We’ve now been waiting in Berri for nearly a month and still there’s no full-time harvest work. The season has been delayed due to extended “cold” snaps (19°C), but we’re told it should kick off in the next two weeks. The temperature swings by as much as 20°C from day to day. So far I’ve done a few half days of work for a local removals company and some gardening, none of which helps me get my visa so it’s a bit like purgatory. It pays the rent at least. Marie’s had no work at all.
There has been the odd bit of excitement: a Halloween party, a couple of barbecues and the theft of our breakfast. For the first couple of weeks our hostel house didn’t have a working fridge, so we had to keep our food & drink in the fridge in the common games room. One morning I went to get our eggs & bacon only to find a nearly empty fridge. We went, frustrated, to the hostel manager who told us that the thieves were probably (in his opinion) Aborigines. We weren’t the only victims – a lot of people kept their beer in that fridge.
The Aboriginal community is a big problem in Australia, or should I say Australia is a big problem for the Aboriginal community. People don’t generally talk about them except in negative terms. They seem to occupy the same section of the Venn diagram, in terms of general public opinion, as travellers would at home. This problem however is totally Australia’s making. I mean, they were here first. For at least 45,000 years. That’s a long time.
When the original inhabitants came to Australia it must have been by sea because Australia has been an island for all of human history. So somehow, nobody’s sure if it was by boat or driftwood or whatever, people found their way across 90km of ocean to the northwest coast of Australia well before European soil was trodden by human feet. From there they spread across the land, occupying every corner and adapting to every environment. Here they happily lived for a very long time and hunted all large native animals to extinction, but never got around to developing a system of writing.
Then all of a sudden in 1788 a fleet of ships filled with white folk arrived near what is now Sydney to start a new British colony and the Aborigines were killed off in huge numbers by new diseases. Those that were not killed by disease were murdered by the Europeans who regarded them as barely human. Those that survived became a minority group in modern Australia. As well as bringing disease, the British brought alcohol. The native people had never evolved an ability to process alcohol properly – hence the widespread problems with alcoholism today.
The nasty treatment of natives didn’t end there. It gets even worse. Between 1869 and 1969 the Australian government had a problem with the Aboriginal communities not mixing properly with “civilised” Australians. Their solution was truly horrible – they removed children from Aboriginal families and transferred them to Catholic schools so they could be integrated into Australian society. Good morals, you know. It was thought that the Aboriginal mothers did not have normal emotions and forgot about their children after a few months. These children are now referred to as the Stolen Generation. Australia officially apologised to the Stolen Generation in… 2008.
So I kind of feel they’re entitled to our eggs & bacon
Back in Berri – the local news continues to amuse. The Murray River newspaper’s front page headline today was about a local crime wave. “Nothing is Safe!” it warned. The items thieved from the Riverland area include a pair of sneakers from Berri and two bicycles from Barmera. Front page stuff indeed!
Finding a proper newspaper to read has been a challenge. The Australian, the only national, seems to lean somewhat to the right. As well as being officially sceptical of the reality of global warming, it’s owned by Rupert Murdoch. The one copy we bought had an editorial piece giving out yards about a Melbourne-based newspaper called The Age – so this is the paper we’ve decided to get our news from. Any paper that is an enemy of a Murdoch publication is good in my book. It was via The Age that we discovered that Australia’s current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is officially opposed to equal rights for homosexuals in marriage. And Gillard isn’t even the leader of the conservatives – she’s Labour. We’re hoping this conservatism is not ubiquitous in Australia. Time will tell.
In the hostel we’ve been drinking goon (box wine) most evenings which is the only budget alcohol available. Ten litres of wine for $24 isn’t bad – but the wine itself is. They only seem to do extreme wines in the budget variety – very dry or very sweet. Both types are undrinkable on their own so we mix them into something palatable.
We’ve also been on the lookout for wildlife and been on a few walks looking for kangaroos. So far the only ones we’ve seen have had unfortunate encounters with cars and were not much to look at. The birds are interesting – dawn brings a whole chorus of alien bird sounds. Our favourite bird we have named the hurdy-gurdy bird on account of him sounding like the Swedish chef off The Muppets. Last night we found a large stick insect walking around our deck – see pictures.
The weather’s warming up – it’ll be 40°C by the end of the week. This is good for work. Once the work kicks in it’ll be all change – six or seven days a week work straight through to the new year with one day of for Christmas. Here’s hoping we’re up to it.
eightyfish 
