawn, grassy hills contrasting against hills coated in dark green foliage while the bright, spinach green of agricultural fields in the lowlands drink in the sun. To my right the the sapphire blue Indian Ocean glistens with bouncing sunlight. Between rocky outcrops almost as old as the planet itself, slivers of golden beaches try to hide. In this kind of environment it's common for me to be lured into a kind of mind-game in which I try to comprehend time spans in which  waves pound against timeless rock ad infinitum, and just as commonly this time, I feel it doing my head in.
I hug the coast all the way down Fleurieu Peninsula to Cape Jervis. There I descend to the terminal where cars are parked, waiting for the Sealink ferry that will transport them and their drivers and passengers to Kangaroo Island which I've already spotted draped almost mirage-like along the horizon. I've only learned recently it is much bigger than I imagined - around 170 kilometers in length.

Although mine is one of the first vehicles in the three lines waiting to board, after the Ferry has arrived, swung around, backed in and dropped its huge rear door, I'm about the last to get the signal to ride aboard. It hasn't been all that comfortable waiting under a merciless sun but I understand the need for a well organised, almost choreographed vehicular loading I'm finally rewarded with a private niche where my bike is secured by ropes to the handlebars.

It's not long after casting off that I fully appreciate the need to secure my bike against falling over. The three quarter hour crossing is as rough as guts. I try not to grin while watching fellow passengers  moving about the rear deck as laughably as comedians impersonating drunks and girls impersonating Marilyn Monroe trying to keep their dresses from blowing up around their heads in the brisk sea breeze.

At the the terminal at other end of the short trip, the first thing that strikes me is the colour of the water in the bay of the tiny town of Penneshaw where we dock. It's coloured an almost impossible turquoise. It's the same startling gem colour I will see again in most the bays around the island. The hills of the mainland rising out of the sea cause an odd feeling for a landlubber like myself looking back at my country without actually leaving it.

After the morning's ride, waiting in the sun and the sea voyage, however brief, I don't feel like going any further today so ride into the yard of a small hostel I've been told is good value - in other words, cheap. Being a habitual Scrooge regarding spending on accommodation, this appeals to me. Curiously, at the very bottom of Australia, I find two Chinese girls in charge. They both have the smiley, doll-like quality I'm often disarmed by in Asian girls. When I ask which one is the boss they both giggle and tell me the boss, the man who owns the place, is not here at the moment. It turns out the girls are in Australia on student visas and are working for accommodation in lieu of pay. I compliment them both on their English. They both giggle again and tell me that English is their major and that they are here to improve it.

They tell me I can sleep in the dorm for a modest tariff or in a private room not much bigger than a bed for ten dollars extra. For me, privacy trumps confined space so it's an easy decision to make and I begin filling the room up with some of my gear.

I've plenty of afternoon left so I begin exploring the small town on foot. Fortuitously, I discover the Penneshaw Maritime and Folk Museum which is only open from two till five. It's located in what was once the Hog Bay (former name of Peneshaw) Public School which operated from 1869 till 1967. The yard outside is littered with rusting machinery. There's nobody inside except the man who runs the place and his daughter who I can hear before I see her taking part in a spelling lesson given by her father. I hadn't expected to stay long but the man takes me under his wing and provides me with a guided tour. His obvious passion for the history of the island is infectious and I'm still in the place a half hour after closing time notwithstanding the impish daughter's not so subtle hints about
locking up and going home for "tea".

  

I'm surprised to learn that the island was inhabited by whites even before Adelaide or the South Australian colony was even thought of, the Aborigines mysteriously abandoning the place some five thousand years earlier.  Females of the race only come back somewhat unwillingly as the mistresses of the wild white men, apparently including such no-frill types as sealers, whalers, escaped convicts, maniacs and assorted oddballs. Marx's former mate Bakunin, if he had known about it, would no doubt have been enraptured with the pure anarchy of the place. When it was decided by the bigwigs back in the old dart to found a colony on the south coast of the continent, it was on Kangaroo Island that the pioneering organisers planned their strategy and from where they launched their ships towards where Adelaide would materialise. To be a fly on the wall to observe how these upper crust Englishmen gentlemen interacted with the locals would have been a rare treat.

Another surprise for me is the number of ships coming to grief on the island - sixty since 1847, and some with tragically high loss of life. It's a reminder of how dangerous life could be (before our own safe-space era with rubber matting instead of naked earth in children's playgrounds) especially aboard ships

Y

Bright and early the next morning I'm off to explore the rest of the island. Tastefully blended into the environment with good, clean facilities are camping areas thoughtfully placed around the island. My plan, if it can be called that, is to simply camp wherever takes my fancy. It's not long before this happens. It's one of the turquoise bays, this one named Vivonne Bay where an extra long jetty jutting out into the sea gives a clue about the radiant colour of the water. It must have something to do with the extended shallowness of the shoals. From high above where I am on the bitumen road, a red brown, gravel-strewn dirt road leads down to the jetty and assorted seaside paraphernalia. As I expected, my bike is skittish, sometimes causing heart in mouth reactions all the way down. I seriously do not want to drop the bike. From personal experience, there is probably more than a fifty per cent chance of damage ensuing, usually only slight such as a busted brake or clutch lever or removed gear shift but enough to render the bike unfit for duty and in such a location it's highly improbable that spare parts are readily available.

THE JETTY AT VIVONNE BAY

I've only just whacked in the last tent peg when a man looking to be retiree age walks over to me to talk motor bikes evidently with memories bubbling up from a long time ago. I can see a woman who I assume to be his wife in the background cooking on the barbecue in the open sided dining room. She's beaming at me, perhaps grateful for the break from her husband.

Throughout my journey so far, wherever I've been I've tried to tease out from people their views on mass immigration and multiculturalism. It's sometimes a delicate operation as people have learnt well by now their freedom of expression goes only so far. I usually unlock this verbal log-jam by hinting at my own views on the subjects. Once it's realised they are on safe ground, that we are sympatico, there's hardly any stopping them. Without exception, they are angry, upset, stunned, saddened by what is happening to their country. One feels the pain involved in their struggle to understand why.
However sometimes, as with my new acquaintance, the process is sharply abridged by his simply shifting his attention from my bike to asking where I'm from. When I tell him Sydney, that's all it takes. He feels sympathy for me. Lived there once himself - couldn't take it. Got tired of playing "spot the Aussie". He's really gathering a head of steam. "It's the politicians. They should all be burnt at the stake." When I suggest this might be going a tad too far he doesn't think so. However, he's much happier since he got the hell out of there.

This to me, is a huge problem. And it's common. Australians living outside of Sydney and Melbourne, the new Sodom and Gomorrah, appear to think that the problems defined so well in those cities will be contained therein, that as long as they distance themselves from those fallen metropolises, their lives will remain untouched, that the cancer will not spread, that it is not their problem. They seem incapable of conceiving that, just like the inexorable march of the cane toads from Queensland, it comes for them also - eventually and inevitably.

Back on the road again, I'm beginning to sort out my impressions of the island. The main impression is one of long roads through drab bush punctuated by scenes of hard-hitting beauty. I'm trying to resist the thought that the island may just be a fraction overrated. If it is, it's understandable as apart from tourism, it has no way of making money. However, there's no arguing with the fact that for one fascinated by exotic wildlife, this would be fauna fiesta. But me? Well, let's just say my policy has always been that if you leave the wildlife alone, it will leave you alone. I have to admit though that seeing seals frolicking in a natural habitat was worth seeing.


 For me, the value of the island is something more intangible. It has its own rhythm and ambience and engenders a sense of semi isolation - understandable of course. I suppose cops exist on the island but I haven't seen one. It could be my imagination, but I think I detect a lingering of the anarchic ways of the original wild men. And naturally the added bonus is, apart from foreign tourists and girls on student visas, I feel, even though they are strangers, I'm among my own kind - just like outside of the cities on the mainland.

My next  camp is at a place named American River, so named because it was where American whalers once based themselves and they thought it was a river, rather than, as closer inspection would have revealed, an inlet. Remarkably, these resourceful men built their own schooner from what was at hand and, not so remarkably, named it Independence. On the way I pass through Kingscote which just pips Penneshaw as being most like a town, even boasting a luxury hotel on the seafront. All the other settlements I've seen would barely rate as villages but quaint and relaxed.

Y

Back in Penneshaw I succeed in securing once again my monk's cell at the hostel. A soft bed however makes everthing right with the world. In the morning when I'm about to ride down to the ferry terminal for the return trip, after all the care taken on treacherous roads, I blow it. The bike's stalled at the hostel entrance. I pull the choke out and hit the starter again - thinking the bike's in neutral. It's not. It leaps forward and hurls me sideways into hedge. I'm like a surgeon in a war-zone, checking for damage lightening fast. Thank Christ! I've caught a break. There is none. It's only then that I become aware of a warm wetness in my left sock. I pull my jeans up a few inches to see that it is soaked with blood. I've managed to strip a few inches of skin from my shin.

The one and only pharmacy doesn't open till ten - typically anarchic - so I buy bandage and tape from the local IAG, doctor myself and then ride slowly to where I was going before being so rudely interrupted - mentally kicking myself in the arse, but at the same time relieved I've been spared a worse outcome.

To be continued